THE TEN THOUSAND

by Harold Coyle

  The unexpected reference to an effort to resolve the crisis through other than force of arms caught Lammers off guard. He could not, however, easily pass this off. If for no other reason than to keep Interior Minister Thomas Fellner, the voice of reason and the only figure respected by all political factions in Ruff's cabinet, satisfied and in line, Lammers had to respond in a positive manner. "Why, yes, that is a very, very sound course of action. I will, of course, continue to appeal to the Americans while the Bundeswehr prepares. But I must warn you, I hold little hope for that."

  "And I, Herr Lammers, must warn you and everyone else that the Bundeswehr may not be able to deliver on the threats that you have been hurling at the Americans. In the first place, every brigade deployed has for the most part only two combat battalions with it. There has been insufficient response by the reservists needed in the two reserve battalions of each brigade to bring those units up to strength. In effect, each of our six panzer and panzergrenadier divisions has only six, maybe seven, tank or infantry battalions with it. Instead of a three-to-one advantage, as the number of divisions deployed by the Bundeswehr and the Americans would suggest, we have less than a two-to-one advantage when counting the critical ground combat battalions.

  "But even here," Lange continued after a slight pause, "our advantage in numbers is illusory. We have not fought since 1945. We have never in our existence moved the entire Bundeswehr at the same time. And the operation which we are engaged in is to say the least quite unusual and sensitive, politically as well as militarily. Regardless of what we say and do here, regardless of how much we talk and debate, the final military outcome, gentlemen, will be determined by the commanders and soldiers out there in units spread all over Germany. And right now those units are, without exaggerating, choking on their own supply lines, lines that run throughout Germany like a plate of spilled noodles. Added to all of this military movement is the mass migration of civilians, some seeking to get out of harm's way and some simply trying to carry on with their lives as if nothing has changed. It will be days before we know for sure if we can pull off the great plans which we so easily toss about here in the warmth of this building."

  Unable to effectively counter Lange's argument, Ruff, Rooks, and Lammers let the meeting limp to an unsettling close. Lange for the moment had succeeded in buying the time he wanted. He had no idea what could happen to change what he was convinced Ruff saw as an inevitable confrontation. Until the first blood was drawn, there was always the chance of a negotiated settlement. The longer the conflict was postponed the better. Still, Lange could not delay forever. He knew that he could only buy so much time with which to allow the political situation to clarify itself by walking the fine line between performing his duty as a soldier and doing what his conscience dictated. At some point, and he had no idea where or when that would happen, time would run out.

  The effect of shifting of forces from one place to another was a very real concern to Captain Friedrich Seydlitz as his column of Leopard II tanks rumbled back to the west down Autobahn E40 just outside of Dresden. The orders to move the two panzer, or tank, battalions of the brigade 230 kilometers by road to Erfurt, after having completed a 270-kilometer road march from the south, were greeted with little joy. Every officer took great pains to point out that the wear and tear on the machines as well as the men would leave the combat effectiveness of their units questionable at best. "One does not simply hop into a tank and go driving about Germany in the dead of winter," Seydlitz's battalion commander warned the brigade commander, "without paying a price."

  As they moved along the westbound lane of the autobahn, Seydlitz could see that the price which his commander had warned about was already being paid. At regular intervals on both sides of the autobahn Army trucks of every description, Leopard tanks, Marder infantry fighting vehicles, and self-propelled artillery pieces sat idle, either broken down or out of fuel. In some instances armored vehicles had seized up in mid-stride, coming to a sudden stop in the center of the road. Left by the losing commander for the overwhelmed maintenance teams to recover, the rest of the unit, fighting civilian traffic as well as a tight timetable, would attempt to flow around the derelict vehicle. When road conditions did not permit vehicles following to pass on a paved surface, the other vehicles in the column and dozens of columns following would maneuver off the road, onto the shoulder, and then back onto the autobahn, dragging great trails of mud onto the road surface already made slick by freezing rain or wet snow. During the day, when the temperature rose above freezing, this mud made driving dangerous to any wheeled vehicles. The number of accidents involving German civilians speeding down the autobahn in their cars who unexpectedly hit this mud multiplied as rapidly as the number of broken-down military vehicles increased. At night or when the temperature dipped below freezing, the mud clods on the road froze hard as stone. The effect of hitting a patch of road smeared with these frozen fields of mud in a Mercedes was just as dangerous as it was when the mud was wet and slick. The image of smashed cars and civilian tractor-trailers along the side of the road, with their angry owners shaking their fists and shouting at Seydlitz and his company as they rolled by, did nothing to cheer up his confused and tired command.

  As bothersome as this was to Seydlitz, his mind was on other, more pressing military matters. The military police and local authorities would deal with the angry and injured civilians. No one, however, seemed to be too concerned about the welfare of his command. Though he considered himself lucky that he had yet to lose a single tank to a breakdown, Seydlitz knew at this point that it was simply a matter of time before his luck ran out. And if a mechanical failure didn't stop them, lack of fuel would. For, although he had seen many fuel trucks moving about, all of them either belonged to another unit or were on the other side of the road headed in the opposite direction. The battalion's own fuel trucks, drained days ago, had been unable to find a fuel depot where they could top off. Suggestions by several of the company commanders in the battalion that they draw on civilian gas stations or fuel depots were rejected. They had, their battalion commander told them, no authority at that time to do so. That, and the desire to minimize the impact of military operations on the civilians, kept Seydlitz from topping off his tanks from a gas station that was less than one hundred meters from the assembly he had just left.

  As if to mock the need to minimize their impact on civilians, Seydlitz's tank rolled by the remains of a bright yellow Porsche. Left on the side of the road, the front left fender was chewed up as though some great metal-eating cat had grabbed the fender and gnawed on it. In an instant Seydlitz knew what had happened. The impatient driver of the Porsche had apparently been following an armored vehicle too closely. Without having seen it, Seydlitz knew that at some point the driver of the armored vehicle had slowed for some reason, causing the Porsche to run into the rotating treads of the armored vehicle. Caught in the treads, the Porsche would be pulled up and into the drive sprocket of the armored vehicle to be ground up. If, like this Porsche, the civilian driver was lucky, the car would be thrown clear of the armored vehicle like a child's toy.

  Such accidents, in a country where heavy military equipment shared the roads with everyone else almost on a daily basis, were to be expected. What was new to Seydlitz was the casualness and lack of serious concern with which his superiors and even his own men now treated this rash of incidents. It seemed as if, in the 2nd Panzer Division's rush to get at the Americans, all thought of maintaining the normally close and friendly civilian-military relationships that had highlighted every peacetime maneuver was forgotten. To Seydlitz, this didn't make sense. For rather than doing everything to defend civilians and their property, the civilians were being viewed as a nuisance to military operations. He had actually watched units along the division's route of march going out of their way to infuriate the very people they were supposed to be defending. When Seydlitz mentioned this to his friend Captain Buhle, the battalion supply officer, Buhle shrugged. "What, Friedrich, do you
expect? We're being told to go out and defend those bastards, putting our asses on the line for them. Yet despite the fact that we need every kind of support imaginable, from fuel to rations, we can't requisition anything, not even toilet paper, from the civilians. 'Military operations,' the fools in Berlin tell us, 'cannot be allowed to interfere with the normal daily intercourse of civilian affairs.' Shit, Friedrich, just look at the mess that this division alone is creating and then tell me how in the hell we are going to keep from interfering with normal daily intercourse of civilian affairs. Fools, I tell you! We're being led by fools in the service of ungrateful swine."

  Even the attitude that his superiors seemed to hold concerning the welfare of their own men and equipment during the marching and countermarching of the past few days bothered Seydlitz. For two days he and his company had sat in their assembly area south of Dresden waiting for their resupply of food and fuel to find them. Orders to move, however, found them first. If it were not for the soldiers going off on their own and buying the food themselves, no one in Seydlitz's company would have gotten a hot meal while they waited. Even their combat rations, as Buhle had so painfully pointed out, were running low.

  Then, in the midst of bemoaning their fate, Seydlitz recognized the tactical symbol of his brigade on several fuel and supply trucks in the eastbound lane of the autobahn. Despite the orders to remain in radio listening silence, Seydlitz felt the need to inform his commander. Could they not, he asked, flag down the column in which their brigade's trucks were moving in order to refuel and draw rations?

  Without any hesitation, his battalion commander informed Seydlitz that they could not. Both the battalion and, no doubt, the brigade's supply vehicles had to adhere to the march tables that controlled the movement of all units in the area. "If every commander stopped when and where he wanted to," the battalion commander explained to Seydlitz, "then this intolerable situation would become totally unmanageable." Reminding Seydlitz that the march orders they were moving under had a maintenance and refueling stop set up by corps supply units and scheduled in another two hours, the battalion commander went on to reassure Seydlitz that if everyone did what they were ordered to do, everyone would eventually get to where they were going.

  Acknowledging his commander, Seydlitz gave up as he watched the trucks carrying the fuel and food his company so desperately needed roll away to the east into the gathering darkness. There was, of course, no fuel and no food waiting for Seydlitz and his company at the end of two hours. The corps supply unit responsible for establishing the refuel and rest stop was still on the road somewhere to the west, tied up behind a broken-down tank and the armored recovery vehicle, also broken down, that had stopped to retrieve it. With fuel almost expended, Seydlitz and his company, as well as the rest of the brigade, would wait, lined up on the side of the road and unable to continue due to a simple lack of fuel. For nearly twelve hours they would wait while staff officers at corps and division desperately shuffled and reshuffled march tables and units without ever realizing that their efforts were for the most part creating more problems than they were solving. It would take the direct intervention of both the corps commander of the 2nd German Corps and his division commanders, riding up and down the route of march and herding and directing units like cowboy trail bosses, and another twenty-four hours, to sort out the 2nd Panzer Division and get it moving again.

  News that they had arrived at Grafenwöhr was greeted with moans and groans by Captain Hilary Cole and the other nurses of the 553rd Field Hospital. Somehow in their minds they had come to believe that once they were out of the Czech Republic and back in Germany things would be different, that everything would be all over. The long, seemingly pointless road marches in the back of a cold five-ton cargo truck were supposed to end.

  There would be, they thought, no more endless waiting as they sat on the side of nameless roads waiting for another column to pass and gnawed at cold combat rations. And the jerky stop and go, stop and go, as they wound their way through the Czech mountains, would be over once they were in Germany.

  So it came as a rude shock when the trucks pulled into a loose circle in the middle of a large well-used gravel and mud parking area, and they were informed that they were at Grafenwöhr. The unit first sergeant could have told them any other German name and, although Cole and the other nurses would have been unhappy, they would not have suffered the severe depression that hit them when the word "Grafenwöhr" was mentioned. Built as a training area with numerous tank and artillery live-fire ranges and maneuver areas by the Wehrmacht before World War II, elements of Erwin Rommel's famed Afrika Korps, as well as units of the elite and notorious Waffen SS, had trained there during the war. Taken over by the Americans after the war with little done to improve creature comforts, few soldiers serving in Germany escaped the horror of doing time there. Grafenwöhr was to those soldiers who went there to train synonymous with misery, discomfort, cold, wet, sleeplessness, and every other word that is used to describe the pain and discomfort a soldier experiences when serving in the field under the worst possible conditions. It was described by more than a few American soldiers as the armpit of the world.

  It didn't matter why they were there. It didn't matter what they were supposed to do there. All that mattered was the fact that they were there, and not in some nice clean hospitable piece of Germany untainted by the foul reputation associated with Grafenwöhr. Even when a group of soldiers came by and shoved another brown plastic MRE combat ration into Cole's hand, she didn't react, though she felt like it. At that moment, she felt like sinking onto the ground and crying. It wasn't fair that they were being treated like that. This was not what she was trained to do. Cole could deal with the pain and suffering of others. She could watch and assist in a very detached manner as doctors pieced torn bodies back together. She could even handle the frustration of doing everything within her power to save a life and then watching that life slip away. All of that was manageable, reasonable, and expected. This, however, was beyond comprehension. Even worse than the horror before her eyes was the sudden realization that there was no discernible end. There was no well-defined conclusion to which they were headed. This terrible endless chain of suffering and wandering had to be endured without any chance of really influencing it in any way, no way of stopping it. That to Cole was the horror of it all.

  Just when she was about to break, to give in to her desire to break down and cry, Hilary noticed that someone had beaten her to it. In the darkness she heard her friend Wendi. Looking about, Hilary could see her standing off from the group alone in the darkness clutching her arms tightly across her chest as she rocked from side to side and cried. Though her own pain and frustration were still with her, Cole handed her ration to another nurse standing next to her and went to Wendi. Wrapping her arms about Wendi, Hilary Cole gently pushed Wendi's head down onto her shoulder. Reaching up under Wendi's helmet, Hilary slowly began to stroke her friend's hair. As Wendi cried, Hilary softly repeated through her own sobs, "It's going to be all right, Wendi. It's all going to be all right. I'm here."

  Under normal circumstances, Big Al Malin didn't like to bother his subordinate commanders when they were getting ready to start a major operation. He made sure that he had good people working for him and that he issued clear concise orders and directives. "The rest," he liked to tell people, "was in their hands and God's." This operation, now referred to as Malin's March to the Sea, was not a normal operation. Though it was planned and briefed to everyone in the same manner as a purely military operation, it was not. The intricate civil-military relationships that were woven into the entire fabric of the operation and designed to prevent or defuse problems between the Tenth Corps and the German populace that they would be moving through touched every aspect of the operation, both planned and potential.

  Some commanders voiced strong reservations about the rules of engagement imposed by Big Al. The commander of the 55th Mechanized Infantry Division had on several occasions pushed Big Al to soften
his order restricting the use of artillery fire to only confirmed enemy locations that were a danger to the command. Every chance he got, Big Al would remind his commanders that "We, an army used to the indiscriminate use of firepower, must look twice and three times before we pull the trigger. Otherwise we're going to leave in our wake a hostile populace that will cut our combat service support units to ribbons and deny us the use of their fuel and resources that the success of this operation depends upon. It is totally unreasonable to expect us to ask a German mother or father to allow us free and unhindered progress after we've blown up their home and killed their children. If you can't picture that, then just ask yourself before you make a call for fire, Would you still do so if your wife and child were in the target area?"

  It was the need to stress such things that drove him to visit every command he could before they jumped off, and to talk to every officer and soldier in a position of leadership. In his own mind he wanted to ensure that he had done his best to convey his intent and that it was understood. Standing there that night in front of the commanders of Scott Dixon's brigade, Big Al went over what he intended to do and how they would do it. The formal review of the brigade's plan, given by Dixon himself, was Dixon's own effort to ensure that every battalion and company commander in his brigade understood what he intended. When he was finished, he turned the floor over to Big Al.