THE TEN THOUSAND

by Harold Coyle

  At the edge of the tree line Gross paused and squatted. The dismounts followed suit, scanning the area to their immediate front. From where he was, Gross could see a stand of short pine trees. The clearing was, he decided after looking at his map, a tree nursery that had been planted to replace older trees harvested years before. Standing slightly less than three feet tall and covering an area that Gross estimated to be one hundred by one hundred meters on either side of the trail, the tree nursery provided the only open area of any note in this forest. Not that this was important. What did matter was that the short pine trees and the noise created by the German panzergrenadiers that he could now clearly see across the clearing gave Gross the opportunity to close with and surprise them.

  The Germans, oblivious to the danger that was lurking less than one hundred meters away, were idly picking away at their first warm meal of the day at the rear of a mess truck while the drivers of their two Marder infantry fighting vehicles were refueling them using five-gallon cans taken off of two fuel trucks parked next to each of the Marders. Like Gross's own dismounts, the German infantrymen sought every chance they could to escape the cramped and confined spaces of their fighting vehicles. The presence of a mess truck and the need to refuel combined to negate any security measures that the platoon commander had set up. With such an advantage, Gross decided to take on the Germans without waiting for any reinforcements from the rest of the company.

  Splitting his dismounts in half, Gross sent the two groups in opposite directions around the nursery to deal with each of the Marders while dispatching one of the squad leaders back to the Bradleys with his orders for them. Gross, leading one of the two teams of dismounts, would initiate the attack. Using handheld light anti-tank rocket launchers and well-controlled small-arms fire, Gross intended to disable the German fighting vehicles and pin the German dismounts and crews without damaging the fuel trucks. With luck, the appearance of his four Bradleys charging across the tree nursery under the control of his platoon sergeant would discourage any desire of the Germans surviving the initial onslaught to continue to resist.

  As with any operation, there are always the unknowns to contend with that do not become apparent until after the operation commences. That was why the battalion had an advance guard. That way, if something unexpected came up, like the two Marders, the advance guard could check it out, report, and allow the lead company commander or the battalion commander time to consider what to do without having the entire battalion stumble over the unexpected resistance. Gross knew this and kept pondering as he led his team along the edge of the nursery toward the Germans what he had missed in his hasty reconnaissance. What if there was a third Marder still tucked into the tree line out of sight? There could even be, he realized, a fourth, since German mechanized infantry platoons had four Marders per platoon. That, he began to grasp as they drew nearer, was a very real possibility that he had not properly planned for. It was, however, too late to stop and go back to reset the whole operation. He and his entire platoon were committed to the plan he had come up with and was about to spring. That he had neglected to report any of this to his company commander or seek her permission never entered Gross's mind.

  When they reached the corner of the tree nursery just short of where the Germans sat, Gross paused for a few minutes in order to ensure that the other team of dismounts was set. Only when he was satisfied that he had allowed more than enough slack time for them to make it did Gross allow the squad leader with him to finish deploying his men and prepare to attack. As he watched his people slowly ease themselves into firing positions, Gross looked around and saw no sign of any other German vehicles. This relief was short-lived when he realized that the dismounts he was with were setting up in a way that would leave them open to friendly fire from the team deployed across from him. For a moment he considered pulling the men with him back, but then stopped when he saw a German sergeant walk out into the middle of the small cluster of soldiers and vehicles and begin to issue orders. Now was the time to strike. He would simply have to trust his luck to the hands of God, just like his company commander kept saying when she was in situations like this.

  Just then the thought of Captain Kozak made Gross realize that he hadn't reported in. God, he thought, how stupid. How goddamned stupid. Looking back in the direction where the Bradleys were hidden, Gross hoped that his platoon sergeant had remembered to do so. He wondered if there was any way that he could before he attacked make sure that a report had been made. Looking over at the Germans, who were now beginning to move about as if they were preparing to leave, Gross dropped that idea. He was committed. Though he had screwed up by not reporting, this was not the time to worry about that. He had to play out his hand.

  With that momentary crisis resolved, Gross refocused his attention on the matter at hand. To initiate the attack, he decided to take out the German sergeant giving orders himself. Raising his M-16 to his shoulder, he flipped the fire select switch off of safe and into the three-round burst mode. After taking careful aim, Gross squeezed the trigger just like the instructors at Fort Benning had taught him and began their one-sided battle.

  Greeted by the presence of one of Gross's Bradleys covering the trail, Kozak ordered her driver to maneuver around it and over to where Gross and his dismounts were rallying. Though the other Bradleys were not visible, Kozak could see where they had come out of the wood line, deployed in the nursery, and charged across it toward the Germans. At the far side of the nursery she could see the two Marders, of which only one appeared to be damaged. The other simply looked abandoned, which it was. Sergeant Danny Wolf, not knowing this for sure, laid his sight onto the undamaged Marder and watched it while Kozak ordered her driver to bring their Bradley to a halt in between the two Marders.

  Rolling out of the woods and into the small clearing that the Germans had been using for a resupply point, Kozak was greeted by Gross. Resting the butt of his rifle on his left hip, Gross waited until Kozak had brought her Bradley to a halt and dismounted before he saluted. With a grin that ran from ear to ear and still pumped up from the rush that a soldier got who had just risked his neck and come out alive and successful, Gross reported. "Ma'am, Second Lieutenant Gross is pleased to report that 2nd Platoon, Company C has overrun a German outpost, destroying one Marder and capturing another as well as two fuel trucks, one mess truck complete with mess, and fifteen prisoners of war without loss."

  While Kozak listened, she looked around. Unlike Gross, she felt only the full weight of her exhaustion and concerns, magnified by lack of sleep and the need to rush about from one crisis to the next. It was only with the greatest of efforts that she cleared her mind and focused it on the matter immediately at hand. From where she stood, Kozak could only see two of Gross's Bradleys, the one she had come across on the trail and Gross's own track that was being used to guard the prisoners. The others, she assumed, were deployed further into the woods. As she watched, a squad leader and his men were searching the prisoners while the platoon medic tended to half a dozen wounded Germans next to them. The dead, left where they had fallen, served as a grim reminder to Kozak that the success that Gross was so thrilled over had been purchased with human lives. Deciding that Gross needed to be brought back to reality, Kozak turned to face him, drawing across her face the mask of an angry commander. "Why in the hell, Lieutenant, didn't you report before you acted? What in the name of hell do you mean by charging off like that into the attack without permission?"

  Kozak's response hit Gross like a slap in the face. Slowly dropping his salute, he thought for a moment before responding. When he did, his voice was subdued and unsure. "But, Captain Kozak, there were only two Marders. And they didn't look like they were expecting us."

  "How did you know they were alone? How did you know that they weren't just the last two or the first two Marders in a whole column?"

  Gross, remembering that he hadn't thought of that until he was well committed to his attack, didn't respond. His blank, almost sheepish expres
sion told Kozak that her suspicions about him running off half-cocked had been correct. Deciding that she had made her point, far too tired to play mind games with Gross, and anxious to get on with the advance now that they had made contact with the Germans, Kozak considered what to do next before she issued her orders. Turning away from Gross, she watched the driver of Gross's Bradley as he ran back and forth to one of the fuel trucks, hauling five-gallon cans of fuel. Turning her head back toward Gross, Kozak pointed to Gross's driver. "Save that fuel for Ellerbee's tanks. Send a runner over to his tank and tell him to laager his tanks here and refuel. He has twenty minutes."

  Gross looked over to his driver, then back at Kozak. "But we need the fuel too. All of my tracks are less than half full."

  Kozak shook off Gross's response. "Ellerbee's herd of hogs need the fuel more than you do. Now what else do you have for me? I need to check in with the battalion commander."

  "The prisoners. What do we do with them?"

  Shaking her head, Kozak took in a deep breath as she struggled to hold her temper in check. "If you paid more attention to my orders instead of running off on your own little Rambofest, you'd know exactly what to do with them, Lieutenant."

  Glancing over to the Germans, then back to Kozak, Gross leaned forward and lowered his voice. "You can't be serious. I mean, these guys are probably pissed off. After all, we just killed three of their buddies and damned near killed them. I know Colonel Dixon is a smart man, but I really don't think he's considered all the angles as far as prisoners are concerned. How do we know that they won't join the first unit they come across, get themselves rearmed, and come back looking for blood?"

  "We don't, Gross. Odds are that's exactly what's going to happen. I know that's what I would do."

  With a look of excitement on his face, Gross threw his free hand out to his side. "Then why in the hell are we letting them go? So they can come back and have a second chance to kill us?"

  Angry at Gross's manner and persistence, Kozak reached down, unsnapped her holster, and pulled her pistol out. Pulling the pistol's slide back in a sharp exaggerated motion to chamber a round, Kozak flipped the safety off and offered the pistol, butt first, to Gross. "Well, Second Lieutenant Marc Gross, if you feel so strongly about leaving live prisoners behind, then here, go shoot them. Because that's the only other way we have of dealing with them. The entire corps has no transportation to haul them, no food to feed them, and no one to guard them. So if you're so hell-fired concerned about dealing with them, this is it. You said there's fifteen of them? Good! There's fifteen rounds in my pistol. Just enough to do the job."

  The response by his company commander shocked Gross. She was normally a reasonable person who took great pains to explain everything to her subordinates, and Gross was not prepared to deal with her preposterous proposal or caustic response. Stepping back, Gross let his head hang down for a moment before looking back up at Kozak. Seeing the anger etched into her face, added to the signs of strain and lack of sleep, Gross knew that she was right. There was no good alternative. He also realized for the first time that this whole affair, the race for the sea and the fighting, had entered a new and very deadly phase, one in which there were no guarantees that they would make it. This was, Gross suddenly realized, a real life-and-death struggle, one which every one of his men, as well as Kozak and he, could very easily lose.

  Looking up at Kozak, he began to apologize, but Kozak cut him short. "Listen, Marc. Odds are, unless we do everything right, you and I will be sitting over there with our hands on our heads in a matter of days. We, you, me, the battalion commander, Colonel Dixon, and anyone who calls himself an officer in this corps can't afford to forget that. We can't afford to make mistakes either. You understand that. I know you do, damn it. I taught you better than this. Now pull your head out of your ass and stop acting like a first-year ROTC cadet running around on a weekend maneuver."

  Softening her tone, Kozak asked if he had anything more to report. After seeing him shaking his head slowly, Kozak turned and walked back to her Bradley, C60. As she did so, she looked over every now and then at the prisoners. For she knew, unlike Gross, that unless their luck changed soon they would indeed all be prisoners, or worse. All the plans, all the speeches, and all the pep talks, together with all the fancy maneuvers they had just done, had finally come down to luck and hard fighting, period.

  That was what wars were all about.

  Major Bob Messinger would have disagreed violently with Nancy Kozak's observation that luck was an important ingredient in military operations. A tried and true military technician by training, Messinger was proud to the point of arrogance of his skills as an Army aviator. Only his abilities as an operations officer, which had landed him the job as the battalion operations officer for the 14th Cavalry's air cavalry battalion, ran a close second. From that platform Messinger preached his doctrine that good combat pilots make their own luck. Praying that the enemy will make a mistake or depending on luck, he told his company commanders, was for weenies.

  To this end he was meticulous with his planning. Nothing was left unaccounted for—fuel required for each mission; weapons mix carried by his squadron's attack helicopters; attack routes in and egress routes out; location of primary, alternate, and subsequent battle positions; command and control procedures; engagement sequence; suppression of enemy air defense; friendly fire support; forward rearm and refuel point locations and defense—nothing. And Messinger, unlike many of his contemporaries, had a natural skill for pulling all of these diverse elements together into a deceptively simple and coherent plan. Though he would have shunned being called an artist, for there is in fact a high degree of creativity involved when crafting a plan, few officers in the Tenth Corps could equal his skills. If there was one serious fault that Messinger did have, it was that he knew he was good and felt no shame in making sure that everyone around him knew that too.

  Today, as he and Warrant Officer Larry Perkins stalked a column of armored vehicles and trucks belonging to the 4th Panzer Division's 1st Brigade as they moved north along Highway 19, Messinger was again afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his skills as a military artist. Ordered to screen the Tenth Corps' eastern and southern flank, the 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment ordered its air cavalry squadron, reinforced with two attack helicopter companies, to find and attack elements of the 4th Panzer Division, delaying and disrupting their deployment. Coming up from the southeast, that panzer division not only threatened to turn the maneuver of Scott Dixon's brigade into a trap, it threatened to add the weight needed to break the 2nd Panzer Division's deadlock as it continued to pound its way into the center of the Tenth Corps. In preparing his order, Messinger used the same words that regimental operations used when defining their mission: delay and disrupt. To these he added his own, reminding the company commanders that the best way to delay and disrupt the enemy was to kill them. To this end, Messinger laid out in detail how they would do it.

  Working from an ancient OH-58D, an aircraft frame that was almost as old as he was, Messinger deployed his units. Scouts from one of his troops secured the ambush site, north, south, and east, keeping their eyes open for German attack helicopters as well as any anti-aircraft guns or surface-to-air missile launchers. If encountered before Messinger sprung the ambush, he would decide whether to press the attack or break it off. If the scouts ran across these threats after the ambush had been initiated, the scouts would deal with them as best they could and keep Messinger advised.

  Messinger himself would be with the Apache company making the attack. From there he could judge the effectiveness of their fire and determine when they reached that point where a continuation of attack became counterproductive or too costly to them. Due to the increased work load placed on his squadron, insufficient time to properly maintain their aircraft, the exhaustion of critical spare parts, and the need to conserve fuel, none of the units of the Tenth Corps, particularly the aviation units, could afford to waste precious resources in pursuit of marg
inal gains. In most ambushes, the majority of the killing is done in the first few seconds or minutes when the enemy is surprised and off balance. When, because of the actions of the enemy commanders or an inability of the attacker to maintain the pressure, the unit under attack is given time to recover from that initial shock and rally, the tables are often turned and the attacker becomes the victim. Bob Messinger's primary job that morning was to ensure that every one of his aircraft was long gone before that happened.

  With well-measured ease, Larry Perkins slowly brought his aircraft up above the treetops until the golf-ball-like instrument dome mounted on top of the rotor blades had a clear view of the road. With one eye he watched the trees to his front and with the other the instrument screen. Messinger, his eyes glued to his observer's display, didn't speak. He didn't need to give Perkins directions or corrections, since the instrument dome had free rotation. Messinger himself could traverse his sight to cover the area that he was interested in, leaving Perkins free to fly the aircraft. When Perkins reached the proper height that allowed the instrument dome to clear the last of the tree branches, Messinger merely muttered, "Okay, that's good."

  While Perkins held the helicopter steady, Messinger scanned the road. To his front a column of armored vehicles, Leopard tanks and Marder infantry fighting vehicles, interspersed with trucks and other vehicles, was moving north in a steady stream.

  Though he was interested in all of them, it was the tanklike Gepard armed with twin 37mm anti-aircraft cannons, and Rolands, tracked vehicles mounting surface-to-air missiles, that Messinger was looking for. They would be given priority when the killing started, since they were the most effective defense against just the kind of attack that Messinger was about to initiate.