THE TEN THOUSAND

by Harold Coyle

  "BETRAY? You, Herr Fellner, are mad. If there be treason, you, and not I, are the traitor. There is no doubt, no doubt at all, that you have never fully supported this government during this crisis. You continue to work against our purposes."

  "And what," Fellner shouted, "are those purposes? To destroy Germany again, for the third time in less than one hundred years? What in the hell are you doing?" Then looking about the room, Fellner asked everyone present, "What are we all doing? Have we gone mad, again? What are we doing dragging all of Germany and its people back to the gates of Armageddon? What?"

  In the silence that followed, a captain of the operations section entered the room and began to head for Lange until he realized what was happening. Freezing in place, the captain looked at Lange, then back at the door. He was about to turn and flee when Lange caught his eye and signaled him to come over. Though he did so with the same reluctance that a man jumps into a sea full of sharks, the captain inched toward Lange and handed him a dispatch. For a moment, while the silent standoff between Ruff and Fellner continued, Lange read the dispatch.

  When he finished, he thanked the captain and dismissed him. While the captain was fleeing the room, Lange stood up, cleared his throat, and began to speak. The sarcasm he felt showed in every word he spoke. "Gentlemen, excuse me for disturbing your, ah, discussions. But I am afraid the situation in central Germany has changed somewhat. It seems the Americans have entered Paderborn and are moving west and northwest toward Münster and Osnabrück. The enemy has managed to break out of our encirclement."

  Dumbfounded, Ruff turned his attention away from Fellner and toward Lange. "How can that be? Just five minutes ago your chief of operations briefed us that the 7th Panzer Division had established blocking positions in front of Paderborn. What happened?"

  Looking down at the message, Lange considered his response. When he spoke, he did so without looking at Ruff. "It seems the positions of the 7th Panzer Division were compromised."

  "Compromised? What in the hell do you mean, compromised?"

  "It means, Herr Chancellor, that enemy actions and maneuvering compelled the commander of that division to withdraw."

  "And how many casualties," Ruff demanded, "did the 7th Panzer inflict on the Americans before they retreated?"

  "I do not know, Herr Chancellor. This dispatch doesn't say."

  "All right, Herr General, how many casualties did the 7th Panzer Division suffer before yielding Paderborn?"

  With a quick glance down, Lange found the appropriate passage and read it. "The 7th Panzer Division reports suffering three casualties, all wounded, when their truck was sideswiped by a Leopard tank while leaving Paderborn."

  "Three?"

  "Yes, Herr Chancellor, three. It seems we were very, very lucky today."

  Like a well-rehearsed stage play, the column of American tanks and infantry fighting vehicles of the 55th Mech Infantry Division approached the bridge held by elements of the 7th Panzer Division. When the lead Bradley was clearly visible, the senior German officer present, a panzergrenadier captain, walked out into the middle of the road. Upon seeing the German, the commander of the Bradley halted and reported. Within minutes the most senior American officer in the column, an armored major, came forth mounted in his tank. Stopping thirty meters away from the German officer, the American major dismounted with no undue haste, then walked up to the German captain.

  After the exchange of military pleasantries, the German captain spoke first. "I have been ordered, Herr Major, to establish a blocking position here and prevent the passage of American forces."

  The American major, responding in German, likewise stated his mission. "I have been ordered, Herr Captain, to seize this bridge and establish a bridgehead on the far side."

  The German captain replied, "I must resist your efforts until my position is no longer tenable."

  The American major nodded. "I understand." Then, turning toward the commander of the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle behind him, the major waved his hand over his head and then pointed to the bridge. Without hesitation, the commander of the Bradley gunned his engine and raced for the bridge, past German obstacles removed to clear the way and German Marder infantry fighting vehicles only partially hidden in positions meant to cover them.

  When the American Bradley reached the bridge, the German captain, who had been watching its progress, turned to the American major. "Ah, if you would excuse me, Major. My position is no longer tenable. I must withdraw my unit to its next blocking position, which is seven point two kilometers further down the road."

  "That is all right, Captain. I understand. Auf Wiedersehen."

  Saluting, the captain also bid the American major farewell and returned to his unit.

  * * *

  Just short of the road junction west of Ronshausen, Major Harold Cerro saw a lone humvee half concealed in a stand of trees with two figures standing next to it waiting. Knowing one of the figures had to be his boss, Colonel Scott Dixon, Cerro ordered his driver to pull over next to it and stop.

  Normally, when responding to a summons by his commander to meet at some isolated spot in the middle of the night, Cerro would literally jump out of whatever vehicle he was traveling in before it stopped and bound over to Dixon to receive the latest order or change of mission Dixon invariably had for him. Dixon and Cerro, having worked so long together, understood each other's work habits to the point where they could hold short, almost encrypted, conversations without any loss of clarity or meaning. Tonight, for example, when Dixon called the brigade command post and directed that Cerro meet him at a crossroads near the command post of the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Infantry, Cerro knew that Dixon had an important order that needed to be issued and there wasn't time for him to return to the command post himself.

  Cerro, however, didn't leap out of his humvee when it stopped. Instead, he sat there for a moment almost as if he had to think about what to do next. Slowly Cerro had to gather the strength necessary to climb out of his vehicle. For Cerro, like everyone else in the brigade, from the youngest rifleman to Dixon himself, was pushing the limits of endurance. The Battle of Central Germany, now officially declared over by the American news media, had cost more than lives and materiel lost. Everyone, American and German, who had participated in the grueling slugfest was exhausted. And the exhaustion was not only physical. It was mental as well. Fear, stress, wild swings that took a person from near comatose exhaustion to the heights of sheer terror where they couldn't even control their bodily functions, tore away at the mental fiber of the mind and soul just as heavy labor tore at the cells of one's muscles. War, as von Clausewitz so correctly pointed out, was as much a contest of wills and minds as it was physical.

  As he mustered the strength to move himself over to where the two colonels waited, Cerro looked at them. They were quite a contrast. Colonel Vorishnov was the storybook image of a Russian officer. He was big for an armor officer. The Russian Army still recruited only short officers and men so that their tank designers could create combat vehicles that had a lower silhouette. Unlike many of his peers, however, Vorishnov was not thick in the waist, though the heavy parka he wore made him appear to be quite pregnant. Dixon, a man of average height, seemed dwarfed by the tall Russian. The two had used their physical difference before the Battle of Central Germany for comic relief. Every now and then when he judged the mood to be right, Vorishnov would come up to Dixon as he was slouched over a map or document. Standing between Dixon and the light, so that the American colonel stood in the shadow of the tall Russian, Vorishnov would stretch his large frame out and up as far as it would go. When Dixon noticed the shadow of the tall Russian over him, he would stop what he was doing, look up, and with a look of terror on his face exclaim, "My God, they are ten feet tall." In response, Vorishnov would reach out with his hand, fingers upturned and spread out as if they were holding a ball. Bellowing so that his voice sounded like it came from the depths of a monstrous cavern, Vorishnov would say, "If we had known you wer
e so puny, we would have crushed you a long time ago." In the past, such antics had never failed to bring a round of laughter from the staff of the 1st Brigade.

  Sitting there, Cerro realized that those days were gone. The war had taken its toll. There was no humor anymore. There was no lighter side to look at. Even worse, after assessing the results of their recent battles, Cerro even wondered if there was hope. For as they sat there that night, there was no indication that the will of the German soldier to fight had in any way been diminished during the last battle. Fuel reserves within the Tenth Corps were almost nonexistent, casualties in some companies reached as high as 50 percent, equipment that had been damaged and could not be hastily repaired had been destroyed in place by their crews, the heavy freeze that had made the ground hard and easy to maneuver on was coming to an end. And they were only halfway to the coast with few surprises left up their sleeves. With such solemn thoughts as a backdrop, Cerro slowly unfolded his weary body from the front seat of his humvee and trudged over to where Dixon and Vorishnov waited.

  There were no greetings, no pleasantries. Not even a grunt to acknowledge Cerro's appearance. There was only Dixon's announcement, made matter-of-factly. "Hal, you're to assume command of the 3rd of the 3rd. Jim Jensen, who's been filling in since their XO was wounded, will report immediately to brigade for reassignment." There was a pause before Dixon added, "You know the situation and the battalion's mission. I have no need to tell you how important it is that you keep the Germans at bay. We can't afford another incident like the one last night with the engineer company and the field hospital. We were lucky, you know. There was a supply convoy less than two kilometers down the road with a dozen tankers filled with diesel sitting on the side of the road. Had we lost them instead of the hospital, we'd have been in real trouble."

  Neither Cerro nor Vorishnov, who was listening and watching, found any fault with what Dixon had said. They agreed that it would have been far worse if the fuel convoy had been lost. It was not that they had in a matter of a few days become unfeeling and inhuman monsters. All three knew what the 553rd Field Hospital incident had meant in human terms to the soldiers and patients of that unit. But there was no energy left at that moment in their exhausted minds, overtasked with the needs of dealing with the imperatives of the moment, to lament the dead and wounded of the 553rd. That action was over, completed. What was critical now was to get their brigade moving to the sea. The war had not stopped. The killing was not over. The next twenty-four hours would be critical. The commander of the Tenth Corps, Big Al, hoped to pull away from the last of the corps' battle against the 2nd and 10th Panzer divisions and posture the corps for the forthcoming battle with the 1st and 7th Panzers, now forming what was being called the Hannover line. It was believed that once this line had been broken, there would be no stopping them from reaching the sea.

  To that end, Dixon assessed the effectiveness of his brigade, determined which units were still capable of offensive action and which were good only for defense, and positioned them in his line of march accordingly. The 3rd Battalion, 3rd Infantry, which had performed well and was still, on paper, a powerful battalion, had lost two commanders in less than six hours. That, coupled with a series of quick but brutal encounters with the 2nd Panzer, had left the leadership and troops of the battalion unsettled. After a quick conference with Major Jensen, Dixon had determined that Jensen was not capable of rallying the troops of the battalion and executing the rear-guard actions that Dixon had assigned it. Rear-guard operations, high risk under the best of circumstances, required a commander to have sound judgment, a will of steel, and, as Cerro himself had once said during a training exercise, "a commander with a set of brass nuts."

  The first thought that came to Cerro's mind was one of confusion. "Why," he blurted out, "not Colonel Yost?"

  "Because, Hal, I need Yost as the brigade XO. You're right, he should be the one. But I can better afford to lose a maneuver battalion than the field trains. Yost is the only person who is keeping this brigade's support units going and functioning."

  The implication that Dixon was willing to write off Cerro and the battalion he was about to command in order to save the brigade's supply trains didn't bother Cerro. It was, after all, a simple statement of fact. Dixon had four maneuver battalions, two tank and two mechanized infantry. He had only one set of field trains to keep those maneuver battalions fed, fueled, and supplied. Without the field trains, the brigade died. Period. What bothered Cerro was that he was about to replace one of his peers under less than honorable circumstances. Jensen, by virtue of being the operations officer of the 3rd of the 3rd, was the next man in the chain of command and the proper choice for the position. That Dixon was relieving him and removing him from the battalion, to be replaced by an outsider, was a clear indication that something was wrong with Jensen, the unit, or both. Though Cerro wanted to find out what the problem with Jensen was, he knew that neither he nor Dixon had the time. Nodding, Cerro simply said, "Okay, sir. I'll head on down to their CP, transfer my personal gear over to Jensen's vehicle, and send him up to brigade. Any change in the mission or new orders?"

  Having experienced a change of command under similar circumstances during the war in the Middle East, Dixon felt like giving Cerro some advice or a short speech to reassure him. But then he stopped. What could he say? What words could make this deplorable situation any better? None. Cerro was a professional and he had a job to do. It was that simple.

  Dixon decided to leave it at that. Instead he merely shook his head. "No, no new orders. You know what to do."

  With that, the three men parted, Cerro to relieve a man who had once been a friend, and Dixon and Vorishnov to talk to the next battalion commander further down the road.

  When Cerro arrived at the command post of the 3rd Battalion, he was surprised to find Major Jim Jensen waiting for him outside. Cerro's vehicle had barely stopped before Jensen was there greeting Cerro. "I spoke to Colonel Dixon. He said that I was to throw my stuff into your humvee as soon as you got here and report to Colonel Yost at the trains. I've got my gear ready to go." Turning, he began to rush over to his humvee parked several meters away, but then stopped as something occurred to him. "Oh, I had the commands and staff of the battalion already gather here. They're waiting for you inside. I thought that you'd like to talk to them." Then, without giving Cerro a chance to respond, Jensen continued to go for his gear.

  Cerro, caught off guard by Jensen's behavior, yelled out, "Jim, hold it." Walking over, Cerro came up to Jensen, placed his right hand on Jensen's left shoulder and started to say something, then stopped. What in the hell do you tell a friend when you're about to relieve him of command? Cerro knew that this action, done under these conditions, would effectively destroy Jensen's career. As soon as Jensen got into Cerro's humvee and drove away, he would be viewed as a failure, a soldier who failed the test of combat. For a combat arms officer that was worse than the kiss of death. It would leave a psychological scar that Jensen would carry for the rest of his life. Cerro knew this. Jensen knew this. So what, Cerro thought, could he possibly say to make this better, easier, for Jensen?

  While he pondered, searching his tired and confused mind for some words that were appropriate, Jensen saved Cerro from his embarrassment. "Hal, I asked to be replaced."

  Taken aback by Jensen's comment, Cerro looked up in his friend's eyes and, unable to control his reaction, let his jaw drop open. "Yeah, that's right. When Colonel Dixon and the Russian were here, I asked them to be relieved." Jensen stepped back, throwing his arms out to his sides while letting Cerro's limp hand fall away. "I'm not the commander type. I just don't have it. You know the system. You know the peacetime Army. Majors who want to be lieutenant colonels have to be successful battalion XOs or ops officers. It's the system and I, just like you, played this system. I didn't know that there was going to be a war and I damned sure didn't know everyone was going to get themselves killed or wounded, leaving me to hold the bag. I don't want this. All I wante
d to do was retire after twenty years as a lieutenant colonel. I can't deal with this. You can. I can't. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. So don't worry."

  Pivoting on his heels, Jensen again began to walk away but stopped a second time. Twisting his head slightly, he looked at Cerro, still standing dumbfounded, and called back, "Oh, yeah. Congratulations, Hal, and good luck."

  Though he had been told to expect someone from Berlin, Major General Horst Mondorf, commander of the 7th Panzer Division, did not expect General Lange, Chief of the General Staff. After his aide had gone to escort Lange to Mondorf's office, Mondorf stood up, walked around to the front of his desk, straightened out his uniform jacket, and waited. As he stood there staring at the door, he kept repeating that he had been right. His decision to give way had compromised the entire Hannover line. Without the 7th Panzer Division, there was no way that the 1st Panzer could hold that line. He had through his orders opened the road to the sea for the American Tenth Corps and, he hoped, spared the German people further suffering. For the future of Germany as a nation, Mondorf had broken ranks with his fellow division commanders and, like the senior officers of the Luftwaffe had done a week ago, allowed his conscience to be his guide, consequences be damned.

  Mondorf felt a strange peace as he prepared to greet Lange. He was about to be relieved of his command and no doubt be brutally criticized for failing to do his duty in the defense of Germany and to uphold the traditions of the German Army. Yet he had done what he knew was right. He had followed his heart and decided that for the good of Germany and the German people the current insanity had to be brought to an end. Though he knew his actions alone could not bring this sad chapter to a close, he had done all he could. He was prepared for whatever Lange did or said.

  Preceded by a light rap, Mondorf's aide announced his presence and opened the door. With the precision expected of an officer of his rank and position, the aide announced Lange: "Herr General, the Chief of the General Staff, General Lange." Stepping aside, he made way for Lange. Lange paused at the door and looked at Mondorf. It seemed almost as if Lange was hesitant to enter. As the two general officers stared at each other, Mondorf couldn't help but notice that Lange's face, normally frozen in a hard expressionless stare, was haggard and worried. In his eyes Mondorf saw traces of doubt, worry, and uncertainty. There was something going on inside Lange's head that his years of training and self-discipline could not hide.