THE TEN THOUSAND

by Harold Coyle

  Pausing to look over his notes, Kasper asked why the 1st Panzer was attacking with only two brigades. ' "The other brigade, the 1st Brigade, is not responding to orders. They have gone into an assembly area south of Hannover and refuse to acknowledge all communications with their division headquarters."

  "And the other divisions?"

  Referring to a summary that he had prepared an hour ago, Arndt went through them one by one. "Well, as you know, the 4th Panzergrenadier was badly mauled and is unable to get around the rear guard of the 14th Cavalry Regiment. Those bastards continue to make the 4th Panzer bleed for every kilometer. The 10th Panzer, after its lackluster performance several days ago in central Germany, hasn't moved. It still needs time, according to its commander, to complete its reconstitution. The 3rd Panzer is watching the Poles, covering Berlin, and dealing with the riots while the 6th Panzergrenadier is waiting to see if the American Marines in the Baltic are going to land."

  "So," Kasper announced, "we have more than three divisions that are no longer reliable, one, the 4th Panzer, that is approaching combat ineffectiveness, and two tied down in the east. That, according to my figures, leaves us less than two panzer divisions for offensive operations."

  "Yes, Hans, that's about right. Even when you take their losses into account, we have, in effect, been cut down to near parity with the Americans."

  "Well, that should be more than sufficient to severely punish the 4th Armored Division."

  Arndt hesitated and then lowered his voice. "Well, yes of course, we can do that. But to what purpose, my friend? I mean, what exactly are we doing?"

  This caught Kasper off guard. "Doing? What do you mean, what are we doing? We are defending Germany against its enemies."

  Slowly, carefully, as if to feel out his fellow officer, Arndt spoke. "Are you so sure, my friend, that we are dealing with the proper enemy?"

  Kasper wanted to ask Arndt to clarify that question, but he decided not to out of fear that he wouldn't like the answer. Instead, with a brisk voice, Kasper told Arndt that he needed to finish preparing his briefing for the Chancellor, thanked him for the information, and hung up the phone without so much as a good-bye.

  When Kasper hung up, Arndt knew that he had gotten the answer he had expected. Looking about at the operations center, he listened to the dozen or so conversations that were going on about the room, watched as numerous staff officers went this way and that, and thought about his conversation with Kasper. Then without any further thought he stood up and turned to the young major sitting next to him. "I am going out."

  The major, one ear glued to a phone, covered the mouthpiece. "I don't blame you, Herr Colonel. If someone asks where you are, I'll tell him you're taking a break."

  Arndt smiled. "Yes, you do that." Turning, he walked out of the room, down the hall where their coats hung, grabbing his as he went by, then headed for the elevators. Taking the elevator to the ground floor, Arndt stepped out, walked through another series of corridors "to the main entrance which led out to the street. Pausing as he put his cap on, Arndt smiled when he saw the sun. Returning the salute of the two guards posted at the main entrance, Arndt walked down the flight of steps to the street, made a right, and began to walk home. For him the war was over.

  From where his tank sat, Second Lieutenant Tim Ellerbee had a clear shot straight down the main highway as it came out of the small German village they had evacuated less than an hour ago. Two hundred meters to his front right, and out of sight, sat Sergeant First Class Ralph Rourk and his tank, covering a side street that came out of the town and into a cluster of fields that surrounded the village. The Germans, Ellerbee figured, would probably use one of those two exits from the village. If they didn't, they'd have to take a long detour to the west. And if they did that, they would run smack into another platoon of Captain Nancy Kozak's company.

  There was another way out of the village, a mere alley, that Ellerbee should have covered with a third tank. And he would have if he'd had a third tank. But he didn't. Like all of the platoons in Kozak's company, Ellerbee's platoon had been substantially reduced in strength through a combination of combat losses and mechanical failures. The first tank he had lost had been his wing man, A32. The platoon had just broken contact west of Kassel with the advance guard of a German panzer battalion and were making a high-speed run to their next blocking position when a pair of German attack helicopters sitting in ambush fired on both Ellerbee's tank and A32. Ellerbee saw the incoming missiles and took evasive maneuvers. A32 didn't. Though there was only one man wounded on A32, and Ellerbee was able to retrieve him and the rest of the crew after the German helicopters moved on, there wasn't time to recover the damaged tank. So it was abandoned. The wounded man was evacuated and the remainder of A32's crew was reassigned to one of Kozak's infantry platoons to make up for some of their losses.

  Rourk's wing tank, A33, sheared a drive sprocket while maneuvering across the side of a muddy hill. Though the damage was not catastrophic, since a replacement drive sprocket could have been cannibalized from another damaged tank that had been written off, the fact that Ellerbee's platoon was part of the division's rear guard made recovery impossible. So, like A32's crew, this crew was forced to abandon their tank and join one of Kozak's platoons as infantrymen.

  As every other platoon leader in the Tenth Corps had to, Ellerbee adjusted his tactics to compensate for his losses. Actually, Ellerbee found dealing with only two tanks much to his liking, especially since the other tank was commanded by Rourk, an experienced NCO who needed no real guidance from Ellerbee. That, coupled with his brief but sorry combat experience in the Ukraine which he had taken to heart, allowed Ellerbee to more than survive their recent battles in central Germany. Grudgingly, ever so grudgingly, Rourk and the other noncommissioned officers in the platoon began to recognize Ellerbee as a competent tanker.

  Unfortunately, in the eyes of Captain Nancy Kozak, he was unable to shed his image of a bungling idiot. Ellerbee's actions of five days before that had saved Colonel Scott Dixon and his tactical command post were seen by Kozak for what they were, a happy series of lucky accidents and errors. In all her dealings, she continued to treat him as if he were a first-year cadet at West Point. In fact she had never dropped her requirement that Rourk, Ellerbee's platoon sergeant, be present whenever she issued orders to him. Determined to show that he was a better man than she, Ellerbee said nothing, knowing that when all was said and done and the fighting was over, his record and performance would speak for themselves and he would be able to show that it was Kozak, not he, who had been unreasonable and unprofessional. So Ellerbee said nothing, for this was not the time or place to deal with such trivial matters. Instead he concentrated on doing his duty and building a reputation that would allow him when peace came to extract a measure of revenge against the female infantry captain who had embarrassed him and his platoon.

  Over the radio Ellerbee heard Rourk's voice calling, "Alpha Three One, this is Three Four. There's a German crawling along the ditch on the side of the road about fifty meters past the last house. Can you see him? Over."

  Ellerbee keyed the mike. "Three Four, wait One. Out." Then, letting go of the lever that keyed the radio transmitter, Ellerbee called out to Specialist Wilk, his gunner. ''Yo, Wilk. Can you see the German Rourk is talking about?"

  With his eye glued to the gunner's primary sight, Wilk traversed the turret slowly to where Rourk had seen the German. When he thought that he was looking at the right spot, Wilk reached up and flipped the lever on the primary sight that moved the sight from a three-power wide-angle field of view to a narrow ten-power field of view. After a moment Wilk grunted. "Ah, there's the little bastard, LT, moving up next to that shot-up Mercedes about fifty meters beyond the last building in the village."

  Leaning forward and putting his head up to his extension of the primary sight, Ellerbee saw what Wilk did. "Yeah, I see him." For a moment both he and Wilk watched as the German, moving with great care, inched his way forward.
Every now and then the German stopped, popped his head up out of the ditch, and looked around before proceeding a little further. "Well, what do you think?"

  Wilk laughed. "I think this guy needs to go back to basic training and learn how to low-crawl. God, look at that. His ass is sticking up so high a helicopter would have to swerve to avoid running into it."

  When he was ready, Ellerbee rekeyed his radio. "Three Four, this is Three One. I see the German. From the way he's sneaking about, I think he's a tanker taking a look-see before his unit breaks cover. Over."

  Rourk's response betrayed a slight chuckle. "Yeah, Three One, he's a tanker all right. Even the Germans, it seems, can't teach a tanker how to low-crawl right."

  Ignoring Rourk's comment, Ellerbee issued his order. "Three Four, this is Three One. I think they'll come bounding out of town right down the main road. If they do, odds are every eye will be glued on where I'm sitting. So you wait until you've got a good flank shot and then pop the lead German vehicle. When you do, back up and get going to our next position. They may come down the street after you, in which case I'll be able to get a flank shot and cover your withdrawal. If the opposite happens and the Germans try to sneak out of town using the side street instead of the main road, I'll fire first and then you cover me. Do you copy? Over."

  "This is Three Four. Good copy. I'll see you at the next position. Over."

  "Roger, Three Four. Three One. Out."

  Ellerbee and Rourk didn't have long to wait. With the confidence of a man who was sure that no one was watching, the German in the ditch stood up, walked into the middle of the road, and waved at someone in the village. In less than a minute Ellerbee could see the form of a Leopard II tank emerge from around a street corner in the village and begin to roll down the road toward him. Knowing that Rourk couldn't see the German tank yet and, from the manner in which the lone German on the road and the Leopard were moving, that his own tank hadn't been seen by them, Ellerbee keyed the radio. "Three Four, there's a Leo coming down the main road fast and dumb. Get ready. Over."

  When Rourk responded, he betrayed no emotion. "Roger, Three One. We're ready."

  Slowly, like an animal sticking its nose out to sniff for danger, Rourk saw the end of the German tank's long 120mm main gun appear from behind the cover of the last house in the village. Then the front fenders, followed by the massive body of the Leopard tank. Finally, when the entire tank was visible, Rourk called out to his gunner, who had been tracking the German. "Not yet, Chuckie, not yet." For a moment, Rourk's gunner wanted to protest, but then stopped when he saw the German tank slow down. "Hold your fire, Chuck. We'll wait until the guy in the ditch begins to climb on board."

  The gunner didn't respond to Rourk, calling over to the loader instead. "Billy, you up?"

  The loader, watching his commander and gunner, reached over, threw the spent cartridge guard that also served to arm the main gun over to the ready position. Flattening himself against the side of the turret wall, he yelled back. "Yeah, I'm up."

  When the German tank came to a complete halt and the German who had been in the ditch began to climb onto the front slope of the tank, Rourk all but whispered his command. "Fire!"

  With his sight laid dead on the black German cross that adorned the side of the Leopard's turret, Chuck hit the laser range finder button with his thumb, glanced down at the range readout that showed up at the bottom of his sight picture, and yelled out, "On the way," before he pulled the trigger.

  With that, the main gun of Rourk's tank spit out an armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot round. When the depleted uranium penetrator left the muzzle, it was traveling at over a mile a second. Inside, Rourk and his crew felt their M-1A1 tank shrug and lurch as the main gun recoiled, automatically opening the massive breech block, kicking out the small base plate of the expended round. By the time this action was finished, the loader already had a new round in hand, Rourk was sticking his head up out of his open hatch, shouting to the driver to back up as he went, and Chuck, the gunner, was searching for a new target.

  There was no need to fire a second round at the German tank. Smacked in the side of the turret with a dart measuring little more than one inch wide and a foot and a half long, made from the densest metal available to man, the German tank was consumed by a catastrophic explosion.

  From his position, Ellerbee watched. Two and a half hours of patient waiting had resulted in the destruction of another German tank and the successful completion of his mission. When he was sure that Rourk was well on his way and he saw that there were no Germans in immediate pursuit, he ordered his own driver to slowly back away from their hidden position. They had done what he had been ordered to do, delay the Germans. It would be at least a half hour before the commander of the German unit in the town figured out that their attackers were long gone. By then, both he and Rourk would be in their next position, getting ready to play the deadly game of hide-and-seek with the same German advance guard unit.

  In silence, both Colonel Scott Dixon and Colonel Anatol Vorishnov watched as a sergeant from the brigade's intelligence section plotted the latest location of the 1st Panzer Division. With maddening regularity, the sergeant moved the red stickers that represented German tank and infantry companies further and further to the west. With the same maddening regularity, a sergeant from the operations section, paper in hand listing the location of Scott Dixon's tank and infantry companies, would move the blue symbols that represented them on the map to the west and away from the advancing red symbols. Every now and then, a blue symbol would be removed, like a chess piece that had fallen to an opponent's attack.

  But these were not chess pieces. Every blue symbol removed represented a unit of fifty to one hundred men and women that had ceased to exist as an effective organization. Without taking his eyes away from the map that the two sergeants were working on, though they now had less than one hundred miles of their long and painful odyssey to go, Vorishnov summed up what Dixon already knew. "We're in trouble."

  At first Dixon said nothing. Instead he waited until the two sergeants had completed posting their respective updates and then moved forward to the map. Vorishnov followed. Coming up to Dixon's left, Vorishnov jabbed at the symbol that represented Company C, 1st Battalion, 37th Armor. "This company, because of the terrain, cannot move west. It will soon be forced to move to the south, away from the rest of its parent battalion, if the Germans continue to advance."

  Putting his hands in his pockets, Dixon looked at the company symbol, at the German unit symbols closing on it, and then at the other unit symbols scattered about the map. Taking a deep breath, he paused a little longer before he spoke. When he did, his voice betrayed the despair he felt. "And if that happens, ping, the Germans have a free road to the northwest. If the company retreats, it must retreat to the northwest."

  Moving his finger down, Vorishnov placed it on another symbol. "That means that this unit, Company C, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Infantry, must speed up, get north across the Mittellandkanal, and block the Germans here. Because once the Germans find their route to the northwest blocked, they will simply deflect off the 1st Battalion, 37th Armor, advance to the southwest, and..."

  Dixon nodded his head and finished the sentence. "And cut this brigade in half, leaving two battalions north of the Kanal and two south of it."

  "Do you think, Colonel, that Major Cerro will be able to get north, across the Kanal?"

  Turning to Vorishnov, Dixon looked at him for a moment. "What do you think?"

  Without a word Vorishnov looked back at the map, mentally measured the distance that the advancing German units had to cover, then the distance that Cerro's battalion had to cover, before answering Dixon. When he was ready, he looked Dixon in the eye and shook his head. "No. I do not think so."

  Dixon looked down. "I agree. Even if they managed to shake that German unit that has been dogging them all the way from Kassel, they wouldn't be able to get everything across the Kanal. The question, then, is what do we do?"<
br />
  Vorishnov placed one hand over the symbols that represented Dixon's two battalions that were north of the Mittellandkanal, and his other hand over the two that were south of the Kanal. Pulling them apart, he moved the hand over the northern units further north and those south of the Kanal first to the west, and then north to the Kanal. "As much as I hate to say this, you must split your brigade, leaving those who have crossed the Kanal to continue to the north and those south—"

  "To attempt to cross the Kanal further to the west and follow as best they can."

  Dropping his hands to his sides, Vorishnov looked down at his boots, then back up at Dixon. "I am sorry, my friend. I understand what such an order means. But you must face facts." Vorishnov pointed at the map, moving his finger to indicate the units he was talking about. "If you order your 37th Armor to hold its ground, it will be overwhelmed, and you will still lose that company as well as the two battalions in the south. Better to save two battalions for sure than lose one trying to save two that are beyond help. Your four battalions, all of them approaching half strength and exhausted from the long march north, are no match for the full-strength well-rested battalions of the 1st Panzer Division. To make a stand would be to risk everything, even the uncommitted battalion in the north." Stepping back, Vorishnov allowed his observations to sink in.

  For a long time Dixon said nothing. Instead he looked at the map, pulling his right hand out of his pocket and moving it from one unit and terrain feature to the next. Finally he looked at Vorishnov. "Even if we do this, someone will have to delay the lead elements here, just north of the Kanal, so the two battalions south of the Kanal can outrun the Germans to the next good crossing point to the west."