Soldiers and Marines Saga, page 40
But, of course, it’s much too early to be sure. The reports are too fragmented and scattered for any certainty or to be able to discern a general trend in the fighting.
The main Russian and East German attacks are coming through the two Fulda Gap corridors towards Frankfurt and the center of Germany, just as the armor guys always predicted. The terrain, it seems, is favorable for using the big and weighty battle tanks Moscow is so fond of building.
What we know so far is only that the initial fighting in the Fulda Gap is extremely intense. But not enough details have come in to know for sure how things are actually going on the ground—other than the fact that we are being pushed back. In contrast to the heavy fighting in the Fulda Gap, things are relatively quiet in Northern Germany and in the south along the Czech border.
This is what we all expected. Where there is no consensus among my senior commanders and staff is what will come next and where the Warsaw Pact will end up actually concentrating its efforts.
On the air side all of the initial indicators are looking good. We apparently shot down at least nine of the Russian AWACS and inflicted serious amounts of damage on their inventory of planes and airfields. The swimmers and long-range penetration teams also seem to have been successfully inserted.
And, to my amazement and everyone’s great pleasure, the squawking of the Warsaw Pact identifiers worked a second time right after the scheduled start time of the invasion. The missile defenses around most of the Warsaw Pact airfields finally realized they were shooting down their own planes and stopped just in time for the Warsaw Pact airfields to begin launching what was left of their planes to support the schedule 0217 start of the invasion.
Once again the Russian AWACS were successfully overloaded and their radar receivers failed. That allowed a second round of NATO planes, again squawking as if they are SU-25s, to once again beat up the Warsaw Pact airfields and cause the missile crews defending the airbases to again begin shooting down their own planes when they return to refuel and rearm. It was a turkey shoot with the turkeys shooting each other is how Jim Macefield described it at our ten o’clock commanders conference.
Perhaps the best news since the war started is that Poland will stay out of the war. It worked! The Czechs and Hungarians are in but NSA reports the Hungarians are not at all enthusiastic and their troops are not trying to push forward. It looks like it’s going to be the NATO countries with troops in West Germany versus the Russians, East Germans, and a contingent of Czechs with token support from Albania, Romania, and Hungary.
****** Sergeant Wilson “Willie” Ross
It’s about eight in the morning and Sergeant First Class, and die-hard White Sox fan, Wilson “Willie” Ross of Chicago was standing as high as he could on the commander’s seat of his M60 Patton tank squinting into the rising sun. His left hand was up to shade his eyes and his right hand was resting on the handle of the machine gun. He was intently watching the forested ridge ahead, particularly the gap in the ridge where the road runs through it at its lowest point.
Willie was not the only one looking intently at the gap. So are the tank’s gunner, Freddy Knowles and its driver, Bobby Mendez; their heads are poking out of their hatches. They know their first combat experience is about to begin and they are understandably more than a little anxious about it.
Tanks and vehicles of the American reconnaissance regiment patrolling this section of the border had poured over the ridge and through the gap until about thirty minutes ago—after a fight in the early morning darkness against an East German combined arms attack involving infantry, armor, and attack helicopters.
The reconnaissance regiment didn’t do as well as its recently deceased commander expected. It seems the East German attack helicopters and tanks are equipped with absolutely splendid night vision optics he and his men didn’t know about. The East German helicopters were initially successful but, with or without night vision capabilities, they were no match for the flight of West German Eurofighters that quickly arrived in response to the recon regiment’s desperate calls for help. They obliterated the East German helicopters a few minutes after their brief initial successes—and were surprised that no SAMs came up at them.
Lieutenant Rogers, Willie’s platoon commander, had carefully positioned his platoon’s five tanks just behind a little hill so they could see the top of the ridge in front of them with as little as possible of their hulls exposed. The company’s other ten tanks are to the left of Willie’s platoon. They aren’t totally “hull down” but they are in pretty good positions in the cover provided by a slightly sunken road.
“It won’t be long now,” Willie thought as he again, for about the tenth time in the past two minutes, looked at the handheld SAM he and every one of the platoon’s tank commanders had lying across the turret opening where the tank commander stands.
SAMs are something new for Willie and the other tank commanders of the Nickel-Dime. It’s some kind of a new infrared heat seeker and they just got them a couple of days ago. If an enemy helicopter approaches, Willie is supposed to pick it up, flip the switch, aim, and pull the trigger to fire it as soon as the handle he is holding begins to vibrate. And what the hell am I supposed to do if it doesn’t start vibrating?
On the other hand, if an enemy infantryman or vehicle fires an anti-tank missile at his Patton, it is, so Willie had been told, important that he instantly use his machine gun to hose off the area from which it was fired—so the shooter, who will be using a joystick to fly it into his tank, flinches and loses control.
Wire guided Warsaw Pact missiles are apparently called Saggers and are supposed to be as slow and difficult for their shooters to control. One little twitch by the shooter and they go out of control and miss by a mile. At least that’s what Willie and the other tank commanders were told at last week’s orientation briefing.
Willie supposedly will have about thirty seconds to let loose with the fifty caliber mounted on the commander’s turret and cause the Sagger’s shooter to duck or flinch and lose control. He was intensely focused and determined to start shooting in about two.
Freddy Knowles, Willie’s gunner, was also supposed to fire with his machine gun, the one that tracks with the tank’s 105mm cannon if he sees a Sagger launch. This requires Freddy to move the turret to aim its canon and get its slaved machine gun on target. And that, everyone knows, will take time. In reality, if someone pops a Sagger at them it will be mostly up to Willie and his turret machine gun as to whether his Patton lives or dies.
For the last thirty minutes or so there have been a lot of NATO aircraft and attack helicopters working the area on the other side of the ridge Willie and his crew were watching—where the recon regiment was stationed along the East German border. At least I think the planes are ours because all the explosions and shooting are all on the other side of the ridge. In any event, the noise and smoke and diving airplanes seem to be getting closer and closer.
Then there was movement and a tank came charging over the top of the ridge across the way. Every one of the company’s tank commanders and gunners saw it and, in an instant, even before Freddy could finish swinging the tube of Willie’s Patton towards it, three or four of the company tanks fired almost simultaneously. The late-arriving reconnaissance regiment M60 was hit by their friendly fire and exploded in a huge cloud of smoke and dust.
******
Two hours later there were white contrails criss-crossing the sky above them and everything was again quiet between the two low ridges. The noise had moved further to the west and a steady stream of Warsaw Pact tanks and vehicles, probably East Germans, were pouring through the notch and through the heavy black smoke drifting across the road. Willie Ross’s tank and the other two surviving Nickel-Dime tanks of his platoon had withdrawn to new positions further west. Willie was in command of the platoon’s three tanks now that Lieutenant Rogers was gone.
Some of the smoke on the right side of the ridge is from the late-arriving M-60 and the other Nickel-Dime’s losses, including the two Pattons from his platoon, but most of it is from the six T-62s and eight of what appear to be BMP fighting vehicles that Willie and his platoon left scattered among the trees towards the top of the ridge.
With his binoculars Willie could make out men who seemed to be walking around the burning armor up on the ridge. Good luck with that, he thought, there ain’t nothing gonna save them muthafuckers. Closer in a burning Patton was similarly giving off plumes of heavy black smoke where Willie and his platoon had been waiting for the Russians to come over the ridge.
Shit. Well we sure as hell won’t be listening to LeShaun’s stories or taking orders from Lieutenant Rogers no more. Guess I’m the man now.
Everything out in front of the platoon changed a few seconds later. A flight of three German Typhoons streaked out of the eastern sun and roared down the road one after another firing their machine guns, discharging their anti-tank rockets, and dropping napalm canisters. Flashes walked down the road ahead of the exploding rockets and flames and thick black smoke of the napalm; in a few split seconds, the road became an inferno of even more burning vehicles and dead and dying Russians.
“Nach hausen gehen” said the flight leader as he pushed his throttle all the way to the wall and headed west. The Germans were so low that their radars were blocked by hill in front of Willie’s tank—they didn’t see the two Sukhoi SU-27s coming in from the right until it was too late.
****** General Roberts
About noon, when it was still early in the morning in Washington, I again began briefing the President and the National Security Council and Joint Chiefs. The Council members and the Chiefs were teleconferenced together from their various locations. They’ve been up all night, as we all have. Once again the President wanted a detailed briefing and to know “how things are going from your perspective.”
I reported what the Russians already know, that we have apparently inflicted massive air and bridge losses on the invaders. I started to tell them we may have successfully gotten some of our German long-range penetration teams into Russia—but then I stopped and decided not to mention it.
“All in all, Mr. President, we are doing much better than we even dared to hope. This is a heavyweight championship fight and we’ve won the first round. Rather decisively, actually.”
Earlier, when I had spoken with the NATO Secretary General, Henri Forguet, I suggested to the Secretary General that whenever he speaks with the President he might want to remind him that the United States is not the only nation fighting.
“Would you please,” I asked him, “discretely and gently remind the President that it is the West Germans and other Europeans who are bearing the brunt of the fighting and casualties, not the Americans.”
The German Chancellor called almost immediately after I finished briefing the President and the National Security Council. The Chancellor was concerned about the Russian advances towards Fulda and asked if there is something positive he could tell his people. He plans to report to them again in a couple of hours.
I would have liked to have told the Chancellor about our strategy of encouraging the Russians and East Germans to move into West Germany so we could cut them off and destroy them. But I dared not for fear the news would quickly reach Ivanov. So I merely said that things appear to be going unexpectedly well, particularly in the air, and that General Klausen and I are determined to drive the Warsaw Pact troops out of every square inch of Germany. I must remember to again ask the President not to share any of our plans with the Chancellor. His staff is probably just as penetrated as Forguet’s.
****** Major Heinrich Muller
Air fighting over the front continued to grow as the first day of the war progressed. It was already at the fur ball stage with hundreds of dog fighting planes over the front by the time Major Heinrich Muller and his surviving wingman, Robert Francoise, finished beating up the armor on the road and began a high speed run back to their base.
Muller was quite pleased with himself thirty-five minutes later as he turned the plane over to Arnie Schultz and headed to the mess for an after-mission coffee and a pastry. In addition to catching the Russian armor on the road, he and Robert each picked up a Sukhoi as they came over the forward edge of the battlefield at high speed and passed through the mass of planes dogfighting over it.
Their kills had been unexpectedly easy once they got away from the Sukhoi SU-27s who jumped them right after their attack on the East German armor. He and Robert had jinked hard to the left to avoid a collision with a turning Dutch F-15 and found four Russian Sukhoi SU-25s immediately in front of them. A pity poor Franz wasn’t there to get one too. Perhaps he bailed out successfully after the SU-27s jumped us. But it isn’t likely, not from a Typhoon it isn’t.
Muller’s Typhoon had already been on five sorties in the past eleven hours and will soon be going again, this time with Wolfie Schultz as the pilot. As he taxied as fast as possible back to his squadron’s refueling and rearming site Muller began wondering if the men he’d sortied with less than an hour ago were already back and how they’d done. They weren’t. He and Robert were the first to return.
Other planes soon landed and more and more pilots joined Muller and Francoise in the mess. The question each newcomer asked was always the same “Wie geht es?” And the answers were always the same—either a resigned shrug, in two cases, or a smile and the holding up of one or more fingers.
In all, fifteen fingers were held up by the nine men who sat in the mess smoking cigarettes and sharing stories. In addition to the enemy planes, they also destroyed a number of trucks and over forty tanks and other armored vehicles. The armor and infantry kills are nice. But in the Luftwaffe it is killing a Russian plane that counts the most, even if it is flown by East Germans or Czechs. Missing pilots are never mentioned.
****** Feldwebel Thomas Schulter
In the rain and darkness Schulter sensed the rapidly approaching ground, but did not see it until a split second before he landed. But they’d jumped low so he knew it was coming and quickly. He’d been carefully trained so he immediately bent his knees and prepared to land as soon as he stepped off the cargo ramp with his men and pallets.
Even so it was a shock when he actually touched down and rolled to the ground. The land is soft and marshy. No stein danke gott. Seconds later he heard a distant “umph” and a splash.
Schulter gave a big and somewhat questioning “hallo” and got an immediate response from another member of his team, Karl Wettering, one of the engineers from the special battalion of airborne engineers. They quickly linked up by calling and talking as they walked towards each other. Then, after a quick handshake in the dark, they began calling. Softly at first and then loudly. There was no response. They were wet and cold and alone as dawn broke.
Two hours later there was a distant shout and big Jacob Jahn hurried toward them with a look of great relief on his face.
Thomas and Karl had quickly located the pallets as soon as there was sufficient light. They were already hard at work moving their supplies and equipment off of their pallets and into the woods when Jacob showed up. He immediately joined them and the men spent an exhausting morning literally running back and forth to get their pallets and equipment out of sight and into a temporary hiding place beyond the wood line.
To the absolute amazement of Schulter and his men they seemed to have landed in the right place even if it was unexpectedly muddy and swampy. What they had not expected was the effort required to carry their supplies and gear, and then the pallets themselves, out of the boggy open field where they could be seen and into the distant tree line—and from there to even deeper in the forest where they will set up the first of their two permanent caches of equipment and supplies. It was absolutely exhausting.
A second cache, a virtual clone of the first, will be established far from the first. It will be their backup home if their first stash is discovered.
Schulter and his two engineers were totally exhausted by the time dark fell on the first day of the war. But they’ve gotten everything into the trees. Tomorrow they will begin carrying it even deeper into the woods on the side of the mountain, far from any of the potential drop zones or helicopter landing areas shown on their map.
****** Robin “Buck” Owens
At eleven in evening and somewhat rested from their mandatory eight hour sleep period, Colonel Owens and eleven of his Green Giant pilots stood watching as a string of five Green Giant F-15s taxied at high speed towards their waiting crew chiefs and ground crews and the mechanical hoists with their preloaded missiles and ammunition pods.
Another string of seven F-15s soon followed—they’d been briefly held on the taxiway so a squadron of fully loaded British Typhoons could thunder on to a departure runway and, without even pausing or slowing down, instantly light the night with their flaming afterburners.
There have been several more casualties and the Green Giants are down to twelve planes. One pilot was lost last night and another this morning. Sometime during their third flight of the previous night, Major Jesse “Poker” Parker of Portland, Oregon and his plane disappeared. One moment Poker had been there as a blip on their screens and the next moment there was no trace of him.
A few words and handshakes with the arriving pilots, a quick final piss on the concrete parking area next to their planes, and Owens and his men began climbing into their cockpits while the ground crews rushed to complete the rearming and refueling. Then a high speed taxi straight on to a departure runway and all twelve of the Green Giant F-15s simultaneously lifted off heading east. They made such a thunderous roar as they lifted off together that the sides of the airfield’s metal hangars vibrated.
