Soldiers and Marines Saga, page 44
There was a great puff of black smoke and the flaming Hind dropped into the distant trees just as mortar rounds start falling. A few seconds later a mass of Russian tanks and infantry began to pour out of the trees and start across the two thousand or so yards of open space on either side of the sunken road. The other Hind kept right on going and didn’t return.
As I ducked into my tank and pulled down the hatch cover I could see the two SAM-firing grenadiers shout and raise their clenched fists with a cheer and dive back into their holes. Then I leaned my eye towards the viewing block just in time for the tank to lurch back and bang me in the face as Freddy fired.
Outside it was chaos and within seconds I could hear the ping and click of rounds and shrapnel hitting the tank—and the open area in front of us was suddenly filled with T-62s and running Russian infantry. Freddy swung our tube slightly to the left to find a target and the Patton rocked back as he fired. Then the turret turned and he fired again and then again.
The Russian attack is finally over. Inside the tank the overwhelming noise from Freddy firing the slaved machine gun that tracks the 105 cannon suddenly stopped with a final tinkle as the last empty cartridges fall on the metal floor. Outside the din of small arms fire from the grenadiers continued for a few more seconds. Then it too faded away and stopped.
“Anyone see anything?” Freddy shouted. He had his eye pressed to his rubber gun sight.
All he and I can see are smoking and flaming T-62s and a field strewn with Russian dead and wounded. We can’t hear their screams and cries over the noise of our idling engine.
But it isn’t totally quiet. The roar of firing continues to our immediate north for almost another minute. Then suddenly it too drops away and everything becomes deathly quiet as I turned off the engine to listen—and began to hear the screams and cries from the Russian wounded on the ground in front of us.
I started to open the hatch to get a better look but as soon as I did I could hear the pings and whooshes of incoming small arms fire. The hatch clanged as I dropped it back down and again glued my right eye to the vision block. Shit, someone can see us.
“They’re in the sunken road where we were,” I screamed. “Watch for Saggers, Goddamn it.” We’re too damn close.
Suddenly, a few minutes later, I jumped as the Patton’s external phone unexpectedly rang. It’s a grenadier feldwebel. “Hallo. Here is Hauptfeldwebel Feucht. Do you stay here?”
“I think so but I’m concerned about Saggers.”
“Ja, Sagger are heavy. Grenadier is understand Sagger. We shoot schnell if see Sagger. Grenadier is gut here if panzer is gut here. Maybe you back go a little, Ja?”
“Wait one. I need to check something.” ….
“Delta Two-Two to Delta Two-One. What’s your status, Delta One?”
“Willie? This is Archie. I think the Delta one is gone, maybe Jonesy in the first platoon too.”
“Damn. You got any German infantry around you, Archie?”
“Yeah, a bunch.”
“Good. Tell’em to watch for Saggers and try to keep them with you. We’re gonna need them German boys if the Russians try to get us with Saggers.”
****** Sergeant Ross
Battalion is reporting that the Russians have broken through the brigade to our immediate north with a combined arms attack that resulted in heavy Russian loses of helicopters, armor, and infantry. It’s been costly day for our company as well. With the loss of Jonesy and Lieutenant Randall, we’ve lost all our officers and are down to five tanks. Two days ago we had fifteen.
“You’ve got Delta and you’re a first lieutenant now, Willie.” Those words from the battalion’s acting commander, Major Marshall, came over the battalion net later that afternoon. They were still ringing in my ears.
“Atta boy, Willie” was the jumbled chorus that immediately came over the radio. Then I cautiously lowered the escape hatch and slide down on to the dark mud that has been churned up underneath the tank. I desperately need to pee and think things over.
A grenadier hauptfeldwebel, a senior sergeant, I can tell by the stripes on his epaulets, watched as I cautiously slid out of the escape hatch under the tank and peed behind it. When I finished he motioned me to slide over to his hole. His gestures make it quite clear that I should crawl on my belly and stay low, not walk.
Hey, he’s probably the guy who was on the external phone. This is the first time I’ve actually seen him. He’s a mean looking little guy with a dirty uniform and a bloody bandage on a stubble covered face that hasn’t been shaved for a week or more.
“I am sorry for your comrades,” he said as he pointed to the left where Randall’s and Jonesy’s tanks were sending up clouds up thick black smoke as he offered me a cigarette. Looks like I’m going to start smoking again. Then we talked in pigeon English. It seems we are both commanding what is left of our companies. His name is Karl Sieman.
With lots of gestures, fumbling for words, and pointing at a muddy map, Karl told me, I think, that his grenadiers are going to move back across the open area tonight and kill any Russian troops in road. Then, if it’s possible, they’re going to move into the trees and go as far as they can go.
“Here is no gut fur uns,” he said, motioning at my tank and his positions as he opened a torn and muddy map and pointed, “here is besser fur unser grenadier und panzer.”
He’s right. The open space between the stand of trees we’re in and the trees across the way is only about fifteen hundred meters and the Russians are in the sunken road running through the middle of it. It means they can fire Saggers at us from hiding places in the trees and even closer from the road.
The next open space to our rear, the one behind the stand of trees we’re in, is more than three thousand meters wide. Karl is right. It would be much better if the Russians have to come over the bigger open space to get at us—because it’s too far for their Saggers and we’d have more time to pick off any attacking armor and infantry.
Then there is the sound of motorcycles behind us and we both crouch down together in Karl’s hole. What a dumb fuck I am; I’m out here in the open without a weapon.
We’re not the only ones alarmed. All along the line Karl’s grenadiers are swinging their weapons around in their newly dug holes and hunkering down to face the rear.
A moment later there is a loud hail in German and, after lot of shouting back and forth in German. A couple of minutes later a single rider on a dirty all-brown bike slowly walked it up to us with its engine barely turning over. It was surprisingly quiet.
The rider is wearing a West German uniform.
About ten minutes later about twenty Germans and a German Lieutenant, all with paratrooper insignia on their camouflage battledress, come cautiously through the trees humping a bunch of strange missiles and weapons. That’s when Karl and I first learn about the motorcycle troops and their Israeli missiles. They have come to cover us while we withdraw.
The officer, a German parachute division lieutenant named Feucht, smiled a wicked smile and nodded his head when Karl showed him the map and explained what we plan to do that night instead of retreating. Feucht understood it immediately. “Gut.” ... “Zehr Gut.”
Then Feucht crawled from man to man among his new arrivals and passed the word. Some of his men immediately went back for more supplies while the others spread out and dig in among the grenadiers. Hot damn. We’ve got cover and anti-tank missiles out the ass.
Karl’s plan is simple. He doesn’t think the Russians expect us to attack so that’s what he’s going to do. When it gets dark he will spread out his grenadiers and take them across the field, and assault the sunken road with grenades if there are still Russians in it, and then try to move through the trees across the way to the bigger open space behind them. If he makes it all the way through the woods, he’ll send back a messenger and I’ll move my five tanks across and through the woods to join him.
Feucht likes the plan and adds to it. He’ll bring eight of his men and their “wunderbar Israeli missiles” and follow the grenadiers on their motorcycles as soon as the grenadiers get into the tree line across the way. His other ten men will set up here along the tree line under his hauptfeldwebel to cover us if we have to pull back.
I like it. The idea of going through the woods in the dark with a tank is not as dumb as it sounds. German forests aren’t like those in Georgia where we trained. They’re more like farms with the trees spaced apart in rows and the underbrush cleared to prevent fires. Our Pattons will easily push through the half grown trees in front of us just as the T-62s did this morning. Best of all, the Saggers probably won’t work in the trees because the wires guiding them will get all tangled up.
****** General Roberts
After dropping in unexpectedly at a couple of division headquarters, one German and one American, I flew into a German army helicopter base in a farm field north of Weinheim in a low flying West German helicopter. There was no radio announcement of the helicopter’s arrival. We just settled onto a corner of the field—and I got out and it quickly flew off.
An old civilian Volkswagen van with a driver was waiting for me. It took me to a garage attached to a now-deserted German BOQ near an artillery kaserne east of my headquarters.
When I reached the deserted BOQ I walked through its silent lobby, nodded at the two Marines who motioned me forward, and got into a Mercedes taxicab parked under the overhanging roof at the front door. Then off I went to the five story parking garage of the huge Weinheim office and apartment complex whose basement Klausen and I now occupy. We’re there with a small staff and a bunch of Marine guards in civilian dress who never go outside. It took me about twelve minutes from time I touched down at the field to sink into a seat in our briefing room.
Each of NATO’s other deputy commanders, except Klausen and Pug Murphy who always stay here with me, has a somewhat similar headquarters and a similarly deceptive arrival routine. And everyone coming here or visiting them follows a similar, but different, route. Military vehicles and uniformed troops are never seen or allowed to get close to our headquarters.
When someone we need to talk to is not here we communicate via a dedicated multi-line ground wire running to a signals transfer truck located in a building fourteen miles to the west. That truck sends them on another dedicated wire to a second signals truck located eight miles beyond the first.
Our headquarters are, I hope, hard to find.
******
The briefing that followed made it quite clear that everything did not go well in Austria this afternoon. We’d sent infantry and engineers, and all the immediately available helicopters of the German and American airborne divisions, in an effort to hold or cut the Austrian rail and highway bridges between Vienna and Munich.
It didn’t turn out as we’d hoped.
Our rapid deployment into Austria apparently turned into a disaster for some of our units. It seems the Russians and Czechs had the same idea and their elite Spetsnaz units arrived at some of the bridges and passes almost simultaneously with our guys. The result was a series of vicious firefights between the Spetsnaz and our German FSK guys and paratroopers. From the initial reports it appears there are heavy casualties on both sides and whoever got there first won the fight and controls the battlefield.
As it stands, the Warsaw Pact holds some bridges and passes and we hold others. That’s bad for the Warsaw Pact—we only need to cut one bridge or hold one pass to break the transportation chain the communists need to get their units and support columns through the Alps if they are to attack us in the Munich area.
Otto quickly ordered the ones we hold reinforced and resupplied.
******
We begin releasing prisoners on the afternoon of the third day of the war, mostly Russian and East German teenage conscripts. Our inspectors say it is easy to separate them from the officers and professionals we will continue to hold—just a few simple orders and the officers and professionals move out of the way to the other side of the sports fields and other places where the units process their prisoners.
Buster Jones’ inspectors say the first batch of Russian conscripts, initially ecstatic at being sent home, became fearful and started crying when the trucks stopped on a deserted road near the front and they were told to get out. They had declined our offer to join us or emigrate because they want to go home to their families. Now they think they are going to be shot; they just can’t believe we are going to let them go free. So our guys waved goodbye and drove off. Perhaps now they’ll believe us.
We didn’t release the officers. The officers and the senior enlisted men and technicians were separated from the conscripts. Then those who didn’t want to join us or immediately emigrate are led off to a nearby train station and sent off to Paris to be held until the end of the war; all those who want to emigrate or join us will be put on a separate train to Munich as soon as we have enough for a trainload. Most of them want to go home.
******
Dave Shelton called right after I got back to my headquarters. He thinks our special operations are going even better than we dared hope and so far he has had enough troops and crews, but by tomorrow he thinks he may need more planes and helicopters to make good his losses.
I immediately got Macefield and Klausen on the line with us and they instantly agreed to replace Dave’s losses. As a result, an entire West German helicopter transportation company and the next twelve C-130s that land at the airfields where the penetration teams are staging will be used for tonight’s drops and those that follow in the days ahead. If there is time, the insignia on the C-130s will be changed from a star and American flag to an iron cross and a West German flag; if there isn’t time the teams will fly under the American flag.
This will be the third night of the war, the night when we plan to drop troops on refineries, petroleum storage facilities, and pipeline pump stations in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Lithuania. We’ll hold some of the facilities as hostages to encourage their owners to quit the war; others we’ll instantly blow. Most will be destroyed and our raiders will attempt to make their way back on foot.
Shelton is really pumped about how things are going. He says Jack Riley and his photo guys see no signs of troop deployments around the refineries or other facilities we’re going to hit tonight, just a few missile batteries around a couple of nearby airports, stuff our planes can avoid by either making low altitude approaches or staying high and dropping the troops to fly their chutes to their targets. Mostly they’ll go in low.
It’s hard to run trains and use your armor when you don’t have fuel, bridges, fuel and electricity. It’s astonishing to me that the Russians have ignored the economic aspects of war. Hell, maybe it’s not astonishing; they ignored their economy’s inefficiencies when there wasn’t any shooting. Why start now.
If our assault teams can’t escape after they destroy their objectives they have been ordered to drop their weapons and surrender—but only after they thoroughly blow their targets beyond all hope of repair. We are also sending five of our remaining UK and Australian penetration teams by helicopter into the Austrian Alps to cut a couple of secondary passes and some of our swimmers to cut two rail bridges in Austria.
****** Willy Ross
I was standing in my turret manning the machine gun as Karl and his grenadiers crawled forward in the dim moonlight. They are headed out through the grass and brush, over the road, and into the edge of the trees on the other side of the open field in front of us. Lieutenant Feucht was standing next to me and trying to follow the grenadiers’ progress with his night vision glasses.
An hour later Feucht and I were still standing there and beginning to wonder what happened to the grenadiers. The silence in the night almost certainly means the Russian infantry who sought shelter behind the road embankment pulled back as soon as it got dark. Suddenly there were Russian flares, and then the sound of grenade blasts and small weapons firing. It all seems to be coming from the woods on the other side of the field. Guess they didn’t pull back very far.
While the probe by Sieman’s grenadiers was underway, Freddy poked his head out of the turret to tell me that a message just came in from battalion. It seems our brigade has been well and truly flanked on the west and the entire battalion, including my company, is to immediately fall back to a new line being established along the Pfalz road to avoid being cut off.
I instantly climbed back up to the turret and radioed back a reply.
“Delta cannot comply at this time. Supporting German grenadiers moving forward, repeat forward, to assault Russian positions.”
Feucht overheard the exchange and gives me a friendly clap on the shoulder when I climbed back down. “Guter Mann.”
Two hours later the grenadiers returned in the dark.
“Many Ivans in the forest,” reported Sieman shaking his head as he walked up in the moonlight and joined us behind the tank. He has two lightly wounded men who don’t need to be evacuated and two of his men are missing.
The three of us talked things over as we stood there in the dark. We agreed that our current position is untenable and that we should continue to stick together and move to a better position. God, Sieman has bad breath.
The plan is for my five Pattons and Sieman’s grenadiers to fall back into the tree line to the tree line beyond the big open space behind us. We’ll pull back together as soon as the grenadiers are ready.
Feucht’s skirmishers, on the other hand, will bring their bikes forward and stay here as long as possible as a rear guard. Then they’ll run for it and move back either all the way to us or to the farm house in the middle of the open area.
“Are you sure about staying?” I asked Feucht.
“Ja. It is what we do.”
Chapter Eight
At about three in the morning one of my newly assigned orderlies, Corporal Peter Massey a big shambling guy from Oakland, shook me awake. “General, please wake up General. There’s a flash message for you.”
“Okay.” I glance at the cheap wall clock and staggered from cot into the briefing room next door to read, to my pleasant surprise, that NSA intercepts indicate that in a few hours, right after dawn, the Russians and East Germans will launch a major offensive in the North with heavy supporting attacks simultaneously scheduled in the center and south. Good. That’s what we’ve been waiting for.
As I ducked into my tank and pulled down the hatch cover I could see the two SAM-firing grenadiers shout and raise their clenched fists with a cheer and dive back into their holes. Then I leaned my eye towards the viewing block just in time for the tank to lurch back and bang me in the face as Freddy fired.
Outside it was chaos and within seconds I could hear the ping and click of rounds and shrapnel hitting the tank—and the open area in front of us was suddenly filled with T-62s and running Russian infantry. Freddy swung our tube slightly to the left to find a target and the Patton rocked back as he fired. Then the turret turned and he fired again and then again.
The Russian attack is finally over. Inside the tank the overwhelming noise from Freddy firing the slaved machine gun that tracks the 105 cannon suddenly stopped with a final tinkle as the last empty cartridges fall on the metal floor. Outside the din of small arms fire from the grenadiers continued for a few more seconds. Then it too faded away and stopped.
“Anyone see anything?” Freddy shouted. He had his eye pressed to his rubber gun sight.
All he and I can see are smoking and flaming T-62s and a field strewn with Russian dead and wounded. We can’t hear their screams and cries over the noise of our idling engine.
But it isn’t totally quiet. The roar of firing continues to our immediate north for almost another minute. Then suddenly it too drops away and everything becomes deathly quiet as I turned off the engine to listen—and began to hear the screams and cries from the Russian wounded on the ground in front of us.
I started to open the hatch to get a better look but as soon as I did I could hear the pings and whooshes of incoming small arms fire. The hatch clanged as I dropped it back down and again glued my right eye to the vision block. Shit, someone can see us.
“They’re in the sunken road where we were,” I screamed. “Watch for Saggers, Goddamn it.” We’re too damn close.
Suddenly, a few minutes later, I jumped as the Patton’s external phone unexpectedly rang. It’s a grenadier feldwebel. “Hallo. Here is Hauptfeldwebel Feucht. Do you stay here?”
“I think so but I’m concerned about Saggers.”
“Ja, Sagger are heavy. Grenadier is understand Sagger. We shoot schnell if see Sagger. Grenadier is gut here if panzer is gut here. Maybe you back go a little, Ja?”
“Wait one. I need to check something.” ….
“Delta Two-Two to Delta Two-One. What’s your status, Delta One?”
“Willie? This is Archie. I think the Delta one is gone, maybe Jonesy in the first platoon too.”
“Damn. You got any German infantry around you, Archie?”
“Yeah, a bunch.”
“Good. Tell’em to watch for Saggers and try to keep them with you. We’re gonna need them German boys if the Russians try to get us with Saggers.”
****** Sergeant Ross
Battalion is reporting that the Russians have broken through the brigade to our immediate north with a combined arms attack that resulted in heavy Russian loses of helicopters, armor, and infantry. It’s been costly day for our company as well. With the loss of Jonesy and Lieutenant Randall, we’ve lost all our officers and are down to five tanks. Two days ago we had fifteen.
“You’ve got Delta and you’re a first lieutenant now, Willie.” Those words from the battalion’s acting commander, Major Marshall, came over the battalion net later that afternoon. They were still ringing in my ears.
“Atta boy, Willie” was the jumbled chorus that immediately came over the radio. Then I cautiously lowered the escape hatch and slide down on to the dark mud that has been churned up underneath the tank. I desperately need to pee and think things over.
A grenadier hauptfeldwebel, a senior sergeant, I can tell by the stripes on his epaulets, watched as I cautiously slid out of the escape hatch under the tank and peed behind it. When I finished he motioned me to slide over to his hole. His gestures make it quite clear that I should crawl on my belly and stay low, not walk.
Hey, he’s probably the guy who was on the external phone. This is the first time I’ve actually seen him. He’s a mean looking little guy with a dirty uniform and a bloody bandage on a stubble covered face that hasn’t been shaved for a week or more.
“I am sorry for your comrades,” he said as he pointed to the left where Randall’s and Jonesy’s tanks were sending up clouds up thick black smoke as he offered me a cigarette. Looks like I’m going to start smoking again. Then we talked in pigeon English. It seems we are both commanding what is left of our companies. His name is Karl Sieman.
With lots of gestures, fumbling for words, and pointing at a muddy map, Karl told me, I think, that his grenadiers are going to move back across the open area tonight and kill any Russian troops in road. Then, if it’s possible, they’re going to move into the trees and go as far as they can go.
“Here is no gut fur uns,” he said, motioning at my tank and his positions as he opened a torn and muddy map and pointed, “here is besser fur unser grenadier und panzer.”
He’s right. The open space between the stand of trees we’re in and the trees across the way is only about fifteen hundred meters and the Russians are in the sunken road running through the middle of it. It means they can fire Saggers at us from hiding places in the trees and even closer from the road.
The next open space to our rear, the one behind the stand of trees we’re in, is more than three thousand meters wide. Karl is right. It would be much better if the Russians have to come over the bigger open space to get at us—because it’s too far for their Saggers and we’d have more time to pick off any attacking armor and infantry.
Then there is the sound of motorcycles behind us and we both crouch down together in Karl’s hole. What a dumb fuck I am; I’m out here in the open without a weapon.
We’re not the only ones alarmed. All along the line Karl’s grenadiers are swinging their weapons around in their newly dug holes and hunkering down to face the rear.
A moment later there is a loud hail in German and, after lot of shouting back and forth in German. A couple of minutes later a single rider on a dirty all-brown bike slowly walked it up to us with its engine barely turning over. It was surprisingly quiet.
The rider is wearing a West German uniform.
About ten minutes later about twenty Germans and a German Lieutenant, all with paratrooper insignia on their camouflage battledress, come cautiously through the trees humping a bunch of strange missiles and weapons. That’s when Karl and I first learn about the motorcycle troops and their Israeli missiles. They have come to cover us while we withdraw.
The officer, a German parachute division lieutenant named Feucht, smiled a wicked smile and nodded his head when Karl showed him the map and explained what we plan to do that night instead of retreating. Feucht understood it immediately. “Gut.” ... “Zehr Gut.”
Then Feucht crawled from man to man among his new arrivals and passed the word. Some of his men immediately went back for more supplies while the others spread out and dig in among the grenadiers. Hot damn. We’ve got cover and anti-tank missiles out the ass.
Karl’s plan is simple. He doesn’t think the Russians expect us to attack so that’s what he’s going to do. When it gets dark he will spread out his grenadiers and take them across the field, and assault the sunken road with grenades if there are still Russians in it, and then try to move through the trees across the way to the bigger open space behind them. If he makes it all the way through the woods, he’ll send back a messenger and I’ll move my five tanks across and through the woods to join him.
Feucht likes the plan and adds to it. He’ll bring eight of his men and their “wunderbar Israeli missiles” and follow the grenadiers on their motorcycles as soon as the grenadiers get into the tree line across the way. His other ten men will set up here along the tree line under his hauptfeldwebel to cover us if we have to pull back.
I like it. The idea of going through the woods in the dark with a tank is not as dumb as it sounds. German forests aren’t like those in Georgia where we trained. They’re more like farms with the trees spaced apart in rows and the underbrush cleared to prevent fires. Our Pattons will easily push through the half grown trees in front of us just as the T-62s did this morning. Best of all, the Saggers probably won’t work in the trees because the wires guiding them will get all tangled up.
****** General Roberts
After dropping in unexpectedly at a couple of division headquarters, one German and one American, I flew into a German army helicopter base in a farm field north of Weinheim in a low flying West German helicopter. There was no radio announcement of the helicopter’s arrival. We just settled onto a corner of the field—and I got out and it quickly flew off.
An old civilian Volkswagen van with a driver was waiting for me. It took me to a garage attached to a now-deserted German BOQ near an artillery kaserne east of my headquarters.
When I reached the deserted BOQ I walked through its silent lobby, nodded at the two Marines who motioned me forward, and got into a Mercedes taxicab parked under the overhanging roof at the front door. Then off I went to the five story parking garage of the huge Weinheim office and apartment complex whose basement Klausen and I now occupy. We’re there with a small staff and a bunch of Marine guards in civilian dress who never go outside. It took me about twelve minutes from time I touched down at the field to sink into a seat in our briefing room.
Each of NATO’s other deputy commanders, except Klausen and Pug Murphy who always stay here with me, has a somewhat similar headquarters and a similarly deceptive arrival routine. And everyone coming here or visiting them follows a similar, but different, route. Military vehicles and uniformed troops are never seen or allowed to get close to our headquarters.
When someone we need to talk to is not here we communicate via a dedicated multi-line ground wire running to a signals transfer truck located in a building fourteen miles to the west. That truck sends them on another dedicated wire to a second signals truck located eight miles beyond the first.
Our headquarters are, I hope, hard to find.
******
The briefing that followed made it quite clear that everything did not go well in Austria this afternoon. We’d sent infantry and engineers, and all the immediately available helicopters of the German and American airborne divisions, in an effort to hold or cut the Austrian rail and highway bridges between Vienna and Munich.
It didn’t turn out as we’d hoped.
Our rapid deployment into Austria apparently turned into a disaster for some of our units. It seems the Russians and Czechs had the same idea and their elite Spetsnaz units arrived at some of the bridges and passes almost simultaneously with our guys. The result was a series of vicious firefights between the Spetsnaz and our German FSK guys and paratroopers. From the initial reports it appears there are heavy casualties on both sides and whoever got there first won the fight and controls the battlefield.
As it stands, the Warsaw Pact holds some bridges and passes and we hold others. That’s bad for the Warsaw Pact—we only need to cut one bridge or hold one pass to break the transportation chain the communists need to get their units and support columns through the Alps if they are to attack us in the Munich area.
Otto quickly ordered the ones we hold reinforced and resupplied.
******
We begin releasing prisoners on the afternoon of the third day of the war, mostly Russian and East German teenage conscripts. Our inspectors say it is easy to separate them from the officers and professionals we will continue to hold—just a few simple orders and the officers and professionals move out of the way to the other side of the sports fields and other places where the units process their prisoners.
Buster Jones’ inspectors say the first batch of Russian conscripts, initially ecstatic at being sent home, became fearful and started crying when the trucks stopped on a deserted road near the front and they were told to get out. They had declined our offer to join us or emigrate because they want to go home to their families. Now they think they are going to be shot; they just can’t believe we are going to let them go free. So our guys waved goodbye and drove off. Perhaps now they’ll believe us.
We didn’t release the officers. The officers and the senior enlisted men and technicians were separated from the conscripts. Then those who didn’t want to join us or immediately emigrate are led off to a nearby train station and sent off to Paris to be held until the end of the war; all those who want to emigrate or join us will be put on a separate train to Munich as soon as we have enough for a trainload. Most of them want to go home.
******
Dave Shelton called right after I got back to my headquarters. He thinks our special operations are going even better than we dared hope and so far he has had enough troops and crews, but by tomorrow he thinks he may need more planes and helicopters to make good his losses.
I immediately got Macefield and Klausen on the line with us and they instantly agreed to replace Dave’s losses. As a result, an entire West German helicopter transportation company and the next twelve C-130s that land at the airfields where the penetration teams are staging will be used for tonight’s drops and those that follow in the days ahead. If there is time, the insignia on the C-130s will be changed from a star and American flag to an iron cross and a West German flag; if there isn’t time the teams will fly under the American flag.
This will be the third night of the war, the night when we plan to drop troops on refineries, petroleum storage facilities, and pipeline pump stations in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Lithuania. We’ll hold some of the facilities as hostages to encourage their owners to quit the war; others we’ll instantly blow. Most will be destroyed and our raiders will attempt to make their way back on foot.
Shelton is really pumped about how things are going. He says Jack Riley and his photo guys see no signs of troop deployments around the refineries or other facilities we’re going to hit tonight, just a few missile batteries around a couple of nearby airports, stuff our planes can avoid by either making low altitude approaches or staying high and dropping the troops to fly their chutes to their targets. Mostly they’ll go in low.
It’s hard to run trains and use your armor when you don’t have fuel, bridges, fuel and electricity. It’s astonishing to me that the Russians have ignored the economic aspects of war. Hell, maybe it’s not astonishing; they ignored their economy’s inefficiencies when there wasn’t any shooting. Why start now.
If our assault teams can’t escape after they destroy their objectives they have been ordered to drop their weapons and surrender—but only after they thoroughly blow their targets beyond all hope of repair. We are also sending five of our remaining UK and Australian penetration teams by helicopter into the Austrian Alps to cut a couple of secondary passes and some of our swimmers to cut two rail bridges in Austria.
****** Willy Ross
I was standing in my turret manning the machine gun as Karl and his grenadiers crawled forward in the dim moonlight. They are headed out through the grass and brush, over the road, and into the edge of the trees on the other side of the open field in front of us. Lieutenant Feucht was standing next to me and trying to follow the grenadiers’ progress with his night vision glasses.
An hour later Feucht and I were still standing there and beginning to wonder what happened to the grenadiers. The silence in the night almost certainly means the Russian infantry who sought shelter behind the road embankment pulled back as soon as it got dark. Suddenly there were Russian flares, and then the sound of grenade blasts and small weapons firing. It all seems to be coming from the woods on the other side of the field. Guess they didn’t pull back very far.
While the probe by Sieman’s grenadiers was underway, Freddy poked his head out of the turret to tell me that a message just came in from battalion. It seems our brigade has been well and truly flanked on the west and the entire battalion, including my company, is to immediately fall back to a new line being established along the Pfalz road to avoid being cut off.
I instantly climbed back up to the turret and radioed back a reply.
“Delta cannot comply at this time. Supporting German grenadiers moving forward, repeat forward, to assault Russian positions.”
Feucht overheard the exchange and gives me a friendly clap on the shoulder when I climbed back down. “Guter Mann.”
Two hours later the grenadiers returned in the dark.
“Many Ivans in the forest,” reported Sieman shaking his head as he walked up in the moonlight and joined us behind the tank. He has two lightly wounded men who don’t need to be evacuated and two of his men are missing.
The three of us talked things over as we stood there in the dark. We agreed that our current position is untenable and that we should continue to stick together and move to a better position. God, Sieman has bad breath.
The plan is for my five Pattons and Sieman’s grenadiers to fall back into the tree line to the tree line beyond the big open space behind us. We’ll pull back together as soon as the grenadiers are ready.
Feucht’s skirmishers, on the other hand, will bring their bikes forward and stay here as long as possible as a rear guard. Then they’ll run for it and move back either all the way to us or to the farm house in the middle of the open area.
“Are you sure about staying?” I asked Feucht.
“Ja. It is what we do.”
Chapter Eight
At about three in the morning one of my newly assigned orderlies, Corporal Peter Massey a big shambling guy from Oakland, shook me awake. “General, please wake up General. There’s a flash message for you.”
“Okay.” I glance at the cheap wall clock and staggered from cot into the briefing room next door to read, to my pleasant surprise, that NSA intercepts indicate that in a few hours, right after dawn, the Russians and East Germans will launch a major offensive in the North with heavy supporting attacks simultaneously scheduled in the center and south. Good. That’s what we’ve been waiting for.
