by Ralph Peters
But the river line was open now. The Forty-ninth Corps, functioning as an operational maneuver group directly under the front’s control, had passed three of its four maneuver brigades to the west. The hastily reorganizing divisions of Starukhin’s army were readying themselves to follow in force. The first follow-on army was approaching the border, hurrying along the cluttered, broken roads, despite the desperation of NATO’s air attacks.
Trimenko’s army had reported… Malinsky stopped himself. It was no longer Trimenko’s army. Trimenko was dead, replaced by his deputy commander. Nonetheless, the Second Guards Tank Army had reported a lone forward detachment approaching the Dutch border with no opposition, while a reconnaissance patrol mounted in wheeled carriers claimed it had reached the banks of the Rhine across from Xanten on the western side. The advance party of an airborne division that had been subordinated to the front had struck the Dusseldorf civilian airport, although the outcome of that operation had yet to be decided. Due to the heavy transport losses going in, Malinsky had decided to hold back the heavy lifts. He counted on the Forty-ninth Corps moving quickly. One of the leading brigades was in position to reach Dusseldorf within twelve hours, unless the Americans put in an early appearance.
The business with the Americans gnawed at Malinsky. He realized that he was behaving in a less-than-scientific manner, counting on his luck to hold just a little longer. The battlefield, for all of the front’s fine successes, had become quite a fragile thing. The first-echelon armies were out of breath, and even a beast like Starukhin could only whip a horse back up onto its legs so many times before the animal gave out. The Forty-ninth Corps would have to carry the initiative for the front until the initial follow-on army came up. The front had moved so far, so fast, and had suffered such losses, that the units and even formations were disorganized. There was a lack of control out there that Malinsky could sense through the darkness, a battlefield on the edge of anarchy. If it materialized, the American attack would need to be dealt with swiftly and violently, before it could discover and exploit the front’s weakness.
He expected the Americans to attempt to sweep north across the Paderborn plain. Theoretically, an attack into the base of the operational penetration would be more desirable, but it was impractical at this point. The Americans would be desperate to blunt the penetration before substantial Soviet forces reached and crossed the Rhine. And if the Americans did attack in the Paderborn direction, the trail brigades of the Forty-ninth would have the mission of stopping them. His son’s brigade would be directly in the line of attack. Malinsky recognized the danger but refused to think about it in any more depth. Such were the fortunes of war, and his son would fight well, he had no doubt.
If the corps alone could not break the American attack, Starukhin would have to do it. His divisions were badly disorganized and intermingled, but there was still substantial combat power available, and Starukhin would just have to sort it all out. If they couldn’t hold the Americans west of the high ridge of the Teutoburg, they could always shape them into a pocket between the ridge and the Weser. And the Second Guards Tank Army could close the trap behind them, from the north.
The material logic was correct. And the follow-on forces were closing as fast as they could. But Malinsky worried about the psychological aspects of the coming fight. He might, at least temporarily, be forced onto the defensive, until the next echelon came up. And Malinsky did not trust the defensive at all, after what he had seen his forces do to the Northern Army Group over the past two days. He made a mental note to call the Second Guards Tank Army main command post and stress that they must further increase the tempo of the drive to the Rhine. Sheer movement carried the initiative now. He considered bringing the mechanized regiments of the airborne division into holding areas close behind the Third Shock Army’s spearheads and giving them to Starukhin to employ as a light armored reserve. The Twentieth Guards Army to the south would be of little help now, since they were spread thin with the task of blocking any Central Army Group counterattacks against the base of the penetration, closer to the East-West German border.
Malinsky tried to keep it all in precise order in his head. But he could feel the effects of stress and sleeplessness beginning to tell on him. Small details had begun to elude him for long moments, and he wondered how much longer he could go on without becoming a menace to his men.
The helicopter started losing altitude. Malinsky saw discreet guide lights directing them onto the landing area. He was anxious to get out and hear the latest on the situation from Starukhin. And, he admitted to himself in a moment of weakness, he desperately wanted to know what was happening to his son’s brigade.
Major Barak enjoyed the clean feel of the night air on his face as his tank cruised down from the mountain. His battalion constituted the advance guard of the Third Brigade, and he had worried as his column approached the Teutoburg Forest, then began the climb along the tree-lined mountain road. It was inconceivable to him that such a perfect choke point would go undefended. But no one had fired a shot. Now it was an enormous relief to emerge from the narrow pass, running down through the tight corridor of a village and out onto an open highway. His tanks were headed west for the Ruhr, and for the Rhine beyond.
The rumble of the armored column penetrated the roar of his own vehicle, piercing the padded headset and filling Barak with a sense of irresistible power. If the Americans showed up, they would have the devil beaten out of them. And if they failed to appear, Barak intended to see the Rhine before sunset.
Barak enjoyed leading the way this time, despite the obvious risk. He worried about the brigade commander. Colonel Malinsky had been visibly ill at the hurried meeting a few hours before, and, when questioned, the brigade staff admitted that the colonel had a bad case of the shits. The situation made Barak uncomfortable. He did not care much for Malinsky, in any case. The colonel was far too remote, too self-involved for Barak, who liked noisier, more sociable commanders who did not mind sharing a drink with their subordinates. Drinking with his superiors had long been a successful practice for Barak, and he resented Malinsky’s aloofness, telling himself that the elegant young colonel had simply ridden on his father’s coattails.
Malinsky was too much of an intellectual, as well. Barak distrusted the bookish sort of officers, the ones who could always tell you what Gareyev or Reznichenko or some other theorist had to say about an issue. Barak was convinced that all of the restructuring nonsense was ruining the army. How could anybody who was afraid to knock back a few drinks be any good in a fight? Barak suspected that the deep thinkers were the ones who had almost ruined the army in Afghanistan. He doubted the brigade commander would be much of a fighter, even without the runs.
Distant points of light on the southern horizon caught Barak’s eye! It was an odd little display, and he could not determine what caused it. Then he saw more points of light. Some of them seemed to be moving. But the night beyond the roar of the column felt silent, dead.
Without further warning, Barak’s vehicles began to erupt. Instantaneous clangs and blasts underscored spurts and billows of fire. Dark shapes careened through the air as burning tanks spun off the highway into ditches and fields, fuel tanks blazing.
Barak dropped into his turret. He could not decide what to do. He ordered his driver to find a building, anything, to hide behind.
He could not remember the call sign for the air-defense troops. He had never spoken to them in the past, regarding them as second-class soldiers. He broke open the radio net.
“Air-defense commander, air-defense commander, this is the battalion commander. Do you hear me?”
No response.
A lurching motion smacked Barak against the inside of the turret. Attempting to steer the vehicle off the road, the driver had misjudged the angle of an embankment. The tank began to slide to its left.
Now that Barak had opened the net, everyone tried to speak at once.
“Everybody clear the net,” he shouted, as though raisin
g his voice would empower the transmission. “Clear the net. Air-defense commander, where are you?”
“This is the air-defense commander.”
“Enemy helicopters. Why aren’t you firing? What good are you?”
“We are firing. The targets are out of range. We can’t even pick them up on radar.”
Barak clung to the inside of the turret. The driver fought the slide of the tank and seemed to have arrested it. Barak tried to understand how he could be attacked by something at which he could not strike back. How could the enemy be out of range, or invisible? What were the air-defense troops for, after all?
“They can’t be out of range,” Barak insisted. “Fire at them.”
Abruptly, the tank resumed its slide. The sickening motion felt tentative at first, then it gained in velocity. Barak stared wildly down into the hull. The tank stopped with a jerk that banged Barak down against the gunner. The big vehicle had come to rest at a forty-five-degree angle.
“We’re in the mud,” the driver said matter-of-factly, as though it were something to be routinely expected.
“Get it out,” Barak ordered. “I don’t care what you do, but get us out of here.” He switched from the intercom back onto the radio net. “All vehicles clear the road. Get in among buildings or trees. All vehicles take cover.”
Barak’s tank growled and shook, then powered back down. The driver tried again, filling the compartment with fumes. The efforts only seemed to grind them deeper into the mud. Barak knew from experience that they would need to be towed out.
He switched over to the long-range radio, calling brigade headquarters. Again, he received no response. The airwaves buzzed with static and surrealistic tones. The enemy were jamming everything. He sent his message anyway, hoping that someone would copy it, reporting that he was under heavy attack by enemy antitank helicopters. Finished with the transmission, he began to climb out of the tank, intending to take over a vehicle that remained mobile.
The sight of his battalion stopped him. Dozens of vehicles stood ablaze, marking the long trail of the battalion in the darkness. There were more fires than he could count, stretching down the road as far as he could see. It seemed impossible, a joke. It had been minutes, seconds. Here and there, an untouched vehicle moved against the fiery backdrop like a stray dog scavenging. One of the roaming vehicles exploded just as Barak turned his eyes to it. Then another went up. It was as if some godlike enemy were out there, patiently exterminating them all. Barak almost jumped to the ground and fled. But he took command of himself, unwilling to be a coward, no matter how hopeless the situation. He slipped back into the hold to order his crew to evacuate the helpless vehicle with him. A noise enormous beyond imagination stopped him.
The brigade’s senior officer of transportation troops watched helplessly as his supply column began to explode. He had pulled off the road on a hilltop, positioning his vehicle so that he could count the trucks of the materiel support battalion as they passed, wondering how many had fallen out. And without warning, the faint dawn blew up. Enemy tanks, sleek, with flat, angular turrets, emerged from the murk across the valley, bristling into small-unit formations as they rolled north. They used their main armaments sparingly, raking the column of trucks with machine-gun fire. The steel phantoms seemed to float over the terrain, enhancing the ghostly effect of their unexpected appearance east of the Teutoburg forest. The transportation officer’s concern with lone lost vehicles quickly disappeared.
A motorized rifle subunit assigned to protect the convoy tried to deploy and return fire. The transport officer watched with a surge of hope as sparks flew off an enemy turret. But the tank kept coming, impervious to the weapons of the infantry fighting vehicles.
The tanks opened up with their main guns to engage the guardian combat vehicles, destroying each with the first shot.
The transportation officer ordered his assistant and driver to take cover in the trees, where he joined them after securing his classified materials. The trio hunkered in the brush, watching the panorama of destruction. There had been no warning, except a casual mention of stray pockets of enemy resistance. But there was nothing feeble about this attack. It was determined, and big. The ammunition carriers and fuelers threw such spectacular fireworks into the air as they were hit that the enemy slowed, then briefly halted. At an unheard signal, the tanks opened volley fire on the precious transports, then backed off slightly, shying away from the secondary blasts, reorienting the angle of their attack before resuming movement.
The transport officer’s abandoned vehicle lifted off the ground on a cushion of flames. The driver, lying nearby in the brush, screamed in pain, caught by a random fragment of steel.
The enemy tanks swept up over the hill, passing within a hundred meters of the transport officer’s hiding place. Large, boxy infantry fighting vehicles trailed the tanks. The transport officer tried to get a count, but too many of the vehicles were hidden by folds in the terrain or blurred in the bad light. Phantomlike, the war machines disappeared back into the darkness, headed north. They seemed marvelously, almost supernaturally, controlled in their strange open formations. The transport officer knew they were not supposed to be this far north, that this was critical information. But his vehicle, carrying his radio, was a smoldering pile of junk.
After the whine of the engines subsided, he ordered his assistant to see to the driver. Then he started down into the burning valley on foot, cautious about the continuing blasts as ammunition cooked off and streaked across the lightening sky. Even though the enemy had passed, it sounded as though a great battle was still raging.
A radio, he thought. If they only left me a radio.
Twenty-two
Anton felt the situation collapsing around him with irresistible speed. The Americans had hit him broadside, hours before they were expected to appear, catching the brigade at its most vulnerable, with units strung out on both sides of the Teutoburg ridge. The first fragmentary reports had driven him to hastily establish his command post in a nearby grove so that he could get his communications gear fully set up. Reports from elements in contact came in broken and chaotic, and the number of enemy forces reported seemed impossibly high, multiplied by panic. A few things were clear, however. The Americans had found a gap between the forward elements of the Twentieth Guards Army, which had bogged down in the southeast, and the bulk of the Forty-ninth Corps’ combat power, which had been pushing southwest and west as rapidly as possible. Anton’s brigade had been a perfectly positioned target for the American onslaught from the southern flank. Helicopters or some special weaponry had catastrophically destroyed his advance guard, and other units reported contact at various points along the line of march. Feverish, Anton could not discern the pattern of the American attacks. His head would not come clear. He stared at the urgently plotted locations on the map, trying to make sense of the situation. His brigade was dissolving. “Comrade Brigade Commander,” his chief of staff called, “can you please listen to me?”
Anton turned slightly. He had not even been aware of the man a moment before. He felt disgracefully weak. The surgeon had given him shots for the fever, but Anton could detect no improvement in his condition. Sleep, he thought. You can’t get better unless you sleep.
He drew himself up erect before the map and the eyes of his staff, unsure of how much longer he would be able to remain on his feet.
“Look,” the chief of staff said, “the brigade transport officer reports enemy tanks here, working their way north beyond Lemgo.”
Anton tried again to focus on the map. To take in the reality of the scrawled colored markings. He wanted to sit back down and close his eyes.
“That’s impossible,” he said. “That would put them behind us.”
“Yes, Comrade Commander. Behind us. I’ve verified the coordinates. The transport officer swears he saw them with his own eyes. They overran the brigade resupply column.”
Anton turned his head to look into the face of this bearer of bad news
.
“Damage?”
“Severe.”
This cannot be happening, Anton thought. I have no control over any of this. He laid his hand on the map, bracing himself, but attempting to disguise the action as a gesture of decisiveness.
“Order all units to halt where they are and assume a hasty defense. All units this time.” He looked at the map. The colored arrows seemed to be teasing him, refusing to hold still. If the Americans had already slipped some elements behind them, his brigade could still block any forces that tried to follow in the wake of the lead elements. Yet no one seemed to know exactly where the enemy was located. It was all such a mess. There were too many possibilities.
Anton swept his hand along the trace of the brigade’s march routes. “Defend the intersections. Block them. Commandeer any civilian vehicles in the area and build antivehicle barricades. Use our support vehicles, if necessary. But I want every major intersection blocked and covered with fire.”
“Artillery?” the chief of staff asked.
Anton tried to think. He wanted to be firm, to offer a worthy example to his staff. But it all seemed a bit distant and dreamlike.
“The guns will be positioned near the roads, where they can bring direct fires to bear in an emergency.” Anton thought. There was a dull physical pain associated with each new thought now. “Protect the rocket launchers. Position them at a central location where they can support as much of the brigade as possible.”
He felt nauseated. Dizzy. He had to sit down. Hold on, Anton told himself. Just hold on. It can’t last forever.
