Cauldron

by Larry Bond

  His own Leopard had almost reached Kawice — racing toward the little cluster of wood-frame houses, walled vegetable gardens, and narrow, unpaved streets. His lead companies were already there. He could see German armored vehicles and scout cars bunching up as they formed in column for a final dash toward the bridge.

  Lauer mentally urged them on. Speed was crucial. They had to get across the river and into the other half of the village before the Poles could deploy.

  A flash and puff of white smoke from a house across the water caught his eye. He spun around and saw a bright flame arcing toward them — only a meter or so off the ground. “Missile! Evade!”

  He stabbed frantically for the button that would fire his tank’s protective smoke grenade launchers and missed as the Leopard swerved abruptly to the right, throwing him forward hard against the hatch coaming. In the next second, the tank’s main gun fired, and this time the recoil threw him backward.

  The enemy antitank missile screamed past and slammed into the ground just a few meters away. It left a length of control wire draped over the command tank’s deck as concrete evidence of an attack that had come entirely too close for comfort. Lauer knew that only the combination of the wild evasive maneuver and a shell howling close by had spooked the Polish ATGM gunner, throwing his aim off in that last crucial second.

  Other German tanks had seen the missile launch and now they opened fire, pumping HE rounds into the one-story wood house. It disintegrated, torn apart by a series of bright orange and red explosions. Pieces of burning timber tumbled lazily through the air before splashing into the river.

  Dirt fountained skyward next to a Leopard on Lauer’s flank. Then it blew up, hit broadside by a second 125mm round from a T-72 that had been lurking between another pair of buildings across the Cicha Woda. The Polish tank reversed out of sight before anyone could return fire.

  The voice of C Company’s commander came through his headphones, barely intelligible over the echoing roar of machine-gun and tank cannon fire. “Rover One, this is Rover Charlie One. Crossing the bridge now! I’ll…”

  The transmission ceased suddenly. To his horror, Lauer saw thick black smoke climbing above Kawice’s rooftops.

  “Rover One, Charlie One is hit and burning! The bridge is blocked! Repeat, the bridge is blocked!”

  The major cursed. Despite the trail of burning and broken vehicles they’d left behind, too many enemy tanks and APCs had made it inside Kawice for Lauer and his men to simply bull right through them. With their antitank teams and infantry dispersed among the houses and gardens, the Poles could turn their half of the little village into a hornet’s nest.

  The 7th Panzer’s recon battalion had lost its race.

  Lauer scowled and lifted his mike. “Rover Delta, this is Rover One. Deploy your infantry to cover the bridge approaches.” D Company’s foot soldiers stood a better chance out of their lightly armored troop carriers. “All other Rover units, withdraw fifteen hundred meters west.”

  Acknowledgments crackled in while he angrily reviewed his options. They were limited. Digging the Poles out of Kawice now would take the combined efforts of infantry, tanks, and heavy artillery. His battalion didn’t have enough infantry. The division’s artillery was still somewhere on the road behind them. And taking on those T-72s at point-blank range with his Leopard 1s was a good way to wind up with a wrecked unit.

  He shook his head. No, he would have to let the 19th Panzergrenadier pass through to take the town.

  While Bremer and his men fought it out, Lauer planned to scout south along the river, looking for a spot shallow enough for his snorkel-equipped tanks to ford. If that failed, they would have to wait for the division’s engineers to lay another pontoon bridge across the Cicha Woda.

  The 7th Panzer Division’s “lightning-fast” advance against the Polish flank had been slowed to a slogging crawl.

  19TH PANZERGRENADIER BRIGADE, NEAR WILCZKOW

  Von Seelow lay prone on the lip of a small fold in the ground watching artillery pummel the Polish-held woods. Thirty-six 155mm howitzers were in action, dousing the treeline with high explosives.

  The brigade’s TOC and other command vehicles were parked in the shadowed hollow behind him. The sun was a huge red ball low on the western horizon.

  Colonel Georg Bremer came stomping up from von Seelow’s M577 and dropped flat beside him. He’d been talking with both the division and corps headquarters over the TOC’s radio. “Madness! They’ve all gone crazy back there, Willi! Now that there’s no hope of pocketing the Poles here, they’ve changed their minds again. Now we’re supposed to push them out of Wroclaw by direct assault. The higher-ups claim that will end the war!”

  Von Seelow frowned. Madness, indeed. Abandoning maneuver warfare in favor of a straight slugging match to take a single geographical objective violated the three basic tenets of German Army doctrine — mobility, agility, and flexibility. Attrition warfare wasted lives, supplies, and time. It was also unnecessary.

  With half their army still tied down watching their eastern border, the Poles could not possibly be strong everywhere. Throwing six EurCon divisions squarely at their main line of defense was foolish. His worst fears were coming to life. Frantic to win a quick victory before the war escalated further, the Confederation’s political leaders were starting to grasp at straws.

  He lowered his binoculars and turned his head toward Bremer. “So we attack as planned?”

  The colonel nodded silently, too frustrated to speak out loud. Both of them had urged another end run around the Polish troops blocking the Sroda Slaska road. But General Montagne, unwilling to accept further delay, had ordered a full brigade attack on the enemy positions instead. And Leibnitz, their division commander, still seemed unable or unwilling to contradict his French superior.

  The barrage lifted suddenly, leaving an unearthly quiet in its place. But the silence did not last long.

  Twelve PAH-1 attack helicopters swept low overhead, flying in line as they approached the woods at high speed. Fiery-white flares streamed out behind each helo. It was a wise precaution.

  Several white smoke trails arced up out of the shell-torn and splintered trees. The Poles were firing hand-held SAMs at the German helicopters — either American-supplied Stingers or Soviet-made SA-14s. Von Seelow held his breath, watching the missiles curve toward their targets.

  The SAMs missed, decoyed by the falling flares.

  And the PAH-1s opened fire, volleying hundreds of unguided, spin-stabilized rockets. From a distance, they looked like swarms of glowing sparks lancing down into the trees. Brown clouds of rocket exhaust coiled beneath the helicopters, caught in their rotor downwash. Explosions crackled through the woods.

  Still trailing flares, the German helos veered west and lost altitude, heading for their own lines with their skids only meters above the ground.

  Perfectly timed by a forward air controller, the next attack came in right on their heels. Four swept-wing Tornado attack jets screamed north along the edge of the woods. Thousand-pound bombs tumbled off their wing and fuselage racks — twelve from each plane.

  The Tornados were turning away when a Polish ZSU-234 antiaircraft gun hammered them — spraying 23mm tracer rounds across their flight path. Staggered by multiple hits, one of the German jets rolled over and nose-dived into the ground. It exploded in a rolling, tumbling ball of flame. The other three howled past von Seelow and Bremer and disappeared.

  The edge of the woods seemed to dissolve in a rippling series of blinding white flashes.

  When the afterimages stopped dancing in front of Willi’s eyes, he could see flames and black smoke rising from the treeline. There were burning Polish tanks and APCs in there. He nodded to Bremer. “That was the last air strike, sir.”

  “Right.” The colonel wriggled backward until he was below the rise. Then he clambered to his feet and jogged toward the little cluster of command vehicles in the hollow, already shouting the orders that would set the 19th Panzer-grenadier’s
battalions in motion.

  Von Seelow swiveled his head, watching clusters of armored vehicles break from cover and rumble toward the shattered patch of woods. Forty long-gunned Leopard 2s led the attack. Marder APCs crammed with infantry followed several hundred meters behind the tanks.

  Shells began bursting inside the trees, churning the smoking earth. The German artillery batteries would “shoot in” the assault — firing until the Leopards and panzergrenadiers were almost on top of the enemy’s defensive positions.

  Willi von Seelow glanced at the setting sun and shook his head in dismay. Although he was sure the brigade’s attack was powerful enough to shove the Poles out of the woods and back another few kilometers toward Wroclaw, he knew it wouldn’t tear a lasting hole in the Polish lines. It was too late for that. Disentangling the intermingled panzer and panzer-grenadier battalions, evacuating their casualties, and refueling and rearming their surviving vehicles would take hours — especially in the confused darkness under the trees.

  The German and French offensive was bogging down, blunting itself in a series of head-to-head clashes with an increasingly experienced and prepared enemy.

  JUNE 9 — 5TH MECHANIZED DIVISION, NEAR SRODA SLASKA

  Flashes pulsed in the black early morning sky. The Germans were shelling the Polish battalions forming a new line just west of the city.

  Major General Jerzy Novachik stood in the tall grass beside the two-lane road, watching the remnants of one of his battle groups limp by. Every vehicle showed signs of damage — scarred by shell fragments and blackened by flame. Ambulances interspersed with the retreating Bradleys and M1s carried the worst of the wounded toward Wroclaw’s hospitals. Other injured men, still able to fight or just too stubborn to quit, stayed with their comrades. A third of those who had gone into battle were dead — trapped in burned-out tanks or torn apart in smoking shell craters.

  More tanks and fighting vehicles lumbered past the stumbling, weaving column, heading for the front.

  These gallant soldiers had held the enemy long enough for reinforcements to show up. Other units of Novachik’s division were coming in piecemeal — delayed by EurCon air attacks and the refugees flooding all northern and eastern roads out of Wroclaw. Each new force joined the battle as soon as it arrived.

  The general’s bushy eyebrows came together as he frowned. His troops were slowing the enemy advance, but they couldn’t stop it. There were too many German and too many French tanks and guns pouring across the frontier. Trying to hold them back with three battered Polish divisions was like trying to hold back the tide with a few schoolchildren armed with buckets and shovels.

  EurCon’s growing air superiority only made things worse.

  Novachik had watched French and German warplanes and helicopters bombing and strafing his men all day — working back and forth along his lines with apparent impunity. Where the hell, he wondered bitterly, was his nation’s own vaunted air force?

  JUNE 10 — 11TH FIGHTER REGIMENT, WROCLAW, POLAND

  “Porucznik! Porucznik!

  Lieutenant! Lieutenant!”

  Someone was shaking Tadeusz Wojcik’s shoulder, dragging him out of a soft, warm blackness. Awareness came flooding back, like the memory of a particularly bad nightmare. He realized he had been asleep in the pilot’s quarters and that it was time to get up for another mission. The voice was still speaking, but it took him several seconds to decode the orderly’s Polish.

  He had to think for a moment before he could even say “Dziekuje,” or “thank you.” Normally his Polish was very good, but right now he was just too groggy. Even speaking coherent English would have been a chore. After five days of three or even four combat missions a day, four hours’ crew rest didn’t refresh him — it barely took the edge off his fatigue.

  The corporal took a moment to make sure the porucznik, or first lieutenant, was fully awake, then went on to his next victim.

  Tad’s watch read 3:04, but he resolutely dragged himself out of bed. He had a mission scheduled for this morning. Right now, just moving took an effort. Sitting in an ejection seat and flying at high g-levels day after day had given him a sore back and behind. Lying deep in sleep for four hours allowed everything to stiffen up, so that now on waking he felt like he’d been beaten up.

  The day’s flying would only make that worse. He could expect to be in the cockpit for eight to twelve hours today, if he lived that long. And survival was high on Tad’s priority list.

  He was proving very good at that. His skills had been honed to a razor’s edge since that first night battle in the sky over Hungary. He had eight kills to his credit now. Most were attack aircraft of one kind or another, but there were German Fulcrums and French Mirages hanging from his belt as well. Still, the flying, always at the edge of his skill and endurance, drained him.

  A cold shower helped clear his head, but it couldn’t touch the deep core of fatigue that left him aching and bone-weary.

  When he came out, a TV in one corner of the deserted commons room was on, as it had been when he fell into bed. It was tuned to CNN. Tad heard the American anchorman speak of “anguished appeals from Warsaw and Prague for immediate military aid.”

  The journalist’s words irritated him, although he wasn’t quite sure why. They were probably a fair statement of the desperate situation his adopted homeland found itself in. Maybe he just didn’t like hearing about it. Not in such dispassionate tones from a man thousands of miles away and well out of danger.

  Buttoning his tunic, he stepped out of the barracks into the chilly, predawn blackness — headed for the airfield’s operations center.

  The building was still under repair. Ground crewmen working under dim, shielded lights were busy shoveling dirt away from one bomb-damaged side, while heavy equipment stacked concrete slabs against other parts of the bunker. Some of the damage had been inflicted by the EurCon stealth cruise missile attack more than a week before. Some was more recent.

  Two nights ago, enemy planes had raided the base — this time hitting the runways with Durandals while they targeted buildings and aircraft shelters with laser-guided bombs and missiles. Four aircraft had been destroyed on the ground. Another had been shot down trying to defend the field.

  Luckily the Russians who had first constructed the base had built well. The thick layer of earth covering the ops bunker had been blown off, and its outer walls had been weakened, but the officers inside were still in business, planning missions and assigning pilots to fly them. Of course, stacked runway sections and sandbags couldn’t offer as much protection as reinforced concrete. One more direct hit would finish them.

  The same repair crews working on the bunker had put the damaged runways back in service within hours. Even the lost shelters were not too terrible a hardship, either. There were fewer and fewer planes and pilots to fill them.

  The raid had been expensive for the enemy as well. Wroclaw was well defended by American-made Hawk and Patriot missiles and Soviet-made antiaircraft guns. Tad glanced at a shadowed, angular mound of metal piled between the two runways. Only the shape of the outer wing panels and part of a Maltese cross identified the wreck as the remains of a German Fulcrum. The sight cheered him up in a grim sort of way.

  The inside of the ops bunker was alive with activity. He headed for the briefing room first, which was now also doubling as a cafeteria. It was half-filled with pilots and other squadron personnel, listening as the intelligence officer briefed them on the night’s developments. Most were eating, and they all had lined, drawn faces.

  The smell of food made his stomach growl, and Tad spotted a side table piled high with coffee, juice, sandwiches, and kolduny, meat turnovers. As he loaded up a paper plate, he listened to the brief.

  “… SAM battery at Legnica is being reinforced to battalion level, so it’s dangerous to approach the place within thirty kilometers, except at low altitudes.”

  “Kostomloty fell last night.” Reacting to the looks on the faces of his audience, the intelligen
ce officer tried to reassure them. “It’s one step closer to us, but the army hadn’t really expected to hold the town for long, and they made EurCon pay for it.”

  Maybe so. But that put the French and German spearheads only twenty-five kilometers from the edge of the city.

  “Remember, our strategy is to delay them and inflict as many casualties as we can. With luck we can hold on until Tad’s old friends can make it over here.”

  Wojcik, sitting down as he chewed on a kolduny, shrugged and tried to look hopeful. He had taken a lot of ribbing, some of it with a sharp edge, over the apparent slowness of the American and British response to the invasion. All the press statements and proclamations in the world from the White House and 10 Downing Street weren’t going to stop the French and German troops surging deeper and deeper into Poland.

  “The general staff confirms that we are still a major objective of the EurCon advance. If they can take Wroclaw, they cut Polish-Czech communications, take a big step toward Warsaw, and interfere with the operations of Poland’s best fighter regiment.”

  Scattered laughter and smiles showed there was still some spirit in the assembled pilots.

  A sergeant nudged his elbow. “Lieutenant, Major Broz is ready for you.”

  Carrying his food, Wojcik left the room, with the briefer’s words trailing after him into the crowded hallway. Nodding to those he knew, Tad edged through the press into a room marked “Mission Planning.”

  Broz, the first squadron’s operations officer, sat at one of four desks crowded into a room meant for two. Another pilot was just standing up as Tad walked in, and the major tiredly waved him into a seat. The remains of breakfast were mixed with maps, printouts, an F-15 flight planning handbook, and rather ominously, a 9mm automatic pistol being used as a paperweight.

  “It’s a solo mission for you first, Wojcik,” Broz announced. “Air-to-ground along the A4 Motorway, two-thirds of the way to Legnica.”

  As he spoke, he handed Tad a packet containing the mission profile, radio code card, and the other information he would need.