Cauldron

by Larry Bond

  “Herr Oberstleutnant!”

  Von Seelow turned around. Major Thiessen’s head poked out of a roof hatch on the M577 serving as the brigade’s TOC, its tactical operations center.

  “All battalions report they are ready to resume the advance, sir!”

  Willi dumped his coffee out on the flattened grass and whirled toward his own APC’s open ramp, already snapping out new orders. “Radio all units to push forward up the highway. We’ll exploit this breach toward Swiecie. Our objective is Gdansk!”

  HELL TEAM POSITION

  Reynolds both hated and welcomed the first brightening of the eastern sky. On the one hand, the morning light gave him his first real chance to see the ground he would be defending. On the other, dawn meant that the Germans would be coming soon.

  He yawned uncontrollably, hoping that the coming daylight would fool his body into wakefulness. So much for the battalion’s sleep plan, he thought. He had a sneaking suspicion that it was only the first of many that would go astray.

  Nobody had slept last night, or wanted to — not knowing they were almost sure to be attacked the next morning. While he frantically set up artillery target points and designated fields of fire, his men dug in and camouflaged their new positions — doing everything they could to turn the ground they occupied into a small fortress.

  Irizarri’s help had been invaluable. He had thrown himself into organizing Hell Team’s defense, almost adopting Reynolds and his company as his own. Reynolds remembered the colonel’s training background at Fort Irwin, and was grateful for his assistance on this “final exam.”

  All of the setup had to be done in near-absolute dark, and with absolute security. If Alpha Company’s battle positions were discovered too soon, its mission would fail before it even began. Battalion’s scouts had been right about the woods being clear of Germans. He could only hope they had kept the enemy scouts at bay as well.

  Hell Team held a thin line of woods on the edge of a dilapidated farm. The trees were old, well-established growth, originally planted next to a low stone wall that had fallen into disrepair. Brush had grown up along the treeline, and the three-hundred-meter-long grove had widened over the years until there was plenty of cover for a reinforced company. The woodland’s only flaw was the difficulty of digging in its root-tangled earth.

  The trees also created a mix of problems and opportunities for the team’s antitank missile operators. To hide both themselves and the backblast when they fired their TOWs and Javelins, they wanted to be as far back inside the treeline as possible. Too far back, though, and they would risk tangling the TOW’s missile guidance wires on branches when they fired. It had taken them much of the night just to position all their weapons to Reynolds’ satisfaction.

  A two-lane asphalt road ran through their front, angling in from the right and cutting through their line. About fifty meters back, it curved east and eventually joined with the motorway. To their front, rolling fields extended another two thousand meters up to a low wooded crest, the graveyard of the 314th and now held by the Germans.

  Reynolds had spent part of the night studying the crest, looking for clues to the enemy’s deployment or strength, but even in the thermal sight, there was nothing for him to see. The Germans were staying well out of sight.

  They were there, though.

  Two early morning Polish air raids on the 314th Regiment’s old positions had drawn ground fire — a lot of ground fire. About midnight, and again at three, jets shrieked past overhead, darting south toward the German-held hill. Seconds later, bright explosions had billowed out from the trees. More significantly, sparkling tracers had climbed into the night from dozens of separate points — most spraying the sky at random, but a few converging on the fast-moving attack planes as they circled away.

  Reynolds couldn’t tell if the Polish pilots had hit anything during their brief forays over the battlefield. The few hot spots he’d found using the thermal sights never moved. In the gray, predawn light they were also marked by columns of thin black smoke. Were there German tanks at the base of those flames, or just burning leaves?

  He lowered the sight and turned his head toward Sergeant Andy Ford. “All right, Sergeant. Have the men stand to.” They were as ready as they’d ever be.

  Most of Hell Team were already at their posts, with their weapons ready, so there was no noise, no bustle — just an increase in alertness, and tension.

  Irizarri had left an hour ago with two more Polish stragglers who had wandered in. Both the Poles had insisted on staying and helping Hell Team until the last possible minute, and one, wounded in the leg, had to be near-dragged to Irizarri’s waiting Humvee. The man had wanted a weapon.

  Reynolds’ fingers drummed steadily against the butt of the M16 assault rifle lying next to him. Despite all their hard work through the night, Hell Team’s present location was a poor match for their previous position. The company CP was nothing more than a few shallow holes dug in the middle of a tiny cluster of trees, with the spoil piled in front to provide more cover. It was euphemistically called a “hasty position,” as opposed to the “prepared positions” they had reluctantly abandoned yesterday evening. Knowing all of that, Alpha Company’s commander felt insecure, exposed. Why don’t those bastards come ahead and get it over with? he wondered.

  He forced himself to wait, to sit quietly. Every minute EurCon delayed was a win for his side. If he had his druthers, he’d sit here until Christmas, while the German tanks rusted. But that wouldn’t happen.

  The field phone buzzed. Corporal Adams answered it. “It’s the OP, sir.”

  Reynolds took the handset offered him by the tall, gangling soldier. He had placed two of his men, Corporal Ted Brown and Private Gene Webster, on a small rise a kilometer in front of Hell Team’s position, halfway to the enemy. Thoroughly dug in and camouflaged, they were there to give him a few minutes’ extra warning.

  “We can see ‘em, sir. Dozens of tanks!” Brown’s voice mixed eagerness and excitement with fear. He’d finally seen the enemy, in the flesh, arrayed for battle. “They’re still back in the trees, but they’re moving up.”

  “How many? What are they doing?” Reynolds spoke sharply, feeling his own pulse rate climbing. This was it. “Come on, Ted. Use SALUTE.” The acronym was a memory aid, designed to help observers report what they saw clearly — even in the noise and confusion of battle. Including size, activity, location, unit, time, and equipment in any contact report usually covered all the essentials.

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry, sir.” There was a small pause. “Size — six armored vehicles. They’re wheeled. I think they’re Luchs armored cars.”

  Reynolds scribbled the information down. “Roger.” He didn’t ask what happened to the “dozens” Brown had seen moments ago.

  “Activity, moving up to the edge of the woodline.”

  Once he remembered the much-practiced drill, Brown quickly passed the rest of the information. It sounded like the reconnaissance element of a German armored division, getting ready to move forward. Reynolds nodded to himself. That made sense. The Germans would certainly throw a line of scout vehicles out ahead of their advancing tanks. Alternatively they could be using the recon unit’s movements as a feint while the panzer division launched its real attack in some other sector. Which was this?

  Reynolds scanned the area with his own binoculars. Nothing. The enemy scout cars Brown and Webster had spotted were still too far away. He asked the observer, “Can you see any other movement? Tanks or APCs?”

  “No, sir. Just the recce vehicles. It looks like they’re getting ready to move out.” The concern in Brown’s voice hinted at his real message: “Can we leave now?”

  At normal rates of advance, the enemy would take three to four minutes to reach the OP. And it would take two men, sprinting with their gear, longer than that to reach the safety of Hell Team’s position. In other words, they had to bug out the second that the Germans started to move.

  Reynolds had no intention of sacr
ificing his two men unnecessarily, but he wasn’t going to let them leave a second early, either. His only reply was “Stay low and keep your eyes peeled.”

  He passed the sighting report back to battalion, then to his three platoon leaders. Their waiting was almost over.

  A few minutes later, the OP called in again, with a new report. They could now see tanks, at least ten, and the armored cars were moving forward. This time Corporal Brown wasn’t shy about it. “Sir, we’d like to get out of here.”

  “Get back here, fast.”

  Reynolds alerted his platoon leaders, then searched the woods ahead again. At two kilometers, the small, gray-green vehicles would be hard to see, even if the ground had been perfectly flat. This wasn’t Texas, though, and the rise and fall of the terrain would give him only glimpses of the enemy scouts.

  The German scouts were playing a deadly game, daring the Americans to shoot at them, thus revealing their positions. They trusted to their own luck or their enemy’s poor shooting for survival. It was a dare Reynolds couldn’t pass up. If he left the scouts unmolested, depending purely on concealment, they might get close enough to see the battalion’s positions as well as his own. No camouflage was ever perfect — especially against expert observers with their own thermal imaging equipment.

  Instead, he was going to let the Germans close until they were well inside Javelin range, then open up and try to kill several at once. He had time, a few minutes yet.

  Alpha Company’s first victory came without firing a shot. One of the scout cars, angling off to Reynolds’ left, hit a mine laid by the engineers last night.

  Whummp.

  The sudden, powerful explosion tossed the Luchs into the air and then over onto its side. No one crawled out of the smoking, twisted vehicle.

  The captain smiled grimly. That minefield wasn’t very wide or very dense, but it would take the Germans a while to find that out. Meanwhile, one of their six reconnaissance vehicles lay wrecked out in the open.

  Reynolds studied the surviving scout cars through his binoculars, taking care to keep the lenses out of the sunlight. Each Luchs was a long, eight-wheeled thing. Angular, lightly armored, and capped with a small turret holding a 20mm gun, they were “easy meat” for an M1 Abrams or even a Bradley, but to Reynolds and his men, they could be a real threat — if they got close enough. Except he didn’t plan to let them live that long.

  Three of the five Luchs rumbled up and over the low rise occupied by the now-abandoned OP. They were within seven hundred meters. Now. He lifted the field phone. “Shoot!”

  He heard several, muffled whumphs, followed by a thin, rippling whistle of missiles in flight. One TOW and four of the Javelins fired — the smaller missiles double-teaming their targets.

  Reynolds lowered his field glasses, trying to follow one of the Javelins, no more than a small black dot moving incredibly fast. As the gunner made course corrections, it darted a little from side to side, then arced up and flew above one of the Luchs.

  Whammm.

  The antitank missile exploded into a round gray-black ball right over the German scout car. Puffs of dust or smoke danced on its engine deck and turret top, and sparks flew as if it were being struck by dozens of small hammers. He never saw the second missile aimed at the Luchs. Luckily, one hit was enough.

  The armored car slewed right and stopped, with greasy black smoke pouring out of the engine compartment, in the rear. The jagged fragments spewed by the Javelin’s warhead not only pierced armor — they were also white-hot.

  Through the binoculars, Reynolds saw two men stumble out of the Luchs, quickly scrambling out of sight. They were at the ragged edge of small-arms range, but his well-disciplined company held their fire. With two of their comrades dead and their vehicle wrecked, the German scouts were no longer a threat.

  More explosions echoed across the countryside. Two more vehicles were also hit. The leftmost, targeted by the TOW, was a mass of flame. The TOW’s larger warhead must have detonated its on-board ammunition. The third, hit by two Javelins, sat motionless — wreathed in dust and smoke. Reynolds nodded somberly. Hell Team had just announced its existence to the EurCon commanders.

  The first steps in the dance had been his, but he knew what had to come next, and so did the rest of his men. He’d exercised with the Germans as a young platoon leader, and they were good.

  “Incoming! Take cover!” Sergeant Ford’s shouted warning rose above the shrill whistle of the first enemy shell arcing in.

  Whammm.

  Christ! As tight as he’d been hugging the earth before, Reynolds buried himself in it now. The explosion tore a chunk out of the ground a hundred meters away, still about ten meters out from the copse of trees they were holding, thank God.

  It was as close as Reynolds had ever been to a real live artillery shell fired at him, and it awed and frightened him. In exercises, they used artillery simulators, “devices” that exploded with about the same force as an old M80 firecracker. You really had to use your imagination to turn a bunch of those into an artillery barrage.

  He wouldn’t need to use his imagination ever again, he thought grimly. He’d remember this for the rest of his life. Probably a 155mm, the professional part of his mind speculated — a ranging shot. More to come.

  There were, and for the next few minutes the earth and air blended in a thunderous roar as HE rounds hammered the area around Alpha Company’s positions. Reynolds’ stomach turned to water every time a round landed nearby, and he buried his face in the dirt, in genuine fear for his life. He risked a glance to his right. Adams was curled up into an impossibly small ball, tucked into the space between two trees.

  After the first few blasts didn’t kill him, his sense of duty took over. How were his men doing? Their foxholes would protect them from near misses, but they had little overhead cover. Even more important, he knew what he’d be doing, if he were the enemy commander.

  He risked raising his head, buffeted by the pressure wave from an explosion in the middle distance. Raising his glasses and bracing them on the mound of dirt piled in front of his hole, Reynolds saw tanks, formed up in neat rows, advancing out of the distant woods.

  He studied them for a minute, then reached over, lightly punching Adams in the side. The corporal looked up, and Reynolds shouted, “Get the arty. We need a fire mission, SADARM, ref point seven one. Got it?”

  Adams nodded. He scuttled over to the field phone. Hugging the instrument close, the corporal passed on his captain’s message — screaming to be heard over the shells still howling in and exploding all around.

  The important thing was to keep busy, Reynolds realized. Action helped suppress fear. He concentrated on his next move. One of the first tactical lessons any junior officer ever learned was the importance of retaining the initiative. You couldn’t let the enemy force you into reacting the way he wanted you to. Well, right now the Germans wanted him to keep his head down. He studied the advancing line, ignoring the shells still raining down all around.

  The German batteries were firing blind, he decided — flinging shells out toward unseen map coordinates. With their forward scouting parties either dead or in flight, they couldn’t possibly have an observer close enough to adjust their rounds directly onto his positions. So the enemy gunners were just firing among the trees, not concentrating their barrage anywhere, or even aiming it accurately. Of course, there was still dumb luck, he thought as a near miss rattled his teeth. He spat out dirt.

  Adams shouted in his ear, “Done, sir.” Besides the American guns, the 3/187th had a battery of Polish-manned 155s in direct support, with a full artillery battalion on call if they needed it.

  “Great!” Reynolds ate dirt again as another 155mm round exploded close by. Fragments screamed overhead, tearing leaves and lethal splinters off the trees above the CP. He lifted his head again. “Have all the platoons check in.”

  The corporal nodded, more intent on his task now.

  The reports came back quickly, and they were en
couraging. So far Hell Team had been lucky. A few men had been wounded by shell fragments or splinters of wood, but no one was dead. Not yet. Reynolds relaxed minutely, relieved that the moment had not yet arrived when he would have to deal with losing any of his men. But he couldn’t fool himself. Once the Germans started concentrating their artillery fire, his casualty count would skyrocket.

  “Captain! Hewitt wants to open up!”

  Sergeant Hewitt commanded the team’s attached TOW antitank platoon. The German Leopards were well inside effective range, and at the rate that they were moving, the sergeant and his ATGM gunners would only get a few shots in before they’d have to displace or be overrun. Reynolds understood that, but he had his own ideas. “Tell him we’re sticking to the original plan.”

  Now, where the hell was that fire mission?

  Reynolds steeled himself, studying the approaching tanks, counting them, checking their formations, trying to be all business. He could feel his insides starting to liquefy again. They were less than a thousand meters from his positions! He opened his mouth, just about ready to have the TOW missiles fire anyway, when the friendly artillery fire arrived, whistling past on its way toward the oncoming German tank company.

  He raised his binoculars, looking above the armored formation.

  The German barrage stopped suddenly, having done about as much as could be expected with unobserved fire. Besides, this far inside Poland, artillery ammunition was undoubtedly at a premium. Reynolds noticed the cessation only when he realized that he hadn’t flinched for a good minute.

  A clump of small parachutes blossomed almost directly above the German Leopards. More followed in short order, popping into existence faster than the eye could follow.

  Old-style HE barrages were rarely effective against armored units. Unless a round scored an incredibly lucky direct hit or knocked a track loose, tanks could roll right through the artillery fire, ignoring the man-killing fragments rattling off their armor. SADARM was an advanced form of artillery ammunition designed to give U.S. guns a way to kill enemy tanks.