by Harold Coyle
The worst part of the march was seeing the suffering of the local Germans who had stayed.
As the Team rolled past, if they acknowledged them at all, it was only with blank stares.
Bannon shuddered to think what was going through their minds, especially the old people.
This was the second time in their lives that they had seen war. As the Team passed through one of the villages, an old woman stopped pushing a cart and watched. Bannon could see tears running down her cheeks as they went by. He would never know for whom she was crying.
The children bothered him the most. During peacetime maneuvers through the German countryside they would wave and laugh and run along the side of the tracks, yelling to the soldiers to throw them candy or rations. American soldiers often did. But now the children didn't come. Instead, when they heard the rumble of the tanks, they ran and hid. Only a few would peek to see whose tanks they were. Even when they saw that the tanks were American, there were terror and fear in their eyes.
Bannon began to understand why the pacifist movement had been so large in Europe. The children of the last war, who had witnessed his uncle's Sherman tank roll through their villages, had not wanted their children to experience the same horror. Unfortunately, the good intentions of the parents were no match for the intentions of the Soviet leaders. As had happened too often in the past, good intentions and the desire for peace were useless against cold steel and people willing to use it.
Looking at these children caused Bannon to wonder about his own. They still didn't know if all the families had made it out before hostilities. After awhile, he began to turn away whenever he saw the children. The thoughts they brought to his mind were too painful.
Three hours after they started, Team Yankee finally rolled into the town where the I st of the 78th was supposed to be. As the Team entered the town, they passed a group of American soldiers sitting in front of a house cleaning their weapons. They were stripped down to their T-shirts or bare chests, enjoying the weather and in no hurry to finish the tasks at hand.
Some of the men didn't even have their boots on. Their PC was parked in an alley. Clothes and towels were draped on it to dry. A shirt was even hanging on the barrel of the caliber .50.
Bannon stopped 55 and signaled the rest of the column to halt. Turning to the group of soldiers, he called out, "Who's in charge here?"
A couple of the soldiers looked to the left and the right, then chattered among themselves. One young soldier turned and yelled back: "Who the fuck wants to know?"
Garger later told Bannon that he had never seen him move so fast. When the soldier gave him that reply, he was out of the turret of 55 and on the ground headed for the man at a dead run, all in one motion. "ON YOUR FEET, YOU SORRY EXCUSE FOR A SOLDIER! ALL OF YOU! YOU TOO!"
They suddenly realized that perhaps they were talking to an officer and began to stand up. Not that they could tell-the only thing different about Bannon since his meeting with the Tank Battalion command group that morning had been the cleaning of the wound on the side of his face. Regardless of who he was or how he looked, "Who the fuck wants to know" is a poor reply, especially for a soldier.
"All right, soldier, I'll ask you one more time. And if you give me a smartass answer like you just did they'll be sending your remains home in a very small envelope. Is that clear?"
Before answering, the soldier took stock of this godawfullooking and — smelling figure before him. Taking no more chances, he came to attention. "Sir, our squad leader is not here. "
"That's not what I asked you, soldier. I asked you who is in charge. There is someone in charge of this gaggle, isn't there?" "I guess I am, sir."
"YOU GUESS! YOU GUESS! DON'T YOU KNOW?" "Yes, sir, I am in charge, sir." "What unit are you, soldier?" "Company C, sir."
"Good, great! You wouldn't happen to know what battalion you belong to, would you?"
"Sir, the Fighting First of the 78th, sir."
By this time, the tracks in Team Yankee had shut down and were listening to the conversation. When the soldier Bannon was dressing down came out with the fighting first comment, everyone in the Team broke out in uproarious laughter. From struggling with his rage, Bannon suddenly found himself struggling to hold back his laughter. He lost. The C company soldiers were enraged at being the object of laughter, but they said and did nothing. They were not about to tempt the wrath of a column of soldiers who looked as Bannon did. They simply stood at attention and bit their tongues. After regaining control of himself, barely, Bannon continued, "All right, soldier. Where is your Battalion CPT' The soldier told him that it was in a school just down the street and how to get there. With that Bannon turned and climbed aboard 55, gave the hand and arm signal to crank up and move out, then led Team Yankee at a dead run to the headquarters of the Fighting First.
As Bannon and Uleski walked down the corridors of the German school. Bannon felt out of place. In the field he felt at ease. They belonged in the field. That was where they worked. But this was a school, a place where young children came to learn about the world and to prepare for the future.
Bannon was a soldier whose job was to close with and destroy the enemy by fire, maneuver, and shock effect. In short, to kill. He had no business here, in a place of the future. The two hurried down the corridors in silence so as not to offend the spirit of the school. When they entered the classroom where the battalion staff and company commanders were having a command and staff briefing, they felt more out of place. Though hard to imagine, the battalion staff appeared to be even cleaner than they had been two days ago, when the order to take Hill 214 had been given. It could have been that Bannon was just dirtier. Both he and the XO had gone tromping into the room like two men storming into a strange bar looking to pick a fight with the first man who said boo. They stood there for a moment, surveying the scene as the assembled group surveyed them. It reminded Bannon of a scene from a B-grade western. He looked at Uleski, who appeared to be thinking the same thing, and almost began to laugh.
It was Major Jordan who first came up and greeted them with a sincere smile and a handshake, as if they were longlost cousins. The battalion commander and the other company commanders followed. Only the C company commander hung back. Bannon imagined it was from embarrassment. When the greetings were over, Colonel Reynolds took him to the front of the group and sat him on the seat next to his, displacing the C company commander. This move shocked Bannon since Captain Cravin, commander of C company, had always been Colonel Reynolds's fair-haired boy. Whatever Cravin did was good and right. Major Jordan, who didn't think much of Cravin or his company, smiled at the sight of the colonel's fair-haired boy being taken down a notch. As the meeting continued, Reynolds would stop, turn to Bannon, and ask what Team Yankee needed from the battalion motor officer, the S-4, the S-1, and so on. It quickly became apparent that the colonel was prepared to give Team Yankee first choice on whatever was available. Given the opportunity, Bannon grabbed it and ran. When the S-1 wanted to know about personnel needs, Bannon told him that the Team needed eighteen infantrymen to replace Polgar's losses. The S-1 stated that it would not be possible to replace them now. Bannon turned to the battalion commander and told him that since C and D companies were still up to strength, if each of their squads gave up one man, Polgar could be brought up to strength. He had meant this as a cheap shot at the two companies. To his surprise, the colonel told the S-1 to see that this was done and to ensure that only the best soldiers went. He then turned to the S-4 and told him that if the S-4 couldn't get another PC for Polgar right away, C company was to turn one over to Team Yankee.
At the end of the meeting Bannon and Uleski briefed the colonel and the S-3 on what had happened after Team Yankee had crossed the line of departure in its attack on Objective LOG and Hill 214. The Colonel and S-3 would stop them and ask questions about certain aspects of the operation, effects of weapons, where the Team's soldiers seemed to be wanting, how the Soviets reacted, and so on. Jordan recommended that the leade
rship of Team Yankee prepare a briefing for the officers and NCOs of the battalion. In this way, lessons learned could be passed on. The colonel endorsed the idea.
Major Jordan gave Bannon the location where the first sergeant had the rest of Team Yankee, congratulated both him and Uleski on a job well done, and ended the meeting. The colonel also congratulated them and then left with Jordan.
When everyone was gone, Bannon and Uleski sat in the silent room, staring at the floor in front of them. Without looking up, Uleski quietly asked, "Did we really do as well as they said we did?"
Bannon thought for a moment. In the discussion, it had all seemed so easy. It was as if they had been discussing a tactical exercise at Fort Knox, not a battle that had meant life and death for the thirty-five men that had set out to defend Hill 214 yesterday. Their discussion had covered the effects of weapons, the deployment of forces, and the application of firepower. In the cool, quiet setting of the German classroom it all seemed to make sense, to fit together. The dread and fear of dying was missing. The stinging, cutting emotional pain he had felt as the crew of 66 removed Ortelli's shattered body from the burning tank had not been covered. The disgust and anger he had experienced when it seemed that Team Yankee had been wiped out was not important. The battle they had talked about and the one Team Yankee had fought were not the same and never would be. At least not for those who had been there. Bannon turned to Uleski, "What do you think, Bob?"
He stared at Bannon for a moment before answering, "I think we were lucky.
Damned lucky."
"You know, Bob, I think you're right." With that, they left the classroom and went about rebuilding the Team.
For the next three days Team Yankee licked its wounds and pulled itself back together.
Their assembly area was a few kilometers from the battalion CP. First Sergeant Harrert had found and claimed it. Soon after arriving Bannon found out why. In the center there was a small gasthaus where Germans used to stop and eat after taking their long weekend walks through the forest. The old man and woman who ran the place were indifferent to the Team at first but began to become friendly after the first day. By the second day, the old woman was cooking for them and doing their laundry. She said that since she couldn't take care of her son, and since their mothers couldn't take care of them, she would help them. The old man told of his son, a panzer trooper like the men in Team Yankee, and of his own experiences in "the last war."
Replacements came in for men, equipment, ammunition, uniforms, weapons, radios, and a myriad of other things modern war required. The first people they got were the infantrymen stripped from the other companies. While the Team didn't get the best, those they did get were usable. When these men came in, Polgar gathered them up and gave them the law according to Polgar. One of the first rules he had established was that they never forget they now belonged to Team Yankee. That struck Bannon as strange at first. In the past, the assignment of a Mech Platoon to the tank company was equated to exile to Siberia. Now it was a matter of pride. In fact, most of the infantry replacements had volunteered to be assigned to the Team. As one of the new men told him, if he had to be in this war, he wanted to be with people who knew how to fight. The Team was not as fortunate in the replacements they received for the tank crews. Most of them came straight from the advanced individual training course at Fort Knox. Some had never even been in a tank when a round was fired. It seemed that if they could recognize a tank two out of three times, they were shipped. So the Team's number-one priority became training the new men and integrating them into the crews and squads as quickly as possible.
One of the most interesting transitions that had occurred in the Team had taken place in Pfc.
Richard Kelp. Before the war he had always been an average soldier, nothing more, nothing less. Since the Team had come off Hill 214, however, he had become a man with a purpose. When they picked up a replacement tank from war stocks, Kelp was the first man on it. Instead of Folk having to keep on Kelp to work, Folk now found it difficult to keep up with him. With the new 66 came a new man. As it is easier to train a loader, Kelp was reassigned as the driver and given the mission of training Pvt. Leo Dowd as the loader.
After conducting several hours of crew drills on the second day, Bannon asked Dowd how things were going for him. He reluctantly answered that he thought that Kelp was being too hard on him. Bannon put on his official company commander's face and told him that Kelp was doing just fine. He added that if Dowd listened to Kelp and did just as Kelp told him, maybe he would make it out of this war alive. After that there were no more complaints.
Along with his new direction in life, Kelp received official recognition for his efforts in the defense of Hill 214. After questioning both of the privates who had come back from the tank-killing detail that night, Polgar put them in for Silver Stars. As the Dragon gunner who had been killed had led the group for awhile and had taken out the first tank, Bannon added him for a posthumous award. By the time the citations made it to division level, the efforts of the three men took on epic proportions. The story was turned slightly. The killing of the two tanks became the critical event for the battle of Hill 214 that caused the whole Soviet battalion to withdraw. In reality, things weren't that clearcut, but Bannon went along with it since it expedited the awards.
One change that had taken place that was not to Bannonfs liking was the outlook on life that Bob Uleski had adopted. His arm had been dislocated during the initial attack on Hill 214.
The battalion physician's assistant at the 1st of the 4th Armor's aid station had popped it back into place while the cut on Bannon's face was being cleaned and dressed. They wanted to have Uleski evacuated for a few days to convalesce. But he refused. As the Team was short of officers, Bannon allowed him to stay on as long as he could perform his duties. Despite obvious pain, he performed. For the most part, he slipped back to his good-natured self. But when it came to training, he was a different man. His personality changed to that of a cold and emotionless being, unable to tolerate the slightest error or any action that was not up to standard. When drilling his crew, he would turn on them with a vengeance if their times were not to his liking. When Bannon approached him on it, he simply shrugged it off as nerves. But there was more to it. Bannon wouldn't ask to replace him simply because he had changed. Everyone had changed. In his case, however, it was not a change for the better. So Bannon watched him closely.
One of the jobs that Bannon had dreaded most began the first night in the assembly area.
After the Team had stood down for the night, and only those personnel required for minimal security were posted, he sat alone at a table in the gasthaus. In the quiet of the night, with, no noise but the hiss of the coleman lantern, he began to write letters to the families of those who had died. "Dear Mrs. McAlister, I was your son's company commander. You have been informed, I am sure, by this time, of the death of your son, John.
While this is small consolation for the grief that you must feel, I want you to know that your son died performing his duties in a manner befitting the fine officer he was. His absence…"
"Dear Mrs. Ortelli, As you know, I was your husband's company commander and tank commander. You have been informed, I am sure, by this time, of Joseph's death. While this is…" "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Lorriet, I was…"
As he wrote the letters, the images of those who had been lost came back. In his mind's eye he could see 21 hanging on the edge of the ditch, burning and shaking from internal explosions; Ortelli, wrapped in his sleeping bag; Lorriet's eyes that stared and saw nothing; the severed arm belonging to a soldier Bannon didn't even know. Those images were perfectly clear to him. To the responsibility of running the Team, he now added the haunting and frightful baggage of remembering those who had been entrusted to his care and had died. In all his readings, in all the classes he had attended, nothing had prepared him for this. Each commander was left to deal with the images of the dead in his own way. "Dear Mr. and Mrs… '
On th
e afternoon of the second day the first sergeant brought 2nd Lt. Randall Avery to the Team's assembly area. Avery had been assigned to take over the 2nd Platoon. As he was hauling his gear out of the first sergeant's vehicle, he noticed Garger going through a sand table exercise with his tank commanders. As the two lieutenants had both been in the same officer basic course at Fort Knox, Avery was thrilled to see the face of an old drinking buddy in this sea of strangers. He called to Garger. But instead of coming over and giving him a hearty greeting and hello, Garger merely acknowledged the new lieutenant's presence with a nod and continued to work with the 3rd Platoon's leaders. Avery could not understand the cold reception. The reception he got from Bannon was even colder.
Bannon and Uleski were sitting at a table on the terrace in front of the gasthaus going over the next day's schedule of training and maintenance when the first sergeant brought Avery over. "Captain Bannon, this is Lieutenant Avery. He's straight out of Knox and has been assigned to take over the 2nd Platoon."
With that introduction, Avery came to attention, saluted, and reported. "Sir, Second Lieutenant Avery reporting for duty."
Bannon and Uleski looked at each other, and then looked at the first sergeant. With a nod, Bannon acknowledged the lieutenant's salute. For a moment Avery stood there, not sure what to do. "At ease, Lieutenant. We don't do much saluting in the company area. Where are you coming from?" "I came over from Fort Knox, where I was attending the motor officers' course after AOB. I was in the same class as Gerry, I mean Lieutenant Garger. We were good friends there, sir."
Again Bannon and Uleski exchanged glances. "That's nice. What college did you graduate from?" "Texas A and M, sir."
Uleski couldn't resist. He let out three loud whoops. Neither First Sergeant Harrert nor Bannon could keep from breaking out in laughter. Avery stood there at a loss. He didn't appreciate being the butt of the XO's joke. Neither was he in a position to do anything about it. He was totally unprepared for this kind of reception.
