Defense of Hill 781

by James R. McDonough

  “Sir, what do we when we spot the enemy?” It was Baker.

  “You kill him.” Always was slightly annoyed.

  “What about surprise? Don’t you want to keep the surprise?” It was Archer.

  “I figure he knows we’re coming. He just doesn’t know where and how. He’ll probably see us before we see him, and that will generate an immediate report. Kill them as you come to them and that will leave him fewer to defend with. Besides, if he sees us in the north and focuses there, then we have a better chance of flanking him from JOHN WAYNE. Any way I slice it, it makes better sense to kill them as you come to them.”

  “What do you think he’ll counterattack with, sir?” It was Evans, the freshest of the commanders.

  “I don’t know. Can’t be sure. Probably anything he’s got handy. Could be a company. Maybe a battalion.” The commander was pleased with the question, glad at least one man was alert enough to think of the future.

  Future. Future. Only in war could the future be considered 0400 the next morning. It underlined how fleeting life was. You lived by the hour, indeed, by the minute. If you lived to nightfall, then you could plan ahead to morning. And tomorrow? Well, that was a whole ′nother day—a lifetime!

  Always snapped himself back from his reverie. God, he was tired. “Have to stop musing,” he thought to himself. “Have to focus on the mission.”

  “Captain Dilger, Captain Evans, I want you to hold your positions where they are now. I may not be able to get you through the pass. If not, then I’ll bring you up along the direct routes. No need for you to bunch up behind the scouts. If they get through, then I’ll decide if there’s time to move you by way of the pass.” The colonel was trying to avoid sounding doubtful, but he had to hedge his bets. The gamble was bold enough as it was; no need to compound it.

  “Look men, what we’ve got here is a plan. I think for the most part it will work. But a thousand things are going to happen out there between now and tomorrow morning. It’s going to be confusing. You can bet that we’ll be knocked off the radios for at least part of the time. You’ve all got to understand where we’re going and what to do when we get there. Commanders, as always, I expect you to take command. Push this attack through. Don’t let it get bogged down. I can assure you I’m pressing on. I plan to kill any enemy I find in my way, and I plan to be there in the morning. If you all end up where I said I wanted you, all well and good. If you don’t, I plan to be there anyway. So get there and take part in the fight. There will be enough enemy to go around.”

  By 1730 the meeting ended. The attack was set for 2000, giving the task force eight hours of darkness. It would take that long to move everybody into final position. A light rain was falling on the TOC canvas as the smelly group broke up.

  Always found the time to visit his companies. On the surface they seemed in a shambles: replacements coming up hurriedly; vehicles being towed and worked on everywhere; ammunition being loaded by bone-weary men who looked as if they might drop from the effort; sergeants growling at men to move here and there; lieutenants draped over worn map sheets, giving instructions to squad leaders and planning fires with their artillery forward observers; smelly, greasy fuelers rushing about to pour diesel into thirsty machines; aid stations littered with bloody bandages, processing casualties; combat veterans snatching a moment’s sleep wherever they could safely get out of the way of roaring vehicles. But as he talked and looked, Always heard and saw the deeper signs that revealed a battle-hardened unit ready for more combat. Weapons were clean; soldiers were fed; vehicle load plans were adjusted; the orders were passed; information was shared; and everywhere there was a solid determination to do the mission, to defeat the enemy.

  The going was slow in the pass. One obstacle had been cleared, only to reveal another, then yet another. It would be hours and hours of work at best. They might never get through. Always decided to stick to the plan. He could adjust it later if need be.

  By 1930 the commander had moved to a position just short of the LD. The rain had picked up—hardly a drenching rain but enough to make itself felt and to make a man want to hunker down. That was good, Always figured. The defenders would think about it more than the attackers.

  A net call went out at 1945; intelligence was updated and slight adjustments to the order were given. By 1955 all parties were off the net. The self-imposed silence would cause no immediate problems. The first 1,000 meters were to be done in radio silence, the movement controlled by direct command and by wire being played out now by the advancing infantry. Nonetheless, the frequency was shifted to the alternate. It would serve as a backup until the full extent of the wire was played out, at which time the radio would again become the primary means of communication.

  By 2010 Always’ track lurched into motion behind Team Charlie, which along with Alpha was already ten minutes into the attack. Close behind him came his artillery and air force officers, and behind them at about 200 meters came Bravo.

  For the first hour things went quietly. Progress was good, if not steady, vehicles having to stop and wait for the infantry to keep pushing out in front of them, the infantry moving slowly and with care. That was the way Always wanted it. There was no rush to get there.

  Sometime after 2100 the first contact with the enemy was made by Team Alpha. An enemy BRDM moving from west to east in the vicinity of Checkpoint 1 had appeared in the thermal sights of an Alpha Bradley. It was moving with no great dispatch, probably lost in the dark looking for one of its unit’s positions. Captain Archer had been informed and was scanning with his own thermals to make sure it was in fact an enemy vehicle. The silhouette is distinct to the trained eye, but the tired and the new—and the gunner’s eyes were certainly one or the other—could make a mistake. Satisfied that his men had enemy in sight, Archer gave the okay to open fire. Six 25mm rounds spit out of the designated Bradley and the enemy vehicle was destroyed, its crew dead. Alpha received some sporadic and poorly adjusted artillery fire for its efforts, none of which did any damage.

  Hasty mine fields were being discovered along both direct routes. Because of the flatness of the terrain, the mine fields were not tied in to any restrictive terrain features, and so, with patience, were able to be bypassed. This cost time, however, and soldiers as well, since guides from the ranks of the infantrymen would have to be left in place to ensure that following vehicles did not blunder into the mines. In the meantime, no word had been heard from the scouts and engineers in the pass for more than two hours. The terrain was just too steep and broken to allow for an uninterrupted radio transmission.

  At the time of the Alpha contact the radios on the battalion net had gone back into operation. The result was another jam session, Always fighting his way through it for a while before passing the order to switch to the second alternate. His head had begun to hurt from the racket in his ears.

  By 2230 the pattern for the night had established itself: sporadic fighting followed by momentary confusion as commanders sorted out what was happening. Infantrymen in the lead proceeded with caution; drivers in vehicles fell asleep at their posts as they waited for the orders to move on. Always had left his vehicle twice to prod the trail platoon of Charlie. Both times he had found drivers and vehicle commanders dozing at their instruments. Once he had run the two hundred meters back to Bravo, not wanting to risk approaching his own men in his vehicle from the opposite direction, woke the lead vehicle crew members, and got them moving apace with Charlie’s progress. Again the enemy intercepted his radio net and jammed it. For the third time the battalion shifted frequency. And so it went. Stop, start, a brief firefight, a stall, get people and vehicles moving, get jammed, work through it, shift frequency, run to the unit ahead, run to the unit behind, keep everybody moving forward.

  Always was consuming energy at an alarming rate. His headache had developed into a constant throbbing, his neck and back ached, his face and hands were chapped and bleeding. Each time he climbed from his vehicle his knees protested. Each time he ra
n in the sand his legs rebelled. He was driving himself now with all the willpower he could muster. He found himself cursing aloud at the enemy jamming his radio and tried to settle himself in order to conserve strength. It was a losing battle as he caught himself shouting at the sleeping crews in their tanks, banging on their armored vehicles with his helmet. His chemical suit, drenched by rain water each time he left his Bradley, became heavy and sodden, and his clothes underneath were drenched in sweat. From 2345 to 2400 he talked through a screeching, high-pitched jamming session, hoping to hold out on the established net until the standard frequency change at midnight, only to discover that the enemy was only a few seconds behind him in arriving at the new day’s net. His frustrations were mounting.

  But they had made progress. Only two vehicles and a few infantrymen had been lost to enemy fire in the north. As far as he could tell, all remaining vehicles and soldiers were still en route, headed in the right direction. It was from the units in JOHN WAYNE pass that he had heard nothing. By midnight this was a critical vacuum, its silence deafening. Accordingly, Always ordered Captain Dilger to send out his lead platoon leader to make contact with the scouts. Soon he would have to decide which way to commit his forces. He wished his headache would go away.

  Always could not know the consternation he was causing the enemy, who had expected to be attacked from along the road. When he came under fire from Alpha Team along Route DIRECT SOUTH, it threw him into disarray. His artillery had not been planned there. Most of his night vision devices had been situated in the north. The remainder had been left behind to watch the pass. The continued pressure by Always’ battalion caused him to shift his forces from Hill 781 to Hill 760. The order had been passed so that the night vision devices could be moved to where the action was breaking. In the confusion that dark often brings, the order had precipitated a withdrawal of the enemy from his position around Checkpoint 2. By the time the enemy commander discovered the error, he concluded it was all for the better. Repeated sightings of enemy infantrymen and vehicles had inflated the reports, convincing him that the entire effort was being made along the direct approach. He was quickly shifting his forces south and west of Hill 760 to stop Always’ attack.

  When Delta’s Lieutenant Sampson made contact with the engineers clearing the last obstacle at CP 2, the enemy was long gone, a fact confirmed by the scouts. He could get no assurance that yet more obstacles, perhaps covered by enemy, did not lie between him and Hill 781. Momentarily he was thrown into a quandary.

  His orders had been to link up with the scouts to determine if the way was clear. He understood that the decision to commit Delta and Echo rested with that information. He also understood that time was fleeting, that if he waited for absolute confirmation, the moment would have passed. In order for the two companies to get up to Hill 781 in time to assist the assault on 760, he would have to speed back and bring them up now. Yet if he did that and the way was unclear, they would never be in position in time to help the action. Worse yet, they could run into a buzz saw and get chopped to pieces.

  Sampson considered the alternatives. He was smart enough to understand that there was a convenient way to avoid the responsibility. He need only to follow out his orders to the letter, which meant waiting until he could get a clear picture. He certainly could not be faulted for that.

  But escapism was not in him. He felt a responsibility for this action. This feeling of obligation had been put there by his company commander. It had been put there by the few minutes he had talked with Lieutenant Colonel Always. It had been put there by his training. Most of all, it had been put there by his devotion to his men. He made a decision. If the enemy had not taken advantage of the best position from which to defend, then most likely he would not be on the poor ground between CP 2 and Hill 781. Even if the enemy had put obstacles out there, the ground was open enough to find a way around them. It was now more a problem of terrain navigation than anything else. And he was confident that he could find his way to the objective. He decided to go back, give his opinion that the way was open, and recommend that Delta and Echo come down JOHN WAYNE pass. In that decision, Lieutenant Sampson gave the battalion the chance it needed to take 760.

  When Always got word that the pass was open, it was already 0100. He studied his map and tried to calculate the time-distance factors. His mind was finding it difficult to focus. Twice he lost track of what he was doing. On the third try, and only with great effort, he was able to focus long enough to determine that without resistance and without getting lost, they could close on Hill 781 by 0330. He gave the order for Delta and Echo to move out, and immediately got jammed. He never even heard if they rogered his order. By the time he had shifted frequency again, they were gone.

  Charlie and Alpha came abreast of the probable line of deployment (PLD) at 0234. There had been one heavy fight in the vicinity of Checkpoint 3, where a platoon of tanks had established an ambush position. But the opposing tanks had opened fire early and nervously, and Captain Archer had been able to fix their positions by their fire and move his infantrymen against them. In such a face-off, if the infantrymen can stay under cover until they close, and if there is no enemy infantry to thicken the defense, the advantage lies with the attacker. Accordingly, the enemy had stood his ground until the loss of the first tank told him that he was compromised. With that he had pulled out his remaining three tanks, two of which were destroyed immediately by the Abrams tanks attached to Captain Archer.

  Always had correctly deduced that the bulk of the defending enemy was to the south of Hill 760. In his mind this dictated that he should commit Bravo in the north, behind Charlie, the principle being strength against weakness. Alpha would have to conduct a fixing attack. It would be rough going for Captain Archer, but he was a solid commander and the best bet for such a high-risk operation. If the main attack went in violently enough, it would relieve the pressure on Archer before doing him irreparable damage. If only he knew what Evans and Dilger were up to! He had sent Major Rogers after them when he could not gain radio contact, but so far all that had gotten him was the loss of Rogers.

  But this was no time for equivocation. The infantrymen would begin to make their dismounted approach immediately. At 0310 the combat vehicles would cross the PLD. Carter would press on to CP 8 while Baker went into the north side of Hill 760. Archer would assault the south side of 760, then move on to link up with Carter, Bravo sweeping the objective to make sure all enemy were dead or captured. Infantry forces would give their exact location at 0305 so that an artillery preparation could soften the defenses on 760.

  The last five minutes of the order had been passed through a barrage of jamming, bleeps, whistles, stuttering, and screeches. Always dismounted his Bradley once again to find Carter and Baker in their vehicles, to ensure that they, at least, had gotten the order. He was determined to make good on his vow. He would be on the objective by first light, due at a few minutes after four. If he could have at least Bravo and Charlie with him, so much the better.

  A reinforced enemy motorized rifle company had begun the defense of 760. The loss of a platoon of tanks had reduced that to approximately a company-sized element, two platoons of which were now out of position on the south side of the hill. A few reconnaissance elements in the area had added their support to the defenders, one of them destroyed while trying to link up with an outpost at CP 3. The BRDM at CP 4 was the only element guarding the backside approach. When the artillery started falling at 0325 he shifted to CP 6, to see better what was happening atop 760. He was afraid he might be abandoned at his post in the rush of the night fighting. His commander’s voice was sounding increasingly shaky as the night progressed.

  The task force’s infantry had found and breached the thin wire obstacles on both sides of Hill 760. According to the prearranged signal, they marked them with chemical lights. It was through this breach that Charlie and Alpha rushed in at 0330. Instantly the night was ablaze with flashes of light. The two enemy platoons in the south put u
p a stiff resistance for the first few moments. But their positions were unprepared, having been shifted during the confusion of the night. They did not have the advantage they otherwise would have. Two of Alpha’s Bradleys were hit, one of them Archer’s, killing the Stinger gunner in the rear and leaving the crew uninjured. But the enemy took two hits as well. Their platoon leaders, tough veterans of many battles, remained unshaken. The position there hung in the balance.

  At that moment the reconnaissance vehicle at CP 6 sighted Delta making a swift approach from the south, Lieutenant Sampson in the lead. The enemy scout yelled a warning over his company net, then pulled out toward 760. One of the defender’s BMPs saw the movement and, not believing there to be any of his compatriots in that direction, opened fire on him. The BRDM, now in a state of panic, pursued by two companies of Always’ battalion and drawing fire from his own company, returned fire at the BMP, nearly hitting it and sending shrapnel pinging off other defenders. That was the straw that broke the back of the defense. Caught in a cross fire and alarmed by the report of a large enemy force approaching unimpeded from the south, the defenders pulled out to the northwest. The movement brought them by the rear of their own platoon to the north of 760 and across the front of Charlie Company coming in at CP 8. The startling effect unhinged the northern platoon, which joined in the dash for safety. By 0336 Hill 760 was taken. Always had his prize, and at little cost.

  He took the reports with a sense of elation. Bravo was sweeping over the top of the hill. The infantrymen were coming up to link up with their vehicles. Delta and Echo were consolidating on 781. The engineers and the scouts were fast closing in on them.

  It was in the next few minutes that fatigue overtook the battalion. The radios had gone silent, all necessary reports having been rendered. The infantry went to ground, waiting for the final few minutes of darkness to pass before they found their vehicles. The vehicle crews paused for the infantrymen and the rest of their units to close together. They became frozen in a world halfway between light and dark, excusing their inactivity with the implication that each was to wait for the other. One by one, men dropped off to sleep. Leaders, allowing themselves a moment’s pause after the exertions of the night attack, at first did not notice the stillness, then succumbed to fatigue in varying degrees themselves. Always’ warning of a counterattack was a forgotten statement.