Defense of Hill 781 (22 page)

At last Major Rogers came up on the radio. Always told him to take his forces on 781 and bring them into the melee around 760. Rogers said it would take him about ten minutes to get everybody ready. Always cursed again, then turned to make his fight.

It was a donnybrook. The enemy came in line formation, his artillery crashing in on Hill 760. Always countered with his artillery on their moving formations. The enemy’s was more effective. The defending enemy company commander had sent in his fire plan to his commander earlier in the evening. It had included targets in and around Hill 760. This planning now eased the enemy’s calls for fire. Always had to improvise, making use of the unfleshed-out details of the counterattack plan.

The direct fire engagement went more toward Always, his vehicles stationary, able to pick out targets appearing amidst the dust and smoke. The enemy was unable to fire on the move. He needed to get set to send home his rounds. That was enough to cost him the first two companies.

But there was more enemy coming on. Perhaps seventy to eighty vehicles were closing at top speed. Always was starting to take losses. Rogers got in motion and made a dash toward CP 8. For perhaps seven minutes the battle raged back and forth. Always, seeing rounds careen all around him, hearing the roar of the enemy tanks, knew that he could not hold. The enemy had the ground if he wanted it. If Always stayed, his task force would be decimated. He would have to pull back, give up his hard-earned objective. The thought was devastating.

It was at that moment that the enemy pulled back. He knew he could take 760, knew he had Always. But there had been another battalion attacking with Always. It had been unsuccessful during his night attack, in fact had gotten lost in the dark, but with the light it might reappear and shift the odds. If that battalion broke through, then the lines of communication of the counterattacking force would be threatened. As it was, Always had put up just enough of a defense to make holding 760 untenable for the enemy. Bitterly, the commander of the counterattacking force passed the order to fall back. He would have to wait for another day.

The after-action review at 0900 was hard. But not because the observers were harsh. Lieutenant Colonel Drivon was surprisingly gentle, in fact heaped much praise on Lieutenant Colonel Always for the aggressiveness of his night attack. So much had gone right, only the consolidation on the objective had gone astray. But it was enough.

Always was disgusted with himself. He had had his victory, but through his own weakness he had let it slip away. Or had it been weakness? Perhaps he had taken too much upon himself. Perhaps he had trained the battalion to respond to his authority so much that when he let down for an instant his men took it as a signal to let down as well. Maybe it was his very strength that had turned into a weakness. He had pushed himself relentlessly. What little energy he had left he had dissipated in the exertions of the night attack, the struggle with the jamming on the radio, the sprints back and forth to keep the companies moving, the endless vigilance to ensure that the battalion was doing all that it should. Perhaps it was in that effort that he had set up the disaster that took place between 0346 and 0430, when he finally got enough of the battalion back on its feet to make a fight, albeit an inadequate one.

Certainly there was enough strong leadership in the battalion
to allow others to assert themselves. Walters could lead the battalion in a heartbeat. Rogers as well. The commanders were all solid, ready to assert themselves. Even the lieutenants were ready to lead. Hadn’t Sampson made a brilliant and courageous decision during the night? Hadn’t Lieutenant Wise pulled off coup after coup? The battalion was full of good men. Always had given them leadership. Perhaps it was time to share in that leadership, to let them take the reins a bit.

The lesson to be taken from this was the hardest one of all:

A commander is human, and as a human, he is limited. He cannot shoulder the entire burden by himself. He needs others to help him, to pick up where his energies run out, when he cannot be there, when he is hit. He can command—but he needs others to make his command effective. It is not a sign of weakness to let others assert their strengths. The weakness lies in excusing them from the responsibility of independent, decentralized leadership, from denying them the incentive to pick up the mantle when the commander cannot do it all himself.

It was a startling idea to Always. His entire life he had shouldered his responsibilities himself. He jealously guarded them, as if they and his ability to tote them around were a measure of his manhood. To understand that the greater wisdom, the greater measure of his worth, lay in his ability to engage others in their carrying was like the lifting of a great veil from his mind. Of all the after-action review lessons, perhaps this was the greatest one of all. Always took it to heart.

CHAPTER 7
Battle Position Defense

The mission was to defend Hill 781 and Hill 760 from a battle position. This was different from the previous defense in that a battle position defense is not as fixed as a defense in sector, not necessarily tied in with friendly units on the left and right, and affords greater flexibility to the commander. The objective is the same, however—to allow no enemy to pass and to kill as many of them as possible in the process.

Always’ immediate dilemma was that the enemy could take either of two directions. The first would take him to the east of Hill 760 right at Hill 781 and on to the south. This would be the more serious combat, as the terrain constricted on either side of 781 in such a way that a fierce fight would be forced as the enemy tried to penetrate. The second would take the enemy past Hill 760 and on to the west, a route that could avoid the bulk of Always’ battalion unless he chose to place them along that avenue of approach, the least defensible terrain.

Always did not want to fight the enemy forward (north) of Hill 760. The ground was too open, and a massed motorized rifle regiment, which was what intelligence told him to expect, could smash through him on the open ground. Yet if he pulled all of his forces back to 781, that avenue of approach would
be a free ride for an enemy staying out of range. The friendly battalion that had attacked on Always’ left during the night attack had not made it to its objective and was now held up in the vicinity of Hill 876. Always could let it take the brunt of the attack passing by him, but in so doing he would have avoided his mission, the battle position defense of both 760 and 781. Accordingly, such a cowardly course of action was out of the question.

On the other hand, Always wanted the fight to break in and around Hill 781. That little hillock, splitting the passes at CP 6 and CP 5, offered a major attraction for a defensive action. The defenders would have to do a thorough reconnaissance of the area, but early indications were that it was ideal terrain for a cunning defense.

It was Captain Johnson, the assistant S-3, who first proposed the possible solution to the dilemma. “Sir, if we could put a substantial force forward at the base of 760, say on the north and east where the enemy would be sure to see it, we might lure him into attacking through them into 781.”

“What are you getting at, Captain Johnson?” Always wanted him to elaborate on his idea.

“Well, sir, if we put a force up there it denies the enemy any chance of bypassing to the north on a beeline to 876 in the east. A company or two positioned there could rip any movement like that to shreds from flanking positions, and the survivors would only have to fight our sister battalion in the end anyway. But if he saw a force up there, on ground that is not too good for defense, then he would probably figure he could smash right through if he came head-on at it. After that he wouldn’t expect much left around Hill 781 to hold him up.”

“You’ve got a point there, Captain Johnson, except that the enemy calculations would be correct. If I put two companies up on 760 then I couldn’t hold at 781 if that’s where the main
battle broke.” Always was probing, hoping Johnson had thought it through a bit more.

He had. “But sir, I didn’t say it had to be two companies. And maybe we wouldn’t have to leave them up there once the action started.”

“You mean we could withdraw them in time to thicken our defenses around 781?”

“Yes, sir. We would have to wait until the enemy was committed, you know, deployed on line and attacking so that it would be almost impossible for him to pull out of it and change direction. Then we could pull back to a prepared position and let the wave break on our defense in and around 781.” The young captain’s eyes were bright, gleaming, staring intently at Always.

The tired lieutenant colonel was mulling over the rapid-fire ideas in his head. A spark had begun to glow in his heart, and it was catching fire in his mind. The intensity of the captain was striking. He was onto something there. He was advocating risk, big risk, and he was not letting Always carry it all himself. He was willing to acknowledge authorship for the idea, to shoulder part of the responsibility if the plan did not work. He wanted to contribute, to help his commander see the options as he saw them. He wanted to beat the enemy, to fool him, to draw him in, to pound him to pieces on the best ground available. He was willing to go on record stating just how to do that.

Always’ mind was leaping; he knew that the captain was right. And he could see beyond the initial move, into the placement of the companies, the preparation of the obstacles, the size of the force to put on 760, when to withdraw it, where to put it when it withdrew, how to further encourage the enemy to keep on toward 781 by flanking him with artillery fire that would discourage any deviation from his path, and where and when to strike with the reserves. But before he spoke he remembered
his lesson of the previous battles. How much better to get subordinates to share in the decision making, the problem solving, the responsibility bearing. The youth of the captain alone indicated that he could bring much greater energy to the solution of the problem than could the battered lieutenant colonel. And not just him. The rest of them—the captains, lieutenants, sergeants, and soldiers—were young men, as dedicated and committed as Always himself. Given the freedom to share in the decisions on how best to fight the battle, they would probably spare no energy in exploring every option. Always could correct any missteps, any misdirected exuberance. The important thing was to get them all in on the ground floor, to let them use their minds, their bodies, their skills and their energies in determining how best to fight the enemy. If it was their idea, not only might it be good, it might commit them that much more to its execution.

“Captain Johnson, I think you’ve got something there. Let’s get the staff together on top of Hill 781 and you can discuss your idea with them. Thirty minutes after that we’ll pull in the company commanders and give them some preliminary orders for their placement just so they can orient and position their forces. We’ve got until the morning after tomorrow to complete our defenses. After they’ve looked the ground over this afternoon we’ll meet again tonight and listen to their ideas on fleshing out your plan. The only early recommendations I’ll want from the staff is where to put in the major obstacles, and that so I can do some early work by our engineers and whatever attached bulldozers you can scrape up for us.”

“Yes, sir. What time do you want to give the order?”

“Please get with the S-3 and the XO on that and give me a recommendation. I don’t want to lose the opportunity to work tonight, but I also want to give everybody a chance to look over the problem. I need some help in figuring this one out.”

“Yes, sir.” Johnson’s voice belied his enthusiasm and pride.

The preliminary meetings were over by 1400. The commanders
and staff suggested an initial meeting for the operations order at 1800, with a second meeting, more or less an update, to take place sometime in the afternoon of the following day. Always accepted the recommendation and refrained from giving orders except to assign D Company the mission of defending forward (the actual composition of the company to be decided at the operations order) and to direct two battalion obstacles to go in on either flank of 781. Captain Johnson would directly supervise the location, in coordination with the engineer platoon leader.

As the battalion leaders took off in all directions to conduct their reconnaissance and pass the orders to bring their units up to the designated company battle positions (general areas suggested by the assembled group and approved by Always with minor modifications), the battalion commander moved to his jeep to take a forty-five-minute nap. He would get up in time to take a short reconnaissance of the area prior to the operations order meeting at 1800. His subordinates, he was sure, would bring him the details of the terrain he needed to know but had not necessarily seen for himself.

His men did their work well. By the orders meeting they had covered their respective areas well and were not at all reluctant to offer suggestions as to how to put in the defense. Captain Johnson agreed that either side of Hill 781 was a good place for emplacing obstacles, but felt that a gap would have to be left to allow Delta to withdraw. The S-2 suggested leaving the gap completely unprepared, thereby drawing the enemy toward it in an attempt to follow Delta. The artillery officer offered the view that he could close the gap with FASCAM (artillery-delivered mines), not only denying the enemy passage but catching him midstride in the mine field.