Defense of Hill 781 (24 page)

“How long have you been with us, PFC O’Donnel?”

“Since last night, sir.” O’Donnel looked pale, self-conscious.

“Good. We need some fresh soldiers to give us the energy to put this together. You listen to your sergeant over the next few days. He’ll tell you everything you need to know. Glad to have you with us.” Always had picked up on the fear in his eyes.

“Thank you, sir.” O’Donnel looked at his tank commander, whose stoic face showed absolutely no human emotion. He didn’t know if he should be reassured or not. Always moved on.

An hour later he was with Echo Company, inspecting the progress on the obstacles being emplaced to prevent any infiltration down the sandy wash. Captain Evans was enjoying having infantry dismounts under his command. He was an infantryman to the core and, while content to command his antitank company, had missed the supervision of ground pounders.

He was talking to his commander. “Don’t worry, sir. They won’t get through here, not unless they commit everything they’ve got this way.”

“We’ll have to keep in mind that they just might. I’ll take action if that happens. But you’ve got to buy me the time. Don’t let them by without making them pay a helluva price.”

And so it went throughout the morning and afternoon, throughout the operations order at noon, and into the evening. Commanders and soldiers talking and looking, checking and rechecking, offering suggestions, bouncing ideas off one another, reassuring each other, making adjustments, analyzing the terrain, shifting forces and obstacles slightly here and there, improving camouflage, and every so often taking an action intended only to throw any watching enemy off the track.

The counterreconnaissance battle was going well. Two BRDMs attempting to infiltrate wide around the flanks of the battalion were picked up by the scouts and killed. Four reconnaissance positions in the battalion’s rear had been identified. Always committed a platoon-sized infantry patrol against the one he thought might be getting too much of an eyeful, but just marked and noted the other three. He would hit them with artillery just after dark, then put a little nonpersistent gas on their positions. They were on remote enough terrain to not endanger his own forces.

The toughest order to give had been the one to shift positions after dark. The men had worked hard all day. Instead of getting a respite that night, they would shift just enough to have to do it all over again. But Always felt it was necessary to give them
just a slight edge over an enemy that had been plotting their positions all day, a chore made difficult for him by the numerous little deceptions played during the day. Now this one more would serve as further insurance that the enemy could not attack with a precise knowledge of the defensive plan.

The receptivity to the order had been enhanced, however, by the commanders’ unanimous agreement that such a shift was necessary. They had explained the urgency of shifting position to their men during the day, and had allowed some of the preparatory work to be done discreetly during the daylight hours. The adjustments at night would not be that difficult.

Shortly after dark the three remaining identified enemy reconnaissance outposts were taken out. At the same time, possible outpost sites were also put under artillery fire. Under the cover of the noise, Captain Dilger rehearsed his movement back through the gap and into his secondary battle position at Battle Position 38. He also practiced dropping off his Bradley platoon with Team Alpha, the latter slipping into defensive positions prepared for them by Captain Archer’s people. By 2300 all elements had rehearsed their movements, returned to BP 30, and set up for their initial defenses.

The enemy dismount probes began around midnight, slipping past Delta in BP 30 and honing in on Team Echo in BP 40. They were looking for an entrance into the sandy wash. Evans, however, had laid a number of antipersonnel mine fields in the first few hours after dark. It was in these that the enemy suffered his first casualties. Both Evans and Dilger had picked up his movement with their thermal sights, and had been talking to each other over secure radio for an hour before he closed. They watched as he worked his way through the mine field and stole closer to the obstacle blocking the way to the wash. Just a few hundred meters short of there, Evans put him under mortar fire. Nevertheless, he struggled on into the obstacle, only to be met there by a machine gun crew from one of the dismounted squads.
After a few minutes of chewing, he pulled back out, only to be put under mortar fire once again and finally eaten up by a Bradley positioned with Team Delta, which promptly shifted its position once it had done its work.

The report to Always made it seem like a complete victory. He did not suspect, nor did Evans and his dismounted infantrymen covering the obstacle, the hard-core determination of five of the enemy who remained through it all in the tank ditch in the obstacle complex. Scared and cramped, unable to move lest they give themselves away, they flattened their bodies against the bottom of the pit, waiting until times were a little more peaceful before pressing on with their mission.

Sergeant Schwartz cursed at the noise created by the ruckus over in Echo’s area. He was trying to show O’Donnel how to fire the main gun. The kid seemed awfully dense, almost afraid of touching the mechanisms that would spit death out of the tube of the monster beneath their feet. The sergeant was tired and irritable. He could think of a thousand things he’d rather be doing than teaching his raw recruit how to handle an Abrams tank. But he defined it as part of his job and was determined to do it.

Always had been out with Captain Dilger, going over the plan once again. He knew that Delta was exposed and did not want to overlook anything in getting it back. Dilger appeared to have a firm grasp on things. There was no posturing by him to impress his commander, just a matter-of-fact discussion of the probabilities. He knew he was running a high-risk game, knew it was crucial to the battalion’s battle plan, and knew he would have to shoulder the final decisions himself. Each man respected the other, not in least part for the responsibilities each was shouldering for the survival of both and for the survival of the battalion.

“You know that I’ll be the last one out, sir?”

“Yes, I know. Don’t wait too long to pull.”

“No, sir. I won’t.”

They parted in the darkness, Dilger taking up his lonely post, waiting for the dawn and the attack he expected, Always heading back to the TOC, now located to the rear of BP 38, for a final update before moving to his battle position with Bravo on the ridge east of Hill 867. He had scouted for the best position earlier and decided that he could see the majority of the battle from this location, as well as bring in the helicopter battalion as it came up.

“Sir, higher headquarters reports that heavy forces are massing fifteen kilometers to our northwest.” It was the S-2 speaking.

“That must be a report from Higher’s long-range reconnaissance patrols. I hope they can tell us when they start moving.” Always could picture the motorized rifle regiment massing its more than 150 vehicles, tanks, BMPs, antiaircraft guns, engineers, artillery pieces, BRDMs, personnel carriers, and command and control vehicles. For a second it gave him a cold chill. Then he shrugged it off and listened for whatever helpful details his intelligence officer could give him.

It was as he pulled into BP 32 and found Bravo’s command post that the firelight over in Echo’s obstacle broke out. Always went over to the artillery officer’s track and listened to the calls for fire to the mortar platoon. He was impressed with the professionalism with which the incoming fires were adjusted. Captain Baker joined him inside the track for fifteen minutes, and with the artillery officer and the air liaison officer reviewed the plan should the main attack break in his sector.

With the report from Dilger that he had finished off the probing force, Always and his command group pulled up on the crest of the ridge, barely 200 meters from the leftmost extent of the tank obstacle cutting across Checkpoint 6. At 0100 he stretched out on the floor of his Bradley, with orders to be woken at 0315. Sleep came easily.

Captain Baker had also stretched out in his Bradley to get
some rest. At 0219 he was wakened by his radiotelephone operator. Captain Dilger was calling from Team Delta, reporting that one of his thermal sights had picked up dismounted troops moving toward his position. Baker walked over to his center platoon, talked directly to his platoon sergeant there in the platoon leader’s Bradley, who in turn called over the wire to his platoon leader astride the obstacle. The lieutenant scanned the desert floor with his night vision goggles, picked up the squad running directly at him in a low crouch, waited until they were fifteen meters short of the obstacle, then blew his claymores lining the forward edge of the concertina wire. The entire squad fell dead and dying, legs severed, bodies shattered. The killing had taken less than a second. Always stirred in his sleep, then rolled over and drifted off again.

The enemy hiding in Echo’s tank ditch flinched when the claymores went off over by Bravo. It had taken immense concentration for the five men not to move during the past two hours. Their sergeant was afraid the noise would awaken the machine gun team lying only twenty-five meters beyond the ditch. He had heard their heavy breathing begin only about fifteen minutes earlier. Now he would have to wait some more to make his move.

Captain Dilger was dozing off in the tank’s cupola. He had put his men at 100 percent alert at 0130. He had gotten no rest prior to that, and so excused himself this little violation of his own policy as he drifted in and out of wakefulness. He was not depressed or gloomy, but somehow he was pessimistic about the battle ahead. It was not that he thought he would fail. He was confident enough about pulling off his mission successfully. It was just that he didn’t feel he personally would make it through. There had been too many close calls in the previous days. He could not keep squeaking by. Sooner or later everybody’s number has got to be up. He sensed his was coming.

Sergeant Schwartz had just gotten to sleep when Bravo blew
its claymores. He cursed out loud, looking over at the scared face of his loader sitting next to him in the cupola. He cursed again to himself and tried to get back to sleep, but it was a futile attempt. He was too pissed off.

At this moment Major Walters was bringing up the last load of spare parts to Charlie in BP 36. He had prioritized maintenance from front to rear during the last thirty-six hours, and right on schedule was bringing parts and mechanics together for final repairs. He would have everything fixed and in fighting condition by dawn. Of all the men in the battalion, he might have been the most tired. Only sheer stubbornness and pride kept him awake. At dawn he was going to move into the TOC. If the battle at the front went sour, he would take charge of it as it passed to the rear of the battalion. He calculated that with Charlie’s tanks and those that made it back with Delta, he could crush any of the enemy that penetrated to his position. He hoped some would come. His blood lust was up.

At 0304 the enemy squad made its move. They slipped out of the tank ditch and slit the throats of the three men of Echo’s machine gun team. They then returned to the obstacle and quietly started removing mines and cutting concertina wire. Two men worked at filling in the tank ditch with D-handle entrenching tools. None of Evans’ men noticed. Many were asleep. Those who were awake figured the machine gun team by the obstacle had it well covered. Their attention was elsewhere.

The surrealism of the predawn hours shrouded the desert in a mystical panoply. Sleepy warriors in and astride mechanical beasts were caught between drowsiness and adrenaline bursts as they contemplated the fate that shortly awaited them. Hazy mists rose from the desert floor, ghostlike apparitions that folded over the equipment of war. Hundreds of men, flickering open their heavy eyelids, stared into the mysterious darkness as if to seek out the eyes of their intended killers staring back from across the endless wastes. Alternately, in an ironic juxtaposition
of the savage and pacifist in each of them, they fondled a memento of more civilized times—a picture of a loved one, a letter, a locket—and the instruments of murder—a bullet, the edge of their bayonet, a hand grenade. Time was rushing toward destiny.

The obstacle in front of Echo had been unraveling for eleven minutes when Always awoke at 0315. For five more minutes he stretched and shook the cobwebs from his head, then choked down a tepid cup of coffee from a dusty thermos and unfolded his maps before him. At 0323 he raised Captain Dilger and discussed the wisdom of shifting 400 meters off position in the next half hour. The battalion commander was worried about the artillery barrage that would precede the attack. All other units had shifted after dark, as had Delta, but with the latter the chances were that the enemy had noted and recorded the change. It took four minutes for Dilger to agree that, although it would be a large pain in the ass, it should, and would, be done.

The stillness of the air gave Always his final opportunity to assuage the enemy’s knowledge of his final defensive positions. At 0350 prepositioned smoke pots throughout the battalion’s battle position gave rise to a series of clouds that covered companies and empty spaces in a sort of graceful shell game. Thermal sights cut through the smoke as easily as the darkness to look for the beginnings of enemy movement. The stage was set for the rise of the final curtain.

Six minutes after the long-range reconnaissance patrols reported the moving of the motorized rifle regiment from its assembly area, the horizon flared with light flashes—yellow and red, angry and intent. A split second behind the first flashes the sky beyond the horizon flickered with the reflections of yet more flashes. Then the first echelon of flashes sparkled again, and so back and forth in a wicked array of malign fireworks. Within minutes the ground around Hills 760 and 781 was being reshaped
by giant explosions. It was the start of the enemy’s artillery preparation. It was 0403.