Team Yankee: a novel of World War III (25 page)

78th that had been attached to the I st of the 4th Armor. They were waiting for word to go in and pick up the dismounted element he and Polgar had encountered. Just below the crest of the hill, two tanks and a PC sat, peering over the top toward Arnsdorf below. There were three figures standing next to the PC looking at a map board. When one of the figures looked up and saw Bannon approaching, he motioned. The other two looked up, put down the map board, and started towards him. They were the battalion commander, XO, and S-3

of the 1 st Battalion, 4th Armor, Team Yankee's parent battalion. As he closed, Bannon saluted and, as nonchalantly as possible, greeted Team Yankee's saviors.

"Sean, Colonel Reynolds told us you had been wiped out last night." "Sir, the news of our demise has been greatly exaggerated. D company is reporting for duty." Not that they could do anything but, what the hell, it

sounded good.

Maj. Frank Shell, the S-3, looked him over for a moment, then turned to the battalion commander. "If the rest of his people look as bad as Sean, the infantry was right, Team Yankee was wiped out." Then he turned back to Bannon and, seriously this time, asked if the rest of the Team did look like him. Bannon's eyes were bloodshot and had dark circles around them. Every exposed patch of skin was dirty. He had two days' growth of beard. The cut on the side of his face had become swollen from infection, and there was dried blood on his face and neck and around his collar. There was also dried blood on the chest and sleeves of his chemical suit from pulling Ortelli from 66. This was mixed with diesel and oil stains. Bannon guessed he couldn't have looked much worse. As they walked over to the PC, he explained the Team's situation and requested that an ambulance be sent immediately to the trail junction to bring out the wounded. The battalion XO got on it and had an M-113 ambulance rumbling down to the Team in minutes. They stopped by the tanks and looked down into Arnsdorf. There were still wisps of smoke rising from some of the burned-out Soviet vehicles. Scores of dead Russians littered the field among the smashed vehicles. The battalion commander looked at Bannon, "I take it you did that last night."

"Yeah. With a little help. Very little help," he replied without turning away. It all seemed so remote now, so foreign. Bannon had difficulty equating the scene before him with the horror show that had been last night. He gazed up at the clear blue morning sky, across the valley to the green hill to the north, and then at the battalion commander. "Yes, sir. We did that and more."

After the battalion commander and XO left to go down into Arnsdorf and follow the attack, Major Shell updated Bannon on what had happened since yesterday morning and how 1st of the 4th had come into play. The Mech Battalion that Team Yankee was part of had become spread out all over the division's rear during the night road march. While passing through one of the villages at night, part of the column had taken a wrong turn. The people leading the two line companies, C and D, the battalion trains, and the battalion CP all realized their mistakes at different times and tried to get back onto the proper route separately. This led to confusion and more errors, just as the first sergeant had reported.

D company was the first to show up and join Team Bravo on its overwatch position at 1730

last night. C company went into the rear areas of the German panzer division that was to the south of the division, got turned around, and then ran out of fuel. It never reached its destination, being held in the rear as part of the division reserve. The battalion trains pulled in

at night but never told anyone. Major Jordan found them by accident in the area where they were supposed to be. The S-4, in charge of the trains, thought the battalion was still under radio listening silence, never realizing the net had been jammed, and the battalion had moved to another frequency. Team Bravo, which had been in position to support Yankee, moved up to LOG but was thrown off in the late morning by a dismounted counterattack from Lemm.

When all this had been sorted out by the battalion and brigade commanders, it was decided to pull the 1st of the 78th Mech out and throw in the 1 st of the 4th Armor. As Team Bravo was combat ineffective, and everyone thought that, except for recovered tracks, Team Yankee was gone, the I st of the 78th was sent to the rear to reconstitute and act as reserve.

The

1st of the 4th relieved the Mech Battalion at 0300, just after the battle of Hill 214, and began its attack at 0530, just before the Team woke up. Major Shell told Bannon that he, the commander, and the XO were trying to figure out what had happened to all the Russians that the 1 st of the 78th had reported and who had done all the damage in Arnsdorf when Bannon showed up.

The good news from this comedy of errors was that Team Bravo held LOG long enough for First Sergeant Harrert to gather up the Team's wounded and recover those tracks that had only been damaged. To Bannon's surprise, he found out that First Sergeant Harrert had four tanks and two PCs, including the HQ PC, in varying states of repair. In the attack against LOG, Team Yankee had had only two tanks totally destroyed, 21 and 66, one PC, the 1 st Squad of the Mech Platoon, and the FIST track. For casualties, not counting the men who were killed on Hill 214, the Team had lost fifteen killed and six wounded. The number of killed seemed staggering and out of proportion. But as he thought about it, it made sense.

Tank 21 and the infantry PC alone accounted for thirteen of the dead.

While Bannon pondered the Team's good fortune, Major Shell contacted brigade and received orders for Team Yankee. The Team was to road march to the rear and join the 1 st of the 78th in reserve. He gave Bannon the location of the Mech Battalion's new CP in the rear and the route the Team

was to use. Bannon asked for and received permission to stop by the 1 st of the 4th1s combat trains and pick up some diesel. With a battalion to run, the S-3 had to go. He told Bannon to get the cut on his face taken care of while the Team was refueling at the trains and wished him luck. The S-3 mounted his PC, they exchanged salutes, and then he rolled down into Arnsdorf to join his commander. Bannon went back to Team Yankee, relieved in every sense of the word.

The formal portion of the morning briefing at the Tenth Corps Headquarters was over. The commanding general got up and walked over to the two maps that were displayed before him. On the large-scale map the overall situation in Germany was displayed. It was not good. In the NORTHAG, or Northern Army Group, area the Soviets were fast approaching the Dutch border. Hamburg and Bremerhaven had fallen. Though there had not been a breakthrough, several portions of the front were threatened with collapse. Already two corps commanders had requested the release of tactical nuclear weapons in order to break up concentrations of Warsaw Pact units. Follow-on Soviet, Polish, and East German units were moving toward the front to resume the attack.

The CENTAG or Central Army Group area, where the Tenth Corps operated, was much better. The terrain there was not the best for armored warfare. In addition, French forces were readily at hand and beginning to reach the front.

Turning to his small-scale map that depicted the corps' area of operation and current situation, he began to run his finger along the front line trace of his units, stopping every so often to study Warsaw Pact forces that were opposing the corps. At one point, he stopped his finger on a group of Soviet units and turned to his Intel officer. "George, these people here, you said that they are continuing west?"

"Yes, sir. We expect them to be in the vicinity of Kassel by tomorrow morning at the latest unless we can get the Air Force to delay them." "What's coming up behind them, George?

Who is going to be in the Leipzig area two to four days from now?"

"Well, sir, right now, no one. There is one Polish division here that could be in that area, but that's about it."

Without turning away from the map and motioning with his hand, the general began to issue instructions to his operations officer. "Frank, get your Plans people to work on an attack centered around the 21 st Panzer Division. As soon as the French relieve it, I want the 21st to move here and attack north into the Thuringer Wald. The mission of the 21 st is to breach the Soviet security screen and then cross the Inner German Boundary here. The second phase of the operation will be a passage of lines by the 52nd or 54th Division with orders to continue the attack north across the Saale River towards Leipzig. I want this operation to commence in three days. Have your people prepared to present me a decision briefing by 1800 hours tonight. What are your questions?"

The operations officer studied the map for a moment, then turned to the general, "Sir, can I plan on using the 25th Armored Division? Also, how far do you want us to plan after we reach Leipzig?"

"Frank, I want your plan to use everything we've got. For planning purposes you will consider our axis of advance from where we are to Leipzig, Berlin, and finally the Baltic coast. If I can convince the CINC, we're going to go

for broke."

Without further ado, the briefing broke up, staff officers scurrying in all directions to prepare for the evening briefing.

The road march was uneventful. Team Yankee had fortyfive kilometers to cover and could have done it in an hour had it not been for the traffic. As Team Yankee was going to the rear this time, and its road march had not been scheduled by the division's movement control center, it was bumped by higher priority traffic going to the front or wounded headed for the rear. It was amazing how many vehicles there were driving around in division's rear. As they sat on the side of the road waiting for a convoy to go by before the Team could move again, Garger wondered if someone was really in charge of all this. There were long convoys of supply and fuel trucks, artillery batteries, columns of ambulances moving

rearward, a field hospital moving forward, engineers all over, and equipment he had never seen before and whose purpose he had no idea of. That an army could bring order out of this apparent chaos, keep people fed, vehicles fueled, and units arriving at the right place at the right time was a source of wonder to him.

The biggest problem Bannon had during the long pauses while the Team waited for a break in the traffic was waking everyone up when it was time to move. It seemed that each time they stopped, the men fell over asleep. Once, when a break in the traffic appeared, it took so long to wake everyone up that by the time they were ready to roll, a new convoy came by and the Team had to wait again. The men immediately went back to sleep.

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. "