The Ten Thousand (53 page)

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Authors: Harold Coyle

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BOOK: The Ten Thousand
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Vorishnov, steeled for action before anyone else, had dropped to the turret floor and plopped himself down on the seat he had been standing on. Reaching across, Vorishnov grabbed the long, crooked arm that served to arm the tank’s main gun as well as deflect the wide base plate of expended main gun rounds into a container hanging from the gun’s breech. Finished with that, Vorishnov pulled his whole body over to one side to escape the recoil of the main gun and hung on to the handles as he had been shown.

As he sat there watching Dixon in the dim blue-green light of the turret, he pondered whether he should ask what round Dixon wanted to load next but decided not to. Dixon’s mind, he knew, was busy going over the shoot-don’t shoot decision process. Vorishnov, knowing that they were facing an anti-tank unit, would load a high explosive anti-tank, or
HEAT
, round next, once the armor-piercing, fin-stabilized anti-tank round already in the gun’s chamber was fired. He would have to announce that to the gunner so that he could change the ammunition selection lever on the primary sight and allow the fire-control computer to provide a new ballistic solution. But that was easy and worth the effort. Though Vorishnov hadn’t been told, he assumed that the Americans, like his own Army, preferred the
HEAT
round, a chemical round that caused a-shaped-charge explosion on contact with target when engaging lightly armored vehicles and material targets. Armor-piercing rounds used against enemy tanks were nothing more than a depleted uranium slug that used kinetic energy to punch its way through the armor plate of the target. Against the Jaguar there was the chance that the armor-piercing round would sail through both sides of the Jaguar without destroying it. Though Vorishnov doubted that would happen, a
HEAT
round next time would be better.

If there was any doubt in Dixon’s mind about whether or not he should engage the Jaguar across the square from him, he didn’t dwell long on it. They were committed to war. First blood had been drawn, and this was neither the time nor place to determine if the crew of the Jaguar across from them was made up of good Germans or bad Germans. Only the fact that Vorishnov had forgotten to announce that he was UP, or ready for action, caused a delay. Out of habit, Dixon shouted, “LOADER!
ARE
YOU
UP?”

Vorishnov, realizing his error, shouted, “UP,” then silently cursed himself for being so stupid.

Dixon instantly shouted, “FIRE!” causing the gunner to respond with “ON
THE
WAY” just before he pulled the trigger.

The first engagement of the evening was over before the last of the reverberations from Dixon’s tank died away in the close confines of the town’s square. Like a giant dart, the depleted uranium penetrator sliced through the armor plate of the lead Jaguar 1 of Captain Albrecht Benen’s company. Vorishnov’s fear that such a round would have minimal effect against the Jaguar was ill founded, as the depleted uranium penetrator, pushing a chunk of the Jaguar’s own armor plate in front of it, cut through stored ammunition into the Jaguar’s fuel cell and out the rear through the engine compartment. The tremendous heat created by the transformation of the penetrator’s kinetic energy into heat upon contact with the Jaguar set off first the propellant of the stored ammunition, then the diesel fuel.

Hans Gielber never had the opportunity to see any of this. By the time the lead Jaguar began shuddering from internal explosions, Hans was fleeing from the window, his face, chest, and upper arms shredded by glass that had been shattered by the concussion of the muzzle blast from Dixon’s main gun.

Though he would survive, he, like other children around the world, would pay for the decisions made by men who claimed to be their leaders and the men who were opposed to them. Like many of his countrymen caught in the middle of a conflict which few understood, Hans Gielber would carry the mental and physical scars of war with him for the rest of his life.

With the initial threat dealt with, Dixon now had to make a series of quick decisions. They were, relative to his rank and position, rather simple decisions. But that didn’t make them any less critical.

Knowing full well that anti-tank guns don’t travel alone, Dixon knew there were more somewhere nearby, if not immediately behind the one he had just destroyed. The destruction of the lead Jaguar would serve as an effective, if somewhat bloody, warning to any German unit in the area that the Americans were there. So sneaking away into the darkness was out of the question. That didn’t rule out the option of retreat. Dixon’s tank was the only combat vehicle in the entire tactical command post. Though there might only be one more guided-missile anti-tank vehicle in the town, the chances of there being more were just as good, and Dixon had no way of knowing which answer was the correct one. So retreat was a prudent choice.

No one who knew Scott Dixon, however, would ever be able to accuse him of being conservative or prudent when it came to tactics. It was that reputation that had led his superiors to select his brigade for the foray into the Ukraine. It was those traits that gave them confidence that Dixon’s brigade would be able to pull off the ride around the 2nd Panzer Division’s flank. And in a moment of sheer panic Dixon’s hard-hitting and aggressive nature overrode common sense and dictated his next series of orders. Keying the radio net, he ordered Cerro to find somewhere that the soft-skinned vehicles of the tactical command post could be protected by the officers and enlisted of the staff with the few anti-tank rockets that they had while they waited for the lead element of the next battalion to reach them.

Even before Cerro acknowledged Dixon’s order, Dixon shouted for his driver to move out and told his gunner to keep his eyes open, that they were going to go around the Jaguar they had just destroyed and see if there were any more following. As the driver engaged the transmission, Dixon squatted on his seat and looked over to see how Vorishnov was doing with reloading. Dixon, just in time to see the Russian ram the next round into the gun chamber, noticed that he was sweating. Vorishnov, seeing Dixon watching, grunted and yelled over the sounds of the tank’s turbine engines, “Automatic loaders are much better.” Then he added after keying the intercom, “
HEAT
loaded.”

With a quick smile and a thumbs-up, Dixon acknowledged the comment and popped back up just as his tank was about to pass the burning Jaguar. His gunner, who was not blinded by the flames of the burning German vehicle, shouted a new acquisition report. “Anti-tank, twelve o’clock!”

Dixon noticed that his gunner’s voice was calmer now, even though he saw at the same instant that the new target was even closer than the one they had just engaged. Without waiting to give a full fire command, Dixon yelled, “
INDEX
HEAT? FIRE!” in a single breath. Before the gunner fired, Dixon looked and saw another Jaguar desperately trying to back down the narrow street behind the one his gunner was engaging.

The muzzle blast of his tank’s 120mm main gun momentarily blinded Dixon, who had not heeded the gunner’s warning of “On the way” and closed his eyes. Not that there was much to see. The second engagement ended as the first had, with a target hit on the second Jaguar at a range of less than forty meters. But there was no time to stop to catch their breath. For while the gunner was preparing to dispatch the second Jaguar, Dixon caught a glimpse of the other Jaguar halfway through the process of turning around further down the street. Suddenly Dixon began to doubt the wisdom of charging across the square in pursuit of Germans. For the briefest moments he understood how Custer could have allowed himself to get suckered into his own massacre.

But this was no time for half measures, no time for backing up. Dixon felt he was committed and that it was better to keep going than to back off now. Taking a deep breath, Dixon looked about as his night vision began to clear and ordered the driver to keep heading down the street toward what he thought was the rail yard. Though he was pushing his luck or, more correctly, the luck of his entire crew, Dixon had no intention of stopping while he thought he had an advantage.

In the rail yard, bewilderment was replaced by a panicked frenzy of activity as Captain Albrecht Benen and his first sergeant, once they realized what was going on, ran up and down the line of flatbed rail cars shouting at their men in an effort to get them to hurry. Not everyone was as panicked as their commander. One Jaguar commander, seeing that his crew was doing the best it could and noticing that the second tank cannon report was closer, climbed on his vehicle and began to mount an anti-tank guided missile. Even if they were still on the rail car when the enemy tank came, the Jaguar commander figured he would be able to get at least one shot off.

Benen, pausing after he heard a third tank round fired, realized that in moments the enemy would be right there in the middle of the rail yard itself. Knowing that it was useless to try to take on the enemy tank in the town, Benen decided to prepare to meet the Americans in the rail yard. There, the anti-tank guided missiles would have enough stand-off distance between the launcher and the target, for it took several meters for an anti-tank guided missile to arm itself after being fired, something that he couldn’t count on in the narrow streets of the town. Leaving the first sergeant to take care of the vehicles at the front of the train, closest to where he expected the enemy tanks to come from, Benen ran to the end of the rail cars where he intended to deploy several of his Jaguars. Though it would be close, he was confident that they could do it.

Confidence, at that moment, was something that Second Lieutenant Tim Ellerbee could have used.

Ordered to pick up his speed and get into the town of Dermbach as quickly as possible to protect the brigade command post from an enemy counterattack, Ellerbee and the rest of his platoon had left Captain Nancy Kozak and her slower Bradleys behind in the night in their efforts to reach the brigade command post before the Germans did.

The sudden burst of speed that allowed Ellerbee and his tanks to break free of the numbing convoy speed, heightened by the prospect of battle, shook any traces of sleep from Ellerbee’s mind. They were going into battle again. This time he and his platoon would do everything right. The problems that he had experienced in the Ukraine would be washed away in a single smashing success. And he would be able to prove to the female captain who spoke to him like he was an idiot that he was as good a soldier, if not better, as she was. Of all the thoughts that ran through Ellerbee’s mind as his platoon reached the southern outskirts of Dermbach, that was the most important one.

Which perhaps explains why Second Lieutenant Ellerbee missed the sign that indicated the main road, the one that would have taken his platoon to the center of town where the brigade command post was and where Scott Dixon and his crew were fighting for their lives. Instead Ellerbee found that he was rapidly leading his entire platoon down a blind alley instead of charging to the rescue. Not understanding what had happened, Ellerbee brought his tank to a screaming stop when he suddenly ran out of street and entered a factory complex. Pausing, he looked to his left, then to his right, then at his map while the sounds of Scott Dixon’s lonely battle against Captain Albrecht Benen’s Jaguar company reverberated through the empty streets.

While Ellerbee was trying to figure out what had gone wrong and what to do about it, Sergeant First Class Rourk, Ellerbee’s platoon sergeant, came over the platoon’s radio net. “Alpha Three One, this is Alpha Three Four. We missed a turn back there somewhere. Do you want me to get everyone turned around? Over.”

Looking back down the line of tanks, Ellerbee realized that would take time, which the brigade command post might not have. Besides, if they missed the turn once, there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t miss it again. Looking at his map again, Ellerbee noticed that there was a rail line that ran north to south. To his front, he could make out what he thought was a set of tracks in the factory’s yard.

Glancing back to his left, he followed the tracks toward the direction of the town center and the sounds of battle. It only made sense that the tracks in the factory yard had to be connected to the main rail line shown on his map.

Stuffing his map back down the open hatch he stood in, Ellerbee keyed the radio mike. “Negative, Three Four. We’re going to follow these tracks here to my front and into the center of the town. When we get close enough to the action, we’ll cut up a side street and find the brigade CP. Over.”

Though Rourk wasn’t too keen on Ellerbee’s idea, Ellerbee was the platoon leader and they had to do something fast. So with a less than enthusiastic “Roger, we’re right behind you,” Rourk and the rest of 3rd Platoon made a sharp left and began to rumble along the railroad tracks toward the sound of the guns.

In headlong pursuit down the twisting streets after another, and what he hoped to be the last, Jaguar, Dixon didn’t notice that he had run out of street and was entering the wide-open rail yard. Not that this helped the Jaguar that they were chasing. When the gunner thought he had enough time, he yelled, “ON

THE
WAY
.” Without waiting for Dixon to give the order to fire, he fired the main gun. As before, this
HEAT
round found its mark.

The sudden report of a tank cannon and the series of explosions caused by the destruction of one of his Jaguars right there in the middle of the rail yard caught Captain Albrecht Benen and the rest of his company by surprise. In an instant the dark rail yard was bathed in bright yellow and red light as flames from the burning propellant of ammunition stored in the latest Jaguar destroyed leaped into the black night sky. Every one of Benen’s officers and soldiers turned and watched before the image of Dixon’s tank, with its huge 120mm tank cannon turning toward them, caused them to redouble their efforts. This was it.

Fight or flight.

The sudden image of a dozen enemy armored vehicles, some still on rail cars but all of them pointing toward them, startled Dixon, Vorishnov, and his gunner. They were in deep shit with no good choices.

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