The Ten Thousand (57 page)

Working from an ancient OH-58D, an aircraft frame that was almost as old as he was, Messinger deployed his units. Scouts from one of his troops secured the ambush site, north, south, and east, keeping their eyes open for German attack helicopters as well as any anti-aircraft guns or surface-to-air missile launchers. If encountered before Messinger sprung the ambush, he would decide whether to press the attack or break it off. If the scouts ran across these threats after the ambush had been initiated, the scouts would deal with them as best they could and keep Messinger advised.

Messinger himself would be with the Apache company making the attack. From there he could judge the effectiveness of their fire and determine when they reached that point where a continuation of attack became counterproductive or too costly to them. Due to the increased work load placed on his squadron, insufficient time to properly maintain their aircraft, the exhaustion of critical spare parts, and the need to conserve fuel, none of the units of the Tenth Corps, particularly the aviation units, could afford to waste precious resources in pursuit of marginal gains. In most ambushes, the majority of the killing is done in the first few seconds or minutes when the enemy is surprised and off balance. When, because of the actions of the enemy commanders or an inability of the attacker to maintain the pressure, the unit under attack is given time to recover from that initial shock and rally, the tables are often turned and the attacker becomes the victim. Bob Messinger’s primary job that morning was to ensure that every one of his aircraft was long gone before that happened.

With well-measured ease, Larry Perkins slowly brought his aircraft up above the treetops until the golf-ball-like instrument dome mounted on top of the rotor blades had a clear view of the road. With one eye he watched the trees to his front and with the other the instrument screen. Messinger, his eyes glued to his observer’s display, didn’t speak. He didn’t need to give Perkins directions or corrections, since the instrument dome had free rotation. Messinger himself could traverse his sight to cover the area that he was interested in, leaving Perkins free to fly the aircraft. When Perkins reached the proper height that allowed the instrument dome to clear the last of the tree branches, Messinger merely muttered, “Okay, that’s good.”

While Perkins held the helicopter steady, Messinger scanned the road. To his front a column of armored vehicles, Leopard tanks and Marder infantry fighting vehicles, interspersed with trucks and other vehicles, was moving north in a steady stream.

Though he was interested in all of them, it was the tanklike Gepard armed with twin 37mm anti-aircraft cannons, and Rolands, tracked vehicles mounting surface-to-air missiles, that Messinger was looking for. They would be given priority when the killing started, since they were the most effective defense against just the kind of attack that Messinger was about to initiate.

When he found what he was looking for, he depressed the radio transmit button and called the other scout that was doing the same thing. “Kilo Nine Five, this is Kilo Five Three. I have a Gepard near the head of the column, three vehicles behind the lead. Over.”

There was a pause while the observer in the other scout looked and confirmed. “Roger, Five Three. I see ‘em. I’ve got nothing in the middle or rear. How ‘bout you? Over.”

Traversing the joy stick that controlled the instrument dome, Messinger scanned the entire length of the column a second time. When he was finished, he looked up from his sight, rubbed his eyes, and then put his head back down against the brow pads of the sight again before responding. “Negative. The Gepard in the front is the only gun I see.” He was about to say that he would take out the self-propelled Gepard antiaircraft gun but thought better of it. He was senior officer on the scene. He needed to keep himself out of the fight, exercising command and control for as long as possible. The other scout could deal with the Gepard, leaving him free to watch for other air defense systems they might have missed while keeping an eye on the attack of the Apache helicopters and the German reactions. With that decided, Messinger directed the scout to stand by to fire on the Gepard while ordering the commander of the Apache company, waiting in firing positions some five thousand meters away on the other side of the road, to stand by to commence firing.

When all was ready, he initiated the ambush with a simple, almost casual call to the scout. “Okay, Nine Five, let her fly.”

When he was set, the observer in the scout helicopter with the call sign Nine Five hit the laser designator button, watched for it to illuminate the target, then fired a Hellfire missile. Once the Hellfire was clear of the trees and screaming in toward the Gepard, German air guards up and down the column began to yell their warnings to their vehicle commanders, who in turn relayed the warning throughout the column via radio. Though that warning came too late for the Gepard, which received Kilo Nine Five’s Hellfire square on the side of the turret that housed the twin 37mm anti-aircraft guns, other vehicles began to turn away from the attack right into the sights of the waiting Apaches. Without any need for orders, the commander of the five Apaches gave his order to engage and joined the fight himself by launching a Hellfire at a Leopard tank that he had been tracking.

With the attack coming from the direction that the fleeing vehicles had thought was away from danger, the surprise and chaos created had the desired effect. The commanders of the vehicles that survived the first volley ordered their drivers to turn their individual vehicles this way or that, to back up, or to stop and assess what was happening. The result was momentary confusion and loss of command and control.

Some vehicles, their commanders and drivers trying to look in all directions at once, plowed into each other. Adding to the general confusion were clouds of smoke created when tanks fired smoke grenades in all directions. Here and there trucks ran off the road rather than be crushed by tanks wildly seeking safety as Marders dropped their ramps so that the precious infantry could scramble out and seek safety on the ground rather than remain boxed up in what might soon become a death trap. During this initial confusion, when none of the surviving German commanders could make sense out of what was going on or exert their authority, the Apaches launched a second volley, adding to the confusion and cutting down more leaders in midstride as they tried to sort out their commands.

From afar, Messinger watched. By now both he and scout Kilo Nine Five were long forgotten by the Germans on the road. The massed Apache attack was far too overwhelming to ignore. Though satisfied with the results of the initial strike and the confusion that reigned, Messinger knew it would soon end.

Already he could see commanders of individual Leopard tanks turning to fight. Though a tank main-gun round was not the most effective anti-aircraft weapon, the sophisticated computer-driven fire-control system of the Leopard, like the American M-1A1 tank, gave them teeth that could not be ignored.

Realizing that the longer he allowed the Apaches to continue the engagement the more the Germans would be able to respond, Messinger ordered the Apache company commander to fire one more volley and then break off the attack. Though he could have stayed and taken out more vehicles, to do so would have increased his chances of losing aircraft and crews that could not be replaced. Since there were more columns further down the highway, all racing north in an effort to save the 2nd Panzer Division, Messinger knew he could repeat this performance again later somewhere else against another unwary column. For now, a dozen or more kills, a major highway temporarily blocked, a column scattered and in disorder, and the flow of combat forces north momentarily halted was good enough to accomplish what the 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment was tasked to do. When Messinger saw the last of the Hellfire missiles detonate on the rear deck of a Leopard tank and heard the Apache company commander announce over the radio that he and his company were out of there and en route to their next battle position, Messinger lifted his head from his sight and turned to Perkins. “Okay, Larry. We’ve done enough damage here. Let’s head south and see if we can do it again.” With that, Larry Perkins allowed the OH-58D to drop down a few feet before he twisted its tail boom a quarter turn with a flick of his hand holding the collective, pointed the nose of the helicopter south and right into the gunsight of a German attack helicopter’s gunner. The German gunner, seeing that his quarry was about to flee, let fly a stream of 20mm rounds at Messinger’s aircraft. Though it had been a hasty shot, the German gunner’s initial aim had been good enough. In a matter of a couple of seconds the crew compartment of Messinger’s helicopter was shredded by a hail of 20mm high-explosive rounds, serving to remind anyone who cared to think about what had just happened that in war even the craftiest hunter can in the twinkling of an eye become the hunted.

Though the evening briefing was a short affair that night, the information in it weighed heavy on Big Al Malin. Even if Big Al had been able to sit through it, none of the staff officers could have sat in one place for more than ten minutes without nodding off to sleep. For despite every effort to rotate the staff officers and enlisted staff members at the Tenth Corps command post in and out for rest, there were few who managed to snatch any meaningful sleep. It was not because things were going bad. On the contrary, the situation was for the most part conforming to the plan that this very staff had formulated and put into motion some thirty-six hours before. The fighting and maneuvering of both German and American forces then in progress was pretty much yielding the results that Big Al had hoped for.

The real problem wearing at Big Al and his staff was a problem that all senior officers in the modern age faced. Though he gave the orders, though he had the authority to initiate battles and determine when and where those battles would be fought, he did not, could not, do the fighting. At that moment Big Al or his staff didn’t have much say over what happened. Neither he nor his staff, with all of its sophisticated communications equipment and collective knowledge, wisdom, and experience, could do anything to tilt the scale of the company and platoon battles being waged in the valleys, hills, forests, and towns of central Germany. The corps staff could order more fire support to assist a unit in contact in the form of attack helicopters or artillery. They could augment those units with reinforcements. But the one thing that Big Al and his staff could not do was to gain release through combat from their fears, apprehensions, and stresses.

Big Al’s orders had set the divisions in motion. The divisions had issued their own orders that had sent their brigades attacking in just about every direction possible. Brigades had tasked their subordinate battalions to attack in a set direction with a definitive objective or to defend a key piece of terrain. From there the orders were transmitted to company commanders. At that level, in the confined spaces of darkened personnel carriers, the company commander issued his own instructions to a group of platoon leaders who were just as cold, tired, dirty, and confused as the soldiers that they were about to lead into battle. When that was finished, those young lieutenants or senior sergeants charged with closing with and destroying the enemy by use of fire, maneuver, and shock effect were left to wander on their own back to where their soldiers waited to hear the orders that for many would be a death sentence.

Often during the long, terrible wait for information and news from the units in contact and the results of those contacts, Big Al would stare at the map in his operations van. Every blue symbol on that map meant something to him. They were not simply marks on a plastic overlay; they were flesh and blood.

They were his soldiers. That his orders determined how many of the soldiers represented by those symbols lived and how many died bothered Big Al greatly. So he like any competent commander did his best to ensure that he had all the information he needed to make sound, intelligent decisions. Though reams of information flooded into the corps headquarters every hour, only a shockingly small amount meant anything to the primary decision makers. It took time to collect a skilled staff to sift through and sort that critical information that Big Al would use when modifying his plans or issuing new orders.

Until that was done, Big Al was left to struggle with his conscience, his fears, his personal battle, and watch the symbols on the map as they were moved from one place to another.

The operations map in front of him presented a picture that almost staggered the imagination.

Throughout central Germany, units of the Tenth Corps were playing out a drama that defied definition or description. There were no longer front lines, rear boundaries, or flanks. There was at that moment no main effort, no center of gravity. All the corps staff could report to Big Al that night was a series of widely separated attacks under the control of brigade and battalion commanders that were attempting to achieve the objectives that Big Al had outlined the day before. To the west, the 1st Brigade of the 55th Mech Infantry Division was attacking south against the 10th Panzer Division’s 3rd Brigade. The 55th’s 2nd Brigade was attacking to the west while its 3rd Brigade was attacking, under the control of the 4th Armored Division, to the north and northeast in an effort to keep the 2nd Panzer Division’s 1st and 3rd Brigades from Unking up. Dixon’s 1st Brigade was also attacking the 2nd Panzer Division’s 3rd Brigade in one direction while putting pressure on the 2nd Panzer’s 2nd Brigade and attacking the division’s service support units in the opposite direction. Dixon’s sister brigade, the 2nd Brigade, was doing likewise some fifteen kilometers away, sending one battalion northeast to hit the 2nd Panzer’s 2nd Brigade, holding one battalion in place to fix the 2nd Panzer’s 3rd Brigade, and attacking south with a third battalion against the 2nd Panzer’s 1st Brigade. It was, one assistant operations officer dryly stated in a vain effort at humor while briefing, a high-tech barroom brawl.