Trial By Fire (55 page)

In several places, company commanders reacted by redeploying their units and conducting hasty attacks on the fly. Some of these attacks succeeded, allowing the company commander to press on to the southwest toward his distant objective. Other attacks failed, with the company thrown back onto itself. A few company commanders, unable to assess what was going on, simply stopped where they were, coiled their units up into a tight defensive posture, and waited for orders. Within minutes, effective command and control at battalion level and above ceased to exist.

Confusion was not limited to the battalion and brigade commanders alone. Command and control also ceased to exist within some companies.

A failed night attack, at its best, bears a striking resemblance to a nightmare.

Burning tracks, both tanks and Bradleys, cast an eerie illumination over the area where the attack had taken place, an area still dominated by fire from enemy positions and artillery that the attack had failed to destroy.

Into this area medics and recover teams, under the control of the company first sergeant, must move to save the wounded and retrieve damaged vehicles. Sometimes these people, in the process, also become casualties.

While all this is going on, the company commander, if he has survived, is trying to rally the survivors of the attack, count noses to find out who he still has, figure out what happened so that he can submit a timely and accurate report to his battalion commander, and reorganize his unit. This entire effort usually is complicated by the fact that sometimes leaders, including the company commander, are among the casualties that the first sergeant is trying to recover. When that happens, platoon sergeants—or if they are also gone, squad leaders—must step forward and assume the duties of platoon leader, doing things they have never trained for, under the worst possible circumstances.

A failed attack almost always appears worse than it actually is. It takes time, however, to sort that out. And even when a unit is finally reorganized and recovered, the psychological impact of the failure, coupled with the exhaustion from the physical exertion, stress of combat, and trauma of a confused night battle, is usually enough to make the unit combat-ineffective for hours. It is at this time, in the midst of a seemingly impossible situation, that the young officers who lead the companies and platoons earn their pay. For inevitably, from out of the darkness, through the use of the magic we call radio, the voice of some unseen staff officer comes to the young captain or lieutenant, giving him new orders, orders that will require his unit to expose itself again to the horrors it has just survived.

It is at this moment, in the brief span of time that separates the commander’s acceptance of his new orders and the issuance of his own orders to his own unit, that many young combat leaders experience a loneliness and despair that knows no bounds. Exhausted himself, the company commander must find, from the depth of his own soul, not only the courage and fortitude to propel himself forward again into combat, but enough to motivate almost one hundred men to follow him as he does so.

Some call this courage. Others, simply a commander’s duty. Regardless of what it is called, it is hard, and some people simply cannot do it.

By midnight, the entire 3rd Brigade was in disarray. Some companies were pressing on, unchecked, toward Monterrey. Other companies that had initiated hasty attacks and failed were scattered about and in the process of recovering. As the chances of units becoming isolated, or firing on other friendly units in the confusion of the night, became more and more likely, the brigade commander had to face the fact that his brigade was falling apart. Once he accepted this reality, and being unwilling to expose his units to unnecessary risks, it was easy for the brigade commander to issue -the order shortly after midnight to break contact, assume hasty defensive positions, and be prepared to conduct a movement to contact at 0600 hours.

In those six hours, there was no time for battalion commanders, their staffs, company commanders, and platoon leaders to rest. Instead, they scurried about the battlefield, assessing the status of their units and their personnel, arranging for and supervising the rearming and refueling process, and receiving and issuing new orders for the next operation. All of this, done under the cover of darkness, after a failed attack, took its toll on what little mental and physical strength those leaders had. The commander of the 3rd Brigade, himself feeling the effects of the long, hard night, knew that his unit had only a few good hours left before it could go no further. Hence, the need for the division reserve battalion. In a three-way conversation with the division commander and the division G3, the 3rd Brigade commander explained that he intended to punch through whatever Mexican positions he encountered with his own battalions.

Once he was sure they had cleared the main defensive belt, he intended to commit the division reserve, pushing the 2nd of the 13th Infantry through the gap created by his lead battalions and toward Monterrey.

Though

Big Al did not like the idea of plowing head-on into the Mexican defenses, he was under the mistaken impression that the 3rd Brigade was too heavily committed to break contact and maneuver, an impression created by the reports submitted by the 3rd Brigade staff.

Dixon, seeing the situation in the same light as the 3rd Brigade commander, had come up with the same solution. Dixon therefore endorsed the option selected by the 3rd Brigade commander. Trusting in the judgment of the commander on the scene, and himself suffering from lack of sleep and nervous tension, Big Al approved the plan that would throw Second Lieutenant Kozak’s platoon, ready or not, into the heat of battle.

Our hatred knows no bounds, and the war shall be to the death.

—Simon Bolivar

5 kilometers northwest of nuevo repueblo, mexico 0940 hours, 12 September

The movement of Kozak’s platoon through the gap created by the 3rd Brigade was a sobering experience. The first vehicles they encountered were ambulances, both tracked and wheeled, rushing past them with the wounded. Next came the battlefield itself. The axis of attack that the 3rd Brigade had followed was dotted with shattered and burning vehicles.

Here and there, neatly laid out beside the abandoned combat vehicles, were body bags, filled with the remains of crewmen who had died in their vehicles.

The column that Kozak’s platoon was in was slowed by combat engineers, who directed the lead elements of 2nd of the 13th toward marked lanes through minefields. Slowed almost to a crawl, Kozak had more time to inspect the point where elements of the 3rd Brigade had made contact with the Mexican forces. As they neared the Mexican positions, the number of American vehicles destroyed and damaged increased, belying the reports by the battalion intelligence officer that the Mexicans had few antitank weapons. Some of the vehicles burned furiously, throwing off great billowing clouds of black smoke. Others, their guns aimed into the vastness of space, just sat there, abandoned and forlorn. The only motion on these vehicles came from the flapping of green, yellow, and red flags, left on the stricken vehicles by surviving crewmen to help harried recover teams determine the nature of their problem and know whether or not wounded were on board.

Kozak, watching a recovery vehicle hook up to a damaged Bradley, didn’t notice the Mexican defensive works until her own Bradley hit a sudden bump. Looking down to see what they had run over, her eyes fell on a length of trench, its floor covered with bodies. Before she could react, the forward motion of the Bradley took that image away, replacing it with that of an American aid vehicle parked just beyond the trench. The aid vehicle was surrounded by wounded soldiers, American and Mexican, some lying on stretchers or ponchos, most on the bare ground. On one side of the vehicle, she could see teams of medics working on several of the wounded in a frantic effort to save lives while other wounded men, with lighter injuries, watched and waited their turns. On the other side of the aid vehicle, a lone chaplain, the purple vestment about his neck in stark contrast to the brown and tan camouflage uniform, knelt before a motionless figure, administering last rites. This figure belonged to an other

group, one in which those too badly wounded to help were put to wait until those who could be helped were, or until they died.

To actually see triage, the separation of the wounded into three groups, in practice, hit Kozak hard. Unable to watch, she turned away, scanning the horizon. This brought her no relief, though, for the horizon was dotted with more burning vehicles, more aid stations, and more trenches littered with dead. This was the face of battle, a face that had, until then, been to her only an imagined notion. Now, and for the rest of her life, it would be very real.

After her Bradley was clear of the marked lane, a soldier Kozak rec ognized

as Wittworth’s driver flagged her down. Ordering her driver, Specialist Freedman, to stop, Kozak took her crewman’s helmet off and leaned over to hear what Wittworth’s driver wanted. Pointing to a cluster of three Bradleys to the right, he shouted above the rumbling of the Bradley’s engine that the CO was over there, about to issue a frag, or abbreviated order. Giving Wittworth’s driver a thumbs-up to indicate that she understood, Kozak put her crewman’s helmet on and radioed Ser geant

Rivera that she was going over to the CO’s track to receive a frag order, and that he was in charge until she got back. In her haste, she took her helmet off before Rivera could ask where she wanted him to park the platoon. When he received no response from Kozak, he looked toward her track. By then,”Kozak was on the ground, trotting over to the CO’s track with that distinctive and female walk that Rivera now associated with his platoon leader. Mumbling a curse to himself, Rivera looked for a vacant spot to take the platoon that was as far as he could get from the stench of death and from the 3rd Brigade units still eliminating pockets of resistance.

As soon as Kozak joined the circle of lieutenants gathered about Wittworth, he looked at them and asked, “Is that everyone?”

The lieutenants, in turn, looked at each other. It was obvious that he knew they were all there, he had just looked at them. Why, Kozak thought, had he asked that? Strange, she thought. Captains can sometimes be really strange.

After his XO responded that they were all present, Wittworth turned toward the front slope of his Bradley, where his map was laid out. With a marking pen, he pointed to the symbols and locations he mentioned as he briefed his lieutenants. “We are currently located here, on the northern edge of Objective Amanda. The rest of the battalion is spread out south of here. The attack this morning by 3rd Brigade succeeded in penetrating the enemy’s main defensive belt and routing the enemy.”

Kozak, taking a quick glance at the devastation, wondered who had been routed.

“The battalion,” Wittworth continued, “after having completed a passage of lines through the 3rd Brigade, will conduct a movement to contact toward Objective Beth, located just south of this town, named Marin, and then to Objective Carrie. Deployed in a diamond formation, with Team Charlie in the lead, Company B on the right …”

The sudden thump-thump-thump of a Bradley’s 25mm cannon firing less than one hundred meters to their rear caused Kozak to jump. Twirling around, she saw the Bradley, sitting at one end of a trench, firing its cannon into the trench. For a moment, Kozak and the other lieutenants, also caught off guard by the sudden firing, watched as members of the 3rd Brigade carried out the grisly task of “mopping up” enemy positions that had been bypassed. The Bradley was firing in support of an M-i Ai tank.

The tank, with a dozer blade attached to its front slope, was in the process of pushing dirt into the trench, starting at the end farthest from the Bradley. Taking its time, the M-i tank would drop its blade and move forward, pushing a pile of dirt over to the trench where the dirt would disappear from view as it fell. Backing up, the tank would shift over a little, closer to the Bradley, and repeat the process. Every now and then, as the M-i was in the process of backing up, the Bradley would pump a few more rounds into that part of the trench that was not yet covered.

Curious as to why someone would waste time and ammunition doing something like that, Kozak turned to Wittworth and asked. Wittworth took a deep breath. “Well, I guess the Mexicans in the trench don’t want to surrender.”

Kozak’s eyes betrayed her shock. She took a quick glance at the trench, just in time to see the tank push another scoop of dirt over the edge. Looking back at Wittworth, she asked if anyone had tried to talk the Mexicans into surrendering. Wittworth chuckled. “I doubt, Lieutenant Kozak, if anyone in the 3rd Brigade was in the mood to try. It’s a general rule of thumb that the longer you defend, the less likely it is that the attacker will be in a mood to accept your surrender. Besides, they’re only Mexicans.”

After one more long look at the trench, Kozak turned her back to the scene. But she couldn’t turn her mind away from it. The laboring of the tank’s engine as it pushed more dirt into the trench, and the occasional thump-thump-thump of the Bradley’s cannon reminded her of what was going on. What do you call men who would rather be buried alive than surrender, she wondered. Were they heroes? Or fools? Was it courage and pride that made them do such a thing? Or was it insanity? In her wildest dreams, she could never imagine anyone in her platoon, even the most gung-ho soldier, sitting in a trench, calmly waiting to be shot or buried. Taking one more fugitive glance over her shoulder at the scene, Kozak decided that, as for herself, she would rather take a 25mm shell in the chest than allow herself to be buried like that.

With her mind awash with images and thoughts of the trench, Kozak missed most of Wittworth’s order. Not that it made much difference.

Company B was on the right, its normal location with the battalion deployed in a diamond formation. Her platoon, the 2nd, would be the right flank guard, deployed 1,500 meters to the right of the rest of the formation. Though Wittworth warned her that since her platoon would be cutting across a series of dry streambeds, or arroyos, forcing the platoon to go slower than the battalion’s main body moving on flatter ground, she didn’t appreciate what he was telling her. Instead, Kozak’s mind was in the process of grappling with the cold, uncompromising inhumanity of war, an inhumanity that enveloped her like sackcloth.