Ian Slater - Rage of Battle

“May I ask what with, General?” said the brigadier pointedly, fatigue overriding caution.

“With determination, General,” Freeman told the brigadier, “and tanks.”

The brigadier was too tired to bristle at the inference, restricting his utterance to a description of what he called a “devil” of a logistical problem. SPETS commandos had apparently been reported in the area, and the two major fuel depots for the pocket had been blown.

“You mean we’re outta gas?” Freeman said, turning on him.

The brigadier called over his supply officer. “You have the figures on that petrol, Smythe?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the British major. “We’ve enough petrol for our most advanced tanks to run four or five miles out from the perimeter.”

The brigadier looked down at the major’s notes. “You said we had more than that.”

“You’ve lost the depot at Ahlen,” said Freeman, without taking his eyes from the board. “You also have fewer tanks than you had yesterday. Nine hundred approximately.”

The brigadier said nothing, feeling he had been set up by the American to reveal the deficiency of his own intelligence reports. Still, the brigadier was relieved that Freeman was, as the Americans would say, “on the ball.” He was equally resentful of the fact that while elements of the United States, Bundeswehr, and the British Army of the Rhine had been fighting and dying for almost five weeks in various stages of retreat, since the breakthrough at Fulda in the South, no one outside the pocket seemed to know just how punishing this high-tech war of movement had been on the Allied troops. Meanwhile the troops waited, apparently in vain, for NATO’s air forces to be resupplied enough so that they could do more than simply harass the Russian armor.

The war they had thought would be a quick push-button affair wasn’t quick, nor was it push-button. You pushed buttons, all right, but often nothing happened. For all the training in peacetime, the accuracy of laser beams standing in for cannon fire to save the exorbitant cost of live ammunition, there was no substitute for the terrible punishment of a high-explosive shell hitting an M-l ‘s reactive armor packs, which blew up and destroyed the shell but which couldn’t do a thing about the jarring impact that set sensitive electronic and computer circuits awry. Time and again the brigadier had seen high tech fail the retreating troops as the more simple, brutish Russian armor kept on coming, losing more tanks than the Americans, but with a four-to-one advantage, the Russians could absorb it.

“We can’t just sit here,” said Freeman. “Yesov’s a mover. Not the old Zhukov at all. He won’t wait for too much longer before he attacks. He’d prefer a steady buildup of men and materiel before he hits us, but given this snow cover for attack, he won’t wait.”

“Then,” said the brigadier, “he’ll run into our mines.” The British major couldn’t suppress a wry smile at his superior’s ready response. The mine fields beyond the perimeter were ample evidence that the British Army of the Rhine hadn’t exactly been sitting on their derrieres. The brigadier had spread his hand eastward out from the BD pocket, indicating the fan shape of the mine fields.

“He’ll clear,” said Freeman.

“If I may say so, General,” replied the brigadier, “I don’t see how. Oh, certainly — he’ll use his ‘roller’ and ‘flail’ tanks to move ahead, but that’s a slow business at the best of times. In this weather — I grant you he’ll clear here and there, but we’ve got two-man mobile antitank units to close them up again. Even if he gets through, he’ll pay an awful price. I daresay it would give him pause, General — if not stem the assault altogether.”

“You don’t have to justify stopping and seeding mines rather than standing your ground, General,” said Freeman evenly. “It was your decision and I wasn’t here, but if our intelligence reports are right, Yesov has at least a three-to-one, possibly four-to-one, tank advantage. We can gobble up as much of his steel as we like and he’ll still have enough to break through, spread north and south — split our forces in two, then eat them up — just like they did at Fulda. Russkies aren’t shy about repetition, General. If it works once — they’ll do it again.”

Freeman’s knuckles rapped an area on the map ten miles northeast of Hereford. “Reconnaissance has Russian tanks converging on a twenty-mile front about Bielefeld.”

On a tank-to-tank basis, Freeman knew that the M-1s had an edge on the T-90s, for though the Russian tanks had good laser and thermal range finders, the M-1s dug in with a much better defilade angle, or what the GIs called the “angle of dangle.” Freeman also knew the British brigadier had acted correctly, ordering the NATO tanks to dig in under camouflage nets, using the mine fields as a protective moat with mobile platoons of three tanks each, ready to rush any gap through the mile-wide mine field. But if the Russians should somehow break through the mine field on a wider front, the dug-in NATO tanks would quickly find themselves surrounded, and the mobile NATO reserves would be in danger of hitting a NATO tank for every Russian T-90 they missed.

The greatest danger wasn’t only to the men trapped inside the DB pocket, but a rupture through the mines would allow Yesov an end run to the Rhine. “If they cross the Rhine—” began Freeman. He did not need to say anything more, but he did, ordering, “All tanks and APCs to prepare for immediate counterattack. We’ll open the narrow channel through the mine field and break out — hit them with all we’ve got before they roll over us.” Freeman glanced at his watch, then, taking a blue marker pen from below the map, slashed three broad strokes at ten-mile intervals along the eastern side of the DB pocket. “I want them ready to roll at oh four hundred.”

“General,” said the brigadier, “a word—”

“What?” grunted Freeman. A word? He realized the Englishman wanted to speak with him in private.

Walking away from the babble and surging static of the “OPS” table, Freeman, his hands on his hips, waited impatiently for the British brigadier to make his point.

Surely, the brigadier told Freeman, their best hope was to simply keep “dug in,” let the storm slow the Russian advance. The Allies’ best hope, he argued, was to effect a stalemate behind the mine field, to buy time for NATO reinforcements of men and materiel. To hold out a few days— a week even — until what the brigadier flatteringly called “the clear genius of the American air force to resupply by air” would allow a NATO buildup.

Agitated, Freeman turned back to the wall map, thumping it with such violence that some of the blue NATO pins popped to the ground. A Bundeswehr corporal quickly picked them up again, but not before a sudden and noticeable silence ensued, as all operators’ eyes momentarily turned toward Freeman. The brigadier’s jaw was clenched, not in anger so much as in shock, while Freeman’s eyes, far from indicating any embarrassment, swept over every man in the headquarters basement. “Now, you listen to me. This isn’t a command post. This is a goddamned Tower of Babel, and it’s all about how the Russians have got us on the run. Well, we’re going to change that in—” he looked at his watch “—approximately six hours from now. At fourteen hundred hours. We’re going on the attack. Those tanks that run out of gas will siphon fuel from the APCs, those men in the APCs will ride on or behind the tanks. Do what the Russians do — rig up sleds. Prisoner intelligence tells us Ivan’s low on gas, too. Recon flights show they’re carting refueling drums, just as they did in all the prewar maneuvers. That means, gentlemen, his supply line’s overextended. Tell your battalion commanders that I want to see some initiative or tomorrow they won’t be commanders. I’ll break the sons of bitches to sergeants — every goddamned one of ‘em.”