Mila 18 - Leon Uris

“How far from the road?”

“Oh ... maybe three hundred meters.”

They could make it an hour of good riding. It was the nearest point with decent cover. This is where we’re going, gentlemen,” Andrei said. “Have your men combat-ready, and move single file and stretched out. Quick trot all the way. Second Platoon, take the rear guard and drop your last man a kilometer back. Let’s move.”

“Mount up!”

“Combat-ready. Load them up.”

“Single file. Don’t bunch up like a flock of pigeons.”

The scouts moved out at a gallop.

This time Captain Androfski was first on the road. He put on his steel helmet, buckled the chin strap, cocked his pistol, and swung Batory up ahead of the company.

Styka’s large mustache drooped.

“How you doing, Sergeant?” Andrei asked.

“I’m so scared I could crap my pants,” Styka answered.

“Stay close to me. Well get through today. They say after the first one it’s not so bad.”

Styka faced the company. “Ride hard!”

Company A moved north again and within an hour found the woods which Private Trzaska had promised. Andrei was pleased. He had cover and an excellent view of the road.

He ordered each of four men to ride out a kilometer indifferent directions and observe. They were issued flares for warning. Then he sent one rider north to continue to look for Company B and a second rider south back to the Grudziadz base.

By midafternoon a second flight of planes, as large as the first flight in the morning, again blackened the skies, heading toward central Poland.

Andrei sat away from his men, trying to evaluate his situation and its implications. The new German Panzer power they had discovered, the seven hundred airplanes, and the lost Company B—all indicated war had started.

What move?

To continue to Tczew and join the battalion even though there appeared to be trouble up north?

To stand pat and wait for the sign of Germans?

What if the Germans showed up? He had good cover. Should he button up and wait for dark and head back to the main base?

No, impossible. The nature and breeding of the Ulany made the idea of both running and hiding repulsive. He smiled to himself as he thought of Chris. Too bad he won’t be the first into Berlin. No doubt we are massing for a huge counterattack into Germany now.

As often happens in war when men are in the field, the decision is made for them.

“Captain,” Styka said, “riders coming in from the north!”

Andrei trained his field glasses on them. There were two. One was his, the rider he had dispatched earlier. Another, a stranger. They pulled into the forest with frothing mounts. The stranger was bloody and half senseless.

“Back up, dammit,” Andrei said. “Give the man breathing room.”

“He’s from Company B, sir,” Andrei’s man said.

“Can you talk, soldier?”

He nodded and gasped. “Holy Mother ... oh, holy Mother, Captain.” Andrei pumped some water down his throat. “Oh, Jesus. We never knew what happened. The Germans ... heading south ... right down the road.”

“Take this man and keep him calm. Lieutenant Vacek, plant your contact mine on the road. Lieutenant Zurawski, set up all four machine guns in a U-shaped cross fire around the mine. Use the ditches on both sides of the road for cover. Dzienciala, can we use our mortars effectively from this distance?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Keep your squad in the woods here as a covering force. The rest of you line out for a single-file charge. I’ll lead. If our luck goes right, we can ambush the first batch of them. I want only limited pursuit. Pull back here to the forest for regrouping.”

“If we don’t pursue, they’ll know where we are, Captain.”

“Hell, they’ll know in Berlin where we are ten minutes after the first shot.”

“What does the captain plan to do after we regroup?”

“Sit our asses right here and keep them from getting south on this road. As soon as it turns dark we’ll go north to find the battalion.”

The single land mine was planted on the road and a crossfire of machine guns established within minutes. The two mortar squads set up in the forest and zeroed in on the road. The rest of Company A stretched nearly the length of the woods ... and they waited.

A warning flare arched up from the northern advance guard.

“Here they come, Captain.”

Out of the north there arose a billow of dust. Andrei lifted his field glasses and watched the cloud of dust grow larger until it could be seen by everyone. And then, the sound of motors. He counted them as they turned a bend into the straight flat stretch of a kilometer and a half directly below him.

“Troop carriers, twenty-two of them. Must have two companies.”

And then he could see the swastika markings on their sides. The trucks rambled down the road in an undeterred race. Andrei reasoned that the Germans must have felt there would be no opposition after they had overrun the battalion and Company B.

“Steady the line, dammit!”

He held the glasses to his eyes. He could see the face of his enemy! In the lead truck the driver looked to be a boy. For some crazy reason he thought of Wolf Brandel at that second, and Batory went up on his hind legs.

“Stand by!”

The lead truck was armored. It struck the mine, and the earth shook and splattered and the truck disintegrated. The second truck, filled with soldiers, attempted to stop short and it careened off the road, rolling into the ditch, bursting into flame. The third and fourth trucks slammed into each other. And then! Rat-a-tat! Rat-a-tat! Streaks of tracers leaped from the machine guns, catching the Germans in a deadly cross fire. German soldiers poured out of the trucks in wild disarray, trying to organize under the frantic shouts of their officers.

Andrei brought his hand down. “Charge! Charge! Kill the sons of bitches! Charge!”

A bloodcurdling battle cry erupted from Company A as they poured down the knoll behind their captain. The horsemen tore into the confused enemy, ripping, hacking, trampling them into a gory massacre.

Unable to organize, the Germans began fleeing on foot, to be run down, shot down, smashed down.

The tail end of the convoy, the last five trucks, were able to turn around and flee back north. The mortars in the woods found one truck, turning it into a torch. The other four escaped.

It was over in ten minutes. A hundred dead and dying Germans lay strewn about the road and the ditches, and the air hot with the burning of the shattered vehicles. Andrei pulled his men back into the forest.

He climbed from Batory and fell to his knees and doubled over to catch his breath. There were howls of the delight of victory among his dripping wet, exhausted men. The first smell of combat had been victory.

Andrei climbed to his feet and leaned against his horse, who was wet with sweat too but excited over the stimulation of carrying his master to a kill.

“Styka, we’re not going to throw a victory ball. Calm them down, we’ve work to do. Medic, what were our casualties?”

“Four dead, sir. Trzaska, Lieutenant Zurawski—I think he got it from our own cross fire—and Wajwod and Lamejko.”

“Wounded?”

“Six—one bad.”

“Horses?”

“Ten, Captain,” Styka said. “All have been executed.”

Andrei looked at the wreckage on the road. Nothing could pass. The Germans could not detour, for the ditches were too steep.

“Any orders, Captain?”

“Get the machine gunners back here. No use having them exposed. Just stand by—they’ll be back. Let me take a look at the wounded.”

The victory had done much to pass the first terrible fear of contact. They waited.