Ralph Peters - Red Army

Trimenko was determined to fulfill the front plan so well that Malinsky would be forced to change it, cutting back Starukhin's role. He believed he would have an ally in Chibisov, Malinsky's clever little Jew, whom he took pains to cultivate. Trimenko regarded Starukhin as grossly overrated, a holdover from another, more slovenly era. Trimenko didn't believe modern war was for cossacks. Not at the operational level. Now it was for computers. And until they had better computers—computers that could replace the weaker type of men—war belonged to the men who were as much like computers as possible: exact, devoid of sentiment, and very, very fast.

Captain Kryshinin finally heard from the missing combat reconnaissance patrol. They had run into enemy opposition and had slipped off further to the south of Bad Bevensen. On Kryshinin's map, the patrol had moved outside of the unit's assigned boundary. But the good news was that they had seized a crossing site on the Elbe-Seiten Canal.

Kryshinin had gotten his forward security element on the move again, and the minefield and the lieutenant's sacrifice lay several kilometers to the rear. Kryshinin felt as though he would need to perform very well now to make up for his earlier lapse. He wondered what his other officers thought of him now.

He tried to reach division on the radio, and, when that failed, he attempted to reach the advance guard that was somewhere on his trail.

He needed someone in a position of authority to make a decision on further violation of the unit boundary. But his element's route led through low ground now, and all he could hear was static and faint strains of music. He was not sure whether his radio was being jammed or if the nets had simply gotten out of control. Earlier, foreign-language voices had come up on his internal net, having a conversation.

Kryshinin desperately wanted to report the seizure of the crossing site.

He suspected that, under the circumstances, division would order him to hurry to the support of the tiny patrol, despite the boundary problem.

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The lieutenant who led the patrol reported that they had come up on an east-west underpass, wide enough for tanks, where the elevated canal passed over a farm road. The tunnel had been guarded only by a few Dutch soldiers with small arms, and the patrol surprised them. Now the lieutenant was crying out for support.

Kryshinin tried both stations again.

Nothing.

He halted his column, then called for his senior artillery officer and the air force forward air controller who had been detailed to accompany the forward element to meet him by the air force officer's easily recognizable vehicle, a modified personnel carrier. The forward air controller was positioned closely behind Kryshinin, but the artilleryman was to the rear, leading the guns but prepared to come up to join the commander as soon as they were deployed. Kryshinin stood in the slow rain, waving for the artillery captain to hurry.

"Can either of you talk with your higher?"

The artillery captain shrugged. "I'm monitoring all right. I haven't tried to talk."

"I have a link back to division main and army central," Captain Bylov, the air force officer, stated, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Listen," Kryshinin said, "I want both of you to raise any stations you can. Then give my call sign and tell them my direct links aren't working.

Listen carefully." Kryshinin unfolded his map, trying to protect it as much as possible against the fine drizzle that refused to come to an end.

"We're changing our route of advance. We're going further south. To right there. The combat reconnaissance patrol has a crossing, but they won't be able to hold it for five minutes once they get hit."

The artillery captain, Likidze, looked at Kryshinin as though the element commander was crazy. "That's out of our sector. I won't be able to call up any fire support."

"That's what your battery's for. Look, our mission is to find a passage to the west. We've gotten this far, and it seems as if the enemy's covering plan has come apart. But the hardest part is getting across that damned canal. And now we have a crossing. I'm not going to pass it up just because it's a few kilometers out of sector. But you have to call back and tell higher what we're doing."

"What you're doing," the artilleryman said. "You have no authorization to cross a sector boundary. That site may even be one of the targets scheduled in our neighbor's fire plan."

Kryshinin wanted to shake the artilleryman, who had articulated 75

Ralph Peters

Kryshinin's own doubts and fears. He realized that no one would share this responsibility with him. But he thought again of his earlier failure to act when confronted with the minefield, and of the lieutenant who had been so much braver and clearer-thinking than his commander. Now there was another lieutenant waiting for help who had managed to find a way across the canal. Kryshinin looked at the artilleryman in disgust, seeing himself and a hundred other officers he knew.

"Correct," Kryshinin said. "It's on my shoulders. Now let's get moving."

Time pressed harder on Kryshinin's mind than it ever had before. The patrol commander reported incoming artillery on his position. Kryshinin realized that he might well get away with his decision as long as he proved successful in holding onto the crossing site. After all, that conformed to the essential mission. But if he had taken the wrong decision, and if the crossing site was lost and he had no results, he would pay.

He lost radio contact with the patrol.

Kryshinin spurred his element on as fast as it could go. He felt oddly lucky now that he had lost his engineers, since the big tank-launched bridge would never have been able to keep up with the increased speed of the march column. When one of his vehicles broke down, he left it for the advance guard to collect. The tanks set the pace, gripping the wet road with their whirring tracks.

At a crossroads, they raced by a bewildered enemy military policeman.

The soldier emptied his machine pistol in the direction of the flying column, then ran for the trees. A bit further along, a medical clearing station had been set up in the courtyard of a farm, obviously intended to support the enemy's covering troops. Kryshinin's element left the site undisturbed in their muddy wake. Kryshinin sensed that the enemy had lost control of his forward battle now, and that his own location was not known to them. He wondered if, perhaps, his element had already penetrated the enemy's main defenses. It was impossible to tell. Unlike the exercises to which Kryshinin was accustomed, where you knew generally how it was all laid out and usually received tip-off information so the unit would look good, real war seemed ridiculously confusing.

Kryshinin had expected battle to have more formality to it, for combat to be more structured and to make better sense.

When an enemy field artillery battery appeared under drooping camouflage nets at the edge of an orchard, Kryshinin ordered his column to shoot it up from the march without deploying. He did not want to get 76

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bogged down. It was critical to maintain a single focus, and to act with speed.

The column crested a low hill, and Kryshinin saw the monumental line of the canal running north and south. He could not understand why the low ground had not been inundated. In a marvelous piece of engineering, the canal passed smoothly over a local farm trail, built up like a medieval fortress wall with a great open gate. Under the stout concrete tunnel, a single Soviet infantry fighting vehicle covered the near bank.

Kryshinin could not understand why the enemy had not blown the overpass immediately. He hastily got on his radio and ordered the artillery to deploy in the open hollow off to the left on the near bank. One platoon of motorized rifle troops would secure the near side of the crossing and protect the guns. Everyone else was to follow Kryshinin to the far side of the canal.