Ralph Peters - Red Army

Kryshinin looked back across the canal. Still no sign of movement.

Kryshinin cursed the artillery officer, wondering what was keeping him.

He needed someone to call fires. Otherwise, they would be overrun before the guns did any good.

His tank platoon rolled powerfully down across a saddle and veered toward their new position. Kryshinin felt confident that they would do their job. The lieutenant had had a crisp professionalism about him.

One of the antitank vehicles had profiled too high on the ridgeline.

Now it caught a round in the bow and lifted over on its back, throwing scraps of metal upward and outward in a fountain. Kryshinin felt a sting on his shoulder, as though he had been bitten by an oversized insect. He almost tripped but managed to keep running.

The nearest platoon of motorized riflemen had dismounted,- but their officer had not properly positioned them. They were simply lying in a close line with their machine guns, assault rifles, and antitank grenade launchers, protected only by the small irregularities of the ground.

Kryshinin shouted at the officer in charge. "Are you crazy? Get these men into the buildings. It's too late to do anything else now. Hurry."

The lieutenant stared at him as though he understood nothing at all.

Suddenly, Kryshinin went cold inside at the thought of what the situation 80

RED ARMY

was probably like in the platoon that had lost its lieutenant in the minefield. He felt overwhelmed by the need to do everything himself. He ignored the lieutenant now, grabbing the first soldier he could reach, a machine gunner.

"You. Get inside the buildings. Take your pals. Fight from there."

Kryshinin ran along the line. Where the lieutenant had positioned the men, they would have been not only hopelessly vulnerable, but useless.

They had no fields of fire. Kryshinin could not believe he had failed so thoroughly to train his officers and soldiers. He had complied with every regulation, and his training sessions usually had gone well, with the company receiving mostly fours and fives. Now it all seemed meaningless, as though they had all merely been going through the motions, without really learning. And now it was too late. They would have to fight in the state in which war had found them.

"All of you. Get up," he shouted, rasping to be heard above the chaotic battle noise. One of the machine gunners had opened fire, and firing began to spread along the line, although some soldiers simply lay still on the ground. "Stop it. Stop. They're still out of range." Even on his feet, Kryshinin could not see the enemy from the position of the firing soldiers. "Get into the buildings and get ready to fight. This isn't a country outing. Stop your firing."

Then he saw the helicopters. Approaching from the wrong side.

"Come on, "he shouted, voice already cracking. He ran for the cover of the buildings, with the motorized riflemen all around him. Behind them, an infantry fighting vehicle positioned in the orchard sent off an antitank guided missile.

"Where's the air defense team?" Kryshinin wondered out loud.

The helicopters throbbed over the trees, ugly, bulbous creatures with dark weaponry on their mounts and German crosses on the fuselages.

The markings confused Kryshinin, who was sure he was still in the Dutch sector. He stopped to fire his assault rifle at the aircraft, and a few others fired as well.

The helicopters, four of them, churned overhead without firing.

Kryshinin felt relief at their passing. But a moment later, he heard the hiss of missiles coming off launch rails.

The artillery, Kryshinin remembered. The battery was sitting out in the open. Kryshinin watched helplessly as the enemy attack helicopters banked playfully above the landscape, teasing the desperate gunners on the ground, destroying the self-propelled pieces one after the other.

Why didn't the air defense troops fire? Kryshinin wondered.

81

— Ralph Peters —

In less than a minute, the helicopters peeled off to the south, leaving the wrecked battery in a veil of smoke pierced now and then by the flash of secondary explosions.

Kryshinin made a hurried stop at his own vehicle. It had moved nearer to the crest, and its main gun fired into the distance. He leaned into the turret, grabbing the gunner by the sleeve, shouting to be heard.

"Back into the courtyard. Get her behind the walls. I need the radios."

The gunner stared up at him. "Comrade Captain. You're bleeding."

Kryshinin followed the gunner's eyes down to his shoulder, then over his chest and sleeve. Much of the uniform was shockingly dark, much darker than the rain alone could have made it. At the sight, Kryshinin felt a momentary faintness.

"Hurry up," he said, almost gagging. "Get into the courtyard." But he suddenly felt weaker, as if his realizing that he had been wounded had unleashed the wound's effect. He remembered the little sting. It seemed impossible that it could have done this. He was not even aware of any pain.

He trotted beside his vehicle, guiding it through the gates as the direct-fire battle increased in intensity. But the forward air-control vehicle had blocked the courtyard, taking up more than its share of the space. Kryshinin ran to make the air force officer move out of the way just as the artillery came thumping back.

The barn roof collapsed. The concussion of the blast knocked several of the men in the courtyard to the ground. One soldier had blood draining from his ears, and Kryshinin felt deafened. But he still had enough hearing to recognize the sound of a tank gun closer than expected. In the misery of the courtyard, soldiers screamed for aid and choked on the dust of the smashed barn. Then the rain abruptly increased in intensity, as if the enemy controlled that, too.

"Everybody into the buildings," Kryshinin shouted. "Don't just stand around." But the soldiers were hesitant. After watching the roof of the barn cave in, Kryshinin could hardly blame them. Nonetheless, the remaining buildings provided better protection than the open courtyard.

And it was impossible for all of the men to fight effectively from the courtyard. "Move, damn you."

But they were already scrambling to obey him. It was only that they had been stunned into a slowed reaction by the confusion that seemed to worsen with every minute. Now those who didn't understand Kryshinin's Russian simply followed their peers.

The sounds of moving tanks crowded in with the noises of missile back-blasts and automatic weapons. Kryshinin bounded back into the RED ARMY

house and up the stairs, crunching glass underfoot. The lieutenant remained at his post. But he didn't need his binoculars anymore.

"Those tanks," he told Kryshinin, "at least a company. Working up along the treelines. We got two of them."

A round smashed into the wall of the house, shaking it to its foundation. But the building was old and strong, built of masonry.

The lieutenant noticed Kryshinin's bloody tunic.

Kryshinin held up his hand. "No real damage done," he said, hoping he was correct. He couldn't understand where the pain was hiding. The arm still worked, if stiffly.

"One of the officers went up on the roof with a radio," the lieutenant said. "He looked like an air force guy."

"Where is he?"

"On the roof. There's an attic stairway back there. The roof has dormer windows."

The enemy tanks had closed to within a thousand meters. Kryshinin watched them for a moment, catching a glimpse of dark metal now and then through the local smokescreens the enemy vehicles laid down with their smoke grenades. Their movement struck him as very clever, very disciplined, but slow. They seemed to move in cautious bounds.