his defiance would be a fine thing. In practical terms, it would achieve nothing. Montagne and General Leibnitz would only replace him with von Olden or someone similar.
He peered down at the map, aware that both Thiessen and von Olden were watching him carefully, waiting for their instructions. For a moment, his mind stayed obstinately blank. Then, suddenly, the beginnings of an idea tugged at his consciousness. If you couldn’t bypass a strong enemy position or spend the time needed to pulverize it with superior firepower, there was just one real option left. Speed was life, the fighter pilots said. Well, the same often applied to land warfare. Rapid maneuver was the key to seizing the initiative and disrupting enemy plans. It also lay at the heart of German tactical doctrine.
Willi looked up at the 192nd’s commander. “When can you attack, Colonel?”
“An hour? Perhaps two?” Von Olden shrugged. “Once we’ve closed up on the river, I’ll need time to deploy my companies, scout the ground, and brief my officers. I’ll want tank support from the 194th, too.”
“No.” Von Seelow shook his head. He nodded toward the northern horizon. “The more time we use up now, the more time we give those Poles to finish digging in.”
He turned back to von Olden. “So don’t mess about, Colonel! Hit them as hard and as fast as you can before they’ve got time to get set! Swing right out of your march column into the attack! I’ll feed the other battalions into the fight as fast as they arrive. Clear?”
The 192nd’s aristocratic commander nodded reluctantly, clearly unenthusiastic about the whole idea. For all his aggressive posturing, Klaus von Olden was a cautious man at heart.
Willi ignored his subordinate’s uncertainty. He glanced at Thiessen. “Get on the radio to Captain Brandt. Tell him I want the approaches to that damned village cleared as quickly as he can!”
The major nodded and hurried away. Gunther Brandt commanded the brigade’s advance guard — a battle group made up of the captain’s Luchs scout cars and a Leopard company attached from the 194th Panzer for added striking power. Brandt and his men had been skirmishing with retreating Polish armor and infantry units all morning, engaging at long range and maneuvering off the highway to outflank the Poles whenever they turned to fight. It was the kind of fighting designed to minimize casualties while still gaining ground, but it was time-consuming. Von Seelow’s new orders would change that.
Whatever Montagne and his French staff officers expected, the 19th Panzergrenadier Brigade would do its damnedest to seize the Rynarzewo bridge intact.
Rynarzewo, a tiny cluster of brick and wood-frame houses split in two by the highway, lay on the south side of the Notec River. Two buildings dominated the little village — an old red brick church and a two-story, concrete- block building that served as a combination post office, library, and town hall. Outside the village, fields, pastures, isolated farmhouses, and apple orchards stretched almost as far as the eye could see. Woods stood dark in the distance. A narrow ribbon of blue, one of the Notec’s tributary streams, snaked through the green and brown landscape before cutting in front of the village and under the highway.
Two kilometers west of Rynarzewo, the twisted remains of a railway bridge lay half in and half out of the river. French jets had dropped the steel-girder span with laser-guided bombs several days before as part of the effort to keep Polish reinforcements from reaching Poznan.
But the highway bridge was still up. Troop carriers, supply trucks, and other vehicles fleeing the approaching EurCon Army lumbered across in a never-ending stream. They were the tail end of a withdrawing army and it showed. Though never beaten decisively in a stand-up fight, three weeks of almost continuous retreat were starting to take a toll on Polish morale. Heads turned apprehensively toward the south whenever sounds of gunfire crackled above the roar of traffic. Although friendly troops were still screening the retreat, everyone knew the French and Germans couldn’t be far away.
Combat engineers swarmed over the span, dodging APCs and trucks as they frantically wired it for demolition. Several hung over the sides, dangling from climbing ropes while they placed charges against the concrete piers supporting the roadway itself.
Two hundred meters from the southern end of the bridge, a short, brown-haired Polish officer hurried from house to house on the village outskirts, checking his defenses. Captain Konrad Polinski commanded the mechanized infantry company ordered to hold Rynarzewo while the engineers finished their work.
As an experienced soldier, Polinski was not happy with his company’s tactical situation. He didn’t like fighting with a river at his back — especially when the only way across was liable to go up in smoke at any minute. His small detachment was not strong enough to defend the village against a determined EurCon attack. Detailed at the last minute, C Company hadn’t had time to lay mines and barbed wire, or to dig holes with good overhead protection.
There were supposed to be T-72s stationed in the forest across the river, but that was really too far away to do much good. Rynarzewo’s buildings would also block much of their field of fire. Even the best tank gunners in the world couldn’t hit targets they couldn’t see. He couldn’t even count on reinforcements. The 421st’s other mechanized infantry companies were several kilometers beyond the river, reorganizing and refitting before coming back to form a defensive line.
The captain stopped behind a garden wall and raised his binoculars. There, at the very edge of his vision, pillars of black smoke billowed skyward. Half-hidden beneath a thick brown mustache, his mouth turned down in a sudden grimace. That was a full-fledged battle raging out there, something far more serious than the usual isolated sniping. EurCon’s leading elements must be trying to smash through the covering force guarding the retreat.
His radioman, a skinny, eighteen-year-old corporal, confirmed that. “Sir! Tango Foxtrot reports contact with a strong German unit near Kolaczkowo! Tanks and APCs both!”
Polinski swore inwardly. Kolaczkowo was the closest village — a tiny hamlet barely four kilometers down the highway. If the enemy advance guard was already there, they could be on top of him in minutes. “Order all platoons to stand to!”
“Yes, sir.”
The Polish captain spun around to look back at the vehicle-choked bridge behind him. The engineers were still hard at work. How much more time did they need? More important, how much more time would the Germans give them?
Smoke from burning buildings, burning vehicles, and turret-mounted grenade launchers had turned the battlefield outside Kolaczkowo into a gray, hazy, nightmarish swirl of deadly, split-second encounters.
“Veer right! Right!” Lieutenant Werner Gerhardt screamed, already hoarse from yelling orders above the deafening noise all around. He tightened his grip on the hatch coaming as his mammoth Leopard 2 roared out of its own smoke screen and swung sharply to avoid a wrecked vehicle dead ahead. Fifty-five tons of steel moving at high speed clipped the burning Luchs scout car, sending it tumbling out of the way in a high-pitched, grinding shriek of tearing metal.
Another tank, a Polish T-72, appeared almost directly ahead, trundling backward in a tangle of flapping camouflage netting as it reversed out from behind a farmhouse. Its 125mm cannon still pointed away from the German lieutenant’s Leopard.
“Gunner! Target at one o’clock!” Gerhardt squeezed the turret override, guiding the Leopard’s main gun around himself.
“Sabot up!”
“Fire!”
Hit point-blank, the T-72 slid sideways and exploded. Steel splinters thrown by the blast spanged off the Leopard’s own armor and screamed over Gerhardt’s head. He ducked and then stood higher, looking from side to side for new dangers.
More German tanks emerged from the smoke, strung out in a long fighting line. The lieutenant tallied them rapidly while still searching for signs of the enemy. Counting his own Leopard, ten of A Company’s twelve vehicles had survived the tank duel.
As the smoke cleared, he could see that the Polish rear guard and Captain Brandt’s scout company had been far less fortunate. Destroyed T-72s, BMPs, and German Luchs scout cars covered the fields on both sides of the highway, facing in every direction in mute testimony to the confused, savage nature of the short battle. Only his own tanks were still moving.
