Reynolds’ fingers drummed steadily against the butt of the M16 assault rifle lying next to him. Despite all their hard work through the night, Hell Team’s present location was a poor match for their previous position. The company CP was nothing more than a few shallow holes dug in the middle of a tiny cluster of trees, with the spoil piled in front to provide more cover. It was euphemistically called a “hasty position,” as opposed to the “prepared positions” they had reluctantly abandoned yesterday evening. Knowing all of that, Alpha Company’s commander felt insecure, exposed. Why don’t those bastards come ahead and get it over with? he wondered.
He forced himself to wait, to sit quietly. Every minute EurCon delayed was a win for his side. If he had his druthers, he’d sit here until Christmas, while the German tanks rusted. But that wouldn’t happen.
The field phone buzzed. Corporal Adams answered it. “It’s the OP, sir.”
Reynolds took the handset offered him by the tall, gangling soldier. He had placed two of his men, Corporal Ted Brown and Private Gene Webster, on a small rise a kilometer in front of Hell Team’s position, halfway to the enemy. Thoroughly dug in and camouflaged, they were there to give him a few minutes’ extra warning.
“We can see ‘em, sir. Dozens of tanks!” Brown’s voice mixed eagerness and excitement with fear. He’d finally seen the enemy, in the flesh, arrayed for battle. “They’re still back in the trees, but they’re moving up.”
“How many? What are they doing?” Reynolds spoke sharply, feeling his own pulse rate climbing. This was it. “Come on, Ted. Use SALUTE.” The acronym was a memory aid, designed to help observers report what they saw clearly — even in the noise and confusion of battle. Including size, activity, location, unit, time, and equipment in any contact report usually covered all the essentials.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, sir.” There was a small pause. “Size — six armored vehicles. They’re wheeled. I think they’re Luchs armored cars.”
Reynolds scribbled the information down. “Roger.” He didn’t ask what happened to the “dozens” Brown had seen moments ago.
“Activity, moving up to the edge of the woodline.”
Once he remembered the much-practiced drill, Brown quickly passed the rest of the information. It sounded like the reconnaissance element of a German armored division, getting ready to move forward. Reynolds nodded to himself. That made sense. The Germans would certainly throw a line of scout vehicles out ahead of their advancing tanks. Alternatively they could be using the recon unit’s movements as a feint while the panzer division launched its real attack in some other sector. Which was this?
Reynolds scanned the area with his own binoculars. Nothing. The enemy scout cars Brown and Webster had spotted were still too far away. He asked the observer, “Can you see any other movement? Tanks or APCs?”
“No, sir. Just the recce vehicles. It looks like they’re getting ready to move out.” The concern in Brown’s voice hinted at his real message: “Can we leave now?”
At normal rates of advance, the enemy would take three to four minutes to reach the OP. And it would take two men, sprinting with their gear, longer than that to reach the safety of Hell Team’s position. In other words, they had to bug out the second that the Germans started to move.
Reynolds had no intention of sacrificing his two men unnecessarily, but he wasn’t going to let them leave a second early, either. His only reply was “Stay low and keep your eyes peeled.”
He passed the sighting report back to battalion, then to his three platoon leaders. Their waiting was almost over.
A few minutes later, the OP called in again, with a new report. They could now see tanks, at least ten, and the armored cars were moving forward. This time Corporal Brown wasn’t shy about it. “Sir, we’d like to get out of here.”
“Get back here, fast.”
Reynolds alerted his platoon leaders, then searched the woods ahead again. At two kilometers, the small, gray-green vehicles would be hard to see, even if the ground had been perfectly flat. This wasn’t Texas, though, and the rise and fall of the terrain would give him only glimpses of the enemy scouts.
The German scouts were playing a deadly game, daring the Americans to shoot at them, thus revealing their positions. They trusted to their own luck or their enemy’s poor shooting for survival. It was a dare Reynolds couldn’t pass up. If he left the scouts unmolested, depending purely on concealment, they might get close enough to see the battalion’s positions as well as his own. No camouflage was ever perfect — especially against expert observers with their own thermal imaging equipment.
Instead, he was going to let the Germans close until they were well inside Javelin range, then open up and try to kill several at once. He had time, a few minutes yet.
Alpha Company’s first victory came without firing a shot. One of the scout cars, angling off to Reynolds’ left, hit a mine laid by the engineers last night.
The sudden, powerful explosion tossed the Luchs into the air and then over onto its side. No one crawled out of the smoking, twisted vehicle.
The captain smiled grimly. That minefield wasn’t very wide or very dense, but it would take the Germans a while to find that out. Meanwhile, one of their six reconnaissance vehicles lay wrecked out in the open.
Reynolds studied the surviving scout cars through his binoculars, taking care to keep the lenses out of the sunlight. Each Luchs was a long, eight-wheeled thing. Angular, lightly armored, and capped with a small turret holding a 20mm gun, they were “easy meat” for an M1 Abrams or even a Bradley, but to Reynolds and his men, they could be a real threat — if they got close enough. Except he didn’t plan to let them live that long.
Three of the five Luchs rumbled up and over the low rise occupied by the now-abandoned OP. They were within seven hundred meters. Now. He lifted the field phone. “Shoot!”
He heard several, muffled
Reynolds lowered his field glasses, trying to follow one of the Javelins, no more than a small black dot moving incredibly fast. As the gunner made course corrections, it darted a little from side to side, then arced up and flew above one of the Luchs.
The antitank missile exploded into a round gray-black ball right over the German scout car. Puffs of dust or smoke danced on its engine deck and turret top, and sparks flew as if it were being struck by dozens of small hammers. He never saw the second missile aimed at the Luchs. Luckily, one hit was enough.
The armored car slewed right and stopped, with greasy black smoke pouring out of the engine compartment, in the rear. The jagged fragments spewed by the Javelin’s warhead not only pierced armor — they were also white-hot.
Through the binoculars, Reynolds saw two men stumble out of the Luchs, quickly scrambling out of sight. They were at the ragged edge of small-arms range, but his well-disciplined company held their fire. With two of their comrades dead and their vehicle wrecked, the German scouts were no longer a threat.
More explosions echoed across the countryside. Two more vehicles were also hit. The leftmost, targeted by the TOW, was a mass of flame. The TOW’s larger warhead must have detonated its on-board ammunition. The third, hit by two Javelins, sat motionless — wreathed in dust and smoke. Reynolds nodded somberly. Hell Team had just announced its existence to the EurCon commanders.
The first steps in the dance had been his, but he knew what had to come next, and so did the rest of his men. He’d exercised with the Germans as a young platoon leader, and they were good.
“Incoming! Take cover!” Sergeant Ford’s shouted warning rose above the shrill whistle of the first enemy shell arcing in.
Christ! As tight as he’d been hugging the earth before, Reynolds buried himself in it now. The explosion tore a chunk out of the ground a hundred meters away, still about ten meters out from the copse of trees they were holding, thank God.
It was as close as Reynolds had ever been to a real live artillery shell fired at him, and it awed and frightened him. In exercises, they used artillery simulators, “devices” that exploded with about the same force as an old M80 firecracker. You really had to use your imagination to turn a bunch of those into an artillery barrage.
He wouldn’t need to use his imagination ever again, he thought grimly. He’d remember this for the rest of his life. Probably a 155mm, the professional part of his mind speculated — a ranging shot. More to come.
There were, and for the next few minutes the earth and air blended in a thunderous roar as HE rounds
