climbed above the horizon — a ball of fire rising in a cloudless sky. Red-tinged sunlight touched the rusting steel girders of the Forst railroad bridge and set them aglow. Light winds from the south and southeast promised warm and dry weather later in the day.
Men in camouflage-pattern fatigues, combat engineers, swarmed over the railroad bridge, laying wood planking across its tracks and ties so that armored vehicles could use it safely. Other engineers, attached to the brigade by the 7th Panzer Division and II Corps, were busy deploying two ribbon bridges across the Neisse. They worked as fast as their self-propelled pontoon sections arrived and splashed into the water, bolting them together to form floating roadways reaching across the river.
Clusters of armored vehicles dotted an open park just west of the bridging site. Gepard flakpanzers mounting radar-directed, 35mm guns were on watch in case the Polish Air Force made an unwelcome appearance over Forst. Longer-range Roland SAM batteries stood guard further back, outside the town.
In the narrow streets of Forst itself, the 19th Panzergrenadier’s Marder APCs and Leopard tanks were lined up nose-to-tail, waiting to cross into Poland. Infantrymen wearing helmets and camouflage battle dress lay curled up beside their Marders. They were making use of the delay by trying to catch up on some of the sleep they’d lost during the previous night. Tank crewmen wearing olive-drab fatigues and black berets stood on top of their vehicles, using binoculars to scan the silent, wooded enemy shore.
Several staff officers and NCOs chatted together near an American-made M577 command vehicle parked in a street overlooking the railway bridge. The boxy tracked vehicle served as the brigade’s TOC, its tactical operations center. Bent low to clear the M577’s low roof, von Seelow walked down the rear ramp and joined his subordinates. He stood blinking in sunshine that was painfully bright after a night spent cooped up inside the TOC’s map- and radio-filled compartment.
“Any news, sir?”
Von Seelow nodded. “Major Hauser assures me that his bridges will be completed on schedule, and that we’ll be crossing in half an hour. Since he is a punctual and punctilious man, I think we can count on his assurances.”
His mild jest drew a laugh from those in earshot. A louder and longer laugh than it deserved, he noticed. Beneath their carefully assumed nonchalance, these young men were all nerves, frightened by the very real prospect of killing or being killed. No amount of riot control duty or street patrolling could compare with the sheer frightfulness of modern war.
Von Seelow knew he should be feeling the same grating anxieties. Certainly he’d been scared enough under fire in the Balkans — caught between the warring Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. For some reason, though, this was different. He was still conscious of being afraid of death or failure, but his fears were buried deeper than he remembered them. Maybe it was because he had more control over events now than he’d had as a junior officer obeying other men’s orders. Maybe he was just too busy.
Movement near the far end of the railway bridge caught his eye. With their hands held high in surrender, a steady trickle of disconsolate Polish infantrymen in their distinctive “worm” camouflage-pattern field uniforms came walking across, prodded at riflepoint by German soldiers whose faces and hands were daubed black.
The Poles had been captured during the first and most dangerous phase of this river crossing. Crammed into flimsy rubber rafts, an infantry company from the 7th Panzer’s reconnaissance battalion had paddled silently across the Neisse before dawn. Once ashore, they’d overwhelmed a tiny Polish garrison posted in the little village of Zasieki to keep an eye on the railroad bridge. Together with a light infantry company from one of the division’s Jaeger battalions, the recon troops were now spread in a semicircle through the woods, guarding the bridgehead until the brigade’s heavy tanks and vehicles could relieve them.
Willi had bet that this crossing point would be only weakly garrisoned, and he had won his bet. With just four divisions deployed along a border nearly four hundred kilometers long, the Poles were too thin on the ground to defend everywhere at once. In this sector, they’d concentrated their troops opposite the highway bridge at Olszyna, ten kilometers south. A German assault at Zasieki, with only a rudimentary road net and surrounded by forest, must not have seemed a significant threat.
Von Seelow planned to show them they were wrong. Once across the Neisse, the 19th Panzergrenadier would sweep southeast along the railroad embankment and the woods themselves. The forest wasn’t old-growth. It lacked the dense, tangled undergrowth that would have rendered it impassable to vehicles. Movement would be made even easier by using some of the dirt logging tracks that crisscrossed the area. Most of them fed onto the highway near Olszyna. The brigade’s Leopards and Marders should hit the reinforced Polish battalion guarding the bridge from the flank and rear before its commander knew they were coming.
The 7th Panzer Division’s reconnaissance battalion prowled onward through the woods, advancing in a kilometer-wide wedge. Sunlight streamed down through the trees, splintered by gently swaying green leaves and branches into patches of light and shadow rippling over camouflaged hulls and gun turrets. Eight-wheeled Luchs scout cars roved ahead, probing for the first signs of stiffening Polish resistance. Tanks and six-wheeled Fuchs troop carriers followed a few hundred meters behind.
Major Max Lauer rode proudly erect in the unbuttoned turret hatch of his Leopard 1 headquarters tank. Although they mounted smaller-caliber main guns and had less armor protection than the newer Leopard 2s, the thirty-six tanks under his command still gave his recon battalion a powerful punch. He and his men could fight most enemy forces they encountered on equal terms and outmaneuver most of those who outnumbered them.
Thunder rumbled to the southwest — the sound of heavy shelling muffled by distance and by the trees. Lauer brushed his radio headphones back for a moment to listen and then nodded grimly. The Poles holding the highway bridge were catching hell from at least twelve artillery batteries. He didn’t envy them the experience.
He slipped his headphones back on. The battle for the bridge wasn’t his concern. Not directly anyway. The 19th Panzergrenadier would deal with the enemy troops there. His battalion had its own mission. They were supposed to seize and hold the road junction at Jaglowice, six kilometers further down the highway.
From there, Lauer’s tanks and infantry could block or delay any reaction force speeding toward the battle. They would also tighten the noose around any Polish units that survived the attack at Olszyna and tried to flee east down the road.
Major Marek Malanowski was knocked off his feet as another near miss rocked his command bunker. Dust and smoke from the explosion boiled in through observation and firing slits beneath the bunker’s timber and sandbag roof. One of his sergeants helped him up.
The major bent down and scooped his helmet off the earth floor. Then he clapped it back on over his close- cropped black hair. “I don’t think they like us very much, Jan.”
The sergeant grinned, a quick flash of tobacco-stained teeth across a dirt-smeared face. “No, sir.”
Malanowski took another look outside. It was like staring into a whirling, roaring maelstrom — only one made up of smoke and fire instead of water and foam. More shells churned the riverbank and nearby woods. Airbursts shredded treetops, sending wood and steel splinters whining earthward. Shock waves from the explosions tore the leaves from those trees left standing and sent them swirling wildly through the air. Plumes of oily black smoke curled into the air from several vehicles smashed and set on fire by direct hits.
Nevertheless, despite the pounding they were taking, his defenses appeared mostly intact. If their nerves held out under the constant, shattering noise, troops in well-prepared positions could usually ride out even the worst artillery bombardment. So far, at least, the men of the 411th Mechanized Battalion were standing firm. If they could just hold on a little longer, he was confident that they would tear to shreds any EurCon attempt to cross the river.
Malanowski’s battalion was organized along American lines, but it was still using Soviet-style equipment. He had three companies of BMP-1s dug into the woods along the riverbanks, sited to cover the bridge and other potential crossing points with their 73mm smoothbore cannon and wire-guided antitank missiles. Their infantry squads were all dismounted and in firing positions with overhead cover to protect them from shell fragments. He even had a T-72 tank company in support.
With that much firepower on tap, any first German tanks that tried storming across the highway bridge wouldn’t get more than a hundred meters. And if they tried sending infantry across in rubber rafts or assault boats? The Polish major shrugged. Mortars and machine guns should deal pretty handily with those poor bastards. Even a smoke screen couldn’t stop converging automatic weapons fire. Put enough bullets into an area fast enough and you
