no sign of another enemy tank or a TOW missile headed that way. Something, she realized, was coming up on their flank through the woods. Anxious to reset her radio to the company net and find out what was going on, Kozak blurted a quick report on the battalion net. 'Hotel 60, this is Charlie 60. I think we're in contact over on our right flank, in the woods. I'll report back in a minute. Out.'
Without waiting for any sort of acknowledgment, Kozak flipped her frequency selection lever back to the company net and began calling her 1st Platoon.
Sitting next to the road, Cerro, perched atop his Bradley, felt overwhelmed. In quick succession he had watched the M-1 tank coming south toward him blow up, leaving his brigade and corps commanders on the road and exposed. Then he had watched a German tank come trundling out of the woods to the northeast while he was talking on the radio and had done nothing. Finally, just as things seemed to be getting under control, the commander of the company he was with called in, told him she thought they were in contact with enemy forces due east of their position, and then disappeared off the battalion radio net. Though he could clearly see Kozak's Bradley to his right, less than thirty meters away, it could have been a million miles away for all the attention she was paying him. Determined to solve one of his problems, he ordered his driver to back up and then move over to where Kozak's Bradley was sitting. If they couldn't talk on the radio, they could at least shout at each other.
Inching his way out to the edge of the tree line, Seydlitz, hunched low in his open hatch, scanned the open field to the south and west for any sign of danger. His gunner, able to see the hard-surfaced road to the west for the first time, saw an American personnel carrier racing north on that road toward the burning American tank and yelled out his acquisition report.
Seydlitz, who was looking for more dangerous targets, ignored the gunner's sighting. His vigilance was rewarded when off to their left he caught sight of a Bradley in the wood line to the southwest backing up. Now he was ready to issue his fire command.
Unable to see anything from where his tank was, Second Lieutenant Ellerbee ordered his driver to move forward slowly. As they did so, Ellerbee ordered his gunner to keep his eyes open for the clump of trees across the field that would appear to their right once they had cleared the trees they had been hiding behind. With his head up out of his open hatch, Ellerbee looked first to his right at the trees to the southeast and then south down the hard- surfaced road where he watched Colonel Dixon's personnel carrier pull up next to another one behind the burning tank. They were using the destroyed tank as cover. He was thinking about how clever this was when his gunner screamed, 'ENEMY TANK! TWELVE O'CLOCK IN THE WOOD LINE!'
Without even looking, Ellerbee dropped back into the turret, ordering the driver to stop and issuing a fire command as he went. As the gunner and loader yelled their responses, Ellerbee gave the command to fire before he even got his eye to his primary sight extension. Used to the rock and recoil of the powerful 120mm main gun by now, Ellerbee eased his eye up to the commander's extension just as the tank was settling back down from firing its first round. Though he could see from the fading whiffs of smoke that they had hit the Leopard tank, he knew they hadn't killed it, for its 120mm main gun, exactly the same type that was mounted on Ellerbee's tank, was now being trained on them.
At first neither Seydlitz nor his gunner realized that they had been hit. A sudden shudder and a soft scream from the driver's compartment, more of an excited exclamation, were the first clues that something was wrong. Only when Seydlitz noticed his tank jerk to the right did he call out, 'Willie, what are you doing?'
'Captain, we've been hit. Right track I?'
The gunner's scream cut him off. 'ACHTUNG! PANZER!'
Looking back up to his sight, Seydlitz saw the American tank that had just fired on them as it appeared in the far right corner of their sight for the first time. 'Forget the Bradley, engage the tank, now!'
Laying his sight on the center mass of the target, the gunner announced he was ready. Knowing that the American would continue to shoot till he saw his tank burn, Seydlitz didn't hesitate. 'FIRE!'
They had hit it. Ellerbee knew they had hit the damned thing. But it wasn't dead. Without another thought, he yelled his new command as he watched the German's gun come to bear. 'TARGET! RE-ENGAGE!'
Without waiting for the loader to finish announcing 'UP!' Ellerbee's gunner screamed, 'ON THE WAY!'
In quick succession, as if one finger had pulled the two triggers, both the Leopard and the M-1 fired. And with the skill and precision of veteran gunners aided by high technology, both gunners hit their marks. It was Ellerbee's tank, however, that got the worst of the exchange. Punching its way through the frontal armored plate on the left side of the turret, the armor-piercing round fired by Seydlitz's gunner scattered hot scraps of metal and debris as it continued through the crew compartment and into the ammo storage racks to the rear of the turret. There it ignited the propellant and the warheads of several rounds, beginning the process of destroying Ellerbee's tank.
The scream of the loader, the sudden discharge of the onboard fire extinguishers, and a searing pain that shot through Ellerbee's body told him he needed to get out now. There was no real conscious thought. He didn't feel the pain or comprehend everything that happened in the few seconds it took him to pull himself up out of the turret and onto the turret roof. Nothing registered. No pain, no thoughts. -Not even when he rolled off the turret, hit the right front fender, and bounced off it like a rag doll and onto the ground did he understand what he was doing. Only vaguely was he aware of his gunner and driver, who both came down next to him, grabbing him by either arm and dragging him back into the woods as his tank, the last of four tanks in his platoon, tore itself apart.
Shaken, but alive, Seydlitz looked about the turret of his tank, first at the loader, then the gunner. 'What happened? What in the hell happened? Did we get him?'
The gunner, anxious to see, put his eye to his sight, then cursed. 'SHIT! He got our sight.'
Putting his own eye up to his sight, Seydlitz saw that the primary sight was gone. 'The telescope. Is it still good?'
From above, Seydlitz watched the gunner pull his head away from the eyepiece of his shattered primary sight and move over to the telescope mounted on the side of the main gun's cradle. 'Yes. Yes, it's still good. And the American tank, it's burning!'
Popping his head up, Seydlitz looked across the field and saw that their shot had been true. Though he couldn't see Ellerbee and his crew as they fled back into the woods, that didn't matter. Looking back to the left, where he had last seen the American Bradley, Seydlitz confirmed that it was now gone. With no primary sight, one track shot out, and no targets in view, he decided that he needed to check in and find out what was happening to his left and right and then report to battalion.
From his vantage point, Vorishnov had no idea who was coming out on top. He could see that both Dixon and Malin were for the moment safe to the right of the burning hulk of the tank that had been Malin's escort. To the southeast, in the woods that the Germans had come out of, there was at least one German tank destroyed and a second one that had been hit. Due south, where Dixon's force had been, he could see dense clouds of dirty black smoke rising on what should have been the right flank for those forces and another column of dense black smoke to the left of that. While Vorishnov didn't quite understand exactly what was going on, he realized that the enemy attack had two prongs, only one of which, the one coming from the woods to the southeast, that he could do anything about. Contacting the commander of the battalion he was with, Vorishnov ordered him to deploy more forces to their left and prepare to send infantry over into the woods where the first German tank had come from. In the meantime, he ordered his fire support officer back at the brigade main command post to call for every piece of artillery he could find and begin to pound the woods to the southeast.
When Dixon and Malin finally realized they were safe, Dixon pulled himself out of the rear of his personnel carrier and stood on its roof. Carefully he looked up and over the burning tank that was giving them cover. From below, Malin, who was just now catching his breath, called up, 'Can you see what's going on, Scotty?'
Just as Malin asked that question, Dixon saw a muzzle flash from the German woods to the east. A flash of tracer streaking from those woods came to an abrupt halt in the tree line not far from where Malin had come from. A sudden bright flash, followed by a sheet of flames, told Dixon that another American tank had been hit. His reaction told Malin that something bad had happened. Finally ready, Big Al pulled himself up and jumped over onto Dixon's personnel carrier. Together they stood there side by side powerless to do anything effective to influence the battle as they watched the next series of exchanges.
Just as they came around a bend in the forest trail and caught sight of the 1st Platoon Bradley guarding the
