completion of a full year in continuous combat. Of the ten men in his squad who had crossed the beach at Omaha three days after D-Day, Kozak was only one of three who could boast of seeing that much combat. The others had been taken away feet first. Kozak intended to see his birthday, as well as his first anniversary in combat, alive and in one piece.
That he didn't have any goals or even conscious thoughts of anything beyond his twentieth birthday never occurred to Kozak. While it was fashionable for politicians and dreamers to speak of a brave new world, such thoughts were foreign to the American rifleman in 1945. Like a million other infantrymen, Kozak's world was defined by the field of vision that the Sherman in front of him offered, and a future that was not his to control and was measured in minutes.
When the boy finally heard the grinding of the tanks and felt the rumbling of the earth, he ran to the window. 'Papa, Papa! Mother, Papa has come home!'
From her corner the mother looked at the boy. Dear God, she thought, what a fool. What a poor godforsaken fool. Did he still believe that his father was alive? Did he still believe that the Nazis would be able to turn back the enemy? 'Johann, that is not your papa. He is dead. He was killed last Christmas in Belgium with your uncle. It is the Amis. The Americans. They have come to put an end to this nightmare.'
In a flash the boy turned to face her. 'NO! You lie! You
Turning away from his mother, the boy pushed a box under the basement window and stood on it, pulling himself up in an effort to see the tanks. The shock of seeing a tank he immediately recognized as an M-4A3 Sherman tank, followed by men in sloppy, disheveled uniforms, was too much for the boy. The Americans! How could that be? How could his father let them come like that? First his father had left them. Then his mother, sister, and he had moved from their farm near Breslau to the dirt and filth of Regensburg. Then the bombers had come. And now the Americans themselves. Was this the end, like his mother had said? Was it really the end? And if it was, what was he to do? The Fuhrer had called for all Germans to fight to the last. Was that what he was to do now? Fight the American tank? Without thinking, the boy reached down and grasped the knife he had been presented when he had joined the Hitler Youth. He was proud of that knife. It was a living symbol that connected him directly to his Fuhrer. Now it was his only weapon. Questions of how best to use that weapon to do his duty for Fuhrer and Fatherland now raced through the boy's eight-year-old mind.
The movement of a head bobbing up and down in a basement window not more than twenty feet away from him caught Kozak's eye. Shit! Without thinking, Kozak yelled, 'Sniper on the right!' Running out from behind the tank, Kozak covered the distance from where he had been to the side of the basement window in a single rush. Even before reaching the relative safety of the side of the building next to the window, Kozak was pulling a hand grenade from his web belt. Behind him the rest of his squad dropped where they had been and trained their rifles on the window where Kozak was headed. The tank, oblivious to the infantrymen's actions, continued to rumble on down the street alone.
Once he had reached the window, Kozak held his rifle between his knees while he pulled the safety pin from the grenade and let the spoon fly off. With an audible snap, the grenade's striker hit the primer. After holding the grenade for three or four seconds, Kozak bent down and tossed it into the open window. As soon as he had released it, Kozak grabbed his rifle, stood upright, flattened himself against the side of the building, and waited for the explosion. Kozak had no intention of giving anyone who survived his grenade a chance to recover from its effects. As soon as he heard the muffled roar of the grenade, he stuck his rifle into the window and began to fire. Moving sideways across the open window, which was still billowing smoke, Kozak kept his rifle trained into the basement, squeezing off round after round as he continued to move. By the time he reached the other side of the window, the bolt of his M-1 Garand locked back and the follower assembly flipped out the expended clip.
For a moment he paused, flattening himself against the side of the building again on the opposite side of the window. When he had caught his breath, Kozak leaned over and looked into the window while the fingers of his right hand fumbled about his bandoleer searching for a new clip. The smoke from the grenade was still clearing. There were no sounds, no motions coming from the basement.
'Hey, Kozak! Anything?'
Kozak looked back at his squad leader, then down into the window again. Through the gloom and darkness of the room, all he could see was two stacks of bodies. There were still no motions, no sounds. Whoever had been moving about wasn't moving anymore. Relieved, Kozak relaxed, but only for a moment. The tank, his shield, was still rumbling down the street, leaving him and the squad behind and exposed. 'No, Sarge. They're all dead.'
Pushing himself up off the pavement, Kozak's squad leader looked about to ensure that all of his men were still with him, then shouted to them. 'Okay, second squad, let's get moving. Now!'
Kozak didn't need to be told twice. Without another thought, he finished shoving a fresh clip into his rifle and turned his back on the basement window, running down the street to catch up with the tank. It was as if at that moment the Sherman tank was his only guarantee that he would live to see his twentieth birthday. And nothing and no one was going to stand between him and that.
Part One
OPERATION DESPERATE FUMBLE
CHAPTER 1
Pausing just short of the crest next to a tree, Colonel Scott Dixon knelt on one knee, leaned against the tree, and began to pull the hood of his white camouflage parka up over his helmet. As he fiddled with the drawstrings of the white parka, Dixon scanned the crest of the hill to his front. Beyond it was the Ukrainian border. While one would assume that Dixon's head would be filled with concerns and thoughts about the upcoming operation, it was not. Rather the commander of the 4th Armored Division's 1st Brigade was at that moment feeling a twinge of guilt about insisting on being issued the white parka. After all, the odds of him, the commander of a maneuver brigade with two tank and two mechanized battalions, needing to use the white garment to hide from the enemy were remote. As he told the brigade XO when he was first given the parka, 'If it gets to the point where this is the only thing that is protecting me, then someone has screwed up, big time.' Despite the order from the division commander that only infantrymen serving in line companies and scouts receive the scarce article, the brigade S-4 had connived until he had obtained the coveted white parka. Now that he was actually using the camouflage properties of the parka during his personal reconnaissance of the Ukrainian border defenses his brigade would be crashing through in less than twelve hours, Dixon could justify having it. Of course, everyone who knew Dixon knew that he enjoyed having all the 'neat' things, and no amount of justification could hide that. Still Dixon's staff felt no misgivings about indulging their commander. He was in their eyes worth it.
Scott Dixon, at age forty-six, was a complex man who had the ability to deceive those who met him with an easygoing manner. Physically he was equally unpretentious. A casual observer standing on the street corner of any large American city would never pick Scott Dixon out of a crowd as the commander of four thousand men and women. His five-foot, ten-inch body and medium build would be classified as average. The 170 pounds he carried about were well distributed, although there was a hint of a spreading waist when he wasn't wearing baggy fatigues or an oversized parka like today. Even if the observer were to look at Dixon's face from a distance, there wouldn't be anything of special note other than the fact that he wore his hair shorter than the average American male and his face still failed to betray the forty-plus years his body had clocked. Even the facial expression that would have betrayed his personality and emotions was carefully hidden from view. The only external feature that differentiated Scotty Dixon from any other middle-aged American male was his eyes. His eyes betrayed Scott Dixon.
Like many veterans who had seen war and knew that they had not yet seen their last, his eyes were often fixed in a sad faraway gaze. On those rare occasions when he allowed his mind to wander, the sadness in his eyes would deepen and glaze over with moisture as his mind's eye passed before him again and again a parade of faces
