excuse me for disturbing your, ah, discussions. But I am afraid the situation in central Germany has changed somewhat. It seems the Americans have entered Paderborn and are moving west and northwest toward Munster and Osnabruck. The enemy has managed to break out of our encirclement.'
Dumbfounded, Ruff turned his attention away from Fellner and toward Lange. 'How can that be? Just five minutes ago your chief of operations briefed us that the 7th Panzer Division had established blocking positions in front of Paderborn. What happened?'
Looking down at the message, Lange considered his response. When he spoke, he did so without looking at Ruff. 'It seems the positions of the 7th Panzer Division were compromised.'
'Compromised? What in the hell do you mean, compromised?'
'It means, Herr Chancellor, that enemy actions and maneuvering compelled the commander of that division to withdraw.'
'And how many casualties,' Ruff demanded, 'did the 7th Panzer inflict on the Americans before they retreated?'
'I do not know, Herr Chancellor. This dispatch doesn't say.'
'All right, Herr General, how many casualties did the 7th Panzer Division suffer before yielding Paderborn?'
With a quick glance down, Lange found the appropriate passage and read it. 'The 7th Panzer Division reports suffering three casualties, all wounded, when their truck was sideswiped by a Leopard tank while leaving Paderborn.'
'Three?'
'Yes, Herr Chancellor, three. It seems we were very, very lucky today.'
Like a well-rehearsed stage play, the column of American tanks and infantry fighting vehicles of the 55th Mech Infantry Division approached the bridge held by elements of the 7th Panzer Division. When the lead Bradley was clearly visible, the senior German officer present, a panzergrenadier captain, walked out into the middle of the road. Upon seeing the German, the commander of the Bradley halted and reported. Within minutes the most senior American officer in the column, an armored major, came forth mounted in his tank. Stopping thirty meters away from the German officer, the American major dismounted with no undue haste, then walked up to the German captain.
After the exchange of military pleasantries, the German captain spoke first. 'I have been ordered, Herr Major, to establish a blocking position here and prevent the passage of American forces.'
The American major, responding in German, likewise stated his mission. 'I have been ordered, Herr Captain, to seize this bridge and establish a bridgehead on the far side.'
The German captain replied, 'I must resist your efforts until my position is no longer tenable.'
The American major nodded. 'I understand.' Then, turning toward the commander of the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle behind him, the major waved his hand over his head and then pointed to the bridge. Without hesitation, the commander of the Bradley gunned his engine and raced for the bridge, past German obstacles removed to clear the way and German Marder infantry fighting vehicles only partially hidden in positions meant to cover them.
When the American Bradley reached the bridge, the German captain, who had been watching its progress, turned to the American major. 'Ah, if you would excuse me, Major. My position is no longer tenable. I must withdraw my unit to its next blocking position, which is seven point two kilometers further down the road.'
'That is all right, Captain. I understand. Auf Wiedersehen.'
Saluting, the captain also bid the American major farewell and returned to his unit.
Just short of the road junction west of Ronshausen, Major Harold Cerro saw a lone humvee half concealed in a stand of trees with two figures standing next to it waiting. Knowing one of the figures had to be his boss, Colonel Scott Dixon, Cerro ordered his driver to pull over next to it and stop.
Normally, when responding to a summons by his commander to meet at some isolated spot in the middle of the night, Cerro would literally jump out of whatever vehicle he was traveling in before it stopped and bound over to Dixon to receive the latest order or change of mission Dixon invariably had for him. Dixon and Cerro, having worked so long together, understood each other's work habits to the point where they could hold short, almost encrypted, conversations without any loss of clarity or meaning. Tonight, for example, when Dixon called the brigade command post and directed that Cerro meet him at a crossroads near the command post of the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Infantry, Cerro knew that Dixon had an important order that needed to be issued and there wasn't time for him to return to the command post himself.
Cerro, however, didn't leap out of his humvee when it stopped. Instead, he sat there for a moment almost as if he had to think about what to do next. Slowly Cerro had to gather the strength necessary to climb out of his vehicle. For Cerro, like everyone else in the brigade, from the youngest rifleman to Dixon himself, was pushing the limits of endurance. The Battle of Central Germany, now officially declared over by the American news media, had cost more than lives and materiel lost. Everyone, American and German, who had participated in the grueling slugfest was exhausted. And the exhaustion was not only physical. It was mental as well. Fear, stress, wild swings that took a person from near comatose exhaustion to the heights of sheer terror where they couldn't even control their bodily functions, tore away at the mental fiber of the mind and soul just as heavy labor tore at the cells of one's muscles. War, as von Clausewitz so correctly pointed out, was as much a contest of wills and minds as it was physical.
As he mustered the strength to move himself over to where the two colonels waited, Cerro looked at them. They were quite a contrast. Colonel Vorishnov was the storybook image of a Russian officer. He was big for an armor officer. The Russian Army still recruited only short officers and men so that their tank designers could create combat vehicles that had a lower silhouette. Unlike many of his peers, however, Vorishnov was not thick in the waist, though the heavy parka he wore made him appear to be quite pregnant. Dixon, a man of average height, seemed dwarfed by the tall Russian. The two had used their physical difference before the Battle of Central Germany for comic relief. Every now and then when he judged the mood to be right, Vorishnov would come up to Dixon as he was slouched over a map or document. Standing between Dixon and the light, so that the American colonel stood in the shadow of the tall Russian, Vorishnov would stretch his large frame out and up as far as it would go. When Dixon noticed the shadow of the tall Russian over him, he would stop what he was doing, look up, and with a look of terror on his face exclaim, 'My God, they are ten feet tall.' In response, Vorishnov would reach out with his hand, fingers upturned and spread out as if they were holding a ball. Bellowing so that his voice sounded like it came from the depths of a monstrous cavern, Vorishnov would say, 'If we had known you were so puny, we would have crushed you a long time ago.' In the past, such antics had never failed to bring a round of laughter from the staff of the 1st Brigade.
Sitting there, Cerro realized that those days were gone. The war had taken its toll. There was no humor anymore. There was no lighter side to look at. Even worse, after assessing the results of their recent battles, Cerro even wondered if there was hope. For as they sat there that night, there was no indication that the will of the German soldier to fight had in any way been diminished during the last battle. Fuel reserves within the Tenth Corps were almost nonexistent, casualties in some companies reached as high as 50 percent, equipment that had been damaged and could not be hastily repaired had been destroyed in place by their crews, the heavy freeze that had made the ground hard and easy to maneuver on was coming to an end. And they were only halfway to the coast with few surprises left up their sleeves. With such solemn thoughts as a backdrop, Cerro slowly unfolded his weary body from the front seat of his humvee and trudged over to where Dixon and Vorishnov waited.
There were no greetings, no pleasantries. Not even a grunt to acknowledge Cerro's appearance. There was only Dixon's announcement, made matter-of-factly. 'Hal, you're to assume command of the 3rd of the 3rd. Jim Jensen, who's been filling in since their XO was wounded, will report immediately to brigade for reassignment.' There was a pause before Dixon added, 'You know the situation and the battalion's mission. I have no need to tell you how important it is that you keep the Germans at bay. We can't afford another incident like the one last night with the engineer company and the field hospital. We were lucky, you know. There was a supply convoy less than two kilometers down the road with a dozen tankers filled with diesel sitting on the side of the road. Had we lost them instead of the hospital, we'd have been in real trouble.'
Neither Cerro nor Vorishnov, who was listening and watching, found any fault with what Dixon had said. They agreed that it would have been far worse if the fuel convoy had been lost. It was not that they had in a matter
