The movement of Kozak's platoon through the gap created by the 3rd Brigade was a sobering experience. The first vehicles they encountered were ambulances, both tracked and wheeled, rushing past them with the wounded. Next came the battlefield itself. The axis of attack that the 3rd Brigade had followed was dotted with shattered and burning vehicles.
Here and there, neatly laid out beside the abandoned combat vehicles, were body bags, filled with the remains of crewmen who had died in their vehicles.
The column that Kozak's platoon was in was slowed by combat engineers, who directed the lead elements of 2nd of the 13th toward marked lanes through minefields. Slowed almost to a crawl, Kozak had more time to inspect the point where elements of the 3rd Brigade had made contact with the Mexican forces. As they neared the Mexican positions, the number of American vehicles destroyed and damaged increased, belying the reports by the battalion intelligence officer that the Mexicans had few antitank weapons. Some of the vehicles burned furiously, throwing off great billowing clouds of black smoke. Others, their guns aimed into the vastness of space, just sat there, abandoned and forlorn. The only motion on these vehicles came from the flapping of green, yellow, and red flags, left on the stricken vehicles by surviving crewmen to help harried recover teams determine the nature of their problem and know whether or not wounded were on board.
Kozak, watching a recovery vehicle hook up to a damaged Bradley, didn't notice the Mexican defensive works until her own Bradley hit a sudden bump. Looking down to see what they had run over, her eyes fell on a length of trench, its floor covered with bodies. Before she could react, the forward motion of the Bradley took that image away, replacing it with that of an American aid vehicle parked just beyond the trench. The aid vehicle was surrounded by wounded soldiers, American and Mexican, some lying on stretchers or ponchos, most on the bare ground. On one side of the vehicle, she could see teams of medics working on several of the wounded in a frantic effort to save lives while other wounded men, with lighter injuries, watched and waited their turns. On the other side of the aid vehicle, a lone chaplain, the purple vestment about his neck in stark contrast to the brown and tan camouflage uniform, knelt before a motionless figure, administering last rites. This figure belonged to an other group, one in which those too badly wounded to help were put to wait until those who could be helped were, or until they died.
To actually see triage, the separation of the wounded into three groups, in practice, hit Kozak hard. Unable to watch, she turned away, scanning the horizon. This brought her no relief, though, for the horizon was dotted with more burning vehicles, more aid stations, and more trenches littered with dead. This was the face of battle, a face that had, until then, been to her only an imagined notion. Now, and for the rest of her life, it would be very real.
After her Bradley was clear of the marked lane, a soldier Kozak rec ognized as Wittworth's driver flagged her down. Ordering her driver, Specialist Freedman, to stop, Kozak took her crewman's helmet off and leaned over to hear what Wittworth's driver wanted. Pointing to a cluster of three Bradleys to the right, he shouted above the rumbling of the Bradley's engine that the CO was over there, about to issue a frag, or abbreviated order. Giving Wittworth's driver a thumbs-up to indicate that she understood, Kozak put her crewman's helmet on and radioed Ser geant
Rivera that she was going over to the CO's track to receive a frag order, and that he was in charge until she got back. In her haste, she took her helmet off before Rivera could ask where she wanted him to park the platoon. When he received no response from Kozak, he looked toward her track. By then,'Kozak was on the ground, trotting over to the CO's track with that distinctive and female walk that Rivera now associated with his platoon leader. Mumbling a curse to himself, Rivera looked for a vacant spot to take the platoon that was as far as he could get from the stench of death and from the 3rd Brigade units still eliminating pockets of resistance.
As soon as Kozak joined the circle of lieutenants gathered about Wittworth, he looked at them and asked, 'Is that everyone?'
The lieutenants, in turn, looked at each other. It was obvious that he knew they were all there, he had just looked at them. Why, Kozak thought, had he asked that? Strange, she thought. Captains can sometimes be really strange.
After his XO responded that they were all present, Wittworth turned toward the front slope of his Bradley, where his map was laid out. With a marking pen, he pointed to the symbols and locations he mentioned as he briefed his lieutenants. 'We are currently located here, on the northern edge of Objective Amanda. The rest of the battalion is spread out south of here. The attack this morning by 3rd Brigade succeeded in penetrating the enemy's main defensive belt and routing the enemy.'
Kozak, taking a quick glance at the devastation, wondered who had been routed.
'The battalion,' Wittworth continued, 'after having completed a passage of lines through the 3rd Brigade, will conduct a movement to contact toward Objective Beth, located just south of this town, named Marin, and then to Objective Carrie. Deployed in a diamond formation, with Team Charlie in the lead, Company B on the right…'
The sudden thump-thump-thump of a Bradley's 25mm cannon firing less than one hundred meters to their rear caused Kozak to jump. Twirling around, she saw the Bradley, sitting at one end of a trench, firing its cannon into the trench. For a moment, Kozak and the other lieutenants, also caught off guard by the sudden firing, watched as members of the 3rd Brigade carried out the grisly task of 'mopping up' enemy positions that had been bypassed. The Bradley was firing in support of an M-i Ai tank.
The tank, with a dozer blade attached to its front slope, was in the process of pushing dirt into the trench, starting at the end farthest from the Bradley. Taking its time, the M-i tank would drop its blade and move forward, pushing a pile of dirt over to the trench where the dirt would disappear from view as it fell. Backing up, the tank would shift over a little, closer to the Bradley, and repeat the process. Every now and then, as the M-i was in the process of backing up, the Bradley would pump a few more rounds into that part of the trench that was not yet covered.
Curious as to why someone would waste time and ammunition doing something like that, Kozak turned to Wittworth and asked. Wittworth took a deep breath. 'Well, I guess the Mexicans in the trench don't want to surrender.'
Kozak's eyes betrayed her shock. She took a quick glance at the trench, just in time to see the tank push another scoop of dirt over the edge. Looking back at Wittworth, she asked if anyone had tried to talk the Mexicans into surrendering. Wittworth chuckled. 'I doubt, Lieutenant Kozak, if anyone in the 3rd Brigade was in the mood to try. It's a general rule of thumb that the longer you defend, the less likely it is that the attacker will be in a mood to accept your surrender. Besides, they're only Mexicans.'
After one more long look at the trench, Kozak turned her back to the scene. But she couldn't turn her mind away from it. The laboring of the tank's engine as it pushed more dirt into the trench, and the occasional thump- thump-thump of the Bradley's cannon reminded her of what was going on. What do you call men who would rather be buried alive than surrender, she wondered. Were they heroes? Or fools? Was it courage and pride that made them do such a thing? Or was it insanity? In her wildest dreams, she could never imagine anyone in her platoon, even the most gung-ho soldier, sitting in a trench, calmly waiting to be shot or buried. Taking one more fugitive glance over her shoulder at the scene, Kozak decided that, as for herself, she would rather take a 25mm shell in the chest than allow herself to be buried like that.
With her mind awash with images and thoughts of the trench, Kozak missed most of Wittworth's order. Not that it made much difference.
Company B was on the right, its normal location with the battalion deployed in a diamond formation. Her platoon, the 2nd, would be the right flank guard, deployed 1,500 meters to the right of the rest of the formation. Though Wittworth warned her that since her platoon would be cutting across a series of dry streambeds, or arroyos, forcing the platoon to go slower than the battalion's main body moving on flatter ground, she didn't appreciate what he was telling her. Instead, Kozak's mind was in the process of grappling with the cold, uncompromising inhumanity of war, an inhumanity that enveloped her like sackcloth.
As more and more American tanks and infantry fighting vehicles came pouring over the trenches of the brigade defending around Nuevo Re pueblo, Guajardo knew the end was in sight. So did the colonel who commanded the brigade being overrun by those vehicles. Unable to watch any longer or listen to the cries for help from his subordinates, cries that he could do nothing about, the brigade commander turned away from the
