Still planning his next moves, von Seelow turned away from the window and headed outside to confer with his battalion and company commanders. He felt an odd mixture of elation and sorrow. Against all the odds but at a painfully high human cost, his soldiers had won a stunning victory. The 19th Panzergrenadier Brigade had cracked the Notec River line before the Poles had time to form a cohesive defense.
EurCon’s II Corps had its bridgehead on the main road to Gdansk.
Several dozen American officers wearing battle dress and their web gear sat in rows inside the Gdansk Town Hall’s main council chamber — the Red Room. Their warlike, woodland camouflage pattern uniforms were a stark contrast with the chamber’s ornate, sixteenth-century decor and its colorful Baroque ceiling and wall paintings. The Poles were letting the U.S. Army use the room for a briefing theater. Easels covered with large-scale maps and charts occupied one side of the chamber, surrounded by the brigade staff.
The assembled line officers were edgy, aware that something big was in the works. They’d been summoned to this emergency brief by the 3rd Brigade’s commander, Colonel Gunnar Iverson. Outside the building, Gdansk’s city streets were jammed with Polish and American military vehicles heading south. The armed sentries stationed outside the Red Room doors were another sign of impending trouble.
Sitting at the back with the other company commanders, Captain Mike Reynolds stifled a yawn. He’d had only four hours’ sleep in the past twenty-four, and that small amount had come in even smaller pieces. Unfortunately sleep deprivation was becoming a pattern. Their first day in Poland had passed in a jet-lagged confusion of unfamiliar streets and hurried procedures as the brigade first found, then took possession of, its equipment. None of the four days since then had been much more restful. Or less frustrating.
After all the rash to get them to Poland in the first place, it had seemed strange that the 101st and its constituent brigades were still sitting on their collective butts only a few klicks from the Gdansk Airport. To many of the airborne troopers, the delay seemed just another typical army snafu, a standard case of “hurry up and wait.” But Reynolds was pretty sure there had been a lot more to it than that.
The scuttlebutt at brigade HQ was that the 101st and parts of the 82nd Airborne were being held as a “strategic reserve” — as an American trip-wire force to deter the Russians from jumping in on the EurCon side. The rumors had gained powerful credibility when all of the division’s operations and intelligence officers were summoned to a special briefing on last-ditch defensive positions around Warsaw — defensive positions facing east. Just the possibility of Russian intervention sent chills down the captain’s spine. Getting caught in a land war against the French, the Germans, and the Russians seemed like a surefire prescription for a short fight and a long stretch as a POW — or an eternity as a dead man.
Reynolds shifted uneasily in his chair. Whatever the reason, the five-day delay had not been wasted. Although they’d been ready to go into combat within hours of touching down from the States, the extra time had given the division a much-needed chance to sort itself out. During the emergency deployment to Poland, their weapons and vehicles had been packed “administratively,” meaning tightly, to make the most efficient use of the valuable space aboard the USAF’s cargo planes. Once in Gdansk, the 101st’s forward staging base, everything had to be assembled and checked out, before being readied for helicopter deployment to the front. With that done, the division’s brigade and battalion commanders had run their units through an intensive series of combat drills and physical training, honing the 101’s already sharp edge even sharper.
Well, it looked like their mini-Phony War was finally coming to an end.
“Attention!”
Boots slammed onto the floor as the brisk command brought Reynolds and the others to their feet. Accompanied by a single aide, Colonel Iverson marched to the front of the room and stood facing them.
“Take your seats, gentlemen.” Iverson waved them down impatiently. “I’ll keep it short and sweet. This is no drill. We’re going into the line against EurCon.” He ignored the stir that caused and turned to his S-2, the brigade intelligence officer. “Start your dog-and-pony show, John. I want this outfit on the move before dark.”
Reynolds nodded to himself. There’d be no fancy speeches from this officer. Iverson had a reputation for being quick, to the point of brusqueness. If you weren’t ready to say something useful when you went in to see him, you didn’t bother going.
The S-2 moved to center stage. His presentation was what everyone had been waiting for. It touched on the real reason for their being there: the enemy’s latest moves.
He pointed to the largest easel-mounted map as he talked. EurCon’s first two pincer attacks against the Polish Army had failed. Now the French and Germans had turned north and were driving on Gdansk. And the most recent reports from the battle front said EurCon troops were across the Notec River. Their armored spearheads were already closing in on Bydgoszcz, an important road and rail junction just 150 kilometers south of Gdansk’s vital port facilities.
That might seem like a lot, but every American soldier on Polish soil had heard stories about just how quickly the EurCon Army, especially its German components, could move. The rear-area types, always nervous about their own skins, were convinced that French and German tanks might show up at the Renaissance High Gate any second, blasting their way into the city.
Reynolds and his men held a combat soldier’s contempt for anyone stationed safely outside artillery range, but the tales hit a nerve anyway. Light soldiers do not think of themselves as mobile, in spite of their helicopters. Tough, yes, but they still walked on the battlefield. In a mobile battle they could be quickly cut off and destroyed in detail, and this was a fast-moving war.
Now they would find that out at first hand. Worn down by three weeks of gallant resistance against superior numbers, the Polish Army was starting to crack. Positions that should have been held for days were falling in hours. And Russian threat or no Russian threat, the Combined Forces couldn’t let EurCon capture Gdansk.
“Attention!”
Iverson’s call startled the intelligence officer, intent on his task. Reynolds and the others leapt to their feet a second time as Maj. Gen. Robert J. “Butch” Thompson strode into the chamber. Thompson was the Big Dog from Hell, the top soldier in the whole 101st Airborne.
At a distance, the division commander looked like a man of average height. But nobody held on to that impression once they’d seen him up close or in company with other men. He actually stood half a head taller than Mike’s own six feet. The general wore his gray-streaked blond hair cut very close over a powerful, square-jawed face and ice-cold blue eyes. Thompson had led the 101st for over a year, and during that time he’d imparted his characteristic drive to the entire division.
The general took position in front of the S-2’s maps and charts. “First, I want to compliment this brigade on the job you’ve done getting over here and getting ready to fight.”