He passed the sighting report back to battalion, then to his three platoon leaders. Their waiting was almost over.
A few minutes later, the OP called in again, with a new report. They could now see tanks, at least ten, and the armored cars were moving forward. This time Corporal Brown wasn’t shy about it. “Sir, we’d like to get out of here.”
“Get back here, fast.”
Reynolds alerted his platoon leaders, then searched the woods ahead again. At two kilometers, the small, gray-green vehicles would be hard to see, even if the ground had been perfectly flat. This wasn’t Texas, though, and the rise and fall of the terrain would give him only glimpses of the enemy scouts.
The German scouts were playing a deadly game, daring the Americans to shoot at them, thus revealing their positions. They trusted to their own luck or their enemy’s poor shooting for survival. It was a dare Reynolds couldn’t pass up. If he left the scouts unmolested, depending purely on concealment, they might get close enough to see the battalion’s positions as well as his own. No camouflage was ever perfect — especially against expert observers with their own thermal imaging equipment.
Instead, he was going to let the Germans close until they were well inside Javelin range, then open up and try to kill several at once. He had time, a few minutes yet.
Alpha Company’s first victory came without firing a shot. One of the scout cars, angling off to Reynolds’ left, hit a mine laid by the engineers last night.
Whummp.
The sudden, powerful explosion tossed the Luchs into the air and then over onto its side. No one crawled out of the smoking, twisted vehicle.
The captain smiled grimly. That minefield wasn’t very wide or very dense, but it would take the Germans a while to find that out. Meanwhile, one of their six reconnaissance vehicles lay wrecked out in the open.
Reynolds studied the surviving scout cars through his binoculars, taking care to keep the lenses out of the sunlight. Each Luchs was a long, eight-wheeled thing. Angular, lightly armored, and capped with a small turret holding a 20mm gun, they were “easy meat” for an M1 Abrams or even a Bradley, but to Reynolds and his men, they could be a real threat — if they got close enough. Except he didn’t plan to let them live that long.
Three of the five Luchs rumbled up and over the low rise occupied by the now-abandoned OP. They were within seven hundred meters. Now. He lifted the field phone. “Shoot!”
He heard several, muffled whumphs, followed by a thin, rippling whistle of missiles in flight. One TOW and four of the Javelins fired — the smaller missiles double-teaming their targets.
Reynolds lowered his field glasses, trying to follow one of the Javelins, no more than a small black dot moving incredibly fast. As the gunner made course corrections, it darted a little from side to side, then arced up and flew above one of the Luchs.
Whammm.
The antitank missile exploded into a round gray-black ball right over the German scout car. Puffs of dust or smoke danced on its engine deck and turret top, and sparks flew as if it were being struck by dozens of small hammers. He never saw the second missile aimed at the Luchs. Luckily, one hit was enough.
The armored car slewed right and stopped, with greasy black smoke pouring out of the engine compartment, in the rear. The jagged fragments spewed by the Javelin’s warhead not only pierced armor — they were also white-hot.
Through the binoculars, Reynolds saw two men stumble out of the Luchs, quickly scrambling out of sight. They were at the ragged edge of small-arms range, but his well-disciplined company held their fire. With two of their comrades dead and their vehicle wrecked, the German scouts were no longer a threat.
More explosions echoed across the countryside. Two more vehicles were also hit. The leftmost, targeted by the TOW, was a mass of flame. The TOW’s larger warhead must have detonated its on-board ammunition. The third, hit by two Javelins, sat motionless — wreathed in dust and smoke. Reynolds nodded somberly. Hell Team had just announced its existence to the EurCon commanders.
The first steps in the dance had been his, but he knew what had to come next, and so did the rest of his men. He’d exercised with the Germans as a young platoon leader, and they were good.
“Incoming! Take cover!” Sergeant Ford’s shouted warning rose above the shrill whistle of the first enemy shell arcing in.
Whammm.
Christ! As tight as he’d been hugging the earth before, Reynolds buried himself in it now. The explosion tore a chunk out of the ground a hundred meters away, still about ten meters out from the copse of trees they were holding, thank God.
It was as close as Reynolds had ever been to a real live artillery shell fired at him, and it awed and frightened him. In exercises, they used artillery simulators, “devices” that exploded with about the same force as an old M80 firecracker. You really had to use your imagination to turn a bunch of those into an artillery barrage.
He wouldn’t need to use his imagination ever again, he thought grimly. He’d remember this for the rest of his life. Probably a 155mm, the professional part of his mind speculated — a ranging shot. More to come.
There were, and for the next few minutes the earth and air blended in a thunderous roar as HE rounds hammered the area around Alpha Company’s positions. Reynolds’ stomach turned to water every time a round landed nearby, and he buried his face in the dirt, in genuine fear for his life. He risked a glance to his right. Adams was curled up into an impossibly small ball, tucked into the space between two trees.
After the first few blasts didn’t kill him, his sense of duty took over. How were his men doing? Their foxholes would protect them from near misses, but they had little overhead cover. Even more important, he knew what he’d be doing, if he were the enemy commander.
He risked raising his head, buffeted by the pressure wave from an explosion in the middle distance. Raising his glasses and bracing them on the mound of dirt piled in front of his hole, Reynolds saw tanks, formed up in neat rows, advancing out of the distant woods.
He studied them for a minute, then reached over, lightly punching Adams in the side. The corporal looked up, and Reynolds shouted, “Get the arty. We need a fire mission, SADARM, ref point seven one. Got it?”
Adams nodded. He scuttled over to the field phone. Hugging the instrument close, the corporal passed on his captain’s message — screaming to be heard over the shells still howling in and exploding all around.
The important thing was to keep busy, Reynolds realized. Action helped suppress fear. He concentrated on his next move. One of the first tactical lessons any junior officer ever learned was the importance of retaining the initiative. You couldn’t let the enemy force you into reacting the way he wanted you to. Well, right now the Germans wanted him to keep his head down. He studied the advancing line, ignoring the shells still raining down all around.
The German batteries were firing blind, he decided — flinging shells out toward unseen map coordinates. With their forward scouting parties either dead or in flight, they couldn’t possibly have an observer close enough to adjust their rounds directly onto his positions. So the enemy gunners were just firing among the trees, not concentrating their barrage anywhere, or even aiming it accurately. Of course, there was still dumb luck, he thought as a near miss rattled his teeth. He spat out dirt.
Adams shouted in his ear, “Done, sir.” Besides the American guns, the 3/187th had a battery of Polish-manned 155s in direct support, with a full artillery battalion on call if they needed it.