C Company had been nicknamed “Crusader” when it was a US unit. That, of course, was a no-go now. Nor could the tank unit be known as Charlie Company anymore either – that phonetic designation was sexist, as were those of its sister units, Alpha and Bravo Companies. Alpha was patriarchal, and Bravo was too much like “Braves,” which might offend Indigenous/First Peoples. Also, they were not referred to as “sister” units anymore; they were “sibling units,” since “sister” imposed a narrow gender identity on the units of the armor battalion.
Colonel Deloitte had tolerated the Crusader and other traditional nicknames, but a tirade about those regressive, oppressive nicknames had taken up half of Major Little’s final orders briefing to his subordinate leaders. They would use the official nicknames, he proclaimed. So, it came to pass that Caring Company’s commander, Captain Jack Cardillo, stood up in the roof hatch next to the mounted .50 caliber machine gun mount, second in the line of vehicles rolling down Route 231, watching for enemies across the flat, open fields.
There were ten tanks in his company, less than the 14 at full strength. His company was followed by a dozen 5-ton trucks packed with infantry, plus a logistics train including a fueler. They had a rougher ride – the tracks of the nearly 70-ton tanks were tearing up the road pretty well.
They were five miles past the line of departure/line of contact and nothing. No people at all, and no opposition. He checked his watch – on schedule, which was good. Route 231 was the key MSR – main supply route – into Jasper, and they could not let it get backed up.
The little hamlet of Whitfield – no more than some houses, barns, and buildings sitting at an intersection with another county road – lay ahead. The woods were getting closer to the road, which made him nervous. He’d prefer to stop, dismount infantry and clear them, but the commander was unequivocal about his commander’s intent – don’t slow down on the way to Jasper. And also, don’t engage in cis-het normative stereotyping.
The second point seemed most important to Major Little.
Cardillo didn’t hear the shots behind him over the roar of the 1500-horsepower Honeywell AGT1500C turbine engine and the clack of the tracks beneath him. The call came over his radio headphones on the company command net.
“Crusader Six, Crusader One-One, contact left! Engaging!”
The first tank of first platoon was under fire – and replying.
Captain Cardillo turned around to see several M1s stopped and firing their .50 cals into the woods on the east side of the road. One of the turrets rotated its 120 millimeter smoothbore gun left.
“Oh, shit,” Cardillo hissed.
Crusader One-One’s main gun fired into the trees, and the captain could hear the roar even through his hearing protection. The shell detonated inside the woods – a M830 high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) round meant for enemy armor. The People’s Republic had not bothered investing in the canister rounds that essentially turned the massive cannon into a giant shotgun.
Using a HEAT round on guerrillas was like using a sledgehammer for a gnat. And they didn’t have enough shells to spare.
“Crusader elements, this is Six! Cease fire main guns, I say again, cease fire main guns! Suppress and move, over!”
He took his own M2 machine gun turned it toward the woods. No targets. The other tanks were moving again now, accelerating to catch up with the rest. But behind them, the infantry trucks were stopping and troops were dismounting. Behind them, the column was halted.
His radio came to life again, this time on the brigade command net. “Caring Six, this is Blue Falcon, you will use the proper call signs! Acknowledge!”
“Shit,” Cardillo said, watching the movement descend into chaos behind him and the casualty reports began coming in over the company command freq.
When the tank round hit the tree and detonated, Banks was sprayed with some pieces of wood but luckily he was far enough away that he wasn’t sliced by splinters. No one had been hurt by the fusillade of return fire the convoy had laid down after their initial assault on the column. Banks rose up and gestured to his guerrillas to fall back to their alternate positions, just as they had rehearsed. Through the trees, he could see trucks stopped and infantry dismounting. All was going as planned.
The insurgents would be long gone before the infantry organized themselves to sweep through the woods.
The guerrillas had initiated the ambush after letting half the tanks pass by unmolested. The initial volley was some rifle fire, both from the lighter AR15s and various hunting rifles, aimed at the crews riding exposed out of the turret hatches. Four of the tanks actually took fire. One of the crewmen got hit in the arm, and then the trail tanks stopped the convoy to engage the guerrillas while the infantry dismounted to clear the woods adjacent to the road.
But the guerrillas cleared themselves out of the woods. They couldn’t win that fight, so they weren’t going to fight it.
Farther back to the north, the logistics portion of the convoy was held up too. It sat there, waiting for the road ahead to clear. That was when the second group of guerrillas attacked.
This time the insurgent force was heavier, and reinforced with the two HUMVEEs liberated at the airfield. Their .50 caliber machine guns began sweeping the trucks, wreckers, and fuelers that formed the combat trains of Crusader Company and its attached infantry company. At the same time, riflemen engaged from 500 meters or further. The support soldiers attempted to return fire with M4s, but this was pushing the maximum effective range of their carbines. Outgunned, the support soldiers took cover as their trucks were riddled. The fuelers especially drew fire, one eventually bursting into flames.
After a few minutes, the guerrillas withdrew. By the time reinforcements arrived, the enemy had vanished. The PRA forces collected up the dead and wounded, then pushed the wrecked vehicles off into the ditches at the side of the road and began moving forward again. Now they were behind schedule.
Bravo Company’s tanks and infantry rolled through Alfordsville, which sat astride the county road that was one of the three major north-south arteries in the sector. The town was a collection of rustic homes and a church, with a population of about 100 before the evacuation. About two dozen people had stayed behind, the others having gone south or into the woods to fight. Once the army units moved out southward, the PSF and the PVs moved in, about 50 of them. They went house to house, the PSF mostly focused on dragging the civilians to the center of town. A pair of citizens did decide to run; the Volunteers caught them and shot them dead.
Kunstler and his tactical team, in a convoy of four black SUVs, pulled into town and stopped. Kunstler got out and the senior PSF officer approached.
“We have about 20 prisoners,” he said. “Old men and women.”
“So the young ones are out in the woods,” Kunstler growled. There were several bullet holes in his armored Blazer.
“They deny it. They say no one from here’s a terrorist. They say all the younger people went south when they were warned what was happening.”
“Of course they did,” Kunstler said. “Shoot them all.”
He went back to his vehicle as all around the PVs carried loot out of the houses that they had not yet torched.