For a while, Weir considered going straight to his friend Lieutenant General Horn, then decided against it. Going over the head of his immediate commander could lead to his dismissal. The last thing Weir wanted to do was get thrown out of the war before he got into it.
The grinding of gears and the laboring of truck engines in the distance were the only noises that penetrated the cool night air. A heavily laden supply column led by a Soviet BRDM armored car en route to the front was slowly making its way up an incline. In another two minutes the column would come to a bend in the road just before it crested the hill. There it would be met by Sergeant First Class Duncan and the men of the 1st Platoon.
After escaping the Soviet onslaught, Duncan had rallied his men and taken them into hiding a few kilometers away. There he took stock of what he had.
That wasn't very much. Seventeen men had followed him out of the foxholes.
They brought with them their individual weapons, a couple of dozen hand grenades, some claymore nines, eight LAW antitank-rocket launchers and two Dragon missiles. Food was almost nonexistent, and they had only the water in their canteens. The one thing that the platoon had plenty of was 5.56mm. ammo for their rifles and squad automatic rifles, or SAWs.
As Duncan was checking, it became obvious that none of the men, including him, had fired a rifle. There simply had not been any targets that small-arms fire would have had an effect on.
The first major problem Duncan faced was getting his men over the shock of the disaster they had just survived. Once out of danger, they fell into a state of despondency. One man kept asking no one in particular,
"What happened? What in the hell happened?" over and over. Duncan himself was bewildered and in a stupor. The image of his lieutenant's body still caused a violent reaction. Never having been confronted with a situation of the magnitude he now faced, Duncan did what came naturally to him, what he had been trained for: being a soldier and a leader.
First he organized his group into two squads and distributed equally all the weapons, ammunition and food: That done, he got the men together and told them what they were going to do. He did not ask for opinions, he did not ask for a vote. As far as he was concerned, there was no alternative for them. They would fight. Duncan was honest with his men. There was no false bravado, there were no promises. The men watched and listened intently as he told them that they would move south, paralleling the road the Soviets were using. When the opportunity presented itself, they would ambush convoys or small patrols. Duncan made it clear that they were going to fight whenever and wherever they could get the drop on the Russians. He held the hope that they would be able to make their way back to their own lines, but stressed that that was only a hope.
The men accepted Duncan's decision in silence. That night there was no further discussion on the matter. They were at war. They were soldiers,
American soldiers, renowned for their ability to do things that defied logic. In the tradition of Valley Forge, the Alamo, New Market and the Bulge, the men of 1st Platoon followed their leader and prepared to exact their revenge.
Duncan watched as the BRDM leading the convoy rolled forward. He divided the platoon into teams. The first team consisted of three men armed with LAWS. On Duncan's order they would take out the BRDM leading the convoy.
Their firing would be the signal for the main team, deployed just off the road, to fire on the trucks nearest them. These men were further broken down into three-man sections. Each section was to fire on one truck, taking out the drivers and shooting the tires. Once a section managed to stop a truck and the immediate area appeared to be safe, two men were given sixty seconds to raid the truck for food, water and any types of antitank weapons they could find, while the third man covered them. The last team, located at the far end of the ambush, was the security team. Because the platoon was not large enough to deal with an entire column and could take on only a small chunk of it by isolating the lead trucks, the security team's job was to keep the rest of the convoy busy and provide covering fires while the ambush team rummaged through the stopped trucks. Once finished, all teams would withdraw to a predesignated rally point, then move to a hiding place where they would spend the following day.
Like most commanders leading men into battle, Duncan was nervous as he lay there watching the BRDM labor up the incline. His mind was filled with fear and apprehension. Had he thought of everything? Were his men really ready for combat? What happened if the BRDM wasn't knocked out by the team with the LAWS? Were the lead trucks full of supplies or Soviet infantry? Was the security team large enough to deal with the rest of the convoy? What would they do if his men didn't find any food on the trucks? Questions and concerns cascaded through his mind.
Despite the cool evening, he was sweating. He wiped his hands and watched the progress of the BRDM.
The image of his lieutenant's body, ripped open and quivering as its life force oozed out, flashed through Duncan's brain. His stomach began to turn and knot up. As he tried hard to compose himself, he wondered what he feared more, death or failure. Death was easier for him. Once he was dead, his problems were over. Failure was the more to be feared of the two. If he failed, his men would pay the price.
They would be ripped apart, just like the lieutenant. Other horrible images would crowd his mind. That, to Duncan, was more terrible than death.
The soldier next to Duncan nudged him and pointed. The BRDM was about to reach the point where the team with the LAWs could engage it. Duncan watched, waited and prepared to give the order to fire. In another second, it would be out of his hands.
A convoy of T-80 tanks of the 3rd Battalion, Soviet 68th Tank Regiment, moved through the darkness like a great mechanical snake. Its body turned and slithered along the road relentlessly, always going south.
This snake, however, was not alert. Hours of monotonous moving at the same unchanging, slow speed through a countryside that did not vary had drained the last ounce of vigilance from the young tank commanders and their crews. The rhythmic thumping of the tanks' tracks on the road, the steady vibration of the engines, and the silence of the radios and the intercom were more conducive to sleep than to alertness. Instead of standing in their turrets or peering through their sights, watching their assigned sectors, they struggled to stay awake, occupying themselves with thoughts of home.
Besides, with security forces out on the flanks and recon elements in front, the danger of an attack on the tanks was minimal.
As the long columns moved, it was not unusual for a tank to slowly drift off toward the shoulder of the road and into a ditch as its crew fell asleep. Sometimes the driver or the tank commander would feel the change in the vibrations of the tank as it moved onto the rough shoulder. When this happened, the driver, startled by the calamity he faced, would jerk the tank back into line, tossing the crew in the turret about. On other occasions, the crew never realized what was happening until the tank literally fell off the road.