Bannon was not happy about the disruption in the march, but was thankful for the chance to walk around some, stretch his legs, and break the monotony. It was 0345 Alpha time. They had been moving for almost three hours and were scheduled to attack in another hour and fifteen minutes. As he moved up the column, he noticed a lot of activity in front of the Team and in the fields at the side of the road. Further up ahead he could see lights a little beyond the head of the column.
Uleski was already dismounted and was talking to some people when Bannon reached Alpha 55. One of the people with the XO turned out to be an engineer officer.
“Well, Ski, what do we have?” Bannon asked as he joined them.
“Sir, this is Captain Lawson, commander of the 79th Bridge Company” Uleski informed Bannon as he motioned to a tall captain across from him. “His people put this ribbon bridge in earlier today. When Team Bravo crossed it, too many tanks got onto the bridge at once and did some damage. Captain Lawson has to close the bridge and repair it before we can pass.”
“Captain Lawson, Sean Bannon, commanding Team Yankee. How long is it going to take your people to unscrew the mess some of my tanks made?”
Lawson gave him an estimate and a brief explanation of what had to be done and why the work had to be finished before he would chance having any more tanks cross. “Barring any unforeseen problems, it shouldn’t take more thirty minutes.” As Lawson seemed to know what he was about, and his people were hustling, Bannon asked him to keep the XO posted, excused himself and Uleski, and let Lawson get on with his work.
Both Bannon and Uleski agreed that except for the bridge, everything so far was going very well. After telling him to stay at the front and monitor the work on the bridge, Bannon was going to walk down the column and have the tanks disperse and shut down. This halt would give the people a chance to dismount, shake out their legs, and check their tracks. If the engineers finished before he returned, Uleski was to have his driver crank up 55 as a signal.
The crews were slow to respond. They were tired. Perhaps the halt was a good thing, Bannon quickly concluded. It would give everyone a break. One by one the tanks moved off the road, with every other one alternating to the left, then the right. All stopped facing out at a forty-five-degree angle. This was a formation called a herringbone, used by mechanized forces at times like this. By the time Bannon had reached the 3rd Platoon, he didn’t need to tell the crews any more. The tank commanders began to move their tracks off onto the side in the alternating pattern when they saw the tanks in front of them do so. By the time he reached the Mech Platoon, the entire center of the road was cleared.
It was then that it occurred to him that something was wrong. Had Charlie Company kept to the road march timetable published by battalion, it should have been closing up behind the Team by now. But there was no one behind the Mech Platoon belonging to the battalion. The road was clear for as far as Bannon could see. When the last of the tracks had shut down their engines, he walked about a hundred meters down the road and listened for the distinctive whine of Charlie Company’s personnel carriers. Still night air, an occasional rumble from distant artillery, and the pounding and yelling of the engineers working on the bridge at the head of the column was all that could be heard. After five minutes, he abandoned his vigil and began to walk back to the head of the column. He really didn’t know if there was, in fact, anything wrong. Unfortunately, with radio listening silence in effect, he had no way of finding out. All he could do was hope that if something really terrible had happened to the rest of the battalion, someone would take the initiative to break radio listening silence and spread the word. But that was a hope, not a sure thing, giving rise to a bad feeling that things were not going as well as he had thought before their unscheduled halt. If something was wrong, there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
It took Pat’s parents a moment to realize that their joyous welcome wasn’t evoking any response. She barely acknowledged their presence. All she did was look at them with a unblinking stare, returning their greeting with a soft, almost hesitant, “Hi Mom, Dad,” as she stood there with her three children. Sarah had her arms wrapped tightly around her mother’s neck as if holding on for dear life. Sean was leaning against her side, grasping one of her hands with both of his while Kurt clung to her other arm with head tucked down, sucking his thumb.
For an uncomfortable moment Pat’s parents simply stood there, not knowing what to do or say. Her father broke this uncomfortable silence by offering to go get their suitcases while they waited there. Pat’s simple response, “there aren’t any,” further ratcheted up her parents already anxiety. After her father gave her a long, hard look, he turned and went off to pull the car around to the front of the terminal.
When Pat and the children moved to leave, they moved as one, none of them wanting to let go of the other. Pat’s mother continued to stare, feeling less and less at ease in the presence of her daughter. As they left the terminal, an airman took Pat’s name, the children’s names, her husband’s name and unit, and Pat’s destination. The final checklist and roster in their long odyssey.
Outside, Pat and the children climbed in the back seat of her father’s car. Even in the car they continued to clutch onto each other as if fearful of letting go. Only as they were pulling away did Pat turn and watched as the terminal faded from sight. They were finally leaving military control.
She thought about that for the moment. She thought about the other wives and their children. She looked at her parents in the front seat and asked herself the same question tens of thousands of other military wives were asking themselves; Now what? The evacuation was over, but now what? There was nothing more to do. She was safe. Her children were safe. She was going back to her parent’s home.
But what then? Wait? Wait for what? For the war to end? For word to come about her husband? And what kind of word would it be? Pat had listened to stories of Old Army wives who had waited while their husbands were in Vietnam. She wasn’t ready for that, she told herself. Even now, safe in the US, the dark abyss of the trackless future opened before her.
Like an earthen dam that had tried to hold back more water than it could, her resolve collapsed. As she began to cry, her children silently tightened their grips on their weeping mother in an effort to comfort her as well as themselves.
In the front seat her parents, not knowing what to do or say, simply stared at the road ahead.
CHAPTER 5
HUNTER AND HUNTED
Twenty-eight minutes from the time Bannon had talked to Captain Lawson, Alpha 55 cranked up. The bridge was opened and ready for Team Yankee. The engineers, however, made sure that the tanks didn’t screw up their work again. An engineer NCO stood at the near end of the bridge, stopping each tank as it approached the ramp where he would hold it until the tank on the bridge got off on the far side of the river. When it was Alpha 66’s turn at the on ramp, Lawson came up to the side of the tank.
“Right on schedule, Lawson,” Bannon shouted down to him. “Your people done good. Give ’em a well-deserved atta boy for me.”