With his attention momentarily focused on the BTR, Bannon didn’t notice until it was too late that a lone Soviet soldier had risen up out of a trench not twenty meters to the right of 66 and was aiming an RPG straight at him. Bannon panicked. He tried to traverse the M2 to the right to engage the Soviet but he knew in his heart he wouldn’t make it in time. Calmly, the Russian took aim as he prepared to fire. He knew he had 66 and there wasn’t a damned thing Bannon could do to stop him.
But luck was still with Bannon as the Russian was suddenly thrown backwards as a stream of machine-gun rounds hit him in his chest. A 2nd Platoon tank had come up, seen the RPG gunner, and fired. The relief Bannon felt was incredible. For the second time in a matter of minutes, 66 had been saved by the slimmest of margins.
Overwhelmed by alternating rushes of fear, anger, and helplessness, the Soviet lieutenant watched the American tanks rumble by his position. All his efforts and those of his men had been for nothing. The American tanks had ripped through his position as if he hadn’t been there. Catching his breath once they were gone, he began to survey the scene. Those of his men who had not fled or been stuck down were coming up from the bottoms of their foxholes. Looking back over the field to his front, he saw several personnel carriers closing on his positions. “Well,” he thought out loud, “If we can’t kill the tanks, we’ll kill the American infantry.” With that, he grabbed an RPG from a dead man as he prepared to rally what was left of his platoon and continue the fight.
Once on Objective Log, the five remaining tanks of Team Yankee continued on in a staggered line moving forward through the woods. Friendly artillery had stopped falling, probably as a result of a call from Team Bravo. After entering the woods a hundred meters, the tanks lost contact with the Soviets. There was also no sign of the Mech Platoon.
Deciding it would be best to wait for the Mech Platoon to catch up, Bannon ordered Ortelli to slow down as he keyed his mike to make a net call on the company net. “ALL BRAVO 3 ROMEO ELEMENTS ON LOG, STOP AND FORM A COIL. I SAY AGAIN, STOP AND FORM A COIL. WE WILL WAIT FOR THE ZULU 77 ELEMENT TO CLOSE UP, OVER.”
To his utter amazement, none of the other tanks stopped. They didn’t even slow down. Bannon called again, but got no response. The radio was keying, but for some reason the other tanks were not hearing his transmissions. Even worse, instead of stopping, they were beginning to speed up. He called a third time with no luck. To make matters worse, artillery began to fall all round 66. He assumed it was Soviet but couldn’t tell. This caused the other TCs to crouch low in their cupolas and orient to their full attention to the front as they did their best to pick their way through the woods as quickly as possible.
The ragged line of tanks that remained, with Alpha 66 trailing slightly behind the others, had just emerged from the woods on the far side of Objective LOG when 66 suddenly slid to the right and stopped with a violent jerk that sent Kelp and Bannon bouncing about from side to side. As they were struggling to regain balance, Ortelli gunned the engine. But 66 did not move. Once he’d managed to regain his footing, Bannon stuck his head out his open hatch even as Ortelli continued to gun the engine in a desperate effort to move forward.
Without having to see what was keeping them from moving forward, Bannon realized they were stuck. Even worse, the last of Team Yankee’s tanks, all four of them, were continuing to roll on toward Hill 214 and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to stop them.
CHAPTER 6
ON THE RAZOR’S EDGE
“Lay off the accelerator, Ortelli. We aren’t going anywhere and you’re only making it worse.”
Kelp and Folk turned and stared at Bannon wide-eyed and fearful. The expression on Ortelli’s face, no doubt, was no different. All were waiting for his next brilliant idea.
“Why me?” he thought, “Why in the hell me?” He felt lost. He had managed to lose half the Team and get 66 stuck in an artillery barrage in the middle of a battle. Now his crew was looking at him expecting him to magically come up with the right answer. Maybe there was no right answer this time.
Then again, maybe there was, another part of Bannon’s brain chimed.
“Okay, right,” Bannon muttered, more to himself than his crew. “Listen up. I’m going to go out and see how bad off we are. Kelp, cover me with your machinegun. Sergeant Folk, be ready to give me a hand if I need you or provide suppressive fire if we’re shot at. Clear?” Both nodded their heads in unison.
With that, Bannon turned, opened the TC’s hatch all the way, and stuck his head out to check the situation. Alpha 66 was just on the edge of the artillery-beaten zone. Another twenty to thirty meters and they would have been in the clear. “So much for luck,” he grumbled.
Ducking back down, he turned to Kelp and asked if he were ready. The loader’s eyes were as big as hen’s eggs and his face drawn in fear. But he was standing ready to leap into position when Bannon gave the word. With no reason to delay any further, and after unplugging his CVC cord, Bannon took a deep breath. “Alright, let’s go.”
With that, he jumped out of the TC’s hatch, rolled down the side of the turret, and dropped to the ground. The drop turned out to be more than he had anticipated. With a thud, he landed hard on his side, knocking the wind out of him. As he lay there struggling to get his breath back, he looked around. The neat German forest they had rolled through was now ripped and pockmarked by the artillery fire. Shattered branches and uprooted trees were everywhere. And the artillery wasn’t finished yet, as rounds continued to impact here and there all around 66. Every now and then a loud zing or a sharp ping would cause Bannon to hunch over as a shell fragment from a near miss flew by him or ricocheting off the tank. Having no wish to stay out in the open longer than he needed to, Bannon got on with his inspection.
The track he was lying next to was still on all the road wheels and the drive sprocket. They hadn’t thrown a track. Thank God for small miracles, he thought as he crawled along, keeping as close to the tank as he could for safety. Looking between the road wheels, he could see the other track was also on. When he reached the rear of the tank, he found mounds of loose dirt the tracks had been throwing up to their rear. It was clear to him both tracks had been spinning free without gaining any traction.
It wasn’t until he crawled around to the rear of the tank and looked under the hull that he saw what had stopped them. The tank was hung up on a shattered tree that was still partially connected to its stump. As 66 had maneuvered through the forest, it had straddled the shattered tree and driven itself up onto the stump. To make matters worse, there was a shell crater to the right of the tank that the right track had dropped into just as 66 had bellied out on the stump.
The solution to their problem was not going to be simple. If there was another tank around, it would have been easy to hook tow cables between it and 66 and pull 66 off. But all the remaining tanks had continued onto Objective LINK.
They could sit and wait for help to come along, Bannon reasoned. Eventually, if the rest of the battalion came up, a tank in Team Bravo or an M-88 recovery vehicle could pull 66 off. But it seemed just as likely that the Russians who had survived being overrun by his Team would show up first. Odds were, he reasoned, they would be in a foul mood after being overrun.
That aside, Bannon knew sitting about, waiting there with his thumb up his ass was a non-starter. He was, after all, the team commander. He had to get back with the Team and regain control, even though the Team was now nothing more than a reinforced platoon. Besides, simply sitting there and waiting to see what happened next was not his style. A solution had to be found.