To Bannon’s surprise, Shell went on to inform Bannon that his first sergeant had four tanks and two PCs, including the HQ PC, most in varying states of repair, with him.
Exhausted and somewhat frazzled. It took Bannon a minute or two to realize that the attack against LOG had cost his Team only two tanks totally destroyed, 21 and 66, one PC, the 1st Squad of the Mech Platoon, and the FIST track. Casualties, not counting the men who were killed on Hill 214, amounted to fifteen killed and six wounded, which at first seemed to be out of proportion. Only when as he thought about it did it made sense. Alpha 21, the infantry PC and the squad that was aboard it alone accounted for thirteen of the dead.
While Bannon was mulling these revelations over, Major Shell contacted brigade, informed them they’d found Team Yankee and asked if they had orders for them. The Team, Shell was told, was to road march to the rear and rejoin the 3rd of the 78th in reserve. After getting the location of the Mech Battalion’s new CP in the rear and the route the Team was to use from Major Shell, Bannon asked for and received permission to stop by the 1st of the 4th’s combat trains and top-off the tracks with him. With that, the S-3 wish Bannon luck, mounted his PC, and headed down into Arnsdorf to join his commander, leaving Bannon free to make his way back to Team Yankee, relieved in every sense of the word.
With the formal portion of the morning briefing at the Tenth Corps Headquarters over, the commanding general rose from his seat and walked over to the two maps that were displayed before him. The large-scale map displayed the overall situation facing NATO throughout Germany. It was not good. Up in NORTHAG’s AO Hamburg and Bremerhaven had fallen. Though there had not been a breakthrough, several portions of the front were threatened with collapse as the Soviets prepared to continue their drive to the Dutch border. Already two corps commanders had requested the release of tactical nuclear weapons in order to break up concentrations of follow-on Soviet, Polish, and East German units that were moving toward the front to resume the attack.
In the CENTAG area of operations, where the Tenth Corps was, the situation was much better. The terrain there was not the best for armored warfare. In addition, French forces were readily at hand and beginning to reach the front.
Turning to his small-scale map that depicted the corps’ area of operation and current situation, the Corps commander began to run his finger along the front line trace of his units, stopping every so often to study Warsaw Pact forces that were opposing the corps. At one point, he stopped with his finger resting on a map symbol that represented a group of Soviet units and turned to his G-2. “George, these people here, you said that they are continuing west?”
“Yes, sir. We expect them to be in the vicinity of Kassel by tomorrow morning at the latest unless we can get the Air Force to slow them down some.”
“What’s coming up behind them? Who is going to be in the Leipzig area two to four days from now?”
“Well sir, as best we can tell, no one. There is one Polish division here that could be in that area,” the Corps G-2 informed his commander as he pointed to the map symbol representing the Pols. “But as of now, that’s about it.”
Without turning away from the map, and motioning with his hand as he spoke, the general began to issue instructions to his operations officer. “Frank, get your plans people to work on an attack centered around the 21st Panzer Division. As soon as the French relieve it, I want the 21st to move here and attack north into the Thuringer Wald. The mission of the 21st is to breach the Soviet security screen and then cross the IZB here. The second phase of the operation will be a passage of lines by either the 52nd or 54th Division with orders to continue the attack north across the Saale River towards Leipzig. I want this operation to commence in three days. Have your people prepared to present me a decision briefing by 1800 hours tonight. What are your questions?”
The operations officer studied the map for a moment, then turned to the general. “Sir, can I plan on using the 25th Armored Division? Also, how far do you want us to plan after we reach Leipzig?”
“Frank, I want you to use everything we’ve got. For planning purposes you will consider our axis of advance from where we are to Leipzig, Berlin, and finally the Baltic coast. If I can convince the CINC, I intend to go for broke. Until one of the Jedi knights in the G-3 Plans section comes up with a more fearsome name, we’re calling this operation Winner Take All.”
Having grown used to their commanding general’s aggressive nature and willingness to take risks, the briefing broke up without further ado. With all the initial planning guidance they needed in hand, the staff officers scattered to prepare for the evening briefing.
This road march was, for the most part, uneventful. Team Yankee had forty-five kilometers to cover and could have done it in an hour had it not been for the traffic. As it was going to the rear this time, and its movement had not been scheduled or coordinated by the division’s movement control center, it was bumped by higher priority traffic going to the front, or forced to yield the road in order to allow wounded headed for the rear to get by.
After spending most of the last few days along the forward edge of the division’s sector, Bannon was amazed at just how many vehicles there were driving around in division’s rear. As they sat on the side of the road waiting for a convoy to go by before the Team could move again, Garger wondered if someone was really in charge of all this. There were long convoys made up of supply and fuel trucks, artillery batteries, columns of ambulances with wounded aboard moving rearward while others making a return trip to pick up more, a field hospital moving forward, engineers everywhere you looked, and equipment he had never seen before and whose purpose he had no idea what it did. That anyone could bring order out of this apparent chaos, keep people fed, vehicles fueled, and units arriving at the right place at the right time was a source of wonder to him.
The biggest problem Bannon had during the long pauses while the Team waited for a break in the traffic was waking everyone up when it was time to move again. It seemed that each time they stopped, the drivers, and more than a few TCs, slumped down in their seats and fell asleep. Once, when a break in the traffic appeared, it took so long to wake everyone up that by the time they were ready to roll, a new convoy came by, leaving the Team no choice but to wait for it to pass. Naturally the men immediately went back to sleep.
The worst part of the march was seeing the suffering the local Germans who had stayed in place were having to endure. As the Team rolled past them, the few who bothered to look up at the passing American tanks and PCs regarded the men belonging to Team Yankee with blank stares. Bannon shuddered to think what was going through their minds, especially those of the old people. For them, this was the second time in their lives they had seen war. In one village the Team passed through, an old woman who bore an eerie resemblance to his own mother stopped pushing a cart and watched. Bannon could see tears running down her cheeks as Alpha 55 went by. He would never know for whom she was crying. Not that it mattered. By the time this war was over, he expected there would be many a tear shed, and not just for the dead.
It was the sight of the children that bothered him the most. During peacetime maneuvers through the German countryside they would wave and laugh as they ran along the side of the tanks, yelling to the soldiers to throw them candy or rations. American soldiers often did. But now the children didn’t come. Instead, when they heard the rumble of the tanks, they ran and hid. Only a few of the bolder ones peeked to see whose tanks they were. Even when they saw that the tanks were American, their eyes betrayed the terror and fear they felt.