Not wanting to sit out in the middle of the field by himself, Bannon ordered Kelp to follow 55. Dropping down to where the radios were, he flipped through his CEOI, found the radio frequency for the brigade’s command net, switched the frequency, and reset the radio’s preset frequencies.
While the battalion net had been relatively quiet, brigade’s was crowded with a ceaseless stream of calls, orders, half-completed conversations, and requests for more information. Bannon entered the net just as the battalion S-3 Air was finishing the report Bannon had directed him to make. Not surprisingly, most of the information was wrong. Colonel Brunn, the brigade commander, came back and asked the S-3 Air to confirm the battalion’s current location.
Before he could respond, Bannon cut in, giving the correct location of the companies that were still combat effective and his assessment of the battalion’s current situation. He ended by informing the brigade commander that in his opinion the battalion was no longer capable of continuing the attack, running down a list of the reasons why. When he finished, there was a moment of silence on the brigade net while the grim news sank in. Then, without hesitation or a long-winded discussion, Colonel Brunn contacted the commander of the 1st of the 4th Armor and ordered him to pass through the mech battalion and continue the attack north. After this message was acknowledged by 1st of the 4th, Brunn came back to Bannon, ordering him to rally the battalion as best he could and to keep the brigade S-3 posted on its status. For the moment, Task Force 3rd of the 78th Infantry was pretty much out of the war.
As Garger led his platoon through the area where Charlie Company, then the Soviet tank company had, for all practical purposes, been wiped out, he realized that he was seeing another aspect of war that he had so far missed, the aftermath, up close and personal. Up until then, all the engagements he’d been part of had been at long range. Even the run through the town of Arnsdorf with the CO during the defense of Hill 214, where they had been eyeball to eyeball with the Russians, had been but a blur, a frenzied dash carried out at night at high speed.
This was different. The slow movement of the Team through the battle area afforded Garger his first opportunity bear witness to the carnage left in the wake of a battle up close and personal. Everywhere he looked there were smashed tanks and PCs. Some were burning fiercely, throwing off thick, oily black clouds of smoke. Others showed no apparent damage, almost as if its crew had simply stopped their vehicle and abandoned it. It was the dead and the dying sprawled about in tight little groups near the disabled or destroyed track that were most unsettling. To his left, there was a Russian tank crewman hanging halfway out of a burning tank, his body blackened and burning. Over to his right, a group of dead infantrymen who had abandoned their PC in the middle of the fight only to be cut down by machinegun fire. Here and there the wounded were being gathered by medics who were frantically sorting out those who could be saved from those who were beyond help. Garger didn’t want to watch. He wanted to turn away. But that was not possible. Even if he could close his eyes and shut out he horrors around him, the stench of burning rubber, diesel, and flesh would have been enough to paint a picture in his mind that was all too vivid, and all too real.
The time that lapsed between hearing the last shot in the valley to the west and the sound of tanks coming from the east could not have been more than five minutes. Polgar heard the distinctive squeak of tracks being pulled through drive sprockets just as the forward security team he had sent out reported that there were Russian tanks inching their way down the trail toward them. Before he gave them permission to pull back, he reminded the NCO in charge of the security element OP he needed to report the type and number of tanks they were observing. Sheepishly, the NCO informed him he could see three T-72s moving through the thick wood toward the draw where the first group of Soviet tanks had emerged.
Instead of trying to hold them in the open at the tree line, Polgar had decided to deploy his three squads further into in the dense woods where they would have the greatest advantages and the tanks would be the most vulnerable, if not downright helpless. The Dragons would be worthless in this fight. The antitank guided missile they fired needed to fly some distance before the warhead armed. There would neither enough standoff distance for them to arm nor a clear line of sight that the gunner would have between him and the tank he was tracking. This fight was going to be strictly man against tank and at very close range.
Anxious to get his dismounts in place as quickly as possible, his orders to the squad leaders were short and sweet. “Get you men in position and under cover. Fire on my command or when the lead tank hits a mine.”
With that, he set out along the trail at a trot accompanied by his driver who was carrying the last two anti-tank mines they had. They’d only have enough time for a surface lay and a quick scattering of leaves over them once they were armed. Hopefully, that would be enough. And if it wasn’t, then…
Polgar didn’t want to think about the then as he hustled down the trail. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.
It came as great no surprise to Polgar that commanders of the three tanks were all standing upright and leaning as far forward out of their open hatches as they dare. More concerned about keeping from throwing a track as other tanks behind them had, their eyes were glued to the trail just in front of their tanks. None of them seem to be too concerned with security. The fact that the lead element had passed through these woods without incident apparently satisfied this group of Russian tankers that the trail was clear. Either that, Polgar reasoned, or they were hell-bent on joining the lead company as quickly as they could. Unable to help himself, Polgar chuckled he watched the T-72s advance. They would be, sooner than they expected.
The men who had been on Hill 214 with Polgar were far more confident than they had been before that fight. They’d seen with their own eyes that under the right circumstances, the big Soviet tanks could be defeated. So rather than being fearful, some saw the coming fight as a challenge of sorts, a test to see how fast it would take them to kill the tanks. The detonation of the first antitank mine was their cue to start the clock.
As the Platoon went into action, there was nothing for Polgar to do. Every man deployed along the trail had been hastily briefed on what was expected of him by his squad leader as he’d assigned a position. Machinegunners and riflemen cut down the tank commanders before they could drop down inside their tanks. Other infantrymen with light antitank rocket launchers, called LAWs, began to fire. A single M72 LAW with a 66mm warhead is not enough to kill a tank. All of the T-72s would need to be hit multiple times before it was destroyed or rendered combat ineffective. With this in mind, Polgar had had each squad leader organized a three-man tank killer team. Each man in the team carried several LAWs as well as his rifle. It was up to each of the three squad leader to designate the tank his tank killers were to target and give the order to fire. Once engaged, each man would fire in turn, hitting the same tank repeatedly until the squad leader gave the order to ceasefire or they ran out of LAWs.
The first two tanks were dispatched without much trouble. The driver of third tank, seeing the plight of the first two, had begun to back up as quickly as he dared. He didn’t get far. Two infantrymen, on opposite sides of the trail, pulled a mine attached to a rope onto the trail under the third tank as it was backing up. The detonation severed a track, blew off a set of road wheels and brought the tank to a standstill, but did not kill the crew. Trapped in his disabled tank, with his commander dead, the gunner began to spray the woods indiscriminately with machine-gun fire in an effort to keep his unseen assailants at bay.