The gunners checked their thermal sights, adjusting the contrast and clarity of the image to obtain the best possible sight picture before turning their attention to their computers, checking settings and functions to ensure the fire-control system was ready and operating. Tank commanders, perched in their cupolas, divided his time between watching their crews as they prepared for battle and scanning the tank’s assigned sectors. When all was ready, a TC would turn to his wingman and wave until the wingman acknowledged him.
With their weapons ready, the men of Team Yankee prepared mentally for their ordeal, each in his own way. Those who had not forgotten how to do so and still put their faith in God said a prayer. Many of the young soldiers, infantry and tanker alike, weaned on technology, found it so much easier to put their trust in their machines than the concept of a divine being, leading them to check and recheck their weapons. Still, even the most technologically savvy member of Team Yankee could not escape the humbling experience of war, an experience that tends to strip all who survive their baptism of fire of smug pretenses and arrogance. The awesome spectacle of war, and the ever present death tends to bring a man face-to-face with himself. For many of the young men in Team Yankee, it was the first time in their lives they found themselves facing their own mortality. Some found they lacked something, an emptiness. Along the way, a fair number sought refuge and comfort in beliefs long dormant. In the shadow of death, amidst the violence of the coming attack, simple, heartfelt prayers completed the Team’s preparation for battle.
Not long after the artillery began pounding Langen, the scouts reported the appearance of the Soviets. They were, as had been expected, tanks, advancing in company columns down the center of the Langen gap. As was their habit, the Russian in command of them was waiting until the last minute to deploy. This made it easy for the scouts to divide up the Soviet formation up among themselves and engage without needing to worry about the optical tracker of their sights accidently becoming confused with the thermal beacon of a missile launched by another track, a catastrophe that would cause the missile the gunner should have been tracking to lose control of it.
With no need of further instructions from battalion, the scouts began the grim business of the night by engaging at maximum range and calling for supporting artillery fires. The commander of each track focused his full attention on carrying out the battle drill he and his crew had practiced countless times in training, firing, moving, firing, moving.
For his part the Soviet commander, who recognized this threat for what it was, also adhered to his battle drill, doing his best to ignore the scouts. He appreciated the scouts did not constitute a major threat to his regiment. To stop and engage the scouts would not only cost him tanks he could ill afford to lose, doing so would prevent him from reaching the valley and accomplishing their mission in a timely fashion before the enemy could bring addition forces to bear.
The scouts were persistent. Just as a single mosquito can keep a full-grown man from sleeping, the scout platoon eventually did succeed in drawing some of the Russian tanks away from their mission. A company of tanks peeled off from the formation and began to engage the scouts. In accordance with their instructions, when they found themselves in danger of becoming decisively engaged, the scouts fired a few more rounds to draw their attackers farther away from the advancing regiment. Then, they disappeared into the darkness. The Soviet regimental commander knew they were still out there, waiting to strike again. And though they had done little to impede his advance, they had cost him a number of tanks as well as an entire company that would need to stay behind and keep them at bay.
To the men in Team Yankee, the Soviet advance was an awesome spectacle. Silently they watched as the neatly arrayed horde of Russian tanks bypassed Langen and began to move across their front. The fires burning in Langen provided a perfect backdrop, silhouetting the Soviet tanks as each company deployed from column of companies into line, with one company behind the other as if they were on parade. As the lead company began to pass to the south of Langen, Major Jordan called for the scatterable mine fields.
Amidst the noise of the Soviet artillery fire that continued to pound Langen, the US artillery-delivered mines arrived almost unnoticed. That is, until Soviet tanks began to run over them. The Soviet officers knew about scatterable mines and their capabilities. There wasn’t anything they didn’t know about the American military. But to have knowledge about a weapon system does not always mean that you know what to do about it when you encounter it for the first time. The manner in which the Soviets dealt with the scatter-able minefields was a case in point.
As tanks began to hit the mines, shedding tracks severed by the detonation and stopping, company and battalion commanders became confused. Buttoned up and with limited visibility, they at first thought they were under fire and took to searching for the telltale flashes of tank fire or the back blast of anti-tank missile launchers. All the while more tanks hit the mines, stopping them and causing other tanks to slow down or swerve left or right to avoid colliding with disabled tanks in front of them. Belatedly, it occurred to them they were in a minefield.
It was, in the opinion of the regimental commander, an unexpected inconvenience but one that his battalions could deal with. With a single order, the companies began to reform into columns behind tanks equipped with mine plows and rollers. Once he was sure his tanks were out of the minefield, he would give the order to redeploy and continue as before. It was a battle drill they had rehearsed many times before and were able to carry out with little trouble.
It was at this point, when the Soviets were in the midst of redeploying, that Major Jordan ordered Delta Company, the ITVs, and Team Bravo to open fire. The sudden mass volley caught the Soviet regimental commander and the commander of his lead tank battalion off-guard. They had thought that once they had cleared the choke point between the two hills and had begun to bypass Langen there would be no stopping them. It had been, after all, the logical place to stop them as evidenced by the American minefield. Confusion, both in the Soviet battle formation caught in the middle of redeploying and in the minds of commanders faced with an unexpected problem became worse as the Soviet tank company commanders and platoon leaders began to die.
With the Soviets thrashing about in the open, Jordan directed the artillery to switch to firing dual-purpose improved conventional ammunition, or DPICM. Like the scatterable mine, the artillery projectiles were loaded with small submunitions. The submunitions in DPICM, however, were bomblets that exploded on contact and were designed to penetrate the thin armor covering the top of armored vehicles. Confusion quickly degenerated into pandemonium. Some tanks simply stopped and began to fire at their tormentors in Langen or on the hillside to their right. Others tried to carry out the last orders they’d received or simply pressed on. Tanks from the second tank battalion of the regiment which were still in the gap between the hills charged directly toward Langen. In doing so they ran afoul of the minefields laid by the engineers and infantry. Some tanks, leaderless and commanded by NCOs who possessed a strong sense of self preservation turned toward the woods where Team Yankee was, thinking the silent tree line there offered safe haven.