Bannon waited until at 1100 hours to put word out to the platoons to roust everyone and start checking their tracks and cleaning weapons. When Uleski came around, blurry-eyed and rumpled, Bannon instructed him to compile a complete status of the Team on ammo, fuel, other POL needs, maintenance problems, and personnel needs for each vehicle by noon. At that time Bannon intended to have a short meeting with the platoon leaders to go their current status and give them any news from battalion that he could come up with. Still not quite awake, the best Uleski could come up with by way of response was a sigh, a nod, and a mumbled “Roger, Out” before setting about his tasks.
Kelp and Bannon already had a good head-start on the task of cleaning up and preparing for the next battle. They had spent the morning cleaning 66’s three machineguns as well as their own pistols while watching Delta Company’s patrols go about their grim tasks in the valley below. Although Kelp had matured a great deal, he was still fascinated by some of the more gruesome aspects of war. Every so often, as he was sitting on top of the turret cleaning a machinegun, he would stop what he was doing and yell out to Bannon. “There goes another one!” Grabbing Bannon’s binoculars, he would watch as a patrol stopped to dispatch a Russian who had been hiding and had chosen to flee rather than surrender. After each chase was terminated, usually in a most direct and brutal manner, he would offer his views and critique the patrol’s performance, noting that they were using way too much ammunition to bring down the Russians they stumbled upon. When Bannon offered to arrange it so that Kelp could go out there and show the infantry how to do it, he lightened up on his remarks, but continued to watch.
It wasn’t until well after noon that Bannon met with Major Jordan, who had been called to brigade headquarters midmorning. On his return, he, in turn, gathered his commanders and staff into Langen for a meeting. He had new orders.
Both the battalion’s mission and its organization had changed. Team Yankee, with all three of its organic tank platoons and one mech platoon was being returned to 1st of the 4th Armor. What was left of the 3rd of the 78th was to remain at Langen to cover the Langen gap and serve as a reserve for the Division. Major Jordan explained the reasoning behind all this and what he knew of “The Big Picture.”
Division expected the Soviets would renew their efforts to break into the Division’s flank even as they were throwing whatever forces they could scrape up between the brigade’s lead element and the Saale River. Thus far the brigade had been able to continue the advance, but at an ever mounting cost. At the rate the 1st of the 4th was taking casualties, Major Jordan pointed out, it would soon be combat ineffective.
The problem facing the Division, and the rest of the US Army in Europe, was that it was running out of equipment. Prepositioned war stocks of tanks, personnel carriers, trucks, and all the hardware needed to wage a modern war had run out. Some equipment was arriving from the States, but not near enough to replace equipment at the rate it was being lost. Even if the Navy could provide the necessary sealift to carry what was needed and move it across the Atlantic without losing it to Russian submarines, there wasn’t enough equipment available in the States to make good the loses being sustained by the United States Army in Europe, known by its acronym USAREUR. At prewar levels, which most of the factories were still operating at, the US could only produce a pitifully small number of M-l tanks a month. USAREUR was currently losing the equivalent of one month’s production of tanks each and every day.
The solution to this problem was simple, but draconian. Since there wasn’t enough to keep all units at or near full strength, only those units still capable of carrying out offensive operations or holding critical sectors would be receiving any replacements of men and equipment for the foreseeable future. The 3rd of the 78th, which was no longer capable of offensive operations, was one of those units that fell in that latter category.
“That doesn’t mean we’re out of the fight,” Major Jordan cautioned his commanders and staff. “Our orders are to hold Langen and parry any renewed efforts by the Soviet’s to punch trough into the brigade’s flank while the balance of the brigade continues to push north.”
Major Jordan had no need to elaborate what that meant. Without Team Yankee, the battalion would be down to two understrength mech infantry companies. If the Soviets did manage to find the forces necessary to make a new attack through the Langen Gap, the odds of stopping them were slim. “Division G-2, relying on the old Russian maxim of never reinforcing failure, does not expect another attack here,” Jordan pointed out. “Still, they don’t discount that possibility.”
Needless to say, this left everyone in the room, save Bannon, in a somber mood. After issuing some initial planning guidance to the commanders of Team Bravo and Delta Company, he dismissed them. When they were gone, he gave Bannon instructions on when and where Team Yankee was to link up with the 1st of the 4th. Prior to leaving to return to his Team, Bannon coordinated with the battalion S-4 for rearming and refueling before the Team departed that evening. Then, with no further business in Langen and much to tend to, he too headed out, leaving Major Jordan to huddle with his staff in order to work up a new plan for holding Langen with what they had left.
News that the Team would be returning to 1st of the 4th was welcomed by Uleski, Garger and SFC Hebrock. Even Sergeant Polgar seemed to be pleased, explaining that as far as he was concerned, it really didn’t matter to him where his platoon went so long as it stayed with Team Yankee. When Bannon thanked him for his vote of confidence, Polgar replied that confidence had nothing to do with it. According to him, the chow in Team Yankee had always been good, and good food meant he had fewer complaints to listen to from his men.
Second Lieutenant Murray Weiss, the leader of 1st Platoon, was particularly happy to be back to the Team. He had the honor of being the company’s only Jew, a fact that left him open to a great deal of ethnic humor. Fortunately, like Bob Uleski, he had an almost infinite capacity to absorb incoming jokes and return them in kind, a trick he had learned at an early age. Weiss’s decision to make the military his career had come as quite a shock to his family. The US Army was not normally something that college-educated Jewish boys were taught to aspire to. But Murray had deep convictions. The Israeli tankers who had fought in the Sinai and on the Golan in ’73 had been his childhood heroes. While his friends aspired to be doctors or lawyers, he dreamed of being a tanker like Gen. Mordecai Tal or Avigdor Kahalani. Weiss’s performance before and during the war showed he was well on his way to achieving that dream.
The Team had much to do before it began its move shortly after nightfall. As badly as the 1st of the 4th needed them, to leave their positions before dark would telegraph to the Soviets the weakness of the Langen Gap. Though no one at brigade or Division expected it would not take the Soviets all that long to figure out the tanks were no longer with 3rd of the 78th, no one was willing to make discovering that fact easy for them.