The Ten Thousand

CHAPTER 13

Like someone hitting a light switch, the violent tugging at the bottom of his sleeping bag brought Staff Sergeant Joe Dallas out of a sound sleep. For a moment he didn't move, didn't make a sound. Perched on top of the turret of his M-1A1 Abrams tank, wedged in between boxes of rations, duffel bags full of personal gear, and boxes of.50-caliber ammunition, Dallas, known to everyone since his first day in the Army as Dallas Joe, just listened. It was quiet. Except for the sound of his own breath bounding off the nylon cloth that covered his face and protected it from the wind and weather while he slept, Dallas heard nothing. For a moment, lying there warm and snuggled up tight and secure in his Arctic sleeping bag, he could imagine that he was anywhere. He had even managed to learn over his years in the Army to ignore the discomfort of sleeping on the hard armor plating of his tank. During that moment before the distress of the circumstances crept into his conscious mind, before the bitter cold bit at his cheeks, before the responsibility of being a tank commander came crashing down upon his twenty-six-year-old shoulders, Dallas could enjoy a few seconds to himself, free from the misery and harshness of the circumstances.

Another tug at the bottom of the sleeping bag, followed by his loader's voice, punctuated by a hacking cough, ended Dallas's splendid isolation. "Sergeant Dallas, the LT wants you over at his tank right away. Says there's an order to move out in ten minutes."

With great reluctance, Dallas let out a grunt to acknowledge his loader's efforts. When he was ready, Dallas moved his right hand from where it had been resting mummy style on his chest and pushed the face cloth off. Though he was prepared for the cold, Dallas was not at all ready to be sprinkled with a shower of freshly fallen snow that had accumulated on the cloth. In an instant the peace and tranquility that Dallas had felt just after waking was wiped away. Sitting up, he looked about but saw nothing. Even when he looked up, he couldn't see any sign of sky. The only thing he could detect was the soft, cold, wet pinpricks of falling snow on his face. It was, he realized, going to be another miserable day in Krautland.

With the speed and efficiency of a professional, Dallas was up, dressed, and on his way to his platoon leader's tank in minutes, leaving his gunner, Sergeant Tim Doyle, to pack up sleeping bags, camouflage nets, and to prepare the tank. When Dallas arrived at his platoon leader's tank, the lieutenant was standing in front of his tank with the platoon sergeant studying a map spread out on the front slope of the tank. Walking up to one side of the platoon leader to where he could see the map, Dallas made his presence known without interfering with the discussion between platoon leader and platoon sergeant. Though both of them realized that Dallas was there, neither acknowledged him nor broke off the discussion that had been in progress.

"You're right, Sergeant Emerson. I don't like the idea of running down the middle of a two-lane highway in the middle of the night either. But the CO was clear. He wanted us to physically make sure that Highway 84 was clear as far as Rasdorf and check out the reports from the division's cavalry squadron of tracked vehicles moving into that village. To me that means he wants us to roll along every inch of that hardball road."

The platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Emerson, looked at his lieutenant, thought for a moment, then leaned forward over the map. With a small red-filtered maglight, Emerson studied the map for several moments. "Look here, Lieutenant, there's this logging trail running parallel to the highway. If this map is right, there's a number of smaller logging trails that run from the logging trail out to the main road at regular intervals. I could take my wing man and run the logging trail, sticking my nose out onto the highway every now and then to take a look, while you and your wing man run the main road, but further back. When I see that the road is clear, I'll call. Then you can come up to where I am and hold while I drop back to the main parallel logging trail and go down to the next crossover point. That way we can satisfy the old man's desire to pound the pavement without stumbling down the middle of the road like a bunch of drunks."

Looking at the logging trail that Emerson had pointed out, the lieutenant thought for a moment. "It sounds good, Sergeant Emerson, but that's going to take a long time."

"Did the old man give you a time limit, sir?"

"No, no, he didn't. He just said do it."

"I don't see what the big deal is then. So long as we're doing exactly what he said, it doesn't make any difference how long it takes."

Conceding Emerson's point, the lieutenant sighed. "You're right, Sergeant Emerson. As always, you're right. We'll do that until we get here, just west of Rasdorf. There we'll set up on both sides of the road, with you on the north side and my section on the south. The only difference is that I'll take my section down the logging trail and you run the road. Gotta remember, I'm the platoon leader."

Emerson, trained long ago that there were certain things that you didn't argue about with a West Pointer, merely shrugged. "Okay by me. Unless you have something else, sir, I'm going to go and give Allston and his crew a swift kick and get ready to move."

Emerson, not waiting for a response, disappeared into the darkness. For the first time since his arrival, the lieutenant turned and faced Dallas. "Did you get most of that, Sergeant Dallas?"

Dallas, not pleased that his platoon leader had opted to take the logging trail, something that could be hazardous under the best of conditions, said nothing. Though the risk would have been higher, Dallas would have preferred to go down the road, especially on a night like this. Dicking around on a rutted logging trail at night when you couldn't see your hand in front of your face was not his idea of excitement. Just as Emerson had discovered a long time before, Dallas was finding out that there were some things that you just didn't debate with a young second lieutenant. Instead, Dallas just grunted. "Got it, sir, loud and clear. I'll be ready to roll in less than five."

Satisfied, the lieutenant brushed off the snowflakes that had fallen on his map as he carefully folded it in a manner that would show their route to Rasdorf. "Fine, real fine, Sergeant. Bring your tank around as soon as you're ready and meet me here." Giving his platoon leader a halfhearted salute out of habit, Dallas turned and stumbled back to his tank to prepare for the start of a new day.

Progress, as the lieutenant had anticipated, was slow because the condition of the logging trail was everything that Dallas had expected. The map that both the platoon leader and Dallas used, though it was the most detailed, couldn't show every twist and turn in the logging trail. At times Dallas even wondered if they were on the right trail. But after making the left turn and popping out onto Highway 84 a couple of times, as Emerson had suggested, Dallas stopped worrying. If there was one thing that his platoon leader could do well, it was use the position locator on his tank and read a map. Satisfied that all was going well, Dallas began to relax some by the time they reached the halfway point to Rasdorf.

Tracking their progress on his own map, Dallas figured that they should have reached the next turnoff. Looking up from his map, he saw the cat-eyed taillights of his platoon leader's tank slow and then turn to the left. After making a tick mark on his map case to indicate where they were, Dallas called to his driver, Specialist Bobby Young, to slow down and prepare to turn. Young, already aware of what to do, said nothing in response. He knew that it was just Dallas's way of checking on him and keeping the rest of the crew aware of what was going on. With the greatest of ease, Young began to feel his way into the turn while Dallas leaned as far out of his open hatch as he could to watch that the huge 120mm main gun didn't smack any trees as the tank turned onto the connecting trail that led to Highway 84. When they were on the trail and Dallas saw the taillights of his platoon leader's tank again, he eased himself back down into his open hatch and watched as his platoon leader moved forward slowly toward the main road.

Just before the two tanks reached the road, Dallas ordered Young to stop. He wanted to give the platoon leader some room to back up just in case he needed it. From the hatch of his tank, Dallas watched his platoon leader's tank break free of the woods, climbing up a slight embankment and traversing its turret to the right in the direction of Rasdorf as it went. To Dallas, who didn't like using night vision goggles, everything was black and shades of gray. Even his platoon leader's tank was nothing more than a large black mass before him, with the gun tube slowly moving to the right being the only clear feature of the turret he could see. Turning away for a moment to look down along the side of his own tank to check how well it was doing in negotiating the logging trail, Dallas was startled when suddenly the whole forest seemed to light up around him.

Young, the driver, hit the brakes when he saw a mass of flames leap out of the platoon leader's tank in front of him. Thrown forward and then back, Dallas struggled to regain his balance before looking up at his platoon leader's tank. That tank, now dwarfed by sheets of flame leaping up from the turret, was rolling backwards toward his own tank. Though he had no idea what happened, he suspected the worst. Looking to his left, then to his right, Dallas saw that there was no way to get around his platoon leader's tank, now being racked by a series of secondary explosions. Nor was there any way that he could fight his tank where it stood if he had to. Stuck on the narrow trail, and lit up by the fires from his platoon leader's tank, he would be a sitting duck. The only thing that Dallas could think of was escape. "BACK UP! Young, back up! NOW!"

There was no need for Dallas to repeat his order. Young was already shifting gears before Dallas said anything. When he felt the tank lurch, and then begin to move back, Dallas twisted about in his open hatch, facing to the rear as he prepared to direct Young. Dallas's night vision, however, was shot by the conflagration that was consuming his platoon leader's tank. He saw nothing of what was before him. Dots and blurred images of flames burned into his eyes, blinded him to where he was going and what was happening around him. Keying the intercom switch on the side of his crewman's helmet, Dallas told Young to take it slow and hold the tank straight. Though Dallas didn't hear a response, he could feel the tank slow slightly, telling him that Young had heard and understood.

Both Dallas and Young were calming down and getting their act together when the loader, watching back toward the road, yelled over the intercom, "Dallas! There's something moving on the road. It's— SHIT! It's a tank and he's looking right at us!"

To the west, sitting on the side of Highway 84 just around a bend in the road from where his platoon leader was supposed to come out of the woods next, Sergeant Emerson saw the ball of flame leap up over the treetops. Immediately following that he heard the crack of a high-velocity cannon firing. Someone, he knew, had fired, and someone had died. Without a second thought, Emerson ordered his driver to move forward slowly up to the bend in the road so that he could see what was going on. Emerson's gunner, unable to see anything, yelled out asking what was happening. In a voice that never seemed to betray excitement or stress, Emerson responded by simply telling his gunner to keep his eye glued to the sight and be ready to engage. Emerson in the same calm voice told the loader who had been riding with his head popped up out of the turret to get down, load sabot, and arm the gun. Even before he heard the loader's yell, "SABOT LOADED," Emerson had eased himself down into the turret so that only his head and shoulders showed above the lip of his open hatch. With his hand on the tank commander's turret override, he, like the rest of the crew, was ready.

Though the flames had died down some, whatever had been hit, and Emerson feared the worst, was still burning. The fire created an eerie light that lit the road and the trees that lined it at the bend ahead. Moving toward that point, Emerson slowly began to traverse the turret so that as soon as his tank rounded the bend the main gun would be pointed down the center of the road toward the east. Like everyone else in the crew, Emerson held his breath as he felt his pulse rate quicken in anticipation of what they would find. Taking a quick glance to his rear, he could see his wing man Sergeant Allston's tank, following at the same pace, off to one side of the road. Satisfied that he was ready, Emerson faced back to the front just as the front slope of his tank began to inch out around the bend. With a simple "Okay, here we go," Emerson prepared his crew.

The scene to his front confirmed his worst nightmare. The road leading toward Rasdorf was lined on either side by tall pine trees. Less than three hundred meters ahead, through the light snow that continued to drift down, Emerson saw the gun tube and front of a burning tank. Half protruding out of the woods, hanging on the road embankment and blocking one lane of the road, it was burning furiously. For a second he tried to confirm that it was in fact an Abrams tank. The motion, however, of another vehicle emerging from the darkness beyond the burning tank caught Emerson's attention. Instinctively he slewed the gun tube in the direction of this threat, more perceived than confirmed. Ordering his driver to stop, Emerson watched.

From further down the road, the black form moved to one side of the road as it tried to bypass the burning tank. Emerson was about to drop down and check out this vehicle through the thermal sight when he clearly saw it turn its turret to the left in the direction of the burning tank and fire at something in the woods beyond it. Without any hesitation, without waiting for any further evidence, Emerson shouted out a quick fire command. "GUNNER, SABOT, TANK!"

Both the gunner and loader responded in unison, "IDENTIFIED!" "UP!"

To which Emerson replied, "FIRE!"

At a range of three hundred meters, the flight time of Emerson's armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot round, which is a small depleted uranium dart launched at speeds greater than one mile a second, was indistinguishable from the rock and recoil of the main gun on Emerson's tank. By the time the muzzle blast had cleared, their target had already been hit and was beginning to be rocked by secondary explosions. Satisfied that the target was finished, Emerson dropped down to look at it through the tank commander's extension to the gunner's primary sight. When he did, the image that greeted him made his heart sink. The tank that he had just engaged and killed was without a doubt a German Leopard II. That, of course, meant that the burning tank sticking out of the woods was his platoon leader's tank. Knowing that German tanks, like American tanks, never travel alone, Emerson jumped back up and ordered his driver to back up around the bend. From there he could call, in an effort to find out what had happened to Dallas and even more important to inform his company commander that they had made contact with the enemy and report the results of that contact. The thought that he had witnessed the opening shots of the shooting war had not yet dawned upon Sergeant First Class Emerson. Such things were of no real concern to him. He was, as the commander of the German Leopard tank had been, simply doing what he was trained to do.

Impatiently, Big Al Malin waited for the morning update to end. He already understood both the nature and the severity of the situation that the Tenth Corps faced. The straight line between Alsfeld in the west and Hünfeld in the east was approximately thirty-five kilometers, or twenty-one miles. Between those two points, Autobahn A7 and Highway 27 ran north to Kassel from Fulda in the south. It was at this critical point amongst the hills and forests of central Germany that the Bundeswehr, prodded by Ruff, chose to strike first.

Neither the location nor the units involved were a surprise to the Tenth Corps' senior commanders. Big Al's intelligence officer had been tracking the progress of the 2nd Panzer Division from Erfurt in the east and the 10th Panzer Division coming up from Frankfurt in the west for some time. Warnings had gone out to the commanders of the 4th Armored Division and the 55th Mech Infantry Division to be prepared to block those thrusts, something that both commanders set about to do. Yet even as the commanders and staff's of the Tenth Corps and its two divisions went through the motions of preparing for the confrontation, many hoped that the maneuvers of the two panzer divisions were nothing more than posturing. That was why almost to a man the staff officers of Tenth Corps felt an uncomfortable sinking feeling that morning when they briefed Big Al on initial contacts, like Sergeant Emerson's. The hope of being able to make it to the sea without a serious confrontation was in an instant washed away by the blood of these first battles. It had come, as Big Al had predicted, to a fight. Now in a matter of hours it would become a death struggle for the Tenth Corps.

The corps G-2 intelligence officer himself presented the briefing that morning. Like the other briefers, he referred to a large map covered with clear plastic sheets that took up the entire wall of the expandable tractor-trailer van which served as the corps briefing area. In his usual clear and unemotional monotone voice, the G-2 presented as clear a picture as possible of the enemy's current situation and what he thought their intent was as he used his retractable pointer to indicate the unit symbols on the map he was talking about. The German units coming from the east and west were depicted in red. All major German maneuver units, down to brigade, were displayed with arrows to show where they were headed. This, of course, was toward Autobahn A7, the Tenth Corps' main axis of advance north. Between those arrows American units, shown in blue, reminded Big Al of a big bubble, a fragile bubble, which he realized was being prodded by ice picks.

In the west the American 55th Mechanized Infantry Division coming up from Würzburg aimed for Alsfeld. A relatively minor town, Alsfeld had no real strategic or tactical importance other than that was where two mechanized forces brought together by the roads that converged there collided on the morning of the 19th. It was, however, more of a cautious bumping together like bumper cars at a carnival than a head-on collision between two steaming locomotives. The commander of the 10th Panzer Division, Major General Albert Kiebler, unsure of the political situation, had intentionally moved slowly. Troubled by a light turnout of reservists, the 10th Panzer could only muster seven full panzer and panzergrenadier battalions by the 18th of January. And even the determination and combat value of the soldiers in those battalions was open to question as debate amongst the officers raged as to who was the true enemy of the German people. This left Kiebler with the impression that his division was at best a fragile weapon that he feared would shatter under heavy pressure.

Kiebler's tactics reflected his caution. Instead of the armored juggernaut that Ruff had envisioned, the 10th Panzer Division moved up from Frankfurt toward Alsfeld like a giant caterpillar. The two lead battalions, moving abreast, would stretch out a little and then stop. Once the lead battalions were set, the battalions following would move up behind as if they were providing the necessary boost to propel the lead battalions forward again. The official justification was that this technique was necessary in order to keep the division from being strung out and dispersed, keep supply and support elements up, and the division ready to fight. While this was true, it all but assured that the Americans, and not the 10th Panzer, would reach Alsfeld first. This, of course, suited Kiebler just fine, since in his heart he was willing to do anything to postpone any confrontation with the Americans in the hope that somehow the differences between Berlin and Washington could be resolved without a colliding of arms. Even as his units were clashing in the fields around Alsfeld, Kiebler continued to question the wisdom of his government and walked the fine line between obedience to his duty and following his conscience. Left to their own, the commanders of the 10th Panzer Division's lead battalions followed the example of their commanding general, restricting themselves to light probing actions that were easily parried by the 55th Mechanized Infantry Division.

The commanding general of the 2nd Panzer Division to the east had no such reservations. The initial confrontations, like the one involving Emerson and Dallas with his lead units, reflected this. A motorized rifle regimental commander in the former East German Army, Major General Erich Dorsch was reinstated with the rank of general in the unified Army under Chancellor Ruff's reforms. Dorsch drove the 2nd Panzer Division into the flank of the Tenth Corps like a lance. In part this was possible because many of his officers and soldiers were, like him, easterners. Having spent their formative years and early adulthood under communism, they had no great love for the Americans. Nor were they troubled by the conflict of duty versus conscience that had been hammered home into the minds of every officer of the old Bundeswehr, a handicap that now hamstrung them at the moment of truth. Even the turnout of reservists reflected this difference, with the 2nd Panzer Division boasting nine ground maneuver battalions, making it the largest German division in the field.

With the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Armored Division entering Kassel, and Scott Dixon's 1st Brigade still south of Fulda bringing up the rear, that left the 3rd Brigade the task of covering the division's eastern flank. Unable to cover every possible approach in strength, Colonel Andrew Bowman, commander of the 3rd Brigade, concentrated two of his three battalions to deal with an attack coming down Autobahn E40 running west from Erfurt to Bad Hersfeld, a city situated midway between Fulda and Kassel. The danger of this obvious avenue of approach made sense, for Autobahn E40 was the same road that Kiebler and his 10th Panzer Division were using as the axis for their advance from the southwest. To Dorsch, that approach was too obvious. Even before his own reconnaissance elements confirmed the information provided by the Luftwaffe and national-level intelligence agencies, Dorsch had already decided to use a more difficult but less obvious axis of advance into the flank of Tenth Corps. While holding the attention of the American 3rd Brigade with a supporting attack down the axis that the Americans expected the 2nd Panzer to use, Dorsch launched his main attack down Highway 84, which ran southwest from Eisenach into Highway 27 at Hünfeld. Six kilometers, or four and a half miles, to the west of Hünfeld lay Autobahn A7. In a single stroke Dorsch intended to push aside the Tenth Corps flank guard, inserting his 2nd Panzer Division between the American rear guard and lead elements while cutting both routes running north that the Tenth Corps so heavily depended upon.

By midmorning the series of sharp engagements that had begun with Sergeant Emerson's fight on Highway 84 just outside of Rasdorf left the tank battalion that Emerson belonged to battered and reeling back away from the relentless advance of the 2nd Panzer Division. Their line of retreat was toward the northwest and the 4th Armored Division's 3rd Brigade's center of mass. While this maneuver made sense to both the commander of the 3rd Brigade and the commander of Emerson's battalion, it opened Highway 84 all the way to Hünfeld.

Looking at his watch, Big Al decided that he could not wait for the briefing to continue as usual. His division commanders were waiting for orders from him. Although they were already reacting to the situation within their division areas of responsibilities, there was the danger that their decisions and actions, made independently, would handicap the corps' ability to deal with the twin threats effectively. When the G-2 finished his briefing, Big Al leaned over to his chief of staff, Brigadier General Buddy Bolin. "Buddy, I know that this briefing is as much a benefit to the staff as it is to me, but they're just going to have to get it later. We have work to do. Now I want you, the G-2, the G-3, the fire support officer, air liaison officer, and the assistant G-4 to stay behind. We need a plan and we need one right now. Otherwise my two headstrong division commanders are going to go charging off in different directions and tear this corps apart."

As the other staff officers left the expandable van, the G-2 grabbed a chair, seating himself facing Big Al with his back to the briefing map. Bolin, on Big Al's right, was joined by the corps assistant G-4, who took a seat to Bolin's right. On Big Al's left was Brigadier General Jerry Prentice, the corps G-3, with the corps fire support officer to Prentice's left and Colonel Tim "Big Foot" MacHaffry, the Air Force liaison officer, to his left.

When everyone else had left and the van was quiet, Big Al looked at the map for a second. He glanced at the somber faces of his battle staff, then back at the map. He already knew what he was going to say about future operations. That was simple. What troubled him was how to say it. He, like his staff officers, was tired, depressed, and deeply concerned to the point of being pessimistic. Placing his hands on his hips, Big Al pretended to study the map while he searched for the right words and prepared himself to deliver them. For he as their senior commander would set the tone. Everyone would watch him, studying how he carried himself and listening for the conviction behind his words. If his presentation was gloom and doom, that attitude would be carried over into the corps order and would be parroted by his own staff as they talked to the staff's of the two divisions. Such a negative attitude would in turn be passed on down by the divisions, who, unable to physically see Big Al himself, would assume that they were engaged in a questionable operation. There was no time for Big Al to personally visit each command as he had done a week ago. During this operation he would depend on his staff to convey both his, the commander's, actual and the psychological messages. Big Al, recalling a scene in the movie Patton, when Patton's aide-de-camp commented that Patton's staff didn't know when he was acting, Patton had smiled and informed the concerned aide that they didn't need to know. Only he, Patton, did.

With that thought in mind, Big Al forced a scowl on his face and turned to his battle staff. "As I see it, the real danger is the 2nd Panzer." To a man, the assembled staff officers nodded their agreement. This observation was based just as much on Big Al's personal knowledge of the two German division commanders as it was on the current situation. During several joint NATO and American-German command post exercises run while Big Al commanded the Tenth Corps, General Kiebler's 10th Panzer Division had operated as part of the American Tenth Corps. Though these exercises had used computers instead of real soldiers to wargame various scenarios and contingencies to deal with them, Big Al had been able to observe and learn how Kiebler thought and reacted. As a result, Big Al concurred with the G-2's assessment that Kiebler, while being both steady and reliable, was cautious. The movement of the 10th Panzer from Frankfurt am Main through Giessen reinforced this perception. Though Big Al didn't know that Kiebler's normal caution was intensified by his troubled conscience, that didn't matter. What was important at that moment to the assembled men was that they were able to agree that the 10th Panzer Division was of secondary importance. The real danger to the corps for the next forty-eight hours would be the 2nd Panzer Division. Big Al's knowledge of the German commanders gained during both social gatherings and training exercises before this crisis again played a major part in his thinking. During two of the command post exercises that the Tenth Corps had run, Dorsch, the commander of the 2nd Panzer, had played the opposing force. Once, he had been the overall commander, and the other time he had played the role of a Polish armored division commander. In both roles, Big Al had been impressed with the manner with which Dorsch had combined the machinelike tactics of the former Red Army with the Teutonic precision that appeared to come as naturally to him as breathing. During meetings and social events associated with these exercises, Big Al had been equally struck by Dorsch's cold, standoffish manner. Both Big Al and other NATO commanders couldn't help but notice the aloof and cold manner with which he spoke to them. All agreed that this was the result of years of communist indoctrination and his early training, which had instilled into him the idea that the Americans were the real enemy of Germany. This factor, just like the decision to go through Bavaria, where the people viewed the Americans in more favorable terms, was not discounted by Big Al and his assembled staff officers when determining which of the German divisions presented the greatest danger.

With that issue decided, how best to use this insight and knowledge to deal with the current situation was now discussed. Actually, a discussion per se never took place. The same men who were now assembled had already played out a series of "what if scenarios over the past forty-eight hours collectively and within their own staff sections as soon as the danger posed by the two panzer divisions had been identified. Instead, Big Al stood up, moved over to the map, and looked at it for a moment before speaking, while the G-2 moved his chair around next to the assistant G-4. Turning to his staff officers, Big Al, using his finger as a pointer, began to talk. "With the 4th Armored's 3rd Brigade pulling back to the northwest, we're leaving the door open for the 2nd Panzer. It's too late to stop that maneuver, and even if we did, pressure from the supporting attack coming down Autobahn E40 as well as the main German effort would be too much for that brigade to handle. So for the time being we'll let the 3rd Brigade, 4th Armored, stand fast and cover Bad Hersfeld."

Big Al paused, turning to the map. When he continued, he remained facing the map, but still used his finger to indicate the units he was talking about, and ran his finger along the map to indicate where he wanted them to go. "Now, that decision leaves a big gap between the 4th Armored's 1st Brigade here, in Fulda, and the 3rd Brigade here, south of Bad Hersfeld. We could encourage the 4th Armored Division to hurry the 1st Brigade north in an effort to close the gap, but I don't think they'd make it. We could order the 1st Brigade to move directly north and hit the 2nd Panzer in the flank, but Dorsch would be expecting that. In this terrain the 1st Brigade would be easily blocked by a couple of German panzergrenadier companies. We would in short order find ourselves engaged in a slugfest here in the south and a standoff in the north, while Dorsch's lead brigade ran riot through our logistic areas. And that, gentlemen, would spell the end to this corps and our great gamble."

Big Al paused, stepped back slightly, moved his head about as he looked at the entire map, then turned to his staff officers. With his hands on his hips and a firm, determined expression on his face, Big Al made it known in his indomitable style that he intended to throw caution to the winds. "We knew from the beginning that this was a great gamble, one crapshoot after another. Well, people, it's time to roll the dice again." Without waiting for a response, Big Al began rattling off his concept for the corps counterattack. "Effective immediately, the 55th Infantry's 3rd Brigade, with no less than four maneuver battalions, is attached to the 4th Armored Division. That brigade will move due east, cross country if possible, and take up blocking positions at or west of Hünfeld. We'll lose the use of Highway 27 if Hünfeld falls, but we can live with that so long as the autobahn stays open. To do this, the 55th Infantry's 3rd Brigade will link up with the 4th Armored's 3rd Brigade. When and where possible, I want both brigades to conduct local counterattacks to stop or disrupt the German advance. In addition to the 55th Infantry's 3rd Brigade, the commander of the 4th Armored will have priority on the 10th Aviation Brigade's attack helicopter battalions. With a little luck we should be able to check the 2nd Panzer." Pointing to the symbol that represented the 4th Armored Division's 1st Brigade, still south of Fulda, Big Al continued. "Our main effort to eliminate the threat posed by the 2nd Panzer will be made by the 1st Brigade. From Fulda, I want that brigade to strike northeast paralleling Highway 27 and head toward Highway 19. Just short of Highway 19, this brigade will turn north and cut behind the 2nd Panzer. Their mission is to tear up the 2nd Panzer's support elements and cause Dorsch to hesitate, maybe even turn around and go after the 1st Brigade. While all this is going on, we continue to push north. It is not my intent to fight a battle of annihilation here. Our goal is to get to the coast, not kill Germans. Now, having said that, I do want to make sure that everyone in this corps understands that does not mean holding back."

From where they sat, Big Al's staff officers could see the fire in his eyes as he balled his hand up into a fist. Pounding his fist on the map board to emphasize each point of his next announcement, Big Al drove home how he wanted his corps to fight. "Throughout this operation, I want every commander at every level to move fast, strike true, and hit hard. Our target is the German Army, not the German people. They are to avoid collateral damage whenever possible and heap terror and destruction on the German Army every time it comes to a fight. I want to serve notice to those gentlemen in Berlin that, while we may be running, we're not helpless." Toning down his enthusiasm, Big Al pointed out that if they succeeded here other German commanders not yet engaged might pause and think twice before striking.

Before turning his attention to the 10th Panzer, Big Al looked at MacHaffry. "Big Foot, talk to me about the Luftwaffe."

An F-22 fighter pilot by training, MacHaffry was labeled Big Foot because his six-foot-four frame was supported by feet that required size 13 1/2 double-E boots. Leaning forward in his seat, MacHaffry placed his hands on his knees and looked up at Big Al. "Although rumors concerning the Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe have yet to be confirmed, the fact is that there is a great deal of confusion at every level. We do know that pilots have refused to fly, sabotage is widespread, and base commanders have denied fuel to squadron commanders on their own base. Although we can expect some air activity, it will be limited."

After nodding a few times, Big Al turned to the map again and spoke without looking at MacHaffry. "Is Boomer ready for Operation Whirlwind?"

Boomer, the call sign for Colonel Wilber Smith, commander of the 79th Air Wing that had supported the Tenth Corps in Slovakia, was prepared to use Czech bases for as long as possible to support the Tenth Corps breakout efforts. Whirlwind was the name for what everyone believed would be a one-shot air offensive against selected Luftwaffe bases. The targets of Valkyrie would be those bases and Luftwaffe facilities that posed the greatest threat to the Tenth Corps. Though there was lively debate about whether Whirlwind would cause those in the Luftwaffe who were undecided about the wisdom of opposing the Americans to throw their lot behind Chancellor Ruff's government, it was agreed by every staff officer and pilot of the 79th Wing that they would support the Tenth Corps regardless of consequences. The worst that could happen was that each plane would fly one mission and then be interned by the Czech government upon its return. The best, the removal of the stain on the Air Force's name as a result of the capitulation at Sembach.

"We're ready, sir. We know that we'll be able to penetrate German airspace. Whoever has been feeding us the IFF codes for the Luftwaffe is continuing to do so." IFF, short for identify friend or foe, is an electronic system on every combat aircraft that emits a signal when interrogated by another aircraft or a ground-based air defense system. If the correct response comes back from the aircraft being interrogated, it is considered friendly. If not, it is deemed to be hostile and engaged or tracked. With the Luftwaffe's IFF codes, the aircraft of the 79th Air Wing would be able to make it to their designated targets without interference from the German long-range air defense system. Even when it was discovered that the IFF codes had been compromised, confusion would reign and engagements between opposing aircraft would rely on visual rules of engagement rather than radar alone.

Looking back at MacHaffry, Big Al smiled. "Okay, get back to Boomer and tell him to stand by. I don't want to push the Germans too far, not until it's really necessary."

Satisfied that everything that could be done about the Luftwaffe was in hand, the assembled group looked to the portion of the map where the symbols of the 10th Panzer Division sat clustered west of Alsfeld. Prentice, the G-3, pointed out that the 55th Infantry Division, with two brigades and six battalions, was an even match for the 10th Panzer's three brigades and six battalions. Though Big Al agreed, saying that he intended to leave that fight up to the 55th's commander, he also stated that he would suggest a holding action at Alsfeld with one brigade, and a maneuver to the north and west with the other. To assist in this fight, Big Al directed Prentice to issue orders attaching one squadron of the 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment to the 55th. The rest of the 14th Armored Cavalry would cover the corps rear and the maneuver by the 4th Armored Division's 1st Brigade.

Finished, Big Al asked if anyone had any questions or comments. Prentice, looking at the map, asked if he thought that the 4th Armored Division's 1st Brigade would be able to cover the distance from Fulda to Highway 19 and still be able to strike north in time to influence the battle. Big Al smiled as he prepared to answer. "That's Scotty Dixon's brigade you're talking about. If I asked him to secure a bridgehead on the moon, the only question he would ask is what side of the moon we wanted it on." Then, on a serious note, he looked at the map. "If anyone can do it, he can." Unsaid was a follow-on comment that Big Al kept to himself: And if I'm wrong, Scotty's brigade will be wiped out and we fail.

While the general pondered and staff officers scurried about issuing orders to this unit and that, the first casualties arrived at the 553rd Field Hospital just as the sky in the east began to lighten, announcing that another cold gray day was dawning. The appearance of real wounded soldiers whose bodies were torn, twisted, or burned in combat had the same effect on the personnel of the 553rd that news of the first battles had had on the staff of the Tenth Corps. But they hid any outward manifestation of that shock or dread behind the mask of medical professionals. For the task of the men and women of the 553rd Field Hospital was to save those who were suffering from true shock, the shock of physical and psychological trauma caused by what was being called the Battle of the Two Felds.

Working in pre-op, Hilary Cole, like every other nurse in the unit, walked a fine line between maintaining a detached professional attitude when dealing with the broken and traumatized soldiers entrusted to her care and opening her heart to their sufferings. In some cases, where the soldier was unconscious or under heavy sedation, this was easy. Then all she had to do was cut away those parts of the uniform that would interfere with the surgeon's work, remove old dressings, often hastily applied in adverse conditions and contaminated with dirt and mud, and clean the wounds as best she could.

It was when the soldier was conscious and able to talk that Cole had to be on her guard. Often these soldiers had no idea of how seriously they had been injured. They knew they had been hit, and they felt pain. But the shock of the wound, coupled with adrenaline dumped into their system by their bodies, and sedatives administered at battalion aid stations, masked for the most part the severity of- their condition. Inevitably those who could would ask the question that the nurses working in triage and pre-op dreaded, namely, "How bad is it?"

Having worked in shock-trauma before joining the Army, Cole had seen serious injuries before and had learned to deal with that question. While working as quickly as possible, Cole would try every ploy she knew to change the subject. She'd ask the patient's name, where he came from, what his unit was, anything to take his mind off of his injury and save her from having to lie about it. That was not always possible. One soldier, missing his left foot from the ankle down, would not be put off by Cole's diversions. The more she told him to calm down and relax, the more upset he became. Finally, angry and upset, he began to struggle to sit up as Cole was trying to cut away the blood-soaked field dressings. Stopping what she was doing, Cole turned away from his left leg and leaned over the soldier, taking his face firmly between her hands. Mustering all the calm she could, she looked him in the eye and quietly told him his foot was gone. For a second there was a pause as the horror of her statement struck home. Then he closed his eyes and let himself slump back down as he tried desperately to absorb the reality of losing his foot. Finally, just as Cole finished and was preparing to leave, the soldier reached out and grabbed her arm. His face betrayed no more fear, no anger. He only nodded and whispered, "Thanks."

Taken in isolation, Cole and the other nurses could have handled such incidents. But as the day wore on, Cole's ability to keep her emotions in check, her efforts to isolate herself from the pain and suffering of the young men and women she worked on, oozed away like the blood that soaked through field dressings. By midmorning Cole could feel herself begin to lose it as she realized that no matter how fast she worked there were always two or three more waiting for her attention. Still, like the other nurses, she kept working, dealing with the screamers and those barely alive. She had to, as she watched two more wounded brought in. For a second Cole felt like she was the only one there, left alone to deal with cuts and gashes that measured a foot or more, burns that made the human body look like badly burned beef, severed limbs that refused to stop bleeding, abdominal wounds that revealed the intestines, and shattered bones that stuck out of the body in ways she never thought were possible. And there was no end, no letup.

Turning her attention away from the door, Cole forced herself to focus on the soldier lying before her. He was a young man, maybe twenty, twenty-one at most. From his waist down, blood seeped through his burned uniform from numerous wounds. Unable to deal with him properly, his battalion aid station had sent him straight to the 553rd with only hasty patching and treatment. It was now up to Cole to prepare him for the surgeons.

At first she didn't even bother looking at his face. Instead she mechanically began to cut away the charred uniform, stopping only when she exposed a wound that was bleeding too badly. The cutting was not easy, for the burned skin often stuck to the shredded uniform. When she ran across this, Cole was careful to lift the uniform slightly, and then separate the skin from the material with scissors or a scalpel. While she was doing this to one particularly nasty wound on the inside of his thigh, Cole noticed that the soldier didn't move or jerk. Looking up at his face for the first time, she checked to see if he was breathing. To her surprise, he was awake and staring up. Finishing what she was doing, Cole moved over to check the soldier's vital signs. As she did so, he still didn't move as he continued to stare vacantly into space. Satisfied that he was still hanging on, Cole was about to go back to work when he softly called out, "Is it all there? Am I, am I going to be all right?"

Knowing that he was concerned about his genitals, Cole hesitated for a second. She didn't know, since she hadn't gotten that far. Torn between ignoring the soldier's gentle plea and responding, Cole flashed the best smile that she could and turned to face the soldier. With her right hand, she brushed several dirty strands of hair away from his forehead and leaned over close to him. "Well, honey, I'm sure you're going to be all right. I just need to do some more cleaning up so the doctors can take care of you. Now if you promise to relax and try to stay still, I'll do my best to finish as quickly as possible without causing you any more discomfort than I have to. Is that a deal?"

A weak smile was the best response that the soldier could muster before he returned to staring into space. Taking a deep breath, Cole straightened up, looked at his face one more time, then got back to work. Though she did her best to keep the amount of distress she was causing him to a minimum while working as fast as she could, Cole knew that she was putting the soldier through agony. Still he did not move. Every time she looked up, all he did was lie there staring at the ceiling. Only when she finished and turned back to tell him that she was done, did she find that at some point during her efforts the soldier had quietly slipped into unconsciousness and died.

Suddenly the full weight of all the emotions that she had been holding back, all the horror and suffering that she had been defending herself against, came crashing down on Cole. With her face stiff with panic, Cole stepped away from the table, unable to turn away from the soldier's eyes frozen open in death. Without realizing it, Cole began to shake and tremble. She didn't hear the high-pitched squeal that came from a soul unable to continue with her gruesome labors. Slowly, uncontrollably, Cole was beginning to break down under the stress.

From across the way, First Lieutenant Renée Ritter heard Cole's screech and looked up. In an instant Ritter knew what was happening. Shouting to an orderly to come over to where she was and finish cleaning a burn, Ritter rushed over and grabbed Cole's arm from behind and spun her around. Cole's face was taut with terror. Her eyes, wide open and unblinking, were focused on some unseen object past Ritter's shoulder. Holding Cole's arms firmly in her hands, Ritter gently shook her.

Finally Cole looked up and searched Ritter's face for a second before speaking. Even then Cole was able to utter only a few weak and fluttering words. When she did, those words were disjointed and almost whispered. "He died! He did what I asked and he died. He just lay there like I asked him and he died. I told him if he just relaxed and kept quiet, he'd be all right. And he died!"

On the brink herself, Ritter fought back her own tears as she took Cole's chin in her hand and tilted it up to look into her eyes. "Hilary, you're doing your best. You can only do so much. God, I hate to see this too and I hate to admit it, but not everyone in here is going to live. We can't stop that. You can't, I can't, even the colonel can't. We can only do our best to save those we can." Pausing, Ritter let go of Cole's chin and wiped away the tears that were streaming down her own cheeks. She didn't realize that in the process she was smearing across her own face blood that was still on her hands from the last casualty she had been working on. "Hilary, you've got to stay with me. If you don't, we'll lose more. Do you understand that? Do you hear me? You've got to stay with me."

Cole, fighting her tears with the last of her strength, looked into Ritter's eyes as she inhaled. She couldn't answer. All she could do was nod just before she wrapped her arms about Ritter. Putting her head on Ritter's shoulder, Cole began to cry. Without hesitation, Ritter wrapped her arms about Cole and leaned her cheek against Cole's.

While other nurses and orderlies around them went about their work, ignoring the two nurses, Ritter slowly rocked Cole, saying nothing, for there was nothing that could be said. No words could drown out the moans and screams of the wounded that waited to be tended to. No promises that everything would be all right could reassure Cole. Only the warmth of another human being, suffering and needing a kind and gentle touch just as badly as Cole did, could ease the suffering that was tearing at Cole's heart.

Though the wounded kept coming in, they would have to wait for a moment while the Army's caretakers took care of their own invisible wounds and suffered for a moment in silence together.

Outside, in any direction you cared to turn, officers and soldiers of the U.S. Tenth Corps and the Bundeswehr moved about through the woods and around the hills of central Germany hunting each other like animals. For at company and platoon level, the grand strategy and sweeping maneuvers discussed by commanders and staff officers at corps and division had no meaning. War to the company commander, platoon leader, and the soldiers entrusted to them was nothing more than a series of chance meetings, sudden firefights, and swift mad charges and countercharges as attacker and defender rushed forward to tear blindly away at their enemy whenever they were found. For the next two days, opposing German and American companies and platoons collided in the cold, damp, snow-covered hills, fields, and woods. When that happened, they would hurl themselves at each other, exchange fire, and push for an advantage. In this way they generated more wounded, more broken bodies, broken bodies that would eventually find their way to Cole, Ritter, and other nurses, German and American, working hard to undo the damage caused by officers doing their duty and national policies run amuck.

CHAPTER 14

While the problems faced by all the commanders throughout the 1st Brigade, 4th Armored Division, up to this point of Malin's March to the Sea had been varied, complex, and numerous, they were for the most part taken in stride and carried out swiftly and efficiently. Even the sudden change in orders, jerking them from the nerve-racking task of playing rear guard for the corps to an offensive mission that would require them to charge off into the flank of an advancing German panzer division, was taken in stride with hardly a break in the tempo of the brigade. Scott Dixon, after all, had gone to great extremes during training exercises to stress and test the flexibility, both physical and mental, of all of his commanders. "Every conceivable problem and difficulty in war," he told his officers and noncommissioned officers at every opportunity, "is possible. The only thing that any of you can be sure of," he warned his subordinates, "is that in war, the next mission or next problem you face will probably be the one which you were never trained to deal with or weren't prepared to deal with." While these words were coming back to haunt every officer and sergeant in Dixon's command the further north they went, they had special meaning to Captain Nancy Kozak that morning.

Though everyone by this point was tired and a little ragged from the constant movement and stress brought on by maintaining a high state of combat readiness around the clock, the effectiveness of Scott Dixon's training paid off as the 1st Brigade went through the throes of changing its mission and direction of movement. Having received the new orders just after occupying a new defensive position, Kozak accepted the battalion order that would hurl them into the flank of the 2nd Panzer Division and without any fuss quickly prepared her own company order. With the efficiency of a well-trained drill, Kozak gathered her platoon leaders, described the new situation that they were about to face, and issued the necessary orders that would initiate their movement to contact in the clear, concise, and crisp manner that Fort Benning taught its young officers. With salutes that were as crisp as Kozak's orders, her platoon leaders had acknowledged their new orders and turned away to go back and brief their platoons, when without warning the company first sergeant presented Nancy Kozak one of those unexpected challenges that Scott Dixon had taken great pains to warn them about. The challenge came in the form of a Mrs. Emma Louisa Richardson and her two children.

As all good soldiers quickly learn, it is important to establish a routine, a disciplined routine, for taking care of oneself in the field and maintain it even under the most pressing of circumstances. Kozak, having discharged all of her responsibilities for the moment by issuing out a quick and complete operations order for their new mission, found herself with a few minutes to herself. Informing the executive officer that she was going to clean up and grab something to eat, Kozak climbed inside of her Bradley. Sitting on one of the seats free of personal gear and equipment, Kozak removed her helmet and dropped it to the floor. With both hands she violently began to scratch her head. As she did so, all she could think of was how filthy and oily her hair got during operations like this. At that moment Nancy Kozak would give just about anything to spend five minutes under a hot shower beating down on muscles that ached and skin that was so dirty that it almost made her cry. Knowing that such a dream, however, was only a dream, she pulled her rucksack over to her and began to dig for her ditty bag and towel, shouting up to Sergeant Wolf, who was standing radio watch in the turret, to keep an eye open for visitors and wave them off if possible. Within a few minutes, Kozak was stripped down to her T-shirt and preparing to spend the few minutes she had to herself getting as clean as her spartan conditions would allow.

She was just beginning to enjoy the warmth of the Bradley and the fact that she had no web gear, bulky jacket, or itchy sweater on when Wolf yelled down to her. "Yo, Captain. First sergeant's coming our way."

Taking the washcloth she had been wiping the back of her neck with in both hands, Kozak wrung it out over the small bowl of soapy water that sat between her feet, dropped it into the bowl, and muttered a curse that Wolf couldn't hear. When she heard the first sergeant pound on the armor plate of the rear troop compartment door, the tone of Kozak's voice betrayed her disgust at being disturbed. "Come on in, Top."

Twisting the heavy metal handle, First Sergeant Gary Stokes let the door swing out, then stuck his head in. "Sorry to bother you, ma'am. But I got this little problem I'd like your opinion on."

Despite her anger at losing her only chance to clean up, Kozak couldn't help but smile at Stokes's shy country-boy approach when he was trying to tell her that something had come up that needed her attention. "What seems to be the problem, Top?"

"Well, ma'am, it seems some colonel's wife decided that she didn't need to go home with the rest of the dependents when they were evacuated last week."

Though she knew what was coming, Kozak didn't rush Stokes. Instead she brushed a strand of hair out of her face. "And?"

"Well," Stokes continued, "she and her two kids just showed up in front of 2nd Platoon's position and asked to see an officer about food and evacuation."

With that, Kozak let her head drop down between her shoulders and began to shake it from side to side. "Great, fine. We're about to go charging off with the mission of ripping off the head of a German panzer division and suddenly we have camp followers." Looking up at Stokes, Kozak sighed. "Where is she?"

"Right outside, ma'am."

That there was the possibility that the woman had heard Kozak's comment didn't bother her. Instead she told Stokes to help her into the Bradley while Kozak moved some gear out of the way. As Stokes helped Mrs. Emma Louisa Richardson climb into the vehicle that was so foreign to her, Kozak studied her. In her mid-forties, Emma Richardson looked haggard but still very dignified. Reflecting on her own state, dirty hair and stripped down to combat boots, BDU pants, and T-shirt, Kozak could only reflect how officers' wives, regardless of what the circumstances, always took great pains to maintain that look and air of dignity. Once she was settled, Emma Richardson looked over to Kozak, cocked her head to one side, reached out with one hand to touch Kozak's arm, and smiled. "Oh, thank God. You're a woman."

In an instant Nancy Kozak understood what the woman meant. Mrs. Emma Richardson apparently was under the impression that because Kozak was a woman she would be treated differently and that all her troubles were over. Though the worst was in fact over for Emma Richardson and her children, Kozak couldn't help but reflect how far from the truth that woman was about her. The very idea that Kozak would do something different than a male Army officer under the same circumstances slapped Kozak across the face like a wet towel. Though both women had been raised by the same society and as children and teenagers been molded and judged in the same manner, the worlds that Emma Richardson and Nancy Kozak moved through now bore no resemblance. For while Emma Richardson went to college and chose to follow a career and lifestyle acceptable to a female that allowed her to continue to move through life using her natural and learned feminine skills, Nancy Kozak had turned her back on the conventional and gone into a pursuit that was anything but feminine.

The art of war as practiced by Western societies is a most barbaric and brutal pursuit. The skills and practices of a soldier, when applied, are physically and psychologically demanding in the extreme, even to the strongest man. With few exceptions, the Western military traditions are a celebration of masculine values, virtues, and prowess. Anyone and everyone desiring to be a soldier and to be accepted as one has to accept those traditions and measure up to them without question, without fault. Early on at West Point Nancy Kozak learned that this requirement was more than a simple initiation or a rite of passage. It was a hard, brutal necessity. For soldiers in combat must be able to depend on each other and on their leaders. They must have unflinching trust and confidence in themselves, in their fellow soldiers, and in their leaders. Anyone who for whatever reason does not measure up to those demanding standards is viewed by any competent soldier as a danger to himself and those around him. So Nancy Kozak found that she had to leave the safety of being a woman, something that her parents and her society had prepared her for, and enter a gray area where, despite her skills, despite her achievement, she would always be on trial, a woman having to conform without question to a very male world. These hard truths, never far from Kozak's mind, weighed heavily on her as she listened to Emma Richardson talk.

"I'm so glad to be back in the arms of the American Army. My husband, Lieutenant Colonel Frank T. Richardson, the commander of the 126th Maintenance Battalion, always said that the Army takes care of its own, and, you know, he's right."

Forcing a smile, Kozak pulled her dark thoughts back to the matter at hand and shook her head. "Yes, Mrs. Richardson, I suppose he was right."

"But of course he was right, dear. Frank is always right."

The patronizing tone of Emma Richardson and reference to her, Kozak, as dear, irked Kozak. Yeah, Kozak thought, this is a colonel's wife, half of a "command team," a concept in which the Army expected a commander's wife to take charge of the other wives in the unit. Deciding that she didn't want to waste any more time with this woman and in a less than subtle move to put Mrs. Colonel in her place, Kozak let her face go into a stone-cold stare. "This, Mrs. Richardson, is a combat unit. We will be moving in the next few minutes and have little time to spare for civil-military concerns. My first sergeant will evacuate you and your children back to the battalion aid station, where they should be able to take care of you. Other than that, there's nothing that I can do. Now if you would excuse me, I need to finish washing up and get dressed. My company is waiting for me."

The reaction that Kozak elicited from Emma Richardson couldn't have been any more devastating if Kozak had punched Emma Richardson in the face. Like a child being scolded by a parent, Emma Richardson sat up straight as the warm smile that she had plastered across her face was replaced with a look of genuine shock. She couldn't understand, Kozak concluded, how another woman, especially one junior to her in age and status, could treat her like that. Though for a brief second Kozak felt bad about what she had done to the older woman, that thought quickly passed. Instead Kozak rationalized to herself that the pompous ass deserved it. Perhaps, Kozak thought, Mrs. Colonel Emma Richardson will think twice before treating an officer in the Army like she was one of her little Army-wife friends.

Turning to Stokes, who had been standing in the open door of the Bradley throughout this whole scene and trying hard not to laugh, Kozak nodded. "If you would, First Sergeant, arrange for transportation back to the aid station for this lady and her children so we can get on with the business of the day." Finished, Kozak reached down, fished the washcloth out of the bowl of soapy water between her feet, and paid no more attention to Emma Richardson as she made her way out of the Bradley.

Finished with his second briefing of the day to Chancellor Ruff and glad to be afforded the opportunity to flee the press of politicians and reporters that crowded the corridors and offices of the Chancellery, General Lange began his headlong flight back to his operations center. Even his brisk pace and choice of less well used exits, however, was not enough to ensure his unhindered escape. Lange was about to leave the building when a shout from Colonel Kasper, Ruff's military aide, stopped him. "General Lange, a moment of your time, please."

Upset that he had not even made it out the door without being summoned back to answer another absurd question, Lange paused and turned to face Kasper as he approached. That Kasper had framed his request more as a command and less like a question did not escape Lange and increased his anger.

As the young colonel approached, the general watched him like a cat watches a strange dog. He did not trust Kasper. No one, in fact, on the General Staff trusted Kasper. He was to them an opportunist, a General Staff officer who used his training and proximity to the Chancellor to benefit his own career. A few who had dealings with him openly wondered if Kasper was singlehandedly trying to resurrect the old Prussian king's adjutant. Under that system, a relatively junior officer assigned to the king to handle administrative matters often served as a personal advisor to the king. Depending on how the king felt about the officer and the General Staff, the junior officer, or king's adjutant, could have power that was greater than his rank or experience warranted. The more Lange saw of Kasper, the more convinced he became that the talk of his staff might not be far from wrong. Looking at his watch just as Kasper came up to him, Lange gruffly reminded him who was the leader and who was the led. "I have, Colonel, already spent far too much time here. Whatever it is will have to wait."

Kasper, used to such efforts to brush him aside, ignored the general's rebuff. "This will not take more than a moment, Herr General. First I would like to apologize for the Chancellor's ramblings and short temper. You see, Herr General, he has been under a great deal of pressure and is not well equipped to handle it."

Though he felt like shouting back that everyone was operating under the same pressure, Lange merely grunted.

Though he saw the look of disdain in Lange's face and felt in his heart Lange's curt response, Kasper continued. "There is much concern with the manner in which the Army has been responding to orders. The Chancellor is not pleased with the lack of drive General Kiebler has shown in close contact with the American Tenth Corps. The Chancellor noted several times over the past days the vast difference between the performance of the 2nd Panzer and the—"

Lange cut him off, for he knew where the conversation was going. "General Kiebler is the commander of that division and he is carrying out his orders in a manner that he judges suitable for the situation, the enemy, and the terrain which he faces. I will not, so long as I am the chief of staff, second-guess my commanders in the field." He was about to add that Kasper needed to tell the Chancellor that there was a vast difference between the view in Berlin and conditions as they actually existed in the field, but again he held himself in check.

Not that he had to. Kasper already understood what Lange was leaving unsaid. Seeing that there was little use in easing into the subject, Kasper opted for the direct approach. "What I would like to convey to you, Herr General, is that the Chancellor is losing his confidence in certain senior leaders. He feels that they are intentionally holding back, that they are in fact attempting to do everything within their power to allow the Americans to escape and embarrass this government. The collapse of the Luftwaffe's command structure due to absenteeism, failure to follow orders, and the active sabotage of aircraft is only serving to heighten his suspicions."

By "certain" senior leaders Lange knew that Kasper was referring to those of the old Bundeswehr who unlike the easterners had been lectured for years that being an officer in a constitutional army required more than simply following orders. Seeing that the shadow boxing was over, Lange also got to the heart of the matter. "Doesn't the Chancellor appreciate the position in which he has placed us?" Lange, now animated, thrust his index finger at Rasper's chest. "You, Colonel, you are an officer. Don't you feel the pressure? Haven't you stopped to consider what's going on here?"

Lange paused, turned his head to look out the door at the leaden gray sky, then back at Kasper. What the hell, Lange thought. If he was here to feel me out for Herr Chancellor Ruff, he might as well get it all. Placing his briefcase on the tile floor next to his foot, Lange folded his arms across his chest and leaned forward closer to Kasper as he lowered his voice to a whisper. "My God, the Parliament has called for an immediate armistice, a call that Herr Ruff is happily ignoring as he continues to hide behind the emergency powers clause of the constitution. He, better than anyone else, knows! Every officer in the Bundeswehr, except for the easterners, has been taught that his first responsibility is to his conscience, and the selection process for our officers has always emphasized the need for officers who believe that morality and responsibility to the German people are more important than blind obedience. Every senior officer from the old Bundeswehr that I have talked to feels like he's being pulled by four plow horses all going in different directions. Herr Chancellor continues to run blindly off into the darkness, dragging us and the German people into a crisis of his own design. The Parliament insists that it has constitutional control of the Army and that the emergency war clause does not apply. The German people and our responsibility to them are not being served by blowing up our own countryside, and they are making it known. And finally, most of the officers of the old Bundeswehr cannot in all good conscience support a government whose motivations they do not trust."

Kasper listened in silence. He wondered if he had missed something. The frustrations of the German Army officers corps that Lange was pointing out to him were a surprise. Could they, his fellow officers, be so out of touch with the reality of the political situation? Could they be so absorbed by the military situation or their own mystical code of ethics that they did not see how precariously Germany's sovereignty and future hung? Or was he the one out of touch? Were the rumors true? Had Ruff adopted a bunker mentality and refused to see the situation as it really was? Were his actions those of a man serving the German people or were they self-serving? Kasper's head was still trying to absorb these questions when Lange continued.

"I do not know any longer, Colonel, what is right and what is wrong. Neither do the majority of the officers and the soldiers out there. Since the shooting started this morning, the debating has stopped. Now it is time to decide. And I will tell you and anyone here in Berlin with the good sense to listen that I do not know what is going to happen." Lange reached down and picked up his briefcase. When he stood up, he looked down at the floor rather than at Kasper as he continued in a very reflective, almost mournful tone. "As each unit closes with the Americans, our ability to influence the situation is slipping from our hands. Starting today, what is right and what is wrong is no longer ours to decide." As he looked Kasper in the eye, Lange's face grew taut. "That, Herr Colonel, will now be decided by each and every captain and lieutenant, every sergeant and every landseer on the forward edge as the battle is joined. Your Chancellor may threaten and scream, shout and stomp all he wants. He can even roll on the floor frothing at the mouth and chewing on the rug if he pleases. That, however, isn't going to change a damned thing. It is, and probably always has been, out of our hands."

Kasper began to say something, then stopped. He didn't know what to say. For the first time, Lange realized that Kasper's face betrayed the confusion that Lange had just created in the young colonel's mind. Maybe, Lange thought, I have been wrong about this officer. Maybe he was after all really one of us? That he hadn't had time to determine that before saddened Lange. It would have been useful to have a reliable officer close to Ruff. There was no time, however, to concern himself over what should have been done. The American President was preparing to announce her response to the opening of armed hostilities, and Lange wanted to hear it firsthand. That response no doubt would overshadow the events in central Germany that were still in the balance and cause Lange and his staff long hours of hard work. As he had said himself, the debating was over. Now was the time of decision.

In a tone that was somewhat friendly, Lange excused himself and walked out into the cold Berlin afternoon, leaving Kasper behind to deal with his new concerns and, of course, Chancellor Ruff.

While she quietly sipped her coffee and listened to the White House spokesperson on screen deliver the prepared text, Jan Fields-Dixon glanced over to the President. She, like Jan, was listening intently to the spokesperson as she calmly sipped her second cup of coffee. Jan, used to working with politicians, knew this was a setup. She knew from the moment the conditions of the interview had been set that Wilson had something specific in mind and that she, Jan, was part of that plan. Still Jan, asked for by name, agreed. So with camera crew and notebook Jan tromped into the Oval Office fifteen minutes before the White House spokesperson was scheduled to go on and joined the President for a light breakfast of sliced fruit, danish, and rolls. The fact that the President was having her breakfast then and there made Jan suspect that she had been unable to have it upstairs in her private quarters before coming down to the Oval Office. Odds were, Jan thought, President Wilson had come up from the White House War Room instead, where she would have received an update on the current fighting taking place in central Germany.

Looking back at the screen, Jan watched as her colleagues from the White House press corps jumped up, to a person, madly waving their hands and calling out as soon as the spokesperson finished reading the prepared text. The camera couldn't help but catch the crestfallen expression on the spokesperson's face as he surveyed the sea of waving hands and tried to pick the easiest mark in the crowd. Again glancing over to Wilson, Jan smiled to herself. The President was no fool. She knew that the White House press corps would react like that. She knew that it would be impossible to control them. Therefore she had sent her spokesperson out to deliver the message and take the full brunt of the initial volley of questions while she, safely tucked away in the Oval Office, could watch and listen to the questions that the media felt were most pressing. Then with a single trusted member of the media, Jan, she would be able to answer those questions at her leisure in a calm setting where she would be able to think without competing with shouts, flashes popping, and hands waving to gain her attention. No, Jan thought, Wilson was no fool.

Wilson's abilities and skill as a politician, of course, were well known. She was good. She had to be in order to survive in a world that was not only male dominated but one in which her abilities and conduct were measured against standards established by those who had gone before her, all of whom were male. Jan had in a way highlighted Wilson's problem when she had asked Wilson how she felt about questions like "Is she tough enough to handle Congress?" or "Will she be able to fill the shoes of her predecessor?" during her race for the office. Wilson pointed out to Jan that skill and cooperation, not strength, were just as effective in dealing with people and securing their cooperation. Then with a smile Wilson also pointed out that she had no desire to wear her predecessor's shoes, since their style was not to her liking.

Jan understood all of this, having had to deal with similar concerns and issues in her own profession. So it was with a sharp eye that Jan watched Wilson as she redefined the image and role of the President to fit her. Though often accused of being "unpresidential," Wilson seldom failed to carry the day and come out every inch a leader and a lady. Today, Jan thought, was a perfect case in point. Rather than throw herself into a situation that was already degenerating into a shouting match, one in which passions and tempers would run high and words could easily be misunderstood, Wilson had chosen to distance herself from that while still dealing with it. Jan watched Wilson's face and her manner. Her face betrayed no strain, no apprehension. Instead, Wilson sat there rather impassively sipping coffee while studying the television monitor as she listened to her press spokesperson field the press's questions. Jan would be able to record Wilson's own version of those responses in a few minutes and then be able to have them on the noon broadcast, showing the nation and the world that the President of the United States was both in control of herself and the situation.

Turning back to the television, Jan listened, writing short notes in a spiral notebook that sat on her lap while she too sipped her coffee. The spokesperson, after finally succeeding in getting only one correspondent to ask a complete question, responded with carefully chosen words. "As I have stated in the text of the prepared statement, while President Wilson does not endorse General Malin's actions to date, she cannot ignore the fact that German reaction today, the resort to force of arms to stop General Malin, is placing innocent Americans in danger. The deployment of forces from the Mediterranean and the United States and the heightening of the readiness condition of Air Force units in England are all in response to the German decision to open hostilities and are intended to save as many innocent soldiers of the Tenth Corps as possible."

Another correspondent took up where the first had left off. He didn't wait to be recognized or for the spokesperson to finish. He simply jumped up and shouted, "But Chancellor Ruff of Germany is claiming that the soldiers of the Tenth Corps by obeying Malin's orders have made themselves willing accomplices to what he is calling a crime against German sovereignty."

The spokesperson, with specific instructions on what to ignore and what to respond to, turned his attention to this comment. "Chancellor Ruff might be right. Even if he were, however, the President feels that using the German Army to destroy the entire Tenth Corps, something that Chancellor Ruff has threatened to do, is the same as executing a person accused of a crime without a trial." The spokesperson paused, then added, "I would like to take this opportunity to point out again that even the duly elected German Parliament does not agree with Chancellor Ruff's decision. The call for an immediate cease-fire and an armistice negotiated by the European Council or the UN is a reasonable solution that President Wilson is more than willing to consider."

This last comment led to the next question. "Could President Wilson convince General Malin, who hasn't been willing to listen to Washington thus far, to agree to a cease-fire?"

The spokesperson, with a wry smile, responded. "That, at this point, is mere supposition. So long as the German government insists on resolving the issue by force of arms, I expect General Malin feels he has no choice but to respond in kind. It is now the Germans who have the responsibility of making the first move."

With that response, the balance of the press conference fell into a round of follow-on questions that attempted to draw out more details on the deployment of American forces to Europe. The spokesperson, not having this information, fended off these and other questions as best he could until they reached a previously determined time limit. Finished, he closed his folder and looked up; and over the chorus of shouts, he thanked the White House press corps and walked out of a room still reverberating from shouts of further questions. As she watched the manner in which her colleagues acted, Jan couldn't blame Wilson for opting to sit this press conference out.

Finished with her coffee and with watching, Wilson leaned over to the coffee table, put her empty cup down, and pressed the power button on the television's remote control. With a smile she sat up, looked at Jan, and told her that for the moment the show was over and she was ready to start their interview. Jan's cameraman and sound technician, who had been waiting in the outer office, were allowed in. While they prepared their equipment, Wilson prepared herself. She made no extraordinary efforts. Only a tug at her dark blue jacket, a smoothing of her skirt, and a quick check of her hair was all she needed. With a nod Wilson indicated that she was ready to start.

Well drilled, Jan's crew started to roll, giving her the thumbs-up when they were running. Skipping most of the preliminaries, Jan went straight to her first question. "President Wilson, I would like to pick up where Tim Allen of the UP left off during the press conference that was just held. While your prepared statement made it clear that the deployment of forces —including alerting the 17th Airborne, redeployment of elements of the Navy and Marine Corps into the Baltic Sea, and increased readiness of Air Force units in Great Britain—was in response to the German actions this morning and would be used to support the Tenth Corps, your statement said nothing about the conditions under which those forces would be used and did not set a timetable for their use. Have conditions, including a timetable, already been determined, and has the German government been advised of these?"

Without batting an eye, Wilson looked at Jan and began to respond. "To answer the first part of your question, as far as I am concerned, the conditions that would dictate the use of additional U.S. forces from outside the theater have already been met." Wilson paused to allow the implications of that statement to sink in before continuing. "If you recall, Jan, I stated several days ago that I would respond to any hostile actions against the innocent men and women of the Tenth Corps by the Germans by doing everything in my power to rescue as many of them as possible. The deployment of additional forces to that theater of operations is the initial phase of that effort. As to when they will be employed, I am still taking that under consideration. It is still contingent on German reaction over the next day or two."

"Then," Jan asked, "you are committed but it is not, in your opinion, too late?"

Wilson smiled. "It is never too late for sanity to prevail. I will be more than willing to entertain reasonable proposals and enter negotiations with Chancellor Ruff's government, provided the fighting stops and I have some assurance that he and his government are dealing with us in good faith and not simply stalling while seeking a military advantage while we talk."

"Then, Madam President, we have not crossed the proverbial Rubicon. Our forces have not taken any actions that threaten to escalate this crisis any further, for the moment?"

"That, as you know, is very subjective. For example, although our aircraft based in Great Britain have not violated German airspace, the Air Force has established round-the-clock patrols. They're already using aircraft based in Great Britain over both the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, including E-3 airborne early warning and command and control aircraft flying in support of the Tenth Corps. Down links, using satellites and other secure communications nets, are already providing the Tenth Corps staff with information from the E-3s on German air operations."

The matter-of-fact manner in which Wilson was discussing the issue caused Jan to pause. Wilson was both calm and well prepared. This, coupled with no visible sign of stress or apprehension, made Jan wonder if the latest turn of affairs was not only expected but in fact had been planned for. Not wanting to lose momentum or give Wilson cause for concern, Jan popped the first question that came to her mind while she tried to figure a way of prying more information from Wilson. "Then it is your intention, Madam President, to use forces as they become available to assist the escape of the Tenth Corps?"

"As I said, Jan, employment of additional forces is contingent on German reaction." Shifting slightly in her chair, Wilson looked down at her nails, then back up at Jan. "I would like to take this opportunity to point out that I do understand the position of the German people and Chancellor Ruff's government. Yes, American forces, the Tenth Corps, have violated a number of international agreements. Yes, they have violated German territory and endangered the peace. But the Tenth Corps did not fire the first shot. Chancellor Ruff's government has over the past week continued to respond to my calls and those of my representatives for a peaceful and a negotiated settlement with demands that we cannot accept. I ask the American public as well as the German public to bear in mind throughout this crisis that it was the seizure of the nuclear weapons by force of arms at Sembach that started this chain of regrettable events. In the passions of the moment, we must not lose sight of the events that have brought us to this point, or of the real issues at hand."

Jan caught what Wilson was hinting at and jumped in. "You are, of course, referring to the nuclear weapons?"

A smile lit Wilson's face. "Exactly. The United States, operating as an agent of the Western nuclear powers, including Britain, France, Russia, and Israel, took direct action to secure nuclear weapons from an unstable government, one which had previously denounced nuclear proliferation. The seizure of those weapons by Germany, another nation that had previously denounced nuclear proliferation, the manner in which they were seized, and the resulting crisis are entirely separate issues from the intervention in the Ukraine."

"But we did contribute, Madam President, to this problem by bringing those weapons seized in the Ukraine to Germany. That was a clear violation of a previous agreement. Chancellor Ruff's government contends that that action on our part provided sufficient justification for their actions."

Knowing that Jan's husband was part of the Tenth Corps, Wilson decided to hit on a very personal note without making it seem like she was doing so. Leaning forward, her face set in a determined, almost angry mask, she said, "Does that violation of a treaty justify the murder of innocent American and German soldiers, not to mention the destruction of German civilian property? Does it justify the relinquishing of control of nuclear weapons to the Germans? No. Chancellor Ruff's justification for his actions over the past few days is far too thin. Rather than responding to this crisis in a responsible manner, as the commander at Sembach did, Chancellor Ruff has been obsessed with a desire to extract a pound of flesh when we in truth never threatened the safety or sovereignty of the German people in the first place. It is our soldiers, our sons and daughters, who are being endangered and unjustly punished without due process of law at the hands of the German military. And I will not tolerate it. Not as long as I am the President of the United States."

Wilson's angry and defiant response caught Jan off guard and, as Wilson had anticipated, hit her hard. The mention of American servicemen being endangered unnecessarily caused Jan to lose concentration as the image of Scott Dixon popped into her mind. The fact that the President of the United States was making a major policy statement as well as issuing a warning to a foreign government right there was forgotten for a moment. Scott and thoughts of his safety and well-being were what crowded Jan's thoughts. Because of this, an awkward silence of several seconds followed before Jan finally was able to pick up where Wilson had left off.

But the steam was gone from Jan's interview. When she finally realized that everyone was looking at her, waiting for her next question, Jan didn't have one ready. Instead she looked over to Wilson, thanking her for taking the time for the interview. With few formalities, Jan and her camera crew left moments before Ed Lewis, waiting in an adjoining office, came in. Wilson, who had already moved from where she had been during the interview with Jan Fields-Dixon, was seated at her desk but facing away, out into the Rose Garden. Seeing that she was deep in thought, Lewis quietly walked over to where the breakfast buffet was still laid out and helped himself to a cup of real coffee. As he went about this, he made just enough noise to ensure that Wilson was aware of his presence yet not enough to disturb her train of thought. When he was finished at the table, he walked over to the sofa that sat catty-corner to Wilson's desk, took a seat, and waited for her to finish whatever she was working over in her mind.

Without a word, Wilson slowly spun her chair around and faced Lewis. For a moment she simply looked at him. The expression on her face was one of pain. That, of course, did not surprise Lewis. It was in fact more of a surprise that she was holding up as well as she was when others about her, like Soares and Rothenberg, were losing their nerve and thrashing about the halls of the State Department and Pentagon like beached whales. For Wilson not only had the burden of the crisis to deal with, a crisis she was keenly aware her poor foreign policy decisions had precipitated, she was part of the three-way conspiracy that Big Al Malin was now playing out in central Germany. No, Lewis thought, she deserves to be concerned.

When Wilson finally spoke, it didn't have anything really to do with the matter at hand. Instead of discussing the battles raging in central Germany and her responses, she announced quite blandly, "Ed, I'm becoming a real bastard. A cynical, manipulative, grade A, government-inspected and FDA-approved bastard."

Caught off guard, Lewis's first reaction was to make light of her comment. "I think, Madam President, you're suffering from a little gender dysphoria this morning. I believe the female species uses a different term."

Looking at Lewis, Wilson showed her appreciation for his efforts by smiling slightly. But just as quickly as the smile came, it left. In its place was a serious stare. "No, Ed, I meant what I said. I've become one of them, one of those macho-asshole male professional politicians who don't give a damn who they step on or what they do in order to have and hold the power that this city has come to represent."

Seeing that she was stuck on this issue and his easygoing manner and humor wouldn't be enough to shake her off of it, Lewis put down his cup of coffee and prepared to deal with Wilson's crisis in confidence. "Abby, what did you expect? I mean, if the Lord on high was going to stage the second coming tomorrow and tempt the new messiah, he'd send him to Washington, not the desert. No one, Madam President, for all their good intentions, can do what you and others that have gone before you have to do and expect to maintain their eligibility for sainthood."

"Ed," Wilson said as she shook her head, "I know that. Damn it, I know that. People told me that before I started my race for the White House and told me that when I got here. But it still doesn't make it any easier for me. I mean, I really wanted to be different. And as the first woman President I thought that I could be different, that I could set my own standards and do things in a more human, open, and, well, loving and caring way. I mean, after all, I raised two children, maintained a marriage, and held down a career without losing my sanity. Why, I thought, couldn't I do the same thing here? Why couldn't I balance it all and still maintain my pride and dignity. Is that, Ed, too much to ask?"

"First off, Abby, I want you to know that you're the most human and caring individual that has occupied that desk that I've known. Despite all our differences, I admire the manner in which you have redefined the term 'presidential.' Perhaps this office was long overdue for a woman's touch and was just waiting for the right person who could retain her sense of femininity while dealing with the office and its demands." Lewis paused, picked up his cup of coffee, but set it down again without taking a sip. "Having said that, I must remind you, Abby, that you can't expect to play in a pigsty and not get dirty. Washington is the highest priced pigsty in the world, and this office happens to be in the center of it. That you've done as well as you have up to this point is nothing short of a miracle. Now tell me what's really on your mind. What brought on this sudden need for self-flagellation right in the middle of this crisis? Are you having second thoughts about letting Big Al make a run for the sea?"

Shaking her head, Wilson looked up at the ceiling. "No, no. I, like you, am still convinced that, given the situation, General Malin's option was the best of all the rotten choices we had. That's not what's gotten to me. No, it seems like the big decisions are easy to make and live with. It's when they become personal, human, that it gets to me." Looking down at Lewis, she waited a few seconds, then began to unload. "Jan Fields-Dixon was just here doing an interview after watching my spokesperson read the statement we prepared this morning. The interview was going fine until we got to a point where I saw an opportunity to make an impression on her, to play on her emotions. Knowing full well that her husband is in the middle of this mess, I used that connection to drive home the righteousness of my decision."

Wilson paused as she took in a deep breath in an effort to hold back a tear. "I hurt her, Ed. I wanted to play on her female emotions, and when I did, and I saw that I had thrown her into a momentary panic, I felt a sudden twinge of pride."

"I'm sure, Abby, you did what you thought was right. As I said, you are the President. You have a great deal of responsibility and many things that—"

Leaning forward, Wilson made a fist and pounded it on the desk. "That doesn't make me feel any better, Ed. I hear your words, but in my heart I feel like dirt. After despising and condemning male politicians all these years for doing the same thing to me and other female politicians, I suddenly realized that, given the opportunity, I would do the same thing." Easing back into her chair, Wilson thought for a moment before speaking again, this time with a softer, almost mournful tone. "It's, it's like I've lost the last of my innocence. I suppose that I've become nothing more than a political whore like everyone else around here, and it will be easier from now on."

Standing up, Lewis walked over to the front edge of Wilson's desk. Leaning over with his arms resting on his knuckles, Lewis stared at Wilson. "Abby, no one will ever be able to call you a whore. And the fact that you feel like this should be enough to convince you that you'll never be like the rest of us. You are something special. Despite what your detractors say, you've made, and will continue to make, a difference. Don't buckle now. You've got too much going for you, and we've got a lot to do."

"Do you think, Ed, that Ms. Fields knows that her husband is leading the main effort?"

Lewis, standing up, folded his arms and shook his head. "I really doubt it. But that doesn't make a difference. Scotty Dixon has a reputation for hanging his tail end over the edge. Jan knows without having to be told that Scotty is doing his duty and doing it from the front."

"You know, Ed, I wish he weren't leading that effort. For Jan's sake, I wish he weren't."

Leaning down, Lewis placed his knuckles back on the desk. His voice became rather stern. "No you don't, Madam President. Scotty Dixon is the best that you, the commander-in-chief, have. No. You, as the President and not the woman, want Dixon exactly where he is. Besides," Lewis concluded as he stood up, "he's a soldier. That means he's an expendable commodity. He knows that, Jan knows that, and you, the commander-in-chief, know that. It's when commanders become so concerned about the welfare of their soldiers that they are no longer willing to risk them in battle that men die needlessly and all is lost."

Wilson shook her head. "That might be true, Ed. But it doesn't make this any easier."

"And, Madam President, so long as you and those who follow you feel that way, this country will in my opinion be a cut above the rest." Finished, Lewis stood there for a moment. He suddenly felt very foolish for having lectured the President. It was, he realized, not the way things were done. But then again no one would ever accuse Lewis of doing things in a conventional way. Wanting to end this particular discussion, Lewis smiled. "Besides, Scotty Dixon's a brigade commander, a full colonel. There's so many people between him and the shooting that only an incredible stroke of bad luck could put him in harm's way."

Sensing that the mood had suddenly changed, Wilson sat up and looked Lewis in the eye. There was a hint of a smile on her face. "Ed."

"Yes, Madam President?"

"Thanks."

Though he didn't know exactly what Wilson was thanking him for, Lewis took it that the personal crisis she had been suffering when he had walked in had passed and that she was ready to get down to the business at hand.

Knowing that there was no time to lose, Captain Albrecht Benen ran up and down the line of flatbed rail cars sitting in the Dermbach rail yard in an effort to hurry his men. With the sound of the rest of the 4th Panzergrenadier Division's 1st Brigade already moving north through the town, Benen knew he didn't have much time to get his men and equipment offloaded and moving to their assigned forming-up point. Looking at his watch and seeing that it was not even twenty hundred hours, Benen wondered how the rest of the brigade, using roads, had gotten there before him, formed up, and moved to join the 2nd Panzer Division. But the noise of tracked vehicles and heavily laden supply trucks rolling through the town told him that at least some elements of the brigade had.

With no time to lose, Benen did his best to ignore the rumbling ground caused by tanks and tracked vehicles and to hasten the efforts of his soldiers. They had twelve Jaguar 1 antitank guided-missile tank destroyers, two trucks, and a small jeep to untie and get off the rail car. Doing it in the darkness of the deserted rail yard without the help of any railway workers only served to make things worse. The workers were no doubt screwing off with the police somewhere. No matter. The whole operation, from the first day that they had rolled out of their kasern to the receipt of the orders that had placed them on this train while the rest of the brigade had road-marched, had been a muddle. Why, he asked his first sergeant, should this be any different?

The first sergeant grunted his agreement. Then, looking in the direction of the town center, the first sergeant asked if maybe it would be a good idea for someone from the company to go into town and let someone from brigade know that they had arrived. Benen, embarrassed that he had arrived late, told the first sergeant that he would do so as soon as the company was ready to move. Besides, he needed every man he had to get the company's vehicles off the rail cars and moving. That decision, however, was countered by the captain himself with his next breath. Seeing that the lieutenant who commanded the one platoon that was already off the train had his men and vehicles assembled and ready to move, the captain shouted to the lieutenant to take his platoon of three anti-tank guided-missile tank destroyers up to the center of the town and wait there until the rest of the company was ready.

The first sergeant was about to point out that the personnel from that platoon could help offload the other Jaguar anti-tank guided-missile tank destroyers but didn't. Seeing that his commander was quite agitated and as confused in his own mind as the situation within the division appeared to be, the first sergeant shrugged and walked away. Officers, he thought, were sometimes difficult to understand. Tired from the long series of marches and countermarches that had taken them from one end of Germany to another, the first sergeant decided that this was neither the time nor place to argue with another confused and tired man. Better just to shut up and do as he was told while the officers sorted out this mess. Besides, the sound of tank engines growing fainter and fainter told him that whoever had been passing through the town's center had left. With the village cleared, at least for the moment, of military traffic, there would be little danger of their three tank destroyers getting mixed in with another convoy or adding to some other commander's confusion in the village. While the revving of engines of the lead tank destroyer platoon began to fill the rail yard, the first sergeant walked the line and shouted to his soldiers to hurry up and get a move on.

As the last tank of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Armored Division, left the north side of Dermbach, Scott Dixon and his tactical command post entered the town from the south. Leading the small convoy from his tank, Dixon was anxious to catch up to the rear of the 2nd Battalion, if for no other reason than to tuck up within it for security. The single M-1A1 tank, three M-113 armored personnel carriers, and one M-577 command post carrier didn't offer much in the way of defensive firepower. In a pinch, against anything bigger than a platoon, the best Dixon could hope for was a valiant last stand.

Looking down to his left, Dixon watched Colonel Vorishnov for a moment. Standing upright in the loader's hatch of Dixon's tank, Vorishnov was leaning over on his folded arms that rested on the flat race ring of the loader's 7.62mm machine gun while he looked to the front, keeping track of where they were going while watching for any sign of trouble. Like Dixon, Vorishnov was bundled up in a heavy parka with its fur-lined hood pulled up over his armored crewman's helmet. A wool scarf wrapped around his neck several times was pulled up over Vorishnov's nose to protect his mouth and nose while a set of heavy plastic and rubber goggles were pulled down to keep his eyeballs from freezing in their sockets. Like every armored crewman who had to hang out of his vehicle and face the freezing temperature and the cutting winds, both Dixon and Vorishnov had every square inch of skin covered by as many layers of clothing as they could wear while maintaining their ability to function.

Vorishnov's desire to be up front where he could see what was going on was second only to Dixon's desire to have him nearby. Dixon had come to rely on Vorishnov's opinions and insights. It was like having a second pair of eyes that were just as keen as his own and trained to operate at the same level and speed. Vorishnov, understanding his role, never argued with Dixon and never tried to impose his own opinion on him. Instead he would stand back watching and listening. When he did have something to say or add, he would always start by saying, "Excuse me, Colonel, but could I make a comment?" By the time the order from division had come down to commence the flanking maneuver against the 2nd Panzer Division, no one on Dixon's staff would even consider commencing a briefing without the tall, stocky Russian colonel present. Vorishnov even shared Dixon's love of being a tanker, throwing himself into the task of learning how to function as a loader on an American tank. Though he couldn't help but comment every chance he had about how much better it was to have an automatic loader, like on Russian tanks, Vorishnov enjoyed being there with Dixon.

From the second-story window of his family's small corner apartment that overlooked the town's square, seven-year-old Hans Gielber watched in fascination as the line of three Jaguar tank destroyers moved from the rail yard toward him. Finally, he thought, the German Army had arrived. After watching American tanks and infantry fighting vehicles pass right under his own window for the last hour, someone was finally coming to stop them. Though he could only count three tank destroyers, that didn't matter. They were German tank destroyers, armed with either long-range TOW anti-tank guided missiles or the intermediate-range HOT anti-tank guided missiles. Either way, Hans knew that the big heavy American tanks would be no match for the fast, hard-hitting Jaguars that he and the other boys in his class had been learning about over the past weeks.

Like most of his classmates, he had great confidence in the abilities of the German Army and the effectiveness of its weapons. He didn't realize that the long-range anti-tank guided missiles on the Jaguars would be ineffective at very close range in street fighting due to the warhead's arming process that required the missile to fly a considerable distance before becoming fully capable. What young Hans Gielber knew in his heart was that both the soldiers and the weapons were the products of a nation with a long, proud military heritage that combined the knowledge of great engineers with the skills of master craftsmen. Nothing made in America, he told his friends in school, could ever hope to match a precision-made German machine in the hands of a brave German soldier. That he would be able to see the vindication of his arguments from his own window excited Hans no end.

While he intently watched the Jaguars move closer, Hans felt the floor of his apartment begin to vibrate as it had before when the last of the American tanks had come through. Pressing his face against the glass, Hans put his hands up on the window and looked in the opposite direction, down a side street that led to the south, to see if there were more American tanks coming. In the glow of the dim streetlights that circled the town square, Hans could just make out the image of a long heavy gun tube coming out of the shadows and into the town center. It was another American tank. Looking back to where the Jaguars were, Hans waited impatiently to see who would fire first. Not that it made a difference, he thought. The Jaguars would in short order reduce the American tank to a burning hulk. And he, out of all the boys in his class, would be there to see it.

Noting that they were about to enter the town's center crowded with shops and buildings, Dixon twisted about in his open hatch to look behind him to make sure that Cerro and the armored personnel carriers were keeping up. In his desire to make up for lost time, it was easy to forget about the slower, heavily burdened carriers. In the dim lights that lit the dingy little streets of the eastern German village, Dixon could make out the image of Cerro's personnel carrier as it wound its way through the narrow streets of Dermbach. He was about to key his intercom switch to order the driver to slow down so that the rest of the command post could catch up when Vorishnov, in a voice that was excited, yet clear and concise, cut Dixon off. "German anti-tank guided-missile carrier to the front, fifty meters!"

Snapping his neck about, Dixon instantly focused on the squat boxlike tracked vehicle emerging from a side street directly across the town square from where his own tank was coming. While his body prepared him for battle, dumping adrenaline into his blood while his groin muscles tightened to keep from venting urine or bowel, Dixon's mind automatically flipped through a mental file of armored vehicle images and profiles. Without much conscious thought needed, a voice inside Dixon's brain shouted, Jaguar.

With that completed, Dixon's training as a tanker took over, treating the armored vehicle to his front as an enemy until such time as he could determine otherwise. With a single seamless order, Dixon shouted directions to his crew in the form of a fire command that did not come out as clear and concise as he would have liked. But that didn't seem to make a difference as the crewmen, including Vorishnov, responded to each element of the command. "DRIVER STOP! GUNNER—BATTLE SIGHT—ANTI-TANK!"

The driver, already alerted to the presence of an enemy by Vorishnov's acquisition report, had eased up on the throttle and was prepared to continue or stop when Dixon issued his fire command. With measured practice, the driver eased down on the brake, bringing the massive tank to a smooth stop.

The gunner, lulled into a near state of sleep, had also been jerked to life by Vorishnov's warning. By the time Dixon uttered his first word, the gunner had his eye on the primary sight, and the thermal sight switched from standby to on. Like Dixon, the gunner's training overrode any panic. Instead, his hand moved across the face of the primary sight's controls and knobs, ensuring by feel that all was ready to engage the target. Though Dixon had announced battle sight, the gunner intended to range to the target using the laser range finder integrated in the primary sight. In fact, the gunner didn't even have to think twice about that as his right thumb automatically twitched and depressed the laser range finder button on the top of the gunner controls. This action caused the 120mm main gun to jump as the computer received automatically the correct range to the target, computed a proper ballistic solution for the forthcoming engagement, and applied that ballistic solution to the tank's fire-control system, all done before Dixon had finished spitting out the last word of his fire command.

Vorishnov, steeled for action before anyone else, had dropped to the turret floor and plopped himself down on the seat he had been standing on. Reaching across, Vorishnov grabbed the long, crooked arm that served to arm the tank's main gun as well as deflect the wide base plate of expended main gun rounds into a container hanging from the gun's breech. Finished with that, Vorishnov pulled his whole body over to one side to escape the recoil of the main gun and hung on to the handles as he had been shown.

As he sat there watching Dixon in the dim blue-green light of the turret, he pondered whether he should ask what round Dixon wanted to load next but decided not to. Dixon's mind, he knew, was busy going over the shoot-don't shoot decision process. Vorishnov, knowing that they were facing an anti-tank unit, would load a high explosive anti-tank, or HEAT, round next, once the armor-piercing, fin-stabilized anti-tank round already in the gun's chamber was fired. He would have to announce that to the gunner so that he could change the ammunition selection lever on the primary sight and allow the fire-control computer to provide a new ballistic solution. But that was easy and worth the effort. Though Vorishnov hadn't been told, he assumed that the Americans, like his own Army, preferred the HEAT round, a chemical round that caused a-shaped-charge explosion on contact with target when engaging lightly armored vehicles and material targets. Armor-piercing rounds used against enemy tanks were nothing more than a depleted uranium slug that used kinetic energy to punch its way through the armor plate of the target. Against the Jaguar there was the chance that the armor-piercing round would sail through both sides of the Jaguar without destroying it. Though Vorishnov doubted that would happen, a HEAT round next time would be better.

If there was any doubt in Dixon's mind about whether or not he should engage the Jaguar across the square from him, he didn't dwell long on it. They were committed to war. First blood had been drawn, and this was neither the time nor place to determine if the crew of the Jaguar across from them was made up of good Germans or bad Germans. Only the fact that Vorishnov had forgotten to announce that he was UP, or ready for action, caused a delay. Out of habit, Dixon shouted, "LOADER! ARE YOU UP?"

Vorishnov, realizing his error, shouted, "UP," then silently cursed himself for being so stupid.

Dixon instantly shouted, "FIRE!" causing the gunner to respond with "ON THE WAY" just before he pulled the trigger.

The first engagement of the evening was over before the last of the reverberations from Dixon's tank died away in the close confines of the town's square. Like a giant dart, the depleted uranium penetrator sliced through the armor plate of the lead Jaguar 1 of Captain Albrecht Benen's company. Vorishnov's fear that such a round would have minimal effect against the Jaguar was ill founded, as the depleted uranium penetrator, pushing a chunk of the Jaguar's own armor plate in front of it, cut through stored ammunition into the Jaguar's fuel cell and out the rear through the engine compartment. The tremendous heat created by the transformation of the penetrator's kinetic energy into heat upon contact with the Jaguar set off first the propellant of the stored ammunition, then the diesel fuel.

Hans Gielber never had the opportunity to see any of this. By the time the lead Jaguar began shuddering from internal explosions, Hans was fleeing from the window, his face, chest, and upper arms shredded by glass that had been shattered by the concussion of the muzzle blast from Dixon's main gun. Though he would survive, he, like other children around the world, would pay for the decisions made by men who claimed to be their leaders and the men who were opposed to them. Like many of his countrymen caught in the middle of a conflict which few understood, Hans Gielber would carry the mental and physical scars of war with him for the rest of his life.

With the initial threat dealt with, Dixon now had to make a series of quick decisions. They were, relative to his rank and position, rather simple decisions. But that didn't make them any less critical. Knowing full well that anti-tank guns don't travel alone, Dixon knew there were more somewhere nearby, if not immediately behind the one he had just destroyed. The destruction of the lead Jaguar would serve as an effective, if somewhat bloody, warning to any German unit in the area that the Americans were there. So sneaking away into the darkness was out of the question. That didn't rule out the option of retreat. Dixon's tank was the only combat vehicle in the entire tactical command post. Though there might only be one more guided-missile anti-tank vehicle in the town, the chances of there being more were just as good, and Dixon had no way of knowing which answer was the correct one. So retreat was a prudent choice.

No one who knew Scott Dixon, however, would ever be able to accuse him of being conservative or prudent when it came to tactics. It was that reputation that had led his superiors to select his brigade for the foray into the Ukraine. It was those traits that gave them confidence that Dixon's brigade would be able to pull off the ride around the 2nd Panzer Division's flank. And in a moment of sheer panic Dixon's hard-hitting and aggressive nature overrode common sense and dictated his next series of orders. Keying the radio net, he ordered Cerro to find somewhere that the soft-skinned vehicles of the tactical command post could be protected by the officers and enlisted of the staff with the few anti-tank rockets that they had while they waited for the lead element of the next battalion to reach them.

Even before Cerro acknowledged Dixon's order, Dixon shouted for his driver to move out and told his gunner to keep his eyes open, that they were going to go around the Jaguar they had just destroyed and see if there were any more following. As the driver engaged the transmission, Dixon squatted on his seat and looked over to see how Vorishnov was doing with reloading. Dixon, just in time to see the Russian ram the next round into the gun chamber, noticed that he was sweating. Vorishnov, seeing Dixon watching, grunted and yelled over the sounds of the tank's turbine engines, "Automatic loaders are much better." Then he added after keying the intercom, "HEAT loaded."

With a quick smile and a thumbs-up, Dixon acknowledged the comment and popped back up just as his tank was about to pass the burning Jaguar. His gunner, who was not blinded by the flames of the burning German vehicle, shouted a new acquisition report. "Anti-tank, twelve o'clock!"

Dixon noticed that his gunner's voice was calmer now, even though he saw at the same instant that the new target was even closer than the one they had just engaged. Without waiting to give a full fire command, Dixon yelled, "INDEX HEAT— FIRE!" in a single breath. Before the gunner fired, Dixon looked and saw another Jaguar desperately trying to back down the narrow street behind the one his gunner was engaging.

The muzzle blast of his tank's 120mm main gun momentarily blinded Dixon, who had not heeded the gunner's warning of "On the way" and closed his eyes. Not that there was much to see. The second engagement ended as the first had, with a target hit on the second Jaguar at a range of less than forty meters. But there was no time to stop to catch their breath. For while the gunner was preparing to dispatch the second Jaguar, Dixon caught a glimpse of the other Jaguar halfway through the process of turning around further down the street. Suddenly Dixon began to doubt the wisdom of charging across the square in pursuit of Germans. For the briefest moments he understood how Custer could have allowed himself to get suckered into his own massacre.

But this was no time for half measures, no time for backing up. Dixon felt he was committed and that it was better to keep going than to back off now. Taking a deep breath, Dixon looked about as his night vision began to clear and ordered the driver to keep heading down the street toward what he thought was the rail yard. Though he was pushing his luck or, more correctly, the luck of his entire crew, Dixon had no intention of stopping while he thought he had an advantage.

In the rail yard, bewilderment was replaced by a panicked frenzy of activity as Captain Albrecht Benen and his first sergeant, once they realized what was going on, ran up and down the line of flatbed rail cars shouting at their men in an effort to get them to hurry. Not everyone was as panicked as their commander. One Jaguar commander, seeing that his crew was doing the best it could and noticing that the second tank cannon report was closer, climbed on his vehicle and began to mount an anti-tank guided missile. Even if they were still on the rail car when the enemy tank came, the Jaguar commander figured he would be able to get at least one shot off.

Benen, pausing after he heard a third tank round fired, realized that in moments the enemy would be right there in the middle of the rail yard itself. Knowing that it was useless to try to take on the enemy tank in the town, Benen decided to prepare to meet the Americans in the rail yard. There, the anti-tank guided missiles would have enough stand-off distance between the launcher and the target, for it took several meters for an anti-tank guided missile to arm itself after being fired, something that he couldn't count on in the narrow streets of the town. Leaving the first sergeant to take care of the vehicles at the front of the train, closest to where he expected the enemy tanks to come from, Benen ran to the end of the rail cars where he intended to deploy several of his Jaguars. Though it would be close, he was confident that they could do it.

Confidence, at that moment, was something that Second Lieutenant Tim Ellerbee could have used. Ordered to pick up his speed and get into the town of Dermbach as quickly as possible to protect the brigade command post from an enemy counterattack, Ellerbee and the rest of his platoon had left Captain Nancy Kozak and her slower Bradleys behind in the night in their efforts to reach the brigade command post before the Germans did.

The sudden burst of speed that allowed Ellerbee and his tanks to break free of the numbing convoy speed, heightened by the prospect of battle, shook any traces of sleep from Ellerbee's mind. They were going into battle again. This time he and his platoon would do everything right. The problems that he had experienced in the Ukraine would be washed away in a single smashing success. And he would be able to prove to the female captain who spoke to him like he was an idiot that he was as good a soldier, if not better, as she was. Of all the thoughts that ran through Ellerbee's mind as his platoon reached the southern outskirts of Dermbach, that was the most important one.

Which perhaps explains why Second Lieutenant Ellerbee missed the sign that indicated the main road, the one that would have taken his platoon to the center of town where the brigade command post was and where Scott Dixon and his crew were fighting for their lives. Instead Ellerbee found that he was rapidly leading his entire platoon down a blind alley instead of charging to the rescue. Not understanding what had happened, Ellerbee brought his tank to a screaming stop when he suddenly ran out of street and entered a factory complex. Pausing, he looked to his left, then to his right, then at his map while the sounds of Scott Dixon's lonely battle against Captain Albrecht Benen's Jaguar company reverberated through the empty streets.

While Ellerbee was trying to figure out what had gone wrong and what to do about it, Sergeant First Class Rourk, Ellerbee's platoon sergeant, came over the platoon's radio net. "Alpha Three One, this is Alpha Three Four. We missed a turn back there somewhere. Do you want me to get everyone turned around? Over."

Looking back down the line of tanks, Ellerbee realized that would take time, which the brigade command post might not have. Besides, if they missed the turn once, there was no guarantee that they wouldn't miss it again. Looking at his map again, Ellerbee noticed that there was a rail line that ran north to south. To his front, he could make out what he thought was a set of tracks in the factory's yard. Glancing back to his left, he followed the tracks toward the direction of the town center and the sounds of battle. It only made sense that the tracks in the factory yard had to be connected to the main rail line shown on his map.

Stuffing his map back down the open hatch he stood in, Ellerbee keyed the radio mike. "Negative, Three Four. We're going to follow these tracks here to my front and into the center of the town. When we get close enough to the action, we'll cut up a side street and find the brigade CP. Over."

Though Rourk wasn't too keen on Ellerbee's idea, Ellerbee was the platoon leader and they had to do something fast. So with a less than enthusiastic "Roger, we're right behind you," Rourk and the rest of 3rd Platoon made a sharp left and began to rumble along the railroad tracks toward the sound of the guns.

In headlong pursuit down the twisting streets after another, and what he hoped to be the last, Jaguar, Dixon didn't notice that he had run out of street and was entering the wide-open rail yard. Not that this helped the Jaguar that they were chasing. When the gunner thought he had enough time, he yelled, "ON THE WAY." Without waiting for Dixon to give the order to fire, he fired the main gun. As before, this HEAT round found its mark.

The sudden report of a tank cannon and the series of explosions caused by the destruction of one of his Jaguars right there in the middle of the rail yard caught Captain Albrecht Benen and the rest of his company by surprise. In an instant the dark rail yard was bathed in bright yellow and red light as flames from the burning propellant of ammunition stored in the latest Jaguar destroyed leaped into the black night sky. Every one of Benen's officers and soldiers turned and watched before the image of Dixon's tank, with its huge 120mm tank cannon turning toward them, caused them to redouble their efforts. This was it. Fight or flight.

The sudden image of a dozen enemy armored vehicles, some still on rail cars but all of them pointing toward them, startled Dixon, Vorishnov, and his gunner. They were in deep shit with no good choices. Dixon knew that he had pushed his luck too far and it was now time to beat a hasty retreat if they could. Even the driver, without being told, understood their plight, had realized what was coming and had already applied the brakes before Dixon gave the frantic order to back up, repeating it several times, even after his tank had begun its rearward motion.

Like Dixon, the explosion of the Jaguar in the rail yard and the sight of multiple targets less than one hundred meters to his front caught Ellerbee by surprise. He and the rest of his platoon, however, had an advantage. All the Germans were looking the other way. Somehow he realized they had come up behind the Germans and were in a perfect position to hit them from the rear before they had time to react. Without looking to see if there was room to properly deploy, Ellerbee keyed the platoon radio net and ordered his platoon to deploy on line to either side of his tank and begin to engage the enemy vehicles at will.

Not waiting for acknowledgment from any of his tank commanders, Ellerbee let the radio mike go and issued a quick if somewhat confused initial fire command to his own gunner. The content of the fire command, including the target Ellerbee wanted to engage, didn't matter. Ellerbee's gunner had already laid his sights onto the rear of a Jaguar that was sitting on top of a rail car with its missile launcher up and ready to fire. When Ellerbee screeched his command to fire, the gunner gave a quick "On the way" and pulled the trigger on his right gunner's control.

While the destruction of the Jaguar to their front had been a surprise, the firing of a tank and the explosion of another Jaguar behind the men of Benen's company was a shock. Captain Albrecht Benen turned around just in time to see a second American tank pull up next to the one that had just fired and turn its gun on the Jaguar that he was standing next to. Realizing what was coming Benen threw himself under the rail car to his left just as the second American tank fired, destroying another Jaguar.

Rolling over onto his stomach and propping himself up on his elbows, Benen looked at his latest loss. He realized that all hope of salvaging this one-sided battle was gone. Though Benen had no idea that his company outnumbered the Americans engaged, that didn't matter. He had been unable to bring the weapons of his company to bear and had never been able to recover from the initial shock. As he lay there, Benen saw his men abandon their efforts to bring their Jaguars into the fight and, like him, seek safety behind cover or in flight. All thoughts of duty, honor, and country were forgotten as Benen crawled over the concrete rail sleepers and through puddles of waste oil, mud, and slush that dotted the rail yard and his path to safety.

Though the tide had swung back in their favor, it was several minutes before Scotty Dixon and his crew realized that. And even when they did, neither he nor anyone else on his tank showed any great desire to rejoin the fighting. They had done what they had hoped to do; they had saved their own lives. That they had killed other men in the process didn't matter. What mattered was that they were alive, that they were in one piece, and that the hope of making it home that way was still a realistic and achievable goal. There was no joy, no pride. Only four sweating men relieved that they had survived somehow and for the moment had nothing to do.

It was Vorishnov, in his indomitable style, who finally broke the silence and pulled Dixon and the rest of his crew out of their own personal reflections and thoughts.

Climbing up and out of the open loader's hatch, Vorishnov looked toward the rail yard, hidden by the twisting street but marked by many fires and secondary explosions. After taking off his helmet and wiping the sweat from his brow, Vorishnov looked at Dixon and pointed a finger at him. There was a stern look on Vorishnov's face. "You know, Colonel, it would have been much better with an automatic loader. This juggling act to load this cannon is too much for one man, especially an old one like me. You must tell your generals you need automatic loaders."

Dixon laughed. "Well, Colonel, remind me of that when we get to Bremerhaven."

Vorishnov nodded. "I will do that, Colonel. I promise you."

CHAPTER 15

In relative terms, the forces engaged were small given the area involved and the nations participating. The area defined by Giessen in the west and Eisenach in the east, Kassel in the north, and Fulda in the south belonged to the German state of Hesse and encompassed over 4,000 square miles, or slightly less than the state of Connecticut. The only river of any consequence was the Fulda, running north to south from the town of Fulda to Kassel. Most of the towns and villages scattered throughout this area were, comparatively speaking, small. Except for the major road networks that ran through some of them, few were of any significance.

It was the hills, forests, and small valleys that gave the Battle of Central Germany its character. Because of this, maneuver space was quite limited and the opportunity to use the sophisticated long-range weapons that both armies were equipped with to their maximum effective range was rare. The broken and hilly terrain, cluttered with forests, meant that the series of battles that took place seldom involved more than a single company on either side. There were no long-drawn-out battles of maneuver and massed firepower where generals and colonels maneuvered massed formations here and there. Instead, the Battle of Central Germany was a series of seemingly random and disjointed actions that were short but vicious. These confrontations, often fought at very close range, never involved more than a handful of tanks or infantry fighting vehicles, controlled by captains and lieutenants, and fought by soldiers who seldom saw more than one or two other vehicles of their own unit. Although violent surprise attacks against strong points and ambushes were the preferred technique of both sides, chance meetings were just as likely as the Tenth Corps shifted to deal with the aggressive 2nd Panzer Division and the leisurely probes of the 10th Panzer.

The weather added its own cruel touch to the battles fought throughout the state of Hesse. Short days and long nights, nights that lasted from 4:30 in the afternoon until almost 7:30 in the morning, added to the difficulties of combatants and those supporting them. Even when day did make its brief appearance, leaden gray skies filled with angry dark clouds often shielded the soldiers of both sides from the warming rays of the sun. It was perhaps the prevailing gloom of winter weather and the discomfort it brought to members of the Tenth Corps and the Bundeswehr that made the foul business of war even fouler and more unpleasant.

In war the weather can be as deadly and vicious an opponent as any human being. Freezing temperatures can kill the unprepared or careless soldier just as dead as a bullet. And even when the freezing temperatures rise long enough to melt snow, the weather gives no warmth, no relief. Instead, warmer weather generates mud, mud that coats both soldiers and their equipment. Mud that fouls weapons and machines. Mud that grabs an infantryman's ankles and makes each step an effort that further saps the soldier's diminishing strength and stamina. With the approach of night, when the temperature dips again below freezing, uniforms and jackets, now wet and covered with mud, give their owners little protection from the bitter winter winds. Nor do the cold and tasteless combat rations do anything to relieve the sufferings of the soldiers. Together with the lack of dry clothing and the inability to stop long enough to tend to personal needs, including sleep, hope, as well as a soldier's ability to function, slowly erodes. As physical discomfort and the frustrations of not being able to relieve them continue, nerves fray and tempers wear thin, adding mental gloom and despair to an already gloomy and desperate situation. With each kilometer that the Tenth Corps moved north toward the sea and the Bundeswehr fought to stop it, the hopes and spirits of the soldiers sagged lower and lower. Only the efforts of the commanders on both sides, who themselves suffered under the same conditions that were slowly breaking their men, kept both armies going.

Seventeen kilometers south of Bad Hersfeld, Captain Friedrich Seydlitz stood shivering in the open hatch of his Leopard II tank, watching and waiting impatiently for the American mechanized infantry forming up in the wood line across from his company to make its attack. That they were there and that they were preparing for an attack was obvious to everyone in Seydlitz's company. Since moving west out of Hünfeld, the Americans had been putting continuous pressure on Seydlitz's brigade while it continued to make its way to Autobahn A7. Seydlitz, standing on the forward edge of battle and unaware of the activities of other units, couldn't understand why, after such a magnificent start, he and his company were now standing on the defensive. No one, not even his battalion commander, bothered to explain to him that the lack of fuel and the unexpected counterattack of an American brigade in the rear of the 2nd Panzer Division kept Seydlitz and his men from reaching their objective. Instead, Seydlitz was simply ordered to move to such and such a place, assume a hasty defensive position, and be prepared to beat back any and all counterattacks.

Turning up the collar of his field jacket, Seydlitz wondered what the Americans across from him were up to. They had been fooling around just inside the tree line five hundred meters across a narrow valley from his company for better than three hours. Every now and then one of his tank commanders or gunners would catch a glimpse of an American combat vehicle and ask permission to fire. Seydlitz, without exception, declined permission. They, not the Americans, were at a disadvantage in this situation and had to be careful. Better, he thought, to wait until the enemy came at him in force and in the open than to pick ineffectually at them and expose his own tanks to systematic destruction. Though Seydlitz, like his tank commanders, was chafing at the insufferable delay and anxious to do something, there was nothing to do but curse the cold and dampness that inflamed every joint in his body.

In the distance, a series of low rumbles broke the silence. The firing of American artillery announced the beginning of the attack. Never having been the target of an artillery barrage, Seydlitz didn't quite know what to expect. In training, he had seen and even directed artillery fire at old vehicle hulks and piles of scrap metal. That, however, had been under totally controlled conditions in which every effort had been made to ensure that no mistakes would be made and that no one would be hurt. This, Seydlitz realized as he dropped to the turret floor, pulling his hatch cover over his head, was different. He, and not some pile of scrap metal, was their intended target.

Any further thoughts were cut short as the first rounds of American artillery broke apart on their downward arc, disgorging baseball-sized anti-tank submunitions over most of the woods where Seydlitz's company was deployed. With his hatch closed and locked, there was nothing more for him to do but wait for the final impact and pray. The armor plate of his tank, while it served to insulate them from much of the noise, reducing the sound of the submunitions detonating to the point where they sounded more like firecrackers than lethal tank killers, could do nothing to diminish the fear and apprehension that Seydlitz felt as they waited.

Seydlitz looked around the turret at his crew. Across the turret, slouched down in his seat, was the loader, watching Seydlitz. As he tried to force a smile, Seydlitz noticed that he was sweating despite the fact that just moments before he had been freezing. Though the heat generated by the tank's heater made his overcoat unnecessary, most of the sweat running down his body felt cold and clammy. He was not suffering from overheating, just overexcitement and fear.

From his position, Seydlitz's gunner called out, "Smoke. They are laying down smoke to our front, Herr Captain."

Turning away from his loader, whose deadpan stare stayed fixed on him, Seydlitz glanced out of the clear vision blocks that surrounded his position. To his front he could see clouds of smoke that appeared to come billowing out of the ground. Artillery-fired smoke rounds no doubt were the cause. Putting his head up to his sight extension, Seydlitz saw that his gunner had already switched the view of the tank's primary sight from clear daylight to thermal. Even this did little to clear his view of the battlefield. Without moving his eye or directing his gunner, who was slowly scanning the area to their front by traversing the turret, Seydlitz mumbled, "Plastic white phosphorus." Then added, "I can't see a damned thing."

The gunner, keeping his eye to his sight while continuing to slowly traverse the turret, grunted. "Neither can I. Not a damned thing."

Unlike conventional smoke, plastic white phosphorus rounds contained a mix of white phosphorus and butyl rubber. On impact, the projectile ruptured, exposing the white phosphorus to air, which caused it to burn. The butyl rubber, mixed with the phosphorus, began to burn and flake off. Floating up and away from the ruptured projectile, these flakes of burning rubber created a curtain of heat that could defeat thermal sights. Seydlitz was still watching the clouds of heated smoke drift about in the opening between his position and where the Americans had been last seen when a new series of firecracker-like pops outside reminded him that they were under attack and that he needed to report his observations and status to his commander.

Without thinking, Seydlitz keyed the radio and called his battalion command post in preparation for reporting. He paused when he realized that he wasn't sure what to report. Not having received any reports from his platoon leaders since the artillery attack had commenced, Seydlitz naturally assumed that they had nothing to report. But that was just an assumption. If he was going to make a report to his battalion commander that his commander was going to use to make decisions, Seydlitz had to base that report on facts, not assumptions. Ignoring the calls by the battalion operations officer, Seydlitz switched his radio to his company net and contacted in turn each of his platoon leaders. Their situation, he found to his great relief, was very similar to his own. Artillery was impacting somewhere to their rear and smoke was obscuring their ability to see more than a hundred meters to the front. Warning them to stay alert and ready to move on a moment's notice, Seydlitz prepared to switch back to the battalion radio net to complete his aborted report.

He was, however, unable to do so, for as soon as Seydlitz flipped the battalion radio frequency on, the earphones of his headset came to life with reports streaming in from the tank company to the right of Seydlitz's and with orders from the battalion commander. Quickly it dawned upon Seydlitz that the brunt of the American attack had fallen on that company and not his. Surprisingly, the first thought that came to Seydlitz's mind was one of relief, relief that it was not his company that would bear the full fury of the enemy attack and in turn not his company that would determine, at least in the beginning, whether the battalion succeeded or failed. Though such a feeling was selfish and unprofessional, it was an honest reflection of Seydlitz's state of mind and priorities.

Seydlitz's salvation, however, was purchased at the expense of one of his fellow company commanders. From the radio traffic and reports, it was obvious that the American attack had come right under the cover of the artillery and smoke, catching the defending company momentarily off guard. Quick reactions and well-sited positions, however, cost the attacker dearly. In a matter of minutes, the lead echelon of the American assault force, consisting of M-1A1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, was shredded and scattered.

When the two forces came together, it came down to a simple question of who saw who first. Though the artillery barrage managed to degrade the ability of the German company under attack to observe its sector of responsibility and caused them to button up, the artillery had little permanent effect on the Germans. And the artillery-delivered smoke, while covering the first three hundred meters of their advance, did nothing for the attackers during the last few critical meters. It in fact served to disrupt the attack in a few instances and separated the assaulting elements from those that had remained behind to cover the assault by fire.

Emerging from their own smokescreen, the Americans were greeted with a volley of fire from those Leopard tanks that were undamaged and waiting. There were only a few instances where an attacking American tank managed to fire first. Even here, however, that success was fleeting as German tanks that were not under attack or had dealt with the threat immediately to their front repositioned themselves to cover gaps created by the loss of a Leopard tank to their immediate left or right. Thus, before the German battalion commander was able to issue Seydlitz his first clear order, the critical point had been reached and the crisis was over. All that remained was the elimination of a handful of American vehicles that had made it into the German-held woodlot and the restoration of the defensive perimeter.

From his position on the periphery of this fight, Seydlitz waited impatiently for orders. While still relieved that he and his company were not involved in the fight, his ability to influence a battle that, if lost, could result in his own company being attacked from the flank and rear made him nervous and apprehensive. As he listened to the reports from the commanding officers in contact, Seydlitz followed the action on his map. As he did so, he began to notice that, while few American tanks and Bradleys were reported to have made it across the opening, those that had were beginning to work their way around the flank of the company next to Seydlitz's. If unchecked, they could find their way into his sector or, even worse, into the battalion's rear. Like many armor officers, raised to believe in the superiority of aggressive, offensive operations and trained to seek, strike, and destroy, the idea of simply sitting there while his peers were fighting for their collective lives just a few hundred meters away was becoming too much for him.

Opening his hatch slightly and popping his head up, Seydlitz noticed that the artillery barrage on his position had lifted. Satisfied that it was clear, he threw the hatch into the full open position, popped up, and looked about. The first thing that struck Seydlitz was that there were so few signs of the artillery barrage that his unit had just been subjected to. Since most of his images of war were based on films and photos of the devastation created by the massive and prolonged barrages of the two world wars, this should not have surprised him, but it did. Seydlitz looked in the direction from which the noise of battle drifted through the thick pines. He should, he knew, hold his position and await orders. There was still the possibility that the fight could spill over into his sector of responsibility or, having failed to achieve success in one part of the field, the Americans could expand their attack and hit his unit. On the other hand, the old military dictum that no commander could do wrong by marching to the sound of the guns kept buzzing through Seydlitz's mind.

He was in the process of weighing the pros and cons of moving parts of his company to the right into the fight when the sound of an M-113 armored personnel carrier coming up behind him caught his attention. Leaning over and looking to his rear, he noticed that it was the battalion's operations officer. With the same casual disregard for speed that most Germans display when driving their personal cars on the autobahns, the driver of the personnel carrier pulled around the rear of Seydlitz's tank without slowing down. When the battalion operations officer riding in the open commander's hatch of the personnel carrier was even with Seydlitz, the driver of the personnel carrier brought his vehicle to a sudden stop. The operations officer, used to the driver's habits, hung on to the machine gun at his position with one hand and the rim of the hatch with the other as he absorbed the recoil of the sudden stop by merely swaying back and forth like a jack-in-the-box that had just been sprung.

Like many officers in the panzer corps, the operations officer freely demonstrated his individuality and devil-may-care attitude by wearing his cloth garrison cap instead of a steel helmet. Pulling the radio earphone from one of his ears, the operations officer yelled to Seydlitz as soon as he stopped swaying. "Seydlitz, your company will remain here and assume responsibility for the entire battalion's battle position. The rest of the battalion will move, as soon as the last of the enemy vehicles are found and destroyed, to an attack position south of here in preparation for a new effort to break through to the west. You will report directly to the 1st Panzer Brigade and remain in place until ordered to join us either tomorrow or the next day. Is that clear?"

Not sure that he had heard everything over the noise of his tank's engine and that of the personnel carrier, not to mention the ongoing fight somewhere off to their right, Seydlitz restated his orders as he understood them. "So, I'm attached to brigade with the mission of holding fast here until ordered to join you sometime tomorrow west of here."

The operations officer nodded. "That's right." Replacing the earphone over his ear, the operations officer yelled into the intercom for his driver to move out. With a jerk, the driver slammed down the personnel carrier's accelerator and went charging off back toward the sound of the battle. The operations officer, without so much as a look back, swayed this way and that, ducking low-hanging branches with a well-measured casualness as his driver picked up speed and disappeared in the direction from which they had come.

Though he was happy to have received definite orders and therefore relieved of the need to exercise his own initiative, Seydlitz didn't like the idea of being left behind. Success in holding empty woodlots in central Germany against attacks wasn't going to end this fight. Seydlitz knew this, as he was sure that his superiors did. Only by attacking would they be able to bring the renegade Americans under control and demonstrate for anyone who needed the lesson that Germany was a sovereign and independent nation. That he wouldn't be part of that effort suddenly overcame Seydlitz's common sense that should have told him that attacks in this terrain, just like the one that his battalion was still in the process of beating down, were costly and often led to failure. He was, however, a Panzertruppen, a tank soldier with a proud family heritage and the member of a branch of service that had once been the scourge of all of Europe. If he was to serve, he wanted to be in the forefront like his ancestors.

But Seydlitz was a soldier, a German soldier. And like all good soldiers who had orders that were clear and concise, he knew he had to obey them. Though his personal preference would have been to leave the defense to someone else, it was his duty to follow his orders regardless of how unpleasant they were.

With a sigh, Seydlitz noticed a slackening of noise. The fight to his right was ending. Settling down into his hatch, he reached for his map and began to study it as he considered how best to deploy his company once the rest of the battalion pulled out.

Just south of Autobahn E40 in what used to be East Germany, Company C, 3rd of the 3rd Infantry, lead element of Scott Dixon's brigade, ran into the flank guard of the 2nd Panzer Division. It was, like most of the engagements that Dixon's brigade was stumbling into on the 20th, a chance encounter. But the fact that these meetings between the 2nd Panzer Division's 2nd Brigade and Dixon's brigade were accidents didn't make them any less deadly. Racing north along a muddy, deeply rutted road that cut through the forest south of the autobahn, Captain Nancy Kozak kept checking her map while watching for the vehicles of 2nd Platoon. Behind her the tanks of Ellerbee's platoon followed.

For the third time in less than twenty-four hours, Kozak found herself rushing into the middle of a crisis at full speed with little or no information. In Dermbach the night before Ellerbee and his platoon had charged into the middle of a street fight with anti-tank guided-missile carriers before she could get there. That morning her 1st Platoon leader, Second Lieutenant Sly Ahern, had made a wrong turn just after dawn and run head-on into a German artillery column that was in the process of setting up. And now her 2nd Platoon, which was acting as the battalion's advance guard, was in the middle of a hasty attack against an enemy force of unknown size. As she ducked to avoid low-hanging branches, the only thought that kept coming to mind, despite the desperateness of the situation and the mental exhaustion that was beginning to wear on her, was which would kill her first: enemy action or the antics of her platoon leaders.

Though Ellerbee's tanks were technically faster, the 63-ton M-1A1 tanks of Ellerbee's platoon with their wider chassis and oversized main gun protruding well to the front could not keep up with Kozak's Bradley C60 as it ran through the narrow, twisting forest trail that none of their maps showed. Through the use of such trails, the bulk of Dixon's brigade had been able to avoid hasty roadblocks and defensive positions set up to cover the obvious routes of advance that the Germans had thrown up between Dixon and Autobahn E40. With the goal of cutting across the rear of the 2nd Panzer Division and raising hell with its rear area supply and service units, Dixon had ordered his battalion commanders to keep their own supply vehicles tucked up close, ignore their flanks and rear, and run hell-bent for leather north until they hit the autobahn, destroying anything that belonged to the German Army along the way. The battalion commanders in making their plans had included Dixon's instructions word for word in their own orders. Company commanders, well drilled in Dixon's style of leadership and tactics, passed their commander's intent on to their platoon leaders and saw to it that those orders were carried out with a vengeance. It should have come as no surprise then that Gross had simply seized the initiative and gone right into the attack.

He was, after all, following his brigade commander's intent to the letter.

That, however, did not excuse him in Kozak's mind from reporting to her what he was facing and what he was doing. As C60 bucked and swerved along the rutted trail, Kozak hoped that her young and energetic platoon leader hadn't bitten off more than he could deal with. Well aware of the pitfalls that most second lieutenants of infantry allow themselves to fall into, since she herself had been one, Kozak was hurrying forward with all the firepower she could muster as fast as she could. Though Ellerbee was still far from her favorite platoon leader, the performance of his platoon in Dermbach had shown that he was capable of reacting under fire and getting the job done. Of course, neither Dixon nor Kozak knew that Ellerbee's clever maneuver around the German anti-tank unit had actually been a mistake. The results had been good, and therefore the maneuver that had led to that success was termed brilliant.

In an effort to show that the infantry could be just as resourceful, and in response to Dixon's stated intent, Second Lieutenant Marc Gross had led his infantry platoon in what he considered to be a classic mechanized infantry action as they fell on two German Marders as they sat in a clearing refueling. The fight that developed turned out to be rather one-sided and over before it could even degenerate into a proper fight. In retrospect, Gross had made the right choice and Kozak's concerns were unfounded. But there were a few moments, after he had begun to maneuver his platoon and before they actually attacked, when Gross himself doubted that.

Coming up to a clearing that didn't show on his map, Gross stopped just inside of the wood line and dismounted to check out the area before sticking his nose out in the open. As he moved along the trail and left the noise of his own Bradley behind, he heard the noise of several diesel engines idling in the distance. Stopping, Gross used hand and arm signals back to his gunner, who was covering him from the Bradley, to have the dismounts come up and join him. When the fifteen dismounts of his platoon, stripped down for a fight, joined him, Gross deployed them in a line on either side of the trail they had been moving down. When all was ready, Gross, in the center of the line, began to advance, followed by his men. Gross kept looking in the direction of the sounds they were tracking. The three squad leaders with their dismounts watched Gross for his signals while ensuring that their men kept the proper distance and covered their assigned sectors.

At the edge of the tree line Gross paused and squatted. The dismounts followed suit, scanning the area to their immediate front. From where he was, Gross could see a stand of short pine trees. The clearing was, he decided after looking at his map, a tree nursery that had been planted to replace older trees harvested years before. Standing slightly less than three feet tall and covering an area that Gross estimated to be one hundred by one hundred meters on either side of the trail, the tree nursery provided the only open area of any note in this forest. Not that this was important. What did matter was that the short pine trees and the noise created by the German panzergrenadiers that he could now clearly see across the clearing gave Gross the opportunity to close with and surprise them.

The Germans, oblivious to the danger that was lurking less than one hundred meters away, were idly picking away at their first warm meal of the day at the rear of a mess truck while the drivers of their two Marder infantry fighting vehicles were refueling them using five-gallon cans taken off of two fuel trucks parked next to each of the Marders. Like Gross's own dismounts, the German infantrymen sought every chance they could to escape the cramped and confined spaces of their fighting vehicles. The presence of a mess truck and the need to refuel combined to negate any security measures that the platoon commander had set up. With such an advantage, Gross decided to take on the Germans without waiting for any reinforcements from the rest of the company.

Splitting his dismounts in half, Gross sent the two groups in opposite directions around the nursery to deal with each of the Marders while dispatching one of the squad leaders back to the Bradleys with his orders for them. Gross, leading one of the two teams of dismounts, would initiate the attack. Using handheld light anti-tank rocket launchers and well-controlled small-arms fire, Gross intended to disable the German fighting vehicles and pin the German dismounts and crews without damaging the fuel trucks. With luck, the appearance of his four Bradleys charging across the tree nursery under the control of his platoon sergeant would discourage any desire of the Germans surviving the initial onslaught to continue to resist.

As with any operation, there are always the unknowns to contend with that do not become apparent until after the operation commences. That was why the battalion had an advance guard. That way, if something unexpected came up, like the two Marders, the advance guard could check it out, report, and allow the lead company commander or the battalion commander time to consider what to do without having the entire battalion stumble over the unexpected resistance. Gross knew this and kept pondering as he led his team along the edge of the nursery toward the Germans what he had missed in his hasty reconnaissance. What if there was a third Marder still tucked into the tree line out of sight? There could even be, he realized, a fourth, since German mechanized infantry platoons had four Marders per platoon. That, he began to grasp as they drew nearer, was a very real possibility that he had not properly planned for. It was, however, too late to stop and go back to reset the whole operation. He and his entire platoon were committed to the plan he had come up with and was about to spring. That he had neglected to report any of this to his company commander or seek her permission never entered Gross's mind.

When they reached the corner of the tree nursery just short of where the Germans sat, Gross paused for a few minutes in order to ensure that the other team of dismounts was set. Only when he was satisfied that he had allowed more than enough slack time for them to make it did Gross allow the squad leader with him to finish deploying his men and prepare to attack. As he watched his people slowly ease themselves into firing positions, Gross looked around and saw no sign of any other German vehicles. This relief was short-lived when he realized that the dismounts he was with were setting up in a way that would leave them open to friendly fire from the team deployed across from him. For a moment he considered pulling the men with him back, but then stopped when he saw a German sergeant walk out into the middle of the small cluster of soldiers and vehicles and begin to issue orders. Now was the time to strike. He would simply have to trust his luck to the hands of God, just like his company commander kept saying when she was in situations like this.

Just then the thought of Captain Kozak made Gross realize that he hadn't reported in. God, he thought, how stupid. How goddamned stupid. Looking back in the direction where the Bradleys were hidden, Gross hoped that his platoon sergeant had remembered to do so. He wondered if there was any way that he could before he attacked make sure that a report had been made. Looking over at the Germans, who were now beginning to move about as if they were preparing to leave, Gross dropped that idea. He was committed. Though he had screwed up by not reporting, this was not the time to worry about that. He had to play out his hand.

With that momentary crisis resolved, Gross refocused his attention on the matter at hand. To initiate the attack, he decided to take out the German sergeant giving orders himself. Raising his M-16 to his shoulder, he flipped the fire select switch off of safe and into the three-round burst mode. After taking careful aim, Gross squeezed the trigger just like the instructors at Fort Benning had taught him and began their one-sided battle.

Greeted by the presence of one of Gross's Bradleys covering the trail, Kozak ordered her driver to maneuver around it and over to where Gross and his dismounts were rallying. Though the other Bradleys were not visible, Kozak could see where they had come out of the wood line, deployed in the nursery, and charged across it toward the Germans. At the far side of the nursery she could see the two Marders, of which only one appeared to be damaged. The other simply looked abandoned, which it was. Sergeant Danny Wolf, not knowing this for sure, laid his sight onto the undamaged Marder and watched it while Kozak ordered her driver to bring their Bradley to a halt in between the two Marders.

Rolling out of the woods and into the small clearing that the Germans had been using for a resupply point, Kozak was greeted by Gross. Resting the butt of his rifle on his left hip, Gross waited until Kozak had brought her Bradley to a halt and dismounted before he saluted. With a grin that ran from ear to ear and still pumped up from the rush that a soldier got who had just risked his neck and come out alive and successful, Gross reported. "Ma'am, Second Lieutenant Gross is pleased to report that 2nd Platoon, Company C has overrun a German outpost, destroying one Marder and capturing another as well as two fuel trucks, one mess truck complete with mess, and fifteen prisoners of war without loss."

While Kozak listened, she looked around. Unlike Gross, she felt only the full weight of her exhaustion and concerns, magnified by lack of sleep and the need to rush about from one crisis to the next. It was only with the greatest of efforts that she cleared her mind and focused it on the matter immediately at hand. From where she stood, Kozak could only see two of Gross's Bradleys, the one she had come across on the trail and Gross's own track that was being used to guard the prisoners. The others, she assumed, were deployed further into the woods. As she watched, a squad leader and his men were searching the prisoners while the platoon medic tended to half a dozen wounded Germans next to them. The dead, left where they had fallen, served as a grim reminder to Kozak that the success that Gross was so thrilled over had been purchased with human lives. Deciding that Gross needed to be brought back to reality, Kozak turned to face him, drawing across her face the mask of an angry commander. "Why in the hell, Lieutenant, didn't you report before you acted? What in the name of hell do you mean by charging off like that into the attack without permission?"

Kozak's response hit Gross like a slap in the face. Slowly dropping his salute, he thought for a moment before responding. When he did, his voice was subdued and unsure. "But, Captain Kozak, there were only two Marders. And they didn't look like they were expecting us."

"How did you know they were alone? How did you know that they weren't just the last two or the first two Marders in a whole column?"

Gross, remembering that he hadn't thought of that until he was well committed to his attack, didn't respond. His blank, almost sheepish expression told Kozak that her suspicions about him running off half-cocked had been correct. Deciding that she had made her point, far too tired to play mind games with Gross, and anxious to get on with the advance now that they had made contact with the Germans, Kozak considered what to do next before she issued her orders. Turning away from Gross, she watched the driver of Gross's Bradley as he ran back and forth to one of the fuel trucks, hauling five-gallon cans of fuel. Turning her head back toward Gross, Kozak pointed to Gross's driver. "Save that fuel for Ellerbee's tanks. Send a runner over to his tank and tell him to laager his tanks here and refuel. He has twenty minutes."

Gross looked over to his driver, then back at Kozak. "But we need the fuel too. All of my tracks are less than half full."

Kozak shook off Gross's response. "Ellerbee's herd of hogs need the fuel more than you do. Now what else do you have for me? I need to check in with the battalion commander."

"The prisoners. What do we do with them?"

Shaking her head, Kozak took in a deep breath as she struggled to hold her temper in check. "If you paid more attention to my orders instead of running off on your own little Rambofest, you'd know exactly what to do with them, Lieutenant."

Glancing over to the Germans, then back to Kozak, Gross leaned forward and lowered his voice. "You can't be serious. I mean, these guys are probably pissed off. After all, we just killed three of their buddies and damned near killed them. I know Colonel Dixon is a smart man, but I really don't think he's considered all the angles as far as prisoners are concerned. How do we know that they won't join the first unit they come across, get themselves rearmed, and come back looking for blood?"

"We don't, Gross. Odds are that's exactly what's going to happen. I know that's what I would do."

With a look of excitement on his face, Gross threw his free hand out to his side. "Then why in the hell are we letting them go? So they can come back and have a second chance to kill us?"

Angry at Gross's manner and persistence, Kozak reached down, unsnapped her holster, and pulled her pistol out. Pulling the pistol's slide back in a sharp exaggerated motion to chamber a round, Kozak flipped the safety off and offered the pistol, butt first, to Gross. "Well, Second Lieutenant Marc Gross, if you feel so strongly about leaving live prisoners behind, then here, go shoot them. Because that's the only other way we have of dealing with them. The entire corps has no transportation to haul them, no food to feed them, and no one to guard them. So if you're so hell-fired concerned about dealing with them, this is it. You said there's fifteen of them? Good! There's fifteen rounds in my pistol. Just enough to do the job."

The response by his company commander shocked Gross. She was normally a reasonable person who took great pains to explain everything to her subordinates, and Gross was not prepared to deal with her preposterous proposal or caustic response. Stepping back, Gross let his head hang down for a moment before looking back up at Kozak. Seeing the anger etched into her face, added to the signs of strain and lack of sleep, Gross knew that she was right. There was no good alternative. He also realized for the first time that this whole affair, the race for the sea and the fighting, had entered a new and very deadly phase, one in which there were no guarantees that they would make it. This was, Gross suddenly realized, a real life-and-death struggle, one which every one of his men, as well as Kozak and he, could very easily lose.

Looking up at Kozak, he began to apologize, but Kozak cut him short. "Listen, Marc. Odds are, unless we do everything right, you and I will be sitting over there with our hands on our heads in a matter of days. We, you, me, the battalion commander, Colonel Dixon, and anyone who calls himself an officer in this corps can't afford to forget that. We can't afford to make mistakes either. You understand that. I know you do, damn it. I taught you better than this. Now pull your head out of your ass and stop acting like a first-year ROTC cadet running around on a weekend maneuver."

Softening her tone, Kozak asked if he had anything more to report. After seeing him shaking his head slowly, Kozak turned and walked back to her Bradley, C60. As she did so, she looked over every now and then at the prisoners. For she knew, unlike Gross, that unless their luck changed soon they would indeed all be prisoners, or worse. All the plans, all the speeches, and all the pep talks, together with all the fancy maneuvers they had just done, had finally come down to luck and hard fighting, period.

That was what wars were all about.

Major Bob Messinger would have disagreed violently with Nancy Kozak's observation that luck was an important ingredient in military operations. A tried and true military technician by training, Messinger was proud to the point of arrogance of his skills as an Army aviator. Only his abilities as an operations officer, which had landed him the job as the battalion operations officer for the 14th Cavalry's air cavalry battalion, ran a close second. From that platform Messinger preached his doctrine that good combat pilots make their own luck. Praying that the enemy will make a mistake or depending on luck, he told his company commanders, was for weenies.

To this end he was meticulous with his planning. Nothing was left unaccounted for—fuel required for each mission; weapons mix carried by his squadron's attack helicopters; attack routes in and egress routes out; location of primary, alternate, and subsequent battle positions; command and control procedures; engagement sequence; suppression of enemy air defense; friendly fire support; forward rearm and refuel point locations and defense—nothing. And Messinger, unlike many of his contemporaries, had a natural skill for pulling all of these diverse elements together into a deceptively simple and coherent plan. Though he would have shunned being called an artist, for there is in fact a high degree of creativity involved when crafting a plan, few officers in the Tenth Corps could equal his skills. If there was one serious fault that Messinger did have, it was that he knew he was good and felt no shame in making sure that everyone around him knew that too.

Today, as he and Warrant Officer Larry Perkins stalked a column of armored vehicles and trucks belonging to the 4th Panzer Division's 1st Brigade as they moved north along Highway 19, Messinger was again afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his skills as a military artist. Ordered to screen the Tenth Corps' eastern and southern flank, the 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment ordered its air cavalry squadron, reinforced with two attack helicopter companies, to find and attack elements of the 4th Panzer Division, delaying and disrupting their deployment. Coming up from the southeast, that panzer division not only threatened to turn the maneuver of Scott Dixon's brigade into a trap, it threatened to add the weight needed to break the 2nd Panzer Division's deadlock as it continued to pound its way into the center of the Tenth Corps. In preparing his order, Messinger used the same words that regimental operations used when defining their mission: delay and disrupt. To these he added his own, reminding the company commanders that the best way to delay and disrupt the enemy was to kill them. To this end, Messinger laid out in detail how they would do it.

Working from an ancient OH-58D, an aircraft frame that was almost as old as he was, Messinger deployed his units. Scouts from one of his troops secured the ambush site, north, south, and east, keeping their eyes open for German attack helicopters as well as any anti-aircraft guns or surface-to-air missile launchers. If encountered before Messinger sprung the ambush, he would decide whether to press the attack or break it off. If the scouts ran across these threats after the ambush had been initiated, the scouts would deal with them as best they could and keep Messinger advised.

Messinger himself would be with the Apache company making the attack. From there he could judge the effectiveness of their fire and determine when they reached that point where a continuation of attack became counterproductive or too costly to them. Due to the increased work load placed on his squadron, insufficient time to properly maintain their aircraft, the exhaustion of critical spare parts, and the need to conserve fuel, none of the units of the Tenth Corps, particularly the aviation units, could afford to waste precious resources in pursuit of marginal gains. In most ambushes, the majority of the killing is done in the first few seconds or minutes when the enemy is surprised and off balance. When, because of the actions of the enemy commanders or an inability of the attacker to maintain the pressure, the unit under attack is given time to recover from that initial shock and rally, the tables are often turned and the attacker becomes the victim. Bob Messinger's primary job that morning was to ensure that every one of his aircraft was long gone before that happened.

With well-measured ease, Larry Perkins slowly brought his aircraft up above the treetops until the golf-ball-like instrument dome mounted on top of the rotor blades had a clear view of the road. With one eye he watched the trees to his front and with the other the instrument screen. Messinger, his eyes glued to his observer's display, didn't speak. He didn't need to give Perkins directions or corrections, since the instrument dome had free rotation. Messinger himself could traverse his sight to cover the area that he was interested in, leaving Perkins free to fly the aircraft. When Perkins reached the proper height that allowed the instrument dome to clear the last of the tree branches, Messinger merely muttered, "Okay, that's good."

While Perkins held the helicopter steady, Messinger scanned the road. To his front a column of armored vehicles, Leopard tanks and Marder infantry fighting vehicles, interspersed with trucks and other vehicles, was moving north in a steady stream.

Though he was interested in all of them, it was the tanklike Gepard armed with twin 37mm anti-aircraft cannons, and Rolands, tracked vehicles mounting surface-to-air missiles, that Messinger was looking for. They would be given priority when the killing started, since they were the most effective defense against just the kind of attack that Messinger was about to initiate.

When he found what he was looking for, he depressed the radio transmit button and called the other scout that was doing the same thing. "Kilo Nine Five, this is Kilo Five Three. I have a Gepard near the head of the column, three vehicles behind the lead. Over."

There was a pause while the observer in the other scout looked and confirmed. "Roger, Five Three. I see 'em. I've got nothing in the middle or rear. How 'bout you? Over."

Traversing the joy stick that controlled the instrument dome, Messinger scanned the entire length of the column a second time. When he was finished, he looked up from his sight, rubbed his eyes, and then put his head back down against the brow pads of the sight again before responding. "Negative. The Gepard in the front is the only gun I see." He was about to say that he would take out the self-propelled Gepard antiaircraft gun but thought better of it. He was senior officer on the scene. He needed to keep himself out of the fight, exercising command and control for as long as possible. The other scout could deal with the Gepard, leaving him free to watch for other air defense systems they might have missed while keeping an eye on the attack of the Apache helicopters and the German reactions. With that decided, Messinger directed the scout to stand by to fire on the Gepard while ordering the commander of the Apache company, waiting in firing positions some five thousand meters away on the other side of the road, to stand by to commence firing.

When all was ready, he initiated the ambush with a simple, almost casual call to the scout. "Okay, Nine Five, let her fly."

When he was set, the observer in the scout helicopter with the call sign Nine Five hit the laser designator button, watched for it to illuminate the target, then fired a Hellfire missile. Once the Hellfire was clear of the trees and screaming in toward the Gepard, German air guards up and down the column began to yell their warnings to their vehicle commanders, who in turn relayed the warning throughout the column via radio. Though that warning came too late for the Gepard, which received Kilo Nine Five's Hellfire square on the side of the turret that housed the twin 37mm anti-aircraft guns, other vehicles began to turn away from the attack right into the sights of the waiting Apaches. Without any need for orders, the commander of the five Apaches gave his order to engage and joined the fight himself by launching a Hellfire at a Leopard tank that he had been tracking.

With the attack coming from the direction that the fleeing vehicles had thought was away from danger, the surprise and chaos created had the desired effect. The commanders of the vehicles that survived the first volley ordered their drivers to turn their individual vehicles this way or that, to back up, or to stop and assess what was happening. The result was momentary confusion and loss of command and control. Some vehicles, their commanders and drivers trying to look in all directions at once, plowed into each other. Adding to the general confusion were clouds of smoke created when tanks fired smoke grenades in all directions. Here and there trucks ran off the road rather than be crushed by tanks wildly seeking safety as Marders dropped their ramps so that the precious infantry could scramble out and seek safety on the ground rather than remain boxed up in what might soon become a death trap. During this initial confusion, when none of the surviving German commanders could make sense out of what was going on or exert their authority, the Apaches launched a second volley, adding to the confusion and cutting down more leaders in midstride as they tried to sort out their commands.

From afar, Messinger watched. By now both he and scout Kilo Nine Five were long forgotten by the Germans on the road. The massed Apache attack was far too overwhelming to ignore. Though satisfied with the results of the initial strike and the confusion that reigned, Messinger knew it would soon end. Already he could see commanders of individual Leopard tanks turning to fight. Though a tank main-gun round was not the most effective anti-aircraft weapon, the sophisticated computer-driven fire-control system of the Leopard, like the American M-1A1 tank, gave them teeth that could not be ignored. Realizing that the longer he allowed the Apaches to continue the engagement the more the Germans would be able to respond, Messinger ordered the Apache company commander to fire one more volley and then break off the attack. Though he could have stayed and taken out more vehicles, to do so would have increased his chances of losing aircraft and crews that could not be replaced. Since there were more columns further down the highway, all racing north in an effort to save the 2nd Panzer Division, Messinger knew he could repeat this performance again later somewhere else against another unwary column. For now, a dozen or more kills, a major highway temporarily blocked, a column scattered and in disorder, and the flow of combat forces north momentarily halted was good enough to accomplish what the 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment was tasked to do. When Messinger saw the last of the Hellfire missiles detonate on the rear deck of a Leopard tank and heard the Apache company commander announce over the radio that he and his company were out of there and en route to their next battle position, Messinger lifted his head from his sight and turned to Perkins. "Okay, Larry. We've done enough damage here. Let's head south and see if we can do it again." With that, Larry Perkins allowed the OH-58D to drop down a few feet before he twisted its tail boom a quarter turn with a flick of his hand holding the collective, pointed the nose of the helicopter south and right into the gunsight of a German attack helicopter's gunner. The German gunner, seeing that his quarry was about to flee, let fly a stream of 20mm rounds at Messinger's aircraft. Though it had been a hasty shot, the German gunner's initial aim had been good enough. In a matter of a couple of seconds the crew compartment of Messinger's helicopter was shredded by a hail of 20mm high-explosive rounds, serving to remind anyone who cared to think about what had just happened that in war even the craftiest hunter can in the twinkling of an eye become the hunted.

CHAPTER 16

Though the evening briefing was a short affair that night, the information in it weighed heavy on Big Al Malin. Even if Big Al had been able to sit through it, none of the staff officers could have sat in one place for more than ten minutes without nodding off to sleep. For despite every effort to rotate the staff officers and enlisted staff members at the Tenth Corps command post in and out for rest, there were few who managed to snatch any meaningful sleep. It was not because things were going bad. On the contrary, the situation was for the most part conforming to the plan that this very staff had formulated and put into motion some thirty-six hours before. The fighting and maneuvering of both German and American forces then in progress was pretty much yielding the results that Big Al had hoped for.

The real problem wearing at Big Al and his staff was a problem that all senior officers in the modern age faced. Though he gave the orders, though he had the authority to initiate battles and determine when and where those battles would be fought, he did not, could not, do the fighting. At that moment Big Al or his staff didn't have much say over what happened. Neither he nor his staff, with all of its sophisticated communications equipment and collective knowledge, wisdom, and experience, could do anything to tilt the scale of the company and platoon battles being waged in the valleys, hills, forests, and towns of central Germany. The corps staff could order more fire support to assist a unit in contact in the form of attack helicopters or artillery. They could augment those units with reinforcements. But the one thing that Big Al and his staff could not do was to gain release through combat from their fears, apprehensions, and stresses.

Big Al's orders had set the divisions in motion. The divisions had issued their own orders that had sent their brigades attacking in just about every direction possible. Brigades had tasked their subordinate battalions to attack in a set direction with a definitive objective or to defend a key piece of terrain. From there the orders were transmitted to company commanders. At that level, in the confined spaces of darkened personnel carriers, the company commander issued his own instructions to a group of platoon leaders who were just as cold, tired, dirty, and confused as the soldiers that they were about to lead into battle. When that was finished, those young lieutenants or senior sergeants charged with closing with and destroying the enemy by use of fire, maneuver, and shock effect were left to wander on their own back to where their soldiers waited to hear the orders that for many would be a death sentence.

Often during the long, terrible wait for information and news from the units in contact and the results of those contacts, Big Al would stare at the map in his operations van. Every blue symbol on that map meant something to him. They were not simply marks on a plastic overlay; they were flesh and blood. They were his soldiers. That his orders determined how many of the soldiers represented by those symbols lived and how many died bothered Big Al greatly. So he like any competent commander did his best to ensure that he had all the information he needed to make sound, intelligent decisions. Though reams of information flooded into the corps headquarters every hour, only a shockingly small amount meant anything to the primary decision makers. It took time to collect a skilled staff to sift through and sort that critical information that Big Al would use when modifying his plans or issuing new orders.

Until that was done, Big Al was left to struggle with his conscience, his fears, his personal battle, and watch the symbols on the map as they were moved from one place to another.

The operations map in front of him presented a picture that almost staggered the imagination. Throughout central Germany, units of the Tenth Corps were playing out a drama that defied definition or description. There were no longer front lines, rear boundaries, or flanks. There was at that moment no main effort, no center of gravity. All the corps staff could report to Big Al that night was a series of widely separated attacks under the control of brigade and battalion commanders that were attempting to achieve the objectives that Big Al had outlined the day before. To the west, the 1st Brigade of the 55th Mech Infantry Division was attacking south against the 10th Panzer Division's 3rd Brigade. The 55th's 2nd Brigade was attacking to the west while its 3rd Brigade was attacking, under the control of the 4th Armored Division, to the north and northeast in an effort to keep the 2nd Panzer Division's 1st and 3rd Brigades from Unking up. Dixon's 1st Brigade was also attacking the 2nd Panzer Division's 3rd Brigade in one direction while putting pressure on the 2nd Panzer's 2nd Brigade and attacking the division's service support units in the opposite direction. Dixon's sister brigade, the 2nd Brigade, was doing likewise some fifteen kilometers away, sending one battalion northeast to hit the 2nd Panzer's 2nd Brigade, holding one battalion in place to fix the 2nd Panzer's 3rd Brigade, and attacking south with a third battalion against the 2nd Panzer's 1st Brigade. It was, one assistant operations officer dryly stated in a vain effort at humor while briefing, a high-tech barroom brawl.

The idea that he was unable to go somewhere to influence at least one of the chains of seemingly disjointed battles that the brigades of his corps were engaged in wore on Big Al's nerves as staff officer after staff officer stood up to brief him and the primary staff officers. The staff, in turn, was beginning to feel the pressure of having their commander standing about with nothing to do, watching them or staring at the operations map. They were used to receiving Big Al's guidance and then being left to deal with it while he visited units or division command posts. It was, one staff officer commented, like having a bear watching campers cooking their dinner.

Though Big Al tried hard to stay out of his staff's hair, the corps chief of staff felt the need to keep his commander entertained. This resulted in a steady stream of staff officers pulled from their normal duties and sent to update the corps commander on one thing or another. Though the staff officers did keep their commander informed and did receive some additional guidance, the wear and tear on each other's nerves was telling. Some of the staff officers were even betting how long it would take before Big Al finally blew a gasket and dumped on someone.

The victim of that eruption, quite innocently, turned out to be an artillery major. Midway through the evening briefing, while the major, an assistant fire coordination officer, was briefing, Big Al caught the attention of the chief of staff. Using the index finger of his right hand, Big Al made a small circular motion, indicating that he wanted the chief of staff to speed up the briefing. The chief shifted in his seat and cleared his throat in an effort to catch the fire support officer's attention.

The young major, caught up in his briefing, failed to notice Big Al's signal to the chief of staff and missed the meaning of the chief's cues. So rather than speed up or skip to the summary, the young major continued to dump hordes of numbers and heaps of data and information onto his reluctant audience like a tenured professor delivering a stale lecture. Though Big Al had no doubt that all the information being delivered had some importance to someone somewhere, the parade of digits and the major's monotone voice grated on Big Al's worn nerves like a child dragging his fingernails across a blackboard.

When it became obvious that the message had not gotten through, Big Al, unable to hold himself back and unwilling to give his chief a second chance, stood up, gave the chief a perfunctory "Thank you," and began to walk out of the van. Though he knew his actions were rude and that the young major who had been briefing would catch hell for pissing off the old man, Big Al had bigger concerns on his mind. With his face distorted in anger, anger at his inability to do something more positive, more active, Big Al made his way through masses of staff officers who practically beat each other to death as they tried to get out of his way. Followed by his aide, who had been caught off guard and was trying to keep up with his boss while fumbling with helmets, jackets, and a notebook, Big Al fled the corps command post and out into the night.

When he caught up to Big Al, the aide found him outside the protective wire that surrounded the command post. Standing on the side of the road, Big Al stood alone watching a convoy of trucks and field ambulances go by. Moving around to the side, the aide made his presence known simply by placing himself so that his movement would be caught by Big Al's peripheral vision. Aides were trained to do that, to make their presence known without interrupting or interfering with conversations or reflective moments. Stopping a few paces short, the aide waited for Big Al to reach out and motion for the parka and helmet that the aide carried. But there was no movement, no beckoning call. There was only the silence of the bitterly cold night punctured by the steady grinding of trucks passing by and generators humming about the corps command post. In the faint light of dimmed headlights, the aide could see that Big Al's face was still screwed up like a twisted mass of raw nerves. He stood there alone, intently watching the trucks go by, one after the other, as they slowly inched their way north. Though the aide had no idea what was going on in his commander's mind, he knew that Big Al had come here to escape.

After being in the warm vans that made up the corps command post all day, crunched in with other people and unable to go outside much, the cold night air sent a chill through the aide. Concerned that his boss was also cold, the aide moved closer to Big Al and prepared to hand him his parka. But at the last minute he stopped short. When he saw that Big Al's expression didn't change, the aide stepped back and waited. Though Big Al was cold, the aide also knew that there was something that was bothering his commander and that he was deep in thought. Good aides learned quickly when to say something and when not to. They learned when their commander wanted them and when they were expected to melt away into the background and wait quietly for their commander to summon them. It was time, the aide realized, to become a shadow.

The string of ambulances moving north did nothing to calm Big Al's concerns or feelings of inadequacy. In fact they only served to heighten his depression, for here, right in front of his face, were the by-products of his actions. The ambulances and trucks of a hospital unit were a terrible reminder that what he was doing in the command post behind him was no training exercise, no drill. The decisions that he made and the orders that his staff issued in his name were paid for in blood by the soldiers that his government and country had entrusted into his care. How terrible, Big Al thought, if after all was said and done his best intentions didn't measure up to their sacrifice. How terrible.

From the cab of the truck where Hilary Cole sat she could see the figures of two men standing on the side of the road. One man, a very short one with no helmet or jacket on, just stood there and watched as her truck went by. Though she couldn't see his face, his stance, with his arms folded across his chest, made him look important. The second man, holding a parka in one hand and a helmet in the other, stood a few feet away from the short man, as if he were waiting for the short man to notice him. Though she didn't know who the two men were, it was obvious that the short one was important.

But, Cole thought, he wasn't important to her, especially not at that moment. What was important was that she had an opportunity to escape the horrors of the day for a little while. There in the heated cab of the truck the steady hum of the engine served to drown out the screams that still rang in her ears. Though not the most comfortable seat she had ever had, Cole found it good enough. She rolled a blanket that she had brought along with her and placed it against the window beside her. When she had it set the way she wanted it, Cole leaned against it and folded her arms. With luck she would be asleep in a few minutes. It was important, she knew, that she take advantage of this opportunity to sleep, for she knew that once they stopped there would be much to do. Not only would the wounded they had taken along from their last site still need care, but there would no doubt be new wounded waiting. The battles, she had been told, had yet to reach their climax. That, for her and the other nurses, translated to more wounded, more suffering, more nightmares.

As she slowly drifted off to sleep, Cole wondered if the short man on the side of the road had anything to do with the battles. And if he did, she wondered if he really understood what his orders really meant to the soldiers who suffered as a result of those orders. Probably not, she thought. After all, if he did and he could see the suffering that his orders caused, he couldn't possibly issue them. No one could send men to their death or certain mutilation if he had seen it himself. No sane human that had seen what she had seen all day could continue to send men into battle. No, Cole thought as she drifted off to sleep, General So-and-So back there, warm and pampered in his little command post, had no idea of what his great plans cost. None.

The sudden appearance of the battalion's supply officer startled Captain Friedrich Seydlitz. Though he was still standing upright in the commander's hatch of his Leopard II tank, he had fallen sound asleep. Only after a great deal of shaking did the supply officer manage to awaken Seydlitz. When he did come around, Seydlitz jumped, causing the supply officer to laugh. "Well, Friedrich, I am glad to see the defenders of the Fatherland are alert and ever watchful."

Though he couldn't see the face, Seydlitz recognized the voice. Realizing that he had fallen sound asleep but that there was no immediate danger, Seydlitz cleared his throat before he responded. "Fuck you, Rudi."

Slapping Seydlitz on the back, Captain Rudi Buhle laughed even louder. "Well, I am certainly glad to see that war has done nothing to diminish your charm and eloquence, my dear Friedrich." Known for his easy and friendly manner, Rudi Buhle was never at a loss for a quick comment. His ready smile often served to cheer up the darkest face. And if anyone needed a little cheer, it was Friedrich Seydlitz.

Left with only his company to hold an area that the entire battalion had been stretched to defend a few hours before, Seydlitz had been a nervous wreck. Throughout the early evening his tank platoons, now spread out to the point where they could no longer support each other, had sent him a steady stream of sighting reports. That the enemy was still across from them and active was driven home twice when artillery barrages came crashing down on, around, and behind Seydlitz's location. Of course, Seydlitz's tired mind never was able to make the connection that the artillery attacks, normally lasting less than a few seconds, came after he contacted the brigade command post he had been ordered to report to. It simply did not occur to him that the Americans were using his radio transmissions to locate him and his company.

Stretching, Seydlitz yawned while Buhle sat on the turret of Seydlitz's tank and waited. Ready and more alert, Seydlitz turned to Buhle. "I see that you have finally decided to venture out into the night to find us."

Buhle grunted. "Finally? Finally? I've been on the road since before dawn this morning looking for the battalion. Where the hell have you all been?"

"We have been here all day. Don't you ever read the battalion orders?"

Folding his arms, Buhle leaned back. "My dear Friedrich, I have not seen a copy of the battalion's orders in almost a week. I am reduced to leading my little supply column around the countryside like a band of gypsies asking everyone I come across, 'Ah, excuse me, good sir, but have you seen the 26th Panzer Battalion? Yes, panzer battalion, you know, a collection of tanks and soldiers'." Seydlitz watched Buhle gesturing while he spoke. Then he stopped and leaned forward. "And do you know something, Friedrich? I have had to stop asking civilians. I can no longer depend on the people we are supposed to be defending. One old man I asked this morning said he had seen you and gave me detailed directions on how to find you. It wasn't until we found ourselves running down a dead-end road that I realized that the old bastard had lied to me. A fellow German. Our countryman. And he lied to me."

Buhle's carefree manner had disappeared. In its place was a mixture of confusion and scorn. Though Seydlitz himself knew that not all Germans agreed with what the Chancellor was doing, intentional obstructions of the war effort, like the one that Buhle was describing, were an entirely different matter. It was, Seydlitz thought, treason.

After a long and heavy pause, during which Buhle calmed himself and caught his breath, Seydlitz reached out and placed his hand on Buhle's shoulder. "It will be all right, my friend. Surely you know that?"

Though Seydlitz's voice and reassurance were anything but convincing, Buhle nodded his head. "Yes, yes, I know." When he was ready, Buhle continued his story. "Now I just ask military personnel for directions. And even they are not very helpful. Christ, Friedrich, the whole division is screwed up. Brigades and battalions are intermixed. Supply trains and artillery units are stumbling over each other. Command posts are passing out information that is out of date. Even the Feldjägers don't know what they're doing. Earlier this evening they sent me south of here in search of the battalion. They told me that American units and raiding parties were roaming around throughout this area and that the battalion had pulled out of here earlier today. Everyone in the rear is running around like chickens without their heads. You are lucky, Friedrich, being up here where you at least know what you're doing."

When Buhle had finished, Seydlitz considered Buhle's last comments. Buhle obviously had his problems. But to imagine that it was better to be up front hanging your ass out and waiting for someone to swat it was not what Seydlitz would consider lucky. And the idea that he, Seydlitz, knew what was happening was a little much. Still Seydlitz said nothing. He was too tired and there was far too much to do. His company needed to be rearmed and refueled. But he could not let Buhle get away without comment. Though he found it strange that he would be defending the Feldjägers, or military police, a branch of service that Seydlitz never did like, he couldn't resist the urge to bust the supply officer's bubble. Leaning over, Seydlitz tapped Buhle on the shoulder. "Rudi, the Feldjägers were right, a little. The rest of the battalion left here late this afternoon. They are south of here, in an assembly area, waiting to continue the attack to the west. My company is the only one here."

The sudden realization that he had not seen an end to his seemingly aimless wanderings hit Buhle hard. Even in the dark, Seydlitz could see Buhle's shoulders slump forward. In the two years in which he had known Buhle, Seydlitz had never heard him talk so or be at a loss for a joke. Now finding that he had an opportunity to be the cheerful one, Seydlitz slapped Buhle on the arm. "Cheer up, my old friend. Things could be worse. You could be sitting on the side of some road waiting for the Feldjägers to figure out what they were doing instead of earning an honest living pumping fuel and passing out ammunition, both of which, by the way, my company needs."

Taking two deep breaths, Buhle prepared to climb down off of Seydlitz's tank, but paused. "You know, I'd rather face enemy fire than to tell my drivers that we're not staying here for the night. To a man, they're dead on their feet."

Seydlitz laughed. "Don't give me that shit, Rudi. Your drivers haven't used their feet all day except for pushing the accelerator down."

With a chuckle, Buhle corrected himself. "Okay, they're dead on their asses. Now let's get on with this. I have a feeling this will be another long night."

Though they were only five kilometers northwest of Bad Hersfeld when she woke up, Hilary Cole had no way of knowing that. As if awakening from a drunken stupor, it took her several minutes to realize that the truck was stopped, the engine was running at an idle, and the driver, leaning against the door and window on his side, was sound asleep. Looking outside the cab, she noticed that they were parked off on the side of the road right behind a truck only a few feet to their front. Though she wondered why they were stopped, she felt no great desire to go out into the cold and find out. The driver had left the heater on, the cab was warm, the steady hum of the engine had a tranquilizing effect, and she couldn't do anything anyway to improve their situation even if she knew. They were stopped, no doubt, by some MPs waiting for the road ahead to clear or for another convoy to pass. The military police were always doing things like that.

That they were sitting behind an engineer bridge unit that was waiting for their orders to move didn't matter to Cole. What did matter was that she was being left alone and that she could go back to sleep. Someone no doubt with more horsepower than she had was out there in the cold night stumbling around trying to sort the column out. Best to stay where she was and get some more sleep while she could. That, she knew, would end soon enough.

The rearming and refueling of Seydlitz's company had taken longer than Buhle would have liked. That it did shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. Both his men and Seydlitz's were dead tired. Most wandered around during the resupply operations like zombies, barely knowing what they were doing or even where they were. While he watched, it amazed Buhle that anyone could expect men in that condition to think and act, let alone fight. Perhaps, he thought, this was what everyone meant when they said that war was insane.

Though he would have liked to coil up behind Seydlitz's tanks for a few hours and allow his drivers to sleep before pushing on back into the night, the news that the battalion was preparing to continue the attack to the west demanded that he continue. For if the fuel levels of Seydlitz's tanks were any indication, the rest of the battalion would not be able to go very far with what they had. So with great reluctance Buhle ordered his drivers to mount up, re-formed his column, and led it back out onto the hard-surfaced road that had taken them there.

When Buhle's column reached the juncture where the forest trail that they had been following met the hard-surfaced road that would take them back to Hünfeld, Buhle tapped his driver on the shoulder and pointed to his right. The driver, barely awake, simply turned the wheel and pulled out onto the hard-surfaced road. At first he slowed, since the trucks following needed time to make the turn and catch up to Buhle's little Volkswagen staff car. To make sure that all of his trucks were still with him and made the turn, Buhle opened his door slightly, leaned out, and turned his head to the rear to watch. His senior sergeant, riding in the cab of the last truck, would flash a green-filtered flashlight toward the head of the column when he was on the road. Until then, Buhle simply hung on to the door with his right hand, the dashboard with his left, and stared off into the darkness watching for the signal.

Actually, Buhle thought, this wasn't half bad. The cold air flowing around his neck felt good. It helped to wake him up and clear his mind. He needed to stay alert. He needed to keep himself, his driver, and every man in his column awake and alert. Before this night was over, Buhle mused, he was going to have to use every leadership and motivational skill and trick that his tired brain could conjure up.

Like a beacon at the end of a long dark tunnel, Buhle saw the green light from the last truck flashing. But he didn't react at first. It took several seconds for Buhle's tired mind to make the connection between the image of the green light and what he was supposed to do next. Finally a thought snapped and Buhle sat up, turned to his driver, and ordered him to begin to pick up the speed. While doing this, Buhle missed the red light to their immediate front, now only a few meters away, flashing wildly.

Buhle's driver, however, didn't. Between Buhle's shaking him out of his stupor and the sudden appearance of a red light shining in his eyes, the driver shot upright in his seat, clutched the steering wheel in both hands, and slammed down the brake without hitting the clutch, stalling the Volkswagen and throwing Buhle forward into the windshield. A sudden jerk that shook the whole vehicle told Buhle that the truck behind them, still following closely since there had been no time to assume the proper convoy intervals between vehicles, had also been caught off guard by his driver's sudden stop. The thought that his little Volkswagen staff car could have been crushed by the huge Mann supply truck never crossed Buhle's exhausted mind. At that point it could only deal with one thought or one action at a time.

Pushing himself up and away from the dash, Buhle looked at his driver in wide-eyed surprise. He still had no idea why his driver, staring to the front with mouth agape, had stopped. It wasn't until he heard a rapping on his side window that Buhle turned away from his driver. When he did, he realized that his vehicle was surrounded by several figures. Where in the hell, he wondered, had they come from? Now it was Buhle's turn to gaze outside in wide-eyed amazement at the apparitions that had sprung up from nowhere.

After what seemed like ages, the soldier standing at Buhle's door opened it. Shining a red-filtered flashlight from Buhle's face over to the driver and then back to Buhle, the soldier said nothing. Only slowly did it dawn upon Buhle, now blinded by the flashlight despite its filter, that he not only didn't have any idea who these people were, he didn't even know whose side they were on. Seydlitz's warning that there were enemy units infiltrated into their rear drifted into Buhle's slow-moving mind and caused him to start.

Seeing this, the soldier with the flashlight paused but kept the flashlight aimed in Buhle's face. "Oh, excuse me, Herr Hauptmann. I was simply checking to make sure that you and your driver were all right. We seem to have given you quite a surprise."

As with everything that night, the fact that the soldier at his door responded in German with a heavy, very formal northeastern German accent took several seconds to register. When it did, Buhle could feel himself go limp with relief. The soldier also noticed Buhle's response and introduced himself. "Sorry to cause you such concern, Herr Hauptmann. I am Oberstleutnant Kramer, Feldjäger Company 75."

While this sank into Buhle's mind, dulled by lack of sleep and the stress of wandering about the countryside in search of his battalion, Oberstleutnant Kramer continued to talk. "I am afraid I must divert your column. This road is no longer open to German military traffic."

More alert, Buhle shook his head. "You mean that there are American units operating this far to the rear?"

"Yes, Herr Hauptmann. In fact, they are very, very close."

With the Feldjäger's flashlight still in his eyes and his inability to deal with anything beyond the most immediate and obvious problems, Buhle never took note of the soldiers moving around or behind the lieutenant. Nor did his drivers, given a chance to lay their heads on the steering wheels in front of them and rest a minute, hear the movement of other soldiers as they moved out from the cover of the woods on either side of the road and crept up to the cabs of their trucks.

Standing upright and stepping back away from Buhle's door, the Feldjäger lieutenant named Kramer dropped the red-filtered flashlight from Buhle's face and turned to face toward the rear of the column. Buhle, wanting to talk to the Feldjäger lieutenant, began to climb out of his Volkswagen. This prevented him from seeing Kramer raise his red-filtered flashlight and wave it toward the rear of the column. Buhle, however, did catch the glow of green-filtered light at the rear of the column being waved at them.

For a moment he looked at the green light and thought. His sergeant, he was sure, had already signaled him that all of the trucks had made the turn onto the road. Why was his sergeant signaling him again? Perhaps the sergeant was tired, just like Buhle, and wanted to make sure that he had seen it. Or maybe, Buhle thought, the sergeant was under the impression that Buhle had stopped the column to allow the last trucks to catch up before continuing and it was he, Buhle, waving the red light. Well, no matter. Everything would be clarified in a few minutes. Turning back to the Feldjäger lieutenant, Buhle realized that he was looking down the barrel of a pistol held inches from his face.

Shaking his head to make sure he wasn't imagining things, Buhle began to step back, but Kramer, the Feldjäger lieutenant, whispered so that only Buhle could hear. "If you are very smart and very careful, you and your men will survive the next few minutes. If not, you all die. It makes no difference to me or my men."

Still not understanding what was happening, and working on the original premise that the Feldjäger lieutenant was who he said he was, Buhle began to protest. "What in the hell is this all about? Are you crazy?"

The sound of the hammer of the pistol held in front of his eyes being cocked back was the only answer Major Nikolai Ilvanich gave Buhle. But it was enough to convince Buhle that this Feldjäger lieutenant was perhaps not who he said he was and that he, Buhle, was in serious trouble.

Without taking his eyes off of Buhle, Ilvanich called out in English, "Sergeant Rasper. Lieutenant Fitzhugh and his men are ready."

Without any need for further instructions, Sergeant First Class Rasper of Company A, 1st Ranger Battalion, hit the horn of Ilvanich's commandeered German staff car three times. Rasper's three blasts served to startle the dozing German drivers and signal the rest of Company A to spring into action. As one, the rangers who had crept out of the bushes on either side of the road and eased up to the cabs of Buhle's trucks jerked both doors of the trucks open. Some drivers who had been leaning against the doors of their cabs asleep fell out onto the road. Their screams and yells were answered by rangers who shoved the muzzles of their M-16 rifles into their faces. In seconds, without a single shot being fired, the entire column— its precious fuel and 120mm tank-gun and 7.62mm machine-gun ammunition, all of which could be used by American tank units—was firmly in Ilvanich's hands.

Turning away from Ilvanich, Buhle tried to watch what was happening. Though he could see little, he heard everything. Surprised shouts and curses muttered by his drivers were answered by the rangers as they yelled to the German drivers to get up and put their hands behind their heads. Every now and then the clatter of a pistol or a rifle being torn away from a German driver and thrown onto the pavement of the road could be heard. Standing there watching his unit being taken over by the enemy caused Buhle to become angry. Then, realizing that there was nothing he could do, Buhle lost the last ounce of control he had and began to cry. He had been surprised, overpowered, and taken prisoner. Turning to face Ilvanich, who had in the meantime reached over and relieved Buhle of his own pistol, Buhle, with tears running down his cheeks, sputtered out in German, "Who in the hell are you?"

Ilvanich smiled to himself. Now was a good time to use some of the weird humor that had so fascinated him since joining this American unit. In his heavily accented English, Ilvanich responded to Buhle so that the rangers around him could hear. "We, Herr Captain, are the good guys. You, my prisoner." Then with a great flourish Ilvanich added, "On behalf of the United States Army and the Russian Republic, I thank you for these magnificent trucks and the supplies. They will, I assure you, be put to good use." On the other side of Buhle's vehicle, Specialist Pape, who was training his heavy German-made machine gun on Buhle's driver, began to laugh.

Angered at being the subject of a joke and at his momentary loss of self-control, Buhle turned on Ilvanich. Stomping his foot, Buhle shouted, "What do you intend to do with me and my men?"

Shrugging as he tossed Buhle's pistol into the bushes behind him, Ilvanich grunted. "I don't care what you and your men do. For all I care, they can go to hell. Now please step aside or we will be forced to run you over." Lifting his arm above his head, Ilvanich waved it in a circular motion and shouted, "All right, mount up and prepare to move. Spread the word down the line." Like an echo, Ilvanich's orders were relayed from ranger to ranger until from the very end of the column came three long blasts from Lieutenant Fitzhugh's truck.

With a casual motion of his pistol, Ilvanich signaled Buhle to move out of the way. Pape, on the other side, did likewise to Buhle's driver, who surrendered his seat to Pape. After seating himself in Buhle's place, Ilvanich turned to the still angry German captain. "I wouldn't be so hard on myself. I imagine that somewhere out there tonight one of your units is doing the same thing to one of ours. It's like that in war, you know."

Buhle couldn't tell if Ilvanich was trying to make him feel better or simply rubbing his nose in his own mess. Not that it made a difference. The fact was that he was still angry at himself and at the strange American commander for making fun of him in what was the most embarrassing moment of his life.

As he watched his supply trucks roll away into the darkness with their precious cargoes, now driven by the American rangers, Buhle wondered how he could explain losing them all without a single shot being fired in their defense. It would be several more minutes, after the sound of the last truck disappeared into the bitterly cold night, that Buhle realized that he had neither a map nor a flashlight. He and his men, stripped of their warm trucks, weapons, cargo, and purpose in life, were now reduced to a hopelessly lost and downcast mob of stragglers left to be brutalized by the weather and tossed about in the swirling storm of a very confused and vicious battle.

While Buhle stood in the middle of a deserted road wondering what to do next, his friend Seydlitz was busy running his company. Refreshed and under the impression that all was at least in some measure getting back to normal, Seydlitz made his rounds of his company positions as soon as Buhle and his supply column had departed. Upon returning to his own tank, Seydlitz's gunner informed him that the brigade operations officer had been trying to contact him. Pulling himself up back onto his own tank took most of Seydlitz's remaining energy. Though his mind was more alert, his body was far from refreshed. Pulling his crewman's helmet down over his dirty hair now snarled in knots, he didn't bother to tuck it all in and under the earphones. Standing on the back deck of his tank and leaning over the turret roof, Seydlitz looked down his open hatch to make sure that the radio transmitter was set to the brigade frequency before he began his broadcast. Satisfied, he keyed the radio, held it down for a moment, and then called the brigade operations officer. "Danzig Five Zero, this is Leo Four Seven. Danzig Five Zero, this is Leo Four Seven. Over."

There was no pause from the brigade operations officer. It was as if he had been sitting at the radio far off in the rear somewhere waiting for Seydlitz's call. "Leo Four Seven, this is Danzig Five Zero. You have a change of mission. Over."

Expecting nothing more than a request for a simple situation update, the quick response by the operations officer himself and the announcement that he was going to issue him an order caught Seydlitz off guard. Knowing that he would need his map and something to write on, Seydlitz yelled to his gunner to toss him up his map, his notebook, and a flashlight. Spreading the map out as far as he could, Seydlitz opened his notebook to the first page free of scribbling and notes and prepared to write. That his flashlight wasn't shielded from the enemy across the way didn't escape the notice of Seydlitz's gunner. Quickly, as his commander prepared to receive his order, the gunner pulled a poncho out from a storage rack. Standing on top of the turret roof, the gunner held it up so he and the poncho stood between the American positions and Seydlitz. Seeing what his gunner was doing, Seydlitz looked up and muttered a quick "Thank you" before rekeying the transmit lever on his crewman's helmet. "Danzig Five Zero, this is Leo Four Seven. Ready. Over."

"Leo, this is Danzig. The enemy forces that had been attacking your position have shifted their main efforts to the east. They are now hitting Düsseldorf and have forced Düsseldorf north of Autobahn E40. We must do something to relieve this pressure. Your mission will be to leave your present location, infiltrate to the north toward Bad Hersfeld, and conduct mounted raids throughout the enemy rear. Over."

Düsseldorf, the code name given the 2nd Panzer Division's 2nd Brigade, was supposed to be a supporting attack. Why he and his company were being sacrificed in such an obvious suicide mission to support a supporting attack didn't make sense to Seydlitz. To be sure that he was understanding his orders properly, Seydlitz rephrased them and asked for correction if necessary. "This is Leo. I am to move my unit north through enemy lines toward Bad Hersfeld and Autobahn E40, attacking enemy rear units as I go. Is that correct? Over."

"Leo, this is Danzig. That is correct. Over."

Seydlitz paused again to think. There was no mistake. He was being sacrificed to save someone's ass. Deciding that he'd be damned if he was going to go riding about in circles waiting to be pinned and wiped out, Seydlitz shot back to the brigade operations officer, "Danzig, this is Leo. How long do you want me to keep up my raids and where am I to go after I have done all that I can? Over."

The pause on the other end of the radio confirmed Seydlitz's suspicions. The bastards, he thought, hadn't thought about that. He and his company were truly being sent on a death ride. The gunner, listening to the exchange, looked down at Seydlitz. In the soft glow of Seydlitz's flashlight, the gunner's face betrayed the dark thoughts that were running through his mind. Finally the brigade operations officer responded. "Leo, this is Danzig. You are to use your own discretion as to how long you stay in the enemy's rear. Targets are your choice. When you feel you have done as much as you can, attempt to break out to the east, moving north of Autobahn E40, and link up with Düsseldorf. Over."

That, Seydlitz thought, was shit. Of course, he didn't take into account that the entire 2nd Panzer Division's situation was rapidly deteriorating. He couldn't. Left manning a thin outpost line on his own all day, Seydlitz had no idea what was happening even five kilometers from where he sat. That his superiors were rapidly losing all hope of cutting off the American march to the north and defeating them never occurred to Seydlitz. At no time did it enter Seydlitz's mind that instead of victory the fight now revolved around individual brigades, short on supplies and attacked from several directions at once, fighting for their very existence. Even the fact that the brigade staff of the 1st Brigade, which Seydlitz now was attached to, were issuing him orders that seemed pointless and suicidal didn't alert Seydlitz to the seriousness of their situation. Nor did it occur to him that the staff officers at brigade were just as tired and just as confused as he himself was. In the German Army, one expected the higher headquarters to be in control, to be able to think clearly and issue orders that were sound and well thought out. The idea that staff officers were only human and, like him, susceptible to exhaustion and error was the furthest thing from Seydlitz's mind. They were in charge and had to know what was going on. They had to.

Still Seydlitz instinctively continued to prod the brigade operations officer. "Danzig, this is Leo. When do you want this operation to commence? Over."

Tiring of Seydlitz's questions and anxious to join a briefing that the brigade commander was about to hold with the commanders and staff of the brigade a few meters from where he sat, the operations officer became terse with Seydlitz. "When you are ready, over." Then as an afterthought the operations officer added, "What is your fuel status? Over."

That he had been ordered to execute a mission such as this without first being asked if his unit was physically capable of executing it did not escape Seydlitz's attention. "This is Leo. We completed rearming and refueling an hour ago. Over."

The brigade operations officer's voice betrayed surprise. "Leo, who provided you with this fuel and where did they go?"

Why, Seydlitz wondered, was this so important? Were there problems that he wasn't aware of? Perhaps. But this was not the time to ask such questions. Instead he simply responded, "The supply column from my own battalion, of course. They left here some time ago headed to the assembly area my commander told me he was moving into. Over."

While Seydlitz waited for a response, the brigade operations officer turned to one of his sergeants and told him to check with the 26th Panzer Battalion to see if their supply column had arrived. As the sergeant was doing that, the operations officer returned to Seydlitz. "Leo, do you have any further questions? Over."

Taking a minute to look at his map and his skimpy notes, Seydlitz came to the conclusion that he had all he was going to get. The fact was the orders were sufficiently open to allow him almost unlimited freedom of action. To ask for more guidance might result in additional restrictions or orders that would eliminate that freedom. If he played this right, there was the chance that he and his company would survive the night. Satisfied, Seydlitz responded that he needed nothing more and then signed off.

Stretching as he looked down on his map, Seydlitz allowed himself to mutter a few curses and heard his gunner chuckle. "That good, Herr Hauptmann?"

Seydlitz, aware that he had erred by showing his displeasure with brigade in front of his gunner, looked up. There was, he realized, no hiding the truth. Seydlitz looked down at his map. "Oh, far better than you can imagine, Sergeant. I have no idea where the enemy is, no idea where our 2nd Brigade is, no idea what fire support is available, and no idea if anyone outside the 1st Brigade staff, in particular the Luftwaffe, knows that we will be going into the enemy rear. In short, we will be crawling out of the shitter into the asshole of the American Tenth Corps." Then with a tired smile Seydlitz looked up at his gunner. "Provided, of course, we can find where that asshole begins."

As Seydlitz prepared to translate his brigade operations officer's sketchy order into action, the sergeant on duty in the 4th Armored Division's division artillery intelligence section came bounding out of his armored command post carrier over to where a captain from the operations section sat. "We've got the bastards. We finally got a good fix on that German brigade command post south of Bad Hersfeld. Here are the coordinates, sir." Without waiting for a response, the intelligence sergeant went over to the wall map behind the captain and made a mark where the division's radio intercept unit, known as a collection and jamming unit or CJ platoon for short, determined the enemy brigade command post was.

Slowly the captain, tired from a long day made longer by two relocations of the command post done when he should have been sleeping, got up and walked over to the map. After looking at the newly plotted location, he thought for a minute. "We sure it's the brigade command post?"

The intelligence sergeant, anxious to have something to do that was meaningful, nodded. "Positive, sir. The enemy unit that's located seventeen kilometers south of Bad Hersfeld hasn't moved all day. The latest intercept was a long conversation between it and the brigade headquarters. The officer in charge of the CJ platoon thinks it was an operations order of some kind."

The captain raised an eyebrow. "Thinks?"

"Well, sir, the message was encrypted. We couldn't break it, but they talked long enough to get a good fix on the transmitter that we believe is the brigade headquarters."

The captain folded his arms. He knew about the enemy unit seventeen kilometers south of Bad Hersfeld. During the day several batteries of artillery had fired missions on its location twice with no noticeable effect. Its location and durability made everyone believe it was a front-line battalion or cavalry unit. Because the responses from the other unit or headquarters had been short, the collection and jamming platoon had never had enough time to get a good fix on what everyone assumed was the higher headquarters, probably the 2nd Panzer Division's 1^st Brigade. Looking at the map, the captain decided that it was pointless to go after the front-line unit again. If it survived twice, odds were it would survive again. Having made his decision, the captain turned to his own operations section. "Sergeant Mears, get a copy of these new grids and pass them on to the MLRS battery. Have them dump a spill on those grids."

The intelligence sergeant thought about that. One spill, twelve rockets or one pod of a multiple rocket launcher, would be devastating, but maybe not devastating enough. Knowing that his boss had been waiting to catch the command post of the German 1st Panzer Brigade all day, the sergeant was determined to make sure that it got nailed good and proper now that they had it. "Sir, this is an enemy brigade command post, the command post of the lead enemy brigade that's controlling the enemy units threatening to cut off Autobahn A7. Don't you think we should dump more on them, just to be sure?"

The artillery captain thought about that while looking at the red brigade symbol on the map and its location. With a smile he nodded his head. "You're right. They do deserve everything we've got. Sergeant Mears, let's fuck 'em over real good. Three spills, followed up immediately with a battalion time on target from the eight-inch battalion."

The intelligence sergeant glanced over at the sergeant sitting in front of the TACFIRE computer. Both sergeants were grinning as the TACFIRE sergeant gave the intelligence sergeant a wink before he turned to input the necessary data for the fire mission. "On the way, sir."

Through the magic of computers and digital communications, Sergeant Mears communicated with rocket and gun batteries spread out all over the 4th Armored Division's area. The computer, accepting the grid and target description provided by Mears, determined all firing data needed by both the rockets and the eight-inch howitzers, relaying that data in seconds. When the computers of all firing units reported back to Mears's computer that they were ready, the same computer system gave the order to fire and initiated an artillery strike that would effectively wipe out the commander and staff officers that had given Seydlitz his last orders for the day.

When she woke again, Hilary Cole was completely disoriented. Looking around, it took several seconds for it to sink in that they hadn't moved from where they had stopped hours ago. When she went to sit upright, a sharp burning pain, caused by a muscle cramp and leaning against the door of the truck with only a thin Army blanket for padding, shot through her right arm. Pausing, Cole let the pain subside before she moved again. While she waited, she looked down at her watch. Three a.m. Four hours' sleep. She had been able to get four hours of uninterrupted sleep. That was the most sleep she had been able to get in one sitting since they had left Slovakia.

That adventure seemed years ago instead of just two weeks. Two weeks of traveling through hell, a hell that tonight looked an awful lot like a deserted forest road.

Ready, Cole finished sitting upright. When she did, she realized that she had a headache as well as a body racked with pain. Still she was thankful that no one had bothered her during the last four hours. That thought was soon replaced with one of concern for the wounded. How were they doing? Realizing that it would be a while before she would be able to go back to sleep, Cole decided to get out, stretch her legs, find some aspirin, and check on the wounded that were in the six ambulances immediately behind the truck she was traveling in. Looking over at the driver, who was sound asleep, Cole slowly opened her door.

Even before she had it fully opened, the blast of cold air hit her. It didn't bother her. Rather, it felt good, refreshing. Pushing on the door, Cole carefully swung her legs out and searched for the running board of the truck. When the toe of her boot found it, she slipped down, turned to face the driver, now stirring, and then closed the door as quietly as she could. When she was sure it was secure, Cole lowered herself to the ground, pulled her parka around her, zipped it up, and flipped the hood up over her head. Though she was sure she looked like something out of a Russian fashion magazine, Cole was warm and well protected from the cold night air.

As she moved over to the shoulder of the road, the pale moonlight allowed her to see the line of trucks that stretched off into the distance almost to a bend in the road. The trucks in front of her hospital's lead vehicle carried strange boatlike contraptions. An engineer unit, she thought. Had to be. They carried all kinds of unusual stuff like that. In front of the dozen or so engineer trucks at that bend there was an MP humvee parked in the center of the road. A lone MP sat upright manning the M-60 machine gun mounted on top of the humvee's roof while another MP, bundled up against the cold, slowly walked back and forth across the road in front of the humvee. With his rifle slung over his shoulder, Cole couldn't tell if he was on guard or waiting for someone and simply walking to and fro to stay warm.

No matter, Cole thought. They knew what they were doing. And she knew what she had to do. Turning her back on the MPs and the engineers, Cole began to walk toward the first ambulance. In doing so, she missed seeing the lone roving guard freeze in place, listening to a noise in the distance while he unslung his rifle.

Crashing through a series of logging trails and unpaved farm roads some six kilometers northwest of Bad Hersfeld, Seydlitz was beginning to realize that his orders, which seemed so absurdly simple, were becoming harder and harder to carry out. After backing his tanks out of position in pairs, he reassembled his company and began to infiltrate them en masse as he had been ordered. Though his attempts to contact brigade and notify them of his departure went unanswered, Seydlitz didn't care. He had his orders and he had verified them. Now all he had to do was to carry them out as he saw fit.

Doing so turned out to be almost as nerve-racking as sitting in one place for hours on end waiting to be attacked by enemy ground units or artillery. Fumbling forward into the darkness, Seydlitz's company managed to avoid contact with any American units. That soon became a problem. The routes into what he thought were the enemy rear areas were totally devoid of any sign of the enemy. It was almost as if the Americans had never existed. Slowly, as he pushed his exhausted company further and further north, he became bolder and bolder, picking up speed and heading for parts of the forests and countryside that looked like good places to set up rear area supply bases and facilities.

Under normal circumstances, Seydlitz's thinking would have been correct. But these were not normal circumstances for the Tenth Corps. Rather than concerning themselves with setting up and operating, the Tenth Corps' combat service support units were only concerned with getting out of the trap that the 2nd and 10th Panzer divisions were still trying to close. So instead of hiding in the woods where Seydlitz was hunting, the prey he sought sat in the open, lined up and exposed on the roads as they waited their turn to continue the long march to the sea.

Seydlitz's decision to leave the woods and begin to move along the roads was not based on any great revelation or protracted decision-making process. Rather, he was tired of screwing with the countless tree branches that slapped at him as his Leopard tank lurched back and forth over the heavily rutted trails now frozen stone hard. To hell with this, he finally said to himself shortly before 3 a.m. With a curt order over the company radio net that was almost a scream, Seydlitz ordered the lead tanks to halt while he took the time to study his map and decide where to go next. Satisfied that he had a good fix on his unit's location, Seydlitz noted with much joy that there was a hard-surfaced secondary road just a few hundred meters in front of his lead platoon. "There. That is what I want."

Seydlitz's gunner, waiting for his commander's order, thought that Seydlitz was yelling for him. "What is it, Herr Hauptmann? Trouble?"

"No, Ernst. No more trouble. We are going to get out of these damned woods and head east." Folding his map, he looked about. "If there are Americans here, then they are the best camouflage artists in the world. We tried as hard as we could. We went north, as ordered, and tried to find the Americans. Our duty is done. Now it is time to end this insanity." Keying the radio mike, Seydlitz contacted Sergeant Wihelm Zangler, the platoon leader of Seydlitz's lead platoon, and ordered him to make a left turn onto the next hard-surfaced road and follow it until they hit the first village. From there they would make their way to the autobahn and then, as per his orders, head east. Humans, even humans who were German soldiers, could only go so far. Seydlitz was reaching his end and suspected that his platoon leaders and tank commanders were collectively nearing theirs too. To continue would be a foolish waste of good men and machines.

Glad to finally be free of the worry of tree branches, the tanks of Zangler's platoon made the turn onto the hard-surfaced road as ordered and immediately began to pick up speed. Though they should have known better, since this left the tanks further back in the column still in the woods and struggling to reach the road, tired minds never think of everything. So when Zangler's tank came swinging around the bend and smack into an American military police vehicle sitting in the center of the road, his platoon was alone and instantly in contact. There was no time to think, no time to pull back. Without any hesitation, Zangler ordered his gunner to open fire and passed the word down to the tank commanders in his platoon to close up, follow him, and attack.

Hilary Cole had just reached the rear of the first ambulance when the chatter of machine-gun fire shattered the stillness of the night. Turning toward the sound, Cole watched as a great black lumbering form spewing orange tongues of flame came around the bend in the road and rammed the MP humvee without slowing down. In horror, she watched as the tank's left track rose ever so slightly onto the MP vehicle, then slowly crushed it under its full weight before any of the occupants, including the MP manning the machine gun, could escape.

Transfixed by the sight, Cole watched as another tank came up next to the first, which was still in the process of crushing the MP humvee. It slowed when it caught sight of the line of engineer trucks. Hilary watched as the second tank lowered its long menacing main gun, took a second to aim, and then fired on the first target that looked worthy of a tank main-gun round. Its choice of target had been a good one, for the fuel truck sitting near the head of the engineer unit's column ripped itself apart, sending a huge yellow fireball into the air and lighting the entire length of the column.

Cole, standing little more than a hundred meters from where the fuel truck blew up, could feel the heat of the fireball. As she watched the burning fuel run out from the sides of the ruptured fuel truck onto the road and into the ditch on the side of the road, Cole realized that she was standing on the edge of hell, and there was nothing that she could do about it. Without any further conscious thoughts, without any control of what she was doing, Cole turned and fled into the forest as a third Leopard tank came careening around the bend and began to charge down the road, machine-gunning anything and everyone who stood in its way.

After having done it, Zangler realized that ramming the American humvee hadn't been a good idea. It had proven to be a little tougher than he had originally thought. Because of his preoccupation with the wreck that had once been a humvee, the two tanks that had come up behind him had passed his. Now looking down the road, he saw them come together, almost hub to hub, and begin to run march down the road, firing as they went. The Leopard tank on the left, with its turret traversed forty-five degrees in that direction, was busy machine-gunning American trucks and personnel at point-blank range with all the machine guns that the tank's crew could bring to bear. The Leopard on the right was concentrating on trucks and personnel further down the road. Since it had greater range, that tank began to alternate between firing its main gun and its coaxially mounted machine gun. Because the loader was busy feeding the main gun, he couldn't bring the turret-mounted machine gun into play. Not that it mattered. By the time it had fired its second 120mm high-explosive anti-tank round, the chaos and confusion, not to mention the destruction, were complete.

Unable to lead, and seeing that it was not possible to get around the side of the line of American trucks and run down along the shoulder of the road, Zangler ordered his driver to slow down. Looking to his rear, he saw the fourth tank in his platoon finally come up. With a series of wild motions, Zangler directed the commander of the fourth tank to pull around and come up on the right side of his own tank. This formed a second pair of vehicles that stretched from one side of the road to the other. Ready, Zangler waved and ordered his own tank and his consort to begin moving down the road, following the first two at a distance of fifty meters and engaging any personnel or vehicles with their machine guns that the first two tanks of his platoon had missed.

The fireball that had marked the destruction of the engineers' fuel truck was the first indication Seydlitz had that the lead platoon was in contact. He immediately attempted to contact Zangler. His calls went unanswered. Still not on the hard-surfaced road yet, Seydlitz listened to the steady rattle of machine guns, punctuated on occasion by a main gun firing. Frustrated, he ordered his driver to pick up speed and his loader to change the radio frequency of his radio to Zangler's platoon frequency.

Pulling his head down to avoid the tree branches now wildly whipping over the open hatch above him, Seydlitz listened to Zangler's radio net for a second. To his surprise, Seydlitz didn't hear any of the excited chatter or confused orders that one usually hears on a radio during initial contact. Instead the radio was silent. Looking over to his own receiver-transmitter, Seydlitz made sure that it was on and set to the proper frequency. Satisfied that all was in order, Seydlitz keyed the radio and called to Zangler. "Leo One Five, this is Leo Four Five. What is your situation? Over."

Zangler responded without a pause. "We've run into a column of trucks. An engineer unit, I think. We're engaging them now." Though his voice was calm, his failure to use full call signs or radio procedures told Seydlitz that he was either busy in an engagement or directing his platoon. Since he was already engaging, there was little that Seydlitz could add.

Still he felt that he needed to say something. So Seydlitz rekeyed the radio. "Leo One Five, continue your attack and destroy everything on the road. Repeat, destroy everything on the road. I am coming up with the rest of the unit now. Over."

With nothing more than a quick "Affirmative," Zangler accepted his commander's orders and passed them on down to his tank commanders.

When they came across the red crosses on white backgrounds on vehicles further down the column, Zangler's tank commanders didn't hesitate. Why they didn't was lost in the confusion and panic of the night. For the moment, Zangler's tank crews had become mindless killing machines. Perhaps they simply looked at the trucks and personnel fleeing from them as nothing more than the enemy, someone to be acquired, engaged, and killed. Perhaps they saw this as an opportunity to repay the bastards who had attacked them the day before with artillery while they had sat buttoned up in their own tanks shitting their pants every time a round detonated nearby and praying that they would live for another minute. Perhaps some even had higher, loftier thoughts such as defending Germany against invaders. Perhaps.

CHAPTER 17

By now Jan was used to listening to Colonel Edward J. Littleton, Jr., U.S. Army, retired. Littleton, located in a separate studio, was explaining the military situation in Germany. Jan, with a well-practiced smile on her face, sat and watched Littleton's face on a monitor while he explained the situation in central Germany as he saw it from Washington, D.C. Over the tiny earphone hidden in her right ear, the director whispered that they were ready to cut to the live feed from Germany. Excited at being given the chance to cut the pompous ass off, Jan jumped in while Littleton was in mid-sentence. "Excuse me, Colonel, but I've just been told that we have a live feed from Bob Manning, our correspondent in Germany."

With the camera focused on Jan's face, she leaned forward and with a look of concern spoke to the camera. "Bob? Bob, can you still hear me?" The man she was trying to talk to was Robert J. Manning, a British correspondent who was working for WNN. Right now Bob and a camera crew, using a satellite shot, were attempting to give a live feed for Jan's morning report.

In a flash, as soon as the technicians in the control room had a good clear picture of Bob, the video image was switched from Jan to Bob. "Jan, yes, I've got you now, thank you." Attired in a British Army camouflage smock with a black wool watch cap pulled down over the tops of his ears, it was obvious that Bob was more concerned about life and limb, not to mention protection against the cold, than he was about what his image looked like on the television screen four thousand miles away. The idea of wearing camouflage caught on very quickly when the losses amongst front-line correspondents began to mount. The bright yellow or international orange jackets and parkas, it seemed, drew far too much fire. The thought that a correspondent would be given special consideration vanished, along with many other illusions about war, as the viciousness and intensity of battle escalated.

"Bob, it's midafternoon there, isn't it?"

Before he could answer, the report from a small-caliber automatic cannon not far from where he stood caused him to flinch and look over to his right. When he saw that he was in no immediate danger, Bob looked back to the camera and responded to Jan's question trying to look as if nothing had happened. "Yes, Jan. It is afternoon. Of course, the time of day really doesn't seem to make any difference in this battle. The German mechanized infantry unit I'm with has been continuously engaged with elements of the American rear guard since early yesterday, day and night. The American cavalry unit that it has been playing a deadly game of tag with since then is now located just across the river behind me in a town named Burghaun."

Looking down at her computer-generated map of central Germany, the one used to show the home audience where the battles were taking place, Jan noted that there were no towns of that name shown. "Excuse me, Bob. But where exactly is that?"

"Jan, we're about four or five kilometers northwest of Hünfeld. If you recall, the Germans seized Hünfeld on the 19th but weren't able to go any further west due to the Tenth Corps' rapid redeployment of blocking forces. Now it seems that the elements of this German unit will be able to finally make it across the Fulda River here and link up with the 10th Panzer to the west."

"Is that due," Jan queried without betraying a hint of the deep concern she felt, "to a collapse of American forces?"

Jan could see Bob shake his head. "No, Jan. On the contrary. The American units that the Germans had hoped to bag have made it north and out of the trap. This is due in great measure to the skillful and valiant efforts of cavalrymen, like those across the river. It's almost become a regular drill these past two days. The American cavalrymen will set up in a town or blocking position and wait for the Germans in pursuit to catch up. Sometimes the Germans detect the Americans first and approach with caution. Most of the time, however, it is the Americans who initiate the action, usually with an ambush. This morning was a case in point."

Pointing over to a partially demolished bridge, Bob cued his cameraman to focus on the smoldering hulk of a German Marder infantry fighting vehicle sitting on the bridge.

"When the German unit I'm with lost contact with the American rear guard before dawn this morning, they took off and followed, as usual. For some reason, when we got here, they thought that the bridge was clear. Two Marders, the German equivalent of your Bradley fighting vehicle, rolled onto the bridge and began to cross. That's when the Americans in Burghaun blew up the bridge and fired on the Marders. You can clearly see, Jan, the results of that surprise."

While Bob talked and the camera continued to focus on the wrecked Marder, Jan felt a cold shiver. It was becoming harder and harder to watch those shots and talk as if they meant nothing to her. For while others viewed the film footage coming in with an eye to whether it supported their story or made a bold statement, Jan looked for anything that might give her a clue as to where her husband was and how he was doing. This was not easy, for some of the film showed wounded Americans and on occasion a corpse left sprawled on the ground in its own blood. Though she didn't know how well she could deal with seeing Scotty like that, Jan couldn't not look. She had to. It was there, and there was no denying it. So she looked and prayed in silence that she wouldn't find what she sought.

Just as Bob was finishing up his explanation, a series of loud screeches passed overhead. Automatically the cameraman, recognizing them for what they were, swung the camera away from the Marder on the bridge and over to a view of the town across the river. His reaction and timing were perfect, catching the impact of half a dozen German artillery rounds that had caused the shattering noise overhead. Looking over to where the camera was aimed, Bob then began to ad-lib. "What you're seeing, Jan, is an artillery barrage going in on what the Germans suspect to be American positions."

Watching her monitor, Jan shook her head. "Yes, Bob. We've got that here. Can you see any of the American vehicles or personnel from where you are?"

"No, Jan. And I doubt that the Germans can either. In fact, there's the very real chance that the Americans who blew up the bridge and destroyed the lead Marders are long gone. These cavalrymen are quite good at giving the Germans the slip."

With a look of mild surprise on her face, Jan asked, "If the Germans can't see the Americans, then why are they firing on the town, a German town that no doubt still has people in it?"

Bob pointed back to the Marder on the bridge. "It didn't take too many incidents like that to convince the young soldiers of this unit to shoot first before they stick their necks out."

Before she realized what she was saying, Jan asked, "Well, Bob, are you in danger of being fired on by the Americans?"

Jan cursed herself. That, she thought, was a dumb question, a really dumb question. Of course he was in danger.

"Well, Jan, of course there's always the danger that the odd shot will wander in our direction, but for the most part, no, we're in no real danger. The Americans have been very selective about how they use their artillery and where they shoot, so far. Though no one will admit it, the only times I've seen populated areas shelled by artillery have been when the Germans did it themselves."

Before Jan could ask her next question, the image of Bob disappeared from the screen. Jan pulled back, looked at the screen, then glanced over to the control booth. Over the earphone a technician announced that the feed had been cut from Bob's location. The German Army public affairs officer controlling the video feed hadn't liked his last comment. Jan looked up at the camera and did what most news anchors do when faced with a sudden interruption of their lead story. "It seems that we're having some technical difficulties with our live feed from Bob Manning in Germany. We'll continue to update you on the latest from Germany after this commercial."

While they waited, Jan sat back watching the commotion in the control booth while wondering what to do next. The logical thing was to go back to Littleton. The question was, however, how to tie Bob's interrupted report into a conversation with Littleton. As she pondered this, Jan heard the director suggest that she go back to Littleton and tie her questions into the last video somehow. Looking up at the director, Jan was about to say, "No shit, Sherlock," but decided not to. She could tell from where she sat that he already had more than enough on his mind and his hands full. He didn't need her smart-ass comment. Instead Jan simply smiled, nodded, and prepared to go back live.

When the red light flashed on the camera before her, Jan started in. "Good morning if you're just joining us. With us today in our Washington studios is Colonel Edward J. Littleton, Jr., U.S. Army, retired." Glancing over to the monitor that showed Littleton's face, Jan's smile transformed itself into a serious mask. "Colonel Littleton, over the past few days we've seen an American force, outnumbered and deep in Germany, consistently outmaneuver and outfight the German Army, an army that has for centuries held the reputation as one of the best in the world. The German military machine, not to mention its skills in planning and its general staff, has been the model for many other armies in the world, including the American Army. How then, Colonel, do you explain what one could call the poor performance of the German Army over the past two weeks? It seems a simple thing to bring their forces to bear on the numerically inferior Tenth Corps and stop it."

When the video shot shifted to Littleton, he was smiling. "The myth of German military superiority has taken a long time to die. While the Germans have maintained a superb military force since the mid-1800s, it is not without fault and it is far from perfect." Shifting slightly in his seat, Littleton turned slightly away from the camera. "The fact is, Jan, the German Army has not fought in any wars since 1945. The United States Army, on the other hand, has had ample opportunity to blood its officers, so to say, in several conflicts. And," Littleton continued, pointing his finger at the camera, "there's more than simple combat experience. Since the breaking up of the Soviet Union, the German Army has not held a major maneuver training exercise. Most training exercises above battalion level have been command post exercises involving only the officers and assisted by computers. To my knowledge, there isn't a single German division commander who has had every unit in his command maneuvering in the field at the same time in years. An added problem was the creation of multinational corps. When the Germans pulled their units out of those multinational corps, in which officers from other nations held many key positions, the German effort to revert to all-German corps staff's in the midst of an active campaign created major problems at all levels of the German command structure that they still have not yet resolved."

"Then what you're saying, Colonel, is that the American Army is a better army."

Again Littleton smiled. "No, Jan, I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that the American Army was better trained and prepared going into this crisis than the Germans were. They, the Americans, have a solid corps of knowledgeable and experienced officers and noncommissioned officers who have made the difference when it mattered. Unfortunately for the Tenth Corps, the Germans are learning. In that particular instance at the bridge, the lesson cost them two infantry fighting vehicles and their crews. Our soldiers, who learned their lessons before the first shots were fired, are facing combat veterans now who have learned their trade the hard way."

Littleton's statement sent a chill through Jan. For a moment her face went blank as she tensed up. The director, seeing the sudden change, ordered the camera to hold on Littleton for a moment instead of cutting back to Jan for her next question. Only after Jan realized what had happened and had regained her composure did he allow the camera to cut over to her. As hard as it was for her to do, Jan asked the next logical question. "Will this newfound experience be able to make a difference in sufficient time to allow the Germans to stop the Tenth Corps?"

Taking a deep breath before answering, Littleton pondered the question, then looked up at Jan. "Perhaps. It is hard to say right now. Washington and Berlin must assess the results of the battle that's now winding down. It's really hard to say what either will do. The Tenth Corps has won, but it has paid for that success. The Germans have had their noses badly bloodied and will now step back to catch their breath and figure out what to do next. The only thing that we can be sure of, Jan, is that when and where the two armies come together again, it will be more violent and more vicious. The Americans now realize that they are fighting for their lives."

"And the Germans, Colonel? How will the German soldier react?"

Again Littleton carefully considered his next comment. He, like the rest of the world, was really unsure. Public opinion in Germany was solidly against the war. Anti-war riots in every major city outside the combat zone had resulted in martial law being imposed and the diversion of those reserve units that had responded to their call-up to controlling civil disturbances instead of reinforcing combat units facing the Tenth Corps. And yet the German Army continued to maneuver and prepare for the next fight. Taking another deep breath, Littleton finally answered. "I don't think anyone, even the German Army commanders themselves, can answer that question."

While Jan Fields-Dixon and Colonel Edward J. Littleton, Jr., U.S. Army, retired, pondered what would happen next, Captain Nancy Kozak had no illusions as to how the German soldiers would behave. From the side of the road, Kozak watched with cold and impassionate eyes as two soldiers from her first platoon carefully laid the charred and shredded body of her battalion commander on a poncho. Though they were careful, there was also a decided lack of true emotion on their part. They were, like everyone else in Company C, 3rd of the 3rd Infantry, beyond feeling. The stress and strain of battle, sleepless nights, long periods of tedium shattered by sudden spasms of sheer terror known as combat had beaten practically every human emotion out of them. They were, like Kozak, responding but no longer feeling. It was too late for that.

From down the road, the roar of the battalion executive officer's humvee failed to disturb Kozak as she watched her soldiers continue the grim task of removing the bodies of the battalion commander's crew from their smashed Bradley. Even when the executive officer's humvee stopped next to Kozak and he dismounted, Kozak made no effort to acknowledge his presence. She simply continued to watch her soldiers drape another corpse in a mottled green camouflage poncho. Coming up next to Kozak, the executive officer looked briefly at what Kozak's soldiers were doing, then, ignoring the stench of burned flesh that made his nostrils twitch, he turned to Kozak. "What happened?"

Kozak answered without taking her eyes away from the soldiers or enshrouded body. In a voice that was little more than a whisper Kozak responded. "The battalion commander's dead."

The executive officer stared at Kozak for a moment and blinked. He knew that. She was the one who had reported that to him. Not understanding her response, the executive officer continued. "Yes, I know that. What I meant to say is how did it happen?"

Still without looking at the executive officer, Kozak responded in the same soft monotone that she had before. "The Germans killed him."

Only slowly did it begin to dawn on the executive officer that Kozak's responses, her attitude, and her refusal to acknowledge him were not meant as disrespect or evasion. They were the best that she could do. Kozak, like most of the rest of the soldiers in her company, was at the end of her physical and emotional tether. After two weeks of giving all she had to give and enduring more than any reasonable person could expect, Kozak had nothing more to give except her life. And at that moment if someone had come up to her, pointed a gun at her head, and threatened to shoot, odds were she would have done nothing. Sometimes the soul dies long before the body does.

But the battalion executive officer, now the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Infantry, wasn't finished with Kozak and her company. The battalion, now the rear guard for the 1st Brigade and in turn the 4th Armored Division, had another important mission to fulfill. Though the death of the battalion commander was regrettable, it was part of being a soldier. The battalion commander knew this. The executive officer knew this. Kozak knew this. Yes, soldiers had died, the executive officer thought, all of them, like the battalion commander, good men. But the Tenth Corps had escaped being crushed by the 2nd and 10th Panzer divisions and the march continued.

After looking at the soldiers going about their grim task one more time, the executive officer moved so that he now stood between Kozak and the grisly scene. Finally unable to watch her soldiers as they tended to the dead, Kozak looked up at the executive officer for the first time. When he had her attention, the young major began to issue his orders. "Nancy, I want to take your company up this road about two kilometers to a place called Weiterode just outside of Bebra. Set up a blocking position oriented to the southwest. We have been ordered to keep Highway 27, which runs through Bebra, open until midnight. A Company will pass through you and deploy to the north of Bebra blocking 27 as it comes in from the north. D Company will be following and deploy to the south. B Company, which got beat up pretty bad this morning, will be reconstituting in Bebra and serve as a reserve."

Though Kozak was looking him in the eye without blinking and nodded in acknowledgment, the executive officer wasn't sure she understood. Patiently he tried to explain to her the importance of what they were doing. "Listen, Nancy, it's important that we hold here. The whole corps is shifting its axis of advance. Instead of pushing through Kassel directly north to Hannover, we're shifting to the northwest in the direction of Paderborn. The corps commander feels that we can do better there than staying in the hill country. Is that clear?"

Again Kozak simply stared vacantly into his eyes and nodded, causing the executive officer to wonder how much longer Colonel Dixon thought that he could push the brigade. The executive officer knew that when officers like Kozak began to teeter on the edge of total collapse, the end was in sight. He couldn't allow that to happen. He was a commander now, charged with a mission. "Okay, Nancy, I want you to get your company mounted up and moving. I want you in place before it gets dark. Is that clear?"

As before, Kozak stared at him and nodded. Realizing that there was nothing more that he could do there, the executive officer shook his head, turned, and began to walk away. He was about to get into his humvee when Kozak called out, "Major."

Stopping, the executive officer turned around and faced Kozak. "Major, I'm all right really. It's just that it's been a bad few days. I… I don't think…"

After Kozak lapsed into silence, the two officers looked at each other. For the first time in several days the executive officer felt compassion for another human being. Nodding, he said nothing at first. Then he said, "I understand. We'll talk about it in Weiterode. Is that all right?"

"Yes, sir. That will be fine. Thank you."

The executive officer looked at Nancy Kozak for a moment and realized that what she needed was more than another mission. She needed a calm and reassuring voice to talk to her, to reach in and wrap itself about her troubled and fatigued mind and ease her burden. But he couldn't do that right now. Several kilometers down the road another company commander, like Kozak, waited to receive his orders. The executive officer doubted if he would be in any better shape than Kozak. Though the image of Kozak shaken like this was very disconcerting to the executive officer, there was nothing that he could do about that. The war went on and they had a mission, a very important one, to execute. He would have plenty of time later, after Kozak's company had settled into their new position, to talk to her. Plenty of time.

With that, he turned, climbed into his humvee, and went speeding down the road in search of B Company, where he would play out the same scene with a different company commander. The executive officer didn't know that his tenure as battalion commander had less than thirty minutes left. Like his battalion commander before him, the executive officer was scheduled by fate to become a statistic.

Each day General Lange found the afternoon briefings at Ruff's office more and more intolerable. Everything about the briefings and the people who attended them bothered him. It bothered him as a professional soldier, as a German, and as a human being.

To Lange's right sat Rudolf Lammers. As the chief of operations briefed, Lange carefully looked over to the man who as the Minister of Defense was supposed to be his immediate superior. In the past three days, however, Lammers had been nothing more than a messenger for Chancellor Ruff, and not a very good one at that. Though he gave the outside world the appearance of still being in control, he was out of his depth. Whenever Ruff demanded action or a decision had to be made, Lammers hurriedly sought out Lange and with wide eyes simply asked, "Well, what do you think?"

On the other side of Lammers was Bruno Rooks, the Foreign Minister. While Lammers at least gave the appearance of being in control of himself, Rooks couldn't even manage this. Everything about the man, including body odor from lack of bathing, told of a broken man. Among the world community it was he, Rooks, who the press held up as the man who had been dealing with the other nations of the world before the crisis. So now it was he who the press watched as nation after nation slammed their doors in his face. While Ruff could hide in his office surrounded by his loyal staff and military men, Rooks suffered in person the abuse of diplomats who had once called themselves his friends. This, coupled with Ruff's own attitude of ignoring a man who had become unnecessary to his purposes, was too much for Rooks to bear. Just when he needed a friend, a person to confide in, he had no one; and no one except Lange seemed to notice.

Of the inner circle, only Fellner, the Minister of the Interior, seemed to be holding up. That, Lange surmised, was probably due to the fact that, although considered a part of the inner circle, he was not one of Ruff's men. Of the lot, only Fellner continued to maintain his dignity and speak for the good of the German people. Though he supported Ruff, who was after all the duly elected Chancellor, Fellner left no doubt that he stood for Germany and all of its people.

Finally in the circle of men who were driving Germany into the dark abyss there was Chancellor Ruff himself. If Fellner stood for Germany and the German people, what did Ruff now stand for?

Everything, Lange had been able to convince himself, up to the first bloodletting had been justifiable. Everything could be explained. Ruff's indignation against the United States for not informing them of the Ukrainian operation, his seizure of the nuclear weapons brought into Germany against all treaties, even his use of the Army to blockade the American Tenth Corps in the Czech Republic were political maneuvers that could be defended. Those efforts, Lange had thought, had hoped, had all been bluffs. Now, however, after the battles in central Germany, Lange finally began to understand that Ruff had never been bluffing. Ruff had always been working for an armed confrontation with the Americans. But why? Why in the hell had this man who had earned an impeccable reputation as a man of reason, a strong unifying element in a troubled Germany, driven his people and his nation into a war that could only ruin decades of hard work, not to mention the lives of thousands of its people?

Leaning forward, Lange propped his chin on his hand. With a sly sideways glance he studied Ruff for several moments. There was something going on inside of that man's head that no one, even his most trusted supporters, knew about. But what? What could drive a man to sacrifice his fellow countrymen in such a manner? Perhaps this same thought had troubled the General Staff officers of Nazi Germany. Perhaps they too stared at their national leader and wondered what drove the man who drove their nation.

Lange's reflection on his commander-in-chief was interrupted by a civilian aide from the Ministry of the Interior who, after gaining access to the briefing room, walked straight over to Fellner and handed him an envelope. Without regard for the briefing officer, Fellner ripped open the envelope, ruffled the thin sheets of paper as loudly as he could manage, and made a great show of reading them. Finished, he folded the papers and turned to face Ruff. Again acting as if the chief of operations didn't exist, Fellner began to speak. "It would seem, gentlemen, that the stories about the destruction of a field hospital are quite true."

There was a moment of silence before Fellner continued. "Early this morning the Americans escorted French and British news teams to the spot and allowed them to film the recovery of wounded and dead personnel, both male and female, from vehicles clearly marked with the International Red Cross symbol. Those films are now playing on every news program around the free world. The British news team was the most charitable, referring to the incident as a massacre. The French preferred the word 'murder.' "

Unable to stand Fellner's gloating, Ruff slapped his hand on the table as he jumped to his feet. "BASTARDS! Who do they think they are?" The sudden outburst surprised everyone in the room except for Lange and Fellner.

As he looked about the room, red-faced and unable to conceal his anger, Ruff glared at everyone, who stared back until they averted their eyes. Only Fellner and Lange returned Ruff's stare with a defiant, almost contemptuous look. When he was ready, Kurt turned to Fellner. "I want you to make sure that we have complete control of all foreign correspondents. All of them. We cannot afford to allow them to run about freely, spreading lies and aiding the American propaganda campaign against us."

"But Herr Ruff," Fellner hastened to remind him in a warm voice, "the correspondents who shot those videos were then behind American lines. We cannot, as the past few days have demonstrated, control what happens behind enemy lines."

Turning about, Lange looked at Fellner. Was that last comment meant as an insult to the German Army? He was about to pass it off when Fellner added, "We could, of course, solve this problem by insisting that our Army refrain from committing atrocities except behind our lines."

Now there was no doubt. Fellner had declared himself, though it took Ruff, still steaming with rage, several seconds to understand this. But Lange knew that from that moment on the German war cabinet would begin to crumble. It was the beginning of the end. But what would that end bring for them and for Germany? How long, he wondered, would Ruff continue to play out this insanity?

Like a tiger whose paw was stuck in a steel trap, Ruff began to lash out at Fellner. "HOW DARE YOU? HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO ME, TO US, LIKE THAT!"

Fellner, standing erect and calm, looked Ruff in the eye. "And how dare you, Herr Chancellor, betray the German people."

"BETRAY? You, Herr Fellner, are mad. If there be treason, you, and not I, are the traitor. There is no doubt, no doubt at all, that you have never fully supported this government during this crisis. You continue to work against our purposes."

"And what," Fellner shouted, "are those purposes? To destroy Germany again, for the third time in less than one hundred years? What in the hell are you doing?" Then looking about the room, Fellner asked everyone present, "What are we all doing? Have we gone mad, again? What are we doing dragging all of Germany and its people back to the gates of Armageddon? What?"

In the silence that followed, a captain of the operations section entered the room and began to head for Lange until he realized what was happening. Freezing in place, the captain looked at Lange, then back at the door. He was about to turn and flee when Lange caught his eye and signaled him to come over. Though he did so with the same reluctance that a man jumps into a sea full of sharks, the captain inched toward Lange and handed him a dispatch. For a moment, while the silent standoff between Ruff and Fellner continued, Lange read the dispatch.

When he finished, he thanked the captain and dismissed him. While the captain was fleeing the room, Lange stood up, cleared his throat, and began to speak. The sarcasm he felt showed in every word he spoke. "Gentlemen, excuse me for disturbing your, ah, discussions. But I am afraid the situation in central Germany has changed somewhat. It seems the Americans have entered Paderborn and are moving west and northwest toward Münster and Osnabrück. The enemy has managed to break out of our encirclement."

Dumbfounded, Ruff turned his attention away from Fellner and toward Lange. "How can that be? Just five minutes ago your chief of operations briefed us that the 7th Panzer Division had established blocking positions in front of Paderborn. What happened?"

Looking down at the message, Lange considered his response. When he spoke, he did so without looking at Ruff. "It seems the positions of the 7th Panzer Division were compromised."

"Compromised? What in the hell do you mean, compromised?"

"It means, Herr Chancellor, that enemy actions and maneuvering compelled the commander of that division to withdraw."

"And how many casualties," Ruff demanded, "did the 7th Panzer inflict on the Americans before they retreated?"

"I do not know, Herr Chancellor. This dispatch doesn't say."

"All right, Herr General, how many casualties did the 7th Panzer Division suffer before yielding Paderborn?"

With a quick glance down, Lange found the appropriate passage and read it. "The 7th Panzer Division reports suffering three casualties, all wounded, when their truck was sideswiped by a Leopard tank while leaving Paderborn."

"Three?"

"Yes, Herr Chancellor, three. It seems we were very, very lucky today."

Like a well-rehearsed stage play, the column of American tanks and infantry fighting vehicles of the 55th Mech Infantry Division approached the bridge held by elements of the 7th Panzer Division. When the lead Bradley was clearly visible, the senior German officer present, a panzergrenadier captain, walked out into the middle of the road. Upon seeing the German, the commander of the Bradley halted and reported. Within minutes the most senior American officer in the column, an armored major, came forth mounted in his tank. Stopping thirty meters away from the German officer, the American major dismounted with no undue haste, then walked up to the German captain.

After the exchange of military pleasantries, the German captain spoke first. "I have been ordered, Herr Major, to establish a blocking position here and prevent the passage of American forces."

The American major, responding in German, likewise stated his mission. "I have been ordered, Herr Captain, to seize this bridge and establish a bridgehead on the far side."

The German captain replied, "I must resist your efforts until my position is no longer tenable."

The American major nodded. "I understand." Then, turning toward the commander of the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle behind him, the major waved his hand over his head and then pointed to the bridge. Without hesitation, the commander of the Bradley gunned his engine and raced for the bridge, past German obstacles removed to clear the way and German Marder infantry fighting vehicles only partially hidden in positions meant to cover them.

When the American Bradley reached the bridge, the German captain, who had been watching its progress, turned to the American major. "Ah, if you would excuse me, Major. My position is no longer tenable. I must withdraw my unit to its next blocking position, which is seven point two kilometers further down the road."

"That is all right, Captain. I understand. Auf Wiedersehen."

Saluting, the captain also bid the American major farewell and returned to his unit.

Just short of the road junction west of Ronshausen, Major Harold Cerro saw a lone humvee half concealed in a stand of trees with two figures standing next to it waiting. Knowing one of the figures had to be his boss, Colonel Scott Dixon, Cerro ordered his driver to pull over next to it and stop.

Normally, when responding to a summons by his commander to meet at some isolated spot in the middle of the night, Cerro would literally jump out of whatever vehicle he was traveling in before it stopped and bound over to Dixon to receive the latest order or change of mission Dixon invariably had for him. Dixon and Cerro, having worked so long together, understood each other's work habits to the point where they could hold short, almost encrypted, conversations without any loss of clarity or meaning. Tonight, for example, when Dixon called the brigade command post and directed that Cerro meet him at a crossroads near the command post of the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Infantry, Cerro knew that Dixon had an important order that needed to be issued and there wasn't time for him to return to the command post himself.

Cerro, however, didn't leap out of his humvee when it stopped. Instead, he sat there for a moment almost as if he had to think about what to do next. Slowly Cerro had to gather the strength necessary to climb out of his vehicle. For Cerro, like everyone else in the brigade, from the youngest rifleman to Dixon himself, was pushing the limits of endurance. The Battle of Central Germany, now officially declared over by the American news media, had cost more than lives and materiel lost. Everyone, American and German, who had participated in the grueling slugfest was exhausted. And the exhaustion was not only physical. It was mental as well. Fear, stress, wild swings that took a person from near comatose exhaustion to the heights of sheer terror where they couldn't even control their bodily functions, tore away at the mental fiber of the mind and soul just as heavy labor tore at the cells of one's muscles. War, as von Clausewitz so correctly pointed out, was as much a contest of wills and minds as it was physical.

As he mustered the strength to move himself over to where the two colonels waited, Cerro looked at them. They were quite a contrast. Colonel Vorishnov was the storybook image of a Russian officer. He was big for an armor officer. The Russian Army still recruited only short officers and men so that their tank designers could create combat vehicles that had a lower silhouette. Unlike many of his peers, however, Vorishnov was not thick in the waist, though the heavy parka he wore made him appear to be quite pregnant. Dixon, a man of average height, seemed dwarfed by the tall Russian. The two had used their physical difference before the Battle of Central Germany for comic relief. Every now and then when he judged the mood to be right, Vorishnov would come up to Dixon as he was slouched over a map or document. Standing between Dixon and the light, so that the American colonel stood in the shadow of the tall Russian, Vorishnov would stretch his large frame out and up as far as it would go. When Dixon noticed the shadow of the tall Russian over him, he would stop what he was doing, look up, and with a look of terror on his face exclaim, "My God, they are ten feet tall." In response, Vorishnov would reach out with his hand, fingers upturned and spread out as if they were holding a ball. Bellowing so that his voice sounded like it came from the depths of a monstrous cavern, Vorishnov would say, "If we had known you were so puny, we would have crushed you a long time ago." In the past, such antics had never failed to bring a round of laughter from the staff of the 1st Brigade.

Sitting there, Cerro realized that those days were gone. The war had taken its toll. There was no humor anymore. There was no lighter side to look at. Even worse, after assessing the results of their recent battles, Cerro even wondered if there was hope. For as they sat there that night, there was no indication that the will of the German soldier to fight had in any way been diminished during the last battle. Fuel reserves within the Tenth Corps were almost nonexistent, casualties in some companies reached as high as 50 percent, equipment that had been damaged and could not be hastily repaired had been destroyed in place by their crews, the heavy freeze that had made the ground hard and easy to maneuver on was coming to an end. And they were only halfway to the coast with few surprises left up their sleeves. With such solemn thoughts as a backdrop, Cerro slowly unfolded his weary body from the front seat of his humvee and trudged over to where Dixon and Vorishnov waited.

There were no greetings, no pleasantries. Not even a grunt to acknowledge Cerro's appearance. There was only Dixon's announcement, made matter-of-factly. "Hal, you're to assume command of the 3rd of the 3rd. Jim Jensen, who's been filling in since their XO was wounded, will report immediately to brigade for reassignment." There was a pause before Dixon added, "You know the situation and the battalion's mission. I have no need to tell you how important it is that you keep the Germans at bay. We can't afford another incident like the one last night with the engineer company and the field hospital. We were lucky, you know. There was a supply convoy less than two kilometers down the road with a dozen tankers filled with diesel sitting on the side of the road. Had we lost them instead of the hospital, we'd have been in real trouble."

Neither Cerro nor Vorishnov, who was listening and watching, found any fault with what Dixon had said. They agreed that it would have been far worse if the fuel convoy had been lost. It was not that they had in a matter of a few days become unfeeling and inhuman monsters. All three knew what the 553rd Field Hospital incident had meant in human terms to the soldiers and patients of that unit. But there was no energy left at that moment in their exhausted minds, overtasked with the needs of dealing with the imperatives of the moment, to lament the dead and wounded of the 553rd. That action was over, completed. What was critical now was to get their brigade moving to the sea. The war had not stopped. The killing was not over. The next twenty-four hours would be critical. The commander of the Tenth Corps, Big Al, hoped to pull away from the last of the corps' battle against the 2nd and 10th Panzer divisions and posture the corps for the forthcoming battle with the 1st and 7th Panzers, now forming what was being called the Hannover line. It was believed that once this line had been broken, there would be no stopping them from reaching the sea.

To that end, Dixon assessed the effectiveness of his brigade, determined which units were still capable of offensive action and which were good only for defense, and positioned them in his line of march accordingly. The 3rd Battalion, 3rd Infantry, which had performed well and was still, on paper, a powerful battalion, had lost two commanders in less than six hours. That, coupled with a series of quick but brutal encounters with the 2nd Panzer, had left the leadership and troops of the battalion unsettled. After a quick conference with Major Jensen, Dixon had determined that Jensen was not capable of rallying the troops of the battalion and executing the rear-guard actions that Dixon had assigned it. Rear-guard operations, high risk under the best of circumstances, required a commander to have sound judgment, a will of steel, and, as Cerro himself had once said during a training exercise, "a commander with a set of brass nuts."

The first thought that came to Cerro's mind was one of confusion. "Why," he blurted out, "not Colonel Yost?"

"Because, Hal, I need Yost as the brigade XO. You're right, he should be the one. But I can better afford to lose a maneuver battalion than the field trains. Yost is the only person who is keeping this brigade's support units going and functioning."

The implication that Dixon was willing to write off Cerro and the battalion he was about to command in order to save the brigade's supply trains didn't bother Cerro. It was, after all, a simple statement of fact. Dixon had four maneuver battalions, two tank and two mechanized infantry. He had only one set of field trains to keep those maneuver battalions fed, fueled, and supplied. Without the field trains, the brigade died. Period. What bothered Cerro was that he was about to replace one of his peers under less than honorable circumstances. Jensen, by virtue of being the operations officer of the 3rd of the 3rd, was the next man in the chain of command and the proper choice for the position. That Dixon was relieving him and removing him from the battalion, to be replaced by an outsider, was a clear indication that something was wrong with Jensen, the unit, or both. Though Cerro wanted to find out what the problem with Jensen was, he knew that neither he nor Dixon had the time. Nodding, Cerro simply said, "Okay, sir. I'll head on down to their CP, transfer my personal gear over to Jensen's vehicle, and send him up to brigade. Any change in the mission or new orders?"

Having experienced a change of command under similar circumstances during the war in the Middle East, Dixon felt like giving Cerro some advice or a short speech to reassure him. But then he stopped. What could he say? What words could make this deplorable situation any better? None. Cerro was a professional and he had a job to do. It was that simple.

Dixon decided to leave it at that. Instead he merely shook his head. "No, no new orders. You know what to do."

With that, the three men parted, Cerro to relieve a man who had once been a friend, and Dixon and Vorishnov to talk to the next battalion commander further down the road.

When Cerro arrived at the command post of the 3rd Battalion, he was surprised to find Major Jim Jensen waiting for him outside. Cerro's vehicle had barely stopped before Jensen was there greeting Cerro. "I spoke to Colonel Dixon. He said that I was to throw my stuff into your humvee as soon as you got here and report to Colonel Yost at the trains. I've got my gear ready to go." Turning, he began to rush over to his humvee parked several meters away, but then stopped as something occurred to him. "Oh, I had the commands and staff of the battalion already gather here. They're waiting for you inside. I thought that you'd like to talk to them." Then, without giving Cerro a chance to respond, Jensen continued to go for his gear.

Cerro, caught off guard by Jensen's behavior, yelled out, "Jim, hold it." Walking over, Cerro came up to Jensen, placed his right hand on Jensen's left shoulder and started to say something, then stopped. What in the hell do you tell a friend when you're about to relieve him of command? Cerro knew that this action, done under these conditions, would effectively destroy Jensen's career. As soon as Jensen got into Cerro's humvee and drove away, he would be viewed as a failure, a soldier who failed the test of combat. For a combat arms officer that was worse than the kiss of death. It would leave a psychological scar that Jensen would carry for the rest of his life. Cerro knew this. Jensen knew this. So what, Cerro thought, could he possibly say to make this better, easier, for Jensen?

While he pondered, searching his tired and confused mind for some words that were appropriate, Jensen saved Cerro from his embarrassment. "Hal, I asked to be replaced."

Taken aback by Jensen's comment, Cerro looked up in his friend's eyes and, unable to control his reaction, let his jaw drop open. "Yeah, that's right. When Colonel Dixon and the Russian were here, I asked them to be relieved." Jensen stepped back, throwing his arms out to his sides while letting Cerro's limp hand fall away. "I'm not the commander type. I just don't have it. You know the system. You know the peacetime Army. Majors who want to be lieutenant colonels have to be successful battalion XOs or ops officers. It's the system and I, just like you, played this system. I didn't know that there was going to be a war and I damned sure didn't know everyone was going to get themselves killed or wounded, leaving me to hold the bag. I don't want this. All I wanted to do was retire after twenty years as a lieutenant colonel. I can't deal with this. You can. I can't. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. So don't worry."

Pivoting on his heels, Jensen again began to walk away but stopped a second time. Twisting his head slightly, he looked at Cerro, still standing dumbfounded, and called back, "Oh, yeah. Congratulations, Hal, and good luck."

Though he had been told to expect someone from Berlin, Major General Horst Mondorf, commander of the 7th Panzer Division, did not expect General Lange, Chief of the General Staff. After his aide had gone to escort Lange to Mondorf's office, Mondorf stood up, walked around to the front of his desk, straightened out his uniform jacket, and waited. As he stood there staring at the door, he kept repeating that he had been right. His decision to give way had compromised the entire Hannover line. Without the 7th Panzer Division, there was no way that the 1st Panzer could hold that line. He had through his orders opened the road to the sea for the American Tenth Corps and, he hoped, spared the German people further suffering. For the future of Germany as a nation, Mondorf had broken ranks with his fellow division commanders and, like the senior officers of the Luftwaffe had done a week ago, allowed his conscience to be his guide, consequences be damned.

Mondorf felt a strange peace as he prepared to greet Lange. He was about to be relieved of his command and no doubt be brutally criticized for failing to do his duty in the defense of Germany and to uphold the traditions of the German Army. Yet he had done what he knew was right. He had followed his heart and decided that for the good of Germany and the German people the current insanity had to be brought to an end. Though he knew his actions alone could not bring this sad chapter to a close, he had done all he could. He was prepared for whatever Lange did or said.

Preceded by a light rap, Mondorf's aide announced his presence and opened the door. With the precision expected of an officer of his rank and position, the aide announced Lange: "Herr General, the Chief of the General Staff, General Lange." Stepping aside, he made way for Lange. Lange paused at the door and looked at Mondorf. It seemed almost as if Lange was hesitant to enter. As the two general officers stared at each other, Mondorf couldn't help but notice that Lange's face, normally frozen in a hard expressionless stare, was haggard and worried. In his eyes Mondorf saw traces of doubt, worry, and uncertainty. There was something going on inside Lange's head that his years of training and self-discipline could not hide.

Pulling himself up to a more military stance, Lange entered the room and dismissed the aide, who without another word closed the door and disappeared. While he moved over to an armchair and removed his overcoat, Lange looked down at the floor. He said nothing to Mondorf and heard nothing from him. Finally, when he was ready, Lange dropped into the armchair and studied Mondorf, who remained in place at attention staring at the door. Lange knew what this officer, one of the senior commanders of the German Army, had done and he knew why. Now, Lange thought, did he himself have the courage to do the same? Was he prepared to follow the example of this officer, who was his junior, and turn his back on his sworn duty to his country and its appointed leaders and do what he as an individual deemed was right? Mondorf could be wrong. The senior commanders of the Luftwaffe who had resigned and the pilots who had flown their aircraft into Holland could be wrong. The individual commanders of the warships of the Kriegsmarine who had sailed out of port north to Norwegian fjords, where they dropped anchor and turned off their radios, could be wrong. And the reservists who had refused to answer their call to the colors could be wrong. They all could be wrong.

But what if they were not? What if their actions, and not those who still accepted Ruff's orders, were appropriate? And what at this point was right and what was wrong? It was all very confusing. All untidy and beyond explanation. The only thing that was clear to Lange, and he was sure to Mondorf, was that the point of decision had been reached. Each officer, as both he and Mondorf had been taught, had to decide between right and wrong for himself. Staff studies, regulations, orders, and philosophical discussions had no place here. This was, Lange knew, a critical moment in the life of Germany, and he alone should decide how that moment ended.

When his superior said or did nothing, Mondorf slowly turned his head and looked over to where Lange sat, lost in his own thoughts. He could see by Lange's furrowed brows and glazed, unflinching stare that the concerns and perplexed thoughts that were racing through his mind were weighing heavily upon him. Relaxing his stance slightly, Mondorf turned toward Lange and in a low voice spoke. "When it comes time, the difference between one's duty and one's conscience is hard to separate. I fear that perhaps we have been soldiers for too long, Herr General."

Lange looked up at Mondorf. He was right, of course. He was absolutely right. As a senior commander, Lange realized that he had allowed his duty and his conscience to merge into one. This, he suddenly realized, was why senior officers, far removed from the heat of battle, were having problems deciding what to do, while many junior officers saw clearly what needed to be done and did it. To them the choice was simple, fight or step aside and let the Americans pass. Finally he knew what he must do.

"Yes, Horst, you are right. I have forgotten." Then, like a man galvanized into sudden action, Lange jumped to his feet. "But I have not forgotten that before I was a soldier I was a German. You and other men of courage like you, thank God, have not forgotten that." Reaching down for his coat, Lange all but shouted like a man possessed, "Come, Horst, we have much to do and not much time."

"Where, Herr General, are we going?"

"We are going to Bremerhaven, now, tonight. We will use my helicopter. Turn your operations here over to your chief of staff."

Still bewildered, Mondorf hesitated as Lange raced for the door. He was halfway through the door when he noticed that Mondorf was not following. Stopping, he turned to Mondorf. "Come. We must reach our paratroopers before the Americans do."