Defense of Hill 781 (20 page)

The scouts themselves, after conducting a zone reconnaissance
out to 1,500 meters beyond the LD, would assist in keeping the bulk of the forces on target. Always did not want to push them out too far in their exhausted state. Unsupported, they would be easy prey for the enemy lurking out there. The probing for the enemy would be done by dismounted infantrymen, who in the north would walk 300 meters out in front of the lead mounted platoons. The tanks and Bradleys would be moving with their thermal sights on, able to pick up a rabbit hopping more than 2,000 meters out. They would have no problem seeing their own infantrymen, who using their compasses should be able to keep their direction in the dark. As a final safeguard, artillery spotting rounds would be fired on known locations visible from the route of march. Always’ people would be able to sight these even in the dark, draw a back-azimuth from them, and calculate with a great degree of accuracy just where they were.

Even with all these precautions, however, staying on course
would still be a chore. The desert is tricky even in the daylight. At night it is downright treacherous. The cloudy skies would take away the last vestiges of light. Add to that the swirling sand, and it would be difficult to see a hand in front of your face. Leadership at the small unit level would be key.

Always had made the major decisions by about two in the afternoon. It remained for the staff to fill in the myriad of details—artillery fire support, recognition signals in the dark, passage through the line, consolidation on the objective, and so on. This was a plan that would have to be well briefed, and 1630 was set as the time for the orders group to assemble. Both Always and his S-3 had personally briefed Lieutenant Wise and his scouts, who could not wait for the orders briefing. Yet their job was so important that they had to understand exactly what was in the commander’s mind.

So too were the engineers briefed. They would get to work as soon as the scouts had fixed the position of the lead obstacles and ensured that no enemy were in the immediate vicinity. At the end of the briefing the platoon leader was somewhat surprised by Always’ admonishment to preserve his force. He could not know that his commander was already looking ahead to the next mission in which the engineers would be even more critical.

And so, even as the orders group meeting started, the scouts and engineers were hard at work breaking through the first obstacle along JOHN WAYNE pass. It was noteworthy that no enemy was spotted in the area.

The TOC, which had moved up to a wadi just short of the line of departure, gave off an atrocious odor. The gathering of staff and commanders, long without a shower or change of clothes, exuded an aroma so foul it would turn back a rat in midstride. They were spared the repulsiveness of their own stink only by their long-conditioned acceptance of such an extreme state. Immunized by their own stench, they could tolerate the noxiousness of the group. A clean soldier would have been nauseated. Moreover,
his very cleanness would have made him an outcast from the group. Despite the rigorous discipline that demanded a shave and a washing every day, the battalion had grown beyond the pale of civilization. Their filth was imbedded in their pores. Their clothes, soaked by sweat, bleach dried in the heat, and soaked by sweat again, were uncleanable. Their soiled condition seemed to go with the red-eyed, fatigue-blackened visages of the assembled group, and was worn as if a badge of honor. Amidst this putridness, the order was briefed.

“Expect a counterattack.” Always was glaring at his commanders. “They don’t want to give any more ground. When we take it from them, they’ll want it back.” He looked for recognition of his words.

It was getting harder for his people to look ahead. The task at hand was always of such prime importance, always such a matter of life and death. It was hard for company commanders, better yet platoon leaders, to be thinking beyond the current mission even when they were fresh. Now that fatigue had settled over them like a poisonous cloud, the here and now was taking even greater amounts of concentration.

“Sir, what do we when we spot the enemy?” It was Baker.

“You kill him.” Always was slightly annoyed.

“What about surprise? Don’t you want to keep the surprise?” It was Archer.

“I figure he knows we’re coming. He just doesn’t know where and how. He’ll probably see us before we see him, and that will generate an immediate report. Kill them as you come to them and that will leave him fewer to defend with. Besides, if he sees us in the north and focuses there, then we have a better chance of flanking him from JOHN WAYNE. Any way I slice it, it makes better sense to kill them as you come to them.”

“What do you think he’ll counterattack with, sir?” It was Evans, the freshest of the commanders.

“I don’t know. Can’t be sure. Probably anything he’s got handy. Could be a company. Maybe a battalion.” The commander was pleased with the question, glad at least one man was alert enough to think of the future.

Future. Future. Only in war could the future be considered 0400 the next morning. It underlined how fleeting life was. You lived by the hour, indeed, by the minute. If you lived to nightfall, then you could plan ahead to morning. And tomorrow? Well, that was a whole ′nother day—a lifetime!

Always snapped himself back from his reverie. God, he was tired. “Have to stop musing,” he thought to himself. “Have to focus on the mission.”

“Captain Dilger, Captain Evans, I want you to hold your positions where they are now. I may not be able to get you through the pass. If not, then I’ll bring you up along the direct routes. No need for you to bunch up behind the scouts. If they get through, then I’ll decide if there’s time to move you by way of the pass.” The colonel was trying to avoid sounding doubtful, but he had to hedge his bets. The gamble was bold enough as it was; no need to compound it.

“Look men, what we’ve got here is a plan. I think for the most part it will work. But a thousand things are going to happen out there between now and tomorrow morning. It’s going to be confusing. You can bet that we’ll be knocked off the radios for at least part of the time. You’ve all got to understand where we’re going and what to do when we get there. Commanders, as always, I expect you to take command. Push this attack through. Don’t let it get bogged down. I can assure you I’m pressing on. I plan to kill any enemy I find in my way, and I plan to be there in the morning. If you all end up where I said I wanted you, all well and good. If you don’t, I plan to be there anyway. So get there and take part in the fight. There will be enough enemy to go around.”

By 1730 the meeting ended. The attack was set for 2000,
giving the task force eight hours of darkness. It would take that long to move everybody into final position. A light rain was falling on the TOC canvas as the smelly group broke up.

Always found the time to visit his companies. On the surface they seemed in a shambles: replacements coming up hurriedly; vehicles being towed and worked on everywhere; ammunition being loaded by bone-weary men who looked as if they might drop from the effort; sergeants growling at men to move here and there; lieutenants draped over worn map sheets, giving instructions to squad leaders and planning fires with their artillery forward observers; smelly, greasy fuelers rushing about to pour diesel into thirsty machines; aid stations littered with bloody bandages, processing casualties; combat veterans snatching a moment’s sleep wherever they could safely get out of the way of roaring vehicles. But as he talked and looked, Always heard and saw the deeper signs that revealed a battle-hardened unit ready for more combat. Weapons were clean; soldiers were fed; vehicle load plans were adjusted; the orders were passed; information was shared; and everywhere there was a solid determination to do the mission, to defeat the enemy.

The going was slow in the pass. One obstacle had been cleared, only to reveal another, then yet another. It would be hours and hours of work at best. They might never get through. Always decided to stick to the plan. He could adjust it later if need be.

By 1930 the commander had moved to a position just short of the LD. The rain had picked up—hardly a drenching rain but enough to make itself felt and to make a man want to hunker down. That was good, Always figured. The defenders would think about it more than the attackers.

A net call went out at 1945; intelligence was updated and slight adjustments to the order were given. By 1955 all parties were off the net. The self-imposed silence would cause no immediate problems. The first 1,000 meters were to be done in radio
silence, the movement controlled by direct command and by wire being played out now by the advancing infantry. Nonetheless, the frequency was shifted to the alternate. It would serve as a backup until the full extent of the wire was played out, at which time the radio would again become the primary means of communication.

By 2010 Always’ track lurched into motion behind Team Charlie, which along with Alpha was already ten minutes into the attack. Close behind him came his artillery and air force officers, and behind them at about 200 meters came Bravo.

For the first hour things went quietly. Progress was good, if not steady, vehicles having to stop and wait for the infantry to keep pushing out in front of them, the infantry moving slowly and with care. That was the way Always wanted it. There was no rush to get there.

Sometime after 2100 the first contact with the enemy was made by Team Alpha. An enemy BRDM moving from west to east in the vicinity of Checkpoint 1 had appeared in the thermal sights of an Alpha Bradley. It was moving with no great dispatch, probably lost in the dark looking for one of its unit’s positions. Captain Archer had been informed and was scanning with his own thermals to make sure it was in fact an enemy vehicle. The silhouette is distinct to the trained eye, but the tired and the new—and the gunner’s eyes were certainly one or the other—could make a mistake. Satisfied that his men had enemy in sight, Archer gave the okay to open fire. Six 25mm rounds spit out of the designated Bradley and the enemy vehicle was destroyed, its crew dead. Alpha received some sporadic and poorly adjusted artillery fire for its efforts, none of which did any damage.

Hasty mine fields were being discovered along both direct routes. Because of the flatness of the terrain, the mine fields were not tied in to any restrictive terrain features, and so, with patience, were able to be bypassed. This cost time, however, and soldiers as well, since guides from the ranks of the infantrymen
would have to be left in place to ensure that following vehicles did not blunder into the mines. In the meantime, no word had been heard from the scouts and engineers in the pass for more than two hours. The terrain was just too steep and broken to allow for an uninterrupted radio transmission.

At the time of the Alpha contact the radios on the battalion net had gone back into operation. The result was another jam session, Always fighting his way through it for a while before passing the order to switch to the second alternate. His head had begun to hurt from the racket in his ears.

By 2230 the pattern for the night had established itself: sporadic fighting followed by momentary confusion as commanders sorted out what was happening. Infantrymen in the lead proceeded with caution; drivers in vehicles fell asleep at their posts as they waited for the orders to move on. Always had left his vehicle twice to prod the trail platoon of Charlie. Both times he had found drivers and vehicle commanders dozing at their instruments. Once he had run the two hundred meters back to Bravo, not wanting to risk approaching his own men in his vehicle from the opposite direction, woke the lead vehicle crew members, and got them moving apace with Charlie’s progress. Again the enemy intercepted his radio net and jammed it. For the third time the battalion shifted frequency. And so it went. Stop, start, a brief firefight, a stall, get people and vehicles moving, get jammed, work through it, shift frequency, run to the unit ahead, run to the unit behind, keep everybody moving forward.

Always was consuming energy at an alarming rate. His headache had developed into a constant throbbing, his neck and back ached, his face and hands were chapped and bleeding. Each time he climbed from his vehicle his knees protested. Each time he ran in the sand his legs rebelled. He was driving himself now with all the willpower he could muster. He found himself cursing aloud at the enemy jamming his radio and tried to settle
himself in order to conserve strength. It was a losing battle as he caught himself shouting at the sleeping crews in their tanks, banging on their armored vehicles with his helmet. His chemical suit, drenched by rain water each time he left his Bradley, became heavy and sodden, and his clothes underneath were drenched in sweat. From 2345 to 2400 he talked through a screeching, high-pitched jamming session, hoping to hold out on the established net until the standard frequency change at midnight, only to discover that the enemy was only a few seconds behind him in arriving at the new day’s net. His frustrations were mounting.