The Red Line

“Whoosh!” went the cannon on Greene’s tank.

With a lightning machine-gun burst, Richardson cut down a solitary soldier crawling forward with a missile tube. Another widow would wail in the streets of Moscow.

“Whoosh!” went the cannon on the platoon leader’s Abrams.

An eighth and ninth enemy tank were added to the ferocious fires.

“Let’s get out of here!” Mallory said into the radio.

“I’m with you, Lieutenant,” Richardson said.

“Richardson, back out and go. We’ll cover you.”

“Roger,” Richardson said. “Jamie, you heard the man. Let’s go!”

While the other tanks continued to fire their machine guns, Richardson’s compelling giant backed out of its hole. The tank turned and ran. As the M-1 wheeled about to head down the back side of the hill, Richardson cranked the turret around to protect Greene’s and Mallory’s escape. Unlike the inferior Russian tanks, which could only engage their opponent while standing still, with its fully coordinated fire-control system, Richardson’s M-1 was capable of accurately firing and hitting any target even while moving at full speed.

“Tony, get your cannon and machine gun ready. Nail anything stupid enough to come over the crest of that hill after us.”

Richardson spoke into the radio. “Okay, Lieutenant, we’re clear and on our way. While we run, we’ll protect your retreat the best we can.”

“Okay, Greene, you’re next,” Mallory said.

“Roger, Lieutenant.”

A second tank eased out of its hole to begin its escape to the next protective burrow. Five miles west on Highway 19, the platoon’s secondary firing position was waiting. Greene’s tank performed the same maneuvers Richardson’s had. It disappeared over the slope on the western side. Another Spandrel missile slammed into the logs and dirt at the crest of the hill.

“Okay, Lieutenant, we’re all set for you to come out,” Greene said.

In seconds, the lieutenant’s tank also vanished from the battlefield. In all, the deadly encounter had lasted slightly less than two minutes.

Nine Russian tanks and sixty enemy infantry were no more.

With Greene protecting the lieutenant, Richardson cranked his turret around to face forward. The M-1s weaved their way through the thinner trees on the western side of the hill. They headed for the twisting highway, hidden in a magnificent forest of august fir.

“Jamie, go ahead and get onto the road.”

Pierson adjusted the motorcycle-like handlebars to move the menacing tank onto the asphalt. As he did, Richardson popped open the tank’s commander hatch. He cautiously poked his head out. To his left, Vincent did the same. The young soldier settled in behind the loader’s machine gun.

The brisk afternoon air rushing by the fleeing tank brought tears to Richardson’s eyes and stung his boyish features. While he peered down the winding roadway, the fleeting strands of the day’s disappearing sunlight danced on the deep forest’s floor.

Mallory was on the radio once again. “Echo-Yankee-One, this is Sierra-Kilo-One-One.”

“Roger, Sierra-Kilo-One-One. Go ahead,” the voice at battalion headquarters said.

“Echo-Yankee-One, have destroyed nine tanks without sustaining a single casualty. We’re presently moving toward our secondary fighting position.”

“Roger, Sierra-Kilo-One-One, we copy. Be advised, enemy helicopter activity in your sector has been extremely heavy in the past hour. Be prepared to repulse a possible air attack.”

“Thanks for the warning, Echo-Yankee-One. Estimate arrival at secondary position in fifteen minutes. Will contact for further instructions then.”

The second Russian armored column was fast approaching Highway 19. They would soon take up the chase.

Like so many before them, the American tank platoon moved farther west.

• • •

It was a war of unyielding intensity. It was a war like none that had come before.

As the day’s sunset neared, the toll on both sides was obscene. American deaths were approaching one thousand per hour. Fifteen Americans were dying every minute in the reddening fields of Germany. By the end of the second day, American losses would be greater than in three years of fighting in Korea. By the end of the third, American casualties would reach beyond those in ten nightmarish years in Vietnam.

German military losses were twice that number.

Russian deaths were five times as great as that of the Americans. Around the clock, without respite, five thousand Russians were dying each hour.

Still, they kept coming.

The real suffering, however, was occurring among the civilian population. The estimates at the end of the second day ran as high as one million German dead. Another three million were injured. In a country as small and heavily populated as this one, such casualties were inevitable.

They died in droves when caught between the combatants. They were slaughtered by the unspeakable death reaching down for them from the sky. And from the unpredictable death coming at them from the ground. To add to the ever-mounting misery, they were killed in untold thousands by Comrade Cheninko’s summary executions and firing squads.

• • •

Twenty miles east of Richardson’s position, the initial armored battle of the new war had ended a few hours earlier. It’d been a truly historic struggle. For twenty-four unrelenting hours, the vastly outnumbered Allies made a valiant stand. But the inevitable finally happened. The razor-thin German and American line in the southern half of the country collapsed late on the morning of the war’s second full day.

Two German divisions and the American 1st Armor Division had withstood hour after hour of immense pressure throughout the first day and the endless night that followed. Wave after wave of attackers smashed into the defenders’ fragile defenses. Yet the Allies didn’t give an inch. One of the fiercest artillery barrages in history crushed their bodies and sapped their spirits. Still, they held on.

Late on the previous evening, the Russians overwhelmed the nine thousand American cavalry soldiers protecting Munich. The city was eerily peaceful and quiet. The Russians chose to surround, but bypass, the sprawling metropolis to avoid the time-consuming, house-to-house battle taking Munich would entail. There’d be ample time for such later.

• • •

The Russians were prepared to fight a five-day war. The clock was steadily ticking. The precious hours in General Yovanovich’s plan were rushing past. Stalemated by the resolute Americans, Yovanovich turned to the only answer he could find. He upped the ante. He introduced nerve gas to the battlefields of the great war. The unspeakable horror of chemical weapons became a crucial part of the battle for control of Germany.

It had begun at three in the morning. After sixteen hours of nonstop killing, the embattled Americans inexplicably found the fields in front of them quiet and deserted. The surprising silence was fearfully deafening to the exhausted men of the 1st Armor Division. A war of unbelievable ferocity had given way to absolute peace. For an hour, not a shot was fired. The Americans futilely searched the killing ground for an enemy who had somehow vanished into the darkness and couldn’t be found.

At 4:00 a.m. the image-wracking stillness suddenly was broken. Hundreds of obscene Russian helicopters appeared in the misty night sky. A few feet off the ground, they roared along the front lines. From their stubby wingtips certain death spewed forth for those unprepared to deal with it. On a swath of earth 150 miles long and 12 miles wide, they dropped life-ending liquid from the black winter skies. Colorless, odorless droplets rained down upon an unforgiving world.

For seventy years, the Americans had anticipated the use of such tactics. They were thoroughly prepared for such an eventuality. The poison gas would have little effect on the Bradley and M-1 crews, secure within their armored vehicles’ fully integrated chemical defenses.

For the exhausted infantry soldier on the ground, however, the nerve gas was a far different story. The Russians caught him at the lowest physical and mental point of the night.

He had nine seconds to get his gas mask on or face a certain, horrible end. He had ninety additional seconds to clothe himself in his chemical suit and booties or suffer the consequences.

Each soldier had practiced for this moment hundreds of times. The steps were imprinted on his brain. Ripping open his gas-mask pouch. Removing the horrid mask. Placing the grotesque object over his face by inserting his chin first. Pulling the straps over the back of his head and tightening them. Clearing the mask by blowing out. Verifying the mask was properly positioned and the seal was tight. Giving himself an atropine injection by slamming the thick tube with its long needle into the fleshy part of his thigh.