“Enemy air attack in progress,” a plotting officer said.
“Enemy tanks emerging from woods east of Sack, estimate battalion strength. Heavy artillery fire supporting the Germans.”
He had to trust his colonels now, Alekseyev knew. The time at which a general could observe the entire battle and control it was long past. His staff officers made their little marks on the map. The Germans should have waited, the General thought, they should have let the division spearhead go through, then attack the division supply column. That was foolish, the first time he had seen a German commander make a tactical error. Probably a junior officer who had relieved a dead or wounded superior, or perhaps a man whose home was nearby. Whatever the reason, it was a mistake and Alekseyev was profiting by it. His leading two tank regiments took losses, but they smashed the German counterattack in ten furious minutes.
“Two kilometers-leading elements now two kilometers from Sack. Opposition from artillery only. Friendly units are in sight. Infantry troops in Sack report minor resistance only. The town is nearly clear. Forward scouts report the road to Alfeld is open!”
“Bypass Sack,” Alekseyev ordered. “The objective is Alfeld on the Leine.”
ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
It was a scratch team. American mechanized infantrymen and the lead tank squadron of an advancing British brigade reinforced the remains of Germans and Belgians who had been crushed by five Soviet divisions that day. There was little time. Combat engineers worked furiously with their armored bulldozers to scrape shelters for the tanks while infantrymen dug holes for their antitank weapons. A cloud of dust on the horizon was all the warning they needed. A division of tanks was reported heading their way, and the civilians had not entirely evacuated the town behind them. Twenty miles behind them, a squadron of ground-attack aircraft circled, waiting for the call-down signal.
“Enemy in sight!” a lookout on a church steeple radioed. In seconds artillery fire lashed at the leading Soviet columns. Antitank-missile crew popped the covers off their targeting scopes and loaded the first weapons of what promised to be a long afternoon. The Challenger tanks of 3rd Royal Tank Regiment settled into their holes, hatches shut tight as the gunners zeroed their sights on distant targets. Things were too confused and there had not been enough time to establish a firm chain of command here. An American was first to fire. The TOW-2 missile sped downrange its control wires trailing out behind like a spider’s web as it reached four kilometers to a T-80 tank.
“Advanced elements are now under fire from enemy missile teams,” reported a plotting officer.
“Flatten them!” Alekseyev ordered his artillery commander. Within a minute the division’s multiple-rocket launchers were filling the sky with trails of fire. Tube artillery fire added to the carnage at the battle line Then NATO artillery joined the fray in earnest.
“Lead regiment is taking losses.”
Alekseyev watched the map in silence. There was no room for deceptive maneuver here, nor was there time. His men had to race through the enemy lines as quickly as possible in order to seize the bridges on the Leine. That meant that his leading tank crews would suffer heavily. The breakthrough would have its own heavy price, but the price had to be paid.
Twelve Belgian F-16 fighters swept in low over the front at five hundred knots, dropping tons of cluster munitions on the lead Soviet regiment, killing nearly thirty tanks and a score of infantry carriers less than a kilometer from the allied lines. A swarm of missiles rose into the sky after them, and the single-engine fighters turned west, skimming over the ground in their attempt to evade. Three were smashed to the ground, and fell among the NATO troops, adding to the carnage already created by Soviet fire. The commander of the British tanks saw that he lacked the firepower to stop the Soviet attack. There just wasn’t enough. It was time to leave while his battalion was still able to fight. He alerted his companies to be ready to pull out and tried to get the word to neighboring units. But the troops around Alfeld came from four different armies, with separate languages and radio settings. There hadn’t been time to establish exactly who was in overall command. The Germans didn’t want to leave. The town had not yet been fully evacuated, and the German troops would not desert their positions until their countrymen were safely across the river. The Americans and Belgians began to move when the British colonel told them to, but not the Germans, and the result was chaos within the NATO lines.
“Forward observers report enemy units moving back on the right, repeat, enemy units appear to be disengaging on the northern side of the town.”
“Move the second regiment north, loop around and head for the bridges, fast as they can. Disregard losses and charge for those damned bridges! Operations Officer, keep pressure on all enemy units. We want to trap them on this side and finish them if we can,” Alekseyev ordered. “Sergetov, come with me. I have to go forward.”
The attack had ripped the heart out of his lead regiment, Alekseyev knew, but it had been worth the cost. The NATO forces would have to move their units through a smashed town to get to the bridges, and having the allied units on the north side disengage first was a godsend. Now with a fresh regiment he’d be able to run over them and, if he were very lucky, get the bridges intact. This he’d have to supervise himself. Alekseyev and Sergetov boarded a tracked vehicle, which motored southeast to catch the maneuvering regiment. Behind them his operations officer began to give new orders over the divisional radio net.
Five kilometers on the far side of the river, a battery of German 155mm guns was waiting for this opportunity. They had remained silent, waiting for their radio-intercept experts to pin down the divisional headquarters. Quickly the gunners punched the target data into their firecontrol computers while others loaded high-explosive shells. Every gun in the battery trained out on an identical azimuth. The ground shook when they began rapid fire.
A hundred shells fell in and around the divisional headquarters in less than two minutes. Half the battle staff was killed outright, most of the others wounded.
Alekseyev looked at his radio headset. His third close brush with death. That was my fault. I should have checked the siting of the radio transmitter I must not make that mistake again . . . Damn! Damn! Damn!
Alfeld’s streets were clogged with civilian vehicles. The Americans in their Bradley tracked vehicles avoided the town entirely, hurrying down the right bank of the Leine and crossing to the other side in good order. There, they took positions on the hills overlooking Leine, and set up to cover the crossing of the other allied troops. The Belgians were next. Only a third of their tanks had survived, and these covered the southern flank on the far side of the river, hoping to stop the Russians before they were able to cross. German Swatspolizei had held back civilian traffic and allowed the armored units to pass, but this changed when Soviet artillery began bursting in the air close to the river. The Russians had hoped it would impede traffic, and it did. Civilians who had been late to follow orders to leave their homes now paid for their error. The artillery did scant damage to fighting vehicles but thoroughly wrecked civilian cars and trucks. In minutes, the streets of Alfeld were jammed with disabled and burning cars. People left them, braving the fire to run for the bridges, and the tanks trying to make their way to the river found their way blocked. Their only escape was over the bodies of innocent civilians, and even when ordered to proceed, the drivers shrank from it. Gunners rotated their turrets to face over the rear and began to engage the Russian tanks now entering the town. Smoke from burning buildings wafted across everyone’s field of view. Cannon fired at targets glimpsed for a moment, rounds went wild, and the streets of Alfeld turned into a slaughterhouse of soldiers and noncombatants.
“There they are!” Sergetov pointed. Three highway bridges spanned the Leine. Alekseyev started to give orders, but they weren’t necessary. The regimental commander already had his radio microphone keyed, and directed a battalion of tanks with infantry support to proceed up the west bank, following the same route, still relatively open, that the Americans had used.
The American fighting vehicles on the far side of the river opened fire with missiles and their light cannon, killing a half-dozen tanks, and the remainder of the regiment engaged them with direct fire while Alekseyev personally called down artillery on the hilltops.
In Alfeld the battle had come to a bloody standstill. The German and British tanks took up positions at intersections largely hidden from view by wrecked cars and trucks, and backed toward the river slowly as they fought to give the civilians time. The Russian infantry tried to engage them with missiles, but too often debris lying in the streets tore the flight control wires, causing the missiles to fall out of control and explode harmlessly. Russian and allied artillery fire churned the town to rubble.