“We weren’t expecting the cavalry, Major Schwarzkopf,” Mayor Anton J. Hodge admitted. “We thought we were on our own in this fight.”
The bear-like young officer grinned broadly.
He and his men had drawn fresh fatigues and had had the run of the Wisconsin National Guard arsenal before setting off up US 151 to Sun Prairie; after the Company’s chastening recent experience running away from the rebels Schwarzkopf had jumped at the opportunity for payback.
“How many effectives do you have, sir?” He asked of the Mayor.
“About a hundred and twenty.”
The citizens of Sun Prairie were armed with hunting rifles, shotguns, revolvers and pistols that many of the men seemed to have brought back from World War II. Occasionally single shots or brief fusillades broke out in the near distance.
Schwarzkopf had been pleasantly surprised to discover the Madison arsenal was packed to the rafters with exactly the sort of firepower he needed. Each of his M113s carried a single Browning M2 50-caliber machine gun, and each of his grunts brand new M16 assault rifles, and Colt 1911 pistols. He had withdrawn six more M2s and two spare barrels for each weapon, and loaded up so much 50-caliber ammunition that his men had had to ride out to Sun Prairie sitting on top of the boxes. Almost as an afterthought two of his M113s had been loaded with 60-millimtre M19 Mortar reloads.
“Where are the bad guys?” Schwarzkopf asked as his men decamped from the big, rumbling armored personnel carriers and began to shake out into machine gun and mortar sections.
The Mayor of Sun Prairie stared distractedly at the raw, heavy metal firepower being unloaded from the backs of the M113s.
“Er, the main strength is to the south and south east. Possibly they intended to cut Route 151 into Madison but then they ran into the Marines dug in along the road. That was yesterday; overnight they started probing into the eastern streets of the town and feeling their way around to the north.”
“Right!” The towering younger man decided. “I’ll send my Recon Platoon up US 151 until they hit trouble.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Schwarzkopf was tempted to order him to pull his people out of harm’s way.
“Company ‘A’ has been sent out here to kill rebels,” he declared grimly. “Not to attempt to hold the town. We will dig in and we will kill rebels but when the time comes we will withdraw back into the Madison perimeter. If your people want to help me kill rebels that’s fine and dandy by me; but when we pull out it will be fast and dirty and we won’t be coming back for anybody we leave behind.”
Schwarzkopf was in a hurry to get forward. The ground on which Sun Prairie lay was undulating, part river valley and part farmland. There was no dominant high ground; and there would be dead areas, hollows in the surrounding fields where whole battalions might hide. His M2 machine guns were lethal out to two thousand yards, his M19 mortars out to nearly three thousand and already he was sensing a priceless opportunity to blunt the onrushing horde. If the rebels were already south of Sun Prairie his guns and mortars might catch them out in the open — vulnerable to enfilade fire — with several hours of daylight left.
He waved his men forward; the spearhead M113s lurching behind the scurrying infantrymen at a crawl, their M2s swinging from side to side. It was unreal; around him the streets were empty, intact, undamaged, typical genteel Americana, the sort of place where a man would want to bring up a young family. Not that any sane man would want to marry or start a family in the World the way it was at the moment.
From within the Madison perimeter 105 mm M2A1 (M101A1) howitzers — of which five had been mothballed in the Madison arsenal — fired ranging shots every few minutes down the east-west alignment of Interstate 94. There were only a couple of hundred rounds per barrel in the depot so the artillerymen were being frugal this early in the battle.
Schwarzkopf sent his Recon Platoon and two M113s east with orders to withdraw into the built-up area of the town on contact with the enemy and headed into the southern streets with half-a-dozen men. The citizens of Sun Prairie had dug foxholes, overturned cars and trucks to block roads and sought out the best sniping posts.
“Well I’ll be… ”
The rebels were encamped in the open, shielded here and there by small stands of trees, in their thousands. They were not quite naked on the plain below Sun Prairie because the land rose and fell like long swell of a great ocean somehow frozen, maize stood chest high in the nearby fields, and elsewhere cattle grazed obvious to the drama playing out around them. There were tents, pitched where whim determined, camp fires burning and people milling, or standing in groups, dark and ragged even from a distance, and cars, flatbed trucks, lorries, Jeeps, and riders on motorcycles in motion within the throng.
And great, streaming banners at the heart of the horde.
Because of the topology most of what he was seeing would be invisible to the men inside the Madison lines.
Schwarzkopf was scrabbling for his map.
“Run back to the comms APC,” he ordered, trying to bite down on his excitement. “Report enemy concentrations of many thousands of persons at grid references Oscar-X-ray, Oscar-Papa and Oscar-Lima and surrounding grids. I will engage from Northern flank at one-three-zero-zero hours.”
He gazed at the rebels; the nearest tents and vehicles were a lot less than a mile away. That was well within the optimum kill zone of his M2s. In an ideal world he would have waited for his spearhead to make contact with the enemy on the eastern edge of Sun Prairie. However, he had learned at Waukesha that what you wanted and what you got in combat was hardly ever the same thing.
Schwarzkopf growled orders for his mortar and machine gun teams to come forward. NOW! The M113s were to pick their way to the southern limit of the town as quickly as possible.
Sun Prairie’s civilian defenders were taking pot shots at the enemy throng.
‘CEASE FIRING! CEASE FIRING!”
The last thing Schwarzkopf wanted was for the rebels to be provoked into launching an attack on the town at a time of their own choosing before his men were dug in and ready.
The first M2s were being hastily set up when the blaring of hundreds of vehicle horns filled the fields south of Sun Prairie, and then washed, like a shrill tide around the town. The M2s of the two spearhead M113s in the eastern streets of Sun Prairie began to rattle like chain saws.
Schwarzkopf heard it, knew what it meant.
The rebels were about to surge forward along the whole front; rolling over Sun Prairie as a side show to the main entertainment which was about to kick off to the south, where the horde was about to fall on the most heavily defended stretch of the Madison perimeter. The horde did not form up; it simply rose to its feet and moved to the west.
More banners were raised into the hazy summer air as dust began to rise from the countless feet and the wheels of the pickups, trucks and… tractors.
“MACHINE GUNNERS!” Schwarzkopf bellowed. “ON MY COMMAND HIT THE FLANK ONE HUNDRED YARDS BEHIND THE FRONT LINE. MORTAR MEN! YOUR TARGET IS THE CENTRAL AREA WHERE YOU CAN SEE THE BIGGEST BANNERS!”
The Commander of Company ‘A’ did not actually believe he was seeing what he was seeing. It was like watching something out of a movie; a medieval army lurching towards the enemy. There were no tactics, no stratagems; the rebels were just jogging and running towards prepared positions. It would have been suicidal even if his M2s had not happened upon the horde’s flank.
“OPEN FIRE!” He yelled.
M2s ripped at the air like multiple chainsaws, mortars popped and the long guns of the citizen defenders of Sun Prairie barked a loud, ragged volley.