Although forest trails honeycombed the woods that surrounded the Burbenheim Bowl, only three roads ran from Panzerbrigade ll’s assembly area across the fields and up to the American-held wood line. Cooper directed the l-89th’s S2 to cover these inlets. He, in turn, tasked the companies, who passed the order down to a platoon, who sent out a squad. While the scout platoon lay strung out across the battalion’s front, someone was sure to make it through their screen. In fact, the S2 had directed the scouts to engage with indirect fires only. On no account were they to reveal their positions, for the battalion commander would need reports from those positions in the morning. It was with this in mind that Sgt. Nick Watson received his orders to establish an ambush at a Y-shaped trail junction some nine hundred meters behind the scouts’ screen line.
Watson’s resources were meager indeed. The platoon sergeant pulled a few trip flares and an extra radio from the other two squads, but beyond that Watson had only the men in his squad to count on. All other hands were occupied with the preparation of the platoon’s battle position. After coordinating signals so that the platoon wouldn’t fire on them going out or coming back in, Watson studied the map, but the close contour lines and deep green told him no more than that the ambush site was in a hilly forest. As he looked up at the firs blocking out the stars overhead, he congratulated himself on such a brilliant deduction. He’d have to figure it out when they got there. After a quick inspection of his squad, they mounted their Bradley and drove out of the company battle position.
Since one hill looked like another in the forest dark, Watson tracked their progress by using the odometer. About four hundred meters from where the intersection should be, he halted the Bradley. He dismounted the squad for local security before going forward to pinpoint the ambush site, taking two men with him for protection. They walked in the shadows, weapons at the ready, for no more than three hundred meters before they literally stumbled onto the intersection — Baldwin tripped and sprawled into the middle of the road. It took Watson only a few moments to make up his mind.
The intersection was not a perfect Y; rather, the main trail on which Watson stood ran fairly straight for almost four hundred meters, then the second came in at an angle. The woods around the junction were too thick to place the Bradley in the center to cover both approaches, so Watson brought it to within a hundred meters of the intersection and parked the track off to one side, from where the gunner could see and shoot down the main trail. He posted a two-man security team along each of the incoming routes, each team carrying both a squad radio and a pair of AT-4 antitank missiles. Finally, in the center and not more than fifty meters back from the intersection — that was all the farther the thick woods would let him back up and still be able to see — Watson and his SAW gunner, both also carrying AT-4s, set up the ambush CP. Watson and the gunner placed three Claymore mines around the intersection, each set on the forest corners so that, when detonated, their blasts of antipersonnel flechettes would all intersect dead center on the junction. The mines rigged and the firing wire laid to his CP, Watson made one quick trip around to double-check each position, then settled back against a tree and waited.
On the other flank of the 195th’s front, 1st Lt. Billy Travers and Sfc. Roosevelt Lawson took their canteen cups off of the single-burner, white-gas camp stove dug into a small pit behind Travers’s Bradley. Satisfied the water in their cups was hot enough, each dumped a packet of MRE instant coffee into the lukewarm liquid, pulled plastic spoons from their pockets, and stirred. Their mission was to prevent enemy recon elements from penetrating around or through Travers’s position. Their problem was how to make the Bradleys and Mis make up for the platoon’s lack of manpower.
“Sergeant Lawson, I just don’t have enough people to run patrols and dig in and lay mines and prepare the position. I wouldn’t have enough if I had a full platoon, much less one vehicle short.”
Lawson nodded as he sipped the coffee. The S2 had charged them with the mission, but hadn’t told them how to do it shorthanded. Lawson knew he needed to get the platoon forward to engage early, but he didn’t relish the idea of becoming a target for a dismounted attack. There were just too many wooded patches for German grunts to sneak up on them.
“El-tee, I need some kind of close-in protection for these things. The Ml’s thermal is good, but yours is better,” Lawson said, gesturing at the Bradley. “I can pick up a blob and hit it at four klicks out, but I won’t know whether it’s an outhouse or a tank. If I fire, I give away my location. Then dismounts could get in close before I ever see them.”
Travers nodded, trying to think of some way to accomplish the mission and cover both the tanks’ weakness and his platoon’s lack of manpower. The one thing they did have an abundance of was vehicles, a total of seven, all with thermal sights. He squatted and scratched in the dirt for several minutes, then came up with a plan. A few minutes later the two platoon leaders struck a deal.
It was in this way that Travers’s three Bradleys went forward with only drivers and vehicle commanders, who would double as gunners. The gunners had been left back at the platoon position to help with the work. Lawson dropped his loaders off to assist the infantry with laying mines, stringing wire, and digging holes. Lawson’s tanks, sporting three-man crews, followed the Bradleys forward. The tanks were to take up stations four hundred to six hundred meters back from the infantry vehicles. Once a tank thermal picked up a target, a Bradley would use its more accurate sight to identify it and mark the target with a burst of 25mm tracer fire; the tank would then kill it with its big gun. Lawson and Travers congratulated themselves on inventing something novel, not knowing that armored forces in Iraq had arrived at the same solution years earlier.
Prime Minister Aaron Felderman sat quietly in the dining room in the suite that the Crown reserves for visiting heads of state. His chair was covered with soft, rich leather. Across the burnished wood of the long dinner table, a full colonel in the Israeli Air Force waited patiently for Felderman to speak.
“Isn’t London a wonderful city, Colonel?”
“I have seen little of it. I have been with the planes.”
“They are all ready?”
The colonel nodded solemnly. “Including the munitions.” Felderman leaned forward. “Levi, I have known your family for many years. Your father was a good man, almost a father to me. You have been much like a younger brother.”
“Father died early in the camps. He was lucky; as an old man death came quickly for him.”
“But he saw to it that you and your mother were safe. That’s what he wanted, and now I fear I must put you in harm’s way.”
“So that is what you hear from the Mossad? We will have to go in? When?”
“We have agents all over the area. They report that German casualties continue to come out of the depot, but no Americans. The Americans still own their atomic bombs, but the Germans have stopped their ground forces, although a big battle appears to be brewing. Also, the Special Security henchmen are poised outside the American base. They appear ready to make some move. In the morning, perhaps, we shall see. Theoretically the Americans could defeat the Germans, then retake the depot.” -