“All right, this is it,” he snapped crisply in a tone of voice he hoped came across as being calm and confident. “The Russians are laying into the cavalry. When Ivan finishes with them, we’re next. I want everyone in MOPP level II. Leave the nets over your tracks but clear them away from the front so that they can quickly move forward into their fighting positions. First Sergeant, take the PC and fire team from the Mech Platoon that are designated to man the passage point and get down there. Lieutenant U, you’ll stay up here with the ITVs and fight them with 2nd Platoon if necessary. I’m going to move my tank down to the right of 3rd Platoon and fight from there. Other than that, we do it the way we’ve trained and planned. Stay off the air unless you have something really critical to report. Anyone have any questions?”
He looked into each man’s eyes, just as the colonel had done to him. He saw the same dark thoughts he had reflected in their expressions. Only the first sergeant, also a Vietnam vet, wore the stern, no-nonsense look he always did. For a few moments there was silence, broken only by the continuous crash and rumble of the artillery in the distance. “All right, let’s move out and make it happen.” Without waiting for a response, Bannon turned and began to head slowly towards his tank. As the colonel had done for him, he was setting the example for his people. He suspected that they would do the same with their tank commanders, and their TCs would, in turn, get their people moving. At least, that’s what he hoped would be happening.
The drumbeat of Soviet artillery continued unabated in the distance, growing louder but less intense. The Russian gun crews had to have been getting tired of humping rounds by now, Bannon thought, for the rate of fire was slowing down. The distant rumble was joined by the noise of Team Yankee coming to life. The PC’s driver cranked up its engine, revved it, and began raising the rear ramp. The crews of the ITVs and Alpha 66 were also cranking up their engines.
As he neared 66, Bannon could see Sgt. Robert Folk, his gunner, in the cupola. Folk had his combat vehicle crewman’s helmet, or CVC, on and was manning the M2 machinegun, ready for action. Bannon tried to yell to him to dismount with the rest of the crew so they could tear down the net. The noise of the engine, the muffling of outside noise through his CVC, and Folk’s preoccupation with trying to see what was going on to his front frustrated Bannon’s efforts. It wasn’t until he started climbing up onto the front right fender that Folk noticed his commander was calling out to him. Cocking his CVC off to one side in order to hear, Folk leaned forward.
“We need to get this net off!” Bannon called out over the whine of the tank’s turbine engine. “You and Kelp get out here and help me with it. We’re moving.” Without waiting for a response, Bannon dropped back down to the ground again and began to pull down the support poles and spreaders that held the net up as Folk took off his CVC, leaned over toward the loader’s hatch, and, with his left hand, slapped Kelp, the loader, on top of his CVC.
Popping his head up through the open hatch, Kelp looked over at Folk. Folk, in turn, pointed to Bannon who had already begun tearing down the net. Getting the message, Kelp also removed his CVC and climbed out to help.
“Let’s get this net down and stowed, just like we do during training,” Bannon called out as the two crewmen joined him. “Only let’s do it a little faster this time, OK?” Neither man answered him as he saw the expression on their faces was little different than the stunned disbelief he’d seen on his platoon leaders’ faces.
Folk dropped to the ground and circled the tank, pulling up the net’s stakes as he went. Kelp started to pull down the supports and spreaders that were resting on the tank, taking care to keep the collapsing net from draping over the tank’s nine hundred plus degree exhaust and melting it. With the stakes out and the poles down, the hard part began. The net caught on everything, including the crewmen taking it down. Tugging seldom did any good. One had to find what the net was caught on, pull it free, and roll it up until it caught again. Trying to hurry only seemed to make it worse. Despite the delays, the crew finally gathered the net up into a pile on the bustle rack and secured it. They hadn’t done the neatest job of stowing it, but it was probably one of the fastest.
Before they climbed in, Bannon told his crew to pull their chemical protective suits on. This was MOPP level II. As Folk and Kelp dug their suits out of their duffle bags, Bannon walked forward to the driver’s compartment and told Pfc. Joseph Ortelli, the driver, to climb out and get his suit on. As Ortelli reached over to kill the engine, Bannon stopped him, not wanting to run the risk of screwing something up. The last thing he needed was a tank that wouldn’t restart. It was running, and at the moment he didn’t want to mess with anything that was working properly.
As Bannon pulling his own chemical suit on, he noticed his crew was watching him. This caused him to slow down some. In part he didn’t want to fumble and fall. That would have been more than embarrassing, for like the platoon leaders, they were taking their cue off of him. He had always been told that calm, like panic, was contagious. Now was a good time to find out. Besides, it had been a long time since they had trained in their chemical protective clothing and he had to figure out where all the snaps and ties went. The heavy protective clothing was a necessary evil of modern war.
When Bannon was finished, he turned to Folk. “We ready to roll, Sergeant Folk?”
Folk looked at him for a moment and blink as his expression softened a tad. “Yes, sir. We’re ready.”
“Are all weapons loaded and on safe?” Bannon’s second question caused the relaxed look to be replaced by one of embarrassment as both Folk and Kelp stopped pulling at their suits and looked at each other. “I take it that that’s a big negative on my last question.”
Sheepishly, Folk replied that it hadn’t occurred to him to do so because they were in an assembly area with cavalry still out in front. All the range safety briefings and all the times the men had been harangued about keeping weapons clear and elevated except when on a live fire range were coming home to haunt them. Bannon couldn’t blame his crew. It was their first battle. He could only expect them to do what they were taught in training, no better, no worse, for soldiers rarely rise to the occasion. Rather, they default to their training. In the case of Alpha 66’s crew, and the rest of Team Yankee for that matter, while the training had been good, it had been conducted under peacetime conditions, conditions that were now a thing of the past.
Stopping for a moment, Bannon leaned back on the side of the turret and looked at his crew. “Alright, guys, here it is. We really are at war. I don’t know what’s happening yet, but from the sound of that artillery, you can bet the Russians are letting the cavalry have it. The cavalry is out there to buy us some time and let us get our shit together. That’s what they get paid for. When the Russians finish with the cavalry, we’re next. What I want you to do is to calm down and start thinking. Remember what we did in training and do it now. Only think! There are a couple of habits we picked up in training that you’re going to have to forget about. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
With a nod and a glance sideways at each other, they gave their tank and team commander a subdued but nervous, “Yes, sir.”
“Alright, finish getting your suits on. We’re going to move over to the right of 3rd Platoon and take up a position there. If nobody has any questions, let’s get moving.”
By the time the crew of 66 was finished and mounted, the rest of the crews and tracks in the headquarters position were ready. The first sergeant, having taken over the headquarters PC, had already pulled out of position and was moving down the logging trail with his jeep following. Bannon also noticed all the tracks around him, and more than likely elsewhere, were running. As the cavalry’s covering force battle would last for hours, possibly even as long as a day, there was no sense in leaving the tanks running. All that would do was burn diesel, something the M-l Abrams was very good at, and create a tremendous thermal signature, another unhealthy trait the M-l was guilty of. The savings in diesel would be worth a small violation of radio listening silence. Besides, it might be good for the leadership of the Team to hear their commander’s voice as well as give him a quick shot of confidence by seeing if they were on the ball and listening. Unless the Soviet radio direction-finding detachments were fast, Bannon figured it would do little, if any harm.