Rolling out of the woods and into the small clearing that the Germans had been using for a resupply point, Kozak was greeted by Gross. Resting the butt of his rifle on his left hip, Gross waited until Kozak had brought her Bradley to a halt and dismounted before he saluted. With a grin that ran from ear to ear and still pumped up from the rush that a soldier got who had just risked his neck and come out alive and successful, Gross reported. "Ma'am, Second Lieutenant Gross is pleased to report that 2nd Platoon, Company C has overrun a German outpost, destroying one Marder and capturing another as well as two fuel trucks, one mess truck complete with mess, and fifteen prisoners of war without loss."
While Kozak listened, she looked around. Unlike Gross, she felt only the full weight of her exhaustion and concerns, magnified by lack of sleep and the need to rush about from one crisis to the next. It was only with the greatest of efforts that she cleared her mind and focused it on the matter immediately at hand. From where she stood, Kozak could only see two of Gross's Bradleys, the one she had come across on the trail and Gross's own track that was being used to guard the prisoners. The others, she assumed, were deployed further into the woods. As she watched, a squad leader and his men were searching the prisoners while the platoon medic tended to half a dozen wounded Germans next to them. The dead, left where they had fallen, served as a grim reminder to Kozak that the success that Gross was so thrilled over had been purchased with human lives. Deciding that Gross needed to be brought back to reality, Kozak turned to face him, drawing across her face the mask of an angry commander. "Why in the hell, Lieutenant, didn't you report before you acted? What in the name of hell do you mean by charging off like that into the attack without permission?"
Kozak's response hit Gross like a slap in the face. Slowly dropping his salute, he thought for a moment before responding. When he did, his voice was subdued and unsure. "But, Captain Kozak, there were only two Marders. And they didn't look like they were expecting us."
"How did you know they were alone? How did you know that they weren't just the last two or the first two Marders in a whole column?"
Gross, remembering that he hadn't thought of that until he was well committed to his attack, didn't respond. His blank, almost sheepish expression told Kozak that her suspicions about him running off half-cocked had been correct. Deciding that she had made her point, far too tired to play mind games with Gross, and anxious to get on with the advance now that they had made contact with the Germans, Kozak considered what to do next before she issued her orders. Turning away from Gross, she watched the driver of Gross's Bradley as he ran back and forth to one of the fuel trucks, hauling five-gallon cans of fuel. Turning her head back toward Gross, Kozak pointed to Gross's driver. "Save that fuel for Ellerbee's tanks. Send a runner over to his tank and tell him to laager his tanks here and refuel. He has twenty minutes."
Gross looked over to his driver, then back at Kozak. "But we need the fuel too. All of my tracks are less than half full."
Kozak shook off Gross's response. "Ellerbee's herd of hogs need the fuel more than you do. Now what else do you have for me? I need to check in with the battalion commander."
"The prisoners. What do we do with them?"
Shaking her head, Kozak took in a deep breath as she struggled to hold her temper in check. "If you paid more attention to my orders instead of running off on your own little Rambofest, you'd know exactly what to do with them, Lieutenant."
Glancing over to the Germans, then back to Kozak, Gross leaned forward and lowered his voice. "You can't be serious. I mean, these guys are probably pissed off. After all, we just killed three of their buddies and damned near killed them. I know Colonel Dixon is a smart man, but I really don't think he's considered all the angles as far as prisoners are concerned. How do we know that they won't join the first unit they come across, get themselves rearmed, and come back looking for blood?"
"We don't, Gross. Odds are that's exactly what's going to happen. I know that's what I would do."
With a look of excitement on his face, Gross threw his free hand out to his side. "Then why in the hell are we letting them go? So they can come back and have a second chance to kill us?"
Angry at Gross's manner and persistence, Kozak reached down, unsnapped her holster, and pulled her pistol out. Pulling the pistol's slide back in a sharp exaggerated motion to chamber a round, Kozak flipped the safety off and offered the pistol, butt first, to Gross. "Well, Second Lieutenant Marc Gross, if you feel so strongly about leaving live prisoners behind, then here, go shoot them. Because that's the only other way we have of dealing with them. The entire corps has no transportation to haul them, no food to feed them, and no one to guard them. So if you're so hell-fired concerned about dealing with them, this is it. You said there's fifteen of them? Good! There's fifteen rounds in my pistol. Just enough to do the job."
The response by his company commander shocked Gross. She was normally a reasonable person who took great pains to explain everything to her subordinates, and Gross was not prepared to deal with her preposterous proposal or caustic response. Stepping back, Gross let his head hang down for a moment before looking back up at Kozak. Seeing the anger etched into her face, added to the signs of strain and lack of sleep, Gross knew that she was right. There was no good alternative. He also realized for the first time that this whole affair, the race for the sea and the fighting, had entered a new and very deadly phase, one in which there were no guarantees that they would make it. This was, Gross suddenly realized, a real life-and-death struggle, one which every one of his men, as well as Kozak and he, could very easily lose.
Looking up at Kozak, he began to apologize, but Kozak cut him short. "Listen, Marc. Odds are, unless we do everything right, you and I will be sitting over there with our hands on our heads in a matter of days. We, you, me, the battalion commander, Colonel Dixon, and anyone who calls himself an officer in this corps can't afford to forget that. We can't afford to make mistakes either. You understand that. I know you do, damn it. I taught you better than this. Now pull your head out of your ass and stop acting like a first-year ROTC cadet running around on a weekend maneuver."
Softening her tone, Kozak asked if he had anything more to report. After seeing him shaking his head slowly, Kozak turned and walked back to her Bradley, C60. As she did so, she looked over every now and then at the prisoners. For she knew, unlike Gross, that unless their luck changed soon they would indeed all be prisoners, or worse. All the plans, all the speeches, and all the pep talks, together with all the fancy maneuvers they had just done, had finally come down to luck and hard fighting, period.
That was what wars were all about.
Major Bob Messinger would have disagreed violently with Nancy Kozak's observation that luck was an important ingredient in military operations. A tried and true military technician by training, Messinger was proud to the point of arrogance of his skills as an Army aviator. Only his abilities as an operations officer, which had landed him the job as the battalion operations officer for the 14th Cavalry's air cavalry battalion, ran a close second. From that platform Messinger preached his doctrine that good combat pilots make their own luck. Praying that the enemy will make a mistake or depending on luck, he told his company commanders, was for weenies.