"Leo, this is Danzig. The enemy forces that had been attacking your position have shifted their main efforts to the east. They are now hitting Düsseldorf and have forced Düsseldorf north of Autobahn E40. We must do something to relieve this pressure. Your mission will be to leave your present location, infiltrate to the north toward Bad Hersfeld, and conduct mounted raids throughout the enemy rear. Over."
Düsseldorf, the code name given the 2nd Panzer Division's 2nd Brigade, was supposed to be a supporting attack. Why he and his company were being sacrificed in such an obvious suicide mission to support a supporting attack didn't make sense to Seydlitz. To be sure that he was understanding his orders properly, Seydlitz rephrased them and asked for correction if necessary. "This is Leo. I am to move my unit north through enemy lines toward Bad Hersfeld and Autobahn E40, attacking enemy rear units as I go. Is that correct? Over."
"Leo, this is Danzig. That is correct. Over."
Seydlitz paused again to think. There was no mistake. He was being sacrificed to save someone's ass. Deciding that he'd be damned if he was going to go riding about in circles waiting to be pinned and wiped out, Seydlitz shot back to the brigade operations officer, "Danzig, this is Leo. How long do you want me to keep up my raids and where am I to go after I have done all that I can? Over."
The pause on the other end of the radio confirmed Seydlitz's suspicions. The bastards, he thought, hadn't thought about that. He and his company were truly being sent on a death ride. The gunner, listening to the exchange, looked down at Seydlitz. In the soft glow of Seydlitz's flashlight, the gunner's face betrayed the dark thoughts that were running through his mind. Finally the brigade operations officer responded. "Leo, this is Danzig. You are to use your own discretion as to how long you stay in the enemy's rear. Targets are your choice. When you feel you have done as much as you can, attempt to break out to the east, moving north of Autobahn E40, and link up with Düsseldorf. Over."
That, Seydlitz thought, was shit. Of course, he didn't take into account that the entire 2nd Panzer Division's situation was rapidly deteriorating. He couldn't. Left manning a thin outpost line on his own all day, Seydlitz had no idea what was happening even five kilometers from where he sat. That his superiors were rapidly losing all hope of cutting off the American march to the north and defeating them never occurred to Seydlitz. At no time did it enter Seydlitz's mind that instead of victory the fight now revolved around individual brigades, short on supplies and attacked from several directions at once, fighting for their very existence. Even the fact that the brigade staff of the 1st Brigade, which Seydlitz now was attached to, were issuing him orders that seemed pointless and suicidal didn't alert Seydlitz to the seriousness of their situation. Nor did it occur to him that the staff officers at brigade were just as tired and just as confused as he himself was. In the German Army, one expected the higher headquarters to be in control, to be able to think clearly and issue orders that were sound and well thought out. The idea that staff officers were only human and, like him, susceptible to exhaustion and error was the furthest thing from Seydlitz's mind. They were in charge and had to know what was going on. They had to.
Still Seydlitz instinctively continued to prod the brigade operations officer. "Danzig, this is Leo. When do you want this operation to commence? Over."
Tiring of Seydlitz's questions and anxious to join a briefing that the brigade commander was about to hold with the commanders and staff of the brigade a few meters from where he sat, the operations officer became terse with Seydlitz. "When you are ready, over." Then as an afterthought the operations officer added, "What is your fuel status? Over."
That he had been ordered to execute a mission such as this without first being asked if his unit was physically capable of executing it did not escape Seydlitz's attention. "This is Leo. We completed rearming and refueling an hour ago. Over."
The brigade operations officer's voice betrayed surprise. "Leo, who provided you with this fuel and where did they go?"
Why, Seydlitz wondered, was this so important? Were there problems that he wasn't aware of? Perhaps. But this was not the time to ask such questions. Instead he simply responded, "The supply column from my own battalion, of course. They left here some time ago headed to the assembly area my commander told me he was moving into. Over."
While Seydlitz waited for a response, the brigade operations officer turned to one of his sergeants and told him to check with the 26th Panzer Battalion to see if their supply column had arrived. As the sergeant was doing that, the operations officer returned to Seydlitz. "Leo, do you have any further questions? Over."
Taking a minute to look at his map and his skimpy notes, Seydlitz came to the conclusion that he had all he was going to get. The fact was the orders were sufficiently open to allow him almost unlimited freedom of action. To ask for more guidance might result in additional restrictions or orders that would eliminate that freedom. If he played this right, there was the chance that he and his company would survive the night. Satisfied, Seydlitz responded that he needed nothing more and then signed off.
Stretching as he looked down on his map, Seydlitz allowed himself to mutter a few curses and heard his gunner chuckle. "That good, Herr Hauptmann?"
Seydlitz, aware that he had erred by showing his displeasure with brigade in front of his gunner, looked up. There was, he realized, no hiding the truth. Seydlitz looked down at his map. "Oh, far better than you can imagine, Sergeant. I have no idea where the enemy is, no idea where our 2nd Brigade is, no idea what fire support is available, and no idea if anyone outside the 1st Brigade staff, in particular the Luftwaffe, knows that we will be going into the enemy rear. In short, we will be crawling out of the shitter into the asshole of the American Tenth Corps." Then with a tired smile Seydlitz looked up at his gunner. "Provided, of course, we can find where that asshole begins."
As Seydlitz prepared to translate his brigade operations officer's sketchy order into action, the sergeant on duty in the 4th Armored Division's division artillery intelligence section came bounding out of his armored command post carrier over to where a captain from the operations section sat. "We've got the bastards. We finally got a good fix on that German brigade command post south of Bad Hersfeld. Here are the coordinates, sir." Without waiting for a response, the intelligence sergeant went over to the wall map behind the captain and made a mark where the division's radio intercept unit, known as a collection and jamming unit or CJ platoon for short, determined the enemy brigade command post was.
Slowly the captain, tired from a long day made longer by two relocations of the command post done when he should have been sleeping, got up and walked over to the map. After looking at the newly plotted location, he thought for a minute. "We sure it's the brigade command post?"
The intelligence sergeant, anxious to have something to do that was meaningful, nodded. "Positive, sir. The enemy unit that's located seventeen kilometers south of Bad Hersfeld hasn't moved all day. The latest intercept was a long conversation between it and the brigade headquarters. The officer in charge of the CJ platoon thinks it was an operations order of some kind."
The captain raised an eyebrow. "Thinks?"
"Well, sir, the message was encrypted. We couldn't break it, but they talked long enough to get a good fix on the transmitter that we believe is the brigade headquarters."
The captain folded his arms. He knew about the enemy unit seventeen kilometers south of Bad Hersfeld. During the day several batteries of artillery had fired missions on its location twice with no noticeable effect. Its location and durability made everyone believe it was a front-line battalion or cavalry unit. Because the responses from the other unit or headquarters had been short, the collection and jamming platoon had never had enough time to get a good fix on what everyone assumed was the higher headquarters, probably the 2nd Panzer Division's 1st Brigade. Looking at the map, the captain decided that it was pointless to go after the front-line unit again. If it survived twice, odds were it would survive again. Having made his decision, the captain turned to his own operations section. "Sergeant Mears, get a copy of these new grids and pass them on to the MLRS battery. Have them dump a spill on those grids."