To his left, Gross heard a piercing scream. To his right, someone was yelling for a medic. The shouts of squad leaders were punctured or cut short by the noise of gunfire and the grinding engines of enemy vehicles as they crashed their way through the woods. His platoon was taking casualties, and at that moment there was nothing that he could do to stop the enemy or help his people who were in trouble. Suddenly the real problems of being a combat leader hit home. For several critical seconds Gross would have to trust that his squad leaders and every individual rifleman in those woods would continue to perform their assigned duties while ignoring the pain and suffering of their friends and comrades. In those seconds, with enemy vehicles everywhere, there was nothing that Gross or the infantry squad leaders in the woods with him could do to control the people under their command. If he failed to keep his head and suppress his own fear and panic, or the discipline and cohesion of the unit failed, the platoon would fall apart and cease to be a fighting unit. If his nerve and the cohesion of his platoon held, then Gross and his sergeants had a chance to reorganize the platoon after the BMPs had passed and continue to resist. Jumping out of the path of a BMP that rolled on past him like a rogue elephant, Gross prayed that, one, he survived the next ten seconds, and two, he found something left to command at the end of those ten seconds.
The problem facing Ellerbee at that moment was, for him, equally distressing, though not nearly as hazardous. When he heard Kozak's order to flex his platoon to the right, Ellerbee yelled down to his driver to crank it up and prepare to move out. Turning off his radio during the starting sequence, Ellerbee held his hand on the radio's on-off switch while he waited for the sound of the engine turning over. When Wilk, his driver, hit the starter button, however, the only sound they heard was a clunk as the lights in the turret all but died out. "JESUS, LIEUTENANT! THE BATTERIES ARE DEAD!"
Startled by that announcement, Ellerbee let go of the radio's on-off switch, leaned down, and yelled, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THE BATTERIES ARE DEAD?"
"THEY'RE DEAD! DRAINED! NO POWER TO START THE TANK. WE NEED A SLAVE."
While Ellerbee sat there dumbfounded, Tinker Shildon turned around in the gunner's seat, faced Ellerbee, and began to pull his crewman's helmet off. "There's a slave cable on Rourk's tank. I'll go get it." Though his voice wasn't excited, Shildon was up and out of his seat in a flash. Squeezing past Ellerbee, the breech block of the 120mm main gun, and the loader, Shildon didn't stop until he was halfway out of the loader's hatch. Then his voice betrayed his shock and surprise. "WHERE IN THE HELL ARE THEY GOING?"
Shildon's comment threw Ellerbee. As he scrambled in an effort to get his head up and out of his hatch to see what Shildon was yelling about, Ellerbee yelled, "WHO? WHERE'S WHO GOING?"
"Sergeant Rourk and the rest of the platoon. They're moving out!"
Like a floating toy held under water in a bathtub and suddenly released, Ellerbee popped up and looked about just in time to see the taillights of Rourk's tank and his wing man disappear in the woods to their right. Instinctively Ellerbee reached up and keyed the push-to-talk lever on the side of his crewman's helmet to activate the radio. When nothing happened, he suddenly remembered that he had switched the radio off and had failed to turn it back on in the confusion following Wilk's announcement that they had no power. Just as he was prepared to drop down and turn the radio on, Ellerbee saw his own wing man's tank, A32, go screaming right behind him. Jumping back up, Ellerbee pointed at A32 and yelled to Shildon, "STOP HIM, TINKER. STOP HIM."
Pushing himself up and out of the loader's hatch, Shildon scrambled to the edge of the turret roof, climbed over the crew's personal gear stored in the bustle rack at the rear of the turret, hit the back deck with both feet, and took a flying leap onto the frozen ground, yelling at the top of his lungs as he did so. His efforts, however, were for nought. By the time he got up and began chasing A32, that tank, like Rourk's and his wing man's, was gone, swallowed up by the dark woods. Stopping, Shildon looked at the woods where A32 had disappeared, then back at the dark form of Ellerbee, who was hanging halfway out of his hatch. In the distance, both Shildon and Ellerbee could hear the battle at the riverbank.
Remembering that the engineer platoon was down the road a few hundred meters, Ellerbee yelled over to Shildon, "TINKER. Go down the road. Find the engineers at that farmhouse and see if they have someone who can come up and give us a jump start."
Looking through the woods toward the road, Shildon paused for a moment as he considered going back to the tank for his field jacket and helmet. A series of explosions from 2nd Platoon's positions and the thunk-thunk-thunk of 25mm cannons firing told him he didn't have time for that. Turning, he began to run. As he had before, Ellerbee sat there and watched Shildon disappear into the darkness, like the other tanks in his platoon had. Bad luck, he thought, piled on top of more bad luck, had left him and his disabled tank on the hill while Gross and the infantrymen in his platoon fought for their lives. Pounding his fist on the edge of his open hatch, Ellerbee began cursing out loud at Kozak and the incredible bad luck that had brought him to this spot.
No one in 2nd Platoon, or Kozak, realized that Ellerbee was out of the fight. Even Rourk, who had acknowledged Kozak's order and had passed it on to the platoon, had no idea what had happened to his platoon leader. What he did know was that the infantry was in trouble and that his platoon leader had failed to respond. Assuming that his lieutenant was too busy trying to get himself and his tank ready to move, and that he would follow when he could, Rourk took over the platoon and moved out in response to Kozak's order. There would be time later, if they won, to listen to Ellerbee's excuses. Right now, all Rourk knew was that the grunts were in deep shit and needed help.
Clear of the river and in the woods, the commander of the Ukrainian company that was overrunning Gross's dismounted infantry had three simple choices and not much time in which to make his decision. He could stop in the middle of the American position in the woods, dismount his own infantry, and try to wipe out the enemy. Since he really didn't know how many of his BMPs had made it, and his own company was as disoriented and confused at that moment as the enemy they were overrunning, he quickly decided against that. His next option was to move out of the woods and stop there. By doing so, his company would be clear of the enemy positions and in the open. The Ukrainian commander would then have time to dismount and organize his own command before going back into the woods to clear out the enemy. That, however, didn't seem like a good idea, since there had been reports of enemy tanks in the area. They, he thought, might be on the high ground, ready to engage his company as soon as it emerged from the woods. To stop there would only make the job of the enemy tanks easier. The final option available to him, as the Ukrainian commander saw it, was to forget about the Americans in the woods by the river line and just keep advancing toward the high ground. There, in the woods overlooking the bridge and open areas near the riverbank, he could deploy his company and cover the engineers as they put their bridge across the damaged highway bridge. Once that bridge was in place, the two tank battalions of the brigade would be able to cross over and join him. Then they could deal with the enemy tanks. That, he decided, would be the most advantageous decision for his company and the entire brigade.