Nor could Kozak and her tiny command ignore their unusual position as accidental liberators. Without realizing it, Kozak's company, as well as the rest of the brigade, had found itself smack in the middle of the Ruthenian struggle for independence from the Ukraine. Never having heard of Ruthenia, Nancy Kozak, through broken translations provided by the farmer whose home the engineer platoon had occupied, learned that Ruthenians, who held that they were ethnically different from the Ukrainians, made up the bulk of the population around Uzhgorod, the historical capital of Ruthenia. Unhappy with the Ukrainian government's decision to prevent closer ties with their ethnic brethren in Slovakian Ruthenia, the Ukrainian Ruthenians had been agitating for independence. The sudden appearance of American forces fighting the Ukrainians naturally was viewed as an answer to their prayers. That neither Kozak nor any of her soldiers knew of the problem didn't seem to matter to the happy Ruthenians. As the farmer explained, frontline soldiers, regardless of which flag they serve under, are seldom told the real reasons behind their orders. Unprepared for this sudden attention and civil-military problem, Kozak had no idea what to do. After trying to explain that they were not there on behalf of the Ruthenians, she gave up, letting the farmer and all his relatives, and other fanners and villagers from the area who came to visit their "liberators," believe what they wanted. Besides, the Ruthenians, despite their obvious difficulties in making ends meet, were always ready to give Kozak's soldiers fresh bread, sweets, and warm home-cooked meals. Though she felt bad knowing that they were accepting the gifts from the Ruthenians under false pretenses, Kozak saw no way of stopping it. So she let it go and tended to the military matters for which she was trained.
Not that there was after the seventh of January a great deal to do professionally. After being repulsed in their predawn assault, the Ukrainian armored brigade, stalled on the south bank of the river, was worked over by the aging but venerable A-10 Warthogs. Coming in low and slow, the A-10s nailed anything that even looked like it was of military value. When the Ruthenian farmer later told Kozak that a number of refugee columns flowing out of Chop had been shot up by accident, Kozak questioned the air liaison officer who had joined her company about it. He shrugged off the concern by flatly stating that there was always the possibility of collateral damage when operating in densely populated areas. When asked by Kozak exactly what he meant by collateral damage, the Air Force captain looked at her as if he didn't believe she had to ask, and then answered in his casual, matter-of-fact manner, "Oh, it's damage to civilian structures or personnel, usually civilians that are in the vicinity of the target but aren't part of the strike's objective." Seeing an expression of disapproval creep across her face, the Air Force captain continued. "You know, when an A-10 comes rolling in at treetop level at over four hundred miles an hour, the pilot doesn't have a whole lot of time to separate the wheat from the chaff. When enemy tanks and refugees are sharing the road, collateral damage is unavoidable." Though she didn't know exactly how to feel about this, Kozak was glad to find out that the Ukrainians had given up their efforts to stay in close proximity and had pulled back from the river in an effort to escape the pounding from the air. There was a price that needed to be paid by someone, she realized, for everything.
With the immediate threat removed and casualties from the first day's fight tended to, Kozak turned to reorganizing and resting her company, while at the same time maintaining her command at a high state of vigilance. For the infantry and engineer platoons, this was no problem. Though the infantry platoons, as is traditional, suffered the majority of the casualties, their morale was high and they remained motivated and ready. This, however, was not the case with the tank platoon. Though it did play a pivotal role in the final defeat of the Ukrainian assault river crossing, the poor performance of their platoon leader, and the loss of one of their own to friendly fire, left a pall hanging over the entire unit.
Kozak did little to dispel this. Had it been a training exercise, she would have been able to shrug off Lieutenant Ellerbee's errors, just as she had done with other new lieutenants. But Kozak had lost her objectivity. Her own brush with death during the fight along the Latorica River, coupled with the accidental death of Ellerbee's gunner to friendly fire, a death that she viewed as both tragic and avoidable, had destroyed her ability to view Ellerbee in the detached and professional manner that she knew she should. As hard as she tried to reason with herself, Kozak continued to discover that she was, after all, very human. Though her mind told her that such errors and transgressions were unavoidable in the heat of battle, she found that she could not forgive Ellerbee for the very real professional shortfalls that had almost cost her and her crew their lives, and what she perceived as a poor attitude.
Having determined that she would never be able to fully accept Ellerbee as a responsible combat leader, Kozak did little to hide the contempt in which she held him. It showed in the manner in which she ignored him and the disdain in her voice when she spoke of him. When Kozak called for a meeting of all platoon leaders the night after the battle, she made it a point that she wanted Ellerbee's platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Rourk, to accompany him to the meeting. When, after the meeting, Rourk asked to see Kozak alone, pointing out that it was foolish for both him and Ellerbee to come to her meetings, Kozak didn't bat an eye. She simply looked straight at Rourk and told him, "Yes, you have a point. In the future leave him behind."
Kozak's efforts to remove Ellerbee or his platoon were frustrated by the brigade commander. His order that Ellerbee and his platoon stay where they were until he had an opportunity to personally review the situation pleased neither Kozak nor Ellerbee. When she went to Lieutenant Colonel Rick Zacharzuk, her battalion commander, to request that he request that the brigade commander reconsider his decision, Zacharzuk, nicknamed Ricky Z, refused to bring the matter up to Dixon. "Things are getting a little hairy right now, especially with this German thing," he told Kozak. "Though I agree with you, I'm afraid the brigade commander has one hell of a lot on his mind. Until we're out of Ukrainian territory and the situation in Germany is clarified, I have no intention of bothering him with this." Then, noticing that Kozak's shoulders physically slumped when he told her that, Ricky Z tried to soften the blow. "Look, Nancy. In another day we'll be back in an assembly area in Slovakia. Once we're there, I don't care if you surround Ellerbee and his tanks with barbed wire and post guards on them. I imagine we'll sit there while the powers that be sort out all the hard feelings between Berlin and Washington and all the little nukes are back in hand. Until then, you'll have to make the best of a bad situation."
As if her dark thoughts had conjured them up out of the river, Kozak heard Ellerbee's tanks rumble across the bridge and begin to close on the spot where her Bradley sat. Though she knew she was being petty and unprofessional, Kozak couldn't hide the feeling of disdain she felt every time she thought about Ellerbee. The mere image of the tanks passing her position, great black hulks against the dark overcast sky, caused Kozak's blood pressure to rise. Counting them in order to make sure that they were all clear of the bridge before she gave Lieutenant Matto permission to blow the bridge, only Ricky Z's promise to get Colonel Dixon to resolve the Ellerbee issue as soon as things settled down allowed Kozak to carry on in what she considered to be an intolerable situation.