Any further thoughts were cut short as the first rounds of American artillery broke apart on their downward arc, disgorging baseball-sized anti-tank submunitions over most of the woods where Seydlitz's company was deployed. With his hatch closed and locked, there was nothing more for him to do but wait for the final impact and pray. The armor plate of his tank, while it served to insulate them from much of the noise, reducing the sound of the submunitions detonating to the point where they sounded more like firecrackers than lethal tank killers, could do nothing to diminish the fear and apprehension that Seydlitz felt as they waited.
Seydlitz looked around the turret at his crew. Across the turret, slouched down in his seat, was the loader, watching Seydlitz. As he tried to force a smile, Seydlitz noticed that he was sweating despite the fact that just moments before he had been freezing. Though the heat generated by the tank's heater made his overcoat unnecessary, most of the sweat running down his body felt cold and clammy. He was not suffering from overheating, just overexcitement and fear.
From his position, Seydlitz's gunner called out, "Smoke. They are laying down smoke to our front, Herr Captain."
Turning away from his loader, whose deadpan stare stayed fixed on him, Seydlitz glanced out of the clear vision blocks that surrounded his position. To his front he could see clouds of smoke that appeared to come billowing out of the ground. Artillery-fired smoke rounds no doubt were the cause. Putting his head up to his sight extension, Seydlitz saw that his gunner had already switched the view of the tank's primary sight from clear daylight to thermal. Even this did little to clear his view of the battlefield. Without moving his eye or directing his gunner, who was slowly scanning the area to their front by traversing the turret, Seydlitz mumbled, "Plastic white phosphorus." Then added, "I can't see a damned thing."
The gunner, keeping his eye to his sight while continuing to slowly traverse the turret, grunted. "Neither can I. Not a damned thing."
Unlike conventional smoke, plastic white phosphorus rounds contained a mix of white phosphorus and butyl rubber. On impact, the projectile ruptured, exposing the white phosphorus to air, which caused it to burn. The butyl rubber, mixed with the phosphorus, began to burn and flake off. Floating up and away from the ruptured projectile, these flakes of burning rubber created a curtain of heat that could defeat thermal sights. Seydlitz was still watching the clouds of heated smoke drift about in the opening between his position and where the Americans had been last seen when a new series of firecracker-like pops outside reminded him that they were under attack and that he needed to report his observations and status to his commander.
Without thinking, Seydlitz keyed the radio and called his battalion command post in preparation for reporting. He paused when he realized that he wasn't sure what to report. Not having received any reports from his platoon leaders since the artillery attack had commenced, Seydlitz naturally assumed that they had nothing to report. But that was just an assumption. If he was going to make a report to his battalion commander that his commander was going to use to make decisions, Seydlitz had to base that report on facts, not assumptions. Ignoring the calls by the battalion operations officer, Seydlitz switched his radio to his company net and contacted in turn each of his platoon leaders. Their situation, he found to his great relief, was very similar to his own. Artillery was impacting somewhere to their rear and smoke was obscuring their ability to see more than a hundred meters to the front. Warning them to stay alert and ready to move on a moment's notice, Seydlitz prepared to switch back to the battalion radio net to complete his aborted report.
He was, however, unable to do so, for as soon as Seydlitz flipped the battalion radio frequency on, the earphones of his headset came to life with reports streaming in from the tank company to the right of Seydlitz's and with orders from the battalion commander. Quickly it dawned upon Seydlitz that the brunt of the American attack had fallen on that company and not his. Surprisingly, the first thought that came to Seydlitz's mind was one of relief, relief that it was not his company that would bear the full fury of the enemy attack and in turn not his company that would determine, at least in the beginning, whether the battalion succeeded or failed. Though such a feeling was selfish and unprofessional, it was an honest reflection of Seydlitz's state of mind and priorities.
Seydlitz's salvation, however, was purchased at the expense of one of his fellow company commanders. From the radio traffic and reports, it was obvious that the American attack had come right under the cover of the artillery and smoke, catching the defending company momentarily off guard. Quick reactions and well-sited positions, however, cost the attacker dearly. In a matter of minutes, the lead echelon of the American assault force, consisting of M-1A1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, was shredded and scattered.
When the two forces came together, it came down to a simple question of who saw who first. Though the artillery barrage managed to degrade the ability of the German company under attack to observe its sector of responsibility and caused them to button up, the artillery had little permanent effect on the Germans. And the artillery-delivered smoke, while covering the first three hundred meters of their advance, did nothing for the attackers during the last few critical meters. It in fact served to disrupt the attack in a few instances and separated the assaulting elements from those that had remained behind to cover the assault by fire.
Emerging from their own smokescreen, the Americans were greeted with a volley of fire from those Leopard tanks that were undamaged and waiting. There were only a few instances where an attacking American tank managed to fire first. Even here, however, that success was fleeting as German tanks that were not under attack or had dealt with the threat immediately to their front repositioned themselves to cover gaps created by the loss of a Leopard tank to their immediate left or right. Thus, before the German battalion commander was able to issue Seydlitz his first clear order, the critical point had been reached and the crisis was over. All that remained was the elimination of a handful of American vehicles that had made it into the German-held woodlot and the restoration of the defensive perimeter.
From his position on the periphery of this fight, Seydlitz waited impatiently for orders. While still relieved that he and his company were not involved in the fight, his ability to influence a battle that, if lost, could result in his own company being attacked from the flank and rear made him nervous and apprehensive. As he listened to the reports from the commanding officers in contact, Seydlitz followed the action on his map. As he did so, he began to notice that, while few American tanks and Bradleys were reported to have made it across the opening, those that had were beginning to work their way around the flank of the company next to Seydlitz's. If unchecked, they could find their way into his sector or, even worse, into the battalion's rear. Like many armor officers, raised to believe in the superiority of aggressive, offensive operations and trained to seek, strike, and destroy, the idea of simply sitting there while his peers were fighting for their collective lives just a few hundred meters away was becoming too much for him.
Opening his hatch slightly and popping his head up, Seydlitz noticed that the artillery barrage on his position had lifted. Satisfied that it was clear, he threw the hatch into the full open position, popped up, and looked about. The first thing that struck Seydlitz was that there were so few signs of the artillery barrage that his unit had just been subjected to. Since most of his images of war were based on films and photos of the devastation created by the massive and prolonged barrages of the two world wars, this should not have surprised him, but it did. Seydlitz looked in the direction from which the noise of battle drifted through the thick pines. He should, he knew, hold his position and await orders. There was still the possibility that the fight could spill over into his sector of responsibility or, having failed to achieve success in one part of the field, the Americans could expand their attack and hit his unit. On the other hand, the old military dictum that no commander could do wrong by marching to the sound of the guns kept buzzing through Seydlitz's mind.