Confusion was not limited to the battalion and brigade commanders alone. Command and control also ceased to exist within some companies.
A failed night attack, at its best, bears a striking resemblance to a nightmare.
Burning tracks, both tanks and Bradleys, cast an eerie illumination over the area where the attack had taken place, an area still dominated by fire from enemy positions and artillery that the attack had failed to destroy.
Into this area medics and recover teams, under the control of the company first sergeant, must move to save the wounded and retrieve damaged vehicles. Sometimes these people, in the process, also become casualties.
While all this is going on, the company commander, if he has survived, is trying to rally the survivors of the attack, count noses to find out who he still has, figure out what happened so that he can submit a timely and accurate report to his battalion commander, and reorganize his unit. This entire effort usually is complicated by the fact that sometimes leaders, including the company commander, are among the casualties that the first sergeant is trying to recover. When that happens, platoon sergeants — or if they are also gone, squad leaders — must step forward and assume the duties of platoon leader, doing things they have never trained for, under the worst possible circumstances.
A failed attack almost always appears worse than it actually is. It takes time, however, to sort that out. And even when a unit is finally reorganized and recovered, the psychological impact of the failure, coupled with the exhaustion from the physical exertion, stress of combat, and trauma of a confused night battle, is usually enough to make the unit combat-ineffective for hours. It is at this time, in the midst of a seemingly impossible situation, that the young officers who lead the companies and platoons earn their pay. For inevitably, from out of the darkness, through the use of the magic we call radio, the voice of some unseen staff officer comes to the young captain or lieutenant, giving him new orders, orders that will require his unit to expose itself again to the horrors it has just survived.
It is at this moment, in the brief span of time that separates the commander's acceptance of his new orders and the issuance of his own orders to his own unit, that many young combat leaders experience a loneliness and despair that knows no bounds. Exhausted himself, the company commander must find, from the depth of his own soul, not only the courage and fortitude to propel himself forward again into combat, but enough to motivate almost one hundred men to follow him as he does so.
Some call this courage. Others, simply a commander's duty. Regardless of what it is called, it is hard, and some people simply cannot do it.
By midnight, the entire 3rd Brigade was in disarray. Some companies were pressing on, unchecked, toward Monterrey. Other companies that had initiated hasty attacks and failed were scattered about and in the process of recovering. As the chances of units becoming isolated, or firing on other friendly units in the confusion of the night, became more and more likely, the brigade commander had to face the fact that his brigade was falling apart. Once he accepted this reality, and being unwilling to expose his units to unnecessary risks, it was easy for the brigade commander to issue — the order shortly after midnight to break contact, assume hasty defensive positions, and be prepared to conduct a movement to contact at 0600 hours.
In those six hours, there was no time for battalion commanders, their staffs, company commanders, and platoon leaders to rest. Instead, they scurried about the battlefield, assessing the status of their units and their personnel, arranging for and supervising the rearming and refueling process, and receiving and issuing new orders for the next operation. All of this, done under the cover of darkness, after a failed attack, took its toll on what little mental and physical strength those leaders had. The commander of the 3rd Brigade, himself feeling the effects of the long, hard night, knew that his unit had only a few good hours left before it could go no further. Hence, the need for the division reserve battalion. In a three-way conversation with the division commander and the division G3, the 3rd Brigade commander explained that he intended to punch through whatever Mexican positions he encountered with his own battalions.
Once he was sure they had cleared the main defensive belt, he intended to commit the division reserve, pushing the 2nd of the 13th Infantry through the gap created by his lead battalions and toward Monterrey.
Though Big Al did not like the idea of plowing head-on into the Mexican defenses, he was under the mistaken impression that the 3rd Brigade was too heavily committed to break contact and maneuver, an impression created by the reports submitted by the 3rd Brigade staff.
Dixon, seeing the situation in the same light as the 3rd Brigade commander, had come up with the same solution. Dixon therefore endorsed the option selected by the 3rd Brigade commander. Trusting in the judgment of the commander on the scene, and himself suffering from lack of sleep and nervous tension, Big Al approved the plan that would throw Second Lieutenant Kozak's platoon, ready or not, into the heat of battle.
20
Our hatred knows no bounds, and the war shall be to the death.
The movement of Kozak's platoon through the gap created by the 3rd Brigade was a sobering experience. The first vehicles they encountered were ambulances, both tracked and wheeled, rushing past them with the wounded. Next came the battlefield itself. The axis of attack that the 3rd Brigade had followed was dotted with shattered and burning vehicles.
Here and there, neatly laid out beside the abandoned combat vehicles, were body bags, filled with the remains of crewmen who had died in their vehicles.
The column that Kozak's platoon was in was slowed by combat engineers, who directed the lead elements of 2nd of the 13th toward marked lanes through minefields. Slowed almost to a crawl, Kozak had more time to inspect the point where elements of the 3rd Brigade had made contact with the Mexican forces. As they neared the Mexican positions, the number of American vehicles destroyed and damaged increased, belying the reports by the battalion intelligence officer that the Mexicans had few antitank weapons. Some of the vehicles burned furiously, throwing off great billowing clouds of black smoke. Others, their guns aimed into the vastness of space, just sat there, abandoned and forlorn. The only motion on these vehicles came from the flapping of green, yellow, and red flags, left on the stricken vehicles by surviving crewmen to help harried recover teams determine the nature of their problem and know whether or not wounded were on board.
Kozak, watching a recovery vehicle hook up to a damaged Bradley, didn't notice the Mexican defensive works until her own Bradley hit a sudden bump. Looking down to see what they had run over, her eyes fell on a length of trench, its floor covered with bodies. Before she could react, the forward motion of the Bradley took that image away, replacing it with that of an American aid vehicle parked just beyond the trench. The aid vehicle was surrounded by wounded soldiers, American and Mexican, some lying on stretchers or ponchos, most on the bare ground. On one side of the vehicle, she could see teams of medics working on several of the wounded in a frantic effort to save lives while other wounded men, with lighter injuries, watched and waited their turns. On the other side of the aid vehicle, a lone chaplain, the purple vestment about his neck in stark contrast to the brown and tan camouflage uniform, knelt before a motionless figure, administering last rites. This figure belonged to an other group, one in which those too badly wounded to help were put to wait until those who could be helped were, or until they died.