Trial By Fire (54 page)

With his plans set and dispositions completed, Guajardo’s role in the upcoming battle would be simple. He had only two decisions to make, and two orders to issue. The first involved where and when to commit the Nicaraguan tanks into battle. Once he knew where the main American effort was, he would make that decision and issue the appropriate code word to launch that counterattack. The second decision would be when to break off the battle. That decision would be made when, in Guajardo’s opinion, his forces had done all they could do and further sacrifice would be pointless. When that point was reached, he would have the code word transmitted that would allow his subordinate commanders to break contact with the Americans. Withdrawing to new positions south and west of Monterrey, they would regroup and wait as the initiative moved back into the hands of the politicians and diplomats.

12 kilometers southwest of vallecillo, mexico 1840 hours, 11 September

With nothing to do before the lead units of the division crossed their lines of departure, and too keyed up to sleep, Big Al and Dixon sat in the G3

Plans van in the division main CP and rehashed how they saw the battle developing the next morning. Of the three options available to the division, Dixon still favored punching through the Mamulique Pass with the main effort. It had, he pointed out, the advantage of being the least likely choice while being the most direct into Monterrey. Eventually, since the hills on both sides of the pass needed to be cleared anyway, an assault on the pass would be necessary. The division, Dixon claimed, had more than enough direct and indirect firepower to suppress the defenders in the pass while dismounted infantry were airlifted to the flanks and rear of the defenders to isolate them. Once in control of the high ground, the dismounted infantry would be free to rout out those defenders still wanting to resist.

It was not that Dixon lacked imagination or was, by nature, bloody minded. It was important, he pointed out to Big Al, and anyone who would listen, to demonstrate early in this war the effectiveness of American firepower, the damage it could inflict, and the American resolve to use it. In a set-piece battle, such as Dixon was advocating, all the weight of the division could be brought to bear on a single point. The slaughter of the defenders, which would be great, could not be ignored. Besides, by taking the best-defended and most difficult position, the division would be making it clear to the leadership of the Mexican Army, in a less than subtle manner, that no position, regardless of how well defended, could be held. The technique of attacking into the teeth of apparent strength was often used by the Opposing Force Brigade at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin in order to shake the confidence of units training there.

Dixon, having been on the receiving end of one of those attacks, understood the psychological value of such an action.

Big Al, however, was a maneuver man, a soldier who preferred to use the tracks of his tanks rather than their guns to achieve victory. The end run south of the Sierra Picachos, where the ground was more open and therefore more conducive to maneuver by mechanized forces, appealed to him. The Mexican defenders, notoriously weak in mechanized forces and totally lacking modern antiarmor weapons, would be quickly overwhelmed by a mounted attack. Besides, Big Al’s preference just happened to coincide with the general order from the Department of the Army that major confrontations that would result in high casualties and protracted combat be avoided, when possible. That order, coupled with a restriction on both Air Force and Army aviation that limited it to no more than fifty kilometers from the forward edge of friendly forces, bothered Dixon. It was as if,.Dixon quipped, they were being ordered to kill the Mexicans only a little. Though Big Al agreed that it was ludicrous to establish such limitations now that they were engaged in a shooting war, he, as the commander, had no choice but to comply.

With the time for debating and decision-making over, and the success or failure of the next day’s operations in the hands of the captains and lieutenants, Big Al and Dixon compared Zachary Taylor’s campaign of 1846 with their own. Their one lament was the amount of control people outside the theater of operations exerted on their current operations. Had Taylor been burdened with the communications that the current president had at his disposal, Dixon pointed out, the 16th Armored Division would be preparing to seize Kansas City, not Monterrey.

5 kilometers northeast of martinez, mexico

0050 hours, 12 September

The promise of action in ten minutes, after a sudden and unexpected road march, no longer thrilled Second Lieutenant Nancy Kozak. In part, this was due to the road march that had taken the 2nd of the 13th Infantry from the division reserve at Vallecillo to their current location behind the 3rd Brigade. Moving all night, the 2nd of the 13th had arrived in its new assembly areas just as the sun crested the horizon to the east. Rather than being thrown into the growing battle around Nuevo Repueblo, as the battalion commander had expected, the 2nd of the 13th had been placed in reserve again. The situation that had existed when the 2nd of the 13th began its move had completely changed. Instead of achieving a breakthrough, as the 3rd Brigade commander had expected to do when 2nd of the 13th was released to his command, he had encountered unexpected resistance on the part of the Mexicans which had changed the entire picture by the time 2nd of the 13th arrived in the 3rd Brigade’s area.

At an update held by Captain Wittworth after he returned from the battalion CP, Nancy Kozak found out that, rather than giving ground without a fight, the Mexicans facing the 3rd Brigade’s sweep south of the Sierra Picachos mountains had merely moved to other positions under cover of darkness. The lead elements of the 3rd Brigade’s attack, finding that those Mexican positions that had been occupied earlier were vacant, had assumed the Mexicans had withdrawn. Ordered to switch from conducting a deliberate attack to a headlong pursuit in an effort to catch the fleeing enemy, the two lead battalions of the 3rd Brigade had been in the process of changing formations, on the move, when they made contact with the actual Mexican fighting positions. The resulting combination of surprise, stiff enemy resistance, and the change of formations during a night battle resulted in confusion that stalled, then halted, the 3rd Brigade’s advance. Rather than continue thrashing about in the dark, and risk fratricide, the commander of the 3rd Brigade had ordered all units to break contact and assume hasty defensive positions. The attack, Wittworth told his platoon leaders, would begin again, after dawn, using only those elements that were currently in contact. Until such times as the situation was fully developed, the 2nd of the 13th would remain, as it had been since the beginning of the invasion of Mexico, in reserve.

For Kozak, this was not all bad. The reason she accepted the role of being in reserve, again, was a feeling that things in her platoon were not right. Despite the fact that she could not quite put her finger on exactly what those things were, she did not feel comfortable with the way her people had been acting the past few days. Though she was mentally ready for combat, she wasn’t sure that her platoon in general, and her platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Rivera, were ready. Since entering Mexico, the attitudes of both had changed, and she wasn’t sure if the two changes were related.

When she had mentioned her observation to Staff Sergeant Maupin the day before, he had admitted, in an unusually candid conversation, that he hoped that they would be allowed to do something worthwhile, which, to Maupin, translated to being committed to combat. He went on to explain that the prospect of getting mauled or killed didn’t thrill him or anyone in his squad. While everyone in his squad wanted to go back north, meaning back to the United States, they wanted to do it under their own power. It was just that the idea of going through the entire operation with all the discomforts, fears, and stress that go with an active campaign in the field, not to mention family separation, without having an opportunity to shoot someone, was, in his words, “shitty.”

That her men felt that way was a revelation to young Lieutenant Kozak.

That she felt the same way was a shock. She kept telling herself that this was not, after all, a video game. That the next time she put the sights of her Bradley onto a target, it would be a live target, manned by real people. Still, the idea of going into battle, and the thought that she was finally going to be given an opportunity to prove to herself and everyone else that she had “the right stuff,” fascinated her like nothing else ever had. That real people would have to die in order to satisfy this urge seemed unimportant, a remote consideration at best.

As difficult as this was to deal with, Rivera’s strange conduct was more difficult. Though Captain Wittworth had discussed the possibility that some of the soldiers of Hispanic origin might be reluctant to engage in combat, Kozak had never imagined that her platoon sergeant, the cornerstone of the platoon, would have second thoughts. That he did was becoming more apparent every day. Instead of the dynamic, hard-driving
NCO
he had been back at Fort Hood, Rivera had, since the border incident on September 7, kept to himself. Though he performed his assigned duties, he did so in an impersonal and mechanical manner, almost by rote. Even the soldiers, used to being jumped on by Rivera for the smallest infraction, began to mumble, loud enough that Kozak could hear, that Rivera had gone off the deep end.

Though something needed to be done, and done soon, Kozak didn’t quite know how to approach the matter. On the single occasion when she tried mentioning that she had noticed a change in his attitude, he had all but snapped at her, asking her to enumerate exactly what he was doing wrong. When she responded that he wasn’t doing anything really wrong, Rivera had surprised her by telling her that if she wasn’t happy with him, then she should relieve him and find someone who suited her. Frustrated by the direct approach, Kozak had mentioned the conversation and her concerns to the company first sergeant. He hadn’t proved to be much help. With a simple shrug, the first sergeant told Kozak not to worry.

Everyone, he said, got a little funny in a war. The first sergeant assured her that, when the shooting started, the old Sergeant Rivera would pop out, as if by magic, and everything would be back on track. Though the first sergeant’s words did little to allay her concerns, she dropped the subject. Maybe, she thought, he was right. He was, after all, a first sergeant and a combat veteran. Surely he, if anyone, knew what he was talking about.

Looking at her watch, then at those vehicles that she could see, Kozak decided there was little more to be done. All was, as far as she could tell, ready. Bringing her hands up to her face, she carefully rubbed the sides of her nose with her index fingers. Damn, she thought, as a flash of pain ran through her body. When will this damned nose stop hurting?

While Second Lieutenant Nancy Kozak made every effort to sort out the problems within her platoon, her peers in the two lead battalions of the 3rd Brigade had more immediate concerns to deal with. After shifting through all information available concerning the location of Mexican positions, including reports based on a hasty recon by division air cavalry scouts, the commander of the 3rd Brigade ordered the lead battalions to conduct a movement to contact commencing at 0600 hours. It was his intent, stated in a verbal order issued to his battalion commanders at 0400

hours, to find and fix the enemy. Once the brigade and battalion commanders had a firm grasp of where the enemy main positions were, they would pile on with everything he could get his hands on. Without realizing it, the commander of the 3rd Brigade had lost sight of the division commander’s concept, moving away from an operation based on maneuver and gravitating toward one based on the direct approach and use of overwhelming firepower. It was an approach to war that was more familiar to American soldiers and resembled Dixon’s original approach.

Though all this was, to the brigade and battalion commanders, important, it didn’t matter what approach they used if the young captains and lieutenants in command of tank and mechanized platoons couldn’t get their people motivated and moving. Even a professional soldier gets tired.

No amount of battle drill, no amount of physical training, no amount of benefits, real or imagined, could change the fact that a human body and mind can only go so long without sleep, real sleep, before it up and quits.

The soldiers of the 3rd Brigade were fast approaching that point.

On the previous day, in order to deceive the Mexicans, the brigade had been shifted to an assembly area twenty kilometers east of Nuevo Re pueblo. Only after darkness on the night of 11 September had the brigade been moved to its actual attack positions. That movement had been orchestrated in such a manner that, just as the last unit was closing on the attack position, the lead elements of the brigade were crossing the line of departure and going into the attack. Timed to commence at 2200 hours, or ten p.m., the attack had appeared to go well at first. Initial contact, made at 2215 hours, had been light and along the line where the brigade had expected to find the enemy. When, by 2235 hours, contact had been broken and initial reports were stating that the lead units were overrunning many abandoned positions, the brigade commander had ordered the lead units to shift from a deliberate, attack into a pursuit.

It was at this point, while the lead battalions were changing from being dispersed for an attack into the tighter formations used in a pursuit, that contact with the main Mexican positions, positions that had not been identified by earlier reconnaissance, had been made. As these were initially believed to be delaying positions, used to cover the withdrawal of the main body of troops, preparation for the pursuit had continued. It was not until sometime after 2300 hours, probably 2320, that the truth had become known. By then, companies lined up in columns of platoons, with artillery units limbered up and closed up on top of them, had been decisively engaged in close combat.