Red Army

The motorized rifle officer did not respond. Bezarin wondered if he had even taken a dismount radio with him.

As his tank nosed out into the open near the deck of the bridge Bezarin could see the vivid traces of action back in the center of the town. The guardians of the bridge were giving Lasky a tough time of it. But they had left the bridge itself virtually undefended. A few British military policemen fired their small arms at the tank, forcing Bezarin down behind the shield of his hatch cover. But his machine gun soon drove them to ground. He hoped there would not be too many more of them. He was nearly out of machine-gun ammunition, and he had no main-gun rounds to waste. As the next tanks in column came up behind him Bezarin ordered his driver forward. They had approached the bridge at an awkward angle, and it proved difficult to maneuver up onto the deck of the bridge. To his rear, the next tank worked its pivots.

It was possible, he realized, that the British were set to blow the bridge, that they were only holding off until Soviet vehicles filled its span before they dropped everything into the river. But he could not wait for Lasky's dismounted troops to work their way up to check for demolitions.

Success could be a matter of a few minutes, of seconds. At the same time, Bezarin's overwhelming emotion was not fear, but a peculiar sort of joy, of fervor. He had reached the river. If he had to go, this was as fine a moment as he could imagine. But he did not really believe that he was going to die. He felt as confident as he had ever felt in his life. His tank snorted and began to accelerate.

The bridge had cleared of traffic during the assault. Bezarin rolled across a span that lay empty save for a single broken-down British personnel carrier. He rode high in the turret again, ready with the last few rounds in his machine gun. He sensed that he had just become a part of history, and it filled him with a thrilling bigness. He felt as though he could accomplish anything in the world. Below him, the dark, murky waters seemed almost alive, and resentful. The river caught fractured patterns of light from the fires back in the town. But there was no beauty to it. It reminded Bezarin of a sewer.

He looked to the rear. His second tank followed him, and a third was 271

Ralph Peters

steering around the obstructions to come up on the bridge. Suddenly, small-arms fire broke out from the shadowy clutter of buildings on the far shore, and random shots pinged off the glacis of Bezarin's tank. He dropped back inside the turret. The tank's infrared searchlight revealed a few probable vehicles well up on the far bank, arranged to exploit the intermittent fields of fire allowed by the antique cram of the village. But they didn't look like—didn't feel like—tanks. And no main guns fired at him. Bezarin ordered his gunner to hold his fire. They were too low on main-gun rounds to waste a single shot, and they would need to fight their way into Bad Oeynhausen. Bezarin decided to take the risk of simply racing through the funnel of the built-up area. He got on the radio and ordered his other tanks to follow him, but to hold their fire unless it proved necessary to suppress local targets.

He tried again to call Lasky. But there was nothing on the airwaves except intense static and faint ghosts of other men's voices. He wanted to direct Lasky to remain and hold the bridge at all costs. But, unable to contact him, he could only hope that Lasky would grasp the dictates of the situation. Bezarin did not intend to accept any further delay. He would take his remaining tanks on to Bad Oeynhausen. The motorized riflemen, the artillery, everyone else could remain at Rinteln. Nothing, not even unit integrity, was more important than time.

Bezarin's tank rolled off the bridge. Roaring up the canyon of shops and houses, he paid out a few more rounds of machine-gun fire, hoping to discourage any hidden antitank grenadiers. A signature in the path of the infrared searchlight baffled him for a moment. Then he realized that the crossing site was well-protected, indeed, but against the wrong threat.

The path of Bezarin's tanks led through the middle of a NATO air-defense missile unit. The enemy had anticipated air assaults or air attacks on the Rinteln crossing. But they had not expected Soviet armor to penetrate so deeply so fast.

Bezarin managed to contact his self-propelled battery, which lay on the other side of the river now, deployed against an orchard. He ordered the battery commander to wait five minutes for the tanks to transit the area, then to open fire on the far side of the river. He also directed the artilleryman to use his long-range radio set to contact any higher station he could raise, reporting the situation at Rinteln and that Bezarin was leading his remaining tanks directly on Bad Oeynhausen. Finally, the battery commander was to track down Lasky and order him to remain and hold the bridge, literally to the last man.