Major Mix-up
By: AliasCWN
Chapter 8
"Sergeant Troy?"
"Yeah, that's me." Troy responded. "What is it?"
"Captain Kaufman wants to see you right away,"
It had been roughly three hours since their arrival on the base and Troy, Pettigrew, and Hitchcock had eaten, showered, and found their assigned bunks. They had taken Moffitt a meal and the other sergeant was still hard at work translating the pile of papers they had taken from the Germans. The three of them had just returned to their room to try to get some rest. The knock on the door changed their plans.
"Want us to go along Sarge?" Hitch asked from his seat on his borrowed bunk.
"No sense all of us losing sleep. You two stay here, I'll send for you if I need you."
Captain Kaufman was pacing in front of his office door when Troy arrived. "There you are Sergeant. We have a bit of a problem."
"Only one?" Troy asked with a hint of a smile. "Maybe Moffitt hasn't gotten to the others yet."
The officer looked surprised at Troy's response until he saw the grin the sergeant was trying to hold back. "I suppose you're right." He sighed heavily. "But Sergeant Moffitt seems to think that your unit can handle this one alone."
Troy looked past the captain toward the office door. "He does, does he? Maybe you'd better tell me more about this problem."
"Come inside Sergeant Troy, Sergeant Moffitt can answer your questions better than I can." Captain Kaufman turned and led the way into his office.
Moffitt was still seated at the desk with stacks of papers all around him. Two other soldiers were working on translating other papers at another desk.
"Where are Tully and Hitch?" Moffitt asked when he looked up and saw that Troy was alone.
"Trying to get some rest." Troy answered. "The captain tells me you're volunteering again."
The British sergeant smiled apologetically. "That's right." He nodded. "I found the plans to attack this base."
"And you want us to try and stop it?"
"Exactly Troy, but there isn't much time."
"I know." Troy nodded. "The assault starts tomorrow morning." He waited for Moffitt or the captain to explain what they expected his unit to do to stop a full-on assault.
"There is a group of tanks and halftracks headed for this base as we speak." Moffitt began. "They are supposed to arrive at a wadi near here and camp overnight. They will launch their attack early tomorrow morning."
"Do we know which wadi they plan to use?"
Moffitt rose from behind the desk and walked over to a map on the wall. He stabbed a finger at a spot near the base. "Approximately here. There can't be that many large enough to hide a force the size of the one headed here. I'm certain that we can determine the correct one once we go out and look at them."
Troy moved closer to look at the map. "Why not send some mortar teams out to deal with them?"
"They'd see us coming." Captain Kaufman explained. "That whole area is pretty open except for those wadis."
Troy chewed his lip. "How are we supposed to stop them? If you can't slip a mortar team in there without being seen then they'd be able to see us too."
"Sergeant Moffitt seems to think that you will figure it out." The captain sounded uncertain. "He has faith in you."
"Are we sure they'll be there?"
"Not one hundred percent." Moffitt admitted. "But if they haven't canceled the operation I think it's highly likely that they will go ahead with this part. If the plan is to have any success they will need that armor. And there are very few places within striking distance that they can hide it."
"But we know about them."
"That's true Sergeant, but the Germans may not know that we have enough translators to get through all of the papers." The captain explained. "They may still think they can surprise us with some of their plans. Headquarters has been expecting something to happen. That's why they sent your team to try to get the plans. Only they expected the main attack to be somewhere else. Most of our armor has been sent to the areas they thought were most at risk. We can't handle a force the size of the one Jerry is sending our way. We don't have the men or the equipment for an attack like that. We'd try of course, but I don't know if we could hold out until help could arrive."
"So you want us to blow up those tanks and halftracks before they reach the base?"
"Yes." Captain Kaufman replied simply. "Can you do it?"
"All we can do is try Captain. I'd better go wake my men."
"I'll send someone to do that." The captain offered. "I'll let you and Sergeant Moffitt here to come up with a plan." He left the office to find someone to go wake Hitch and Tully.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to volunteer for anything in the Army?" Troy asked without taking his eyes off of the map.
"I couldn't figure out how to get those tanks." Moffitt smiled tiredly. "But I have complete faith in you; you'll come up with something."
"They'll see us coming before we get anywhere close."
"It will be dark."
"We can't drive a jeep across a flat desert without being spotted, not even in the moonlight." Troy argued. "Or do you have that much faith in Hitch and Tully too?"
Moffitt smiled again. "If anyone could do it, they could." He shook his head. "But no, I can't expect that of them."
"We could walk in but we still run the risk of being seen and then we'd be on foot. It's too far to walk in and too exposed to drive." Troy spoke aloud.
"Would it be possible to plant our charges before they got there? Perhaps mine the road?" Moffitt abandoned the papers he was translating to stand next to Troy and look at the map.
Troy shook his head, "They'll avoid the road if they don't want to be spotted. Besides, we'd only get one or two before the others scattered; that wouldn't be much help."
"Mine the wadi?"
"They'd stop gong in after the first one hit a mine."
"Wired charges?"
Troy paused to look over at Moffitt. "They'd have to be buried deep so that the tanks didn't expose the wires."
Moffitt nodded. "We could do that."
"That still leaves us with the problem of how to set them off."
"Timers perhaps?"
"That would only alert them if we picked the wrong wadi. No, we need to make sure we have the right place before we make any noise. We're only going to get one shot at this."
Moffitt sighed tiredly. "I'm sorry old man; I thought we were the Captain's best chance of getting the job done."
"We are." Troy admitted. "This is our ball of wax, it's what we do. None of the usual methods will work, not with what we have to work with."
Tully and Hitch walked in while they were still trying to come up with a solution. The privates listened and watched as the sergeants threw ideas back and forth.
Finally Troy threw his hands up in frustration. "Wired charges are still the best way to go but we need some way to set them off after we visually confirm the targets."
"Maybe we could build us a blind, like a duck blind. We could hide close by until we set off the charges and run in the confusion." Tully suggested.
"No." Troy argued. "We'd be on foot and the Germans would cut us down before we could reach the jeeps. There's nowhere to hide the jeeps close by."
"What if only one of us hid in the blind?" Tully asked. "I could set off the charges and the rest of you could come running in the jeeps to pick me up."
"You'd still be exposed and they'd target you before we could reach you."
"If I stayed in the blind they would have to find me first. After dark with all that confusion." Tully shrugged. "You might have time to get to me before they did."
"Maybe they wouldn't shoot to kill." Hitch suggested. "Maybe they'd try to catch the guy to find out how much we know."
"They might try to capture him." Troy agreed. "But if it looked like he was going to get away, they'd shoot to kill."
"Troy's correct." Moffitt added. "They might try to capture him but they would kill him before they would allow him to escape."
"What if they thought he wasn't going to escape?"
"Say that again." Troy ordered.
"I said, what if they thought he wasn't going to escape. Instead of picking him up in jeeps, what if we picked him up in patrol cars?"
Moffitt looked at Troy hopefully. "If they thought that the patrol cars were going to capture him they might hold their fire."
"It's risky Moffitt."
"What other choices do we have?"
"They know we have the plans. They'll suspect that we know about that wadi."
Moffitt shook his head. "The wadi isn't specifically mentioned in the report. I figured that out on my own from several references to the armor. The area around it is exposed. I'm certain they will have scouts out to check the area before they move into the wadi. Any blind would have to be well hidden."
"How well?"
Moffitt paused to think. His eyes fell on some supplies stacked along the wall of the building outside of the office window. He was smiling when he turned to answer Troy. "I think I have an idea that will work. We need an empty crate, one with a lid."
Hitch and Tully were sent to acquire an empty crate from supply. Troy and Moffitt continued to plan their next move.
"Okay." Troy nodded. "If we go out there now we can get there before the armor. We should have plenty of time to plant the charges. I told Hitch and Tully to get plenty of explosives and wire along with a detonator for multiple charges."
"The man who stays will have to be in place well before dark." Moffitt warned. "The Germans could send someone ahead in the daylight to make sure that the wadi is clear."
"Okay, so we wire it and leave someone behind to set off the charges. I don't want to wait for the detonations to go after him; we'll be too far away. I think we should set a time and have the patrol cars begin a perimeter sweep in plain sight. It might distract the Germans while they figure out where the patrol came from.
"I would suggest sometime between 0100 hours and 0300 hours. If our luck holds the Germans will be in place and perhaps even trying to get some rest before morning."
Troy nodded. "That sounds about right."
"Are we going to be in German uniform?"
"No." Troy shook his head. "It's going to be too dark to distinguish uniforms until too late. I don't want to risk getting caught out of uniform."
"I hardly think it will matter." Moffitt answered. "If we get caught they will shoot us no matter what we are wearing."
"Then we won't get caught." Troy grinned.