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For each Russian soldier lost, five airmen went down. The Americans fell back once more. With satchel charges in hand, the airborne soldiers raced into the hangars and fortified bunkers. The A-10s, F-22s, F-35s, and F-16s burst into flames. Tremendous explosions filled the morning as countless numbers of America’s fighter aircraft died on the snowy ground at Spangdahlem. The vicious fight for control of the air base went on unabated. Hand-to-hand combat raged from building to building and from room to room.
In the middle of the desperate battle, a 100mm shell soared into the base’s massive ammunition dump. The explosion of thousands of missiles, rockets, and bombs was as powerful as that of a small nuclear device. It leveled everything in its path for two miles in all directions. A surging fireball rose thirty thousand feet into the air. Two-thirds of the base collapsed beneath its crushing shock wave. On both sides, hundreds died from the detonating armament’s all-consuming blow. The explosion could be heard seventy-five miles away.
An hour into the battle, it was clear to the American base commander that all was lost. He issued the only order he could. Everyone was to retreat to protect the six thousand women and children trapped in the housing area. Two gates to the south remained in American hands. They had to get the dependents out while there was still time.
The airmen fought with everything they had to defend their families. Car after car filled with terrified dependents rushed out of Spangdahlem. They raced down an icy, winding road toward the safety of the Army installation at Kaiserslautern, forty miles to the southeast. Children watched in horror as their fathers died trying to protect them. Thirty-one women and nineteen children were killed during the attack. More than two hundred were wounded. Four thousand fleeing women and children would evade capture. Two thousand more were trapped when the final routes to freedom were overrun by the parachutists.
Fifteen hundred American corpses lay in the stained snows at Spangdahlem. A handful of airmen had escaped. The rest of the base defenders found themselves prisoners of war, two hundred miles inside their own lines.
One-fourth of Spangdahlem’s fighters had been downed during the Russian air attack. Half had been destroyed by the paratroopers. The final one-quarter were presently involved in the air battle or were away supporting the intensifying combat at the front lines. Those still in the air would never return to Spangdahlem. Instead, they would fly across the Channel to land at Lakenheath.
With vengeance in their hearts and revenge in their souls, they’d carry on the struggle for Germany from England.
Spangdahlem was no more.
In their Humvees and trucks, a battalion from the recently arriving 82nd Airborne Division was rushing toward the air base. But with frantic Germans clogging every roadway, they’d be too late to save Spangdahlem. By the time they arrived, not a building would stand or an aircraft survive.
The shooting of the defeated base defenders would soon begin.
• • •
Forty yards away, a parachutist stepped from behind a broad tree. He hurled a hand grenade over the high fence. The grenade fell nine feet short of the large bunker. Rios fired upon the figure that had thrown the grenade. The machine gun’s .50-caliber shells waltzed across the Russian’s chest. They tore huge holes in his upper body. The mortally wounded Russian tumbled into the tangled branches.
“Get down!” Rios screamed.
The seven Americans clawed at the frozen ground. The hand grenade exploded. Sharp-edged metal flew in all directions. Inside their sandbagged worlds, the airmen could hear death whizzing by. Lethal pieces of the grenade smashed into the sandbags and burrowed for the cowering airmen. The layers of sand overwhelmed the deadly metal. Safe in their brown world, not a scratch found its way onto any of the airmen.
Four additional A-10s were ready to enter the battle. They screamed down the runway. The Warthogs rushed to meet the enemy in the open country three miles north of Ramstein.
The Russians on the eastern fence threw everything they had at the small group of defenders. They pressed their advantage. The widespread line of Americans struggled to hold on. There would be no further help for the airmen fighting at the distant fence. The base commander had no choice.
The general could do nothing further to protect the eastern edge of the base. He would hold his reserves and wait for the major assault soon to commence at the base’s main gates. And he’d pray that, somehow, the desperate defenders on the eastern perimeter wouldn’t fail.
• • •
“Let ’em have it!” Rios screamed.
He struggled to his knees and flailed away at the tree line once more. His machine gun’s deep tones were joined by the staccato sounds of the M-4s. They fought to hold on against the superior Russians. All up and down the sprawling eastern fence, the parachutists fired their automatic weapons. Their primary goal was the elimination of the main bunkers along the lengthy defensive line armed with the powerful machine guns. The Americans futilely attempted to match the enemy’s firepower.
Sixty Americans on the open ground, with a few sandbags to protect them, fought 140 proficient killers protected by the sheltering woods. Over the raucous songs of the guns, anguished screams could be heard all along the expanse as defenders and attackers alike succumbed to the withering fire.
Fifty yards to Rios’s right, Michaels took a bullet to the face. T
he bullet’s entry hole was no bigger than a dime. The exit hole in the back of his head was the size of the airman’s fist.
On Rios’s team there were now only six.
CHAPTER 31
January 29—9:05 a.m.
Military Airlift Command
Rhein-Main Air Base
Rhein-Main had been one of the last major assets returned to the Germans during the American phasedown. And it had been one of the first given back to the Americans as they slowly initiated the process of rebuilding their forces in Europe. The air base had been back in American hands for a little over eighteen months and was finally reaching full operational status.
At the immense transport air base, the Americans were struggling to hold on against the fiercely determined Russian onslaught. The Rhein-Main base commander had no attack aircraft he could call upon to protect his installation. But because his base was enclosed in a thick forest, he did have a tactical advantage. The forest forced the Russians to focus the bulk of their attack at a few central locations. The main thrust had come at a small rear gate hidden in a thick mantle of snow-covered green. Deep within the woods, the Americans clung to the rusting gate with every ounce of courage they could muster. For fifteen minutes, a handful of air police armed with LAWs and three heavy machine guns held the narrow gate against an attacking force of two hundred armored vehicles.
At the main gate, the Americans had succeeded for the moment in beating back a smaller attack.
With the trees to conceal them, the regimental commander sent the rest of his parachutists out on foot to probe at the fences for weak spots.
There were many.
On the southern and western fences, the Russians crushed token resistance. After blasting gaping holes in both, they exploited them to the fullest. Three hundred parachutists scurried through the southern fence and pressed on toward the flight line. One hundred broke through the western wire.
At the back gate, the air police crumpled. One hundred and eighty soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division had arrived on a commercial airliner fifteen minutes prior to the attack. Armed with only the M-4s they’d carried with them on the plane, they rushed to the rear gate.
