Prelude to Battle

MAY 6TH, 2009
BELOW THE MOLOTOV HEIGHTS

The action of the 6th was limited to prepatory fire. American fighters and bombers strafed the forbidding Russian fortifications along the Molotov Heights, spilling their deadly cargos of missiles, rockets and cluster bombs amidst the Rusian lines. General Slurry was overseeing the movement of artillery and siege guns towards the front, and soon all of the XXII Corps was stationed within about five miles of the primary Russian defenses.

General Slurry called his divisional commanders together for a conference on the early afternoon. General Ramsey's Regular division would launch the first phase of the attack, attacking Fort Belkin on the Army's left flank, thought to be guarded by a small detachment of Russians under Lieutenant Ovechkin; the hardest part would be marching through the jungle to get there. The main assault, for whatever reason, fell upon General Ale's division; they would attack the strongest part of the line, a headlong assault against the Molotov Heights. If Ramsey's attack succeeded, Strelnikoff's flank would be turned, and Ale's attack might not even be necessary, depending on the outcome. However, General Slurry had his work cut out for him, however much superiority in men and guns he had, and it would take sheer luck, skill, bravery, and a bit of mad dash to prevent any such assault from turning into a Fredericksburg or Morhange.

At a glance, the Russians had done a superb job of fortifying their main position. Colonel Strelnikoff had emplaced all of his available heavy weapons, heavy machine guns, anti-armor weapons, and artillery - a dozen light field guns and eight monster howitzers - in an elaborate series of entrenchments, bunkers, blockhoues and redoubts. There were interior lines which would allow Strelnikoff to maneuver men and guns where needed, to plug any breakthroughs by the American forces. And the side of the hill was pockmarked with Russian and Cuban troops stationed in rifle pits, pillboxes and machine gun nests, designed to make any advance up the hill sheer hell. All told, Strelnikoff had his brigade-strength Russian force, plus two Cuban brigades, a handful of Palacian loyalist troops - as worthless as they generally were, they could at least fire a rifle or stop an enemy bullet - and his artillerymen, engineers, and machine gunners, giving him a total of nearly 25,000 men. Even the volumnious shelling and bombing did frustratingly little to disrupt the Russian lines; and as Slurry's forces had only minimal armor and no tanks, his assault seemed likely to fail, or at least occur atrocious casualties.

Not only this, but the Russian left was not nearly as weak as the Americans were expecting. For Strelnikoff had dispatched his largest Cuban brigade under Colonel Linares to reinforce Ovechkin's small detachment at Belkin, along with several crack machine gun battalions. The fog of war had prevented this key intelligence from reaching Slurry, and thus General Ramsey, slogging through the jungle to reach a heavily fortified position, was in as much danger of defeat and carnage as Ale's forces opposite Molotov.

However, Colonel Strelnikoff made one fundamental error, a boneheaded military mistake which in and of itself was ample evidence of why he was merely a Lieutenant-Colonel. His primary line of infantry and machine guns had entrenched on the very crest of the hill, rather than the "military crest", thus preventing them from being able to depress their weapons onto the oncoming forces - provided, of course, that the Americans got that far. Still, it was an extraordinary risk, a boneheaded blunder of startling stupidity, the sort of thing a shavetail lieutenant or politically appointed bungler might make. But Strelnikoff had made it, and while General Slurry could not foresee this, it would prove perhaps the decisive factor in the battle ahead.

The stage was set for the largest battle in the Western Hemisphere since Roosevelt and Wood stormed San Juan Heights. Strelnikoff had gambled everything on this defensive line, while Slurry was hoping simply for the quickest end to the campaign possible.