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Tommy Cookers: Part I
By Specterx

Colonel Tyler gazed out of the second-floor window to the street below, which was nearly empty, with the very notable exception of two columns of Main Battle Tanks, one American and one Soviet. History would look back on this as one of the tensest moments in the turbulent history of the Cold War. Tyler, however, considered the whole thing rather boring. American tanks had stood toe to toe with enemy-they weren't really enemies were they-tanks before, and under much worse circumstances. The sign denoting the boundary of the American sector obscured most of his view of the Soviet column, and the activities of his own men were decidedly uninteresting. It was times like this that Tyler tended to daydream of times past, when he was a real fighting soldier, not a suit that drove a desk and spent his days fighting endless battles with stacks of paper. Ah, one was coming along now, how nice… Something to take his mind off the boredom…

Lieutenant Tyler observed the delivery of his new vehicle with the sort of disgust one might normally associate with a medical student dissecting his first cadaver. The M4 was a decidedly unattractive vehicle, but the physical appearance was the least of his concerns. Perhaps Tyler should have been pleased, since the M4A3E8-76 was one of the finest tanks America had (the M4's the British received were nicknamed "Tommy Cookers" for their tendency to explode spectacularly when hulled, which tells volumes about their quality), and was supposed to be able to survive shots from some of the more formidable German vehicles. The new 76-millimeter weapon was also a plus, and was said to be able to penetrate much thicker armor than its predecessors. However, such things had been said about other tanks, and one does not gain confidence in a vehicle by having one of that vehicle literally blown out from under him. They had never seen the Panther, and Tyler's miraculous survival was due only to the fact that he had been standing on the roof of his M4A3's turret. The explosion of the poorly stored ammunition blew him clear, and he landed in a shell-hole filled with water and lined with mud, cushioning the impact and allowing him to walk away with nothing more than a scratch. Unfortunately, Tyler's crew hadn't been so lucky. The replacement crew would be a group of raw recruits with little or no training in armored vehicles. Tyler knew the drill: Each man would get to fire the main gun three times, and the drivers would get two hours of on-the-spot training before the crew-Tyler included-would be fed into battle to fuel the ever-burning furnace of war.

Accompanying Tyler's dubious gift from the Army were eighty-five high school kids comprising the replacement personnel for Tyler's new company. More senior officers were unavailable, and the former company commander had been killed when his tank struck a mine. The unfortunate captain forgot to look for the piles of shredded cattle by the side of the road that typically denoted a minefield. The unit had marching orders for 1500 hours, and tank training had to be completed in the next hour if they were to be on the road in time for the assault. The ritual was completed in the required time limit and the newest company of the 27th Armored Division roared off towards what had been dubbed "the meat grinder." Despite the negative association, the name meant nothing, as the number of targets nicknamed "the meat grinder" and "bloody ridge" was more than anyone cared to count.

The target was a low, unassuming and seemingly unimportant ridge commanding a road that High Command evidently considered important. As with so many such targets, Tyler found himself wondering why the vaunted Allied Air Force hadn't already blown it to hell. Whenever he brought up the topic, which was often, the answer was always the same: "The Air Force cannot afford to waste ordnance/fuel/men on every German position we encounter!" Perhaps it was a legitimate excuse, but the tankers would have preferred even a single rocket-equipped aircraft. Such an aircraft could destroy at least one German tank, which would probably save three or four Shermans and their crews.

Tyler, as the company commander, assumed the lead position in the column of seventeen tanks. His unit was to be the tip of the sword, and would be making the frontal assault on the German positions. He was informed that aerial reconnaissance had determined that none of the really dangerous German tanks, namely the Mark V Panthers and Mark VI tigers, were at this particular position, and to expect light to moderate resistance from infantry armed with hand-held antitank weapons. There was a possibility that the formation would encounter scattered antitank guns and Panzer Mark IV's, but nothing that the attack force wouldn't be able to handle. Tyler's own company would be going in with two companies of mechanized infantry, and another company of 18 Shermans would be attacking from the west. He informed his company of the mission, then walked off to once again inspect his vehicle and pessimistically consider the two million things that could still go wrong. He had been in combat in North Africa long enough to grasp that, no matter how good a plan looked on paper, something always went wrong. Errors and mistakes were to be expected, but, in combat, such mistakes cost lives. Tyler was troubled by the fact that the reported German defenses at the target location were so light. It wasn't like them to put such weak defenses at a point obviously important to someone on the Allied side. His thoughts were soon interrupted by an obnoxiously loud sergeant driving by in a Jeep:

"Mount up! Let's go! Let's go! We pull out in two minutes!"

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