On the way to Piotrkow we tried to contact anyone still left in the 5th but only got a few responses. We picked up plain language Polish from their 10th Tank Division saying they had finally knocked out the last of the American armor but that they only had five tanks left. We also picked up transmissions trying to raise the Polish Cav we had wiped out in Lask so we knew we were on borrowed time.
The map said the HQ was on the northern side of the town and the supply dump on the southern edge. We went into town with your turrets turned around to face the back and the Russian trucks in front making it look like our tanks were captured by the Russians to fool the HQ troops.
The ruse worked and the HQ troops were totally surprised when our guys poured out of the trucks, with the Bradley and our two tanks knocking out three APC’s that were part of the HQ group.
The Cav went to secure the supply dump while we searched the area till we found us a dead Colonel General and his staff and a lot of papers and maps, which we took. But during the search a Russian who was hiding shot the major. He died a few minutes later, promoting me to major from captain and giving me command so that the Cav would continue to follow our lead.
Once we got to the supply dump we found it was even bigger than the last one.
The Cav had grabbed three more 5000 liter fuel trucks and one ten thousand liter truck as well as five more Russian trucks. In addition there were all kinds of supplies including repair tools and other things we needed, including more rounds for the cannon we were hauling.
They had captured a Soviet BMP-C intact as well as found two captured Hummers and an M88A1 with German markings that they must have captured during the last offensive into Poland that had clearly seen better days. We even found 40 assorted 120mm rounds for our main gun and another twenty rounds for our captured howitzer.
While searching the dump we found a real prize as well – four 200 liter containers of av-gas! I made sure we grabbed that for sure - surely we could trade someone that av-gas for other things.
We figured we had more than enough gas and diesel to keep us going for a very long time. There was more gas and diesel than we could take – it was a big dump. We gassed up the captured vehicles and topped off ours and brought them along. If only the 5th could have captured this dump who knows what we could have done!
We left the town with the dump in flames, ammo exploding and a lot of supplies going up, with the fire from the dump spreading into the town itself. We went as fast as we could because no one was going to miss that pyre.
Those two Russian divisions weren’t going to have any gas left to chase us and not much ammo to shoot at us if we did. Later on we wished there had been more trucks to carry gas and diesel with us but we were damn lucky we got what we did.
The vehicles that ran on alcohol needed to be changed out to run on gas and diesel and we needed rest as well. We looked at our captured maps and saw that there weren’t any Russians to the south of us so we headed for a town called Kamiensk. We barely made it into the town as one of the LAV-25’s quit just as we got there and two others stalled out moving them off the road.
As the mechanics got to work we finally started to see who we had with us and what our next moves would be.
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