The fourth day we were there an alarm rang out as a small column of Soviet vehicles was spotted heading for town from the north. We had our vehicles well hidden and let them come all the way into town, three trucks and one UAZ-469.
We waited till they stopped their engines and then hit them and hit them hard, killing all 25 men in the patrol. We found orders on them indicating they were from the 129th Motorized Rifle Division based in Olesno with orders to capture or kill any 5th Division soldiers they found. That was way too close for comfort.
We sent a squad north to scout the town out and then returned saying they had close to a 100 men there, but no armored vehicles. We put together a strike force of three LAV-75 tanks, three LAV-25 and four HMMWV, along with the trucks and jeep the Russians had just provided us, with a total of 60 men and headed out to attack the Russians.
We had taken a bunch of uniforms in the supplies we grabbed, so we split into two waves, one being 25 guys dressed in Soviet uniforms, the other being the tanks and APC’s. Their security sucked and our guys were never even fired on until they pulled up and opened fire on the Soviet guard positions, knocking out or capturing all three heavy machine gun posts right off the bat. Our tanks and APC’s charged in afterward to finish the fight, which was pretty quick when a bunch of civilians joined in the fun on our side.
We found papers in their HQ which gave their dispositions and found out they had garrisons in five other towns with Kluczbork being the next closest. It also said to watch out for some group named Wojsko Ludowa and for the Wojsko Slaskie, i.e. the Silesian Army. That was good news to hear we may have some allies. We also found three guys from the 4-12, all in bad shape, that they were holding prisoner.
We were lucky and only had four wounded. The villagers, who were clearly happy to see us, were all too glad to tell us all about the Russians, who had been forcing them to make methanol and ethanol for their vehicles. We found a trailer tanker that had 3000 liters of methanol in it that we used to gas up the Russian trucks and jeep. I set up lookout posts on the roads to Kluczbork and Opole.
Our scouts reported in after a half hour that a column of six trucks and two jeeps were coming from the direction of Kluczbork. I radioed for our two M1’s to come join us and got our guys ready. When the Russians hit our kill zone we hit them hard, lacing the trucks with machine gun fire.
We had ten guys from Olesno along with us who wanted a crack at the Soviets as well. It didn’t last long. We bagged another 70 Russians (including the garrison commander) and took ten guys prisoner who informed us (after some not too gentle persuasion) that they had been responding to a radio call for help from Olesno and that an OMG was coming as well from Opole.
Our tanks arrived along with another eighty men so I felt we could handle whatever they sent. We moved south and dug in to the woods south of Olesno and camouflaged our tank firing positions. Piotr and Narsimha reported in, six BMP’s, two T-80 tanks, two SAU-122 SPG, ten trucks, four jeeps with the tanks in the lead. The M1’s were going to take the tanks and the SPG, the LAV-75’s the BMP’s and the 25’s the trucks.
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