In New York: Summer Soldiers vs. "Soviets"

By John Tompkins

It is 5 in the morning on a warm Saturday. New York City is asleep. But the crenellated red brick armory of the 101st Cavalry Squadron on Staten Island is busy. Hundreds of men in Army greens and black combat boots load trucks and Jeeps with weapons, tools, radios, medical gear. At 6:35 a.m., a 48-vehicle column rolls out, past the sleeping homes of Clove Lake Park, across the Goethals Bridge and into New Jersey. In twelve hours the 101st will reach Fort Drum on New York's border with Canada to begin its annual two-week summer training as scouts for the 8,500-man 42nd Infantry Division, Army National Guard.

Somewhere along Route 80, civilian life drops away. Instead of bus drivers or cops, insurance men or factory workers, the men begin to feel like troopers in the 101st Cavalry, a proud and dashing outfit that in 1916 chased Pancho Villa across Mexico. The horses were replaced by tanks in 1942, but a certain amount of cavalry elan persists. Thoughts of home and work are replaced by simpler concerns --food, a cigarette, a breakdown ahead. Vocabularies slide easily into the four-letter Anglo-Saxon mode. At dusk, when the group rolls into Fort Drum, the barracks area is like a class reunion as men greet one another after a year apart.

Fort Drum is huge. You could lose Detroit inside its perimeter and still have room for Manhattan Island and then some. Its rolling hills resemble the Rhineland, and this year's exercise, appropriately enough, involves a breakthrough by "Soviet" forces. Early Sunday the influence of legendary Tanker George Patton is obvious. Major General Joseph A. Healey, 50 (general manager, public services, New York Telephone Co.), trim and tough in freshly pressed greens, tells unit commanders, "These few days are precious. Begin to get angry about your mission of killing 'Russians.' "

The 101st checks out its 18 tanks. They are "Iron Coffins," old M48 Pattons, recently modernized with 105-mm turret guns and twelve-cylinder diesels. Crashing through trees and brush, the 54-tonners seem invulnerable. Tankmen know better; but they think they can shoot faster and straighter than the "Russians." They have set up camp at a tank range, miles of scrub and shrubbery dotted with pop-up silhouette targets that look like Soviet tanks, trucks and armored cars. Staff Sergeant Donald Fogal, 36, tank commander (foreman in an auto parts plant), and his regular gunner, Sergeant Ron Pospisil, 31 (Xerox representative), have to run through the qualification course with a pickup driver, Corporal Victor Feliciano, 32 (nursing home worker), and loader, Corporal Terry Bell, 27 (prison teacher). They all work up a sweat piling the tank full of machine-gun ammunition and 105-mm shells that weigh 38 lbs. apiece.

"O.K.!" Fogal yells on the intercom. "Crank it up!" The diesel roars to life. They move out over the dusty range. Three T-62 tanks appear suddenly nearly a mile downrange. "Gunner! Heat! Tank!" Fogal screams. The words alert the crew, order a high-explosive antitank round to be loaded and specify the target.

"Identified!" says Pospisil, with the first tank in his gunsight. Fogal yells "Fire!" An orange flame bursts from the cannon. A thunderclap of sound. The tank rocks like a boat hitting a wave. The gunner's "On the way!" is drowned by the noise. "Target!" cries a voice from the control tower. A stench of burned powder chokes the crew as Bell loads another round. "Fire!" The breech slams back like a pile driver. Even with earplugs, the shuddering sound is unbelievable. "I flinch every time," says Bell. "Fire!" The control tower: "Target! Target! Good shooting." It is a perfect score: three tanks in 24 sec. at 1,150 meters.

Fogal's crew is debriefed by an Army evaluator. "Real good," he says. "You guys are ready for combat." General Edward C. Meyer, Army Chief of Staff, has helicoptered in to watch. As a reward for the tank's performance, Fogal is asked if he wants to meet the general. "Nope," says the sergeant.

At dawn there are dehydrated eggs, freeze-dried sausage, coffee, lemonade. Then a runner calls Fogal to a conference. A three-tank recon mission has been assigned. "Crank her up!" says Fogal, and they roll out of the woods onto a dirt road. He guides the lumbering tank carefully into strange territory. As the Patton dodges from one side of the road to the other, he guides its cannon constantly back and forth to cover the tree line. Rain begins to fall. The road turns to mud.

On the next mission, rolling across a field, the tank turns up a truck full of soldiers in specially tailored "Russian" uniforms. They are angry at being captured, and when a tankman climbs into their truck, he is roughly pushed off. In retaliation, his comrades tie the "Russians" up with their own belts. Inside Fogal's tank, a mess of C-ration cans, cartridge cases, girlie mags has accumulated. Also a dog-eared copy of The Third World War: August 1985 by British General Sir John Hackett. It tells how the Soviets launch an attack from Eastern Europe. Before peace is made, Birmingham, England, and Minsk are wiped out.

By now the tankmen have forgotten their homes. They no longer know what day it is. Boots are caked with mud, uniforms black with sweat, faces smeared with camouflage, bug repellent and dirt.

Eventually, the 42nd moves up to take positions on the "frontier." Across the border are five enemy armored divisions and four motorized rifle divisions. The 101st is assigned to feel out the enemy and report back. Over the next two days, Fogal's tank destroys six or seven tanks. The 42nd stops the "Russian" armored attack in five days of fighting. Later, Fogal and his crew learn that the enemy was supposed to break through -- but did not.

--By John Tompkins

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