Captain Bell and his handful of troops of Alpha Company, 3-36 Infantry, had positioned themselves inside the village of SCHWABENROD. After the initial clashes with the Soviet VDV it had been relatively quiet in their immediate area. They had heard the sounds of heavy fighting from the south, and they knew REIBERTENROD had caught hell.
Bell had grown a bit impatient when one of the men signaled he had spotted movement at eleven o'clock, and sure enough moving out of a building only about 200 meters away were half a dozen Soviet paratroopers...
A powerfull lust for blood boiled up in him. Quickly, he called out the targets to the troops nearby and opened fire himself. The Soviets were quick to return the fire but their lack of cover proved their undoing - one after one their weapons fell silent. Bell reloaded, the smell of gunpowder was strong. He remembered something he once read an Israeli saying:
"Firing a weapon is a great joy..."
Boy, he thought, it had never been truer..., but what now - had they been scouts for a larger body of enemy troops? What waited beyond those German houses...