Fox On The Rhine

by Douglas Niles

  But now, looking at Stauffenberg, he understood the painting at last. He was not surprised at Stauffenberg’s next words.

  “No. My position is somewhat different from that of the rest of you. I have one more role to play in this drama; you--as many as can survive--have another saga ahead of you.”

  They understood as well, and slowly, silently, they rose to leave, one by one, until they came to Lieutenant Haeften. “I’m afraid I must stay as well,” he said.

  Normandy, France, South of St-Lo-Periers Road, 1627 hours GMT

  The bleak landscape looked like hell on earth.

  Carl-Heinz squeezed another drop of oil onto the rotor of his periscope sight, which was in danger of fouling from the grit and debris spattered about during the bombing. Meanwhile, the lieutenant had ascertained that their panzer was alone for at least two hundred meters to either side. The three other tanks that had remained of their original company were gone, the position battered so badly that they had been able to find the wreckage of only one of them. The nearby company of panzer-grenadiers, infantrymen who worked in close concert with the German tanks, had also apparently been annihilated--even their slit trenches were gone, indistinguishable amid the barren moonscape of the cratered ground.

  The lieutenant had found them a place of some shelter between two massive mounds of earth thrown up by the bombs. The crew spent a few minutes covering the tank with dirt and tree limbs, a hasty attempt at camouflage that did a remarkable job of blending the large machine into the landscape. After these minimal preparations they had settled down to wait, knowing that it wouldn’t be for long.

  Pfeiffer and Peltz were looking out from behind a low mound of earth, seeking signs of enemy activity, and now they came sliding down the dirt pile and hastened back to the tank.

  “Time now for the really big guns to try and kill us,” Ulrich said, with a sad shake of his head.

  The whistling shells and subsequent explosions of the artillery barrage quickly drove Carl-Heinz and his crewmates into the shelter of the Panther. Hatches closed, teeth clenched, knuckles white around nearby handholds, the German tankers sat tight to wait out this next onslaught on their machine, their sanity, and their lives.

  Ulrich was sure everyone was about to die, but then he glanced over at Carl-Heinz--the man was humming! How could any man remain as cheerful and self-possessed as Carl-Heinz under such terrible conditions? On the other hand, he was glad of Carl-Heinz’s comforting presence. Lieutenant Schroeder might command the tank, but Carl-Heinz was the center of the crew, the stalwart rock from which everyone else drew comfort and protection.

  For some reason, the tank acted like a pet dog under Carl-Heinz’s hands. It did everything but sit up and beg. And Carl-Heinz was constantly tinkering with it, repairing it, tweaking it, modifying it. By now, Ulrich thought, it wasn’t a panzer any more, it was a strange new beast of Carl-Heinz’s own making. Carl-Heinz was simply the most capable and intuitive mechanic he’d ever met, and the work was all around him, even in the horrific noise.

  Sometimes weeks had gone by without a single shot being fired. During that time Carl-Heinz was always busy. Their tent had a solar water collector for fresh water all the time. A carefully planned moat swept rain water away without ever touching a sleeping bag or duffel. An elegant stone cooking platform gave them fresh hot food far better than the normal campfire, with a windmill-powered spit for roasting. The creative use of netting landscaped their bivouac. Everything he touched turned into a work of mechanical art.

  Not at all like Ulrich himself. Ulrich knew himself to be dour and pessimistic, but under the circumstances of this horrible war, he felt he was only realistic. Yet he envied Carl-Heinz in his fantasy, if that’s what it was. He suspected that it wasn’t fantasy, but rather that Carl-Heinz carved his own reality, his own elegantly crafted surroundings, wherever he went.

  If only his luck rubs off on the rest of us, he half prayed as he hunched tighter under the thunder of guns.

  578 Squadron Base, Wendling, Norfolk, England

  Staff Sgt. Frank “Digger” O’Dell

  Wendling, Norfolk, England

  July 26, 1944

  Mrs. Lucy O’Dell

  Roxboro, North Carolina

  Dear Mama,

  Up until now, it was looking like all I was going to do in the war was go to school. I thought once we’d reached our airbase, we’d be going into combat, but instead we went to all sorts of briefings over about a week and a half. Most of the briefings were about how to escape and evade capture in case we got shot down. We now have escape kits with about five thousand dollars in different kinds of money, which we were told is some of the best counterfeit that was ever made.

  Well, we’ve got our final crew together now, and our very own B-24. It doesn’t have a name yet, like a lot of the planes such as Memphis Belle, which you’ve heard of, but there’s a great big letter “P” in a circle on the tail with a bar over it, so we’re calling it “P-Bar” for now.

  Lieutenant Russ is our commander, and we did decide to call ourselves “Russ’s Ruffians.” Booker, our navigator is from California. The co-pilot is Lieutenant Webb. He’s only a second lieutenant and Russ is a first lieutenant. Harry Glass and I are the waist gunners; he’s got the left and I’ve got the right. Wagner is the flight engineer and upper turret gunner. There’s a guy named Fry (he’s from Georgia) in the nose turret, Kirby’s the tail gunner. The bombardier is another lieutenant named Sollars. He’s kind of fat. And there’s Tony Hutt, who’s the radio operator. He’s my best friend in the crew so far. Part of the reason is that I am the backup radio operator. Tony’s a short guy, real energetic, looks like he’s spoiling for a fight. He’s from North Philadelphia, which he says is a pretty tough neighborhood, so he’s not worried about some Germans after growing up in North Philly, as he calls it.

  Every night about five o’clock they post the battle order for the next day, if there’s going to be a mission, and last week on July 24 we were on it for the first time. We got up real early for the mission briefing. Our target was a place called St.-Lô (those funny hooks over the ‘o’ is how the French write it). That’s where the Americans were stuck.

  The St.-Lô raid was going to be a two thousand plane raid. In our particular airplane, we carried twenty-pound frag bombs, which are really twenty-pound hand grenades in huge clusters held together with wire rope and wooden slats. As the bomb falls out, it has a propeller that spins counterclockwise so it will spin off and unloose all of the baling material holding the clusters together. Then, these hundreds of twenty-pound frag bombs would go raining down. Each of the airplanes in our squadron had hundreds and hundreds of these. And those frag bombs would then go right into the holes in all the apple orchards down there and rout out the Germans. That was the mission.

  We went out to P-Bar in a jeep, opened the bomb hatch (the airplane doesn’t have a real door; we go in where the bombs come out) and started the pre-flight procedures. We’d done it in training often enough, but it felt quite a lot different to do it for real for the first time. We all tried to do it by the book. A lot of the crews that had been there for a long time and flown lots of missions used a lot of shortcuts, but this was our first time and we didn’t want to try any shortcuts, at least for now.

  The B-24 is very noisy inside. I wore headphones so I could hear what the pilot said and also to protect my ears from the racket. We lumbered down the runway and took off. Now, the B-24 flies about 270 miles per hour, and I stand there with the window open pointing a fifty-caliber flexible machine gun. The IP, or the Initial Point, which is where the bomb run starts, was actually in England, and we flew right on across the channel to St.-Lô and dropped the bombs.

  Well, I don’t know exactly where we were in the two thousand airplanes, but by the time we got there all we could see was smoke. So we synchronized on the smoke and dropped our bombs. We didn’t see any enemy fighters, so I didn’t have much to do. But I carried a couple of empty ammunition boxes,
wooden crates that held rounds for my gun, and I threw them out over the side hoping to hit some German over the head. I call them “Digger’s Personal Bombs.”

  The raid went pretty smoothly, and we made it back home and landed. I read in Stars and Stripes a day or so after the raid that the German soldiers were stumbling around in the apple orchards, dazed with blood running out of their eyes and ears and noses, due to all the concussions.

  But here’s the bad part. Later that day, after I got back from the raid, I was going to the PX and the group navigator was there and he had not flown the raid that day. He asked me if I had, and I told him yes.

  He replied, “Well, you know you plastered your own troops.” And of course I didn’t know that and there’s still nothing official, but the scuttlebutt is that General Bradley was really against the raid coming in from north to south because he was afraid the bombs would drop short, which is evidently what happened, according to the rumors. So they agreed the raid would come in from the east side, but somehow the battle order got changed and we came in from the north. I don’t know but I think this may be a true rumor.

  Well, Lieutenant Russ took us to the pub that night in celebration of our first mission. I ordered “arf and arf ’ and we had a big old time.

  Your son is now a combat veteran and got to fight some Germans. What with Hitler’s death and the breakout from Normandy on schedule, it doesn’t look like this thing is going to last that much longer. I don’t know if I’ll be home for Christmas, but not too long after that, it looks like.

  Love,

  Your Son

  Digger

  Normandy, France, South of St.-Lo-Periers Road, 1803 hours GMT

  For nearly half an hour the 105-and 155-mm guns of the American army had pounded the already blasted positions of the Panzer Lehr division survivors, a thorough, crushing, and violent barrage. Even so, after the massive aerial bombardment the cannon fire was almost anticlimactic--except that the Germans in the battered tank knew that the guns certainly presaged a ground offensive.

  Exploding shells pounded near and far, sometimes showering the panzer with debris, other times echoing dully in the distance. In the driver’s seat, Carl-Heinz felt a curious sense of calm, tempered by a growing impatience for the actual attack. It was not that he wanted to kill Americans, but at least they would be able to take some action against attacking troops instead of just sitting here wondering if they were about to take a direct hit.

  He thought of the careful job he had done inspecting the linchpins on the treads and was grateful that he had located and replaced several worn or bent rods. At the same time, he worried about dirt clogging the air intake and wondered if a razor-sharp fragment of steel might already have cut into the tracks or jammed one of the drive sprockets or road wheels. They could be sitting here fully disabled, and he wouldn’t know until it came time to start up the tank and try to move.

  Beside him, Ulrich sat glumly at his machine gun, while Fritzi and Peltz waited in the turret, ready to fire the main gun. The lieutenant tapped his fingers against his thigh, occasionally opening the hatch to stick his head out for a quick look around. As the barrage moved on, the officer’s inspections became more frequent, as they knew that the Ami--American--infantry would not be far behind.

  Finally the shelling ceased altogether, and Carl-Heinz pressed his eye to the periscope, seeking some sign of the attackers. He was startled by a thumping against the side of the tank, followed by an unmistakably German voice.

  “Panzermen? Hallo!”

  With a swivel of the scope, the driver saw a panzergrenadier standing beside the Panther. The soldier, a feldwebel, was dirty, though the Schmeisser submachine gun slung from his shoulder was immaculate. Carl-Heinz suspected that he was with the infantry unit that had given their tank company flank protection.

  Lieutenant Schroeder tossed open the turret hatch and looked down at the foot soldier.

  “We have one machine gun left, over there.” The sergeant gestured across the moonscape of the ground. “We’ve seen the Ami infantry on the way--just wanted you to know that we’ll watch your flank. And ask you to keep your eyes peeled for tanks.”

  ”Ja. And thanks.”

  The feldwebel had no sooner headed back to his own unit than the chatter of machine gun fire broke across the field. Carl-Heinz could see nothing moving through his periscope, so he settled down to wait, listening for the lieutenant’s command and keeping his hand near the starter button. The small arms fire grew to a momentarily furious rattle, then died away. There was a flicker of movement in the viewing scope as human figures crossed the horizon of a dirt mound and vanished into a depression about a thousand yards away.

  “Driver--start the engine. Loader--high explosive.” Lieutenant Schroeder’s voice barked the command through the intercom, and Carl-Heinz pressed the starter button, easing the motor into life as he heard Peltz jam a shell into the breech of the main gun. The turret whirred through a minor rotation, the long barrel depressing slightly.

  “Fire!”

  The gun spit a plume of smoke and bright fire, and almost immediately the distant mound of earth was torn by a violent explosion, a flash of flame in the midst of showering debris.

  “Reload, fire!” Twice more the tank sent lethal bursts into the flank of the advancing infantry. Though they could see none of the effects of the shots, Carl-Heinz was certain that the surviving Ami infantry would take a long time to come out of those holes.

  “Driver--reverse,” came the next order.

  Depressing the clutch sharply with his left foot, easing it out and then pressing downward again, Carl-Heinz started the tank backward. The Panther rolled smoothly out of the notch where it had found such scant shelter.

  “Driver--stop. Left turn--forward--schnell!” The commands came in staccato cadence, the veteran driver reacting smoothly to each instruction. In seconds the tank was rolling along, perpendicular to the line of the enemy’s advance.

  “Driver--right turn. Forward, slow...” Lieutenant Schroeder’s voice was hushed, the entire crew sharing the need for stealth. Through his scope Carl-Heinz tried to study the irregular ground, steering slightly to get around a deep bomb crater, bring the panzer forward until the tracks pressed against the ruins of an ancient hedgerow. The barrel stuck over the obstacle, and the driver pressed the clutch and pushed the gear lever into neutral. The engine idled smoothly as the crewmen scanned the ground before them.

  In a few seconds the whistling sounds of artillery fire made them unconsciously shrink into their seats, and the ground shook as the barrage pummeled to the right--the position from which the Panther had fired just moments earlier. As always, Carl-Heinz was impressed by the accuracy and timeliness of the American artillery support--the Panther would have been pounded hard if it had stayed in position after shooting.

  Before the shelling lifted, the driver saw another flash of movement in the distance, a spot marked by a flash of fire and the smoky residue of a big gun. He could barely make out the shape of a tracked vehicle and a squat turret distinguished by an unusually large gun.

  “U.S. tank destroyer forward, twelve hundred yards,” Fritzi remarked calmly, confirming Carl-Heinz’s suspicions.

  “Loader--AP. Gunner, train on target.”

  The Panther’s long gun depressed slightly to bear on the creeping American vehicle as Peltz lifted an “AP,” an armor-piercing round, into the breech. The tank destroyer crawled over the embankment of the Periers-St.-Lo road, and for a moment the armored vehicle was silhouetted above the landscape.

  “Fire!” Fritzi had anticipated the lieutenant’s command, and the gun spoke even as the order came over the intercom. The shot was true, the tank destroyer lurching to a halt as black smoke spilled out of the hull. In two seconds the entire vehicle vanished in a cloud of greasy flame, and Carl-Heinz couldn’t help but wince at the gruesome fate of the crew. A fiery death in a burning shell of steel--it was a reality that every tanker tried not to think about.


  “Jabo!”

  Carl-Heinz didn’t know who shouted the warning, but they all heard the scream of a diving single-engine aircraft. Reacting instinctively, backing up at high speed, the driver swiveled the tank around and drove across the rough ground, lurching through a crater, then cranking the wheel around to spin the tank through a desperate evasive maneuver.

  A bomb blasted somewhere behind them, the concussion driving the Panther forward with brutal force. They skidded to the side teetering on the edge of a deep crater, but Carl-Heinz gingerly drove them forward onto level ground. He careened through a turn as another bomb exploded off to the side and then couldn’t help ducking in his seat as a barrage of machine gun bullets rattled off the panzer’s thick armor.

  Ulrich sighed. “The next one will get us, I have a feeling.”

  Carl-Heinz ignored his comrade as he heard Schroeder’s voice in the intercom. “Any damage?”

  “She’s driving well, sir,” he replied, while Peltz, Fritzi, and Ulrich all confirmed that their own stations were still functional.

  “Driver, reverse... back to our original position,” ordered Schroeder.

  Shifting smoothly, Carl-Heinz guided the massive vehicle over the rough ground, soon parking them between the mounds of dirt that in fact provided very little cover. They all saw the new craters, though no one commented on the accuracy of the American artillery.

  Once more they heard the machine guns and knew that the panzergrenadiers were heavily engaged. For a long time they watched the flank, and once or twice Ulrich added the Panther’s hull machine gun to the engagement. They saw some foot soldiers drawing closer, and again the main gun dropped high explosive shells into the advancing troops.

  This time the panzer evaded by rolling to the right, again moving out just before the inevitable artillery barrage thundered down upon their firing position.