Fox On The Rhine

by Douglas Niles

  “What is the word from the south?” he asked Bücher, who had just been in contact with Manteuffel.

  “Patton is bogged down south of Bastogne” said the SS officer. “It does not look like he will get into the city, or even within artillery range of the key roads.”

  “Excellent.” Rommel paused to reflect, still studying the map. “Any threats from farther to the west?”

  “It seems the Americans are stretched very thin there,” the SS officer continued. “We have several volksgrenadier divisions holding that front, and they report very little offensive pressure.”

  “And we have room to fall back there,” the field marshal noted, thinking of the old men and youths making up the volksgrenadier, the “People’s Soldiers” who had recently been recruited from the Third Reich’s thin manpower reserves. Of course, many of these troops had fought for him at Normandy, and he knew they made staunch warriors--as, indeed, did all German men--but for now it would be enough for them to give ground slowly if pressed.

  “Closer to home?” wondered Rommel, following the serpentine line of the Meuse south of Dinant. He stabbed at the city of Givet, just south of the place where the river flowed from France. “American armor was reported here, this morning... correct?”

  “Yes, Herr Feldmarschall,” Bücher noted. “But there is no good road on this side of the river. And if they try to come up on the west, Ninth SS Panzer Division is in position to block them.” “And of course the enemy would know that Ninth Panzer has been bombed for two days. So perhaps they’ll try to come at us through the woods.”

  “Perhaps.” Bücher nodded. “Though it’s unlikely they could get here before tomorrow.”

  “Too close for comfort,” Rommel said, shaking his head. Again he studied the map, looking at the road leading into Dinant from the southeast. “Panzer Lehr is in convoy here, scheduled to reach the bridges by this evening, correct?” Though he made the remark as a question, he took no notice of his staff officers nodding their heads; he already knew the answer.

  “When they cross they will give you six panzer divisions west of the river,” Speidel offered. “And we have captured fuel enough for all of them”

  “I don’t want them to cross,” the Desert Fox stated. “We are vulnerable in only one place, along the river, and we know that enemy tanks might be moving in that direction. I want Panzer Lehr diverted off the highway. I need a screen of armor south of Dinant.”

  Bücher turned to the switchboard to get the new order on the way to Manteuffel when the field telephone jangled in the background. The lieutenant at the microphone listened for a moment and then turned to Rommel.

  “Herr Feldmarschall, we have reports of an American armored attack approaching Dinant from the south. They are five kilometers out, coming through the woods along the river.”

  Southern Outskirts of Dinant, Belgium, 0642 hours GMT

  Pulaski put his head down, clapped a hand over his helmet, and sprinted across the road toward the shelter of the low stone wall. He crawled and scraped across the hard-frozen ground with Sergeant Dawson right behind, and he felt his heart hammering as he leaned against the frost-limned rocks of the barrier. He noticed that he was in a cemetery, and hunched lower, using the granite bulk of an ornate cross for cover.

  “No shooting that time,” he remarked, trying to sound droll. “Yes, sir,” Dawson replied, checking over the radio. “But don’t you think you should get back into the half-track?” Pulaski chuckled wryly. “Sounds good to me, but not until I see what’s holding Frank up.”

  Crawling like men who knew that a mistake could get them killed, the two Americans made their way out of the cemetery and around a battered tavern. Beyond, the country road straightened to become a city street, but there were no Sherman tanks rolling down that beckoning avenue. Four or five of the M4s, however, were wrecked and burning at the near end of the road.

  He found the commander of Task Force Ballard huddled with some of his officers in the shattered shell of a mill. Captain Zimmerman of the tank destroyer company was there as well, in this field headquarters of pockmarked walls and blasted, gaping roof. The officers had been trying unsuccessfully to get through to the Air Forces liaison, to call in a tactical bomber strike against the crossroads directly ahead of them.

  “What’s the hold-up?” Pulaski asked.

  “We count four Tigers, hull down, really well concealed on the far side of the street. Two have direct fire down the road, and one has a good enfilade from each side. They cooked off four Shermans inside of a minute,” Ballard reported tersely.

  “Shit!” Pulaski kicked a shard of rock out of his way. He turned to Dawson. “Sarge, see if you can get through on your set”

  While the sergeant ran up his battery and tried the call, the colonel went to the front of the mill and, crouching, looked out the empty socket of the front door. Smoke from the burning Shermans wafted past, and, while he couldn’t see the Tigers, he had a pretty good idea of where they must be hiding.

  “What about flanking them?” he asked as Ballard joined him.

  “They picked their place well. To our left there’s a little ravine with a stream at the bottom, too deep for tanks. To the right there’s a park, acres of open ground exposed to direct fire. The only way around is to back out of here and try to come into Dinant from a different road.”

  “We don’t have time!” snapped the frustrated Pulaski, angry with himself. He turned to the sergeant, who was still repeating the call sign through the radio. “Any luck?” he asked unnecessarily.

  Dawson only shook his head.

  “I can hear the damn planes overhead. Why the hell can’t we get in touch with them?” demanded the colonel, as the steady droning of engines rose to a high-pitched whine. In the near distance, bombs--lots of them--crumped into the ground, reverberating through the pavement with tremors that brought trickles of dust from the sagging ceiling timbers of the ancient mill. Perhaps the bridges that were his objective were getting pasted by the air forces, but he couldn’t afford to take that chance. Combat Command A of the Nineteenth Armored had its own job to do.

  Tensely he paced back to the door and looked down the street. Shifting his gaze, he could see the open field of parkland between the two shattered buildings across the way, then followed the view to the south where his men bunched in the fringe of rural woodlands.

  “Can you get through to Bob Jackson?” he asked the sergeant.

  Dawson nodded. A few moments later he had the commander of the Nineteenth Armored’s Combat Command B on the radiophone.

  “How far south of town are you?” Pulaski asked. “We’re up against a nut here.”

  “Ten klicks .., just passing the spot where you took out the first eighty-eight,” Jackson replied. “Call it two hours at the most.”

  “Bring it on, then. I have a feeling we might be needing you,” Pulaski said. He signed off, then looked at Frank Ballard. “We’ll spread ’em out here, start a strong flank attack across the park, with the tank destroyers in support. A minute later we’ll send a swarm of Shermans down the road, and take the damn Krauts out with sheer numbers.”

  The lieutenant colonel nodded. “I’d been thinking something like the same thing,” he admitted. “It’ll be tough at first, but it’s our best chance.”

  “How many M4s with the 76-mm do you have?” Pulaski asked, again studying the cramped narrow, littered approach up the street.

  “A good dozen,” Ballard answered. “They’re in the lead.”

  “They’ll have to try for shots at the Tigers as they show,” the colonel ordered.

  “And in the park?”

  “We’ll put the rest of the armor there.” Pulaski turned to Zimmerman. “You have a few of the M36 Tank Destroyers, don’t you?”

  “Three, still operational. Now that’s a tank killer.”

  Pulaski nodded, even as he grimaced at the awareness that there were all too few of the lethal vehicles. The M36 carried a much more deadly weapon tha
n the M10s that made up the majority of his tank division. It had a 90-mm gun, and it had proved to be the only American armored vehicle that could take out a Tiger with a single shot. Of course, they had the typical vulnerability of the tank destroyer: no roof on the turret. It would have been suicide to send the TDs between the wrecked buildings on the street, since German snipers could have picked off the gun crews with a few well-placed shots.

  “Put them on the far right, screened by a few Shermans on the outside. They might be able to get a shot at that dug-in Tiger.” He left unspoken his second concern, that his own right flank was totally exposed as he made this rash attack. Once before Rommel had struck him in a vulnerable flank, breaking up an attack and shattering the combat command. The tank destroyers wouldn’t protect them against a serious threat, but they might give pause to any panzers leading the enemy attack. “I want Task Force Miller to follow Frank’s men up the street. Whitey, your boys will guard our right--but you’ll need to reinforce our progress once we make our way into the city.”

  He would have liked to have a strong force to post here, to guard their line of communication and retreat. But the bridges were the main objective, and he was determined to reach that goal as soon as possible. Furthermore, he knew that Bob Jackson and CCB were not too many miles away. Pulaski could only hope that his men could hold out for that long.

  Fortunately, a lane provided a route of dispersal inside the shelter of the woods, and it took only twenty minutes to deploy CCA for the attack. Infantry dismounted from trucks and halftracks, ready to rush forward in the wake of the tanks. The eighteen guns of Diaz’s artillery battalion were deployed a half mile back from the edge of the woods, and they took a few ranging shots along the buildings and ruins where the Tigers were hull down.

  “When I give the word, I want smoke--as much as you can deliver,” the colonel ordered. Lieutenant Colonel Diaz nodded enthusiastically, and Pulaski once more remembered Lorimar at Abbeville, and his cheerful wave before the predecessors of these guns had been overwhelmed by attacking panzers. But he couldn’t waste any more time with this kind of worry.

  “You take the left, the street attack,” Pulaski told Ballard. “I’ll come across the field with the right flank. Remember, give us a minute or two before you move out.”

  The lieutenant colonel agreed and took his position in the lead Sherman, rightly observing that his gunner had proved to be as steady and accurate as any tanker in the division. “Make that first shot count,” was the only suggestion Pulaski could offer.

  He and Dawson, in the half-track, would follow in the second wave across the field. He didn’t take time to pep talk his men. They knew the stakes as well as he, and all recognized the desperation that had driven them to such a risky onslaught.

  Finally the tanks had rolled into position, taking advantage of the last screen of saplings before they rumbled into the open. Dawson, who had been keeping the radio channel open, passed the instrument to the colonel who used the daily code to issue orders to his artillery.

  “Ducky Six--this is Popcorn Ten. Give me everything you’ve got, established coordinates,” he ordered.

  The crack of the guns thudded through the woods, and moments later shells whistled overhead to explode in the clearing and among the wrecked structures of Dinant. After the blasts, white smoke billowed through the air, and seconds later the next volley of projectiles rocketed past, and then the next, and still another.

  In a few minutes the fringe of the city was obscured by a thick cloud of pale, foggy smoke, and Pulaski knew the opportunity had come. With the radio open to all commanders he barked the “Go!” order.

  Immediately the tanks rolled. Small trees bent and snapped as forty Shermans and eighteen tank destroyers rolled from the woods and trundled onto the vast park. Pulaski saw a few cagelike soccer goals, realizing with an odd sense of incongruity that they were charging across a series of playing fields. More smoke shells crashed into the German position, and now the leading elements of the attack wave were half-obscured by smoke, ghostly shapes that rumbled and clanked and roaring with monstrous presence.

  A shell from an eighty-eight screamed out of the cloud, torching an M4 in the front rank. There was no way to tell if the shot had come from a Tiger or an emplaced AT gun. The tank gunners didn’t wait to find out: dozens of Shermans spat high explosive shells into the murk, a barrage that flashed and smoldered, discoloring the smoke cloud with alternating swaths of fire and darkness.

  To his left Pulaski could see Ballard’s upgunned Shermans waiting in line. Abruptly those tanks, too, rolled forward, driving steadily into the smoke that drifted through the street. Another M4 went up in flames, but now the leading tanks were rumbling between buildings, cannon and machine guns raking the stunned Germans in their foxholes and strongpoints.

  A half-dozen Shermans came upon the hidden Tiger, and at the cost of two of their own they plastered it with enough fire to disable the turret and blast both tracks off. Sappers rushed forward with satchel charges while the surviving armor rumbled on, spreading out through the streets of the medieval city. Seeing their fate, the German tankers popped through the hatches to make a run for it. Bullets cut them down before the last of them had taken two steps from the wrecked Tiger.

  Flames seared the street before him and another Tiger went up. And then Ballard’s column rolled into sight. The lead tank halted so that the gunner could draw a bead, and the 76-mm gun drilled an armor-piercing shell into the side armor of yet one more of the Nazi behemoths. That panzer crackled into blistering flames, and none of the crew appeared.

  Ballard popped open his hatch as the half-track rolled into the town. Fierce gunfire marked infantry battles in the nearby buildings, but the noise was moving away as CCA infantry knocked the Germans out of one building after another. The lieutenant colonel raised his thumb in a salute.

  “We’re in!” shouted Pulaski, feeling the emotion himself. “Now let’s get to those damn bridges!”

  Aboard B-24 “Darling Debbie,” Nearing the Meuse, Belgium, 0935 hours GMT

  “Fighters! Fighters!” Lieutenant Lester “Sky” King heard the intercom call from his nose turret gunner just about the time he noticed a series of small white puffs ahead of the lumbering B-24. At first he’d thought it was strange-looking flak, then he realized that he was seeing exploding 20-mm shells. The heavy Liberator shook from end to end as the gunners began firing 50-caliber machine guns at the shrieking Me-262s swooping out of the gray winter sky.

  From the flight deck, the aircraft commander could only see ahead and slightly to each side as he concentrated on staying in formation, moving toward the bridges of Dinant, the target

  Soon it would be up to the bombardier to fly the plane through its bombing run, then it would be time to get the hell out of there--if it wasn’t already. Radio chatter among the gunners as they traded information about the positions of attacking fighters kept him up-to-date on the engagement. “On your six! Coming in fast! Charlie, look out--he’s underneath you!”

  The plane lurched as flak exploded. He noticed an Me-262 pull up under his left wing, as if he was joining the formation, and begin pouring 20-mm shells into the B-24 ahead of him in the formation--it was Ford’s Folly. “Jesus,” he said to his copilot. “That’s Russ’s plane.” The pilot was a good friend.

  Suddenly, the number-three engine burst into flame. “Abort, goddamn it--abort!” he yelled, as if Russ could hear him. “Get the hell out of there!” But he could see the bomb bay grinding slowly open, preparing to drop its load, possibly short of the destination, but at least somewhere they might kill some Krauts.

  Now number four was on fire, and the plane looked like a flying blowtorch. The bombs were dropping. “Bail out, Russ,” he shouted helplessly. He looked over at the attacking Me-262, an aircraft distinguished by bright flames painted on the nose. It was so close he could see the pilot grinning at him. He wished he had a gun of his own so he could wipe the goddamn smile off the bastard’s face,
but all he could do was keep his aircraft steady.

  Skies Over the Meuse, Belgium, 0941 hours GMT

  Krueger tightened his finger on the trigger, directing a stream of cannon shells into the swollen belly of the lumbering Liberator.

  “Bum, you bastard! Go down!” he hissed through his clenched teeth.

  Despite the flaming engines, the stubborn bomber refused to go down. The Me-262 roared past, close enough for the pilot to read the vulgar Americanism Ford’s Folly scribed onto the huge aircraft’s bulbous nose.

  The black blossoms of antiaircraft fire shivered in the air, and rattles of shrapnel tickled the skin of the jet fighter. The German ace ignored the distraction, picking another target from the sea of heavy bombers.

  The Stormbird’s gun ripped into this new target with shocking effect as the bomber exploded in a blinding flash of light. That’s one who won’t be dropping his bombs, Krueger thought with a warm flash of satisfaction.

  Then he was through the formation, and though his starboard engine was again running a little hot, he raced back around, determined to find the plane he had first targeted.

  There it was, at the front of the squadron, smoke pouring from number-three engine, but still flying. It was a doomed plane, but the bomb bay doors remained open as Krueger swept closer. He wanted to prevent the bomber from dropping its load.

  But before he could press the finger, his jet lurched hard, shearing to starboard. With shock he saw flames pouring from the housing of his engine, a white-hot fire that was melting away his precious jet before his eyes. He would never learn of the small rag inside, a memento of his long-ago visit to the Jumo factory in Dessau.

  Krueger shrieked as flames surged upward from the deck, licking the inside of his thighs, teasing his groin. The Stormbird lurched and skidded through the sky, utterly lacking the nearly angelic grace and speed of its true flight. The right engine still burned, melting away before his horrified eyes. He sensed the hunger of the flames, and again he screamed.