Slaughter City

by Len Levinson

  The First Battalion’s final midnight barrage blows the Nazis off the banks of the Moselle, thanks to Sergeant C. J. Mahoney and his kill-crazy sidekick Cranepool. After an R&R of both pleasure and pain, the Sergeant itches for action -- and action he gets when Patton launches a desperate offensive: seize the city of Metz, the key to the Siegfried Line! But enemy snipers, mortars and artillery are chewing up the advancing Third Army, and the Sergeant battles his way through the raining hell on a deadline do-or-die mission. With nothing but guts and grenades, Mahoney slips into the occupied city to destroy Hitler's inhuman weapon of mass slaughter -- but first he has to survive the 'invisible' and bloodthirsty Nazi death squad! And if the Sergeant fails ... Patton fails!

  Chapter One

  The night sky flashed with explosions as German shells rained down on the First Battalion. The GIs huddled in trenches or hid behind trees, exhausted and in disorder because the Germans had just counterattacked and pushed them back across the Moselle River.

  Master Sergeant C. J. Mahoney lay sprawled in a trench, blood leaking through the bandage on his left shoulder. He was unconscious, with jaw hanging open and face pale. Private Grossberger, the medic, felt his pulse while Corporal Cranepool looked on anxiously.

  “How is he?” asked Cranepool, a lanky young soldier from Iowa.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’ll be okay,” replied Grossberger, whose thick eyeglasses were taped to his face. “I think we should take him back to the dressing station so they can get the bullet out.”

  “Where’s the dressing station?”

  “I don’t know—back there someplace.” Grossberger motioned with his chin toward the rear lines.

  “I’ll take him back,” Cranepool said. “You look after the wounded here.”

  “Right.”

  German machine-gun bullets stitched along the top of the trench, and Cranepool and Grossberger ducked. A German artillery shell exploded twenty yards away, making the ground shudder and sending clods of mud flying through the air. Someone shouted for the medic. Grossberger adjusted his haversack full of medicine and bounded out of the trench. He was five foot four and ran quickly as a squirrel across the tumultuous battlefield.

  Cranepool looked down at Mahoney. Grossberger had given Mahoney a shot of morphine a few minutes before, and Mahoney still was out like a light. Mahoney’s left sleeve was soaked with blood. The wound wasn’t bad, but the bleeding would have to be stopped soon.

  Cranepool kneeled in front of Mahoney and pulled Mahoney toward him. He leaned Mahoney over his shoulder and tried to lift him off the ground, but Mahoney weighed two hundred and twenty five pounds, and it wasn’t easy.

  “What the fuck are you trying to do?” Mahoney asked in a low, slurring voice.

  Cranepool let Mahoney drop against the wall of the trench. Mahoney’s eyes were half open, and he had a silly grin on his face.

  “How you feeling, sarge?” Cranepool asked.

  “Not bad at all,” Mahoney replied as though he were talking in his sleep. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “I was gonna carry you back to the dressing station.”

  “What for?”

  “So’s a doctor can take that bullet out of your arm.”

  “Bullet in my arm?” Mahoney asked in a singsong voice. He looked toward his left shoulder and saw the bloody mess. “Oh, yeah, there’s a bullet in my arm.”

  “Do you think you can stand up, sarge?”

  “Sure I can stand up.”

  Mahoney tried to rise but only got a few inches off the ground and then collapsed into the mud again.

  “I think I’m gonna stay right here,” Mahoney said.

  Cranepool looked around and saw Pfc. Ambrose P. Butsko firing his rifle at the German side of the Moselle.

  “Hey, Butsko,” Cranepool said. “Help me with Sergeant Mahoney. I gotta take him back to the dressing station.”

  Butsko pulled the M-1 off the parapet and moved in a crouch toward Cranepool and Mahoney. He was a husky young man with a round, meaty face.

  “Where’s the dressing station?”

  “Back there someplace. You grab one arm, and I’ll grab the other.”

  They bent to lift Mahoney up, and Mahoney looked at them dazedly, seeing them glow chartreuse and pink. He felt giddy from the morphine and wanted to sing a song.

  Cranepool and Butsko pulled Mahoney out of the trench and dragged him back from the banks of the Moselle. The air was filled with the crackle of small-arms fire and the thunder of artillery explosions. It still was raining, and all of them were soaked to their skins.

  “Goddamn, he’s heavy,” wheezed Butsko.

  “We won’t have far to go,” Cranepool replied.

  Mahoney spat a big gob into the mud and thought of what had happened to the First Battalion during the past twenty-four hours. They’d crossed the Moselle the night before but without artillery support because they’d run out of shells for the big cannons and had taken heavy casualties. They’d managed to push the Germans back, and Charlie Company had moved ahead to take a little town called Villeruffec, but then the Germans counterattacked in force with tank support, and there’d been a massacre. The GIs couldn’t do anything except run for their lives, and many had been killed trying to swim back across the river. Their corpses were somewhere in Luxembourg right now and soon would be carried out to sea.

  “Those fucking Nazi bastards!” Mahoney muttered.

  “Take it easy, sarge,” Cranepool said.

  Mahoney craned his head around and looked at the German lines. “Those cocksuckers!” He stumbled and nearly fell, but Cranepool and Butsko held him up.

  “Calm down,” Butsko said.

  “Fuck you!” Mahoney replied, still twisting his body and looking back at the German lines. “We’ll be back, you son of a bitch kraut bastards!” Mahoney raised a big fist and waved it in the air. “We’ll be back!”

  Chapter Two

  In a forest two miles away, General John “Bayonet” Donovan, the commanding officer of the Thirty-Third Division, known as the Hammerhead Division, stood in his command-post tent and looked at the map that showed the positions of his various units. He had a potbelly, was fifty-five years old, and had earned his nickname when he was a young lieutenant in the First World War, fighting with the Second Division in the Battle of the Argonne Forest.

  Captain Snyder, one of Donovan’s staff officers, approached the map table. “General Patton wants to speak with you on the phone, sir.”

  Donovan groaned because he’d known that Patton would call as soon as he found out that one of the Hammerhead battalions had been thrown for a loss. Patton hated to give up ground, and he’d probably be boiling mad.

  All the staff officers looked at Donovan as he strode toward the corner where Corporal Stanfield sat in front of the field switchboard. Stanfield held up the phone, and Donovan plucked it out of his hand.

  “General Donovan speaking, sir.”

  “This is General Patton,” said the deep, bellowing voice on the other end. “I understand that you just let the Germans kick your ass.”

  “One of my battalions was pushed back by the Germans, sir, but all my other units made it across the Moselle and have established beachheads.”

  “What the hell was wrong with that battalion?”

  “They took the brunt of a rather fierce counterattack, sir. If we had artillery support, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “How does that sector look now?”

  “If the Germans come across the Moselle, I don’t know if we can hold them.”

  “Then you’d better tell me who you think I should appoint as your successor because you’ll be relieved of command if you don’t hold them.”

  Donovan swallowed. “I’ll hold
them.”

  “You’d goddamn better hold them or else. You’ve got some reserves, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This sounds like a good time to use them, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’d better not find out that Germans are on my side of the Moselle, Donovan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That is all. Carry on.”

  ~*~

  The field hospital was located in a complex of tents surrounded by sandbags and covered with camouflage netting. Cranepool and Butsko dragged Mahoney to the opening of the main tent and went inside. They saw the floor covered with bleeding, mangled men who were moaning and groaning. The ones who were conscious puffed cigarettes and stared with haunted eyes at each other and the khaki canvas. The only light came from kerosene lamps that flickered and made weird shadows on the walls of the tent.

  Mahoney took one look at the wounded soldiers and decided the field hospital was not for him. “Lemme out of here!” he said, trying to break loose from Cranepool and Butsko.

  “Take it easy, sarge,” said Cranepool. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

  “Lemme out of here!”

  A wide-hipped old nurse wearing steel-rimmed glasses and army fatigues stood up and looked at Mahoney. “What’s going on over there!”

  “Lemme out of here!” Mahoney yelled, trying to drag Cranepool and Butsko out of the tent with him.

  Cranepool held Mahoney’s arm tightly and grinned nervously at the nurse, who wore captain’s bars on her collar. “He’s got a bullet in his shoulder, sir.”

  “Let me take a look at it.”

  The nurse approached, squinting her eyes. Her brown hair had gray strands, and her nose was like a big button. She examined the bloody bandage and sleeve. “Sit him down right here. We’ll get to him in a few minutes.”

  “Lemme out of here!” Mahoney said. “I’m just fine!”

  The nurse looked him in the eye. “You’d better do as you’re told, sergeant, unless you want to be a private again.”

  Mahoney stared at her. It was almost unbelievable to him that a female who looked like his Aunt Minnie could talk to him that way. He opened his mouth to tell her what he thought of her, but the captain’s bars on her collar paralyzed his vocal chords.

  “I said sit down!” the nurse told him.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mahoney replied sheepishly.

  Cranepool and Butsko eased him down to the ground.

  “You two can return to your unit,” the nurse told them. “We’ll take care of him from now on.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Cranepool and Butsko looked at each other, the nurse, and Mahoney, who was sitting with his legs splayed on the ground. He looked like a little boy who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  “So long, sarge,” Cranepool said.

  “Take it easy,” Butsko added.

  Mahoney grunted. The pain was coming back to his arm, and he felt irritable. Cranepool and Butsko left the tent, and the nurse walked away. Mahoney looked at the wounded GIs, thinking that he’d like to kill every German in the world with his bare hands for what they did last night. He closed his eyes and tried to get some sleep.

  ~*~

  Colonel Walter J. “Maud” Muller, the G-4 (supply) officer for the Third Army, was sound asleep and snoring loudly in his room at Chalons when the phone on the night table rang. Groaning, the stocky, broad-faced officer reached in the dark for the phone and picked it up. “Yes?” he asked sleepily, blinking his eyes in the darkness.

  “This is General Patton,” said the voice on the other end.

  Colonel Muller sat bolt upright in the bed. “Yes, sir!”

  “One of my battalions in the Hammerhead Division has been thrown back across the Moselle tonight because they didn’t have artillery ammunition,” Patton said. “I want you to see that they get whatever they need because I want them to go back across that river tomorrow night.”

  “But, sir, we have a shortage of artillery ammunition throughout the entire Third Army,” Colonel Muller protested. “If we draw from our reserves, we won’t have anything left for emergencies.”

  “This is an emergency, and you’ve just received an order, Muller. Any questions?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Carry on.”

  The connection went dead in Muller’s ear. He hung up the phone, turned on the light, and got out of bed, stumbling toward the closet to put on his uniform.

  Chapter Three

  Mahoney opened his eyes and saw a nurse’s rear end directly in front of him. She was bending over a soldier in the next cot, and Mahoney wanted to reach out and have a pinch. Only the vision of a firing squad held him back. He looked at his watch and saw that it was ten o’clock in the morning. They’d operated on him sometime during the night, and his shoulder was swathed in bandages, but he still wore the uniform he’d had on when Cranepool and Butsko brought him in.

  “Nurse?” Mahoney asked.

  The nurse stood up and turned around. She was blonde, in her twenties, and not terribly unattractive. “Well, Sergeant Mahoney, you’re up!” she said cheerfully. “What can we do for you?”

  “When’s chow?”

  She looked at her watch. “A couple more hours, but I can have one of the orderlies bring you something before then if you’ll just be patient for a few minutes.”

  “That’s okay,” Mahoney replied, “I can get the chow myself. Just tell me where the mess hall is.”

  She shook her head. “Oh, no, Sergeant Mahoney, you can’t get out of bed yet. You’ve just been operated on.”

  “Well,” Mahoney said, “it’s not as if I had my head shot off or something like that. It was only a bullet in my shoulder. That’s nothing.”

  “It’s enough to get you evacuated to the hospital in Granville.”

  “It is?”

  “That’s right. You’ll be going back sometime this afternoon. Now you just lie quietly there and I’ll see about getting you some chow.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The nurse walked out of the tent, and Mahoney tried to assimilate the information the nurse had given him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to the hospital in Granville because he’d be at the mercy of all the silly nurses and orderlies. They’d have him supervising details that mopped floors and cleaned latrines. It might be months before he saw his buddies again, and he might be assigned permanently to the rear, along with all the punks, sissies, and PX cowboys. Combat soldiers would have contempt for him. He would lose his manhood.

  I’ve got to get out of here, he thought, sitting up in bed. He looked at his shoulder and saw the big bandage. They’d cut his sleeve away so they could operate, and he noticed tiny needle marks on his arm. His shoulder throbbed faintly, and he felt peculiar due to the drugs with which they’d injected him. I wonder if I can stand up.

  He swung his feet around to the floor and looked at the other soldiers lying in their cots. Some were out cold; a few smoked cigarettes and looked at him. They all lay on plain canvas cots, wearing whatever they’d had on when they were brought in, and had been given only pillows and one wool blanket apiece.

  “Going someplace, sarge?” asked one of the soldiers.

  “You’re fucking right,” Mahoney replied.

  He stood up slowly, and the room spun around him. Taking a few deep breaths, he wondered if he’d have the strength to make it out of there, but then he thought of rear-echelon chickenshit and decided to at least make the effort to get back to Charlie Company.

  He took a step, and it wasn’t so bad. The room spun less quickly, and he wasn’t as weak as he thought he might be. Once these damn drugs wear off, I’ll be all right, he thought.

  An orderly entered the tent, carrying a tray of food. “Where in the world do you think you’re going?” he asked Mahoney.

  “I gotta take a piss,” Mahoney replied.

  “I’ll get you a bedpan.”

  “I don�
�t need no fucking bedpan,” Mahoney said. “I can make it to the latrine by myself. Where is it?”

  The orderly pointed. “That way, but it’s raining out, and you don’t even have a helmet on.”

  “How much you want for your helmet?”

  “My helmet?” the orderly asked, surprised.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m not going to sell you my helmet! What do you think I am?”

  “Ten bucks.”

  The orderly looked around and lowered his head. “You’d pay me ten bucks for my helmet?”

  “That’s right, and you can get another one without any trouble because there are probably helmets lying all over the place around here.”

  The orderly took his helmet off, and he had bright-red hair. “If you’re crazy enough to pay ten bucks for my helmet, I’m crazy enough to sell it to you.”

  Mahoney reached into his pocket, took out the roll of bills he’d won in a crap game at Villeruffec, and handed over the ten dollars. The orderly gave him the helmet, which had a white cross painted on the side.

  “What about your chow?” the orderly asked.

  “Put it on my cot,” Mahoney replied. “I’ll be right back.”

  The orderly grinned. “I don’t think you’re coming back, sarge.”

  “Sure I am, kiddo. You can trust me.”

  Mahoney slipped out of the tent and into the rain. He looked around at the complex of hospital tents, the wounded soldiers being unloaded from meat wagons, and several jeeps parked underneath a tree. The rain pinged on his helmet and soaked into the bandage on his arm. He felt a little lightheaded but otherwise almost normal as he moved stealthily toward one of the jeeps.

  ~*~

  Charlie Company still was holding fast on the west side of the Moselle. The Germans hadn’t tried to cross the river during the night and now, almost at noon, appeared content to fortify their positions on their side of the river. The GIs sat in their trenches, smoking cigarettes and eating C rations. All were filled with hatred and fury for the Germans because the company had lost half its men during the night and every survivor had a friend who never made it to the safe side of the river.