“Oh, no, Sergeant,” the German replied. “That’s not what I mean at all. The surprises will be things you cannot even imagine. Wonders for which there will be no defense.”
“Can we knock off this happy talk now?” the GI lieutenant said. “We gotta get these Krauts back to the S2 for questioning.”
Sean asked, “You guys want a ride back, sir? I got three vehicles still running. Looks like your men could use the break.”
“Sure, but the Krauts walk.”
“Okay. However you want it, Lieutenant.”
As Sean climbed back into Eight Ball’s turret, Fabiano asked him, “That fucking Kraut…he said wonders, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, I believe he did.”
“He’s gotta be talking about wonder weapons. Hell, everybody’s talking about them Kraut wonder weapons. Super guns, super tanks, super rockets, super airplanes—”
“Don’t go getting your balls in an uproar, Fab. Them Krauts were supposed to be super men, too, remember? That was a load of hot air, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know, Sarge. I got a real bad feeling here.”
“You always got a real bad feeling. Give it a rest.”
But giving it a rest was the last thing on Corporal Fabiano’s mind. “I’ll bet they even got some machine that controls the weather now. You ever seen it so shitty? And ain’t that convenient, since it keeps our flyboys glued to the ground, where they can’t help us a damn bit.”
“It’s a good thing you’re an ace shooter, Fab…otherwise I’d have you up for a Section Eight so fast your head would spin.”
The GIs clambered onto the decks of Sean’s three surviving tanks. When they moved out, Eight Ball was second in the column, with the prisoners walking between it and Smitty’s lead tank. There were dozens of weapons trained on the Germans.
Fabiano’s boot gently teased the foot switch that fired the turret’s coaxial machine gun. “C’mon, you bastards,” he said, “make a break for it. I’m begging you…”
As they rumbled back to the CP, Sean took in the gloomy overcast that had hung over the Ardennes ever since 4th Armored arrived, keeping their air power grounded. His thoughts shifted to his younger brother Tommy, a fighter pilot who flew close support for Patton’s 3rd Army:
I hope you’re enjoying your vacation, little brother. Not like you ain’t had plenty of them.
A heavy, wind-driven snow began to fall again, promising to add a fresh layer of frigid misery. Exposed to it all as he stood in the turret hatch, Sean pulled goggles over his eyes to fend off this new assault of blinding coldness.
As he did, he flushed the German’s warning—and Fabiano’s fears—from his mind with one final verdict:
Wonder weapons, my sweet ass.
March 1945
Chapter Two
Vicinity of Trier, Germany
The Shermans of Baker Company, 37th Tank Battalion—Tech Sergeant Sean Moon’s outfit—idled in tactical dispersal a mile west of the Moselle River. Soon, they’d get the word that it was their turn to cross the Moselle and continue their plunge into Germany. Until then, the tankers had little to do but stretch their legs and gossip as they kept their eyes and ears open for German aircraft.
“You men might as well eat,” Captain Newcomb, Baker Company’s commander, told his troopers. “We’ll probably be crossing the river right around lunchtime. It’s a pontoon bridge, so it’ll be slow going—one tank at a time. And once we’re across, no telling where or when we’ll be stopping.”
“Way ahead of you, sir,” Sean replied. “We already got coffee brewing. Want some?”
“Yeah, that would be great. Thanks.”
They sat on the ground, resting their backs against Eight Ball’s road wheels.
Newcomb asked Sean, “Have you given any more thought to a direct commission to first lieutenant?”
“No, sir.”
“You mean no, you haven’t given it any thought? Or no, you’re still turning it down?”
“The second one, sir. With all due respect.”
“Well,” Newcomb said, “that’s too bad. You’ve been doing a platoon leader’s job for months now. I just thought you might want to get paid for it, too.”
Eager to change the subject, Sean asked, “Gotta ask you something, Captain. Them Krauts we hauled in this morning—they were from Seventh Army, weren’t they?”
“That’s what the intel boys say,” Newcomb replied.
Sean exhaled a blast of frustration through his mouth. “I’m telling you, Captain, I’m getting sick and tired of fighting the same Germans over and over again. We were supposed to have rounded up all of Seventh Army back at Falaise last summer. Then we fight them all over again at the Ardennes. And now we’re fighting them here, too. It’s like they keep getting resurrected or something.”
“What’s your point, Sergeant Moon? It’s not the same guys, just the same unit designation. Look at what our turnover’s been, for cryin’ out loud. But we’re still Thirty-Seventh Tank.”
“I get all that, Captain. I ain’t as dumb as I look. But how many times we gotta polish these Krauts off? It’s like every brass hat but Patton don’t know how to finish a fight. If Ike had listened to him during that fubar Ardennes fiasco and pinched off that bulge on the back side, we could’ve trapped every fucking Kraut in there. Instead, he puts Montgomery in charge of the whole mess, and all he did was push on the front side so they all squirted right back into Germany. I’m telling you, sir…we shoulda been in fucking Berlin a long time ago.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Sergeant.”
“Maybe so, sir. Maybe so. But I get pissed off every time I hear that Battle of the Bulge happy horseshit. That wasn’t no bulge—it was a fuckup, plain and simple. First Army went to sleep and Ike let ’em. And good ol’ Third Army had to come to their rescue. Again.”
“Again, Sergeant, preaching to the choir.”
“Bulge, my ass. The only bulge anybody around here’s got is in his skivvies.”
Newcomb downed the last of his coffee. “You know what really pisses me off, though? Slowpoke Montgomery having the balls to take credit for bailing us GIs out in the Ardennes. I don’t remember seeing one Limey anywhere near Bastogne. Do you?”
“Negative, sir. Not a damn one.”
Captain Newcomb’s RTO called out, “Battalion on the horn for you, sir.”
“This could be the word to move out,” Newcomb said, rising to his feet. “Better saddle up.”
As Sean climbed back into the turret, Fabiano asked, “Tell me we ain’t gonna be in no street fight in that town…what’s its name?”
“Trier. It’s called Trier. And as far as I know, this battalion’s not going into the town proper. We’re going around the back side to cut off any Krauts trying to withdraw.”
“Good,” Fabiano replied. “I like that better. A lot better. But I’m losing track, Sarge. How many times have we crossed the Moselle, anyway?”
“Four times, counting going both ways. This’ll be number five.”
“Geez. So maybe this time we won’t have to give back ground we already took to go fight someone else’s battle, like at Metz and Bastogne?”
“I hear you, Fab. But like the captain says, you’re preaching to the choir.”
The best thing Sean Moon could say about the Moselle crossing was at least we’re not under fire at the moment. The fifty-yard-long pontoon bridge just completed by the engineers was a typical, single-lane floating thoroughfare, just like the ones the tankers had crossed many times before. The bridge could support no more than one 40-ton Sherman at a time, which would have to traverse it slowly and cautiously; the process of crossing a tank company like Baker—with fifteen or more vehicles—could take better than half an hour. Fourth Platoon, with its lighter Stuart tanks, had crossed first. Sean’s Second Platoon was next in line.
As Eight Ball approached the river’s edge, Sean had the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he’d had every time they cross
ed a pontoon bridge:
The first couple of yards ain’t that bad, where it’s still anchored to the riverbank. But then you hit the part that’s just floating…and you feel them pontoons sagging under her weight while you watch the water wash over their tops as they’re pushed down, almost going under. You feel like you’re falling…and there’s nothing gonna catch you.
If those pontoons bust up and sink, you’re going right down with them.
You didn’t expect a Sherman was going to float, did you, pal? Like them ones that tried to swim ashore at Normandy, with them big, inflatable donuts all around the hull like a fat man floating in an inner tube. A lot of guys went straight to the bottom in those things, inflatable donuts and all.
If I wanted to lose sleep over drowning, I would have joined the damn Navy.
He wasn’t worried about his driver’s ability to keep her on the bridge’s narrow, bobbing treadways. Kowalski was a steady hand on the steering levers. He’d never failed to get her across before.
Not like some of them jaboneys who let their tracks wander over the edge and toppled right into the drink. Destroyed the damn bridge in the process, too.
But even with a steady hand at the controls, it was slow going. They weren’t even halfway across when Sean noticed something racing through the broken clouds overhead, flashing into view momentarily when not concealed by the cottony puffs.
It was an airplane.
Or is it?
When it dropped below the clouds a few seconds later, Sean was startled by how far she’d traveled.
Ain’t no airplane flies that fast.
But by all appearances, she was indeed an airplane—cigar-shaped fuselage, cruciform tail, straight wings each carrying what appeared to be an engine nacelle.
Looks like a B-26, Sean thought. But no B-26 flies that damn fast.
She turned now, a wide arc that made her vanish from view for a few moments beyond the treetops of the near bank. Then she reappeared, the swift craft pointed straight at the pontoon bridge—and Eight Ball.
The plane was just a few hundred feet above the water’s surface. Sean and his crew could hear the strange shrieking noise she made, like the scream of a continuous siren, drowning out the roar of their Sherman’s engine.
Manning the .50-caliber machine gun atop the turret, Sean had the aircraft in its sights. She was close enough now to engage.
He squeezed the trigger.
But in what seemed an impossible speeding up of time, the plane flashed past, moving too rapidly for any weapon to track her.
No one had seen the bomb fall away from her fuselage. It struck the water’s surface just yards from the bridge.
Eight Ball rose up as the roadway surged beneath her tracks. A geyser of river water rose alongside the bridge, too, shooting skyward and then quickly collapsing to wash over the tank and her crew.
What goes up must come down. The bridge and its cargo fell back to the roiling surface of the river, the pontoons and treadways twisting and heaving in a manner guaranteed to break them apart.
Before Sean could scream at Kowalski to STEP ON IT, the driver was doing just that, racing ahead on the sinking treadways as if their tank was walking on water.
The ear-shattering whine of the aircraft faded quickly as she flew away.
And then she was gone, as rapidly as she’d appeared.
When the pontoon bridge broke apart, Eight Ball was just yards from the far bank. She sank into two feet of water—a foot short of her maximum fording depth—but never stopped moving forward. Once on firm ground again, she stopped suddenly, as if needing a moment to consider what had just happened.
“KEEP HER MOVING, DAMMIT,” Sean ordered Kowalski. “I DON’T WANT TO BE NO SITTING DUCK IF THAT FUCKING THING COMES BACK…”
He finished the sentence in his head: Whatever the hell that thing was.
But Fabiano already had a theory. He presented it grimly: “I think we just seen one of them Nazi super weapons, Sarge. It’s a damn rocket ship. No propellers or nothing. Ain’t nothing gonna catch that thing.”
Near a Luftwaffe airfield at Kaiserslautern—some 50 miles east of Trier—a four-plane flight of American P-47 fighters—jugs in GI slang—orbited at 8,000 feet. The flight leader, Captain Tommy “Half” Moon, was brand new to the rank of captain but a veteran at his job. His flight was a pack of hunters lurking for their prey: turbojet-powered bombers, the same type of aircraft that had just attacked the pontoon bridge his brother Sean was crossing.
Unlike the tankers, the pilots knew something about these jets, named Arado-234. They had no illusions about their being super weapons. Certainly, they were fast; the Germans called the 234 a schnellbomber—fast bomber. No aircraft currently in the Allied operational inventory could catch one at full speed, much less shoot it down. But they weren’t rocket ships. And they did have a critical weakness: anything that took to the air must land eventually.
To come back to earth, an aircraft had to reduce speed. When the jets did slow down to land, the American planes suddenly had the advantage in speed and maneuverability.
It should be just like shooting fish in a barrel, Tommy Moon told himself. Just got to be at the right place at the right time. And that right time should be any minute now.
“Blue Leader to Blue Flight,” Tommy broadcast, “let’s bring it down to angels six.”
“You see them, boss?” The voice was Tommy’s wingman, Lieutenant Joe Wilkinson.
“Negative. Not yet. Keep your drawers on.”
Blue Flight flew a wide orbit, the four P-47s equidistant around its circumference, each in a shallow left turn as they descended. This is the best way to set up for the bounce, Tommy reminded himself. You cover the tail of the guy in front of you until the quarry’s in sight, then the two ships in the best position attack while the other two provide top cover.
Just got to be careful we don’t stray over their airfield—there’s going to be plenty of flak around there.
And don’t get dead on their tail. Intel still isn’t sure if these things have tail guns or not. Got to engage with an oblique shot. That’s going to be harder...but not impossible.
The excited voice of Blue Three—Lieutenant Charlie Fusco—spilled from Tommy’s headset: “I got ’em! Due south, low. Maybe five, six miles out. Two of them.”
On the far side of the orbit, Tommy craned his neck and dipped his left wing a little lower for a better view. He could just see them, fast-moving dark specks descending to the valley floor, barely visible against the backdrop of drab mountains still awaiting the verdant shades of spring.
“Roger, I’ve got them,” Tommy replied as he plotted the intercept in his head.
Those jets are going to have to do a one-eighty to get lined up with the runway. We need to take them while they’re on the base leg—they should be good and dirty with flaps and gear by then.
If we wait until they’re on final approach, they’ll be even slower…but we’ll get too close to the airfield, guaranteed. Once we break off the attack, the flak gunners down there would have a field day riddling our asses without worrying about shooting their own guys down.
I figure we’ll go ring-around-the-Rosie up here one more time before those jets will be where we want them. My Three and Four ship should end up in the best position to intercept.
On the radio now, he told Blue Flight, “Joe, you and I will be top cover. Charlie, you and Eddie do the intercept. Orbit one more circuit, then you guys head straight down and take them. Charlie, get the lead one. Eddie, get the one in trail. Remember—one oblique pass from above, hit them in the fuselage right between the wings. Then break away from the airfield and come straight back upstairs.”
“Roger, boss,” Charlie Fusco replied. He was already halfway around his final orbit.
Tommy took a glance at the German airfield, some three miles off his wingtip, and thought, Damn shame we can’t just tear these things up while they’re sitting on the ground. I hear they don’t fly much…t
he Krauts don’t have enough fuel for them, supposedly. But we’ve never seen one just sitting on a ramp somewhere. They’re either camouflaged real well…or they’re tucked into those concrete hangars that are like bunkers. I swear I put a five hundred-pounder dead on the roof of one of them last week…and nothing happened. Nothing at all. Didn’t even make a tiny hole, near as I could tell. It’s like bombing Fort Driant all over again—just wasted effort.
If the Krauts are “super” at doing anything, it’s pouring concrete.
Wilkinson, Tommy’s wingman, asked, “You think they’ve spotted us, boss?”
“Probably.”
The Americans were in position to begin the attack. Blue Three and Blue Four—Charlie Fusco and Lieutenant Eddie Dugan—rolled their jugs onto their backs and plummeted nearly straight down, gunsights lined up on the aiming point Tommy had specified: the fuselage between the wings.
At their rapid closing speed, they’d only get one short burst before flashing past the target.
But if their aim was good, one burst from a jug’s eight .50-caliber machine guns was probably all they’d need.
The lead Arado was squarely in Fusco’s gunsight. As he was about to squeeze his trigger, it suddenly jinked left, vanishing beneath the jug’s bulbous nose.
Cursing under his breath, he pulled out of the dive. The Americans had heard that the pilots flying these new jets wouldn’t be rookies; they’d have a very experienced hand at their controls. Charlie Fusco had just learned that the hard way. Though flying low and slow, the German pilot had known and executed the precise maneuver to get out of trouble.
Eddie Dugan didn’t fare any better. Just as he was about to start shooting, his target slipped beneath his nose, as well.
“Switch places with us,” Tommy told his Three and Four ship. As Fusco and Dugan climbed, Tommy and Wilkinson had already begun their dives to continue the attack on the Arado jets.
The Germans were both in tight turns, hoping the move would make them difficult to track as they desperately tried to get back on course to the runway.
Our Ally, Our Enemy (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 3) Page 2
