Our Ally, Our Enemy (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 3)

by William Peter Grasso

  “I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop, oncle. This is the second time I’ve brought in valuable intelligence. Surely you remember what happened the first time?”

  “Of course I remember, Sylvie. The Americans…”

  “Yes, the Americans,” she said. “They discarded it like so much garbage. I’m not yet convinced they won’t do it again.”

  “I thought you liked Americans, Sylvie. I mean, that airman of yours…”

  “I like a few Americans, oncle. Actually, a very few.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  McNulty watched the Sturmoviks return, counting the sixteen ships as they taxied to the ramp, knowing that number was five less than had set out earlier. Even from a distance, it was obvious that several of the returning ships were shot up. One rear gunner was slumped against his machine gun.

  “If that Ivan ain’t dead, he’s doing a real good impression,” he said to Oliver Hammersmith, who was watching the return with him. “Looks like they got their asses handed to them.”

  He didn’t say another word until the four escorts—three Yak-9s and Tommy’s P-47—passed over the field while preparing to land. He told Hammersmith, “This is a hell of a lot harder than being at your own base, waiting to see if your ship’s coming back.”

  “Why, Sergeant?”

  “Because if your ship goes down out of this godforsaken place, you ain’t got no shoulders to cry on. Nobody wants to know your name here.”

  As Eclipse of the Hun III was guided to her parking space, McNulty and Hammersmith watched as the dead gunner was hoisted from the Sturmovik. They were close enough to see the long lock of hair falling from beneath the flying helmet as her body was slid down the side of the fuselage like a rag doll. The pilot—also a woman—climbed from her cockpit and got her first glimpse of what she feared was true. Grabbing the canopy for balance on the inclined wing, she kicked her aircraft in frustration. Then she climbed down from the wing to help load her gunner’s body into the ambulance.

  Shaking his head solemnly, McNulty said, “I still can’t get over how many janes they got flying these crates.”

  “Yes,” Hammersmith replied, “the Soviets believe a woman can pull a trigger just as well as a man.”

  McNulty added, “Looks like they can die just as good, too. Hey, Lieutenant, if we call a Russian guy Ivan, what do we call a Russian skirt?”

  “Ivana, I suppose, Sergeant.”

  Tommy climbed down from Eclipse to join them, resisting the urge to give his crew chief the thumbs up, signifying a clean ship. “We’re going to have to think up some other signal that everything’s okay,” he told McNulty. “Can’t let the Russians think we’re rude bastards now, can we? That’d give Brooklyn a bad name.”

  “Ah, I don’t think the Ivans know Brooklyn from Shinola, Captain. But how about we use the three-ring sign? Or is that some kind of insult around here, too?”

  “Not that I know of. I guess that’s as good a signal as any.”

  McNulty asked, “Get any Krauts while you were up wasting that piss-water that passes for gasoline around here?”

  “Didn’t even see any, Sarge. We just watched the Sturmoviks beat up a convoy.”

  “Looks like they got beat up pretty good in return,” McNulty replied.

  Vukonikov’s Yak pulled into the next parking spot and shut down. Shooting a nasty look the major’s way, McNulty asked, “Did Who-cut-your-cock-off give you any shit this trip?”

  When Tommy stopped laughing, he replied, “No, Vukonikov and I didn’t get into any shit this time around. And by the way, that’s a great nickname. Best one you ever came up with, Sarge.”

  Hammersmith slid into the conversation. “Hate to break up the happy chat, gentlemen, but we need to have a serious talk. In private.”

  “Sure,” Tommy replied. “Let me and Mischenko get through the debrief first. Round up J.P. and I’ll meet you in the usual spot. I won’t be long.”

  The usual spot: a corner of a bombed-out hangar where no one could eavesdrop on their conversations. They didn’t even have to speak in French to keep their exchanges private. Hammersmith and J.P. Lambert were already there when Tommy walked in. “I thought Mischenko was with you,” the Brit said.

  “He’s coming,” Tommy replied. “He ran out of the debrief to round up something of great interest, or so he claims.”

  J.P. grinned as he said, “Maybe Sergeant Sonia finally agreed to sleep with him?”

  “That better not be it,” Tommy replied. “I told him if General Kozlovsky didn’t cut his balls off, I would. Can’t have our cozy little arrangement here shot to hell over some pretty little Russian girl.”

  “While we’re waiting,” Hammersmith said, “let me bring up something of great importance. I’ve gotten word back from your Air Force, Tommy. They say that under no circumstances will they provide heavy bomber support for the Soviets. They intimated that they’ve done more than enough for them.”

  Tommy replied, “And you’re still sure that’s all the Russians wanted? We fly heavy bomber missions for them and they stay out of our airspace?”

  “In a nutshell, yes.”

  As Tommy thought that over, an anxious Hammersmith said, “So what do we tell the Soviets, then? It looks like they’ve made the only concession. We’re giving them absolutely nothing in return. I’m afraid you don’t know the Soviets very well, Tommy. If we don’t give them an acceptable reply on the heavy bombers, they’ll throw us out of here lock, stock, and barrel. We’ll lose any chance to gather further intelligence.”

  “They won’t throw us anywhere as long as there’s still a chance they can get what they want,” Tommy replied. “So we’re going to stall them like this: let’s ask for their target list. It’s a logical request, but you know there’s no way in hell they’re going to give us one, at least not right away. Then we can break their chops to our hearts’ content about them not cooperating.”

  J.P. Lambert smiled like he’d just heard the voice of wisdom. “That’s perfect,” he said.

  Hammersmith looked surprised at first—and maybe a little crestfallen—that Tommy seemed to know the Soviets much better than he’d imagined. Then he smiled and said, “That’s an excellent idea, Tommy. You’ve caught on more quickly than—”

  He was interrupted as Mischenko burst into the hangar with Junior Sergeant Sonia Alexiev in tow, their faces flush with excitement.

  “Oh, God,” Tommy mumbled. “Please don’t tell me they’re fucking. That’s going to set this place on fire.”

  But what the two translators had to say was far more earth-shattering. “Sonia’s just come from the commo shack,” Mischenko said breathlessly. “The switchboard guys…they tapped into a Kraut switchboard in Linz. That’s on the western border of Austria—”

  “We know where Linz is,” Tommy said. “Keep talking.”

  Alexiev took over from there. “The switchboard operators have been playing games with the Germans for weeks. A few of us who speak the language fluently have fooled their counterparts on the German switchboards, often getting through to one headquarters or another, demanding answers to all sorts of questions until they’re finally found out and cut off.”

  Tommy asked, “You’ve actually spoken to a German headquarters? In German? How many languages do you speak, anyway?”

  “Seven,” she replied.

  He found that incomprehensible. “How did you learn all of them?”

  “For most of them, Captain, I merely paid attention my whole life. There are many different languages spoken around Moscow. I’m told your New York City is not much different.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. “But how did you learn English, Sergeant?”

  “I studied in Birmingham to become an embassy translator. I came home just before the Germans attacked.”

  “Seven languages, huh?” Tommy said. “One of them doesn’t happen to be French, does it?”

  “No, Captain. Your secret conversations are safe from me.”
r />   Hammersmith was quite amused. “Birmingham, is it? I thought I detected a bit of West Midlands in your voice.”

  But Tommy was growing impatient. “That’s all amazing, but there’s got to be more to this than you broke into a German telephone network.”

  “Oh, there is, Captain,” Sonia replied. “We’ve found out that the First Belorussian Front is entering Berlin at this very moment.”

  “Ah, shit,” Tommy said. “First Belorussian Front. That’s another Russian army, right? Don’t tell me they beat us there.”

  “Yes, Captain, you’re correct. It’s an army, and they’ve beaten your General Eisenhower to Berlin. But there’s more. There’s a very strong rumor that Hitler is dead.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tommy said. “How do your switchboard people know they’re not being fed bullshit?”

  Calmly, Sonia replied, “Captain Moon, it appears that Germany is in complete turmoil. We remember when we—the Soviet people—were in complete turmoil from the German invasion four long years ago. There’s a panic in the German voices now we remember like it was our own, and that panic does not lend itself to subterfuge.”

  J.P. Lambert clapped his hands in delight. “Then that would be the end of everything, wouldn’t it? Hitler dead, war over.”

  “Not so fast, J.P.,” Hammersmith said. “Like Sergeant Alexiev said, it’s just a rumor. And just because Der Führer is dead doesn’t mean they won’t stop fighting. Nobody’s used the word surrender, have they?”

  Alexiev replied, “No, sir. We haven’t heard that word. Not yet.”

  “Well,” Tommy said, “we’re going to continue our mission here until we’re told differently. Is that okay with you, Lieutenant Hammersmith?”

  “Yes. We’ve got no choice.”

  Tommy asked the Frenchman, “How about you, Lieutenant Lambert?”

  “Yes, I’m in agreement.”

  “Good,” Tommy said. “Let’s get down to some serious business, then. Corporal Mischenko, if you’d escort Sergeant Alexiev back to wherever she needs to be…”

  The two interpreters gone, Hammersmith said, “We’d better start compiling our notes on what we’ve learned here.”

  “Why?” J.P. asked. “The war’s going to be over in a matter of moments, it seems. What we found out won’t matter.”

  Hammersmith tried to corral his frustrations. “It matters, J.P., because we weren’t sent here on holiday. We were sent here to do a job, and if we don’t have our findings properly documented, we’ve failed at that job.”

  Lambert scowled, dismissive of that interpretation of their mission. “Nonsense, Oliver. We were sent here as pawns to discourage the Russians from interfering in Allied airspace. Not to be spies or diplomats.”

  “That’s where I must differ with you, my friend,” Hammersmith replied. “That’s not the way His Majesty’s government sees it. Not at all. We’re intelligence gatherers—behind the lines, if you will. We must document everything we’ve seen here and report back.”

  Growing indignant, Lambert asked, “What have we seen that we didn’t already know?”

  “Oh, come on, man,” the Brit replied. “You’re the one who’s been allowed the closest look at the Soviet organization here. You know more than anyone in the Allied camp at the moment about the sad state of readiness of the Soviet air fleet, how decrepit it truly is, how it has nearly no strategic capability and poor mechanical reliability in its tactical units.”

  Lambert couldn’t deny that.

  “And you, Tommy,” Hammersmith continued, “you’ve experienced Soviet tactics in the air first hand. And from what you’ve told me, they’re no different than their tactics on the ground.”

  “Really? What do you mean, Ollie?”

  “You’ve described their lack of coordination between individual units, how their planes can only attack singly or with all aircraft massed together. That’s no different from how they fight on the ground. Their use of armor and artillery—it’s exactly the same. For example, do you know what a time on target mission is?”

  “Sure,” Tommy replied. “I’ve been an ASO, so I know a little something about fire coordination between units. A T-O-T is when a number of different artillery units in different locations all fire at the same target so that everyone’s rounds land at exactly the same time.”

  “Correct. And you realize the levels of communication and coordination that takes, Tommy, since with the various batteries in different locations the time of flight of the rounds will be different for each battery. So even though all those rounds may land at exactly the same point at the same time, they were fired at different times.”

  “Yeah, that’s how it works,” Tommy replied.

  “Well, our friends the Soviets aren’t capable of that like our armies are. They lack the radio communications and inter-unit coordination. The only way they can mass fires is to line up all their cannon hub to hub and shoot them all at the same time. As a ground attack aviator, you’d like to know that fact, wouldn’t you? Think how vulnerable that mass of lined-up artillery would be.”

  Tommy nodded; Hammersmith made a very valid point. But still he had to ask, “But why does all this matter now, Ollie? It sure looks like this war is almost over.”

  The Brit shook his head sadly. “A German surrender won’t be the end of it, Tommy. Not by a long shot.”

  “I’m not following you,” Tommy said.

  “Neither am I,” Lambert added.

  “Then follow this, both of you,” Hammersmith replied. “Once we’re finished with the Germans, there’s an excellent chance we’ll be fighting the Soviets in very short order. Mr. Churchill is convinced of it.”

  “We’ll just have to see about that,” Tommy said. “But in the meantime, I don’t want anybody to write down anything about what we’ve seen here. And I mean anything. Your memory’s going to have to be good enough. That’s all we need—giving them the goods to call us spies.”

  For two weeks, the men of 4th Armored Division had scoured the Bavarian Alps in the southeast corner of Germany without any sign of a National Redoubt. Scattered and shattered remnants of German Army units popped up from time to time, becoming more a nuisance than a blocking force and certainly incapable of mounting any sort of offensive operation.

  True to Wehrmacht practices, some German units would still put up some semblance of a defensive stand until, after a brief exchange of fire, they’d throw down their weapons and come forward with hands raised, shouting kamerad.

  That practice had become unbearable to GIs who could taste the final victory and had no desire to be the last man to die for it. The companies of 37th Tank had taken to mounting loudspeakers on light trucks, capable of clearly projecting a voice a thousand yards. When a recalcitrant Wehrmacht unit was encountered, a German-speaking GI would announce over the loudspeaker:

  Your situation is hopeless. We have no desire to harm you. If you do resist, however, you will anger us, and we will bring the full force of our arms against you. It will be easier for you if you just stop your futile efforts, throw down your weapons, and come forward with your hands raised. We wish you a pleasant day.

  It usually worked.

  There was even some time for sightseeing. American paratroopers were occupying Hitler’s deserted retreat on the Obersalzberg high above the alpine town of Brechtesgaden, very near the Austrian border. It would have invited mass breakdowns of their Shermans to have them climb the steep mountain roads to the retreat, so the men of 37th Tank were shuttled to the peak in trucks. They got to spend half an hour touring the retreat, ogling the spoils of war, sampling Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring’s extensive liquor collection, and trading good-natured insults with the airborne troopers. Then they were trucked down the mountain so the next group of GI tourists could have their turn.

  As Sean Moon put it, Something about standing in Hitler’s house can make you pretty sure this damn war is as good as over.

  Convinced now that the National Redoubt was a figment o
f hyperbolic German propaganda and overanxious Allied imaginations, SHAEF ordered 3rd Army to turn east into Austria and Czechoslovakia. To the men of 37th Tank, it was just another example of their being sent in the wrong direction. The rumor that Russian troops were already in Berlin was growing stronger. At a battalion meeting, Sean expressed the mood of the tankers: “That should be us in Berlin, not the fucking Russians. It would be, too, if Ike didn’t keep screwing us around.”

  As the murmurs of agreement died down, Colonel Abrams said, “SHAEF feels it’s important at this point to keep the Russians out of as much of Germany as possible. The Allies are occupying about two-thirds of it at the moment. The Russians have the rest, and Ike doesn’t want their share getting any bigger. So down here in the south, we’re going to butt up against those Russians in Czechoslovakia and Austria, not Germany.”

  Sean replied, “That still sounds like the consolation prize, sir.”

  “Don’t think of it as a consolation prize, Sergeant Moon,” Abrams said. “Think of it as victory.”

  At first, there was dead silence from the assembled battalion cadre. Then a voice shouted, “Damn right!” Within seconds, Abrams’ men were cheering. Whether they were cheering for their colonel’s impression of victory—one that they hadn’t seemed to share a few moments ago—or the fact that victory by any definition meant going home, no one seemed to care.

  Then Abrams said, “There’s one more piece of good news. Get used to calling our Lieutenant Pollack Captain Pollack.”

  After Abrams pinned the bars on the new captain, the first man in line to offer congratulations—to everyone’s surprise—was Sergeant Vinny Vaccaro. Once the meeting broke up, Pollack said to Sean, “I didn’t think Sergeant Vaccaro was my biggest fan. But his congratulations seemed so genuine, almost like he’s forgotten I’m a Jew. What the hell’s gotten into him?”

  “Buchenwald, sir,” Sean replied. “That place did a real number on him.”