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

by William Peter Grasso

  Colonel Abrams filled in his combat leaders on a few other aspects of the area. “A couple of miles down the road, you’re going to find huge tunnels dug into the bases of some of the mountains. It was all done by slave labor from these camps. I can’t imagine how many of those prisoners died in the process. Inside those tunnels, there are factories that were building those jet planes we see from time to time. I’m told they were building V2 rockets, too.”

  Captain Pollack asked, “Do we know how many prisoners are still there, sir?”

  Abrams replied, “Thousands, Captain. Thousands. But here’s the good news: Thirty-Seventh Tank will be bypassing the camps and continuing east. Looks like we’re about to meet ourselves some Russians.”

  They were only on the move an hour when the colonel’s prediction proved true. Just short of the small city of Perg on the Danube’s north bank, they could see tanks on the narrow road ahead coming their way. Looking through binoculars, Sean said, “Yep, they’re Russian. I make that lead tank to be an IS-2.”

  Fabiano asked, “IS-2…that’s one of them heavy tanks, ain’t it?” He sounded as nervous as if the target in his gunsight was German.

  “Yep, it sure is.”

  “And ain’t that the one that can only fire something like three rounds a minute?”

  “Right again, Fab.”

  “Geez, they better make first-round hits every damn time, or they’re gonna get smoked before they ever get off a second shot.”

  “How far you make her, Fab?”

  “Seven hundred yards.”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right,” Sean replied.

  Fabiano asked, “Can I come up top and take a look? I ain’t believing what I’m seeing here.”

  “What ain’t you believing, Fab?”

  “If I got the scope dialed in right, that is the biggest fucking tank I ever seen. That gun looks like it’s a mile long.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty big, ain’t it?”

  “You know what I call that, don’t you, Sarge?”

  “Let me guess…a fucking super weapon, right?”

  “Damn right. Now can I come up top?”

  “Negative. Stay on the gun until I tell you different.”

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to fight these clowns, Sarge.”

  “That’s right. We’re not supposed to. But I don’t see no one throwing no flowers at us, neither.”

  Eight Ball was on a gentle downslope. Sean told Kowalski, his driver, “Ski, don’t go any farther than the bottom of this hill. When you get there, stop dead in the middle of the road, straddling both lanes. But keep her on the slope.”

  Over the radio, he told his platoon, “Keep your interval, even when we stop. Don’t all bunch up on me.”

  Fabiano thought that odd for a meeting of friendly forces. He asked Sean, “How come you want to keep the interval, Sarge? If we ain’t gonna fight ’em, what’s so important about that now?”

  “I want us spread out up this hill like we’re on stairs so everybody gets a clean shot. Nobody’s masked by the tank in front.”

  “Sure sounds like you’re getting ready for a shootout, Sarge.”

  “Just shut up and pay attention.”

  Eight Ball arrived at the bottom of the hill a full minute before the Russian column reached it. The lead Russian tank was an IS-2, just as Sean had identified it. Its huge 122-millimeter main gun pointed at the Sherman like an accusing finger.

  Over the radio, Sean advised Captain Pollack, “We got contact, Six. Any word where the translator is at?”

  “Negative, no translator yet,” Pollack replied. “You know what to do in the meantime.”

  The Russians hadn’t bothered to bring a translator, either. An officer—nobody could tell what rank he was—stood beside the IS-2 and, like a traffic cop, was waving his arms, signaling the Americans to get off the road. He was yelling something, too, but the Americans didn’t understand a word.

  “Pretty pushy, eh?” Sean said. “Who died and left him boss?”

  Kowalski asked, “But we’re not gonna move, right, Sarge?”

  “Affirmative. Keep her running, set the brakes.”

  The Russian officer’s gestures were becoming more demanding. Still sitting in his turret hatch, Sean replied by shaking his head while smiling and waving hello.

  From his vantage point atop the turret, Sean could look down the entire Russian column. The lead tank was the only IS-2; the others behind it—he counted eight—were T-34s, the standard Soviet battle tank that had carried the day for them just like the Shermans had for the Americans. They were both medium-sized tanks with medium-sized guns and a host of vulnerabilities the heavier, better-armed panzers had easily exploited back in the days when Wehrmacht offensives seemed unstoppable. But as the conflict matured into an industrial contest as much as a strategic one, Allied tanks were being produced in such numbers the less numerous, more complex to build German tanks could never destroy them all. A Tiger might knock out four or five Shermans or T-34s in a single action, but there would always be more coming. One of them would eventually kill the Tiger.

  Sean had never seen any Russian tank before today, but every GI tanker knew their characteristics almost as well as they knew those of the German tanks. His first impression of the T-34: Kinda looks like some kid built it with his Erector Set.

  A handful of armored cars and lend-lease American jeeps made up the rest of the Soviet column.

  Apparently, the Russian officer was getting tired of waving his arms at the Americans. He yelled something to the IS-2’s commander. With a lurch, the big Russian tank began to move forward, settling into a slow crawl as she came straight for Eight Ball.

  Sean said, “Fab, move our tube ten degrees right.”

  “How come, Sarge?”

  “So he doesn’t fucking ram it, that’s how come. Do it now, and don’t make me say things twice.”

  Sean locked eyes with the Russian tank commander, who seemed to be slowly sinking into his turret. Only the top of his head was visible now.

  Sean called out, “WHAT’S THE MATTER, IVAN? YOU THINK I’M GONNA THROW A ROCK AT YOU OR SOMETHING?”

  The Russian commander must’ve been thinking quite like Sean, though; his long main gun—its muzzle brake now passing over Eight Ball’s bow—traversed to its right so as not to damage itself against Sean’s gun or turret.

  So much for the shooting war. We’re down to a shoving match now.

  The sounds of their bows coming together were like nothing Sean and his crew had ever heard before: the dull but resounding thud of thick steel slamming together; the snarl of treads gnashing against each other.

  They were locked face to face in a mechanized dance, caressing each other while frozen in place, the gun tubes like arms draped around their partner.

  Kowalski’s panicky voice filled their headphones: “He’s trying to push us, Sarge!”

  Sean’s voice was calm but commanding: “Just stand on the brakes. He’ll never push her uphill.”

  “But ain’t they got about five tons and two hundred horses on us?”

  Sean replied, “Yeah, but we got the laws of physics on our side at the moment.”

  The Russian engine roared as the tank tried to overpower Eight Ball with brute force and push her back. The Sherman rocked violently but didn’t yield an inch.

  Still standing on the road, the Russian officer grew furious at his inability to simply shove the roadblock out of his way. He began gesturing to the next tank in line—a T-34—to move off the road and proceed around the Americans.

  The T-34’s commander protested, arms outstretched as if pleading. The ground off-road was obviously soft from the recent rain. Traction could be difficult; once the hull bottomed out, the tank would be stuck. A Russian soldier tried to test the soil’s firmness. He quickly sank over his ankles and lost a boot in the muck as he tried to extricate himself.

  But the officer was insistent. The T-34 began to move. It rumbled up the pavement p
ast the officer and then pivoted onto the road’s shoulder.

  “Watch this,” Sean told his crew. “It oughta be a hoot.”

  The T-34 plowed about fifty feet onto the soft turf before the hull bottomed. Its tracks would do nothing now but spin like treadmills, propelling the tank neither forward nor backward, slinging torrents of mud on the man whose order had caused this predicament.

  “There you have it, men,” Sean said. “Living proof right before your eyes that the Russians have their share of stupid shithead officers, too.”

  The American tankers were sitting atop their vehicles now, cheering the Russian failure like rabid fans at a ballgame.

  The front hatches on the IS-2 sprung wide open. A crewman’s head popped through each of those hatches, gasping for air. Puffs of white smoke drifted up through the hatches.

  “Look at that!” Sean said. “They’re burning up their clutch.”

  Within seconds, Sean and his crew could smell the pungent odor of the overheated clutch, too.

  “Wooo-eeee,” Sean cried, holding his nose. “Get a load of that stink bomb, fellas.”

  The efforts of the IS-2 to move Eight Ball were faltering, becoming less violent. After a few more attempts to push the Sherman backward—all failures which only damaged her transmission further—the Russian tank shuddered into reverse and limped backward.

  And then they waited, the Americans enjoying themselves, hurling insults at their supposed allies. The Russian tankers—all the ones who weren’t getting covered with mud hooking tow cables to the mired T-34, at least—merely glared from their hatches in silence.

  Two more T-34s moved forward to hook up to the cables and pull their sister out of the mud. Sean laughed as he said, “Damn shame they burned out the clutch in the IS-2. It coulda pulled out the T-34 all by itself. If they don’t do this smart, in a minute they’re gonna have three T-34s stuck in the mud.”

  Colonel Abrams arrived with the American translator in tow. Eight Ball and the IS-2 were separated by about one hundred feet. Abrams and the translator walked halfway to the Russian tank and stopped. Then they waited.

  Five minutes later, an armored car threaded its way to the head of the Russian column. An older officer—one with considerably more ornamentation on his shoulder boards than the column commander—dismounted and took a long look at the situation. Sean and his crew didn’t have to know Russian to figure out that this officer wasn’t happy with what he saw. After taking a few moments to chew out his mud-splattered subordinate, he and another soldier began to walk toward Colonel Abrams and his translator.

  “This oughta be great,” Sean said. “I’ll bet ol’ Abe tells him fuck you and the tank you rode in on.”

  But the conversation seemed surprisingly cordial. It didn’t take long, however, for it to turn into a full-blown international conference. More officers arrived on both sides, including General Gaffey, 4th Armored Division’s commander. Maps were produced; the conferees moved to the bow of Eight Ball for a surface on which to spread them. That gave Sean and his crew a front row seat for the negotiation.

  The ranking Russian officer—a colonel—insisted the Americans return to Linz and advance no farther. He claimed all of Austria was to be in the Russian-held territory since they already held Vienna, its capital. The American officers knew where this logic was going. They’d heard that Russian troops had already entered Berlin. By the colonel’s logic, all Germany would then become Russian-controlled territory.

  General Gaffey’s initial response was to laugh out loud. Then he said, “Sorry, Colonel, but that dog won’t hunt.”

  Both translators looked confused. The Russian had no idea what the expression meant, period. The American knew but wasn’t sure how Gaffey would want him to make the reply a bit less colloquial, leaving no chance for misinterpretation.

  Seeing his translator’s dismay, Gaffey said, “Just tell him no fucking way, Corporal.”

  Now Eight Ball’s crew was laughing, too. The fact that their laughter was obviously annoying the Russians made it all the better.

  With a wink of his eye, Gaffey told the GIs, “At ease, boys. Let me do the talking here, okay?”

  The translator delivered the general’s response. The Russian looked mightily offended and spat out something which sounded exceedingly hostile.

  Speaking softly into Eight Ball’s interphone, Sean played the shithouse psychologist for a moment, asking his crew, “Is it just me, or do our Russian pals here have an air of violence about them? They all look like they’d kill their own mother for the price of the bullet.”

  Then two things happened simultaneously that brought all discussion to a halt. First, a flight of P-47s passed low overhead, heading straight down the road on which the Russians had come. Second, one of the T-34s trying to pull out her mired sister got stuck in the mud, too.

  “Fucking idiots don’t have a long enough cable,” Sean said. “We all knew that was gonna happen, right? Shame, too, because we could loan them longer cables, but why bother? It’s too much fun watching them fuck the dog.”

  As if enough bad fortune wasn’t falling on the Soviets, the IS-2 attempted to pivot to the opposite direction. Halfway through the maneuver, there was a cringeworthy grinding of metal, and the big tank shuddered to a stop. A heated exchange ensued between the driver and tank commander, but mere words would not get her moving again, no matter how loudly they were yelled.

  “Well, Colonel,” Gaffey said, “it looks like three of your nine armored vehicles are out of action…and you did it all by yourself, with no help from an enemy. I’d hate to have to explain a fuckup like that to my boss.”

  The Russian listened to the translation with eyes full of rage. His reply: “I still have more forces than you at my disposal.”

  “Oh? How do you figure that, Colonel?”

  The Russian triumphantly pointed to the five Shermans spread out on the downslope: Sean’s four tanks plus the one belonging to Colonel Abrams.

  Gaffey smiled coyly as he asked the Russian, “Would you care to take a little stroll with me, Colonel?”

  The colonel agreed. The two men walked up the hill, their translators close behind.

  Colonel Abrams found it all very funny. He told Sean, “You know, Sergeant, I don’t believe that Russian fellow has any idea we’re point for an entire division. What do you figure’s going to happen when he gets to the top of the hill and sees the rest of Fourth Armored’s vehicles stretching back for miles?”

  Sean replied, “I think he’s gonna shit his pants, sir.”

  Regardless of what happened in the Russian’s pants, a much different man came back down the hill, one who now clearly knew he’d brought a knife to a gunfight.

  “We have many divisions, too,” the Russian tried to protest.

  “Yeah,” Gaffey replied, “but they’re not here, Colonel. All you have is a li’l ol’ patrol…and a third of it is in the ditch. And those aircraft that just passed overhead are busy doing a reconnaissance beyond Perg, and they’re reporting that there are no other Russian forces anywhere near here. That kind of puts you all alone out here without any support. So I’ll tell you what we’re going to do…”

  As Gaffey laid out his terms to the Russian, Abrams told his tankers, “Looks like the intel we got on those Russkies is right, boys. The only thing they understand is force.”

  The Russian colonel had little choice but to accept Gaffey’s terms. The Americans brought up their armored wrecker—with its very long cables—and pulled both T-34s out of the muck. Then the wrecker maneuvered the disabled IS-2 onto an American flatbed tank transporter. As the Russian vehicles turned around on the narrow road and headed back toward Perg, their crews flashed thumbs up signs to the Americans. Knowing no better, the GIs returned the thumbs up, thinking they were engaging in a show of good will.

  A few of the Russian soldiers and tankers fired tracers into the air as they drove away. Sean asked Colonel Abrams, “Them tracers…what do you make of that, sir?”<
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  “I take them as a warning, Sergeant. I don’t think there will ever be any hugs and kisses between the Russians and Third Army.”

  The last vehicle in the Russian column—the GI flatbed with the IS-2—drove off to deliver its load to the Russian side of the boundary line Gaffey had just dictated, which would run through the middle of the city of Perg. The Russians would have the east side of the line, the Americans the west.

  The GIs already renamed it Purgatory, that place between Heaven and Hell. The city would mark the finish line for both their advances. And, quite possibly, the end of their war.

  With the Germans, at least.

  Morale was soaring at French 1st Army headquarters. German resistance was little more than token; the collapse of the Reich seemed all but assured in days if not hours. The French advance across the western-most finger of Austria, which protruded between Germany and Italy and bumped up against Switzerland, was unchecked. In the rugged Italian Alps fifty kilometers to the south, the Germans, caught in the Allied pincer of the French coming from the north and Americans from the south, had ceased fighting altogether. The French were in constant radio contact with the American 10th Mountain Division as it marched north to the Resia Pass. They were sure that in a few days they’d make physical contact with the Americans at that mountain pass, completely securing the Allied southern flank.

  Sylvie’s work with Affaires Civiles had become less demanding. Population was lighter in the mountain towns and there were few displaced civilians to accommodate. Food supplies were being delivered on time, and though the amounts were no more than barely adequate, no one seemed in danger of going hungry. The weather was warming, too, easing the need for coal to power heating furnaces. Most days, she was actually finding a few hours of free time, a benefit she hadn’t enjoyed for many months.

  She filled some of that free time trying to figure out where Tommy Moon was. She’d finally come to an answer: 301st Fighter Squadron was now based at Eschborn, Germany. And while that was 400 kilometers from where she was—a solid day’s drive if military traffic permitted—getting to see him was, at least, in the realm of possibility.