Moon Above, Moon Below

by William Peter Grasso

  Sylvie wrapped the old woman in her arms. She knew there would be no changing her mind. Just holding her close made it seem like everything was all right, if only just for a moment.

  “You will stay the night, won’t you?”

  “Of course, Grand-mère. But I must leave first thing in the morning.”

  “You must get back to your little war games with the maquis, I suppose…and to that shit of a husband.”

  Little war games: from anyone else, Sylvie would have taken offense. But she knew she could no more change her grandmother’s opinions on life and war than she could grow wings and fly. And there was no denying Bernard was a shit.

  Tommy had just finished writing the mission report when Sergeant McNulty stuck his head into the operations tent. “Hey, Lieutenant, I just lucked into another kit for the rocket mod. We got a great chance to do it tonight, when we’ve got those wing pylons off for that re-shim. It should make the job go a whole lot quicker, but if we run into problems it could turn into an exercise in fertility, and she won’t be ready at the crack of dawn like you want.”

  It took a few moments to reach his decision: I want that stand-off punch the rockets give, even if it is hard as hell to actually hit a tank with one. But I don’t want to be stuck here on the ground if the shit’s hitting the fan in the morning. McNulty and his boys have never let me down before, though.

  “Yeah, Sarge. Go ahead and do it. Give me the rockets.”

  “You got it, sir. You gonna be around in case we need your opinion on anything?”

  “Me and a couple of the other pilots are going into Alençon for a while. We should be back around 2300.”

  McNulty’s face lit up in a crooked smile. “Chasing skirt beats out beauty sleep again, eh, Lieutenant?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, be sure and use a cundrum. And nail one for me while you’re at it, will you?”

  Thirty minutes later, Tommy parked the jeep behind the MP post in Alençon. He and the three pilots in his section spilled out: Jimmy Tuttle, Joe Rider, and Herb Clinchmore. Tuttle asked, “Why the hell are we dumping the jeep here, Tommy? All the good bars are blocks away.”

  “Because if I ask the provost marshal to keep an eye on it, it’ll probably still be here when we get back. And if it’s not, you can bet some MP borrowed it, and it’ll magically reappear before you can finish a cup of coffee.”

  “Is that some New York City wisdom talking?”

  “No, just common sense. And hard experience.”

  While his section mates headed off to the bars, Tommy walked the few blocks to Papa’s House. There was the usual line of GIs wrapped around the corner and the usual amount of grumbling as he pushed to the head of the line, assuring the annoyed troopers this fucking officer was not cutting in; he was just looking for someone.

  When he got to the door, that same giant Frenchman was standing guard. In French, Tommy said, “I’m looking for Sylvie Bergerac. I’m a friend, not a customer. Maybe you remember me from last night?”

  The guard couldn’t be bothered to look down at Tommy as he replied, “I don’t know you, soldier, and I don’t know any whore by that name.”

  “She’s not a whore, she’s—”

  Roughly shoving Tommy aside, the giant said, “Clear the way and get out of my sight before I make you wish you had. This is not the lonely hearts’ club, you little shithead of an American.”

  The GIs in the line had no idea what was being said, but it looked likely this huge Frenchman was about to kick the living crap out of an officer, and they were dying to watch. It wasn’t to be, however. Tommy turned and walked away.

  What the hell did that guy mean he doesn’t know her? He sure as hell knew her last night.

  Making his way to the Café Madeleine, he was struck by how normal everything in Alençon seemed, as if everyone—French civilians and GIs alike—was untouched by the war raging just a few miles up the highway.

  Everything in the café seemed normal, too: rowdy GIs being endured by the long-suffering French proprietors for the steady flow of francs their business provided. Asking the bartender if he knew of Sylvie’s whereabouts, he got the same answer as before: “I do not know any woman by that name.”

  “But she walked around here like she owned the place last night.”

  Dismissing Tommy with a scowl and a violent shake of his head, the bartender replied, “I own this place. No one but me. Thank you for speaking your almost intelligible French, Lieutenant…but now I’ll thank you to leave my café.”

  “Can I at least get a beer?”

  “No. Get out.” He looked ready to leap over the bar and throw Tommy out single-handedly.

  At his Alençon HQ, General Wood stood before the big tactical map on the wall. His fingers ran lightly over the town of Gacé and then over to the symbol in the green area representing a forest two miles east: a simple line drawing of a flag, representing the headquarters of Combat Command Fox. With a ruler, he measured the distance from the Flers-Argentan stop line to that symbol: five damn miles.

  The Division S3—Wood’s operations officer—asked, “Having second thoughts about sending them over Monty’s line, sir?”

  “Hell, no, Colonel,” Wood replied. “When I reported their progress to General Patton, all he said was ‘Great job.’ Then I asked how he was going to report our little trespass to the boys upstairs, and he said, ‘I’m not going to tell them shit yet.’”

  Sylvie’s head had just hit the pillow when the snarl of tank engines shattered the night’s stillness in Gacé. From her grandmother’s parlor window, she could see the darkened silhouettes of German soldiers in formation running up Rue de Manet. She heard a voice, maybe that of a sergeant or officer, shouting, “Macht schnell! Macht schnell!”

  Her grandmother was awakened by all the commotion. Walking sleepily into the parlor, she asked Sylvie, “Has the fighting come back to Gacé?”

  “I don’t know, Grand-mère.”

  “Are they leaving, perhaps?”

  “Either that…or they’re going to attack the Americans.”

  “Or it’s the Americans who are attacking, Sylvie. Come away from the window. We must go to the basement.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ALLIED GROUND FORCES DIRECTIVE

  FROM:

  MONTGOMERY--COMMANDER, ALLIED GROUND FORCES

  DATE--TIME OF ORIGIN:

  14 AUG 44/0100 HRS

  TO:

  BRADLEY--COMMANDER, 12TH ARMY GROUP

  COPY (FOR INFO):

  SHAEF (EISENHOWER); HODGES--US 1ST ARMY; PATTON--US 3RD ARMY; DEMPSEY--2ND BRITISH ARMY; CRERAR--1ST CANADIAN ARMY; CONINGHAM--RAF 2ND TAF; QUESADA--IX TAC; WEYLAND--XIX TAC; BRERETON--9TH AIR FORCE

  RE YOUR STATUS REPORT OF 2200/13 AUG, THIS COMMAND IS ALARMED TO LEARN OF THE DEEP GERMAN SALIENT 3RD ARMY HAS ALLOWED TO DEVELOP IN THE AREA NORTH OF SÉES. I MUST REMIND YOU THAT YOUR CURRENT MISSION IS TO TRAP THE GERMAN 7TH ARMY, NOT ALLOW GERMANS TO DRIVE A WEDGE BETWEEN YOUR 1ST AND 3RD ARMIES AND ALLOW BOTH TO BE DESTROYED IN FLANKING MOVEMENTS.

  YOU ARE ORDERED TO ELIMINATE THE SALIENT AT SÉES TODAY, 14 AUG, NLT THAN 2359 HOURS. USE ALL ASSETS AVAILABLE, TO INCLUDE TACTICAL AIR POWER, TO ACHIEVE THIS MOST CRUCIAL OBJECTIVE.

  SIGNED,

  MONTGOMERY

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Sean Moon checked his watch: 0300…are the Krauts coming or what?

  The men of CCF had been listening to the murmur of German engines in Gacé for over two hours. In that time, not one vehicle had left the confines of the town to show herself on the moonlit highways or open fields.

  I’m sure glad they’ve got the gas to waste without going nowhere. Maybe we should’ve hit that fucking town after all and taken that gas for ourselves.

  When he’d last checked Eclipse of the Hun’s fuel gauge, it read less than a quarter of a tank: Not even enough to get back to Alençon…or get us through one good fight.

  He scanned the darkness with binoculars
one more time. Not a damn thing happening. Maybe the Krauts are just trying to keep us awake.

  If that was the Germans’ plan, it was working. Sean’s crew was exhausted, but not a man had dozed off. They broke open box after box of K rations, eating just to stay awake. If we keep chowing down like this, Sean told himself, we’ll be out of food, too, before you know it. Damn, I gotta take a leak.

  He slid down from the turret to the hull deck and then to the ground behind the Sherman. For a few moments, the physical relief of urination masked the sound of the distant German engines. But once he was finished, something had changed. The murmur had become a snarling mechanical chorus, growing steadily louder. The German tanks were moving, getting closer. All along the treeline, gunners in Shermans and tank destroyers pressed eyes to gunsights, waiting for the dark shapes to grow larger and into range. Farther back, in clearings that afforded them fields of fire, the mortars and artillery pieces were ready to shoot illumination and HE rounds in high-angle fire onto predetermined target zones.

  Captain Newcomb’s voice spilled from the company radio net. “Nobody get itchy trigger fingers now. They can’t see us for a max range shot, so they’re going to have to get close…close enough that maybe we can kill them first.”

  So they waited.

  Fabiano, Eclipse’s gunner, asked Sean, “How far do you think they are?”

  “I make them at twelve hundred yards, Fab.”

  “So why the fuck ain’t we shooting? Those up-gunned tank destroyers we got should be able to cook ’em at this range. And with a lot of luck, these Zippos could, too.”

  Sean replied, “We shoot when the captain says so, and not before. You read me?”

  “Yeah. Loud and clear. But I don’t fucking like it.”

  “Too damn bad, Fab.”

  Sean tried to count those dark shapes, advancing toward them in what seemed two ranks. He got to 17 when a blinding beam of light rendered his eyes useless.

  “THEY GOT FUCKING SEARCHLIGHTS ON THOSE TANKS. I CAN’T SEE A FUCKING THING.”

  It would take time to restore his vision, time they didn’t have. Those searchlights were illuminating almost every vehicle in the treeline. Within seconds, the German tanks were firing.

  Sean wasn’t the only one affected. Night-blind GI gunners all along the line—at least those whose vehicles weren’t already knocked out in the first salvo—either fired poorly aimed shots at the dazzling lights or didn’t fire at all. Inside Eclipse, the only crewman who hadn’t been looking into the searchlights when they snapped on was the loader, PFC Kowalski.

  “Ski,” Sean said, “you still got your eyes?”

  “Yeah, Sarge.”

  “Then this is your big chance, kid. Take over for Fab. Squint into the sight so you don’t go fucking blind, too.”

  Kowalski slid across the turret and took the gunner’s position. He knew what to do; Sean had cross-trained all his crewmen well. But he’d never had to do it when it was a matter of life and death. Trying to pick out a target through the sight, he asked, “What the hell do you want me to shoot at, Sarge?”

  “Pick any one of ’em. There’s plenty to choose from.”

  Aligning the gun tube with a shape that seemed so big—and so close it filled his sight picture—he said, “Okay, I pick him. On the way!”

  Eclipse shuddered with her own recoil. The breech snapped open, and the acrid stench of expended propellant filled the turret.

  “Somebody gonna fucking load for me?” Kowalski asked, his voice taking on the tone of a man relishing his first taste of command. “Or do I have to do everything my goddamn self?”

  “Easy, killer,” Sean replied, fumbling for an anti-tank round. “I got you covered. That first shot hit anything?”

  “Fucking A it did. Hit him right in the turret. Shoved the tube and that goddamn searchlight right down his throat.”

  Sean rammed the round in and locked the breach. No sooner had he reported “Up!” when Kowalski yelled, “On the way!”

  The searchlights were extinguished and shattered now, their few seconds of dominance erased by main guns and .50 calibers up and down the line. Now it was the Germans’ turn to be blind. Their line of tanks slowed and then stopped as drivers and gunners struggled to regain orientation on the battlefield. Colonel Abrams told his artillery observer, “Fire for effect, son.”

  Volley after devastating volley of short-range, high-angle fire from 105-mm howitzers rained almost straight down on the bewildered Germans. Their tanks—a mixture of Mark IVs, Panthers, and a few of the dreaded Tigers—were impervious to being knocked out by most American weapons when shooting at their tough front armor. But rounds plummeting onto their decks and turret roofs were another matter. Those panzers suffering direct hits from above were quickly turned into flaming coffins as their hulls were breached and their ammo and fuel ignited. As this high-angle death continued to fall, the American tankers’ vision was returning. They added their direct fire to the chaos the artillery had caused.

  Captain Newcomb’s voice was on the radio again. “Kraut tanks don’t attack by themselves. There’s got to be infantry with them somewhere.”

  As if to prove his point, the whoosh and flaming tail of a rocket from within CCF’s perimeter struck a Sherman, turning it into a pyre.

  “Shit,” Sean said, “we got Kraut bastards with panzerfausts up our ass.” He climbed out of the turret hatch to man the .50 caliber mounted on the roof. He could see the dark outlines of running men, some of them holding short, thin tubes with one bulbous end that could only be panzerfausts. No GI carried a weapon shaped like that.

  He pivoted the .50 caliber to knock them down. Before he could get off a burst, he saw the silhouette of a coal scuttle helmet of the Wehrmacht at Eclipse’s rear end. The man wearing that distinctive helmet was climbing onto her rear deck. In his raised hand was something that looked like a stick with a tin can stuck on its end. A short, point-blank burst from Sean’s machine gun ripped him apart. The stick he’d carried—a “potato masher” grenade—dropped onto the deck. Sean scrambled through the turret hatch. He wasn’t all the way inside when the grenade exploded.

  He knew he was hit, feeling the searing metal fragments in his arm and shoulder. But he didn’t feel wounded. Every part of his body seemed to work just fine. He was back out of the turret and on the .50 caliber in seconds, firing at fleeting shadows in strange helmets, shouting into the turret as he identified panzers for his gunner to engage. He could see the battle clearly now, the field bathed in the light of so many burning tanks from both sides. He offered a silent prayer the foot soldiers he was gunning down weren’t his own.

  Colonel Abrams was on the radio with a terse message: “Do not pursue. Repeat, do not pursue.” It took the adrenaline-fueled tankers several moments to process what their colonel meant: The battle is over. The Germans are withdrawing back toward Gacé.

  Do not pursue: Sean smiled as the full meaning of those words sunk in: We won’t have to fight house to house in the fucking dark tonight. Thank God.

  He checked his watch again: 0312.

  Not even ten fucking minutes, Sean told himself. That’s all it took.

  When the sun came up in a few hours, they’d know what it had cost.

  At his HQ at Alençon, General Wood cursed when he read the directive from General Patton. Once his entire staff was roused from their sleep and assembled, he told them, “Gentlemen, Georgie says we can’t wait for Eightieth Division to take Sées. We’ve got to do it our damn selves…and we’ve got to do it today.”

  “What about CC Fox, sir?” his G3 asked. “They’ve just fought off a major attack. We won’t know what their combat condition is for a few hours yet. They’re going to need our support. We can’t hang them out to dry.”

  “Tell me something I don’t for damn sure know, Colonel,” Wood replied. “It sounds like that little Limey clerk chewed Brad’s ass but good for not keeping his hold line nice and straight. Like this is some fucking parade ground
or something.”

  The G3 asked, “So Monty doesn’t have a clue about CC Fox’s whereabouts yet, does he, sir?”

  “Apparently not. If he did, there’d be a hell of a lot more shit hitting the fan right now than just tidying up his silly little line. But here’s the rest of the deal. Brad’s told Ninth Air Force to level Sées at sun-up. Then all we’ve got to do is mop up afterwards, he says…like he’s forgotten the rubble of shattered towns makes for terrific defensive fortifications that just might hold us up for days.”

  “But sir,” the G3 replied, “there can’t be more than a couple of battalions left in Sées. What happened to the directive not to indiscriminately flatten whole towns that aren’t heavily defended?”

  “Directives are made to be ignored sometimes, Colonel. Just ask George Patton. He’s a master at the practice.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The men of Combat Command Fox needed only the veiled light of predawn to take the toll of what had happened just a few hours before. The burned-out hulks of a dozen German tanks—one Tiger, the rest Mark IVs and Panthers—littered the open field between the forest and Gacé. The GIs were surprised to find none of those beaten tanks were closer than 500 yards; they had seemed so much closer when the fight was on.

  The Shermans and tank destroyers on the west side of CCF’s perimeter absorbed the brunt of the attack. Nine were knocked out, with most of their crew dead. Armored vehicles on the other sectors of the perimeter were unscathed, as was the artillery. The American infantrymen miraculously suffered only a handful of dead and wounded, but the German infantrymen who infiltrated the perimeter fared far worse; over 50 were dead, a number of them in the area behind Eclipse of the Hun. A precise count proved difficult, as they weren’t counting whole bodies, only body parts. Fifty-caliber machine gun fire tends to crudely butcher a man rather than just tear neat holes in his flesh. The GIs loading the noxious stew of fragmented Germans into empty ammo trailers—men who had grown hardened to the gore of battle—had all they could do to keep from puking their guts out.