Ardennes Sniper: A World War II Thriller

by David Healey

  The sight was both terrifying and mesmerizing. Fortunately, he and Friel were too far away to be in any real danger from the Allied bombs.

  That changed when the planes returned from their bombing run to strafe the narrow road. Each American plane was equipped with wing-mounted .50 caliber machine guns. Like dozens of others, Von Stenger scrambled for shelter as the heavy slugs churned up clods of frozen mud and shredded whatever vehicles were in the line of fire.

  Considering that the planes traveled at high speed, the strafing was over in an instant. The planes circled back to hit the column again, but this time the Germans were prepared. Behind a MG-42 mounted on a vehicle, he could see Sgt. Breger was one of those soldiers unleashing twelve hundred rounds per minute at the planes, which were well within range. Without doubt, the planes took fire, because they did not return.

  Once the planes were gone, Von Stenger crawled out from the roadside ditch and was amazed to see Friel still standing in the back of the Volkswagen, unscathed, even though the strafing had punched holes in the hood of the vehicle.

  The bastard had nerves of iron.

  "That was just two planes," Friel said ruefully as Von Stenger climbed somewhat sheepishly back into the vehicle. "They will return, and perhaps in greater force. Fortunately for us, their base in Saint-Dizier is more than one hundred twenty kilometers distant. Even if those were scouts, that buys us some time."

  "It will take hours for the entire Kampfgruppe to get there on these roads."

  "Do you have an alternative to suggest, Kurt?" the Obersturmbannführer snapped at him.

  "No, Herr Obersturmbannführer."

  "I wish you did." The SS officer folded his map and stowed it in a pocket of his coat. "Keep that rifle of yours handy. Perhaps you can shoot down an Allied plane or two."

  The Kampfgruppe continued along the road, its progress slowed by the burning or disabled vehicles in its path. Panzers now doubled as bulldozers, pushing the wreckage off the roads. Behind them, a single tank was engaged with a small American unit that had scattered with the first shot from its 88 mm cannon.

  With the weather clearing, Von Stenger knew well that they were in a race against time. The return of the Americans to the skies meant real trouble for them. It was hard to ignore the fact that the Kampfgruppe was spread out now over many kilometers, making concerted movement difficult and communication challenging.

  They had to get to that bridge at Habiemont.

  “Come with me, Kurt.” Friel climbed aboard a tank. A single tank could race ahead and hold the bridge. It was their best hope. He ordered Breger to follow in a half track equipped with a machine gun.

  At speed, a Tiger II tank could move at twenty-four miles per hour. The road ahead was narrow but frozen hard, not broken up yet by the passage of other vehicles. They moved close to top speed, the countryside of snow-covered fields and rolling hills passing in a satisfying blur. If there were civilians, they had the good sense not to show themselves. Friel rode with his head out of the hatch, keeping one eye on the skies and the other on the road ahead. The tank crew tried to ignore the falling fuel gauge as the roaring engine drank greedily.

  Von Stenger rode on top of the tank, feeling very exposed. He would have preferred to be on the ground, but he could not have kept up with the mechanized treads of the tank.

  From time to time, Friel leaned down and shouted into the tank below, “Faster! You can do better than that! The road ahead is clear. Full throttle!”

  Despite the speed of the tanks, it took them an hour to reach Habiemont. Finally, the village came into view. It looked like something out of a storybook with the little houses all covered in snow. The bridge came into sight.

  The bridge was narrow, so the massive tanks would need to cross one at a time.

  Movement ahead caught Von Stenger's eye. He spotted a knot of soldiers in olive drab struggling up the far bank of the river. They appeared lightly armed, as if they were not concerned about defending the bridge. What had they been up to? With a sinking feeling, he realized that one of the men held a large spool of wire in his hands as he scrambled up the bank. Another man held a detonating plunger.

  Von Stenger lifted his rifle and shouted a warning. "Friel, they are going to blow the bridge!"

  Their driver had already stopped so that Friel could direct the panzers, so Von Stenger stood and balanced the rifle across the tank turret. He put the crosshairs on the American engineer holding the spool of wire and squeezed the trigger. It was not too difficult a shot—no more than 300 meters. The man crumpled and the spool of wire went bouncing away. For a moment it looked as if it might roll right into the river. But the wire got caught on something and another man slid down after it. Von Stenger worked the bolt of his rifle.

  Friel was shouting, ordering the tank to fire on the engineers while urging Breger forward with the half track so that he could open devastating fire with the machine gun.

  Von Stenger could aim faster than a panzer and with more precision than the machine gunner. No sooner had the next engineer picked up the spool, than Von Stenger shot him. Once again, the spool bounced away.

  The next man dived on top of it like an American football player. He almost hated to shoot such a brave fool. He lined up the crosshairs on the soldier, let out his breath—

  A split second later, the tank lurched beneath him as the cannon fired. The sound was deafening, making the powerful rifle seem like a pop gun as it went off, the bullet going far astray. Von Stenger cursed; his ears rang and his eardrums hurt as if a nail had been driven through them.

  He ignored the pain. No time for that.

  A bullet pinged off the top of the tank. Scheiss! Von Stenger swiveled around. The shot had come from behind them. Another bullet cracked past. He could not see anyone behind them, but there were clearly snipers back there.

  “Kurt, get down!” he yelled. “You are drawing sniper fire. Get inside the tank!”

  Another bullet karoomed off the steel skin of the tank. Friel wasn’t so lucky this time, because a fragment of the bullet grazed his face. He tumbled inside the tank, where operations came to a standstill as the crew hurried to help their injured commander.

  Cursing, Von Stenger jumped down from the tank. Now fully exposed to sniper fire, he ran to one side of the road. A bullet kicked up ice and snow inches from him. Stabs of pain radiated from his wounded leg, but he ignored that. He got free of the road and sprawled in the snow, hoping a prone position would keep the rifle steady.

  For now, he chose to ignore the snipers aggravating them. All that mattered was securing the bridge.

  Locked under the rifle, his elbows were effective as a bipod. He put his eye to the scope in time to see the drab-uniformed Americans scurrying like rats to attach the wire to the detonator.

  The pause in the firing from the Germans as they reacted to the sniper attack was all the time that the American engineers needed. They scrambled to lay wires and set charges.

  Von Stenger took aim. He was just about to fire when from the corner of his eye he saw the bulk of a King Tiger tank approaching as it raced toward the bridge. Cursing, he rolled out of the way to keep from being crushed. Several tons of steel now blocked his line of fire.

  He ran to a new position and fired, the bullet going wide, kicking up mud a foot or so away from the man working at the detonator.

  Von Stenger worked the bolt, put the crosshairs on the man, forced himself to let out a breath and take better aim.

  The American soldier seemed to look right at him defiantly. Von Stenger shot the man through the heart, but his dying action was to slump across the detonator.

  Multiple explosions flashed beneath the bridge.

  The panzer was preparing to cross the bridge when the structure blew sky high. Chunks of stone, mortar and wood shot upwards, propelled by a geyser of ice and water.

  The panzer fired with telling accuracy, the arc of its tracer aimed as accurately as Von Stenger's bullet, but with much more telling impa
ct. The high explosive round detonated, leaving a crater where the American engineers had been a moment before. They had paid for the bridge with their lives.

  But for Kampfgruppe Friel, it was too late. Their route back into France had vanished.

  Nearby, Friel popped back out of the tank long enough to scream curses at the remnants of the bridge that splashed down into the icy river. He shook his fist at the wreckage, but it was a futile gesture. “Those damned engineers!”

  More bullets from the rear. Von Stenger thought he saw a flash of movement. He fired and the shooting stopped.

  Friel was still staring at the ruined bridge when a courier approached. The lead elements of the Kampfgruppe, left behind by Friel’s lone panzer, were already pouring into town. "Sir, an American force has been sighted to the east. They have Sherman tanks and tank destroyers. It is a sizable force, sir."

  Friel nodded. It had only been a matter of time before the Americans managed to regroup. Operation Watch on the Rhine's element of surprise had run its course.

  The reality of the situation began to sink in. Kampfgruppe Friel's back was to a river that it could not cross. Retreat toward Germany was now blocked by the enemy.

  With no route across the river, Friel turned his forces toward the nearby town of La Gleize, which offered a better defensive position. It would be his rallying point. More of his straggling tanks and support vehicles streamed into La Gleize. Kampfgruppe Friel might be cut off, but it remained a formidable force. True, they were low on fuel. However, they had plenty of ammunition for one last battle.

  Surrender to the Americans was not an option. Not after the massacre at Malmedy. At best, they would stand trial in some puppet court for murder. At worst, they would be gunned down where they stood. He would not do that to his men.

  Just hours ago, success had seemed within their grasp. But the loss of the bridges had changed all that. Now, the struggle would be for survival.

  "We will stand and fight," he said.

  CHAPTER 25

  "La Gleize," Lieutenant Mulholland announced. "If we weren't in the middle of a war, this town could be on a goddamn Christmas card."

  Even Cole had to agree, although he was hardly in a holiday mood. It was true that the village tucked into the rolling countryside was scenic, with old stone houses festooned with snow. The sight of German panzers and machine gun emplacements marred that picture. Their arrival just in time to harass the lead elements of Kampfgruppe Friel had helped to keep the Germans pinned down on this side of the river.

  Cole lit a cigarette. "Ain't goin' to be so pretty once the shootin' starts."

  He smoked the cigarette as he studied the layout of the village.

  It was Bienville all over again.

  At that French village in Normandy, Americans had fought to hold the village against a much larger German force. Strategically, Bienville had been a vital town—nobody was getting anywhere on the roads through Normandy unless they came through Bienville. Cole and the other snipers had been part of that last-stand defense. Thanks to Jolie, they had invited Das Gespenst to what was essentially a duel between the German and Cole.

  But Das Gespenst had lived up to his name by tricking them. During the night, he had found a passage into the heart of the village. Safe inside the stone spire of an ancient Norman church, he had picked off the American defenders and then slipped away. Cole had caught up to him, but had paid a steep price for that encounter.

  He had hoped that Das Gespsent died that day. By all rights, he should have. Luck had been on the German’s side and he had lived to haunt them all over again in the Ardennes.

  Now, at La Gleize, it was the Germans making a last stand. The tables had turned—to a point. For starters, La Gleize had no real strategic value—it was simply where the German armored column had run to ground.

  Unfortunately, there would be no using Das Gespent's tricks against him by slipping into town undetected. The Germans were already dug into La Gleize. The snipers were on the outside, looking in.

  "Lucky for us, we're in the suburbs," Vaccaro pointed out. "Plenty of space to roam around."

  Vaccaro’s description was apt. A much smaller village, really just a clump of buildings that included a few shops, a scattering of houses, and a church, was located east of La Gleize, just within rifle range. The American forces were centered around this smaller village.

  A teenage girl came out of the church. She looked to be seventeen or eighteen, pretty in a country way with cornflower blue eyes and dark hair. She wore a simple kitchen apron, flecked with blood. The interior of the church had been converted to a makeshift hospital, staffed by a few medics and this local villager.

  There had been a short, sharp fight as the Germans settled into La Gleize and the leading edge of the American force arrived. Inside the church, the pews were filled with wounded Germans, Americans, and townspeople. Someone had taken a white sheet and painted a red cross on it, then hung that from the church steeple.

  "You should not be here," Jolie called out to the girl in French. "Go home. There is going to be a battle here."

  "I'm not going anywhere," the girl replied. "This is my village. Some of my neighbors have been hurt. What about you? You are fighting alongside those men."

  Jolie shrugged and turned back to loading the rifle she had been given.

  "What were you two jabberin' about?" Cole asked.

  "I just told her this was not going to be a good place for her. That she should go home."

  Cole snorted. "Well, if that ain't the pot calling the kettle black."

  “That is just what she said to me.”

  As the girl spoke, an old man approached her, smiling ear to ear, and brought her what appeared to be a bag of rags. Bandages. The girl took them gratefully.

  "Look at her," Vaccaro said. "She's a regular Florence Nightingale, only cuter. Quick, somebody shoot me in the foot."

  "Oh, I reckon I might shoot you, but not in the foot."

  "Ha, ha. Hey, Cole, ever hear of a redneck virgin? That's a girl who can outrun her brother."

  "Vaccaro, did you want me to shoot you now?"

  "Wait a little and you might save yourself a bullet. It's gonna get ugly around here any minute now."

  • • •

  As a saboteur behind enemy lines, Klein’s tactic of falling in with an American unit had worked so well in destroying that fuel depot that he repeated it. However, it soon became apparent that this unit was not as disorganized as the one he had mixed with yesterday. He realized that most of these Amis knew one another, making Klein the odd man out. He had to slip away as soon as possible to avoid discovery.

  The captain called a halt, and Klein welcomed a few minutes of rest. He put his rifle down against a tree and sat on a tree stump. He kept his head down and tried not to talk, but finally someone asked him a direct question.

  “You look lost, buddy. What unit you with?”

  “The two hundred and ninety-sixth engineers.”

  “Yeah? You’re a long way from home, ain’t you?”

  “Ya. Everything is a mess,” he said. Klein could have kicked himself. Not yes or yeah or yep, but ya. He was that damn nervous and tired. He hurried to cover his mistake. “These damn Germans are causing a lot of trouble.”

  “You got that right. I heard they blew up a fuel depot yesterday. Killed a couple of guys in the process. You know how the rumor mill goes—I hear there are Krauts dressed as Americans trying to cause all kinds of trouble.”

  “If you see any, you let me know.”

  “Ain’t you funny, buddy. You sound like you could be a German yourself. Are you from Pennsylvania? You know, Pennsylvania Dutch.”

  “Philadelphia.” Klein didn’t know what Pennsylvania Dutch meant, but he knew Philadelphia was in Pennsylvania.

  “I used to go into Philly to shop at the Macy’s,” the soldier said. “You know the big one near City Hall?”

  “Macy’s. Of course.” Klein smiled tentatively. “I buy all my tie
s there.”

  The soldier chatting with him came to a dead stop. He raised his M1 so that it was—almost—pointing at Klein.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Klein stood. His hands crept toward the knife tucked into his belt, at the small of his back.

  “Hey fellas,” the soldier said. “This guy here says he’s from Philly but he don’t know Wanamaker’s from Macy’s. You think he’s one of those German agents?”

  The others stopped and circled Klein in a loose ring. They held their rifles so that they would be ready in an instant.

  Klein said nervously, “You have the wrong guy.”

  “Ask him what the capital of Pennsylvania is,” somebody said.

  The soldier looked at him. “You heard the man. Well?”

  “Philadelphia,” he said, grinning, as if the answer was obvious.

  “No, buddy. Try Harrisburg.”

  Somebody else fired another question at him. “Maybe he ain’t much on geography. How about the movies. So tell me, buddy, the name of the movie that won Best Picture last year?”

  What? He had trained for hand-to-hand combat and for rigging explosives, not for trivia questions. He said the first title that came to mind. If it was that famous, it must have won the award. “Gone with the Wind,” he said.

  But even as he said it, Klein knew from the look on the soldier’s face that the answer was wrong. His fingers searched for his knife. With luck, he might be able to cut his way free. His fingers groped frantically. Where was his knife?

  “Looking for this?” a soldier asked, holding the knife in front of him. The American had been quicker than him.

  Klein’s brain scrambled for just the right thing to say, but he was confused. German and English words vied for attention.

  Too late. He saw that the first soldier’s rifle was now pointed directly at him. No amount of fast talking was going to get him out of this hot water.

  “Hands up,” the soldier said. “It looks like we found us one of those back-stabbing Nazi saboteurs.”