by David Healey
"Mmm, mmm. She can guide me through her French bushes anytime she likes," Vaccaro wisecracked.
"Shut up, Vaccaro. Headquarters tells me Miss Molyneux is one of the best guides there is and we’re lucky to have her. She will try to keep your sorry ass from being killed, because I've been assured the countryside here is thoroughly mined and booby trapped. Our job will be to go in there and eliminate as many German snipers as possible, because they are playing holy hell with our infantry units."
It was some team, Mulholland thought. They were supposed to start conquering the Third Reich with a farmer, an Indian, a smart ass city kid, a French girl, and a hillbilly. God help them.
"Before we head out, I want to assess everyone's skills as a sniper. I need to know what I'm dealing with here. We're going to do a little shooting. Follow me."
Mulholland took them to a relatively empty section of the beach. In the distance, a perimeter had been set up for captured Germans, who stood about singly or in small groups, watching the activity on the beach. No one paid much attention to Mulholland's small team of soldiers, but their female French guide did get some notice. Her arrival was met with a few catcalls and whistles.
Using the heights as a backdrop, the lieutenant took a few empty booze bottles—there was no shortage of those around the empty German fortifications—and set them up on a sandbag. They now had a natural target range.
"Farm boy, you go first," Mulholland said. "Three shots. Let's see how good you are."
Meacham had a head-down, aw shucks look as he stepped forward. There was something awkward and slow moving about the farm kid, but you had the feeling that there was a lot of strength in those shoulders.
"Look on the bright side," Vaccaro said. "If Meacham here misses or runs out of bullets, he can beat the hell out of them."
It was clear from the easy way that Meacham handled the rifle that he was familiar with weapons. He put the rifle to his shoulder and fired. A bottle shattered. He worked the bolt and fired again, then again. Three bottles were gone.
"That's some good shooting," the lieutenant said. "You must have been hell on the rabbits and woodchucks back home. You're next, Chief."
"One request, sir. I really don't like to be called Chief."
"You hit those three bottles and I'll call you anything you want."
"Yes, sir."
Chief surprised them by sitting down on the sand, working his arm through the sling, and propping his elbows on his knees in a classic shooting position right out of boot camp. "I've never even fired this rifle, you know."
"Just go ahead, Chief."
"Pretend they're cowboys, Chief, and you'll mow them bottles right down!" Vaccaro said.
"Shut up, Vaccaro."
They left the soldier alone and let him aim. Their French guide was standing off to one side, watching the show, and Mulholland caught his men giving her sidelong looks. It was clear that they wanted to impress her. No surprise there. As the colonel had said, she was a knockout. But there was also a tough and mysterious air about the young woman. She had been fighting the Germans a lot longer than any of them, that was for sure.
Chief fired and one of the bottles shattered. He took aim again. There was the sharp crack of the rifle, and instantly the bottle exploded.
"One more, Chief, and you win the Kewpie Doll!"
He took aim and fired, but the bottle remained standing.
"Damn!" he said. "Must have been the wind."
"It ain't the wind, Chief," Vaccaro said. "It's just that your ancestors were better with a bow and arrow."
"Screw you, Vaccaro. Let's see how you do."
Vaccaro strutted forward—there was really no other way to describe it—and took aim. He fired three times, but hit nothing.
"Are there bullets in your rifle?" Chief asked. “Or were those blanks?”
"Goddamn thing ain't sighted in. Not my fault."
"Let me see it a minute, Vaccaro," said Mulholland, stepping forward to take the rifle. He inspected the weapon, but could detect no obvious fault with it, though it was very possible that the telescopic sight needed adjustment. He put the scope to the eye and one of the bottles sprang closer. With the crosshairs settled just where the shoulder of the bottle began to fatten, he squeezed the trigger, and the bottle shattered.
"Maybe it's not the rifle," the lieutenant said, handing it back. "Cole, let's see you shoot."
"Yeah, let's see if the hillbilly here really knows how to use a rifle," Vaccaro said.
Cole walked to the spot where the three others had shot from. So far, he had been the quietest of the group, and the French guide eyed him with interest. He had a tough, competent look about him that reminded her of some of the Resistance fighters she knew. Cole raised the rifle and fired three times in rapid succession, but none of the bottles was touched.
Vaccaro laughed. "You can't shoot for shit, Reb! You're as bad as I am."
Mulholland was surprised, but he didn't let it show. He had already seen what Cole could do with a rifle. "That's all right, Cole. Maybe today just isn't your day."
"Uh, sir?" Meacham pointed into the distance, toward the German POW camp. Three bodies lay sprawled on the beach, and several of the POWs as well as the guards were running around, trying to determine where the shots had come from.
"Holy shit," Vaccaro said. "Reb shot them!"
Mulholland was stunned. "Private Cole, you can't do that!"
Cole spat. "A lot of men died on this beach. What's three more dead Germans? I reckon I'm just evening the score."
"Reb, you are goddamn crazy," Vaccaro said.
Mulholland wasn't sure what to do. Technically, Cole had just murdered three prisoners of war.
"Your hillbilly is right," their guide spoke up. "The Germans killed many innocent people."
Mulholland was still undecided about how to react when the colonel picked that very moment to wander over from HQ. The lieutenant opened his mouth to say something about the prisoners, but the colonel spoke first. "If ya'll are done shootin' up empty bottles, do you think you could shoot some Germans?"
"Shit, sir, Reb here just did that."
Vaccaro might have said more, but the lieutenant gave him a warning look. That goddamn Vaccaro, Mulholland thought. He couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, but he could sure shoot his mouth off.
"What?" the colonel looked confused.
Lieutenant Mulholland started to salute, then dropped his arm upon remembering what their guide had said. "Yes, sir. We'll move out right away."
CHAPTER 8
Toward nightfall, when it was safer to move, Von Stenger slipped away from the bridge. If he stayed, it would only be a matter of time before the Americans pinpointed his position. As he knew well from Russia, a sniper who kept moving was one who stayed alive.
So he and the boy hiked toward the beach and the sound of fighting. They kept to the smaller paths through the bocage, which reduced their chances of running into any Allied forces. The two of them alone could move silently and slip off the road, into the brush, whenever the need arose.
"Herr Hauptmann, are we going to stop tonight?" the boy sounded so weary, and Von Stenger could hear how he dragged his feet.
"If you stop, I will shoot you."
That shut the boy up. Although Von Stenger was much older, years of hard campaigning had given him lean muscles and inured him to the discomforts of not stopping to sleep or eat. Around midnight they heard voices ahead in the darkness—German voices—and came across a small unit that was setting up a series of defensive fallbacks in the hedgerows. Von Stenger volunteered his services as a sniper, and the captain in charge gladly accepted, teaming him up with another pair of snipers.
"My name is Wulf," said the taller sniper, a Wehrmacht corporal who appeared to be in his early twenties. He nodded at the other man. "That’s Schultz. You look old enough to be my father, Pops. Are you one of the reserve units that was sent in?"
In the darkness, Von Stenger knew the corporal could
not see his rank. "No, I have been a sharpshooter for a while now."
"You went through the sniper training school?"
"Yes, I was an instructor there," Von Stenger said. He lit a cigarette and the flickering flame illuminated the Knight’s Cross he wore. "Then I was a sniper in Spain, Poland and Russia. And you?"
“This is my first time in combat ... sir."
Von Stenger quickly sized them up. Wulf had a tough, competent look about him. Schultz appeared more nervous and kept checking and rechecking his rifle.
"Remember your training, Corporal, and you will do fine,” Von Stenger said. “There will be many Americans here by morning. The woods and fields will be crawling with them. That I can promise you."
The German plan was simple, yet highly effective, taking full advantage of the Norman terrain. The countryside was laid out like a patchwork quilt, with few roads, so that the dense hedgerows formed the seams of the imaginary quilt. It would be necessary for the Americans to move cross country. To do so, they would have to push from one field to the next. It was all a little like one of those old houses where one had to walk through an adjacent bedroom to get to the bath because the house hadn't been designed with hallways. The Germans intended to make the Allied forces pay dearly for each step and every inch of territory.
The fields ranged in size from five or ten acres to expanses of twenty or even fifty acres. There were generally just one or two gaps in the hedge to allow a farmer access to his crops or livestock in the field. With their valuable head start on the allies, the Germans had placed snipers or machine gunners to cover the entrances to the fields. The only way in or out was through their gun sights. In essence, nearly all of Normandy was now an elaborate trap. This particular field was one of the first in from the beach.
"Wulf, we are going to do some shooting at daybreak tomorrow," Von Stenger said. "The Allies are going to come pouring through here, but they won't know what hit them."
The three German snipers prepared to hide themselves at the far end of the field, which had a crop of tall winter wheat, but made certain they had a clear view of the entrance. There was an exit for themselves, but Von Stenger had Fritz help cut brush so that they could create a camouflage gate. It would only be a matter of time before too many Allied troops had made it into the field, but when that happened, the Germans could escape through the gate ... then start the whole process over again in the next field over.
"Are you ready, Corporal Wulf?" Von Stenger asked.
The younger man licked his lips. "Indeed I am."
"Remember, nothing too fancy. Take the body shot rather than the head shot. We are trying for kills here, not misses. We need those bodies to stack up like cordwood."
All that was left to do now was wait for daylight.
• • •
Cole's eyes flicked across the landscape, which changed abruptly as they moved away from the beach. Grass replaced the sand, woods superseded the dunes, and where there had been the constant surge of surf and machinery on the beach, there was now the rustle of leaves and birdsong. If it hadn't been for the distant gunfire, they could have been going for a walk through the woods and fields back home.
Cole felt more at ease here than he had in months. He always had been a loner, having grown up in the woods and the mountains. The cramped quarters of Army life were not to his liking. Privacy was nonexistent. There was not so much as a toilet stall to grab a few minutes alone.
These weeks and even months of constantly crowded conditions had grated on Cole’s nerves, though he was the kind of man who built a sort of armor or shell around himself. Other men sensed his solitary nature and left him alone.
In the quiet and solitude of the French countryside, his senses slowly came alive again, tingling awake like a cramped limb that had fallen asleep in the night. He heard birds, the sigh of the wind in the trees and the whisper of it on the grass. The air smelled of rain and wet earth. The country sounds and smells made Cole feel like he was home. A part of himself he had forgotten about stirred and came alive.
"This ain't so bad, is it, Lieutenant," Vaccaro said. He sounded too loud for the hushed countryside. Vaccaro had a city voice. "We could be going up against Panzers. Those are the real bad asses. We just need to find a few stray Jerries with rifles."
"We'll see," Mulholland said. "Just keep your eyes open and pay attention."
"It's spooky quiet here," Chief said.
"Yeah,” Mulholland agreed. “Listen, I want everyone to spread out. Keep twenty paces between you and the man in front of you. If a machine gun opens up on us, we don't want Jerry to take us all out in one burst."
"Does that apply to me as well, mon lieutenant?" asked Jolie, who was walking nearby.
"You bet," he said. "But you know this country. Don't you want to be first and lead the way?"
"Non, I do not," Jolie said. "The first person is more likely to step on a land mine."
"These roads are mined?" Mulholland asked, looking at the muddy road beneath his feet with fresh concern.
"It is hard to know for certain. The Germans did bury thousands of mines. Who knows where? Better not to go first." She nodded at Vaccaro. "Send that one first. He is useless but for a big mouth."
"Hey, sweetheart, I love you too."
"Shut up and pay attention, Vaccaro," Mulholland said. He remained at the head of the squad.
Cole was bringing up the rear, which was fine with him. One by one, he sized up the members of their patrol. Meacham was twenty paces ahead of him, scanning the woods and fields with the eye of a country boy. He seemed all right.
Then came the Chief and Vaccaro. The Chief paid attention and seemed like a quick learner. Cole thought he would be a decent sniper—if he lived long enough.
Vaccaro might get them all killed on account of his loud mouth alone.
The lieutenant was a decent officer—he sure as hell had been brave enough on the beach yesterday, taking chances that Cole himself wouldn't have, if the lieutenant hadn't been leading the way. Mulholland was all right for an officer.
The French girl trailed a few paces behind the lieutenant. Cole was puzzled by the fact that she didn't seem particularly excited or grateful that they had come to liberate her country. She had a hardness to her, like a soup bone with all the meat boiled off. No nonsense. She also didn't talk too much, which was a quality Cole admired in a woman.
He pushed thoughts about his companions aside and kept his eyes moving, looking as far ahead as possible. The hedgerow country was unlike anything he had seen before. These hedgerows were ancient, going back to Roman times. They had begun as simple berms of earth to separate fields in order to corral livestock and define ownership. Over the centuries, brush and trees had grown on top of the earthen berms to form thick, almost impenetrable walls of greenery.
The hedgerows covered most of the Cotentin Peninsula as completely as a quilt across an old double bed. Unpaved lanes and roads passed through the bocage, some of these so thickly overhung with greenery that going down the road was like passing through a tunnel. After dark, the bocage would have been the perfect setting for a werewolf story.
But in this nightmare world, there were no werewolves or vampires. Snipers were far more real and deadly. This living maze was perfect for defensive action such as that now being undertaken by the Germans as they worked to thwart the Allied advance. Worse yet for the Americans was the fact that the few points of high ground scattered around the bocage offered an excellent vantage point. A German sniper on one of these hill tops could look down into the fields and lanes—and pick off anything that moved. In the hours after D-Day, nearly all this high ground had been occupied by German troops moving into defensive positions.
Their squad had orders to engage the enemy. But first, they had to find them. Cole suspected that the French countryside would not be quiet for long.
After the French woman's remark about the Germans mining the roads, most of the others kept looking down at the dirt and grass, expe
cting to see some hint of a mine, but Cole reminded himself that he needed to look up for the real danger, which happened to be German troops, snipers, and Panzers.
"This is where we leave the road," Jolie said. "The road here will just take us in a circle. It is necessary to have to use a map and compass from this point on."
Lieutenant Mulholland followed Jolie's suggestion and led them toward a gap in a hedgerow into an expanse of field, newly green with spring. They entered the field only after Lieutenant Mulholland and Meacham had advanced some distance into it. The field encompassed perhaps twenty acres and was ringed by the green-walled hedgerow, which managed to give the field the feel of a sprawling football field surrounded by bleachers.
On the opposite side of the field was a similar gap that Cole figured led to the next field over. A squad of American soldiers was crouched on either side of the gap. He could see two bodies sprawled in the grass just inside the neighboring field.
They moved around to the edge of the field, keeping out of any line of fire offered by the gap, then approached the other squad. Mulholland got together with the squad leader. Though their voices were low, Cole was close enough to hear the two officers talking.
"We've got orders to clear this field, but German snipers have got the gap covered,” the captain said. “They've already shot two of my men. I just wish we had a goddamn Sherman tank with us—we could follow along behind it. But we don't have one, so thank God you all came along."
"Us?"
"You're counter snipers, right? You've all got telescope sights on your rifles. Fight fire with fire, I always say. This is your operation now, Lieutenant."
"Yes, sir," Mulholland said uncertainly. "How many Germans are there?"
"We're pretty sure there are three because the shots are coming from different directions."
"Where are they located?"
"Damned if I know. Walk into that field and you'll find out, Lieutenant." The captain slumped back against a large stone and lit a cigarette. "Hell, if this is what we have facing us between here and Paris, it's going to make the beach landing yesterday look like a kindergarten birthday party. Where did you all come ashore?"
