by David Healey
"Well, it's a start," Mulholland said. "We're going to stay on this road until called upon to deploy against German snipers."
"Lieutenant, we should let that tank up there deploy against snipers," Vaccaro said. “Looks to me like it’s bulletproof.”
"Wouldn't do much good," the lieutenant said. "It would be like using a sledgehammer to drive a nail, when what you need is a hammer. And we're the hammer."
"Last time I got hammered, I managed to nail a sweet little English girl," Vaccaro said. "That's the kind of hammering and nailing I like to do."
They all laughed at that, harder than they should have, and Chief cracked a joke about the girl costing Vaccaro not one but two cartons of cigarettes, which got them laughing harder.
They started to feel the tense mood that had come over them lift. It was funny, in a war, how you could go from being scared to death to being giddy about the simple fact of being alive, all in the space of a morning.
Their laughter was cut short, however, when they came around a bend in the narrow road and saw a handful of American troops at the side of the road, gathered around a German on his knees, with his hands raised in surrender. An American sergeant had a pistol out and it was pointed at the German's head. He lowered the .45 when he caught sight of the approaching sniper squad.
The German was youthful and blond-haired, but he was clearly in pain. His coat was off, revealing a gray undershirt crisscrossed with suspenders, and there was a deep red stain on his side where he had been wounded. It was obvious as well from the fresh bruises and cuts on his face that he had been roughed up. Next to the soldier's coat and helmet was a Mauser with a telescopic sight.
"What's going on here?" Mulholland asked.
"Best just move along, sir," the sergeant said. "We have this under control."
"I demand to know what's going on, Sergeant. That's an order!"
The sergeant seemed to think it over. He was an older man, not some kid, with heavy stubble not quite obscuring the lines of exhaustion etched on his face. In civilian life he might have been a shop foreman, the kind of man used to some authority. There didn't seem to be any officers around.
"He's a sniper," the sergeant said. "He shot three of our guys trying to cross a field before we winged him."
"You know the rules, Sergeant. Captured Germans get sent to the rear."
"Not this one. Not a sniper. They're killers and murderers, sir, not regular soldiers." For the first time, the sergeant seemed to notice that the lieutenant’s squad was armed with rifles that had telescopic sights. "I'm not saying that about our own men, mind you. But these are the goddamn Krauts we're talking about."
"I'm not so sure the Germans wouldn’t feel the same way about us," Mulholland said.
"That's a chance we all take, ain’t it, sir? Now, let me say it one more time. It's best if you just move along."
Almost imperceptibly, there seemed to be a change in the air. The squad of Americans gripped their weapons more tightly. There were at least twenty of them—and only six in their own sniper squad. Cole shifted his own weight and put a hand on his automatic. Beside him, Jolie glanced at him nervously. She had felt the tension, too. Cole looked around at the faces—exhausted, bloody, dirty—and it was clear to him that if it came down to it, these men would start shooting before they gave up their prisoner.
"Lieutenant, I reckon we ought to move out," Cole said.
"Sir, they're going to shoot him," Meacham said. "That's against all the Geneva Convention rules."
"Shut up, Farm Boy," Cole said. "You ain't helping any. Last time I heard we were at war with the Germans, and I reckon that means we're going to kill a few of them along the way. Sir?"
Mulholland didn't move or speak, so Cole got a good grip on the handle of the .45. Here he was about to get in a shootout with their own boys, but he reckoned there were stranger things that happened in a war. He was familiar with what happened when emotions ran high and everybody had guns.
"Let's move out," Mulholland finally said, his voice strained.
They continued down the road, leaving the squad surrounding the German. They hadn't gone far when there was a single pistol shot. Cole looked back and saw the German's body at the side of the road.
"That was messed up," Vaccaro said.
"It was wrong, just plain wrong," said Meacham.
"Sometimes it ain't about right or wrong," Cole said. "It's about gettin’ even."
"Do you think the Germans would do that to us if we got captured?" Vaccaro asked.
"Probably," Cole said. "But the upside of that is your chances of gettin’ killed first are pretty good."
"You know how to cheer a guy up, Reb. Lieutenant, what do you think?"
"I think you should shut the hell up, Vaccaro. You talk too much."
After that, the lieutenant quickened his pace and walked several steps in front of them.
"Ya’ll spread out," Cole said.
"Who made you boss, Reb?" Vaccaro demanded.
"You want to get shot, come up here and put your arm around my shoulders so we make a better target."
"Aw, go fuck your sister," Vaccaro said, but he took the hint and dropped back several paces.
The rest of the squad did the same. Lieutenant Mulholland was at the front, followed by Chief, then Cole and the others, all strung out now along the road like prayer beads. Jolie walked a few paces behind Cole.
The road passed between the hedges, which created a thick wall on either side. It reminded Cole a bit too much of a cattle chute. He felt exposed and would be glad to get back into the fields, but the lieutenant seemed intent on following this road.
The squad led by the Sherman tank was just visible in the distance, moving toward a gentle hill presided over by a stone church steeple. One of the things Cole had noticed about France was all the old buildings seemed to be built of stone or brick, while back home even the oldest churches and houses were mostly clapboard. The farms here had been built to last—hell, some of the stone barns in Normandy must be centuries old. The whole countryside dripped with history.
Coming across the execution of the German sniper had cast a pall over them. It was one thing to kill the enemy when he was shooting back, but quite another to shoot a man who had his hands up in the air. Who had surrendered to you. It didn't sit right with them. Cole had known there wasn't a thing they could do to stop it, but the execution still nagged at him. He realized that he himself had gone down a similar road since landing on the beach yesterday morning. He had shot those prisoners in the distance out of spite—mostly to show off. And also because he'd gone a little crazy, a little off the rails. He could understand that now.
Killing someone up close was different—harder and colder, somehow. What he had done wasn't right, but it hadn't felt wrong, either. Well, it was something to think about, which way a man wanted to be in a war. Would you be like a wild dog and kill just to kill, or more like a wolf—a predator that only hunted when it needed to, but that was feared nonetheless.
• • •
Von Stenger was amazed by the view from the church steeple. He could literally see for miles—the long stretch of fields reaching toward the sea to the east, and more countryside dotted with farms and villages all the way to St. Lo. The signs of war were everywhere by now as columns of Allied troops encountered stubborn knots of German resistance. Smoke. Churned earth. Bodies. If only he could have stayed up in the tower, there was no telling how much good he could have done. Targets presented themselves endlessly.
He had been watching for one group in particular, the snipers he had tangled with back in the field. A lucky shot by the Americans had done for Private Schultz, ending his brief career as a sniper, but Von Stenger and Wulf had slipped away with Fritz.
Wulf was stationed at a window in the stairway landing about halfway up. The next-to-useless boy Fritz was downstairs, guarding the entrance to the tower. The thought did not give Von Stenger much confidence, but at least the boy would be able to
see the enemy approaching. With any luck, he might fire a few shots that would serve as a warning to Von Stenger and Wulf.
On the road that led toward the sea, Von Stenger caught sight of the group of American snipers who had given him so much trouble. Hallo, alte Freunde. Hello, old friends. He let the crosshairs sweep over them. He picked out the lieutenant leading them as well as the sniper with the flag on his helmet.
Von Stenger was a sufficient student of military history to recognize the flag as a symbol of the Confederate States of America. This sniper would be an American Southerner. He would be tough and resourceful, maybe even a bit of an outlaw. He remembered that the Confederates were called Rebels. Von Stenger was sure this was the man who had outsmarted him back in that field. That was all right. He liked a challenge.
So far, none of the American snipers had bothered with camouflage. More babes in the woods, he thought. There appeared to be a woman with them, which took Von Stenger by surprise. She wore civilian clothes. French Resistance? Well, well. Perhaps the local Gestapo had been too lenient in eliminating the Reich's enemies. They should have shot a few more Frenchmen—and women—to get the message across.
The tank coming up the road was worrisome. He could tell at a glance that it was no Tiger tank, being much smaller, but it was a threat nonetheless if the Americans opted to open fire on the tower. Behind the tank came what appeared to be a company of infantry, plodding along in the clanking wake of their armored companion.
So many targets, he thought. Where to begin? Von Stenger let the crosshairs float back to the French woman, and then to the sniper with the flag on his helmet. Not yet. His thoughts drifted to Goethe: “It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.”
He settled the crosshairs on the sniper behind them and squeezed off a shot.
CHAPTER 11
Cole looked back to ask Jolie a question and at that moment something zipped past his ear. A split second later he heard the distant crack of a rifle shot.
"Take cover!" the lieutenant shouted, but there wasn't anywhere to go. Cole felt a little like he had when Norma Jean Elwood caught him skinny dipping in Hog Creek and stole his clothes off the bank. The difference was that Norma Jean was trying to embarrass him, not kill him. He got in close to the hedge and hoped the brush would break up the line of fire. Jolie was right beside him.
Chief wasn't fast enough getting off the road. The next bullet hit him square in the chest. He had a look of surprise on his face. Chief staggered. Then he sank to his knees in the middle of the dirt road.
"Chief!" Cole ran to him, stooped down, and got one of Chief's arms across his shoulders. He half dragged, half carried him toward the hedge, but Chief was heavy as hell weighted down with all his gear. Chief's own legs weren't moving. Dead weight, thought Cole. Jolie ran out and grabbed Chief's other arm, and they managed to get him to the hedge, out of sight of the sniper.
Cole shook him. "Chief? Chief?"
But there was no answer. The eyes stared blankly ahead. Looking more closely, Cole could see why—the bullet had struck him in the heart. A 7.62 mm rifle round traveling at thousands of feet per second built up an awful lot of what the Army trainers called kinetic energy. Cole would have described it as being kicked by a mule. Chief never had a chance.
"Mon dieu," Jolie said gently, then reached over and closed Chief's eyelids. "He is gone."
There was only one vantage point from which the sniper could have fired. The church steeple. Even so, the steeple was nearly half a mile away. To hit someone in the chest from that distance was goddamn impressive, to say the least. Cole wondered if he could have done that.
Surely, just for a moment, he had been in the sniper's sights. The thought made his skin crawl.
Lieutenant Mulholland crept along the hedge, out of view of the church steeple, until he reached Cole. "Chief?"
Cole shook his head. "Shot through the heart."
"That goddamn sniper is in the tower."
"I know."
"We're going to get him," Mulholland said. "If we don't, he can shoot up all the woods and fields around here for as far as he can see."
"All right then," Cole said. His eyes, which looked like they could have been made of cut glass, were so devoid of emotion that they startled the lieutenant. "Let's go kill us a sniper."
There was nothing they could do with Chief's body but leave it, so they moved it as far off the road as they could so that it wouldn’t get run over by tanks or Jeeps. Lieutenant Mulholland bowed his head and said a prayer, and then in the shelter of the hedgerow, the five of them continued along the road. But now the sniper was busy picking off soldiers in the squad ahead of them. Those soldiers were packed more tightly in the road and had nowhere to go to get out of the line of fire. The sniper was having a field day with them, firing steadily at the crowded troops.
"Like shooting possums in a barrel," Cole muttered.
"I think you mean fish in a barrel," Vaccaro said.
"I've shot possums, whereas what kind of jackass shoots fish?" Cole said. "Back home, the best way to go fishin' is with dynamite."
"That ain't normal, Reb. Is that what you do for entertainment back there in the hills? The rest of the world just goes to see a movie or maybe a baseball game."
"Will you both shut up please," Jolie said in her heavily accented English. "We must stop this German."
But the Sherman tank was already doing a good job of that. Located at the head of the column, the tank was taking aim at the top of the church steeple. The shells hadn't been all that accurate, but the scream of the passing rounds must have scared the hell out of the sniper up there taking aim at the soldiers. So far, he hadn't abandoned his post. His shots, fired at steady intervals, continued to chip away at the American ranks like so many hatchet blows.
Then the Sherman fired again, blowing a chunk out of the church steeple. A tremendous cheer went up from the troops. However, the old stone steeple seemed to dust itself off and remained standing tall. Then the sniper up there fired again, killing a man standing not far from the tank. Undeterred and impervious to the rifle rounds, the swift-moving Sherman roared up the road, closer to the steeple. Five or six soldiers clung to the outside, hanging on for dear life to whatever handles and footholds they could find. Once the tank carried them close enough, they could rush the base of the steeple and put an end to the sniper.
The Sherman tank had been chosen personally by General Patton for its speed and agility. The tank also had advantages in that it could be transported by rail car. Shermans were small and light enough that it was possible to land them on the beaches of Normandy. But it soon became clear that in almost every way that mattered in combat, the Sherman had revealed itself as an inferior adversary.
The Sherman had three major drawbacks that became apparent as soon as they began to engage enemy tanks in combat. The first issue was that the turret-mounted cannon was too small. Rounds from the Sherman literally bounced off the German tanks. Second, the armor plating was much too light and enemy anti-tank rounds went through them like a hot knife through butter. Finally, the Sherman relied on a gasoline engine for propulsion, whereas the German tanks used less flammable diesel. A single hit turned the Sherman tanks into fireballs, quickly earning them the nickname "Tommy Cookers" among Panzer units.
But at the moment, the Sherman was doing a good job of thwarting the sniper in the church steeple.
"Looks like that tank is going to do our job for us," said Lieutenant Mulholland as they double timed it up the road.
Just as quickly, the tables turned. From a patch of woods beside the church appeared a beast of a tank painted in blue-gray hues. It was one of the dreaded Tiger tanks. Bigger, heavily armored, and with a more powerful 88 mm cannon, it was more than a match for the American Sherman tank.
“Holy shit!” cried Vaccaro. “Look at that goddamn monster!”
Still, the Sherman moved gamely ahead, stopping to let off the men w
ho had hitched a ride. They ran for cover as the Sherman quickly adjusted its range and fired, hitting the Tiger dead on. But when the burst cleared, there was no more damage to the Tiger tank than a scorch mark. The Sherman fired again, and this time the troops could hear the karoom of the shell ricocheting off the German tank.
The Tiger appeared to be taking its time. The gun raised a bit with an audible whirring of gears, and then the tank fired, sending out a shockwave of flame. The shell hit the Sherman dead on and the tank shuddered. After a few seconds, the hatch opened and a man started to climb out, black smoke pouring from the interior of the tank like smoke from a chimney. A shot rang out from the church steeple, and the tank crewman slumped in the hatchway. The smoke thickened and was soon followed by a lick of flame. Seconds later came a whump and a fireball as the gasoline exploded. The Sherman had lived up to its German nickname.
At an almost leisurely pace, the Tiger tank advanced toward the American troops. Without their short-lived protector, they were helpless as the Tiger opened up with its machine gun. The men who had been advancing toward the church steeple had no choice but to fall back.
"Lieutenant, what should we do?" Meacham wanted to know.
"Run!"
There was nowhere to go but back down the road the way they had come. The Tiger was able to push past the burning hulk of the Sherman tank and get onto the road, causing panic among the American forces. The thick hedges on either side of the road kept them hemmed in and there was no time to force their way through—not with a Tiger tank hot on their trail. All the while the machine gun continued to chatter, spewing death as the tank rolled down the road.
The Tiger’s hatch flipped open and a German wearing goggles appeared. But there was no time to take a shot at him. Cole and the other snipers had no choice but to run like hell, hoping that they would come to a gap in the hedge before the Tiger tank got in range. Though not as fast as the Sherman, the Tiger was quickly gaining on them. Before long, the whir of the gears and clank of the treads was as loud as the machine gun, and Cole could smell diesel fumes. He was about to be mowed down with the .50 caliber—or become a permanent part of the French road thanks to the tank's brutal treads.
