by Bill Mesce
A short burst of machinegun fire and Harry jumped, let the glasses tumble free as he scrambled for the pistol grip of the gun. But looking down the length of the barrel, nothing looked any different than before: the bullet–riddled Volkswagen, the three bodies.
Bonilla was close to the scout car now. With a lazy, underhanded lob he tossed something into the open compartment of the vehicle, began jogging back to the creek. He had already slowed to a walk when the grenade detonated, then came a secondary explosion as the scout car’s petrol reservoir was set off, and the Volkswagen and its occupants were immediately enveloped in a flame that gave off a bitter, oily pyre. The smoke did not rise very high, but slowly slipped across the firebreak, carrying its rank smell with it.
Harry turned away.
By the time Bonilla reached the creek he was coughing horribly. It took him several moments to regain himself.
“What were you shooting at?” Harry asked.
“I t’ough’ one of ‘em moved.”
“What was the grenade for?”
“‘S harder to move a burnin’ car. See? I tol’ you this time gonna be easy. It was easy, wa’n it?”
“I guess.”
“They didn’ even shoot back! I don’ t’in’ they knew where we was. Nex’ time won’ be so easy.”
“When’s next time?”
“Soon enough.” Bonilla seemed quietly amused by Harry’s anxiety. “Que pasa? You t’ough’ you was gonna live forever?”
“I had hopes.”
They shared a chuckle.
A distant flurry of explosions – dull crumps, muffled by trees – rolled up the draw.
“G’enades,” Bonilla announced.
The explosions were instantly followed by a burst of heavy firing. After the first concentrated episode, the firing settled down to a more sporadic pattern.
Bonilla parsed the action below for Harry according to the sound, like a critic analyzing some bit of musique concrete. That first bout of heavy firing had been the initial ambush, Sisto and the others pouring it to the unwitting German column below them on the road. Bonilla pointed out the rapid fire carack–carack–carack of the American M–1 rifles, and the dull pop–pop–pop of the lighter carbines. There was the heavy bumbumbum of Horse’s BAR, and the faster staccato of Peter Ricks’ Thompson. Intermittanly, the detonation of grenades.
The Germans began to respond. There was the individual report of the bolt–action Mausers, the distinctive sound of Schmeisser machine pistols – the infamous “burp guns.” And the vicious, tearing bursts of MG 42s.
Bit by bit, the firing crept up the draw.
Bonilla, his head cocked toward the violent orchestral, smiled sadly, appreciatively. “You always wonder the new fella, is he gonna run? This bunch, they don’ run. They good boys.” Then a shake of the head; good boys deserved better then to lie dying in the shadows of a dark forest, in the cold snow far from home.
A new sound separating from the gunfire. Engines again. Heavier than last time.
“Don’ move.”
“Do you need me on the gun?”
Bonilla said nothing but stood down in the creek bed where Farron, standing in the commander’s hatch of the Stuart’s turret, could see him. Bonilla began a sequence of hand signs that Harry presumed gave some indication of what was coming up the road. Farron answered with a wave, lowered himself into the turret. Exhaust flared behind the tank as the driver revved the engine.
“Sergeant!” Harry called.
Bonilla’s eyes were on the road. “Shuddup ‘n’ keep your head down!”
Harry picked up the field glasses and squeezed alongside the gun, looking out through the portal blasted through the curtain of branches.
Now, mixed in with the engine noises, an unmistakable mix of metallic clanks and squeaks. “A tank?”
Bonilla nodded no and hushed him again.
“Here they come!” Harry called.
A few last signals to Farron, then Bonilla pushed Harry clear as he took his place at the gun again. “Same t’in’. You call it at fifty yard, tu sabe? But keep low! They lookin’ for us this time.”
Harry found a spot where he could look under the small space where the fallen trunk was still attached by a few shreds of bark to the stump. In the lead, the compact, slab–sided figure of a light armored car, the 20 mm automatic cannon in its turret looking especially threatening as it happened to be pointing in Harry’s direction, its commander with his head just over the splinter shield. Then, behind the armored car, armed only with an MG 42 but looking more threatening was the larger, blocky shape of a one–ton half–track.
“When you hear me open up,” Bonilla called to him, “you get your head down fast!”
The vehicles grew bigger in the lenses of the glasses.
“Now!”
Bonilla sent a burst at the armored car as Harry pushed himself down the bank. He felt chunks of wood rain on his back as the rapid–fire 20 mm chewed into the tree trunk.
But the German managed only that first, abrupt burst, cut short by the louder bark of the Stuart tank’s 37 mm gun, instantly followed by a second, louder detonation. Harry risked a peek over the top of the creek bank.
That wonderfully analytical lawyer’s mind of his quickly understood the ploy. Bonilla had insured the attention of the Germans on the road would be on him. The Stuart, with the added advantages of being blocked from the Germans’ view by the walls of the draw and the bend in the road, had darted out from behind the inn and across the road, taken a clean aim on the armored car and stopped it dead at the entrance of the draw with a single armor–piercing shell through the forward glacis. The car commander was moving oddly in the turret, black smoke curling up about him, bobbing up and down, then finally erupting out of the hatch to topple off onto the snow where he writhed wormlike, trying to put some distance between himself and the smoldering vehicle. The rest of the crew came quickly out of the smoking hatch, dodging the fusillade of machine gun fire that Bonilla and Farron’s tank were directing their way.
Something looked strange about one of the armored car commander’s legs…
Through the field glasses Harry saw that one of them ended at the knee. Now, he understood. The armor piercing shell had taken away the lower part of his leg as it had passed through the crew compartment. Unable to climb out under his own power, his crew – understandably as the vehicle began to burn – had shoved him up and out in order to clear their only exit.
The tank fired a second time and now flames began licking out the open hatch.
“Another belt!” Bonilla was yelling. “C’mon, hermano! Move!”
Harry dragged a tin of ammo over to the gun, fed the belt into the receiver Bonilla had open and waiting.
“Jesu!”
Bonilla scooted down the bank dragging Harry with him as the half–track’s machine gun stitched along the tree trunk.
Bonilla chuckled. “Tha’s one fockin’ guy don’ give up!”
Bonilla grabbed the .30’s bolt, charged the weapon and the gun resumed its chatter.
Harry heard rifle shots, heard the bullets thunk into the wood of the tree trunk. The half–track had been carrying a squad of infantry. As soon as the armored car had been hit, the half–track ground to a quick halt and the troops had discharged out the back to huddle in the drainage cut along the left–hand side of the road.
The placement of the .30, slightly off–center from the road, now worked against Harry and Bonilla. The road lay a foot or better higher than the ground of the firebreak; just enough cover for the German troopers, lying prone, to begin crawling forward with the height of the road blocking Bonilla’s line of fire. Harry saw the tracer’s from the low–set gun pass over the road at an up–angle, easily clearing the bobbing helmets of the advancing Germans.
While the infantry moved forward, the driver of the half–track was looking to avoid the same fate that had befallen the armored car. With a gnashing of gears and a lurch, the vehicle began to tra
ck in reverse. It proceeded only a few yards before the Stuart, jockeying itself to angle its fire past the burning armored car, put a shell squarely through the protective plate at the front of the engine compartment. The engine exploded in flame and steam, the half–track stopped dead. Before the vehicle had even stopped rocking, the 37 mm sent a second shell through the thin steel of the driver’s view plate. The Stuart moved rearward another meter to change its firing angle, there was a third boom from the cannon, and this round found the half–track’s petrol reservoir; a report that painfully shocked Harry’s ears, a roiling red and black cloud blooming from the vehicle.
With the half–track disposed of, the Stuart could now turn its attention to the infantry moving forward in the lee of the road. The tank moved rearward until it re–crossed the road. The hull and turret .30 machine guns now began to go to work and Harry saw snow and mud geyser up along the far side of the road. Wide open to the tank’s gunfire, the troopers panicked, got to their feet for a headlong dash back to the shelter of the draw, heedless of making themselves vulnerable to Bonilla’s gun as well.
The weaving network of tracers that intersected about the German infantry seemed so dense Harry wondered how any of them managed not to be hit, but several did finally disappear behind the burning vehicles.
Rifle and automatic fire exploded along the trees atop the left–hand side of the draw.
“Ai, mami! Ah, bueno!” A beaming Bonilla pointed Harry to the men positioned just inside the trees exterminating the last of the German infantry in the draw below them.
They were too distant for Harry to make out faces, but he recognized the sound of a Thompson. Peter Ricks was the only man among those who had gone into the woods carrying a Thompson.
Peter…still alive…
Harry swept the tree line with the field glasses. Dominick Sisto stepped out of the forest and began signaling in their direction. With a comforted smile, Harry turned the glasses over to Bonilla. “I think this call’s for you.”
Bonilla’s own smile indicated he already knew who the signaler was. He acknowledged Sisto’s message with a wave and Sisto retreated back into the woods. Bonilla passed his own signals on to Farron, and the Stuart retreated to its lair behind the inn.
“Oye, Colonel,” Bonilla said. “He got wounded up there. He need a jeep to get ‘em out, but you hear that?” In the woods on both side of the draw Harry could hear American and German weapons exchanging fire. “Is better I take the jeep up. Tha’ mean you go onna gun. Can you do that?”
Harry nodded with a certainty he hardly possessed. Bonilla seemed to know it and laid a comforting hand on his arm.
“Is gonna get a lot harder now, bu’ you jus’ do li’ I tol’ you, you gonna be ok.”
“Ok.”
“I come back soon as I can, hermano.” A pat on his arm, then Bonilla scooped up his Thompson and started running down the creek toward the gasthaus.
Harry slipped in behind the gun. He picked up the field glasses and focused on the armored car commander. He was no longer moving.
The gunfire in the woods on his side of the road was growing in intensity, coming closer. He swung the machine gun to face the tree line.
“Comin’ out! Comin’ out! Give us cover!”
They burst from the trees, nearly stumbled and fell down the slope to the firebreak.
Six of them. Americans.
Harry scanned the tree line with the glasses. No sign of pursuers. He dropped the lenses.
On the left, the sturdy BAR man Horse Makowski and Spiro Makris. Horse was holding the stock of his BAR, Makris the muzzle, and perched on this seat was Chicken Hollis, evidently wounded, one arm looped around Horse’s neck to keep from slipping off the BAR.
On the right, another trio: the two black GIs – Spider Valence and Big Man Wright – dragging a wounded Lyle Bott between them.
“They’re right on our arse! Give us cover!” It was Horse bellowing.
Now Harry saw them, like ghosts materializing in the shadows of the forest, those white camouflage capes suddenly gathering inside the tree line. Harry depressed the rear of the .30 to bring up the muzzle of the weapon –
Clunk!
The bow of the trunk was too low. Harry vainly fired a burst that barely cleared the heads of the Americans, mowing uselessly along the midpoint of the slope behind them.
“Dammit!”
“What the fuck are you doin’?” The BAR man screamed hoarsely.
Harry grabbed hold of the tripod and pulled the whole arrangement – over 60 pounds of weapon, tripod, and ammunition – off its firing platform and wrestled the legs of the stand until they awkwardly straddled the top of the tree trunk. It was not a particularly steadfast perch, but serviceable enough. He squeezed the trigger, felt a momentary gratification as he saw the tracers disappear into the forest, saw the white ghosts begin to retreat and disappear into the darkness.
Then nothing.
The weapon closed down.
Harry looked down and saw the empty ammo tin.
Oh God!
“Oh, God!”
“Jesus Christ, man, c’mon!” Horse called out.
Harry flipped open a fresh tin, yanked the belt out without bothering to move the tin closer, popped the receiver open…
Quick look up. The ghosts back at the tree line. The Mausers popping away at the men in the firebreak. Spider Valence turning Bott over to Wright, the bigger man easily tossing the corporal over his shoulder like a duffel bag. Valence wheeled about, took a proper kneeling firing position in the snow and began returning the German fire with his carbine…
Harry cocked the bolt, squeezed the trigger.
Nothing.
OhGodohGodohGod…
He was yelling something, felt his eyes stinging with tears.
Twice. That was what Bonilla had made a point of reminding him. Pull the bolt twice.
Harry jerked the bolt a second time, and was so gratified to feel the gun buck at the squeeze of the trigger, see the tracers meteor across the open ground into the trees, that he almost laughed.
Horse and Makris slid into the creek bed with Chicken Ellis, Big Man Wright tumbled in with Bott a half–second later. Wright immediately shucked himself of the corporal and scrambled back for the top of the bank.
“Spider!”
Makris grabbed him, kept him from climbing back out into the open.
Wright tried to shake him free. “Maybe he’s – ”
“No!” Makris screamed.
The firing began to die down from the trees and Harry let the .30 go quiet. It was only then he saw the body of Spider Valence crumpled in the snow half–way between the creek and the trees.
“What the fuck were you doin’ in here?” Horse demanded of him. “Playin’ with yourself?”
Harry said nothing.
“It hurts, Horse!” Chicken Ellis mewled. “It really hurts!”
Horse forced a comforting smile as he leaned over the boy. “It’s not that bad, really, kid. Ol’ Horse wouldn’t let you get hurt too bad! Just enough to get you sent home to Mama!”
“It really hurts, Horse! It feels – ”
Almost desperate, now: “I said you’re gonna be ok, kid! I said stick with me and you’d be ok, ‘n’ goddammit, kid, you got yourself a million dollar wound!” Horse turned to Makris. “He’s gonna be ok, isn’t he?”
“Sure,” Makris said flatly. “Why not?”
“Here they come!” called Wright.
As it would be recollected later, it was doubtful the charge the Germans made across the firebreak was an organized, ordered assault. In fact, Lyle Bott would remember seeing men he assumed to be German NCOs inside the tree line trying to hold back troops from following the first few who had scrambled down the slope and out into the firebreak. The assumption would become that the German ranks, filled with youngsters who were enthusiastic and committed, but woefully inexperienced and undertrained (even more so than the Americans they faced) simply got carried aw
ay. For the first time since the fighting in the woods had begun they would have seen how pitifully small the force against them was, probably felt – in the mad, frightening exhilaration of their first battle – they were now just a 200–meter dash from finishing the fight. First one, then several broke at a run from the trees, then they began to charge out in clusters.
Short bursts, Harry reminded himself as he began to bring the .30 to bear. Watch your tracers. Watch your ammo.
But even before the men hunkered in the creek bed could take aim, a torrent of tracers cut left to right across the field in front of them.
It was Farron’s tank, again having vaulted out from its ambush this time with Juan Bonilla standing on the rear deck manning the .30 atop the turret. Sitting on the nominal high ground of the road, the firebreak lay open before it and the tank’s three machine guns and 37 mm cannon interlaced with the fire from the men on the creek to catch the Germans in a horrific crossfire.
“C’mon, you cocksuckers!” Harry could hear Horse’s ragged scream even above the roaring clatter of gunfire. “C’mon, c’mon, you fucks, you fuckin’ cocksuckin’ fucks fuck you fuck you!”
The chaos out on the firebreak was something Harry saw only intermittently, between the flashes of flame and smoke from the muzzle of his machine gun, like the jerky cascading images in a hand–cranked peepshow box: two of the charging troops trying to drag a wounded third back toward the woods, all three dropping at once, their camouflage overwear puffing with each bullet strike; at the edge of a still–smoking crater, the lower half of a jack boot, sitting as if caught in midstep; one, young trooper, his blue eyes remarkably clear to Harry, wide–staring with adrenaline, then the lad’s face disappearing in a blossom of red…
Harry stopped looking, concentrating on sawing the .30 back and forth across the open ground, looking up only long enough to correct his sights.
The charge was broken, the Germans now running back for the high ground, madly clawing their way up the slope toward the shelter of the trees.
