by Len Levinson
The other tanks fired their cannons at the hedgerow, blowing holes that they could drive through. They broke through the hedgerow, and one of them machine-gunned the German who’d fired the panzerfaust.
“Charge!” yelled Lieutenant Ferrara, running into the field and holding his rifle in the air.
“Let’s go!” Mahoney screamed.
Charlie Company poured through the holes in the hedgerow and followed Lieutenant Ferrara and Sergeant Mahoney. German machine guns opened up on them from the next hedgerow, and mortar rounds came raining down, but they kept going.
They took the next hedgerow, but then were pushed back two hedgerows by a fierce German attack. At ten o’clock the shooting diminished and both sides decided to dig in for the night.
During the night the Panzer Lehr Division moved west across Normandy. They were cocky young men who wore black berets and considered themselves invincible. So contemptuous were they of the Americans that they broke radio silence repeatedly to chat with each other about the great victory they intended to win when they came up on the line.
They moved in long columns throughout the night, young blond gods in gigantic steel chariots, laughing and joking, muscles rippling under their black shirts, moving inexorably toward the little city of Saint Lo.
Charlie Company was asleep except for its sentries and Lieutenant Ferrara, who sat in his little pup tent, studying maps of the terrain in front of him. The give and take of the daily battle had left little time and energy to pitch the command post tent, but he didn’t think he needed it anyway. It was better to travel light and stay mobile on the front line, he was beginning to realize.
He heard footsteps outside his tent, and went for his forty-five.
“It’s me,” said Mahoney. “Can I come in?”
“Have you got a chicken with you?”
“No sir.”
“You can come in anyway.”
Ferrara looked at him as Mahoney entered the tent on his hands and knees. Mahoney hadn’t shaved for several days; he looked filthy and disreputable, and he was chewing on a wet cigar. Now he sat cross-legged on the ground and smelled like the elephant house at the zoo.
When Mahoney took a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket, Ferrara could see there was a drawing on it.
“I got an idea for something, sir,” Mahoney said. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not, but I thought I’d talk to you about it anyways. You got a minute?”
“Sure.”
“While we were out there today, I noticed that our tanks can’t go through the hedgerows,” Mahoney said. “They have to stand back and blow holes in them, which slows down the attack and makes them sitting ducks. I think I figured out a way so that maybe the tanks can go right through the hedgerows.” He showed Lieutenant Ferrara the drawing that he’d made of a tank with two appendages in front. “I figured that if they welded or bolted two pieces of metal, each three or four feet long, to the front of a tank, it could slice through a hedgerow. You see, sir, when a tank comes to a hedgerow, its treads climb the little hill at the bottom and it goes hull up. With those two steel things in front, they’d cut into the hedgerow before the tank got to the little hill, and then when the tank rolled up the little hill, the action would make those steel things rip up the hedgerow. Get the picture?”
Lieutenant Ferrara looked at the drawing. “You know, this might work, Mahoney.”
“Seems like it should.”
“I’ll send it to Ordnance first thing in the morning. Maybe they can do something with it.”
“It’d be awful nice if it worked, sir,” Mahoney said.
“Yes, it certainly would. I think you should go and get some sleep now, Mahoney. You look about ready to collapse.”
“Yes sir—thank you, sir,” Mahoney said wearily.
He bestirred himself, got onto his hands and knees, and crawled out of the tent.
The next day’s fighting was basically a repeat of the day before. American and German soldiers grappled in the hedgerows, while their tanks tried to outmaneuver each other. The terrain favored the defending Germans, and the Americans made little progress. Casualties were high on both sides.
That evening General Bradley and his staff officers pored over their maps of the front. They had been following the ominous movements of the Lehr Division and disagreed over where it was headed.
“I think it’s a bluff,” Colonel Dale of Intelligence said. “If the Lehr really was going someplace important, its people wouldn’t break radio silence the way they have.”
“I think the Germans are preparing to fall back,” said Major Rainey, also of Intelligence. “It seems to me as though they’re trying to disguise a major withdrawal in this sector.”
General Bradley looked at the map and considered their opinions. He knew that a schoolboy’s hindsight was better than a general’s foresight, and he didn’t want to make any mistakes that might cost American lives.
“I think we ought to prepare for the worst,” he said. “We’ll keep some of our tanks in reserve, and if the Lehr tries to attack us at some point in our line, we’ll hurl these reserves against them.”
His staff officers nodded and agreed with him, pointing out to each other why he was right, though General Bradley knew that they only were doing the same thing he did when he had been a staff officer: agreeing with their commanding officer because it was easier to do that than disagree with him.
He wished that somehow he could know the truth in advance. Earlier in the day he’d walked across a field that one of his regiments had taken, and he couldn’t put his feet down anywhere except on the flesh of a dead German or American soldier.
This isn’t a war—it’s a slaughterhouse, he thought, looking at the route the Panzer Lehr Division had taken across Normandy. It appeared to be headed for some part of the American front, but which part?
Fighting raged all across the American front during the next day, and the Lehr Division continued to move, its soldiers still breaking radio silence and itching to get into battle. Its progress was slow, because tanks are large lumbering vehicles designed for the battlefield and not the highway.
On the evening of that day, while Charlie Company was buttoning up for the night, Mahoney thought he heard the clamor of engines far away. He was walking on the front battlements, inspecting the line of his company, and paused to hear better.
“What’s wrong?” asked Cranepool, who had been accompanying him.
“I hear something,” Mahoney said.
Cranepool put his hand behind his ear and listened to the German lines. “I can’t hear anything,” he said.
“You will.”
Within the hour, all units on the 33rd Division line reported hearing enemy activity that sounded like tanks and trucks.
“I think the Germans are pulling back,” said Major Rainey at General Bradley’s staff conference that night.
At dawn the Panzer Lehr Division attacked. The German units in front of them moved out of the way and the big tanks with black Iron Crosses painted on the sides rumbled through the hedgerow country toward the American lines. The young Panzer commanders stood in the turrets of their tanks, gazing ahead through binoculars, shouting battle cries to each other and singing the famous attack song of the Lehr Division.
The Americans heard them coming and got ready. Word was radioed back to General Bradley’s headquarters that a lot of German tanks were attacking; thus General Bradley finally found out where the Lehr was going. It was on the front just north of Saint Lo, the front that was held by the Hammerhead Division.
General Bradley had pulled back tanks from every front to form the reserve that would fight the Lehr when it attacked. That meant the Lehr would advance against practically no tank resistance for the beginning of its attack, slicing up the first American troops it encountered.
General Bradley did not relish losing all those men, but he figured the cost would be cheaper in the long run than if he kept all his tanks up on the line. It woul
d take longer to reorganize them that way, and longer to send them into the counterattack. The Lehr might make a deeper penetration that way, and kill many more Americans. In fact, they could break through the American lines entirely and push on to the beaches.
General Bradley ordered his tank reserves to be dispatched to the Hammerhead lines immediately, and he uttered a silent prayer that they’d get there before too many American soldiers were killed.
The tanks from the Panzer Lehr Division did not take Charlie Company by surprise. Charlie Company had heard the tanks coming up to the line since four-thirty in the morning and rolled out of their tents to get into position. They set up their anti-tank squads and everybody got plenty of hand grenades. They hoped it wouldn’t take too long before American tanks showed up to reinforce them.
As dawn broke, Mahoney was in the middle of the line. He had a bazooka on his shoulder and Cranepool carried two haversacks filled with rockets. They both carried forty-fives and were festooned with hand grenades.
They peered through the hedgerow and watched the few available American tanks move out to engage the Lehr tankers who broke into the field and came racing across it at top speed, firing their cannons and machine guns, singing their thrilling song.
The American tanks tried to attack the Lehrs from the side, but they were outnumbered and didn’t have a chance. A few Lehr tanks were hit, but the American tanks were destroyed.
The Lehr tanks couldn’t go through the hedgerows any faster than the American’s. They either had to blast their way through or charge into the openings blasted during the fighting on previous days.
Mahoney and Cranepool had taken a position at one of these openings. When the first Lehr tank came through, Mahoney fired a rocket at it broadside and scored a direct hit, blowing off the hatches and disabling the tank, killing everybody inside. Another tank roared through the opening, passing the other tank and breaking into the field. Mahoney shot it from behind, catching it on the treads. The turret rolled around to fire its machine guns at Mahoney, but a bazooka squad from the heavy weapons platoon hit it on the side and put it out of action.
Another tank came through that opening, but Mahoney missed it, his rocket flying over the turret. Cursing, he aimed the bazooka again and fired, this time hitting the tank on its rear deck—but the rocket bounced off it and exploded into the air. The tank kept going, firing its cannon and machine guns, and Mahoney knew that the Charlie Company lines were cracking.
A Lehr tank fired a shell at a hedgerow, blowing up the third squad of the third platoon, who had been behind it. The tank rolled through the hole, firing its machine guns, cutting down the men from Charlie Company. Another tank did the same thing, blowing up the fourth squad from the second platoon. The Lehr tanks rumbled past Charlie Company and headed for the American rear echelons, to wipe out artillery emplacements and ammunition dumps, destroy air fields and communications, and maybe kill a few generals.
Mahoney had the sinking feeling a soldier gets when he knows a battle is lost. The Lehr tanks came thick and fast, overrunning Charlie Company. Mahoney fired his bazooka again, knocking out another tank. Cranepool loaded him up and he fired at one that had blasted through a hedgerow to his left, but he compensated too much for the movement of the tank and the rocket flew past the tank’s front deck.
Lieutenant Ferrara huddled behind a hedgerow and tried to figure out what to do. If he retreated the Lehr tanks would cut his men down with their machine guns, and if he stayed where he was his company would be cut off.
A Lehr tank fired a shell into a section of the hedgerow near Lieutenant Ferrara. The shell landed low, exploding a huge quantity of dirt and muck into the air which rained down on Lieutenant Ferrara, completely burying him. Holding his breath and totally panicked, Lieutenant Ferrara clawed at the dirt above him and kicked with his feet. His hands broke through the dirt and he jumped up into the fresh air. Looking around, he saw the Lehr tanks rolling past him to the rear. Dropping to his stomach on the dirt, he fired his carbine at the tanks. He knew it wouldn’t do any good, but it was all he could think of.
Thirty yards away, Mahoney dropped his bazooka after firing the last rocket. Choking from the fumes of explosions and the diesel exhausts of the German tanks, he realized this was the worst defeat he’d ever been in since the Battle for the Kasserine Pass in North Africa.
Cranepool was frothing at the mouth. “What’re we gonna do?” he screamed.
Mahoney ground his teeth together. He had no idea whatever of what to do. The machine gun of a tank kicked up dirt around his feet and he dived into a shell crater. He threw a hand grenade at the tank but it didn’t do a fucking thing.
Mahoney realized that Charlie Company no longer existed as a coherent fighting unit. It had been overrun, half killed, terrified, and bypassed by a huge enemy tank force. And the German tanks were still coming.
“Fuck this shit,” Mahoney mumbled to himself. “I’m getting out of here.”
Mahoney jumped out of his hole and began running to the rear. He didn’t know exactly where he was going, but if there was safety anywhere, it was back there. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him. In the Kasserine Pass he’d been able to organize a fighting retreat because the terrain was mountainous and he could hide behind boulders and huge rock formations. But here there was nothing.
“Where are you going!” Cranepool, somewhere behind him, screamed.
Mahoney didn’t answer him because he had no idea of where he was going. Shells burst all around him and bullets whistled in all directions. He heard shouting, and the steady roar of the diesel engines sent chills up his back.
He tripped and fell over a rock, and as he did a burst of German machine gun fire rent the air where he’d been standing. Hitting the ground and rolling over, he blinked and swallowed hard as he saw a German tank bearing down on him. The son of a bitch wants to run me over, Mahoney thought.
Mahoney tore a grenade off his lapel, pulled the pin, and threw it at the tank. It bounced off the front deck, doing no damage, but its machine gunners couldn’t see through the smoke for a few seconds, which was the effect Mahoney had hoped for. He jumped up and ran to the side to catch the tank on the flank. Pulling another grenade out of his pocket, he yanked the pin and lobbed it at the treads of the tank. Then he dropped to his stomach, took out another hand grenade and pulled the pin.
Mahoney was spitting mad. The fucking tank had tried to run him down, and that infuriated him. His heart pumping adrenalin, he ducked his head and waited for his grenade to go off.
It exploded, blowing the tread off the tank. The tank stopped and its propulsion mechanism made screeching noises. Mahoney leapt to his feet and ran to the German tank, intending to climb onto it and place the grenade by hand against the space between the turret and the main body of the vehicle, where it would do the most damage. He was pissed off at the tank and wanted to wipe it off the face of the earth.
He charged the tank and leapt into the air. Just as he landed on the side deck, the hatch on the turret opened and he saw a black sleeve and hand. A head with a black beret appeared, and Mahoney shot it with his forty-five. The head blew apart and the shoulders of the tanker dropped into the hatch.
Mahoney threw the hand grenade with all his strength down the hatch and jumped off the deck. Landing on the ground, he ran away from the tank and dived into a shell crater.
The tank exploded, shooting shafts of flame into the air. Mahoney felt jubilant; the tank had tried to run him down and he had destroyed it! The ground shook with artillery explosions and bullets flew through the air like angry gnats. Looking around, he saw German foot soldiers coming toward him through the smoke and mist in a long ghastly skirmish line.
Mahoney realized that he’d come to the end of his rope. He was outnumbered, outflanked, and the battle was lost. He’d always known that a day like this would come, and now it had arrived. The only thing to do was die like a man.
All he had left was his forty-five. Crouching i
n the hole, he ejected the clip and loaded new bullets into it. If he died, he wanted to take as many Krauts with him as he could.
The skirmish line of Germans came closer, shooting the remaining American soldiers. Mahoney’s brain was buzzing and he didn’t want to wait until they came to him. Gripping his forty-five so tightly his knuckles went white, he gritted his teeth and crawled out of his hole. Getting to his feet, he let out a war whoop and ran toward the Germans.
“Follow me!” he shouted. “Blood and guts!”
He charged the Germans and shot his forty-five wildly at them. They opened fire and in the split second it took for their bullets to reach him, he saw his whole life pass before his eyes. He saw what a foolish man he was and how his life had been a charade. What a mess, he thought, and then the bullet hit him.
It was like being kicked in the stomach by a mule. The wind went out of him and the black curtains fell. In his dimming consciousness he was aware that his legs were buckling, and then there was nothing.
Chapter Eighteen
The morning war conference was ending at Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia. The conference had been a gloomy one, because the Eastern Front still was torn wide open.
The staff officers left the conference room one by one or in groups, and Hitler stood with his arms crossed in front of the map table, his facial features creased into a scowl. In only two weeks he’d lost three hundred and fifty thousand trained German soldiers to the Russians. His Army Group Center was a huge gap two hundred miles wide and the Russians had just overrun Minsk. The Russians were pouring one-hundred-twenty-six infantry and six cavalry divisions through the gap, along with forty-five tank brigades. All Hitler had in that sector were eight infantry divisions. He wondered if his will and brilliance could turn the debacle around.
The door to the conference room opened, and General Rudolph Schmundt, his Wehrmacht adjutant, entered, swimming against a sea of officers who were leaving.
