“Hell, Lieutenant, when they gave us those orders, they didn’t know about this.” He nodded in the direction of the corpses rapidly cooling on the ground, “This has to change everything. Who knows, there could be a regiment of Nazis dressed to look like Americans waiting around the corner?” He gave Cassidy a quick glance and looked further up the track, as if they were about to come up from the forest shooting, “Or even armor.”

  “Armor! That does it. We have to get back. If we run into armor, we’re dead.”

  “If they do have armor out there somewhere, we have to find out. They’d want us to pinpoint their location, so they can use artillery or airstrikes to destroy them.”

  Logan looked up at the sky, and his gaze was mournful. “Ain’t no aircraft gonna fly in this. It’s thick cloud almost to ground level, so I doubt they’d be able to get off the ground, let alone locate enemy tanks.”

  Bond’s voice was shrill. “Dammit, we don’t know there is enemy armor! Cassidy, I blame you for inventing a false rumor about armor. Get into line with the rest of the men. We’re going back.”

  He didn’t move. “Sir, with all respect, that’s a bad decision. If they have brought in armor, we have to call it in, and we can’t do that until we know. We should go further and check it out.”

  The Sarge supported him. “He’s right, Lt. If we turn back now, it wouldn’t look too good.”

  “I don’t know. It’s not…”

  “We have to do it, Sir. Just two more miles, and if we do run into enemy tanks, Private Steiner brought along the bazooka.”

  “With two rockets,” he sneered.

  “Two rockets are better than no rockets. After what we’ve seen, anything less wouldn’t look good back at headquarters. People would say…”

  He interrupted quickly. “Yeah, yeah, I hear. We’ll go on for another two miles. After that, we turn back.” He shot Cassidy a poisonous look. “This is your idea, so you and Byrd are back on point. Move out!”

  Ray started moving before he changed his mind, but not before he’d picked up an M3 Grease Gun dropped by the German he’d killed, along with a pouch of spare magazines. Harry scooped up the other Grease Gun, and they slung their Garands on their backs and walked east. Looking every which way, and the forest was like a dark, satanic threat. Every tree trunk could conceal a German, and several times they passed narrow forestry trails. Covered with a thick layer of snow, difficult to negotiate, but not for tracked vehicles.

  They’d walked for a mile and seen no sign of the enemy. Despite scouring the ground ahead of them for any more concealed bunkers, they found nothing. They saw no indications of enemy troops, no footsteps in the snow, and no sign of the distinctive marks made by tracked vehicles.

  They paused, waiting for the platoon to catch up, and Cassidy started to relax. “Dammit, Harry, when we ran into that machine gun, I thought it had to be there for a reason. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Yeah, to kill us.”

  “That, too, but surely they wouldn’t have placed it there for no reason? There has to be something going on, there’s no other explanation.” Byrd opened his mouth to reply, but he grabbed his arm and jerked him off his feet so he sprawled in the snow. Cassidy joined him, “Quiet, I hear something.”

  “That’s my teeth chattering.”

  “Listen.” They waited, and at first there was nothing. Apart from the noise of the forest, the wind and snow howling through the trees, and the occasional crack of a thin branch, the thick snow causing it to snap. And then they heard it, “An engine.”

  Harry listened, and he nodded. “It’s okay. It’s one of ours, a Willys jeep.”

  “It’s coming from the east. We’re so far forward there can’t be American troops further east.”

  “Germans?”

  “That’s my bet, and they’re coming this way. We need to get behind cover.”

  They rolled to the edge of the track and scooped out a shallow trench in the snow. Just in time, the jeep came into view, moving slowly. Battling to get through the thick snow, and a few yards before it reached their position, all four wheels lost traction. Despite the efforts of the driver to gun the engine backward and forward to extricate the vehicle, it was stuck twenty yards from where they lay. There were five men in the jeep. Four climbed out, grabbed shovels, and started to dig. The fifth man manned the pedestal-mounted Browning M-60 machine gun.

  Harry nudged him. “How can we tell if they’re ours or the enemy?”

  “We wait.”

  Three soldiers worked at clearing the packed snow while the fourth watched. At first they said nothing, just grunted with the effort, and then one man spoke to the soldier who watched with hands on hips.

  “Corporal, we can’t go any further in this. The snow is impassable. We’ll get stuck again and again. We’re wasting our time.”

  “If it’s impassable for us, it’s also impassable for the enemy, Brzezinski. Keep digging.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Harry looked at him. “They’re ours, they’re speaking American.”

  He was tempted to agree with him, but he was still suspicious. “Give it another minute.”

  “Ray, I’m freezing my ass off.”

  “One minute.”

  When it happened, it almost took them by surprise. The soldier named Brzezinski slammed his shovel into the ground and hit something hard, probably a fallen log. The handle broke, and he whirled away, his face red with effort and fury. “Verdammt, das ist alles Scheisse.”

  The corporal reacted with fury. “For Christ’s sake, we’re supposed to be Americans, so no speaking German.”

  He replied with a strong American accent. “Yeah, okay. I forgot, is all.”

  “Krauts,” Harry breathed, “You were right. What’re we gonna do?”

  He was thinking the same thing. The guy standing behind the Browning was looking everywhere, expecting trouble. “Harry, can you get a shot at the guy on the jeep?”

  “I guess. How do you want to play this?”

  “He’s the danger. If he opens with that Browning, we’re toast. Take him down, and I can hose the rest of them down with the Grease Guns.”

  “That sounds like a plan.” While the guy on the machine gun was looking at another part of the forest, Harry slowly rested his Garand on the snow and took aim, “I’m ready when you are.”

  “Give me a moment.” He tucked one Grease Gun under each arm and got ready to start shooting, “Now.”

  Everything went wrong. Harry fired a single shot, and the bullet tossed the machine gun backward into the snow. But a second before he fired, the corporal in charge of the men working to clear the wheels shouted they’d dug away enough snow to get out. A soldier climbed into the driver’s seat while another two went to the rear to push it to get started. Ray charged in firing the Grease Guns, but instead of taking down four enemy soldiers, all he managed to hit was the two waiting to push. The driver started the engine, slammed the vehicle into gear, and tried to drive out. The corporal had an MP-40 submachine gun slung on his back, and he moved like a veteran. Ducked behind the jeep for cover, the stubby barrel poked over the hood, and he cut loose with a stream of bullets. He dived for cover as 9mm rounds parted the air over his head, and in the chaotic melee, Harry was trying to pump bullets into the corporal while the driver was frantically trying to drive away.

  He got the wheels turning, and the jeep surged forward, heading west. Heading toward Lieutenant Bond’s platoon, and although Byrd fired several shots after him, they all missed. The corporal was left behind, and he froze for a couple of seconds until realized the danger. He threw himself off the track and into the dark gloom of a mass of trees. Cassidy fired after him, but the bullets impacted harmlessly against the wood, and with no choice he ran after him.

  “Harry, go after that bastard in the jeep.”

  “I can’t outrun a jeep!”

  “He won’t get far. The snow’s too thick. Get him before he runs into the platoon, and they may not realize what he is.”

  “I’m on it.”

  He burst out into the open and began staggering through the snow. When he reached the track, he managed to use the ruts created by the jeep to pick up speed, and Cassidy raced after the German. The guy was waiting for him, and it almost cost him his life when he opened fire from close range, less than thirty yards away. He was lucky. The burst went high, giving him time to roll behind a tree, almost dropping one of his guns. He glanced around and reckoned he could move from cover to cover and get close before the German had time to get in a shot. He got to one knee and crouched down, like a sprinter on his starting blocks, ready to make the first run. The Grease Guns held firmly under each arm, he sucked in a deep breath ready to go.

  A split second later, he heard the noise they’d been dreading. The last sound any infantryman wants to hear on the battlefield, the noise of a powerful engine, and the clatter of tracks. Armor, heading along the track toward the west. He peered through the trees, trying to get a good look at it, and he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. Something round and metallic pressed against the back of his neck. The barrel of a gun, and the corporal holding it had crept in behind him while he was looking for the tank.

  “You shouldn’t have come, American. We don’t take prisoners.”

  Chapter Three

  The shot never came. A voice he recognized shouted in fluent German, “Nicht schiessen, er ist ein Deutscher.” ‘Don’t shoot, he’s a German.’

  He swung around in confusion, searching for the man who’d called to him, and the bullet took him in the center of his face. Blood fountained, and Ray watched the body of the man who wanted to kill him fall into a deep rift, where his body lay half submerged in the snow.

  His mind was still trying to come to terms with his escape from certain death, and he looked for his savior. PFC Kurt Steiner waded through the snow toward him, his face split in a wide grin. “My Ma and Pa made me learn to speak German fluently, they always said it will come in useful. I guess they were right.”

  He nodded his thanks. “That was fine shooting, Kurt. I tell you, if any of the guys give you any more trouble about where your family originally hailed from, they can take it up with me. And if I ever run into your Ma and Pa, I’ll thank them, too. Where are the rest of the men?”

  “They’re close, digging out a Willys that was stuck in the snow. We weren’t too sure about it, but Sergeant Logan checked under the passenger seat, and he found a Nazi flag. The Lieutenant reckons it’s identification for when they run into their own troops. Kind of like we paint the white Allied star on all our vehicles, they display the swastika. Except the bastards won’t be displaying anything, he sent them back toward our lines with two men guarding them. Say, that noise, it sounds like…”

  Harry Byrd joined them, and he pointed through the trees. “It’s a tank, yeah. And it’s heading this way. We need to get back to the platoon and get back to our people and warn them. This looks like a serious offensive. They’ve decked out the soldiers with American uniforms and equipment, which will make it tough to work out who to shoot at.”

  Cassidy itched to get a look at the tank heading toward them, but there was no time. “Let’s go.”

  They floundered back through the snow and reached the platoon. The men were clustered around the Willys jeep, and Corporal Davey Jones was holding out the ominous flag; bright red, with a white circle in the center displaying the black, spiderlike swastika, the image of Nazi murder and terror across the whole of Europe. The trees and the snow muffled the noise of the approaching tank, and so far they were unaware of the danger.

  As Cassidy ran up, he called a warning. “Hey, you guys, there’s an enemy tank heading toward us!”

  Bond’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me! From which direction? It could be one of ours.”

  “No way, Lt, it’s coming in from the east. It’s possible they’re using one of ours, a captured Sherman. My guess is they’re about to hit us with a major attack using troops dressed up as Americans. When they hit our guys, there’ll be all hell to pay. It’ll be chaos.”

  He nodded. “Okay, we have to head back and make Company HQ aware of the danger.” He glanced at Logan. “Sergeant get the men moving, and make it snappy. We can’t tangle with an enemy tank.”

  He stared back at him. “Lieutenant, don’t forget we have the bazooka. It’s just one tank. We could knock it out with a rocket. It’d be better to go further east and find out what’s happening so we can give our people a better idea of what’s going on.”

  He hesitated, thinking it through, and it was a tough decision. Bond wasn’t the most decisive platoon leader in the Division, but he was no coward. If the tank was a Sherman, a bazooka rocket should be enough to deal with it. But if it was a German heavy, like a Panther or a Tiger, the bazooka wouldn’t do much more than scratch the paintwork.

  “I don’t know, Sergeant. It’s one hell of a risk.” He paused and looked east through the trees. Any decision was too late. A tank suddenly appeared through the forest, knocking flat a big tree as it rolled over it, and it was no Sherman. He stared at the monster, one hundred yards away, and he was looking at the distinctive hull of a Panther. His skin went pale, his eyes bulged almost out of their sockets, and he muttered, “Oh, shit. We’re screwed.”

  They stared at the massive tank trundling toward them, and they expected both MG-34 machine guns mounted on the behemoth to have opened up already, yet so far they were silent. There was just the noise of the powerful engine, and the clank of the tracks muffled by the snow.

  A man muttered in a hoarse voice, “Why haven’t they opened fire?”

  Cassidy, like the rest of them, was thinking the same thing. Puzzling it out, and the answer came to him a second later. “They think we’re Germans. They know their guys were heading this way, and they won’t shoot until they’ve identified us.”

  “But we’re not Germans,” Bond pointed out, “As soon as they find out, we’re dead meat.”

  He recalled the flag they’d found in the jeep. “Unless we can fool them. Kurt, that Nazi flag, get it out, fast!” He looked at Bond. “If we show the flag, I’m guessing they’ll assume we’re friendlies.”

  “If they stop to question us, they’ll know the moment we open our mouths, and we neither speak nor understand a word of German.”

  “Private Steiner is fluent. Lt, this is our only chance. Someone help him to show that flag.”

  Harry took one end, and they held up the blood red swastika flag in full view of the Panther. The tank kept coming, and every man in the platoon held his breath. Praying it would drive past, that the damn thing would go away so they could live.

  Cassidy had another idea. “You guys, wave at them, like we’re their pals.”

  “What if they stop? They’ll want to speak with our commander, and that’s the Lieutenant.”

  “Maybe not. Don’t forget we’re supposed to be in disguise. Kurt, you’ll have to be in charge. Tell ’em you’re a high-ranking SS officer. What ranks do they use?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Although I did hear once they have a rank of SS-Sturmbannfuhrer, and that equates to a major in the regular army.”

  “That’ll have to do. You’re Sturmbannfuhrer Steiner.”

  He was shaking with fear as the tank rumbled closer. “Ray, I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “You can do it. And if they want to know why the rest of us aren’t speaking German, tell them you gave the order to only speak American to make it look good. Kurt, you have to make this work. You’re an arrogant SS sonofabitch, a real Nazi shit, so give them the full works.”

  “I’ll try. But I’m still hoping to Christ it doesn’t stop to check us out.”

  They watched the enormous armored vehicle close on their position, and this was no masquerade. Emblazoned with Nazi swastikas and regimental insignia, this was the real deal. It stopped five yards before the Willys, which meant Kurt’s hopes were dashed. A black-clad Wehrmacht tank commander popped his head out of the turret and shouted a question. They were suspicious, and Cassidy noted the turret move a fraction to train a machine gun on them in case they didn’t check out. The German officer shouted something at the Lieutenant, and he stared back at him, mouth open in terror. Kurt was frozen on the spot, unable to respond, and the tension was as brittle as the icicles hanging from the frozen branches. At any moment, the machine guns would open up, and First Platoon would cease to exist.

  Chapter Four

  The tanker was a Wehrmacht lieutenant, and when Kurt shouted to him, he instinctively threw up a hand in a Nazi salute. Kurt returned the salute, and it looked surreal coming from an American private soldier. Something was troubling the German, and he fired a series of questions at Kurt, but he pointed to the Nazi flag and fired back with a torrent of German words they couldn’t understand. But they sure sounded threatening, and after several minutes the tanker threw up a salute, called an order into his microphone, and the tank lurched forward.

  They waited until it was out of sight, and he looked at Steiner. “What did you tell him? It looks like you put the fear of God into him.”

  “I told him I was under the direct orders of Heinrich Himmler, and if he failed to obey, I’d order the Gestapo to arrest him as a traitor.”

  “No wonder he looked scared.” He looked at Bond. “We have a problem, Lt. Like a Panther between us and our lines. Apart from any number of Nazis dressed up as Americans. We have to warn HQ there’s a German tank heading their way.”

  “Private Cassidy, in case you’ve forgotten, we don’t have a radio. We have to get back somehow, and it’ll take a long time to reach them on foot, and we could still tangle with that Panther.”

  “Sir, we have the jeep.” Logan pointed to the Willys, “How about we send two men back in the jeep. There’re plenty of forest tracks they can use to get past the tank, and with any luck, they’ll get through in time to give them a heads up.”

  He quickly made up his mind. “That sounds like a plan. Corporal Jones, take one man with you and get back to headquarters as fast as possible. In the meantime, we’ll…” He stopped. They all stopped and listened to the sound of powerful engines heading in from the east, “Tanks. More of them.”

 

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