Iron Sniper

by David Healey

  Satisfied that she was as clean as she was going to get, she headed to the children's bedroom. She could make out her niece’s sleeping form. Somehow, her niece had managed to get back into bed and go right to sleep as if nothing had happened.

  When she looked at Leo's bed, however, the boy was not there.

  Lisette felt her heart skip in her chest. Dieter and the fat German sergeant had not frightened her, but the sight of that empty bed did. Where had her nephew gone?

  She went into the kitchen, then wandered back to her own bedroom, and then to the twins' bedroom again. The house was too small for Leo to be hiding anywhere.

  Lisette ran into the farmyard, calling his name. "Leo? Leo? Where are you?"

  She checked the outhouse. Then the barn and henhouse. Nothing.

  It would not have been like her nephew to wander off. He had certainly never done that before, and he would not have done that at night, alone.

  Lisette recalled the sound of the motorcycle fading in the night. With a sinking feeling, she realized that Dieter and the German sergeant had not left alone. She could not think of any other explanation for Leo’s disappearance. For whatever reason, they must have taken Leo with them.

  Lisette did not go back to bed. Sleep would have been impossible. She made coffee and sat at the kitchen table until first light, deciding what to do, and hoping against hope that Leo would come wandering in from some hiding place. Maybe he had been scared by the Germans.

  The chickens stirred, the rooster crowed, and Lisette remained alone.

  She wished she knew where her brother, Henri, had gone. She could have used his help. But like so many young Frenchmen, he was off fighting the Germans, prying their fingers away from France. That was all well and good, but what about the children?

  Getting Leo back was up to her, and her alone.

  She would have to confront the Germans at their headquarters to do it. The thought of that filled her with trepidation.

  Lisette knew that she could not take Elsa with her. She was walking into the lion's den, after all. There was a good chance that she would not be coming back. With the Germans, there was no telling what might happen.

  Her mind made up, Lisette went and woke up Elsa. She gave the girl bread and a cup of milk for breakfast. When Lisette questioned her, it was clear that Elsa had no idea what had become of her brother, nor did she seem especially frightened by what had happened last night.

  "Dieter gave me chocolate," she announced. A pout soon replaced her smile. "He said he was taking Leo on an adventure. I wanted to go, but he said it was for boys only."

  Lisette could only nod at her niece's childish innocence. "Drink your milk."

  "What is wrong, Tante?"

  "I must go find Leo. Did anyone say where this adventure was going to be?”

  Elsa just shrugged.

  There was an old woman named Madame Pelletier who lived half a mile away. Leaving Elsa alone with her bread and milk, Lisette left long enough to bring back the old woman. She agreed to mind Elsa at the house. Lisette wanted someone there, just in case Leo returned on his own, by some miracle.

  She scribbled a quick note to Henri, explaining what she was doing. She did not go into detail, of course; Henri would blame her more than the Germans for what had happened. She left instructions with Madame Pelletier to tell Henri where she had gone, if he happened to appear.

  "If I can, I will call you," she said, nodding at the old telephone on the wall. By some miracle, it still worked—say what you wanted about the Germans, but the roads, electricity, and telephone service had vastly improved during their occupation of France. Her farmhouse was close enough to the road for a telephone; old Madame Pelletier’s house didn't have one yet.

  Upon leaving the cottage, Lisette's first thought was to visit German headquarters. Leo might be there, and perhaps she could lodge a complaint against Rohde—for all the good that it would do. The Germans could care less what French civilians thought.

  However, she had not gone far when a vehicle came up the road. She had been expecting a German truck and was taken aback by the large white star on the hood. Americans!

  The truck slowed. The sight of a young French girl, walking alone down a road, was enough to get the attention of the soldiers in the truck.

  "Need a ride, miss?" the driver asked enthusiastically. He spoke French with a very heavy accent, but was understandable.

  Quickly, Lisette explained about her missing nephew. She had to tell her story three times, ever more slowly, before the driver understood it all. The driver then told her in no uncertain terms that she would never make it to German headquarters. There was already heavy fighting in that direction. The Germans, he said, were surrounded.

  Lisette's heart sank, thinking of Leo.

  "If I were you, I'd try our forward command post. If anyone found a kid, that's where he'd be. Hop in. We're headed there right now."

  Lisette thought that made more sense than finding herself in the middle of a battlefield, or than searching aimlessly across the woods and fields. There was also the unsettling thought that if she found Leo, she might also come upon Dieter Rohde. If that happened, it might be useful to be accompanied by soldiers. The GIs eagerly made room for her in the cab of the truck, and off they went.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Well before dawn that morning, Rohde was back in the field where he had prepared his sniper's hides. In the gloom, he looked them over quickly and saw with satisfaction that everything from the hole in the field, to his makeshift shooting blind, to his shooting platform within the hedgerow itself, blended almost perfectly into the landscape. It would take a sniper with the eyes of a hawk to spot anything amiss.

  Rohde realized that he did not feel the least bit of guilt about shooting Hohenfeldt. He only regretted not doing it sooner, because it would have saved him a lot of trouble. As for that business with Lisette, what was done was done. He would have preferred to end things differently with her, but he reminded himself that Lisette she was just another tooth in the cog of war. Just like Rohde himself. Just like everyone.

  The hour was later than he had planned, not so much because of the errand involving the Staber, but because of the little boy, Leo, who lagged behind at every step. The boy's enthusiasm about going on an adventure was beginning to wane.

  "Hurry up, damn you!" he snapped at the boy, his patience at an end. Everything depended upon their being in position by first light. The boy spoke little German, but Rohde's tone needed no translation.

  "I'm hungry," the boy whined in response.

  "I told you, do what you are told and you can have something to eat."

  The child nodded sullenly.

  Already, a red dawn showed to the east, a harbinger of another day of war. And yet the countryside around them remained oblivious. Birds began to sing in the trees. A cow lowed in the distance, signaling that it was ready to be milked.

  Rohde looked out across the field, toward the distant hedgerow on the other side. As the light gathered, the details of his killing field became more clear.

  Now, he just needed the bait.

  To catch a lion ...

  "Come here," he said to the boy with a coldness in his voice that made the child give him every bit of his attention. "Put out your hands."

  The boy did not understand him, so Rohde roughly grabbed Leo’s hands, turned them wrist to wrist, and bound them tightly with a cord he took from his pocket.

  The boy winced and whimpered, tried to pull his hands away, but Rohde was having none of that.

  He had chosen cord no bigger than a shoelace so that he could bind the boy's wrists tightly with no chance of him wriggling free. Next, he took a rope and tied it around the wrists, where the boy's fingers could never work it free.

  He had debated how to go about securing the boy in the field. He had considered, and quickly dismissed, the idea of hamstringing the boy, worried that Leo might die of blood loss before he had served his purpose.

&
nbsp; He tugged at the rope. "Come on," he said, half dragging the boy behind him as he made his way out into the field. The Gewehr 43 was on a sling over his shoulder.

  Once they reached roughly the middle of the field, Rohde knotted the free end of the rope around a grazing stake that he had brought for just this purpose. It was a simple metal stake half a meter long, shaped at the end like an upside down stirrup. Using his boot, he stamped the stake deep into the field. Farmers used these stakes to keep grazing horses and cattle in place. He was certain that the stake would be enough to keep the boy just where Rohde wanted him.

  Rohde glanced toward the east. The light began to grow much brighter all at once, like the drapes of a darkened room being cast open. The sun was coming up. He had better hurry. Everything depended on him being in position before anyone could see his hiding place.

  He could also hear the distant sound of mechanized vehicles from that direction. The Allies were on the move. It would not be long now.

  Breathing heavily from the effort of driving home the stake, he knelt beside the boy. Rohde took a chocolate bar from his pocket and presented it to Leo, ruffling his hair as he did so.

  "Au revoir," he said, and left him there.

  Rohde returned to his first hide and settled down to wait. He slid the rifle across the top of the hole. He realized that it would have been better to camouflage the rifle in some way, and silently cursed himself. The light brown wood of the stock seemed to stand out, along with the fact that the finish on the stock was still new and bright. It was too late now to do anything about that.

  From his sniper's dugout, he had a clear view across the field. The boy was just visible through the grass, his head and shoulders making a silhouette against the early morning backdrop of trees and sky and grass.

  Using those quiet moments, Rohde took stock of his conscience. He was not so entirely lost that he did not know that his actions could be considered abhorrent. He had whored out the French girl, kidnapped a child to use as bait, and murdered old Hohenfeldt. Shining a light into the corners of his mind, he knew that he should have felt more about that, but any feelings were strangely muted. Perhaps he had been a soldier too long, or perhaps he had allowed his ambition, his burning desire for the Iron Cross, to overshadow everything else. He cast his inner eye one last time on these actions and emotions, then bundled them up and locked them deep within himself.

  His opportunity for contemplation did not last long. The early morning peace was broken by an approaching mechanized rumble. Guessing that it must be a Sherman tank, he frowned. He had planned on an assault by men, not machines.

  Fortunately for him, the thick boundary of the hedgerow was impregnable to the tank. He could hear it to the west, working its way around the field. The question was, were there any Americans traveling in the tank's wake?

  His question was answered when he saw a shadowy figure slip through the tight-knit vegetation on the other side of the field.

  The Amis had arrived.

  Rohde lined up the post sight on the figure as he emerged. He wished that he'd had time to at least make a few test shots of the Gewehr. On the job training. That was the Wehrmacht for you. What else was new?

  The Staber had said that it was sighted in for 200 meters, so Rohde could accept that as fact. Hohenfeldt had been a bastard, but he was exacting about the details of weapons.

  Rohde had paced off the field, so he knew that where he had placed the boy was at the 200-meter mark. The far edge of the field was twice that distance.

  The American soldier entered Rohde's field of view within the rifle scope.

  He held his breath.

  Although the telescopic sight was adjustable, all of the scopes used by the sniper were famously finicky. He could change the elevation with a few clicks, but there was no certainty that the scope would return to its current sighted-in range with any accuracy.

  Instead, it made more sense to raise his aim. Normally, he aimed for the belt buckle. Now, he aimed a little higher. Complete accuracy did not matter so much; hitting a man anywhere from the chest to the groin would put him down. A man made a long target, up and down; it was mainly the windage—from side to side—that proved more challenging. That would not be much of a factor in the still morning air.

  Although a bullet was a vast technological improvement over a stone or a spear, the same rules of gravity applied to the modern warrior. Any projectile was pulled down by the force of gravity, whether it was a spear or a bullet. To throw a spear any distance, one had to throw it high. The same principle applied to a bullet. Fire it along a curved trajectory, and it would travel farther before gravity worked its inexorable pull upon it.

  Rohde aimed high, and fired.

  Instantly, he experienced two pleasant surprises. First, the bullet struck the GI dead center and sent him spinning into the field. Second, the recoil of the Gewehr 43 was much lighter due to the operation of the semi-automatic rifle's gas recoil system. There was no working the bolt and slapping it back into place, forcing him to readjust his aim in the process. Instead, the new rifle spat out the brass casing and loaded a fresh round instantly.

  For good measure, Rohde shot the GI again.

  Out in the field, the boy was frightened by the sound of the shots as well as the bloodshed he had just witnessed.

  Leo began to scream.

  The boy’s cries worked to perfection. Almost instantly, another American appeared, and then another. Having just seen one of their comrades shot, it was likely that they would have kept their heads down if it hadn't been for the boy's screams.

  Rohde fired once, twice. Two more GIs collapsed into the field. The first one lay still, killed instantly, but the second was on his elbows, trying futilely to drag himself to safety. His own pitiful cries joined those of the boy.

  The devil himself could not have orchestrated a more horrible symphony.

  Rohde chided himself for not thinking of shooting to wound, rather than to kill. He had been too excited about the new rifle to think clearly. At least some of the time, he realized that missing had its own rewards.

  Despite the noise, the GIs were not so eager to take any action with a German sniper in play. A few shots began to zip across the field, but the bullets came nowhere near Rohde's hiding place. He guessed that there were at least a dozen GIs hidden at the edge of the field. If the GIs had opened up on him, or if they had used a machine gun, he might have been in trouble with a swarm of bullets coming at him, hiding place or not. But Rohde guessed that the GIs were afraid of hitting the boy.

  That was the trouble with Americans, he thought. They were too soft-hearted. If it hadn't been for the sheer advantage of numbers and air power, they would not be winning this war.

  He could see a couple of puffs or flashes where the GIs were shooting from cover. Rohde fired at those spots and the guns fell silent. After that, the return fire was only sporadic.

  The cries of the wounded GI and of the boy seemed to grow louder.

  Rohde let the earth hug his belly, and he settled down to wait for whatever target showed itself next.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  High above the French countryside, a raven soared on outstretched wings, surveying the landscape.

  Since ancient times, ravens had gathered in the skies above the battlefields of Europe. They were scavengers by nature, and instinct had long since taught them that where men clashed with weapons, the ravens would find rich rewards.

  What seemed so gruesome to the survivors of battle was simply natural instinct to a raven.

  If someone could have seen the French countryside with a raven's eye and cleared away all of the trees and hedgerows, all of the tall summer grass and stone walls, then the scene might resemble one of those miniature villages and landscapes in a train garden that sometimes appeared during the holidays.

  But this was no peaceful holiday scene. In August 1944, the French countryside was a tableau of violence.

  First, the eye would be captured by e
ntire units on the move. It was rather an awesome sight. Masses of American troops crept forward, tiny figures in olive drab, while in the distance were English, Canadian, and even Polish troops.

  Blue-gray uniforms on the tableau showed the German forces, forming well-demarcated defensive lines. Here and there, pockets of soldiers in olive drab and blue-gray uniforms faced each other across fields and woodlands.

  These forces included the British 2nd Army, Canadian 1st Army, Polish troops, and the German 7th Army and 5th Panzer Division.

  By early August, the Germans were boxed into an area 20 miles long and five miles deep. Allied forces were squeezing in on them from three sides. This was the beginning of what would come to be known as the Falaise Gap or Pocket. The French and British pronounced it as poh-ket.

  Not particularly notable for any strategic value, it was simply one of those turns of fate that all these troops seemed fated to clash here at Falaise and Argentan. This was where the German 7th Army had found itself herded by circumstance as Allied forces pushed in. Like water finding its level, the German troops had filed into a wide valley ringed by low hills. The Allies wasted no time getting artillery position on those hills, and then opened fire.

  It was not unlike the situation that had brought Union and Confederate troops to clash at the town of Gettysburg in the Pennsylvania countryside eighty years before. No one had set out to fight a battle there. The names of commanders then had been Lee and Longstreet and Meade. Now it was Patton and Von Kluge and Montgomery.

  Not even the Germans were sure how many troops were caught in this gap, but it was anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 men—a vast number of German soldiers whose destruction seemed near.

  On August 12, however, General Omar Bradley ordered Patton to halt his steamrolling advance. His 3rd Army had been surging across Germany, sometimes moving faster than the Germans could retreat. At these orders, Patton was almost apoplectic, considering that the total annihilation of German forces seemed within his grasp.