Iron Sniper

by David Healey

  At least, that was how Patton saw it. Bradley's view was that Patton's lines were stretched too thin as it was, to the point that the Germans might break through, with disastrous results. In typical Bradley fashion, he later explained that he'd rather have Patton offer a strong shoulder to prop up the Allied advance than to suffer a broken neck.

  Having been on Ike's naughty list for most of the previous year, Patton decided to obey orders. With the advance stopped, it left a gap just two miles wide in the Allied lines. Still, thousands of German troops managed to escape toward Germany through that gap.

  The noose around German forces at Falaise and Argentan kept tightening.

  The Germans were not helped by the fact that their commander, Von Kluge, had been ordered back to Germany on August 18. He was a suspected conspirator in the attempt on Hitler's life. Rather than face punishment, he committed suicide by swallowing cyanide.

  Walter Modell replaced Von Kluge. Though late to the game, Modell was an adept and capable general. He threw himself into the chaos of this last stand, hoping to keep much of the army intact to fight another day, in Germany itself.

  If the raven overhead had good weather for flying, so did the Allied planes.

  The weather in early August was all blue skies and sunshine, made to order for air operations. The Luftwaffe was virtually gone, either destroyed on the ground in Operation Cobra and subsequent bombing, or simply overwhelmed by the sheer number of Allied fighters. The German airmen were mostly inexperienced and poorly trained at this point.

  Goring had proven to be a poor choice to head up the Luftwaffe throughout the war. One could only imagine the different outcome of the air war if an Admiral Donitz had been in charge. Unlike the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine remained a dangerous adversary.

  The British Hawker Typhoons and P-47 Thunderbolts flew their sorties, mostly unchallenged, unleashing their bombs, rockets, and machine guns on German targets. And it was a target-rich environment, with trains, tanks, and convoys ripe for the taking.

  Despite the Allied planes, German tanks roamed the tableau like iron wolves, looking to pick off prey.

  All in all, it was battle on a massive, sprawling scale. The movement of men and machines appeared impersonal and remote. But each of those tiny figures below represented a life filled with hopes and desires and fears. The cold eye of the raven was indifferent to their fates.

  Here and there stood a quiet stone farmhouse, surrounded on all sides by troops and tanks. Seeing the violence to come, one hoped that the occupants had fled.

  One such farmstead was Lisette's. This morning, the raven's eye would have picked out the figure of Lisette, running frantically from the house to the barn to the fields, searching for her nephew, who was nowhere to be found.

  If the raven squinted, he might even have seen the small figures of American soldiers moving across the landscape, toward a skirmish being fought across a small field not far from Argentan.

  Far below, one of those snipers looked up, put his rifle to his shoulder, and shot the raven from the sky.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  "Show off," Vaccaro said. "Nobody else I know can hit a bird flying."

  "I don't much like ravens," Cole responded. "Devil birds, if you ask me. Shot that one through the eye."

  Vaccaro snorted.

  Cole moved down the dirt road, eyes scanning to the horizon. Maybe Vaccaro was right and shooting the bird was showing off, but he'd had an itchy trigger finger all morning. Short of any available Germans, he'd had to shoot something, goddammit.

  The morning light was still growing, promising more sunny weather. After the clouds and gloom of early summer, this was a welcome change. It was as if the sun knew that there was a war going on, and showed its disapproval by withholding its warmth. He had longed for a single summer day from back home, with the sky bright blue against the mountains and a warm breeze scented with woods and wildflowers.

  They had started off crossing grass, leaving their boots wet with dew, and now the dust from the road clung to them. He remembered all that spit and polish bullshit from boot camp. Cole hadn't seen the point. Hell, he was just glad to have boots. There had been plenty of times, as a boy, when he'd simply gone barefoot.

  With growing wariness, he saw the countryside close in around them as they walked. For a mountain boy, it was a claustrophobic feeling. The countryside here was too flat. Cole longed for a hill to climb so that he could get the lay of the land. So far, he was not enamored of France. He thought that the whole landscape looked too tame from centuries of farming.

  The day promised to be a sunny one, enabling the flyboys to do their job. With the planes flying sorties overhead, the German Panzers would be run to ground.

  Cole himself felt edgy. Like something was about to happen. He had learned to trust that instinct. It had kept him alive so far.

  Their orders were simple. He and Vaccaro were assigned to counter sniper measures. As they moved toward Falaise, there seemed to be no shortage of enemy snipers.

  Cole hoped to meet one sniper in particular. When he thought about it, maybe hoped wasn't the right word. He itched to put a bullet in that sniper.

  He looked up for another bird to shoot, but the sky was empty.

  This morning, they had taken along a kid named Harper to serve as a spotter. More than two months after D-Day, fresh troops like Harper were being rotated into combat units. Rumor had it that Harper had been in the typing pool and asked for a transfer to the field. That either made him brave, or awfully stupid.

  Harper had claimed to have some skill with a rifle, so Lieutenant Mulholland had gotten the bright idea to send the kid along with Cole and Vaccaro this morning.

  "Maybe you can teach him a thing or two," Mulholland had said.

  "We don't need no help, lieutenant," Cole said.

  The lieutenant had shot him a look. "It's not a suggestion, Cole. It's an order."

  "Yes, sir," Cole said through gritted teeth. Lately, there had been a lot of tension between Cole and Mulholland. It didn't take a genius figure out that it was over that French girl, Jolie Molyneux.

  There wasn't an extra sniper rifle, so Harper carried an M1 with open sights. So far, nobody had figured out how to put a scope on one of those, which was a shame, because a semi-automatic sniper rifle wasn't a bad idea.

  Unlike the Germans or the Russians or even the English, the United States Army did not have an official sniper school. Soldiers with an aptitude as marksmen were simply given a scoped rifle and on-the-job training.

  "Got any advice?" Harper had asked as they moved out.

  "Yeah," Vaccaro said. "Don't get shot."

  Cole looked Harper up and down with those weird eyes of his, but said nothing.

  Now, Harper hung back and walked for a while with Vaccaro, letting Cole take point.

  Every now and then, Harper glanced almost furtively at the sniper. Cole made him nervous. The U.S. Army wanted every soldier to see himself as lean, mean, fighting machine, but there was a fine line between being a soldier and being a killer. Whatever that special something was that made someone a killer, Cole radiated it like an Old West gunfighter.

  "What's with him, anyway?" Harper asked Vaccaro.

  "Just leave him alone and stay out of his way," Vaccaro said quietly. "He's in one of his moods."

  "What mood is that?"

  "The kind where he wants to shoot something. You wanna volunteer?"

  "No thanks."

  "You see, kid, Cole's got himself a feud going with that German sniper who shot him up. He's a hillbilly, so he's never happier than when he has a feud going. This is real Hatfield and McCoy stuff."

  "The one I feel sorry for is the German, because he doesn't know yet that Cole is out to get him."

  Harper gestured at the woods and fields surrounding them. "And just how are they going to find each other?"

  "You ever been at a USO dance and run into a guy from the same high school?"

  "Yeah, something like
that."

  "Thousands of guys on the other side of the ocean, and you run into one you know. What are the odds, right? It’s a small world, kid. It's even smaller when Cole is looking for you."

  They walked on. In the distance, they could hear shooting and the dull thud of artillery that meant somebody was catching hell. So far, it was quiet in their neck of the woods.

  They passed a body lying in a ditch. It was a dead American.

  "Goddamn Krauts," Cole said bitterly, looking at the body. He spat.

  Harper and Vaccaro hung back a little farther.

  The sound of gunfire erupted not that far ahead of them. Bursts of fire, followed by solitary rifle shots. It sounded like a lopsided fight. But if there was a sniper involved, those solitary rifle shots might be devastating.

  A few minutes later, a soldier came trotting up the road.

  "Hey!" he shouted when he caught sight of Cole. He ran up to them, nearly breathless. He took a good look at Cole's rifle. "Is that a sniper rifle?"

  Cole could see that the soldier had been running, and he looked a little scared, so he gave him the benefit of the doubt. "Well, it ain't a banjo."

  "Good." The soldier was too rattled to be anything but serious. "The lieutenant back there sent me to find you. He said to look for somebody named Cole." He waved his arm in the general direction of the road behind him. "Is that you?"

  "That'd be me."

  Vaccaro spoke up. "He asked for you by name? What the hell?"

  "Shut up, Vaccaro." Cole looked at the runner. "I reckon I'm Cole. So what's the situation?" He pronounced it, sitch-ee-ay-shun.

  "A sniper has us pinned down. And if that's not bad enough, the sniper has got a kid tied up in the field. He’s using him as goddamn bait. A couple of our guys got greased trying to rescue him." He gulped. "It's awful."

  "Let me take my banjo here, and go have a look."

  They set off down the road at a trot. Cole moved with a graceful lope that was hard for the others to keep up with.

  Still, Vaccaro managed to pant a question at the soldier who had found them on the road. "Are you sure the lieutenant didn't mention me? Vaccaro?"

  "I'm pretty sure he didn't."

  Cole looked back over his shoulder. "Hey, quit jabberin' and keep up."

  He picked up the pace. They could tell that they were getting close by the louder sound of gunfire.

  The soldier stopped running near a gap in the hedge. The sound of firing was very close now. "This I where I cut through."

  Cole didn't know what he was walking into, but he knew it wouldn't be good. If this soldier was right, and the German sniper had tied some kid up in the field as bait, it meant that the German had set a trap and that he had every advantage.

  What kind of German sniper would do that? Cole suspected that it might very well be the one who had ambushed him yesterday.

  Cole hesitated before plunging down the path. He didn't like this set up one bit. Like the soldiers in the squad that was now pinned down, he would just be walking into the sniper's trap.

  It didn't help that he was ringed in on every side by trees, hedges, and flat fields. His ears were telling him more than his eyes. But he couldn't shoot with his ears. What he needed to do was get up high and get the lay of the land.

  He thought about the church they had seen in the distance. It wasn't exactly a cathedral, but the steeple was at least a couple of stories tall, and the church itself had been built on high ground. It was likely that the church was far beyond rifle range from this field, but at least he could see what was going on, and then make his move from there.

  He turned back the way they had come and started running.

  "Cole?" Vaccaro shouted after him. "What the hell?"

  "Come on," Cole called, and without further explanation, he ran back toward where he had seen that church steeple.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The church was of modest dimensions, no more than thirty-five feet long and maybe twenty-five feet across. More of a chapel, in actuality, than a church, and the building definitely was not going to be confused with a cathedral. A plaque identified it as Église St. Dominic. It was built of huge stone block, hauled from God knows where, with each massive block weighing hundreds of pounds. One thing about these French, Cole thought, was that they built to last. If only they had taken the same care to defend the very existence of their country.

  Once he had left the road, Cole approached cautiously. The church looked deserted, but with the territory surrounding them in flux, he didn't want to walk up on any German patrols. That would ruin his day in a hurry.

  He pressed himself against the right front corner of the church and listened. Didn't hear anything inside.

  Cole looked behind him and gave the hand signal for the others to approach. They did so, running toward the church in a crouch. He noticed that Vaccaro kept his eyes on the steeple, with his rifle pointed in that direction. The city boy was learning.

  Vaccaro ran up, panting, an exasperated expression on his face. Harper ran up next. The other soldier had returned to his squad.

  "You don't have to fight the war alone, you know," Vaccaro said. "You could tell me what the hell you're up to."

  "I'm gonna tell you now," Cole said. "What I want to do is get up in that steeple, and see if I can get a look at where this sniper is dug in."

  Vaccaro turned to Harper. "Kid, you stay down here and keep watch. Keep a sharp eye out. I sure as hell don't want to get trapped in that church if a German patrol comes along."

  Harper nodded, and instantly turned his eyes toward the landscape surrounding the church.

  The church was not locked. Cole pushed the massive wooden door open with his shoulder, did a quick check inside, and then stepped all the way in with Vaccaro behind him.

  Inside, the church smelled of dampness and incense. This was an old peasant church so there were no pews, but only bare flagstones and a simply carved altar flanked by simple stained glass windows whose light barely penetrated the gloom.

  Nor were there any steps leading to the steeple. Instead, there was only a ladder.

  Briefly, Cole thought about Von Stenger, who had used a tunnel to get into a church inside Bienville and then began shooting up the town's defenders like a fox inside a henhouse. That Von Stenger had been a slippery son of a bitch.

  Cole went up the ladder first, followed by Vaccaro.

  "Do you think Harper is going to be OK watching our six?"

  "Once we get up in that steeple, we ought to see anyone coming at us from a long ways off."

  They emerged through a trapdoor into the church steeple itself. It was no more than six feet on a side, hemmed in by low stone walls topped by a wooden rail so rotten that it would be hazardous to lean against, all covered by a slate-shingled hip roof. The floor was chalky white with pigeon droppings. There was a bell rope, but no bell. Cole suspected that the Germans had taken it away and melted it down, which was a common practice of the occupiers.

  From the steeple, there was a good view of the surrounding countryside. The old church had been built at a kind of crossroads, and four dirt roads led away from the chapel. In the distance, they could see the field where the fight was taking place.

  Hidden in the field, Rohde had to wait longer than expected for the Americans to get up their nerve again. The sun climbed higher and began to beat down mercilessly on the wounded.

  The boy had mostly fallen silent and was sitting down now, but the wounded GI was still calling out, this time for water.

  He saw a flicker of movement through the trees. The Americans were trying once more to break through and get across the field. This time they tried a simple diversion. Two men ran forward, firing from the hip, while another man far to their left ran in a crouch toward the boy.

  Their ploy was simple enough. They hoped to keep the sniper's attention focused on the two men who were firing while the third man reached the boy undetected in order to free him.

  But Rohde was h
aving none of that.

  "Look at them, Carl," he spoke aloud to his dead brother. "They must think that I am a fool."

  The new rifle made it easy. He fixed the sight on the man trying to rescue Leo and took him out. Then he swung the rifle toward the two men and put them down with two quick shots.

  Finally, one of the other Americans couldn't stand the pitiful cries any longer and broke cover, carrying a canteen.

  This soldier zigzagged as he ran, which made him a difficult target. He was carrying only a canteen, and had stripped off his gear and even his helmet in an effort to be more fleet of foot.

  And could this one run like a rabbit! Rohde fired, his bullet singing through the air where the GI had been only a moment before. Rohde fired two more rapid shots, pulling the trigger, tap, tap. The runner went down.

  After that flurry of activity, all was quiet for several minutes. The only sound came from the boy still tied up in the field. Leo was whimpering like a frightened puppy.

  Cole watched it all through the scope. It was a goddamn slaughter. He itched to get a shot at the German sniper. If nothing else, maybe he could rattle him enough to lay off the trigger.

  With that thought in mind, he tugged the Confederate flag from a pocket. It was the same flag that old man Hollis had wrapped his knife in. Not knowing what else to do with it at the time, Cole had stuffed it in a pocket. Now he knew.

  He took the knife and used it to secure the flag to the wooden rail in the steeple so that it hung down, clearly visible from a long way off. He reckoned it would be like waving a red flag at a bull. Just fine with him. Although marking his location with a bright Confederate flag went against any lick of sense, he thought that maybe he could goad that sniper into doing something stupid.

  He set the rifle across the low stone wall of the steeple, then put his eye to the scope.