Iron Sniper

by David Healey

  Lisette had no doubts that it had been Rohde who had ambushed the Americans. He had stopped by yesterday, looking for her, and unwittingly, old Madame Pelletier had informed the German that she had received a phone call informing her that Lisette would be back in the morning, escorted by two American snipers. Armed with that bit of intelligence, he must have laid his trap.

  It was small consolation that a dead German lay across the stone wall on the other side of the barnyard. One of the Americans was now dead, lying in the dirt beside the water trough. The other soldier, named Cole—the one with the cold eyes—had escaped through the trees beyond the barn. From a distance, she had seen the German sniper pursue him. It had to have been Rohde.

  She had not gotten a glimpse of his face, but there was something about the way that he moved that looked familiar. She and Rohde had been lovers, after all.

  A shudder of revulsion ran through her at the thought.

  The children did not appear overly concerned about events at the farm. They seemed to view it all as a big adventure. Even Leo seemed not too worse for wear, given all that he had been through. Children were more resilient in some ways than adults. It helped that the American GIs had spoiled him with attention, not to mention chocolate and chewing gum.

  "Tante, we are hungry!" Sophie said. "Did you bring us something good to eat?

  Lisette took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, ignoring that fact that there were two dead men in her yard. The Americans had, in fact, given her a few tinned goods to bring home, along with some more Hersey's chocolate. Sharp-eyed Sophie must have noticed.

  "Yes, let's have something to eat. We may need our energy before the day is through."

  She busied herself unpacking the cans, and handed Madame Pelletier a can opener. She noticed that the old woman's hands were shaking.

  That's when she heard the dog begin to bark.

  She had forgotten the dog was out there. He had run off at the sound of gunshots, but must have returned.

  "What now?"

  Leo was already at the door, and opened it before she could stop him.

  Almost immediately, he slammed it shut. He turned to Lisette, his face ghostly white.

  "The German sharpshooter is here!"

  Rohde had returned. Did it mean that he had killed the American?

  Lisette felt her blood run cold. She struggled to remain calm for the children's sake. Behind her, Madame Pelletier gasped.

  What could Rohde want? Considering what he had done to her, and to the Americans who had helped her home, it could not be anything good.

  A wave of emotions washed over Lisette, from shame to fear. Shame that she had allowed herself to become involved with the German sniper in exchange for food—and if she was honest with herself, to satisfy her own desires and expel her loneliness. Fear, because Rohde's return could only mean nothing good.

  To her surprise, the emotion that she settled on was anger.

  Rohde had come back to her house? To harm her niece and nephew? How dare he!

  "Get under the table," she ordered the children. There was no time for them to hide anywhere else, but the thick tabletop would stop a bullet if the German came in shooting. "Now!"

  Desperately, she looked around for something to defend herself. She realized that she still held a wooden spoon in her hand. She tossed it away.

  In two steps, she was at the door into the hallway, which was normally open. Behind it, she kept the ancient shotgun that Henri used to scare off foxes. She grabbed the shotgun now. For safety's sake, the shells were kept on a high shelf, out of the reach of the children.

  The shelf was higher than eye level, so Lisette reached up, but felt nothing but dust.

  Her heart hammered in fear. Where were those shells?

  Her hand searched farther back. Out in the yard, the dog barked more furiously.

  She heard Rohde shout her name. He must be right outside the door.

  There. She touched the scattered shells, knocking them to the kitchen floor in the process. Lisette practically dove after them.

  She saw the children huddled under the table with Madame Pelletier. The old woman had taken refuge there as well. She had her eyes closed, and her lips moved silently. The old woman was praying.

  Lisette picked up the shotgun. Her hands did not shake at all as she worked the lever to open the breech, just as Henri had taught her. She slid a shell into each barrel, and snapped the gun shut.

  Then she opened the door.

  There was Rohde. He staggered toward the house. He was bleeding heavily from an ugly wound in his belly. There was so much blood that his tunic looked black. The circle of dark blood was big as a dinner plate. He was a dead man walking. She felt no pity, but only anger at what he had done to her and to Leo.

  Lisette screamed at him and leveled the shotgun.

  Rohde had not expected a warm welcome. He had thought that he would force himself inside and take the medical supplies that he needed. It had not occurred to him that perhaps he would not get inside at all, if that stout cottage door was locked against him. He knew that he lacked the strength to break it down.

  Rohde was hurting now, getting weaker. He looked behind him and saw that he was leaving a trail of blood across the muddy farmyard. He was leaking that much.

  He need not have worried about the door.

  The thick door opened and Lisette stepped out. In her hands, she held the ancient shotgun she kept around to ward off foxes and hawks. Her face looked hard and set.

  She held the shotgun at hip level, and pointed it right at him.

  "Lisette?"

  "Batard!" she screamed again.

  With weakening hands, Rohde hurried to unsling his rifle.

  As if in a daze, Lisette watched Rohde raise his rifle, practically falling down from the effort. Was he actually going to shoot at her?

  Rohde shouted something at her in German, but the words were unintelligible.

  He was swaying wildly as if blown by some unseen wind, but managed to get the rifle to his shoulder.

  Lisette realized, with a sense of shock, that he was going to pull the trigger.

  He fired.

  The bullet struck the stone wall near her head and ricocheted away. Rohde really was trying to kill her.

  The recoil of the rifle made him stagger. Reeling like a drunken man, covered in blood, Rohde was struggling to bring the rifle to bear once again.

  Lisette did not give him a second chance. Bracing the shotgun against her hip, she leveled the gun at him and pulled both triggers at once.

  Ten minutes later, a vehicle drove into the farmyard. Peering from the cottage window, Lisette recognized it as an American Jeep, similar to the ones that she had seen the day before at the command post. She did not, however, recognize the uniform of the soldier driving it, but she was relieved to see that he was not German.

  Then the man in the passenger seat got out. She did recognize him—it was the American sniper, Cole. With a sense of relief, she could see that Rohde had not shot him, after all.

  Cole was in a hurry, his rifle held at the ready. His eyes darted this way and that even as he crossed the barnyard. When he moved, he seemed to lope—almost like one of those foxes that emerged from the nearby woods.

  He went over to the body of the GI at the water trough and removed ammunition from the dead man's utility belt. He straightened up, pressed a clip into his rifle, and moved toward the cottage door. He paused just long enough to give Rohde's body a glance.

  Lisette opened the door just ahead of Cole. She was still holding the shotgun, loaded with fresh shells. Her ears still rang from the blast of the double barrels, but she was able to hear shooting and the deep boom of artillery. The firing was the closest that it had been.

  Cole looked pointedly at the shotgun in her hands, and then out at what was left of Rohde.

  "You OK?"

  She knew what "OK" meant, and nodded.

  "We need to get you and the young 'uns out of
here," Cole said. "The whole dang war is headed this way."

  Lisette did not really understand him.

  Cole took a step back, waved at her with a follow me gesture, and then pointed at the Jeep. "Maintenant," he managed. "You and les enfants."

  Although the words were mangled, Lisette understood the meaning well enough. She turned back into the kitchen and gathered Leo and Sophie. Old Madame Pelletier was still there, and there was no leaving her behind, so she was squeezed into the back seat of the Jeep next to the children. The dog would just have to fend for himself until they returned.

  The driver shouted something in what sounded like Polish, and pointed toward the nearby field. He shouted again, an urgent tone in his voice.

  At the last minute, Lisette remembered food and water and blankets for the children, and ran back into the kitchen. On the way, she had to pass Rohde's body again. Lisette had not wanted to look too closely, but she saw that the dual shotgun blasts had struck Rohde squarely in the chest. His tunic was a ruin, but his pretty, boyish face was untouched, other than having a final look of surprise upon it. His blue eyes stared.

  She felt a stab of terrible regret, but had to remind herself that this dead young man had been un monstre, even if that was hard to equate with his appearance in death—a death that she had caused.

  Lisette did not have time to search her emotions any further. She ran back to the kitchen, grabbing what she could. She had to abandon the shotgun to fill her arms. Cole ran after her, taking Lisette firmly by the arm and marching her back toward the Jeep.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Lisette noticed movement in the field. Turning her attention there, she saw German troops, crouched low, crossing the field. As she watched, one of the soldiers pointed towards the farm and raised his rifle. He was going to shoot at them.

  Lisette felt her insides go cold. All that she could think of was the children. No, no. I will not lose Leo and Sophie. She hurried to put herself between them and the German soldier.

  Cole muttered something under his breath, put his rifle to his shoulder, and fired a shot. The German went down, buying them a little more time.

  A few hours ago, Lisette might have gasped at the sight of a soldier being shot. Now she thought, Good.

  More troops spilled from the woods and across the field. They heard the scream of a shell, and a geyser of earth erupted just beyond the barn.

  Sophie and Madame Pelletier gave frightened cries, while Leo offered a boyish yelp of delight. It was all just so many fireworks to him.

  Lisette scrambled into the back seat of the Jeep and took Sophie into her lap. Cole jumped in and slapped the driver on the shoulder. The Jeep spun momentarily in the mud, spitting dirt from its tires, then surged down the road, away from the oncoming assault.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  From the hills above the valley filled with German troops, artillery shells rained down. To the west was Canadian artillery, to the eastern side was Patton's 3rd Army. The Germans were effectively fish in a barrel.

  The men in the artillery units stripped off their shirts and worked in the hot August sun, streaming sweat. Such destruction was hard work. Shells poured down into the valley below, killing and killing.

  As the noose enclosed what was left of the German 7th army and 5th Panzer narrowed, artillery shells loaded with leaflets encouraging the Germans to surrender were fired into their positions. The sheets fluttered everywhere, snatched out of the air by desperate Wehrmacht troops. The SS threatened to shoot anyone they caught reading the leaflets.

  Those who sensed the inevitable were likely hoping to stay alive long enough to do just what the leaflets suggested. Other Germans were focused on escaping. A few insisted on fighting—and dying—until the bitter end.

  It was a point of consternation to many Allied officers that the bulging gap had not been pulled shut like the drawstring of a tobacco pouch, catching the Germans neatly inside. By now, just two miles of territory was left to German forces. Through this opening, the Wehrmacht continued to escape.

  General Omar Bradley and the other Allied commanders had their reasons not to rush to close the gap, chief of which was worry over the confusion that might result among different units from different nations operating in close proximity in the heat of battle. Allied forces were arranged across from each other in what could easily become a circular firing squad. In their frenzy to kill Germans, they might very well kill one another. The Allied high command feared the toll that friendly fire would have on sensitive Allied alliances.

  All in all, it was safer to let a few Germans escape than to take a chance that American, Canadian, Polish, and British troops might bombard one another by mistake.

  In the middle of the artillery bombardment, an unusual drama unfolded.

  Up on the heights, an American unit watched a German soldier galloping away on horseback. It was insanity that he would even try to cross that killing field. Machine-gun fire churned the narrow dirt road. At one point, a shell landed so close that dirt sprayed across horse and rider, but still they kept going.

  Some of the soldiers stopped shooting and cheered him on.

  With a last surge of power, horse and rider disappeared into the trees and relative safety.

  A ragged cheer went up.

  "What the hell's going on?" an officer wanted to know, red-faced. "How do you know that son of a bitch wasn't shooting at us on Omaha beach?"

  "Sir, we just—"

  "I don't want to hear it, soldier! Put some hurtin' on those sons of bitches!"

  The firing recommenced.

  It was likely that the horseman was trying to retreat down a road that would become known as "The Corridor of Death"—and with good reason. Dead horses, burned trucks, smashed tanks, and bodies—many, many bodies—lay thick on the road.

  Thousands of fleeing troops using the one available road away from the Allies had to make their way across a narrow ford, known as the Gue de Moissy. In a sense, the Wehrmacht forces trying to cross the ford were like the camel trying to pass through the eye of a needle. Under relentless artillery fire and air attacks, somehow thousands of troops still managed to slip away. If there was a story to be told of courage under fire from this battle, it was at the ford. Their determination and order despite the chaos were some of the German Army's greatest accomplishments at Falaise, even in defeat.

  The gap closed August 19 when U.S., British, Canadian, and Polish forces finally completed the Allied line. The tobacco pouch had been drawn shut.

  The next day at 1200 hours the Normandy campaign was declared to be over. Seventy-seven days had passed since the D Day landing. Some thought that the war was essentially over after the disastrous German defeat, but that was wishful thinking. The fighting and dying would go on for another several months, with awful ordeals like the wintry Ardennes and Bastogne still ahead.

  Around Falaise and Argentan, the numbers of dead were astonishing. At least 10,000 were killed. The Germans were comfortable with horses and had made use of them to pull wagons filled with supplies, or simply to ride. Now, dead horses lay everywhere. For days after the bombardment and retreat, witnesses described a gray haze over the valley. The haze came from swarms of flies settling over the dead men and horses. The unlucky men assigned to bury the dead sometimes had to shoot the bloated corpses to release enough of the putrid gas so that they could handle the bodies for burial. Some would suffer nightmares about such grisly sights for years to come.

  With the battle won, General Eisenhower was one of those who came to tour the scenes of destruction. Much of Argentan, like other towns caught up in the fighting, lay in ruins. And yet, odd things had survived. Navigating the rubble, Ike's motorcade passed the bombed-out shell of a building, all of its windows shattered and the stucco pockmarked by bullets and shrapnel, but with its proud sign proclaiming "Ecole Maternelle" entirely intact.

  Ike was awestruck by the human carnage. He later wrote, "The battlefield at Falaise was unquestionably one of the greate
st killing fields of any of the war areas. Forty-eight hours after the closing of the gap I was conducted through it on foot, to encounter scenes that could be described only by Dante. It was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh."

  With so many dead, it seemed miraculous that vast numbers of Germans somehow managed to survive the bombardment.

  At least 20,000 and maybe more escaped into Germany.

  Another 10,000 men became prisoners. Some might say they were the lucky ones, having survived the final battle and avoided the ones still to come. Long columns of prisoners marched endlessly with hands on heads, wearing greatcoats despite the summer heat. Veteran soldiers knew that come nightfall or winter, they would be glad of a coat.

  Some Americans, out of curiosity, struck up conversations with the Germans, many of whom spoke some English. They found the Germans friendly, relieved that the war was over, and eager to talk about their families back home, as were the Americans. The soldiers had a great deal in common. Both sides came away from these conversations wondering what they'd been killing each other for.

  Epilogue

  Major Dorfmann sat at his desk, a glass of French cognac at his elbow. Sadly, France was lost. Happily, Dorfmann had managed to get out with several cases of very good cognac.

  The cognac was for more than consumption; in a way, it was currency. He remembered the bad time after the Great War, when money itself had become worthless. A wheelbarrow full of paper money was needed to buy a loaf of bread. He suspected that those times were coming again. When that happened, the small bottles of cognac would be like gold for trading. Until then, he could afford to drink some of it and hope for better days. Besides, he needed a bit of alcoholic inspiration to generate his latest propaganda piece.

  He sighed and sipped his cognac, enjoying the bite of it on his tongue, along with the faint taste of grapes and earth and sunshine mixed in with the heat of the alcohol. Better days, indeed.