by David Healey
“See anything?” asked Corporal Wojcicki, peering out into the dark woods.
“Darker than the inside of a cow out here,” replied his buddy, Stan Barnes, standing a few feet away.
Wojcicki had heard that one before, but he didn’t comment. He was too worried about the dark woods being filled with Germans. The impenetrable shadows among the trees left a great deal to the imagination. He and the rest of B Company were on a hill overlooking the town, the idea being that the position offered a two-fold benefit. They overlooked the twinkling lights of the village and could get down the hill in a hurry to reinforce the troops there. Also, the position on the hilltop meant that they would likely be the first to encounter any approaching Germans, thus warning the soldiers in the town.
Up here on the hilltop, Wojcicki felt alone and exposed. They did have self-propelled 75 mm guns to provide some heavy hitting if needed—in other words, if the Germans arrived with Panzers.
Wojcicki wasn’t totally unprepared. He had made a white smock for himself out of a bedsheet. He figured that it would provide some camouflage in the snow.
“Shouldn’t we dig in?” Barnes asked.
“Nah, the lieutenant said not to bother because there aren’t any Germans coming around. Besides, you’d damn near need a chisel to get through this frozen ground. Maybe even a blow torch.”
So they stared out at the dark woods, their ears straining, waiting for something to happen. Shivering.
After an hour, the lieutenant came by and ordered Wojcicki and Barnes to scout ahead of the company. “Wojcicki, you ought to blend right in with that smock. Let’s see if these woods are really empty.”
“Yes, sir.”
Corporal Wojcicki wasn’t a big fan of the idea, but orders were orders. As they headed out, Barnes whispered. “Yeah, got to hand it to you for wearing that smock. You got us both sent right into the lion’s den. If you get any more bright ideas, check with me first.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Still, they were glad to move, because it helped them keep warm. Slowly, they worked their way from the clearing where the company was spread out into the deep forest. Wojcicki could barely see his hand in front of his face. He kept walking into trees.
In fact, Wojcicki was so intent on avoiding the trees that he was utterly surprised when he fell into the hole.
“What the hell!”
“You OK?” Barnes asked.
“Got your flashlight? I fell into a hole or something. Banged the hell out of my knee.”
Barnes switched on the light, which was equipped with a red lens to help prevent them from losing their night vision. Briefly, in the strange red glow, they saw a freshly dug foxhole, and then another. Someone had lined the rim of each foxhole with rocks and logs. Nobody in Company B had dug these holes, which could only mean one thing.
The Krauts had already been here and dug in.
But where had they gone?
“Shut it off,” Wojcicki said nervously, worried that the dim red light might give them away. “We’ve seen enough.”
What Wojcicki and Barnes couldn’t know was that the Germans had slipped out of the foxholes and were already sweeping around to flank the company. If it hadn’t been so dark, they might even have seen the Germans moving through the trees. The gently falling snow had muffled the sound of movement through the forest.
“Let’s get out of here,” Wojcicki said, as Barnes finally snapped off the light and helped him out of the foxhole. “This place might be crawling with Krauts.”
They hadn’t even made it back to the company’s position when they heard the indistinct shouts in the woods behind them.
Running faster, they made it back to the company, practically shouting the password so that they wouldn’t get shot by their own guys. Quickly, they found the lieutenant to warn him. Wojcicki’s smock, which had once been a pristine white, was now smudged with dirt from the foxhole that he had fallen into.
Around them, the shouts in the woods grew louder and more distinct.
“Hey, Mueller!”
“Wake up, Schmidt!”
Nearby, Private Schmidt raised his head and shouted back, “What? Who wants me?”
Wojcicki felt his blood run cold. Those shouts were coming from the woods, which could only mean one thing. “It’s not us, dummy! It’s the Germans!”
“Hello, Schmidt!” Laughter drifted from the forest. “Your old friends are here to see you, Schmidt!”
The Germans called a few more names at random. Wojcicki realized they were simply shouting out common German surnames to rattle the defenders. It was weird to think that some of the GIs might be about to fight their distant cousins.
He had to hand it to the Krauts—the tactic had sure worked. The soldiers of Company B were now apprehensive and confused. Judging by the occasional laughter from the woods, the Krauts were having a good time messing with the Americans.
From the woods, they began to hear banging and rattling. It sounded as if the Germans were using their mess kits to make a racket, as if it was New Year’s Eve all over again.
“Hang Roosevelt!”
“Heil Hitler, my friends!”
The Americans gripped their weapons, trying to get a glimpse of anything in the dark forest surrounding them.
So far, nobody had opened fire, but that was about to change.
Leading the rest of the German unit, Hauer moved silently through the dark woods. A few flakes of snow still reached him, and he felt invigorated by the cold and snow. This was proper German weather!
They had dug the foxholes earlier, fully expecting the Americans to attack. However, the Americans didn’t seem to know they were there.
Instead, the Germans had launched an attack of their own.
At first, Hauer was annoyed when his comrades started calling out names. But when the Americans actually answered, clearly confused, he joined in the laughter. Were the Americans such Dummköpfe? It must be an inexperienced unit that they faced.
Now, Hauer took the game to a new level. He found a tree at the edge of the clearing and rested his rifle against it. He looked through the rifle scope, which gathered what light there was, and intensified it. He could see a few vague shapes outlined against the backdrop of the night sky. Incredibly, the Americans weren’t even dug in.
“Go ahead and shoot, Americans! It will make you better targets!”
He picked out one of the vague shapes visible against the backdrop of snow, settled his sights upon it, and squeezed the trigger.
Instantly, firing erupted all around him. From the shelter of the forest, taking cover behind trees, the Germans shot at the Americans caught in the open. The Americans seemed to be shooting back without aiming. The battle-hardened German troops picked their targets carefully. As Hauer had warned, the muzzle flashes of the Americans only provided a better target.
Before the heavy guns could even open fire, a squad rushed from the woods and overwhelmed the crews of the 75 mm guns. Some of the Americans fled down the hill toward the village, while the rest were quickly rounded up and taken prisoner.
With the others, Hauer helped relieve the prisoners of their rations and wristwatches. Already, he had four watches strapped to his left wrist. They were useful to trade for bottles of schnapps with troops who hadn’t seen any fighting yet.
A few bodies lay scattered in the snow, evidence of the Germans’ more accurate fire. One of those bodies was still moving, dragging himself away from the Germans. Unlike the others, this soldier had on a white smock. Badly wounded, the soldier was leaving a dark trail of blood against the white ground as he tried to crawl away.
Hauer rolled the wounded soldier over with his boot, prompting a groan of agony, then looked down at him and asked, “Schmidt?”
The soldier looked up. “No, I’m not Schmidt. The name is Wojcicki. Go to hell, you damn Kraut.”
Hauer put him out of his misery.
Chapter Eight
Having overwhelmed the ill-prepared
American defenses, the Germans moved into the village below, the lights like a beacon. The sky above the hills to the east was getting even brighter as the winter dawn approached. A pinkish glow managed to light the underbelly of the low snow clouds. Even in the midst of the attack, a few soldiers still managed to note the surreal beauty of the scene.
It seemed a tragic moment in which to die, given the promise of a new day. They did their utmost to make sure that it would be Americans who died, rather than Germans.
To their surprise, the defenders did not open fire. In the darkness and the snow, the Americans didn’t want to shoot their own men, some of whom were still straggling in from the debacle on the hilltop.
However, the German attackers had no such qualms. They opened fire at any defenders who dared to shoot at them, overwhelming them with rifle fire and machine-gun fire. They had tried to bring down some of the self-propelled 75 mm guns right into the streets of town, but a lone Sherman tank had managed to knock out those guns before being destroyed itself.
The fight for Wingen sur Moder seemed to be over almost before it had started. As the daylight grew and the last of the flakes from the departing snowstorm drifted down, the village found itself firmly in German hands.
Before the attack, around three dozen soldiers in the service company had bedded down in the cellar of a house near the Catholic church. The upstairs of the spacious house had mostly been taken over as office space and sleeping quarters for some of the officers.
Joey Reed slept soundly, despite the crowded space. He didn’t mind too much because the body heat kept the stone basement warm.
Before daylight, the sound of gunfire woke Joey up.
This shooting wasn’t taking place in the hills. This was right outside. In the village streets.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“We’re under attack, that’s what,” Serra said. “It sounds as if the goddamn Krauts are right outside the window!”
Both men reached for their weapons, but they weren’t exactly eager to join the fight. Neither man had fired his weapon since training back in the States.
“Hey, you’ve got to put bullets in it, dummy!” Serra shouted, pulling Joey back from the window and shoving an ammunition clip into his palm.
Joey had to think for a second about how to load the carbine. On top of that, the weapon’s action was caked with mud from when he had dropped it a couple of weeks ago and never bothered to clean it. In a headquarters unit, combat readiness was not emphasized as much as the importance of filing paperwork correctly.
He finally figured out the carbine, got it loaded, and joined Serra at the window. Beside them was another soldier, Private Paul Sampson, hunched over his own weapon. Quite unlike the mighty Biblical Sampson, this soldier was skinny and wore thick glasses with heavy black frames that dwarfed his bony face, but had somehow managed to enlist.
“Should we start shooting, or what?” Sampson wondered.
“No, we might hit our guys. Let’s wait for orders,” Serra said.
Joey stared out through the cellar window. Although it was dark, in the flashes of light from the shooting going on, he caught glimpses of men running here and there. He had assumed they were other soldiers from the 179th, mounting a defense of the town. Some must have been fighting back. But then he also saw troops wearing white smocks and the distinctive, square-shaped Stahlhelm of German troops. His blood ran cold.
“Holy cow, those are Krauts out there!” Joey said.
“You catch on fast,” said Serra. “How good a shot are you with that carbine?”
“Not very good.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. And you’re not the only one. We’re all a bunch of clerks, for chrissakes. If I were those Krauts, I wouldn’t exactly be shaking in my shoes.”
As dawn gave way to the gloomy morning, the scene in the street only worsened. White-clad Germans went past with Schmeissers hanging from leather slings, herding groups of American POWs with their hands in the air. A few prisoners were in their underwear, despite the cold—the fact was that they had been surprised in their beds.
It seemed almost inexplicable that the Americans hadn’t been more prepared, but the average GI couldn’t be blamed. The capture of Wingen sur Moder reflected some serious shortcomings on the part of the unit’s commanding officer.
Some of the Germans passed so close that the men hiding in the cellar could hear them conversing. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted in. The Krauts were smoking cigarettes that they had captured from the Americans.
They could see German machine-gun teams setting up at key positions down the street, unleashing overwhelming fire whenever someone shot at them from one of the houses in the village.
“Holy cow,” Joey muttered over and over again. He felt a growing sense of desperation. What were they supposed to do?
The only real holdout against the Germans seemed to be a rifleman in the church steeple next door, who kept the Krauts scrambling for cover whenever one of them entered his line of sight.
It all felt surreal to Joey, like he was watching a real-life pageant or something. So far, nobody had noticed the clerks hiding in the cellar—possibly because they were all being quiet as church mice.
“Anybody got any ideas?” Serra whispered.
“The Krauts haven’t spotted us. We’ve got that much on our side, at least,” a sergeant said. Although he held the highest rank of anyone in the cellar, he didn’t seem eager to take charge.
“Any ideas?”
“What we ought to do is sit tight until dark. We can try to slip out of here then and the Krauts won’t see us.”
“Dark? That’s a long time to wait. You think we can hide out that long?”
The sergeant shrugged. “You got any better ideas? Maybe you want to go out there and take on the Krauts with that rusty rifle of yours. Nah, we can wait. It’s winter. It gets dark early.”
However, waiting was much harder than any of the men expected. Each minute dragged out for an eternity. They all seemed to hold their breath countless times as the enemy came within spitting distance of their hiding place. How was it possible that they had not been detected? Each cough threatened to give them away. They had no food or water. A corner of the cellar was turned into a makeshift latrine. Meanwhile, it wasn’t getting any warmer in the cellar.
Through the window gratings, they kept watching the German soldiers, who looked bulky in their winter gear and square helmets, carrying their deadly submachine guns. As the hours went by, the Germans seemed to grow even more ominous in their imaginations.
Not far from anyone’s thoughts was what had happened last month, at the crossroads town of Malmedy. German troops had captured nearly one hundred soldiers when their convoy had been cut off and surprised by Panzers. The Americans had taken cover in a roadside ditch as the Panzers made short work of their vehicles. In the end, they’d had no choice but to surrender. They had come out with their hands up and found themselves to be POWs.
No one was exactly sure what had taken place next, whether the shooting was a direct order or a terrible mistake, but the Germans had opened fire on the unarmed prisoners. When the shooting stopped, more than eighty Americans lay dead. Only a handful managed to escape.
“Think about what happened to those poor bastards at Malmedy,” Serra said, as if reading Joey’s thoughts. “We shouldn’t be too quick to give ourselves up.”
“That’s for sure,” Joey agreed.
At first, there had been bursts of gunfire throughout the village as pockets of defenders tried to turn the tables on the Germans. The gunfire had been sporadic at best. Eventually, the shooting stopped entirely, except for single shots here and there. It was all too clear that the village had fallen.
“That’s the Germans mopping up,” Serra said.
The only opposition that remained was the soldier up in the church steeple. At this point, the best that he could hope for was to be a thorn in their side, picking off any enemy soldiers car
eless enough to show themselves on the street directly in front of the church. From time to time, the Germans would unleash a burst of machine-gun fire at the steeple, but minutes later, the lone rifleman would be back at work. So far, the Germans hadn’t brought up any heavy weapons to deal with the sniper—or maybe they didn’t feel like he was worth the effort.
Finally, it appeared that the Germans had had enough. An officer appeared on the street, shouting up at the steeple from behind the shelter of a ruined car.
“Hey you, come on down from there!” the German officer called out in English. “The town is ours, so why keep fighting? You will be treated OK.”
The drama playing out on the street held the rapt attention of the soldiers in the cellar.
“Do it, buddy,” the sergeant muttered. “Give it up. You’re dead meat, otherwise.”
“No way,” Serra said. “I wouldn’t trust those Krauts as far as I could throw them.”
As far as Joey could tell, the sniper in the church steeple seemed to agree with Serra, because seconds later the sniper fired a shot that hit the vehicle giving cover to the German officer.
“Last chance!” the officer shouted.
Again, another shot made the officer duck.
Now, another man ran to join the officer. He looked even sturdier than the other Germans. A big guy. He carried a rifle with a telescopic sight.
“Uh oh,” Serra said. “That guy’s a sniper!”
Soon, the sniper had set up beside the officer, aiming his rifle at the church steeple, waiting for his chance.
Joey looked down at his rusty weapon. It was loaded and ready to fire—at least, he thought it was. If he had an ounce of courage, he’d stick that thing right out the window and shoot that sniper in the back. What was he, less than a hundred feet away?
He might have done it, if he’d thought that he could hit the German sniper from here. During training, he hadn’t been the best shot. Then again, Joey knew that if he opened fire, whether he took out the sniper or not, he’d be signing the death warrant of every man in that cellar.