Sean was relieved that, at least for the time being, one part of the attack plan seemed to be working: they weren’t receiving artillery fire from the adjacent forts. “The flyboys must be pasting the shit out of them other forts real good,” he said, thinking out loud. “That’ll keep those turrets retracted into the ground for now, but they can’t keep that shit up forever. And as soon as them birds fly home, them guns will start spitting out shells all over again.”
But what bothered Sean most: We been standing still too damn long. We’re dead meat if some joker with a rocket on his shoulder pops up and we don’t cancel his ticket quick enough. But if we move, the engineers take it in the shorts. What’s taking them so damn long, anyway?
He didn’t have to wait long for the answer. An engineer lieutenant identified himself on the tank’s intercom. Then he announced, “FIRE IN THE HOLE.”
The explosion was disappointing, more dust and flying debris than noise. It didn’t feel like the usual punch to the eardrums and scrotum that accompanied a blast.
But then there was another explosion, far more powerful, felt by every fiber in the tankers’ bodies. They heard only the sirens screaming in their brutalized ears. Everything else was muffled, as if each man’s head was packed in a box full of cotton.
Then came the dense smoke that began to fill the hull, tinted a lurid pink by the flames licking through ruptures in the engine compartment firewall.
“EVERYBODY OUT,” Sean screamed, but no one heard him. In the world of the suddenly deaf, spoken words were useless. Actions were the only language.
Pulling his gunner and loader behind him, he leaned down into the driver’s compartment, pointing frantically to the escape hatch in the bottom of the hull. Once the driver and assistant driver had made their way through the hatch, Sean and the other two from the turret followed.
They didn’t need to be told to take their Thompson submachine guns with them. Lucky 7 wasn’t going to protect them anymore. They were foot soldiers now.
Beneath their crippled tank, there was no way to get out but forward, toward her bow. The way aft was blocked by burning puddles of gasoline, rapidly growing.
Sean started to yell an order but quickly gave up. He couldn’t understand himself through his crippled ears. Nobody else’s ears would be able to understand him, either.
He’d simply have to lead the way.
When they dropped into the trench leading to the tunnel door, they realized they weren’t the only tankers now walking; three of the five crewmen from one of his other tanks were there, too. Those men couldn’t hear much of anything, either.
Peering over the ledge of the trench, Sean could see both tanks brewing up, each with mangled metal on the aft hull where a projectile had penetrated. Across the triangle formation that had once been his platoon, the sole operational tank was firing her 75-millimeter main gun as fast as her crew could load it. The turret was traversed completely around so it was shooting across her aft deck, directly over the tankers and engineers in the trench. The added pressure on their eardrums from the 75 millimeter’s firing wasn’t helping the return of anyone’s hearing. After getting off five shots, it fell quiet.
The engineers had retreated down the trench to trigger their blast and had now returned. The engineer lieutenant tried telling Sean something, but his moving lips—which made no sound—did nothing but emphasize just how hearing impaired the tankers were at the moment. It took some lip-reading, but finally Sean reduced what he was saying to just one word repeated over and over again:
Three syllables…panzerfaust.
Shit. Where the hell did they come from?
The engineers had broken out long crowbars to pry away what was left of the tunnel door. In the few minutes it took them to clear the opening, the tankers had regained at least some hearing, provided the speaker shouted loudly enough.
“You saw panzerfausts?” Sean asked the engineer lieutenant, a man of easy confidence and composure named Chenoweth.
“Yeah,” the lieutenant replied. “A couple of ’em. Your tank over there…the one that still works. He took care of them.”
“Great,” Sean replied, “I’ll get him a fucking medal.”
They could feel the searing heat of the fires consuming the two shot-up Shermans.
“Those tanks of yours, Sarge. They’re burning pretty good. They gonna blow?”
“They might, if that fire gets through the water jackets around the ammo.”
“We’d better be inside that tunnel when they do blow,” Chenoweth said.
“You seen the infantry anywhere, Lieutenant?”
“There’s part of a platoon down the trench.”
“That’s all? Part of a platoon? There’s supposed to be a whole fucking company.”
“We’ve got enough men to go in, Sergeant,” Chenoweth replied, as if nothing surprised or upset him much anymore. “There’s not going to be a lot of room down there, anyway. If and when the rest show up, we’ll get them involved somehow.”
Then he fixed the tankers in a judgmental gaze and asked, “You going to join us in the tunnel? Not like you’ll be doing much above ground anymore.”
Sean replied, “There’s a kinda ominous ring to what you just said, sir. That whole not being above ground thing…”
Chenoweth grimaced as if he was smelling something rotten. Or maybe the stench of gutlessness.
“Wait a minute, Lieutenant,” Sean said. “We ain’t yellow. We’re in this fight one way or the other.”
His face now a victorious smile, Chenoweth replied, “Never doubted you for a second, Sergeant. Now let’s get those infantrymen up here and take the plunge.”
“Let me just have a word with the TC on that buggy of mine that still works, sir. Maybe he can radio for some help over this way.”
As he worked his way down the trench, Sean came to the three crewmen of his other knocked-out tank. The TC, Sergeant Spinetti, was not among them. The loader, PFC Bonner, wasn’t there, either.
“Spinetti bought the farm,” his gunner reported. “Don’t know what happened to Bonner. He was with us when we bailed out, but…” His voice trailed off hopelessly.
“Yeah, yeah, I get the picture,” Sean said. “Go with the lieutenant over there.”
The gunner eyed him suspiciously. “And where’re you going, Sarge?”
Sean pointed to the surviving tank. “I’m going over to tell Sergeant Lerner that he is Second Platoon now. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Sean didn’t think much of using the handset on the back of Sergeant Lerner’s tank—it left him dangerously exposed. Instead, he crawled to the front of the Sherman and startled her driver as his face suddenly filled the armored glass of the narrow viewer. Sean made a quick hand signal to open the bottom hatch and dropped back to the ground. By the time he’d crawled under the tank to the hatch, it had been opened for him.
“Talk loud,” he yelled to Lerner. “I’m still half fucking deaf. You got contact with the CP?”
“Yeah. They say Fourth Platoon is gonna come over and reinforce us. Or what’s left of it, anyway. We’re taking a beating in this fucking place all over again.”
Impatiently, Sean replied, “No shit. Tell the captain we got one dead, one missing, and I’m taking who’s left to work with the engineers in the fucking tunnel.”
The look on Lerner’s face could only mean one thing: Better you than me, buddy.
Sean had time for one more question: “Did you take out them Krauts with the panzerfausts? Or did they just vamoose?”
“It’s the damnedest thing, Sean. Keller here”—he pointed to his gunner—“I think he actually shot one with the seventy-five while the bastard was lining up on us. I saw the whole thing through the scope. Watched the round go right at him. One second he’s standing there, next second he fucking vanished. Kinda overkill, don’t you think? The main gun shoots one hell of a big bullet.”
“Whatever works, Lerner. Good job. You just watch your ass now, okay?”<
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Then Sean dropped down through the hatch.
When he got back to the tunnel entrance, Lieutenant Chenoweth was putting the finishing touches on his improvised plan of attack. He told Sean, “It’s really close quarters inside the tunnel. There’s fourteen of us armed with Thompsons—your guys and my engineers. Those are the only weapons compact enough to be worth a damn in there besides forty-five pistols. All the infantry guys are lugging M1s, with a couple of BARs and one thirty-cal machine gun thrown in. Those’ll all be a little unwieldy where we’re going.”
He pointed to the infantrymen spread out down the trench. It was hardly a platoon, more like two squads, about seventeen men, at Sean’s rough count. “There’s only one non-com in the bunch,” Chenoweth added, “a buck sergeant who just got the stripe about five minutes ago. So they’re a little light on leadership. I’m thinking we keep them as rear guard in case we get Krauts from Bunker 3…or from lord knows where.”
“They have any idea where the rest of their company is, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t think any of them even know where they are themselves, Sergeant Moon. You tankers have any flashlights on you?”
“I got one,” Sean replied, “and I think we can come up with a couple more between us.”
“Good. You’ll need them. Blowing the door shattered all the light bulbs in this part of the tunnel, I think. It’s going to be pretty damn dark in there.”
“One question, Lieutenant. What are you expecting to find once we’re inside?”
“According to the drawings of this place, we’ll probably find another armored door. One other thing…you guys have any grenades?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. We don’t want to be throwing them around in there unless we absolutely have to.”
The tunnel reminded Sean of the New York City subways. He could picture himself just five years ago, before he’d joined the pre-war Army, walking those crowded, tiled corridors that led to the underground station platforms. The only difference to him was dimensional: the tunnels of Fort Driant were much narrower. Only two men could fit abreast in their narrow confines. And they’d be rubbing shoulders.
But, so far, they hadn’t rubbed shoulders with any Germans.
There were two ways they could go: west, toward Bunker 3, or east, toward Bunker 4. Looking west—or left—they could see another armored door—closed and locked from the opposite side—leading to Bunker 3. Since the plan was to bypass that bunker completely, they made a right turn and headed east toward Bunker 4 and the gun batteries.
“This’ll be pretty much a two-man fight,” Sean said to Lieutenant Chenoweth. “One GI against one Kraut. Everybody else has someone in their damn way.”
They advanced slowly, cautiously, crouching to be smaller targets. The only thing ahead in their flashlight beams was more tunnel. Sean asked, “How far you figure we’ve gone, Lieutenant?”
Chenoweth replied, “Not real sure. Maybe halfway to Bunker 4.”
If he was right, that meant in the five minutes they’d been in the tunnel, they’d only crept about two hundred fifty feet into its inky, concrete-lined menace.
They could hear the faint hum of machinery and feel it in the walls. “Generators,” Chenoweth said. “Hydraulics, too. Maybe those big turrets are getting ready to fire. I wonder what that’s going to feel like?”
“It can’t make my hearing much worse than it already is, Lieutenant,” Sean replied. Then he dropped to one knee and said, “Hey, I think there’s something up ahead.”
He was holding the flashlight away from his body, as if that might attract the gunfire they hadn’t encountered yet. Then he mocked himself for the pointless precaution.
This flashlight ain’t gonna save you, you idiot. The place is so fucking narrow it won’t matter where they aim. They just gotta point.
But the flashlight had caught something in its beam, a glint off another surface still far ahead but squarely in their path.
“It’s the door I’ve been telling you about,” Chenoweth said. He then used his flashlight to signal his demolition team to the head of the column. “Hold the rest of the men back,” he told Sean.
“You know, Lieutenant, sooner or later there’s gonna be Krauts behind one of these doors.”
“No shit, Sergeant Moon.”
“How far back you want the rest of us?”
“Fifty paces. Make them big paces.”
It took three minutes to rig the charge. Chenoweth and his demo team came quickly back down the tunnel, unreeling a spool of wire behind them. When they reached Sean and the rest, the lieutenant said, “Everyone turn around and cover up. Especially your ears.”
A few more seconds to hook the wire to the detonator, and then:
“FIRE IN THE HOLE.”
Funneled down the confines of the tunnel, this explosion was infinitely louder and far more punishing to the body than the engineers’ first blast. Smoke, dust, and debris swirled around the GIs, a choking cloud that had them all gasping for breath.
In a few seconds, they realized they weren’t able to breathe at all.
“OUT! EVERBODY OUT,” Chenoweth yelled. He tried to repeat it but gagged on the words. There was nothing he could do but push the stumbling, choking men back to where they’d entered the tunnel.
Once outside in the trench, the lieutenant caught his breath. Then he cursed his miscalculation. “Carbide gas, dammit,” he said. “There’s not enough airflow down there with all those doors buttoned up. The explosion sucked up all the oxygen. There’s nothing left but the carbide. Everyone okay?”
Their nods might’ve been slow in coming, but once they’d regained their breath, every man had to admit he was all right.
Sean asked, “So how the hell are we going to get to the Krauts if there’s no air to breathe, Lieutenant?”
“Slowly, Sergeant. One fucking door at a time.”
“How long before we can go back in, sir?”
“Give it a couple of minutes. I think we blew all the way through that door.”
“Kinda makes you wish we hadn’t thrown all them gas masks away, don’t it, Lieutenant?”
Chenoweth couldn’t help his pained smile as he said, “Probably wouldn’t have helped. GI gas masks are just filters, not oxygen generators. They don’t work if there’s no oxygen available to begin with.”
But he knew Sean was right about one thing: just about every GI in France had managed to lose his issued gas mask a long time ago. The bulky masks were considered just another useless encumbrance strapped to their bodies. Everyone sensed the unwritten agreement: nobody would be hurling chemical weapons at the other side. Tear gas, nerve agents, pathogens, and other poisons would languish in depots for the duration.
Bullets, incendiaries, and high explosives were deemed lethal enough.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It brought a small measure of comfort when three Shermans from 4th Platoon arrived. The lead tank pulled up right next to the trench so it was easy, and somewhat safe, for Sean to use the phone handset on its stern.
“They’ve got Battalion on the horn,” he yelled to Chenoweth. “Sounds like we’re the only ones who’ve actually gotten inside a tunnel, so far.”
He listened for a few moments and then added, “A couple more things from Battalion, sir. First off, they’re sending more infantry our way.”
Chenoweth was less than impressed. “Let’s hope this bunch actually gets here intact. What else?”
“They think Bunker 3 is deserted. They want us to check it out.”
“Tell them we don’t have the people to probe a damn tunnel and a damn bunker at the same time,” Chenoweth said. “If and when more infantry show up, maybe then it’ll be a different story. Which one do they want done in the meantime?”
They had the answer in a matter of seconds: the tunnel.
“I’m gonna have them push the burning Zippos out of the way,” Sean said. “If that’s okay with you, Lieutenant.”
�
��Good idea,” Chenoweth replied. “They’re making me nervous. We’ve got enough trouble with explosions right now.”
“Sure. Anything else you need them to do?”
“Yeah. Try to keep our half-tracks covered. There’s stuff in them we still might need. And ask them if they want any of this infantry we’ve got now for support.”
“He says roger on the half-tracks, sir. And they’ll take a squad of infantry, too.”
“Good,” Chenoweth said. “Divvy them up, Sergeant Moon, and then we’ll go tunnel diving again.”
Lieutenant Chenoweth was right. They had blown a hole in the second door. Just not a big enough hole for a man to fit through.
But it was more than big enough for bullets to pass through. As Chenoweth’s team crept up to the door, they were met with burst after burst of machine gun fire from the tunnel beyond. It didn’t hit any of the GIs nearest the door. But two engineers at the rear of the group, far enough back that they hadn’t felt the pressing desire to hug the tunnel’s wall, were struck down. They thrashed on the tunnel floor, their echoing screams drowning out the machine gun’s insistent chatter.
“LIGHTS OUT, EVERYONE,” Chenoweth ordered.
The tunnel went dark immediately as flashlights clicked off. The only light now was whatever leaked through the breach in the door from the other side.
Sean sent Fabiano and Kowalski to drag the wounded engineers out of the tunnel. Then he and Chenoweth slithered through the blackness in a low crawl toward the door. Once they got there, they sat, hearts pounding, one on each side of the hole they’d blown through the thick steel, trying to see what was on its other side as bullets whizzed through the hole, hissing like angry insects, just inches from their faces.
Every now and then, there’d be a nerve-shattering CLANK as the gunner exceeded his very narrow field of fire and one of his bullets struck the opposite side of the door.
They found the hole bigger than they originally thought, a jagged vertical tear in the steel almost four feet long. It was nearly a foot wide at its center but quickly narrowed toward each end. The area on the other side of the door was still well lit. A small fraction of that light spilled through the hole, casting a ghostly light on their faces.
Fortress Falling (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 2) Page 23