As long as they stayed wide of the hole, they were safe.
“Be kinda nice if we had one of those grenades now,” Sean said.
Chenoweth replied, “You wouldn’t be able to throw it in there, not without getting your hand shot off. We’ve got to make him stop shooting for a second or two.”
“Maybe some of them dogfaces got a rifle grenade, sir. We can shoot one through.”
“Too chancy,” the lieutenant replied. “It’ll probably hit the door and bounce back on us.”
He yelled to one of his men, “Shellnutt, get the blunderbuss and four grenades, on the damn double.”
Sean asked, “What the hell’s a blunderbuss, Lieutenant?”
“It’s an idea we borrowed from the Tommies back in England. Real handy for cleaning out pillboxes and bunkers in a humane manner.” A weak, ironic smile followed the word humane. “But maybe we’ll get lucky and the bastard will run out of ammo while we’re waiting.”
Three minutes passed before PFC Shellnutt returned, dragging what looked like a duffel bag as he low-crawled to them. The bastard beyond the door had not yet run out of ammo.
Sean watched in the dim light as Chenoweth removed a weapon from the bag. In Brooklyn, they’d call it a sawed-off shotgun or hand cannon, an ideal heavy-gauge weapon for close-in, wide-angle carnage. Then he pulled the four grenades out and slid them across the floor to Sean.
The lieutenant stuck his finger into the barrel of the shotgun as if testing its contents. He nodded to Shellnutt and said “Good job.”
“What’s in the barrel?” Sean asked.
“Rock salt. Packed full of it. Bounces all over the place and stings the shit out of you. Really incapacitating for a couple of seconds.”
Chenoweth laid beneath the breach in the armored door and then nestled the muzzle of the blunderbuss into the base of the breach, the trigger guard resting on his chest. He told Sean, “As soon as he stops shooting, throw the grenades in.”
Under his breath, Chenoweth muttered, “Fire in the hole.”
He pulled the trigger.
The hammering of the machine gun stopped immediately, replaced by the sound of men screaming in pain, until the dull poomh of Sean’s first grenade.
He threw the rest in sequence, waiting until the one before had burst, throwing each one harder than the last. As he pitched the fourth—and last—grenade, his arm inadvertently pushed against the door…
And it creaked open a few inches.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Chenoweth said. “Maybe we blew the bolt off and didn’t even know it. It ain’t like the Krauts to leave it unlocked. See if you can push it open a little more.”
The heavy door yielded slowly but without complaint.
“At least we’re not choking to death again,” Chenoweth said.
“Pretty quiet in there,” Sean added. “Should I push it open some more?”
Chenoweth brought his Thompson to the ready as he nodded his approval.
With a hefty shove of his foot, Sean flung the door all the way open.
They were staring into a smoke and dust-filled chamber that looked much like a building’s concrete-walled basement. Most of the lights were still on. They could make out the machine gun, overturned and broken on a low berm of sandbags. One German soldier was slumped over the berm. Several others lay motionless on the floor nearby.
“We’re going in,” Chenoweth told his men. “Let’s move out.”
With two engineers wounded and two tankers acting as their litter bearers, they were down to ten men. But that was more than enough to cover this cellar, little bigger than a basketball court. None of the men had any doubt this windowless, damp chamber was anywhere but underground. And to their surprise, it even had a working toilet.
“How about that,” Sean said as he used the sink to rinse the dust and grime from his hands and face. “All the comforts of home.”
Two of the Germans weren’t dead, but they were wounded badly enough to pose no immediate threat. Sean didn’t find it odd these casualties, both fully conscious, had never uttered the word kamerad, the German act of surrender. Despite their wounds, they glared defiantly at their captors.
“We seen those uniforms before, Lieutenant,” he told Chenoweth as he checked them for hidden weapons. “These ain’t your ordinary fritzes. They’re officer cadets. Real hardcore Nazi lunatics.”
“Yeah, I know, Sergeant. The ops order mentioned it. Put them over in that corner for now.” He pointed to one of his men and added, “Schmidt, you’re in charge of these prisoners. If they try anything—anything at all, even look at you sideways—shoot them. Tell them that in German.”
In the center of the room were metal stairs leading up to another closed steel door. The stairs looked more like a ladder canted at a steep angle.
“Looks like we’re in the basement of Bunker 4,” Chenoweth said as he positioned men to cover that door.
Near the base of the stairs was a large, rectangular grate over a floor drain. There was another drain near the blown door through which they’d entered.
“We’d better pull them grates off, Lieutenant,” Sean said, eyeing the door at the top of the stairs. “Those drains under them’ll make great grenade sumps.”
“Yeah, good idea.”
On the far wall was yet another armored door. It didn’t take any knowledge of German to translate into English what was written on it: 15 Centimeter Battery.
For the first time since they’d teamed up, Sean saw indecision written on Lieutenant Chenoweth’s face. I know what he’s thinking. We’re holding the cellar of Bunker 4 by the skin of our teeth. Battalion wants us to probe Bunker 3, too…and now, we’re just one door away from the gun batteries.
We’re gonna need a hell of a lot more guys…
And either one of those doors could bust open any second and the whole fucking Wehrmacht could come spilling in here.
“Sergeant Moon,” Chenoweth said, “you’re in charge here until I get back. I’m going to go find a radio, report in, and see what they want us to do next.”
It had been an hour since Lieutenant Chenoweth left. Sean and his improvised team of engineers and tankers had heard nothing from the outside world except the sound of gunfire from the building above their heads. That all changed when Fabiano and Kowalski returned, their arms loaded with boxes of K rations.
“The infantry finally got around to doing something,” Fabiano said to Sean. “There’s a company of our guys crawling all over Bunker 3. The rest of the battalion’s been trying to storm some of the gun turrets but they can’t get through the wire. They’re taking a real beating.”
Sean started tossing ration boxes to the men, “Only half of you clowns eat at a time,” he instructed. “If you’re not moving your jaws, you’re watching your door. Is that clear?”
Then he asked Fabiano, “What’d you do with those wounded engineers you hauled out of here?”
“We put them and a whole bunch of wounded dogfaces on Sergeant Sokol’s tank and drove ’em to the aid station. There’s plenty of wounded to go around, so we made a couple more trips, too. Then we liberated these rations.”
“Regular Florence Fucking Nightingales, ain’t you? Look around you, Fab. What do you see?”
“I see a big fucking dungeon with three doors.”
“Very good. Now pick a door.”
Fabiano pointed to the one at the top of the stairs.
“Okay, see the three guys covering that door already? Go join them. Kowalski, go hook up with the guys covering the door to the gun battery. Now you see those big square holes in the floor?”
Both men nodded.
“Guess what they are.”
Fabiano replied, “Grenade sumps, right?”
Sean asked, “Do you agree, Corporal Kowalski?”
“Yeah, Sarge. I do.”
“Outstanding. Now you know as much as the rest of us.”
“Hey, Sarge,” Kowalski said, “it’s getting dark ou
t. We gonna be stuck in here all night?”
“Who knows, Ski. Besides, down in this tomb, it don’t much matter if it’s day or night, does it?”
An engineer tore open his ration box, held up the coffee packet, and asked, “Hey, Sarge, okay if we start a little fire for some hot joe?”
“Yeah, go ahead. I might even have some myself.”
Sean waited until all of his men had brewed their coffee before he made his. Settling into a corner, he savored its aroma as he brought the canteen cup to his lips…
And then their subterranean refuge trembled as if an earthquake had struck, spilling the coffee all over his chest.
The earth kept shaking, one unsettling tremor every second or two, strong enough to make a man hold on to something for dear life. Strong enough to knock concrete dust loose from the ceiling, too. It drifted down on the GIs, coating them with a gray pall.
And the sound—it was like being inside a bass drum banging out the cadence of a quick march.
“What the hell, Sarge?” Fabiano said. “Are them turrets upstairs firing?”
“I don’t think so, Fab. That’s incoming. The guns from them other damn forts are trying to sweep our guys off the roof.”
“I guess that means the flyboys are done bombing them other forts for the day, right?”
“Yeah, and it means something else, too, Fab. We’re cut off down here now. Ain’t nobody up top gonna be able to help us out. Those rounds from the other forts can’t get us, but we’re sure as hell on our fucking own.”
A GI shouted, “THEY’RE COMING DOWN THE TUNNEL.” His Thompson was leveled, cocked, and ready to fire.
A distant, echoing voice shouted right back, “LIEUTENANT CHENOWETH, NUMBNUTS. DON’T FIRE. I’M LIEUTENANT CHENOWETH.”
It was more than just the lieutenant coming. With him was a mob of GIs—Sean couldn’t count them, but they were many more than those already in the cellar. Most were lugging something as they ran. One of them even carried the musette bag of a medic.
“Good to have you back, Lieutenant,” Sean said. “What’s going on outside?”
Struggling to catch his breath, Chenoweth said, “All the other tunnel attacks got beaten back. We’re the only ones who’ve actually gotten in.”
“We really ain’t into much of anything, Lieutenant.”
“That remains to be seen, Sergeant Moon.”
The equipment the new arrivals carried was piled up in the middle of the cellar. There was ammunition, more demolition equipment, more rations, and two field radios.
“The radios aren’t worth a shit while we’re down here,” Chenoweth said, “but at least we can use them from the tunnel entrance. Once this fucking barrage stops, of course.”
Sean asked, “That shelling hurting us bad, sir?”
The lieutenant nodded somberly. “You bet it is. We’ve got infantry down all over the place. It’s forced our tank support to pull back, too.”
Sean looked at all the munitions stacked on the floor. “It sure looks like we ain’t done here yet, Lieutenant. I guess that means we won’t be pulling out tonight?”
“No, Sergeant, we won’t be.”
There were shouts and then bursts from Thompsons at the base of the stairs.
Two German grenades—potato mashers in GI parlance for their long, wooden throwing handles protruding from tin can-like bodies—bounced crazily down the steps. Tumbling behind them was a soldier, apparently struck by the Thompsons’ bullets. Like a sack thrown from a truck, the falling soldier struck the floor with a sickening ploomp at the base of the stairs. He remained motionless right where he landed.
One grenade hit the floor and rolled toward Fabiano, who deftly kicked it into the grenade sump.
The other deflected backward through the open steps and rolled toward the two German captives.
Both grenades exploded within a heartbeat of each other, the one in the sump hurting nothing except the GIs’ ears.
The other exploded next to the German captives. Too impaired by their wounds to scurry away, the grenade killed them both.
Schmidt, the engineer guarding them, had been too far from the grenade to get it into a sump. But he’d instinctively thrown himself prone on the floor. Still, he wailed in pain as he caught fragments in his leg and arm.
Sean shook his head vigorously, trying without success to clear this new concussive assault on his already damaged ears. Everyone else was doing the same thing, with the same lack of success.
Fabiano, his Thompson trained at the now-closed door at the top of the stairs, said, “Keep opening up, assholes. I can do this all night.”
One of the engineers asked Chenoweth, “What do you want to do with these dead Krauts, Lieutenant?”
“Drag them way down into the tunnel before they start to stink.”
After making sure everyone had been resupplied with plenty of ammunition, Sean sat down on a crate of explosives, the same type the engineers had used to blow the first two doors. He watched the metal latch on the crate rattle with each impact of artillery rounds on the surface above them. That rattling was making a sound, he was sure, but he couldn’t hear it. He asked Chenoweth, “Which door we gonna blow next, sir?”
The lieutenant pointed to the one that led to the gun batteries.
“We gonna have to evacuate the tunnel again when we blow it?” Sean asked.
“Yep. It’s a shame, too, because this cellar’s probably vented well enough so we wouldn’t nearly choke to death like after blowing that last door.”
“But the blast would kill us if we stayed close, right, sir?”
“Yep.”
“And it ain’t safe for all of us to leave the tunnel while those damn guns are firing,” Sean said. “So I’m guessing we ain’t gonna be blowing nothing until they stop, right?”
“Affirmative, Sergeant.”
“And I’ll bet they shoot until the sun rises and the flyboys can shut them up all over again.” He blew out a weary sigh, adding, “It’s gonna be a long damn night, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah, you’re damn right, Sergeant.” He settled next to Sean on the crate. “I’m kind of pleased you and your tankers are still here. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you hit the road.”
“Where would we have gone, Lieutenant? It’s not like we could just leisurely stroll back to the rally point. Not with all this lead whistling through the air.”
“Well, thanks anyway, Sergeant.”
“Just do me a big favor, Lieutenant. Don’t go telling nobody I volunteered for this, okay?”
Once night had fallen over A-90, Tommy tried to avoid the other airmen. There were still too many questions about what was happening on Zebra Ramp. Every man in the 301st seemed to have noticed the absence of the first yellow Culver. Now the other one was gone, too.
But he couldn’t avoid everyone. Especially his bunkmates.
“Krauts blew them out of the sky, didn’t they, Half?” Jimmy Tuttle asked. “So what’d you learn from that?”
“That Culvers are easy to shoot down, Jimmy, that’s all.”
“It’s still too low and too slow, look out below, I guess,” Tuttle added.
“You’ve got that right.”
“But come on, everybody already knows that, Half, except those maniacs like Rocket Man in their L-4s. So what the hell is really going on over there on Zebra?”
Tommy was running out of ways to deflect those questions. As he tried to think of a snappy evasion to this latest probe, he was interrupted by the rumble of trucks coming to a halt outside.
Tuttle glanced out the window. He did a double take and pressed his face against the glass. “You ain’t going to believe this, Half, but there’s a bunch of darkies driving those deuce-and-a-halfs. Wait...there’s a white guy with them. He’s a first john, too. They all look like they’re lost to me.”
They walked outside, but Colonel Pruitt was at the lead jeep before them. He asked the first john—a first lieutenant just like Tommy and Tuttle—where they
were going.
The lieutenant shuffled some papers by flashlight and replied, “We’ve got orders here to deliver these truckloads to Five-Sixty-Second Bomb Squadron, sir.”
The unit designation didn’t ring a bell to the colonel. He looked at Tommy and Tuttle, who just shrugged.
Pruitt asked, “Any other clues on those orders, Lieutenant?”
“Yeah, hang on a second, sir.” He began to shuffle the papers again, looking for something more. “Oh, here it is. A Major Staunton’s supposed to sign for it. He around here?”
“Now you’re talking,” Pruitt replied. “Lieutenant Moon here can help you out. He’ll take you over to the other side of the airfield. That’s where you’ll find the major.”
“Give me a second to get into proper uniform,” Tommy said. “I’ll be right back.”
As they waited, Colonel Pruitt and Tuttle took a hard look at the column of trucks. There were four deuce-and-a-halfs in total, with another jeep bringing up the rear.
“Your drivers are all Negroes, Lieutenant,” Pruitt said. “Where’d you find them all?”
“Have you ever heard of the Red Ball Express, sir?”
“Yeah, but I have no idea what it does.”
“Well, Colonel, at the moment, the Red Ball is how the whole danged Twelfth Army Group’s getting its supplies. This special load we’re carrying would’ve sat in some Normandy depot until the cows came home. Transportation units were working overtime figuring out how to avoid carrying the stuff. Only the Red Ball drivers would haul it. And most of those drivers are coloreds, by the way.”
“What’s so special about this stuff, Lieutenant?”
“It’s ten tons of Torpex, sir.”
The colonel and Tuttle took a spontaneous step back when they heard that.
Tommy reappeared and jumped into the back seat of the jeep. Tuttle asked him, “Did you hear what’s in these trucks?”
“I think I already know, Jimmy. It’s Torpex, right?”
Fortress Falling (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 2) Page 24