Pulaski, six feet tall, blond hair and blue eyes, a handsome officer with the solid build of a natural athlete, wore his new colonel’s wings with pride, still not quite able to believe where he was. He put his hands on his hips as he surveyed the scene. “Jesus Christ, what a fight this must have been,” he whispered, his voice betraying awe at the wreckage of war still scattered everywhere, though the invasion had occurred nearly six weeks earlier.
“They say it was even worse over there,” observed Major General Jack King, pointing east. “At Omaha Beach the First Division almost got pushed back into the channel.” General King, new commanding officer of the Nineteenth Armored Division, also wore fresh insignia, his second star gleaming silver. A thin, angular, man with wavy silver hair, uniform crisp and spotless even in a combat zone, he looked almost as if Central Casting had sent him over for the job.
Pulaski realized that General King was as impressed--even awed--as he was. He knew the general had much more combat experience than he, even though Pulaski himself had served with distinction in North Africa, winning a Silver Star for his heroism. Still, it was hard for either man not to react to the scene in front of him.
“Well, they made it ashore--and now here we are to finish the job,” announced Pulaski with barely contained anticipation. “I sure hope Hitler’s got a few Krauts left!”
“Wouldn’t worry about that,” the general replied as the two men climbed down the landing ramp and headed toward the already debarked tanks.
“They look ready for anything, don’t they?” Pulaski stared with unconcealed pride at the row of M4 Sherman tanks gathered at the base of one of the long causeways that connected this isolated beach to the mainland of Normandy and the rest of France.
These were his tanks, members of the lead company of his combat command. The eighteen humpbacked armored vehicles of Company B, 38th Tank Battalion of the Nineteenth Armored Division had been unloaded from the LST earlier in the day. Their crewmen had been reunited with their tanks, and each had been started and warmed up. Now they simply waited for the command to move off of the beach. The rest of the three battalions in Pulaski’s combat command were still aboard the nearby LSTs but were due for debarkation in the next twelve hours.
“When’s the rest of the division come in?” inquired Pulaski. He was impatient, ready to drive toward the war immediately.
King looked unconsciously across the still waters of the English Channel. “Tomorrow P.M., supposedly,” he replied. “At least, that’s when Bob Jackson and his HQ company land. But we want you up to the bivouac tonight.” He looked at the younger officer affectionately, an elder to a bright youngster who had the potential to turn into something fine. Pulaski was a little annoyed at the implied patronization--hell, I’m thirty-three years old--but General King had a fine combat record, and he was entitled to his opinion. Pulaski might be a trifle unseasoned in his new command role, but the experience would happen soon enough, once they encountered Germans. He could hardly wait.
“Fair enough--just tell me when to go,” declared Pulaski. He returned King’s look with an unabashed grin, unable to conceal his nervous energy.
“Believe me, when we jump off you’ll be leading the way,” the general declared. “You know I’m counting on Combat Command A.”
The younger officer reached out to pump the general’s hand.
“And you know how much this command means to me, sir,” he said, his voice thickened by gratitude. “I won’t let you down.”
“Hell, call me Jack--in private, at least. We’re going to be working together a lot, you and I,” replied King with a wide grin, teeth glistening. “You’re going to make a first-rate tank officer. Find the chinks in the German defenses, push through, and open the gaps to crack the enemy into little pieces.”
“I’ve arranged for you to get the first of the division’s 76-mm guns,” King added, as Pulaski again took in the row of his immaculate Shermans. Four of the tanks were armed with cannons that were significantly longer than the guns on the rest of the stubby vehicles. These big barrels were also distinguished by a hollow flash guard at the terminus of the gun.
“You think it’s true what they say about the German tanks--that a 75-mm armor-piercing round will bounce right off the turret?” asked Pulaski skeptically. “We had those same 75s on the Lees in Tunisia, and I’ve seen their AP rounds punch right through enemy armor.”
“That was in ’43, and things change. From what I hear, the Panther is damned tough,” King replied. He and his colonel had seen the same intelligence reports. “And the Tiger is a real monster, but they don’t have too many of them on the front.” The colonel turned to watch as the components of Combat Command A continued to roll off of several ships. He knew a thrill of pride at the thought that he was in charge of a third of the division’s firepower--its lead strike force. The combat command included full battalions of tanks and armored infantry in half-tracks, as well as a recon company, assault-gun company, and the eighteen big guns of a self-propelled artillery battalion. All in all, they would move out with more than five hundred vehicles and ten times that many men.
“Whatever you come up against, Ski, I know Combat Command A of the Nineteenth Armored will make a real name for itself.”
“Thank you, General. I’ll do my best.” He touched his new shoulder patch. The Nineteenth Division’s insignia was a white star on a badge of crimson.
“I know you will,” replied King with a grin.
“Excuse me--General King?” A military policeman approached them through the grassy sand. He saluted casually as he reached the two officers. “I’m to take you up to Carentan tonight. Is your first battalion ready to go?”
King looked at Pulaski, who nodded enthusiastically. “Ready and willing,” the colonel replied. “But what about that traffic jam?”
“We take our places at the back,” said the MP with a shrug. “Don’t worry, sir--we might get up to three or four MPH once we’re off the causeway.”
“What about the rest of the division?” asked King.
“They’ll be met tomorrow, General--you can wait here if you want to or come up to Carentan with the Thirty-eighth.”
“Guess I’ll hitch a ride, Ski,” the general said. “After all, I can’t let my junior commanders get the best rooms in the hotel!”
“Sergeant Dawson!” Pulaski called his headquarters sergeant over. Dawson, a sturdy man with an advanced age somewhere in his mid-thirties, trotted over and saluted. He had the bulk of a radiophone slung over his shoulder. “Have you seen any sign of Captain Miller?”
“Eyeing up the causeway, Colonel. He’ll be back in a flash.” Miller was the captain of B Company, and he did appear a few minutes later. He had planned ahead, so his company was ready to roll.
The vehicles of the headquarters platoon were nearby. Together with Sergeant Dawson and the MP, King and Pulaski climbed into the nearest half-track. Pulaski’s driver--a wiry farm kid from Georgia named Keefer--eased in the clutch. The colonel and Dawson climbed up into the cab while the MP and King chose to ride in the back, seated in the lurching hull. The smells of gasoline exhaust rose around them. It was an honest odor, signifying powerful combustion and capable machinery.
The eighteen tanks and two jeeps of Company B joined, in file, the column of vehicles crawling over the narrow causeway and onto the constricted roads beyond. Broken into small plots by tall, tangled hedgerows, each field was a potential fortress to a defender. This bocage country, as Normandy was often described, had exacted a grim and bloody toll from the American troops who had wrested it from tenacious German defenders. Each hedge was a mound of earth, often six feet or more in height, with a bristling barrier of shrubbery growing from the crest. The bocage was perfect for defensive concealment and hell on maneuver--two grave liabilities for tank operations.
The column passed the shells of houses and barns in the darkness, the ruins looming like ghostly tombs to either side of the road. Often Pulaski had the impression of
hedges pressing close to either side of the road, and it seemed in the eerie night that the half-track might have been rumbling down a long, narrow tunnel.
“You’re up in the Eight Corps area, General,” shouted the MP, speaking over the throaty rumble of the engine. “Under General Bradley’s command, First Army.”
‘That’s what I’ve been told--so show me the way,” replied King, shouting in return.
“Say--I hear that before too long Old Blood and Guts hisself might be coming over here to take over a field command!” the MP shouted, trying to make conversation.
“Patton? Goddamn right he is--and then we’re heading straight for Berlin!” The general grinned in a sharp line of gleaming straight white teeth, and Pulaski couldn’t help but believe him.
The MP proved an enthusiastic escort, pointing out the route, talking about some of the firefights that had pocked the buildings and cratered the ground. Occasionally he brandished a written sheet of orders to the other MPs manning the checkpoints that frequently blocked the way. By the time Company B pulled into the trampled field of their bivouac site, they had come a dozen miles and passed a thousand or more individual proofs of war’s fury.
The glow of sunset still brightened the western sky mere hours after Pulaski’s landing on the beach at Normandy. As the tank engines died they were replaced by an equally persistent growl, a thunder that rumbled from beyond the horizon to the south. He knew immediately the true import of the sound. It was an artillery barrage--batteries of heavy 155-mm guns steadily pounding the Germans at their front.
“Well, Ski,” the general commented, “it sounds like we found the war.”
Wehrmacht Hospital, Vesinet, France, 1500 hours GMT
A fly... no, two flies... they buzzed past his ear to thunk repeatedly, loudly against something hollow and close beside him... a lampshade, perhaps. The injured man seized on that sound, clung to it for the proof that he had not yet died, that the darkness might be parting before him.
Rising through that small opening was pain, a pure agony that was utterly marvelous for the fact that it confirmed his vitality. The left side of his face was a mass of broken, burning flesh, and he vaguely recalled that he had been thrown from the car. And before the crash there had been the bullets from the sky, tearing into his body. He remembered that a tree beside the road had exploded, ripped apart by cannon shells. Wounds throbbed in his torso and his leg, his head was racked by a monstrous aching, and through all the sensations the most important thing was that his body was whole, would have at least a chance to heal.
And he would live.
Then the darkness crept upward again. Physical suffering waned, but now his mind was torn by nightmare... roaring, whining, lethal aircraft... deadly Hurricanes and Typhoons, murderous Spitfires and Thunderbolts flying everywhere, bringing flames and death to his brave men and his magnificent panzers.
The darkness was a river, and he slipped backward... back to 1914, to the first time he’d come under fire. His guts ached from remembered food poisoning and still he led a patrol, so tired and so sick he could barely remain in the saddle. Shots rang out of the fog... he halted the platoon and went on with three men. The new lieutenant followed a path through a hedge, heard voices, and saw the enemy. Fifteen--no, twenty of them.
His training urged him to bring up the platoon, but instead he attacked, firing rapidly as the enemy survivors scrambled for cover in nearby farmhouses, from where they returned fire. His platoon moved up and he had them ignite bundles of straw, half his men providing covering fire as the others kicked in doors and threw the flaming bundles into the farm buildings. He led them on foot, house by house, until the village was cleared. And he could see the flames, hear the screams, remembered his own pain, and struggled to awake.
Still he lived... they could not kill him... but like all those who survived he was helpless, frozen in concealment under the glare of daylight. At night he might scuttle across the landscape like a crab, but he would have to seek another hiding hole before dawn brought the lethal aircraft swarming back into the skies. Even now he could hear them droning, fighters and bombers diving from all sides, roaring around his head...
The sounds formed the rhythm of his darkness, the dull hum of skyborne doom. For a time it was North Africa... and then it was France... and then ultimately it made no difference, for everywhere was the same beneath the naked sky... the enemy would find him, kill him, kill his men, his tanks, his Fatherland. Always there was the sound, the nagging buzz...
But again the thick curtain parted, and it was not the sound of aircraft. They were merely flies... insects, a minor irritant, but they were nearby and they were real... as he was real. He almost wished he weren’t, for if he was real, he would be forced again to preside over defeat. Defeat for the Fatherland, defeat for his soldiers, defeat for himself. For there was no longer any hope as long as the enemy held the skies.
Voices of men in the room, coming from the space beside his bed.
He held the curtain of consciousness apart with a pure effort of will, embracing the pain through his entire body... he could not see, nor gesture, nor even make a sound, but through a great cloud he understood words.
“... other man would have died--Dr. Schennig says it is so.”
“Any man but the Desert Fox... you watch, he will be up biting the surgeons by the end of the month!”
“Surely not--he lost so much blood!”
“Bah--it matters not. I tell you he will make it! You should have seen him in Africa, standing tall in his car, racing right along with his tanks while the bombardment fell all around! No, they shan’t get him this easily!”
“But the head wound--the bullet went into his temple!”
“And I repeat--he will live...”
More words, then, but it was too much to make them out. A head wound, he thought. My brain--my mind... Was that the reason he was having so much trouble organizing his thoughts? A depressing chill settled into him. He would sooner lose an arm, or a leg, or an eye--anything other than accept damage to his intellect. It’s my best weapon, he thought.
Worry was futile. If he could worry, his mind could not be completely gone. Instead, he yielded to his fatigue; but now when the darkness came there was peace, and he slept.
Ministry of Propaganda, Berlin, Germany, 1915 hours GMT
The Reich minister of propaganda limped across his huge office to surreptitiously pull the curtain aside once more. Outside, in the streets of Berlin, the summer evening was still well lit, long shadows and an enlarging sun the only evidence that night was falling. He could see them: at least a full battalion of Wehrmacht infantry, outfitted with grenades and small arms. They had marched into place a few hours before, coming south from the Brandenburg Gate. At each comer surrounding the huge house a machine gun rested on its squat tripod, dark barrels pointed all too obviously at the doors of the structure.
Irritably he stalked away from the window. In his agitation his crippled leg nearly collapsed beneath him, and he lunged forward to catch himself on the edge of the desk. Furiously he picked up the phone.
“This is Dr. Goebbels! Have you connected me to the Wolfschanze? Idiot--keep on trying! It’s imperative that I speak with the führer!”
Slamming down the phone, the Nazi minister stared at the wood-paneled walls of the elegant office. He ignored the lush Persian carpet covering the floor, the gold and silvered plaques adorning the walls. His gaze rested upon a man, the only occupant of the room.
“What does it mean--‘The bridge has been burned’?” demanded the chief of propaganda. “Why do they fill the airwaves with such drivel?”
The other man remained silent--it was not a question he could have answered in any event.
“Leave me!” spat Goebbels. “Go find out why those troops are there!”
The other man, taller and younger, stiffened at the tone in the minister of propaganda’s voice. “Come, Herr Speer,” Goebbels added, his tone modulating to the persuasive purr he
reserved for such moments. “I must make some private telephone calls. And we have to communicate with the officer outside the building--find out whose orders he follows!”
“Very well,” replied Minister of Armaments Albert Speer, turning and leaving abruptly.
Goebbels spent another fifteen minutes rebuking the telephone operator for his failure to reach the Wolf’s Lair when the door to the office opened and a Wehrmacht major entered the room. He halted at rigid attention, fixing the minister with an impassive stare. “I am Major Remer--you wished to see me, Herr Reichsminister?”
“Why have you encircled my residence?”
“I act under the orders of my commander, Major General von Haase. I am to seal off these blocks of the government quarter--no one is allowed to enter or leave.”
“But why? You are an officer--you’ve taken an oath to your Reich!”
“An oath to my führer, Herr Reichsminister. And now he is slain. I can only obey my commander. This quadrant is rife with conspirators!”
The news hit Goebbels like a thunderclap, and he had to clasp the desk for support. “You lie!” he gasped. “The führer is alive--I spoke to him at Wolfschanze this morning!”
The young major was obviously uncomfortable with the subject. His own face showed the strain of grief mingled with disbelief. “He was killed this afternoon--a bomb planted in his headquarters!”
“In that case, you must know that I cannot possibly be implicated!” pleaded Goebbels, whining. “You must release me--allow me to draw in the reins of government!”
At that instant a burst of small arms fire stuttered through the air, coming from the yard beyond the huge house. The minister of propaganda blanched, his eyes going to the Walther in the holster at the major’s side. “No...” He whispered the word, his eyes darting from the officer to his desk and back again. He would not be captured, tortured, killed by the enemies of the Reich. Better he controlled his own fate, no matter how cruel.
Fox On The Rhine Page 4