Fox On The Rhine

by Douglas Niles

  “Christ, Bobby, let us worry about that. Get your tanks moving, and get word back to Army HQ when you’ve got a depot space cleared. We’ll see that you get your gasoline.”

  “Of course, General! Very good, sir!” If Jackson was stung by the criticism he didn’t show it, saluting smoothly and turning to march back to his jeep.

  A second later Jack King turned to Wakefield. “What was that Patton said to you about Pulaski?” he asked.

  Wakefield shrugged. “Our young colonel had some good luck at Sainte-la-Salle. He was trying to persuade me to let him advance, against orders, when Georgie rolled up. He chewed me a new asshole for trying to hold Ski back.”

  King chuckled wryly. “That’s our boss, Hank. But you’ve got to hand it to him--he knows how to handle armor.”

  Wakefield could only agree, albeit reluctantly. He still thought the division could be advancing into terrible danger, and he didn’t like the knowledge that their flanks were exposed, would be stretched by hundreds of miles before this was over. But if there was one lesson he’d learned in this man’s army, it was when to keep his mouth shut.

  “Let’s get moving,” King suggested, turning toward the division HQ vehicles. “I have a feeling our HQ is going to be set up wherever we stop for the night, and I’d like to get a few miles behind us by then.”

  “Yes, sir,” Wakefield said, mentally preparing himself for an entirely unseemly measure of haste.

  Just South of Roncey, Normandy, France, 2 August 1944, 0645 hours GMT

  The camouflage-mottled Panther squatted in the farmyard, close against the concealment of a stone wall. The tank’s long gun poked over the top of the barrier, trained down the long, empty road to the north.

  In the driver’s seat, Carl-Heinz Clausen switched off the engine to conserve fuel while the lieutenant climbed from the turret, announcing over the intercom that he intended to reconnoiter. From his position, Carl-Heinz couldn’t see what lay behind them, so he popped open his own hatch and clambered down the sloping forehull of the big tank. The stone wall connected to a house, but the building stood on the other side of the wall--it didn’t block the tank’s line of withdrawal.

  The driver saw a lower stone wall standing across the back of the yard about twenty meters away. The area around the farm was bare of trees, except for some brush fringing the nearby marsh. The only obstacle capable of stopping his tank, once he got rolling, was the house itself... and, of course, the muddy bog.

  The road they had followed in the latest leg of their retreat from the St.-Lo position approached this farm in a straight line. Four days of running and fighting had brought them down this route, to this farm where they had elected to set up another ambush. For the nearest kilometer the road passed between the low swamp to the east and a forest of ancient oaks to the west; the American tanks, when they came, would be limited to that single lane, and the partially concealed Panther had a tight bead on the entire route.

  Of course, a squad of infantry could slip through the forest and surprise them here--but the lieutenant was gambling that the Amis would be in too much of a hurry for such a tactic. Word was that their advance spearheads were already through Avranches. Now it was just a matter of falling back and making the enemy pay the highest possible price for each kilometer of France. No longer part of any coherent division, Schroeder’s panzer fought on its own, always facing the forefront of the American advance.

  Carl-Heinz climbed back in as the lieutenant trotted back from scouting the other side of the house.

  “Won’t be long now--be ready to start at a word.” The young officer scrambled up the turret with his usual efficiency of effort, settling onto the rim of his hatch so he could keep his eyes trained on that still empty road.

  Carl-Heinz dropped into his own seat and clamped the metal hatch cover overhead. Ulrich Pfeiffer, at his radio and hull machine gun, sat in the adjacent position and shook his head lugubriously. The lean carpenter from Saxony remained convinced that the tank faced certain and imminent destruction here, as it had on many occasions since they had survived the cauldron of Kursk on the Russian front during the previous year. To Pfeiffer, today was simply another chance to die.

  “Don’t worry--the leutenant’s got us tucked in snug,” Carl-Heinz said, with a friendly nod. “We’ll have the bastards cold as soon as they come into sight.”

  “Sure,” Ulrich said sadly. “The first one ... maybe the second. But what about the dozen after that?”

  Clausen clapped his pessimistic comrade on the shoulder, humoring him but unwilling to agree. Sure, there were times when it felt as if the entire United States Army sought to destroy them, personally. Still, Carl-Heinz found that the thought of death didn’t particularly affect him.

  “Enemy observed.” The lieutenant’s voice came over the intercom, crisp and brief as always. Carl-Heinz instinctively placed his thumb over the starter button. “Driver--start the engine. Gunner, fire at 500 meters.”

  The Panther’s gasoline engine roared into life. Carl-Heinz could see little through his driver’s viewing hatch, and when he swiveled the periscope to look to the left he saw only the blocking presence of the stone wall. No matter--he’d grown quite used to driving the big vehicle exactly as the lieutenant ordered.

  “Here they come--column of at least a half dozen tanks, maybe more--with some half-tracks bringing up the rear. They’re moving fast and coming this way, so let’s see if we can hold them up for a few minutes. Gunner, aim for the lead tank. Fire when you’re sure of the target.”

  “I’ve got him, leutnant.”

  The crack of the long 75-mm gun rocked the Panther back and the first Sherman blew up in a spectacular fountain of flame. Immediately the American column dispersed off the road, but Fritzi put a round into a second tank moments later. The Shermans were not terribly well armored, but they were fast, and Carl-Heinz strained for a sight of the enemy tanks coming out of the woods before him.

  “Scheiss! Behind us!” barked Lieutenant Schroeder. “Gunner, train forward--driver, back up--schnell!”

  Double-clutching with his left foot, Carl-Heinz jammed the gear lever into reverse and floored the accelerator. The Panther jolted toward the rear, at the same time as Fritzi, the gunner, swiveled the long barrel to the front. The crew needed no prodding.

  In moments the farmhouse concealed the tank completely from view up the road, the gun facing the thoroughfare at a perpendicular angle. “Driver--stop!” barked Schroeder, and Carl-Heinz immediately stomped on the clutch and knocked the tank out of gear.

  “Swivel to the right--bring the turret around--full rear!”

  The grinding of gears swiveled the barrel out of Carl-Heinz’s line of sight and continued until he knew the long barrel was trained behind them, sighting over the compartment where the big engine rumbled and snorted.

  Nerve wracking seconds dragged on--Where are the damned Amis? Carl-Heinz stared down the length of wall, watching the comer where at any instant tons of olive-drab steel could roll into view. He couldn’t see to the rear but knew that Fritzi and the lieutenant were looking for targets to appear in that direction.

  “Fire!” Fritzi, as usual, anticipated the lieutenant’s order and the long gun instantly spit an armor-piercing shell.

  “Got him! Driver--reverse! Gunner--train forward!”

  Carl-Heinz smoothly backed the tank past the house as the turret once more swiveled toward the front. The driver stared through the periscope, startled as a Sherman appeared around the comer of the building. The American tank fired, the shell ricocheting off the Panther’s frontal armor with a deafening clang. Fritzi shot back, hitting the base of the Sherman’s turret. The resulting explosion blinded Carl-Heinz momentarily, but when his vision cleared he saw that the cannon of the M4 had bent back like an aluminum drainpipe.

  The shell casing rattled into the turret as Peltz jammed another round into the breach. This time Fritzi didn’t wait for the command, blasting his second point-blank shot into the forehu
ll of another tank. Smoke belched from the hatches, and the gun stopped its frantic motion. The driver popped out of his escape hole but Schroeder quickly squeezed the trigger on the turret machine gun, dropping the helpless tanker halfway out of the hatch. The body collapsed forward, arms dangled off the front of the olive-drab tank.

  “Driver--reverse!” snapped Lieutenant Schroeder. Again Carl-Heinz double-clutched and rocked backward. The Panther lurched as it struck the stone wall and then pitched up and over the broken barrier. Carl-Heinz saw the receding gap, a neat notch the size of the panzer, as he continued to back away from the house and farmyard.

  “Driver--stop--forward--left turn; Gunner, train right!” Immediately Clausen repeated the gear-shifting process, the Panther responding with a grace worthy of its namesake. Quickly the German tank rolled past the back of the house. Risking a look through his periscope, Carl-Heinz saw the hump-backed silhouette of another Sherman rumbling off the road, straight toward the Panther. The American gun fired, but the fast-moving panzer had already darted past the gun trajectory--the shot was a clean miss.

  “Driver--stop! Gunner--fire!” The Panther’s cannon barked and Fritzi’s shot caught the nearest M4 squarely in the forehull. Smoke instantly spewed from the ruined tank, secondary explosions continuing to rock the metal carcass. Another Sherman had darted off the other side of the road, racing toward the forest in a standard dispersal tactic in the face of ambush. Those tankers were obviously unaware that the German was now perched directly to their rear.

  Fritzi settled into a careful shot, blasting the American tank in the back of the turret, where it was most vulnerable. The shell punched through the armor, and, while the Sherman showed no outward sign of damage, it stopped moving. Slowly, its gun settled toward the ground.

  Meanwhile Carl-Heinz swung the periscope leftward to check the road. He saw half-tracks, white stars emblazoned on the doors, rolling into the ditch. Infantrymen scrambled out of the vehicles, ducking into the makeshift trench, racing toward the Panther.

  He called over the intercom. “Leutnant! Up the road!”

  “Loader--high explosive,” Schroeder ordered, and Peltz smoothly replaced the antitank round in the breach as the turret swiveled to the left. Carl-Heinz pressed his eye against the periscope’s rubber eyepiece, watching American infantry rush forward. They moved much more slowly than the steadily swinging tank gun. They’re doomed--why don’t they run?

  “Fire!” The high explosive projectile struck the ground in front of the first half-track, concussion blasting the vehicle backward, killing the nearby soldiers in a flash of blast and shrapnel. Fritzi put the second round into the next half-track, which exploded in a spectacular fireball, the blaze popping off ammunition like stuttering bursts of gunfire.

  “Driver--forward, right turn! Let’s get down the road!” Carl-Heinz needed no coaxing. The Panther rumbled through its circuit around the farmhouse, rolled past smoking Shermans and then growled into high gear on the road. They raced at top speed, more than forty kilometers per hour, toward the south.

  “Radioman--coordinates?”

  “Three kilometers west of Mortain,” Pfeiffer chattered into his microphone as the crew awaited a reply.

  Carl-Heinz had heard the same rumors as the rest of the crew: that Avranches had already fallen, that they were all but surrounded here in Normandy as the American attack swept into the rest of France. But there was nothing he could do about that, so he concentrated on holding the rumbling Panther on the road, throttle wide open. A shell whizzed over the tank, and another exploded just beside them, but their luck held as the range between them and the enemy tanks lengthened. Within a kilometer, he had to drive through the ditch to avoid a pair of burned-out trucks, but he quickly regained the highway and rumbled over a low elevation.

  At last they were out of sight of the American armored column, but the driver muttered a curse as he saw that the road before them was blocked with blazing tanks and trucks, all in the field gray of the German army. Marshes pressed close against either side of the road, and there seemed to be no way around the blocked road. Clearly this bottleneck had been a killing ground for the Allied air forces.

  Lieutenant Schroeder threw open the turret hatch, rising for a look at the situation.

  The fighter came seemingly from nowhere, machine guns spitting lethal bullets. The lieutenant’s body was riddled before he could drop through the hatch. When Fritzi finally got him into the turret, Lieutenant Schroeder could only moan softly and die.

  “More of the Jabo bastards!” shouted Peltz. “Looks like a bomb run!”

  Carl-Heinz knew the Panther was a sitting duck, parked at the end of the file of wrecked vehicles. He turned the wheel violently, driving down the embankment and into the soft mud of the marsh. Gunning the engine, holding the throttle at top speed, he urged the big vehicle through the soft muck as bullets tore the earth around him.

  “Come on, baby... you can do it... I know you can,” he said encouragingly.

  A bomb went off nearby, casting a sheet of muddy water across the periscope, and the desperate driver pushed open the hatch, sticking his head just far enough that he could see.

  We’re doomed--we’re going to die here! He had the desperate thought as he felt the mud sucking at the treads, trying to pull the Panther down. Traction was all but gone, and the tank wallowed to the left, to the right, and back again as the tracks flailed at the too-soft ground. Gradually their headway slowed until they were barely crawling, and Carl-Heinz knew that if they stopped they would never get started again.

  So he could not let them stop.

  “Please, baby ... do it for Papa,” he whispered, vaguely aware that Ulrich was staring at him, wide-eyed, from the radioman’s seat.

  More bullets sprayed the muddy ground, but now the tracks were biting into solid dirt. The engine raced into an almost human scream, pushing them through water and mud. Sticky goo splashed up the forehull into his face, and Carl-Heinz spat it out, not taking the time to wipe his eyes.

  Finally, with a groaning lurch, the huge tank found its footing, pushing to the edge of the marsh, then crawling up a bank. With his head still out of the driver’s hatch, Carl-Heinz felt branches lash his face as he drove between two massive trees and straight into the cool shelter of a small woods.

  Ukraine, Soviet Union, 2320 hours GMT

  “I’m not cut out to be a diplomat,” Müller said. “This waiting is driving me crazy!”

  Reinhardt smiled. It was the third day of the negotiations between Ribbentrop and Molotov--or, more properly, between Ribbentrop’s aides and Molotov. The work of the negotiations was taking place almost around the clock, with pots of awful coffee and stale bread sandwiches grabbed and eaten during the talks. Ribbentrop’s collapse was now virtually complete; he was in bed with one guard while his staff tried valiantly to resolve difficult issues without the power or authority to do so. If they came back with a deal Himmler didn’t like, Müller was sure they would be punished, probably killed. Alternately, Müller feared, Molotov could decide to have them all shot at any moment. The Russians were cold, unyielding, frustrating to talk to. It was just their traditional negotiating style, Reinhardt observed.

  The meetings had stopped for an hour to allow people to shower and change clothes. Müller found the icy water terrible and jumped out in seconds, drying himself off and struggling back into his clothes. Reinhardt seemed to glory in the stoic torment, washing himself thoroughly. He studied his reflection in the small mirror, slicking his jet black hair down just so.

  Müller hoped for a detailed briefing of the progress, but Reinhardt was not forthcoming. He suggested in vague terms that the situation was not quite hopeless, and that had to be enough for Müller. It wasn’t. “They hate us, Gunter,” he said in a plaintive voice. “Or are you claiming that’s just a negotiating ploy?”

  Reinhardt smiled. “Those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts, you know,” he replied.

  The conference was in a temp
orary barracks, surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers. Müller thought it looked more like a POW camp than the site of intergovernmental negotiations at the foreign minister level, but then any job on which he was assigned always turned out to be a lot less elegant than he expected.

  What surprised him was Reinhardt. Gunter had fast moved into a leadership position on the effectively headless team. Baron Steengracht was weak and inconsequential, a man fit primarily for embassy parties and occasions of show. He had been von Ribbentrop’s “parrot” for years and was best known for his extremely beautiful wife, not for his intellect.

  Reinhardt stepped up, first with whispered ideas, then with diffidently phrased suggestions that cut through complicated issues, and finally worked his way into the negotiations as nearly a full partner. Molotov regarded him suspiciously at first, then seemed to accept him as a man with whom he could do business.

  “The Soviet Union is a peaceful nation,” Molotov said with a grunt. “You had peace with us, but you lied. We cannot trust a nation of liars. This discussion is useless. We see no value in continuing.” He began to stand up. Müller was panicked, then noticed that Steengracht seemed to be panicking as well.

  “But Commisar,” Steengracht said, rising rapidly to his feet in hopes of heading off the Russian. But it was Reinhardt who cut through Steengracht’s empty protestations before they could get started. As Steengracht was saying, “We are prepared to commit the honor of the Third--” Reinhardt interrupted him.

  “It’s very simple, Commissar Molotov. You cannot trust us. Nor can we trust you.”

  “Eh?” said Molotov, taken aback by the nondiplomatic brusqueness.

  “I beg your pardon!” said Steengracht with an icy stare, but Reinhardt ignored the clear hint to sit down and shut up.

  “As Catullus says, ‘Let none believe that a man’s speeches be trustworthy.’ If any part of our arrangement depends on mutual trust, we are doomed.”