“Leave that platoon to show Whitey the way,” Ballard shouted down to Smiggs, making up his mind. “The rest of your boys fall in--we’re going for the road!”
Immediately the tanks rolled, B company leading the way. Ballard remained outside his turret, where he could get a view in all directions. The terrain was partially blocked, with many copses of trees and small woods. Here and there a farmhouse dotted the landscape, which tended to be flat, with a few low irregularities that hardly qualified as hills.
“I followed that track through the woods,” Smiggs reported, indicating a narrow lane through a small forest. “You might have to take your tanks down it and deploy on the far side of the trees.”
Ballard was about to reply when the crack of an 88 shot across the field, and in the same moment one of B company’s Shermans exploded into an inferno of flame and popping ammunition. There was no time for any of the crew even to open a hatch, much less have a chance at escape.
“Where the hell did that come from?” demanded Ballard, wincing at the knowledge that five of his men had just met an unthinkable death. He grabbed his microphone and spoke in a voice that was louder than he wanted. “Bruno Six to all Brunos--action front! Bruno One, engage in front. Bruno Two, refuse the left. Bruno Three and Four, deploy and move up in reserve. All Brunos, acknowledge.”
The tanks of Task Force Ballard broke from the road at the first shot. A dozen Shermans were pushing through a field of mounded haystacks, while two more M4s were skidding around a farmhouse and others raced for the cover of the woods. Three were already burning, and then another cooked off with fiery violence. Shells zipped through the air, and he could tell that they were being attacked from in front, and on the left flank. They were taking a lot of fire, though he still couldn’t see his attackers.
“Bruno Three, reinforce the left--move forward!” Ballard ordered.
More shots lashed out from guns hidden in the nearby trees. The flank attack was a powerful counterpunch, he realized with sickening awareness. Additional M4s went up in flames, and tufts of hay flew through the air following a near miss. Fires burned all over the clearing. Some of the pyres were merely hay, but all too many of them were wrecked tanks and dying Americans. Even though he had yet to catch sight of the enemy, Ballard knew from the volume of fire that this was the strongest opposition his battalion had yet encountered. His tanks were shooting back, but suffering in the face of serious resistance. At least a dozen Shermans were burning, and the shots coming from the nearby woods were frequent and accurate.
“Bruno Two!” he called to his infantry company. “Dismount--we need some flank protection!” Ballard clenched his radio mike, unmindful of armor piercing shells whizzing past his tank. “Crimson Eight, this is Bruno Six. Action front and left. Guns! I need some fire support!”
He was trying to get Colonel Pulaski on the horn, but he couldn’t make the connection. He thought about demanding air support, but then he took note of the low overcast and drizzling skies, knew they would get no help from that quarter. “Jones, back us out of here!” he called to his driver on the intercom. “Get me someplace where I can see what’s going on.”
And then there were tanks of mottled tan to his left, rolling forward from concealment in the woods, blasting apart Task Force Ballard. More panzers rumbling into a head-on collision with his Shermans, and these newcomers were the biggest damned things Ballard had ever seen--Tigers, he knew. He had fought them before but now, somehow, the slab-sided behemoths seemed incomprehensibly huge. Vicious barrels of lethal 88-mm guns jutted from massive, angular turrets, belching death, punching armor-piercing shells through the relatively thin-skinned American tanks.
The Shermans fought valiantly, but even at close range their shells bounced right off the armored goliaths--Ballard’s men might as well have been using peashooters, for all the damage they did. Everywhere, M4s were wrecked and burning.
More German tanks rolled from the flank now, Panthers and Mark IVs breaking out of the woods, and Ballard knew that his task force had been caught in a neat and very deadly ambush. They were trapped against the Somme, the river water glistening pastorally only a hundred yards away to his right. Many German tanks fired at close range, and Shermans, armored cars, and half-tracks exploded to either side. Jones maneuvered backward, the turret swiveling to line up a shot. The barrel spat smoke and fire, but the shell exploded with no apparent effect against the front of a Panther’s turret.
The panzer fired back just as Jones popped the clutch and jolted the M4 into movement. Ballard felt the shot whistle past his ear and only then did he drop down into the turret and pull the hatch shut over his head.
He looked through the periscope and saw several armored cars bouncing through a field, turrets reversed to shoot at the pursuing Germans. One by one the light vehicles erupted, crushed like tin cans by the force of heavy German guns.
“Shit, Smiggy--Goddamn... I’m sorry,” he hissed through clenched teeth, a curse of regret and helpless fury.
A Tiger rolled past his position, intent on chasing down a retreating Sherman.
“Gunner--traverse right!” Ballard shouted. The turret spun and the 76-mm gun depressed, lined up on the rear of the big panzer. “Shoot the son of a bitch!”
The M4’s gun spat smoke and fire. The shell hit the Tiger near the rear of the turret, the AP round punching a neat hole in the armor. Abruptly the German’s hatch flew open to release a blistering gout of fire, as more flames spilled out the hole bored by the shell. No crewmen made it out of the big panzer.
Jones was still trying to get them out of there, skidding along a muddy track above the river, when a ringing explosion pounded through the hull. Smoke filled the turret and Ballard reacted by instinct and training, fueled by sheer panic. He pushed open the hatch over his head and tumbled out of the tank, slipping down the olive drab metal to sprawl in the muddy road. He looked up, vaguely aware that his tank was burning like a Roman candle. Machine guns chattered, and tufts of dirt flew up nearby. None of his crewmen were anywhere in sight.
And then he was running, blinking away tears of pain and smoke and profound, utter disbelief. A shell streaked past, ripping through the air with a shrill sound, and then the ground heaved and convulsed underfoot. Dirt and fire were everywhere, and Ballard felt himself to be weightless, tumbling, soaring in a strangely peaceful silence.
He was barely conscious as the waters of the Somme, surprisingly gentle and warm, closed over his head.
Excerpt from War’s Final Fury, by Professor Jared Gruenwald
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel once wrote, “In the age of mobile warfare, the battle is fought and decided by the quartermasters before the shooting begins.” This was a hard lesson for the Desert Fox to learn. In fact, it was a lesson he had decisively rejected only a few years previously, when he complained, “It has become the habit for quartermaster staffs to complain at every difficulty, instead of getting on with the job and using their powers of improvisation, which indeed are frequently nil.” But as tanker ships were sunk in the ostensibly safe harbor at Tobruk during the North African campaign, he learned that there was a part of his military machine on whose proper functioning all else depended.
Adolf Hitler had seen the future of modern warfare much earlier. From 1932 onward, even before his election as Chancellor, he had supported the synthetic fuels effort to convert Germany’s ample stocks of coal into the oil necessary to the war effort. He knew intimately how much fuel an aircraft needed, how much fuel a tank needed, and harangued his generals, often at great length.
Hitler appointed his personal architect, the famed Albert Speer, to run the mobilization of the synthetic fuels effort. By 1944, synthetic fuels were providing over half of the total fuel supply of Nazi Germany--and more than 90 percent of aviation gasoline! The extensive use of slave labor--going so far as to build one synthetic fuels site near Auschwitz for ease of staffing--was critical to the Nazi war machine.
Ultimately, both Hitler’s de
cision to invade the Soviet Union and the strictures he placed on his generals in that campaign involved the economic and military issues surrounding oil. And when his campaign against the Soviet Union did not go according to his plans, Germany was forced to turn back to its own resources: the synthetic fuels effort.
It was not until early 1944 that the Allied strategic bombing campaign began to focus systematically on the German synthetic fuels factories. From raids on the mammoth I. G. Farben plant at Leuna to the famous attacks on the oil installations at Ploesti, Allied strategic bombing raids began to make greater and greater inroads on Nazi production of synthetic fuels. By autumn, the Luftwaffe was operating on only about ten percent of what it needed. This could have been fatal not only to the German air defense initiatives, but also to the Me-262 jet fighter program, except for certain special steps that were taken in the nick of time.
The Kremlin, Moscow, Soviet Union, 1430 hours GMT
Chairman of the Soviet Union Josef Stalin was a surprisingly short man, Müller thought--but that awareness in no way diminished the Communist dictator’s fierce presence, nor Müller’s desire to be someplace, anyplace, else.
Instead, he was supposed to stand at attention with the other members of Ribbentrop’s embassy and put on a brave face. And maybe it’s a good thing we can do that--he’s not our enemy, anymore. Is he?
With one look at Stalin’s affable face, at his easy grin as he clapped Molotov on the back and made some joke that Müller couldn’t quite hear, the German colonel knew the answer. He will always be our enemy.
Müller had frequent nightmares about being trapped in combat, but after this taste of diplomacy, he was convinced that being shot at would be less stressful.
Ribbentrop’s breakdown had grown during the negotiations. Like many of the Nazi hierarchy, he was a patient of the infamous Dr. Theo Morrell, although, unlike Göring, the diplomat had not taken advantage of the liberal use of morphine. Baron Steengracht had wanted to send for Morrell, not trusting the Soviet doctors, but that was impossible. Bed rest, injections of sedatives--that was all the treatment available.
Steengracht and Reinhardt had between them divided up responsibility for the mission: Reinhardt transacted the business; Steengracht handled protocol. Reinhardt deferred to Steengracht respectfully in public; Steengracht didn’t interfere with Reinhardt as he negotiated with Molotov.
Müller was called in for a few sessions. Part of the negotiations involved the transfer of at least some of Germany’s missile technology to the Soviet Union. Müller was deeply shocked, even reluctant to share the information, even at Reinhardt’s urging. “We can’t give it away, Gunter! You don’t understand--if the Russians get hold of this, they’ll be able to dominate us forever!” It was unusual for him to quarrel with his friend, but Müller had been deeply impressed with Dr. Werner von Braun, the civilian scientist and engineer who ran the Peenemünde facility, and was totally convinced of the vital importance of the Vengeance Weapon technology--so convinced that he had accepted a commission in the SS in order to organize his slave labor force more effectively.
Reinhardt was patient and listened thoroughly. “Very well,” he said finally. “But you’ve explained to me that there is a V-2 that will shortly make the V-1 obsolete, correct?”
“Yes,” Müller replied. “Gunter, you should see it. The new rocket will fly well over two hundred miles with a warhead twice the size of the V-1! You see, it can operate at high altitudes--and you can’t even hear it coming because it travels faster than sound itself! And...”
Reinhardt laughed. “My friend,” he said, “I have never seen you with such enthusiasm. This is indeed a powerful weapon. And you’ve given the necessary answer, you see. We can share the secret of the first weapon and hold for ourselves the second weapon. By the time we need to give our new friends the second weapon, presumably Dr. von Braun will be working on the third. Does that seem fair to you?”
Müller thought for a long time. “I suppose it does...but Gunter, I truly hate to share any of this information. But I suppose that’s why I’m on this mission, right?”
“I believe that’s right. Only Minister von Ribbentrop knows for sure, and I’m afraid we won’t be able to confirm this with him. But it is the only thing that makes sense.”
When Müller actually had to make the presentation to Molotov, he found his knees trembling and an unnatural tightness clutching his chest. Still, he tried to present his facts in a coherent fashion, and as he warmed to his subject, he found himself enthusiastically selling the merits of the wonder weapon. Reinhardt observed later that it was his enthusiasm as much as the technical information itself that persuaded Molotov as to the value of the V-1. Müller wasn’t sure whether he should be proud or not.
And now, after another uncomfortable plane ride, he and his fellow Germans were in Moscow, in the very Kremlin itself. Müller felt in a truly alien land, the onion-shaped domes altering his sense of what was normal in architecture. It was only the second time he’d left Germany; as a teenager he’d taken the train to Florence once, and that had been almost too exotic for words. While his friends marveled at the treasures of the Uffizi and the architecture of the Duomo, he found the best food he’d ever eaten in his life.
Müller was in danger of sweating through his best dress uniform; protocol was never his favorite setting. He far preferred a friendly German biergarten; better yet, the cold cellar beneath a weinstube. Caviar and champagne he could live without, especially when it came at such a price. Not that he would turn down food and drink when Stalin offered; at least there was a little consolation for him. He daydreamed through the obligatory speeches; his eyes wandered to a large, ornate mirror, a relic of the tsars. The mirror reflected into another mirror and so on; from where he was standing he saw a multitude of von Reinhardts glistening in dress uniforms, all from different perspectives trailing off into infinity.
The deal was done. Steengracht signed for the Third Reich, Molotov for the Soviet Union. There were numerous concessions--not only Norway and Greece, but a demilitarized and defenseless Sweden, assistance in installing Communist governments in Rumania and Bulgaria, German withdrawal from much of Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia to establish a demilitarized buffer--and worst of all from Müller’s perspective, access to German rocket technology. He was afraid they’d given away the store, but Reinhardt was reassuring, in his fashion.
“As Hans von Seeckt said at the Rapallo Conference, ‘Whenever our policy in the west has run aground, it has always been wise to try something in the east.’ Truly,” he laughed, “it’s in some respects almost irrelevant whether this is a good deal or not for Germany. The odds are against us. To do nothing means to die. The best thing to do in such a circumstance is to throw the dice, and as the English playwright Shakespeare put it, ‘Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.’ Remember, Germany has a new führer, and the rest of the world needs to learn to fear him as they did Adolf Hitler. An outrageous and unexpected treaty, even if in some respects less than ideal, will upset numerous calculations, and that is always good. Confusion to our enemies!” He lifted his champagne glass.
“Confusion to our enemies!” Müller returned the toast.
The Somme, France, 1442 hours GMT
Pulaski was confused. He was riding in the back of the halftrack to get a better view, and he knew that Ballard had pushed ahead from the other side of the marsh--it was the only thing to do. But now he saw several Shermans coming toward him at high speed. Gunfire cracked and rumbled, and it sounded as though he was downrange of a good bit of the shooting.
“Where the hell is the general?” he muttered, frustrated. “Damn him anyway!” Sergeant Dawson, beside the colonel, raised an eyebrow and then quickly masked his expression behind his usually stoic facade.
Pulaski had good reason to be upset. General King had commandeered a jeep and driver from the CCA HQ company and had been racing up and down the column, exhorting his men to victory. But there was an awful lot o
f noise up ahead, a clear enough indication that Ballard had run into difficulty. And worrying about the location and safety of his division CO were two headaches that Pulaski could easily have done without.
“Keefer--get us up this little hill. I’ve gotta see what’s going on!”
The half-track rolled onto a very small elevation, merely a high spot in a slightly rolling field. Even with the naked eye Pulaski could see fires and smoke--obviously a number of tanks were burning. A quick check with binoculars confirmed his worst fear: they were Shermans.
A shell crackled overhead, and another round exploded a few hundred yards away. Tanks were coming toward Pulaski and the rest of CCA, and most of these tanks were flat and wide tracked. Panzers.
More explosions ripped across the field. There were M4s amid the German tanks, engaged in a running gun battle, but there was no question who was getting the best of it. One after another the American tanks blew up or veered away from the crossfire to seek cover in the woods and ravines along the river. Nearby, Dennis White’s infantry were advancing, but the dogfaces went to ground as shots whistled overhead.
Dawson had the radio powered and passed the handset to Pulaski as soon as the colonel realized he needed it.
“Lorri?” he called, urgency driving him to talk in the clear as he ordered rapid fire. “I need some arty support, right now! HE quick-charge fire!”
“Gotcha, Colonel. My Priests are just getting off that Roman road... I’ll be set up to fire in a minute.”
“Colonel--there he is,” Dawson said curtly as Pulaski broke the connection. The sergeant, his face a blank mask, pointed across the field.
Fox On The Rhine Page 24