“I’m relieving you of this command immediately, Lieutenant,” Vreeland said. “I’ll take charge of this operation myself.” Then he told Waldner’s radio operator, “You’re coming with me.”
Vreeland walked to the center of the perimeter, found the sergeant leading the platoon emplaced there, and ordered that sergeant to have his platoon follow him. Reluctantly, the man obeyed. As they advanced, the major told the RTO to order the rest of the company’s platoons to do the same.
Waldner tagged along behind, trying to explain to his bewildered troopers what was going on. He cautioned the major, “Those walkie-talkies are only good for about a mile, sir. Usually less. We’ll be out of range of the guys back across the river real soon, if we’re not already.”
Vreeland scoffed and then strode ahead into a thicket.
The next thing Waldner and his men heard was the major shrieking, “HALT! HANDS UP!”
“Oh, what the hell?” Waldner said. Then he ran into the thicket after the major.
Struggling through the brambles, he came upon a bewildering scene. Vreeland had his carbine leveled at a group of six Russian soldiers, who were not raising their hands. The looks on their faces were a mixture of amusement and uncertainty. All still had their weapons slung over their shoulders.
If anything, Waldner thought, we just stumbled into a bunch of Ivans goofing off.
Vreeland kept shouting at them—still in English—to raise their hands.
Not understanding a word, the Russians’ amusement was winning out over uncertainty now.
Then one made the mistake of grabbing the strap of his shouldered rifle. It could’ve been no more than an attempt to make its carriage more comfortable.
Major Vreeland experienced a moment of perception common to people under extreme stress. In that moment, what you saw may or may not be what was actually happening.
What you remembered of it afterwards could be something different still.
All he saw in those six smirking faces—and that hand on the strap—was a threat.
He fired his carbine three times, putting two bullets into the Russian soldier’s chest.
Lieutenant Waldner pulled the major back through the thicket by the straps of his web gear. They’d vanished into the vegetation before the Russians—now numbering only five—began to return fire.
A smattering of GIs fired, too. Some were combat veterans who knew that a curtain of fire was useful for keeping enemy heads down. The others were raw rookies firing out of sheer panic. None of those firing, though, had any idea what they were targeting.
The rest of the confused GIs, in typical fashion, did nothing more than try to make themselves the smallest targets possible.
As Major Vreeland scurried on hands and knees away from the fight as fast as he could, Waldner took back control of his company, ordering two squads forward to envelop the Russian position.
Gunfire became sporadic and then stopped altogether. The fight had taken less than thirty seconds. The Russians had fled, trying at first to drag their badly wounded comrade with them. But after a few yards, they gave up and left him behind. Before the GIs could get him to a medic, he was dead. The other Ivans had vanished into the woods.
When the lieutenant found Major Vreeland, he was on the riverbank, babbling about imminent threat and bleeding from a superficial wound to his cheek. In the adrenaline rush of terror, he hadn’t realized he’d been hit.
Sean and Captain Carpenter heard the shooting across the river even over the furious racket of Bailey Bridges being constructed. Their men were braced and ready for an impending attack.
But it never came.
Listening to Lieutenant Waldner’s radio report, they immediately agreed what the reply should be.
“Hold your position,” Sean told Waldner. “Send both the stretcher cases back across ASAP.”
Chapter Fourteen
One hour and forty-three minutes after construction of the two Bailey Bridges began, the first vehicles—two Shermans—rolled across them. The team of SS men who’d built the Baileys proudly proclaimed to Captain Carpenter that they’d met the time standard General Patton had promised to reward with an issuance of weapons. Carpenter, who’d been the official timekeeper for the event, shook his head. “You’re not even close,” he told the German team leader. “You predicted one hour and twenty minutes. It took you twenty-three minutes longer. Sorry, but you didn’t win anything.”
The Germans began to quibble what the actual starting time for the construction had been, claiming Carpenter had started the clock early, when the trucks pulled up to the bridgehead.
“No,” he replied, “but that’s what I should’ve done. I gave you a break and didn’t start it until you hauled that first piece off one of the trucks. You still didn’t make it.”
The discussion became heated quickly. “We don’t need a bullshit distraction like this, sir,” Sean reminded Carpenter. “We gotta get moving.”
The captain agreed. He detailed an infantry platoon to corral the Germans, at gunpoint if necessary.
“Get them loaded on the trucks,” Carpenter told the infantry platoon sergeant. “It’ll be up to Colonel Abe whether they come with us or we send them back to the stockade at Klatovy.”
Sean climbed aboard a Sherman and headed across the river. Crossing the Baileys one at a time so as not to overload them, it took almost ten minutes for an entire company of the thirty-five-ton tanks to assemble on the far bank. Once they had, he started them moving toward the Vltava River to complete the encirclement of Pisek. The rest of Baker Team’s tanks, trucks, and half-tracks kept coming across the bridges to join the march.
The road was a shallow but steady uphill climb, slowing the column as the Shermans and heavier trucks needed to use low gear. Heavy woods often blocked any observation of what lay ahead. Cresting an interim peak, Sean brought the column to an abrupt halt. On the commanding ridge ahead, he was sure he could just make out a nest of gun positions, either howitzers or large-caliber anti-tank weapons.
“Get the flyboys on the horn,” he told the tank commander—the TC—a young buck sergeant recently promoted to the job. “We’re gonna need their help one way or another.”
The reply made Sean see red: “I don’t know the frequency, Sarge.”
Dropping into the turret, he elbowed the TC out of the way, pulled his notebook and a grease pencil from his pocket, and began to write every command frequency the tankers should’ve known on the turret wall. As he wrote, he fumed to himself: Did this damn Army unravel that much in just a couple of months? This guy might have been a decent gunner once, but he ain’t figured out how to run a tank crew yet. This demobilization is gonna ruin us. Maybe even get us all killed.
Out loud, he said, “Didn’t they teach you mutts a damn thing back in armor school? What’re the three things a tank’s gotta be able to do?”
The TC—plus the two other crewmen in the turret—mumbled the reply they’d learned by rote: “Shoot, move, and communicate, Sergeant.”
“Gee, that wasn’t so hard, was it? But how the hell can you numbnutzes communicate if you don’t have the fucking frequencies posted where everyone can see them? There ain’t no telling who’s gonna be left to man this radio once the shit starts to fly. I’ll bet none of you sorry sons of bitches even got a grease pencil on you.”
Their embarrassed silence was all the answer he needed.
As he dialed up the frequency himself, Sean said, “If this was back in the real war, we’d be dead already.” Pointing to the TC, he added, “Now call the damn flyboys.”
Climbing from the turret, he turned to other matters. Foremost on his mind: Where’d the lieutenant who’s supposed to be commanding this company get lost to, anyway? And what the hell happened to the artillery FO? Ain’t he supposed to be up front in this parade?
From his perch on the turret roof, he looked back down the road. All he could see was the long column of tanks, idling lazily on the upslope in what looked like a
tunnel made of trees. There were no officers rushing to the head of the column to direct the action.
Well, I’ll tell you what…until someone with some shiny metal on his collar shows his face, I’m in fucking charge around here.
He stuck his head back into the turret and asked, “How’s it going with the air support?”
“They want to know our exact location,” the TC replied. “We gave them the map coordinates but—”
Sean felt like smacking his own head with the palm of his hand. Or better yet, how about I smack that dummy’s head instead?
“How fucking green are you guys, anyway?” he said. “They ain’t got no navigators or bombardiers on fighter-bombers. Coordinates don’t mean shit to them because there ain’t no grid lines painted on the ground for them to see. They need visual references…ones they can actually make out from the air. So where the hell are they?”
“They say they’re a couple of miles west of the river.”
“Which fucking river, numbnuts? We’re in between two of them, remember?”
Sean was beginning to wonder why he’d bothered having his operations section annotate the two rivers’ names in extra-large bold letters on every map they’d distributed. But now he understood why it hadn’t made any difference: These greenhorns don’t know what’s important and what’s not unless you smack ’em in the head with it.
And nobody in this crew had been smacked in the head, apparently.
“Give me the headset,” he told the TC, who seemed relieved to hand it over.
Sean broadcast the general call for air support: “Toledo, Toledo, this is Backstop One-Four, over.”
The voice that replied sounded very familiar, even through the harshly filtered audio of military radios. That voice said, “Backstop One-Four, this is Butternut Leader.” Then he said something that baffled everyone but Sean: “Just wondering…is there a Brooklyn moon out today?”
“Affirmative, and it’s looking for Maggie and Paddy’s baby boy.”
“Then I guess you found him, big brother,” Tommy Moon replied from the cockpit of Eclipse of the Hun IV. He’d managed to recognize his brother’s voice from the very first, too.
Like the old hand he was, Sean got down to the business of guiding Tommy’s flight toward Baker Team. He said, “From Pisek, four miles on heading one-zero-zero. We’ll be the red smoke.”
“Roger. Be there in two minutes.”
Sean told the TC to climb out of the turret. On the rear deck, he took four red smoke grenades from an ammo can stored there and handed them to the buck sergeant. “Get one of your guys to go six tanks down the line,” Sean told him, “and as soon as he hears the planes over the racket of all these Zippos, have him pop these grenades all at once.”
“But Sarge, won’t all that smoke give us away to those Ivans on the next ridge?”
“We’re downwind from them on a downslope, pal. They won’t see much of anything. Besides, if they got halfway good ears, they heard us coming already. This ain’t your first dance, is it?”
“No, I’ve got a couple of combat stars.”
“Then you shoulda known that already.”
Sean figured Tommy would approach their location high, and he was right. Three silvery jugs in a vee formation overflew Baker Team’s column from back to front at 5,000 feet. Then they began a gently descending orbit centered on the red smoke.
“We’re driving perpendicular to a series of washboard ridges,” Sean told his brother. “The bad guys are on the next ridge to the northeast.”
Sean knew Tommy’s flight was probably still too high to make out the ridges clearly. He understood how the Earth’s features tended to flatten the higher above them you were. He wasn’t surprised when Tommy led the flight to the north for a better perspective and then reversed direction to buzz the ridge held by the Russians at treetop height.
“Can’t see the guns for the trees,” Tommy radioed, “but they’re real sloppy about hiding their trucks. Anybody expended any ordnance yet?”
“Negative,” Sean replied.
“Are we ready for some fireworks?” Tommy asked.
Sean knew what his brother was asking: did imminent threat conditions exist for Baker Team? “Affirmative,” he replied.
“Roger,” Tommy said. “I’m going to put a shot across their bow. Let’s see what they do.”
Butternut Flight circled around for another pass, this time from the opposite direction. On this pass, the lead ship—Tommy’s aircraft—hugged the treetops while the other two ships trailed high above him.
Coming to the Russian position, Eclipse’s guns raked the ground behind their truck park with two short bursts. As far as he could tell, there were no personnel in that area. He intentionally missed the vehicles by a wide margin.
“Okay,” Tommy said, “let’s see if that motivates them.”
He led his jugs up to 2,000 feet; they orbited abeam of the Russian guns.
A single Sherman rumbled up the road to the head of Baker Team’s column. Standing in its turret hatch was Captain Carpenter, who jumped over to Sean’s tank once the two were abreast.
“Nice you could make it to the party, sir,” Sean told him. “We’re fixing to have ourselves a little shoving match here any second.”
He filled in the captain on what had transpired so far. Carpenter nodded with satisfaction. “Sounds like you’ve got it under control, Sergeant. So what’s the next move?”
“Depends on what my brother tells me…should be any second now, sir. How’d things go with the Krauts?”
Carpenter replied, “That’s one hell of a long, fucked-up story. I’ll fill you in on the rest later….but just be aware that the deuces full of pissed-off Krauts are at the end of our column. That’s what Colonel Abe wanted.”
“What about Major Vreeland?”
“I think he’s ready for a Section Eight,” Carpenter replied. “We evacuated him back to Klatovy.”
The radio came alive with Tommy’s voice. “We’ve got movement. The trucks have pulled into the tree line.”
Sean told Carpenter, “Let’s take a bet. Are they hooking up the guns to skedaddle? Or are they just trying to get those trucks behind some kind of cover?”
“If it’s the second option,” Carpenter replied, “I’d say they’re digging in for a fight.”
“Yep,” Sean replied. “Sounds like imminent threat to me, sir.”
“I agree, Sergeant.”
Tommy’s voice again: “Okay, I see no further movement, so enough with the chin music. I’m going for the bean ball, if that’s okay with you.”
Sean and Carpenter exchanged affirming nods.
“That’s a roger on the bean ball,” Sean transmitted.
The ships of Butternut Flight peeled from the orbit into single file and, with Tommy’s ship in the lead, bore down on the Russian guns. On this pass, they wouldn’t be dispensing a shot across the bow.
As Tommy watched the target area fill his gunsight, a moment of doubt coursed through his head. After the shit I took for losing Bobby Lescault, the brass sure as hell better mean what they say about sticking it to the Russians.
But today, I’m not doing it for God and country.
I’m doing it for my brother.
Then he saw the first truck emerge from the tree line on top of the ridge. It was pulling a big gun of some sort.
“ABORT, ABORT,” Tommy called. “We’ve got movement. Stand by…looks like they’re pulling out.”
A big smile crossed Sean’s face. He told Carpenter, “Son of a bitch, sir…little brother did the deed. Let’s get this circus rolling.”
Baker Team rolled over the ridge the Russians had just abandoned and pressed on to the Vltava River. “We should be there in less than an hour,” Sean said, “as long as there are no more holdups.”
He could still see the three jugs of his brother’s flight, ahead and high above, shimmering with the reflected light of the mid-afternoon sun as they provided recon and protection
for his column.
There had been four Russian guns, their prime movers, and a few smaller vehicles on that ridge. Tommy had provided that count as he watched them speed away. What type of guns, he couldn’t tell from the air.
But at least one of them was an anti-tank gun, a long-barreled 57 mm. Sean’s lead tank had come upon that weapon—and the American-built three-quarter-ton truck pulling it—abandoned on the side of the road. A quick check of the fuel tank told the GIs that the truck was out of gas.
“Should we take it, sir?” Sean asked Captain Carpenter.
“Why not? Throw in a jerry can or two and put her in the line. You ever fire one of those things?”
“No, sir. Had a couple of ’em pointed at me a few times before today, though. Let’s stick her in the back of the column. Maybe the Krauts are checked out on it if push comes to shove.”
Tommy’s tense voice boomed from the radio. “Backstop One-Four, this is Butternut Leader. You’ve got hostile aircraft coming your way. Go for cover, we’ll try to head them off.”
He’d kept his flight high—at 8,000 feet—for a reason: We’re low enough to be down on the deck real quick to protect Sean’s boys if need be…and high enough not to get jumped ourselves.
They were still down a plane from the loss of Bobby Lescault. There were no floater pilots or aircraft to go around; with this new attempt to step on Soviet toes in full swing, all squadrons were at maximum effort. If more Russian aircraft showed up than they could handle, there was a squadron of P-51s on air defense duty in the general area, patrolling high at 18,000 feet, that could be called on to help.
This Fog of Peace (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 4) Page 14