This Fog of Peace (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 4)

by William Peter Grasso

  With the artillery barrage finished, Tommy vectored the jugs to attack the guns on the road. He could feel the revulsion building in his stomach: so many of the German columns he’d attacked back in the war were full of horse-drawn artillery and wagons. Killing men was difficult enough, even those who were trying to kill you. But killing the animals imposed another kind of burden: it seemed like a slaughter of the innocents.

  But then he saw something that revulsed him even more: Some of those wagons aren’t Russian at all. They’re civilian. Those fucking Ivans mixed refugees in with their column like human shields. I can see women…kids, too. Some of these farmers around here must be running from this fight, and the Ivans are taking advantage of it.

  He knew all too well there was no way a pilot could distinguish civilians mixed in with military targets. He would inadvertently attack them both. The dynamics of bombing and strafing made it impossible to avoid…

  And it would be a slaughter of the innocents several times over.

  “Abort. Repeat, abort,” he told the jugs. “Stand by for further instructions.”

  “What’s the deal?” the jug leader asked. “I can see them pretty good now. It’ll be a turkey shoot.”

  “Negative, negative. Abort. I say again, abort. Civilians in the column. Do not engage.”

  “Okay…roger,” the jug leader replied. There seemed to be a hint of appreciation in his voice.

  Maybe he’s done his share of slaughtering the innocents, too, Tommy told himself.

  Another pilot was on the radio now, the flight leader of the P-51s flying top cover. “Take your time, guys,” he said. “Looks like the Ivan flyboys are still stuck on the ground. Weather didn’t break for them yet.”

  Carpenter said, “He sounds a little disappointed, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” Tommy replied. “All the Russian airfields are north or east of here. The overcast won’t clear for them for a while yet.”

  “How come you guys won’t even take off in overcast?” Carpenter asked.

  “Taking off’s not the problem,” Tommy replied, “it’s finding the place when you need to land. If we have to abort while the field’s still socked in, we’re screwed.”

  Carpenter’s tanks shot up several more T-34s. Like on Sean’s flank, only a few had tried to back out of their positions. Those that did were promptly hit in their sides when they attempted to pivot. One brewed up to a raging inferno in seconds. The rest just stopped dead.

  On both sides of the highway, it had all the makings of a turkey shoot. The T-34s would be knocked out quickly. It was just a question of how fast the Shermans could maneuver and reload to finish them all off.

  But Tommy was the first to see the signs of growing trouble: a long, low dust cloud moving rapidly from the north over open, rolling terrain toward the Americans. Its source was still concealed within a dip of the terrain, but even a raw rookie would know it had to be more tanks coming. He told Carpenter, “You’d better have a look, quick.”

  “Ah, shit. How far out you make them, Tommy?”

  “Two thousand yards and closing fast.”

  “Did you get a look at what type they are?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “We’ve got to slow them down,” Carpenter said. Turning to the artillery FO, he asked, “Are the big guns from Division in a position to help?”

  “Negative, sir. Too far out.”

  “Dammit. Those one-oh-five howitzers we’ve got won’t hold them up a bit, no matter what type they are. Can the jugs hit them, Tommy?”

  “If they can see them, they can hit them. Give me a second…”

  Just then, the advancing tanks appeared atop a rise, one of several pieces of high ground between them and the Americans. They were IS-2s, heavy Soviet tanks with a powerful, tank-killing 122-mm main gun. There were at least eight of them.

  “Shit,” Carpenter said. “They’re probably the same ones who took those potshots at us while we were still on the highway. I was wondering where the hell they went.”

  He did the math quickly in his head: the textbook solution was that he’d lose roughly six Shermans for every IS-2 his tanks killed. That added up to over half his battalion’s tanks being knocked out if he tried to defeat them all in a head-to-head fight…

  If he was lucky.

  Tommy got off the radio with the jug leader. “They think they’ve got a target line,” he told Carpenter. “They can see some of that dust cloud. That’s going to be a big help.”

  “Yeah, it’d better,” Carpenter replied, “or our pincers are going to get pincered between two lines of Ivan armor.”

  Sean was on the radio now, too. He’d seen the approaching tanks. “I’m leaving two platoons to hold the T-34s in place and pulling the rest back so we’ll be hull-down on this low ground behind us,” he said. “We’ll turn around to face the IS-2s so when they pop over the rise we’ll get a shot at their bellies, at least. Their armor’s not that thick down there, I hear.”

  “Good idea,” Carpenter replied. “Be advised the jugs will engage shortly.”

  “That’s music to my ears. How many IS-2s do you count?”

  When Carpenter told him, “Eight,” Sean replied, “Shit. That’s about six too many.”

  The jug leader had one more request for Tommy. “Give me the map elevation of the highest point around here. Baro pressure, too, if you’ve got it. When we pop below this scud, I don’t want to be looking up at the ground.”

  While Tommy provided that information, Carpenter told the FO, “Keep an eye on the animal parade up the road. All we need is for those guns to start shooting at us, too.”

  As Sean was deeply involved in turning six of his platoons to face the advancing Russians, the command radio squawked again. Messiah had another urgent message for the 37th: now they were being ordered to withdraw.

  “Tell ’em we can’t at the moment,” Sean said.

  Messiah’s reply: “Why not?”

  “Just ignore them for now,” Sean told the TC. “We’re too fucking busy to chat. They can read all about it later in the papers.”

  Then they watched as the first P-47 dropped beneath the low, broken cloud deck half a mile behind the line of IS-2s. In quick succession, more jugs popped into view, forming a wide, ragged diamond. Individual ships sideslipped left or right to align with a target. As they closed to within a few hundred yards, the lead jugs opened fire with armor-piercing rounds from their .50-caliber machine guns, aiming for the thinner rear armor of the engine compartments and fuel tanks. There was only time for short bursts; they streaked low over the Russians and then past the line of hull-down Shermans.

  The trailing jugs stayed a little higher, teasing the cloud base. As they approached the Russians, each released five-hundred-pound bombs from their wings. Then they, too, vanished back into the clouds.

  The line of IS-2s staggered to a halt in the swirling dust and smoke of the bomb blasts. There appeared to be no direct hits, but one of the tanks was spewing thick gray smoke. Two had come to rest in half-turns, involuntary pivots due to track damage. Those pivots exposed their vulnerable flanks to the Shermans.

  Though stopped, the IS-2s were close enough that their main guns could engage the Shermans with little to fear from return fire.

  But they didn’t shoot. They didn’t move.

  And then a second group of jugs popped below the clouds.

  Stationary targets are easier to hit than moving ones. Bombs impacted close enough to two tanks that the force of the explosions shoved them sideways, peeling tracks off their sprockets.

  Only one tank appeared able to move. It backed up, pivoted, and made off toward the concealment of a nearby woods.

  The crews of the other tanks abandoned their vehicles and started running for the woods, too.

  Sean smacked his forehead in frustration. “Shit! It’s the same fucking story,” he said. “They’re just like the fucking Krauts. As soon as a plane shows up, they bail out and try to get as far away fro
m their tank as they can. But Zippos don’t scare ’em in the least. Son of a bitch!”

  This skirmish done, he got on the radio and told Carpenter about the withdrawal order from Messiah.

  “We’re not going anywhere until we finish with these T-34s,” Carpenter replied. “Otherwise, they’re looking down their barrels at us as we drive away.”

  “Suits me,” Sean said. “Give me a minute to reposition my guys.”

  But as he crested the rise behind the T-34s, he told his driver to stop. Picking up the microphone again, he told Carpenter, “I got a couple of Ivans walking toward me waving a big white flag. What do you want me to do?”

  Carpenter replied, “Everybody pick a target but hold fire. Then hear them out.”

  No sooner had he said that, several Russians began to approach his tank with a white flag, too.

  “Meet me on the highway,” Carpenter told Sean. “You with your surrender party, me with mine. Let’s get their story in one shot. They’d better have a translator with them, because we sure as hell don’t.”

  “Hang on,” Sean said. “I think I recognize one of these Ivans. Might’ve had a few words with him back in Pisek. He’s some hot shit top sergeant.”

  Carpenter replied, “A hot shit top sergeant, eh? Just like you?”

  “Damn right. But I got an idea. If they ain’t got a translator, ain’t Skolnicki one of your guys?”

  “Yeah, his Zippo’s here in my element. What’s his deal?”

  “He speaks good Polish. That’s how we managed to talk with that Ivan the last time. ”

  The Russians came with no translator. They stood in the middle of the road, white flags flying, with Sean’s tank on one side and Carpenter’s on the other. A third Sherman pulled up. The bow gunner—Private Skolnicki—jumped out of his hatch and joined the meeting.

  The Russian top sergeant—Starshina Pervitsky—was the spokesman.

  Skolnicki provided the translation: “Their colonel has ordered them to withdraw. Not a fighting withdrawal, he says. They just want to pack up and go away.”

  Sean had to laugh. “Ain’t that rich?” he said. “Now they just wanna get lost. What do we do, sir?”

  “I know what I’d like to do,” Carpenter replied, “but we’d better check with Messiah. These withdrawal orders all of a sudden are making me a little suspicious that there’s something going on we don’t know about.”

  As Sean climbed back into the turret to use the command radio, Carpenter added, “Just make sure they know we’ve got the upper hand here.”

  He was only in the turret for a minute. When he popped back out, Carpenter read the expression of disappointment on his face perfectly. “They said let them go, didn’t they?”

  “Affirmative, Captain.”

  Starshina Pervitsky had something else to say. Skolnicki’s translation: “He says there’s no point in us slaughtering each other anymore.”

  Sean laughed again. “Are you sure that’s what he said…slaughtering each other? That ain’t the way I saw it. Looked a little one-sided to me.”

  “Swear to God, that’s what he said,” Skolnicki replied.

  It took a few minutes for Carpenter to spell out how this withdrawal was going to work: the Americans would pull back to the flanks of the Russian position and hold there until the Russian vehicles had left the area. Then the Americans would take to the highway, too, but in the opposite direction.

  Carpenter told Skolnicki, “Make sure this Ivan understands that our aircraft will remain overhead, keeping an eye on everything they do. And the longer they take to get going, the more those clouds will clear out and the better those planes will see them.”

  Pervitsky nodded solemnly when he heard it in Polish. He started to walk away, but stopped and looked back at Sean, crouched on the deck of his tank. Then he said something, which Skolnicki translated like this:

  “We’ll meet again, no doubt, Master Sergeant Moon.”

  “Tell him I’m looking forward to it,” Sean replied.

  The Americans pulled back. Then they watched as the T-34s abandoned their positions and pivoted toward the highway. No one was sure who started it, but a raucous, mutual display of rude gestures and catcalls accompanied the Russian withdrawal. It lasted until the first T-34, after having traveled only a few hundred yards, bucked and lurched to a stop, its engine coughing until going silent. Her crew climbed out and clambered onto the deck of another tank as it passed by.

  The Russians fell silent. The GIs laughed uproariously.

  “I told you,” Sean said. “They ain’t got no gas in them tanks. We coulda turned ’em inside out in our sleep.”

  As they tried to take the highway, a few more T-34s shuddered to a stop, their crews abandoning them, too. By the time a column had formed on the highway, some fifteen tanks—a third of the number that were still able to drive out of the position—had dropped out, their engines silent and out of fuel.

  “We missed ourselves one hell of a golden opportunity here,” Carpenter said. “Can’t wait to hear why.”

  As 37th Tank began its own withdrawal, Sean called his brother on the radio, asking, “Are the jugs gonna shoot up them hulks they left behind? Seems only right, you know?”

  “Negative,” Tommy replied. “They’ve got to cover us now. Better they have some rounds left to do it.”

  Sean glanced skyward and noticed the sky was clearing rapidly. I hear you, brother, he told himself. We might be getting some Reds in the sky, too, before we know it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Most of the drive south proved quiet for 37th Tank. Some GIs might have described it as boring, if they hadn’t still been so keyed up from the fight just an hour ago. It was reassuring, at least, to look up in the sky and see the sun reflecting off the friendly aircraft orbiting overhead, knowing those gleaming ships were still keeping watch over them.

  But that changed quickly when they reached where the detention camp for Soviet prisoners was supposed to be. Despite the loud rumble of their vehicle engines, the tankers could sense its unearthly quiet. From a hundred yards away, they knew they were beholding a place of violent and wholesale death.

  Hardly any of the holding pens had been constructed. Bales of barbed wire were still piled on the ground alongside stacks of tall wooden poles. Tools for digging and cutting were strewn everywhere. A few jeeps stood forlorn and useless, their tires flattened and thin metal bodies punctured and distorted by countless bullet holes.

  The SS men from Patton’s labor battalion were lying on the ground, lined up in several long, ragged ranks as if on a parade field. Some had been riddled with bullets. Most had just one neat hole in the back of their heads.

  There hadn’t been a fight here, just a mass execution.

  In a far corner of the field, the GIs found the American MPs, their bodies contorted in various postures of death. One man was still alive, though badly wounded and barely conscious. He sat on the ground with his back against the wheel of a jeep. Medics quickly went to work on bandaging his wounds.

  Yards from the MPs, they found the body of Major Lowe. He’d been shot in the back.

  “Looks like he was trying to run away,” Sean said. “Poor bastard.”

  Securing the area with a cordon of tanks, GIs prepared to fan out and check each body on the slim hope a few might actually be alive. Sean gave them a warning before they began: “Don’t move the bodies. They could be booby-trapped. Wouldn’t be the first time some bastard left a grenade with the pin pulled under a corpse. Some dummy moves that stiff, the handle flies off, and we lose more guys for nothing. So keep your heads out of your asses. If one of them Krauts looks like he’s still breathing, call for help.”

  It was all for nothing, though. Nobody in that killing field was alive.

  They discovered two bodies among the Germans dressed in civilian clothes. Sean recognized one of them immediately. “It’s that pain in the ass news guy…Pearson, I think his name was. What the fuck was he doing out here?”
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  His voice hoarse and barely above a whisper, the wounded MP began to provide some answers. “The Russians…they came out of the woods,” he said. “Must’ve been a whole company of them. We tried to fight them off, but it was hopeless...they had the drop on us. I got hit and played dead…they were more interested in the Krauts, anyway. While they were lining them up like they were going to march them off somewhere, that stupid reporter started taking pictures. That did it…they just gunned everybody down then.”

  “What about the vehicles?” Sean asked. “There were a bunch of deuces here earlier today. More jeeps, too. Where’d they all go?”

  “The Ivans took them,” the MP replied. “The tents, too. Rolled them up, threw them in a deuce and took off.”

  “Did you see which way they went?”

  The MP pointed east with an unsteady hand.

  “That’s why we never ran into them,” Captain Carpenter said. “They knew enough not to come north.”

  “You’re damn right, sir,” Sean replied, “but this shit never woulda happened if the rest of the Division was on our tail like they were supposed to be. Somebody shit in our mess kits, big time…and I ain’t talking about them Russian bastards, neither.”

  They didn’t find out about the Soviet threat in Berlin until they returned to Pisek just after 1300, some seven hours after they’d set off on Operation Curveball. As sobering as that news was, there was more than a hint of collective relief among the men of 37th Tank. Sean Moon expressed it this way:

  “That’s a lot of fucking heavy metal the Reds moved back into Berlin all of a sudden. If we kept pushing north, we woulda got creamed. Of course, the way our ass was hanging out, we coulda got creamed just about anywhere.”

  Then he spoke for every GI once more as he asked, “All these fucking tanks they got in Berlin now? Where the hell’d they get the gas? These clowns we just mixed it up with didn’t have much of it.”

  There wasn’t an officer in the CP who could answer that question.