That was the name being murmured through the throng of onlookers.
Much to the crowd’s delight, Sylvie viciously kicked the fat man in his side, digging the toe of her oxfords deep below his ribs.
Tommy realized the crowd was with her now, not the man writhing on the ground.
“Take this woman and her child home,” she told a woman who was already helping the victim to her feet. Then Sylvie addressed the crowd: “If any harm comes to this woman or her child, the real maquis—not this tondeur, this slob of an imposter—will mete out justice ten-fold. On that, you have my word.”
A man’s voice called out, “We have only her word that the father is French. It’s more likely she’s a collaborateur horizontale. For that, she must pay.”
“That’s not for you—any of you—to decide. Her word is as good—no, better—than any of yours. Now take her home. Don’t make me say it again.”
Several women led the victim and her infant away, forming a protective ring around them.
The fat man bleated, “You’re making a big mistake, Truffaut.”
“Shut up. The only person who made a mistake is you, pretending to be maquis when you were one of the biggest collaborators in Nancy.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Oh, is it? We know you bent over backward to supply them with wine, spirits, fancy accommodations…and anything else they wanted in that hotel of yours.”
“I had no choice! Everything I had was commandeered!”
“You don’t get rewarded if your property is commandeered, fatso. You look like you ate very well, while the rest of the city starved on bare rations for four long years.”
Now the crowd was clamoring for his blood. Sylvie picked up the shears from the pavement. Then, grabbing his hair, she jerked his head upright and said, “I wonder how you’d look with your hair shorn, fatso?”
The crowd thought it was a great idea.
“You’re lucky I don’t have the time right now,” she said. Pressing the tip of the shears against his groin, she added, “But if I hear of you pretending to be maquis ever again, I’ll put these shears to good use. But for now…”
She ripped the black beret from his head and sliced it into tiny swatches, letting each one float down onto the fat man. When she was done, she stuffed the shears in her musette bag and stormed off down the street, dragging a stunned Tommy with her.
He kept looking over his shoulder as she pulled him along by the arm. He couldn’t quite believe what had just happened in the now-empty street.
“What the hell was that all about, Syl?”
“I’m sure you have a very good idea what it was about, Tommy.” She sounded like she very much wanted the issue closed, with no further discussion.
“No, really…what was going on there? Was it just because that guy was pretending to be maquis?”
She stopped short and turned to face him. He’d seen fire in her eyes before but never like this.
“That was part of it. I should have cut his balls off for that alone. But mostly, she was being punished simply for being a woman. That seems to be the French way now. As far as de Gaulle is concerned, no matter what we did for France, we are now all—”
“Yeah, I know—whores and typists.”
“Exactly. It’s nice to know you’ve actually been paying attention to what I say.”
Her tone softened as she asked, “Are you upset with me, Tommy?”
“No. I’m kind of in awe of you at the moment.”
“Good,” she replied, a satisfied smile coming over her face. “Now let’s hurry. We’re already late for lunch at Paulette’s…and it’s going to start raining again any moment.”
Chapter Eight
Captain Newcomb opened the evening’s briefing with an interesting piece of news. “According to Division,” he said, “the bulk of Third Army is now advancing faster than the Germans can pull back. We stand a pretty good chance of encircling the First and Seventh German Armies before we even make it to the Rhine. The G3 has dubbed it The Decimation of the Saar-Palatinate Triangle.”
Sean Moon spit his mouthful of coffee on the ground in disgust. “With all due respect, Captain, but decimation, my ass. How many times have we encircled and destroyed the Kraut Seventh Army now? I make it three—at Falaise, the Ardennes, and now here in these fucking mountains.”
“We’ve had this discussion before, Sergeant,” Newcomb replied. “Nobody’s getting resurrected. Same unit name but different troopers. And it looks like the quality of those troopers has taken a big plunge, if you ask me.”
No man in 37th Tank could argue with that assessment. Just a few hours ago, they’d taken the surrender of several battalions of infantry which appeared to be composed almost entirely of rear-echelon soldiers and barely capable militiamen of the Volksturm. It had taken all of fifteen minutes to trap them in a poorly prepared position with a lightning-fast double envelopment maneuver that sealed any possible escape route.
It was almost as if those Germans had wanted to be captured. And it had all been done at negligible cost: one GI slightly wounded; no vehicles damaged.
“Without air support, neither,” Sean reminded everyone. “Next time I see my brother, I’m definitely kicking his ass. We don’t get to fight no fair weather war like them flyboys.”
Tired of the grumbling, Newcomb said, “All right, all right. At ease, everyone. Let’s talk about the ops order we’re going to start executing tomorrow. Fourth Armored’s objective is the town of Bad Kreuznach. It’s about thirty miles shy of Worms and the biggest town we’re going to hit until then. It’s one of those pretty resort towns full of those health spas the Krauts seem to like so damn much. I guess that’s why they have so many of them in this part of the country. But if they decide to fight for the town, we’re not going to go house-to-house with them. We’ll bypass and isolate it. To paraphrase General Patton, The secret of our success is we keep moving as fast as we can. Stopping to regroup like our other armies seem to be so fond of is the curse of warfare.”
A murmur of approval rose from the assembled tankers.
“Damn right,” Sean offered. “When your enemy’s down, don’t let him get back up. Kick him in the balls instead. We’ll get this over with a hell of a lot faster that way.”
“I’m glad you agree, Sergeant Moon,” Newcomb said. “Now here’s some good news: Thirty-Seventh Tank will not—I repeat, will not—be the lead unit in Fourth Armored’s column.”
A cheer went up from the tankers. But it stopped abruptly as memories came flooding back of all the times good news had been offered up first to soften the blow of the bad news on its heels.
Newcomb sensed his men’s suspicions immediately. “No, really,” he said. “I’m not going to shit in your mess kits. I’m giving it to you straight up—we’ll be third battalion in the column. No bullshit attached.”
It wasn’t like being third in line would exempt them from combat, and every tanker knew it. They probably just wouldn’t be the ones getting hit with that first killer shot out of nowhere. But they’d be in the ensuing fight one way or the other. They could bet their lives on that—and they would be.
It brought a certain comfort, though, to know they wouldn’t be the tip of the spear tomorrow. They’d spent more than their share of time as point for the division, and they liked to think this was the reason why:
That’s what happens when you perform just a little better than the other outfits. The brass come to depend on you…maybe a little too much.
Once you’re a star, though…
But they also knew that an outfit like 4th Armored Division wouldn’t last long in combat if it had only one star unit with all the others unable to pull their weight; they’d all end up getting destroyed piecemeal. They’d seen it too many times before. The star outfit couldn’t save the rest all by itself.
So the tankers told themselves, It’s a good thing someone else is getting the nod to be up front tomorrow. Even if they’re not as good
as us, maybe the practice will make them better.
And just maybe we’ll all live a little bit longer.
They were rolling before dawn. More than one hundred vehicles emerged from their forest concealment and took to the road in perfect sequence, like a beautifully choreographed ballet rehearsed so well it could be performed in total darkness.
This was Sean Moon’s fourth year at war. He’d been in tanks since those first disastrous days in North Africa back in 1942, when the inexperienced US Army—poorly led and badly equipped—was chewed to pieces by the finely honed German military machine. But so much had happened since then. And so much had been learned by those lucky enough—and crafty enough—to have survived.
Armored warfare had long been second nature to him, and his senses were sharpened to a fine edge. He could smell a snafu long before it came to full, rotten fruition. But this morning, as vehicle after vehicle emerged from the forest in the pre-dawn darkness and fell seamlessly into the advancing column—nothing of them visible except their blackout driving lights—he could smell nothing amiss.
The column made five miles before the sun finally poked above the eastern heights. The pale blue light of dawn gave the first hint that something they’d been waiting for might actually happen today: the sky was finally clearing.
And that means them damn flyboys will actually be able to see the ground and help us out, Sean thought. About fucking time.
A frantic voice on the battalion net had barely gotten through his call sign when the men of 37th Tank felt the shock wave of steel impacting steel. Far ahead in the column, they saw the plume of thick black smoke signaling a vehicle put to flame.
“Contact up front,” Captain Newcomb radioed the tankers of Baker Company. “Anti-tank guns reported ahead. Spread right. We’ve been ordered to flank them.”
Sean mapped the situation in his head. Okay, the lead tank unit’s getting creamed. If they can’t get hull down, they’re gonna get shot to shit. Next in line is the armored infantry. They’re gonna dismount and go into the woods—they gotta get out of those half-tracks or it’ll be curtains for them, too.
And we’re gonna go cross-country through these rolling hills on our right. At least we get some cover while our artillery doles out counter-battery fire. But once that’s done, it’s gonna be up to us to move in and mop up.
So much for not being first in line, huh?
And where’s the fucking Air Force when we need ’em?
Another shrieking voice on the radio: “They’re everywhere! Biggest fucking tanks I ever saw!”
It drove Fabiano into a frenzy. “See? I told you…the rumors are all true! The Krauts got super tanks with six-inch guns on them. And we’re gonna shake hands with them any fucking minute. I knew this was coming, dammit!”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP, FAB,” Sean said in a voice that would make a greenhorn soil himself. Then, at lower volume, he added, “And shove those rumors of yours straight up your ass. We’ve been through this a thousand times. If there really was a tank that big, it would need special bridges to cross all these fucking rivers because it would fall through all the regular ones. Have you seen any bridges like that anywhere in this fucking country?”
Something deep in Fabiano’s soul didn’t want to listen to logic. But he was a tanker—and a very experienced one. His soul could believe anything it wanted, but his mind couldn’t help but admit Sean had a point.
“No, I guess not, Sarge,” he replied.
“Damn right, Fab. Everything looks bigger when it’s shooting at you. I guaran-damn-tee you, whatever the hell is holding us up ain’t no bigger than a Tiger Two. And we’ve killed them before, plenty of times.”
“Not before they killed plenty of Zippos, Sarge.”
But Sean was too preoccupied with all that was swirling around them to continue the debate. “Ain’t the fucking time, Fab.”
The counter-battery fire from the GI artillery was falling now. There was an FO with the pinned-down lead unit, raking the fire across the German strongpoint. Within a minute, Baker Company was moving in to finish them off.
Captain Newcomb’s voice was on the radio again: “Call off the artillery. Red Sky is danger close. Repeat: Red Sky is—”
As Eight Ball crested a rise that gave her crew their first view of the German position, they saw Captain Newcomb’s Sherman engulfed in flames, its turret askew, its glacis plate ripped open like a tin can. She’s still buttoned-up, too, Sean observed. Nobody got out of her unless they got out the bottom hatch…and even then, they’d have to crawl through that inferno somehow.
No, nobody got out. You can bet your sweet ass on that.
Shit. Best damn company commander we ever had, bar none.
Goddamn it.
He told his loader, “Lorenzo, get Lieutenant Fagan on the radio. Tell him he’s Red Sky Six now.”
Maybe there’d be time to properly mourn Captain Newcomb and his crew later.
But right now, the living still had to fight to stay that way.
“Maybe we oughta pull back,” Fabiano said. “With the captain buying it and all.”
Sean replied, “It don’t work that way, Fab, and you know it. We pick up the pieces and keep going.”
Looking through the restricted view of the commander’s periscope, he still hadn’t spotted the German gun that had torn Newcomb’s tank apart.
Then he saw something—a thrashing of undergrowth; a puff of exhaust smoke; a fleeting glimpse of the smooth metal flank of a moving machine, its camouflage paint rendered moot by the fact it was in motion.
“Ah, shit,” Sean blurted over the radio, “that ain’t no tank! It’s a fucking Stug, that’s all.”
Stug: GI slang for the Sturmgeschütz self-propelled assault gun. It packed a powerful tank-killing main weapon on its armored, tracked chassis, but it was basically an artillery weapon, not armor. Lacking the traversing turret of a true tank, it could only shoot what was directly in front of it.
“That’s all?” Fabiano said, incredulous that Sean might be playing down a threat that had just killed Captain Newcomb and so many more of their tanker brethren since they’d set foot on mainland Europe.
“HARD RIGHT,” Sean directed his platoon. “EVERYBODY HARD RIGHT. GET OUT OF HIS FUCKING FIELD OF FIRE. ENGAGE HIM AS SOON AS YOU GOT A CLEAR SHOT.”
Captain Newcomb hadn’t been so lucky: the Stug had been able to target his Sherman the instant she came over a rise. But Sean’s four tanks were spread farther to Newcomb’s right. The Stug commander was trying to traverse his gun to engage them the only way he could, by pivoting the chassis on its tracks.
If they kept moving more to the right, the Shermans of Sean’s platoon—with their fully traversing turrets—could shoot him long before he’d pivoted the hull enough to get a shot at them.
The life-or-death race was on.
The hard right maneuver the platoon was executing put Sean’s Number Three tank in the best position to engage the Stug. Its first shot—from five hundred yards—hit the Stug’s gun mantlet and brought the pivoting to a sudden stop.
Number Two tank put another round into the side of the superstructure. It sent pieces of externally mounted gear flying but glanced off without penetrating the armor.
“That gave them one hell of a headache,” Sean said. “Your shot, Fab. Take the fuel tank, right in front of the aft sprocket.”
“On the way,” Fabiano replied promptly as he stomped the pedal that fired the main gun.
His round was dead on target, punching through the lower hull. Before anyone’s next heartbeat, a massive internal explosion blew all the Stug’s hatches open. Nothing escaped those hatches but flames and pillars of thick black smoke.
The German strongpoint was situated in a copse at a shallow bend of the road. Within it now were three inert Stugs, two neutralized by the American artillery, the third the victim of Sean’s platoon.
“Put a ring around them dead Stugs,” Sean told his platoon. “Smitty, take the north si
de. Vaccaro, you take the east. Meeker, get the south. I’ll take the west. Stay a hundred yards out. Nobody roll into them trees until we get the infantry up here.”
Within a few minutes, GI infantrymen were on hand, combing what had been the German strongpoint. They found no German alive.
Lieutenant Fagan arrived right behind the infantry, riding the M5 Stuart that had carried him as Recon Platoon leader. “Where’s Captain Newcomb’s tank?” he shouted to Sean from the turret hatch.
“Follow me, Lieutenant. I’ll show you.”
When they arrived at the carcass of Newcomb’s Sherman, Colonel Abrams was already there. He yelled up to Sean, “Come down here, Sergeant. Let’s talk a minute.”
Once Sean was standing next to him, Abrams asked, “Did you see it happen, son?”
“Negative, sir. The captain was out ahead of us. He went over this rise way before we did. Must’ve been looking right down that Stug’s tube.” He glanced at the shattered, smoldering tank and shook his head sadly. “And that’s all she wrote, sir.”
Sean thought he saw something glistening on the colonel’s cheek, but Abrams turned and began to walk away before he could be sure.
Can’t blame the man, Sean told himself. Shit, I feel like crying, too.
The restless calm that always followed a battle was pierced by the colonel’s anguished words:
“Goddammit. Goddammit to hell. All these fine men. All gone.”
But there was no more than this fleeting moment for mourning. Abrams straightened his shoulders, walked over to Lieutenant Fagan, and said, “You’re in the saddle now, Stan, am I right?”
“Affirmative, sir. I’ve assumed command of Baker.”
“Very good. You’ll do fine. But if you need my help in any way, don’t hesitate to ask immediately.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sure I’ll be needing plenty of help.”
“We all will, Stan. God help us, we all will.”
Our Ally, Our Enemy (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 3) Page 7