Moon Above, Moon Below

by William Peter Grasso

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass, John. We’re here to kill Germans, not stroke some strutting little Limey’s ego.”

  Wood needed a few moments to catalog all the reasons he considered this a bad idea. Bending the line to Gacé was a minor adjustment of Montgomery’s order, which—provided it didn’t cause a fiasco—would be overlooked in the big picture. But pushing that line still farther north was willful disobedience. Once past the insubordination of it, there were the truckloads of tactical and logistical problems this freelancing would create. But he could sense Patton growing irritated by his silence.

  “Are you asking me to stop an entire German army with my one division, sir?”

  “No, John, of course not,” Patton replied. “First off, they’re a badly depleted and battered German army. Finish them off and we’ll be sipping wine in Berlin before the first snowfall. And you won’t be alone. I’m moving the rest of Twelfth Corps to support the new line. And I’ll move up my entire goddamn Third Army if that’s what it takes.”

  “And General Bradley’s going along with this?”

  Wood could tell from the smirk on his face that Bradley had no idea what Patton was doing. “Brad’ll get over it,” Patton replied, “and so will Ike. Just like they got over Messina and those other times, too. Kicking Kraut ass always beats licking Limey ass…even though that’s Ike’s favorite pastime.”

  He could understand Patton’s confidence: He never got in trouble for winning…just for running his fool mouth. So now he’s going for all the marbles by sticking my division’s neck out farther than it’s ever been before.

  “So we’re really going to do this all on our own, sir?” Wood asked.

  Patton replied, “Isn’t any commander worth his salt always on his own, General?”

  Blue Flight didn’t have to wait long for another target. The leader of a P-38 section was asking for help with a large German armored column they’d encountered near the town of Exmes, six miles west of Gacé. “We’re down to guns,” the P-38 leader reported, “and we can’t get close enough to do any good. They’ve got flak guns out the ass and more tanks than I’ve ever seen all in one place.”

  Tommy asked, “Which way are they headed?”

  “East, toward Gacé.”

  Shit. Right toward CC Fox, Tommy told himself.

  “We’re going home for a refill,” the P-38 leader added.

  It only took a few minutes for Blue Flight to get there. Skirting north around the German column, Tommy could see exactly what the P-38 boys were talking about: he estimated at least 40 vehicles, mostly tanks of various marks. Interspersed were six or more half-tracks—flakwagens—with mounted anti-aircraft guns. They spewed bright tracers in breathtaking, treacherous arcs across the sky as they tried to chase the American planes away.

  “At least there aren’t any horses,” Tommy told his pilots. “Blue Three and Four, fly decoy on top. Blue Two, you and me will come out of the sun with rockets. Go for the flakwagens first. Don’t get too close and let them shoot the shit out of you.”

  As Rider and Clinchmore in Blue Three and Four orbited high over the Germans, taunting their gunners, Tommy and Tuttle flew away to the southeast, into the sun. “Okay,” Tommy radioed, “that sharp bend in the road—that’s the IP. Tally-ho.” Eclipse of the Hun heeled over into a diving, 180-degree turn that would put her on a steep attack path. Tuttle’s plane would circle the IP—the initial point—once, and then follow.

  A clarity swept Tommy’s mind, clearing it of everything but the task at hand. He was no longer just a pilot. He and his plane had once again become a weapons system:

  Okay, looking good. Eighteen-degree angle of descent set. Range to target four thousand yards. Thirty inches manifold pressure. Launch rockets at range two thousand yards, two thousand feet altitude. First half-track at outer ring, moving center, dead on the reticle. Fire three rockets, then throttle to the stop, pull up, and turn back into the sun and out of Tuttle’s way…and away from the bad guys. Then be ready to do it all over again.

  Damn, these Krauts got balls. They aren’t even scattering.

  His eyes in a steady, cyclic scan over gunsight, altimeter, engine gauges, and airspeed indicator, he teased small corrections from the stick and throttle, coaxing the targeting data toward its solution. A ribbon of tracers sprayed far off her right wingtip: Target still moving. It’s got to stop to shoot accurately. Coming up on release point….FIRE.

  Three rockets raced from their wing-mounted tubes a half-second apart, the glowing orange balls of their motors’ exhaust shrinking to pinpoints as they sped away. Tommy felt the urge to stay on the current flight path and watch where those rockets hit. It was almost overpowering. But every second drawing closer to the flakwagens made him a better target.

  “Rockets away, pulling out,” he told Tuttle. “Your turn, Jimmy,” he added, those last syllables sounding strained as the g-forces of the tight turn tried to pull everything in Tommy’s upper body to his feet.

  Halfway through the turn, Joe Rider broadcast his assessment of the rocket attack: “Close, but no cigar, boss. You got ’em a little dirty, though. Give ’em hell, Jimmy.”

  Tuttle’s approach to the target was lower and faster. He released his rockets at a greater range than Tommy.

  “Not even close, Jimmy,” Rider reported as the rockets splashed into the ground well wide of the German column.

  Shit, Tommy thought, what the fuck good are these rockets if you can’t put them where you need them? I think your only chance of a hit is to empty the tubes all at once—fire all six of the sons of bitches and hope for the best.

  The rockets must have had some effect on the gunners, though, even if it was just psychological. Their volume of fire had dropped off quite a bit—maybe even enough to get in close for a strafing run. That was guaranteed to be far more effective than errant rockets.

  “Blue Flight from Blue Leader. I’m going to strafe from the sun. That should keep their heads down while you guys come in behind me and dive-bomb them.”

  Tuttle replied, “You sure you don’t want to do another rocket run, Tommy? They might not work after you fire the guns, remember? The damn wires breaking?”

  “Yeah, I’m dead sure. Save the rockets for something standing still. I’ll worry about them not working later.”

  Orbiting over the IP, Tommy asked, “You guys in position?”

  “Roger,” Rider replied, “about two miles behind you and way up high, boss.”

  He nosed Eclipse over and began the strafing run. The approach path was almost the same as the rocket pass, but a little faster—and she wouldn’t be pulling out until she had passed over the entire German column. Aiming for a point ahead of the lead flakwagen, he squeezed the trigger at 500 yards. If anyone was firing back at him, he couldn’t tell.

  I’m hitting them! Look at all those bright flashes as the API tears through those half-tracks!

  He saw bright flashes against the forward hulls and turrets of some tanks, too, but he knew from hard experience it was just pyrotechnics, doing no harm to the tanks or their crews.

  At least it’s keeping those tankers inside and buttoned up, where they can’t get a bead on us.

  And then there was nothing but empty highway beneath him. Tommy pulled Eclipse up and turned hard, hoping to catch a view of the rest of his section as they dive-bombed the column.

  The timing was perfect; he had a front-row seat. The other three jugs staggered their bombs—six 500-pounders in all—along the flakwagens in the center of the column. Through the smoke and dust of the explosions, only two of the half-tracks emerged, and they weren’t firing anymore. All the others had come to a halt; one was overturned on the side of the highway, another was on fire. Tommy could see the ant-like figures of soldiers running from the stricken vehicles.

  “Outstanding drop, guys,” Tommy told them. “Okay…two-plane teams, now—let’s hit the tanks in the ass. Give these rockets another chance to see if they’re worth a shit.”
>
  But they weren’t worth a shit this time, either. By now, most of the tanks had scattered off the highway, seeking defilade in dips of the terrain that would shield them from every attack angle except directly overhead. Some found it, some didn’t. Herb Clinchmore in Blue Four loosed a sheaf of four rockets at one tank still on level ground but scored no hits. Lining up for a broadside shot on another which had achieved imperfect cover in a gulley, Clinchmore fired his last two. One malfunctioned, falling well short. The other missed.

  Joe Rider got off two rockets before the rest failed to fire. One of the rockets that had actually fired glanced off the glacis plate of a big tank—Rider swore it was a Tiger—and exploded harmlessly in the air. The other missed.

  Tommy noticed something interesting as Jimmy Tuttle bore down on several tanks churning across open ground. They seemed to be slowing as he closed in on them, and then, without the tanks coming to a stop, crewmen jumped off and started running toward the safety of some trees. They would have been better off staying in their tanks. All six of Tuttle’s rockets missed completely, but his strafing of the crewmen a few seconds later appeared brutally on target.

  Tommy spotted a tank which appeared to be stopped on level ground. In reality, the crew thought they had picked a defilade with good cover. But it was too shallow, appearing flat from the air. He fired his last three rockets at the tank’s six o’clock. It was hard to tell how many hit, but at least one obviously did. The tank exploded, launching the commander through his turret hatch as if shot from a cannon.

  Tommy didn’t think much of the score: Twenty rockets fired…with four duds still on Rider’s wing…all to knock out exactly one tank. And it looks like more crews are abandoning their tanks. God only knows why.

  Blue Flight was down to guns now, and they knew those .50 calibers wouldn’t be much use against the tanks. Tommy and Tuttle, the two who had done the strafing, were low on ammo. They all heard the call on their radios: two freshly bombed-up flights were on the way to relieve them and try to beat up this German column some more. That gave Blue Flight a few minutes to deal with some unfinished business below.

  “Blue Three from Blue Leader, you and Four still got all your .50 cal, right?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Okay, then you two go finish off those flakwagens that are still running…and anybody else on foot down there, too. Blue Two, you and I will cover high.”

  As Blue Leader and Blue Two climbed for a better view, Tommy watched as Rider and Clinchmore rolled into their attack on the flakwagens. It looked like a straightforward run on a fast-moving ground target—about a 70-degree angle between the target’s line of motion and the jugs’ direction of attack—the two planes in echelon, with Clinchmore trailing off Rider’s right wing.

  Tommy was climbing in a shallow turn that kept his left wing down and out of the way for a better view below. But if he kept slowly turning left, the action would be below Eclipse’s nose and out of sight. He focused his attention back inside the cockpit just for a moment as he steepened the turn and then reversed its direction, a move which would yield a view of the attack once again but over her right wingtip instead.

  He finished the maneuver just in time to watch the lead jug—Rider’s plane—as it appeared to be skimming along the ground, still firing...and then a shriek came over the radio, a garbled syllable that seemed a cry for help, a howl of victory, and a wail of defeat all rolled into one. Rider’s plane merged with the flakwagen he’d targeted, and both dissolved in the same fireball.

  “NO…JOEY!” It was Clinchmore’s voice.

  Then, nothing but stunned silence over the radio until broken by Jimmy Tuttle: “What the fuck just happened?”

  Tommy had a pretty good idea what the fuck had just happened: target fixation—the tendency of a shooter to get so focused on his objective he forgets about everything else and flies straight into the ground. Strange but true; he’d seen it once before and heard about it plenty.

  Sure, maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe his plane got shot up and wasn’t controllable. Maybe he was already dead…

  But that scream, like he realized too late he’d fucked up.

  Tommy could hear his brother’s voice in his head, and the words seemed terribly correct:

  Just a matter of time.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The tankers of Combat Command Fox didn’t waste much time licking their wounds. They’d spent every minute since sunrise carting off the German dead, burying their own, and scrounging their unserviceable tanks and tank destroyers for ammo and gasoline that hadn’t already been consumed by fire. Now it was midmorning, and they’d managed to collect 350 gallons of gas in five-gallon jerry cans, enough to fill up two Shermans or parcel out one jerry can to each of the 60 surviving tanks. Those five gallons would allow a Sherman to drive only four miles.

  “Better than nothing,” Sean Moon said as his driver poured their can into Eclipse’s nearly empty tank. “At least it’ll give us a running start when we gotta get the hell out of here.”

  Captain Newcomb tallied the jerry cans and said, “Make sure you set aside a couple for the ambulances.”

  Sean asked, “You expecting any of us to actually live through this, Captain?”

  “Yeah, I’m hoping we all will, Sergeant Moon. But right now I’m worried about guys dying because we couldn’t get them to a field hospital.”

  Picking through the collection of weapons the German dead left behind, the GI infantrymen hoarded a dozen or so panzerfausts. They couldn’t wait to see just how much better they were at killing tanks than their less-than-impressive bazookas. The fact that they’d be carrying out this research on German armor brought a certain ironic satisfaction.

  Colonel Abrams stuffed the new orders that had just come over the radio into his pocket and went back to scanning the western approaches to CCF’s forest enclave. “Somebody’s got to come gunning for us again soon,” he told his assembled staff officers. “Between what the rest of Fourth Armored just pushed out of Sées, whatever is still left in Gacé, and the horde that’s coming east from Argentan, we’re going to get hit with the whole shebang smack in the face. It’s just a question of when. We’d better all pray that Fourth Armored is already here when it happens.”

  Miles to the west, they could see the rising smoke of a battle. “That’s got to be the Air Force beating up some Krauts,” Abrams said. Turning to his ASO Charlie Webster, he asked, “What’s going on over there, Lieutenant?”

  “There’s a couple of flights of jugs plus some P-38s beating up a German column near Exmes, sir,” Webster replied. “That’s probably what we’re seeing. It’s only about six miles as the crow flies.”

  “I know where the hell Exmes is, Lieutenant,” Abrams said. “But what are those planes right over there?” He pointed to a flight of four single-engined fighters descending out of the north, crossing in front of CCF’s position. Their silhouettes were nothing like the Americans were used to seeing.

  “Oh, shit,” Captain Newcomb said, “they’re Krauts! Focke-Wulfs, aren’t they? Geez, that’s all we fucking need right now.”

  “No, they’re not Krauts,” Webster replied. “They’re RAF Typhoons.”

  “What the hell is the RAF doing down here?” Newcomb asked, before the answer dawned on him and every other officer standing there: Airplanes go wherever they want. We’re the ones who don’t belong here, on the wrong side of Monty’s stop line.

  Abrams asked, “Can you raise them on the radio, Lieutenant?”

  Charlie Webster began to fumble through the pages of his signal operating instructions. “Yeah…but I’ve got to figure out the Brit frequency, sir.”

  Watching as the planes began to peel off into steep turns toward CCF’s position, Colonel Abrams replied, “Better make it quick, Webster. If they aren’t getting into attack position, I’ll shit in my steel pot.”

  Anxious to get back to his company, Newcomb asked, “One question, sir…if they attack, do we
engage?”

  Without hesitation, Colonel Abrams replied, “Affirmative.”

  On the dead run, Captain Newcomb made it back to Baker Company. He got there in time to watch his men track the circling Typhoons with their .50-caliber machine guns. The planes were standing off a mile or more away, the glare of the midmorning sun off the dark wings and fuselages making their markings nearly impossible to read.

  “Are these clowns Krauts or what?” Sean Moon asked.

  “The ASO says they’re RAF,” Newcomb replied.

  “I don’t know, Captain. They look like Krauts to me. Do we shoot ’em?”

  “If they attack, yeah.”

  “What do you mean if, sir? Why the fuck are we waiting?”

  Fabiano popped up through the turret hatch. “Hogan thinks they got invasion stripes on ’em, sir. They gotta be Limeys.”

  Invasion stripes: the broad black and white bands hastily painted on the wings and aft fuselages of Allied aircraft for Operation Overlord, an attempt to prevent their being shot down accidentally by jumpy Allied gunners. Now more than two months after D-Day, those hastily applied stripes were weathered but still in place.

  Newcomb took a look through binoculars as one of the planes flashed the lower side of its wings their way. “I can’t tell,” he said. “Can’t tell if they have stripes, roundels, or anything.”

  Sean clenched the handles of the .50 cal tighter. “Limeys or not, if those fuckers get any closer, I’m knocking their asses down.”

  “Hang on a minute, Sergeant,” Newcomb said. “Suppose that was your brother up there?”

  “They ain’t my brother, Captain. I know what a fucking jug looks like, and they ain’t no jugs.”

  The four planes flew a few more orbits, as if they, too, were unsure of what they saw before them. Then they stopped turning, formed into pairs abreast, and dove down on the forest and the waiting gunners of Combat Command Fox.

  Sylvie and the refugees from Gacé plodded slowly south, reaching the village of Nonant-le-Pin by 1100 hours. From the heights of the village, they could see the thick black smoke rising from Sées, some six miles to the south. “The Amis and Boche are fighting,” Sylvie told the others. “It is not safe to go there right now.”