by David Healey
A beaver pelt brought a dollar and a really good muskrat pelt was worth 50 cents—not nearly what prices had been just a few years before, when the Cole family had experienced a brief spell of such prosperity that they bought canned goods and even new boots for pa. Then the Depression hit, and the demand for fur had dried up like everything else. Just about anyone with good sense had given up trapping, but for a mountain boy it meant a little money coming in for the family and maybe some muskrat for the stew pot.
Cole's pa was what the mountain people called a "woodsy" in that he mostly lived off the land—hunting and trapping, no matter the season or the game laws. Hard cash was tough to come by in the mountains so the old man would sometimes trade firewood he had split by hand or a jug of moonshine from the still he kept way up in the hills. When he was sober, he taught Cole everything he knew—how to read tracks like a road sign or the way to aim so that a bullet would travel true in the mountain air. Sober, Cole's daddy was a hard man of few words. Drunk on moonshine, he was mean and quick with a beating. It was best to stay out in the woods.
Locked in a deep freeze, the winter woods were silent to most ears, but not so quiet if you knew what to listen for. Cole could make out the chirp of a cardinal, the chatter of a squirrel, the gurgle of creek water so cold it was like liquid ice.
He went down to the edge of Gashey’s Creek, to a hole where the water was at least ten feet deep and still flowing. The current reminded Cole of the quiet, smooth movement of a muscle under the skin.
A mud path on the steep bank showed where the beaver ventured out to gnaw the bark from the willows growing near the water's edge. He set down the bag of traps he carried. A beaver could weigh nearly 50 pounds, and so a beaver trap weighed about 10 pounds. It was a lot of weight for a boy to carry, but already Cole had muscles hard as knotted cordwood.
Working carefully, he set the trap. A steel trap has a system of dual springs that require all the weight of a lean fourteen-year-old boy to set them—and then some. With one boot on each spring, Cole got the jaws open, then set the pan that held them in place. It was not an easy task with bare fingers on cold steel in the frigid air. The slightest touch would trigger the jaws to snap shut. From one spring ran a length of chain, at the end of which was a loop of steel through which was threaded a length of wire that ran down into the water.
When the jaws snapped shut on a beaver, the weight of the trap dragged the animal down into the deep water and drowned it.
Cole knew to be careful around the traps, but the cold made him hurry and take a shortcut. Instead of setting the trap from beneath—a safety precaution in case the jaws snapped shut, although it required extra effort—he set the pan from above. The trigger caught and held, and he started to take his hand away. But the movement caused his feet to shift on the ice and the jaws clamped around his wrist, catching him in his own trap.
The jolt of pain caused him to slip on the icy bank and he encountered an even bigger shock when he plunged into the creek.
The extra winter clothes and layers of wool intended to keep him warm instantly soaked through, weighing him down like a granite shroud. With a 10-pound trap around one hand, he could not swim. Bubbles escaped toward the surface, but he was trapped beneath the water.
How long could he hold his breath? This wasn't some summertime swim. One minute in the icy creek, maybe two, and it would all be over.
Not much time. He had to think of something.
Cole let himself sink to the bottom. There was some current but the wire that ran through the ring at the end of the trap's chain tethered him in place. The only way back to the surface was to get the trap off his hand. But it would take both his feet to do it.
The icy water was very clear; he could look all the way back up to the surface. Like he was the fly in the bottom of a Mason jar of moonshine.
The creek bed was soft and muddy, but he kicked around, ignoring the pain in his hand, until he found a good, flat rock. He put the trap on the rock, then stood on the springs. There was some give, but the buoyancy of the water meant his full weight wasn't on the springs. He raised both feet at once and did a kind of jump. Nothing. His lungs screamed for air. Try again. He bobbed up and came down again on the springs. The added force was just enough to make the jaws loosen their grip and he wrenched his hand free, leaving a good bit of skin behind.
He then kicked his way to the surface and swam the short distance to the creek bank. Once there, he lay half in and half out of the water, taking big gulps of air like it was money some rich man was giving away. Then he crawled the rest of the way up the creek bank.
Though he had not drowned, the frigid air would kill him almost as quick in this cold. It was only about five degrees above zero at midday, which meant ice immediately formed on his wet clothes. His hair froze. He was three miles from home.
Move, he told himself.
He took the time to pick up the sack of spare traps. Pa would whip him if he left those behind.
Then Cole started running, trying to outrace the cold. He trotted through the snowy woods, leaving spots of blood in the snow. His heart hammered with the effort, but he did not stop.
The last couple hundred yards as he came into sight of the shack, its plume of woodsmoke coming from the rusty stovepipe, were the hardest. By the time he reached the porch he was staggering rather than running.
His ma and pa helped get his clothes off him, wrapped him in a dry blanket, and stood him by the wood stove. His sister pressed a hot mug of sassafras tea into his good hand. Once he stopped shivering enough to talk, he explained what had happened.
His pa was half drunk and Cole expected to catch a beating, or a cussing out at the very least. Instead, his old man gently washed his cut hand and poured some whiskey over it, then wrapped it with strips of clean rags. "You done good, boy. You kept your head. That can make the difference between livin' and dyin'. You remember that."
Cole had remembered. He had kept his head time and time again when others panicked. And so far he had stayed alive, which for anyone who had survived until December 1944 in the Ardennes Forest was something of an accomplishment.
He looked out at the darkness, keeping watch.
CHAPTER 15
In the morning, the snipers awoke to yet more fresh snow. Flakes drifted in through the gaps in the thatched roof, covering the cold remains of their campfire. Nobody moved to rekindle the fire. They wouldn't be there long enough, and there was no point in the smoke from a fire letting any Germans in the area know that they had company.
"Does it ever stop snowing in this frickin' place?" Vaccaro muttered. He tried to take a drink from his canteen, but the water was frozen. McNulty handed him a bottle of schnapps instead. He took a swig of liquor and grimaced.
"I reckon it will stop snowing right about the time you stop griping," Cole said. "Now pass that bottle around. It ain't moonshine, but it ought to give a little heat this morning."
"Who the hell drinks moonshine?" Vaccaro wondered.
"My daddy drank it for breakfast. Of course, he was a mean son of a bitch. Moonshine killed him in the end."
"Drank too much, did he?"
"No, he messed around with some other man's still and got shot."
"Cole, sometimes you leave me at a loss for words, which is saying something."
Cole winked. "You come around the holler after this here war and I'll treat you to a jar of the best white lightning you ever tasted."
"Gosh, Cole, now I've got something to live for. I sure as hell hope some German doesn't shoot me before I can get all liquored up on some rotgut you cooked up in a radiator."
The others rolled out of their blankets, looking stiff and creaky in the frigid air. It was so cold that their nose hairs felt brittle. The Kid had not slept far enough away from the opening in the roof so that the snow made him resemble a cruller dusted with sugar.
Cole climbed up to the loft and looked out the hay window at the south end that faced the road where they had encou
ntered the Germans yesterday. Nothing moved on the wintry fields except a handful of crows. He could hear them cawing; for all Cole knew, the crows were bitching about the cold, too.
He moved to the window at the opposite end of the barn. Again, nothing was visible but empty fields, stone walls and hay stacks. Not even so much as a sheep or cow. He knew that the quiet was deceptive. The Germans were out there. Even now, Das Gespent might be in some tree on the other side of the snowy landscape, waiting for someone or something to move. They didn’t call him The Ghost for nothing. Maybe he’d known all along that the Americans were hiding in the barn and was waiting for daylight to pick them off.
Cole pushed the thought from his head. He had been fighting the enemy for months, one bullet at a time. He did not keep count as Vaccaro did of how many Germans he had shot. What was the point? Wasn't a contest—not that Vaccaro would have won. Although he had dealt more than his share of death, he did not take his own survival lightly. Somewhere out there was a German soldier who might be faster, a better shot, or goddamnit, just luckier.
It was one thing to have a vague idea of an enemy sniper who was better. It was another thing altogether to know that Das Gespent was somewhere nearby. Flesh and blood, lead and powder. He was the real deal. Cole just hoped to get another crack at him—before the Ghost Sniper picked him off.
Vaccaro came up the ladder to the loft just as Cole began to unbutton his trousers to take a leak from the window. Vaccaro joined him and their twin streams arced down, steaming in the cold, and made patterns in the snow below.
"One thing I haven't done yet is shoot a man taking a leak," Vaccaro said. "What about you?"
"Hell, that's the best time to shoot a Kraut," Cole said. "Even better is if you can shoot one takin' a shit. Or just havin' hisself a smoke. It makes 'em feel like they ain't safe no matter what. Besides, I'd rather shoot a man who had his pecker in his hands than his rifle. It makes it hard for him to shoot back."
"Hell, Cole, once you've got a Kraut in your sights, he's not gonna have a chance to shoot back, no matter what he’s doing." Vaccaro looked down. "I don't want to brag, but that snow sure is cold."
"If I was braggin', I'd tell you how that snow sure is deep."
Vaccaro looked over at Cole and thought that they could almost be friends. Almost. Cole always managed to put a fence around himself to keep others out. There was also something about Cole that was off the rails and unpredictable. He was bat shit crazy and stone cold deliberate all at once. He was like one of those Old West gunfighters in a movie—the one wearing a black hat. The truth was that Cole scared him more than a little. Sure, he could take a joke now and then, but deep down, Cole was hard like some Brooklyn mobster. An enforcer. A hit man. Where his soul should be there was a black lump of mountain coal—or maybe even a copper-jacketed bullet.
He hadn’t been joking when he told the Kid that he was glad Cole was on their side.
Vaccaro was sometimes amazed that the war had lifted someone like Cole out of the woods and mountains of his boyhood and thrown him together with someone like himself. In another time and place, they never would have met. They were opposites, as different as chianti and moonshine, and yet they were alike in some ways. While Cole was a backwoods boy, Vaccaro was from the mean streets of a working class Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. You had to be tough to survive. Was that so very different from the mountains?
They heard a noise behind them, and looked over their shoulders to see Jolie coming up the ladder.
"Well, this is embarrassing," Vaccaro said.
"Do not worry, I will not look at your willy," she said. "I have left my magnifying glass downstairs, anyway."
"Ha, ha. These French girls are ruthless."
"Hell, piss on 'em if they can't take a joke." Cole shook himself and buttoned up his trousers. "Let's see if we can get the ghost to show hisself today."
They climbed down to the first floor of the barn, where the others were preparing to head out. The morning was achingly cold, but it felt good to be up and moving. The movement brought warmth to their stiff limbs.
Cole scanned the scenery once more and saw only white, dull grays and browns. The sun was up, but hidden by the deep cloud cover, it barely did more than give the forest a dusky light.
“Listen up,” Lieutenant Mulholland said. Although the squad was hardly bigger than a Boy Scout patrol, he always managed to sound as if we were addressing a briefing of Division commanders. “We have one objective today, and that’s to go after the Krauts.”
“Objective?” Vaccaro spoke up. “Isn’t that something they say in the courtroom, sir?”
“That’s objection,” Mulholland said, realizing a second too late that Vaccaro was yanking his chain. “All right, wise guy, you can take point.”
“Aw, and here I thought it wasn’t my turn to get shot today.”
“Shut up, Vaccaro.” The lieutenant turned to Jolie. “You don’t have to come with us, you know. I don’t know what we’re walking into but there’s a good chance you’ll be safe if you stay here.”
“I am coming with you,” Jolie said. “Give me a gun.”
Lieutenant Mulholland opened his mouth to argue, but then thought better of it. Instead, he gave her his sidearm, a Browning 1911 .45 that would definitely put a fat hole in a German.
“Good?”
“C’est bon.”
McNulty spoke up. He had been unusually quiet this morning, which was understandable. He and Rowe had been close, considering that they had both been newcomers to the squad. “Sir? The Kid and I was just thinking that nobody knows we’re here. Out here, I mean. Nobody at HQ, that’s for sure. We could lay low and sit this one out. There’s enough wood—”
The lieutenant cut him off with a shake of his head. He looked at the Kid. “Is that how you feel, son?”
“Sir, it was just talk, is all.”
Mulholland looked at the faces around him. “Listen up, everyone. We are a sniper squad. Which means we operate independently. You all ought to know that by now. We are going to do what snipers do. We are going after the enemy, with or without reinforcements. Any questions, McNulty?”
“No, sir.”
“Then let’s move out,” Mulholland said.
• • •
Still reeling from the news of the massive German attack, General Eisenhower had called a gathering of his top generals in Verdun on December 19. With Christmas a few days ahead, planning a defensive battle was not what anyone had in mind as a way to celebrate the holiday. But Hitler had ruined their plans.
In fact, he seemed intent on stealing victory from the Allies. His massive surge of men and tanks had taken the Americans completely by surprise.
“We are getting reports of tanks and even Luftwaffe planes. What I want to know is, where did all this stuff come from?” Eisenhower asked his staff.
“Out of Hitler’s asshole, most likely,” said General George S. Patton.
Leave it to Patton to put it crudely. Eisenhower didn’t care for Patton’s choice of words, but silently he agreed it was about as good a source as any, at least where Hitler was concerned. No one had thought the Germans capable of this kind of surge. They were supposed to be on the ropes. Broken. Yet they had somehow staged this counterattack in complete secrecy, much as the Allies had done in planning the D-Day invasion. Now, it was their turn to be surprised, and Eisenhower didn’t like it one bit. Being Supreme Allied Commander meant being under constant scrutiny, and the surprise attack made him seem unprepared.
He took a gulp of coffee, then a drag on his cigarette.
At first, no one had wanted to believe the scope and scale of the attack, hoping that it was only a feint. The reports coming back from the Ardennes region soon crushed that hope. The Germans were attacking in force. The question was, how to stop them? That was the job of the men in the room.
There was Omar Bradley, a calm and even-keeled presence—at least as far as battlefield generals went. General Jacob Devers was the
re, and so was British General Sir Arthur Tedder, who served as Eisenhower’s deputy.
And Patton was there, of course. He was the best-dressed officer in the room, with a polished steel helmet and ivory-handled pistols. Somehow, he managed to wear more general’s stars than all the other generals in the room put together.
Patton came from old money and felt quite at home on the world stage. He also knew tactics, having learned them first-hand as a boy from none other than John Singleton Mosby, the Gray Ghost of the Confederacy, who had been a friend of Patton’s grandfather. The old soldiers used to take the boy riding with them, and some of Mosby’s boldness had worn off on the impressionable boy. But where Mosby had been sly like a fox, Patton was more like a charging bull.
He was also Ike’s most problematic general. In fact, Ike had almost been forced to sack him when Patton started slapping shell-shocked soldiers and berating them as cowards. Eisenhower had tried to sweep the incidents under the rug, but the press had caught wind of it. Anyone who had been in combat in this war knew well enough that those soldiers were not cowards. They had simply had all that they could take.
Back home, Americans did not take kindly to the news. These suffering boys could be their sons and brothers Patton was slapping around. Who did he think he was, anyhow?
Ike had managed to save Patton’s job by having him make public apologies to the soldiers he had slapped, along with apologies to the hospital staff who had witnessed these incidents. Patton hadn’t liked eating crow, but he liked being a general, so he had done as Ike told him.
Now, here was a chance to redeem his reputation.
“I’ve got a plan,” Patton announced to the room. “We can kick these Nazi sons of bitches all the way back to Berlin.”
The others looked at him with interest. It was true that Patton was full of himself, but he did not make idle boasts.
“We’re spread too thin,” another officer pointed out. “We’ll never get troops there in time to reinforce our lines. The Germans are going to push right through.”