On Wings of Fire

by Frances Patton Statham

  Caught in a swirl of current, the flimsy boats began to spin in all directions, and the soldiers resorted to using the butts of their rifles to help paddle. But then enemy machine guns on the opposite bank found the boats as the smokescreen vanished.

  “Hell, we’re just damn sitting ducks,” Gig said, sorry that he had been persuaded to set foot in the canvas boat. He took off his helmet and began to bail water, as Marsh and Megan and all the others plugged the holes with every bit of canvas at their disposal to keep the small craft afloat until they reached the other side.

  They were at the mercy of the Germans and their guns. But against all odds, the flotilla landed with only a small percentage of casualties, and rushing the positions of the Germans, the men secured the crossing.

  Two combat teams now raced for the town of Nijmegen, the city reconstructed by Caesar after its destruction by Claudius Civilis; the legendary residence of Barbarossa, Charlemagne, with its breathtakingly beautiful view of the Lower Rhine under fire.

  Approaching the outskirts of the town, the men under Reuben Tucker engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy for every inch of the city. From house to house they fought, as they had in Mook, Grave, Groesbeek, their destination, the five-storied bridge, to reach it before the Germans blew it up in their faces.

  By the time Marsh arrived, the magnificent bridge still stood. A steel monster with a life of its own, the bridge spanned the river like Bifrőst, the legendary, mythical bridge connecting Earth to Heaven. In the darkness, Marsh drew in his breath at its design—even more forbidding than he had imagined.

  “You think we still have a chance to take it?” Megan inquired beside him.

  “If they don’t blow it up in the next few minutes,” Marsh answered, awed at the steel structure looming before them.

  Chapter 34

  As Marsh and the others fought for the bridge at Nijmegen, they were painfully aware of the race against time, for the British airborne unit fighting at Arnhem was isolated.

  The landing fields had been overrun by Bittrich’s panzer divisions, their presence dismissed by Montgomery’s headquarters in spite of the Dutch Resistance reports.

  Farther back in line, south of Eindhoven, men in the British 8 Corps sat down and cried as they heard the paratroopers at Arnhem begging for covering artillery fire that did not come. By all rights, 8 Corps should have been up front with them, for they had perfected the communications system with the troopers, retuning the frequencies of the large radio sets that went out as the troopers dropped with the radios on their practice jumps.

  For months, the radio men of 8 Corps had lived with the troopers, eaten with them, and called them by name. But by a quirk of fate, 30 Corps, judged nearer to the battle scene than 8 Corps, were selected by the high command at the last minute to take over their duties. And the switch to an unrehearsed team spelled disaster for the paratroopers, with no radio contact, their supplies of ammunition and food landing amid the German-held fields, and the weather in England grounding the planes carrying reinforcements.

  The division, with enough food and supplies to last two days, struggled through the hell that now encompassed them—men wounded, without water, their commanding general, Urquhart, trapped in the attic of a house completely surrounded by Germans, with the two ranking officers at loggerheads over the course of action they should take.

  The paratroopers, regardless of nationality—American, British, Polish—felt a special kinship with each other. Knowing that the British could not hold out much longer, the men of the 82nd fought fiercely for the Nijmegen bridge, while listening for the sound of Horrock’s tanks behind them.

  “Where are the damned tanks?” Gig called out to Marsh. “They should have been here before now.”

  “They got held up at Son,” Marsh replied.

  “But that was yesterday.”

  Marsh was grimly silent, his mind on the sniper in the next house.

  The brief silhouette in the window, the steady fire of one rifle and then a lull for reloading registered in Marsh’s brain. The German sniper was the major obstacle directly between the three paratroopers and the others fighting on the bridge.

  Marsh, tired and irritable at the delay, left his position to reconnoiter at the back of the red-tiled house with the parapets overlooking the street, while Gig and Megan continued to fend off the fire from another direction.

  Into the semidarkness Marsh went, using the barrel of his rifle to open the rear door of the house. Stealthily, he began to climb the narrow stairs. Holding his breath, he stopped as the stairwell creaked. But the arms fire outside camouflaged the sound.

  Looking below him to make sure the enemy had not infiltrated the house behind him, he saw instead a dining-room table set for dinner, its contents bathed in the last vestiges of sunlight. Crisp, clean white linen, a loaf of bread, pale yellow flowers were juxtaposed against shattered glass, as if the owner of the house had suddenly left the table when peace turned into war.

  The resumption of fire above caused Marsh to rush the remaining steps. Flinging open the attic door, he saw the sniper whirl from the window to fire at the unexpected intruder.

  Marsh, quicker in his aim, won the brief exchange of shots. Not taking time to record in his memory the physical characteristics of his adversary, Marsh crept toward the parapet. From that vantage point, he could see up and down the length of the narrow street. For the moment, nothing now stood in their way to the bridge.

  To Gig and Megan concealed below, he called out, “I’ve got the sniper. Run and I’ll cover you.”

  First one and then the other drew out of the alleyway, running and ducking, while Marsh crouched on the widow walk and guarded the street until he saw that the two men had passed onto the bridge structure itself.

  On the other side of the bridge, the German commander, seeing his own position worsen and, fearing for the loss of the bridge, gave orders for its demolition.

  As Marsh, racing to catch up with the others, reached the bridge, the German officer commanded, “Now, Corporal!”

  He waited for the detonator to set off the dynamite fitted into boxes painted the same shade of green as the bridge, while paratroopers worked frantically to cut the wires before the feat could be accomplished.

  When nothing happened, the German officer frantically shouted to his corporal, “Now—again. Push the detonator!”

  The corporal tried again, pushing downward on the handle of the detonator box with both hands. But once again nothing happened, and in desperation he looked at the officer.

  They had waited too late to destroy the bridge. The wires had been cut.

  The Germans at the north end of the bridge opened fire with all they had. The Wehrmacht had been unable to keep the paratroopers from seizing the lower end. Now it was up to them to hold the northern end until the panzer divisions, with Heinrich von Freiker in their midst, could negotiate the few kilometers to Nijmegen.

  Pinned down by fire from the opposite end, Gig took the whining, squirming Lester from the top of his combat suit and set him down beside him on the abutment of the steel bridge while he reloaded his rifle.

  “Stay, Lester,” he ordered. But the puppy, tired of his incarceration for the greater part of the day, disobeyed Gig. Like a child suddenly freed of restraint, he took off toward the middle of the bridge, his small belly swollen with the last of Gig’s K rations, his short tail wagging at the two troopers farther ahead.

  “Hey, Madison,” Marsh called. “Your dog’s getting away.”

  Turning his attention from his rifle, Gig began to whistle for the dog. “Come here, Lester. Come back, puppy. You’re going to get your head blown off.”

  The whistling, the shouts were of no concern to the puppy. Lester continued forward as fast as his short, stubby legs would carry him.

  Swinging his body over the railing, Gig began to run after the puppy, to rescue him before a stray German bullet put an end to his short life.

  “Madison, come back. That�
�s an order!” Marsh’s voice shouted the command, his words echoing in triplicate in a staccato sound back and forth across the river.

  But Gig, like the puppy, had a mind of his own. He was too close to Lester not to try a rescue. As Gig’s hands reached out for his pet, a burst of machine-gun fire leveled all three paratroopers brash enough to leave the shelter of the abutment for the middle of the bridge.

  Gig fell in a riddle of bullets, the puppy barely beyond his grasp.

  “Madison!” Marsh shouted again—too late. Anguish filled his heart, spilling over to cloud his vision, while the lump in his throat railed against the sudden death in twilight.

  Marsh leaped from his defensive position, throwing everything he had into battle, as if he were the only one fighting the Germans. He rushed down the bridge, his combat boots making a thundering noise on the metallic surface, while Lester, the small brown puppy, thinking it was a game, leaned over and licked Gig’s still face and waited for the dead paratrooper to tuck him once again into the top of his combat suit.

  There was no time for last rites, no time for rescuing the dead from the bridge. The living were too busy demanding retribution from the enemy, seeking vengeance for life lost in the battle.

  Events of Gig’s life whirled in Marsh’s mind, even as he fought. The episode of the donkey in Sicily, the Great Dane in Normandy. Because of his love for yet another animal, Gig had lost his life.

  Now Marsh Wexford was the only original member of his combat team left to fight. At that moment, his own safety was not high on his list of priorities.

  Denying everything but the need to get even, Marsh was in the vanguard to reach the other side. His grenade, thrown into the concrete bunker, effectively put it out of commission. And the remaining troopers rushed down the bridge, to take and hold the northern end.

  As Horrock’s tanks rumbled through Nijmegen and reached the bridge, a shout went up from the survivors of the 82nd Division. At great cost, they had secured the bridge—the last formidable obstacle between Nijmegen and Arnhem.

  “Go, tanks!” someone shouted, waving them on to cross the newly taken bridge. But the great rumble of tanks began to diminish as each motor cut out, and the tanks settled down for the night on the approach to the bridge.

  “What’s the matter? You afraid to cross?” one disgruntled paratrooper called out at the delay.

  “You want us to come over and lead you by the hand? What’s the matter with you guys? You can’t stop now!”

  “We have to wait for the infantry to catch up with us,” was the reply.

  An unbelieving 82nd Airborne Division—tired, bleeding, hungry and thirsty, aware that their airborne cousins were being decimated at Arnhem only eleven miles away—became livid.

  “Georgie Patton wouldn’t have stopped for the night,” one declared.

  “Yeah. You can bet on that. He would have gone straight through tonight—infantry or no infantry—to rescue every last one of the trropers.”

  “Instead of stopping off for tea.”

  Officers and enlisted men of the 82nd Airborne were extremely bitter. And none more so than Captain Daniel “Marsh” Wexford.

  Heinrich von Freiker, heard the disappointing news. The bridge at Nijmegen had been captured intact by the Americans.

  He would have preferred meeting them before the bridge but, armed with the knowledge of their route, he was not unduly alarmed. Still, he did not quite believe the road chosen for the tanks to get to Arnhem—the dike road, on high ground, indefensible from enemy guns on each side. The most gifted student in either Dutch or German war college would have failed his examination if he had chosen that route to Arnhem, in preference to the lower road.

  But it was to his advantage that the British planners of the invasion had evidently not consulted the Dutch. They had good reason, because of the double agents. But the Americans, more trusting, had utilized members of the Resistance, making it possible, despite their plans being known, to take every objective assigned to them.

  Things would be different from now on, Heinrich pledge silently while he stood on the high ground and looked in the direction of the bridge. At first light, he promised a devastating blow in two directions—on the dike road, and, later, nearer the bridge itself.

  “Back to camp, Horst,” he suddenly ordered his driver in clipped, guttural tones.

  They drove to the bivouac where the tanks had been camouflaged. The offensive of Market-Garden had ground to a halt for the night, and an impatient Heinrich longed for sunrise when he would personally annihilate Horrock’s tanks and break the back of the Allies’ offensive in their attempt to rescue the paratroopers still struggling to hold on at Arnhem.

  “Heil, Hitler!” he said, returning the salute of the special guard as he reached his tent directly beyond the tanks sent from the Reichswald.

  Marsh deliberately chose a resting place for the night where he could be alone with his grief. Megan had gone down on the bridge.

  He was tired of the war, of the price paid for each plot of earth, red from the blood of men dying to keep a madman from taking over the world. And he was tired of the generals in their immaculate uniforms, in their comfortable beds that night, far from the cries of the wounded and the silent recriminations of the men they had sent to their deaths.

  Marsh, the shy and gentle giant, had experienced more than his share of suffering. He longed to wake up from the nightmare and to hear Gig whistling his favorite tune, to see Laroche whittling his alligator from a stick; and to watch Giraldo losing at poker, as he had on the night before their jump into Normandy.

  Finally, a troubled and exhausted Marsh, the stubble of beard on his chin a reminder of the fighting without cessation, relaxed into sleep as his mind continued the nightmare, dreams distorted by what he had lost in these frantic days of fighting in Holland.

  Chapter 35

  Along the suicidal dike road, the tanks from Horrock’s 30 Corps began their advance. The German guns opened up, with the panzerfaust weapons completing what the guns missed.

  In less than one hour, hopeless chaos reigned—tanks destroyed and burning, blocking the narrow corridor that was unprotected on both sides.

  Heinrich looked through his binoculars and felt a sense of elation at the destruction. But the elation was tempered with the realization that it was not only the British tanks that he had sworn to annihilate, but the infantry—specifically the American 82nd Airborne Infantry that had taken the Nijmegen bridge intact the previous evening.

  Like a gladiator assessing the strength of his opponent, Heinrich sensed this was the moment to strike in another direction—in the pocket of woods where the infantry was grouped in hand-to-hand combat.

  This time, he had the advantage. This time, he would make sure that the All-American Division did not escape him as it had in Sicily and Normandy.

  Heinrich, in a reckless mood, decided he would get into the fight personally, the same as the young American general Gavin, who had jumped with his troops and by all reports, had slept on the ground with them.

  “You may follow if you wish,” Heinrich announced to the sad-eyed Horst, as he climbed into the lead tank. “At a distance, of course.” For Horst had protested being left behind.

  With the goggles over his eyes, Heinrich raised his hand to signal the tanks to move out for their positions.

  Captain Marsh Wexford, with a new company of men to lead, left the safety of the slit trench he had dug the evening before, ate a chocolate bar for breakfast, and climbed into a jeep with a driver named Smitty, assigned to take him to headquarters for briefing.

  “You read German, don’t you, Wexford?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The commanding officer seemed relieved. “Well, we just captured a bunch of panzerfausts last night, with their instructions. The first thing I want you to do is translate them, so our men can assemble the weapons. Pretty good, huh? Using the German’s own weapons to knock out their tanks.”

  “It’s about the
only thing that will penetrate the armor—especially the Tigers,” Marsh agreed.

  “Wonder why the U.S. never developed one this good?”

  “I guess no one ever had the guts to tell the Pentagon that their antitank weapons didn’t work.”

  “Yes. Well, get to it, Wexford. We’ll probably need them in the next few hours.”

  With Marsh translating the instructions into English, the men assembled the weapons in a short time. Now they were ready to move out on foot, taking the panzerfausts with them.

  The sound of big guns in the distance pinpointed the main battle along the dike road. Black smoke and the acrid smell of burning rubber filled the sky. Suddenly, as machine guns ripped through the trees within the pocket of woods beyond the dike, Marsh and his men jumped for cover. They had deliberately fanned out in a wider sweep, infiltrating behind the German line of defense.

  “Let’s go,” Marsh whispered, crawling on his stomach through the brush toward the machine-gun nest that defended that portion of road.

  The platoons of soldiers followed and, circling the dug-in position of the Germans, they rushed it with rifles blazing. As smoke filtered through the woods and drifted upward to meet the mist, a bird, oblivious to the battle, lit on the tree next to the machine-gun nest—more intent on the insect crawling along the bark than on the three dead German soldiers being removed from their positions behind the guns.

  While two of the troopers took possession of the placement, the others slowly worked their way forward, their goal to infiltrate each position along the line behind the bigger guns trained on the dike road.

  Turning to his right where Gig usually fought, Marsh felt a sense of loss as he looked at the freckle-faced youth beside him. Then like lightning that gave no warning, a thunderous, dark scowl replaced the sad visage, for zipped into the youth’s combat suit was Lester, the small brown puppy.

  “What are you doing with that dog, Corporal?”