CHAPTER 17

They moved across the field and into the woods, joining the soldiers who were already there. In the wake of the attack across the bridge, there was maybe a quart of adrenalin still pumping through their veins, making the soldiers hyper and jumpy.

Most of the men were gathered around a tree, staring up at the dead German sniper. It appeared he had roped himself into the tree to prevent himself from falling if he was merely wounded. The dead German's mouth hung open and his eyes stared wide like some grotesque Cheshire cat.

Now that the tension of the attack was over, some of the airborne troops lowered their weapons and lit cigarettes, studying the corpse in the tree with professional interest.

"I guess Nazi snipers really do grow on trees,” one paratrooper said.

"You wouldn't be going out on a limb if you said he was dead," quipped another.

The jokes were bad and tasteless, but it was a way for the men to blow off steam.

"Who wants to climb up there and cut him down?" Lieutenant Mulholland asked.

Cole liked the lieutenant, but he had noticed that the officer had a bad habit or phrasing an order as a question when he wasn't sure of himself. And sometimes he just plain had some bad ideas.

"To hell with that, Lieutenant," Cole said.

"It's the decent thing to do, Cole. We're soldiers, not barbarians."

Cole spat into the pine needles. "You saw how that Jerry gut shot those boys on the bridge and let them suffer. I reckon he can stay up there and rot. They got buzzards here, same as home.”

There was a tense silence as Mulholland looked from the tree to the hardened faces around him, and then back at the tree again. After a while he just shook his head and walked away.

Corporal Neville came over and one of the Americans gave him a cigarette. "You are one crazy Tommy," the American said. "The way you rushed that bridge — well, you're damn lucky you're not dead."

"I couldn't stand leaving those wounded men out there another minute." Neville nodded up at the tree. "This lot here were using them for bait to draw us out. Besides, I'm not half as crazy as this hillbilly here. He swam the river and took out the snipers for us."

One of the paratroopers looked at Cole. "That must feel good, huh, knowing you got one."

Cole looked up into the tree and shrugged. He had shot this man, killed him with a single bullet, and he looked inside himself for some feeling about that, but he felt nothing — neither good nor bad about it. It was pretty much the way he felt about killing a fox — it was simply something that needed killing.

The paratrooper had more to say: "If you ask me, we ought to grease that little Nazi right over there. He's a sniper too, which I don't count as a regular prisoner."

Cole flicked his cigarette away so he could get both hands on his rifle. He settled his ice chip eyes on the paratrooper. "I captured him, so I reckon that makes him my prisoner, and I ain't goin' to let you shoot him."

"Easy there, Reb," the paratrooper said, taking a step back from Cole. "I'm just saying, is all. If you want him, then hell, you can have him. He's your prisoner."

Cole looked over at the German kid — who dutifully kept his hands on his head — and noticed that the German kept looking around the woods as if searching for someone.

"Jolie, jabber at that boy and ask him who he's looking for," Cole said to their guide.

Jolie did just that, asking a few questions in German. The boy answered at length and with some excitement, gesturing wildly, and talking to the point that Jolie finally had to cut him off.

"What's he goin' on about?"

"He says there was another sniper, but the boy doesn't see him, so he must have gotten away. Fritz here says that one's name is Captain Von Stenger, and he is some kind of super sniper. His nickname is The Ghost. He taught at the sniper training school and he fought against the Russians on the Eastern Front. The boy says this sniper is the one who shot Chief — and one of our snipers up on the hill."

Cole walked over to where the boy had been pointing. He looked up and had a start when he saw what he thought was someone in a tree overhead. But as he swung his rifle up he saw that it was only a dummy made out of a German uniform stuffed with pine needles. Up close it wasn't very convincing, but seen at a distance through a rifle scope it would have fooled him. Cole’s position in the mill had kept him from seeing anything but the two rifle flashes, but the dummy would have tricked Vaccaro and Meacham, who had a clearer view up on the hill. Cole had gotten lucky in shooting the real sniper.

Cole couldn't help but be impressed by how sly these Germans were. The boy had said the other German was some kind of super sniper. He reckoned the boy was right.

He walked among the trees, looking for some clue as to where this sniper had been hidden. Something bright winked at him from the mossy forest floor, and he stooped to pick up a spent brass rifle cartridge. The base was marked with the strange Cyrillic characters.

"I'll be damned," he said. He looked around some more and spotted one of the gold-tipped stubs of a fancy French cigarette, just like the ones he had found in the sniper's nest back at the hedgerow and in the church steeple. It was too much to be a coincidence. They had to be dealing with the same sniper here.

Cole waved Jolie and the boy over. "Tell me more about this Von Stenger," he said. "I have a bad feeling that we're goin' to run into him again."

"There is a good chance of that," Jolie agreed. "According to our prisoner here, Von Stenger is bivouacked in an old chateau. I know just where it is."

"Considering that it's probably surrounded by Jerries and Tiger tanks, that don't do us much good."

Jolie showed her teeth in a smile. "Leave that to me," she said.

"What are you planning to do?"

"Kill him," she said. "What else would I do with him? But first, I want you to give me a shooting lesson."

* * *

Soon after they had overrun the snipers’ nest, the paratroopers prepared to move on. Their captain shook hands with Lieutenant Mulholland, then tried to talk Neville into coming with them.

"We're heading for St. Lo to link up with the rest of the 101st Airborne. We could use a crazy Tommy bastard like you," their captain said. "We lost a lot of good men in the drop."

"Thanks, mate, but all the same I think I'll stay on with this lot," he said. "They've done a fair job so far of killing these bloody Germans."

"Cheerio then."

Neville laughed. "You Yanks catch on to the lingo fast. Stick with it and we'll have you speaking proper English in no time."

The American paratroopers drifted away through the trees and out into the open fields, toward the not-so-distant sound of machine gun fire and the whump, whump of artillery rounds.

The snipers stayed right where they were because the woods offered good cover until they could decide what to do next.

The lieutenant spotted Vaccaro coming across the bridge and waved him toward the woods. He had made it back from where he had been positioned in the woods on the high ground across the river.

"Meacham?" the lieutenant asked, but Vaccaro only shook his head. For once, he didn't seem to have a wisecrack handy.

"He never had a chance," Vaccaro finally said. "That Jerry sniper picked him off from way over here? Damn, but that German can shoot. I climbed up and got the body down and put him beside the road." He nodded at the German. "Maybe we should get him to go back and dig the grave."

"There will be a burial detail coming by," the lieutenant said, though how he knew that was hard to say. "We'll eat here and take a rest. At least we know it's clear of Germans."

"Well, we got us a Jerry right here from the looks of it," Vaccaro pointed out.

"He's just a dumb kid who's barely old enough to shave," the lieutenant said. "We can keep an eye on him. It's only the rest of the German Army that we have to watch out for."

* * *

It turned out that the German soldier's last name was Fritz. Now that it was becoming clear that the Americans didn't plan to shoot him, his fear had given way to a puppy-like cheerfulness. If he'd been a dog, Mulholland was sure the boy would be happily licking all their faces and wagging his tail. Instead, he kept bouncing around with a happy grin.

He knew a smattering of English, but they relied on Jolie to question him further in German. Based on what she found out, the puppy quality made sense. Their German prisoner was just sixteen years old, one of the young recruits that the increasingly desperate Wehrmacht was bringing in to fill the depleted ranks even as the enemy pressed in from two fronts. It was more than evident that the boy was no member of the Hitler Youth or any sort of fanatic. He was just a kid who found himself far from home in a place he really didn't want to be.

They opened up C rations, sat or stumps or logs, and began to eat. When it was clear that they were taking a break for some chow, the kid set about building a fire and boiling water for coffee — the rations each came with a packet of instant. Cole handed the kid a can of cubed turkey, and he wolfed it down.

Each of them, in their own minds, reminded themselves that this kid was the enemy, though it was hard to take the boy seriously as any kind of threat. Mainly, he seemed happy to be alive. His cheerfulness was a little infectious.

"That goddamn Meacham," Vaccaro said. "He was all right. If you've got to go, you know, one quick bullet is the way to go out. Pop. He never felt a thing."

Crouched over the fire, waiting for the water to boil, the German kid was now trying out his English. "Hey, Yank!" he said. "Baseball! Apple pie!"

Jolie turned to Cole. "How about that shooting lesson?"

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