Gods & Snipers: A World War II Thriller

Chapter Eleven

Cole moved forward cautiously, pausing from time to time to listen, or simply to sniff the air. Cole could actually smell the Germans when they were around. The exhaust from their tanks and vehicles wasn’t the same as that from American vehicles. Even their sweat smelled different, from the food they ate.

"Don't tell me about how you can smell the Jerries," muttered Vaccaro, watching him. "Not that I'd be all that surprised if it's true."

"Let's just say I got a good nose for trouble," Cole said. "And you ain't got to be a bloodhound to know that there's Germans around here."

Cole and Vaccaro were on point, walking ahead of the rest of the patrol. In this kind of fluid situation, where the next step might bring them directly into an enemy crossfire, point was a dangerous position to be in. They had been put there by Captain Norton.

From far behind them, Norton shouted, "Get a move on, already! The Germans will be back across the Rhine and halfway to Berlin before we get to the end of this road."

Cole nodded, but he moved on only when he was good and ready.

He couldn’t tell where the Germans had gone, and worried that the enemy might be waiting just up ahead for the patrol to wander into their sights once again.

The patrol's brush with the Wehrmacht's rear guard had left them badly bruised. West was being carried on a stretcher. Without so much as a Jeep, the squad was forced to take turns carrying him. It was exhausting work. Each step jostled the wounded man, who, mercifully, was drugged with morphine. They had no choice but to bring him along. With the countryside crawling with Germans, it wasn't safe to send him to the rear.

The men in Captain Norton's haphazard patrol were among hundreds of thousands of troops heading east along a battlefront that stretched across France. Most of the countryside was in chaos, with firefights like the one they had just experienced breaking out wherever opposing forces ran into each other on the country roads. Having occupied the countryside since 1940, Wehrmacht and SS troops now sold each mile of France leading toward Germany dearly.

In a sense, the troops of both sides were all in a race — a race toward Germany.

The final boundary would be the Rhine River. Wide and deep, the mighty Rhine had kept the Germanic tribes separated from the rest of the world in ancient times. In fact, it was the freezing of the Rhine during a series of unusually cold winters that enabled the Germanic hordes to cross the ice and hasten the fall of the Roman Empire.

Once Allied troops made that crossing, they would be in the Fatherland itself.

But before they could reach the Rhine, first they must ford the Moselle River. This tributary of the Rhine flowed parallel to Germany's great boundary river. The Moselle stretched from north to south, roughly from the Ardennes region to down below the towns of Metz and Aachen. Beyond the Moselle, it was only a hard day's push toward the Rhine. Having fought their way from Normandy, the Allied troops could begin to taste victory. Time and time again, however, the Germans showed that they were far from defeated yet.

The Moselle was a meandering river through what was largely a rural region of France. Because it drained so many farm fields, the dominant color was brown. Soldiers looking for a poetic description couldn't really call it coffee-colored or even the color of chocolate milk. The Moselle was simply muddy, especially in springtime or after the fall rains.

The Moselle was rarely more than a couple of hundred feet across, but the current was swift between the steep banks, and the river was anywhere from eight to ten feet deep in most place. A tank or a Jeep couldn't cross, and there was no way a GI loaded with gear could swim it. No, the Moselle was a river that was deceptively difficult to cross, which made the bridges so important to both the retreating Germans and the advancing Americans.

A few villages, some of them not quite cities, dotted the banks of the Moselle. The larger villages had grown up around bridge crossings. Many of these villages had existed for hundreds of years and had their beginnings in ferries that crossed the river.

These bridges were strategically a tricky question for the Germans and Allies alike. The Allies did not want to see the Germans retreat or escape, but couldn't blow the bridges if they hoped to follow. The last German across might blow the bridge, but even that action was not without risks. Blowing the bridge too soon would leave their brothers in arms stranded and at the mercy of the Allies. Waiting too long would mean an open road for Allied troops advancing toward the Rhine.

Crossing a river was one of most difficult challenges that an army could face. The open nature of a water crossing exposed troops to enemy fire. These difficulties weren't new to Allied or Axis troops. For example, Union troops crossing the Rappahannock River at the battle of Fredericksburg had been picked off by Confederate sharpshooters and bombarded by enemy artillery on their way to storm Marye's Heights. It had been a perfect gauntlet of fire.

But the patrol moving toward the Moselle had more immediate concerns, such as how to avoid an ambush around the next bend.

The green kid from Norton’s patrol moved up beside Cole. "Sorry I was such a coward back there," the kid said. His voice held an edge of despair. Cole could almost taste the kid's sense of shame. Just a short time ago, he had been cowering behind the wrecked hulk of the tank, hands over his ears, curled into a ball. "I don't know what happened to me. I guess I lost my nerve when I heard the shooting."

Cole spat. He looked sideways at the kid, whose new uniform marked him as a greenhorn. The thumb of his right hand was bandaged, which indicated that he had suffered “M-1 Thumb” by having his thumb caught in the action of the rifle as it snapped shut.

Replacement troops tended to get killed so fast in the vicious fighting across Normandy, that veteran troops didn't bother to learn their names. Cole didn't bother to ask this one's name. In fact, he didn't say anything at all, but kept his eyes on the road ahead.

"Anyhow, it won't happen again. Thanks for saving my bacon."

Finally, Cole said, "You ain't no coward. Gettin' shot at don't come natural to most."

"Better get used to it, kid," Vaccaro said. ”In case you haven't noticed, there's a war on."

"You don't never get used to it," Cole said. "But you get so you can handle the fear."

"If you say so."

"You got to put a rope around your fear and lead it around like a dog. Jest don't let it lead you around."

The kid nodded. "That's quite an accent you have. Where you from?"

"No place that you'd want to be from, that’s for damn sure," Cole said. "Now fall back behind City Boy there, kid. You want a good ten yards between everybody on a road like this, so a burst from a machine gun don't kill us all.”

Although Cole wasn’t more than twenty-four, he felt vastly older than any nineteen or twenty-year-old greenhorn. Some might even say that Cole had been born with an old soul.

“My name is Bill, by the way,” the kid said. “Bill Laurel.”

“Don’t know and don’t care,” Cole replied. “If’n you don’t shut up and pay attention, you ain’t gonna be around long enough for me to worry none about your name, and that’s a fact.”

They trudged on in silence, pressing deeper into what was likely German-held territory, the tension so thick that they could have spread it on sliced bread.

A road sign appeared. Though pockmarked by bullets, the sign was freshly painted with letters in crisp black paint. Cole shook his head. One thing about the Germans, which the French did not like to admit, was that they had been very efficient about maintaining the French roads, which were in much better shape than they had been in 1940 before the occupation. The same could be said for every public service, from electricity to telephones to water and sewer lines.

On the other hand, the Germans also oversaw “improvements,” such as shipping out the Jewish people, seizing artwork, and stripping the Catholic churches of their old silver chalices or anything else of value. Hitler’s “improvements” had even extended to a plan to raze French symbols such as the Cathedral of Notre Dame, but that had promised to be more effort than it was worth. Fortunately for the French, Hitler had been distracted by other projects, such as the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Cole looked at the sign, but the words meant nothing to him. Even if the sign had been in English, the fact of the matter was that Cole could not read, although he took pains to hide his illiteracy from just about everyone. His upbringing in the mountains had taught Cole to read the sky or a set of tracks, but words remained a mystery to him. Vaccaro was one of the only people who knew his secret.

Twenty feet behind Cole, the kid read the sign aloud. "Ville sur Moselle," he said. "I'm pretty sure that means 'Village on the Moselle'."

"Village on the Moselle," Cole said. "I reckon that means we are headin' for the river. At least Captain Numbnuts back there has us going in the right direction. I was worried we was gonna end up in Italy by mistake."

"Careful," Vaccaro said quietly. "You're in enough hot water as it is with him. For a guy who doesn't say much, you sure know to say the wrong thing. Better make nice and lay low if you ever want your rifle back."

"Captain Norton don't worry me none," Cole said. "Captains and lieutenants ain't worth a cup of spit in this army."

"Yeah, but that captain is in command right now and he doesn't seem to like you very much, which means he doesn't like me either, by association," Vaccaro said. "We're stuck with Captain Norton. It's not like we ever so much as see a colonel or general. They're all back at HQ, where it's safe."

"A general out here?" Cole snorted. "Wouldn't that be somethin'. But to hell with officers. I'm a heap more worried about Germans, and that there might be some around the next bend in the road."