Gods & Snipers: A World War II Thriller

Chapter Six

Just a few miles to the north of Ville sur Moselle, American troops were preparing to fight their way across the river at the town of Dornot in order to establish a bridgehead.

Dornot was a good-sized village on the banks of the Moselle River. As a crossing point, it was less than ideal because any troops, tanks, or trucks would have to squeeze through the narrow main street in order to reach the river.

The road leading through the river valley wasn't much better, hemmed in on all sides by low hills, and currently a morass of mud from the cold, steady rain. And yet, more and more troops piled up on the muddy road, forcing the troops up ahead through the narrow places with the same physics as a tube of toothpaste. The problem was that as these troops pushed through, it became more urgent for the Americans to be able to get across the river.

In military parlance, a river crossing was known as a bridgehead. For American GIs, it was going to be a bloodbath.

And they knew it.

"I wish we'd get this over with," Private Robert "Frenchie" Tremblay said, the last word emerging an octave higher from his nervously constricted throat. Nobody bothered to kid him about it. They could actually see the Germans on the opposite bank of the river.

Waiting for them.

"I got to say, this is gonna be a bitch," said Private Marty Pulaski, crouched at his buddy's elbow.

The men had been in position since before dawn, waiting to pile into rubber boats for the attack across the Moselle. However, here it was past ten o'clock in the morning, and nothing had happened except that they had run out of cigarettes.

"It's a SNAFU, is what it is," Frenchie said. His nickname came from the fact that he spoke French fluently, thanks to parents who had grown up in Quebec before moving to the States for work. He spoke Canadian French, but it was clear enough for the locals to understand him. "Situation Normal, All Fouled Up. Nobody knows who's in charge."

Pulaski hid his grin at his buddy’s definition of SNAFU. Despite months of war and carnage, his friend couldn't quite bring himself to swear like a soldier. Frenchie was too much of a straight arrow for that. To Pulaski's way of thinking, the situation was more than Fouled Up — and the F-word that came to mind reflected that.

Soldiers loved a good rumor, and the hurried conferences they had witnessed between officers from various units seemed to back up what they'd heard. That would also explain the long wait. Two different units — one infantry, one armored — had ended up in this spot with orders from two different commanders. It was taking a while to wrangle out who was in charge and whether or not the attack should go forward even though it was evident to all that the Germans were dug in and ready for them.

Another rumor persisted that the Germans awaiting them were SS. The GIs had fought both SS and regular Wehrmacht in France. The Wehrmacht troops were not pushovers, but they had the good sense to surrender when things got rough. They didn't have a death wish. The SS troops fought to the last man. SS troops didn't expect to be taken prisoner, and they didn't take prisoners, either. If you found yourself surrounded, it was unlikely that you could expect any quarter from those SS bastards.

Unfortunately for the GIs, both rumors had a basis in truth. There had been a real mix-up in the command structure that was causing confusion about the river crossing. If that wasn’t bad enough, the German troops on the other side were, in fact, SS. The Americans would have to fight for every inch of that bridgehead against a determined adversary.

Both Frenchie Tremblay and Marty Pulaski belonged to Company F, 11th Infantry, which had seen its share of fighting during the months leading up to this point. They had lost close to 30 percent of their unit since the June landing, either wounded or killed. In fact, it seemed as if the time since D Day had been one long battle with a few snatches of sleep thrown in.

Some of the men couldn't take it anymore. There had been more than a few self-inflicted "accidental" shootings through a hand or foot — anything to get off the line. The Army kept that quiet. Then there were the genuine Section 8 cases where men had gone into catatonic states or simply balled up in a foxhole at the sound of a German 88 and then refused to leave. These guys weren't cowards — they had done their share, and then some — but something in their minds had snapped. They had reached the breaking point. The Army swept these cases under the rug because they were bad for morale.

Frenchie and Marty had been among the lucky ones so far, but you wouldn't know it to look at them. Both young men had dark circles around their eyes from lack of sleep. Marty had developed a nasty-sounding wet cough as a result of the cold, rainy weather. Just the other morning, they had awakened to the sting of sleet pelting their faces. The men shivered and pulled their filthy uniforms closer.

It was only September, but winter came early to this part of Europe. So far, no winter gear had been issued. The supply lines were stretched too thin. The Army had enough trouble getting gasoline and ammo and medical supplies to the front, let alone warm socks. Many of those supplies were brought in by the heroic Red Ball Express, the nickname given to the supply truck drivers wrangling their way through the muddy roads all the way from the coast.

Like his buddy, Frenchie, Private Pulaski was looking out at the expanse of open water to the banks on the other side, knowing full well that the Germans were dug in and expecting them. This was not a scene for a postcard. The river was ninety yards wide here and six or seven feet deep, with a powerful current exacerbated by the recent rains. That current was deceptive because there were no rapids or anything else to disturb the surface. Instead, the current flexed like a smooth, brown muscle. The water had a dank, muddy smell that clung to the shoreline. From a soldier’s point of view, the river was neither inviting nor scenic, but just another obstacle to cross.

On the other side of the river was a flood plain that stretched for around 400 yards before the land began to rise steeply. The only cover on the plain was provided by a patch of woods shaped roughly like a horseshoe. Just a mile from the river they could see the twin fortresses, Fort St. Blaise and Fort Sommy, part of the old Siegfried line of defense built by the Germans, that presided over the flood plain. Beyond those forts began the foothills of the Ardennes region, one of the most rugged and wild regions in central Europe.

Near these fortresses, German artillery had dug in to cover any river crossings by the Americans. The rugged terrain that provided good cover to ground forces, along with the wet weather, meant that the Army Air Corps no longer had all of the advantages. One benefit was that German armor seemed to be absent, having concentrated to the south to confront General Patton's forces.

Just then, a shell ripped in and struck just behind the American position. Dirt and debris showered the waiting troops. Moments later, another shell came at them from west of the river, this one hitting the poor guys anchoring the unit's right flank on the river bank.

Frenchie heard screams and saw the air fill with clods of mud and chunks of what might be body parts. With the other men, he flattened himself against the wet ground, but the firing stopped.

"What a clusterfuck," Marty muttered. It didn't take a general to see that this was a lousy position. The riverbank offered minimal protection. Nobody liked being exposed to enemy artillery.

It didn't help that the Jerries still had a few stubborn pockets of artillery on this side of the river, which meant that the Allied forces were occasionally being shelled from both the front and the rear. While artillery had tried to soften up the German positions earlier that morning, it was hard to say how effective the barrage had been. The German positions were spread out and well protected by the fortresses or the low hills in which they sheltered. All in all, it was a hell of situation.

Finally, the order came to launch the boats. Marty and Frenchie slogged through the water to get the rubber boat away from the shore. They didn't have to go far because the banks of the Moselle dropped off steeply. This was an unforgiving river. They clambered over the sides into the boat and tried to find a comfortable way to sit.

"We're jammed in here like sardines," Marty muttered.

"More like sitting ducks," Frenchie said.

They both grabbed paddles and began to dig into the water. Their pace against the current felt agonizingly slow. Due to that current, Frenchie had no hope of landing directly across from their original position. Instead, their boat and all the rest had to settle for a point downstream.

Immediately, the ungainly, overloaded rubber boats came under enemy fire. Bursts from German machine guns swept the river. Tracers lit the gloom. The men in the boats kept low, but the rubber sides didn't provide any protection.

Mortar rounds burst periodically, erupting in fountains of water and shrapnel. Even boats that didn't lose all the men aboard to a burst of machine gun fire were shredded and began to sink. Loaded down with gear and ammunition, the men who found themselves trying to swim for it didn't stand a chance and quickly slipped under the surface. Those who could grabbed hold of a passing rubber raft, although the drag of the men in the water further slowed the progress of the boats.

All that Marty and French could do was to keep paddling frantically. The boats ahead of them got chewed to pieces, but their own boat somehow managed to slip through — so far.

Survivors from the shredded boats grabbed the sides of their raft. One of those guys tried to eel his way over the side into the raft and Marty reached back and clanged the guy over the helmet with his paddle. "Hang on and kick, or we ain't gonna make it!" Marty shouted as the chastened soldier slipped back into the river.

Finally, the first of the boats reached the far shore and the men scrambled up the steep, overgrown riverbank. Sporadic artillery fire came from the American side, but it was enough to silence the German guns. Shells were in short supply, however, and it was not long after the big American guns stopped that the German firepower started back up.

Ashore, it was like D-Day all over again.

Men made themselves as flat as possible as the mud erupted all around them, churned by machine gun fire. They heard the distinctive ripping sound made by the deadly German MG-42 guns that let loose with twelve-hundred rounds per minute.

"Move it!" a sergeant shouted. "You want to die, you stay right here!"

Screaming, his own rifle held ready although he had nothing to shoot at yet, Frenchie ran forward. They struggled across the open ground with tracers hissing around them and occasional bursts of mortar shells. The terrified troops had nowhere to go but onward. Finally, some of the men reached the relative shelter of the copse of trees midway between the river and the German fortifications.

Frenchie fell down beside Marty, panting with exhaustion, spent both physically and emotionally. Overhead, bullets snicked away at the autumn leaves, sounding like steel sleet. It seemed impossible for them to go on, and yet they must. Already, the sergeant was rallying them for a push toward the forts. They had a lot of ground to cross, all covered by enfiladed machine gun positions.

Frenchie felt someone grab his arm.

"It's been nice knowing you, Frenchie," Marty said. "Write to my parents, will you?"

"Don't talk like that, goddammit," Frenchie said, his own rule about swearing forgotten. "But listen, if I get killed, you'll do the same for me, right?"

"Sure I will," Marty said. Every soldier knew that his number might be up at any moment, but the two of them had been in so many scrapes together that they almost took it for granted that they would get out of this one alive. That outcome seemed even more uncertain. "Now, let's go tell those Germans to shove it up their asses."

At the urging of their sergeant and a lieutenant — their captain hadn't made it off the boats alive — the young GIs sprang up and joined the others running at a crouch toward the nearest fort.

On the way, they passed a group of five dead civilians, including two women, all lined up in a row where they had been mowed down.

"What the hell?" Marty wondered.

"Must be SS that done that," the sergeant said. "They shoot anybody who looks like French Resistance."

The unit moved on. To their relief, the German firing subsided as the Americans advanced and hit the enemy positions with mortars and grenade launchers.

But the Jerries had hardly rolled out the welcome mat. The GIs were faced with rows of barbed concertina wire, which they slowly hacked their way through using the few pairs of bolt-cutters that were available. Others wrapped scraps of cloth or webbed utility belts around their hands and simple yanked a path through the tangles of barbed wire, so desperate that they ignored the vicious slices to their hands and wrists and faces.

The wire wasn't the worst of it. At the edge of the barbed wire was a moat. The bottom was filled with yet more concertina wire, along with rusty metal spikes. These Krauts really knew how to make a guy feel unwelcome. They smelled gasoline, too — the sheen in the bottom of the moat was definitely not water. If the Germans fired just one tracer round into the moat, the Americans would be caught in the resulting conflagration.

Frenchie had thrown himself down into the dirt at the rim of the moat, bracing himself for what was coming next.

Nobody was giving any orders to cross, though, because on the other side of the moat rose the sheer walls of the fortress itself. Even if they made it across the moat, scaling those walls would be impossible without ropes and ladders, and maybe an engineering platoon to help. They would die like bugs hitting a windshield on a summer night.

"Fall back to the river!" the sergeant shouted. "We're here to secure a bridge, not sack a fort."

For the first time that day, Frenchie felt a sense of relief. Apparently, the Germans had fled the fort, which was so imposing that, defended or not, the only way forward was to go around it. The GIs had succeeded in driving off the Germans and securing a river crossing. Their job now would be to get back down to the river and dig in until more troops could be brought over. Having wrested the riverfront from the Germans, their job now would be to hold this position.

Cautiously, the GIs reversed direction and returned using the path that they had so laboriously cut through the tangled barbed wire. To the south, they could hear sporadic firing in the distance, a reminder that they were not the only ones at war this day. Frenchie was glad to be headed back toward the relative safety of the riverbank.

“Guess we showed them,” Marty said.

But Frenchie and the other GIs could not have been more mistaken. They had just cleared the barbed wire and reached open ground again when the Germans counter-attacked.