Righteous Sniper

CHAPTER ELEVEN

As the latest bombardment rained down on Bastogne, a paratrooper from the 101st Airborne was risking his life on a highly unusual mission. The nineteen-year-old private ran down the street, dodging the bomb blasts, finally ducking into the shattered remains of a tavern.

It was a favor for a friend who had brought him there. Just minutes ago, he had been visiting a buddy at the hospital.

His friend had made a simple request. “Listen, won’t you do me a favor? I’m dying for a drink. Can’t you find me some booze?”

“Gee, I don’t know⁠—”

“Come on, won’t you at least try?”

How could he refuse the wishes of a wounded buddy? He patted his friend’s shoulder in reassurance and minutes later found himself outside on the streets of Bastogne.

Looking around at the bomb-blasted buildings, he wondered, Now what?

It couldn’t be that hard to find some booze. He had to give it a try, at least.

From time to time a German shell whistled in and exploded, adding more rubble to the ruins. The air was heavy with the acrid smell of smoke and gunpowder, mixed with the stench of death and destruction. The earth rumbled and buildings collapsed. He felt the impact reverberating through his bones. He swallowed back the coppery taste of fear that he had become all too used to since the Battle of the Bulge had begun.

Through the smoke, he could see other soldiers running for cover. Only an idiot would be out on the streets by choice — and yet here he was.

The easiest thing would have been to give up — but that was not how he was wired. If he said he was going to do something, then he did it.

The young paratrooper thought back to when his father had seen him off at the train station. His father was an Italian immigrant and a proud American. Standing there on the station platform, his father had simply said, “Don’t do anything to embarrass the family.”

He hadn’t so far, and he wasn’t about to now.

He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, then headed down the street. He was looking for a bar or tavern that hadn’t been smashed to bits. It wasn’t easy to find. Building after building that he passed bore the telltale scars of the intermittent bombardments that Bastogne had endured. He passed the entrance to one bar whose shattered sign proclaimed it as une taverne. Glancing inside at the fallen timbers scattered every which way like a game of pick-up sticks, he realized that the place would be a death trap to enter. He kept going.

Halfway down the next block, he found a more promising watering hole. The taverne sign hung crookedly above the door like a broken wing, but the interior was more or less intact.

Might be something, he thought.

However, he was disappointed to discover that most of the bottles behind the bar had been smashed where they stood by some nearby bomb blast. Any intact bottles had long since been liberated by thirsty GIs.

He noticed that the beer tap appeared unscathed. When he pulled the lever, beer ran out and spattered on the floor. This discovery delighted the paratrooper, who couldn’t wait to bring some back to his wounded friend. The question was, How was he going to do that? He looked behind the bar and around the floor for anything that might serve as a container for carrying the beer, but he gave up in futility. Everything was broken and smashed. He might have to hunt through the ruins of nearby buildings until he found a suitable container, costing him precious time. As a reminder that the bar might be reduced to rubble at any moment — and him along with it — a shell smashed into the street not more than a hundred feet away. The shock wave carried dust and the smell of cordite into the bar.

Rubble rained down and hit his helmet. That was when he got the idea.

Quickly, he took off his helmet and held it under the tap, filling it with beer. Once it was nearly overflowing, he started his return trip to the hospital. Mercifully, he seemed to have picked a time when the Germans were busy shelling another part of the city.

He reached the hospital and ducked inside, quickly locating his friend. No one bothered to question why a soldier was carrying a helmet slopping over with beer.

When his buddy spotted him, his eyes got big. “Is that helmet full of beer?”

“You said you wanted a drink.”

“Boy, do I ever.”

Kneeling beside the man, he helped him take a few gulps. He’d soon had his fill. That was no problem, because other wounded nearby had seen what he carried in his helmet, and they all wanted a drink from it. The helmet was soon empty.

“We need more!” the men cried. “Get more!”

The paratrooper found himself with no choice but to head back to the ruined tavern and fill up his helmet once again.

Coming back, he wasn’t as lucky about the bombardment as he had been on his first trip. A couple of shells landed nearby, one so close that the blast knocked him off his feet. Still, he cradled the helmet as he went down, managing to keep most of the beer from spilling.

He was surprised to find himself being helped to his feet by a couple of soldiers.

“You all right, buddy?” one of the soldiers asked in a strong Brooklyn accent. “It’s just a suggestion, but a helmet works a whole lot better when you wear it on your head.”

The other soldier didn’t speak right away. He was lean as a whip but strong, easily helping to pull the stunned paratrooper upright. “Why, I do believe this boy has got beer right here in his helmet. Sure smells like it.”

The second soldier had a strong country accent, with the words right here sounding like rye cheer. The paratrooper was still swaying a little, so the soldier didn’t let go.

The paratrooper could see right away that they were snipers, because both carried rifles with telescopic sights and they wore bedsheets over their uniforms in an attempt at winter camouflage. Both looked like tough customers, and he worried that they would help themselves to his beer.

“Listen, it’s not for me,” the paratrooper blurted. “It’s for my buddies in the hospital.”

“At the rate you’re going, you’ll either end up there yourself or get killed,” the soldier with the country accent said. “Best follow us if you want to get there in one piece.”

The two ducked down an alley, and the paratrooper felt compelled to follow. The alley grew narrower, seeming to press in on all sides, but the sound of the artillery shells impacting diminished. Minutes later they arrived at the hospital. He turned to thank them, maybe offer them a sip of beer, but they were already gone, having slipped quietly away into the darkness.

The paratrooper delivered his second helmet filled with beer, sharing it with even more soldiers this time. There was still plenty despite some of it having sloshed out during the shelling.

When that helmet ran dry, he made a third trip and shared the beer around.

With the praise of the soldiers ringing in his ears, he made yet another trip back to the tavern for more beer. Half of it slopped out on the run back, but it hardly mattered, because he never made it through the hospital doors.

Blocking his path was a very irate officer, who happened to be one of the doctors at the hospital.

He stabbed an accusing finger in the paratrooper’s direction with so much force that it may as well have been a bayonet.

“Are you the one who’s been giving my patients beer?” the officer demanded. He didn’t wait for an answer before launching into a tirade. “I’ve got all kinds of bad wounds in here. Head wounds, chest wounds. Some are awaiting surgery. Giving these men anything to drink by mouth — beer, no less — is the worst thing you could do. You could kill them, dammit. I ought to have you shot!”

“Yes, sir,” the young soldier stammered. The officer looked mad enough to make good on his threat.

“Now get out of here and don’t let me see you again!”

Out of pure reflex, the chastised paratrooper slapped his helmet back on his head. The dregs of the beer that remained ran down over his ears, but he scarcely noticed because he was eager to get out of there. He wasn’t going to wait around for the officer to change his mind. He followed the doctor’s orders and got the hell out of there.

Back at Division HQ, Colonel Roberts was not a happy camper. It was bad enough that the Germans remained intent on pushing them out of Bastogne. Now he had the brass breathing down his neck to boot.

“You have got to be kidding me!”

“Sir?” asked a clerk who was busy at a typewriter. Paperwork continued for the army, even in the midst of war.

Ignoring the clerk, he glared down at the message in front of him. He worked at a makeshift desk that consisted of an old door set between two crates. Just days ago, the door had actually graced the front of a neighboring house but had been blown off by an incoming shell. One of the clerks had salvaged it out of the street.

A fireplace struggled to heat the room, but it seemed to be throwing off more smoke than heat. As a result, they had been forced to open the window to let in fresh air, which defeated the purpose of having a fire in the first place. A stack of papers on his desk threatened to blow away in the breeze, so he had set his .45 on top of the stack to weigh it down.

The colonel chomped hard on an unlit cigar. He would have liked to light it, but to do so would have endangered his ample sandy-colored mustache, because he had already smoked the cigar down to a stub. Cigars were in short supply, and the soggy nubbin of the last cigar that he’d smoked was all that he had left.

The message he had received concerned a German prisoner. In particular, a German officer named Bauer. The colonel had barely been aware of the existence of this officer beyond the fact that several Germans had surrendered outside Bastogne, but apparently someone knew about him — and they wanted to interrogate Bauer for a couple of reasons. The first reason centered on the fact that Bauer might have valuable information to share about the disposition of German troops or other battle plans.

The colonel shook his head. He knew that interrogating the German officer would be pointless. A German officer was a tough nut to crack, and there was no reason this one would be any different.

The second reason interest had been expressed in Bauer was that he was being considered a war criminal, responsible for the execution of American prisoners. The colonel had raised his eyebrows at that — he hadn’t known anything about the incident until he had been informed by a surgeon who had treated a soldier who claimed to be the lone survivor of the incident.

The colonel had no reason to doubt that the account was true.

Perhaps the powers that be thought the accusation of a war crime would give them leverage with Bauer to get him to talk. For his own part, the colonel thought that the best solution would be to take Bauer out back and shoot him, if he had, in fact, been responsible for the murder of American boys.

But the decision wasn’t up to him, and to make matters worse, he was being sent a British intelligence officer who happened to speak German. The colonel’s orders were to make sure that the officer returned with the German.

It was this last part that left the colonel fuming. He would have to give up some of his soldiers to escort the German. He wasn’t in any position to give up a single able-bodied man, not while there was still a chance — a diminishing one, fortunately — that the Germans might still be marching through downtown Bastogne and singing “Ach, Du Lieber Augustin.”

Not only that, but escorting the German to the rear for interrogation would be a dangerous business, perhaps even foolhardy. It was hard to say who held the territory south of town. It might be Americans one minute and Germans the next.

The colonel glared at the clerk. “Go find Lieutenant Mulholland. Tell him I need a couple of his snipers. I hear he has a couple of real crackerjacks. If they can’t get the job done, I don’t know who can.”