Righteous Sniper

CHAPTER TWO

Obersturmbannführer Ingo Bauer considered his options.

For days now they had been pushing through the hills and forests as the Germans advanced. He had called a brief halt while he got his bearings.

Bauer was a tall man in his forties, with dark hair and blue eyes that stood out in a face that seemed permanently tanned and lined from the summer months spent fighting across French fields, despite the fact that it was now winter.

Looking around, he saw that his men were cold and tired, some slumped in the snow or on patches of bare ground. The lack of discipline nagged at him, and he thought the men would be warmer if they had remained standing instead of resting upon the frozen ground, but he held back the command — Steh auf! Get on your feet! — that had already begun to form at the back of his throat.

He had to remind himself that some were only teenagers, pressed into service. There were still a few veteran soldiers, and he depended on them to keep the youngsters in line.

Toward the rear was a small group of American prisoners that they had swept up in the advance. The prisoners slumped to the snowy road, much like his own men.

What had happened to the unit that had set out so confidently from Germany just a short time ago? The cold and snow and constant fighting, that’s what. It had all taken its toll on the men.

Truth be told, it had taken a toll on him as well.

Had it really been just a few days ago that he had listened as Der Führer unveiled this plan to advance through the Ardennes Forest? Hitler and his planners had made it all sound so certain. Here in the cold and snow, with Allied forces digging in and not giving up, the plan seemed nothing but foolhardy, the Obersturmbannführer thought.

At least they were well equipped, with plenty of food and ammunition. The Germans also knew all about winter gear, and they were much better outfitted than the Allies. They were used to the constant gray of a European winter. The Achilles’ heel of the German campaign was proving to be fuel for the panzers and the tanks’ ability to traverse the narrow forest roads.

The sound of a throat being cleared interrupted his thoughts.

“What are your orders, Herr Obersturmbannführer?” asked Hauptmann Sepp Messner, who had appeared at Bauer’s elbow.

Bauer waited a moment before replying. It was just like Messner to address him formally, even though it was just the two of them talking, in the middle of a forest. He had encouraged the use of first names, but Messner definitely had an iron rod up his ass in that regard.

Bauer wondered whether he would ever hear the sound of his first name again.

He knew that Messner didn’t like him, and the feeling was mutual. Messner was a few years younger, but he was two inches taller and far more handsome than Bauer, not to mention that he came from a much wealthier background — just the sort of young officer who caught the attention of all the young ladies in Berlin. Messner resented the fact that a mere peasant such as Bauer outranked him. Bauer’s surname, in fact, meant “peasant” or “farmer” in German — a fact that Messner surely had not overlooked.

Perhaps it was petty, but it felt good to keep Messner waiting for a reply. He took his time studying the map he held, although he had long since memorized it. Their destination, the town of Bastogne, lay ahead.

“We move forward,” he said finally. “We will see if we can join up with the panzers. They can’t be too far ahead.”

“What about the prisoners?”

Bauer shrugged. The prisoners were the least of his concerns, considering that his unit had lost contact with the larger panzer force ahead as the result of having to sweep a couple of villages that the tanks couldn’t be bothered with. In the process, they had picked up a dozen American GIs who had basically been lost in the forest. “We will take them with us.”

“They require watching,” Messner said, disapproval apparent from the tone of his voice.

Bauer glanced over at the prisoners. He doubted that they would give anyone much trouble. They looked to be in even worse shape than his own men, if that was possible. The Americans lacked real winter gear, wrapping themselves in blankets and even burlap feed sacks to fend off the damp cold. Bauer supposed that he should let them eat something, but there wasn’t time. The expressions on the Americans’ faces ranged from blank to fearful. None of them looked defiant.

He turned back to Hauptmann Messner. “What else would you have me do with them, Sepp? Tell them to keep up. I want you at the rear to watch for stragglers.”

Of course, he knew very well that Messner was hoping that his commanding officer would order him to shoot the prisoners. Bauer had no such plans. He wasn’t sure how much of his reluctance to shoot the Americans came from a sense of simple decency toward enemy soldiers — and how much was inspired by the urge to annoy Messner.

There was also the fact that the rules of war had remained somewhat gentlemanly between the Germans and Americans. Sometimes there were regrettable incidents where prisoners on both sides had been shot, but those were isolated cases where passions had gotten out of hand or there was no expedient way to deal with prisoners other than to shoot them.

The truth was that the Allies wanted the Germans to feel comfortable surrendering — preferably in large numbers, as had happened at the Falaise Gap and other battles. The reasoning seemed to be that every German who surrendered was one less to fight.

In any case, these prisoners on the road weren’t Russians. Bauer would have been glad to shoot any Russians himself.

Through gritted teeth, Messner replied, “As you wish, Herr Obersturmbannführer. I will keep them moving.”

The Hauptmann walked off, and Bauer sighed. Having a malcontent as second-in-command only added to his headaches.

He felt that Messner was too reckless by far, taking chances and gambling with the lives of their men. For his own part, Bauer had begun to wonder whether there was a chance, even a slim one, that life would go on after this nightmare of a war was over. That hope was a bit like the faint light you saw on the horizon that hinted at dawn, even while the dark of night still enveloped you.

Of course, survival seemed to be a coin toss at the moment. They still had this day to get through. And if they were lucky, the next one after that. In war, you couldn’t think too far ahead.

Bauer hadn’t given up — he was a good German, after all — but he believed that only a fool could think that Germany would emerge triumphant after the beating they were now taking on two fronts. The way that Bauer saw it, the best option for Germany was some sort of conditional surrender or treaty. He suspected that the window was closing for any kind of negotiated peace, but if this battle in the Ardennes was successful, they still might get at least that.

Hauptmann Messner was one of those fools who still believed that total victory was possible.

Soon Messner was shouting at the prisoners to get on their feet. The unit began to move up the road.

From his maps, Bauer knew that their destination, the village of Bastogne, still lay several miles ahead. The crossroads town was essential to capture. The heavy tanks couldn’t manage the narrow roads through the hills, so the only way forward was through the town. Bauer had been told that, unfortunately for the Germans, the 101st Airborne and other units were putting up a stiff resistance. It would be vital for Bauer’s men to catch up with the panzers to create a more effective attack force.

With the panzers out of sight, the only vehicles that Bauer had at his disposal were a couple of Kübelwagen. Small but sturdy, these vehicles, manufactured in the tens of thousands by Volkswagen, managed to traverse the hilly roads no matter how much mud and slush the winter threw at them.

The Kübelwagen were currently serving as their ambulances, and Bauer had long since given up his seat to make room for the wounded and the worst cases of frostbite. The second Kübelwagen had been Messner’s, and it had taken a direct order for the Hauptmann to give up his vehicle — and then only reluctantly. Messner made the point that Germans who allowed themselves to get frostbite were no different from men who shot themselves in the foot to avoid duty.

“Duly noted, Messner,” Bauer had said, his tone far from patient. “But you need to get out and walk.”

Bauer was not ready to go so far as classifying frostbite cases as dereliction of duty. Nonetheless, he was not happy about the frostbite — those men should have known better than to let their feet get wet. In this cold, wet feet were as effective as a bullet in neutralizing a soldier. He made sure that the sergeants reminded the newer men to change their wool socks whenever they could.

Bauer now had little choice but to plod along at the head of his men. He even carried a rifle taken from one of the wounded.

They left the open ground and moved back into the forest. As the trees closed in around them, Bauer felt a sense of uneasiness. He’d been told that there shouldn’t be any Allied troops between here and Bastogne, but who really knew?

Something flickered just at the corner of his vision. He turned that way, rifle at the ready, but there was nothing to see. Perhaps it had been some winter bird or foraging animal? Looking at the barren trees, he couldn’t help but think that they resembled the rib bones of the dead he had seen piled up in Russia.

He recalled hearing stories about the old days and how there had once been wolves roaming these woods, preying on the local peasants during the coldest months. Men went off to cut wood and did not return. Children went to bring the cows home and disappeared.

The wolves grew fatter.

Stories to scare children, not soldiers.

He shook his head and turned his attention back to the road.

He set a brisk pace, and after an hour his men were strung out along the road despite the efforts of the sergeants and corporals to keep everyone moving. He had lost sight of the end of the column around a bend in the gloomy road.

Bauer was about to call another halt so the column could regroup when he heard a burst of automatic weapon fire toward the rear.

His first thought was that the Americans had found them after all. He shouted orders for the men to get off the road, but it was unnecessary. His men knew what to do. They were already sprinting into the underbrush, getting behind trees, pointing their weapons toward the rear.

Bauer strained to see what was happening, but whatever was going on back there was hidden from sight. The flurry of gunfire was followed by a series of pistol shots, spaced apart like the ellipses at the end of a sentence.

It didn’t sound like an attack, because there was no return fire. He had been in this war long enough to know the different sound that American weapons made, and he had heard only what sounded like German weapons. Then he remembered that Messner was back there bringing up the rear and shepherding the prisoners.

The prisoners, he thought. He’s gone and done it, damn him.

Frustrated by the fact that his view was blocked, and with a growing sense of anger, Bauer jogged back along the column. Of course, the rest of his men were now on edge and watching the woods nervously.

When he finally reached the rear, he saw the curtain closing on the massacre.

Most of the prisoners lay dead in the snow. Hauptmann Messner walked among the bodies like he was out for a stroll, inspecting the cabbages in his garden with delight. When he came to a prisoner who was still moving, a cabbage ripe for the picking, Messner paused and shot the American in the back of the head with his pistol. The sharp crack echoed across the snow-covered hills.

Messner wasn’t the only one with unfinished business. Miraculously, one of the prisoners seemed to have gotten away. Bauer could see him in the distance, running through the trees. He was limping badly and probably wounded, but he had somehow managed to get away from the road.

But he would not escape. One of his men raised a rifle equipped with a telescopic sight. That would be Dietzel, he thought, one of his Jaeger, or scouts, who had a reputation as a crack shot.

Bauer found himself holding his breath as the Jaeger took aim, even surprising himself by willing the prisoner to run deeper into the trees. Yes, the man was an enemy soldier, but he had so much fight in him.

Then the rifle fired, and the fleeing man tumbled into the snow and did not move again.

Bauer stood alone in the abrupt silence, clenching and unclenching his fists. He had the odd sense that the wintry hills and trees were somehow looking on in disapproval.

Hauptmann Messner walked toward him, brandishing a happy smile. Behind Messner came two soldiers. One was Obergefreiter Gerhard Dietzel, holding his sniper rifle, and the other man carried an automatic weapon. He recognized him as a soldier named Gettinger. Both were men who had found the Hauptmann’s favor and had become quite loyal to him. In their sullen eyes, Bauer saw mirrored Messner’s disapproval of their commander.

Over the Hauptmann’s shoulder, Bauer could see the prisoners’ bodies sprawled at the edge of the road. Several soldiers had come from the front of the column to see what all the shooting was about.

“They could not keep up, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” Messner said. Even Messner seemed to hear the lie in his voice, because he shrugged dismissively.

“Is that so?” Bauer fought down the anger that he felt because he did not want to shout at his second-in-command in front of the men. It was not the prisoners that Bauer cared about so much as the fact that Messner had intentionally thumbed his nose at Bauer’s orders.

Dieser Hurensohn. That son of a bitch.

Bauer took a deep breath to calm himself.

“For pity’s sake, Messner. What have you done?”

Like a lawyer, Messner laid out his case. “The prisoners were slowing our advance, perhaps intentionally. Some of them even tried to get away into the forest.” He turned to the soldier with the sniper rifle. “Isn’t that so, Dietzel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s done is done,” Bauer said. “Just make sure that there are no survivors.”

“There were none. I think you saw me make sure of it.” By way of emphasis, Messner patted the pistol at his belt. Then he commenced to pull his black leather gloves back on.

“Good. Because if the Americans find out what you have done, none of us will survive, either, if we are captured. No German will.”

Bauer turned away, his one consolation being the look of realization crossing Messner’s face.

A die had been cast; a line had been crossed.

Also, none of them knew it yet, but Messner had been wrong about killing all the prisoners.

There had been one survivor.

Hidden under the corpse of one of his buddies, a GI named Charlie Knuth held himself very still to avoid receiving a coup de grâce at the hands of the German officer. He held his breath until his lungs felt ready to burst, although he wanted to cry out in pain from the bullets that had torn through his body. Lucky for him, before the German officer had made a closer inspection, attention had turned to the GI trying to escape through the woods.

The man would survive to tell the bloody tale of what had happened on that road through the forest.

And there would be hell to pay.