Sniper's Justice

Chapter Six

Gefreiter Hauer scowled at a man who had stepped on a brittle branch buried under the snow, the sharp crack sounding like a gunshot in the stillness.

“Dummkopf,” he muttered. “Do that again and I will cut your throat.”

“Never mind him, Hauer,” whispered the Oberleutnant nearby. The officer had grown more anxious as they approached their objective, a mountain village that they were to capture. “Do we have a clear way forward?”

Acting as the spearpoint of the German advance, Hauer turned his attention to the forest ahead, rifle at the ready.

Nothing moved, so he glanced at the Oberleutnant, who signaled for the company to advance.

Behind Hauer, a great mass of troops moved through the wintry hills, their passage muffled by the freezing mist and snow-laden boughs of the conifer forest. Orders passed quietly from man to man in order to avoid any shouting. Their goal was to advance as far as possible under the very noses of the enemy. Success depended upon surprise.

The road proved to be narrow and winding, forcing the lead Panzers and the convoy of trucks to move slowly. Crowded out of the road, many of the men had taken to the forest, where the footing was better than on the icy, snow-packed road.

Hauer was among those leading the troops through the forest.

He stopped to study the landscape ahead through binoculars.

“What do you see, Hauer?” asked the Oberleutnant, who had come to depend on the sniper as his eyes and ears in the forest. Where other men let their attention wander, distracted by the cold, Hauer was also sharply attuned to their surroundings.

“The village is just ahead,” Hauer said, lowering the binoculars. He pointed. “Do you see the smoke through the trees?”

The Oberleutnant squinted. When he looked closely, he could see smoke gently rising against the patches of sky visible through the trees.

“There it is. Good work, Hauer.”

Hauer nodded and moved out, keeping ahead of the rest of the troops, his rifle with its telescopic sight slung across his back. Across his front, he carried a submachine gun on a leather sling, just in case they ran across any unexpected enemy troops. But from the clear road they had experienced so far, it seemed that the Americans suspected nothing.

As the shadows lengthened and nightfall approached, there was new urgency to the movement of the troops. Soon, the officers would have to call a halt.

These hills were challenging enough to navigate by daylight for advancing troops because it was difficult to maintain communication. The peaks and valleys limited radio signals. Maintaining any kind of sight contact remained impossible, meaning that individual units like the one to which Hauer was attached moved at their own pace through the hills.

While the terrain was not ideal, it also meant that the Americans did not expect an attack from this direction. All of their attention was to the north, where what the Allies called the Battle of the Bulge still raged in the Ardennes Forest. The second prong of the German advance was now coming at the southern end of the American position. Not so much as a single enemy plane had appeared in the winter sky, thanks to the dismal weather. Their luck was holding.

More than anything else, the Germans feared the planes that could appear out of nowhere to strafe and bomb their ground forces. Even a Tiger Tank didn’t stand a chance against the American planes. As far as the Germans were concerned, bad weather was their friend because it kept the enemy planes grounded or, at the very least, helped to screen their movements from the air.

It was January 3, 1945. Winter fog had moved in, but the new year had begun with clear, crystalline skies and bitter cold, although those had not lasted. Celebrations of the new year had been few and far between because no one wanted to dwell too much on what this seventh year of the war might bring. Circumstances had changed a great deal since those exciting, heady days when the war began in September 1939 with the crushing invasion of Poland, when the war machine of Hitler’s Third Reich had seemed invincible.

Hauer recalled those early days of the war fondly. He had been working as a butcher when the war began. He had resisted becoming a soldier at first, but the demand for troops made keeping out of the war impossible before long. Any able-bodied young man was expected to fight. He had soon found that he had many talents and a natural ability as a soldier.

Hauer heard footsteps behind him, crunching with too much noise across the snowy forest floor, and a moment later, Krauss was walking beside him.

“The Leader has thought of everything!” Krauss announced, panting heavily from the effort of catching up to Hauer. “We will take the Americans by surprise and smash them!”

Hauer glanced at the young Soldat’s ruddy cheeks and saw that he was serious. “Keep your voice down, or you will let the Americans know that we are coming,” Hauer said. “You could lose the war for us. Wouldn’t that disappoint The Leader?”

Looking mortified, Krauss fell silent, much to Hauer’s relief. At first, when Krauss had begun following him around like a puppy, Hauer had been annoyed. Krauss had seemed to be awed by Hauer’s reputation as a sniper, and couldn’t take his eyes off Hauer’s rifle. But then, Hauer had found it useful to have someone willing to fetch things for him or carry messages. Krauss might think that he was currying favor, but there was only one man that Hauer looked out for. Himself.

Hauer shook his head at the Soldat’s praise of Hitler’s strategy. Soldiers did what they were told, of course, but even a private in the ranks had his own ideas about military strategy. Some thought that it would have been better to man a defense at the fortifications that made up the Siegfried line, which had been built at enormous expense, while others believed that the war was already hopeless. But if they were smart, they didn’t say so.

“What do you think?” Krauss asked.

“About what?”

“The war, of course! Do you think that we can finally win it now?”

“What do I think?” Hauer shook his head. “I think that we are soldiers, Krauss. Let the generals determine the strategy. For us, we need to survive one day at a time.”

He quickened his pace to leave Krauss behind. He was done talking for now.

Surely, the Americans knew about the massive Operation Nordwind counter-attack by now, but with their forces spread thin and hampered by the intense cold, they had been slow to send reinforcements or to bolster the defenses of the small towns that they currently held and occupied in Alsace-Lorraine.

As darkness fell, the officers called a halt. There was no point continuing along the treacherous road in the dark. For the troops spread out through the trees, moving through the forest at night was equally as pointless due to the logs, boulders, and other natural obstacles. Some slumped against trees and fell asleep instantly. They had been on the move constantly since first light, with little or no sleep the night before.

Each soldier received half a loaf of bread, and jars of jam were passed around. The jam began to freeze as soon as it was spread across the bread, but no man complained.

Hauer would have like some coffee, but no fires were allowed because that might cost them the element of surprise, or worse yet, make the entire battalion a target for an artillery barrage.

“This is it,” the Oberleutnant announced. “This is the last food you will receive. If you want to eat tomorrow, you must capture enemy supplies.”

Hauer picked a few pieces of sawdust from his ration of bread, wondering if this was truly all of the food, or if this was simply another tactic to get them to fight even harder. Then again, it was no secret that food was in short supply, even in the Fatherland itself, as the enemy pressed from all sides. What food could be found was being sent to the front, leaving the civilian population to survive as best it could.

“I hear the Americans have chocolate,” Krauss said. The young soldier had settled into the snowy forest floor near Hauer. Like Hauer, he gnawed at the rapidly freezing bread.

“If we capture any chocolate, you can have mine,” Hauer said. Krauss was hardly more than a boy; it wasn’t surprising that he dreamed of chocolate. Hauer did not care for sweets. As a former butcher, what he longed for was red meat. Steaks, roasts, ham. That was proper food for a soldier. When was the last time they had eaten any meat other than sausage? He grunted, shaking his head. “Now better eat your bread and get some sleep, or you won’t be good to anyone.”

The Germans weren’t the only ones on the move through the frozen hills and mountains near the border with Germany. Caje Cole and his squad rode in the back of a truck, enduring yet another bone-jarring jolt as the truck moved along the snow-covered road. The truck was open, lacking even a canvas covering to block the wind.

“Happy New Year, boys,” somebody said.

Those who bothered to reply told him to go to hell.

“At least we ain’t hungover,” the soldier pointed out.

They should have been enjoying some R&R, hot food, and booze. Instead, New Year’s Eve had come and gone in the back of this truck, with nothing more potent to drink than canteen water.

By now, the truck ride felt endless. It was slow going. The road wandered and the convoy had to slow at every curve to keep the vehicles from sliding off the road. Every couple of miles, one of the trucks in the convoy found itself spinning its tires helplessly, trying to climb a hill. The soldiers had to get out and push.

Just when it seemed like victory in the Ardennes Forest was going to signal a good start to this new year of war, the Germans had done the impossible and launched a fresh attack to the south. Once again, the Germans had shown that they were not necessarily defeated and in retreat. The soldiers in the truck were among those who had been rushed to reinforce the gaps in the thinly spread American lines. There were supposed to be some French soldiers joining the fight, but so far, nobody had seen any. There were even rumors that the Germans intended to re-capture Strasbourg, the largest city in the region.

Cole sat right up against the cab, glad for whatever shelter it offered from the wind. He sagged on the bench seat and bent over in a coughing fit.

“Hillbilly, you look like hell,” said Vaccaro. “You ought to be in the infirmary.”

“Do you see an infirmary around here?”

Vaccaro looked around the bouncing interior of the truck as if he might find one hiding in the corner. “Nope.”

Cole grunted.

“Then let me at least get you another blanket.” Vaccaro looked around the truck again, his gaze settling on one of the new soldiers who had been sent to fill their ranks after the decimating fighting since before Christmas. “Hey, Tawes. That’s your name, isn’t it? Give me your blanket a minute.”

Private Tawes did as requested. Vaccaro tucked the blanket around Cole’s shoulders. When he caught Cole’s raised eyebrows, Vaccaro said, “What, you didn’t think I was going to give you my blanket, did you?”

A few seats away, Tawes started to protest. “Hey, that’s my blanket. Give it back!”

“Aw, stuff a sock in it, greenbean. You got to earn this blanket. Anyhow, they say shivering is good for you. It keeps you warm.”

Sullenly, Tawes dipped his head lower between his shoulders, looking like a cold turtle trying to stay warm.

Cole tugged the blanket tighter around his shoulders, shivering uncontrollably. He had started feeling poorly a couple of days ago and now had a fever and chills. His body ached all over. Truth be told, all that he wanted to do was crawl into a hole somewhere and sleep. Sick and weak as he felt, the truck ride was pure agony.

“Do you think we’ll get to fight the Germans?” Tawes asked, running his hands up and down his upper arms to keep them warm.

“I’ll tell you what, Tawes. If you’re so anxious to see the Germans, we’ll let you have first crack at them.”

The men rode on gloomy silence, each bounce of the truck threatening to shake loose something important and mechanical — like maybe the motor. The troops in the back of the lurching truck had no choice but to grin and bear it.

Finally, the convoy stopped while a fallen log was cleared from the road. The driver of the lead truck explained that there had been a sharp crack sound, and then the upper third of the tree had come crashing down from the hilltop. He had slewed the truck to the left, bracing himself for incoming artillery, but there was no attack. It was deduced that the sap within the tree had frozen and chosen that moment to suddenly burst the trunk. The driver still felt spooked.

“Everybody stay on the trucks,” Mulholland ordered. “If you’ve got to take a leak, do it out the back.”

Vaccaro spoke up. “Lieutenant, we need a medic over here, sir.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s Cole, sir. He’s sick as a dog.”

The lieutenant looked annoyed at the mention of Cole’s name. Cole seemed to have a talent for ticking off officers. “All right,” Lieutenant Mulholland said. He looked around, spotted a medic riding in the next truck, and shouted in his direction. “Doc, get over here and take a look at Cole, will you? And hurry it up.”

Medics were not actual doctors, but “Doc” was their almost universal nickname. This one wore a large red cross on his helmet and another on his arm, the hope being that this might keep him from being shot at on the battlefield. It didn’t help much. The Germans didn’t target medics — that wasn’t it at all. It was just that in the confusion of the battlefield, the red cross offered little protection.

The medic came over, his rubber-soled boots slipping and sliding on the icy road. If he had taken the time to notice, he might have seen that some of the tracks he passed in the snow had been made by German soldiers, who had passed this way not so long ago. The enemy footprints were easy to distinguish because the Germans still wore leather-soled boots with hobnails. The boots were old-fashioned and not nearly as waterproof as the Americans’ pac boots, which had a rubber sole and leather upper, but the hobnails offered more effective traction in the ice and snow.

The medic climbed up in the truck and gave Cole a quick examination.

“It’s the flu, all right. It’s been going around. You’ve got a fever of one hundred and two. We need to move you into the cab of one of the trucks, where you’ll be out of the wind, at least.”

“Hell no,” Cole said, his teeth chattering. “Just throw another blanket over me.”

“I figured you’d say that,” the medic sighed. Of course, the unheated cab of a Studebaker truck didn’t offer much in the way of comfort. He handed Cole some pills. “See if those help any. Meanwhile, stay as warm as you can. You’re pretty sick, so this is nothing to mess with. Next thing you know, you’ll have pneumonia if you’re not careful. I’ll check back on you the next time that we stop.”

“Thank you kindly, Doc.”

The truck motor turned over, signaling that the column was getting ready to move out. The medic patted Cole on the shoulder, then moved toward the tailgate, the men making way for him without complaint. Medics had universal respect among the men not only for their dedication, but also for their courage under fire.

As the truck got rolling again, every bone in Cole’s body seemed to ache and he felt awful. He swallowed the pills, hoping that they would help him sleep, if nothing else.

He closed his eyes, which felt like they had sand in them, opening them only when, to his surprise, he discovered Vaccaro tucking another blanket around him.

“Sleep tight, Hillbilly,” Vaccaro said. “You heard the medic. We’ve got to keep you healthy so the Germans can kill you later.”

“Thanks a hell of a lot,” Cole mumbled, then dozed as the truck kept rolling through the mountains.

Chapter Seven

For two days now, the soldiers of the 179th Infantry stationed in Wingen sur Moder had been hearing machine-gun fire in the distant hills, always creeping closer. Ratatatat. At night, they sometimes saw the flashes from artillery and mortar fire. Something big was happening, that was for sure.

It was no longer any secret that the Germans were on the move, headed in the direction of the town. The only question that seemed to remain was how long before the Germans got there.

And yet, their officers had not insisted on digging in or otherwise preparing for an attack.

“There aren’t any Germans in this sector,” their lieutenant had said nonchalantly. “Besides, what would they want with this place? No, the Krauts will be looking for bigger fish to fry.”

But no matter what the officers said, it was hard to ignore the shooting growing ever louder in the mountains beyond the town.

“I don’t like the sounds of that one bit,” muttered Tony Serra, looking off into the hills. It was impossible to see anything happening in the tree-covered hilltops, but the two headquarters company clerks walking down the village street could hear the fighting taking place in the distance. “All that shooting makes me nervous. Did you hear the lieutenant this morning? He tried to say it was nothing but hunters. Since when do hunters use machine guns?”

“Maybe the Krauts won’t come in this direction,” Joey Reed replied. “They might go around us. That’s what the lieutenant says, anyway.”

“Yeah, and Betty Grable might show up for lunch.”

“The whole unit is supposed to be relieved in a couple of days. It’s going to be someone else’s problem.”

“Just who is going to relieve us now? Joey, use your head. With these hills crawling with Krauts, they’re going to need every soldier. And that means us.”

Reluctantly, Joey had to admit that he secretly agreed with Tony. He couldn’t quite relax. No matter what their officers said, there was the distant chatter of gunfire. German forces were definitely in those hills.

It was true that they were supposed to be relieved, but that looked unlikely now. What they were coming to understand was that everyone was a front-line soldier. Currently, there were nearly four hundred troops and several officers scattered throughout the town.

The two clerks were part of the headquarters company. Joey had spent more time with a typewriter than with his carbine, which he hadn’t cleaned since arriving in France. That was all right by him; he wasn’t eager to mix it up with the Germans.

Like many of the units currently serving in Europe, the 179th had its roots as a National Guard unit. Most of the soldiers hailed from Oklahoma, which designated the buffalo as its state symbol. Considering that most of the young men in the unit had never been out of sight of the sweeping plains and red-dirt fields back home before the war began, the snow-covered mountains just didn’t look right.

New Year’s morning had dawned crystal clear and bitterly cold, a crisp start to 1945 and what everyone hoped would be the last year of the war. What they hadn’t counted on was starting the new year with a fight on their hands.

The quiet of the new year had been shattered by a Luftwaffe attack on the railroad bridge just beyond town. Bombs had fallen and wiped out the bridge, but thankfully, the German planes had spared the village.

When it was clear that the Luftwaffe was targeting the bridge, Billy and most of the other soldiers in Wingen had come out to watch the show. Huge columns of smoke and debris spiraled upward with each bomb detonation.

“Happy New Year!” Serra shouted. “This is better than fireworks.”

“Stuff a sock in it, Serra,” the lieutenant said. “Anyhow, I thought the Germans weren’t supposed to have any planes left to speak of. I guess somebody was wrong about that.”

Finally, American planes appeared overhead to chase off the enemy, but by then, the Luftwaffe aircraft were long gone.

If it hadn’t been for the war, it would have been easy to get lost in the picture-postcard beauty of the remote village. There were two churches, one Protestant and one Catholic, both modest and not in any danger of being described as cathedrals.

Along with the usual shops, the town had two hotels, which before the war had catered to hikers and other tourists, but now served the officers stationed in town. While other towns in France had been devastated by the fighting and even reduced to rubble, the local economy was thriving through commerce with the Americans.

All in all, it was pretty soft living for the soldiers stationed here compared to the front-line troops fighting to the north in the Ardennes Forest. Even enlisted men enjoyed comfortable quarters staying in homes throughout the town. Nobody was sleeping in a tent or foxhole.

Until a couple of days ago, the war had been going on to the north, leaving this region out of it.

However, the German’s launch of Operation Nordwind was waking up the sleepy villages and hills. The offensive had failed to the north, but now, the Germans were trying again.

The two soldiers walked up the winding main street, both lost in their thoughts. They were interrupted by the appearance of Sister Anne Marie, carrying a basket of food.

“Happy New Year, Sister,” said Corporal Serra, acknowledging the nun with a nod. He was Catholic himself.

“Happy New Year,” she said, smiling pleasantly.

Both men brightened. “Happy New Year to you!” Joey heard himself singing out, pleasantly surprised that the nun spoke English. Like many of the people in the village so close to the border, she was also fluent in French and German.

Although Sister Anne Marie wore a nun’s tunic, and also a shawl on this cold morning, her pretty face was plain to see. Even the tunic did not manage to completely disguise her shapely figure. Nun or not, there was no doubt that Sister Anne Marie was a looker. More than one young soldier had remarked that it was a damn shame that she’d gone and become a nun. The Lord worked in mysterious ways, that was for sure.

“I hope the new year brings us good things,” she said. “Speaking of which, please help yourselves. I have some baked goods here headed for the priest’s kitchen, but he won’t be the wiser if there’s a bun or two missing.”

The two soldiers didn’t need to be told twice. They both eagerly reached for a bun when the young nun pulled back the cloth covering the basket.

“Thank you, Sister,” Joey said gratefully, nodding his thanks.

As the nun went about her errand, Serra gave her an appreciative look over his shoulder. “Now, that’s a shame right there. A pretty girl like that deserves better.”

“Better than what? She’s a nun.”

“My point exactly,” Serra said, then sighed with delight as he bit into the warm bun. His next words were said around a mouthful of fresh-baked bread. “Why settle for being a nun? I’m telling you, that girl ought to be a saint.”

It snowed during the night, just a light dusting that the men guarding the perimeter of Wingen sur Moder could feel against their exposed cheeks and necks. The chill sent shivers down their spines.

“See anything?” asked Corporal Wojcicki, peering out into the dark woods.

“Darker than the inside of a cow out here,” replied his buddy, Stan Barnes, standing a few feet away.

Wojcicki had heard that one before, but he didn’t comment. He was too worried about the dark woods being filled with Germans. The impenetrable shadows among the trees left a great deal to the imagination. He and the rest of B Company were on a hill overlooking the town, the idea being that the position offered a two-fold benefit. They overlooked the twinkling lights of the village and could get down the hill in a hurry to reinforce the troops there. Also, the position on the hilltop meant that they would likely be the first to encounter any approaching Germans, thus warning the soldiers in the town.

Up here on the hilltop, Wojcicki felt alone and exposed. They did have self-propelled 75 mm guns to provide some heavy hitting if needed — in other words, if the Germans arrived with Panzers.

Wojcicki wasn’t totally unprepared. He had made a white smock for himself out of a bedsheet. He figured that it would provide some camouflage in the snow.

“Shouldn’t we dig in?” Barnes asked.

“Nah, the lieutenant said not to bother because there aren’t any Germans coming around. Besides, you’d damn near need a chisel to get through this frozen ground. Maybe even a blow torch.”

So they stared out at the dark woods, their ears straining, waiting for something to happen. Shivering.

After an hour, the lieutenant came by and ordered Wojcicki and Barnes to scout ahead of the company. “Wojcicki, you ought to blend right in with that smock. Let’s see if these woods are really empty.”

“Yes, sir.”

Corporal Wojcicki wasn’t a big fan of the idea, but orders were orders. As they headed out, Barnes whispered. “Yeah, got to hand it to you for wearing that smock. You got us both sent right into the lion’s den. If you get any more bright ideas, check with me first.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Still, they were glad to move, because it helped them keep warm. Slowly, they worked their way from the clearing where the company was spread out into the deep forest. Wojcicki could barely see his hand in front of his face. He kept walking into trees.

In fact, Wojcicki was so intent on avoiding the trees that he was utterly surprised when he fell into the hole.

“What the hell!”

“You OK?” Barnes asked.

“Got your flashlight? I fell into a hole or something. Banged the hell out of my knee.”

Barnes switched on the light, which was equipped with a red lens to help prevent them from losing their night vision. Briefly, in the strange red glow, they saw a freshly dug foxhole, and then another. Someone had lined the rim of each foxhole with rocks and logs. Nobody in Company B had dug these holes, which could only mean one thing.

The Krauts had already been here and dug in.

But where had they gone?

“Shut it off,” Wojcicki said nervously, worried that the dim red light might give them away. “We’ve seen enough.”

What Wojcicki and Barnes couldn’t know was that the Germans had slipped out of the foxholes and were already sweeping around to flank the company. If it hadn’t been so dark, they might even have seen the Germans moving through the trees. The gently falling snow had muffled the sound of movement through the forest.

“Let’s get out of here,” Wojcicki said, as Barnes finally snapped off the light and helped him out of the foxhole. “This place might be crawling with Krauts.”

They hadn’t even made it back to the company’s position when they heard the indistinct shouts in the woods behind them.

Running faster, they made it back to the company, practically shouting the password so that they wouldn’t get shot by their own guys. Quickly, they found the lieutenant to warn him. Wojcicki’s smock, which had once been a pristine white, was now smudged with dirt from the foxhole that he had fallen into.

Around them, the shouts in the woods grew louder and more distinct.

“Hey, Mueller!”

“Wake up, Schmidt!”

Nearby, Private Schmidt raised his head and shouted back, “What? Who wants me?”

Wojcicki felt his blood run cold. Those shouts were coming from the woods, which could only mean one thing. “It’s not us, dummy! It’s the Germans!”

“Hello, Schmidt!” Laughter drifted from the forest. “Your old friends are here to see you, Schmidt!”

The Germans called a few more names at random. Wojcicki realized they were simply shouting out common German surnames to rattle the defenders. It was weird to think that some of the GIs might be about to fight their distant cousins.

He had to hand it to the Krauts — the tactic had sure worked. The soldiers of Company B were now apprehensive and confused. Judging by the occasional laughter from the woods, the Krauts were having a good time messing with the Americans.

From the woods, they began to hear banging and rattling. It sounded as if the Germans were using their mess kits to make a racket, as if it was New Year’s Eve all over again.

“Hang Roosevelt!”

“Heil Hitler, my friends!”

The Americans gripped their weapons, trying to get a glimpse of anything in the dark forest surrounding them.

So far, nobody had opened fire, but that was about to change.

Leading the rest of the German unit, Hauer moved silently through the dark woods. A few flakes of snow still reached him, and he felt invigorated by the cold and snow. This was proper German weather!

They had dug the foxholes earlier, fully expecting the Americans to attack. However, the Americans didn’t seem to know they were there.

Instead, the Germans had launched an attack of their own.

At first, Hauer was annoyed when his comrades started calling out names. But when the Americans actually answered, clearly confused, he joined in the laughter. Were the Americans such Dummköpfe? It must be an inexperienced unit that they faced.

Now, Hauer took the game to a new level. He found a tree at the edge of the clearing and rested his rifle against it. He looked through the rifle scope, which gathered what light there was, and intensified it. He could see a few vague shapes outlined against the backdrop of the night sky. Incredibly, the Americans weren’t even dug in.

“Go ahead and shoot, Americans! It will make you better targets!”

He picked out one of the vague shapes visible against the backdrop of snow, settled his sights upon it, and squeezed the trigger.

Instantly, firing erupted all around him. From the shelter of the forest, taking cover behind trees, the Germans shot at the Americans caught in the open. The Americans seemed to be shooting back without aiming. The battle-hardened German troops picked their targets carefully. As Hauer had warned, the muzzle flashes of the Americans only provided a better target.

Before the heavy guns could even open fire, a squad rushed from the woods and overwhelmed the crews of the 75 mm guns. Some of the Americans fled down the hill toward the village, while the rest were quickly rounded up and taken prisoner.

With the others, Hauer helped relieve the prisoners of their rations and wristwatches. Already, he had four watches strapped to his left wrist. They were useful to trade for bottles of schnapps with troops who hadn’t seen any fighting yet.

A few bodies lay scattered in the snow, evidence of the Germans’ more accurate fire. One of those bodies was still moving, dragging himself away from the Germans. Unlike the others, this soldier had on a white smock. Badly wounded, the soldier was leaving a dark trail of blood against the white ground as he tried to crawl away.

Hauer rolled the wounded soldier over with his boot, prompting a groan of agony, then looked down at him and asked, “Schmidt?”

The soldier looked up. “No, I’m not Schmidt. The name is Wojcicki. Go to hell, you damn Kraut.”

Hauer put him out of his misery.

Chapter Eight

Having overwhelmed the ill-prepared American defenses, the Germans moved into the village below, the lights like a beacon. The sky above the hills to the east was getting even brighter as the winter dawn approached. A pinkish glow managed to light the underbelly of the low snow clouds. Even in the midst of the attack, a few soldiers still managed to note the surreal beauty of the scene.

It seemed a tragic moment in which to die, given the promise of a new day. They did their utmost to make sure that it would be Americans who died, rather than Germans.

To their surprise, the defenders did not open fire. In the darkness and the snow, the Americans didn’t want to shoot their own men, some of whom were still straggling in from the debacle on the hilltop.

However, the German attackers had no such qualms. They opened fire at any defenders who dared to shoot at them, overwhelming them with rifle fire and machine-gun fire. They had tried to bring down some of the self-propelled 75 mm guns right into the streets of town, but a lone Sherman tank had managed to knock out those guns before being destroyed itself.

The fight for Wingen sur Moder seemed to be over almost before it had started. As the daylight grew and the last of the flakes from the departing snowstorm drifted down, the village found itself firmly in German hands.

Before the attack, around three dozen soldiers in the service company had bedded down in the cellar of a house near the Catholic church. The upstairs of the spacious house had mostly been taken over as office space and sleeping quarters for some of the officers.

Joey Reed slept soundly, despite the crowded space. He didn’t mind too much because the body heat kept the stone basement warm.

Before daylight, the sound of gunfire woke Joey up.

This shooting wasn’t taking place in the hills. This was right outside. In the village streets.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“We’re under attack, that’s what,” Serra said. “It sounds as if the goddamn Krauts are right outside the window!”

Both men reached for their weapons, but they weren’t exactly eager to join the fight. Neither man had fired his weapon since training back in the States.

“Hey, you’ve got to put bullets in it, dummy!” Serra shouted, pulling Joey back from the window and shoving an ammunition clip into his palm.

Joey had to think for a second about how to load the carbine. On top of that, the weapon’s action was caked with mud from when he had dropped it a couple of weeks ago and never bothered to clean it. In a headquarters unit, combat readiness was not emphasized as much as the importance of filing paperwork correctly.

He finally figured out the carbine, got it loaded, and joined Serra at the window. Beside them was another soldier, Private Paul Sampson, hunched over his own weapon. Quite unlike the mighty Biblical Sampson, this soldier was skinny and wore thick glasses with heavy black frames that dwarfed his bony face, but had somehow managed to enlist.

“Should we start shooting, or what?” Sampson wondered.

“No, we might hit our guys. Let’s wait for orders,” Serra said.

Joey stared out through the cellar window. Although it was dark, in the flashes of light from the shooting going on, he caught glimpses of men running here and there. He had assumed they were other soldiers from the 179th, mounting a defense of the town. Some must have been fighting back. But then he also saw troops wearing white smocks and the distinctive, square-shaped Stahlhelm of German troops. His blood ran cold.

“Holy cow, those are Krauts out there!” Joey said.

“You catch on fast,” said Serra. “How good a shot are you with that carbine?”

“Not very good.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. And you’re not the only one. We’re all a bunch of clerks, for chrissakes. If I were those Krauts, I wouldn’t exactly be shaking in my shoes.”

As dawn gave way to the gloomy morning, the scene in the street only worsened. White-clad Germans went past with Schmeissers hanging from leather slings, herding groups of American POWs with their hands in the air. A few prisoners were in their underwear, despite the cold — the fact was that they had been surprised in their beds.

It seemed almost inexplicable that the Americans hadn’t been more prepared, but the average GI couldn’t be blamed. The capture of Wingen sur Moder reflected some serious shortcomings on the part of the unit’s commanding officer.

Some of the Germans passed so close that the men hiding in the cellar could hear them conversing. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted in. The Krauts were smoking cigarettes that they had captured from the Americans.

They could see German machine-gun teams setting up at key positions down the street, unleashing overwhelming fire whenever someone shot at them from one of the houses in the village.

“Holy cow,” Joey muttered over and over again. He felt a growing sense of desperation. What were they supposed to do?

The only real holdout against the Germans seemed to be a rifleman in the church steeple next door, who kept the Krauts scrambling for cover whenever one of them entered his line of sight.

It all felt surreal to Joey, like he was watching a real-life pageant or something. So far, nobody had noticed the clerks hiding in the cellar — possibly because they were all being quiet as church mice.

“Anybody got any ideas?” Serra whispered.

“The Krauts haven’t spotted us. We’ve got that much on our side, at least,” a sergeant said. Although he held the highest rank of anyone in the cellar, he didn’t seem eager to take charge.

“Any ideas?”

“What we ought to do is sit tight until dark. We can try to slip out of here then and the Krauts won’t see us.”

“Dark? That’s a long time to wait. You think we can hide out that long?”

The sergeant shrugged. “You got any better ideas? Maybe you want to go out there and take on the Krauts with that rusty rifle of yours. Nah, we can wait. It’s winter. It gets dark early.”

However, waiting was much harder than any of the men expected. Each minute dragged out for an eternity. They all seemed to hold their breath countless times as the enemy came within spitting distance of their hiding place. How was it possible that they had not been detected? Each cough threatened to give them away. They had no food or water. A corner of the cellar was turned into a makeshift latrine. Meanwhile, it wasn’t getting any warmer in the cellar.

Through the window gratings, they kept watching the German soldiers, who looked bulky in their winter gear and square helmets, carrying their deadly submachine guns. As the hours went by, the Germans seemed to grow even more ominous in their imaginations.

Not far from anyone’s thoughts was what had happened last month, at the crossroads town of Malmedy. German troops had captured nearly one hundred soldiers when their convoy had been cut off and surprised by Panzers. The Americans had taken cover in a roadside ditch as the Panzers made short work of their vehicles. In the end, they’d had no choice but to surrender. They had come out with their hands up and found themselves to be POWs.

No one was exactly sure what had taken place next, whether the shooting was a direct order or a terrible mistake, but the Germans had opened fire on the unarmed prisoners. When the shooting stopped, more than eighty Americans lay dead. Only a handful managed to escape.

“Think about what happened to those poor bastards at Malmedy,” Serra said, as if reading Joey’s thoughts. “We shouldn’t be too quick to give ourselves up.”

“That’s for sure,” Joey agreed.

At first, there had been bursts of gunfire throughout the village as pockets of defenders tried to turn the tables on the Germans. The gunfire had been sporadic at best. Eventually, the shooting stopped entirely, except for single shots here and there. It was all too clear that the village had fallen.

“That’s the Germans mopping up,” Serra said.

The only opposition that remained was the soldier up in the church steeple. At this point, the best that he could hope for was to be a thorn in their side, picking off any enemy soldiers careless enough to show themselves on the street directly in front of the church. From time to time, the Germans would unleash a burst of machine-gun fire at the steeple, but minutes later, the lone rifleman would be back at work. So far, the Germans hadn’t brought up any heavy weapons to deal with the sniper — or maybe they didn’t feel like he was worth the effort.

Finally, it appeared that the Germans had had enough. An officer appeared on the street, shouting up at the steeple from behind the shelter of a ruined car.

“Hey you, come on down from there!” the German officer called out in English. “The town is ours, so why keep fighting? You will be treated OK.”

The drama playing out on the street held the rapt attention of the soldiers in the cellar.

“Do it, buddy,” the sergeant muttered. “Give it up. You’re dead meat, otherwise.”

“No way,” Serra said. “I wouldn’t trust those Krauts as far as I could throw them.”

As far as Joey could tell, the sniper in the church steeple seemed to agree with Serra, because seconds later the sniper fired a shot that hit the vehicle giving cover to the German officer.

“Last chance!” the officer shouted.

Again, another shot made the officer duck.

Now, another man ran to join the officer. He looked even sturdier than the other Germans. A big guy. He carried a rifle with a telescopic sight.

“Uh oh,” Serra said. “That guy’s a sniper!”

Soon, the sniper had set up beside the officer, aiming his rifle at the church steeple, waiting for his chance.

Joey looked down at his rusty weapon. It was loaded and ready to fire — at least, he thought it was. If he had an ounce of courage, he’d stick that thing right out the window and shoot that sniper in the back. What was he, less than a hundred feet away?

He might have done it, if he’d thought that he could hit the German sniper from here. During training, he hadn’t been the best shot. Then again, Joey knew that if he opened fire, whether he took out the sniper or not, he’d be signing the death warrant of every man in that cellar.

How had he gotten into this mess?

For the answer to that, he thought, he’d have to go all the way back to December 7, 1941, when the Japanese had launched their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Every boy in Joey’s school — and more than a few girls — had been eager to get into uniform and do what they could to get back at the Japs and Germans.

However, Joey had been too young to join up. He’d have to wait until he finished high school. Back then, the main concern that he and his schoolmates had was that the war would be over before they were old enough to fight.

How wrong they’d been. Now it was 1945 and the war was still going strong.

Joey had enlisted the day after graduating from high school. Basic training had been fine, but one thing was soon clear — Joey was not destined to be a front-line soldier.

Studious and gentle, solidly in the middle of his group of recruits, and with the rare skill among men of being able to type thanks to a high school business class, he had found himself assigned to be a clerk.

It didn’t much matter to Joey whether he was armed with a rifle or a typewriter, and no one else seemed to mind, either. He was on the front lines with everybody else, doing his part, which was all that mattered.

He had dreamed about fighting the Germans, yet when the time came, here he was, hiding in a cellar.

The soldiers of the service company had mostly been issued M-1 carbines, which looked puny compared to the full-sized rifles. No matter — they never had any use for them.

But now, he did regret that he hadn’t made some effort to keep his carbine cleaned and oiled. He should have at least fired it once in a while. Truth be told, combat readiness was lacking in the service company.

But now he held the carbine in his hands. The question was, what was he going to do with it?

A moment passed, and Joey didn’t stick his weapon out the window. Come to think of it, neither did anybody else.

Another shot fired from the steeple hit the vehicle sheltering the two Germans. The officer ducked again, but the sniper did not so much as flinch, his eye never leaving his rifle scope.

A moment later, he fired.

The steeple went silent.

Whoever that sniper was, he knew his business, that was for sure. None of the other Germans had been able to take out the American in the steeple, no matter how many shots they fired at him.

Now, the Germans moved freely about the street. The final resistance in Wingen sur Moder had fallen. All that Joey and the others were able to do was peer out the cellar windows and watch it happen, wondering what their fate would be.

Chapter Nine

For the service company men hiding in the cellar, the waiting game finally became too much.

“I’ve had enough of this,” a soldier said. “I’m making a break for it.”

“Me too.”

“You’ll get us all killed!” Serra complained. “This place is crawling with Krauts. Think about it.”

An argument broke out in hushed tones. Some were all for getting out now. Others wanted to follow the original plan and wait for nightfall. The sergeant tried to order them to sit tight, but the sergeant’s orders didn’t hold a lot of weight.

“Do what you want, Sarge, but we’re making a break for it.”

“You’ll never make it. You can’t get past all those Krauts.”

“We’ll sneak out the back door of this place. From what we’ve seen, the Krauts are all out front.”

After checking their weapons, the two men headed up the cellar stairs. Briefly, their footsteps sounded on the floorboards above as they made their way to the back of the house. The men below held their breath. They heard a slight clunk as the back door opened.

With no windows in the back cellar wall, they couldn’t see what was happening.

Seconds later, they heard a shout, then two quick bursts of gunfire.

So much for trying to escape.

“I told those dumb bastards to wait,” Serra said. “The sarge was right. We’ve got to wait for dark.”

However, they didn’t get the chance. Several pairs of boots appeared at the window grating, followed by the muzzle of a submachine gun.

Inches away, Joey felt his insides turn to liquid.

“Come out, Amerikaner,” shouted one of the Germans. It sounded like the same officer who had tried to negotiate with the sniper in the church steeple. “Come out or we will toss in a few hand grenades and see how you like that.”

The men in the cellar looked at one another in desperation, but it was clear that they didn’t have much choice.

“You saw what happened to the guy up in the steeple,” Serra said. “I think we’d better give up.”

The sergeant moved closer to the window and yelled, “OK, we surrender. You can’t shoot prisoners.”

“We will see,” the officer shouted back. “You are only prisoners if you come out with your hands up. You have one minute.”

Quickly, the men dropped their weapons. Most of the men were empty-handed, but a few grabbed blankets or spare clothes. Joey followed their example and grabbed his blanket.

They filed up the stairs and out the back door. Nearby lay the bodies of the two soldiers who had tried to escape, sprawled in the street with blood flowing from them. Joey felt sick to his stomach, but he kept moving, hands held high.

All around them stood German soldiers, submachine guns at the ready. Joey studied their faces, trying to determine if the Germans were about to shoot. Some of the Germans wore self-satisfied smiles, pleased that they had captured yet more American POWs, while others looked grim. Up close, the Germans had several days of stubble on their faces. The camouflage smocks that looked so white from a distance were actually flecked with mud and even blood.

The officer approached, the German sniper they had seen earlier trailing a few feet behind him.

“Smart Amerikaner! Very smart.”

Some of the soldiers stepped forward and quickly searched their new prisoners. Joey had expected them to be on the lookout for weapons, but aside from a small pocketknife or two — which the Germans kept — the Americans were unarmed. To Joey’s surprise, they took their wallets and money, chocolate bars, and wristwatches. Joey hadn’t known quite what to expect as a prisoner, but he sure hadn’t expected to be robbed.

A soldier looked at Joey’s wrist and nodded, so Joe had no choice but to unbuckle the strap of his watch and hand it over. He felt a pang of resentment because his parents had given him that watch as a high school graduation present, right before he had signed up.

The German sniper who had eliminated the man in the steeple was among the soldiers looking on. He stepped forward and grabbed Serra’s hand, then shucked his Timex off his wrist with such force that it seemed like he might take Serra’s hand along with it. He then started to pull off Serra’s gold wedding band, but Serra jerked his hand away. The soldier raised his rifle.

“Enough!” the officer said. “You have his watch, Hauer. Leave the man his wedding ring.”

The soldier looked as if he might shoot Serra anyway, but then he lowered the weapon. With a smug grin, without taking his eyes off Serra, he slipped the watch onto his own wrist.

Serra glanced at the officer and said quietly, “Thank you.”

If the officer heard Sera, he didn’t show any sign of it. Instead, he turned and shouted orders to the soldiers.

Joey didn’t understand a word of German, so he still wasn’t sure whether or not the Germans were going to shoot them.

Having been searched — and looted — the prisoners were marched toward the church a short distance away.

It all felt so unreal, like a bad dream. Never in a million years had Joey expected to be taken prisoner. Killed, maybe, but not taken as a POW. Their training hadn’t focused on being taken prisoner — maybe it wasn’t something the Army wanted to encourage by preparing you for it. All he knew was that they were only supposed to tell the Germans their name, rank, and serial number. That response had been drilled into them. The funny thing was, the Germans hadn’t even bothered to ask for that information. Maybe they didn’t think the Americans were worth the effort.

The sights they passed in the street were not encouraging. Germans appeared to be everywhere, setting up machine gun nests at key points and fortifying positions. There were a hell of a lot of Germans. For weeks, there had been rumors that most of the German soldiers were now kids or old men, but that was not the case with these troops. They looked battle-hardened and went about setting up their defenses with the efficiency of men who had done it all before.

Clearly, from the effort being put into the defenses, these troops weren’t just passing through. It appeared that they planned to stay for a while.

“Hands up! No talking! Schweigen! Keep moving toward the church.”

Lined up at the edge of the street was a row of bodies. Dead American soldiers and a couple of villagers who had maybe been caught in the crossfire. Joey tried to count the bodies, but he couldn’t seem to get his mind to work right. Counting past ten was more than his addled brain could handle. Anyhow, there were at least a dozen dead bodies, if not more.

It wasn’t his first time seeing a dead man in the war zone, but the sight of the bundles lined up indifferently on the ground was upsetting. Just a few hours ago, these dead men had been very much alive.

At gunpoint, they were marched right up to the Catholic church. Most of the townspeople were nowhere in sight, except for a few who seemed to welcome the arrival of the Germans with open arms, bringing the soldiers baskets of food and bottles of liquor. That should be no surprise — this close to the German border, there were bound to be a few Nazi sympathizers.

As they approached the church, the priest was nowhere in sight. He hadn’t been seen in days. Rumor had it that he had fled the town along with the village constable.

But to Joey’s surprise, Sister Anne Marie stood at the foot of the steps leading to the church. She was apparently not intimidated by the presence of the Germans, but watched with concern as the captured Americans were marched toward the church.

Joey felt like he was in the presence of a guardian angel. Surely, even these tough-looking Krauts would find it hard to shoot down the prisoners in the presence of a nun. Joey caught her eye, and she gave him a reassuring nod. That small gesture gave him new strength.

As they reached the steps, one of the Americans at the front of the group bent down to tie his shoe. It was Sampson, the skinny kid with the glasses. Without warning, the German sniper shot him dead.

“Keep moving!” the officer warned.

Joey and the others had no choice but to step over the dead man’s body. Joey saw Sampson’s blood wetting the steps and felt sick.

Sister Anne Marie moved to Sampson’s side, but he was far beyond any help. She made the sign of the cross and began praying over him.

Still stunned, Joey spent a moment too long taking in the scene. The next thing he knew, a soldier had clubbed him in the side of the head with the butt of a rifle. When he staggered, the soldier shoved him back into line.

“Into the church!”

The Americans had no choice but to obey. Joey’s head rang and he felt warm blood running down over his ear, but he didn’t dare to stop. The rifle butt had cut a gash into his scalp and any head wound bled profusely. He supposed that he should feel lucky that he hadn’t ended up like Sampson, shot dead on the church steps.

Inside the church, they were herded toward the altar at the north end of the space. There was a door to one side that he supposed led up to the steeple where they had seen the sniper earlier. There was no other way in or out of the church that Joey noticed, except for the door that they had just walked through, now guarded by two soldiers with submachine guns. The stained-glass windows were narrow and high, decorative rather than functional, which would have made it quite difficult to crawl out of them.

Like many of the old European churches, this one had no pews, but only a flagstone floor that was cold and damp. The church had no source of heat other than the bodies it now held. All in all, the church made a perfect pen in which to hold the POWs.

To their surprise, another group of prisoners was already there, slumped on the floor or against the stone walls. Due to those thick stone walls, the church looked larger and more substantial from the outside. Inside, it felt more like a chapel than a full-sized church. With the influx of new prisoners, the interior became quite crowded. One of the guards dragged a bench around so that it separated the last third of the church closest to the door. The guards waved their weapons at the bench and then the soldiers, and though they didn’t speak English, the meaning was clear enough — anyone who passed the line would be shot.

The guards soon grew bored and slouched against the wall, smoking cigarettes — but with their nasty submachine guns slung within easy reach.

Another soldier came in and placed a couple of buckets along the wall. The buckets were going to serve as their latrine. Clearly, the Germans intended to keep them here for a while.

The prisoners looked around, getting their bearings, and talking in low voices.

Serra approached Joey and looked at him with concern. “Jesus, kid. Your head is bleeding like a stuck pig. How you do feel?”

“Dizzy, but better than poor Sampson.”

“Yeah, I can’t believe those bastards shot him for tying his shoe.”

Joey felt himself swaying. “I better sit down.”

“Let me take a look at that head,” Serra said. “I’m no nurse, that’s for damn sure, but maybe I can bandage it up.”

The guards had taken anything sharp that could be used by the new POWs as a weapon, but Serra managed to use his teeth to get a tear going in a shirttail. Once he had ripped off a rough strip, he wrapped it around Joey’s head. “That’s the best I can do,” he said. “There’s some other wounded guys in here from that first batch of prisoners, some of them shot up pretty bad, but we don’t have any kind of medical supplies. The Germans took everything.”

“Figures,” Joey said. “Anyhow, thanks for putting the bandage on my head. I feel better already.”

“You’re a lousy liar, Joey, you know that? But at least it stopped the bleeding,” Serra said.

“I sure am thirsty. Does anybody have something to drink?”

“Not that I can see. Not so much as a canteen.”

“I’m sure not gonna ask those guards for a drink. It looks like they wouldn’t mind using those Schmeissers.”

“Hang in there, kid. I hate to say it, but from the looks of things we might be in here for a while.”

Chapter Ten

The battle had been swift and one-sided. Caught by surprise, the American force had been quickly overwhelmed. The officers had made the fatal mistake of ignoring the gunfire in the hills, insisting on putting their faith in intelligence reports that there were no substantial enemy units in the sector, rather than believing their own ears.

For the most part, the people of the village had hidden away during the brief fight, cowering in cellars or simply fleeing into the night ahead of the German advance. Worried for the church and the safety of the congregation, Sister Anne Marie had stayed. Where else would she have gone?

The young nun had watched with a growing sense of trepidation as the Germans quickly moved to take over the village. Just a few days before, the war had seemed all but over, with the village safely in American hands. Now, circumstances had changed considerably.

She watched the Americans being marched into the church. At first, she had worried that the Germans would shoot them all. Instead, they had killed just one prisoner, but his death on the church steps had been harsh and brutal.

It had been the German sniper who had done it. They had all seen him eliminate the American soldier in the church steeple as well. The man was a brutal killer.

She had seen another young soldier clubbed in the head for not moving fast enough. However, even she had to admit that for the most part, the majority of German soldiers had not mistreated the POWs. As for the villagers, the Germans seemed content to let them go about their business. Many villagers spoke German and a handful had even welcomed the Nazi troops with open arms.

“This is awful!” said one of the villagers, who had joined the nun near the church steps. “What are we to do?”

“Why don’t you check on some of the older parishioners and see how they are doing?” Sister Anne Marie said. “They may be afraid to go out.”

The other woman nodded. “Yes, that is a good idea. What about you?”

Sister Anne Marie had already made up her mind that while the church might be expected to remain impartial, her focus would be on helping the Americans. In her mind, they fought on the side of righteousness, unlike the troops of the Third Reich. Besides, the Germans had their own medics and medical supplies. What did the Americans locked in the church have? They have me, she thought.

“I am going to tend to the wounded Americans in the church.”

“But the guards—”

“You let me worry about the guards,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt. “Before you go to check on the villagers, come help me make some bandages.”

The two women went to the priest’s small house next door to the church. The rectory was modest, no more than a small kitchen, a study where the priest conducted church business, and a bedroom. The interior felt cold and empty.

“Should we be in here?” the woman asked. “This is Father Jean’s home, after all.”

“If he did not want us in here, then he should not have run off.”

In the bedroom, Sister Anne Marie found a chest with spare sheets and blankets. She fetched scissors from the study, and the two women got to work turning the sheets into strips of bandages. She chided herself for taking a small amount of delight in turning the absentee priest’s sheets into bandages.

She looked at the growing pile of homemade bandages, then compared that in her mind’s eye to the number of soldiers locked in the church, many of whom were wounded. “It’s not enough,” she said, and stripped the sheets off the priest’s bed as well.

“Father Jean is going to get quite a surprise when he returns and finds that all his sheets are gone. We’ll have some explaining to do.”

Sister Anne Marie said in an innocent tone, “What is to explain? The Germans took them, obviously.”

“Sister!” the other woman said, scandalized that the nun would make up a lie. But then she smiled. “Those Germans will stop at nothing!”

“You finish up the bandages and I will see what else I can find that will be useful.”

As the shepherd of a relatively small flock, Father Jean lived modestly. He was not a bad man, but a weak one, having fled rather than staying to guide his flock. His greatest extravagance, besides a shelf filled with beautiful old leather-bound books, was an open bottle of brandy in the study. The books were useless, but Sister Anne Marie took the brandy — if nothing else, the alcohol might serve as an antiseptic. The kitchen provided a block of cheese, some stale bread, and a bowl containing half a dozen of the small and bitter local apples.

“Unless Jesus arrives to perform some miracle, this won’t be enough,” Sister Anne Marie said, gathering the food into a basket.

The other woman opened her eyes wide, indicating that she was a little shocked by the comment. Her expression seemed to say, first a lie, now blaspheme!

Sister Anne Marie smiled gently. “Thank you, Madame Tolétte. You have a good heart. Now, if you will go to check on the villagers, I will take the bandages and food to the church.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” she stammered.

Sister Anne Marie shook her head. “If there is trouble with the Germans, I don’t want you to be hurt.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

Sister Anne Marie considered the question. Of course, she felt frightened. Who would not? However, her fear was outweighed by her sense of duty. She smiled. “What should I fear, when I have God?”

But left alone, crossing the short distance to the church, Sister Anne Marie knew that her words had been bravado to put the other woman at ease and perhaps to bolster her own spirits. Having cut the parish priest’s sheets to ribbons, however, there was no turning back now.

The door to the church stood open. Sister Anne Marie called to the guards before stepping inside. They had lifted their weapons, but lowered them when they saw her nun’s habit.

“What do you want?” one of the guards asked.

“I have come to tend to the injured Americans,” she said.

“Go away!”

“But please—”

“We have orders to let no one in, not even a nun.”

She could see that there would be no arguing with the stone-faced guard. She reached into her basket and took out the bottle of brandy. Madame Tolétte had seemed to think that Sister Anne Marie was already on the road to hell, so what was one more transgression?

“I wasn’t just thinking of the Americans,” she said. “I brought this for you.”

The guard took the bottle and smiled, his glance lingering on her face. Although she had turned her back on such things, the sister was not immune to the fact that men found her attractive. She managed a smile in return that bordered on flirtation, but what harm would that do if it helped get her inside? With relief, she saw that her bribe, together with the smile, might just work.

“All right, go ahead. But be careful. I would not trust any of them.”

“Bless you,” she said.

The guard lifted the bottle in salute.

Once inside, she moved among the POWs. Seeing their wounds and injuries, some of them still barely dressed and shivering in the chill inside the church, she suddenly felt overwhelmed. What had she gotten herself into? Perhaps Father Jean had the right idea, after all. She stood stock-still for a long moment, not sure what to do.

“Here, Sister. Let me help you,” said a soldier, reaching to assist her with the basket.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’m a medic,” he said. “It looks like you brought us bandages. Thank you. We can use them, that’s for sure.”

“These are just bedsheets. I have a small bottle of mercurochrome and some ointment.”

“That’s great. I’ve got to say, I didn’t think those Kraut bastards were going to let you in.” He seemed to catch himself. “Sorry, Sister. What I mean is—”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “We are all God’s children.”

“If you say so, but the jury is out on the Krauts, if you ask me, especially that Kraut sniper. Did you see how he shot that kid on the church steps? That wasn’t war. That was murder.”

She shuddered. She had witnessed the shooting. It was not a sight that she would forget anytime soon. “What is your name?”

“Corporal Moore.”

“All right, Corporal. You are a medic, so why don’t you take on the worst cases? I can assist if you need it. Meanwhile, I will help the less severely wounded.”

Moore nodded. “Sounds like a plan to me, Sister.”

One of the first soldiers that she moved to help was the one who had been clubbed in the head outside the church. The rifle butt had opened up a nasty gash in the young man’s scalp. Most of the bleeding had stopped, leaving behind an ugly wound.

“Let me help you,” she said. “I am Sister Anne Marie. What is your name?”

“Joey Reed.”

“Well, Joey, let us bandage that head of yours.”

“Thank you, Sister.”

Although she was not a trained nurse, it was not unusual for her to help the sick and injured of the parish. Her experience so far ranged from helping with childbirth to assisting the town doctor in setting broken bones and putting in stitches. She had prayed at more than one deathbed as well. As a result, she was no stranger to pain and suffering.

The best that she could do was wrap strips of cloth around the soldier’s head. The first layer soaked through with blood, so she added another, then another. She wanted to wash away some of the blood drying on his face and neck, but there wasn’t any water.

That’s when the sister had an idea. She went to the altar and returned with a small, ornate vessel. This was holy water that the priest had blessed to be used for religious purposes. He would have been aghast at using it for any other purpose.

She said a quick prayer under her breath, hoping that God would understand, then poured some of the holy water onto a strip of cloth, which she used to bathe the soldier’s face.

“Sister, do you think I could have a sip of that water? I’m so thirsty.”

“Here.” She handed him the vessel, and he drank.

“Wow, that was good.”

“Of course it is good,” she said. She smiled. “It is holy water.”

She gathered her bandages and vials, ready to move on to the next soldier. However, the young man surprised her by saying, “Sister, will you take a moment to pray with me?”

She touched his bandaged head gently. “You pray for both of us. I am going to do what I can for the others.”

The young soldier nodded, got to his knees on the hard stone floor, and closed his eyes. Soon, his lips moved in silent prayer.

Sister Anne Marie shot a glance upward, in the direction that she imagined the soldier’s prayers to be ascending. And then she moved on. Prayer had its place, she thought, but so did action.

After a couple of hours, the bandages and the small bottles of medicines had taken care of the more immediate needs of the captured soldiers. Fortunately, there were no grievous wounds.

But as it became clear that the POWs weren’t leaving the church anytime soon, there were other concerns.

“Sister, do you think there’s any way you can get some food and water in here? Maybe some blankets?”

Looking around at the suffering men, she nodded. The cramped quarters had not done much to increase the temperature. Some men huddled together for warmth.

“I will see what I can do,” she said. “There is not much food, but I’m sure that I can get water and blankets. The hardest part will be getting past the guards.”

“Try finding another bottle of booze,” suggested Corporal Moore, the medic. “That seemed to grease the wheels last time.”

Sister Anne Marie nodded her thanks at the guards and returned to the village streets. Outside, the scene had not changed all that much. The Germans had settled in, ready to defend the town.

So far, no other Americans had appeared to contest the German occupation, but she had a nagging thought. Was Wingen about to become even more of a battle zone? The thought frightened her.

But she had more immediate concerns. The soldiers needed food, water, and blankets. They needed better medicines if there were any to be had. Where would she find these things?

The village shops were closed, but that had not stopped the Germans, who had broken the locks and ransacked the premises. She went from shop to shop, hoping to find something, anything, that the American POWs could use, but the shops had been cleaned out.

In the end, she turned to the parishioners for help. She went from house to house like a beggar, with the villagers sparing what they could. On Corporal Moore’s advice, she also secured two bottles of liquor. Schnapps, this time.

Loaded down, she headed for the church, her mind already whirling with thoughts about where else she might be able to locate supplies.

She had not gone far when a gruff voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Where do you think you are doing?”

Sister Anne Marie looked up from her basket to see a large German soldier blocking her path. With a trill of fear, she realized that it was the same German sniper who had shot the prisoner on the church steps.

“I am going to the church,” she said. “I have supplies for the prisoners.”

“All that is for the Americans?” He sneered. “What are you doing to help our good German soldiers?”

“They are not locked inside our parish church.”

“Whose fault is that? Surely their own,” the sniper said. “They are the ones who allowed themselves to be captured. Why do they deserve anything? If I’d had my way, they all would have been shot. That would have saved us a lot of trouble. Who knows, maybe I will still get my way?”

She looked around for the German officer. Last time, he was the one who had kept the sniper in check. However, he was nowhere to be seen.

“Let me see what you have for the Americans,” the sniper said.

He reached into the basket, tossing neatly folding blankets into the snow. He took out a can of food. “Why waste food on men who are as good as dead?”

The sniper didn’t seem to expect an answer from her. He put the can into his coat pocket. Next, he grabbed one of the bottles of schnapps, which went into another pocket. He tossed a precious vial of mercurochrome away.

“Please,” she said.

“Hauer! What are you doing?”

They both turned to see the officer heading in their direction. Hauer scowled, while she felt relieved.

“I am inspecting these items she is taking to the prisoners,” Hauer said.

“Stop pestering that nun. Let me worry about the prisoners. I need you up in the church steeple. There are reports of American troops headed this way. You and your rifle are going to help hold them off.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sniper gave her one last glare, then moved toward the church so that he could take the stairs up to the steeple.

The officer turned his attention on Sister Anne Marie. His flinty glare softened. She could see that he was younger than he looked at first, and that his face was tight with exhaustion. “Don’t mind him, Sister. Go on and take that to the prisoners.”

She took a few minutes to pick up the blankets, shaking the snow off them as best she could.

As she moved toward the church, the officer shouted a warning. “Look out! Achtung!”

She froze. An instant later, a dark bundle flew through the air in front of her and hit the frozen ground with a resounding thud.

To her astonishment, she realized that a body had just crashed to the ground directly in her path.

She gasped, staring down at a dead soldier wearing an American uniform. She realized that it must be the body of the soldier who had been in the steeple earlier; this was the man that the German sniper had shot.

She looked up at the steeple and saw Hauer leering down at her. He had tossed the dead body out of the steeple, clearly intending for the corpse to drop on her head. If it hadn’t been for the officer’s warning shout, she would have taken another step and been crushed by the falling body.

The German sniper had just tried to kill her.

For once, Sister Anne Marie did not offer a prayer of thanks, but a silent curse directed at the sniper above. It was only with a powerful act of sheer willpower, brought about by reminding herself that she was a nun and should act accordingly, that Sister Anne Marie managed not to shout the ugly words that came to mind.

Behind her, the officer had no such compunctions. He cursed at the soldier in the tower, who looked down and shrugged, not looking chastened in the least. Then the sniper disappeared from view as he took up a position with his rifle.

Shuddering with suppressed fear and anger, she hurried into the shelter of the church.

Chapter Eleven

By the time Cole and the rest of his unit finally rolled up on Wingen sur Moder, the town had fallen and was firmly in enemy hands.

“It’s a hell of a thing,” Mulholland said, having gathered the platoon around. “The Germans have taken this village and we can’t let them keep it. You know what that means.”

“Yeah,” Vaccaro said. “It means that we’re going to get our asses shot off.”

“That about sums it up,” Mulholland said. “Happy New Year.”

“New year, same old story,” Vaccaro muttered.

The lieutenant turned his attention to Cole, who sat nearby, wrapped in blankets. He shivered with fever. “Cole, how are you holding up?”

“I reckon I’ll live,” Cole said, his voice raspy.

“You sit this one out,” Mulholland said.

“Like hell I will, sir.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say. I won’t order you to stay put because we can use every man. Just don’t make the medic carry you back.” Mulholland looked around the assembled men. “Any other questions?”

A soldier raised his hand. “Sir, I feel the flu coming on.”

“Me too, sir. Can I sit this one out?”

“Very funny. You want to be as sick as Cole, go right ahead. Doesn’t look like much fun to me. Anyhow, he said he’s coming along.”

Several men nodded. Sick or not, they were glad to have Cole along. “Yes, sir.”

“Word is that this is a small unit in the village. Not much more than a squad. We should make short work of them.”

Lieutenant Mulholland’s prediction would soon fall into the category of “famous last words,” but the squad had no way of knowing that just yet. It would turn out that there were a lot more Germans defending the village than anybody knew.

Quickly, they got organized for the attack. The Americans had approached on the main road through the mountains, which meant that the most direct way into the village was through an underpass that carried the road beneath a set of railroad tracks.

“The Krauts will be expecting us, sir,” the sergeant pointed out. “We could go around the village and attack from another direction.”

Mulholland shook his head. “Don’t think I didn’t already suggest that, Sarge. The CO informed me that skirting the town would take too long. He wants this town captured as fast as possible. Our orders are to attack head-on. If someone had their facts straight and there really aren’t that many Germans, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

The plan of attack was simple. A handful of men would advance through the underpass and see if anybody shot back.

The lieutenant led the way himself. He had been in enough scrapes since coming ashore back in June that his voice quavered a little as he whispered orders to the men accompanying him. Nobody said anything about it. They knew the lieutenant had plenty of sand. More than a few of them also shook with more than the cold.

Cautiously, the lieutenant moved forward, flanked by two soldiers, Bigelow and Carpenter. For a change, Cole and Vaccaro hung back instead of leading the attack.

At first, it seemed as if the village might be deserted. They emerged from the underpass and started down the road into the village, feeling more confident with every step.

Suddenly, the dreaded rip of an MG-42 machine gun shattered the quiet. The weapon had been nicknamed “Hitler’s Zipper” for the way that the machine gun seemed to tear the air. The Americans’ sturdy Browning machine guns didn’t come close to the same rate of fire. There was nothing like the sound of Hitler’s Zipper opening up to turn a man’s insides to water.

The burst kicked up snow and ice from the road, then caught Private Carpenter and spun him around like a top. Mulholland and Private Bigelow had a split second to dive for the roadside ditch just before another burst filled the air.

From inside the tunnel, the men fired back. More shots came from the village. Bullets pecked at the stones, forcing the men to keep their heads down. It was hard to say just exactly where the Germans were hidden. The buildings of the village offered too many hiding places.

“Get Cole up here!” the sergeant shouted. “We need to take out that machine gun.”

Having been called upon to put his rifle to work, Cole crept forward into the increasing fire. Bullets whacked against the stones around him, ricocheting inside the tunnel. Other bullets kicked chips from the icy road.

If he hadn’t been so sick, he might have paid more attention to the fact that he was advancing when the rest of the men were falling back.

As it was, he felt dizzy. It was hard to focus, too, as if he was crawling through the middle of a dream instead of a snowy road. Every bone ached as if he had already been hit with the slugs coming from the German machine gun. His head throbbed. And yet, he was expected to fight a battle. It was a hell of a thing. It was only the sheer adrenalin of combat that kept him in the fight.

“Tell me what you see, City Boy.”

“You got it, Hillbilly. But I’ve got to say, I don’t see much. Just a bunch of houses and shops. Brooklyn, it ain’t.”

“We ain’t here to write a travel guide. Just tell me if you see any Germans.”

“Oh, I see them, all right.”

Now, they could both see activity in the village streets as German troops moved forward to meet the attack. The Germans also seemed to have a couple of mortars lined up on the American position.

“Mulholland said he was told that there was only supposed to be a squad of Krauts in the village. That’s a whole hell of a lot more than a squad. Look at ‘em all.”

Cole managed to get his rifle to his shoulder. He could see lots of Germans, though most were behind cover. “I think we just kicked the hornet’s nest,” he said. “Where the hell is Mulholland, anyhow?”

“He’s pinned down in that ditch over there.”

“All right, let’s whittle these Krauts down to size.”

Cole tried to aim, but he had to admit, his eyes felt like someone had taken sandpaper to them. He felt too weak to hold the rifle steady. He fired and missed. Missed again.

Vaccaro gave him a target. “Hey, there’s a sniper in that church steeple!”

Just as Vaccaro spoke, a bullet that seemed more precise than all the others pecked at the stone near his head. They both ducked.

Cole searched the church steeple, but couldn’t detect any sign of the enemy sniper. Although Cole couldn’t see him, there was no doubt that he was there, all right. Another bullet came in and hit the new greenbean soldier firing from the tunnel entrance. Private Tawes fell dead, hit square in the head, a neat round bullet hole in the front of his helmet.

Vaccaro swore. “Dammit, I knew I shouldn’t have bothered to learn his name. These new guys never last a week.”

His comments sounded unfeeling, but hardening your heart was sometimes the only way to get through this madness.

The sniper was taking a terrible toll, but Cole was too feverish to be able to focus enough to take him out. He could barely hold the rifle steady. He lowered the Springfield rifle and slumped against the tunnel wall.

Vaccaro looked at him with concern. “You hit?”

“I feel like a truck hit me, if that counts.”

“That dead greenbean looks livelier than you do, Hillbilly. Don’t make me carry you back.”

The squad would have withdrawn, but they couldn’t — not with Lieutenant Mulholland and Private Bigelow still pinned down in the ditch. Between the machine gun and the sniper, trying to make a break for it would have meant certain death.

“We can’t leave Mulholland out there,” Cole said.

“There might not be much choice,” Vaccaro said. “Whoever thought there was just a handful of Germans in the village was wrong — dead wrong.”

“There are a few of them,” Cole agreed.

“We had better pull back. If they put a round from one of those mortars into this tunnel, we’re all goners.”

Behind them, they heard the clank and rumble of approaching tanks. From the engine noise, they knew that these were Shermans. That much was good news.

“Those look like ours!” Vaccaro said. “I never thought that I’d be so glad to see tanks.”

So far, they hadn’t seen any sign of German armor, which would have spelled trouble for any Sherman tank, which was equipped with a gun that was no match for the more heavily armed Panzers prowling these mountains.

The tunnel under the train tracks was just wide enough for the Shermans to pass through, once the dead greenbean’s body was dragged out of the way.

“Poor bastard,” Vaccaro muttered, helping to lift the body onto the back of a tank. “He’d barely been in the field long enough for his socks to get wet. Speaking of socks, that reminds me.”

Vaccaro went through the dead soldier’s pockets and liberated a chocolate bar and a pair of dry socks. The way that Vaccaro saw it, he could put those to good use, but the socks and chocolate wouldn’t do the soldier much good considering where he was headed — the local graves registration unit.

Quickly, the tankers hatched a plan to free Lieutenant Mulholland from the ditch. The lead Sherman would pull out of the tunnel entrance and head down the road just past where the lieutenant lay. The armored behemoth would create cover for Mulholland and Bigelow, giving them a screen. After all, the Germans could fire all the machine guns they wanted at the Sherman, but the bullets wouldn’t so much as dent the metal.

Once Mulholland was out of the ditch, the tank would reverse back toward the tunnel entrance, giving the infantrymen cover all the way. The second tank would hang back in reserve and provide any covering fire.

“You ought to let those Krauts have it,” Vaccaro said. “Jam a couple of shells down their throat.”

“I’d like nothing better,” the tank commander said. “But there might be people in the village. I don’t want to kill any civilians. We’ll have to rely on our thirty for suppressing fire.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Vaccaro said. He shouted down the road, hoping that Mullholland could hear him. “Lieutenant, we’re coming for you!”

It soon became apparent that the plan was going to be complicated by the fact that the Germans had started to advance toward the tunnel, clearly intending to push the Americans back.

“If we’re gonna do this, we need to do it soon,” Vaccaro pointed out. “Those Jerries mean business.”

“No time like the present,” the tank commander said. He pulled the tank hatch shut, sealing the crew within.

The tank started down the road toward the village. At the last second, Vaccaro fell in behind it.

Cole couldn’t believe it. Vaccaro wasn’t one to stick his neck out. Like Cole, he had seen all too often how that usually turned out.

“Where are you going, City Boy?”

“You sit tight, Hillbilly. We’ll be back with the lieutenant in a jiffy.”

From the village, the Germans redoubled their rate of fire. Machine-gun bursts and bullets hammered against the armored skin of the tank. Although the bullets couldn’t pierce the armor, it must have been more than a little nerve-wracking to hear them pelting the metal. Cole had grown up in a shack with a tin roof, so he could well imagine that the inside of the tank must have sounded like the sleeping loft in the shack during a summer hailstorm.

If the tank commander had dared to leave the hatch open, the German sniper in the church steeple might have tried to pick him off. However, the tank was buttoned up tight.

But the tank wasn’t just a punching bag. The Sherman could punch back. Its machine gun blazed, making the Germans who had been advancing toward the tunnel scramble for cover.

Still, the Sherman was fighting with one hand behind its back, considering that it couldn’t use its main gun for fear of civilian casualties. The lack of fire also emboldened some of the Germans, who crept closer, using outbuildings and ditches for cover.

With the tank hatched closed and the limited field of vision that the machine gunner had to work with, it was hard to see the Germans approaching or the fact that two of them carried Panzerfaust, their antitank weapon. Unseen by the Americans, one of the Germans set up behind a shed with the weapon, planning an ambush, waiting for the tank to come into range.

As the tank rolled closer, the German settled the sights of the weapon on the American tank. He was aiming for the sides of the Sherman, where the armor plating wasn’t as thick.

The tank passed the spot where Mulholland and Bigelow lay in the ditch, then stopped. From the shelter provided by the back of the tank, Vaccaro waved at the two men. “Come on, sir! It’s time to go!”

“Vaccaro, I never thought I’d say this, but you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

Mulholland didn’t need to be invited twice. He didn’t attempt to get to his feet, but rolled out of the ditch and behind the tank. The soldier followed his lead. In the lee of the tank, the lieutenant stood.

“We ought to try to advance into the village,” he said to Vaccaro.

“I don’t know about that, sir. There’s a hell of a lot of Germans. The plan is to back this puppy back to the mouth of the tunnel and regroup.”

“All right. Let’s do it.”

The tank crept forward, still firing, and the soldiers behind it didn’t have much choice except to follow it or be exposed to enemy fire.

“Where’s he going?”

“They’re blind inside,” Mulholland said. “They can’t see that we’re out of the ditch.”

The lieutenant used the butt of his rifle to give the tank two quick whacks. The forward motion of the tank stopped. They heard gears shifting, and then the tank began to reverse. The reverse speed was faster than expected and the three men had to trot to keep from being run over.

Down the road, the German with the Panzerfaust saw the tank starting to retreat, and figured it was now or never. He lined up the sights and fired.

There was a tell-tale whoosh of smoke and flame, so fast that there was no time to dodge the deadly Panzerfaust round. The subsequent explosion made the tank shudder.

Whether it was a lucky shot or skill, the German’s Panzerfaust round had scored a crippling hit.

Mulholland and the others just had time to throw themselves flat in the snow. Lucky for them, it was the right front quarter of the tank that took the brunt of the explosion. Nonetheless, Bigelow cried out as a splinter of shrapnel caught him in the leg.

To their horror, the wounded tank came to a halt, engine clanking and shuddering. Thick, black smoke began to pour out of the Sherman.

Unfortunately, the security offered by the tight steel confines of the tank also turned it into a death trap. Exiting a tank filled with roiling, choking smoke was no easy task — if any of the crew had even survived the initial blast.

“Those poor bastards!” Mulholland shouted. “We’ve got to help them!”

Without thinking, the lieutenant scrambled onto the back of the tank, headed for the hatch.

On top of the tank, the hatch started to open, then fell shut again. Whoever was in there seemed to lack the strength to lift it from within.

When the hatch started to open again, Mulholland was there, getting his fingers under the lip and yanking it open. A soot-stained face appeared, coughing and choking on the thick smoke that boiled out.

Mulholland started to help the tanker, who suddenly slumped lifelessly in the lieutenant’s arms. From the village, they heard the solitary crack of a rifle. A shot from the sniper in the church steeple had finished the work that the Panzerfaust had started. Mulholland had no choice but to let go of the dead weight, and the body slid back into the smoking maw of the tank.

“Anybody else in there?” he shouted.

He waited a moment, bullets slicing the air around him, but no one else emerged. Flames began to lick upward from the interior of the tank.

Vaccaro had climbed up on the tank and grabbed Mulholland by the back of the belt, trying to haul him down from the top of the Sherman, where he was a target.

“Sir, it’s no use! They’re gone!”

It took another forceful tug from Vaccaro, but Mulholland finally got the message and slithered down off the tank, keeping low. Heavier smoke now poured from the crippled Sherman, helping to screen the soldiers from the gunfire in the village. It was as if in death, the crew of the defeated Sherman tank was making one final act of defiance against the Germans.

Benefitting from the bulk of the wrecked tank and the smokescreen, the three soldiers were able to run back to the cover offered by the tunnel.

Finally safe for the moment, Mulholland punched the air in an angry gesture. “Son of a bitch! They were just trying to save my ass and I got them killed.”

“Wasn’t your fault, sir. You didn’t kill those boys. The Jerries did.”

Mulholland knew it was true, but it wasn’t much consolation. He shook his head. He seemed to notice Cole slouched against the tunnel wall. “Hillbilly, are you hit?”

Cole raised his head, but didn’t seem to have the strength to respond. Whatever energy that he had managed to summon earlier was gone. His eyes looked glassy and bright with fever.

“He’s just sick, sir.”

“I’ll be damned. All right, let’s get out of here. Somebody grab Cole. It’s going to take more than our squad to capture this town.”

They pulled back, leaving the dead to be collected later. Bigelow was wounded, and they carried him out. Vaccaro draped Cole’s arm over his shoulder and dragged him out of the tunnel as the sound of German firing increased. Cole felt like dead weight.

So far, it had been one hell of a fight and it hadn’t gone well. They had lost two men, along with a tank and its crew. As for Cole, it looked as if he was out of commission for the time being.

On the other side of the tunnel, the rest of the company had set up a defensive line, reinforced by the second Sherman tank. Now, the tables had turned. As the Jerries advanced through the tunnel, the Americans opened up with a withering fire. The tank fired directly into the mouth of the tunnel with a white phosphorous round, resulting in a blinding explosion. A single German soldier emerged, hands in the air, screaming as burning phosphorus consumed him.

Vaccaro fired, and the screaming ended.

It wasn’t the first time that he had shot someone, but even if he was just putting that poor German bastard out of his misery, it wasn’t something that he’d ever get used to.

He turned to look at Cole, who sat in the bottom of a foxhole with his eyes closed.

“Hillbilly, I hope you get better soon,” Vaccaro said. “You’re a whole lot better at this than I am.”

Chapter Twelve

Night returned, along with the bitter cold. The fresh snow that had fallen previously turned crunchy underfoot. Troops did what they could in their foxholes to stay warm, liberating tarps from the trucks and huddling together, but it wasn’t enough. Everybody was shivering and miserable.

Adding to his misery was the fact that Cole was still fighting the flu, the night passing for him in fitful dozing. His head ached. His bones hurt. Vaccaro gave have him some lukewarm instant soup that he had begged and borrowed, which was about the best that could be hoped for in these conditions. Vaccaro also brought him some hard candy to help with his sore throat.

“I swear I could have heated up that soup on your forehead, Hillbilly. You want me to get the medic? Maybe he can give you some more pills.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Cole said. “I’ll be all right in the morning.”

“If you say so.”

Cole finished the soup, sucked on a piece of candy, and slept.

Vaccaro had given Cole his own blanket, so he tugged his coat as tight around him as he could, shivering. They had been in a lot of tough spots, but even he had to admit that this night was a new low point. It was freezing cold. Cole was sick. The Germans had halted the attack on the village, killing the greenbean and one of the squad veterans, wounding Bigelow, and destroying a tank in the process. All that they could do now was sit in the snow and lick their wounds.

From the village, he and the other soldiers heard the sound of singing. The Germans occupying the houses were sheltered from at least some of the cold. They started fires in the fireplaces, breaking up furniture to burn because most of the firewood was gone. Still, with the windows open to shoot out of, awaiting another American attack, the conditions were hardly cozy. But from the perspective of the shivering American troops dug into the frozen ground, the enemy was enjoying the lap of luxury.

“I hate those Kraut bastards,” Vaccaro said. “They’re all nice and warm in those houses, drinking schnapps and eating sausages, while we freeze our asses off out here.”

“Why don’t you stroll on in there and see how you like it,” the sergeant suggested. “Maybe the Jerries will welcome you with open arms.”

“Yeah, right. What are they singing, anyhow?”

“Sounds like more Christmas music. Has a nice ring to it.”

The Germans must have gotten carried away with their attempts to keep warm, because one of the houses had caught fire and was burning merrily, casting a glow across the snowy village. They could see the shadows of enemy soldiers moving in the light cast by the flames, but nobody made any effort to put out the fire.

Dug into the cold ground, surrounded by snow and trees, all that the American troops could do was watch from a distance, wishing they could have some of the warmth from the fire.

For the next twenty-four hours, the American troops sat in their foxholes and shivered.

“What are we waiting for, sir?” Vaccaro asked Lieutenant Mulholland.

“Word has it that we’re supposed to get more tanks. They’re on the way.”

“It’s fine by me if they take their time getting here.”

Everybody understood what he meant. Once those tanks showed up, they would have to attack the village again. Nobody looked forward to going up against fortified enemy positions.

It soon became clear that the American prisoners in the village were going to complicate the attack. Refugees from the village began to enter the American lines, carrying news of the POWs.

“The Germans are holding more than two hundred men inside the Catholic church,” explained a villager named Madame Lavigne, who had fled the village with her elderly mother and a young niece. They were pushing their meager belongings in a wheelbarrow. Madame Lavigne owned a shop in town and looked formidable as a Panzer with her hefty build and winter coat, but the slim young niece attracted the attention of the soldiers. When they decided to camp with the Americans rather than take their chances on the road, several soldiers volunteered to help the niece set up a tent.

“How are the prisoners being treated?” Mulholland wanted to know.

“Some are wounded and there is not much food in town,” Madame Lavigne said. “Not all of the prisoners are in the church. Some are being held in basements here and there.”

From the sounds of it, a large portion of the infantry regiment that had been occupying Wingen had managed to get itself captured. This wasn’t good news, because it meant that the tanks would not be able to unleash their guns on the Germans, for fear of hitting the Americans held in the village. When the soldiers attacked the village, they would be fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. If the weather cleared enough for the planes to get back in the air, it meant that they couldn’t be used against the village, either.

If Wingen sur Moder was to be taken back from the Germans, it was going to be up to the soldiers to wrest it away using nothing more than rifles and machine guns.

“I’ve heard better news,” Mulholland said. “This is shaping up to be a bloody fight.”

While the stalemate between the Americans and Germans dragged into a second day, Cole used the time to sleep as his fever slowly ebbed. He woke from time to time in confusion, his fever dreams mixing with snatches of memories.

One memory had to do with Christmas. He supposed that his feverish sleep, along with just coming off the holiday season, had prompted the memory. Growing up in the mountains during the Depression, money had been scarce. They never had anything like a Christmas tree or any presents. When he heard the other soldiers wax nostalgic about their own childhood Christmases, Cole sometimes had to wonder if he had grown up in the same country as these other men. The closest that the Cole family ever got to celebrating Christmas was that they ate a big meal with nobody going to bed hungry for a change. His ma would even save up sugar, butter, and eggs so that there was enough to bake a pecan pie. Everyone got one slice. Cole usually collected the pecans himself before the snow fell, harvesting them from a patch that grew in a mountain clearing.

His pa always got drunk at Christmas, but then again, his old man never needed an excuse to get drunk. If the sun rose and set that day, that was usually enough reason for his pa to drink the moonshine that he cooked up in the hills. He might even have made some money with that endeavor if he hadn’t kept drinking most of what he produced.

Once when Cole was a boy, his pa had arrived at the cabin on Christmas Eve just before dark, clearly pleased with himself and grinning from ear to ear. Weaving as he walked, he was drunk as a lord.

“I been to town and done bought you all a stick of peppermint for Christmas,” he said grandly.

He reached into his pocket and brought out … nothing. Puzzled, he patted his other pockets. Empty.

“Pa, where’s the candy?” one of Cole’s younger sisters asked. The thought of a peppermint stick was such a rare treat that she was close to tears.

“Dang it,” he said, reaching into his pocket again and staring at his empty hand. “Didn’t eat it, did I? I reckon I must have dropped all that candy.”

Cole’s mother had heard enough. She was usually too afraid of her husband to speak up. They were all afraid of him. There was no meaner drunk. But Christmas had made her bold. “You drunken fool,” she said sharply. “It ain’t right to tease the children so. You go on inside. Go on.”

His father shrugged and made his way toward the shack.

Cole’s mother gathered them around. “I reckon he done dropped that candy along the way. If you walk back along that road, you’ll find it,” she said. “Stick by stick. Hurry up now, before it gets dark.”

When Pa said that he’d gone to town, he meant the lonely crossroads that had a country store and another building with a gas pump. From their shack, it was six miles down dirt roads to that crossroads. Walking with sharp eyes, they found four sticks of candy along the road. The snow was late coming this year, so it helped that the colorful candy stood out against the drab ground. These were penny sticks, striped red, nearly as thick around as a cornstalk. None of the Cole children had ever had such a thing as a stick of candy. It was an unimaginable luxury. Finding each one was like discovering treasure. The candy sticks were a little dirty, but the dirt brushed off easily enough.

Where the fifth peppermint stick had gone was anybody’s guess — if pa had even been sober enough to actually buy five sticks.

As the oldest, Cole had gone without. His little sister had cracked an end off her stick and tried to give it to him, but he wouldn’t take it.

“Gone on now, I don’t need it,” he’d said, curling her hand back around the candy and giving her fingers a gentle squeeze.

Candy was for children and he was eleven years old. Cole couldn’t ever remember thinking of himself as a child. In a way, he had been born old.

In the foxhole, Cole shivered. Now, why had he remembered all that, he wondered? It was because of the candy that Vaccaro had given him.

He slept again and woke in the dark, men snoring around him. He noticed the stars glittering above and realized that he felt better. His fever had broken.

And none too soon. In the distance, a machine gun chattered. Cole might have slept, but the war had not.

In the center of the village, Sister Anne Marie hurried toward the Eglise Saint-Félix-de-Cantalice, carrying a heavy basket. The church near the village center looked small but sturdy, a bastion of red brick, like a bulwark of faith and hope against sin. The stucco exterior gave the structure a vaguely Tudor appearance. Because it looked as if it had been there for ages, many were surprised that the church had only been built in 1914. This morning, she thought that perhaps the eglise was truly an island in a turbulent sea, considering that the village had found itself caught in the storm of battle. There was no shooting at the moment, which meant that they were in the eye of the storm.

As she walked up the street, instead of the usual handful of pedestrians and bicycles, she passed knots of German soldiers. They had thrown together sturdy defenses by turning carts on their sides or carrying out heavy furniture from the houses.

Soldiers were dragging an old bathtub out of a house to add it to the defenses. The sound of the cast iron scraping across a bare patch in the cobblestoned street grated on the ears, sounding unnaturally loud in the still air.

The sight of armoires and sofas — and now, a bathtub — bristling with machine guns and mortars was a strange one, to say the least. However, the village was not currently under attack since the attempt by the Americans had failed the day before. Even from here, the young nun could see the burned hulk of the American tank near the railroad overpass. Of course, no trains had run in many days due to the fighting. Looking more closely, she could see a body hanging half out of the turret, badly burned. More bodies lay scattered in the snowy road, their drab uniforms in stark contrast against the snow.

If her hands had not been full, she would have made the sign of the cross. Instead, she whispered a prayer.

The Germans that she passed in the street smoked and laughed with one another. Some leaned against the walls of the houses, looking all the more bulky menacing in their heavy winter coats.

Judging by their laughter and their easy conversation, they seemed to be old hands at the business of war. Most ignored her, but a few gave her a polite nod and said, “Guten morgen, Schwester.” Good morning, Sister.

“God’s grace to you,” she replied sincerely.

A few of the looks she received were lascivious, however, and she tugged her shawl tighter around her shoulders and face. God forgive them, she thought. Were men so weak that they could lust after a nun?

If nothing else, she felt a sense of relief that the German sniper who had tried to drop a dead man on her head was nowhere to be seen. A glance up at the church steeple confirmed that he wasn’t up there, either.

Above the surrounding hills, the winter sun shone pale and watery through the gauzy clouds. They would find no warmth there this day. The sunlight wouldn’t even reach into the shady places in the village, leaving the ice and cold to tighten its grip.

Most of the villagers who remained stayed out of sight, keeping to the shelter of cellars and the sturdy stone houses. But Sister Anne Marie knew that she could not hide or flee town as the priest had done. That was not why she had answered the call of her faith and become a nun. Her duty lay here. She had not grown up in this village, but in one that was somewhat larger. Still, there were not many options for a poor girl — even a pretty one. Her choices were to become a spinster schoolteacher or nurse, a wife to a young man who was equally as poor, or if she was lucky, to marry some middle-aged merchant who would treat her like a servant.

Instead, the church had offered another choice. She received an education and a certain independence of mind that becoming a wife would never allow. Also, she received some measure of respect when she had donned those habits.

Although the decision had mystified some of her friends and family, she gladly became Sister Anne Marie.

Did she love God? Of course — and she had come to love Him more deeply in the short time that she had been a nun.

On this morning, as war raged, there was nothing that she would rather do than serve God by helping others. This was the truth that kept her warm despite the cold.

Again, the door to the church stood open, although the entrance remained guarded. The guards barely gave her a glance as she came in. They were used to her coming and going by now.

She crinkled her nose against the smell that greeted her inside. The church always had been old and damp, but now she smelled the overflowing latrine buckets against the walls, the musky smell of unwashed male bodies crowded together, and an undercurrent of rotting meat from wounds that desperately needed treatment.

“Hello, Sister,” said the young soldier named Joey, eagerly greeting her. He offered to take the heavy basket from her, but she declined, fearing that as weak as he looked, it might knock him down.

She reached up and touched the bandage around his head. The scalp wound had bled freely and now the cloth was stiff as tree bark. “How is your head?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m fine,” he said. “A lot of these guys are worse off than me.”

Unfortunately, Sister Anne Marie knew that to be true. “Let me see what I can do,” she said. “Will you help?”

“Sure I will.”

The basket was stuffed with as much as she had been able to forage. A few bottles of water and a few tins of things like canned sausages. She looked around at the more than two hundred men crowded into the church. What she had brought was not enough. What she needed was a miracle, but she was no saint. She dreaded the thought, but she might have to go to the German commander to see if he could help with supplies.

“You there!” shouted a deep voice from the doorway.

Sister Anne Marie turned, and her heart sank to see that it was the German sniper whom she thought she had avoided. “What do you want?” she demanded, realizing that she did not sound very sisterly just then.

“I want to see what’s in that basket.”

Beside her, she sensed Joey starting to take a step forward as if to intercept the German, protecting her. She was sure that would not end well. “No,” she whispered to him, and the boy hung back.

The big soldier strode toward her, his deadly rifle with its telescopic sight slung over one shoulder. The guards had no intention of interfering. In fact, they seemed intimidated by the sniper. One of them intently studied the roof beams.

“There’s nothing here that you would want,” she said. “It is only supplies for the soldiers.”

“Supplies for the American soldiers,” the German pointed out. He reached into the basket and withdrew a jar of blackberry jam. “They do not deserve such luxuries. I will share this with the German soldiers.”

Sister Anne Marie tried to lock eyes with the sniper, hoping that a stern look from a nun might help, but his face remained hard and unmoving. “Whatever you say,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “You are lucky that I am letting you keep any of it for diese Schafe.” These sheep. “You know what sheep are good for, don’t you? Mutton and chops. Sheep are not soldiers.”

With that, the sniper turned and took his time walking out of the church.

Sister Anne Marie felt herself breathing again. Her heart pounded with fear — and anger, which she knew was not an entirely Christian emotion. She took a moment to breathe deeply and compose herself.

“I’d like nothing better than to tell that Kraut to go to hell,” Joey said. He flicked an apologetic glance at her. “Sorry, Sister. No offense.”

“None taken.” She had been thinking about telling the German the same thing, even if she hadn’t spoken it aloud. “Now, let’s see if we can share this among the others.”

Very quickly, the supplies that she had brought were used up. Once again, she had been forced to let the German soldier take what he wanted, which further cut into her supplies. Her medical skills were inadequate to treat the more grievously injured soldiers, who suffered silently. Unless they received real medical care, some might die.

As she and the young soldier passed out the last of what she had brought, she said, “I may have to appeal to a higher authority than these guards.”

“God?” he asked, puzzled.

“No, the German commanding officer.”

Chapter Thirteen

Her mind made up, Sister Anne Marie hurried down the street, dodging glances from the German soldiers she passed. Reluctantly, she had come to the conclusion that she must see the German commanding officer. The prisoners were short on supplies, lacking everything from food to blankets to basic medical attention. Ultimately, the prisoners were his responsibility. Sister Anne Marie could not provide for them, but perhaps he could.

Before crossing the street, she had kept an eye out for the sniper who had harassed her at the church. Sister Anne Marie liked to believe that there was good in everyone, but she had serious doubts about that particular soldier. She spotted a group of soldiers smoking cigarettes, bouncing on the balls of their feet to stay warm in the cold, and approached them.

“I am looking for your commanding officer,” she announced to one of the young soldiers who appeared more cordial than the others.

“He is in that big house there,” said the soldier, pointing to what Anne Marie knew to be the mayor’s home before he fled. A look of concern crossed the soldier’s face. “Is everything all right, Sister?”

“I am going to see your commanding officer on behalf of the American prisoners,” she said.

“Are you sure that you want to do that?”

Nearby, one of his companions guffawed. “You won’t get very far with Colonel Lang. He doesn’t like civilians — or nuns.”

But she remained undeterred. “Why wouldn’t I go to see him? He is in charge, isn’t he? I must discuss the care of the prisoners with him.”

“In that case, I wish you luck,” the young soldier said, shaking his head. “But if I were you, I would not argue too hard on behalf of the Americans.”

The young soldier’s comments had not been encouraging, but she continued toward the mayor’s house, apparently now occupied by the commanding officer. Looking more closely, she could see two soldiers standing guard beside the door.

The mayor, along with the priest and the two town constables, had fled ahead of the Germans, leaving the villagers to fend for themselves without their leaders. Considering that the house was the grandest in the village and centrally located, it made sense that the German commander had moved in.

She approached the guards, who had been slouching against the wall, but now stood up straight as she walked toward them.

“What is it sister?” one of the guards asked brusquely.

“I am here to see your commanding officer.”

“Colonel Lang is busy.”

“It is important.”

The soldier stared at her for a long moment, but she did not lower her gaze. She suspected that if she had not been wearing a nun’s habit, she would have been sent on her way — or worse. He had not lowered his weapon.

“Wait here.”

“Bless you,” she said.

The soldier glanced at his companion, as if silently warning him to keep an eye on her, then went inside. He was back a minute later.

“Colonel Lang said he can spare five minutes for you, and no more.”

She followed him inside. Immediately, she was struck by the transformation of the mayor’s house, which had once been a respectable middle-class home with fine furniture and carpets, and even a few oil painting on the walls, valuable old landscapes that had been handed down through the family. Much of the village’s business had been conducted there in the home’s comfortable atmosphere, usually in the mayor’s study on the first floor.

Now, the mayor’s house was a shambles. Snow and mud had been tracked across the floors and carpets. Equipment and even cartridge boxes covered the tables and chairs. Windows bristled with machine guns, some of the glass broken out. The oil paintings were all gone, stolen along with anything else of value.

She was ushered into the mayor’s study, where some of the furniture had been broken up and was now burning in the fireplace in an attempt to keep the winter chill at bay. That wasn’t an easy task, considering that one of the windows was open to the cold air, telephone lines snaking through it to a pair of field telephones on what had been the mayor’s desk.

Colonel Lang turned out to be a tall man of no more than forty years of age. His thinning blond hair was slicked back against his scalp. His boots were covered in slush and like his men, he wore several days of stubble on his face. He looked cranky and exhausted.

He shouted one last order into a telephone as she entered and then turned his attention to her.

Sister Anne Marie noticed the other men in the room. There was a young officer holding some papers who might be an adjutant of some kind, along with a clerk. With a tiny gasp of recognition, she saw that the sniper was also present. The man seemed to be everywhere, like the Devil himself. He looked at her with an expressionless face.

“What is it, Sister?” the officer demanded. “I only have a few minutes. I have to admit, I would not see you at all except that you represent the church.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” she said. “I have come with concerns about the prisoners.”

“The Americans?” His eyebrows raised in surprise.

“You are holding two hundred and fifty-two men in the church.”

“That’s a very exact number. How do you know?”

“I counted them.”

“Ah. What about them?”

“Many are wounded and need medical care. They need medicine and bandages that I do not have. They need food and water. They need blankets. I am asking you to provide for their care.”

“Why trouble yourself about them?”

“They are in my church!”

“Where is the priest? Perhaps he could talk some sense into you.”

“The priest ran away.”

“He did, eh? He’s a smarter man than many.”

“Sir, I am doing what I can to help them, but the prisoners are your responsibility.”

The colonel glanced at the sniper, who stood near the fireplace, warming his hands. “Do you hear that, Hauer? This nun is telling me my job. Apparently, I am to care for prisoners. I thought my job was to fight the war.”

So the Devil had a name, she thought. Hauer.

Hauer flexed his broad shoulders. “Do you want me to throw her out, sir?”

The colonel stared at her and seemed to think over Hauer’s offer. “Not yet. Sister, I would like nothing better than to shoot these prisoners and be done with them.”

“You cannot!”

“Who says? You? God?” He shook his head. “Don’t worry, Sister. We are not monsters. Besides, the Americans are very sensitive after what happened at the Malmedy Crossroads. As ridiculous as it seems when we are in the middle of killing one another, there are rules in war. The lives of German POWs hang in the balance. So you see, no harm will come to the prisoners because of the repercussions to our own men being held by the Allies.”

He moved to the open window and gestured for her to join him.

“Sir?”

“Look out the window, Sister. Do you see that warehouse across the street? It is filled with wounded. My men. Good men. They need bandages and medicine and food that I do not have to give them. If I cannot help my own men, how can I possibly help the prisoners?”

Sister Anne Marie was surprised. She had assumed that the Germans were well-supplied. “I did not know.”

“Find what supplies you can in the village,” he said. “I can’t help you, but I won’t stop you. That is all.”

He reached for a ringing telephone, dismissing her with the gesture as he turned his attention elsewhere.

As she left the room, she felt Hauer’s eyes on her, following her out.

Sister Anne Marie left the German commanding officer’s headquarters and made her way back up the street in the direction of the church. Suddenly, she felt so very tired. Each footstep in the snow and cold took an effort. It was no wonder. She had been working almost around the clock to do what she could for the POWs. When was the last time that she had eaten or slept? She could not remember when that had been. All of her efforts had been so focused upon helping the prisoners in the church.

The thought of a hot bowl of soup and a nap was suddenly quite appealing, but she forced herself to keep putting one foot in front of the other under the watchful eyes of the soldiers she passed. Tired and discouraged as she was, she kept going. Perhaps it was blasphemous, but she thought of all that Jesus had suffered. Her hardships were nothing in comparison.

She felt that she had not accomplished much in meeting with the commanding officer, but she had at least tried. That was something, wasn’t it? Anyhow, where one door closed, another opened.

Sister Anne Marie busied her mind with all of the things still left to do. She would go door to door again, asking for blankets and food. In the houses that people had fled, she might look into the empty rooms in hopes of finding some forgotten scrap of food to feed the prisoners. The German soldiers had already gone through the houses, but perhaps they had overlooked a blanket or jar of jam.

Something penetrated her fog of exhaustion, some primitive warning sense, and she looked over her shoulder.

Trailing her like an ominous shadow was the German sniper.

Hauer watched the nun leave. The colonel was busy on the telephone, so Hauer had slipped out to follow her up the street. Her nun’s dark habit fluttered around her in the winter wind. Where are you going, little crow?

Hauer did not care for nuns. Of course, outside of an overall sense of warmth toward the Reich itself, he did not care for much other than himself, but nuns were still toward the bottom of his list.

Why? He found them sanctimonious and cruel. As a boy, he had attended a Catholic school. Hauer had excelled at sports and schoolyard bullying, but he never had been keen on his lessons. Consequently, the nuns had cracked his knuckles with rulers, ridiculed him, even beaten him with a stick on more than one occasion. He had hated those nuns, yet as a boy, there was nothing he could do about it.

Or so he thought.

One of the cruelest of the nuns had been Sister Agnes. The fact that he remembered her name was a testament to the lasting impression she had made. Of all the nuns, she was the one who singled him out the most with her cruelty.

“You are stupid!” she had said, making him stand in front of the class as she diminished him in front of the others. “Dummkopf! You will never amount to more than a street sweeper!”

He had glared at her then, so much venom in his angry stare that she had looked away.

Hauer never had a clear plan in mind, but he knew that one day he would get even with this evil witch. His chance had come one day when he had glimpsed Sister Agnes headed for the stairs. It was an old building and the stairs were steep. She paused at the top and reached for the railing.

The halls were crowded with students, talking and hurrying to the next class, which gave Hauer the perfect camouflage. Quick as a cat, in the second before she had gotten a good grip on the railing, Hauer slipped up behind the old nun and shoved her with all his might. By the time she started to fall, he had already melted back into the mix of children looking on, horrified, as Sister Agnes tumbled down the stairs, her black habit flapping like the feathers of a bird tumbling from the sky. She landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, moaning, one of her legs twisted at a terrible angle.

The boy had smiled, thinking, Not such a dummkopf, am I?

None of the other children had seen him. Still, he had half-expected to be struck down by a bolt of lightning. Instead, that one moment of action had left him blissfully free from the nun’s tyranny.

Hauer had embraced the fact that officially Hitler’s Germany was agnostic — the only true church being the Third Reich. In the early days, Hitler and his minions had rounded up any meddlesome priests and nuns, then locked them inside the concentration camp at Dachau.

Hauer thought that it was a good place for them. He had long ago cast off whatever shreds remained of his upbringing in the church. After all, he had turned his back on religion many years ago, when he had shoved that witch down the stairs.

As for this nun, perhaps she needed to be taught a lesson as well.

She tried to pick up her pace, but it was no use. Hauer quickly caught up to her. Her heart hammered, recalling that he had attempted to drop a dead man on her head. She glanced at the soldiers on duty along the street, but they either watched in amusement or looked away, clearly with no intention of interfering with whatever Hauer had in mind. The sniper seemed to intimidate many of his fellow soldiers.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” he asked, falling into step beside her.

“If I cannot get help from your commanding officer, then I have much to do,” she replied without looking at him. “Besides, if you have not noticed, it is quite cold out.”

“I don’t know why you are bothering with those prisoners,” he said. “Why don’t you help our good German wounded?”

“You have your own medical personnel,” she said. “What do the Americans have?”

“I would not worry about them too much,” he said. “We might still shoot them. Who knows?”

“I pray that you are wrong.”

She felt Hauer’s eyes staring intently at her face.

“You are too pretty to be a nun,” he said. “Why would God waste you this way?”

“Waste me, how?” Sister Anne Marie was taken aback.

“Turn a pretty girl into a crow.”

“That was God’s decision, not mine.”

Hauer suddenly grabbed her by the arm. “I would like to get you alone and teach you a thing or two that you did not learn in the convent.” He gave her a lewd, knowing smile. “Maybe you can do more while on your knees than pray.”

“Get your hands off me!”

Hauer did not let go, but began pushing her toward the doorway of an empty house. “Come, come. The prisoners can wait. This won’t take long.”

Hauer’s intentions were all too clear. She slapped at his hands, but he didn’t let go, dragging her closer to the empty house. Only a small desire for dignity kept her from screaming for help.

“Hauer! That is enough!”

An older soldier came toward them.

“Never mind about me, Scholz,” Hauer said.

But the soldier wasn’t having any of that. He blocked their path, forcing Hauer to stop. “A nun, Hauer? Really? What kind of Dummkopf are you?”

At the word Dummkopf, Hauer let go of Sister Anne Marie and rounded on the sergeant, big fists clenched in his leather gloves, clearly enraged.

“What did you call me?”

Hauer was much larger than the sergeant, but the man looked tough as an old tree stump left to weather in a field. He was not the least bit cowed by the sniper. He set his feet, his own fists clenched. If it was a fight Hauer wanted, it was clear he was going to get one. “I will call you whatever I want, Gefreiter Hauer. Get back to your post. That is an order.”

Hauer glared at the noncommissioned officer, but kept his mouth shut. He turned his attention back to Sister Anne Marie. She did not think that she had ever seen such a look of malevolence. Thankfully, he had released his grip on her.

“This is not over, Sister,” he said. “All the prayers in the world will not help you now.”

Chapter Fourteen

The commander of the U.S. forces poised to attack Wingen sur Moder had called a truce. He wanted a parlay with the Germans in the village. In preparation for meeting with the Germans, Colonel Allen had gathered a team that included Lieutenant Mulholland, an Army medic, and Private Cole. Cole still felt weak from his bout with the flu, but his fever had finally broken. He felt some of his old strength return with each passing hour.

“Why Cole, sir?” Lieutenant Mulholland had asked when he was momentarily alone with the colonel.

“Because Cole and that rifle of his look scary as hell,” the colonel said. “Maybe it will help put the fear of God in these Krauts. Besides, I don’t entirely trust these Krauts and if any shooting breaks out, I want Cole to have my back.”

“I’ll be there too, sir.”

“I know you will, Lieutenant.” The colonel seemed to ponder that thought. “Come to think of it, give Cole a submachine gun, too.”

“Are you going to ask the Germans to surrender, sir?” Lieutenant Mulholland asked.

“Son, as much as I would like to do that, what do you think the chances are that the Krauts would surrender?”

“Slim to none, sir.”

“Right, so I’m not going to waste my breath,” the officer said. “They’re welcome to volunteer to surrender. Besides, for all I know they’ll be expecting us to surrender to them. We’re pretty evenly matched up, you know. This fight could go either way.”

The lieutenant looked taken aback. “I hadn’t thought about that, sir. Ich ergebe mich!”

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s German for I surrender, sir. I suppose it could work in either direction, depending on how things play out.”

“Well, don’t brush up on your German phrases just yet, son. What I really what to talk to the Krauts about would be these prisoners. The villagers said they’ve got more than two hundred of our boys held in the church. From their reports, it sounds like a lot of those boy are in bad shape. I want to see if we can get any supplies to them. Food, blankets, bandages — whatever they need.”

“Do you think that will work?”

“I’m sure the Krauts will steal whatever they want first, but something will get to the prisoners.”

A response came back to the colonel’s messenger, who had been sent into the village under a white flag. It all seemed very gentlemanly, this business of white flags and truces, like something out of an earlier era. But the flag had worked. The Germans hadn’t shot the colonel’s messenger, and now word came back that the Germans would meet.

The fight that was taking place at Wingen sur Moder was being mirrored in a handful of other places throughout the rugged terrain as the German’s Operation Nordwind continued. The advance was Hitler’s version of a one-two punch. Truth be told, Hitler had hit them hard. However, the American forces were proving to be tough adversaries.

Some of the fighting took place in and around towns, while in other locations, the fighting was dictated by nothing more than the collision of troops from both sides. The much-feared German Panzers had managed to press deep into the Allied lines, creating yet another bulge known as the Colmar Pocket.

But the German advance encountered difficulties, bogging down before long. Even the heaviest Panzers struggled for traction on the steep, snowy roads through the mountain forests. There was also the matter of food and fuel. The men needed one; the tanks and trucks needed the other. The Germans simply didn’t have the supply lines to supply the essentials of food and fuel. The whole situation was like a rubber band that kept stretching and stretching — at some point it was either going to break or snap back into place, its energy spent.

Meanwhile, massive Soviet forces pressed closer to Berlin. The Third Reich was fighting for its life on two fronts against determined adversaries, a situation that was impossible to sustain.

The maps were something for the generals to worry about, however. For every soldier on both sides, the only battle that really mattered was the one that he fought in. His war was often limited to his foxhole and the man fighting beside him.

So far, the Americans held the hills to the south and west, as well as the main road leading into town, the one that led to the railroad underpass where the disastrous first encounter with the Germans had taken place. The Germans still held the big hill almost due north, overlooking the town. Though their force was divided, their defensive strategy proved quite effective.

Holding that high ground, with the ability to put machine-gun fire or mortars on all of the approaches to town, gave the defenders a distinct advantage. It was assumed that the German troops on the hill maintained contact with the rest of the unit in the town through radio communication or telephone lines. If the Americans could cut that line at some point, it would give them an advantage.

Like the Americans, the Germans had laid down endless miles of wire as they advanced because the hills severely limited radio communication.

Unlike the Germans in the village, the Americans were roughing it in the woods and fields surrounding Wingen sur Moder. They didn’t have the benefit of buildings to get out of the wind. Instead, the U.S. forces sheltered in cold foxholes.

They had enough to eat, if you could call combat rations enough. Everything was eaten half-frozen. The more fortunate soldiers warmed up their food on the engine block of a tank or truck to at least take the chill off. They didn’t even have hot coffee because orders had come down against building any fires that might give away their positions to the enemy.

The men grumbled about that. It wasn’t as if the Germans didn’t know they were out here.

It would have been better if the snow and ice hadn’t turned to slush in the bottom of the foxholes. The freezing slush soaked everybody and made them colder.

“I’ve had enough of this snow,” Vaccaro said, his teeth chattering violently. “When I get back home, I swear I’m going to buy a place in Florida. Maybe New Mexico or Arizona.”

“You’ll be bitching about the heat come summer, City Boy,” Cole pointed out.

“Hell no, Hillbilly. All that I’ll need to do is think about this place and I’ll cool right off. Better than air conditioning.”

“I reckon I’d rather have it cold than hot all the time, like them fellas fighting in the Pacific. I hear tell the air is so swampy that they get jungle rot in places you don’t even want to think about.”

They thought about that anyway, and the images that came to mind made them cringe. “We’ve got frostbite and trench foot,” Vaccaro pointed out. “I’m telling you — Florida.”

Cole just shook his head. “Florida is way too flat for me. I need mountains.”

“Yeah, then you should feel right at home in this place.”

Cole was cleaning his rifle, working gun oil into the action, smoothing it over the barrel. The cold could make the oil gum up, so Cole had slipped out the bolt and put it inside his coat to stay warm. The rifle positively gleamed, which was something of an accomplishment in the grimy, slush-filled foxhole.

“I can tell that you’re feeling better,” Vaccaro said. “You were so sick before that you went a couple of days without cleaning that rifle — as if it even needed it.”

“I had to get better,” Cole said. “We’re about to launch another attack. You need me around to make sure you don’t get your ass shot off.”

“Shot off? Well, that’s a relief. For a while there, I was worried that I was going to freeze my ass off.”

Having agreed to a temporary truce, the two sides met on the road leading to the village. The snowy, ice-covered surface of the road had been packed as hard as asphalt by the passage of trucks and tanks. Cold wind blew through the valley, carrying a few flakes of snow. With sunset approaching, the sun dipped low toward the surrounding mountains, tinging the sky in yellow and purple tones, like a brilliant bruise.

The approaching sunset left Cole feeling wistful. Considering that the fight for the town would begin before first light tomorrow morning, it was unsettling to think about who might not be around to see the next evening’s sunset.

Looking over the Germans, he recalled General Patton’s words, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

Cole hefted the submachine gun draped across his chest, eager to help those other poor dumb bastards do their part. Cole was armed to the teeth. Along with the submachine gun, his rifle was slung within easy reach over his shoulder. He wore a .45 in a side holster. His wicked-looking Bowie knife, custom made for him by his old friend Hollis Bailey, was stuck in his belt, Indian-fighter style.

“Keep your eyes open, son,” Colonel Allen had muttered to Cole, somewhat unnecessarily. “I wouldn’t trust these Kraut bastards as far as I could throw them.”

To Cole’s surprise, it was clear that the colonel was nervous about this meeting. “Yes, sir.”

The group going to parlay with the enemy consisted of the colonel, Lieutenant Mulholland, a medic, and Cole. Only Cole was armed. Mulholland carried a white rag tied to a stick, which made him look vaguely silly.

Of course, an entire company of GIs was ready to open up at long range with their M-1 rifles if the need should arise. But if that happened, there was a good chance that the colonel and all the rest would already be dead.

Similarly, by prior agreement, the German officers coming to meet them were not armed — with the exception of their pistols, Cole noticed. The pistols were tucked away into holders with a leather flap — not exactly a quick-draw weapon.

What was surprising was that the Germans had brought a civilian with them.

“What the hell?” the colonel said. “Is that a nun?”

Sure enough, a Catholic nun had accompanied the Germans to the parlay. Cole was struck by the fact that the nun was quite pretty, her youthful face framed by the nun’s habit she wore.

Cole wasn’t the only one was staring. With an effort, he flicked his eyes away from the nun to focus his attention on the one German who, like Cole himself, had come armed to this meeting. Like Cole, the man carried a submachine gun and a rifle. The German’s rifle also had a telescopic sight. Another sniper, then.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have been too surprising that the German officer had also chosen a sniper as a sort of bodyguard. In both armies, the snipers were not only the best all-around shots, but also the men who tended to be coolest under pressure. They wouldn’t lose control and start shooting. And if they did have to shoot, they weren’t going to miss.

As the other man came closer, Cole studied him. The details of the German’s face became more evident.

Cole felt a current of shock go through him. He knew this man. It was the same sniper whom Cole had fought against at Ville sur Moselle. His presence here verified that Cole hadn’t killed him, after all — that was a disappointment. This sniper had been a real bastard, murdering some villagers who had decided to play soldier. Their deaths had been cruel and unnecessary.

The enemy sniper seemed to recognize Cole as well. His eyes widened when he got a good look at Cole’s face. But after that first glimmer of surprise, a smile played across his thick lips.

Quickly, the officers made brief introductions. The German officer saved the sniper for last. “That is Hauer. We call him The Butcher.”

Colonel Allen nodded in Cole’s direction. “That’s Cole. We call him Hillbilly.”

While the officers got on with the negotiations, Cole and the enemy sniper settled into trying to stare one another down, fingers resting gently on the triggers of their submachine guns.

The officers got down to brass tacks. No mention of surrender was made by either side.

“I understand that you are holding American prisoners in the village,” Colonel Allen began.

“This is correct,” the German officer responded. “Two hundred and fifty-two to be exact. Well, two hundred and fifty-one. I believe one died this morning. If I were you, Colonel, I would avoid using any heavy weapons against this village, or there may be even fewer prisoners.”

The colonel bristled. “Is that a threat?”

“No, only a commentary on your poor aim. If a stray shell hits the church, you are the one responsible.”

“You could let them go.”

“Come now, Colonel,” the German remarked, as if the American officer had just said something mildly amusing. “If you were in my shoes, would you let your prisoners go?”

“It was worth a try, I suppose.”

The German turned to the nun, who had remained quiet, watching the exchange between the two men. “This is Sister Anne Marie. She has expressed special concern for the prisoners and has been caring for them. She can tell you what supplies are needed for them.”

“Thank you, Sister,” the colonel said. “How are the prisoners doing?”

Clearing her throat, the young nun spoke up. “They are doing as well as can be expected,” she said. “However, some of them are wounded and need medical attention. They are hungry. I asked Colonel Lang for supplies, but he said that he had none to spare.”

The German shrugged. “That is the truth. Anyhow, I have allowed the nun to help your men as best she can.”

“Listen, what I want to do is send supplies to those prisoners. I’ve got blankets and rations ready. Corporal Gregory here is a medic who volunteered to go back with you and see to their medical needs.”

The German acknowledged the medic with a nod. “Corporal Gregory, you are a brave man. Come back with us, then. No harm will come to you. Is that all, Colonel?”

“That is all. Thank you.”

The two officers saluted. No mention of surrender had been made by either side.

The German sniper edged closer and to Cole’s surprise whispered in heavily accented English, “I will see you later, Hillbilly.”

Then the two groups went their separate ways, boots crunching on the snow-packed road. The medic went with the Germans, hauling a sled that was loaded with supplies. Cole noticed that the nun was the only one who wasn’t wearing heavy winter gear or footwear. Cole thought she must be freezing, but she had not complained.

Out of earshot of the enemy soldiers, Colonel Allen remarked, “I think that went well. Best we could expect, under the circumstances. I just hope some of those supplies make it to our boys and that I didn’t just hand over all that food to the Krauts.”

As the German entourage returned to the village, Colonel Lang strode purposefully, forcing the others to keep up. Hauer practically trotted along beside him.

“Hauer, I thought you and that American sniper were going to shoot one another back there. Did you see the look he gave you?”

“He is nothing to worry about.”

“You don’t think so? Ha! If the Americans had another two hundred like him instead of those clerks in the church, we would not be the ones holding this village. The war would have been over already.”

“Maybe I will have the chance to finish him off tomorrow when they attack us.”

“I certainly hope so. Meanwhile, take half of the supplies they gave us to our own wounded. The nun and that medic can have the rest for the prisoners.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know what else, Hauer? We just saw why the Americans are going to win the war.”

Hauer was visibly taken aback. “Why is that, sir?”

“We are less than a hundred miles from Germany, and yet we have no supplies. The Americans are thousands of miles from their homeland, and yet they have supplies to spare.”

“If you say so, sir. Just so long as we have enough bullets, that is enough.”

The colonel shook his head. “Bullets don’t always win wars, Hauer. You also need blankets and full bellies.”

Chapter Fifteen

The attack was set to begin in the coldest hours before dawn. The sky had cleared, leaving stars strewn across the void. In the distance, a fox barked, a sign that nature was oblivious to the soldiers at the edge of the forest.

“Cold enough for you?” Vaccaro muttered too loudly, his voice carrying in the winter air.

“Shut up, Vaccaro,” Lieutenant Mulholland whispered harshly. He was as nervous as anyone. It was Mulholland who would be leading them right into those German machine guns when they opened up. The others just had to follow. “You want to let the Krauts know we’re coming? Then keep it up.”

Chastised, Vaccaro fell into a sullen silence. In the dark, Cole just shook his head. Vaccaro always talked too much when he got nervous.

They stood in a ring of men, breath steaming like smoke, stamping their feet for some warmth, nervously checking and re-checking weapons. One or two men fumbled with their heavy clothing to relieve themselves yet again, not even bothering to take more than a couple of steps away. The last thing anybody wanted was to have to go during a fight. Though craving nicotine, the men weren’t allowed to light a cigarette, for fear that the sudden flare of a match would warn the enemy.

Given their concerns about being seen by the enemy, the starlight was a blessing and a curse. Reflected by the blanket of snow, the starlight provided the men preparing to attack with a little much-needed light. On the other hand, the light might reveal their movements to the Germans. Down the frozen road, across the valley, they could see the sleepy village, soon to be the target of their attack.

Like the others, Cole and Vaccaro had hardly slept, having been roused from their freezing foxholes as soon as they fell asleep, or so it seemed.

The captain came along, hurrying from squad to squad. “I need a couple of volunteers,” he said.

“I’m guessing it’s not to run down to Paris and bring back a case of champagne,” Vaccaro muttered.

“Lucky you, Vaccaro,” the lieutenant said. “You just volunteered.”

Vaccaro groaned. “For what?”

“We need to cut the line of communication between the Germans in the village and the ones on the hill,” the captain explained. He handed Vaccaro a pair of wire cutters. “They’ve got a telephone line running up there. See if you can find the damn thing and cut it.”

“Sir, won’t they just use their radio if that happens?”

“Sure they have radios, but if they’re like ours they don’t work right in these hills,” the captain said. “Go cut that wire.”

Orders given, the captain hurried off into the dark.

Mulholland spoke up. “Vaccaro, you heard the captain. Take Cole with you, if he’s up to it. If Cole goes with you, there’s at least a chance that you’ll come back in one piece. We attack at oh six hundred, so get a move on.”

“Yes, sir.”

Vaccaro turned to Cole. “Aren’t you glad that you’re feeling better?”

Cole shook his head. He was feeling much better than he had been, but he wasn’t eager for this mission to cut the German wires. “City Boy, what have you and your big mouth gone and gotten us into?”

“Good luck,” Mulholland said. “Remember, the attack starts whether you’re back here or not, so hustle.”

Before they started out, Cole reached into his pack and brought out a white smock that he had taken off a dead German. For whatever reason, the U.S. Army had been slow in adapting to this simple form of camouflage that was so effective in the snow. Cole even had a helmet cover. It was for a German helmet, but it fit well enough. While the camouflage wasn’t perfect, it went a long way toward helping him melt into the snowy backdrop.

“What about me?” Vaccaro asked.

“I took this off a prisoner,” Cole said. “I guess you’ll just have to capture a German.”

“Or shoot one.”

“Not if he shoots you first, which seems more likely, on account of how you make a right good target in all this snow. You stand out like a preacher at a whore house.”

“Great.”

The two moved off into the field. They were both exposed, but there was no helping it. Fortunately, some thin clouds were passing over the stars. If the moon had been out, a trip across the field would have been pure suicide.

They started across the snowy slope leading toward the hill north of town. While the Germans held the village, they also had troops on the hilltop, giving them the high ground above the entire valley. From up there, they had a clear field of fire to drop mortars or bring machine guns to bear on much of the ground surrounding the village. The troops themselves were hidden from view by the forest, but had a clear view out — almost like a one-way mirror in a funhouse.

You had to hand it to the Jerries, Cole thought. They knew their business, inside and out. Whoever controlled that hill could rain hellfire down on the approaches to the village, so the Germans had made sure that they were dug in up there.

What does that leave us? he wondered.

The Americans controlled the road leading toward the village. Unfortunately, to reach the village, they would have to go through the railroad underpass that had been the scene of the disastrous assault on the village earlier, before it was understood that the Germans were there in strength. The wrecked hulk of the Sherman tank still stood in the middle of the road, creating a barrier against further attack.

As the captain had noted, the success of the German defense also meant being able to coordinate between the forces in the village and those on the hill.

That was where Cole and Vaccaro came in.

“How in the hell are we ever going to find that wire?” Vaccaro wondered, speaking quietly. They were both well aware of being exposed, and how far sound carried in the still night air. With no choice, they climbed higher up the slope. The snow wasn’t more than eight inches deep, but between the snow and last fall’s deep grass, it was just enough to make crossing the slope difficult. Before long, they were both breathing hard. Cole realized that he could have used another day or two to recover from his bout with the flu.

“With any luck, we’ll see the tracks where the German engineers laid that wire down,” Cole said. “There ain’t been much snow since then. Not more than a dusting, anyhow.”

“If we see it, can’t you just shoot the wire from here?

“Yeah, that would be real smart. We’d have every German in those trees shooting back at us.”

“I noticed that you didn’t say you couldn’t hit the wire. It was the noise you were worried about. I mean, I was talking about shooting a wire.”

“Yep,” Cole said.

Vaccaro waved the wire cutters. “I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way.”

They trudged through the field, glad for the clouds, but keeping a wary eye on the trees above them. The tree-line began a couple of hundred feet away. They couldn’t see the Germans, but they were there, all right.

Finally, up ahead, they saw where the snow had been disturbed. In fact, a regular trail had been beaten through the snow, likely with men and supplies moving between the hill and village below.

“Give me the cutters,” Cole said. “You stay here.”

“What?”

“I’m the one with the camouflage, remember? If the Krauts have eyes on anything, they’ll have them on that trail.”

Cole unslung his rifle and moved on alone, taking his time. He wanted his motions to be slow and steady in order to attract less attention, just in case he was visible at all against the snowy backdrop. Although it was still dark, snow had a funny way of gathering what light there was.

He found the rubber-coated wire, half-buried in the snow. He had to take off his gloves to work the wire cutters, but soon found that the damn things were useless. Dull as a butterknife. The wire just kept getting hung up in the blades. Not only that, but his cold fingers couldn’t seem to get enough leverage to cut through the wire, anyhow. Now what? Maybe Vaccaro was right. Maybe he’d have to shoot through the wire, after all.

But he had a better idea. Cole drew the big Bowie knife, placed the edge closest to the hilt against the wire, and started sliding the blade. After a moment of initial resistance, the knife cut right through the copper wire. Satisfied that the phone up on that hill had just gone dead, he started back toward Vaccaro.

He hadn’t gone far before the shooting started. Down on the road below, the attack into the village had begun. Tracers flashed across the snow, with fire from the village answering. From the hill above them, a mortar fired, and then another. More flashes lit the night. It was quite a fireworks show.

Cole and Vaccaro found themselves caught out in the open.

“Now what are we supposed to do?” Vaccaro wondered, crouching in the snow, his rifle aimed toward the trees.

“Forget that,” Cole said. “We’re sitting duck out here. Run!”

No sooner had Cole spoken, then a burst of fire stitched across the snow nearby. Cole felt the ice crystals kicked up by the burst sting his face.

They both ran like hell.

On the road, two Sherman tanks raced toward the village. Despite the dark, it was fairly easy for the drivers to follow the road. The lead tank charged ahead, engine roaring, spouting exhaust that was lost in the darkness, while the second tank moved along slightly to the left and behind the other.

Although the tanks didn’t show any lights, their sound and fury were enough to give them away. Tracers from their machine guns lit the night.

Both tanks had crew manning the fifty-caliber machine guns on the turrets. Mounted in the mid-sections of the tanks, the thirty-caliber machine guns blazed away, making the tanks seem like gunfighters shooting from the hip.

However, the tanks were holding back their firepower, avoiding use of their main.75 millimeter guns. A few tank rounds would have gone a long way toward putting a dent in the defenses in the village. But if one of those rounds went astray and hit the church, every last one of the POWs inside might be killed. Consequently, the tanks had been ordered to use only their machine guns in leading the assault into the village.

Even without their main guns, the tanks possessed plenty of firepower. The sight of those tracers sizzling through the cold and dark was dazzling.

Higher on the slope, Cole and Vaccaro skidded to a stop.

“Look at those tanks. Now that’s a beautiful sight,” panted Vaccaro. Both he and Cole paused long enough to watch the attack, using the time to catch their breath and get their bearings. “Give ‘em hell, fellas!”

“Shout that a little louder,” Cole said, breathing hard. “I don’t think the Germans heard you.”

“It doesn’t matter, Hillbilly. Those tanks will put those Jerries on the run.”

“I hope you’re right,” Cole said. “We’ll see.”

The Germans in the village had been expecting the attack, and they were prepared. Soon, the staccato ratatatat of “Hitler’s Zipper” could be heard. The deadly German MG-42 machine guns had an incredible range. Although they were useless against the armored tanks themselves, the exposed gunners on the tanks were being targeted. Sparks flew and tracers bounced as a stream of enemy fire scored a hit on one of the tanks. The big fifty fell silent. It was all too easy to figure out what had happened to the machine gunner on the tank.

Suddenly, a rocket of fire shot from the German position, detonating against the lead tank. An explosion rocked the night, blinding everyone’s night vision. Lying in wait, Kraut soldiers had just hit the lead tank with a Panzerfaust. Time and again, these shoulder-fired weapons had proved more than effective against a Sherman tank.

Cole held his breath, praying that the tank hadn’t already been knocked out. They needed all the help they could get peeling open the village, and the tank made a pretty good can opener.

“They made it!” cried Vaccaro.

“Amen to that,” Cole said.

Sure enough, they could see the tank forging ahead, fragments of burning debris clinging to its armored front. The Panzerfaust had scored only a glancing blow. For now, the nimble Sherman remained in the fight.

The tanks roared ahead, directly toward the underpass where the previous attack had bogged down. In the wake of the tanks, they could see dark shapes just visible against the snow. The infantry was advancing.

“Looks like we’re late to the dance,” Vaccaro said, also noticing the movement on the road.

“Oh, I reckon this party will go on for a while,” Cole replied. “Let’s go see if we can catch up.”

Cole hadn’t taken more than two steps when the guns opened up on the hillside above them. It was the two captured anti-tank guns, being used against the Americans. Although he and Vaccaro had cut the communication lines, it was clear that the Germans on the hillside knew well enough what their role was in this fight.

The muzzle blasts from the two big guns punched holes in the darkness, lighting up the trees on the hillside. In the sudden flash, they could see German troops advancing down the slope. The Jerries were counter-attacking.

Adding to their horror, it was evident to Cole and Vaccaro that the artillery must have been zeroed in ahead of the attack, with their sights set on the entrance to the railroad underpass. Just as the lead tank approached the tunnel, both shots from the German artillery struck in rapid succession.

Hit twice, the Sherman didn’t stand a chance. A fireball engulfed the tank, gouts of flame shooting from the gash ripped into its armor and erupting from the open turret. Nobody could have survived that, Cole thought. The tank crew must have died instantly, the poor bastards.

Beside him, Vaccaro gasped in disbelief.

There was nothing so discouraging to an infantryman as seeing a tank destroyed. If a big can of armored whomp ass bought it, what chance did a guy with boots and a rifle have?

Seeing the fate of the lead tank, the second Sherman immediately began to reverse, getting itself out of the killing zone.

However, it wasn’t quite fast enough. Another pair of shots came from the forest above the town, the flash of the guns again turning the valley into daylight in the way that a lightning bolt does.

The two shells struck with devastating force, obliterating what was left of the first Sherman. Luckily for the second tank, it had reversed just in time. The impact showered the tank with clods of frozen earth and burning debris, but the only casualty was the crew member manning the machine gun, killed instantly by shrapnel.

Rather than advance into certain death, the surviving Sherman took a different tact. Driving right into a roadside ditch to give the tank at least some protection, the Sherman finally brought its.75 millimeter gun into play. There weren’t any American prisoners in the forested hillside above to worry about — but only German targets. The Sherman crew didn’t need as long to aim as the artillery pieces above took to reposition. Less than a minute after running to ground in the ditch, the Sherman opened fire. On the hillside above, splintered trees flew. Direct hit or not, the tank had given the German gunners something to think about.

“Chew on that, Jerry!” Vaccaro shouted.

“Keep your head down, City Boy.”

Now the Germans fired back, but far overshot the tank. Their shells crashed into a field, empty except for a small barn that was destroyed, sending chunks of stone and wood flying through the night.

The duel had begun.

However, the GIs were not sticking around to watch the duel play out. On foot, the American troops headed for the village kept their heads down, listening to shrapnel whistle through the darkness. Nobody could see a damn thing in the dark now that the explosions and muzzle flashes had wrecked their night vision.

The tanks hadn’t succeeded in pushing into the village; now it was up to them.

The real fight for Wingen sur Moder was about to begin.

Chapter Sixteen

Cole and Vaccaro ran to join the assault, latching onto the troops moving toward the underpass. By some minor miracle, they found their squad and Lieutenant Mulholland.

“Cole, is that you? Damn, I thought you were Germans sneaking up on us.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, sir.”

“No disappointment there, believe me. We’ve got plenty of Germans as it is, right in front of us. Did you cut those telephone wires?”

“That we did, for all the good it did. Those Kraut guns are just getting warmed up. They didn’t need anyone to tell them what to do. They already had their guns sighted in.”

“You’ve got that right. They’re tearing us up.” Mulholland shouted orders, “Everyone, spread out and get ready to climb over those railroad tracks. We’re not taking the tunnel. At this point, it would be like trying to run through a sausage grinder.”

It went without saying that with the enemy artillery having targeted the underpass, trying to go through it would have been suicide. Not only that, but the burning hulk of the tank partially blocked the entrance to the tunnel. There was no way past it without being singed. A sickening smell of burning flesh drifted in the pre-dawn air.

Down in the roadside ditch, the surviving Sherman was still firing at the German position on the hilltop. Already, the plan of attack had gone to pieces and the officers were having to improvise.

The soldiers fanned out and began climbing the embankment and crossing the railroad tracks, then rushing pell-mell down the other side.

All the while, the German machine guns kept up their deadly ratatatat. As the tracer fire lit the scene with an eerie glow, Cole could see soldiers falling as the machine-gun took its toll. Some of the wounded or their companions called for a medic. Other crumpled forms lay still and silent.

“Follow me,” Mulholland shouted.

The lieutenant led his men up and over the railroad embankment and they raced toward town. By now, dawn approached, tinging the horizon a deep shade of blood red. It was a warrior’s dawn, if Cole had ever seen one. Despite the red dawn, the morning was cold as ever. The bright colors promised as much warmth as a can of paint.

They cut away from the road, getting out from the machine gun’s line of fire. It was a feeling like stepping out of a downpour or hailstorm. Slowly, as the light grew, houses, outbuildings, even fences began to take shape as the squad advanced. With any luck, they could start to flank the German defenses, which had been set up to cover an attack from the road. That didn’t mean the enemy didn’t have defenses set up elsewhere.

“Keep your eyes open, everybody. If we can see them, they can see us.”

In the murky pre-dawn light, six figures suddenly appeared from a ditch and charged at them, shouting as they ran. Rifle shots crackled.

“Krauts!”

Cole leveled his rifle and dropped one of the enemy, but they were too close to get off another shot. He reached for his Bowie knife, thinking that maybe he could stab one of the bastards.

But there was no need. A burst of machine-gun fire came from their left. The line of Germans went down. Not all of them were hit, however. Some had thrown themselves to the ground instinctively and managed to dodge the deadly burst. They began to get back up.

Cole had a new round loaded and started to aim.

But Mulholland had gotten in the way.

“Not so fast, Hans!” Mulholland grabbed a rifle away from one of the Germans, then dragged the soldier to his feet. Vaccaro grabbed another German. “Hands up! Hände hoch!”

The Germans did as ordered. Soon, they had three prisoners standing before them with their hands up. Three bodies lay inert in the snow. Vaccaro went over and poked at them, but they didn’t move.

Mulholland made the prisoners get on their knees in the snow, hands on their heads.

Cole watched the Germans warily, keeping them in his sights. “We ain’t got time for prisoners, Lieutenant. We ought to just shoot ‘em. Stand back and I’ll take care of it.”

“Hold it, Cole! Battalion could use some intel. We’ll send these three back to see what they can tell us.”

Cole didn’t lower his rifle. It was as if the weapon had a mind of its own. They were in the middle of an attack. Prisoners required guarding. He told himself that he was being practical, not cruel. He was a hard man, but not a monster.

But truth be told, he had seen too many good American boys killed. In his mind’s eye, he could picture all the bodies in the snow from this bloody Battle of the Bulge. What a goddamn waste. He couldn’t seem to take his finger off the trigger.

The Germans must have seen something in Cole’s stance. He wasn’t a captor, but a killer. Beneath the rim of his helmet, his eyes glittered in the light of the winter’s dawn and the fires burning in town.

One of the prisoners began to plead quietly, “Bitte, bitte, bitte.”

Mulholland looked over and saw Cole standing there as if frozen in place. “Cole, that’s an order!”

“What about those poor bastards at Malmedy, Lieutenant? Do you reckon they ever had a chance?”

“Dammit, Cole! Don’t make me say it again!”

Reluctantly, Cole lowered the rifle. “Have it your way, Lieutenant. You want me and Vaccaro to take these Krauts to HQ? We’ll be back here in no time.”

“Hell, no. I’m not sure they would make it with you guarding them.” Mulholland looked around. He turned to another soldier in the squad. The man had been wounded lightly in the arm. “Private, take these prisoners back to HQ. See to that arm while you’re at it.”

“Yes, sir,” the private said. “C’mon, Hans. On your feet. Looks like it’s your lucky day.”

The lieutenant turned back to Cole and glared at him. Now that it was getting lighter, the anger in his face was clear. “If it’s Germans you want to kill so badly, Cole, then follow me. There’s plenty more of them in the village.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cole felt chastened. The lieutenant was right. What had he been thinking? He realized that he had been fighting this war too damn long.

With the Americans now entering the village, the narrow streets had been turned into a battleground. Some of the Germans were veterans of the fighting in the Soviet Union and were all too familiar with street fighting. Wingen sur Moder was no Stalingrad, but the battle for the town was becoming just as vicious.

Very efficiently, the Germans had placed machine-gun positions at the street corners, giving each machine-gun nest a clear line of fire in several directions. All that the attackers could do was scurry from house to house, trying to stay under cover until those machine guns could be knocked out.

“Every last one of these houses has been turned into a damned bunker,” Vaccaro said. “They can hit us from any direction. What the hell are we supposed to do?”

“We take this village one house at a time, that’s what,” Cole replied. “Now, cover me.”

Without waiting for a response, Cole dashed toward the nearest house. It was tall and narrow, offering a good vantage point up and down the street.

His movement was met with muzzle flashes from the windows, then bullets plucking at the snow around his feet, but he managed to reach the back corner of the house and hugged the wall. He stayed there for a moment, gasping for breath and realizing that he still felt pretty weak from the flu. Suddenly, he found himself having a terrible coughing fit. Hell, maybe he ought to still be in bed instead of being out here, fighting the war.

Inside the house, the Germans could hear him. He could definitely hear them inside, shouting excitedly to one another. The angle was all wrong for the Germans in the house to get a shot at him. However, he couldn’t just hide out here all day. Vaccaro was right about every house being a bunker. At any moment, somebody might spot him and pick him off.

One of the Germans leaned out of an upstairs window, trying to get a glimpse of where the American had gone. Cole raised his rifle and fired, sending the enemy soldier tumbling to the snowy ground.

There was another open window on the ground floor, but none of the Krauts was dumb enough to stick his head out. Cole got down low and crawled under the window. Across the way, he spotted Vaccaro, giving him covering fire. Bullets smacked into the house. Cole just hoped to hell that Vaccaro didn’t shoot him by accident.

From his position under the window, Cole pulled the pin on a grenade and lobbed it inside. The ear-splitting blast was almost instantaneous. He heard screams and curses despite his ringing ears. Leaping to his feet, he fired through the window at anything moving in the smoke.

There were still Germans upstairs, though, and they weren’t too happy. He could hear them shouting angrily and rushing down the stairs. The interior of the house echoed with automatic fire. Cole ducked back down; his single-shot Springfield wasn’t any match for that. Now what?

He needn’t have worried. In the confusion, Vaccaro had scrambled across to the house. He emptied a clip from his semi-automatic M-1 into the interior of the house, and then for good measure, tossed in another grenade.

“Fire in the hole!”

Another blast tore through the downstairs, followed by more screams. The grenade had silenced the enemy within. This was going to be an ugly business, repeating the same process from house to house. Not all of the attacks on the houses were one-sided victories, like this one had been. The growing number of American bodies in the streets was evidence of that.

“You all right?” he shouted at Vaccaro, even though the City Boy was just a few yards away. Neither of them could hear a damn thing, thanks to the gunfire and grenades.

“I don’t have any holes in me, if that’s what you mean.”

“All right, then. I’m going in.”

Cole slung the rifle, put both hands on the windowsill, and levered himself inside. His boots came down on something soft. A dead Kraut. In the light from the window, he got a good look at the face. The dead German was young — maybe just a teenager — and quite handsome, blond, his blue eyes now staring. Cole felt a twinge of regret, and just as quickly snapped it off like a light switch. Start thinking that way and it will get you killed, he thought. A few minutes ago, this German lad had been trying to shoot him. Hell, not so long before that, Cole had been more than ready to shoot those German prisoners. What the hell had gotten into him? It seemed like sometimes he got in a killing mood and it was hard to shake.

Vaccaro came in through the other window. Cole unslung his rifle. Together, they made their way from room to room, making sure that there weren’t any surprises. The air smelled heavily of cordite and fresh butchering. They found a handful of dead Krauts, killed either by the grenades or their rifle fire. One of the Germans was still moving, but he was badly wounded, barely even conscious. Cole finished him off with a mercy shot, then started upstairs.

Unlike the downstairs, the second floor was thankfully free of any dead Germans. The furniture was a jumble, everything having been dragged toward the windows and piled up — mattresses, bed frames, dressers, linen chests. Basically, anything that had a chance of stopping a bullet.

Cole peeked out one of the windows. Below, spread-eagled in the snow, he could see the body of the German he had shot. Beyond, the house offered a commanding view up the street toward the Catholic church, which wasn’t more than two hundred feet distant.

“Hey, isn’t that where the prisoners are being held?” Vaccaro asked, joining him at the window.

“That’s what the lieutenant said,” Cole replied.

“Do you think the two of us have a prayer of getting to that church?”

Cole thought about the machine-gun nests lining the streets, and the other well-defended houses between here and there. “Hell, no.”

“Then what’s our next move?”

Cole thought about that. “We’re gonna stay right here and do what we do best.”

“Yeah? What is that, by the way?”

Cole put a pillow across the windowsill to create a pad, then set his rifle across it. The window offered a perfect vista not only of the church, but of anything that moved on the street leading to it.

“Shoot Germans, that’s what,” Cole said, pulling the rifle tight against his shoulder. “You call out any targets you see. And keep an eye out for any Germans making a move on us. This is our house now.”

Chapter Seventeen

Like an incoming tide, the U.S. troops worked their way deeper into the village. From the second-floor window of the house that they had captured from the enemy, Cole and Vaccaro watched the soldiers move up the street. It wasn’t an easy task. Other houses were still held by the Germans, who peppered the attackers with fire. The Germans also held the street corner nearest the church, where a machine gun kept up a steady and withering fire. There were few sounds as sure to send a shiver up the spine of a GI as that.

However, it wasn’t just the machine gun that the attackers had to worry about. Occasional rifle shots rang out with deadly accuracy, dropping Americans in their tracks. Cole had wondered what had become of The Butcher, and now he knew. He also had a good idea of where the sniper was located. Like Cole, he had chosen a high place with a good view of the streets below.

“That Kraut sniper is in the church steeple,” Cole said.

“Can you see him?”

“Not yet.”

“He picked a good spot,” Vaccaro said, scanning the church. “He knows we can’t take him out with a tank or a grenade launcher, not with that church full of our guys.”

“He’s also got himself a bird’s eye view up there. He’s higher than we are, anyhow.”

Cole pressed his eye tight against the telescopic sight, focusing every bit of his concentration on the church steeple. He was hoping for a glimpse of movement that would provide him with a target.

It wasn’t the first time that Cole had encountered a sniper in a church. A question occurred to him that he hadn’t asked before.

“Vaccaro, are you Catholic?”

“Sure I am. Well, don’t expect me to be carrying rosary beads or anything, but yeah, I’m Catholic.”

“Huh.”

“What are you?”

“God-fearing.”

“Sounds about right. Just remember what the chaplain says — there’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole. Did you want to discuss religion right now?”

“Hell, no. I was just thinking about that nun helping the prisoners in the church.”

“I saw her. The young and pretty one. I’ve got to say, we didn’t have any nuns like that growing up.”

“What would lead a young woman like that to become a nun?”

“Faith.”

Cole snorted, but Vaccaro wasn’t done.

“Don’t knock it. Some people have faith in God, Hillbilly, just the same as you’ve got faith in that rifle. That’s what that nun has. Plenty of faith.”

“I reckon I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Yeah? Well, there you go. Now, will you think about shooting that sniper, for God’s sake?”

Cole didn’t need to be told twice. The trouble was that he didn’t have a clear target. The German had hidden himself so cleverly that Cole didn’t have the slightest glimpse of him.

He thought about what he would be doing if he were the one in that steeple, instead of Hauer. The entire structure could not have been more than eight feet wide on each side. There was a roof, covering a bell that was no longer there — the last time that the Germans had come through earlier in the war, they had taken the church bell to be melted down for the war effort. Brick walls, essentially solid railings, covered each side of the steeple, each about three feet high. There was no way for a bullet to punch through that brick.

Cole didn’t see any sign of The Butcher using the top of the brick wall for a bench rest. That was what any ordinary sniper would have done, but of course, The Butcher was no ordinary sniper.

So where was the son of a bitch? He had to be up there somewhere.

His eye went to the bottom of the wall. All around the steeple, small arches ran along the base of the solid railing. They had been designed to drain water that blew in, similar to the scuppers on the deck of a ship.

That’s where he is, Cole realized. He’s down on the floor of the steeple, looking out through one of those scuppers.

Cole pushed the rim of the sight so hard against his eye that it pressed a ring into his flesh. Moving his gaze from scupper to scupper, he still saw no sign of the German sniper.

Again, Cole considered what he would do. If he didn’t want to be seen, then he would have positioned himself more in the center of the space, where he could see from — and shoot out of — any of the scuppers.

Cole grinned, showing some teeth, but his smile was hidden behind the rifle.

If he could shoot through one of those scuppers, he had a good chance of shooting the German. Considering the distance, it was far from an easy shot to make.

Vaccaro interrupted him before he even started to aim. “Hey, something’s happening.”

All of Cole’s attention had been focused on the church steeple, but Vaccaro had been keeping an eye on the bigger picture of what was happening in the street below.

“What?” Cole asked, annoyed. The last thing he wanted to do was break his sight picture.

“I think you’d better have a look.”

Muttering a curse, Cole pulled his eye away from the scope and looked at the scene before them just in time to see the nun running out of the church door and into the street, toward the two fallen Krauts.

“What—”

“I think maybe those were the guards from the church,” Vaccaro said. “They ran out to join the fight and got hit right away. She’s going to help them.”

“They’re Germans.”

“She’s a nun, Cole. They don’t take sides.”

It was indeed apparent that Sister Anne Marie was running to the aid of the two Germans, both of whom were now fallen in the snowy street. One lay unmoving, but the other was holding his belly and rolling in the snow, clearly wounded.

“Is she trying to get herself killed?” Cole wondered.

“Nobody is going to shoot a nun. Not unless they want to burn in hell.”

For the nun’s sake, Cole hoped that Vaccaro was right. The fight for the village remained intense. Even with the machine gun knocked out, there was still fighting from house to house, brutal and vicious.

The young nun knelt in the snow beside the wounded German, seemingly oblivious to the bloody snow soaking into her cassock. She had a handful of bandages and tried to staunch his wound. However, he was badly hit and too far gone for her to be able to do much more than hold his hand and say a prayer. Sometimes, it was the best that could be hoped for.

Captivated by the scene, Cole’s attention remained riveted on the nun. But out of the corner of his eye, he detected movement in the steeple. The Butcher had finally shown himself. Cole could see him above the brick railing of the steeple, aiming down at the street below, directly in front of the church.

Puzzled about what the sniper was up to, Cole was slow in bringing his rifle to bear. There was nobody down there but the nun and the dying soldier. Who was the German aiming at?

Cole saw the muzzle flash, even heard the crack of the rifle. Instantly, the nun collapsed in the street.

Cole’s heart clenched. What the hell? That sniper had just shot the nun.

He and Vaccaro hadn’t been the only ones to witness the shooting. A young American soldier with a bandage around his head ran from the open door of the church. Keeping his head down, he sprinted toward the still figure of the nun and sank to his knees beside her.

The rifle fired again. The young soldier crumpled, his body falling beside that of the nun.

Cole was still stunned, hoping that the nun or even the young soldier might stir. But the shots from above had been too precise and deadly.

Almost too late, he swung his rifle up at the steeple. He caught a glimpse of a head, maybe a shoulder, disappearing behind the brick wall. Dammit. The German was out of sight.

But he was still there in the steeple, likely crouched right behind that brick wall. Several inches of brick wall, he reminded himself. The sniper could hide behind that all day if he wanted to.

Through the scope, Cole studied the steeple, hoping for any sign of the sniper scurrying away like the rat that he was. But the sniper wasn’t showing himself again.

If Cole could put a bullet through the gap at the bottom, right through the drainage scupper, he might have a chance of hitting the sniper.

He rested the rifle across the windowsill, forcing himself to breathe, to be calm. It wasn’t easy. His heart hammered and he kept wanting to check on the nun, to see if the sniper’s shot had been fatal.

Vaccaro’s muttered curses told him all he needed to know in that regard.

He took a deep breath, held it, let it out again. He lined up the sights on the scupper. Not an easy shot — the target was essentially a half-circle, four inches across and four inches high.

A stray burst of machine-gun fire struck the house, but Cole ignored it.

Cole squeezed the trigger.

There was no puff of dust, no flying chips of mortar. The bullet had gone right in.

“Did you get the son of a bitch?” Vaccaro asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Cole said. “Come on.”

Cole didn’t give Vaccaro any choice but to follow him down through the house and out into the street. The Americans were still mopping up, with the Germans shooting at anything that moved, which included Cole and Vaccaro.

“This is nuts, Hillbilly!” Vaccaro protested, one hand on his helmet and the other wrapped tightly around his M-1.

“Shut up and run.”

They sprinted for the church, juking right and left as they ran to make themselves difficult targets. They passed the bodies out front, then ran right through the door of the church.

Inside, more than two hundred American soldiers were huddled down, waiting to see what happened next. They had been expecting to see their German guards return after running outside to join the fight. The prisoners recognized the U.S. uniforms worn by Cole and Vaccaro. Some whooped with joy, but most looked too cold and exhausted for much of any reaction.

It might have been expected that once the guards disappeared, that the soldiers might flee the church and join the fight. However, none of them had weapons and these mostly weren’t combat troops. Running unarmed into the middle of a firefight was certain suicide.

“Boy, are we glad to see you guys,” the nearest soldier said. “I hope there’s more where you came from.”

“They’re right behind us, I can promise you that,” Cole said. “The smart thing to do right now is stay put inside these brick walls.”

A look of concern crossed the soldier’s face. “What about Sister Anne Marie? What about that dumb kid who ran out after her? Did you see them out there? Is the sister all right?”

Cole shook his head.

The soldier slumped back down. “Dammit!”

“Yeah, I know. I’m going after the Kraut SOB who shot them. Now, which way to the steeple?”

The soldier pointed to the far end of the church, where a door to one side of the altar gave access to the steps leading up to the steeple. “Watch out. We saw that German sniper heading back there a while ago. From the look in his eye, we thought he was going to shoot a few of us.”

Cole thought about that, then handed the soldier his pistol. “Take this. If any more Germans come through that door, shoot them.”

“No problem.”

Cole and Vaccaro headed toward the stairs leading up to the steeple. It wasn’t the first time that he had gone after a sniper in a church steeple. The sniper might be trapped, but he had every defensive advantage. There was nothing more dangerous than a cornered animal. Cole half expected to hear a grenade come bouncing down the steps at them. He peered carefully up the stairs that spiraled into shadow.

“After you,” Vaccaro said.

“Out of the way.”

Cole pushed him aside and started up the steps. If that Kraut sniper was up there, he intended on nailing him, no matter what. He got as far as the first landing and stopped.

“Hold on, City Boy. I don’t think he’s up there anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look at that blood.”

Cole nodded toward a bloody footstep, just visible on the dusty stone landing. There was a brick arch there, more of a vent or even like a castle archer’s slit than a window, intended to provide natural lighting for the stairs. The opening was just wide enough for someone to squeeze through. More blood was visible on the brick windowsill.

“The son of a bitch went out the window!” Vaccaro cried.

“Maybe. How high up are we, anyhow?”

Cautiously, Cole looked out the slit. The snow-covered ground was about ten feet below, with footprints in the snow leading away from the church. A few flecks of blood showed against the white snow.

“He’s getting away!” Vaccaro said.

“I ain’t about to jump out that window and twist an ankle. That frozen ground is about as hard as concrete. I’m surprised he made it. Come on.”

With no other choice, they lost precious time making their way back through the church, out the front door, and around back again to the spot where the Kraut sniper had jumped out the window. Cole hated to admit it, but Vaccaro was right. The sniper was escaping.

Cole was a skilled tracker, but he didn’t need any of those skills to follow the German. The tracks were plain as day. They followed the trail to the outskirts of town. Cole kept his rifle at the ready, hoping for a glimpse of their target, but the Kraut managed to keep out of sight.

“Be ready to hit the ground,” Cole said. “He might be trying to get the drop on us, if he thinks we followed him.”

“Why would he think that?”

“It’s the same damn sniper I ran into back in Ville sur Moselle. There’s some unfinished business between us.”

“You’re not the only one he’s got unfinished business with. The whole village will be out to get him. He shot that poor nun.”

“Just keep your eyes open.”

They lost the trail in a jumble of other German tracks but managed to pick it up again on the other side when he saw another fleck of blood in the snow.

Soon, it became clear that Cole’s worries about an ambush were unfounded.

The tracks struck out across the field, toward the hilltop where the German forces still held the high ground. Nearest the village, the slope was wide open, but closer to the forest, small trees and shrubs provided cover. The enemy sniper had simply disappeared.

Like a rat fleeing a sinking ship, the German had fled the fight in the village.

“Come on, let’s go after him,” Cole said.

Vaccaro grabbed Cole by the shoulder, but seeing the look in his eyes, quickly let go. “He’s gone, Hillbilly. We both know that forest is full of Krauts. No way we can go after him.”

“I can’t let him get away with what he did. It ain’t right.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re fighting a war. There’s nothing right about it.”

Deep down, he knew Vaccaro was correct, even if he wasn’t happy about it. Cole gave one last look toward the German stronghold in the forested hilltop, then shook his head and turned away.

Chapter Eighteen

Slowly, house by house, shop by shop, control of the village was wrested from the Germans.

The fighting remained bitter. One house would be cleared, only for more firing to open up from across the road. Then there would be another attack on the next house — more shooting, more grenades tossed through windows. The capture of each house was a battle in miniature.

At the same time, they tried to avoid shooting into basements or tossing grenades into houses, unless the Germans were in there shooting at them. Many of the villagers had taken refuge in their cellars and basements, trying to dodge the stray bullets and shrapnel. Most of the villagers who remained were older, or very young families. Flight for them had proved too difficult. Anyone who could do so had fled as soon as the Germans began to move in, knowing that a battle was coming.

Cole watched as Vaccaro emptied a clip at a tall stucco house. The firing from the house stopped.

“Why the hell won’t these Krauts just give up?” Vaccaro wondered.

“Because they’re Krauts, that’s why. Besides, we’re almost on their front porch. They’re going to fight harder and harder now.”

Like most of the American troops, Vaccaro looked like Cole felt — cold, exhausted, minor wounds wrapped with dirty bandages. Everybody was either wet or covered in snow, shivering.

The conditions and the prolonged fight wore on their patience. For some men, their pilot light of decency had gone out. Sometimes when German soldiers emerged from a house with their hands up, they were not taken prisoner. Instead, a few quick shots rang out. The officers looked the other way. Some might have called it murder or simple revenge, but often, the soldiers had half-frozen tears in their eyes — not for the Germans they shot down, but for their dead buddies, sprawled in the snow nearby.

It didn’t help that the specter of Malmedy was on all their minds — helpless American POWs machine-gunned at a crossroads. These particular Germans might not have had anything to do with that, but they were the enemy all the same.

However, most of the Germans who did give up without a fight were treated well enough, herded into a courtyard, and put under guard. The GIs weren’t taking any chances. Most of the battle-hardened veterans had preferred to die fighting rather than surrender. The guards soon realized that many of the prisoners were quite young, hungry, and shivering just as much as the Americans. As the sounds of combat faded and emotions calmed, it was hard to see the prisoners as anything but fellow soldiers. Many spoke passable English. Besides, it was no secret that the German soldiers at the tail end of this war didn’t have much choice about putting on a uniform.

“They look as cold as we are, poor bastards,” Vaccaro said, passing a group of prisoners being rounded up. “You still want to shoot them, Hillbilly?”

“Never mind about me. Anyhow, this fight ain’t over yet.”

Most of the shooting in the village had died down. Over by the railroad underpass carrying the road into the village, the tank still fired at its opponent up on the hilltop, where a German force remained dug in.

Another round from the tank shot toward the forest, bursting among the snow-covered trees. In response, a round struck the frozen ground near the Sherman, showering the tank with frozen clods of earth. The tank fired again. A tremendous explosion ripped through the trees this time, and the enemy gun finally fell silent.

“Got him,” Cole said with satisfaction.

“Maybe the Jerries will clear out now.”

Cole couldn’t help thinking that The Butcher was somewhere up there on that hill, maybe trying to put a few Americans in his crosshairs. Hauer had been wounded, but it was too much to hope that the wound was incapacitating. The Germans still held that high ground, which could only mean one thing for the troops who had just taken the village.

“We’re gonna have to go up there and take that hill,” Cole said.

“Not until I warm up first, we’re not.”

Dotted around the streets, near where the machine-gun positions had been, the Germans had built warming fires in barrels. Now, it was the Americans who warmed themselves around these fires. Cole and Vaccaro joined the others in their squad, took off their gloves and mittens, and held their stiff fingers closer to the flames.

More villagers emerged. Some of the old folks had died of exposure from days and nights spent cowering in the cold cellars, and their bodies were carried out and laid in the streets. The sight of the dead brought a wave of fresh weeping from the villagers, who thought that they had already cried themselves out.

The villagers eyed the Americans warily. Some looked just plain shaken and haunted. The village had been occupied before by the Americans, but then lost. Would that happen again? So close to the German border, there were even more than a few villagers who didn’t necessarily welcome the U.S. victory.

As always, the children seemed frightened but resilient. Cole gave a nearly frozen chocolate bar to a child, who smiled and said, “Merci.”

They counted more than forty enemy dead, with about as many enemy soldiers taken prisoner. The Germans looked worried, as if convinced Americans would shoot them like what had taken place at Malmedy. Some soldiers wanted to shoot the ones with American watches on, but Lieutenant Mulholland wouldn’t let them.

Before dark, an assault was organized on the hilltop, with the tank leading the way. Cole and Vaccaro found themselves following in the wake of the tank, sucking in exhaust fumes.

“How come we got to take part in this?”

“Just lucky, I reckon.”

The truth was that somebody wanted Cole and his rifle handy, and following the tank was the best way to make sure that he reached the hilltop in one piece — unless the Germans decided to ambush the tank with a Panzerfaust. Then all bets were off.

Cautiously, the assault team approached the forest, more exposed than they wanted to be, but without much choice given the bare, snowy slope leading up from the village. At any moment, they expected deadly fire to be unleashed against them.

But when they reached the tree line, all that they found were empty foxholes and the smoking wreckage of the German artillery.

The Germans had slipped away.

Finally, there remained one task for the survivors of the fight for Wingen sur Moder, and that was to bury the dead. The ground remained frozen hard beneath the snow and ice, so digging through the frost was backbreaking work. No one complained about this final chore. The soldiers mostly just had their trenching tools, but the able-bodied villagers arrived with picks and mattocks and soon joined the soldiers to work side by side with them.

Cole joined in and despite the bitter cold, soon found himself sweating. He hadn’t grown up as a farmer, but he was no stranger to hard work. Taking turns and trading off whenever one person grew tired, the soldiers and villagers dug down. Some of the former prisoners who had been held in the church, the ones who weren’t in bad shape, also turned out to help once they had gotten some food and something hot to drink.

It was easier to dig one large hole for a mass burial, rather than trying to cut several small graves through the frosted earth. This wasn’t how things were normally done, but there was something that felt right about burying the victims of the fighting together. A separate grave was dug for the dead Germans.

One of the soldiers who had been held in the church knelt by the body of the private who had been shot dead when he ran to help the nun.

“Serra, what are you doing?”

“Hold it,” he said to the soldiers who were about to finish wrapping the body in a blanket. He reached inside his shirt and produced a tiny crucifix on a thin chain, which he then slipped over his head. He laid it on his dead buddy’s chest, mumbled a prayer, then wiped at his eyes with the back of his hands. “Go on, then.”

The bodies of the dead young soldier and the nun were wrapped in blankets like the others, and then laid in the bottom of the hole. Soldiers and villagers gathered, hats and helmets off despite the snow. Some of the villagers sobbed. A few days ago, they had celebrated Christmas and all seemed right with their world as the end of the war seemed to be coming into sight. Now, not even a week into the new year, it seemed as if their whole world had shattered.

Prayers were said, and then began the slow work of refilling the grave. The fresh earth was one more scar in the village left by the fighting.

But not for long. More snow fell during the night, covering the landscape in a new blanket of white, as if giving the world a fresh start.

“All right, get ready to move out,” Lieutenant Mulholland shouted. Enough gasoline had been found to keep the trucks running, and two more tanks joined them as the unit prepared to head down the mountain roads.

“Sir, are we going after those Germans?”

“No such luck. Division is sending us somewhere else. Besides, those guys are probably halfway back to Berlin by now. Chances are that we’ll have to fight them again.”

Cole listened, disappointed. Some officer, somewhere, was probably sending them to clean up someone else’s mess. He had hoped that they would be going after the Germans who had escaped from Winger sur Moder. Then again, he agreed with Mulholland that too much time had elapsed. That unit could be anywhere in these mountains.

Truth be told, he wouldn’t have minded another shot at that German sniper. After all, Hauer wasn’t just another soldier. The way that Cole saw it, Hauer was a murderer. It also nagged at Cole that the enemy sniper had eluded him. Cole knew that he was the better shot. He just needed a chance to prove it.

As far as he was concerned, there was some unfinished business between them.

If not this time, he thought, then maybe another.

It seemed as if Vaccaro had more immediate concerns.

“Sir, can I ride up front? It’s cold in the back and I think I’m starting to get whatever Cole had. My throat feels all scratchy.”

“Shut up and get in the truck, Vaccaro. Nobody else can get sick. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If we run into more Germans, things will get hot plenty fast. You know what’s on the other side of these mountains, don’t you? Germany, that’s what.”

Cole thought that sounded good to him, and reached for his rifle.

Already miles away, what was left of the German forces retreating from Wingen sur Moder made their way along the snowy mountain roads.

Like a wave that had crashed against the shore in all its fury, only to have its foaming remains drawn back into the sea, the German advance of Operation Nordwind finally ebbed. Hitler had made a desperate gamble by gathering his remaining forces for one last push against the Allies poised to invade across the Rhine. Thousands of troops, hundreds of tanks and trucks, even the last of the Luftwaffe’s aircraft, now lay shattered in the cold snow of the Ardennes Forest and Vosges Mountains.

In the end, the offensive had never been much more than a forlorn hope against well-supplied forces. The Allies had been delayed and thousands had died in what would come to be known as the biggest battle ever fought by the United States Army.

The Allies would now push on, with fewer and fewer enemy forces to stop them. From the East, the Red Army pushed ever-closer to Berlin. Caught in the middle, for the average German, all of this seemed impossible to grasp. The end of the Third Reich seemed all but certain. Now, it was only a matter of time. Their world was falling apart, but many weren’t prepared to give in quite yet.

“Hurry, hurry!” shouted a German officer, riding past in a Kübelwagen. The agile vehicle threaded its way along the slick road. “Hop, hop, hop! If the Allied planes catch us in the open, there will be hell to pay!”

With the other soldiers, Hauer glanced at the sky, but he was not particularly worried. “Let them come,” he said. “So what?”

“Maybe you will shoot them down for us with that fancy rifle of yours, eh, Hauer?” a nearby soldier asked.

“Maybe I will.”

“I hope you do!” the soldier said cheerfully.

Not all of the others were as friendly toward Hauer. Some viewed snipers with something like disdain, thinking that they were like thieves of souls, shooting from concealment. Even if they tolerated snipers, some of them just didn’t like Hauer. Others, like young Krauss, who had somehow survived the battle and was following along two steps behind him, seemed to regard him with something like awe.

What did he care, either way?

Hauer shook his head. He was cold; he could barely feel his feet. His left leg dragged, stiff from the wound he had suffered in the church steeple. In this case, he was glad of the temperature because it numbed the pain. He was sure that if he stopped moving, he would be captured, or simply die of the cold.

For many hours his stomach had rumbled, but then the sensation of hunger had gone away. Some of the younger soldiers ate snow to keep their bellies full, but he knew that only burned more energy than the temporary relief was worth. What he would give for a hot, sizzling sausage right now! The very idea of it made his mouth water. But for now, there was nothing to eat — no telling for how long.

He thought back to the fight in the village, satisfied that he had killed that meddling nun. He had been wounded while hidden in the church steeple, hit by an impossible shot that had come in through one of the small gaps in the brick wall that he had hidden behind. He was sure that it had been the American sniper whom he had encountered before. In fact, he had seen that sniper chasing him through the village.

Why hadn’t he made a last stand against him? Hauer shrugged to himself. Sometimes, even The Butcher had done enough. He would live to fight another day. He had to hand it to that American sniper, though. He was an excellent shot. If they ever crossed paths again, Hauer would be sure to return the favor.

The cheerful soldier beside him started singing in a low voice. All around him, other soldiers began to pick up the tune. The song was Panzierlied, the “Tank Song” so popular with all the troops:

The snowy forest rang with deep German voices, soldiers marching to make their final stand for the Fatherland.