Soldiers of ’44

Chapter Twelve

December 16, 1944. Six kilometers from Werpen, Saturday, 0630 Hours.

On a slope above the hill where Section Eight’s guns faced east, the mongrel dog was barking at something he heard or smelled in the darkness. To the north and east there was the heavy, curiously human sound of artillery, noises like distant coughings and mutterings accompanied by gleaming streaks of rockets and tracers through black cloud masses. Trankic was shouting something at the men on the cannon and machine guns.

A censor deep in Docker’s mind tried to screen out the sound of that worried voice. He’d been in his bedroll in a drifted lee of the wind only an hour or so, shaved and washed, carbine beside him, his boots drying out beside Dormund’s fire.

He began to wake then, hearing Trankic calling to the men and remembering parts of his fragmented dreams. On his last shift, he had monitored the radio and looked at the mail picked up at Battery, and there was an uneasy residue of all that with him now... Bandleader Glenn Miller, Captain Glenn Miller, eight hours overdue on a London-to-Paris flight. That had been on the Armed Forces network, and a stateside wrap-up of Roosevelt’s first month of an unprecedented fourth term as President. And coincidentally, a letter from his father had said: “The people is a beast. I don’t know who said that first but it’s on the mark and FDR knows it. He’s bought the people of this country the way you buy a dog’s loyalty — through the stomach, through handouts and giveaways. But since I’d rather write of real dogs than FDR, I must tell you the big male, Sheboygan, has shown scant regard for...” He blinked his eyes to focus on the canteen of steaming coffee that Trankic was forcing into his hands.

“You better take a look, Bull. This sure as hell ain’t our artillery.”

“Go get my boots, Trank.”

Walking to the guns, his boots hot and stiff, Docker looked at the horizon. In the east there were bright flashes at ground level. Above them vivid parabolas of tracers and rockets showed against the sky. The artillery shells sounded like freight trains rumbling over their heads. Docker tightened his cartridge belt and buckled his helmet strap. “Schmitzer, get everybody out of their sacks. Trankic, try to raise Battery or Battalion...”

The sergeant looked toward the horizon through his binoculars and saw what looked like tiny balls of fire spurting up behind the mountains. Then he felt rather than heard a deeper sound, a jarring noise that seemed to come up from the ground and through his boots, the sound of tanks. He told Farrel, “Pick up a bazooka, Tex, and get the jeep over here.” Larkin and Schmitzer were ordered to load the food, ammunition and gasoline and warm up the engines of the trucks. “I want to move out fast if we have to. If we get separated, our fall-back position is Lepont on the Salm, two kilometers southeast of grid coordinates A-7 on our large-scale map.”

He took the wheel of the jeep and with Trankic beside him and Farrel in the rear, drove down the trail toward the valley. Ahead of them snow glistened in the blackout beams of their headlights.

Farrel, holding two bazooka projectiles notched carefully in the fingers of his left hand, was watching the road with steady eyes. Docker stopped the jeep fifty yards below the crest of the next hill and the men scrambled the rest of the way on foot, crawling through frozen underbrush to a hedge of gnarled trees.

Rocket bombs flashed methodically through the skies, hanging along the horizon like flaming lanterns. Several thousand yards off they saw barrage lights rising from the next ridge of hills, coating the underside of the low clouds, the reflections brilliantly illuminating the white ground.

Docker’s glasses picked up movement in the distant woods and then he could see German soldiers in long winter-camouflage coats, rifles a dark slash across their chests, the splintered reflections from the barrage lights shining on their helmets.

He lowered his glasses because now he could see the German troops with his naked eye and, not more than a thousand yards away, a white skirmish line moving relentlessly through sparse stands of beech and fir trees. They were still like toy soldiers at this distance, black boots moving up and down as rhythmically as pistons, their long white uniforms and black helmets blurred by flurries of snow. However, when the winds changed abruptly, blowing harder toward Docker and his men, the illusion of miniature soldiers disappeared, the changing gales bringing the sound of their singing to the Americans, a heavy rumble of song that stiffened the fine hairs on Docker’s neck.

“Jesus Christ, Bull,” Trankic whispered, “there’s thousands of them.”

The effect of the reflected barrage lights was magical; the ranks of soldiers seemed to merge with the leaping shadows, disappearing and materializing again in the gleaming mists rising from the hoar-white fields and forests.

Trankic grabbed Docker’s arm and pointed beyond the soldiers to the distant silhouettes of German tanks grinding through the snow. Docker gave his orders with gestures, and the men scrambled to their feet and ran down the hill to the jeep.

The guns were hooked to the trucks, with Larkin and Schmitzer in the cabs. Docker swung the jeep in front of the lead truck and pumped his fist up and down in the air.

“March order,” he shouted, and both trucks rolled out after him, double-clutching for speed and traction against the mud and sleet. In the valley below them Docker saw three German tanks emerging from a black growth of trees, their tracks churning up a storm of snow. Panzer Ills or Panzer IVs, heavily armored with 75-millimeter cannons.

The tanks sighted the truck convoy, and the first projectiles smashed into the mountainside fifty yards behind the Americans, shattering trees and rocks and sending whistling fragments tearing at the sides of the jeep and trucks. But before the German gunners could make corrections, the three vehicles had swung around a turn that put the bulk of the mountain between them and the tanks. Seconds later they were gathering speed recklessly down a treacherous roadway toward another range of hills...

Dog Battery’s Section Eight spent the rest of December 16th bivouacked in a narrow rocky gorge above a tributary of the Our River.

They knew from fragmentary radio reports that the Germans were attacking on a broad front, and from the sound of heavy transport and tanks echoing for miles around them in the frosted air they knew they had been overrun on both flanks by columns of mechanized enemy troops. Eating cold rations and maintaining a full guard mount, they pulled out at dawn the following morning and headed west toward Lepont on the Salm.

Their only ally was the weather; heavy fog and zero visibility reduced the risk of detection by German aircraft and armor and provided Section Eight cover for the tortuous passage through the mountains.

Later that afternoon, as the darkness gave them another degree of safety, the section’s last truck was waved down by a soldier in an American uniform who stumbled from the underbrush and ran alongside the cannon, his boots slipping and sliding in the mud.

Radar barked loudly but Laurel whacked the dog and he and Kohler braced themselves and reached for the desperate hands of the young soldier, touching his fingers, then his wrists and finally hauling him over the tailgate into the truck.

The youngster’s face was drawn and white with fatigue, eyes wide and staring above his roughly chapped cheeks. His boots were clogged with mud, frozen in ridged crusts along the soles, and he fell into a sitting position with his knees drawn up to his chest, his red and swollen hands locked under his arms. The collar of his jacket and shirt was open and Solvis saw a pulse pounding rapidly at the base of his throat.

In response to Laurel’s first questions, the young soldier said his name was Jackson Baird, that he’d been in a line company with the 106th Division. Kohler wanted to know what the Germans had hit them with, tanks or infantry or both, but Baird was so close to shock from exposure that it was obvious he had no clear idea what had happened to him or his outfit.

“He needs to rest, let him alone now,” Solvis said, and taking a blanket from his bedroll he slung it over Baird’s shoulders, tucking the ends around the boy’s chapped wrists and hands. Solvis also noticed then that Baird had no rifle and that there was no sign of dog tags behind the open collar of his woolen shirt.

“You want a cigarette?” When the youngster shook his head, Solvis said, “Then how about a drink? We’ve got some whiskey. Might do you good, kind of thaw you out.”

The soldier shook his head again, with no expression at all in his white face and glazed eyes. He seemed to withdraw into himself then, trembling slightly and hugging himself for warmth, his body swaying with the motion of the truck.