The Second Objective

13

The Ardennes

DECEMBER 16, 10:00 P.M.

Bernie powered the jeep along a logging road into the cover of a nearby forest. Hearing more German troops headed their way, he pulled off the road and the six young soldiers of the 99th Infantry covered the jeep with evergreen branches downed by an artillery barrage. Bernie, Von Leinsdorf, and the Americans waited in silence as the forward line of German infantry and scout cars swept past them, visible twenty yards away on the edge of the woods. Von Leinsdorf had to order the agitated engineers to stay down and keep silent. Those were battle-ready German veterans; if these green kids drew fire, they were all dead. Once the Germans passed-Von Leinsdorf identified them as a reconnaissance company-they climbed back on the jeep and cautiously drove deeper into the woods to the east.

An hour after dark they came across an abandoned woodcutter’s cabin. Bernie parked the jeep in a small shed out back and shut the doors. Inside, they pulled the curtains to black out the one-room cabin, lit a kerosene lamp, and settled in for the night. Bernie helped tend the injured GIs with the jeep’s med kit. The crump of artillery, rockets flying overhead, and the crackle of small arms continued through the night. The riflemen shared their K rations, eaten cold. Von Leinsdorf learned as much as he could from the Americans about their company and its movements during the last day. It was clear the German attack had taken the Allies completely by surprise.

Von Leinsdorf assigned a sentry rotation for the platoon, to get them through what remained of the night. The first man stood his post at the door while the rest bunked down around the room. Von Leinsdorf asked the platoon sergeant for a look at their maps, which he spread out on the room’s crude table. Von Leinsdorf held the lamp close and tried to pinpoint their position.

One of the American kids, a baby-faced private, crawled over next to Bernie and offered him a smoke, then lit it for him, cupping his hand to hide the flame.

“You’re from New York, ain’tcha?” the kid asked.

“Yeah.”

“Thought so. Heard it in your voice. Me too. Charlie Decker.”

“Jimmy Tenella,” said Bernie.

“Pleased to meetcha, Jimmy. I’m from the Bronx, Grand Concourse up near Van Cortlandt Park?”

“Yankees fan?”

“Only since birth.”

“I’m from Brooklyn.”

“Dem bums. Too bad for you.” They shook hands awkwardly. “So how long you been over here, Jimmy?”

“Too long,” said Bernie. He noticed Von Leinsdorf watching them from across the room.

“You in the first wave? Since D-day, huh?”

“Feels like longer.”

“Wow. We been here three weeks. Fresh off the banana boat,” said Charlie, trying to sound hardened and indifferent. “I graduated high school six months ago. I never been anywhere before.”

“You’re someplace now.”

“You guys know how to handle yourselves. You’ve seen the hellfire and brimstone, am I right?”

Bernie looked at him. “I’ve seen a few things.”

“You probably went through basic, too. They hardly gave us any training. Then they stick us out here, saying we won’t even see any action? I don’t even have the right socks.”

Charlie smiled and slowly shook his head. With his unlined face and wide eyes, he seemed eerily matter-of-fact about their predicament. Bernie felt an urgent impulse to get away from him.

“You got a girl back home, Jimmy?”

“No, not really. You?”

“Ann Marie Possler. Real sweet kid. I got a letter from her the other day. Finally wrote her back last night.” He took an envelope out of his jacket, smiling as he looked at it. “She’s in Queens. I’d like you to get this to her.”

“Just keep your head down, you’ll be okay.”

“I’m going to die today.”

Bernie didn’t know what to say, but the hollow look on Charlie’s face put a chill through him. Maybe he knows. Maybe he’s right.

“See, a guy like Bobby Dugan”-Charlie pointed at the wounded soldier across the room-“he catches some shrapnel today, falls all to pieces? He’s gonna grow old and die in bed.” He nodded at two more of his men. “Rodney and Patchett. They’re not gonna see home again either.”

“Come on, knock it off, how could you know that?”

“I’ve heard the words of the Prophet. Even a heart of stone can be turned into a heart of flesh, if you don’t reject the teaching. The new covenant will be unbreakable. It will be written on the heart. Redemption is at hand.”

Charlie held the envelope out to him. Bernie saw the madness in his eyes.

“Say but the word, cleanse your soul of sin, and you shall be healed, and you shall have new life,” said Charlie, and then without changing expression: “Just make sure this gets into the mail for me, okay?”

“Sure thing, Charlie.” Bernie took the letter and stuck it in his pocket. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You got a Bible, Jimmy?”

“Not on me.”

“I’d like you to have mine. Here, take it.”

“Why don’t you hang on to it.”

“You mail the letter,” said Charlie, lying back down on his bedroll. “I got a good feeling about you.”

Bernie walked away from him and stood by the door, trying to shake the kid’s voice out of his head. When Von Leinsdorf finished at the table, he joined Bernie outside for a smoke. The air was dead still, a frozen pool. They moved out of earshot from the cabin. A thick fog crept in and snow fell silently around them.

“Have you talked to these guys?” whispered Bernie. “At least one of ’em’s a fucking lunatic.”

Von Leinsdorf looked at his watch. “We have to be somewhere in a few hours.”

“Where, for what?”

“To pick up something we need.”

“Is this about the bridge, or the other thing?”

Von Leinsdorf glared at him. “The other thing. And they’re not coming with us.”

“Leave ’ em here. Tell ’em we’re going for help-”

“I’m not asking for suggestions.” Von Leinsdorf loaded a fresh clip into his pistol.

“So wave down one of our patrols, identify ourselves-we’ve got signals for that, right? Let ’em surrender.”

Von Leinsdorf chambered a round. “You’re getting sentimental on me, Brooklyn.”

“Look, they don’t have any idea who we are or what we’re doing. What can they say that could give us any trouble? You don’t have to kill them.”

“If you’re not willing to help, I’ll do it myself.”

They heard the cabin door swing open behind them. One of the riflemen walked outside to take a piss. Von Leinsdorf raised the gun on instinct. The man in his sights wasn’t looking their way and gave no indication that he knew they were there. Bernie stepped between Von Leinsdorf and the target.

“I need to know what the fuck we’re doing here,” whispered Bernie. “What are we picking up?”

“Security passes. From the Abwehr.”

Bernie’s heart jumped at the mention of the German secret intelligence organization. “Why didn’t they give ’em to us before we left?”

“They were supposed to be with that fat woman the night we came across. They’ll be there now.”

“What the fuck do we need ’em for?”

“I can’t tell you any more,” said Von Leinsdorf. “Are you going to help or wait out here?”

“We can’t shoot ’em. What if there’s a patrol in the area?”

Von Leinsdorf answered by taking the silencer out and screwing it on the pistol.

Bernie saw the rifleman go back inside. “At least let ’em fall asleep first. It’ll be easier then.”

“Not if there’s two of us.” Von Leinsdorf saw the look on his face and relented. “All right. We’ll wait till they’re asleep.”

Bernie followed him back inside. He told the soldier at the window to catch some rest, that he’d take the last watch. The American joined his friends on the floor. Three were already sleeping; the other two were playing cards by the light of the lantern. Bernie looked at Von Leinsdorf. Both men lit cigarettes and waited.

As snow accumulated outside, the fog reduced their field of vision to less than twenty yards, a white void surrounding the cottage. The first hint of dawn was in the sky before the soldiers finally turned off the lamp and lay down. Von Leinsdorf drew his pistol and signaled Bernie. Bernie picked up a rifle sitting by the door and looked down at Charlie Decker lying asleep at his feet.

You could shoot Von Leinsdorf instead, he thought.

No. Not without knowing what his mission was first. But he couldn’t shoot these GIs either.

Von Leinsdorf pointed his pistol at the first man’s head. Bernie heard something outside and waved his hand to stop him. He cracked open the window and gestured Von Leinsdorf over.

The faint sputter of motorized diesels. Moments later, they both heard faint shouts coming toward them in the distance. Charlie Decker woke when he heard the voices and saw Bernie and Von Leinsdorf at the window.

“Who is it?” asked Charlie. “Who’s out there?”

Von Leinsdorf gestured urgently for quiet. They waited. More shouts, closer, then the squeak of footsteps running in the snow outside. A few isolated gunshots, then bursts of automatic fire. The rest of the soldiers woke in the room behind them. Then came the unmistakable grinding of heavy gears. Bernie recognized the distinctive rumble; German tanks were moving their way.

“They’re ours,” said Bernie to Von Leinsdorf, before he could censor himself.

Thinking he meant Americans, Charlie Decker threw open the front door and ran outside before Bernie could stop him.

“Hey! Hey, guys! Hey, we’re Americans! We’re over here!”

From somewhere in the fog a stream of.50 bullets chunked across the front of the cabin, cutting down Charlie Decker at the door, ripping open his chest. He fell back through the doorway, dead before he hit the floor at Bernie’s feet. Everyone inside scrambled for cover. Bernie looked down at Decker, a faint smile on the kid’s face, as his eyes glassed over.

Moments later, GIs slashed out of the fog right in front of the cabin, a platoon in headlong retreat, most without weapons, running for their lives. A tank shell hit the cottage with a massive, dull thud, but didn’t detonate, a hissing dud, the tip of its nose poking out between logs. At the sight of it, two of the riflemen broke out the back door, out of their heads with fear. Heavier gunfire erupted, bullets piercing the wattled walls of the building. Screams issued from behind the building.

Von Leinsdorf and Bernie dove to the floor as more bullets whistled overhead. The wounded American kid crawled against the rear wall and began screaming for his mother as more rounds kicked through the room.

Bernie crawled to the open door and pushed it almost shut. A ghostly line of German paratroopers in white parkas and winter camouflage emerged from the fog, submachine guns firing. From behind them, the muzzle of a white panzer appeared, and then, moments later, the hulking body of the tank, painted a ghostly white, drove into the clearing. Von Leinsdorf crawled over to Bernie.

“I told you we should have fucking killed them,” he said in Bernie’s ear.

The panzer rolled toward the cottage as paratroopers trotted past the building, picking off survivors running ahead of them. Von Leinsdorf crawled to the wounded American boy and held a hand over his mouth. Pressed against the base of the wall, the last two riflemen looked to Von Leinsdorf for orders, close to cracking, ready to bolt like the others. He gestured at them to stay put.

Bernie saw the parka of a German soldier who was peering in through the cottage window. He pressed his face forward trying to see through the crude glass and his breath condensed on the pane. The Americans huddled directly under the window below him, unseen, terrified. Von Leinsdorf kept his hand clamped over the wounded GI’s mouth, pulled his knife, and held it to his throat. A moment later the German soldier moved away. Bernie raised onto his knees to peer out the same window. What he saw coming drove him to dive down away from the wall.

The barrel of the panzer’s cannon smashed through the window, penetrating halfway across the room. It paused for a moment and then swung violently to the right, toppling furniture, knocking over shelves. Bernie flattened himself against the wall closest to the tank, away from where the machine gun was mounted. He heard the engine engage as the barrel swung back to the left. Muffled shouting issued from inside the tank. Someone reloaded the machine gun.

The Americans panicked and ran for the back door. Bernie turned in time to see Von Leinsdorf cut the throat of the wounded GI. He heard the crew in the tank crank another shell into the chamber, and sprinted for the door as the cannon fired. The shot blew away the back wall of the cottage just as Bernie and Von Leinsdorf hurled themselves out the doorway. Bernie felt the concussion ripple through his body from behind, and the crack of the explosion deafened him.

Bernie landed facedown in the snow. He turned and looked up, groggy, lost in a white, silent world. His senses haywire, he staggered to his hands and knees, trying to remember where he was. A shrill, bell-like tone screamed out of the deep silence and pierced his mind. He felt someone grabbing for him, tugging him to his feet by the sleeve-Von Leinsdorf-then pulling him into the fog. Bernie saw the spinning tracks of the panzer, reversing away from the shattered cottage wall. A boot landed in the snow near him, with a leg still in it. He felt something wet on his face, wiped at it, and his hand came away smeared with blood, the bright red shocking amid all the white.

They lurched into the fog, Bernie trailing Von Leinsdorf, trying to keep him in sight. He knew he was shouting, but he couldn’t hear his own voice. Von Leinsdorf vanished ahead of him in the fog. Bernie turned his head to look for him, and a tree hurtled at him out of the white. He had no time to stop or change course-a low-hanging branch clotheslined him across the neck and everything went black.