Fox On The Rhine (15 page)

“You never like anything,” Carl-Heinz chided, clapping his friend on the shoulder. Sometimes the lugubrious crewmate was a real puzzle to him, for even now--when the weather was good and no battle lay in their immediate future--he seemed to spend his time worrying about bad things that were due to happen sooner or later. He was about to remark further on Ulrich’s pessimism when he noticed that the other man had his head cocked to the side, clearly listening for something. Knowing that Pfeiffer, the radioman, had the best ears among all the crew, Carl-Heinz felt a shiver of alarm. “What is it?”

“Aircraft... lots of them.”

“Jabos?” asked Fritzi, anxiously scanning the skies for a sign of the Allied single-engined fighters that had bombed and strafed the division so mercilessly for the last seven weeks.

“No.” Ulrich shook his head with certainty. “Heavies.”

By the time Lieutenant Schroeder had returned, all of them could hear the dull rumble of countless massive engines, a sound that merged into a droning basso that shivered the flesh in their bellies.

“Getting closer,” the lieutenant observed, unnecessarily. The rumble had swelled into a growl and threatened to become a thunder. “I see them,” Schroeder remarked calmly, inspecting the sky through his binoculars. “Let’s get ready to button up, just in case.”

In moments the men had picked up their few belongings--a teapot and cooking tins, a jug of water, and a few shirts that Peltz had washed that morning and left to dry in the sun--and stowed them in the Panther. They all stood on the hull, looking at the dots that now began to distinguish themselves as four-engined bombers, a whole stream of them, rumbling with stately dignity through the sky. And they were still advancing, on a bearing that would take them directly over the Panzer Lehr division.

“How many are there?” Fritzi asked, his voice unnaturally high. Carl-Heinz saw that all the color had drained from the young Saxon’s face.

With a great display of unconcern, the lieutenant shrugged, though his hands shook slightly as he continued to press the binoculars to his eyes.

“Too many,” Pfeiffer suggested, though by now his words were all but drowned out by the thunder of countless massive engines. Even as the leading bombers came almost directly overhead, the stream of aircraft extended to the far horizon, vanishing into tiny specks that continued to emerge from the distance.

Peltz crossed himself, and Carl-Heinz felt a cramp in the back of his neck as he craned to look upward. They were all watching for a telltale sign, a clue that they were desperately hoping not to see. “Please keep going,” the driver muttered to himself, feeling the churning deep in his belly and groin.

“There!” snapped Ulrich, pointing toward a blue flare that suddenly sparked into view. The marker was off to the right, but almost immediately another brilliant speck of azure glowed to the left. The Pathfinders had marked the target zone--and they perfectly bracketed the Panzer Lehr division.

In seconds the five men had scrambled through the Panther’s portals and snapped the hatches shut. Even within the shelter of their armored cocoon, the noise of the Allied air armada was a thunderous backdrop, an assault of sound that vibrated flesh and metal alike. Carl-Heinz drew a deep breath as his hands settled over the comfortable three-quarter circle of his steering wheel. With an effort of will he forced his fingers to relax, then almost immediately noticed that his knuckles had whitened again from the unconscious pressure of his grip.

Another noise began to seep through the all-encompassing rumble, a whistle that began deceptively soft, quickly swelled louder and louder as strings of bombs tumbled downward. And then came the first impacts, the sounds that made all the previous thunder vanish like remembered whispers. The ground shook, and the roar of explosions came from the right, the left, from behind and before them. Blasts crumped in the middle distance, then boomed with explosive pressure from terribly near. Dirt and stones showered onto the surface of the tank, a rattling tinkle that incongruously reminded Carl-Heinz of rain on his barn roof.

The ground heaved and the forty-ton tank lurched forward. The steering wheel became the only point of stability in his life, and Carl-Heinz clung to the steel arc as if it made the difference between life and death. For some seconds the sounds lightened, though explosions still came from all sides, and then the quaking pressure was right on top of them again. The Panther tilted sickeningly, and more debris thudded onto the roof, onto the hull and hatches.

Sneaking a glance to his right, Carl-Heinz saw that Pfeiffer still sat gloomily, bracing himself with hands extended to the grab bars on either side of his seat at the hull machine gun and radio. Ulrich looked back and shrugged his shoulders, then opened his mouth after something that was lost in the crushing reverberations of the explosive bombardment. The driver imagined him saying “I told you so,” and for once he was forced to agree that his comrade’s relentless pessimism had a certain grounding in fact.

A bomb smashed with a deafening roar and the Panther skidded hard to the side. Other sounds crumped in the distance, and then nearby again. Carl-Heinz lost all track of time--it seemed as though he had spent a lifetime in the midst of whistling death. He couldn’t imagine anyone living through such an assault, and with a pang of regret he sensed that his own span of life must soon be ending. The sounds, the pressure, and the violence of the bombing became a constant backdrop, and his regrets faded to a vague numbness as he awaited the imminent and inevitable blast that would mean his own death.

The destruction was endless, incredibly so, and it amazed him to think of so many bombs being dropped on a small patch of earth. And then, finally, it was over. The explosions ceased with a suddenness that nevertheless took a minute or two to sink in. Ulrich’s lips moved, but though he was right beside him the driver heard no sounds, wondered if he had been permanently deafened by the onslaught. How long had they been bombed? Carl-Heinz didn’t have the slightest idea.

Hesitantly, he pushed open his hatch, tentatively poking his head out of the Panther’s hull. The grassy embankment before them was gone, replaced by a torn landscape of low hills, mounds of dirt that looked like nothing so much as the brown waters of a stormy sea. Jutting from one of these hillocks was the torn turret of a Panzer IV. In another place he saw the bogey wheel from another tank--or perhaps it was the same one.

Slowly he crept out of the hatch, then crawled up onto the Panther’s turret where the ashen-faced Lieutenant Schroeder was shakily climbing through his own hatchway. Carl-Heinz joined him in standing atop the tank, looking across a landscape that was devoid of life, of men or machinery, even of trees or grass. Their own panzer was partially buried, with clods of dirt strewn across the hull. Somehow, miraculously, it seemed that the long barrel of the 75-mm cannon was undamaged.

Looking to the right and the left, or forward toward the line of roadway that led between St.-Lo and Periers, Carl-Heinz sought some sign of the rest of the division, of the five thousand men and hundred tanks that had composed their mighty outfit. Smoke rolled across the landscape, and he couldn’t see very far, except when a swirl of wind momentarily clearing away the dirty smudge. But even then, in the full span of his view, there was nothing, nothing but the ruin and wrack of this bizarre moonscape. The conclusion was obvious, painful, inescapable:

The Panzer Lehr division had ceased to exist.

First Army Advance Observation Post, Normandy, France, 1215 hours GMT

General Wakefield accompanied Colonel Grant, the Nineteenth Armored’s intelligence officer, in following Jack King up the hill. They found space among the many First Army brass who were already crowded between the trees. Everyone was talking about the ascension of the “new führer,” though they all agreed that the German army would be just as tough as it had been last week, or last month. Conversation soon faded away, as the rumbling drone of many thousand aircraft engines drowned out any normal conversation. Most of the men had binoculars, and all had their attention fixed on the swath of green countryside visible for many miles to the south.

“That’s the road, there... St.-Lo to Periers,” Colonel Grant shouted helpfully. Wakefield nodded, though there was only one highway visible from their vantage.

“And the bombs are falling on the other side of it, right?” joked General King. The CO of the Nineteenth was in fine spirits, laughing at a private word shared with another division commander, then turning to urge his XO forward. “C’mon, Henry, you won’t see anything from back there.”

Wakefield mumbled his “thanks” and stepped into the gap between a couple of major generals. It seemed that most of the First Army Staff was here, though there was no sign of General Bradley himself. They were all gathered for a look at the first salvo of Operation Cobra, to be delivered by the heavy bombers of the Eighth Air Force now droning overhead.

“I thought they were supposed to be coming in from the west!” one of the generals barked, scowling at the river of bombers in the sky.

“That’s what I heard, too--Brad insisted,” shouted another, also angry.

Wakefield understood their displeasure, and he, too, was unhappy with the risk. If the bombers had come from either the east or the west, they could have made their whole bomb run over enemy positions. Any bombs falling short would still land on Germans, at least theoretically. With the current alignment of attack, however, shorts ran a danger of hitting the American troops who were supposed to lead off the attack. Had he been in charge, he would not have authorized this attack--better to have the infantry move a little more slowly, but be allowed to achieve their objectives without a threat from their own air force.

Far away the landscape was suddenly torn by explosions. Wakefield saw the debris and smoke fly, felt the concussions of the blasts through the soles of his boots, though it was long seconds before the first sounds reached them. As soon as it began the booming violence formed a steady background roar, a complement to thunderous engines as thousands of aircraft streamed down from England to pour their explosive cargoes onto the battlefield.

“The Old Hickories pulled back from the front, didn’t they?” yelled a general.

“I heard a thousand yards,” Colonel Grant replied. “This is their section of the front before us.”

Wakefield remembered the briefing, knew that the Thirtieth Infantry Division was going to lead the way. He and General King had toured the Old Hickories’ position, since the Nineteenth Armored was slated to move through them as soon as the dogfaces had punched a hole in the front.

“Les McNair himself came out to see this show open,” King reported, drawing impressed nods from the neighboring generals. Leslie McNair was one of the highest ranking generals in the U.S. Army, one of the masterminds behind the Normandy campaign. For a time it had been whispered that he, not Ike, was going to command the whole operation. Now, knowing that he was in the vicinity, the men of First Army got some idea of the stakes the high command put on this operation.

“No hilltop for McNair,” another general reported, clearly impressed. “I saw him heading out to the front--he’s going to watch this from a foxhole.”

“Brave man,” Jack King cheerfully agreed.

But Wakefield wasn’t thinking about army and front commanders any more. He was watching the cloud of dust raised by the bombardment, seeing it billow north, pushed by a slight breeze and the force of its own tumult. Already the road was obscured, and now the murk had enveloped the front of the Old Hickories’ position. More bombs fell, a steady plastering that must certainly be eradicating every living being in the impact zone. The swath of destruction continued to expand, until it was obvious that the positions of the Thirtieth Division, even a thousand yards back from the front, were in grave danger.

“Goddamn flyboys!” one general cursed, while others started edging toward the back of the hill. “They’re blasting our own men!”

And still the chaos rolled on, as subsequent bombers sighted not on the road but on the swirling dust cloud. The Old Hickory trenches, several unit headquarters, and the jumping-off positions for the attack, all vanished in the chaos. Furthermore, with the expanded impact zone moving far from its original boundaries, the destructive pounding kept moving northward. All the officers on the observation post ducked as a booming smash rose no more than three hundred yards from their hilltop.

“Christ! Let’s get the hell out of here!”

Wakefield didn’t know who made the suggestion, but it was the only sensible thing to do. With unseemly haste for a bunch of high brass, the officers beat a hasty retreat down the rear of the hill. The bombs were frighteningly close as the men milled about in the field where their command cars and drivers waited. As Wakefield and King hopped into their jeeps, other command vehicles were already racing away.

Before the generals of the Nineteenth started off, an armored car rolled into view, and a furious lieutenant jumped out. He was terrified and spitting mad, and he started shouting at the first general he saw--Jack King.

“They’re killing our boys, General!” he cried. “A whole battalion of the Thirtieth is plastered to hell--and they even got that general, McNair, come here to see how we did. Damnit, General, get on the phone to someone--you’ve got to stop ’em!”

Only then did they realize that the thunder had ceased, reduced to the fading drone of aircraft engines rumbling into the distance. The bombardment had ended and, under a dark cloud of blood, debris, and tragic mistakes, Operation Cobra was under way.

Berlin, Germany, 1418 hours, GMT

Lieutenant Haeften could not sit still. He was not truly scared, not any more. He was beyond fear. He was dead already; his destiny was certain. It would merely take some indefinite amount of time to realize.

“We’ve failed, haven’t we, sir,” he said in a clear monotone to his superior officer and mentor, who rested in his office chair as if all was normal. It was not a question.