Screaming Eagles (The Front, Book 1) (3 page)

T
wo-and-a-half
ton trucks rolled into the city of Bastogne. Private Grillo took in the idyllic little town and smiled at people going about their business. There were waves and nods, but most kept their heads down. Occupation probably did that to a town--or so Grillo surmised. When you were under the boot-heel of something like Nazi rule, life had to be a daily struggle.

He was packed inside the back of the truck, which had a cloth cover that did little to keep the cold, sleet, and snow out. He sat close to Private Manlien, who'd been chain-smoking from the moment they'd gotten into the vehicle.

“This the place?” Grillo asked.

“No, dummy. We’re in Paris. You’ve been living in a dream and this is the end. It’s all sweet French girls here, with flowing dresses and long legs,” Specialist Moreno said.

Moreno hadn’t shaved in a few days, so patchy bits of dark hair sprouted over his cheeks and neck. He wore a thick canvas jacket over his clothing, but like most of the men in the vehicle, he wasn’t prepared for the cold.

Grillo wasn't any closer to getting used to all of the snow, and also wasn’t shy about his fellow soldiers pressing into him for heat. None of the men smelled that great. They'd had a few days of rest and relaxation, but then they'd been pulled out and directed to the Ardennes region, and no one had been near bathwater since their rapid load-in and departure.

Grillo and the rest of the company were horribly unprepared, and had little ammo or grenades. They’d been promised resupply upon arrival, but so far no one had seen a truck loaded with supplies.

Grillo was trained to blow stuff up. He was a decent shot with the M1A1 Bazooka and was at home with carrying the heavy metal tube, as well as ammo. He’d been issued an M1 Garand, five clips, and two grenades. One of the guys had already talked him out of a grenade, but he held onto his 8-round clips fiercely.

Tjarks was one of the older men in the group of replacements. He hugged his M1 like it was a girl. The man found a beat-up package of Mail Pouch chewing tobacco in his pack, dug out a clump, and jammed the wad into his mouth.

“That stuff taste good?” Grillo inquired.

“Tastes like home,” Tjarks said.

“Where’s home exactly? You got a Kraut name,” Daniels--a no-nonsense Protestant from Maryland--chimed in.

“It’s Dutch/German, but I’m from Crowley, Texas,” Tjarks drawled.

“Another Texan? I’ve run into a dozen of you fellas,” Daniels said. “Don’t they got no industry in Texas ‘cept sending boys off to fight?”

“We got industry like chewing tobacco and kicking Protestant ass,” Tjarks said.

He leaned out the back of the moving truck and spit.

Grillo stayed out of the ribbing, because Tjarks was as big as a house and Daniels was crazy. They’d had to pull over during the night, and he’d seen an American patrol approaching with German prisoners. Daniels had pulled a knife and threatened to start cutting off ears.

“I got industry too, Tjarks, like slitting Texans open,” Daniels said.

“Pipe down, both of you. Plenty of fighting when we get there,” Corporal Papaleo said.

Papaleo was one of the few men in the truck who’d seen action. In the Army for his second tour, he’d been busted down in rank due to disappearing in Italy--or so the rumor went. One of the guys had asked him about it once, but the look Papaleo had given the man had made him stop pestering the Corporal.

The truck came to a stop.

Grillo looked outside expectantly, half-imagining Germans pouring out of the trees.

“Rest stop, five-minute stretch, boys,” a Sergeant said, slapping the side of the truck and moving on to the next.

Grillo plopped down into slushy snow. His combat boots had been new a few weeks ago, but they were already showing signs of wear, and he’d only been in Europe for nineteen days.

He smacked his hands together and fished a cigarette out of his jacket pocket.

The wind was bitter as it whipped up around Grillo and then died down again.

They’d stopped near an aid station. Men rushed into brown tents and carried supplies from trucks. A pair of jeeps covered in mud and snow sat kitty corner to the road. One had a windshield. The glass had been shot out of the second jeep on the passenger side, and the seat was splattered with blood.

“What about you, Grillo? Where you from? Not a Kraut, right?”

Grillo shook his head, but refused to get drawn into the petty talk. Instead his attention was taken up by figures moving out of the mist.

Grillo tossed his cigarette and backed up until he was pressed against the canvas covering the side of the truck. He lifted his M1 and placed the stock under his arm.

“What’s got you spooked?” Tjarks said, and then followed Grillo’s gaze.

The men around Grillo went on the offensive and raised weapons. Daniels dove behind a truck, landing in a pile of slush and aiming his BAR.

“Stand down,” Corporal Papaleo called as he moved among the men. “You’re a bunch of knuckleheads, you know that? That’s our guys.”

Grillo’s heart thumped like a bellows inside his chest. He hadn’t seen action yet and found that he wasn’t quite ready either.

They stood around next to the trucks as the men approached. As they came into full view, Grillo wasn’t the only one to take in a deep breath.

The men were covered in bandages and wounds. A pair of soldiers had another man between them, with his arms draped over their shoulders. The wounded soldier had a bandage over half of his head and was soaked in blood.

A soldier held his arm close to his chest. It was covered in bloody bandages because it appeared that he’d had part of his hand shot off, and the remains were wrapped in a red-soaked bandage.

“Jesus. Those guys look rough,” Grillo muttered.

“That’s why we’re here,” Corporal Papaleo said. “We’re relieving these men so they can get some rest and get fixed up.”

“How long until
we
need rest and to get fixed up?”

“We’re the 101st, son. We spit out lead and shit on Germans breakfast,” the corporal said, and clapped Grillo on the shoulder.

C
aptain Taylor sipped
a cup of lukewarm cowboy coffee and tried to ignore the grounds. He swished the brew around his mouth and wished for the hundredth time that they had some kind of warmth--not for him, for his men.

Summoned to defend against a counter-offensive from the Germans, he’d been cursing the cold, lack of supplies, disorganization, and general piss poor mood since he’d arrived.

Around him sat regulars and replacements for the companies he’d deployed the night before. The men already looked tired, and they were all cold. Taylor had ordered more clothing and blankets be brought up for his men, but requests were slow in reaching the lines.

The townspeople had been helpful in providing some warm--and more importantly, dry--blankets, but they weren’t enough for the hundreds of men of the 101st who waited out in the cold.

He crumpled a message he’d received from command. Then he thought better of it and carefully smoothed the paper out, folded it and placed it in his pocket. Damn the SS to hell. Damn every one of them.

“Not much we can do about it, sir. We got the call so we got the duty,” his orderly, Corporal Krantz, said.

The kid wasn’t much younger than Taylor, but he had a smooth face and looked like he belonged in a high school classroom instead of sitting in Belgium taking care of him.

Taylor was waiting for someone, anyone, to arrive with a situation map. He’d been stuck out here, blind as a goddamn bat, while his men arrayed themselves against the Germans. His map was outdated and he wasn’t even sure of the disposition of all troops in the Ardennes. Now this news had come down.

“What’s the word on the 28th battalion, sir?” Krantz asked.

“Heard a few guys made it here. It was a massacre. Some companies suffered seventy-five percent casualties,” Taylor said. He didn’t speak of the other thing he’d just become aware of, because it was too heinous to contemplate. Inside, though, his blood seethed.

He frowned at the thought of so many men lost. Now he hoped the 101st didn’t suffer the same fate. His men were spread thin, and they were all under-supplied.

“That the word from them or from higher up?”

“Both,” Krantz said, and stared at the ground.

He was probably thinking one thing:
Glad I wasn’t in that grinder
. Men were brave, even stupid brave, but when you’re facing an overwhelming force with little ammo, you start praying to God and wishing you were anywhere but between gunsights or sitting in a tiny hole in the ground while the world exploded around you. It made the bravest of men want to run.

“How many made it to sick call?”

“About a dozen. Most are suffering frostbite, but one of the guys in Charlie took some shrapnel to the face. He’s not doing so good.”

“Who was it?” Taylor asked.

“Clines.”

“Christ.”

Clines had been with the division since Normandy, and had been in the thick of fighting. He’d shown exemplary bravery when his company had been tasked with taking out a battery of 88s. Taylor had recommended him for the Silver Star. He had an East Coast accent, and attitude to go with it. The fiery Italian had been begging to get reassigned to a division moving on Italy over a year ago, but his training had been far from over.

Captain Taylor hoped he wouldn’t be sending home another letter tomorrow morning--assuming the Krauts didn’t overrun this location in the night. If they were overrun and taken prisoner, what would that mean exactly? The men he’d just heard about had surrendered in good faith, and look at what had happened to them.

“The replacements got here yesterday, and they’ve been dispatched to the front lines,” Krantz said.

“Did we get enough men?”

“Not nearly, but they’ll help bolster defenses. Could be worse, sir. Could have gotten nothing. We had the typical foul-ups: guys sent to the wrong companies, or with the wrong ratings.”

“Sounds like business as usual in the United States Army,” Taylor said.

Mortars sounded in the distance, but it was hard to tell which side was taking a pounding.

“Be back soon, sir. Off to get some mess,” Krantz said and saluted.

Taylor returned the salute and took out his orders once again, even though he’d read them five times in the last twenty-four hours. Then he read the other message again. The men would know soon enough, so it might as well be he who passed the word.

The mornings here had started and with miserable blasts of frigid air and the sun making rare appearances. At least the clouds stayed overnight. If they cleared off, it would be at least ten degrees cooler, and he was already getting reports of soldiers freezing to death in the night. He’d slept fitfully himself, under a tent that barely qualified as an overhanging of cloth to keep fresh snow off the tiny chunk of ground he'd called his bed.

God curse this cold. His orderly had informed him the night before that it was going to be below zero degrees today. After twenty hundred hours, he’d given up worrying what the temperature was, because he couldn’t feel his face anymore.

The scraps of wood they’d scavenged was damp. It was hard to come by any that was dry because the people of this area had been burning what they could for months before the 101st had arrived.

Still they’d tried to get a roaring fire going, but it had popped and sizzled until early morning. At this rate, he was never going to be warm again. One of the villagers had offered his home, but Taylor slept in the on the ground, like his men.

A pair of GIs stormed out of the woods. They carried their M1s low, but they glanced over their shoulders as they advanced on the Captain’s position.

“Cooper, Wayne, what’s happening out there?”

Cooper had dark eyes that were large and always animated when he spoke. His face bore a six o’clock shadow underneath dirt and gunpowder discharge.

“Krauts hit us an hour ago with some artillery. Then a force of fifteen or twenty, but we managed to flank them. We killed a few, but the rest ran back toward Berlin,” Cooper said.

“Casualties?”

“That’s the thing, Captain," Cooper said. "Didn’t take any. The Krauts didn’t shoot at us.” He tilted his helmet forward and scratched the back of his head. “It was like they were shell-shocked or something. We hit them, knocked out the whole force, but some got back up and kept coming at us. Took a whole lot of ammo to finish the job. Anyway, we captured one.”

“Good work. Any intel?”

“No sir. This is where it gets weird.” Cooper looked at Wayne.

Wayne shrugged and shook out a Chesterfield.

“Oh?” Captain Taylor said.

“The Kraut didn’t speak at all, sir. We even brought in Big Hoss to intimidate the guy, but he just sat there,” Cooper said.

“Then it got weirder,” Wayne interjected.

Taylor remembered Wayne for one reason in particular: he’d partially lost his voice in a battle, thanks to an unlucky encounter with some artillery shelling, and although he spoke loudly, his words had a hiss to them, like he’d been yelling for an hour.

“Okay,” Taylor said, and waited.

Cooper and Wayne exchanged glances again. Wayne lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply, then blew a stream of smoke upward.

“Well, it was his eyes, sir. They weren’t right,” Cooper continued.

“His eyes weren’t right? What in the hell are you tying to say, Private? Are you suddenly a doc now? Able to see a man’s eyes and know he’s not right?” Taylor asked. He was getting tired of these two pussyfooting around the subject.

“It’s not like that, sir. Wayne saw it too. His eyes turned white, sir. Like white as snow.”

Either these two had been in the field for too long, they were drunk, or they were looking for some R and R.

Playing the crazy card wasn’t going to work with Captain Taylor. He understood that men got scared when they came under fire from the enemy and sometimes their eyes played tricks on them. But Wayne and Cooper had been with him since Normandy and weren’t easily shaken, but a man could break after a while. He’d seen it too many times. Been on the edge himself too many times.

His men were usually straight shooters. He’d been in the field with this pair for too long to give them a full ration of shit.

“I need to speak with Sergeant Pierce in Baker anyway," Captain Taylor said. "We’ll head over to Charlie’s position first so I can look at this German with the white eyes. This better not be some bullshit prank. I’m not in the mood, not after what I just learned about Malmade.” Captain

“Anything you care to share, sir?” Cooper pushed his helmet up over his eyelids.

Captain Taylor took a deep breath and then told the men what he’d learned.

If Cooper and Taylor had looked like they wanted to chew lead before, it was nothing compared to the way their eyes darkened now. Now they looked like they wanted to take on the entire German army themselves.