Ardennes Sniper: A World War II Thriller (4 page)

"Yes, sir."
 

The traffic jam abated, and they rolled on for several minutes. Von Stenger let his thoughts wander—they were still some distance away from the American lines.

His thoughts were interrupted by the driver. "Herr Hauptmann, they say you are a legend with a rifle. How many men have you killed so far?"

Von Stenger shrugged. It was a question he was asked frequently, and yet it was hard to answer. Back when it mattered, he had kept count. The number had climbed above two hundred during the first few weeks of Stalingrad. At that point, he had stopped counting. Such numbers were a point of pride that also managed to sicken him. Who knew how many Allied troops he had shot since June alone? "Do you just want to know how many men I have shot? That would be around two hundred. I have not kept track of the women and children, but maybe fifty of those."

Now it was the young SS driver's turn to give him a sidelong look. "So many."

"Yes," Von Stenger said. "So many. And yet not enough. Now pay attention and don't run into the back of that panzer, or the invasion is going to end quickly for us."

• • •

When Von Stenger looked at Friel, he reminded himself that he was looking at a panther. The man was handsome and urbane—in fact, he was friendly and clever company. But deep down, he was utterly ruthless.

Where Friel's heart should have been, there was a swastika. He was a believer in the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler. Though quite intelligent and a good student, he had dropped out of high school to join the military. But even as a teenage high school dropout, Friel was a military standout. It helped that he looked like he had stepped straight out of some Aryan propaganda poster. He didn't just mouth his loyalty to the ideals of the Reich—it shone from his soul like a beacon. These qualities soon saw him sent to Bad Tolz, the German equivalent of West Point. There, he received advanced training in military tactics and performed incredible feats of physical training—often under live fire. The officers who graduated from Bad Tolz were the very best, the SS version of Spartan warriors.
 

Instead of being sent to the battlefield, Friel was taken under wing by Heinrich Himmler, a real monster. The middle-aged Himmler looked bland enough with his round eyeglasses and receding chin, but he was the mastermind of Hitler's plan to eliminate all
untermenschen
—subhumans. At Himmler's side, Friel planned and then watched the murder of Poles and Jews. He was even present for the testing of the first poison gas chambers.
 

But Friel was eager to see action. Given a tank command in Russia, he was utterly savage. On two occasions, his men had surrounded Russian towns and killed everyone within. The screams of dying women and children fell on Friel's deaf ears. After all, he saw the Russians as being among those
untermenschen
. For his efforts, he received the Knight's Cross and became one of Hitler's darlings.

Despite Friel’s friendly manner, Von Stenger constantly reminded himself that this was the man sitting next to him.
 

Like most people of his class, Von Stenger was a pragmatist. Idealists did not create and then keep family fortunes intact. Germany was at war; therefore, he would help to fight and win. He was not one of the fanatics, like Friel, who welcomed war and fought on when saner minds might have sought a favorable peace. When it came to politics, he sometimes considered what the Roman general and emperor Marcus Aurelius had said in his
Meditations
: "The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." He doubted that Marcus Aurelius would have joined the Nazi party, and neither had Von Stenger.

CHAPTER 5

In all of his eighteen years, Hank Walsh could not remember being so cold. His fingers ached, his ears stung, and his nose felt numb. It was bad enough that the air itself was frigid, but the chill seemed to seep from everything around him and into him. When he stood on the frozen ground it soaked up right through his boots and turned his feet to blocks of ice.
 

Even now, sitting in the front seat of a GMC deuce and a half truck, the cold oozed out of the seat and froze his backside. The windshield wipers swiped fitfully at the snow and ice pellets that popped against the glass.
 

"Goddamn miserable but it beats walkin', huh?" said the driver, a burly 29-year-old from Philadelphia named Ralph Moore. Moore was married and had two kids; back home he worked as a plumber. Since there wasn't much need for plumbers in an army fighting its way across Europe, Moore mostly drove a truck for Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. Hank looked up to him because he seemed eminently older and wiser—a man of the world compared to a kid fresh out of high school.
 

Back then, Hank had been eager to get into the war because it seemed like an adventure. It's not like he had ever been to Europe. Shooting Germans would be like plinking targets at the town fair.
 

Considering that he was going off to war, his prom date had felt obliged to let him get to third base in the back seat of his dad's Ford. Technically he remained a virgin—and there had been few opportunities to change that fact once Hank found himself in basic training and then shipped off to France almost immediately after that. Most of the French women he had seen were old enough to be grandmas. And they had hairy legs.

He had once confessed to Ralph that he hadn’t yet gone all the way with a girl.
 

His older and wiser companion had laughed, but to Hank’s relief had not made fun of him. "Don't worry, Kid. Next time we get to a decent-sized town we can make sure you get laid. And believe it or not, someday you'll find yourself a good little wife and get it nice and regular every Saturday night that she doesn’t have a headache."

Prom night had been the highlight of his teenage years. So far, the war had been a lot less exciting. It was mostly a cold, wet slog. Because he was good at math, he had been put into an artillery observation unit, on the off chance that the need might arise to triangulate fire. So far, their main role had not involved combat but shoring up bridges so that the heavy guns could cross, repairing roads and moving supplies. Most of the men of the 285th had not fired a weapon since basic training.

"Where are we?" Hank asked.

"Just outside of some town called Baugnez."

"Huh."

The name didn't mean a whole lot to Hank, so he settled back in the seat and hugged his arms around himself in some hopes of staying warm. Nobody bothered to put a heater in an Army truck. Never mind the fact that this truck had been manufactured in Pontiac, Michigan—where it certainly got plenty cold.

The crossroads village came and went in a blur of small houses crowded close to the road. A few old men and women peered at them from doorways and windows. Five roads came together here, so that on a map Baugnez looked something like the hub at the center of an old wagon wheel, while the roads formed the spokes. Some of the Americans had taken to calling it Five Points. Just two miles away was a larger town called Malmedy. The convoy crept out of the village and back into the countryside.

The landscape around them was flat and snowy, with a distant view of hills shrouded in a cold mist. Out the window, Hank could see for quite a distance across the bare, level fields. He glanced off to his right and was surprised to see another line of vehicles moving into the village on one of those spokes that fed into the village at the hub of the wheel.
 

"Look at that," he said, tapping on the glass. "Who are those guys? Those are some big tanks."

Ralph leaned forward over the steering wheel and glanced out the passenger window. He lurched back, his eyes wide. "Holy shit! Those are Germans!"

No sooner had he spoken then one of the panzers fired, and a truck on the road ahead exploded.

• • •

Friel kept checking his map and his watch. He had left the tank to ride in the Schwimmwagen with Von Stenger. In the smaller, more nimble vehicle he could roam the entire length of his column to urge his men to make constant forward motion. For Friel, keeping to the
rollbahn
or attack route was vital to success. Already, he was several hours behind schedule.

All across the rugged Ardennes region, other commanders were making a similar push. He knew very well that if he and the other commanders did not keep to the schedule in reaching their objectives, then the attack would quickly fall apart. Friel's goal was to get his column across the Meuse River, and from there to race on to Antwerp.

Though they had gotten off to a good start, the column had quickly become spread out and faced delays when some of the massive tanks bogged down. Though the temperature was below freezing, the tanks broke through the icy crust, leaving behind a churned-up slurry of half-frozen mud and dirty slush. Some of the trucks got stuck and his men wasted precious time getting the vehicles moving again.
 

He ordered the Schwimmwagen’s driver to move up and down the column as Friel shouted, "Get moving! Get moving!"

So far they had not seen a single American. "You have taken the Amis completely by surprise, Herr Obersturmbannführer," Von Stenger said.
 

"That gets us much deeper into the Ardennes without any delays," Friel said. "If only it was colder! We could use some real Russian weather right now. This mud is slowing us down, and I will be damned if we fall behind schedule on the first day of the attack."

Von Stenger did not have a comment—his expertise was not in moving troops and tanks. And yet they seemed to be moving forward as if driven by Friel's willpower alone.

Friel waved over a Scharführer. Von Stenger saw that it was the same sergeant who had shared Friel’s opinion of Wehrmacht officers. "Breger, I want you to make sure that your men keep up the pace. We need to be most of the way to the Meuse River by nightfall."

"Yes, Herr Obersturmbannführer," the man said, saluting. "Sir, the men want to know what we are to do if we capture any prisoners. Are we to send them to the rear?"

"We do not have a rear, Breger. We are a flying column. There are to be no prisoners. Is that understood?"

"Of course, Herr Obersturmbannführer."
 

The man moved off and began shouting orders. Watching, Friel nodded with satisfaction. "I can always count on Breger," he said. "He was with me in Russia, you know. He is a man who follows orders and does not ask questions."

The Schwimmwagen pulled alongside Friel's tank, and the Obersturmbannführer jumped down and ran to climb back aboard the still-moving panzer. Von Stenger's driver fell in behind the tank in case the Obersturmbannführer needed the Volkswagen again.

Von Stenger glanced at the skies, or rather, took notice that the damp gray sky seemed to have settled on the French countryside like a thick blanket. As long as the bad weather lasted, they would be free of any worries about the Allied aircraft. If the clouds lifted—well, it would be better to be across the Meuse by then.

They were approaching the Baugnez crossroads near the town of Malmedy. They had crossed several miles and were much closer now to the American lines. Von Stenger's watchful eyes constantly scanned the countryside, but they seemed to be free of any enemy activity. As they neared the crossroads village where a handful of roads converged like the hub of a wagon wheel, he saw several trucks on the road that ran roughly parallel to their own road. While they were approaching the village, this other column seemed to be leaving. He was confused because the Schwimmwagen was at the very front of the column—how had those vehicles gotten ahead of them?

He raised his rifle and put his eyes to the telescopic sight so that the vehicles instantly appeared closer. The trucks had large white stars painted on their sides. Americans.

No one else had seemed to notice the Americans on the parallel road. Von Stenger stood up, gripping the windshield for balance. "Friel! Friel!"

Once he had the Obersturmbannführer’s attention, he pointed at the enemy column. Friel put his field glasses to his eyes, then snapped them down and began shouting orders. Troops streamed into the field, advancing on the American column, and the panzer abruptly changed direction and swerved into the field. Its massive gun swung round to put the enemy in its sights.
 

The driver of his own vehicle swerved out of the way and came to a stop in the shadow of the tank. The two soldiers carrying panzerfaust tumbled out.
 

"Stay close to us and hold your fire," Von Stenger told them. "If you have to shoot, use your rifles. You want to save those panzerfaust if we go up against Ami tanks later."

Von Stenger put his rifle atop the windshield again, and this time took aim, settling his crosshairs on a soldier riding behind a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a Jeep. Fortunately, there were no tanks in sight. Unbelievably, the American column had not yet noticed them.

Then a tank opened fire, turning an enemy truck into scrap, and the American column erupted in panic like an ant's nest stirred with a stick.

• • •

The parallel line of vehicles stopped and several tank turrets swiveled in the direction of the American convoy. Hank saw a burst of flame. Another truck in line ahead of them exploded.