SEVEN ROADS CONVERGED on Bastogne, and Caje Cole was on one of them, in the back of an open truck with several other men, rushing toward the fighting at the encircled town.
On second thought, the idea that the truck was “rushing” anywhere was more like wishful thinking, considering the rough condition of the forest road. Even the term “road” was a stretch, since this was little more than a one-lane track through the woods.
“Beats walkin,” said a soldier on the bench opposite him.
“If you say so,” Cole replied.
“You think the Krauts are done yet?” the soldier said, looking concerned. “As soon as we get some tanks up here, that’s got to be it for them.”
Cole gave the GI a harder look. The fresh-faced soldier in his new uniform was definitely a replacement sent to the front line, and Cole knew damn well that greenbeans didn’t last long.
Not in this cold. Not against SS troops. Not against battle-hardened Wehrmacht soldiers, either. And definitely not against Tiger tanks.
Cole just snorted and shook his head. He knew that any further conversation would be a waste of breath. The poor son of a bitch didn’t knew he was dead yet.
Ignoring the GI, he kept his gaze focused on the surrounding forest that the road passed through. Grime and gunpowder darkened Cole’s face, but his bright eyes, clear as cut glass, stood out in the winter gloom. His kept a good grip on his sniper rifle, the telescopic sight swaddled in a strip of what had once been white cloth in an effort at camouflage, but the fabric was now muddy and stained with some dried blood.
Winter wind whistled in Cole’s ears and a few stray pellets of sleet stung his cheeks. He tried rearranging the scarf covering the lower part of his face but it didn’t do much good against the frigid onslaught. The sun had dared to emerge that morning but had long since retreated behind a wintry gray veil.
Against the cold, he wore a ragged pair of gloves that the fingertips had been cut out of, the better to work the rifle. He wiggled them to keep them from getting too stiff.
Meanwhile, Cole’s eyes flickered over the landscape.
He knew that the Krauts were out there somewhere.
They might be around the next bend in the road.
Or maybe the one after that.
If he saw them first, just maybe he’d be able to keep this GI across from him alive for one more day.
Hell, maybe he’d even be able to keep himself alive.
The rest of their sniper squad rode with him in the back of the truck. He glanced at Vaccaro, who was slumped against Hank Walsh, the young soldier that they called The Kid, both of them sound asleep.
Either that, or they were dead from hypothermia. In this weather, Cole reckoned it was a toss-up.
Still looking at Vaccaro, Cole shook his head and grinned, lips curling back from sharp-looking teeth. In the dim light, the smile gave his face a wolfish look.
That damned Vaccaro. He was a real idiot sometimes, but Cole reckoned that Vaccaro was the only buddy he had in the whole damn army. He’d better do what he could to keep him alive.
Cole kicked Vaccaro’s boot. The other man stirred but didn’t come fully awake. Still alive, then.
He recalled how Vaccaro had caught up to them at the last instant and had barely managed to climb into the truck.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Cole had demanded.
“Yeah, yeah, I missed you too.”
“You dumb bastard. You ought to have stayed in the hospital.”
“I wanted to make room for somebody who needed it.”
“Some people ain’t got any sense. Vaccaro, maybe you ain’t the dumbest guy in the world, but you better hope he don’t die.”
“Aw, stuff it in your corncob pipe, Hillbilly.”
Then Vaccaro promptly fell asleep.
Cole, Vaccaro and Hank were all that was left of their sniper squad, not including the lieutenant. They had lost Rowe and McNulty just days ago. Cole hoped to hell that they didn’t lose anybody else. But you couldn’t go into battle hoping that you would survive. Just the opposite. In some strange way, a sense of fatalism helped keep you alive.
Lieutenant Mulholland rode up front with the driver, which was his prerogative as an officer. The cab provided some shelter from the wind, but the bouncing truck would be punching him in the kidneys just like the rest of them.
For troops on the move, it would have been better if the road was completely frozen, but the passage of vehicles had turned the surface into a sticky brown stew of slush and mud ladled out into endless potholes.
There had been a tattered canvas cover on the back of the truck, which initially blocked some of the wind but did nothing to keep the cold at bay. The cover had been so shredded that it had finally given up the ghost and blown off a couple of miles ago, leaving the men exposed to the elements.
Riding in the truck wasn’t any joy ride, given that it jarred Cole down to his bones. Maybe the cold made those bones feel more brittle. The driver was sure as hell managing to hit every tree root and pothole, the jolt of each bump telegraphed its way up through the stiff frame of the truck, to the wooden benches, then directly into Cole’s spine. Hell, even his teeth threatened to rattle loose.
All available vehicles had been pressed into service to move troops to where they were needed. Following in the wake of the truck was a Jeep, so heavily laden with men that the top-heavy vehicle kept threatening to tip over.
Every hundred yards or so, the truck rolled down into a hole so deep that the odds came down to a coin toss whether or not they would be getting out again. Then there would be a tremendous jolt from which it seemed unlikely that the forward momentum would recover.
Somehow, after a tense moment in limbo, the truck continued bouncing down the rutted road.
Worse, Cole couldn’t shake the feeling that they were sitting ducks out here as they crept along.
He kept his eyes on the woods.
There were few good roads through the Ardennes region, a fact that the fighting armies on both sides had come to know all too well. The terrain was hilly, even mountainous, punctuated by stretches through mountain valleys and fields, all dormant now and covered by drifts of fallen snow. In the bare patches, the ground showed through, frozen and brown with dead grass.
Narrow bridges crossed the winding mountain streams, where there were often villages that had grown up around the bridge or a mill powered by the stream.
Considering that it was December 1944, the scenery should have been right out of a Christmas card, but war had spoiled it. The charred hulks of burned tanks marred the crossroads and dead bodies lay semi-frozen in the snow at the roadsides. Instead of the smell of spiced cider or baking cookies that so many GIs remembered from the Christmas season, there was an occasional sickly-sweet odor of burned flesh and the stink of spilled fuel.
As they passed one of these grisly vignettes of death and destruction, the GI across from Cole leaned over the side of the truck and vomited.
Cole couldn’t blame the poor bastard, but he was used to such scenes by now.
As a reminder that the Germans were far from beaten, a flurry of shots rang out. A pattern of bullet holes appeared like stitch work in the sides of the truck, letting the gray light through. A man cried out in pain as he was struck by a bullet.
“Everybody out!” Cole shouted, reaching over to shake Vaccaro and the kid, who were still groggy after being awakened by the sound of gunfire.
The men spilled out of the truck, some instantly falling and finding themselves sprawled in the mud. Their clumsiness may have saved their lives as bullets passed over their heads. The tracer rounds glowed devilishly in the gloom.
Others leaped into the slushy ditches, ignoring the fact that their trousers and boots were immediately soaked through.
A few men chose to use the truck for cover, which proved to be a mistake. A well-aimed round from a Panzerfaust struck the truck and exploded with spectacular effect. The men spun away, screaming torches of flame. If the Panzerfaust round had struck a few moments earlier when it was still full of troops, they would’ve all gone up in flame—Cole included.
Cole had taken refuge in the nearest pothole, with Vaccaro and the kid nearby. He spat out a mouthful of cold slush, not quite getting the taste of grit out of his mouth.
“Kraut bastards,” he muttered, then shouted over at Vaccaro and the kid. “You two all right?”
“We were better a minute ago. You see him?”
“Yeah.”
Down the road, he had spotted the German wielding the spent Panzerfaust, which fired a single round. The weapon was intended to knock out tanks, rather than transport trucks, but it had done its job with spectacular effect.
Instantly, Cole lined up his sights on the German. His crosshairs automatically went to the man’s chest—an easy shot at this range. The German had been waiting in ambush, hoping for the truck to get close. No wonder he hadn’t missed.
Cole wouldn’t, either.
But it was also much too easy of a death for an enemy who had just reduced several GIs that Cole had been sharing the truck with to burnt sausages. Pausing with his finger on the trigger, he lowered his aim to the German’s kneecap and fired again. As the shattered bones gave out, the man collapsed in the road, screaming. Far from any real medical attention, in the bitter cold, what remained of his life wouldn’t be any easy one.
It was a form of casual cruelty that came all too easily now to the GIs.
Cole’s expression as he worked the bolt wasn’t quite a grin, but something more like a snarl.
Vaccaro had seen Cole shoot and thought at first that Cole had missed by not instantly killing the German.
“Aren’t you gonna finish him off?”
“Nope,” Cole said.
Vaccaro glanced over at him, probably wondering what Cole meant, but knew better than to say anything when he saw the expression on Cole’s face.
“Let’s get the hell off this road and into the ditch,” Cole shouted.
Cole went first, rolling out of his hole and running at a crouch for a roadside ditch. He tumbled in with Vaccaro and the kid right behind him.
To his relief, he saw that Lieutenant Mulholland had also made it into the ditch. He looked around for the greenbean from the truck and spotted him, dead in the road, his new uniform soaking up the mud and blood.
Poor bastard never had a chance, Cole thought.
The fusillade of enemy fire increased. Bullets plucked at the dry winter twigs overhead, making them dance and twitch like the fingers of a guitarist moving over his chords. Bits of clipped branches dropped onto their heads or fell to the road.
Sheltering in their holes, they returned fire.
But the column wasn’t here to fight Germans. Their orders were to get to Bastogne. Getting bogged down now fighting a small unit of the enemy wasn’t in the cards. The front part of the column hadn’t been hit and those trucks started rolling out, leaving the sniper squad to deal with the attack and fight a rear-guard action.
“There can’t be more than a handful of those bastards, but they’ve been waiting for us to show up,” Vaccaro said. “They’re dug in like my old girlfriend’s fingernails grabbing my arm at the Spook-A-Rama ride on Coney Island.”
“You sure it was the ride she was scared of?”
“Yeah, yeah, very funny. I keep forgetting that your idea of a date was taking your sister to a hog butchering. You’re such a damn hillbilly.”
“Hey fellas, what are we supposed to do about these Germans?” the kid asked, watching nervously as the rest of the convoy slowly disappeared from sight around the next bend in the road.
Nearby, the lieutenant was shouting something about suppressing fire. It was going to take more than that. As Vaccaro had pointed out, the Germans were simply too well dug-in from hidden positions. Meanwhile, they had the Americans right where they wanted them—cowering in a ditch. It didn’t help that the slush and mud had soaked through their uniforms. Even though they were down low, the cold wind had still managed to find them.
As soon as the sun had disappeared behind the hills, the temperature had dropped steadily. Without doubt, the slush and mud on the road would freeze solid tonight.
Beside him, Cole could hear the kid’s teeth chattering. If they stayed in this ditch too long, the cold would kill them if the Krauts didn’t.
“I’ve got an idea,” Cole said. “Pop some smoke and cover me.”
As soon as enough smoke began to screen his movements, Cole slipped back onto the road and made a beeline for the dead GI from the truck. It looked as if the man had been unlucky enough to be killed as soon as he had leaped down from the truck.
“Sorry, buddy,” Cole said, then grabbed the dead greenbean by the back of the collar and dragged him the short distance to the still-smoldering wreckage of the truck. He positioned the body under the truck, using the man’s helmet under his chin to prop up his head. He found a rifle and tucked it into the man’s grip. From a distance, it would look as if the GI was making a valiant last stand.
Cole had long since given up any notion about being disrespectful of the dead—as long as he didn’t know them. Nonetheless, he found himself offering the dead man some explanation. “Sorry about this, fella. But if killing a few Krauts after you’re dead ain’t revenge, I don’t know what is.”
Cole skedaddled back into the ditch.
Once the smoke started to clear, the Germans began firing at the corpse. As their muzzle flashes in the twilight gloom revealed their positions, Cole and Vaccaro picked them off one by one. Soon, the enemy fire ceased altogether. Either they had finished them off, or the survivors had managed to slink away into the trees.
“All right, I think we got them,” Mulholland said. “Let’s go catch up to those trucks. I sure as hell don’t want to walk all the way to Bastogne—or be out here on our own once it gets dark.”
Crawling out of the ditch, dripping wet, they double-timed it. It didn’t take long before the column came into sight. They trucks weren’t exactly speeding down the road, but the convoy would keep moving through the night. It was a maddening snail’s pace, but it was progress. Cole had to admit that the dead greenbean had been right about something. Riding in the trucks sure beat walking all the way to Bastogne.
Incredibly, the Jeep that Cole had spotted earlier was still gamely trailing along in the wake of the convoy. By some miracle, it still hadn’t capsized, even though it had picked up a couple more men, survivors of the ambush. The thing had picked up so many men that it looked like a bunch of grapes with wheels.
But there was no room for the snipers on the Jeep, so they kept going.
They ran to the back of a truck and were pulled inside. The lieutenant joined them this time.
“Where the hell were you guys?” a soldier asked.
“Christmas shopping,” Vaccaro wisecracked. “Better late than never, right? I hope you wanted Santa to bring you some ice and snow because that’s all that was left.”
The GI was too exhausted to process that Vaccaro was kidding. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Ignore him, he ought to be in the hospital, anyhow,” Cole said. “Let’s just say we were takin’ care of business. The business in this case being some of Hitler’s buddies. They won’t be bothering us again.”
It was crowded in the back of the truck, which wasn’t a terrible situation in this cold. The residual body heat was welcome and some guys even broke out blankets, trying to keep the heat in. They settled onto their seats, trying to get some rest and stay warm. This truck still had its canvas covering, which did zilch to keep the heat in, but it did break the worst of the wind.
“Sleep if you can,” Mulholland said. “Once we get to Bastogne, there won’t be much of that.”
David Healey author 