Fox On The Rhine (28 page)

Smiggy nodded. “It’s possible... but Mitchell’s been along this road near the river, and it was clear.” He pointed to another swath of forest, a mile to the west. “Any concentration of force would have to be gathered here.”

“And those guys will have their hands full with Task Force White, as soon as Whitey gets into position.”

Pulaski thought of his orders, and the opportunity that lay before him. It would take several hours just to move his lead task force along that single-lane Roman road. And he knew that route through the marsh could lead Ballard flush into the flank of the retreating Germans, with a prime opportunity to sever the lifeline of the Abbeville bridge. Then, if Task Force White took the more circuitous route, they should arrive at the destination in perfect time to support the armor. They could make an attack first thing in the morning. The calculations took only a minute, and once his mind was made up there was no question about a decision. Conscious of seconds ticking by, Pulaski gave his orders. “Let’s go for it.”

“Sarge!”

“Here it is, Colonel.” Dawson anticipating the order, had the radio warmed up and handed him the mike. “Low power.”

“All Crimsons,” he said, using the code name they had established, “this is Crimson Eight. Move forward, pronto... do not acknowledge.”

Ballard’s tanks started down the hillside immediately, and in a few minutes the first of them had reached the Roman road.

“Frank, I want your boys and Smiggs’s company to head across this stone road, here... send one of your Shermans ahead to make sure it checks out as sturdy. Whitey and I will bring the rest of CCA around the marsh. We’ll meet you south of the bridges--but when you get your battalion across, you should attack if the opportunity’s right. We’ll be up in support.”

“You got it, sir!” replied the ex-boxer, his jaw locked in a scowl of determination.

The column of M4s started across the track, leaving fifty yards between tanks, while the rest of the command gathered at the base of the hill. By the time Lieutenant Colonel Lorimar came up with his self-propelled guns, CCA had received another visitor, and Pulaski clambered out of his half-track to greet General King.

“I had to ride hell-bent for leather to catch you, Ski,” said the general with a broad grin. “Good work.”

“I’ve got a chance here, Jack--looks like this track might take us all the way to the Abbeville bridges. I’m sending the tanks across here, and the rest of us are coming around the marsh.” “Excellent!” declared King, clapping one fist into the palm of his other hand. The division CO looked up at the half-track while the mechanized infantry battalion moved onto the Roman road. “I’ve got a fresh set of recon photos for you, taken this A.M. Looks like the Krauts still don’t have any idea we’re here. Make a little extra room in there, OK? I’d like to ride along.”

Approaching the Somme River, West of Abbeville, 1700 hours GMT

“Hey you, in the panzer!”

“Ja?” Carl-Heinz stuck his head out of the hatch.

“That’s good--stay there while I get your picture.”

“Why?” wondered the driver, though he obliged the aristocratic-looking photographer with a smile and a wave.

“Danke. It’ll make a good shot for the folks back home.” Craning his head around, Carl-Heinz was not surprised to see something like two dozen German soldiers, mostly panzer-grenadiers, perched on the tank’s hull and turret, almost as if his tank had sprouted hair. It had been like that for many kilometers, all these footsore warriors willing to take advantage of one of the few vehicles rolling toward der Vaterland.

“Did you ride all the way from Normandy?” asked the photographer, speaking to a cocky feldwebel on the left fender.

“Better than walking--and this young fellow makes a fine chauffeur!”

“Say, you were with Panzer Lehr, weren’t you?” asked the photographer, catching a glimpse of the division designation on the hull turret. “I know someone who’s going to be glad to see you.”

Ulrich, who had risen from the radioman’s hatch, regarded the man warily. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Oh, forgive me... Baron von Esebeck, at your service. I am a correspondent for the German news service.”

“And who will be glad to see us?” Carl-Heinz asked.

“There he is now.” Von Esebeck turned and waved, shouting loudly. “General Bayerlein, I have found some of your lost souls!”

The commander of the Panzer Lehr division was standing at a crossroads just before them, but he hurried over to the tank and casually returned the crewmen’s brisk salute. Ulrich was clearly embarrassed at being around generals and aristocrats; he slid back into the tank, letting Carl-Heinz do the talking. Carl-Heinz wasn’t intimidated by anybody.

“You were with Schroeder’s company, yes?” Bayerlein asked, clearly delighted to see a vehicle from his old division.

“Ja, mein General,” Carl-Heinz replied. “I am sorry to say that the lieutenant was killed by an enemy aircraft.”

Bayerlein shook his head. ‘Too many of my brave men fell that way...but listen, I need you. Follow that road, there. You’ll see where to wait--and I will be along by this evening. And you panzergrenadiers, stay with the tank. I have work for you, as well.”

Carl-Heinz guided the Panther into a narrow lane and soon saw a young hauptmann waving him over to the side of the road.

“Do you have an officer?”

“He’s dead.”

‘These are your orders--take your tank down the road down to the landing on this bank of the Somme. You’re to form up as part of a new kampfgruppe.”

Carl-Heinz saluted, moderately grateful that there was some semblance of order returning to the German Army. A kampfgruppe was not a division, but it could be a formidable force of armor, and the name implied they were assembled for a specific combat task. He followed the directions and quickly found himself lining up in a camouflaged swath of relatively open woodland. Leafy nets were stretched overhead to conceal a large area, with lots of space between the trees.

Before long there were no less than fourteen Panthers, two dozen Panzer Mark IVs, and even six lumbering Tiger tanks all gathered here. The men emerged from their vehicles and gathered around a truck near the edge of the woods. They exchanged bits of news, all-too-similar tales of retreat and narrow escapes, especially when it came to dodging the bombs of the hated Jabos. Nor could they help speculating on whatever it was that had brought them together here.

Still, to judge from the elaborate extent of the camouflage, someone had put a lot of work into hiding a strong force here. Frequently Allied planes droned overhead, but none flew low enough to seriously inspect the grove. More tankers showed up, including a young captain, Schmitz, who strolled up to inform Carl-Heinz and the crew that he had been given command of their panzer and several others.

“A new company,” he said with a wry smile. “We might have six Panthers before we’re through.”

An hour later General Bayerlein arrived in a command car, quickly emerging to move among the men with an easy familiarity that went a long way toward making them comfortable and reminding them that they were still soldiers in a proud army.

Carl-Heinz didn’t know the man personally, but Bayerlein’s reputation--earned at first under the Desert Fox in North Africa and solidified by his handling of Panzer Lehr in Normandy--was good. And in his stint as division CO he had never caused any unfair difficulties for his troops, which to most enlisted men was the best sign of a good commanding officer.

The tank crews began to gather in the center of the clearing, while officers separated them by the type of their vehicles.

“You are now one part of a new kampfgruppe--yours being the Panther Regiment,” declared a Wehrmacht major, with no trace of irony.

“And that’s the Tiger regiment, and the Panzer IV regiment,” Fritzi whispered, amused at the grandiose title for this ragtag assemblage.

Ulrich laughed dryly, and Hauptmann Schmitz silenced him with a glare.

The major continued, taking no note of the interruption. “Field Marshal Rommel, the Desert Fox himself, is our new army commander. He has a job for us.”

General Bayerlein climbed onto the back of a truck, and outlined the objective of this ad hoc formation. They would be attacking, for a change, and were promised supplies of fuel and ammunition, as well as replacements for all tanks who had lost crewmen. They listened to him earnestly, and Carl-Heinz couldn’t help but feel a rush of enthusiasm as the plan was outlined.

“Where’d all these tanks come from?” wondered one officer, a lieutenant, speaking out loud.

“I don’t know how much you know about Rommel,” declared the general, with his first trace of humor. “But he ordered them to be here, and he doesn’t take no for an answer. And another thing... our field marshal hates the Jabos as much as you do. Therefore, he has ordered rain for tomorrow.”

That got a good laugh from all the men.

“You think I’m kidding?” smiled the general. “You all know the Desert Fox. He’s got fingerspitzengefühl, intuition in his fingers. He knows these things.”

And indeed, in a few minutes the tanks had been fueled from some trucks that had appeared, perhaps conjured by the same magic that had brought about this gathering of armor. Some of the Tigers were unable to top off their fuel tanks before all of the trucks had been drained, but Bayerlein explained that the big panzers wouldn’t be driving far. “The Tigers will be the anvil,” he explained, “while the rest of you will be the hammer, sweeping around the enemy’s flank.”

There was also a shortage of armor-piercing ammunition, but Hauptmann Schmitz made sure that Pelz stowed more than two dozen of the tank-killing rounds. Carl-Heinz learned that they were, in fact, the command tank for a “company” of five Panthers. All around men were checking equipment, cleaning and lubricating fittings, polishing gunsights, and checking radios.

By then night had fallen, and the clearing rumbled and roared to the sound of tank engines.

A few minutes later, the new kampfgruppe moved out.

West Bank of the Somme, Abbeville, France, 20 August 1944, 0923 hours GMT

Ballard’s task force was in the lead, and that was how he liked it. The tank commander had met Smiggy on the north side of the marsh, and the captain and lieutenant colonel had both agreed that as they drew closer to the Germans, the Shermans should be at the front of the column.

“They’ve got a couple of A/T guns sighted on the track to the left, but the road along the river is clear all the way to the Abbeville highway.”

“Is Task Force White up yet?” Ballard asked.

“Not yet... I’ve got a platoon back there to lead them in.” “How much farther do we have to go?”

‘Two miles to the highway, no more,” the captain of the re-con company shouted upward. He was standing in the hull of his armored car, while Ballard leaned out of the hatch in his Sherman’s turret. “I got a good look at it from the cover of some trees.”

“What kind of traffic?” Ballard wondered.

“Mostly foot... I saw a few cars, trucks, horse-drawn carts. You name it, they’re using it. But no sign of any unit cohesion. This ain’t a march, Colonel--it’s a rout.”

“Not for long,” the armored commander vowed. He twisted to look behind him, though the view of the road was blocked by the two trailing companies of his medium tanks. How long would it take for the rest of CCA to circle the marsh and join him? He knew he’d have to guess. Already some of the armored cars had made the trek--surely the rest of the Pulaski’s men couldn’t be that far behind.

He looked north, picturing the Germans getting away along the road to Abbeville. He knew what his colonel wanted, what his general wanted, and his general’s general wanted. And it was what Ballard wanted, too.

Speed
. It was the thing that had brought them this far, and it was the thing that would win the campaign for them. And he remembered a lesson from his boxing days at the Point: When you had your opponent on the ropes, never let him off, not even to draw a breath. The final connection was obvious, because right now the Germans were on the ropes, and CCA was an armored fist poised for a knockout.

“Leave that platoon to show Whitey the way,” Ballard shouted down to Smiggs, making up his mind. “The rest of your boys fall in--we’re going for the road!”

Immediately the tanks rolled, B company leading the way. Ballard remained outside his turret, where he could get a view in all directions. The terrain was partially blocked, with many copses of trees and small woods. Here and there a farmhouse dotted the landscape, which tended to be flat, with a few low irregularities that hardly qualified as hills.

“I followed that track through the woods,” Smiggs reported, indicating a narrow lane through a small forest. “You might have to take your tanks down it and deploy on the far side of the trees.”

Ballard was about to reply when the crack of an 88 shot across the field, and in the same moment one of B company’s Shermans exploded into an inferno of flame and popping ammunition. There was no time for any of the crew even to open a hatch, much less have a chance at escape.

“Where the hell did that come from?” demanded Ballard, wincing at the knowledge that five of his men had just met an unthinkable death. He grabbed his microphone and spoke in a voice that was louder than he wanted. “Bruno Six to all Brunos--action front! Bruno One, engage in front. Bruno Two, refuse the left. Bruno Three and Four, deploy and move up in reserve. All Brunos, acknowledge.”

The tanks of Task Force Ballard broke from the road at the first shot. A dozen Shermans were pushing through a field of mounded haystacks, while two more M4s were skidding around a farmhouse and others raced for the cover of the woods. Three were already burning, and then another cooked off with fiery violence. Shells zipped through the air, and he could tell that they were being attacked from in front, and on the left flank. They were taking a lot of fire, though he still couldn’t see his attackers.

“Bruno Three, reinforce the left--move forward!” Ballard ordered.

More shots lashed out from guns hidden in the nearby trees. The flank attack was a powerful counterpunch, he realized with sickening awareness. Additional M4s went up in flames, and tufts of hay flew through the air following a near miss. Fires burned all over the clearing. Some of the pyres were merely hay, but all too many of them were wrecked tanks and dying Americans. Even though he had yet to catch sight of the enemy, Ballard knew from the volume of fire that this was the strongest opposition his battalion had yet encountered. His tanks were shooting back, but suffering in the face of serious resistance. At least a dozen Shermans were burning, and the shots coming from the nearby woods were frequent and accurate.