Fox On The Rhine (30 page)

The half-track rolled onto a very small elevation, merely a high spot in a slightly rolling field. Even with the naked eye Pulaski could see fires and smoke--obviously a number of tanks were burning. A quick check with binoculars confirmed his worst fear: they were Shermans.

A shell crackled overhead, and another round exploded a few hundred yards away. Tanks were coming toward Pulaski and the rest of CCA, and most of these tanks were flat and wide tracked. Panzers.

More explosions ripped across the field. There were M4s amid the German tanks, engaged in a running gun battle, but there was no question who was getting the best of it. One after another the American tanks blew up or veered away from the crossfire to seek cover in the woods and ravines along the river. Nearby, Dennis White’s infantry were advancing, but the dogfaces went to ground as shots whistled overhead.

Dawson had the radio powered and passed the handset to Pulaski as soon as the colonel realized he needed it.

“Lorri?” he called, urgency driving him to talk in the clear as he ordered rapid fire. “I need some arty support, right now! HE quick-charge fire!”

“Gotcha, Colonel. My Priests are just getting off that Roman road... I’ll be set up to fire in a minute.”

“Colonel--there he is,” Dawson said curtly as Pulaski broke the connection. The sergeant, his face a blank mask, pointed across the field.

“Shit!” Pulaski was helpless to do anything but watch, and curse.

General King’s jeep raced toward the rest of CCA. The vehicle careened onto two wheels as the driver skirted a rock, then floored the accelerator in a desperate attempt to reach the American position. The little car bounced over the ground as a massive tank rumbled on a converging course. “Hurry, damn it!” the colonel breathed, feeling sick to his stomach.

The panzer’s gun spat fire, and a high explosive shell hit the jeep or perhaps the ground directly under it. In any event the car, the driver, and the general vanished in a curtain of oily flame, a yellow-white eruption that sent a single heavy shape tumbling out of the blast. Pulaski vaguely realized that he was watching the jeep’s engine roll across the ground. Of the vehicle’s frame or the two occupants there was no sign. The colonel crossed himself and found his hand lingering near the silver crucifix under his tunic.

All around him the guns of CCA were sending sporadic fire into the approaching Germans. Infantry had dismounted from their half-tracks, and small arms fire mixed with heavy machine guns and a few light antitank pieces. The tanks of Task Force White rolled forward, but far too many erupted from the strikes of deadly German fire. Together they made a lot of noise and threw a lot of lead, but the barrage was having very little effect on the lumbering panzers.

Artillery fire from Lorimar’s battery began to whistle overhead, impacts sending fountains of dirt flying in the distant fields. But the German attack came on, panzers firing, Wehrmacht infantry scurrying forward in the wake of the tanks. The Shermans were gone, either wrecked or hidden, and the rest of CCA was scattered, men fighting wherever they first saw the enemy. And still the flank was enveloped, more panzers appearing on the left.

A Tiger tank rolled right through the wreckage of Jack King’s jeep and Pulaski could only curse in outrage. The armored monster came on, muzzle spitting a shell that blew up a nearby half-track. Bullets whizzed around the colonel, pinging and knocking against the armor of his command truck. Explosions shook the air on all sides, and bits of dirt and spent shrapnel fell like rain on Pulaski’s head.

It was at that moment he knew he had to issue a command he had never expected to say. “Retreat!” he called, gesturing with his hand, shouting the command into the radio.

The remaining components of Combat Command A wasted no time in racing backward, fleeing the onrushing Germans. A barrage of shells followed the withdrawal, a blaze of gunfire that raked the task force from two sides.

White’s infantry pulled back, using the guns of Lorimar’s battery as a defensive screen. The big 105-mm guns held the rim of the hill beside the marsh, using direct fire now, shooting at targets in plain sight before them. Some infantry scrambled into their transport, half-tracks that took off for the rear, while other dogfaces pressed into any cover they could find, using small arms to give cover and support for the bellowing Priests.

At least, for a few precious minutes, the thundering cannon halted the headlong rush of the panzers--even a Tiger could be destroyed by a single hit from one of the howitzers. Pulaski jumped down from his half-track and ran to a nearby hollow where a few GIs had set up an impromptu machine gun nest.

‘They’re coming fast, Colonel,” reported a young sergeant, who popped open another ammo box even as he spoke. “Don’t think we can hold them for long.”

“You’re right, Sergeant--we gotta move out. See if you can hold on for two more minutes, then haul ass outta here.”

The howitzers continued to blast away, sounds of firing intermingled by roaring engines as the big vehicles twisted on their tracks so that the gunners could line up shots. Lacking turrets for their guns, the Priests could only be aligned by moving the whole vehicle, but they still managed to lay down deadly fire. A quick glance showed Pulaski several Tigers and Panthers wrecked and burning after hits from Lorimar’s guns.

But the lumbering field artillery carriers were especially vulnerable to a flank attack, and when a trio of Panthers rolled out of the woods to their left, what remained of the CCA defensive line was immediately rendered untenable. One after another of the Priests exploded in booming fireworks, the guns sitting ducks for the panzers.

Now panic set in. Pulaski shouted orders to his men, urging them to withdraw. Lieutenant Colonel White, his pipe nowhere to be seen, cursed like a sailor as he tried to get his surviving half-tracks and infantry organized. The remnants hastily rolled back, but more accurate fire fell among them, and additional vehicles erupted in smoke, flame, and death.

“Colonel, I think you’ll be wanting to mount up, sir,” said Dawson, who remained calm in the midst of chaos.

The voice seemed somehow distant, almost irrelevant to him. Pulaski was rooted in the moment before him. He could not tear his eyes away from the growing carnage and chaos. But when Dawson tapped him on the shoulder, it broke the spell. He and the sergeant raced back to his half-track, which Keefer had wheeled around, ready for a flight to the rear. Just as the colonel prepared to climb up to the cab, a half-track blew up right in front of him. Burned men spilled out of the hull, and Pulaski and Dawson quickly dropped back to the ground and tried to help the wounded GIs.

The colonel found himself holding Lorimar. The artillery commander’s legs were gone, and his face was an ashen white. His normally smiling features were sagging with an expression of dull disbelief. He managed to force out the words to a single question, words that came forth with a welter of foaming blood.

“What happened?”

Pulaski hadn’t figured out an answer by the time Lorimar was dead.

Central Park West, New York, United States, 21 August 1944,1230 hours GMT

The jangling of the telephone brought Chuck Porter out of a sound sleep. He thrashed, drawing a moan from the bed beside him. Who is that? He blearily struggled with the question even as his hand, operating by instinct, snatched up the phone and brought it to his ear. A look at the clock showed 9:30, and the sunlight streaming in the window added the “A.M.” He had been asleep for about two hours.

“Porter here,” he said--or tried to say, around the hacking cough that was a reminder of too many cigarettes and too little sleep. “This is Porter,” he clarified.

He listened in growing horror to the frenzied voice on the other end of the line. He was slipping his legs into his pants even before he hung up, and by the time the call was finished he had completely forgotten the other person in his bed.

“Honey... what is it?”

Her voice brought him out of his daze as he was pulling on his shirt. Tricia, the AP receptionist from the night shift... they had gone to breakfast together after work, and found themselves back here.

“News flash--they’re bringing in the whole staff,” he said.

“Why?” Tricia demanded, sitting up in the bed, her sheet slipping down.

--“Something’s happened in Russia--it sounds like something big,” Porter explained vaguely. And big trouble. He didn’t voice his deepest concern, wanting to wait until he had more facts in front of him.

Two hours later he was looking over the story, and knew that he had been right.

FLASH/BULLETIN
LONDON. 21 AUGUST. 1200 GMT
COPY 01 RUSSIA DROPS OUT OF WAR
DISTRIBUTION: ALL STATIONS

LONDON. 21 AUGUST 1944 (AP). BY EDWARD REED

THE SOVIET UNION. IN A STUNNING DOUBLE-CROSS. HAS ANNOUNCED THAT IT HAS SIGNED A SEPARATE PEACE TREATY WITH GERMANY AND HAS DROPPED OUT OF THE WAR AGAINST THE AXIS.

WINSTON CHURCHILL CALLED THE MOVE “A SHAME, A SHAM, A SIN, AND A CRIME AGAINST ALL HUMANITY.” NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN THE SOVIETS AND GERMANY HAD BEEN CONDUCTED UNDER CONDITIONS OF UTMOST SECRECY; THE ANNOUNCEMENT CAUGHT THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT COMPLETELY BY SURPRISE.

TOP ALLIED MILITARY AND CIVILIAN LEADERS ARE MEETING NONSTOP TO COORDINATE RESPONSE. GENERAL EISENHOWER ANNOUNCED THAT THE RUSSIAN DEFECTION “MEANS LITTLE IN THE INEVITABLE DEFEAT OF GERMANY.” SOURCES HIGH IN THE ALLIED COMMAND ALL EMPHASIZE THAT THE CURRENT GERMAN MILITARY SITUATION IS ALREADY SO WEAKENED THAT THEIR DEFEAT IS STILL INEVITABLE.

GEN. GEORGE PATTON, WHO HAD BEEN CRITICIZED FOR HIS REMARKS AGAINST THE SOVIET UNION, WAS QUOTED AS SAYING, “WE DON’T NEED THOSE SO-AND-SOS; WE’RE BETTER OFF WITHOUT THEM.”

OTHER GOVERNMENT AND INTERNATIONAL REACTIONS FOLLOW.
MORE
AP LON 333898 JF/082144

“We’ve got White House quotes coming,” Lambert said. Porter nodded. “Damn. Wish I’d been a fly on the wall during those negotiations. Must have been some interesting deal making.”

“You and the OSS,” laughed Lambert.

It would be a long day, followed by a long night of work.

Later, he was looking through a stack of photographs just in from London. One showed a German tank festooned with soldiers during the rout from Normandy.

“Credit to von Esebeck, huh?” he remarked to no one in particular. “That’s the same photog that sent out the picture of Rommel a couple of weeks ago, just to show us we didn’t get him.”

Though some of the German soldiers were bandaged, and they were all filthy and unshaven, they waved at the camera enthusiastically. Porter knew that these Krauts had been running like crazy, ever since Patton had busted out in Normandy.

Sure they’d been retreating. But then why the hell did it look like they were on a goddamn victory parade?

The Teletype began to chatter again. In spite of the jangling alarm bells, hardly anyone ran to read it, figuring it was just a follow-up to the biggest story of the war.

Then he heard someone say, “Oh, my God!” He hurried over just in time to see the first news about the counterpunch in France that had just chewed up half an American division.

Kaufering, Bavaria, Germany, 1427 hours GMT

It was the single most astonishing sight Paul Krueger had ever seen in his life. General Galland’s staff car had driven from the small village of Kaufering into the Eglinger Forest, then through wooden gates and under a vast network of camouflage. Hidden under the camouflage were literally hundreds of pieces of heavy machinery from bulldozers to cement mixers, trucks to cranes. The immense construction site was impressive enough, though not unprecedented, but what came next truly was unprecedented.

Krueger had heard rumors of the great underground factories the Reich was building in response to the Allied strategic bombing campaign, but he had never seen one in person. Most of those who did were slaves, an army of ten thousand Hungarian Jews, laboring until they died in support of the mighty Nazi war machine. Here, a railroad track ran through the construction area and into a mammoth hangar, and underneath was an immense manmade cavern, a concrete bunker whose far wall was lost to view in the dim light.

“It’s three-quarters of a mile long and a quarter of a mile broad,” said Galland with evident pride. “Never seen anything like it, eh?”

“No, mein General,” Krueger said. He hadn’t realized until that moment that he had been holding his breath.

“We’re building a larger one at Landsberg. Once all this is done, we’ll be able to produce nearly a thousand aircraft each month, all without needing to fear Allied bombing raids. Down here, we’re invulnerable.” Galland pointed to a large paved area. “The Me-262 is particularly vulnerable during takeoff. See that? It’s an underground runway. The aircraft will never be exposed while on the ground, even when taxiing. Amazing, isn’t it?”

“Amazing is too tame a word, sir,” Krueger replied. He was filled with pride and awe at the majesty of the Third Reich.

“Come with me,” ordered the Luftwaffe commander, and escorted Krueger on a tour he would never forget. Through immense passageways, a virtual underground road network, through an infrastructure of housing and construction sites that would eventually house ninety thousand people--the statistics made Krueger’s head spin. Finally, they ended up in an engineering office. “Here’s where you’ll work. Some design work, mostly troubleshooting. Because, you see, everything you’ve been looking at is--so far--a huge waste of time and resources.”

“Mein General!” said Krueger, shocked at what seemed nearly a blasphemous statement.

Galland shook his head sadly. “We can build the aircraft, though there are still some production kinks to iron out. What we can’t do is fly them without fuel. You know already that we can’t even supply the operating units. And with Romania going to the Soviets under the new treaty--ah, you didn’t know that, did you? Well, it doesn’t matter. We give it to them; they take it--it’s all the same. Actually, it may be better this way; we might be able to buy some fuel from them.”