Once a Warrior (13 page)

Thunder boomed, as loud as an artillery barrage. As violent as the beating of his heart. Now he was fighting two wars. The one with the Germans and the one within himself.

* * * *

Anne-Marie’s heart was pumping as fast as her legs were pedaling.

It had quit raining at dawn.

She knew because she’d watched the sun come up. While working with the Résistance, she had become accustomed to living on a lot of nerve and a little sleep. The fear of discovery, even more than the idea of death, had burned in her like a low-grade fever day and night. She would go to bed exhausted and get up exhausted. And tell herself, “
C’est la guerre
” when she didn’t think she could stand it another moment.

But last night she hadn’t slept at all.

She’d done her best to forget Mike, knowing there was no future for them. She’d tried a long hot bath and a little warm brandy. She’d told herself they were of the war and nothing more as she’d climbed the stairs to her bedroom. Then she’d put out the light, plunging the room into darkness. Only to see his face when she closed her eyes.

This morning, wearing his borrowed field jacket over her dress, she had left the house before breakfast.

Her front tire hit a rut in the road, splashing dirty water on her bare legs. She didn’t even notice. Her eyes were focused on the field she was fast approaching and her thoughts were centered on the man who had touched her where no other man ever had—her mind and her heart.

Now she wanted him to touch her body. Touch it and teach her how to touch his in return. She wanted him to love her, if only for a little while, as she knew she would love him for the rest of her life.

Unlike yesterday, today was beautiful. The sky was a cloudless blue, the surface of the lake sparkled in the sun and the tree branches swayed in the breeze. Birds sang. And the air, after the storm, smelled fresh and full of—

Anne-Marie stopped her bicycle with a jerk of brakes. Her hands clutched the handlebars so hard that her knuckles went white. A soundless cry tore at her throat.

Mike was gone!

Her heart sank with despair as she stared at the deserted field. All that remained of the tanks and jeeps and self-propelled guns that had been parked there the day before were the herringboned ruts their tires had made in the mud when they’d departed. The grass was matted and yellowed where tents had stood and soldiers had strolled.

Numbly, Anne-Marie pushed her bicycle toward the spot where Mike had pitched his tent. Her eyes were burning dry but, inside, she was weeping. The tears would come later, she knew, when she’d fully absorbed this terrible loss.

Then she saw it—an empty green Coke bottle turned upside down on a stake driven into the ground, with a folded piece of paper inside.

Anne-Marie reached for it with a trembling hand. Mike was gone, yes. But he hadn’t forgotten her. For as she discovered when she shook the paper out of the bottle and unfolded it, he’d left his address and asked her to write to him.

CHAPTER SIX

Aachen, Germany

The colonel commanding the engineer combat group was clearly disgusted. And with good reason. “We’ve taken that hill twice, Lieutenant Scanlon,” he grumbled to his newly assigned forward artillery observer, “and we’ve lost it twice.”

“So I’ve heard, sir.”  Mike was careful to keep his voice neutral, not wanting to sound like he was criticizing a superior officer’s performance.

 They both knew that Aachen wasn’t an important military objective. Strategically speaking, though, it was a different story. Not only was Aachen the birthplace of Charlemagne, it was a sacred symbol of the Holy Roman Empire—the First Reich. Hitler, who’d frequently prophesied that his own Third Reich would also last a thousand years, had exhorted the city’s residents to hold out at all cost. To engage in house-to-house fighting, if necessary, in order to protect their precious heritage. None of which had deterred the Allies, who’d decided that a strike at Aachen could be the fatal blow to the heart of Nazi faith.

So the colonel had a right to be frustrated. The hills and ridges surrounding the city were the keys to reducing it. And in his first experience leading an infantry mission, he’d let those keys slip through his fingers . . . not once, but twice.

He raised his binoculars and peered out the second-story window of the farmhouse-cum-observation post, through the steady October rain and the thick yellow smoke from the Allied dive-bombers. Then he lowered the glasses and looked directly at Mike. Beneath the brim of his steel helmet, with its dangling chin straps bracketing his gaunt face, his eyes were narrowed and his jaw was set in a determined line.

“I want that hill back, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.”  Mike spoke without any hint of nervous apprehension, but his palms were sweaty, his stomach felt hollow and his pulse was keeping time with the heavy concentration of artillery and mortar fire that was pouring down on the dug-in city.

Twenty-four hours with no sleep and nothing to eat could do that to a man . . . as could the knowledge that he’d already outlived the odds against forward observers.

After leaving Ste. Genviève in the dead of night, his battalion had been reattached to their old armored division for the final battle at Argentan-Falaise. With the Gap closed and those Germans who’d escaped capture on the run, they’d spearheaded east. Tomatoes were just coming into season as they thundered through Corbeil, south of Paris, and the French civilians who’d lined the roads had generously shared the ripe, red produce with their Yankee liberators.

They’d met some opposition when they crossed the muddy Seine River on pontoon bridges, but it was quickly overcome. Leapfrogging across northern France, they’d passed through territory that was painfully familiar in American history. In the space of twenty-four hours, they’d rumbled by Château-Thierry and Belleau wood—places where, in World War I, many of their own fathers had crawled forward foot by bloody foot.

Now history had put them in the driver’s seat, and nothing could stop their momentum. Victory was in the air, as sure as the season’s turning. The Germans were in full retreat, the Allies in hot pursuit, and “Win the War in 44” was their battle cry.

They were riding high when they entered the Low Countries, with hysterically happy crowds lining the roads and cries of “
Allemande-Kaput
” ringing in their ears.

Going through Charleroi, Belgium, they’d looked more like the Tournament of Roses parade than a fighting unit on its way to battle. Flowers pelted their vehicles, beer flowed like water, and the people dancing in the streets slowed the armored march to a crawl. To top it all off, a group of Belgian Résistance fighters, drunk as skunks and armed to the teeth, commandeered the battalion CO’s jeep and led the military police a merry chase up and down every side road in town.

But the joy ride had ended in September. Not with a bang, either, but with a sputter. The Allies had run low on gasoline and ammunition, giving the Germans time to regroup along their own border, and every mother’s son on the offensive front had started praying that he’d get “Home Alive in ’45.”

And twice since the Allies had reached a stalemate at the Siegfried Line, those jagged road blocks of concrete and steel that the Germans boasted no enemy army could penetrate, Mike had thought he was a goner.

The first time he’d been on reconnaissance, scouting out a new observation post, when an SS combat patrol had come out of nowhere. His radioman had been killed and one of his wiremen severely wounded in the firefight that followed. The second time his tank had been knocked out while breaching the “dragon’s teeth.”  He’d been thrown clear with only the sharp piece of shrapnel that was still in his leg, but the rest of his crew had burned to death in the subsequent explosion.

Now here he was, he thought grimly, sitting on Germany’s doormat like one of the milk bottles his father used to deliver, wondering when his own number was finally going to come up.

“Do you have a plan of attack, Lieutenant?”  Given his two previous failures to hold the hill, the colonel had no choice but to ask. He did so with both a lack of the hubris that normally accompanied rank and note of hope in his voice.

“Yes, sir, I do.”

His throat sore and scratchy from all the smoke he’d swallowed and his nerves screaming from lack of food and sleep, Mike removed his map from the leather case he’d worn in action since D-Day. He crossed the room, his boots crunching on the rubble of fallen ceiling plaster, and lit the Coleman gas lamp that was sitting on a field table he’d shoved against the wall and away from the window. The lamp hissed and sputtered as he dusted off the tabletop with his sleeve, then spread out the map and motioned his commanding officer over so he could explain the plan.

“There’s a little valley on the other side of the hill where the Germans have dug in,” he pointed out.

“The perfect defensive position.”

Mike nodded in agreement but remained focused on the problem at hand. “And here, overlooking the valley, are three abandoned houses—”

“They’re still standing after the shelling?”

“They were when I left at daybreak.”

“You went up there?” his CO asked, aghast.

“Just long enough to get a look-see. Anyway, there’s a three-story house right here”—Mike put his finger on the spot—“with a half-moon window in the attic—”

“The perfect observation post.”

“The best I’ve seen.

The colonel stroked his beard-stubbled chin. “How will you get into the house?”

“Through the back door.”

“It’s unguarded?”

“And unlocked,” Mike confirmed.

“It’ll take you half the night to get up there.”

“I’ll start as soon as we’re finished here, sir.”

The table rocked and the floor shook as one of their own artillery shells fell short of its target. A high-explosive shell, judging by the hot white and orange flickers that shadow-danced on the walls. Neither one of the men bent over the map even noticed the new plaster filtering down from the ceiling or the dust flying up around them.      

“When do we jump off?” the colonel asked.

“At dawn.”  Which meant another sleepless night for Mike.

“Catch ’em with their pants down, hey?”

Mike’s mouth hooked in a mirthless smile. “In a manner of speaking.”

“How many men will you need?”

“Three, besides myself.”

Silently, the commander strained his red-rimmed eyes over the map. “And while you’re figuring your coordinates,” he said at last, “we can finish consolidating our positions.”

“By this time tomorrow, sir, you’ll be king of the hill.”

“Unless the Germans counterattack.”

Mike had already thought of that. “I’ll smother ’em under another blanket of hot steel.”

“And if they figure out where you’re shooting from?”

“I’ll head for the basement and box us in with artillery.”

His CO gaped at him speechlessly, as if he couldn’t quite decide whether his FO was a fool or a genius.

“Defensive fire?” he demanded when he found his voice.

“Yes, sir.”

“Dangerous as hell.”

“But effective.”  Mike straightened and shrugged his weary shoulders. “What do you think, Colonel?”

“I like it.”  The frown he’d been sporting eased into a smile. “Like it, hell. I wish I’d thought of it myself.”

Mike’s answering grin could have been construed as a grimace. “Wait until you’ve been at this as long as I have.”

“No, thanks!”

The two men laughed at his quick, heartfelt rejoinder, then spent the next few minutes reviewing the details of the plan. Mike had left nothing to chance. Besides the necessary element of surprise, it called for dovetailed timing. If it worked the way it was supposed to, the hill was theirs for the taking.

“How’s your leg, Lieutenant?” the colonel asked before he left to get his men in position.

“I won’t be entering any dance contests for a while, but I can still kick German butt.”

“Yes, well . . .” The commander clicked his tongue. “I was sorry to hear about your tank crew.”

Mike had thought he was too numb to feel. Too detached to care. But the night his tank crew died, he’d burrowed into his sleeping bag and bawled like a damn baby.

Now he just nodded and said, “They were good men.”

“Aren’t they all?”

The sharp thunder of outgoing artillery was the only answer the colonel’s rhetorical question required.

“By the way,” he said then, “our mess sergeant rustled up some hot steak sandwiches if you’d like to eat before you leave.”

Mike still made it a rule not to eat before going into battle, but now his long-empty stomach growled noisily at the mention of food. He looked down at his mid-section, then up at his CO, and grinned in embarrassment. “Sounds good to me, sir.”

“Well . . .” The colonel paused, clearly awkward when it came to good-byes, then snapped his helmet strap under his chin and said brusquely, “I’ll see you at the top of the hill, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” Mike replied as he snapped off a crisp salute.

At the door, the colonel stopped and turned back, his grave expression softening with concern. “Godspeed, son.”

“Same to you, sir.”

Mike could hear the colonel clumping down the wooden stairs, shouting orders all the way, as he folded his map and put it away. The thought of a hot steak sandwich instead of a cold K ration had his mouth watering. And him hurrying to grab one before he started up the hill. 

He got sidetracked, though, when he was replacing the straps of his leather map case around his neck and his hand bumped against the small Bible he always carried in his shirt pocket. In addition to the pictures of his brother and sister and his godson, he now had a snapshot of Anne-Marie Gérard. Her cousin Henriette had taken it, she’d explained, and she had enclosed it in one of her weekly letters—most of which had burned along with his men and the Bronze Star he’d yet to send home for safekeeping when his tank was hit.