The Second Objective (11 page)

“American, yes?”

“That’s right. What do you want?”

The boy glanced nervously to his left, toward a tangled, overgrown hedge to the right of the jeep. Something rustled in those branches. Von Leinsdorf grabbed his rifle and dropped down in the seat.

“Drive, drive!” he shouted.

Bernie stepped on the gas and ducked, just as a rifle barrel pointed at them out of the dense branches. He heard two loud booms. The jeep fishtailed in the mud then righted itself and skidded forward. The boy on the road pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the windscreen, but the jeep’s right front fender clipped him on the leg, spun him around, and knocked him to the ground before he could fire. Von Leinsdorf came up from the floor of the backseat firing an M1, emptying an entire clip at the brush behind them.

“Stop!”

Bernie slammed on the brakes. Von Leinsdorf jumped out of the jeep and ran toward the trees, slamming another clip into the rifle.

“Get the boy!” he shouted.

Bernie pulled his pistol and jumped down, crouching low around the jeep. The boy on the ground was writhing in pain, whimpering, trying to reach the pistol lying a few feet from him in the snow. Bernie hurried over and kicked the gun out of his reach. The boy glared up at him, pain and raw hatred contorting his face.

“
Amis,
fuck you!”

“Easy,” said Bernie. “Take it easy, you little shit. You all right?”

The boy spat at him.

“
Ami
, I hate fucking
Amis
,” he said. “Fuck you.”

Von Leinsdorf came around the hedge dragging a second boy by the collar, carrying an old shotgun. He manhandled him to the ground next to the first boy. As he went down, the boy’s coat came off in Von Leinsdorf’s hand. Something he saw made him laugh.

“What’s so funny?” asked Bernie.

Von Leinsdorf moved and Bernie saw that the boy wore a red armband with a Nazi swastika around his left arm. Bernie stripped the coat off the wounded boy on the ground; he was wearing a swastika as well.

“God damn,” he said. “Fucking Hitler Youth.”

“I told you this was more Germany than Belgium.” Von Leinsdorf spoke to the boys in German. “
Meine kleine Hitlerjugend
. So tell me, you pick up a signal the invasion is about to begin and try to pick off some Americans with your father’s bird gun,
nicht wahr
?”

The boys stared at him in shock. Von Leinsdorf broke down the ancient double-barreled shotgun and popped out the spent shells.

“You are German?” asked the second boy, in broken English.

“That’s right. Not that we don’t appreciate your enthusiasm,” said Von Leinsdorf, “but you nearly shot my head off.”

“Are you really soldiers?” the wounded boy asked.

“What are you, the village idiot?” asked Bernie.

“Where’s your father?” asked Von Leinsdorf. “In the army?”

“He was killed. In Russia.”

“He’d be proud to know his son is a patriot. Even if you don’t know which side to shoot at.”

They heard a rumble of heavy vehicles rolling up behind them along the same road. Headlights flashed through the woods. Von Leinsdorf yanked the wounded boy to his feet.

“Go home, get the hell out of here,” he said. “Those are real Americans coming now.”

“You better think twice before taking any more potshots if you want to live till dinner,” said Bernie.

The second boy put an arm around his injured friend and helped him limp toward the trees.

“And don’t forget your blunderbuss,” said Von Leinsdorf, hurling the old gun after them. The boy picked it up and they helped each other stumble out of sight.

Bernie and Von Leinsdorf hurried back to the jeep and saw Gunther Preuss slumped forward in the backseat. He turned to look at them, a pinched, fearful hangdog stare. His left hand gripped his right shoulder, blood seeping between his fingers.

“Oh shit,” said Bernie.

“It’s nothing,” said Preuss. “It’s nothing, Erich, I swear.”

“Let me see,” said Von Leinsdorf.

He pried Preuss’s hand away from the wound. The uniform was shredded across his unit patch, the flesh of his shoulder peppered with shot. Other pellets had sprayed him across the neck and the right side of the face. All three areas were bleeding copiously.

“God damn it,” said Leinsdorf.

“Please, Erich,” said Preuss, tears running down his face. “Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.”

Bernie could see Von Leinsdorf weighing the odds, and his hand moved toward his pistol.

“It’s not that bad,” said Bernie.

“Get out of the jeep,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“I can patch him up,” said Bernie. “It’s not going to kill him, he won’t slow us down—”

“Out of my way. Preuss, get down—”

Von Leinsdorf reached for Preuss. Bernie grabbed his hand.

“Don’t do it.”

“Let go of my hand, Brooklyn—”

Before they started to struggle, both men were caught in the convoy headlights; eight vehicles—jeeps, transport trucks, and a towed antitank gun—turned into the clearing behind them. Von Leinsdorf shook off Bernie’s grip and stepped toward the oncoming vehicles waving his arms. Bernie could see a platoon of rifle infantry hunched in the trailing canvas-backed trucks.

The lead jeep pulled up alongside Von Leinsdorf. An American captain in the backseat stood up.

“What’s the holdup?” asked the captain.

“Somebody fired on us when we drove in,” said Von Leinsdorf. “One of my guys is hit.”

“Let’s take a look at him,” the captain said, then turned and called to the rear. “Get a medic up here!” A man jumped out of one of the transports and jogged toward their jeep. “Was it Krauts?”

“We couldn’t see. We returned fire, I think they moved off—”

“You a recon unit?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Well, don’t go after ’em, all hell’s broke loose up ahead—”

“We heard shelling. What’s going on?”

“Who the hell knows? We’re getting reports they started coming at us in force soon as that artillery knocked off. Radio’s saying there’s Kraut paratroopers up along the ridgeline—”

“No shit—”

“We’ve got units strung out all along this road; everybody’s ass is hanging out. They want us to hook in and form a line at Malmédy—”

The medic opened his haversack and stepped up on the jeep’s sideboard to take a look at Preuss. Bernie hovered next to him.

“He can’t even talk,” said Bernie. “Think he’s hit pretty bad.”

Taking his cue from Bernie, Preuss rolled his head back, moaning as the medic ripped the arm of his jacket down and probed the wound. Preuss didn’t respond to any of the medic’s questions; Bernie answered in his place.

“We heard they might try a spoiling attack,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Hell, you hear those planes overhead, the V1s? They’re throwing the works at us. It’s no fucking spoiling attack—”

“He needs a field hospital,” said the medic, sifting a packet of sulfa powder onto Preuss’s shoulder.

“We were on our way to Vielsalm,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Screw that, I’m overriding it, you’re coming with us,” said the captain. “Two hundred ninety-first Combat Engineers. Got orders to drag every able body we can muster in there. Fall in behind me, Lieutenant. We’re about five miles from Malmédy.”

The medic jumped into the jeep beside Preuss, unrolling a bandage. Bernie looked for guidance at Von Leinsdorf, who nodded at him to climb in. Bernie steered their jeep into line behind the captain and they continued down the road.

“One hell of a morning, huh?” said the medic to Von Leinsdorf.

“You said it, pal.”

Malmédy, Belgium

DECEMBER 16, 6:30
A.M.

Earl Grannit’s jeep covered the mile back to Elsenborn at top speed, dodging through a moving wall of vehicles as the artillery barrage continued behind them. The village was in an uproar, hungover soldiers roused from sleep running in every direction. Frantic citizens clogged the roads, belongings in hand, evacuating to the west. Grannit pulled up next to the checkpoint at the edge of town, waved over one of the young MPs trying to control the traffic spilling in from the east, and flashed his CID credentials.

“Were you on duty here night before last, son?” asked Grannit.

“I guess I was, sir,” said the MP.

“A jeep came through, sometime between nine and midnight, three men. Anything come to mind?”

“Coulda been ten like that, sir.”

“I’m only looking for one. Think about it. Something stand out?”

Another shell burst, closer to the village, less than a hundred yards from where they were parked. The MP ducked down; Grannit didn’t flinch. “Yeah, maybe. There was one came through from Bradley’s headquarters, Twelfth Army. Seemed like they were a little off course.”

“Who was in it?”

“Couple of officers. A lieutenant, I think, that’s who I talked to. They had a private driving.”

“Was their pass in order?”

“I think it was.”

“Where were they headed?”

“Somewhere south of here.”

“You get any names?”

“Sorry, Lieutenant, that’s all I remember.” Another shell exploded, even closer, and the MP ducked again. “Jesus, what the hell’s happening?”

“There’s a war going on,” said Grannit.

He steered them past the checkpoint, getting bogged down in traffic and mud on the main road halfway through the village.

“I never been shelled before,” said Carlson. “You been shelled before?”

“No. I’d say once is enough.”

“Yeah, I don’t need to go through that again.”

“Next chance you get at a radio, call Twelfth Army,” said Grannit, “see if they’ve got any patrols in this sector answers to that description.”

Carlson wrote it down.

“Where we headed, Earl? We going after them?”

“Has our job changed in the last ten minutes?”

“I guess not.”

“These are wrong guys, Ole.”

“Okay, so we’re going after ’em. So where we going?”

“You remember the location of that field hospital where they took Sergeant Mallory?”

Carlson searched his notebook. “I think I wrote it down.”

“It was Malmédy, wasn’t it?”

Just as Carlson found it in the book. “Sixty-seventh Evac.”

67th Evacuation Hospital, Malmédy

DECEMBER 16, 8:00
A.M.

When the artillery barrage began at dawn, no one at the hospital paid it much mind: By the time it ended an hour later, shells had started to land near Malmédy, word came in that the Germans had punched a hole through the American line, and paratroopers had been spotted on the ridge less than three miles away. The operating theater, which had been running at less than a third of capacity during the recent lull, was put on full alert.

A wave of ambulances arrived within minutes—front-line soldiers with blunt trauma and shrapnel wounds. Many had suffered puncture wounds when shells shattered the trees, firing splinters in every direction. A number of civilians were injured when a rocket hit near the town’s medieval Catholic cathedral after morning mass, knocking down a wall and ringing the bells.

Earl Grannit and Ole Carlson entered the large tent complex on the outskirts of Malmédy just after 7:30
A.M.
They moved past a crowd of wounded GIs stacked in the prep area, located the surgery ward, and found the senior nurse on duty, Dorothy Skogan, working in postop recovery. Grannit showed his credentials and asked about Sergeant Vincent Mallory. Skogan didn’t know the name, but recognized him from Grannit’s description.

She told them Mallory had arrived earlier that night, without dog tags, just after 3:00
A.M.
, accompanied by a medic and a pair of MPs. He had been shot three times and his complicated surgeries lasted over two hours. By the time they finished, the soldier had stabilized, his severe blood loss restored by transfusion. The surgery team had just wrapped out of the OR when the bombs started flying.

“What’s his condition?” asked Grannit.

“Critical but stable. Severe blood loss, shock and hypothermia. Gunshot wounds to the right shoulder, left hip. His jawbone’s shattered, most of his teeth fractured.”

“Is he conscious?”

“No. Won’t expect him to be for hours, if then.”

“Well. We really need to talk to him.”

“That may be difficult, Lieutenant. The bullet tore up his tongue, and we had to wire what was left of his jaw to a plate. I didn’t even know his name until you just told me; he didn’t have his tags.”

Grannit looked at Carlson, frustrated. He quickly told her that Mallory had been shot and left for dead with three other men for over twenty-four hours before they’d found him. “Anything strike you as unusual about him?”