"No, I will let you have that honor." He turned back to his young SS driver. "Get us out of here."
When the bullets started flying, Hank was so stunned that he just stood there, unable to move. He would have been mowed down in seconds, but Ralph tackled him and knocked him to the ground, partially covering Hank with his own body in the process.
Ralph’s actions saved him — if only for the moment. He felt Ralph shudder as a flurry of bullets struck him. Then the firing stopped, as suddenly as it had begun.
Ralph lay there groaning in pain, his body still draped partway over Hank's own. Hank realized his legs felt wet and warm. He was horrified to see that blood covered his legs. He wasn't sure if it was Ralph’s blood or his own — not that he was in any pain. Had he been shot and simply hadn't felt it in these freezing temperatures? Already, the bitter cold seeped up through the ground and into his bones.
All around him, he could hear others in the field moaning. He could also hear the grind of gears and the groan of engines. The German column of tanks and trucks — including some of their own trucks now — was on the move again.
Good. At least now they had a chance to survive if the Germans left.
But the Germans were not finished with their killing field.
Peering from under Ralph’s arm, which was flung over his face, Hank saw a group of SS soldiers standing at the edge of the field near the road, smoking cigarettes. The SS commander was nowhere in sight, but Hank spotted the sergeant with the scar on his cheek. That man tossed away his cigarette, drew a pistol, and walked out into the field, calling, "Hey, you OK?" Two more soldiers followed him, pistols drawn.
Some poor soul made the mistake of answering the SS sergeant. He heard an American voice cry out, "Over here! Over here!" Then came the crack of a pistol, and silence.
It was terrifying to lay there, wondering what was going to happen next. From his vantage point, he could see only a narrow swath of the field, but he dared not move. He heard another pistol shot, then another, as the Germans worked their way through the field.
Hank's heart pounded harder. To his horror, he realized that his warm breath was creating a cloud of vapor. It wasn't much, to be sure, but to the eyes of the Nazis walking around the field looking for survivors to shoot, he was sure his breath would look like the smoke from a forest fire.
He sucked in one last breath and held it, praying.
Then Ralph moaned. He was still alive. But he was going to get them both killed.
He heard German voices, coming closer.
"Please, Ralph, I know it hurts, but you've got to be quiet," he whispered. "Please Ralph."
Ralph moaned again. It was no use. He was too out of it to hear Hank's warning.
Sure enough, Ralph’s moans had drawn the attention of the SS sergeant with the nasty scar. Hank saw him coming, and shut his eyes. His best hope was to play dead. He forced himself not to breathe and told himself that he had to keep his body limp, no matter what.
He could hear the SS men shouting in English, "Hey Joe! Who needs a doctor?"
A few desperate men called out in response. Moments later, they were silenced forever by a single pistol shot.
He heard the SS sergeant walk up. The man smelled strongly of cigarettes and diesel fumes, with a whiff of alcohol thrown in. To Hank, it was the smell of death.
"Hey Joe. Are you OK?" The sergeant asked. When there was no answer, he kicked Ralph’s foot. Ralph moaned in response. The sergeant shot him. Hank felt the body jerk and then go limp as a rag doll.
Don't move, don't move, don't—
He knew that in spite of himself he had jumped when the sergeant fired into Ralph’s body. How could the SS sergeant not have seen it? The German may have thought it was just from the jolt of the bullet hitting the body above.
"Last chance," he said, then kicked at Hank's foot.
Hank heard him work the slide on the pistol, cycling another round into the chamber. He was so frozen with fear that he couldn’t have moved if he wanted to.
“Help me!” one of the wounded GIs called from several yards away.
Hank sensed the sergeant moving in that direction. He had thought holding his breath would be difficult. It was harder telling himself to breathe again.
He heard a gunshot and the soldier who had been crying for help fell silent.
Would the sergeant come back? Hank screwed his eyes shut and started counting to ten. It would be good to live another ten seconds.
He counted to five, heard the Germans moving through the field again, double checking their handiwork.
He got to eight, his heart pounding as he imagined the German standing over him, about to put a bullet in his brain.
Ten. Still alive. He started counting again. Just ten seconds more, God. That’s all I ask. Just ten seconds.
He got to eight again when he heard laughter and the sound of an engine starting. Having finished delivering the coup de grace to the wounded Americans, the SS soldiers drove away.
Still, Hank did not move. He did not open his eyes. What if it was a trick? The cold crept up from the frozen ground. He imagined he could hear the heat leaving the bodies all around him, in the same way that a truck motor ticks as it cools.
The Germans were gone. All around him lay a sea of silent bodies.
Finally, Hank forced himself to his knees. He glanced at Ralph’s dead body. Then he retched again and again, the contents of his stomach spilling across the snow. His vision blurred. And then everything went black.
CHAPTER 7
Hundreds of miles away at Allied headquarters in Paris, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower tossed the latest communiqué from the front down on his desk and lit another cigarette.
“It’s just a feint,” Ike said. “The Germans are stirring the pot, but it’s nothing serious. It can’t be. They don’t have enough men to staff a Rotary carnival, let alone an offensive.”
Eisenhower inhaled the smoke deeply. He was up to four packs a day. Not to mention the endless cups of coffee and terrible diet. He was too busy to eat properly. Yet for a man in his mid-fifties he looked quite fit — if one overlooked the fact that he was balding and carried a small potbelly — but it did not take much to imagine him as the West Point football player that he had once been.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, sir,” said Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, his chief of staff. His nickname was Beetle, although by nature he was much closer to a Doberman — woe to anyone who interfered with Ike’s schedule or tried to waste the general’s time.
“When’s Kay getting back? We’re supposed to see a movie tonight.”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Ike’s pretty Irish driver, Kay Sommersby, was out doing some Christmas shopping on Ike’s behalf. It was a poorly kept secret that she was the general’s mistress. Yet neither Ike nor Sommersby found anything odd in having her pick out something nice for the general’s wife, Mamie, safely out of the way stateside.
Ike smoked and thought. All day long reports of German activity in the Ardennes had been coming in. None of it made sense. “Listen, Beetle. You know as well as I do that the Germans are finished. It’s just a matter of time. They don’t have the resources for a counteroffensive. Why they don’t just do us all a favor and give up is anybody’s guess.”
“Because it’s Adolf Hitler, sir. That’s why.”
Ike was a man who operated on percentages and forecasts and compromise. He admired brilliant military strategists, particularly General Robert E. Lee, but Eisenhower’s great talent was as a politician and administrator. He was the glue that held together sometimes prickly Allied forces. He relied on Omar Bradley and George Patton to lead troops on the field. They were Ike’s equivalent of James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, both of whom had been Lee’s top generals during the Civil War.