David Healey
Gods & Snipers: A World War II Thriller
"There's nothing so much like a god on earth as a General on a battlefield."
Chapter One
On the day that Caje Cole lost his sniper rifle, it finally rained. After a spell of summer heat and drought, the skies opened up and drenched the French countryside. Lightning laced the sky and thunder rumbled deep as any distant German 88. An autumn chill rode in with the rain and wind.
It was September 1944. The fight to push the Germans out of France had been tough and bloody. Even the rain couldn’t wash away the many signs of war in the wrecked vehicles, burned villages, and fresh graves in the fields.
The wet weather also kept Allied planes grounded, which meant that German tanks could operate unimpeded, roving the French countryside. Sherman tanks were suddenly scarce, forced into inaction by a lack of fuel. For the men on the ground, nothing felt quite so unnerving as wondering if you were going to run into a Panther tank around the next bend in the road.
German forces had been in an organized retreat since they had lost the final battle for Normandy at the Falaise Pocket, but the weather gave them a window of opportunity to organize a counterattack. One thing about the Germans — they weren't giving up anytime soon. The Jerries were making the Allies pay a heavy price for every square mile of territory gained.
As a result, Cole and the rest of the small patrol moved cautiously along a narrow road, spread out in single file, with Cole just ahead of Vaccaro. Vaccaro was also a sniper, but he didn’t have Cole’s gift with a rifle. He wasn’t a natural-born predator like Cole. If Cole was a wolf, Vaccaro was more like a junkyard dog. Even now, Vaccaro’s feet plodded, shambling along with his head down, while Cole's eyes moved tirelessly across the landscape on both sides of the road.
Cole was one of those people who was always switched on. He never relaxed. It was a survival trait inherited from cavemen, to worry constantly that a saber-tooth tiger was waiting around the bend. Or a German tank. Before joining the Army, Cole had known only a hardscrabble life in the Appalachian Mountains, where his father was a moonshiner. His own baptism by fire had taken place in those mountains, when he had hunted down his father’s killer when he was scarcely old enough to shave.
Without taking his eyes off the sodden landscape, Cole said, "When it stormed like this back home, the old Cherokee people would say that the gods must be angry."
"The gods, huh?" said Vaccaro, shaking his head. He had grown up Italian Roman Catholic in Brooklyn. He knew about Mary, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, but not gods in the pagan sense. "If you ask me, I don't think the gods — or God — pay a whole lot of attention to what's happening down here."
"I reckon you'd be surprised," Cole said.
Cole didn't rightly know what religion he was, but he sure as hell believed in the Almighty. The Army chaplains liked to say that there was no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole, and Cole was no exception. He had always enjoyed what the old folks back home called a “bawl and jump” preacher, whenever the Cole family had gone to camp meeting to get some religion. His pa had mostly spent those gatherings selling a few bottles of moonshine and drinking with the other men among the battered, dusty trucks parked in the field. You never would have known it was a dry county.
The problem was that his pa drank more moonshine than he sold. Never mind that he had a wife and children to feed — he was more interested in getting good and drunk. Even now, Cole couldn’t hate his pa. He had come to understand that his pa was a weak man in many ways — bad with money and driven to drink. When he was sober, he was at home in the woods like no man alive. You might say that his pa had been a mix of strengths and weaknesses, like most folks.
At those camp meetings, Cole kept among the crowd watching the preacher threaten hellfire and eternal damnation for their sins. He had searched his soul as a boy for sins and come up empty. Now he knew better than to look. "We call him God and the old Cherokees called them gods, so take your pick. The question is, are them gods angry at us fightin' each other, or for not fightin' enough?"
"When I get to the Pearly Gates, I'll be sure to ask St. Peter."
"St. Peter is up in heaven, City Boy, so it ain't likely you'll see him anytime soon."
"Very funny, Hillbilly," Vaccaro said. He grew thoughtful. ”What do you think God looks like?"
Cole thought about that. "Well, I reckon he's about as big as a mountain, with a stony face, and a shock of white hair and a big ol’ beard to match," he said. The rain muffled their voices, so he wasn't much worried about the sound carrying and alerting any Germans down the road.
"Yeah? A big white beard and white hair? That seems about right," Vaccaro agreed.
They walked on. It had been so hot, and for so long, that at first the rain was welcome. The rain washed away some of the blood and softened the scars of war in the landscape. Occasionally, they passed the trunks of shattered trees, bone white in the gloom, or the burned hulks of tanks. The clean smell of the rain kept the smell of burned rubber — and worse — at bay. But for a soldier on foot, rain isn't pleasant for long. Churned by tank treads and horses' hooves and the boots of countless men, the roads turned into a morass.
Their scout-sniper squad was down to four men — Cole, Vaccaro, and two others named Airey and West. The last two were not replacement troops but had been in Normandy since D Day. Cole didn’t know them well because they had only been thrown together a few days ago. Their function was more as spotters — Cole and Vaccaro were the only ones with designated sniper weapons, both of them equipped with scope-mounted Springfield rifles.
Lieutenant Mulholland had been temporarily reassigned to headquarters and the squad had been handed off to a sergeant named Stern, who had caught a burst of machine gun fire two days ago and wouldn't be in charge of anything, ever again. The four men knew their business, though, and Cole was nominally in charge.
Officially, they were attached to an infantry regiment, but the truth was that they were on their own. That was just fine with Cole. Their mission was simple. Whenever they encountered a German sniper, they were to take him out.
It was an important task. A single enemy sniper could hold up an entire company. Worse yet, a sniper might move unseen along a unit's flank and pick off soldiers as the unit advanced. The Germans had a regular training program for snipers and were quite adept at the tactics involved. German snipers learned about camouflage and were equipped with the best telescopic sights available. On the U.S. side, snipers were men who fell into the job and didn’t receive any real training, putting the Americans at a distinct disadvantage.
At this late stage, most of the German snipers tended to be fanatical teenagers — often members of the Hitler Youth — who had been given a modicum of training. They had been taught to shoot but not to survive. Cole and the others didn't much like killing kids who couldn’t have been much more than fifteen or sixteen, but even these kids could be very deadly with a scoped Mauser in their hands.
Unlike adults, these boys didn't understand the rules of engagement. One minute, they would surrender, and then the next minute, they would pull a Luger out of nowhere and start shooting. Crazy kids. It was best not to take prisoners.
They had not encountered any Germans today, but that didn't mean the Jerries weren't there.
Up ahead, he saw a blur of movement through the curtain of rain. Cole raised his fist, signaling a halt. They crouched, ready to fire. Cole put his rifle to his shoulder and peered through the telescopic sight, but all that he could see was more rain.