The general grinned. "That's the spirit."
One of the men broke into song and the singing spread. The song was called “Erika.” Popular since before the war, it was a rousing tune that stuck in one’s head. The lyrics themselves were sentimental rather than martiaclass="underline"
Unterbrink felt a lump in his throat.
Sixty-three men. Such good men. He would command them as proudly as a division.
He watched them going by, singing now, carrying Panzerfaust over their shoulders, two MG-42 machine guns, ammunition. They might be short of fuel and food, but weapons remained plentiful. The soldiers’ burdens were heavy, many were footsore or hungry, or they ached for their lost comrades. Energized by the patriotic song, they swung along the road with a new spring in their step.
The Allies had breached the Atlantic Wall and the Germans had lost the battle for France at the Falaise Gap. Their broken forces streamed toward Germany and what was called the West Wall — the Fatherland's last line of defense. There, what remained of the German military would make a last stand, trying to ignore the fact that the dreaded Russians were pressing toward Berlin on the Eastern Front. The Leader kept promising super weapons that would turn the tide. Unterbrink knew better. Victory or defeat would be in the hands of men such as these.
Battered and bleeding, the German nation was being forced to fight for its life on two fronts. Better than most, General Unterbrink understood that strategically, victory on two fronts was an impossible task. The best that they could hope for was to bring the enemy advance to a halt long enough to buy Germany time — or possibly a seat at the negotiating table.
Over the summer, a group of officers had tried to assassinate Hitler with a bomb. They had come close, but The Leader had survived to exact terrible revenge on the officers, along with their friends and families. Hundreds had been rounded up and shot. There were rumors of cruel punishments involving meat hooks and basement hangings carried out by the Gestapo, along with forced suicides.
Unterbrink thanked his lucky stars that he hadn't been part of that circle. Anyhow, if Hitler had been killed, there might have been a power struggle in the resulting vacuum just when Germany needed strength.
Hitler had consolidated power in the wake of the assassination attempt. The general thought that Hitler's command decisions were increasingly erratic and desperate, but Unterbrink kept such thoughts to himself. Besides, his war had come down to these sixty-three men and the need to get them across the Moselle River.
Off to one side of the crossroads, Hauer stood holding a sniper rifle. He was about average height but solidly built, like a heavyweight boxer. He was not singing but keeping watch over the neighboring woods and fields. Only when the last of the men had gone up the road did Hauer seem to relax.
The sniper's gaze fell upon the two young French boys who were still watching the last of the soldiers. One of the boys had started doing a goose step, marching back and forth along the road. The stiff-legged march had become familiar to French residents watching the German occupiers arrive. The retreating troops were not doing the goose step today. Clearly, the boy was mocking the Germans.
"What are you playing at?" Hauer demanded. “Do you think this is funny?”
Too late, the boys realized their mistake. The boys would have been better off running away, but they froze. Whether or not they spoke German didn't matter because they could understand the sniper's angry tone. Hauer walked over and cuffed the bigger boy violently in the head, knocking him to the ground. Hauer then kicked him savagely, causing the boy to cry out. Hauer would have kicked him again, but the boy was too quick and rolled away out of reach.
Coming to their senses, the boys ran off. The sniper started to raise his rifle to shoot them.
"Hauer, get in," the general said, fully aware that he had just spared the lives of the two French boys.
The sniper lowered his rifle and looked up. He had intense blue eyes. "Yes, sir."
Hauer walked over and got into the passenger seat. He set the rifle between his knees, within easy reach, the barrel pointing up. Unterbrink sat in the back seat, which was nearly overflowing with gear, from medical equipment to an iron curaiss from the Great War that Hauer had found in a barn. The Kübelwagen was one of only two vehicles available at the moment and had been pressed into service to carry whatever it could.
As he settled into the seat, Unterbrink could not resist a nervous glance at the skies.
"It looks like we have lost the Americans for now," the general said.
"They'll be right behind us. To be honest, sir, I'm more worried about their damn planes."
"Do you think that you can shoot down a plane with that rifle of yours?" the general asked.
"I can try." Hauer seemed to think it over, as if it was an actual possibility. "But I doubt it."
The general gave the sniper a sideways look, wondering if the man was serious. Shoot down a plane with a rifle? It would be just like the sniper to try. He liked Hauer's style, though; a few more like him, and the Wehrmacht might not be in retreat right now. Nonetheless, the general had to admit that there had been a few excesses along the road that had brought them here, and it was usually Hauer who was at the heart of them.
The young man had been a butcher before the war, and it showed in his occasional acts of brutality. He would have shot those two boys just now, for example. Unterbrink was usually willing to look the other way when the sniper went too far, so long as Hauer got results. As the situation became more desperate these last few weeks, the general had increasingly come to depend on Hauer when things became difficult. Hauer could be relied upon when there was hard, dirty work to be done. He could not but help to think of it as letting a dog off a leash. Hauer was his indeed his own personal Rottweiler.
Unterbrink lit a cigarette and sighed. He would have preferred a different war, and a different time. He often though of his ancestors, aristocratic Prussians who had served all the way back to the Napoleonic Wars. Their portraits had stared down from the walls of his ancestral home, proud men in immaculate uniforms shiny with gold braid and impressive medals. Those had been the days of swords and horses and black powder. Unterbrink was fighting in a war with tanks and planes and machine guns — and bloody butchers with telescopic sights on their high-powered rifles.
He pushed such thoughts aside. This was a time for action, not introspection. There would be plenty of time for that when the war was over — if they survived.
"We need to keep going. If we can just find a bridge across the Moselle, we'll be that much closer to the West Wall,” Unterbrink announced. He unfolded a map, tapped it with a gloved finger. He continued after a moment, as if thinking out loud. “This place looks promising. Ville sur Moselle. It’s just a few kilometers from here.”
“Yes, sir. The sooner that we get across that river, the better,” Hauer agreed.
“There will be antiaircraft guns and what's left of the Luftwaffe once we get closer to Germany, to give us some cover from these Allied planes,” Unterbrink said.
Hauer glanced at the sky. Grunted. "Looks like rain. That would be a good thing for us! It would keep their planes grounded."
“Let’s move out while we can.” The general leaned forward and touched the driver's shoulder, and the Kübelwagen leaped forward.
Chapter Six
Just a few miles to the north of Ville sur Moselle, American troops were preparing to fight their way across the river at the town of Dornot in order to establish a bridgehead.