"Shoot him," Lange said. The Oberst had heard rumors that SS soldiers captured by the Americans did not make it to the rear. He would return the favor. Besides, he had few enough men as it was and did not want to detail anyone to guarding a single captured American. "No prisoners."
The soldier's grin vanished. "Yes, sir."
The soldier shoved the American between the shoulder blades, pushing him deeper into the nearby field. The American knew what was coming, but to his credit, he did not complain. The machine gun fired, and the prisoner slumped to the ground, dead.
With the Americans thrown back across the river, the SS troops secured their position for the night. He expected no further trouble, and the Americans didn't prove him wrong. Aside from a false alarm involving a herd of cows, it proved to be a quiet night. In the morning, they woke to gray skies and dense, low-hanging clouds. Lange was reassured that once again, they would not have to worry about Allied air attacks.
Having repelled the attempt to force a bridgehead at Dornot, the commander of the SS troops on the east bank of the Moselle faced something of a quandary. He could stay in place in order to stop any additional incursions, or he could move on, perhaps enabling him to halt another attempt at a crossing downstream. Surely, not even the Americans would be bold or stubborn enough to attempt a crossing in the same spot. Orders were a long time in coming. Whatever was left of the command structure had apparently forgotten about him and his unit. Left in limbo, Lange and his men waited, guns aimed toward the river for a follow-up assault that never came. There weren’t enough American soldiers left to launch a new attack.
Finally, new orders arrived. Lange called his officers and sergeants together. "We are moving out," he said. "Gather the men. We will leave a small force here in the forts, but the Americans aren't going to attack here again, not when there are easier crossings downstream."
"Where are we going, sir?"
Lange stabbed a finger at the map spread across the hood of a Kübelwagen. "We go here. A town called Ville sur Moselle."
Lange and his men had been ordered to the south of their current position. This town had an intact bridge across the Moselle that must be secured before the American forces could use it as a crossing point. Lange’s orders to destroy the bridge were simple enough.
The bridge was not far. By boat, it was no more than a voyage of half an hour. But Lange and his men had no small boats and would have to take the road instead. The problem was that the road did not run parallel to the river. The region's ubiquitous hills meant that Lange and his men would have to move west, away from the river, before turning east again toward the town and its bridge.
With any luck, they would be there by nightfall. Maybe tomorrow morning, depending upon what they ran into on the road.
They moved out and Lange soon realized that he had not counted on was the fact that there were only a few narrow roads through this hilly region, and many retreating German troops using those roads. What at first was a trickle of troops soon become a flood by midafternoon. Lange found himself hopelessly bogged down as they encountered broken Wehrmacht forces plodding along the road. He found himself disdainful of their attitude of defeat. Many had no weapons but seemed intent only on staying ahead of the Allied advance.
Lange fought the urge to shoot a few of them as an example, or to force them to clear the road for the SS troops. But Lange was not an oblivious fool. Not all of the Wehrmacht forces were unarmed, many were battle-hardened veterans, and they far outnumbered his own men. He witnessed open hostility toward his SS troops in the looks and sour words they received when trying to muscle their way through the throng on the road. As defeat seemed to be the outcome of the war, many now saw the SS troops as zealots who had gotten them into this mess in the first place.
One of his men started shoving a Wehrmacht soldier whom he thought was going to slow. "Hurry it up!"
The man shoved back. Just a few weeks before, it would have been unthinkable for a Wehrmacht soldier to dare stand up to SS troops. As it turned out, this Wehrmacht soldier was not the only one fed up with the SS. A crowd formed, with more shoving all around and hot words. Lange could see that both his men and the Wehrmacht troops had their fingers on their triggers. He needed to defuse this situation before tempers flared even more.
The situation quickly escalated until Lange waded in and separated them. "We are all Germans here," he shouted. "If anyone wants to fight, take your rifle and march the other way!"
The stream of plodding soldiers gradually resumed, but the dirty looks they were getting from the Wehrmacht troops only increased. There did not seem to be many officers around, and those who were present seemed share the same sentiment toward SS troops as their men. It was likely that most of the other officers were dead. The fighting at the Falaise Gap had taken a heavy toll on the officer corps. Unfortunately, many of those who had been promoted did not have the age or experience to lead effectively. Even Lange himself felt that he was not quite prepared to take on a role that went beyond his Hauptmann rank, but he had no choice in the matter.
"I don't like the looks of this, sir," one of the sergeants said, grasping his machine pistol tightly.
"Just keep going, and make sure the men don't cause any trouble," Lange said.
Finally, the Kübelwagen’s speed was reduced to a crawl in first gear due to the press of men on the narrow, muddy road. He had hoped to lead his men to their objective by nightfall, but it was going to take them longer.
Blowing the bridge at Ville sur Moselle would just have to wait until tomorrow.
Chapter Ten
Frenchie dragged himself up the river bank, panting and gasping. He found himself upon a flat stone that formed a landing where someone might launch a rowboat. Stone steps, worn smooth over time, led up the steep bank. The air smelled faintly of dead fish and dank mud. Frenchie sprawled across the landing stone, letting the water run off him, and figured out what to do next.
He was still alive, or at least, he seemed to be, unless this was some dream from the afterlife and he was actually dead. He'd read a Western story like that once in high school English class, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. But no, his heart pounded and his lungs ached too much from the effort of swimming for this to be anything but real. Also, he began to shiver. The sky remained low and overcast, almost clinging to the landscape, and the wind had a damp edge.
He was bleeding from his leg. He pushed the fabric aside to reveal an angry red furrow in his thigh. Nothing deep, although it stung like fire. He knew that it was a bullet wound. Now that he was out of the river, blood was pooling in the gouge and running down his thigh, staining his trousers. He'd have to do something about that eventually, but he wasn't bleeding to death.
An image flashed in his head of the fat bullet hole in Marty’s helmet. He knew that hed be having nightmares about that for years to come. His stomach clenched all over again, the thought of his friend's death causing actual physical pain.
“I’m sorry, Marty,” he groaned. “I’ll write your parents. I promise.”
He took stock of the rest of his body. There didn't seem to be any bullet holes, which was a good sign. His wet uniform reeked of muddy water and old sweat.
God, he was thirsty. Who would have thought that he'd be thirsty, after swimming the river?
He sat up and looked around. He seemed to be all alone. The water was smooth and empty. He studied the bridge more closely. It was narrow, arched, and built of stone. Frenchie was no kind of expert, but to him the bridge looked ancient or medieval.