Thankfully, no planes were overhead this day. Volkmar had seen enough of burned trucks and charred pieces of bodies to last a lifetime. A lifetime, he giggled nearly hysterically. His own lifetime could end any second now.
The German army was a mob. Not only had so many been killed by the Americans before even reaching the front, but large numbers of older men had simply collapsed and refused to move on. At first he’d been inclined to call them cowards, but many were older than his father and they were simply too exhausted to move. When they found them, SS soldiers shot them in the back of the head and called them traitors.
No, Volkmar thought, they were not traitors. They were simply old men who were poorly fed, inadequately clothed, and so tired they were incapable of moving. Was this the Reich he’d been supporting? Something was wrong. Worse, in his opinion, so many soldiers in the so-called German army weren’t German at all. Instead, they were conscripts from various nations and whose loyalty was dubious at best.
Any unit coherence had also disappeared. Instead of a platoon, Volkmar was now followed by more than a hundred dispirited Volkssturm who had no idea who he was, only that he was an officer and he was taking them in some direction.
In the distance to his front, Volkmar could hear the sounds of cannon firing. He shivered. In a while he and the others around him would close up on the tanks and attack the Americans. Volkmar was sure he would piss himself again. This time, he didn’t care.
Joachim Pieper was a veteran of the war against the Soviets and, at thirty, commanded an ad hoc mixed corps of infantry and armor. His force was supposed to penetrate the American defenses, reach the Rhine, and then turn north, cutting off the enemy defenders. Other units had similar assignments. With luck and skill they would defeat the Amis and take many prisoners.
He initially commanded two hundred and fifty tanks and an infantry brigade. He now had only maybe half that many tanks thanks to the American planes. God only knew how many infantry still followed him. They were a mixed bag of SS, regular army, and Volkssturm, and he didn’t think the Volkssturm were capable of fighting. His armor was first rate, but many of the crews were inexperienced and had never worked together. It was a recipe for disaster, but he was hell bent on avoiding that. While he preferred to maneuver and attack simultaneously from several sides, his men’s lack of experience would not permit him that luxury. No, he had chosen the simplest way and would attack straight on and smash his way to the river. They would endure heavy casualties for victory, but that was a blood price that had to be paid if the Americans were to be driven to the negotiating table.
In an attempt to reach his goal as soon as possible, Pieper’s tanks had outpaced his infantry. It was unorthodox, but he had to hit his target before the sky cleared and the bombs began to fall anew. He particularly dreaded napalm. Fire from the sky had turned so many of his Panthers and T34’s into burning pyres. If the weather turned and cleared, he might quickly find himself without any tanks at all.
Pieper opened the turret hatch of his Panther. He’d been offered a repainted T34 but had rejected it contemptuously. He would command a German tank, not a fucking piece of Russian shit. He had named the tank Sigurd after his wife, who’d tersely informed him in a letter that she didn’t necessarily consider it a compliment. Pieper thought it was funny.
His driver looked up from his own hatch. “Any idea where we are, General?”
Pieper grinned. The driver was a good man who had served with him before. “Heading right towards the enemy and that’s all that matters.”
“Wonderful,” his driver muttered and Pieper laughed. Was there anything better than fighting a war?
Muffled by the rain, he heard the sound of heavy weapons followed by the chatter of machine guns. Somebody had already made contact. He closed the hatch. No sense being a fool and getting killed by a sniper or a piece of shrapnel. They would find the Americans soon enough, maybe in minutes.
Carter’s twelve heavy Pershing tanks were lined up along the dirt road a couple of hundred yards inside the forest. They would have been invisible even on a sunny day. He’d sent out scouts with walkie-talkies but had heard nothing from them. In the distance, he could hear the rumblings of explosions. The fighting had begun.
“Damn it,” he muttered. Finally, the scouts came running back with the info that the German army was passing them and that there was a very large number of tanks. How many, they couldn’t be sure because of the crappy visibility.
“Time to earn our pay,” Carter muttered. He gave the order to move out, and the column slowly snaked its way out of the woods along paths he and Morgan had marked out with white tape on stakes the day before.
In short order they were in an open field. Carter arrayed his tanks in a line and they rumbled forward very slowly. He did not want to rear end the German army.
Shapes began to appear in front of him. Men, and they were hunched over and moving in the same direction as his tanks. Jeb keyed his radio. “We’re gonna hit the kraut infantry. Use machine guns if you have to, but not our main guns. We save those for their tanks.”
The sound of the approaching American tanks awoke the German infantry to their peril and they turned to confront the apparitions emerging from the mist. Some were puzzled. Were these more German tanks? Others saw the strange shapes and the American markings and reacted by either running or shooting. An old man leveled a panzerfaust, but a burst from a machine gun killed him. Other Pershings cut loose with their machine guns and German infantry began to drop by the score. “Kill them and keep moving,” Jeb ordered. “Don’t take chances.”
He thought he could hear screams from the outside and over the sound of his engines but wasn’t sure. He felt his tank run over something. Christ, was that a person?
Large shapes were dimly visible. German tanks. But so damn many of them, Carter thought. What the hell have I gotten myself into?
“Hit them in the rear. Kill them quickly.”
Pieper was confused. What the devil was the source of the automatic weapons fire from his rear? What Volkssturm asshole had begun shooting his own men? Ah well, it was inevitable in such crummy fighting conditions.
At the same time his mind registered the sound of cannon fire also coming from his rear, the Panther to his left exploded. A second burst into flames, and then a third.
“Turn, turn,” he ordered into his radio. “The goddamned Americans have tanks in our rear.”
He spun his tank on its own axis to face the new threat. There, he saw one. It was bigger than any American tank he’d seen before and quickly identified it as a Pershing. There’d been rumors that the Amis had some in the area and they’d just been confirmed.
Several more Panthers and T34’s exploded or started belching smoke before his men could find targets and respond. The American main gun was a killer. The attack on the American defenses would have to wait until this new threat was taken care of.
Carter was appalled. What kind of hornet’s nest had he disturbed? The weather seemed to be lifting slightly and he could see maybe a quarter of a mile. More than a dozen German tanks were burning, but what looked like every tank in the whole damned German army was turning and driving in his direction. They were already within almost point blank range and this was going to turn into a street fight.