Acrimonious thoughts would not help his shooting, so Rohde put his feud with Hohenfeldt out of mind and focused on what he could see through the slightly foggy scope.
Still, the American lookout had not spotted him. Slowly, the soldier eased over the stone wall and crept into the field.
Rohde let him, keeping watch through the scope.
Next, the American began to cross the field, running in a crouch, his rifle held to one side. Rohde guessed that the weapon was an M1 and he frowned. Like Rohde, most German soldiers were equipped with the bolt action Mauser K98. This was an incredibly accurate and reliable weapon, based on decades of use and refinement since the days of the Kaiser. In fact, the Americans had long ago stolen the bolt action design for use in their own Springfield rifles. Back before the Great War, the Mauser brothers had taken the federal Springfield Armory to court and won a judgment against the armory. It became one of history's ironies that even as the war raged, the United States continued to honor its legal obligations by paying royalties to the Mauser firm.
But in many ways, the Mauser was a weapon from an earlier era, better suited to colonial occupations and the trench fighting of the First World War than to modern warfare.
The rifle had one major shortcoming, which was its reliable and much-copied bolt action design. Each time a soldier fired a shot, he had to manipulate the bolt, which ejected the spent shell. The spring in the magazine then fed a fresh shell into the chamber. Then the bolt was pushed forward, and with a swift downward motion, locked into place. Now the rifle could be fired again. In practice, it took just a second or two to complete this action in the hands of a competent soldier. Unfortunately, working the bolt action often meant that the shooter had to acquire the target all over again.
Given the opportunity for multiple targets, Rohde found this to be a huge disadvantage.
His rifle also had its own quirk in that the bolt tended to stick, forcing him to lock it down using a quick whack with the heel of his palm. Again, the motion cost precious time.
The M1 carried by the American was a semiautomatic. This meant that the weapon fired every time that the trigger was pulled. The rifle ejected the spent shell, loaded a new round from the clip of eight bullets, and cocked itself in a fraction of a second. The gas operation of the action slightly reduced the recoil. All the while, the shooter could keep his eye on the target. In terms of elapsed time, the advantage of the M1 over the K98 would seem to be an infinitesimal one, but in combat conditions the improved rate of fire was a huge asset.
Rohde wanted one of those semiautomatics. He wished for something new and modern. Not an M1, but the German version known as the Gewehr 43. There were even a few sniper versions outfitted with telescopic sights. They were few and far between in Normandy, but Rohde knew for a fact that that fat sausage of an armorer Hohenfeldt had one such rifle sitting unused, if one could believe it.
Again, Rohde forced himself to focus on the task at hand. Through the scope, he followed the progress of the American across the field.
Now that the soldier was halfway across, the American appeared to relax. He stood straighter. Before, he'd been hunched over. His gait seemed easier. He seemed to be thinking that if he'd made it this far, then nobody was going to shoot at him.
The sun was shining; it was too nice of a summer day to die.
The soldier kept going, and again, Rohde let him.
The sun beat down and turned the exterior of Rohde's helmet as warm as a teapot. Rivulets of sweat ran down his handsome face. Some of that sweat dripped past his eyebrow and into his eyes, the salt stinging. He blinked to clear his vision.
Attracted by the moisture, an ant crawled up Rohde's neck. Its tiny mandibles sank into the sweetness of human flesh, sampling the possibilities it offered. Rohde ignored the stinging. A red welt blossomed on his neck.
Other insects buzzed in the tall grass around him. A bird landed in a nearby bush, oblivious to the motionless human just feet away. Farther off was the chatter of a machine gun, a reminder that instant death lurked on this summer day.
Two hundred feet away, the American was now halfway across the field. Obliviously running at an oblique angle closer to the sniper.
This was as close as Rohde ever been to an American, not counting dead ones.
He heard a sound behind him. Someone heavy crawling through the brush. Trying to be stealthy about it, but making as much noise as an entire squad. He didn't take his eye off the scope because he knew who it was. If it had been an American coming up behind him, Rohde would already be dead.
"What are you waiting for? Shoot him, Rohde."
The disembodied voice belonged to Hauptmann Fischer.
Fischer had displayed a fascination on more than one occasion with snipers, or Jäger as they were sometimes known in the Wehrmacht. The German word meant hunter. Rohde half expected the impatient captain to take the rifle himself. It was Fischer, after all, who had seen Rohde's talent and put the sniper rifle in his hands. Rohde had become his special prodigy, his secret weapon.
Up close, Fischer had a masculine smell of Sandalwood-scented aftershave mixed with tobacco and fresh sweat. Even now, he managed to be cleanly shaven, his uniform neat except for a few burrs that now clung to it thanks to his crawl toward Rohde's position.
His neat appearance could have seemed prissy or affected in another officer, but Fischer had made it clear to the men in his command that appearance was synonymous with competence.
Rohde liked Fischer, even if he was wary of his increasingly frequent fits of temper. He was a capable officer from a Prussian military family, but like the Mauser rifle, he belonged to an earlier age. The Hauptmann would have been happier walking shoulder to shoulder in organized ranks toward the orderly files of Napoleon's army, for example. Volleys of musket fire could then be exchanged at close quarters, with the engagement settled by a bayonet charge. The officers might seek each other out and fight with swords, like gentlemen.
While the Hauptmann might have preferred a more organized form of battle, he remained a realist. Fischer seemed to find this business of crawling about on one's belly to be distasteful, even undignified, but that was modern warfare for you. He did not find it at all odd when German generals swallowed sodium cyanide — or the muzzles of their own pistols — when they had failed in their duty. It never occurred to a disgraced American or English general to shoot himself; most of them went home and ran for political office. Fischer took this as another indicator of German military superiority.
Fischer was a good soldier, but the long war was wearing him down. Still in his twenties, he was only somewhat older and more worldly than most of the troops he commanded. Lately, the replacement troops tended to be younger and younger to the point that he felt more like their father rather than an older brother. He had been a lieutenant for much of the war, but promotion was coming more quickly these days. At the rate the Wehrmacht was losing its officer corps in battle, he liked to joke that he might be a general by the end of the year.
He was a little too smart for his own good and in the heat of the moment he sometimes made deprecating comments about the German war effort that would have been dangerous if overheard by the wrong people.
Lately, he had developed a very bad temper. He had punched or slapped more than one soldier, and his men were sure that it was only a matter of time before he shot someone as a disciplinary measure. Such things were allowed in the Wehrmacht. In Fischer's case, his anger was a symptom of combat fatigue. But like his men, he had no choice but to go on until the bitter end.