His small company of seventy men was about ten miles inland. They’d landed stealthily and without incident, using rubber boats powered by outboard motors that had been towed by PTs. He’d been able to report back that the area around Port Maitland was, as expected, largely undefended. He also reported that there were no large enemy concentrations inland either. Apparently the Germans were focused on the Niagara River line, which meant that a quick thrust by the invading GIs could put an entire army in their rear. But it would not happen this night, he concluded sadly. The bombardment had begun too late, although he wondered just what were they bombarding since there were no German defenses for several miles to either side of the target area.
It occurred to him that maybe the Germans thought the coming attack was a feint. He hoped it wasn’t. He and his men were primed and ready. Landry also felt that Port Maitland, just a speck of a town, wasn’t a bad place to land as it was connected to civilization by a network of well-maintained dirt roads. One led towards the Welland Canal and Buffalo, while another twisted north to Hamilton. A quick and strong move towards Hamilton might just cut off the entire German army at Niagara. Other roads led west towards the Nazi’s lines, but the Germans were too far away to be an immediate concern.
Landry’s company was arrayed in the fields on both sides of the road leading to Hamilton, which was somewhat larger than a speck at ten thousand souls. He doubted that more than a couple of hundred people lived in Port Maitland.
As darkness fell, he felt that an opportunity to dash into the German army’s rear had been wasted. He just hoped that his men’s lives weren’t going to be wasted.
“Company’s coming,” yelled one of his lookouts. His men scrambled to their positions. They were dug in and well concealed by growing crops of wheat and corn.
A short column of five vehicles moved down the road. The first vehicle was a four passenger Kubelwagen, the German equivalent of a jeep. The other vehicles were General Motors trucks that had clearly been commandeered by the Germans and painted with Wehrmacht markings.
Landry’s men were on either side of the road and arrayed in a shallow V. He used his walky-talky to communicate his plans to his second in command on the other side of the road.
The Germans drew closer, driving slowly, but without apparent concern. Their headlights were out in deference to American planes which further slowed them.
When the Germans were about a hundred yards away, Landry ordered his men to open fire. Rifle and machine gun bullets from both sides of the road ripped through the Kubelwagen and the soft cloth sides of the trucks. He could hear the Germans scream as they died. Some tumbled out of their vehicles and fired wildly before they were cut down, while others, smarter, fled into the fields. He thought a couple of them might have gotten away, but it didn’t matter. The German command would know about this soon enough. He did a count and he’d suffered no casualties. Other than those who might have escaped, there were no German survivors. The couple of Nazi wounded they’d captured died of their wounds within a few minutes.
The German dead were searched and weapons were taken. The krauts had good machine guns and now Landry owned a couple of them, along with a supply of ammunition. Two of the trucks actually still ran and he had those driven off and hidden. They might become useful and Rangers were supposed to be resourceful. Maybe they could drive the damned things right into Toronto? The German dead were dumped into the other trucks and were pushed out of sight, while the debris was picked up before they set up the ambush again. He felt like a spider repairing its web after snaring a fly, a big fat Nazi fly.
Damn, it felt good to hit the pricks.
Eisenhower was livid. “What do you mean we’re not going in, Brad? What the hell is going on out there?”
Lieutenant General Omar Bradley commanded three army corps, one of which was Fredendall’s. It consisted of three division infantry divisions, and he too had just been informed that the attack had been canceled, called on account of darkness.
“An amphibious assault is not a baseball game,” snarled Ike. "It doesn’t get called on account of darkness.”
“Ike, I’m as shocked as you are. Of course nothing ever goes totally right, so I’m not surprised that the invasion got off to a late start, but I don’t get the order to stand down and have the troops sit all night in the middle of Lake Erie.”
“Have you spoken to him? Is he on the coast or still at Fort Fredendall?”
Bradley winced. The men in Fredendall’s command had taken to calling his overly fortified headquarters by that disparaging name. “As near as I can tell, he’s en route from Niagara to someplace south and west of Buffalo.”
Ike angrily lit a cigarette and glowered. “All of which means he’s out of touch and probably doesn’t really know what the hell is going on. Did you tell him that he should take the chance and land at night? If there are no Germans in the area, it should be safe and any confusion caused by the darkness can be fixed rather quickly.”
“I did and he reminded me that he was the commander on the ground and that he had a better sense of things than I did. He added that there have already been skirmishes between his Rangers and Germans headed to the landing site and he feels that major forces are coming right on their tail. I didn’t like the lecture, but it’s something I would normally agree with. Right now, though, we may be missing an opportunity.”
“What does General Truscott think?”
Bradley suppressed a smile. Along with being a highly regarded war planner, Truscott had been instrumental in forming the Army Ranger units currently in the field, both in Ontario and in the Pacific.
“Off the record, Lucian managed to contact one of his boys, a Lieutenant Landry, and he was told that nothing was happening. No major German forces were moving towards Port Maitland. He said that if we strike hard and fast, we can be ashore and well inland before the krauts know we’ve come knocking.”
“So it’s up to Fredendall to get his men ashore and moving inland as quickly as possible. Brad, do you think he will do it?”
“I honestly don’t know. This is his first major command and, like all of us, he’s never had so much responsibility. Even though he’s a favorite of Marshall’s and a legendary fire-breather, I really don’t know what he’s capable of when the chips are down.”
Ike nodded. This had proven to be a dilemma for all the armed services. Men who’d performed brilliantly in peacetime weren’t necessarily good war leaders. Trouble was, nobody knew until the fighting started. Careers had already been destroyed. Admiral Kimmel had been sacked because of his performance at Pearl Harbor along with General Short, and Admiral Ghormley had been relieved for lack of leadership in the fighting for the Solomon Islands. Would Fredendall be the next?
Nobody wanted to point out that the swaggering Fredendall had never led men in combat because so many other generals, Ike included, hadn’t either.
“All right,” Ike said softly, “we keep a close watch on Fredendall and be ready to move if we have to. He may be Marshall’s first mistake. Correction, I may have been his first. Tell Lucian Truscott to be packed and ready to move at a moment’s notice.”
False dawn arrived and the landing craft were cut loose as soon as the shore could be seen. Even though they were heading into the unknown, the men were relieved that they were no longer sitting like children’s toys in a very large tub. Those whose stomachs would let them ate c-rations, while others just tried to act calm.
Canfield and Dubinski looked around at the clearing sky. “We should have been halfway to Toronto,” Dubinski said. “I should have been on my way to some really good Canadian beer.”