Canfield agreed but only grunted a response. He kept his eyes on the sky and on the boats carrying the men of his battalion as they moved towards the shore with agonizing slowness. We are so vulnerable, he thought.
Just then, anti-aircraft guns on the transports opened up, sending tracers towards targets low on the horizon. Canfield saw them, a wave of German fighters skimming the lake not more than twenty feet above the water.
Armed with machine guns, rockets, 20mm cannon, and bombs, they opened fire as soon as they were within range. Canfield watched in hopeless horror as the tiny landing craft were strafed. He ducked as shells struck his boat. Men screamed both from terror and pain. He raised his head in time to see one plane’s rockets slam into a transport. He moaned as he recalled how many men were jammed inside.
“Medic!”
The cry snapped him back to reality. He checked the men. Two were dead and three others were wounded. One had his leg ripped off by a bullet and another had been gutted. His intestines lay like an obscene snake on the bottom of the boat.
Canfield sensed that the craft was wallowing. Leaving the wounded to be cared for by medics, he went to where the young sailor driving the boat sat. He was transfixed by the bloody carnage. Bodies were in the water around them and men were swimming, waving for help. A bomb had hit a transport and it was sinking. Heavily laden soldiers were trying to jump into the lake.
“Where the hell are you taking us?” Canfield snarled.
The sailor was wide eyed with terror. “Out of here. Anyplace.”
Canfield grabbed him and slapped him across the face. “You take us to land, you understand? Then you come back and pick up anybody you can.”
The sailor blinked, as if waking up from a terrible dream. “Got it, sir. Sorry.”
Minutes later, they spilled ashore. The German planes had disappeared, chased by American fighters. The Germans had lost planes, but they had savaged at least a portion of the invasion force.
Canfield ordered them off the beach. Like it or not they had to go inland. Additional Americans would be landing very shortly and congestion on the beachhead had to be limited. He’d gotten reports and the casualties weren’t as bad as he had feared. Only seven dead and fifteen wounded out of his battalion of more than eight hundred plus. Only, he thought ruefully. What would it be like when they made serious contact with the enemy?
A company of Sherman tanks rumbled by, kicking up dust. Now they were beginning to look like a real army. His radioman called him over. He took the phone from the backpack. It was the division commander.
“Exactly where are you and what’s your status?” Canfield was asked. He gave the answer to the best of his knowledge. They were two to three miles inland and facing no opposition. They had crossed a cratered moonscape created by the shelling. The shelling had accomplished absolutely nothing since there had been nothing to destroy.
“Fantastic. Now colonel, do you know what a laager is?”
“A type of beer?” he responded, dreading the explanation he knew was coming.
The general laughed bitterly, “No, you asshole. A laager is when a military force circles the wagons and that’s exactly what you are to do. Pull in your battalion, circle the wagons and prepare to defend against a major German attack that HQ feels is imminent and that could come from any direction.”
“With respects, general, that’s ridiculous. I just came down from a second floor roof of a farmhouse and saw nothing. I have men up in trees trying to spot Nazis and they’ve seen nothing either. Sir, I’m convinced we can advance for quite some time before running into any Germans, and isn’t that the point? Aren’t we supposed to get in their rear and cut them off?”
Canfield could hear the general’s sigh. “That was the plan, but plans change. III Corps is fearful that we will be cut to pieces by a sudden German attack, just like we were by their planes this morning.”
Canfield caught the word fearful. Was the general saying that the higher command was afraid, a pack of cowards? “How much latitude do I have?”
“Not much at all unless you want to lose touch with the units on your flanks. Find some decent ground, and yes I know the land is flat, dig in and call it a day.”
The general hung up. Dubinski stood beside Canfield. “We’re fucked again, aren’t we, chief?”
Chapter Twenty
The Canadian cities closest to Buffalo-Niagara had already been pretty well evacuated and had become virtual ghost towns. Niagara Falls and Niagara-On-The-Lake were deserted, while cities a little farther up the lake like St. Catharines and Hamilton were emptying rapidly, along with a score or more of smaller towns and villages. So too was Toronto as the war, which had seemed like a dark fantasy, was erupting in fury and would soon draw closer. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were on the march, headed east and north, away from where they felt the war was going to be.
Jed Munro still grieved for his brothers, Wally and Paul. Even though the two men’s killers had themselves died, he felt the pain of their dying. The manner of his brothers’ deaths had further complicated his life as well as those remaining members of the Black Shirts. What had been a force of several hundred now counted only about fifty and that was a floating and declining figure. The soldier they’d killed in the U.S. was no longer anything to worry about, but Jed’s shooting of the Toronto cop was a different matter. The Toronto police wanted to talk with him and the others who’d participated in the restaurant attack, and neither Jed nor the others wanted to be interrogated by the cops.
Thus, Neumann had strongly suggested that they take up residence at the Gestapo farm north of the city. Munro was uneasy with that. It was the place where he had raped and tormented the Bradford girl and that death was the cause of his brother Wally’s being killed by her cop father.
They were all safe inside the compound — bored, but safe. The cops wouldn’t touch them. The police wanted to kill them, but they were not about to take on the Gestapo detachment along with any German regulars that might be sent to reinforce them. No, the police had their hands full with the refugees who were clogging the roads and sleeping in the streets and parks. Some of them were even committing petty crimes in order to get food and shelter.
Even though Jed considered these to be dark days, he was still confident that Germany would prevail and that he and his men would wind up on top. And if Germany was defeated, hell, he would head west, change his name, and get lost. There would be more than enough chaos to hide him. He’d even gotten some phony ID from a local forger.
“We’ve got to do something,” he announced to his new best friend, Bruce. Bruce was tall, lean and dark haired. He wasn’t very bright, but he didn’t have to be. He let others do his thinking and his job was to be the enforcer. Like Jed, he too was bored.
“So what do you have in mind?”
Jed laughed, “There are a hell of a lot of so-called refugees clogging the roads. I’ll bet you we can find a bunch and work them over, and that includes giving their women a big fat treat.”
“Great, but will Neumann let us leave here?”
“We’re guests, not prisoners, Bruce. There are no hooks in our asses. We can go anytime we wish.”
That night Jed gathered a score of men into trucks and drove off the compound. This time they were all armed. If they ran into resistance they would shoot their way out. They did not wear their black shirts.
They didn’t have to go far before they began to see clusters of people gathered around the roads. Some of the groups were quite large, with Red Cross and church groups helping out. Smaller groups were often too close to other groups and would likely assist each other if trouble broke out. All of these were off-limits.
He was beginning to get discouraged, but they finally spotted a group of thirty or so with, he exulted, a number of women. He didn’t care about their ages, he just wanted a fuck.