FORTY-ONE
COLEY
They came at the front line like a mob. Hundreds of Germans mixed with Allied soldiers stalked across the ground. An army of flesh and clothes that couldn’t remember how to use their weapons. Hundreds led the charge, but there were many thousands behind.
Officers yelled across the assembled men to pick targets carefully. Coley and his squad had been on the run for over twenty-four hours. They hadn’t slept at all, and now they were being tossed right back into the cauldron.
The German POWs were placed under guard, but the men didn’t put up a fight. They kept their mouths shut and watched with grim faces as their own forces came at the Americans.
After a slim resupply effort, they had enough rounds to assist, but there weren’t enough bullets to go around. The artillery had shifted again, and began to rain hell on the enemy, opening up huge swaths of carnage while punching fresh holes in the ground.
Bodies and debris exploded and were tossed into the air. The sound of the bombardment reminded him of how they’d been awoken yesterday. He wanted to go find a hole to hide in, and come back when this was all over.
But he was an officer in the United States Army, and this was his place. Among his men. What didn’t fit into the equation were the automatons that were attacking. They’d seen this and he’d rushed back to report that they’d been attacked by a force of Nazis just like this.
His squad gathered around him and started to pour firepower on the advancing horde.
“S’like a bunch of damn zombies, sir!” Harpham shouted over the noise.
“Like a what?”
“Seen this movie a couple of years ago at the cinema, called King of the Zombies. These guys are acting like zombies.”
“You think Hitler invested technology in voodoo mysticism and this is the result?” Coley said.
“I don’t know a damn thing about voodoo, sir, but look at them. Most of the soldiers don’t fight, they just walk. Mindless. Like, you know, zombies.”
A blast of machine gun fire made them hunker down. A GI a few feet away slumped to the dirt with a hole in his helmet, and stared at the sky.
“That looks like bullets to me, Private,” Coley said.
“No tactics. No order. They’re just imitating what they did before they got turned,” Harpham said.
Voodoo? That was crazy talk.
But there was no denying what he was seeing. There was no way to hide from this force. During his brief engagement with German soldiers, they’d shown more or less sound tactics, but this was not even organized chaos.
Coley poked his head back over the top of the hastily-dug hole and put a requisitioned M1 to his shoulder. He aimed and fired until the clip sang as it sailed into the air.
The men around them loaded, fired, and loaded again, but it had little effect on the mass of men that were coming at them.
He dug out another clip, and thought very carefully about how much ammunition he had left. They weren’t going to be able to stop army. There simply weren’t enough men, weapons, and ammo.
FORTY-TWO
GRILLO
Grillo, Captain Taylor, and Shaw hit the dirt as rounds ricocheted around them. They’d managed to secure the POW, but the German was a handful. The man was strong but slow. It took the three of them to wrestle him over onto his stomach. A couple of MPs joined the effort and got the man secured before they hauled him off.
“Nice work, men,” Captain Taylor said.
Grillo sucked in deep breaths and wondered how much worse this was going to get. He peeked over the barricade and swore.
A lot worse.
There was no end to the advancing enemy. They came at the thin line and were cut down, but for every Kraut they shot, there were three to take his place. Grillo slung his M1 around and took careful aim.
He shot a pair of Germans, then shifted his aim, but there was an American soldier in his sights. He paused, unsure if he could shoot one of his own guys. Then someone did the deed for him, and the man dropped.
Shaw stated the obvious. “Jesus Christ. There’s too many of them!”
With the assistance of villagers, some of the Americans had started to build fortifications behind them, next to the low walls and buildings of the town.
Everything that could work as a barricade was added to the task. They dragged out dressers, tables, chairs, sections of fence, and chunks of buildings. The wall took shape, but there wasn’t enough manpower to create a barricade long enough to hold this force back.
Grillo fired until his gun ran empty, then dug out his last clip. He reloaded, and picked his targets more carefully.
Only twenty yards separated the men from the Krauts.
He heard a scream to his left, and hazarded a look: a forward foxhole filled with GIs—all of whom were packing it up to fall back—came under direct attack. A soldier dressed in white ran toward them, shrugging off several shots.
He fell onto the men and went after them with his hands and a knife. One of the American soldiers shot him in the head, but it was too late. A force of a dozen or more descended on the emplacement and overwhelmed them.
One of the GIs got free and ran.
The rest screamed and fought, but it appeared to be too late for them.
An officer ran from behind the barricade and yelled “Fall back!”
Grillo didn’t need to be told twice. He rose to his feet and with Shaw and Captain Taylor on either side, made for the city.
FORTY-THREE
GRAVES
Graves and his men dug out ammo cases from the back of the German half-track. They found a box of potato mashers and put it on the edge of the vehicle. GIs snatched them up and turned the explosives against the men who’d planned to carry them into battle against the Allies.
When they’d arrived, a couple of soldiers had placed Big Texas’s body on a stretcher and carried him away to join rows of others who lay next to the remains of an aid station. Cold lumps under the blankets and snow. Graves and his men didn’t have time to offer a proper goodbye. The battle was already under way.
Explosions ripped holes in the lines, but it was too little to stop the force.
The unmistakable sound of tanks came from the direction of the city. He turned and grinned as a pair of Shermans rolled onto the battlefield.
The vehicles tore across the ground and right into a group of Germans, then kept on going. The two machine gunners worked the front guns while a tank commander sticking out of their hatches laid into the Krauts with the .50 cal.
“Wish we were in one of those tanks. I’d do some serious ass-kicking and then hightail it back to the front,” Murph said.
“This is the front,” Graves observed.
“Ain’t no front like I ever seen,” Murph said.
Gabby worked on the Kraut machine gun mounted on the half-track until he figured it out, then fed it ammo. He opened up and ripped a forward line of Germans to shreds. The gun jammed, so he fought it with curses and then got it firing again.
“We’re falling back,” someone yelled.
Graves and Murph took one look at each other.
“Get us rolling, Gabby, Murph you’re back on the machine gun. And leave that American flag draped over the front so no one mistakes us,” Graves ordered.
“You got it. No sense in giving up a fine military machine like this beast,” Gabby said, and slapped the top.
The half-track backed up, then followed the Americans retreating back to the city.
FORTY-FOUR
GRILLO