Still, Cole had to agree that they had already done their part, and then some, in the fighting around La Gleize.
At that village, Cole and the other members of his sniper squad had helped turn back the German panzer unit that had reached La Gleize before running out of fuel and ammo. The German commander Friel and nearly eight hundred of his men in Kampfgruppe Friel had escaped back toward Germany.
By some measures, allowing so many experienced SS troops to escape and fight again another day seemed like a disaster. The Germans had used a clever ruse of lighting cooking fires and giving the appearance of holding their position, but had slipped away in the hours before daylight.
Had allowing the Germans to escape been a failure? Cole didn’t feel that way, because the truth was that the American forces had managed to end the advance of Kampfgruppe Friel. Also, the Germans had been forced to abandon their tanks and support vehicles — they’d nearly all been out of fuel, anyway.
Then again, not all the Germans had escaped. Cole had set a trap for the German sniper known as Das Gespenst and had caught him in the forest outside La Gleize. Das Gespenst had been attached to Kampfgruppe Friel, helping them cut a swath of destruction as the Germans advanced.
But no more.
Cole smiled at the thought, cold lips curling back from his teeth in a feral grin. The smile did not reach his pale eyes, which were thoughtful, remembering the moment when, with a single bullet, he had finally ended a feud that had begun on the bloody beaches of Normandy.
There was no telling how many Americans Das Gespenst had targeted in his crosshairs, but it had certainly been a terrible toll. The German sniper had finally been paid off in American lead.
Although one prong of the advance had been blunted, the Germans were far from done. They were still pushing hard at Bastogne. The American holdouts were blocking their advance but hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Whatever reinforcements could be rounded up were being rushed toward Bastogne before the Germans could break through.
Rushing was more like wishful thinking, considering the slow pace of the truck making its way through the muck and mire, the slush. The truck drivers and crew were the real heroes today, hunting for the best traction on roads that were little more than muddy tracks.
Some of the men jammed into the back stood up and stomped their feet from time to time to stay warm. Others sat motionless, hugging themselves, afraid to move and let any heat escape from their ragged clothes. It was hard to say which method worked best.
Cole figured that the best strategy was to ignore the cold. He had to admit that wasn’t working so far.
He turned to Vaccaro, who was hunkered down on the bench beside him, and said, “Ain’t you glad that you didn’t stay in that hospital? Hell, you’d be under a warm blanket right now, drinking hot soup. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself.”
Vaccaro snorted. “Don’t remind me. At least we’re better off than those poor bastards at Bastogne. I heard the Krauts bombed the hell out of them.”
The truth was, Vaccaro looked more than a little worse for wear, which was understandable, considering that he’d been wounded during the fight at La Gleize. By any sensible measure, Vaccaro should have remained in the makeshift hospital in a church. But like many of the walking wounded, Vaccaro had decided that he wasn’t going to sit this fight out.
Their recent skirmish on the road hadn’t helped. But Vaccaro wasn’t about to give up.
There was still too much at stake, and the truth was, every American soldier now had a burning hatred against the Krauts for the Malmedy massacre, where nearly eighty US troops, held as prisoners of war by Kampfgruppe Friel, had been murdered in cold blood. At La Gleize, they had also seen an innocent young woman gunned down as she tried to help the wounded. For many GIs, the fight now felt personal.
It certainly did for Cole.
As he watched the shadows lengthen among the trees and the forest grow darker, the thought crossed his mind that it was one helluva way to spend Christmas Eve.
They weren’t the only ones experiencing a miserable holiday. In the embattled town of Bastogne, the commanding officer, General McAuliffe, had issued the following statement to his men, written out on a typewriter that typed unevenly and copied onto thin paper using a mimeograph machine that needed more ink. The results weren’t pretty, but the message warmed the hearts of the defenders.
