The trio of tanks hidden in the woods opened fire as well, targeting their counterparts. Soon at least half the enemy tanks were ablaze. A few members of the tank crews ran from the burning tanks, but for them it was too late. They were on fire, human torches that danced macabrely before collapsing in the field. Watching them, Cole felt a little sick.
The remaining tanks retreated, either reversing or making lumbering turns back toward the cover offered by the trees. Often they ran over their own dead or wounded in the process. Fire from
“Cease fire!” Mulholland shouted.
It turned out that Captain Brown wasn’t content with simply holding the hill and turning back the Germans. He gave the order to advance and follow the enemy into the trees, intending to annihilate them completely.
Cole heard the order and thought,
Cole had no choice but to crawl out of the foxhole and start down the hill, Vaccaro and the kid right behind him. They passed the burning carcass of a panzer. Even as a wrecked hulk, it was hard not to be impressed with the sheer size of that behemoth. The burned bodies of the tank crew lay smoldering in the snow, filling the air with the sickly-sweet smell of burned flesh.
He hurried past, running for the trees, hoping against hope that the Germans didn’t wise up and start shooting.
Bauer watched in disbelief as the German troops were cut to pieces.
Not just any German troops, but
Smashed and broken.
It had seemed like such a small thing to push the Americans off the hill — so far, the disorganized US troops they had encountered in the Ardennes Forest had put up little fight. He recalled that the prisoners they had taken — the same prisoners that Messner killed — had surrendered without so much as a shot fired. These Americans on the hillside had been far different. They had been dug in and equipped with machine guns. Bauer’s men and the other troops hadn’t stood a chance.
Then the world had seemed to end when the artillery shells rained down and the tanks added their deadly fire to the mix. Where had those tanks come from, anyhow? The Americans weren’t supposed to have tanks yet.
He could see that to try to advance any farther would be suicide. He ordered the men around him to retreat.
“Back to the woods!” he shouted.
Nearby, Messner seemed angry about the order, scowling, but even he wasn’t so much of a fool that he wanted to run right toward the machine guns. It was a killing field like something that Bauer had heard described from the Great War. He kept low as tracer fire stitched the air overhead.
Once they were back in the trees, even that proved to be no mercy as the American artillery found them there. Men dove to the ground, scratching at the snow in a futile attempt to dig themselves deeper. Mercifully, the artillery stopped firing.
“Rally to me,” he shouted, trying to organize the tattered troops. He pushed a soldier toward a man who struggled through the snow, dragging a bloody leg. “You there, help that wounded man.”
Bauer had experienced doubts previously about the folly of Operation Watch on the Rhine, as the German offensive was called. What had started out as a promising venture had quickly bogged down due to the bitter weather and the poor supply chain. The Americans had staked their claim on Bastogne, and they meant to keep it, as evidenced by that fierce defense of the hillside overlooking the road into the town.
He felt a sudden sense of hopelessness and the utter futility of it all seemed to wash over him like a storm wave. He looked around at the men. Most wore winter-white camouflage, but so many were wounded now that almost every smock was flecked with blood. Advancing yet again into that killing field, or even trying to go around it, now seemed impossible.
The panzers that had accompanied them had almost all been destroyed in the shelling. Even one of the tanks that had made it out of the field was smoking badly — some sort of engine malfunction — and it had to be abandoned. The tank crew got out and joined the infantry, looking dazed and lost outside the confines of their steel beast.
The sight of these torn and bloody men broke his heart. They were all good men who had done their duty to the fatherland. The best he could hope for was to help as many of his men survive as possible. If he could just get them back the way they had come, dodging the enemy, they might be able to reach the relative safety of the German border.
But his plan fell apart as quickly as it had formed.
