“Was it really necessary for her to take his shirt off?” Vaccaro wondered. “I guess it’s a good thing that he didn’t get shot in the ass. You know that thing has got to be white as a lily.”
“You’re just jealous, is all,” Cole said.
Bauer hadn’t had much to say. Maybe he was having second thoughts about shooting at his own kind. It had been good shooting, all the same.
Cole decided to leave the German to his own thoughts. He used the time to double-check their defenses, finding a few more pieces of furniture that he and Vaccaro could pile in front of the downstairs windows.
“Now what?” Vaccaro wondered.
“Now we wait.”
But as any soldier knew, waiting for the next attack was the hardest part.
Brock had watched in astonishment as the Germans attacked the château. What the hell were they thinking? To him, crossing that open ground had seemed like a suicide mission. They’d been lucky to have plenty of covering fire from the machine gun.
He still couldn’t figure out why the Krauts were so determined to get inside the old mansion. It wasn’t like he could saunter over and ask them.
With professional interest, he watched the assault unfold.
“What should we do?” Vern wondered. “It doesn’t seem right just to watch. Those are our guys in there.”
“Let’s see how far the Krauts get and then decide what to do.”
Under the covering fire, two Germans were able to reach the house itself. If they’d had grenades, that might have been the end of the fight. The Germans would have been able to toss in a few grenades and take out the Americans inside.
But the defenders had been able to return fire from an upstairs window, evidently wounding one of the attackers. The Krauts had then beat a hasty retreat back to the woods, where they still seemed to be licking their wounds.
“Damn, I was kind of hoping that they would crack open that nut for us,” Brock said.
“Should we try?”
“Not yet. Let’s see if the Germans make another go of it.”
“They will,” Vern said. “You know how the Germans are. Stubborn.”
“Yeah,” Brock agreed. “When they do attack again, we’ll come at the château from another direction.”
Another hour went by before the Germans tried again. Inside the château, their first warning was the sound of a vehicle engine on the cold air. The forest was very quiet, so a revving engine was quite noticeable.
Vaccaro was upstairs as a lookout, peering out one of the windows at the front of the house.
“What the hell are they up to?” Vaccaro shouted.
Cole raced up the stairs, Bauer right behind him.
They heard the racing engine, the sound of grinding gears, and then the Kübelwagen came flying out of the woods, headed directly toward the house.
This time, the Germans threw caution to the wind. All three were riding on the Kübelwagen. One man at the wheel, one riding shotgun, and another hanging on for dear life as he swung the machine gun toward the château.
Cole tried to get off a shot, but the machine gunner was faster, sweeping the front of the château with a burst from the gun. More stone chips flew, along with splinters from the wood shutters. The splinters threatened to be just as deadly as the bullets. Again, a couple of rounds found their way inside the house itself.
He and the others had no choice but to duck and cover. When they looked again, the passenger and driver of the Kübelwagen were already out, scrambling to reach the foundation of the house, where it would be harder to pick them off.
Against the backdrop of gloomy gray snow, Cole glimpsed a bright flash of burning flame. One of the men rushing toward the house appeared to be carrying something that was on fire.
Cole caught only a glimpse before he had to duck down again because the machine gunner was still with the stopped vehicle, firing away.
Downstairs, something exploded with a deep
The explosion seemed to suck the air out of the house.
Cole put two and two together, realizing what the flaming object had been.
Lacking grenades, the Germans had made a Molotov cocktail. They must have drained some of the fuel out of the Kübelwagen to do so.
“Get ready, boys,” Brock said. “We’re gonna go in the back door, so to speak.”
There wasn’t an actual door, just the side door for the kitchen made of stout wood, but there were ground-floor windows.
With Brock leading the way, they used the woods for cover to skirt the open ground and reach the back of the house.
Brock was betting on the defenders being occupied with beating off the German attack on the front of the house. From that direction, there were several shots, then the dull sound of an explosion. Not a grenade, he thought, but something else. The acrid smell of burning gasoline roiled skyward, and he wondered whether the Germans’ Kübelwagen had somehow blown up.
