Bloody Bastogne Page 14

  “Are you there, McAuliffe?” said the voice of General Middleton.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you. I found out about an hour ago that you’re surrounded.”

  “Well,” McAuliffe said, “that certainly simplifies things, doesn’t it?”

  “How long do you think you can hold out there?”

  “Depends on how many Germans are around me and how badly they want Bastogne.”

  “We’ve identified three German divisions and several other smaller German units, and you only have to look on a map to see how badly they want Bastogne.”

  “Forty-eight hours,” McAuliffe said. “After that I can’t promise you anything.”

  “Relief is on the way if you can just hang on. Patton is coming up from the south.”

  “Patton?” asked McAuliffe. “Maybe things aren’t as bad as I thought.”

  “I don’t know how long the wires between your headquarters and mine will remain intact, so good luck to you, McAuliffe, and try to hang on there as best you can.”

  “We’ll have to hang on here, sir,” McAuliffe replied. “If we tried to get away now, they’d chew us to pieces.”

  McAuliffe hung up the phone and stared into the distance for a few moments, trying to come to terms with the fact that he and the 101st Airborne were surrounded in Bastogne.

  “Anything serious?” asked Lieutenant James.

  “No,” replied McAuliffe. “We’re just surrounded, that’s all.”

  “Surrounded!”

  “That’s right. You might as well notify the troops. I guess they should know.”

  There was a knock on the side of the open door. McAuliffe looked up and saw Mahoney in a new green uniform with a screaming eagle patch on his shoulder.

  “Hello there, sir,” Mahoney said, strutting into the office. “Here I am reporting for duty, just like you said.”

  Lieutenant James looked at Mahoney with disapproval and dismay as Mahoney stood in front of General McAuliffe’s desk and saluted.

  “What do you want me to do, sir?” Mahoney asked.

  McAuliffe looked at his watch. “It’s chowtime,” he said. “Report to me when you come back from the mess hall.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mahoney did a smart about-face and marched out of the office.

  “Who’s that?” asked Lieutenant James.

  “His name’s Mahoney,” McAuliffe replied. “He came to Bastogne on TDY and thought he was going to have a little vacation.”

  “Some vacation.”

  McAuliffe stood behind his desk. “Let’s go to chow,” he said.

  ~*~

  The enlisted men’s mess was in a building down the street, and Mahoney went through the line, holding out his aluminum tray and watching gloomy cooks dump Spam and beans onto it. He poured himself a mug of coffee and then walked toward the tables.

  “MAHONEY!” someone cried.

  Mahoney looked around and saw the grizzled features of Master Sergeant Frank Hooper coming toward him.

  “You old son of a bitch!” Hooper said. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

  “The same thing you’re doing here.”

  “Come on and sit down.”

  Hooper led Mahoney back to the table where he’d been sitting, and Mahoney sat opposite him, slicing a slab of Spam and placing half of it into his mouth.

  Hooper looked at Mahoney as if he was seeing a ghost. “What the hell happened to you?” he asked.

  Mahoney waved his hand as he chewed the Spam noisily. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “How’d you get out of jail?”

  “They let us all out and gave us rifles. How did you get here?”

  “When I heard the Germans were coming to Clervaux, I got in the first jeep that was coming here. I thought I’d be safe, but now the Germans are getting close, and I want to go south to Third Army. You wanna come with me?”

  “You’re fucking right I do.”

  They ate their beans and Spam and hatched a plan to steal a jeep and go south to Third Army, unaware that Bastogne had been surrounded.

  Mahoney shoved a spoonful of beans into his mouth and washed it down with hot coffee. “I’m supposed to report to General McAuliffe after chow, but fuck him. I haven’t had nothing but trouble since I came to this damned First Army. I want to get back to the Hammerheads right now.”

  “Me too,” replied Hooper.

  ~*~

  After chow, Mahoney and Hooper walked into the 101st Airborne motor pool and approached the desk of the dispatcher. Mahoney and Hooper both wore the screaming eagle patch of the 101st plus regimental insignia and the silver badges awarded to paratroopers after they make five jumps. Actually Mahoney was entitled to wear the badge, since he was once in the Airborne Rangers, but Hooper never had jumped out of an airplane and thought people who did were insane.

  “What can I do for you?” asked the dispatcher, a young corporal with the gleam of madness in his eyes common among paratroopers.

  “We need a jeep.”

  The dispatcher looked at their stripes and insignia and said, “Hup, Sarge.” He filled out the trip ticket, and Mahoney signed it. Giving Mahoney a copy, he wrote the number of the jeep in the space provided and told Mahoney where to find the vehicle. Mahoney and Hooper walked across the motor pool and got into the jeep. Mahoney turned the switch and started it up.

  “This is a nice sounding machine,” Mahoney said. “We’ll be in Nancy by morning.”

  Mahoney shifted into gear and drove through the big door into the streets of Bastogne. It was another dark moonless night, and the sounds of fighting could be heard in the distance. The streets were filled with paratroopers and civilians looking for someplace to stay for the night. Mahoney felt guilty about leaving Bastogne, but he felt certain that if he stayed he’d only get into trouble sooner or later with the paratroopers, and they weren’t the kind of people that you wanted to mess with. He’d be best off with his own people in the Hammerhead division.

  The jeep came to an artillery emplacement in the southern part of town, and a short distance beyond that were some fortifications manned by paratroopers. Mahoney and Hooper waved to them, and they waved back as the jeep passed the fortifications and headed toward the open road. Mahoney shifted into high gear and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The jeep gathered speed and roared down the road to France.

  ~*~

  Throughout Germany, citizens were preparing to go to bed when suddenly on the radio the Victory Fanfare blared forth, and people looked at their loudspeakers in astonishment because there had been no victories reported for almost two years. They all gathered around their radios, whether they lived in opulent mansions or humble farmhouses, and waited anxiously for the music to end so they could hear the news.

  Finally the voice of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, came to their ears. “People of Germany,” he said in a voice laden with urgency and melodrama, “our Fuehrer Adolf Hitler has asked me to tell you that a great victory has been won in the West!” Goebbels paused so that the German people would have some time to recover from that statement, then he continued. “Even as I speak, the armies of the Reich are striking deep into France and Belgium, overwhelming all enemy defenses, and taking thousands of prisoners. This offensive began four days ago in complete secrecy and has taken the Americans by surprise. Only now can the truth be told to you.

  “Perhaps you all have been wondering why the Fuehrer has been so silent lately. Perhaps you have thought he was sick. Well, now the truth can be told. The Fuehrer has been in excellent health and has been spending all his time planning this brilliant offensive down to its smallest details. And he has shown his genius once more: the Americans are fleeing before our brave soldiers. Once again, victory is ours!”

  Goebbels continued for some time with his speech, and when he finished, a band played “Deutschland Uber Alles.” All over Germany, people looked at each other and felt relieved.
They’d known they were losing the war, but they’d also believed that somehow they’d recapture the initiative. Now, they realized that their faith had not been in vain. Their leader had transformed defeat into victory, and soon life would be wonderful again as it had been in the great days at the beginning of the war.

  ~*~

  The jeep sped through the dark and mysterious night. Mahoney hunched behind the windshield and puffed a cigarette as the wind stream whistled over his head. He looked at his watches, and both indicated a few minutes after one o’clock in the morning.

  “We should be getting into France pretty soon,” Mahoney said.

  “Yeah,” replied Hooper, glancing at his own collection of watches. “I can’t wait to see that old Hammerhead patch again.”

  “Everything is all fucked up around here,” Mahoney said. “These people don’t know how to fight a goddamned war. All this shit never would have happened in Third Army.”

  “You’re damned right it wouldn’t,” Hooper agreed.

  Mahoney took the last drag on his cigarette and threw the butt over his shoulder. “Hey,” he said, “do you remember that girl I got into a fight over in that bar?”

  “You mean the brunette?”

  “Yeah—Madeleine.”

  “She’s in Bastogne,” Hooper said. “Didn’t you know that?”

  Mahoney’s eyes almost popped out of his head. “In Bastogne?”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?” Mahoney screamed.

  “I didn’t think you gave a shit.”

  Mahoney slammed on the brakes, and the jeep skidded all over the icy, narrow road.

  Hooper hung onto his helmet. “What the fuck’s the matter with you?”

  “WE’RE GOING BACK TO BASTOGNE!” Mahoney yelled as he wrestled with the wheel and struggled to keep the jeep under control.

  Finally the jeep stopped. Mahoney shifted into reverse and turned it around while Hooper stared at Mahoney in confusion.

  “Are you going psycho on me, Mahoney?” Hooper asked.

  “I’m going back to Bastogne.”

  Mahoney aimed the jeep toward Bastogne and shifted into first, stomping on the gas.

  “Hey!” Hooper said. “I don’t want to go back to Bastogne!”

  “Then jump the fuck out!”

  “You’re going back to Bastogne just because you wanna see that fucking little whore?”

  Mahoney reached to the side with one hand and grabbed the front of Hooper’s field jacket. “What did you call her!”

  “Keep your eyes on the road for chrisake!”

  “Don’t you ever call her that again!”

  “Okay—okay!”

  Hooper was a brute, but he didn’t want to argue with somebody driving a jeep at top speed. If the disagreement had occurred outside the jeep, Hooper would have decked Mahoney or at least tried.

  “Where’s she at in Bastogne?” Mahoney asked, his foot holding the gas pedal on the floor.

  “She’s working at the civilian hospital—as a nurse’s helper or something like that.”

  Suddenly the sound of a machine gun ripped the night apart. The windshield of the jeep shattered, and Mahoney already was diving toward the ground. He landed on his left side, bounced, and rolled off into the fresh snow that cushioned him and brought him to a safe stop.

  His eyebrows and face covered with snow, he looked up and saw the jeep continuing down the road, disintegrating before his eyes as machine gun bullets tore it apart. He couldn’t see whether Hooper was in it or not. The jeep exploded in a fiery red flash, and huge chunks of metal flew into the sky. They fell to earth, burned awhile, and then the night became dark again.

  Mahoney lay still, holding his rifle ready. He was bruised all over his body, but he knew somebody had destroyed the jeep and would turn up sooner or later to check on his handiwork. He wondered if Hooper had got out alive.

  He heard voices speaking in guttural German. Three figures emerged out of the darkness and walked cautiously toward the jeep’s wreckage. Mahoney took a hand grenade out of the breast pocket of his field jacket. He pulled the pin and waited tensely until the Germans came closer. Slowly, they approached the jeep, and Mahoney could perceive the outlines of their helmets. They stopped beside it and looked into the driver’s seat where Mahoney had been thinking about Madeleine only minutes ago.

  “Where is he?” asked one of the Germans.

  “He must be near here someplace,” replied another, turning around.

  Mahoney let the hand grenade fly. One of the Germans heard the sound of Mahoney’s movement and aimed his rifle in that direction, but Mahoney was already face down in the snow again, and the hand grenade hurtled toward the Germans.

  “What’s that!” one of them said as it fell near his feet.

  The grenade exploded, annihilating the three Germans. Mahoney rose and ran toward them, holding his rifle ready just in case. He saw them sprawled all over the road, gouts of blood everywhere. He was surprised that Germans were south of Bastogne, and these three must be the patrol of a much larger force. He thought he should get back to Bastogne and report this enemy activity to General McAuliffe as soon as possible.

  Then his sharp eyes noticed something unusual. The epaulette of one of the Germans had something on it that covered his unit insignia. Mahoney knelt and saw that it was green felt. He tore it away and saw the letters GD. Mahoney knew that was the insignia of the famous Gross Deutschland Division. He recalled reading somewhere that the crack Gross Deutschland Division had been fighting in Russia; what was it doing here in Belgium?

  Mahoney thought he’d better relay this information to General McAuliffe, but first he wanted to check on Hooper. He made his way back to the spot where the jeep had been when the firing began. A figure lay in the snow beside the road. Mahoney knelt beside it. Hooper lay on his back, with his eyes wide open and staring and blood freezing on the front of his field jacket. Mahoney felt for a pulse, but there was nothing at all. Opening Hooper’s field jacket, he grabbed Hooper’s dog tags and tore them away, dropping them into his pocket.

  “So long, old buddy,” he said to Hooper’s corpse.

  Turning, he walked back to Bastogne.

  ~*~

  In a small village in eastern Belgium, Field Marshal Model was sound asleep in his new headquarters, which had formerly been a schoolhouse. There was a knock on the door, and he stirred.

  “Who’s there?” he called out sleepily.

  The door opened. “The Fuehrer wishes to speak with you immediately!” said an aide silhouetted by the light in the corridor behind him.

  Model stuck his monocle in his eye and looked at his watch. It was three o’clock in the morning. Grumbling, he rolled out of bed and put his greatcoat over his pajamas and his hat on his head because he sometimes got chills through his bald spot. Stepping into his boots, he left his bedroom and walked down the hall to the conference room, where he’d take the call. He knew that the Fuehrer must be displeased about something and prepared himself for the worst.

  “This is Field Marshal Model,” he said into the telephone.

  “Why have you not taken Bastogne?” Hitler asked, anger and condemnation in his voice.

  “We’ve only reached Bastogne yesterday, my Fuehrer. The Americans are fighting with unusual tenacity. Bastogne should fall into our hands today.”

  “Model,” Hitler said, “as I look at my maps I see Bastogne as the main impediment to our progress. It has become the most important objective in our entire offensive. Do not fail me, Model. We must have Bastogne today.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After hanging up, Model called General Hasso von Manteuffel and relayed the message from Hitler. Manteuffel then relayed it to General Bayerlein of the Panzer Lehr Division and the other divisional commanders surrounding Bastogne.

  It was clearly understood that Bastogne would have to be taken that day, December 21.

  Chapter Thirteen

  At ten o
’clock in the morning, the Third Army was rumbling north on a twenty mile front. The men of the Hammerhead Division rode on tanks, and when they reached Luxembourg City, the citizens came out into the streets to cheer because they’d expected the Germans to attack at any moment, but instead the Americans had arrived to protect them.

  “PATTON—PATTON—PATTON!” the people chanted, waving American flags and throwing flowers at the soldiers.

  Cranepool and his squad rode on one of the lead tanks, and he caught a wreath with the end of his rifle. There was pandemonium everywhere he looked. Girls blew kisses at him, and he wished he could climb down from the tank and grab a few of them. A bottle came flying through the air, and Pfc Grossberger caught it like Joe DiMaggio playing center field. It was red wine, and he dug out the cork with the blade of his penknife.

  “PATTON—PATTON—PATTON!” the people screamed.

  Slowly the men and tanks made their way through the jubilation, drinking wine and ogling the girls. A massive traffic jam caused the tanks to stop, and little children climbed all over the soldiers, begging for chocolate and touching their uniforms. A few girls made it onto the tanks, and officers loudly instructed the men to leave them alone, but the officers couldn’t see everything, and a few kisses were stolen, not to mention some cheap feels.

  Finally the armored column moved out again. It rumbled through the cheering throngs, and Cranepool thought he and the other soldiers might as well enjoy themselves while they could, because soon they’d be in Belgium fighting the biggest German counteroffensive of the war.

  Cranepool’s tank approached an intersection, and he saw a soldier directing traffic. Men on the lead tanks were pointing to the soldier, and Cranepool leaned forward so he could get a better look. MPs held back the crowds, who applauded and shouted in a mad frenzy.

  “ITS OLD BLOOD AND GUTS!” somebody yelled.

  Cranepool saw the stars on the soldier’s epaulettes, and stared in amazement at General George S. Patton Jr. waving the tanks through.

  He’d been the one who unsnarled the traffic jam.

  ~*~