Bullet Bridge Read online

  Mahoney waited until the German threw the grenade, then he jumped up and began running like hell. He dived head first into another hole, and the hand grenade exploded in the one he’d just left.

  Raising the German rifle, he aimed at one of the Germans trying to bypass him, and the rifle went click. It was out of ammunition. And there were no other weapons lying around.

  It’s hand grenade time, Mahoney thought, pulling a grenade from his lapel and yanking the pin. The German attack wave had double-timed around him now, leaving him behind to get mopped up by the next wave. Mahoney hurled a grenade at their backs, but it fell short and only hit a few of them with shrapnel.

  The Germans moved toward the American rear and Mahoney found himself alone again. He thought he’d better find himself another rifle quickly because more Germans were sure to show up soon, so he arose and climbed out of the shell crater, trotting across the battlefield to the scene of the bayonet fight he’d had earlier. He picked a German rifle off the ground and stripped ammunition from German corpses lying nearby, then dropped into the nearest shell crater and lit a cigarette.

  Where in the fuck are our tanks? he wondered.

  He heard whooping and shouting from the direction of the German lines and realized the next wave was coming. It emerged from the darkness and rain, double-timing like the previous waves, and Mahoney settled down with his latest German rifle, aiming at one of the Germans and squeezing off a round. The German soldier was spun around by the shot and fell back into the mass of his comrades.

  A whistle blew, and all the Germans in front of Mahoney dropped to their stomachs, while those on the extreme right and left flanks kept going around him. Mahoney could see them moving in the distance and fired haphazardly at them because he couldn’t take accurate aim in the darkness.

  “Surrender!” shouted a voice in front of him.

  Mahoney ducked his head down in the hole. This must be the mop-up squad and they wouldn’t continue their advance until they’d dealt with him.

  “Surrender or be killed!” the voice said in German-accented English.

  Mahoney wondered what to do. If he stood his ground and fought they’d kill him for sure, but if he surrendered they might kill him too. They obviously weren’t going to run around him like the previous waves.

  A barrage of German bullets smacked into the dirt above his hole and flew over his head. Mahoney knew he was outnumbered and didn’t have a chance. If they all started throwing hand grenades the party would be over quickly.

  The firing stopped.

  “Surrender or be killed!” the voice said again. “This is your last chance!”

  Mahoney clicked his teeth nervously. I guess this is it, he thought. Dropping the German rifle, he took a deep breath and raised his hands in the air. “I surrender!” he yelled, climbing to his feet. “I surrender!”

  He stood in the foxhole with his hands in the air, trembling because he expected the Germans to cut him down. He’d killed German prisoners at various times, and he expected the same treatment, unless they wanted Americans for interrogation purposes.

  Three German soldiers arose from the ground and moved toward him, each aiming their rifles and bayonets at his chest. Mahoney tensed himself so that his fear wouldn’t show. He felt like a sitting duck. A steel door closed in his mind as he realized he no longer was an American combat soldier, but a prisoner of war and maybe a corpse-to-be. He’d heard rumors that Germans tortured their prisoners and put them into concentration camps that were worse than hell. He spoke German fluently but decided to pretend that he couldn’t.

  The three German soldiers approached warily. They were a sergeant and two privates.

  “Search him!” ordered the sergeant.

  One of the privates stalked toward Mahoney, behaving as though he expected Mahoney to pull a bomb out of one of his pockets. But Mahoney stood still, stretching his hands as high as he could in the air, trying to smile and show that he was a nice guy. The German slapped his clothes, feeling for guns, hand grenades, knives, or any other weapons, and all he found were the hand grenades in Mahoney’s pockets. Although it was a cold night in late November, Mahoney began to sweat under his steel helmet.

  The other Germans rose from the ground and approached. Among them was an officer who advanced ahead of the others and scrutinized Mahoney carefully.

  “You’re sure he has no weapons?” the officer said to the sergeant.

  “We couldn’t find anything, sir.”

  The officer stepped toward Mahoney, pulled down the zipper of his field jacket, and yanked out his dogtags. “Mahoney,” the officer said in guttural English, “you are a prisoner of war.”

  Mahoney nodded. The officer looked at the sergeant and said in German, “Have two men take him back for questioning. And he’d better not get away.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The sergeant told the two privates to take Mahoney back to the intelligence section. One of the privates pushed Mahoney toward the German rear, and Mahoney began to walk in that direction, placing his hands upon his helmet. He wished he could smoke a cigarette and recalled that he’d lit one recently, but in the excitement of the fight it must have fallen out of his mouth.

  The other Germans formed up ranks and moved out again, continuing their mop-up operations. Mahoney trudged through the mud that formerly had been no-man’s-land but now was German territory. He’d been in the war since the first landings in North Africa, but now, for the first time, he’d become a prisoner of the Germans.

  Chapter Two

  Peering out the slit in his tank turret, Captain Alfred Kroll realized that the 323rd Panzer Division had achieved a great breakthrough. Thus far his tank company had smashed everything in its way, and now he was in the American rear, looking for ammunition dumps to blow up, communications centers to destroy, and American generals to shoot down.

  He was exhilarated and barely could stop himself from laughing with glee. His machine gunners cut down retreating American soldiers and his cannoneers blew fortifications to bits. This was like the old days when the panzers swept across France, North Africa, and the Ukraine, winning lightning victories for Fuehrer and Fatherland. If the 323rd continued at this rate, it would be at the gates of Metz by late afternoon, and perhaps tomorrow would retake that great fortress city.

  These Americans are nothing, he thought, and just then a shell exploded twenty yards in front of him. So the Americans finally are able to fire their artillery, he said to himself. He wondered how much artillery they had and where it was. Another American shell fell, and then another. Kroll peered through the slit in the turret and tried to figure out where the shells were coming from, so he could charge his tank in that direction and knock the artillery emplacement out of action.

  More artillery shells fell in his vicinity, and he realized that more than one artillery emplacement was involved. He couldn’t see much through the slit and decided to take a chance and look through the open hatch to find out what was going on. He pulled back the latch and Sergeant Schorer looked at him from within the bowels of the tank.

  “Where are you going, sir!”

  “To see where those shells are coming from!”

  Kroll opened the hatch and looked around quickly. What he saw made his blood run cold. In the first glimmer of dawn he could make out a huge number of American tanks attacking the 323rd Panzer from the right flank.

  Kroll ducked back into the hatch and pulled the cover over his head. “Turn right!” he screamed. “Prepare to counterattack!”

  The tank veered to the right and Kroll looked through the slit. The American tanks were attacking swiftly, firing their cannons as they moved along. The American shells whistled among the German tanks, some of which burst into flame.

  “Hold fast!” Kroll shouted into his microphone. “Take careful aim and knock those tanks out of action!”

  His tank stopped and fired a shell at an American tank. The shell flew through the air and hit the tank, blowing its turret awa
y and causing it to disappear in a puff of smoke.

  The tanks on both sides closed the distance between each other. They stopped, fired shells, and then continued moving ahead. Kroll’s heart sank as he realized that the American tanks outnumbered his unit. The great victory that he thought was within his grasp suddenly was slipping away.

  German tanks all around him were blown to bits by American shells. Kroll’s tank was bounced and rocked by American shells landing nearby, but he ordered his men to continue maneuvering and firing at the Americans.

  The interior of the German tank became warm, and sweat poured down Kroll’s face. It stank from diesel fumes and gunpowder smoke. His crew members had removed their shirts and fought furiously in their undershirts, jamming shells into the cannon, aiming, and firing.

  Kroll’s teeth chattered as he watched the American tanks wade into the 323rd Panzer Division. He imagined an American shell striking his tank and roasting him and his crew alive.

  “Retreat!” said the voice of Colonel Gortmann in his headphones. “Retreat!”

  “Retreat!” Kroll repeated to his men. “Get out of here!”

  The tank engines snarled as the driver pulled the levers that switched the tank into reverse. Kroll saw the scenery flash past the slit in the turret. The cannons still were pointed backwards so they could fire at the American tanks that covered the landscape like an army of ants.

  The 323rd Panzer Division changed direction and sped back, while the American tanks pierced deeply into its flank, stopping and firing, stopping and firing. Captain Kroll wanted to weep. Victory had been so close. In another hour or two the breakthrough would have been so deep that they never would have been stopped.

  Kroll’s tank bounced over shell craters and boulders as it tried to escape the American flank attack. An American shell hit its rear deck, was deflected into the air, and exploded above the tank with a roar so loud that Kroll’s ears were ringing afterwards. Kroll was greatly disheartened, but he told himself that there’d be other days and other battles, and perhaps good fortune would smile on the 323rd Panzer Division on another field of battle.

  “Faster!” he shouted to his crew. “Move in a zigzag pattern and go faster!”

  ~*~

  Captain Anderson had formed his company into a tight defensive perimeter and was trying to hold the German infantry off. A great many Germans already had passed his company by, but some evidently had been given orders to wipe him and his men out.

  The air was thick with bullets and the Germans threw hand grenades as if they had a vast quantity of them to squander. Captain Anderson rested his carbine on the edge of a shell crater and took aim at a German helmet a hundred yards away. His carbine fired, and Anderson saw the German helmet disappear. He didn’t know if he’d hit the German or if the German had ducked and the bullet whizzed over his head.

  Anderson and his men fought in a wild fury, knowing their backs were to the wall. The Germans had them surrounded and inched closer steadily. Charlie Company was nearly out of hand grenades and low on ammunition. Its field radio had been destroyed by a German mortar round and its walkie-talkies couldn’t make contact with battalion.

  Suddenly the German fire stopped.

  “Surrender!” shouted a German officer. “Surrender or die!”

  Sergeant Tweed and Pfc. Drago were in the hole with Anderson, and they looked at him with question marks in their eyes. Anderson imagined they might want him to surrender and end the whole bloody mess. Men groaned in pain everywhere, and the ground was heaped with dead soldiers from Charlie Company. But Captain Anderson didn’t think he should surrender if he had something left to fight with.

  The men in Charlie Company stopped firing, awaiting the response of their commanding officer. Captain Anderson knew that a terrible responsibility had been thrust onto his shoulders. If he didn’t surrender he and his men might be wiped out; but if he did surrender, who knew what would become of them? They might be put up against a wall and shot or be put in a POW camp and starved to death. No, it was better to fight until you had nothing to fight with.

  “Surrender!” yelled the German officer. “This is your last chance!”

  “KISS MY ASS!” Captain Anderson replied.

  Captain Anderson’s defiant and raunchy reply raised the morale of his embattled company. More determined than ever, they took careful aim with their rifles and fired at German helmets in the holes ahead of them; and if they couldn’t see any targets, they fired in the general direction of the Germans because they knew that an intense base of fire could keep an enemy away from you.

  Suddenly a whistle blew. The Germans shouted and came up out of their holes, charging toward the Charlie Company position.

  “RAPID FIRE!” screamed Captain Anderson.

  The men fired their rifles as quickly as they could, not even bothering to take careful aim. The machine gunners from the weapons platoon kept their triggers depressed and pulled the guns from side to side on the transverse mechanisms, cutting down the front rank of the German attackers. They’d been trained to fire their weapons in bursts so that the barrels wouldn’t melt, but there was no time for that nonsense now.

  The Germans kept driving toward the men of Charlie Company, who fired their rifles like wild men. Germans dropped to the ground screaming, but the rest of them swept forward. Captain Anderson clenched his teeth and fired his carbine on automatic. Sergeant Tweed held a bazooka on his shoulder and fired into the middle of the Germans. The rocket moved through the air slowly enough so he could see it, and it slammed into the face of a German soldier, taking his head off and exploding a split second later. Nearby Germans were blown in all directions, their arms and legs flying through the air.

  The Charlie Company weapons platoon had only two mortars left, but each of them dropped round after round onto the swarms of Germans running toward them. The German officer urged his men forward, and just then American machine gun fire shot away his jaw and he fell to the ground, blood gushing out of his throat.

  The German attack faltered, and the Americans kept firing. A German sergeant took over and shouted commands. The front rank of Germans ran with their rifles held high toward the Charlie Company dugouts. The American soldiers shot many of them down, but the remaining Germans leapt over the bodies of their fallen comrades and jumped down into the forward American holes.

  Captain Anderson was in one of the forward positions and got to his feet as the Germans swarmed around him. Holding the butt of his carbine to his hip, he fired it on automatic at the Germans, hitting them in the heads, sides, and backs; and then, when his clip emptied, he used the carbine like a baseball bat, bashing the Germans over their helmets or swinging sideways and catching them upside their faces.

  A German sergeant lunged at Captain Anderson with his bayonet, and Captain Anderson whacked him on the hands, fracturing his fingers and causing him to drop his rifle. Anderson slammed him in the head and split his skull open. The German fell at Captain Anderson’s feet, and the young infantry officer rammed a fresh clip into the bottom of his carbine, once again spraying the German soldiers near him with hot lead.

  The main body of the German attacking force began to pull back, stranding their comrades who were fighting for their lives inside the American fortifications. Those Germans quickly were overwhelmed and killed. A few tried to surrender, but the Americans weren’t playing that game. The Germans all were shot down, stripped of weapons, ammunition, and hand grenades, and the Americans prepared for the next attack.

  It was dawn and the battlefield was a mixture of gray light, brown mud, and bloody bodies. Captain Anderson raised his binoculars to see what the Germans were doing and spied a hundred Germans moving forward to reinforce the ones his company already was fighting.

  “Oh-oh,” Captain Anderson said.

  “What was that, sir?” asked Sergeant Tweed, who was bleeding from a cut on the bridge of his nose.

  “Those Krauts are being reinforced.”

  Captain Ande
rson took out a cigarette and lit it up. He knew they couldn’t hold out much longer. The situation looked terrible. Where were the American tanks? Had the Germans knocked them all out somewhere to the American rear?

  Captain Anderson cupped his hands around his mouth. “KEEP FIRING!” he told his men.

  The GIs fired their rifles at everything that moved in the German positions, and a lot was moving because the Germans were getting ready for another attack. One of the American mortars ran out of shells and the other had only five left. The machine gun squads only had enough ammunition for another few minutes of firing, and their barrels already were nearly red hot. Some of the Americans fired the Mauser rifles they’d captured from the Germans and thought them inferior to the American M-ls, because the M-l shells ejected themselves after firing, whereas the German shells had to be ejected through the manual operation of a bolt.

  The Germans shrieked battle cries and came up out of their holes, running toward the Americans again and pointing their bayonets toward American hearts. The GIs could see that they didn’t have a chance this time because there just were too many Germans and too many GIs had been killed or wounded in the last attack. Some of them wished Captain Anderson had surrendered when he had the chance.

  Captain Anderson also thought that maybe he should have, but he switched his carbine on semi-automatic to conserve ammunition and picked off German soldiers running toward him.

  “Hey sir—I hear tanks!” said Sergeant Tweed, spinning around and looking toward his rear.

  Captain Anderson looked behind him also. He’d heard the sound for the past few minutes, but had been too busy to pay much attention to it. Sure enough, in the first glimmer of dawn, he saw German tanks rolling across the fields to his rear and American tanks in hot pursuit. The American tanks vastly outnumbered the German ones, and some of the American tanks stopped to shoot their cannons at the German tanks, scoring direct hits.

  The sound of the tank battle became louder, and the Germans and GIs stopped fighting to see what was going on. The GIs cheered and the Germans stopped dead in their tracks. The GIs, encouraged by what they saw, turned to the Germans and fought harder; and the Germans, disheartened, began to fall back.