David Healey - Ardennes Sniper

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, sir,” said Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, his chief of staff. His nickname was Beetle, although by nature he was much closer to a Doberman — woe to anyone who interfered with Ike’s schedule or tried to waste the general’s time.

“When’s Kay getting back? We’re supposed to see a movie tonight.”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Ike’s pretty Irish driver, Kay Sommersby, was out doing some Christmas shopping on Ike’s behalf. It was a poorly kept secret that she was the general’s mistress. Yet neither Ike nor Sommersby found anything odd in having her pick out something nice for the general’s wife, Mamie, safely out of the way stateside.

Ike smoked and thought. All day long reports of German activity in the Ardennes had been coming in. None of it made sense. “Listen, Beetle. You know as well as I do that the Germans are finished. It’s just a matter of time. They don’t have the resources for a counteroffensive. Why they don’t just do us all a favor and give up is anybody’s guess.”

“Because it’s Adolf Hitler, sir. That’s why.”

Ike was a man who operated on percentages and forecasts and compromise. He admired brilliant military strategists, particularly General Robert E. Lee, but Eisenhower’s great talent was as a politician and administrator. He was the glue that held together sometimes prickly Allied forces. He relied on Omar Bradley and George Patton to lead troops on the field. They were Ike’s equivalent of James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, both of whom had been Lee’s top generals during the Civil War.

Intellectually, Ike understood that Hitler was a fanatic, and yet the concept of ignoring the percentages was hard for him to grasp. Why go on fighting a war you couldn’t win?

Hitler had missed his chance. If the Germans had bid for peace six months before, in the weeks leading up to D-Day when Ike had lost sleep over the dismal casualty projections, the terms of a peace agreement would have been quite favorable for the Germans. But there was no need to negotiate terms with the losing side.

An aide entered with another report. Ike read it, his eyes going wide.

“The Germans have broken through our lines. Damn it, Beetle! Reports are coming in of hundreds of tanks, thousands of men, even Luftwaffe planes. I can’t believe it.”

Beetle Smith got up and spoke to the MP guarding the door. And then he shut the double wooden doors into Ike’s office. He walked over to the windows and drew the blinds. “These stay closed from now on, sir. And we’re going to triple the guard.”

“What the devil are you taking about? It’s no secret that we’re fighting a war. You think we’re being spied on?”

“It’s not to protect information, sir. It’s to protect you . Those reports about Otto Skorzeny’s assassins and saboteurs—

“Hogwash.”

“Well, we didn’t think the Germans could launch a counteroffensive, either.”

“All right, let’s get Bradley and Patton in here pronto,” Ike said, stubbing out one cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and immediately lighting another. “One thing for sure — Hitler has a lousy idea of a Christmas present.”

“Not if you’re German, sir.”

In the heart of the Ardennes, the American snipers didn’t need intelligence reports to know that the Germans were up to something. The sound of gunfire in the distance made them uneasy. Something was up. Something big, from the sounds of it.

“Keep your eyes open,” Lieutenant Mulholland said to his squad, though the warning was hardly necessary.

“What’s going on, Lieutenant?” asked Billy Rowe, scanning the woods nervously.

“To hell if I know, but it’s not good,” Mulholland responded. “Like I said, keep your eyes open.”

Rowe was new to the squad, but so far he had proved to be adept at the job, mostly because he had managed to stay alive, which was harder than it looked when you were hunting German snipers.

Since D plus 1 the snipers had been assigned within the 29th Division as a counter-sniper unit. They had done their job well — perhaps a little too well, because someone at headquarters had gotten the bright idea that the squad needed to be larger. And so they had sent Rowe and two other soldiers to fill out the ranks. Both men were good shots — Mulholland had given them an impromptu marksmanship test when they were assigned to the unit.

But it took more than being a marksman to be a good sniper. One of the replacements had died that first day in the field when he made the mistake of peeking over a log to see if he had hit anything. The German sniper on the other side of the field had picked him off. It was the kind of dumb mistake that always got the new guys killed.

Cole had hunted down and shot the German during the course of a long, tense afternoon. You could count on Cole to get even. He was from that southern hill country where people still held grudges and fought feuds. Cole was serious about that eye for an eye thing. Dead serious.

That was how sniper warfare went. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It felt personal, even when death was delivered at long distance by a nameless German with a Mauser.

Sometimes, Mulholland felt like it was all similar to an endless chess game in which you lost a pawn here or there to expose the enemy’s rook. Both sides had won and lost an awful lot of pieces, and checkmate didn’t seem any closer.

They trudged along the frozen, snowy road until they came to a crossroads. The signs were like something out of a storybook — simple white with the names Malmedy and St. Vith painted on them in black, pointing in the direction to take. Say what you wanted about the German occupation, but they had been sticklers for maintaining the roads.

“Which way, Lieutenant?” Vaccaro asked. He nodded at the road toward St. Vith. The snow was nearly pristine and untrammeled. “Looks quiet down that road. There’s probably a nice little tavern at the end and some warm calvados.”

“We’ll head toward where we heard that gunfire,” Mulholland said. “That’s where they’ll need us.”

“I was afraid you would say that, sir.”

It soon turned out that they were not the only travelers on the road. In the distance, they heard the whine of a vehicle approaching at high speed over the wintry roads.

“Sounds like a Jeep,” Mulholland said. “But I’m not taking any chances. Everybody off the road. Now!”

Cole had already taken a position down in the ditch, his telescopic sight trained on the road they had just come down. The others hurried to join him. “Looks like one of ours, but you just can’t tell for sure.”

“Is it one of our Jeeps or not?” Vaccaro wanted to know.

“It’s one of ours, but maybe it’s a German driving.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You saw that dead man in the road back there,” Cole said. “He damn sure didn’t die of frostbite. Maybe the Germans sent some guys behind the lines to soften us up. That could be them now, coming to link up with their Kraut buddies.”

“Cole, you have got one devious mind, but I like how you think.” Vaccaro worked the bolt action of his Springfield. “Shoot first and ask questions later, I aways say.”

The Jeep came closer, headed toward the hidden snipers. If there were Germans at the wheel, they were driving straight into an ambush. Then the Jeep began to slow as the crossroads came up.

Cole had been watching the approaching Jeep intently through his telescopic sight, but he suddenly lifted his head away and blinked. “Cover me,” he said, and stepped out into the road.

“Cole,” the lieutenant said. “Get back here!”

But the sniper was already standing in the middle of the road, rifle lowered, waiting for the Jeep to come closer. It rolled to a stop just a few feet from him.