David Healey - Ardennes Sniper

Friel was shouting, ordering the tank to fire on the engineers while urging Breger forward with the half track so that he could open devastating fire with the machine gun.

Von Stenger could aim faster than a panzer and with more precision than the machine gunner. No sooner had the next engineer picked up the spool, than Von Stenger shot him. Once again, the spool bounced away.

The next man dived on top of it like an American football player. He almost hated to shoot such a brave fool. He lined up the crosshairs on the soldier, let out his breath—

A split second later, the tank lurched beneath him as the cannon fired. The sound was deafening, making the powerful rifle seem like a pop gun as it went off, the bullet going far astray. Von Stenger cursed; his ears rang and his eardrums hurt as if a nail had been driven through them.

He ignored the pain. No time for that.

A bullet pinged off the top of the tank. Scheiss! Von Stenger swiveled around. The shot had come from behind them. Another bullet cracked past. He could not see anyone behind them, but there were clearly snipers back there.

“Kurt, get down!” he yelled. “You are drawing sniper fire. Get inside the tank!”

Another bullet karoomed off the steel skin of the tank. Friel wasn’t so lucky this time, because a fragment of the bullet grazed his face. He tumbled inside the tank, where operations came to a standstill as the crew hurried to help their injured commander.

Cursing, Von Stenger jumped down from the tank. Now fully exposed to sniper fire, he ran to one side of the road. A bullet kicked up ice and snow inches from him. Stabs of pain radiated from his wounded leg, but he ignored that. He got free of the road and sprawled in the snow, hoping a prone position would keep the rifle steady.

For now, he chose to ignore the snipers aggravating them. All that mattered was securing the bridge.

Locked under the rifle, his elbows were effective as a bipod. He put his eye to the scope in time to see the drab-uniformed Americans scurrying like rats to attach the wire to the detonator.

The pause in the firing from the Germans as they reacted to the sniper attack was all the time that the American engineers needed. They scrambled to lay wires and set charges.

Von Stenger took aim. He was just about to fire when from the corner of his eye he saw the bulk of a King Tiger tank approaching as it raced toward the bridge. Cursing, he rolled out of the way to keep from being crushed. Several tons of steel now blocked his line of fire.

He ran to a new position and fired, the bullet going wide, kicking up mud a foot or so away from the man working at the detonator.

Von Stenger worked the bolt, put the crosshairs on the man, forced himself to let out a breath and take better aim.

The American soldier seemed to look right at him defiantly. Von Stenger shot the man through the heart, but his dying action was to slump across the detonator.

Multiple explosions flashed beneath the bridge.

The panzer was preparing to cross the bridge when the structure blew sky high. Chunks of stone, mortar and wood shot upwards, propelled by a geyser of ice and water.

The panzer fired with telling accuracy, the arc of its tracer aimed as accurately as Von Stenger’s bullet, but with much more telling impact. The high explosive round detonated, leaving a crater where the American engineers had been a moment before. They had paid for the bridge with their lives.

But for Kampfgruppe Friel, it was too late. Their route back into France had vanished.

Nearby, Friel popped back out of the tank long enough to scream curses at the remnants of the bridge that splashed down into the icy river. He shook his fist at the wreckage, but it was a futile gesture. “Those damned engineers!”

More bullets from the rear. Von Stenger thought he saw a flash of movement. He fired and the shooting stopped.

Friel was still staring at the ruined bridge when a courier approached. The lead elements of the Kampfgruppe, left behind by Friel’s lone panzer, were already pouring into town. “Sir, an American force has been sighted to the east. They have Sherman tanks and tank destroyers. It is a sizable force, sir.”

Friel nodded. It had only been a matter of time before the Americans managed to regroup. Operation Watch on the Rhine’s element of surprise had run its course.

The reality of the situation began to sink in. Kampfgruppe Friel’s back was to a river that it could not cross. Retreat toward Germany was now blocked by the enemy.

With no route across the river, Friel turned his forces toward the nearby town of La Gleize, which offered a better defensive position. It would be his rallying point. More of his straggling tanks and support vehicles streamed into La Gleize. Kampfgruppe Friel might be cut off, but it remained a formidable force. True, they were low on fuel. However, they had plenty of ammunition for one last battle.

Surrender to the Americans was not an option. Not after the massacre at Malmedy. At best, they would stand trial in some puppet court for murder. At worst, they would be gunned down where they stood. He would not do that to his men.

Just hours ago, success had seemed within their grasp. But the loss of the bridges had changed all that. Now, the struggle would be for survival.

“We will stand and fight,” he said.

“La Gleize,” Lieutenant Mulholland announced. “If we weren’t in the middle of a war, this town could be on a goddamn Christmas card.”

Even Cole had to agree, although he was hardly in a holiday mood. It was true that the village tucked into the rolling countryside was scenic, with old stone houses festooned with snow. The sight of German panzers and machine gun emplacements marred that picture. Their arrival just in time to harass the lead elements of Kampfgruppe Friel had helped to keep the Germans pinned down on this side of the river.

Cole lit a cigarette. “Ain’t goin’ to be so pretty once the shootin’ starts.”

He smoked the cigarette as he studied the layout of the village.

It was Bienville all over again.

At that French village in Normandy, Americans had fought to hold the village against a much larger German force. Strategically, Bienville had been a vital town — nobody was getting anywhere on the roads through Normandy unless they came through Bienville. Cole and the other snipers had been part of that last-stand defense. Thanks to Jolie, they had invited Das Gespenst to what was essentially a duel between the German and Cole.

But Das Gespenst had lived up to his name by tricking them. During the night, he had found a passage into the heart of the village. Safe inside the stone spire of an ancient Norman church, he had picked off the American defenders and then slipped away. Cole had caught up to him, but had paid a steep price for that encounter.

He had hoped that Das Gespsent died that day. By all rights, he should have. Luck had been on the German’s side and he had lived to haunt them all over again in the Ardennes.

Now, at La Gleize, it was the Germans making a last stand. The tables had turned — to a point. For starters, La Gleize had no real strategic value — it was simply where the German armored column had run to ground.

Unfortunately, there would be no using Das Gespent’s tricks against him by slipping into town undetected. The Germans were already dug into La Gleize. The snipers were on the outside, looking in.

“Lucky for us, we’re in the suburbs,” Vaccaro pointed out. “Plenty of space to roam around.”

Vaccaro’s description was apt. A much smaller village, really just a clump of buildings that included a few shops, a scattering of houses, and a church, was located east of La Gleize, just within rifle range. The American forces were centered around this smaller village.