David Healey - Ardennes Sniper

“Listen up, I want Cole and Vaccaro on my left,” he said, coming back from the briefing. He handed the young soldier a powerful pair of binoculars. “Kid, you will act as my spotter. I want you to keep those glasses on the Krauts. We are looking for any way, shape, or form to take out their machine gun nests or any gun emplacements they have set up.” He looked at Jolie. “I don’t suppose there’s any convincing you to keep out of the fighting? It looks to me like that girl could use some help up at the field hospital.”

“These Germans want to get back into France,” she said. “How can I let them?”

“They had their chance to get to France,” Mulholland said. “The only place they’re going now is to hell. You ought to let us handle it.”

Jolie lifted her chin defiantly. Even after living rough in the field, hiking through snow and sleeping in trucks, she still managed to look like a dish. “You cannot tell me what to do.”

Mulholland sighed. After six months of fighting his way across Europe, there was still a lot of Boy Scout in him that didn’t want to see a woman in combat. But seeing that face, Mulholland felt his resolve melt. “You do want you want, Jolie. I know you will, anyhow. But do me a favor and don’t let the colonel see you, or it’s my derrière.”

They spread out behind a stone wall, their position anchored on the left by a butcher shop and on the right by the bulk of the old church that had been converted into a field hospital.

No sooner had they moved into position than the American guns opened up. The German guns replied. The battle of La Gleize had begun.

Time to hunt.

Cole let his shooter’s calm settle over him, although it was hardly quiet on the battlefield. The heavy guns on both sides barked at one another like big dogs. Shells from tanks and tank destroyers hurtled back and forth, blasting both La Gleize and the woods beyond the American lines to rubble and splinters.

He wasn’t worried about that. The only gun that mattered to him was the one in his hands. Between the gouges in the stock and the scratches on the barrel, the Springfield taken from McNulty was showing signs of hard use. The rifle must have been used when it was issued to McNulty in the first place. But it shot as true as ever. Cole had cleaned and oiled every inch of it — there was no machinery better cared for anywhere in La Gleize.

The snipers were scattered among the ruins of the little village on the fringes of La Gleize. The American tanks and tank destroyers were located further back. Most of the artillery being traded screamed overhead. From time to time, the Germans raked the village with machine gun fire, but most of their attention was on the encircling American lines on the higher ground.

Lieutenant Mulholland saw this as their opportunity to show the value of snipers on the battlefield.

Cole saw it as a chance to get even. To get even for the miles they had trekked across the frozen hills and forests in pursuit of the Germans. To get even for Rowe and McNulty. To get even for the Americans murdered in the snowy field at Malmedy.

“Do you think he’s out there?” Jolie asked.

“Oh, I reckon he is,” Cole said. He didn’t need to ask who Jolie was asking about.

“How can you tell?”

“I can feel him.” Jolie didn’t have to ask him what he meant. She knew, because she could sense him, too. This was the German who had shot her, after all.

The thought made her shudder. Von Stenger had nearly killed her at Bienville, shooting her in order to draw out Cole and put him in Von Stenger’s sights. To him, she had been nothing more than bait.

“You get him this time,” she said. “Don’t stop until you do.”

The snipers were spread out in an uneven line, hidden among the various buildings and stone walls in the village. Lieutenant Mulholland had chosen a spot where a shell had torn through a couple of small buildings, leaving a jumble of timber and stones. The Kid was spotting for him, using a huge pair of field glasses. Vaccaro was to his right, hunkered behind a stone wall.

“The thicker, the better,” he had announced in picking it out.

Cole wanted height. So he had chosen the second floor of a bakery. It offered a good view of La Gleize. The thick stone walls helped, too.

He did not go to the window, where he would have been an obvious target. Instead, he put a wooden table in the middle of the room, put a folded blanket on top of the table, and rested his rifle on that. His view of the town across the field was limited, but that’s where Jolie came in. Armed with binoculars, she could move freely between windows, if need be, trying to spot the Ghost Sniper.

“How will you know where to find him?” she asked.

“Give it some time.”

They did not have to wait long. The snipers were not the only American troops in the village. Other soldiers were busy setting up defensive positions or ferrying messages between points on the battlefield. For the snipers, these other soldiers were the canaries in the coal mine.

A soldier passing below Cole’s window crumpled and fell. The shot had come just as a German tank fired, so it was impossible to tell the location of the shooter.

“Anything?” Cole asked Jolie, who was low to the front window, looking out with the binoculars, trying to see some clue as to Von Stenger’s location.

“I see nothing.”

Cole swept his telescopic sight over La Gleize, located across the snowy fields that were now a no-man’s land. He saw targets — mostly German machine gunners and a few tank commanders with their heads out of their hatches, directing their fire. He left those targets to Mulholland and Vaccaro. There was just one target he had in mind. Das Gespenst.

In the streets below, another soldier fell. This one did not die cleanly, but dragged himself to the base of a wall, then lay still.

Cole moved his scope across the edge of La Gleize once again. There was no sign of Von Stenger.

He thought again about Bienville. The man had been clever, slipping into the town and then occupying the church steeple. Another time in Normandy, he had occupied a church steeple and managed to pin down an entire American company almost singlehandedly.

Cole realized he had been looking for Von Stenger in the front lines of the fighting, which was far too obvious for Von Stenger.

“Jolie, do you see any church steeples in La Gleize?”

There was a pause while she looked. “Yes. Ten o’clock. But you will have to move closer to the window to see it. ”

Reluctantly, Cole slid his table forward several feet until he could see the church steeple. It was stone, substantial, and offered a commanding view of the countryside around La Gleize. He judged the distance to be maybe 300 yards — far behind the front lines.

You would have to be a very good shot to hit anything reliably at that distance. Das Gespenst had proven himself to be a good shot — and then some. The last thing that Cole wanted was to end up in those crosshairs.

The same went for Jolie. She had already been in Das Gespenst’s sights once before, and it wasn’t going to happen again, if he had anything to say about it.

“Jolie, I want you to go up to that church here in the village and see if you can help that girl we saw. There’s an awful lot of wounded.”

“You are as bad as the lieutenant, wanting to send me away.”

“Aw, don’t go arguing with me now. Go out the back and keep every building you can between yourself and those Germans over there. Go in the back door of that church. I reckon it’s got one. And once you’re in that church, don’t so much as stick your nose out. Stay inside those stone walls.”

“You found him, didn’t you?”