David Healey: Ardennes Sniper

Caje Cole looked through the rifle scope at the Germans.

Six Wehrmacht infantrymen, passing around a pack of cigarettes in the gray winter dawn. From a distance of two hundred feet, the four power scope wasn’t powerful enough to pick out the brand, but from the flash of red and white Cole guessed they were smoking Lucky Strikes.

Taken off a dead American, he reckoned. No shortage of those, thanks to these Krauts.

One of the Germans laughed, and the sound telegraphed across the frigid air, making the enemy sound much closer. These were battle-hardened Wehrmacht soldiers, wearing winter gear filthy with the mud of a hundred fox holes. They couldn’t see Cole, who had crept all night with Vaccaro toward the German lines, finally burying themselves in a rotting wood pile at the edge of an abandoned farm. Dirty white strips of cloth, wrapped around their rifle barrels, disguised the outlines of their weapons.

The cloth strips were Cole’s idea. Even after months as a sniper, Vaccaro was still a city boy at heart, so it had taken all of Cole’s considerable skill as a hunter to get them this close.

Right now, it felt a little too close. The Germans laughed again. Cole smelled their cigarette smoke.

He had figured on picking off a German or two, but this group was too good to pass up. The Germans stood around a machine gun. If they got to it in time, Cole and Vaccaro would be dead.

“Take the shot already,” Vaccaro muttered. “I’m freezing my ass off.”

Cole did not reply, but let his crosshairs settle on the German handing out the Lucky Strikes. He let out a breath. Squeezed the trigger.

Gentle-like, he reminded himself. The pad of his finger added a fraction of tension.

When the rifle fired, it almost surprised him.

The German collapsed. Vaccaro took the next shot and knocked down another German.

Cole worked the bolt. Fired again.

Vaccaro’s next shot missed, and the last German went for the machine gun. Cole put the crosshairs on him and fired. His ears told him that his bullet had struck the German. When a brass-jacketed round hit a human body it made a solid whunk sound like a ripe watermelon being split with a big knife.

Seconds after the first shot, all four Germans lay dead in the snow.

“You missed your second shot,” Cole said.

“That’s why you’re here, Hillbilly.”

The two snipers extricated themselves from the wood pile, then followed a stone wall toward the ruins of a barn. Keeping low, they were careful to maintain a distance between themselves. Always good to make a hard target.

Now came the dangerous part, crossing nearly one hundred feet of open field between the barn and the edge of the Ardennes Forest.

“You go first,” Cole said.

“Easy for you to say and me to do.”

Vaccaro took a big breath and ran. Cole raised his rifle to cover Vaccaro as the city boy dashed for the trees. Once there, he covered Cole as he ran across.

Safely in the trees, Vaccaro produced a hip flask filled with calvados. He had gotten a taste for the apple brandy right after the D-Day landing in June. Christmas was in a few days, and then the new year of 1945.

“Wish we could have gotten us an officer,” Cole said.

“Look at it this way, Cole. If things go according to plan, those are the last Germans you’ll have to shoot this year.” He handed the flask to Cole.

Cole looked at him with eyes that seemed cut from glass, then took a long drink from the flask and tossed it back. “I reckon we’ll see about that,” Cole said.

In the winter of 1762 when the Ardennes froze hard, wolves crept down from the mountains and out of the deep shadows of the forests. At first, the people in the isolated villages noticed only the paw prints in the snow beyond the houses and barns, but the wolves themselves remained unseen. The hungry beasts became more bold and visible, attacking sheep, children, even grown men. In local legend it was remembered as der Winter von den Wölfen des Ardennes, the Winter of the Wolves of Ardennes.

It had been a long time since a wolf had attacked anyone in the hills and forests, but that did not mean danger wasn’t present. In the winter of 1944 the wolves were two-legged, and they were once again about to sweep across the sleepy forests and villages.

One of these wolves was named Gunther Klein. Walking alone at dusk it was easy to believe the legends about the forest that he remembered from his boyhood. But he did not feel much like a wolf at the moment. Truth be told, he was downright nervous and jumpy, because he was a German soldier well behind the American lines — a wolf, perhaps, but one in sheep’s clothing. Or, in his case, an American uniform.

If caught, he would be executed immediately as a spy.

Klein was one of a specially trained unit led by none other than Otto Skorzeny, the dashing six-foot-four SS commando with the dueling scar or schmiss on his cheek. Eisenhower had called Skorzeny “the most dangerous man in Europe,” and it had been Skorzeny’s brainstorm to form this team of one hundred and fifty saboteurs.

In addition to wearing an American uniform, Klein carried a captured M1 rifle. He was making his way toward one of the crossroads villages where it was rumored the Americans had a large fuel depot. His orders were quite simple — blow up the fuel, cut any telephone lines, spread misinformation. Basically, he was a one-man sabotage squad. His secret weapon was that he spoke English fluently.

Klein had slipped through the thin American lines without any trouble. To keep to his schedule, he decided to follow the road into the village. He would have preferred keeping to the woods, but the snow was already knee deep in places. He would just have to take his chances on the road.

“Verdammt, es ist kalt!” he muttered, teeth chattering, then chided himself. English, you fool. One slip of the tongue in front of American troops and that would be it for him. There would likely be no trial, but only a roadside reckoning. Skorzeny had made that much clear to everyone.

So far he hadn’t seen a soul. The situation changed abruptly when he rounded a bend in the winding road and a figure materialized from behind a tree and stepped into the road. Klein swung his rifle at the American GI.

“Easy there, pardner! I was just taking a leak. I saw you coming and wanted to make sure you weren’t a German.”

“No Germans around here.” Klein’s heart pounded so loud he was sure the American could hear it.

“You never know. But I’ll bet they’re holed up somewhere nice and warm, waiting for us to come to them.” He coughed, and Klein smelled alcohol on the man’s breath. “Cold as a witch’s tit!”

“Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” Klein said. He was not quite sure what it meant, because it certainly didn’t make any sense, but he had been taught that it was a popular American saying.

“That’s why I was trying to keep warm in one of the local taverns,” the GI said. “I’m headed back to the village. How about you?”

“Yes, the village sounds like a fine idea.” Klein winced as soon as he said it. He knew he had come off sounding stuffy. Skorzeny himself once said that Klein spoke English like he had the queen’s royal scepter up his ass. He needed to work on sounding more American.

The GI gave him a sidelong look. “Say, what are you doing out here, anyhow?”

“Same as you. Running errands for HQ.”