David Healey: Ghost Sniper

He reflected that this was much like a game of chess in which one had made a fatal error, and yet it was too early to give up. One’s opponent might still make some foolish mistake. Some brilliant move might still present itself and thus save the game.

Down below, near the bridge, some soldier’s helmet edged above the rim of his foxhole. Von Stenger put a hole in it. An instant later, a bullet nicked through the bushes not far from his head.

He had fallen for the oldest trick in the book. Some soldier had lured him with an empty helmet so that he would fire and reveal his position.

He pressed his eye more tightly to the telescopic sight. There . He could see a soldier in another foxhole nearby scanning the bank where Von Stenger was hidden. Fortunately, the American did not have a telescope mounted on his rifle. These were airborne commandos equipped with light automatic weapons intended for close fighting. It was an odd sensation, being able to see the man clearly even as he tried to see him , but could not. Von Stenger took aim and shot him. One could not have the enemy thinking they were real snipers.

This time, a few more shots tore into the brush, but by then he had melted away. The first rule of being a sniper was to change one’s position frequently, to maintain the element of surprise and uncertainty. Once the enemy knew where you were, you were as good as dead. It was only a matter of time before they picked you off.

At least a dozen American bodies lay sprawled on the ground beside the line of German dead.

Welcome to the war, Von Stenger thought.

Omaha Beach

D Plus 1

“Hey, watch it, buddy!” Lieutenant Mulholland turned just in time to dodge a detail that was carrying a wounded man toward the makeshift hospital set up on the beach. The medic, who looked dog tired, noticed his rank and muttered, “Sorry, sir.”

Mulholland trudged up the beach, the heavy, wet sand clinging to his boots with every step. Some of the sand was stained red in patches. He was so bone weary himself that he hadn’t even noticed he was walking into the path of the medical team. The poor bastard in the stretcher was covered in several places with blood-soaked bandages. He’d be going onto a launch to be carried out to one of the hospital ships, and from there to England—if he made it.

Considering that the wounded soldier was still breathing, he was better off than the dead men who were literally being stacked in the backs of trucks for removal from the beach. They would be buried further inland in a makeshift cemetery.

Mulholland tried to estimate the number of dead, but quickly gave up. God knew how many there were. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. He looked away. Much of his own platoon was part of the butcher’s bill for taking the beach. Most of them died in seconds as machine gun fire poured into their landing craft when it hit the beach. He saw their faces, imagined the last letters home they had written in the hours before the invasion. What an utter waste of life, thanks to Adolf Hitler.

Mulholland felt guilty about it, but he was glad to be alive. Of course, there was a great deal of fighting yet to come. Who knew if he would survive? He could hear the whump of heavy guns a couple of miles inland. The Germans had lost the beach, but rumor was that they were fighting for every inch of countryside. Normandy’s endless fields ringed by tall hedgerows made for a completely different kind of fighting.

Everywhere he looked, men and materials were in motion, with more swarming ashore at every moment. Stacked boxes and crates awaited transit off the beach. Tanks and trucks bulled their way through the surf and up onto the sand. The beach head established here was now the gateway to Europe. Through this portal would begin the liberation of France and Europe, until the Allied troops were at Hitler’s door step. The sight of all the gear and men coming ashore somehow reassured him that the men on his landing craft had not died in vain.

While gunfire could be heard not so far off, the army bureaucracy had already established itself on the beach. Under a rough canvas sheet that flapped in the wind, typewriters had been set up on crates, where clerks were busy typing dispatches and keeping records of the material coming ashore—and of the dead. Telephone lines snaked from the clerical area into the dunes and countryside beyond. As Mulholland watched, two engineers were busy unrolling another spool of telephone wire. The clack of typewriters, the sight of telephone wires—it all seemed shockingly pedestrian after the carnage and sheer terror on the beach yesterday.

The lieutenant had been summoned to brigade headquarters for the 116th Infantry. He knew that being called to headquarters was never a good sign. It usually meant that you had screwed up somehow—or worse yet, that you were being singled out for some kind of special duty. Although he wasn’t looking forward to what awaited him, he marched resolutely toward HQ.

The beach remained a combat zone, and so HQ was nothing more than a canvas tarp that had been rigged to keep off the rain and wind. More of the now ubiquitous telephone lines ran toward it. Sandbags had been stacked around the tarp to create a barrier, behind which a machine gun was set up in case of counterattack, although the likelihood of the Jerries recapturing the beach faded by the hour. He soon found himself standing before a harassed-looking colonel.

“Lieutenant Mulholland reporting, sir.” He brought himself to attention and saluted.

“At ease, Lieutenant,” the colonel said, returning the salute. The colonel was trying without much success to light a cigarette in the breeze off the ocean, also hampered by the fact that his left arm was heavily bandaged. Mulholland hurried to hold the military-issue lighter for him. “Thank you, son. You know, I used to like the beach, but I don’t believe I’d care to spend a day at the beach again. I’ve got sand in cracks I didn’t know I had.”

“I know what you mean, sir.”

“Well, it’s our beach now, which is goddamn something. We paid a heavy price for this real estate, Lieutenant. And the Jerries are making us fight for every foot inland. Let me be clear that they are not in retreat but are fighting a defensive battle. The interior is nothing but fields, hedgerows and trees, and it’s crawling with Germans. They’ve got tanks, artillery, snipers, and they’re highly organized. The bastards are stubborn.”

“Yes, sir.” Mulholland wondered why the colonel was telling him this, which seemed to be something that everyone already knew. The colonel seemed to be leading up to something, which the lieutenant suspected would involve him and the reason he had been summoned to HQ.

“Like I said, the whole goddamn Cotentin Peninsula is lousy with Germans. Our own armored units can handle the Panzers and all the rest. But I have to say that the snipers are tearing us up pretty bad. We hadn’t really counted on that. They’re sneaky, cowardly bastards, but we need to adopt some of the same tactics if we’re going to fight back. And that’s where you come in, Lieutenant.”

“Sir?”

“I understand that you worked with a sniper in the fighting yesterday to eliminate German resistance.”

“We were just kind of thrown together, sir.”

“Be that as it may, son, you are now the 116th Infantry’s resident expert on sniper warfare.” The colonel clapped him on the shoulder, then winced. “Damn, this arm hurts. Got to get it tended to. Listen, you’ve heard of an ad hoc committee? You are now in charge of an ad hoc squad. Your assignment is to eliminate as many of the German snipers as possible. Counter sniper warfare.”