Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

But they did not; what they found instead and very soon thereafter was a full company of Waffen-SS, who were as much surprised at the encounter as were Milo and his fragments of Charlie Company. The battle was short, of course, and very bloody, and the outcome was certain when it began there amid the whirling snow. Most of it was hand-to-hand, the firearms fired at such short ranges that they often set afire the clothing of those at whom they were aimed.

A MAIN \

Milo fired off the magazine in his Thompson, but had no time to put in a fresh one. He used the submachine gun as a club until his icy-slick gloves lost their grip on it. He managed to draw and arm his pistol then, but had fired off only two shots when something struck the back of his neck and darkness descended on him.

When things had been sorted out and the Hauptschar-fuhrer had made his report, Obersturmfuhrer Karl Greisser waited until the Sanitfttsmann had finished dabbing ointment on his powder-burned face before remarking, “There weren’t many of them, God be thanked, for just look at the mess those few made of this company. Did any get away?”

Untersturmfilhrer Egon Lenge shrugged. “One would doubt it, but in this snow and wind, who can say? There are a few wounded Amis. What do we do with them?”

Greisser raised his eyebrows. “On the advance, Egon? You know what to do.”

Lenge nodded and tried vainly to click his bootheels. Zu Behfel, mein Hen Obersturmfuhrer. “

Pacing over to a knot of soldiers, he bespoke a Rottenführer . “Get two men and fix your bayonets.”

Milo came slowly out of his stupor and groggily raised his body up on his elbows. That was when the Rottenführer . “Get two men and fix your bayonets.”

Milo came slowly out of his stupor and groggily raised his body up on his elbows. That was when the Rottenführer jammed the full length of his bayonet into Milo’s chest, then again and yet a third time. With a groan, Milo sank back into the trampled, bloody snow.

Satisfied, the Rottenführer moved on to perform another mercy killing. He thought well of the company commander for ordering this. Only a very humane man would take time out from an advance to see to it that wounded enemies were not simply left to die of pain and shock and freezing.

Although in severe pain from the penetrating stabs of the bayonet, Milo stayed completely still until the last sounds of men and vehicles had faded into the distance. Although someone had taken his wristwatch, he discovered that the American weapons and clothing and equipment had been left where they lay by the Germans.

“The bastards must be running on a tight time schedule,” he muttered to himself. “They didn’t even search us for cigarettes … not that they’d have found any on this bunch.”

His own searching showed him fourteen bodies, fifteen, including his. So as many as five could have gotten away clean. Of course, there could be some he had not found in the deep snow, too, and some of those not here could have crawled away wounded to die nearby.

He found his Thompson, checked the action, cleaned and dried it as best he could, then jammed his last full magazine into it. His pistol still hung by his side on a lanyard he affected, and he cleared and bolstered it. A careful search of the bodies of his men gave him a handful of dog tags, a few more rounds of .45 ammo for his weapons and nothing else; they had all been down to the bare essentials days ago.

Search as he might, however, he could not find his map case, and as he thought of it, he could not recall seeing it within the last twenty-four hours or so. He reflected that it and its contents would not do him much good anyway, because he did not know where he was except in the very broadest sense, and he could spot no prominent terrain features or landmarks amid the windblown clouds of snow and the very low overcast. He did still have his compass, however, hanging unbroken in its case on his pistol belt; thank God for small favors. If he took a course a few degrees west of due north, he should eventually come out of the Ardennes somewhere in friendly territory, unless the German counteroffensive had rolled the invading Allies clear back to Antwerp by then.

Colonel John Saxon was in an exceedingly foul mood when he hustled into the commo tent, not liking at all being bothered for any reason at his daily bowel movement.

Taking the microphone into his hairy paw and appropriating the radio operator’s seat, he growled, “Saxon here. What is so fuckin’ all-fired important, Mr. Whoever-you-are? And I’m warnin’ you, it better be fuckin’ good! Like capturin’ old Schickelgroober, that kinda good.”

A cool, precise, obviously unflustered voice replied, “Colonel Saxori, your regimental headquarters says that you have or at least had an officer named Milo Moray, a captain and company commander, in your battalion. Is this true?”

“Yeah, it’s so,” attested Saxon, the still-recent hurt of loss taking a good bit of the fire of anger out of him. “The fuckin’ Krauts Wounded him and then bay’neted him and a whole bunch of other wounded fellas to death. Two, three boys come to get away and make it back and tell us ‘bout it. Why? Have you found his body?”

“In a manner of speaking, colonel, in a manner of speaking. This is S-2, Second Armored Division. I’m Major George Smith. A man was captured by one of our advance units a few kilometers southwest of here yesterday. He was wandering around alone in bloodstained clothing, and that in itself made him suspicious, since there were no wounds to be found on him. After the regimental S-2 questioned him, found that his German was as fluent as his English and that, although he claimed to be a captain, there were no indications of rank on his uniform or in his effects and his identity tags carry an enlisted man’s service number, he was sent back here under guard.

“Whoever he is, colonel, he is a linguist. He speaks not only English and German, but French, Dutch, Flemish, Yiddish, Scottish, Spanish and Romanian, and those are only the ones we’ve been able to check out. He has the order of battle of your battalion and regiment down pat and about as much of that of your division and First Army as one could expect the captain of a line company to know. I like the man and I’d like to believe his story … and it’s a hair-raising one, too. But I’ve got to have more proof of his identity than he can give me, or has given me up to now, anyway. With all these phony GIs wandering around the countryside and speaking German when they think they aren’t overheard, we have no choice but to be damned sure just who or what we’ve got.”

“I unnerstand, major,” said Saxon. “You cain’t be-too fuckin’ careful, out in hostile country. I tell you what— you got this man there with you?”

“In the next room, colonel,” replied Smith.

“Then ask him or have somebody else ask him these-here questions I’m gonna tell you and then tell me what he answers.”

When the major resumed transmission, he said, “Colonel, the man states that his high-ranking buddy is Brigadier General Jethro Stiles, that the clapped-up cardshark of your battalion was a Belgian named Jaquot, that the name and rank of the man who tried to kill him back in the States was Sergeant Luigi Moffa, and that—”

“Never mind, major, never mind,” crowed Saxon, grinning from ear to ear. “You got the genyewine article there, not no Kraut. Send Milo home.”

When he finally got through to Brigadier General Stiles, Saxon said, “I hope you sittin’ down, gen’rul. Okay? Milo ain’t dead. Naw, he turned up and was picked up by some Secon’ Armored fellas, two, three days back, and their fuckin’ S-2s has had him sincet then, tryin’ to figger if he was who he said or a fuckin’ Kraut in GI clothes. I give the dumbass fuckers some questions could’n anybody but Milo answer right, and when I got the right answers, I told the bastards to send him back to battalion. I thought you’d wanta know, gen’rul.”