Milo thought that the greasy corned beef hash had never before tasted so good. The coffee could have served equally well as battery acid, but it was hot, and that was just then the important thing to him. But he had had only a single drag on his postprandial cigarette when the order came down to form up and move out into the numbing cold. The snow seemed to be slacking off, but what was still falling was being whipped on by an icy-toothed wind. As he tucked away his canteen cup, he reflected silently that this was damned, poor weather in which to be expected to fight, but then any weather was.
Two days later, Milo crouched in the snow among the nineteen men that were what now remained of Charlie’s headquarters platoon and first platoon. It could well be all that remained of the entire company for all he knew, since there had been no contact with Chamberlin of the second or Hogan of the third for … ? He was just too tired to remember how long.
There gradually approached unseen an ominous grind-ing-clanking-roaring, and lumbering over a low saddle came a German tank, a big one. A black-capped man stood with his black-leather-clad torso sticking out of the turret hatch, and a dozen or so rifle-armed soldiers rode clinging to the hull behind him. As the tank began to descend the slope into the little vale that lay between his hill and Milo’s, the front of the half-track appeared in the saddle behind the lumbering steel behemoth.
“Are there any rockets left for the bazooka, Bernie?” said Milo quietly.
“Yeah, Milo, two,” whispered First Sergeant Bernie Cohen. “But they won’t do no good—that’s a fuckin’ Tiger tank. They’ll just bounce off the fucker.”
Milo nodded. “Well, tell the bazooka man to take out that half-track back there, while the BARs and the rest of us try to kill those infantrymen. They’re what we really need to worry about—this slope is too steep for that tank or any other to make it up here.”
“He won’t need to,” said Cohen sadly. “The fuckin’ hill ain’t too steep for fuckin’ eighty-eight shells to climb. He can just sit down there and blow the whole fuckin’ top off this fuckin’ hill, and us with the fucker.”
The flash and tohooosh of the launched antitank rocket coincided with the tremendous explosion capped by a huge, black-smoky fireball rising from the saddle and announcing that the vehicle had been carrying gasoline, not troops. These sounds also coincided with the spraying of a deadly hail of small-arms fire on the Tiger below. The black hat spun from off the head of the man in the turret, even as that turret began to turn toward the hilltop, its long-barreled 88mm cannon beginning to rise. The unprotected Panzergrenadieren fared poorly, with no cover or even concealment to shelter them from the rain of death.
“Okay, okay!” Milo shouted. “Cease firing, cease firing, and let’s get the hell off this hill before the Krauts blow us all to hell!”
The men needed no further urging, rolling out of their firing positions and running, sliding, rolling down the more gentle reverse slope as fast as was humanly possible. Not until yet another snow-covered hill lay between them and the Tiger did they halt, panting, listening to the main armament of the Tiger bombarding their late position relentlessly.
Milo clapped Sergeant Cohen on the shoulder. “Well, it worked, didn’t it, Bernie? Why’re you still so glum?”
“Yeah, it worked, a’right, Milo, that last time, but it ain’t gonna work again, not for us. We down to one rocket for the bazooka now, and damn little fuckin’ ammo for any fuckin’ thing else. One of the BARs ain’t workin’ no more, and Bailey’s ankle is either busted or sprained real bad. We gotta find either battalion or regiment, Milo.”
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.