The halftracks were within range of the German guns and it was their turn to begin to die. Adding to the horror were well hidden machine guns that raked the lightly armored vehicles. Men tumbled from them and tried to advance. When the bullets struck them, they went to ground and stayed there.
“Son of a bitch!” yelled General Evans. “Where the hell are our planes?”
On cue, P47 and P51 fighters began to strafe where spotters on the ground told them the Germans were hiding. The German guns kept firing, with some of them shooting at the planes, forcing them to jink and juke. One was hit. It cartwheeled into the ground and exploded. More planes dive-bombed, this time with napalm. Fires billowed, killing any life beneath or nearby.
“Why the hell didn’t we do that sooner?” asked Cullen.
“Probably against regulations,” Tanner answered. “Let the infantry suffer before doing anything that makes sense.” General Evans glared at him but did not disagree.
The attack was stalling. Even with the Germans pounded by planes and with searing flames from napalm leaping high, the American casualties were too many. The armor was the first to give up. The tanks moved in reverse to keep their more heavily armored front facing enemy fire. It was a vain hope, as three more tanks exploded. The remaining Shermans then simply turned and raced for safety. More 88mm shells followed and the Germans increased their range. Shells began to fall in and around the area where Tanner and the others now lay on the ground and tried to make themselves very small.
The earth shook and they cowered before they realized their best chance to survive was to get out of sight and far enough away to be out of range of the German guns. “Damn it, I thought we were safe,” said Cullen.
“The eighty-eights got a maximum range of nearly forty thousand feet and that’s damn near eight miles,” said Tanner. “If it can see us, it can kill us.”
“Now you tell me,” said Cullen as another shell shrieked overhead and smashed into the ground behind them.
General Evans had been quiet. All of the planning for the attack was down the drain. The area before the German lines was littered with smashed and burning vehicles and dead American soldiers. It was beginning to dawn on the American commanders that cracking through the Brenner Pass and connecting with Fifteenth Army Group soldiers fighting up from Italy was going to be a very tough and bloody proposition.
* * *
Schubert and Hummel had spent much of their day hiding and trying not to scream as American artillery shells pounded everything near them. Sometimes the concussions lifted them off the ground and sometimes they were deafened, if only temporarily. Debris rained down on the roof of their bunker like hail during a storm. They had heard that the Yanks had an overwhelming superiority in artillery and now they believed it. The German 88 might be a magnificent weapon but there were not enough of them. Worse, the Americans had artillery that was far larger than an 88-millimeter gun.
Earlier, American fighter-bombers had done their part, also proving that the Yanks ruled the skies. Luftwaffe? What Luftwaffe, they thought bitterly. Where the hell were the planes that fat Herman Goering had promised? Had he sold them all for drugs? And where was the Wehrmacht’s vaunted armor? Where were the Panthers and Tigers that had savaged the armored formations of Russia and the United States? Why, they were gone, they answered themselves bitterly, destroyed by the Allies’ overwhelming superiority in numbers. Now they didn’t even care if Lieutenant Pfister heard their complaints.
It was almost a relief when the assaults from the skies ended and the American tanks began to rumble forward. They shifted so they could see the approaching Shermans. “Remember,” said Hummel, “we don’t shoot at the tanks.”
“I’m not that stupid,” Schubert said, annoyed, “or as dumb as you look. Or did you get hit on the head?”
Halftracks filled with soldiers were moving behind the tanks, but the two Germans dared not open fire, at least not yet. Expose their positions to the Shermans and their stubby 75mm guns would be fired right down their throats. They would wait their turn.
Finally, scores of carefully hidden 88mm guns opened fire, devastating the coming tanks. Some stopped dead in their tracks while others exploded in billows of flame. Americans in the following halftracks tumbled out and began to move towards the German lines.
“Our turn,” said Hummel, almost laughing. It was a relief to be able to do something, to strike back at their tormentors. He began to fire short and well-aimed bursts at the Americans. Their MG42 made a sound like metal tearing when it was fired. Everyone hated the hideous noise the MG42 made, but Hummel and Schubert loved it. The magnificent weapon was keeping them alive.
Most German bullets missed their quickly moving targets, but many did not. American soldiers fell. Some lay still while others writhed on the ground. They were close enough to occasionally hear the cries and screams of the wounded.
Schubert kept feeding belts of ammunition. He too was grinning hugely as they hurt the Americans. The tanks were pulling back, leaving American infantry alone and exposed among the dead and burning tanks and their own dead and wounded. It was no time to show mercy. The man you allowed to live today might kill you tomorrow.
They had to pause as Schubert changed the almost red hot barrel. Regulations said they were to control the rate of fire and stick to short bursts so as to not get the barrel overheated, but people who wrote foolish regulations like that never had scores of American soldiers breathing down their necks.
“The hell with regulations,” Hummel said as he helped his partner.
The gun was soon ready and it again spouted bullets. This time they did keep the bursts to short ones. There was no longer a large number of Americans moving towards them. Now they came in small groups of two or three, sometimes only one soldier got up and raced a few feet towards them. Hummel’s aim was good as he picked off soldier after soldier and blew them away. Sometimes the Americans just fell like puppets whose strings had been cut, but sometimes they tried to crawl or run back to their own lines. Neither man was cruel. The wounded they let go back, but anyone who didn’t look wounded they killed.
Suddenly, Hummel’s eyes widened in horror. “Down,” he screamed. Seconds later, a napalm bomb exploded uncomfortably close to their bunker. They were lucky. None of the searing flames washed over them, although they could feel the heat that nearly sucked the air out of their lungs. For a few seconds it was uncomfortably hot and they both wondered what was happening to anyone closer to the explosion than they were. They were being fried to a crisp, was what they both thought.
The bombing was over. American infantry had taken advantage of it to withdraw. The two machine-gunners saw no reason to advertise the fact that they had survived and thus draw attention from the American planes, so they settled down and waited.
Shortly after sunset, their wait ended. A runner from Lieutenant Pfister told them to close up and pull back as soon as it was dark enough to be safe. When they asked why, the young private shrugged and said that the officers were afraid that the battle, although clearly won by the Germans, had enabled the Americans to pinpoint the locations of too many of the German defenses. American artillery could commence again at any time, but most likely at first light.
“Makes sense,” said Schubert as the two men prepared to move out. “It’s a shame since we definitely did win today. We shouldn’t have to retreat after a victory.”
“But what did we win,” asked Hummel, “besides the right to withdraw farther into the mountains? Someday we’ll wind up starving to death on some barren granite slope. As long as the Americans want to keep coming, we can never win.”