EPILOGUE
On June 29, 1944, Lieutenant General Karl-Wilhem von Schlieben surrendered the city of Cherbourg to the Americans. The last German stronghold on the Cotentin Peninsula had fallen. The battle for Normandy that had begun before dawn nearly a month before with the assault on Omaha Beach was over.
The struggle for Cherbourg had not been easy, with nearly 3,000 Americans killed and thousands more wounded in the final days of fighting. Losses for the Germans, who had their backs to the Atlantic, were even more severe with nearly 8,000 killed or missing. In the end, almost 30,000 German troops surrendered in those last days of June. As the city fell, General Friedrich Dollman, commander of the German Seventh Army, was informed that he faced a court martial. It would never be carried out — the loss of the city brought on a heart attack and he died within hours.
Among the troops who streamed into the captured city was a trio of American snipers. Their uniforms were dirty and shredded from weeks of crawling through brambles and sleeping rough in the bocage country. Even their rifles looked battered, the sheen gone from the barrels, the paint on the scopes scratched. But the weapons retained a well-oiled, deadly appearance. Until a few days ago they had been accompanied by a certain British paratrooper, but Corporal Neville had finally rejoined his own unit.
“It’s not much more than a pile of bricks,” said one of the snipers, a dark-skinned Italian who was even darker after the long days of fighting in the French sun. Something else had happened to him in the field — he had become a much better shot thanks to lots and lots of practice.
“Those big Navy guns turned it to rubble,” said the lieutenant. He was referring to the Allied fleet that had anchored offshore and bombarded the Germans. Anyone who had not seen the lieutenant in the last month would scarcely recognize him. He looked leaner and careworn, with permanent lines etched into his face. A bandage soaked through with dried blood was wrapped tightly around his upper left arm. He now gave direct orders without thinking twice about them. “They anchored off shore and gave them a good pounding.”
“Speaking of pounding, I wonder if there are any French girls here who need a good one,” the sniper said.
“Shut up, Vaccaro,” the lieutenant said. By now, the words were a reflex, like shooing flies.
The third sniper walked alone, moving with an easy lope through the streets of the ruined city. He wore a Confederate flag painted on his helmet, though the image of the flag was nearly hidden by a layer of dust and grime. The helmet had a bullet hole in it.
Though Cole was more at home in the woods and fields, he had seen enough ruined towns that he was familiar with what to expect. St. Lo, Caen, Carentan, Bienville — he had been through more than a few of those towns that most Americans had never heard of until a few weeks ago, and now they would never forget.
The sniper’s eyes never stopped moving across the roof tops and the upper windows of the half-ruined houses. Unlike the others, his rifle was held at the ready so that he could put it to his shoulder in an instant. It just so happened that he still carried a Mauser.
They had been operating as a counter sniper unit, fighting mostly on their own, for weeks now. Sniper warfare across the bocage had been vicious, mainly because what they increasingly encountered was a variety of SS sniper that did not move strategically, but who buried himself like a tick. He occupied a sniper nest with a supply of ammunition and rations, and stayed until he was killed — or sometimes captured. Sadly, most of these stubborn German snipers were teenage boys who were so brainwashed about heroism and the glory of defending the Fatherland that they fought to the death. Unfortunately, they took the lives of too many Allied troops first.
Cole often wondered about the Ghost Sniper. Das Gespenst. Had he died in that flooded marsh? That was only weeks ago, but it seemed like years. Cole would have liked to have searched for the body, but the fighting had been too fierce for that. He could only trust that his bullet had struck home.
There had been reports of a sniper who operated in a way much different from the young SS fanatics. Outside Caen, this sniper had pinned down a large American unit, causing many casualties before slipping away. Similar sniper attacks had decimated an entire company on the approach to Cherbourg just a couple of days before.
Das Gespenst? The thought nagged at Cole. If the Ghost Sniper wasn’t dead, it was unfinished business.
Jolie Molyneaux had survived being shot, but she was still recovering in an Allied hospital. If this Von Stenger was still alive, Cole reckoned he owed it to Jolie to kill him. Revenge wasn’t a casual idea to someone like Micajah Cole — the notion of it coursed through his veins like blood.
“How come you never tell Reb to shut up, Lieutenant?” Vaccaro asked. “He never stops talking. You’d think he was trying to talk the goddamn Germans to death.”
“Shut up, Vaccaro,” Cole said.
The snipers moved on through the ruined city. Huge numbers of captured Germans moved in the opposite direction, their hands locked behind their heads, weary GIs marching beside them with weapons at the ready. Though the victors marched alongside the defeated, it was hard to say which side looked more exhausted.
“Where to next, Lieutenant?” Vaccaro asked. It just wasn’t in his nature to shut up.
The lieutenant stopped and looked around at the streets, now filled with American troops and German prisoners. A few French civilians had ventured out, looking with dismay and wonder at the piles of bricks and the broken streets. Beyond the town they could see the harbor, filled with American Navy ships. Someone had raised an American and a French flag in the city square. They snapped side by side in the breeze off the sea.
“I’d say we’re done here,” the lieutenant announced. He smiled. “So what’s next? Germany. I’d say we’re on our way to Germany.”
Despite the defeat and surrender of Cherbourg, not all the German troops on the Cotentin Peninsula had been captured. It was too big a place and there were too many woods and fields in which to elude the enemy.
Those who were left were now joining the retreat across the Seine into Belgium, dodging Allied aircraft and patrols.
A truck carrying battle-hardened Wehrmacht troops rolled down a dirt road through the countryside. Up ahead, a lone figure in a German uniform emerged from the woods and stood in the road, forcing the truck to stop.
Puzzled, the driver leaned out the window. He was surprised to see that the soldier carried a sniper’s rifle with a telescopic sight and that he wore a captain’s uniform. In the Wehrmacht, there were a few legendary soldiers, known for their bravery or prowess. With a start, the driver realized this must be the Ghost Sniper he had heard about.
“Are you on your way to fight or surrender?” the lone sniper asked.
“We are going to fight,” the driver said. His face was grim and determined. “The Amis have not won yet.”
“Do you have room for one more?”
“Of course, Herr Hauptmann. Do you wish to ride up front, sir? We can make room.”
“Thank you, but the back is fine.”
The sniper walked around and climbed in, taking care with the rifle and its telescopic sight, which he had been lucky to find on the battlefield after losing his prized Mosin-Nagant in the marshes around Bienville. He nodded at the grizzled German troops sitting there on benches. Then the truck lurched into gear and drove off toward Belgium.