Even though the tank was fairly spacious, the presence of six good sized men sweating and farting made for a need to open the hatches and air the thing out.
There was a small turret and a high velocity 37mm gun on top of the hull and that’s where Jenks liked to be. High up and with the hatch open, he could see for a very long ways. Some said that the tanks height was a disadvantage, but he didn’t see how. After all, he could see so much more from up there.
The big 75mm was mounted in what was called a sponson which meant it couldn’t traverse all the way like a turret could and Jenks did admit to that being a drawback. A new tank, the M4 Sherman, was supposed to replace the M3s and he considered that a shame. He liked the Grant.
Jenks opened the hatch and took a deep breath of good fresh air. He looked around and saw upwards of forty American tanks rumbling across the Canadian landscape at ten plus miles an hour. Even though the ground was relatively flat, the tanks lurched and wallowed like drunken sailors and Jenks had to hang on to keep from getting hurt. They were outdistancing their infantry support that was trying to follow along in trucks, but trucks didn’t travel cross-country very well. Well, he thought, tough shit. If they ran into Germans, they’d either kill them or hold them until the infantry arrived.
Neither Jenks nor the majority of his men had ever been to Canada and it had proven a surprising and pleasant experience. The houses and farms were sturdy and neat and could have been anywhere in a prosperous agricultural section of the U.S. Of course, a couple of idiots in his unit professed surprise that the Canadians spoke English. He hoped they were kidding, but, considering the sources, decided they probably weren’t.
Jenks was about to comment on a particular farmhouse when the tank next to him exploded, sending a column of flaming gas and debris into the air.
“Ambush!” Jenks yelled and tried to see where the shot had come from. Or maybe they’d run over a mine? No, he saw a flash of light in the distance and a second tank shuddered to a halt with black smoke pouring from it. He turned the tank in the direction of the flash, now wishing he’d had a turret instead of having to move the whole damn tank.
The Grant’s big gun fired and the shell hit well short of where Jenks thought the shot had come from. A third tank was hit and started to burn, and then a fourth. Up and down the line, tanks were burning. Machine gun fire ripped through the American column. Behind him, a truck full of infantry was hit and rolled over, spilling men onto the ground. His tank’s 37mm gun shot in the general direction of the Germans who were now firing heavily and rapidly. Worse, their fire was accurate and lethal. The American armored column was being cut to pieces.
“Pull back,” he ordered to his driver who relayed the order to the surviving tanks.
Jenks was neither a coward nor a fool. He knew he should be inside the tank with the hatch down, but he couldn’t see if he did that. Some son of a bitch was killing his men and he needed to find him.
Black dots emerged from where they’d been hiding to his front. They were German tanks, and they began shooting.
“We’re fucked,” Jenks yelled just as a shell slammed into his tank, hurling him from the turret and down to the ground, but not before smashing his legs. As he lay there in agony so fierce he couldn’t scream, he could hear the rivets popping inside the hull and his men howling as they were torn to pieces by the red hot flying metal. The tank continued to move of its own volition for a few feet before lurching to a halt. Smoke and flames poured from the hull, but nobody else came out.
Jenks was numb with pain and anger. He smelled something burning and realized that his broken legs were on fire.
Tinker and Lambert watched from the bushes as still more trucks moved inside the barbed wire fence. The concentration camp that had once held Jews was filling up again. This time the prison population consisted of anyone who had voiced opposition to the presence of German troops in Canada. Few were Jews. Most of them had long since departed south to the U.S. or west to the brand new Federation of West Canada. There had been no attempts on the part of the Germans to delay their exodus. The Gestapo had seemed to encourage it.
Lambert had to give the Germans their due. It made no sense whatsoever to keep malcontents and potential leaders of an underground force around to cause mischief. He just hoped that there would be no mass executions since deportation to Germany was no longer viable.
He laughed and wondered if his name was on the Nazi’s shit list. A lot of people had heard him criticize the Germans and Hitler.
“What’s so funny?” asked Tinker.
“Just wondering how long before we’re in that camp or at that farm the Gestapo uses for interrogation.”
“Interrogation? Is that what you call it? Christ, you know bloody fucking well that the farm is used to torture and kill people. Or have you forgotten what happened to that girl?”
“Nobody will ever forget what happened to Mary Bradford,” he said softly.
“Then what are we going to do about the people in the camp and the farm? We just can’t leave them there.”
No we can’t, Lambert thought. But what the hell else could they do? The Americans weren’t anywhere near and, if German propaganda was true, the Yanks had just been given a bloody nose outside Windsor. So, if they liberated the camp and farm, what would they do with the prisoners? The krauts would hunt them down and kill them. No, he decided reluctantly, the poor souls behind the wire were safer where they were.
Maybe, however, they could do something about the farm.
Lieutenant General George Patton was near tears as he reported to Eisenhower and Marshall at his headquarters in Detroit. He could close his eyes and still see the burning American tanks and smell the stench of brutal death. Worse were the looks on the faces of the wounded. The wounded and the dead were heroes, but he felt that his lack of experience in command of an army had caused many of the casualties. He also felt he’d been let down by others as well.
Patton put down his coffee cup. It contained a couple of inches of brandy. It was starting to calm him, but he still felt rage and guilt.
“Ike, General Marshall, they killed us. I sent my men straight into an ambush and we lost almost a thousand casualties, and that includes several hundred missing. I hope some of them show up, but I’m afraid that a lot of them are going to wind up in German prison camps and we’ll be seeing them in the newsreels when we go to the movies.”
Eisenhower and Marshall kept silent. They would let Patton get the anger and frustration out of his system. The commander of the Third Army had first won a brilliant victory by sneaking men across the St. Clair River and forcing the Germans from Sarnia and, very soon after, Windsor. The guns that had been pounding American factories had been pulled back out of range and were no longer a factor. The industrial complex could now be rebuilt and work was already commencing. But neither Ike, Marshall nor Patton had thought the Germans would recover so quickly and decimate an American armored division that had been probing its way east.
“Enough feeling sorry for yourself, George,” Ike finally said. “What can we learn from this?”