Cover!

National Archives

Everything seemed to unfold in slow motion. As 2Lt Heintzelman's head snapped to the right and was enveloped in a red mist,so SSG Andersen bellowed, "SNIPER!"

The men scrambled to take cover, Corporal Jack Wilson rolled into the shallow ditch by the side of the road, there wasn't much else he could do with his busted up ankle. Sgt Brandt was looking in the direction he thought the shot had come from when a German MG 42 began to bark. He saw the rounds march down the center of the road, he saw the L.T. get hit again, this time in his lower leg, as the gunner walked the burst over him and into the last man who had been standing with the L.T. and SSG Andersen.

Pvt Alfred Esposito, Spaz, the radioman dropped to his knees and collapsed, blood spurting from his mouth as SSG Andersen tried to pull him to cover.

The rest of the men in the column opened fire at where they thought the machine gun was. No one could see a target but the volume of fire going out was loud and impressive. At the very least maybe it would keep the Krauts' heads down.

Brandt grabbed the nearest man, Cat, then yelled, "Ollie, Red, Cajun, FOLLOW ME!"

Bulling his way through the hedgerow, which wasn't that thick in this spot, Brandt had his Garand up and ready to fire. He was immensely gratified that his men had followed him, without a word. Brandt noticed that while he could still hear the Kraut MG, it was muffled.

"Guys, I think we're in the MG's dead zone, he's obviously set up to cover the road. Let's go."

As he started to rise, Ollie hissed at him, "Sarge, Kraut at 10 o'clock..."

Brandt turned to look at the kid from Wisconsin, his rifle was steady and pointed at the enemy. "Take him."

Oberleutnant Vogel knew they had to move soon, the Amis weren't much on assaulting positions with their bodies, they preferred to call in artillery. As he turned to his right flank soldier, a young private from Hamburg whose name he didn't even know, he saw the man collapse to the ground without a sound.

"Mein Gott, Herr Oberleutnant, we're being flanked." Flieger Kurt Ziegler was on the verge of panic. Vogel couldn't really blame in, he feared they had bitten off more than they could chew.

"Fall back to that farmhouse we passed, quickly." The men were up and running, staying low. The volume of rifle fire from the Americans was increasing!

Brandt and his fire team were advancing slowly, alert for any movement to their front. They stayed close to the hedge on their right, which wasn't very dense but at least it kept them out of the open.

"There! Krauts!" Red had spotted them first, he opened up on them with his B.A.R. and saw at least one German sprout red splotches up the back of his paratrooper smock. The rest of the team opened up as well, it was somewhat satisfying to see the Germans running.

On the other side of the hedgerow, T/4 Milbury, the company medic, dragged Heintzelman into the shallow ditch, where Jack Wilson was providing covering fire in the direction of where the sniper had opened fire.

Milbury was surprised to find that the lieutenant was still alive. Assessing his wounds, he noted that the bullet fired by the sniper had gone into the lieutenant's left cheek and had passed out the other side. While it was bleeding profusely, as head wounds tended to do, other than two holes in his mouth, and a few missing teeth that wound wasn't bad.

The lieutenant's lower left leg though was nearly severed. Milbury tied it off to stop the bleeding and injected the man with a morphine syrette. He then tied a bandage around the lieutenant's face to stem that bleeding. They needed to get him back to the aid station, Milbury figured the L.T. was going to lose that leg, but he needed a surgeon, as soon as possible.

SSG Anderson pulled Esposito off the road, he was dead, no doubt about it, but his radio was intact. Trying to stay as low as he could, using Esposito's body for cover, he pulled his map out and tried to figure out exactly where they were. There, right there, he thought.

Schultz had shifted position, so the American small arms fire which had engulfed his first position was wasted. He saw a man next to the side of the road behind what appeared to be a radioman, a dead radioman. All he could see of the man was his arse. He then noticed that the man had grabbed the radio's handset.

"I'll bet that bastard has a map as well," he muttered as he settled his cheek into the butt stock of his rifle. He wasn't sure if his round would go through the dead radioman, so he decided to shoot the soldier in his arse. That should distract him!

Corporal Jack Wilson was scanning the treeline from where the sniper had fired, thinking, "the sumbitch couldn't have gone too far." As his eyes moved past the stump of a dead tree, he saw, something. Yup, that's a helmet, gotta be.

He steadied his rifle and fired, one round, then another. The first shot was a bit hurried, the second was perfect.

Gefreiter Willi Schultz heard the snap of a round passing just over his head, which caused him to jerk the trigger of his K98k¹.

The next round hit him square in the front of his helmet. It penetrated the thin steel and killed the young man instantly.

"Got you, you Kraut bastard!" Cpl Wilson was pissed that his first shot had missed completely, but with his second round, he saw the helmeted head snap back, then watched as the German sniper collapsed next to the old stump. Then he noticed that SSG Andersen, on the other side of the road, was cursing vociferously.

"F**k, f**k, f**k! Shit!" Andersen was in some pain, the German's round had been high but had managed to clip the back of Andersen's left heel. Hurt like Hell, but he focused and got the radio going.

He gave the coordinates of what appeared to be a farmhouse marked on the map to the company's mortar team. As they had been moving, there had been no time or opportunity to set up preplanned fire missions. The sergeant on the other end was skeptical.

"Andy, what if it's just a French farmhouse? I don't feel good dropping mortar rounds on some innocent Frenchies without someone to spot for me."

"Okay, standby, we're not taking any fire at the moment. Stay close to your radio, okay?"

"Roger that."

Bundesarchiv

Vogel and his remaining men were indeed in the farmhouse marked on Andersen's map. He was at a loss for what to do next, the Americans had managed to damage his MG 42 and kill the gunner when they'd opened up blindly on his first position. He figured that at any moment the Americans would start shelling the farmhouse. For the first time in his military career, he was terrified and at a loss for what to do.

"Herr Oberleutnant, what are we going to do? We should fall back."

"Nein, by staying here, we're delaying the Americans. Befehle sind Befehle², we stand here."

Sgt Bill Brandt and his fire team had worked their way into position, he was sure the Krauts were in the farmhouse to their front. He wanted to get closer.

"Red, Cajun, Ollie, cover us," he whispered. "Come on Cat, you and me."

As the other men readied their weapons, all pointed at the farmhouse, Brandt and Cat slid to their left into some low brush. They would be concealed but would have no cover if the Germans were to spot them. But Brandt's blood was up, he figured that his lieutenant was dead and so was Spaz, one of his boys.

When they were within 20 yards of the building, a head appeared in one of the smashed up windows to the right of the door to the farmhouse.

Oberleutnant Vogel was down, he had been hit in the head multiple times. The four privates sheltering in the farmhouse wanted nothing more than to surrender. But sticking one's head up was obviously not a good idea.

As the senior man, Dolf Seidel realized that he was now in command, he turned to Wolf Haas, who had been a merchant seaman before the war, "How do you say 'Wir kapitulieren'³ in English?"

"It's 'I giff op,' yes, that's it, 'I giff op.'"

Seidel looked around the room they were in and saw what appeared to be curtains next to the window where the Oberleutnant had been killed.

"Rolf, grab that curtain. Tie it to the muzzle of your rifle, f**k this, I am done."

"You ready Cat?"

Pvt Melvin Katz, aka "Cat," late of Vienna, Austria, nodded and shouted out, "Scheißköpfe, kommen sie heraus und kapitulieren, oder wir machen sie alle todt!⁴"

Seidel was shocked to hear someone calling on them to surrender in what had to be Viennese German. Rude Viennese German. He looked at the others and before he could say a word, Rolf Böhm stuck his rifle out of the window, waving the curtain tied to it.

"I giff op! Bitte, nicht Schießen!⁵"

Cat barked out, "Wirft Ihre Waffen raus! Sofort!⁶"

Three rifles and a machine pistol came out of the window, followed by four German paratroopers with their hands high over their heads.

Brandt's fire team rejoined the rest of the company. Jack Wilson was nowhere to be seen, nor was the lieutenant or SSG Andersen. But there was a figure in the ditch covered with a blanket. Brandt remembered seeing Spaz go down. He went over to the shrouded figure.

"Sarge, you guys okay? Nice prisoner haul! Didja know that Jack nailed that sniper, shot him right in the head. Great shot." Pvt Woodrow Simpson, aka "Duck," was happy to see that his sergeant and the guys who had gone with him were still alive. Duck was still pumped up from the brief firefight.

"Where's the L.T., Sarn't Andersen, and Jack. Is the L.T. dead? Who's that under the blanket?" Sgt Brandt had a dozen questions, the adrenaline was still surging through his body as well.

Pvt Jackson Hebert, aka "Bear," answered, "L.T. is alive, lost some teeth and probably going to lose his leg. Sarn't Andersen got hit in the foot, them and Jack were taken back to the battalion aid station. Uh, that's Spaz under the blanket. He's dead Sarge."

Brandt felt numb, the first guy killed in his squad. He walked over to the body and pulled the blanket back. Sure enough, it was Spaz. He looked surprised, like he didn't know what had hit him.

Sgt Bill Brandt sat down next to the body and began to weep.

"I am so sorry, Spaz. I'm sorry buddy..."

Just another day of war.

Just another shitty day.




¹ K98k, standard German infantry rifle of WWII. Karabiner 98 kurz, carbine 1898 model, short. A very good rifle in 7.92 mm, accurate and powerful, though as a five-round bolt action weapon, it was obsolete compared to the American M1 Garand.
² Orders are orders.
³ We surrender.
⁴ Hey shit heads, come out and surrender or we'll kill you all!
⁵ Don't shoot!
⁶ Throw your weapons out! Immediately!