The Uncle

(Source)

Unteroffizier Manfred Sauer, 1st Platoon leader, his platoon messenger, Grenadier Stefan Holzbauer, and the leader of Sauer's 1st Squad, Gefreiter Karl-Heinz Köhler, were standing at the side of the muddy road leading from the nearest village into the forest. They were watching the crewmen of two of the Kampfgruppe's StuGs cutting branches and strapping them onto their vehicles in an attempt to break up the outline.

Sauer turned towards the village when he heard the engine on a Kübelwagen struggling through the mud on the road. He saw the little vehicle sliding around in the thick mud but making headway nonetheless. He wondered what the two men in the small car were up to and where they had come from. That's when he noticed the license plate on the front.

"Scheiße, it's the damned SS."

Köhler turned and saw the vehicle, he looked at Holzbauer and leaned over and told him, "Go tell the Major that the asphalt soldiers¹ are in town."

Holzbauer looked at Sauer, who nodded, then he hurried off to find Major von Lüttwitz, the Kampfgruppe commander.

"I wonder what these boys want, Opa." As the vehicle slid to a stop near the two men, an SS officer stepped from the car.

"Unteroffizier! Is this Kampfgruppe von Lüttwitz?" As he said this his arm swept over the vehicles and men scattered through the small clearing.

Sauer stood to attention, as did Köhler. "Jawohl Herr Standartenführer². How can we help you?"

As the SS officer removed his cap to brush his hair back, Sauer noticed that when the sleeve of his field jacket slid up, it revealed the cuff title on the man's tunic. These guys were not with the Leibstandarte but were with the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich. "We are looking for the men who were with Oberleutnant Herzig when he was killed. I am his uncle, SS-Standartenführer Walter Herzig. I received word just yesterday that the boy was killed in action. As we were not far away, I decided to come over and ask a few questions. That shouldn't be a problem, yes?"

The overcast was starting to break up. Captain Horace Miller of the 513th Fighter Squadron looked to his right to make sure his wingman was still out there. They'd nearly got separated flying through this soup on the way here. He was relieved that the weather boffins had actually gotten the forecast right for a change.

Miller heard the crackle in his headset as his second element leader checked in, "Blue Leader, Blue Three, I have you in sight, we're at your 8 o'clock low."

"Roger three, close it up, the clouds are starting to clear. The weather guessers nailed it, strong wind out of the west is pushing this crap over Hitler-land. Time to ruin some Kraut's day!"

As Sauer started to answer the SS officer, he heard the sound of engines, aircraft engines. "Everybody, off the road, cover!!" he bellowed. As he and Köhler dashed for the cover of a small stand of trees, he turned to the two SS men. "Hide you idiots! That's a flight of Jabos!"³

As Sauer and Köhler rolled in under the trees, Köhler looked back at the road. The SS colonel was shading his eyes from the increasing afternoon light as he tried to make out the incoming aircraft.

"Get down Standartenführer!!" Opa screamed at the man.

Miller had his gunsight pipper on what looked like an assault gun sitting on the track up ahead. Easing his stick down a bit further, he noticed that there were two assault guns and what appeared to be a car sitting on the track.

He pulled the trigger and watched as his rounds walked over both assault guns and then into a man standing next to the car. He had to wonder what that idiot had been thinking.

The first StuG hit by the American aircraft had no more damage than scratched paint, the angle had been too shallow. The second vehicle wasn't so lucky. A number of .50 caliber slugs tore into the engine compartment and started a fire.

Sauer heard the strikes on the two armored vehicles and looked up in time to see the SS officer get shredded by the machine guns of the strafing American P-47. His vehicle wasn't hit by the first aircraft, but it too was shredded when the second American aircraft fired. The driver was killed instantly and the small car was set on fire when a round went through the car's fuel tank.

Sauer buried his face in the ground, expecting the car to explode in flames. Surprisingly enough, it did not.

SdKfz 10/5 mounting a 2 cm Flak 38 cannon
Bundesarchiv

"Shit! Blue lead, break left, Kraut Ack-Ack in the woods!"

Miller pulled hard on his stick and shoved the throttle forward, he just had a glimpse of tracer rounds passing under his aircraft, Two had just saved his bacon.

His wingman wasn't as lucky, he had just started to break up and to his right when five rounds from the German anti-aircraft gun slammed into his engine. The big piston engine coughed once, then again, then caught and began to run, though roughly.

"Lead, Two, I gotta get this bird on the ground."

"Roger that, Blue Flight, Lead, let's go home."

"What the Hell was that?" Opa Köhler exclaimed.

Sauer turned from the spectacle of the two dead SS men and told Köhler, "One of the Major's new toys, they showed up this morning, two of 'em. Sonderkraftfahzeug 10 slash 5, that was a 2 centimeter pill that Ami pilot swallowed, damaged him but didn't kill him. Those 47s are tough birds.

"Yup, saw those f**kers in Normandy, killed most of my old unit in the Falaise Cauldron. Where the Hell did the Major find those?" Köhler had to wonder at the Major's ability to scrounge men and equipment for the Kampfgruppe.

"Apparently they were sitting on a rail siding with their crews. The guys were awaiting orders so the Major asked for them, the colonel running the railyard said to take them, he needed the rail cars they were on. So here they are. Oh, speak of the devil." Sauer stood, brushing the mud and dirt from his uniform as he did so.

"Herr Major." Sauer nodded at von Lüttwitz, then at the burning Kübelwagen.

"Who are those men, Manfred?"

"Apparently the one in the road was Herzig's uncle. He wanted to know what happened to his nephew I guess. We didn't get to tell him anything. Those Jabos came in, we dove for cover, and the NSFO's uncle just stood there, like it's a show or something." Sauer shrugged, as if he didn't care one way or another for the fate of two random SS officers.

Von Lüttwitz looked at his StuGs, the one which had been hit had smoke coming from the engine compartment, but the crew had extinguished the fire. No one in either StuG crew had been injured, but the vehicle with the damaged engine would be a problem, von Lüttwitz thought, where do I get parts for the damned thing?

As the Major went to check on his armor, Köhler looked at the dead man in the road, then turned to Sauer, "The Amis really don't like the Herzig family, do they?"

"Apparently not. Let's get the driver out of the car before he cooks. Then we need to get a detail to bury these two men. I don't want dead SS men stinking up our bivouac." As Sauer went to start pulling the driver out, it was another officer he noticed, he heard Opa say.

"Yes, dead SS men smell bad, even worse than the live ones, what would the neighbors think?"

¹ "Asphalt soldiers" was a derisive term for the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, a unit which started life as Hitler's personal bodyguard. As such they pulled a lot of ceremonial duties in Berlin. The name may be apocryphal, but I've seen the term in more than one place.

² Colonel in the Waffen SS.

³ Jabo = Jagdbomber = Fighter bomber

Author's Note: The other day SCOTTtheBADGER mentioned the travel lock on the StuG IV. Me, in my awesome ignorance, went out for a casual once around the Internet and didn't see any combat photos of the travel lock on the StuG IV, so I assumed it was a "museum thing." What an arrogant ass am I! Since then I see those travel locks all over the place, especially on the StuG III! Look at the lead in photo on this post. Yup, travel locks. I have to remember not to pull the trigger on my comments so quickly. And not assume I know everything. Silly me...

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