Death from Above

(Source)*

2nd Lt. Stephen Hernandez was down on one knee with his NCOs standing around him. He had a map spread out on the ground and was using a stick as a pointer.

"Right here is where Fox got in trouble. Not sure why 2nd Battalion decided to try the old 'hey diddle diddle straight up the middle' play, but they did. Their dogfaces and their attached tankers paid the price, a heavy one. Major Josephson isn't having any of that. He wants to finesse this position. Hell, we're within ten miles of the Rhine and Cologne. So here's the plan..."

"L.T., are we sure those red lines are the Kraut positions?" Sgt Stump Gentile asked.

"No, Stump, it's the S2's best guess. According to him, some of those positions might just be a couple of Hitler Youth with panzerfausts."

"Kinda like Eggersheim, huh?" Sgt Melvin Katz chimed in.

"Yes, but that's what Fox Company thought as well. Then they got hit by Kraut tanks."

"Tigers?" Sgt. Woody Sherman asked.

"Nope, 75 mm guns at best. Whatever they were, they relocated. We've had an artillery spotter bird up all morning trying to spot them. They may have fallen back into Cologne, they may be on the approaches. We just don't know." Hernandez explained.

"While Able and Baker make a lot of noise on this highway paralleling the Kraut lines, we're going to be sneaking. Just us and the tanks. The terrain near Knapsack is kinda broken and rolling, should keep us out of sight of any Kraut guns, they'll be sighted to cover the roads."

"We hope..." Sgt. Enrique Cruz offered.

"Yeah, there it is, we hope. Questions?"

(Source)

"The name of the town is Knapsack, seriously?" Woody Sherman was known for his slightly irreverent attitude towards most things. He often blurted out what everyone else was thinking.

"Well, Woody, in German the 'k' is pronounced, so the name of the town is 'kuh-nap-zack,' I don't know if the town and the thing you carry your stuff in are related." Sgt. Melvin Katz, a native German speaker from Austria, explained.

"Huh, that's interesting." Sherman said. Nobody else really agreed with him.

Overhead the sound of a small propeller plane could be heard. Hernandez looked up, then checked his watch. "Right on time..."

(Source)

1st Lt. Herb McGee loved to fly. He had wanted to fly fighters, but he wound up flying the little Grasshopper observation planes and, as it turned out, he loved it. The weather was gorgeous today, CAVU¹ as pilots liked to say. It was a great day to be aloft.

The weather had been nasty the past few days which had kept him on the ground. While he could go up with a low ceiling that would keep a fighter pilot grounded, the past few days had seen a nasty ground fog and very low ceilings. As the weather got warmer, the snow melted. All of that moisture had to go somewhere.

But that was yesterday, today he was hunting for Germans, especially their tanks. An infantry company had been chewed up a couple of days ago by German armor. There was another advance planned for today, a feint by two companies to draw the Germans' attention with the main attack sneaking in through a potential back door.

He was ready to call in artillery on any targets, real or suspected. As he banked the small aircraft to fly over the area he was supposed to cover, he had an "ah shit" moment. He was being engaged.

(Source)

Unteroffizier Thorben Haas had stepped into the woods to relieve himself. He heard the drone of an Ami spotter plane and quickly tried to finish his business. He had just finished buttoning his trousers when he heard the guns on his Drilling begin to fire. He sprinted back to his vehicle.

"Bist du doof Mensch?²" Haas screamed at Grenadier Lars Jung who was behind the triple-mounted 2.0 cm cannon, hammering away at the small aircraft flying nearby. He was missing badly.

"Michael, get the engine started! We need to move!!"

As the crew scrambled to obey their vehicle commander, Haas heard the distant thump of artillery being fired.

"Sonsabitches!!" McGee yelled as he jerked the aircraft nearly into a stall. Regaining control he was on his radio, calling in a fire mission. What were those square heads thinking opening fire on little old me, he thought. Perhaps they hoped to get lucky and kill him before he could call in the artillery. They nearly did, good thing whoever was shooting was a terrible shot.

The SdKfz 251/21 had moved no more than a few meters when American artillery began impacting all around the position. The third round hit very close to the vehicle, nearly flipping it over. Grenadier Michael Ludwig managed to turn the vehicle in such a way as to right it. But the near miss sent shrapnel into the crew compartment, wounding the loader, Grenadier Tobias Stein and killing Jung outright. Jung's body had protected Haas from being hit.

"Michael! Faster, faster!" Haas screamed at his driver.

Ludwig didn't answer, he just put his head down and drove as fast as the vehicle could go. Artillery rounds were still coming in, but they were falling behind them. It looked like they might survive. Except for poor Jung of course. He'd brought down the fire from the Heavens on them, but only he had been chosen by the Valkyrie to travel to Valhalla. The others were spared, for now.

As McGee banked around to correct the artillery, he could see at least two vehicles moving away from the artillery impact zone, at the same time, he heard his engine start to sputter. Damn it, he thought, the Krauts didn't miss after all.

Checking his gauges, he could see that he was losing fuel at a rapid rate. He decided to turn for home, these little Pipers had a nice glide ratio, from his altitude, and his field being just behind the lines, he figured he could just make it. Patch up the damage, refuel and he could be back on station in less than an hour.

Provided of course it was a simple hole in the fuel tank or a damaged fuel line!

Hernandez looked at his watch as he watched the spotter plane move away. "Well, there goes our artillery spotter. Sounds like he's having engine trouble. I guess we're on our own for now."

"Why's he leaving L.T.?" Sherman asked.

"Probably took some damage when those Krauts opened up on him. The good news is that we know the Krauts are further north of where we're going."

"The bad news?" Cpl. John Myerson asked.

"Well, no aerial spotter for one thing. For another we're advancing into the unknown, so we have to move slower." Hernandez decided that he'd wait another hour before moving. Able and Baker companies hadn't started their demonstration yet anyway.

S/Sgt Wilson said, "I guess nobody in Able or Baker can tell time."

"Don't be too critical of 'em, Top. We don't know what they're dealing with."

"Geez, you got lucky lieutenant. Looks like a cannon shell from a 20 went right through your fuel tank. Didn't you hear anything?" Sgt. Curtis Wilson was amazed that the plane had come back at all.

"I was a little busy Curt, what with cannon shells whizzing by and trying to call in artillery to kill the guys who were trying to kill me." McGee said. "I guess I was lucky the shell didn't explode."

"Lucky, yeah, that's one way of putting it."

"How long to patch that up?"

"Gimme an hour, Sir. We'll have you ready to get back out there in an hour, 90 minutes tops. Provided the weather holds."

"What? It's beautiful today, not a cloud in the sky."

"Fast moving front according to the weather guessers. Could be here in a couple of hours. Snow squalls, high winds..."

"Just get her fixed Curt. We'll deal with the weather when we have to."

"Roger that, Lieutenant!"

Once they had cleared the artillery impact zone, Haas ordered Ludwig to stop. He then checked Stein's wound. It wasn't too bad, but he was bleeding a lot from his side. Once he'd managed to control the bleeding, he patted Stein on the shoulder. He hoped the Sani's wouldn't scream at him for using a wad of oily rags to bind up the wound. He asked Stein how he felt.

"I'm okay, Unteroffizier. It hurts a bit when I breathe but..." 

"Probably a cracked rib, that should get you out of combat for a while." Haas observed.

The poor kid had gone missing outside of Kreuzau during that debacle. The Feldgendarmerie found him wandering in the Drover Heide, weeping and yelling for his comrades. He was lucky that the men who picked him up were veterans of the Eastern Front, they knew the difference between combat fatigue and cowardice. Not all did.

They'd kept him at the small inn they were using as a headquarters on the outskirts of Köln, it was one of the few buildings still standing that was relatively undamaged. After a few days they had brought him back to his unit, they would have done so sooner but they were busy rounding up real deserters. Haas had been happy to see the kid, he was a good lad, industrious and cheerful.

Now, if he could be sent to the rear in an expeditious manner, he might survive this war.

"L.T., it's the Cap'n." Cpl. Myerson announced as he handed the radio handset to Hernandez. After a few moments, the lieutenant handed the handset back.

"Get with the NCOs, orders group in 30 minutes. Our diversion has been postponed, now the Cap'n wants 2nd Platoon to infiltrate tonight. Once we're in position, we radio back, then the show starts. While Able and Baker demonstrate, the rest of Charlie moves in behind us."

"Arty is to lay a barrage on Gleuel at 2200. Then we go in guns blazing. We're the pathfinders tonight, no vehicles, we go in on foot."

"No tanks?" Myerson asked, an incredulous look on his face.

"Nope. They come in with the rest of Charlie once we've probed the Kraut lines. We're to find a hole."

"Sounds like fun. Not." Myerson said.

"Nope, not even a little bit. Thirty minutes, I'm gonna take a nap."

"Copy that, L.T., I'm on it."

Their attack postponed, the men of 2nd Platoon tried to sleep. They would move out shortly after dark. Some men couldn't sleep, so they wrote letters, or cleaned their weapons. No one was in a very talkative mood.

After all, the war was nearly over, why take chances now?

* These are men of the 63rd Infantry Division, my Uncle Charlie's outfit. I like to think that he might be in that picture. He passed away when I was in Germany. A good man.

¹ Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited, i.e. clear skies as far as the eye can see.

² Are you stupid man?

Link to all of The Chant's fiction.