"Diehards"

(Source)

"Hold it Brad, something ain't right." Sgt. Melvin Katz had seen something which seemed out of place. As S/Sgt Brad Woodstock's tank rolled to a stop, Katz had his field glasses out.

On either side of the road he had seen brush and early spring foliage as expected, but something on the right side of the road seemed, he wasn't really sure, odd. Then he spotted it, pine boughs which seemed to grow out of the ground, rather than from a tree. Someone had gotten lazy in their camouflaging efforts.

"Ya see it?" Katz had pointed out the anomaly to Woodstock, who decided that a little reconnaissance by fire was in order.

"Mark, we've got HE loaded, right?"

The loader, Pfc. Mark Workman, responded in the affirmative, as he said that, the gunner, Sgt. Jerry Parsons, already had the turret slewing to the odd pine boughs planted in the earth. "We're on target, Brad."

"Fire! Load HE."

"HE up!"

"Fire!"

Woodstock and Katz were both glassing the area of the anomaly. The first round had gone a bit high, the second was on target. Katz swore he saw something fly into the air which looked a lot like a human arm, seconds later he and Woodstock saw a man in a greatcoat come staggering out of the smoke.

A short burst from the bow machine gun knocked that man to the ground. Katz had his squad dismounted and in a skirmish line shortly thereafter. Carefully they advanced as Woodstock's tank covered them.

Volkssturmmann¹ Peter Bach lay shivering at the bottom of the trench he had helped dig. He wasn't cold, he was wounded and in shock. He had seen his friend Walter Busch blown to pieces and another man in his unit unwisely stand up and try to get away. Machine gun fire from an American tank had cut him down.

He could hear people advancing on his position as his hearing started to return. He tried to get up but a shooting pain from his groin convinced him to hold still. Looking down he could see that his trousers were soaked with blood. He remembered the first war, one of his comrades had been emasculated by a French grenade, the man had begged to be shot.

Bach now understood why the man had begged for a bullet. It hurt beyond belief.

Bach looked up, saw a man looking down at him, rifle at the ready. He thought, "So that's what the Americans look like..." Then he reached for his rifle.

Pfc. Bogdan Nowak looked down at the badly wounded German. The man seemed far too old to be a soldier. Nowak noted the bloody trousers and was wondering if he should call the medic up. Nowak was a Pole, it was his natural inclination to hate Germans. Why not let the poor bastard bleed out?

When the German reached for his rifle, Nowak thought briefly about shooting the man. But why bother? The man's rifle was ruined, the barrel bent enough that attempting to fire a round would just cause the weapon to blow up in the man's face. If it fired at all. So Nowak decided to wait. If the old German pointed the thing at him, then he'd shoot.

Bach's hand reached out and he felt the stock of his rifle, then he realized that there was no way the thing would fire, so he let his hand drop. He heard the man standing over him sigh and then yell something over his shoulder in a language Bach didn't understand.

Doc Milbury spent no more than a few minutes trying to patch the old German up, then he turned to Sgt. Katz and shook his head.

Katz knelt down next to the German and said a few words in German to the man. The old German nodded his head, then closed his eyes. In seconds he was dead.

Zugführer² Oswald Hirsch watched from cover some 40 meters away from where his men had been manning a trench. He noticed that one of the Americans had looked at the lone survivor of his small squad, then had seen that man shake his head and stand up.

Were they not going to treat his wounded man?

Hirsch had not been with his men, he had stepped back into the woods to relieve himself, he had seen the tank fire and destroy his position and the men manning it. He felt like a complete failure. His job had been to block this road, or at least slow the American advance. He supposed that he had slowed them, by about 15 minutes.

Pfc. Alex Boone was off to one side of the road, well clear of the men and tanks near the road.  As he was scanned the brush to the rear of the German trench, he swore he saw a man there. He yelled out, "Man in the woods, to your front!"

The squad went to cover and trained their rifles towards the brush that was situated some 50 yards behind the German trench. No one could see anything, it seemed that Boone had a better view. Sgt. Katz yelled towards the wood.

"Wir wissen, dass Sie da sind, kommen Sie jetzt raus oder wir schießen!³"

Moments later a rifle came flying out of the woods, followed by a feeble voice yelling, "No kill, I am out coming!"

Out of the brush, hands extended as far into the air as he could manage, was an old man with snow white hair. He was not wearing anything on his head other than a thick bandage wrapped around the top of his head which extended down around his neck. One eye was nearly swollen shut and the left side of the bandage was brown with old blood.

"Do you speak English?" Katz yelled at him.

"Ja, yes, a little, I vas school teacher before ze war."

"What are you doing here Grandfather?" Katz inquired.

"The SS came to ze village, told us fight, or die. So we fight, but I sink we die anyway." The old man nodded at the trench and the bodies of his men as he said that.

"Doc, check him out, then get him to the rear. Jesus, one minute we're killing them, the next we're trying to save them." Katz was shaking his head as he walked back to Woodstock's tank.

1st Lt. Hernandez and his command group were on the scene moments after two men had escorted the old man to the rear, after Doc Milbury had dressed the man's wound and rewrapped his head.

"More diehards Cat?" Hernandez said as he looked around.

"Yeah, L.T. the poor bastards died hard all right. If we'd waited a day or so they would've died of old age." Katz said as he remounted Woodstock's tank. "Shall we press on, Sir?"

Hernandez looked in the trench, dead old men in worn uniforms, why won't those Nazi bastards surrender, he asked himself. Looking up at Katz he yelled, "Yup, move out, Cpt. Palminteri says take it slow, take no chances, you got that?"

"Got it Sir."

Turning to his radioman, Cpl. John Myerson, Hernandez said, "If we have to kill every old man in Germany, every boy, and every SS bastard to get you guys home, f**k it, I'll do it."

Myerson nodded, he watched the second tank roll by then told his lieutenant, "We're okay with that Sir. They started this shit, we'll finish it."

In one day and three weeks, Adolf Hitler will kill himself. The Third Reich will survive him by eight days...

¹ Volkssturm equivalent of a Private.

² Volkssturm equivalent of a Lieutenant.

³ We know you are there, come out now or we shoot.

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