The Sniper

(Source)

It was raining. To Soldat Jean-Yves Cahun it was just another dreary day in a succession of dreary days. Behind him, on the beaches of Dunkirk, les Anglais were preparing to evacuate France. His sergeant had posted him on the top floor of this wrecked warehouse not quite five kilometers from those beaches.

"I don't think the bastards will be pressing us very hard lad, but your job is to make sure of that. If you see a Boche, kill him, then move to another position. It's cat and mouse you'll be playing. The trick is to be the cat. Always. The Boches are very good in open combat, let's see how they behave when they are the hunted." With that said, Sergent Ernest Deschanel left with the other three men, the sole survivors of Cahun's platoon.

He could hear the thump of distant artillery, it sounded as if the Boches were again working over the beaches and the approaches to those beaches once again, as they had been doing for a few days now. Today their airplanes stayed home, the weather was too foul for them to be bombing and strafing the poor bastards waiting for a boat home.

Jean-Yves could have easily walked home from where he sat, it was a little over seven kilometers to his parents' home in Brouckerque, but he hadn't been home since early the previous year, before the war. He often wondered how the old couple fared. He was the youngest, at nineteen, of two sisters and five brothers, his parents were well into their sixties and not in the best of health.

Only his sisters, Jeanne and Marie, still lived at home, both were widows. Jeanne's husband had been killed late in the Great War, practically on the eve of the Armistice, Marie's husband had been killed in action in Belgium just two weeks ago.

Of his five brothers, one was a government official in Paris, three others were in the Army, but he had heard nothing of them since the war began. His oldest brother, Jean-Claude, was a naval officer, last he had heard, Jean-Claude was in Marseille.

But his world today was only that which he could see from the opening in the wall in front of him. It might have contained a window earlier in the month, but an explosion had torn a great gap in the wall. It gave him a good view of the dirt track crossing the railroad tracks which ran in front of the warehouse.

On the other side of the tracks was an open area adjacent to a small factory that abutted a small wood which ran down to the Canal de Bourbourg. On the other side of that canal were the Germans. Their tanks had stopped there. So far their infantry had been quiet. Jean-Yves rather hoped they stayed quiet.

Obergefreiter Sepp Wittman handed the field glasses back to Fahnenjunker-Unteroffizier Jürgen von Lüttwitz. "It looks quiet, Uffz. Perhaps the enemy are clustered around the beaches like the Ic¹ said?"

Jürgen grunted and said, "I suppose miracles do happen, Sepp. When was the last time old "Nashorn²" Keppler was right about anything?"

Jürgen was still upset over having lost a man during the fighting for the approaches to Dunkirk. Wolf Gessler was not the first man he'd lost, probably wouldn't be the last either, but the skirmish Gessler had died in had seemed pointless in the extreme. A small French outpost, which could have been bypassed, had killed him.

Jürgen didn't spare a thought for the Frenchmen his attack had left dead in the entrenchment they had assaulted, they were, after all, the enemy. In truth, he was becoming far too used to the sight of death, it bothered him if he thought about it too much. So he tried not to.

"Bring the boys up, have your squad set up along the edge of the track. I'll move my guys over to that slight berm on this side of the railroad tracks. Be careful, now go!"

Jean-Yves watched as the Boches moved carefully into position. Not quite two squads worth from what he could see. He looked for an officer but didn't see any, a couple of non-coms, both fairly junior, maybe not worth the ammunition needed to kill them. But he had his orders.

He settled in, his rifle lay across an old blanket he was using for a rest on top of a work bench set back from the opening. It kept him in the shadows and, hopefully, out of sight of the advancing enemy troops.

Jean-Yves was a very good marksman, he rather wished for a telescopic sight but he'd have to make do with his old-fashioned iron sights. Not a problem within a hundred meters he thought, and les Boches were well within that distance.

"Ah, what's this?" Jean-Yves whispered softly as he saw two men crossing the dirt track. A machine gunner and his assistant. At last, a worthwhile target!

Schützen³ Wilhelm Berger and Klaus König were moving as fast as they could while bent low and carrying their squad's MG 34, two extra cans of ammunition, and a spare barrel. Berger carried the gun itself and a single belt of 7.92 mm ammo, König, as the assistant gunner, carried the two ammo cans and the spare barrel for the 34.

A sudden gust of wind blew rain into Berger's face as he spotted the dip in the ground where he would set up the gun. At the same time he heard a grunt behind him and a clatter as the two ammunition cans fell to the road. What was König thinking? Turning his head slightly, he then heard the "crack" of a rifle shot.

He dove for the ground well short of the dip in the ground ahead and began to set up the gun to return fire. Behind him his squad leader watched with something approaching panic as he saw one man fall awkwardly to the ground and the other dive, seeking cover.

Klaus König was rolled into a ball on the dirt track, clutching his abdomen in extreme pain. It felt as if he had been punched hard low on his right side. As he had fallen he had dropped the cans and reached for where he had been hit, his hands came away bloody. He was trying to maintain his composure, but the pain in his belly was overwhelming. He began to scream, "Mutti!⁴" over and over again, in a high-pitched squeal.

Jürgen saw that Sepp was losing it, the man was staring at the assistant gunner writhing in the mud of the dirt track, screaming.

"Sepp, covering fire! Come on man, do something!"

Realizing that Sepp was combat ineffective for now, Jürgen barked at Sepp's assistant squad leader, Oberschütze Leon Schwarz, "Schwarz! Get your men on line, fire on the top floor of that tall building across the tracks!"

As he tried to get Sepp Wittman's men into the fight, he heard the tearing rattle of his own squad's machine gun firing. Gott sei dank! At least his own men were returning fire. Belatedly Sepp's MG 34 began returning fire as well, only to stop shortly after opening fire on the warehouse.

Jean-Yves smoothly worked the bolt of his MAS-36 rifle and sought another target. Already two Germans, a machine gun team, were out of the fight. One lay slumped over his gun, the other still lay in agony on the road. For a brief moment Jean-Yves thought about finishing the wounded German, then thought, "F**k him, he should have stayed home."

As he looked for another target, a burst of machine gun fire tore into the ceiling over the position he had just vacated. He moved fast and low to his second position, further down the open storage area of the warehouse's top floor.

While his machine gun and the survivors of Wittman's squad continued to fire on the suspected position of the enemy sniper, Jürgen led four men to the building itself. Schützen Michael Offenbach, Karl Wachsmuth, Hans Warstadt, and Walter Schnabel had moved up just behind him when he reached a door on the ground floor. Without any words, Offenbach (der Alte) kicked the door open and Warstadt threw a grenade in. Pressing themselves to the ground, waiting, then after the grenade detonated, the men went in, firing as they did so.

Jürgen followed, quickly scanning the smoky lower floor he noted a staircase, he nodded at the men and began running for it. Michael Offenbach however, grabbed his shoulder and said, "Let us do this Uffz, you need to stay alive."

Jean-Yves had heard the "crump" of the grenade going off then the rattle of rifle fire and he realized that he needed to get away, or die here in this musty old warehouse.

Being very familiar with the layout, he made his way to the office area at the back of the building. Looking around to make sure he was clear, he heard another grenade go off upstairs. Sounded like the Germans were being very thorough.

Jean-Yves looked behind the desk where he'd left his "parcel" and pulled it out. Quickly he placed it near the doorway, wedged behind a file cabinet. He pulled a wire from the satchel and drew it across the doorway, tying it off on the opposite side from the satchel.

Arming the device, he slipped out the back of the building. Noting that he was unobserved, he made his way deeper into the small industrial area. His one thought was of rejoining his unit, failing that, he could just go home. But that area was probably behind German lines now. So he moved towards the coast.

Gefreiter Johannes Grüner and Schütze Christoph Groß found the office area shortly after the rest of the building had been cleared. The sniper's position had been found, but the man himself was long gone.

"Christoph, check the office, I'll cover." Grüner held his MP 40 at the ready as Groß moved to open the door.

As Jürgen and the rest of his team moved back down the stairs to regroup with the rest of the men, he heard a crashing roar. "What the Hell ...?"

He heard the yells over the reverberation of the explosion from the back of the warehouse. "Scheiße! Sanitäter!!"

By the time he arrived he saw that it was too late for Grüner and Groß. The Sani shook his head as he stood up from the crumpled form of Jürgen's assistant squad leader, he then nodded towards what was left of Christoph Groß, which wasn't much.

"The sniper set a trap, Uffz. Johannes and Christoph blundered right into it." Obergefreiter Willi Baumann, the Sanitäter, was wiping his hands as he looked in Jürgen's direction. "Oh, Berger and König are both dead. Willi was hit in the head, he died instantly, Klaus bled out before I could save him."

Jürgen clapped the Sani on the shoulder and shook his head. No words would suffice to assuage the man's anger at being unable to save his fellow soldiers.

Baumann looked at Jürgen and simply stated, "We need to f**king end this, Uffz."

"I know, I know." Jürgen had no idea how to go about ending this war other than by defeating their enemies. Until then, more men would die. On both sides.

¹ The Ic was the German Army staff officer responsible for intelligence.

² Major Wolfgang Keppler, the battalion Ic, nicknamed Rhino (Nashorn) because of his bulk and his very bad vision. Figuratively speaking.

³ Plural of "Schütze," i.e. "privates."

⁴ German for "mama."