Screaming Eagles (The Front, Book 1) Read online

  Too late to lament it now. He was here in Europe, on the border of Germany, and instead of marching in with guns blazing he was cowering with a few men, waiting for a German counter-assault.

  His and Billings' uniforms were newer than anyone else's in the platoon, but that didn’t make them any warmer. His jacket felt threadbare, and his boots felt like they were frozen to his feet. The company's doc had advised him to loosen the laces every hour and walk around, so he didn’t get a case of trench foot.

  Grillo had spent a week in Great Lakes a few years ago while visiting his Uncle Steve, but that hadn’t prepared him for this biting chill. The wind had roared off the water and hit fifteen below one morning. Still, they’d gone out ice fishing, hadn’t caught a damn thing, and spent the rest of the weekend sitting around a fire playing cards and drinking beer.

  The Ardennes was a different kind of cold. Everywhere he looked was snow. Tufts of plants poked up from the white here and there, but so did tree roots and chunks of earth. Under the light snow was ice that had to be broken through to reach the earth beneath so you could dig a hole to cower in.

  He thought of his friend Eddie Elgin and wondered how the man was faring. He looked like a matinee idol, but those looks wouldn’t help him in the war. He’d be just another young soldier looking to put a bullet into an enemy.

  Grillo would never say it out loud, but he missed the training base. He missed having a warm bed, even if he was tossed out of it at all hours of the morning for maneuvers, or just to do some PT.

  Paths had been worn into the snow-covered ground the night before, but they were covered now by a fresh dusting of white. There was a fresh winter smell in the air thanks to the cold, but it was undercut by hints of exploded shells.

  Fahey let out an epic fart, then rolled over and tugged the blanket up around his neck.

  “Gonna give away our position with that kind of gas,” Grillo said. They were the first words he’d spoken since last night.

  “It’s the Krations," Fahey said. "Fill ya up, sure, but then you gotta deal with the other issues, like how that lousy food sits in your guts. I never missed home so much, even when we were rolling up on the beach at Normandy. Wait, I take that back. I missed home a lot that day.”

  He was from Boston, and had the heavy accent to go with it. Fahey liked to talk about his father’s ‘cah’--a six-year-old Chrysler that burned through oil at an enormous rate--and how he wished he was at a ‘bah’ while a girl in a little red dress--whose name changed on a regular basis--talked to him about going back to her place.

  “Krations aren’t so bad,” Grillo said, trying to convince himself it was true. “I like pork. I don’t like it every day, but I like it. Chocolate’s the best.”

  “If we ever get on top of the enemy, Sergeant Pierce over there,” he said, gesturing toward one of the many holes in the ground, “knows how to mix up a couple of cans of meat over a cooking fire and make it taste a like a four-course meal. At least we got warm guts last night. Thought I was going to starve in the damn forest.”

  Grillo nodded.

  Fahey dug out a four pack of Chesterfields and shook one loose. He lit it with a match and sucked in smoke, but kept the glowing end cupped in his hand so he didn’t give away their position.

  Grillo shivered, and thought about moving around. He’d been sitting here for over an hour, and the chill had sunk in. His clothes felt damp thanks to the cold, and he was pretty sure his jacket was frozen to the tree.

  He held his M1 Garand to his chest like it was his best friend. It was loaded with a full-eight round clip and he had a few extra in his pouch. Not enough if they came under heavy fire, but the rest of the squad’s ammo was spread thin. Him being the new guy, they’d stripped most of his rounds when he’d arrived and passed them out among the other men.

  Along with some ribbing, the guys had generally let him settle in. There were the usual shenanigans as they regulars broke him in, like asking him to walk the perimeter until he found his gig line. After the joking died down, him laughing it up with three others including Sergeant Pierce, they’d left him alone, because a mortar had exploded nearby.

  “Didn’t think I’d be spending Christmas in Europe,” Grillo said.

  “I didn’t think I’d be spending another Christmas in Europe,” Fahey replied.

  “What was it like last year?”

  “Like this. Krauts shooting at us. Us shooting at Krauts.”

  “I haven’t even fired a shot yet. Think I’ll fit in after I kill my first German?”

  “Brother, I hope you don’t have to shoot one, but you do, and you make sure the son of a bitch stays down,” Fahey said with a grimace.

  Something cracked in the distance and Fahey suddenly bled confidence. He rolled over, tossed the blanket to the side, and put his M1 to his shoulder. Grillo tore himself away from the tree, ice ripping at his clothes as he peeled himself off his perch. He dropped next to Fahey and raised his gun and tried to spot movement.

  “Where’d the noise come from?” he whispered.

  “From shut up, that’s where,” Fahey whispered back.

  Fahey scanned the tree line.

  Grillo followed the man’s lead. Bootcamp was one thing--practicing shooting at targets, how to look downrange, how to aim, how to exhale and squeeze the trigger. It didn’t teach you how to deal with fear, but that was all he could think about now.

  The morning was misty and that made visibility low. Plus, movement could come from any direction in a two hundred degree plus arc. The rest of the squad had the other sides covered, but even they could fall victim to a surprise attack.

  Another twig snapped in the distance.

  Grillo tensed and squinted his eyes. He should have been wearing glasses, but they kept fogging up in the chill air. He should have a pair of binoculars, but one of the other guys had the Baker’s only remaining pair. He should have been home in bed, warm and waiting for college to start, but instead he’d enlisted, and now here he was, in freezing temperature, laying in a cold hole in the ground, waiting for a man from another country to come try to kill him.

  “Christ. It’s cold as a witch’s tit.” Fahey stated the obvious.

  “What do we do now? I don’t see any movement. Should we go out there?”

  “If Sarge don’t say scout, we don’t scout. If you see a guy in a metal helmet don’t look like ours, you lay into him,” Fahey said.

  Grillo shivered. His gut was done up in a knot so tight he thought he was going to pass out. He inhaled and exhaled, but for some reason his head got foggy and stars danced before his eyes.

  “I don’t feel good, can’t see,” Grillo muttered.

  “Big dummy. Don’t suck in so much air. That’s just fear getting to you. You’re in the damn 101st airborne. You’re here to chew lead and kill Krauts. Now get it together. Just curl up and take some deep breaths. Think about a pretty girl taking off her dress, that always done it for me,” Fahey said.

  Another twig snapped, and Grillo was sure he heard something brushing through the snow.

  “Oh Christ, they’re coming for us,” Grillo said.

  He followed Fahey’s advice and slipped into the foxhole. He took slow breaths, and thought about Louise. They’d had one night together before he’d shipped out. She had been shy, and slipped out of her clothes in the dark.

  Then, warm and soft, Louise had slid into bed with him and let him work at her garters until he'd peeled the stockings off her long, smooth legs.

  He tried to picture her big puff of blonde curls while she lay beneath him, but his thoughts kept getting interrupted by images of Germans coming out of the mist.

  “Contact,” Fahey said and fired.

  The M1 boomed next to Grillo.

  He pushed his panic aside, sucked in a deep breath, and rolled to his stomach with his M1 ready and prepared to fire. He aimed at a vague white shape and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Then he remembered the safety and flicked it forward.

>   “Contact. Contact!” Fahey yelled and fired again. “Christ. My sight's off or something.”

  Grillo steadied his aim, centered the sights, and fired twice. Around him, the men of Baker company ran toward their location. Sergeant Pierce arrived first and dropped next to Fahey. He bore a Thompson submachine gun in one hand, his helmet in the other, and a pair of pineapples from each shoulder strap. The grenades bounced against his chest as he hit the dirt. Pierce lifted his weapon and scanned the forest.

  Grillo sucked in a breath and swore quietly.

  “Where?” Sargent Pierce asked.

  “Grillo popped his cherry. Kraut dropped like a rock just beyond that fallen log,” Fahey said, and pointed north.

  “Any more?” Sarge plopped his helmet on his head and left the straps hanging around his cheeks. He hadn’t had a shave in days, and looked rough around the edges. Dirt coated the front of his jacket, and was smeared on his face like camouflage.

  “Don’t know. Krauts didn’t send a telegraph,” Fahey said.

  “Okay, wiseass, got a job opportunity for you. Since you’re so smart today, why don’t you and Grillo go take a look?” Sarge said.

  “Oh, Jesus, Sarge. I just got warm, here,” Fahey complained.

  “If you’re warm, you’re the only one, Fahey,” Sarge said.

  “Uh, fellas?” Grillo said.

  The figure he’d shot twice got up on all fours. The enemy struggled to rise and then came to his feet. He had a pistol in one hand, but he didn’t lift it. The shape was a good hundred feet away, but Grillo wasn’t able to get a good look at the soldier’s face.

  “Thought you killed him, Grillo,” Fahey said and tossed his smoking cigarette butt to the ground.

  “I got it,” Sarge said.

  “Wait, Sarge. He’s been whining ‘bout his first kill,” Fahey said.

  “Fine. You two take care of that Kraut, and then I want a patrol out to fifty yards. Stay low and don’t get your asses shot off,” Sarge said.

  Pierce climbed out of the shallow foxhole and strutted back to his own piece of heaven in the Ardennes forest.

  Grillo aimed carefully, centered his sights on the soldier’s chest, and fired again. The first time, he’d shot a shapeless form that was probably intent on killing him and the rest of the men in Baker Company. Now Grillo was just finishing what he’d started.

  The soldier dropped behind the log again.

  Snow started to fall in light flakes. They caressed Grillo’s face and melted soon after, leaving little rivulets of water on his cheeks. He brushed a puff off his eyebrow and rose to his feet. Fahey took the lead. He carried his rifle at ready, stock against his shoulder, barrel aimed toward the enemy corpse.

  * * *

  Eight

  Graves

  Three Shermans cobbled together from the 2nd and 5th platoons, 741st Tank Battalion, fifteen infantry in a mixed unit, and an anti-tank company were facing the largest German assault they’d seen since Normandy. The tanks had backed into a copse of trees, barrels out, so they could wait for the force and perform a little ambush. Murphy had left his gunner station and gone out to help fix up some camouflage… such as it was, in this frozen forest.

  The tank was covered in logs they’d cut down a few weeks ago and attached to its sides. The front was reinforced with a couple of slabs of concrete held on by chains they’d absconded with from a shattered building at the same time.

  The Shermans might as well have been made of paper when facing a Panzer head-on. Murphy had seen too many of his friends die when fighting the enemy’s tanks.

  German shells traveled upwards of 3,500 feet per second, and could reach the Americans with effectiveness at over 2,000 yards. The trick was to use the more maneuverable and lighter Shermans to the Krauts' rear and hope you got a lucky shot.

  Fuel was low, and the refueling station was a long ways off, so they’d have to be smart about how they handled the Krauts. But Staff Sergeant Michael “Gravedigger” Graves hadn’t survived the war this long by doing stupid stuff.

  Until today.

  Graves cupped his hands together and blew in them. He tucked his palms back inside his shirtsleeves and huddled next to “Big Texas”. Tom LaRue was large enough to take up the room of two men, but that hadn’t stopped him from being assigned to a Sherman. Somehow LaRue had figured out how to scramble in and out of a tank with the agility of a man half his size. He was a man that got his temper worked up at times but he was a cool as a cucumber when he was manning the gunner station.

  Gabe Woodward sipped from a cup of ice he’d been blowing on in the hopes of making the snow melt faster. Gabby--as they’d called him from their first engagement, when he'd refused to shut the hell up about whatever little thought came into his mind--was the only one among them who was mostly warm.

  They’d been stuck in a tiny village a few weeks ago, and he’d seen the writing on the wall, guessed that it wasn’t going to get warm anytime soon, and negotiated with some of the townspeople for a castoff German overcoat. He wore it under his army uniform, lest anyone mistake him for a Kraut and shoot his head off.

  “Thing about surviving the cold is you gotta outthink it," Gabe said. "When I was sixteen, me and my pops went up to Alaska to do some fishing and we got stuck in a snowstorm. Well as much as I’d like to say I had fun, it was one of the most miserable experiences of my life.”

  “Listening to you talk, Gabby, is one of the worst experiences of my life,” LaRue said.

  “Come on now, I’m just imparting my life experiences on y'all. Keeping us talking while we slowly freeze to death in this hunk of steel. Was a time I used to welcome the cold so I could sleep better at night. We had a wood stove that I had to keep stoked, and there was an art to it. Too much air and you’d be sweating. Not enough and Dad would be thumping me upside the head for being lackadaisical.”

  “Can I thump him upside the head?” LaRue asked Staff Sergeant Graves. “I’ll be real gentle about it and promise not to knock out more than three teeth.”

  “You try it and see what happens. You’re a big guy, Texas, but I was a boxer, and I’ll put you on your fat ass,” Gabby said.

  The two men stared at each other, each willing the other to make the first move.

  “Cut out the chatter, both of you, I’m listening for Germans,” Graves said.

  The men simmered down, Gabby going back to sipping on his cup of ice, and LaRue closing his eyes and leaning back in his seat.

  Murph clambered onto the tank and poked his head inside. The man’s face was covered in dirt, which he’d liberally applied with a little tree sap. It couldn’t have been comfortable, but Graves had to admit it worked. When Murph was in the trees, he was damn near invisible.

  Murph was from a small town in Louisiana, and swore he’d been hunting game since he was ten years old. On more than one occasion, he’d had a hot meal for the men of the tanks, thanks to a clever snare he’d set during the night.

  Last night he’d come up empty, but that was to be expected with all of the damn shooting going on in this region.

  Mortars and screaming meemies had kept all of them awake, and now they faced another cold day of waiting to spring their ambush.

  “You’re as ugly as the day is long,” ‘Big Texas’ Tom LaRue said.

  “You’re one to talk. Face only a momma would kiss,” Murph said as he slid inside the tank and took up position at the gunner controls.

  “I already know you want to kiss me. Seen it in your eyes on more than one occasion,” LaRue said.

  “Shut up, all of you. I hear something,” Graves said.

  The men quieted down and listened as well. LaRue pressed his ear to the side of the tank and plugged his other ear with a finger.

  Graves popped out of the tank's portal and scanned the area.

  To his right was Momma Rose: a Sherman run by by a fresh-faced kid from Pennsylvania who was nick-named Bucky, thanks to his enormous front teeth.

  Bucky looked young, but
he had an old soul, and was all too happy to kill any German forces in his path. He was a ruthless tank commander, and the men under his watch were always willing to comply with his orders to run over a cowering German soldier out in the field.

  Bucky was up top as well, looking for trouble, and even though there was a layer of fog, he had his binoculars pressed to his eyes as he scanned the area.

  “You hear that?”

  “I think so,” Bucky said. “We may have company.”

  “Where’re the scouts?”

  “Should be back with word in a few minutes. Time to warm the engines,” Bucky said.

  Graves nodded and slapped the top of the tank. “Warm up the engine, Murph.”

  “Ready to roll,” Murph called back from the cold interior.

  The Sherman’s engine rumbled to life as her 470 HP engine turned over. The exhaust filled the tank's interior, making the men cough before it cleared up. Next to her, Bucky’s M4 did the same thing, as did the third tank, commanded by a man named Charles Noble.

  Noble was new to both of them, and stayed aloof. He was tall and gaunt and had a scar that ran from above his right eye to below his lower lip. He said a shell had penetrated his first tank while he was a gunner and killed everyone but him. His mangled hand had been partially put back into working order, but he tended to hide the damage in his sleeve when the tank commanders met over meals.

  “This is how we’re going to play it. I want that engine killed in thirty seconds. We’re gonna sit here, cold, and wait for the Krauts to pass. They get hung up by those mines and we have full defilade. Got it?”

  “Sounds good. Hitting Panzers on the ass end is a good way to kill em. Great plan,” Murph said.

  “Stop being a smartass for a second and listen. After we hit them, we’re going to back up and hope they don’t make us a target. The woods are a hindrance, but they will also be an asset. These ponderous Kraut tanks are already struggling to make it over the crap roads around here.”