Counterattack, p.1
Counterattack, page 1
Counterattack
By Todd McLeod & Eric Meyer
BOOK 6 OF THE HEROES OF THE 82ND AIRBORNE SERIES
SHORT FICTION
Copyright 2020 by Todd McLeod & Eric Meyer
Published by Swordworks Books
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Chapter One
Inside the forest known as the Reichswald, Oberleutnant Otto Jansen surveyed the Dutch town of Nijmegen through Carl Zeiss binoculars. A distance of around six miles, and he could see Allied troops crossing the bridge over the Waal River. More troops were establishing barricades and strong points on the bridge, and he cursed the Wehrmacht unit that’d allowed it to fall into enemy hands. On the west bank of the Waal, the wreckage of German Panzer IVs lay semi-submerged beneath the masonry that’d collapsed over them, killing their crews and preventing them from stopping the Allied advance.
He grimaced, what was done was done, and despite his distaste for the Nazis, he could see the end for his country was near. Jansen was a tall, fresh-faced young officer who'd been about to take holy orders before the war came, and his father, a leading light in the local Nazi party, had persuaded him to join the Army or he'd disgrace his family. Since taking up his post, he'd discovered any disgrace lay with the Nazi fanatics who were bringing ruin to his beloved Germany.
Yet he was a soldier, sworn to do his duty, and not everything was lost. If the counterattack was successful, the bridge would soon be back in German hands. He looked over his meager force, hidden from enemy eyes beneath the forest canopy. One hundred Wehrmacht infantrymen, four platoons each equipped with an MG-42 machine gun, his command half-track, known as a Hanomag, and four artillery pieces. Apart from the two panzers, all they could scrape up in time for the counterattack. He was relying on the panzers to deliver the knockout punch. They weren’t the older, lightly armored Panzer IVs equipped with the 75mm gun. High Command had done him proud with two Tigers, heavily armored behemoths each mounting an 88mm gun. The Allies had nothing to compare with the Tiger, and although he’d have preferred more men, he knew he could succeed with what he had.
Besides, the troops defending the bridge were infantry, and so far the sole armored vehicles that’d crossed the bridge had disappeared to the east, and were already too far away to make a difference to his counterattack. He smiled as he looked around at Oberfeldwebel Helmut Kollwitz, his senior NCO. A paunchy, older man who’d served in the trenches during the First World War, and lied about his age to serve in the Second. “The men are ready, Sergeant Major?”
“Yessir, just say the word.”
“And the artillery?”
“Loaded and ready, Sir.”
“Excellent. Stand by.”
He glanced across at the tank commander whose head poked out from the turret. “Major, we attack in five minutes. Make sure your tanks are ready.”
Major Werner Benz snorted a look of contempt, a look of even greater contempt than he normally wore. The Major was low browed, of medium height, and stocky with permanently slitted eyes. His thick lips were badly distorted and twisted into distaste like always. He'd served on the Russian Front until an incoming tank shell exploded close to the barn where he was sleeping. Most of his men died, but he survived, and they transferred him to the Western Front in command of a Tiger tank. He was senior to Jansen, and although the Oberleutnant was nominally in command of the counterattack, he had no business giving orders to his Tigers. He gave him a curt nod of acknowledgment and dropped out of sight inside the turret.
Jansen sighed, the Major could be difficult, but no matter, as long as the attack succeeded. He looked over at the gun positions, and each artillery piece looked ready to open fire, the crews lounging next to their guns. Everything was as it should be, and he glanced at his watch. Four minutes, and he would unleash hell on those Americans on the bridge.
He nodded to Kollwitz. “Get them moving forward. We attack in two minutes.”
* * *
PFC Ray Cassidy enjoyed the brief respite from battle. The Germans had gone, and they were out in the open air, just as he liked it. He was short and wiry after spending most of his life outdoors, and as a result, his skin was tanned and leathery. He was a guy whose favorite hobby was hunting, frequently tracking an animal for hours before he lined up the perfect shot. Not that there was anything to hunt on the flat, open landscape of the Netherlands. Except for Germans, and they’d got them on the run.
He was with his best buddy Harry Byrd, as different from him as chalk from cheese. He loathed the outdoors. Byrd was pale and inclined to a degree of flab, unusual for an Airborne trooper. Yet underneath the flab lay solid muscle. At nearly six feet, he was tall, with blonde hair, a throwback to his Viking ancestors, including his piercing blue eyes; the total opposite of Cassidy, and regarded any place outside of a town as alien territory. Yet together they formed a formidable team.
1st Platoon, B Company, 82nd Airborne was taking a rest, lounging on a patch of grass. The operation to secure the bridges had been a hard slog, and the lightly armed paratroopers had run into a storm of enemy fire from the moment their boots touched Dutch soil. The combination of their epic struggle was the battle to take this bridge across the Waal River at Nijmegen. It’d been touch and go, and the Company had lost too many men, but now the bridge was theirs. Provided they could stop the Jerries from taking it back.
“You think they’ll be back?” Harry asked him.
He shrugged. “The word from headquarters is the enemy is falling back. You saw that British armored division cross earlier, and they’ll be giving any Jerries they find a damn good beating. Nope, on balance I guess we got them licked. We can relax, we’re done here.”
“That’s good to know. It’s time we had some R&R. We haven’t even had time to find a decent bar in the town. I need something to wash the dust out of my throat.”
He nodded. “Me, too. Hey, here comes the Lieutenant.”
1st Lieutenant Frank Bond strolled up to them. “Things are pretty quiet, so I reckon the platoon can stand down for a couple of hours. Nothing is happening around here.”
He was thin and lean, like a successful long-distance runner, and with the nervous expression of an accountant who had found the directors have been skimming the profits. Pale-skinned, his dark, sharp eyes were constantly roving, looking every which way, inspecting everything around him if to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.
They scrambled to their feet. “We were thinking about taking a look at the town.”
He glanced at Cassidy. “I don’t see why not, but I want you back here in two hours.”
“We’ll be back. Say, Lieutenant, are there any Germans left in the town, or have they all left?”
“They’re running, Private, and my guess is there isn’t a Jerry within twenty miles.”
“That’s good to know, Sir. Harry, let’s go. Lieutenant, if we find one, we’ll bring you back a cold beer.”
Bond grinned. “I could sure use one of those now that things are quiet. When you…”
He didn’t get any further. The crump of an artillery piece sounded in the distance, followed by three more, and the whistling of shells flying through the air.
“Incoming!” Sergeant Logan bellowed. “Cover!”
When Logan shouted, they jumped. He was the glue that held the platoon together. A leathery vet, tough and immensely strong, an NCO who didn’t take shit from anybody, and that included the Lieutenant.
They hit the deck, rolling behind any solid object they could find, stone walls, the rubble that covered the wrecked panzers, and some men behind the hulls of the broken tanks. The shells exploded with a mighty roar, and a second later another barrage of shells whistled through the air.
“What the hell’s going on?” Bond shouted.
“I guess they’re closer than twenty miles, Lieutenant. And they’re not running, they’re counterattacking.”
Men scrambled to take up defensive positions, and in the distance, the grey shapes of Wehrmacht infantry appeared, racing toward them under cover of the artillery barrage. They moved fast, jogging from cover to cover, and a moment later machine guns opened up from the flanks. Bond raced away to prepare the defense, but Logan had already ordered the men to start shooting, and gunfire spat toward the onrushing Germans.
It didn’t slow them and they kept coming; expert,
“They’re good!”
“Yeah, too damn good,” Harry snarled, “Thank God they ain’t got armor. We may not be so lucky this time. Infantry we can handle, and when we’re done, we’ll take care of those guns, but armor…” He shuddered, “Gives me the creeps. Especially Tigers. Nasty things.”
Ray wasn’t listening to his buddy. He was doing his best to keep his head down from the stream of bullets whistling and whining around them, dodging shell fragments, and listening to a familiar noise in the distance. Engines, powerful engines; the kind they fitted into their heavy tanks, like Tigers.
“Harry, do you hear that?”
He squeezed off a few more rounds before he replied. “The machine guns?”
“No.”
“The shells?”
“Nope.”
“What…oh, shit, it can’t be, not again.”
They were still a mile away, approaching from behind the infantry, but there was no chance of confusing those squat, boxy shapes. Enough steel to build a battleship, and guns big enough to blow it up afterward.
Ray cupped his hands. “Tigers!”
Logan rolled out from behind cover so he could get a better look. “Yeah, Tigers, that’s all we need. We need bazookas up here. Get the lead out!”
Two bazooka teams appeared. The first man knelt and aimed his rocket at the distant tanks. Another man knelt next to him, and a moment later they both opened fire. The rockets soared into the sky trailing smoke, but with the tanks eight hundred yards away every man knew they’d just wasted two precious rockets.
“Cease Fire, cease fire. Wait until they’re in range.”
“Sarge, they’re Tigers,” a soldier whined, “Who the hell wants to let them get into range?”
“Fire another rocket, Private, and I’ll stuff that launcher up your ass. I ordered you to wait.”
He grumbled but ducked low to wait while the oncoming tanks rumbled toward them behind the screen of fast-moving infantry, and they were within range. Further back, the German artillery had stopped shooting, and the crews were maneuvering their guns forward to support the attack.
Lieutenant Bond joined them, and as he spoke to Logan, he was staring at the oncoming enemy. “It doesn’t look good, Sergeant. If we don’t do something fast, we’re screwed.”
“If we don’t do something fast, we’re dead, Sir. What did you have in mind?”
“Shit, I don’t know. I just don’t know. I heard you shout for the bazookas to wait until they’re in range. I guess that’s all we can do.”
“Lieutenant, we need to do better than that. They’re pushing those troops forward, and they’ll be over us before those tanks are close enough for the bazookas to shoot. You know what’s gonna happen. The Tigers will stay back and blast us into little pieces, and there won’t be a damn thing we can do about it.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I dunno. We have to use the bazookas, but we can’t get close enough.”
Cassidy leaned forward to get his attention. “Sarge, if we find the infantry, we could hit the Tigers from the side, where they’re more vulnerable.”
He frowned. “Good plan, except the only way to get at them is across that bridge, and there’s a company of German troops there, itching for you to try it so they can get some target practice.”
“It’s not the only way to reach them. They’re other ways of crossing a river.”
“Like what?” Bond growled, “You mean for us to swim across? That’s dumb, Cassidy.”
“We could find a boat.”
“Dammit, there aren’t any boats. We already know that.”
“How about a raft?”
Bond glanced across the bridge, and they were getting closer. “Yeah, a raft would work, except we don’t have time.”
“Lt, we could find something that floats to get us across.” He looked around and fixed to the bank of the Waal River was a line of a half-dozen orange-painted life rings, “Like those. Fix into an old door, and there’s plenty of those around here, and we have a raft.”
Bond was already shaking his head. “It’s a crazy plan, forget it.”
But Logan tapped him on the shoulder. “Lieutenant, it may be crazy, but we don’t have anything else. If we don’t do anything, we’re done for anyway. Why not give it a try?”
He took a last look at the oncoming infantry, and a half-track had appeared behind them. The crews were dragging their guns closer, and the tanks continued their slow advance. His eyes were wide, his expression pale, and inside he was tortured by indecision, the knowledge if they didn’t get it right his men were all dead.
“Okay, do it, but you won’t make it alone, Cassidy.”
Harry grunted. “He won’t be alone. I’m going with him.”
“Very well. But you know your chances are not good. If they see you coming, well…”
Byrd gave him a cold smile. “Yeah, they’ll shoot the shit out of us. That’s the trick, Lt. Make sure they don’t see us coming. Ray, what’re we waiting for?”
Cassidy grabbed a bazooka and three spare rockets from the nearest soldier, while Harry ripped down a door hanging on its hinges, removed the life rings, and carried them down to the river. He put the life rings in the water, the door on top, and they clambered on the shaky raft. It wobbled alarmingly and almost tipped over, but Cassidy slipped into the water. He kicked out with his feet to push it across while Harry lay across the door to stabilize it. The water level was below the highway, and they were out of sight of the Germans. At least they’d got that right. The Germans wouldn’t see them. Not yet.
They reached the far bank and scrambled up to the ground level. They poked their heads over the top and immediately ducked down. The Germans weren’t stupid, and they’d anticipated the Americans making just such a move. They’d positioned an MG-42 to cover the stretch of the bank where they’d landed. Bullets chewed into the earth, and firing at the incredible rate of twelve hundred rounds per minute, it was like being pinned down in a hailstorm. Except no hailstorm had ever been as lethal as the monstrous storm of lead chewing into the ground next to where they lay.
“We have to make a move,” Cassidy shouted to Byrd across the drumming of the lead ripping into the bank, “We can’t stay here forever.”
“Ray, if we go out there, we’re dead.”
“If we don’t make a move, they’re all dead. On the count of three.”
“We’re gonna die!”
“One. Two. Three, let’s go!”
They vaulted over the bank into the storm of lead and began to run. The Germans had been waiting for them. They saw them coming, and as well as the machine gun, a score of infantry rifles and MP-38 machine pistols opened fire, and it wasn’t a question of living or dying. They were dead men walking or rather running. It was a question of when.
Chapter Two
They were lucky, several yards from the riverbank a narrow channel cut across the ground to feed into the main river. As in so many parts of Holland, the entire country was crisscrossed with dikes, canals, rivers, and drainage ditches. This channel fed into the river they’d just crossed, draining the land from where the Germans advancing. It meant they were able to wade through the four feet deep, water-filled channel to get close to their targets. That was the easy bit. The hard bit was the Germans knew they were there, and there was no way they’d allow two troopers carrying a bazooka to get close to their precious Tigers.
Ray risked a glance over the edge and ducked back down as a bullet ricocheted off his helmet. They were so near he could almost spit at them, and the commander’s half-track had come even closer. An officer was standing next to the driver, shouting orders to his men. It gave him an idea.
