Sniper's Justice (Caje Cole Book 9) by David Healey (best classic books txt) 📗

one piece—unless the Germans decided to ambush the tank with a Panzerfaust. Then all bets were off.

Cautiously, the assault team approached the forest, more exposed than they wanted to be, but without much choice given the bare, snowy slope leading up from the village. At any moment, they expected deadly fire to be unleashed against them.

But when they reached the tree line, all that they found were empty foxholes and the smoking wreckage of the German artillery.

The Germans had slipped away.

Finally, there remained one task for the survivors of the fight for Wingen sur Moder, and that was to bury the dead. The ground remained frozen hard beneath the snow and ice, so digging through the frost was backbreaking work. No one complained about this final chore. The soldiers mostly just had their trenching tools, but the able-bodied villagers arrived with picks and mattocks and soon joined the soldiers to work side by side with them.

Cole joined in and despite the bitter cold, soon found himself sweating. He hadn’t grown up as a farmer, but he was no stranger to hard work. Taking turns and trading off whenever one person grew tired, the soldiers and villagers dug down. Some of the former prisoners who had been held in the church, the ones who weren’t in bad shape, also turned out to help once they had gotten some food and something hot to drink.

It was easier to dig one large hole for a mass burial, rather than trying to cut several small graves through the frosted earth. This wasn’t how things were normally done, but there was something that felt right about burying the victims of the fighting together. A separate grave was dug for the dead Germans.

One of the soldiers who had been held in the church knelt by the body of the private who had been shot dead when he ran to help the nun.

“Serra, what are you doing?”

“Hold it,” he said to the soldiers who were about to finish wrapping the body in a blanket. He reached inside his shirt and produced a tiny crucifix on a thin chain, which he then slipped over his head. He laid it on his dead buddy’s chest, mumbled a prayer, then wiped at his eyes with the back of his hands. “Go on, then.”

The bodies of the dead young soldier and the nun were wrapped in blankets like the others, and then laid in the bottom of the hole. Soldiers and villagers gathered, hats and helmets off despite the snow. Some of the villagers sobbed. A few days ago, they had celebrated Christmas and all seemed right with their world as the end of the war seemed to be coming into sight. Now, not even a week into the new year, it seemed as if their whole world had shattered.

Prayers were said, and then began the slow work of refilling the grave. The fresh earth was one more scar in the village left by the fighting.

But not for long. More snow fell during the night, covering the landscape in a new blanket of white, as if giving the world a fresh start.

“All right, get ready to move out,” Lieutenant Mulholland shouted. Enough gasoline had been found to keep the trucks running, and two more tanks joined them as the unit prepared to head down the mountain roads.

“Sir, are we going after those Germans?”

“No such luck. Division is sending us somewhere else. Besides, those guys are probably halfway back to Berlin by now. Chances are that we’ll have to fight them again.”

Cole listened, disappointed. Some officer, somewhere, was probably sending them to clean up someone else’s mess. He had hoped that they would be going after the Germans who had escaped from Winger sur Moder. Then again, he agreed with Mulholland that too much time had elapsed. That unit could be anywhere in these mountains.

Truth be told, he wouldn’t have minded another shot at that German sniper. After all, Hauer wasn’t just another soldier. The way that Cole saw it, Hauer was a murderer. It also nagged at Cole that the enemy sniper had eluded him. Cole knew that he was the better shot. He just needed a chance to prove it.

As far as he was concerned, there was some unfinished business between them.

If not this time, he thought, then maybe another.

It seemed as if Vaccaro had more immediate concerns.

“Sir, can I ride up front? It’s cold in the back and I think I’m starting to get whatever Cole had. My throat feels all scratchy.”

“Shut up and get in the truck, Vaccaro. Nobody else can get sick. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If we run into more Germans, things will get hot plenty fast. You know what’s on the other side of these mountains, don’t you? Germany, that’s what.”

Cole thought that sounded good to him, and reached for his rifle.

Already miles away, what was left of the German forces retreating from Wingen sur Moder made their way along the snowy mountain roads.

Like a wave that had crashed against the shore in all its fury, only to have its foaming remains drawn back into the sea, the German advance of Operation Nordwind finally ebbed. Hitler had made a desperate gamble by gathering his remaining forces for one last push against the Allies poised to invade across the Rhine. Thousands of troops, hundreds of tanks and trucks, even the last of the Luftwaffe’s aircraft, now lay shattered in the cold snow of the Ardennes Forest and Vosges Mountains.

In the end, the offensive had never been much more than a forlorn hope against well-supplied forces. The Allies had been delayed and thousands had died in what would come to be known as the biggest battle ever fought by the United States Army.

The Allies would now push on, with fewer and fewer enemy forces to stop them. From the East, the Red Army pushed ever-closer to Berlin. Caught in the middle, for the average German, all of this seemed impossible to grasp. The end