Gunslinger

At about 3.30pm on 3rd January, 2nd and 3rd platoons were returning from a patrol when the lead units decided to take a short-cut across the open fields to get to the foxholes before dark and the other units followed. The Germans saw them.

When the patrols ducked into the woods, they noticed immediately that the Germans had zeroed artillery in on the position. There were shell holes and branches from tree bursts all around the foxholes. The shell holes were big, indicating that the Germans were using 170mm guns. Every member of the company went to work at once, without having to be told, to strengthen the cover of their foxholes.

Dana heard the guns open up in the distance, and within seconds the first shells were bursting through the trees. The sound was deafening and terrifying, and the ground rocked and pitched as in an earthquake.

As suddenly as it began, the shelling stopped. It had been the worst shelling that the company had endured in the war. All through the woods, Dana could hear men calling for a medic. As she prepared to leave the foxhole to see what she could do to help, Brian pulled her back down.
“No, stay here”, he said. “They’re gonna wait and hit again shortly, just enough time for people to get out of their foxholes and try to see to the wounded.” Dana went to protest, but before her lips could form the words the shelling resumed and went on for several minutes.

After it had stopped again, Dana cautiously raised her head. She heard her name being called, and looked over at Lieutenant Carlisle who was about 15 feet from her position.
“Sergeant Vandenberg”, he called again. “You get things organized here, and I’ll go for help.” With that, he turned and disappeared. Dana stared after him in disbelief.
“What the fuck?”, Brian snapped from next to her. “He’s gonna take up and leave us alone after that!”

After a few more minutes, and no further shelling, Dana and Brian both rose from the foxhole and began to move toward the sounds of screaming. As they passed Hanson, they saw carnage all around. Two of the men from Hanson’s platoon had been hit, and he was running around calling for medics. Brouchard noticed the un-nerved look on his face, and the limp he was trying to conceal. He sent him off to the aid station, where it was found that he had a severe case of trench foot and was evacuated.

*****************

Kennedy was gone, Carlisle was “taking a walk”, Hanson was gone, one replacement lieutenant had also turned himself into the aid station with trench foot, and one lieutenant was suspected of shooting himself in the hand. Somerville was concerned. By 3rd January, the company had spent 23 days on the front line in Normandy, 78 in Holland, 15 in Belgium. A total of 116 days. Statistically, the whole company was in danger of breaking down at any time.
***********

There was no German infantry follow-up attack that night, nor the next morning. The medics cleared the wounded, however the bodies of the dead stayed out there, frozen, for several more days. Lieutenant Carlisle reappeared from wherever he had disappeared to and things returned to normal.

Richland, Dana and Brian went to see Somerville at Regimental HQ in private. Dana described Lieutenant Carlisle’s actions during the shelling.
“Sir, Lieutenant Carlisle is going to get a lot of E Company men killed.” Somerville listened intently to the three as they described what had been going on. He wasn’t sure what to do about the situation, and decided to speak with McKenzie for advice.

As Dana, Brian and Richland returned to the lines they crossed through D Company’s line. Richland spoke briefly with a D Company lieutenant as they passed through. Lieutenant Dunn had the coldest eyes that Dana had ever seen, and there was something terribly off-putting about the man. He didn’t seem psycho, but there was just something so silent and still about him.
“Did you ever hear the stories back in Normandy about Lieutenant Dunn?”, Brian asked her as they continued back to the line.
“No, what?”, Dana asked, looking at Brian and Richland.
“There’s one that said that he offered cigarettes to a bunch of German POW’s, then mowed them all down with a machine gun.”
“What?!”, Dana shrieked.
“Everybody but one of them is what I heard”, Brian added.
“Everybody said that they heard it from someone else”, Richland continued the story, glancing at Dana and Brian. “Nobody who was ever actually there, though.”
“He seems spooky enough to have done something like that”, Dana said with a shudder.

********************

A few days later, the 2nd Battalion of the 506th was selected to take the village of Foy. Somerville selected E Company to lead the assault, which would be a simple, brutal operation. Charge across an open, snow covered field of about 200 metres in length down into the village. Every window could be a machine gun post. No subtlety, no maneuvers, just charge and get close enough to the enemy to use grenades to root them out of the rooms of the village houses. The key was to get across the field quickly. If the company pressed the attack, if the cover fire was heavy enough, it should be simple. If they paused for any reason, it could be costly.

Division ordered the attack to kick off at 9am. When Dana was advised of this, she felt her heart almost stop beating. They were supposed to run across an open field in broad daylight?

At 9am the next morning, Somerville was watching E Company attack. Dunn and other officers from the unengaged companies stood behind him. Somerville had placed the two machines of HQ section to provide covering fire over the open fields sloping away in front of them, about 200 metres across from the tree line to the town line. There are some scatted trees and haystacks in the field.

Lieutenant Higgins, leading 1st platoon, and the rest of the company moved out, line abreast. The covering fire opened up, however there were only a few random rifle shots coming from the village.

1st platoon, on the left flank, came on an area with some cow pens and small outbuildings. As the 22 strong platoon checked out the shacks, three Germans were seen scrambling into one of the shacks. Higgins had it surrounded, kicked the door in, and said in his best German, “Come out with your hands up!”. There was no reply, so Higgins pilled the pin on a fragmentation grenade and tossed it into the shack. After the explosion, the three Germans emerged, shaken and bleeding. One was a 1st lieutenant, and the other two were sergeants. Higgins started to question them about the whereabouts of the other German troops. One of the sergeants reached his hand into his opened coat and another made a similar move. The lieutenant yelled “Dummkopf!”

One of Higgins’ men cut the Germans down with a burst from his submachine gun.
“Well, there goes the prisoner idea”, Butler said. Brian frisked the bodies and removed the concealed pistols. The platoon then hurried to rejoin the others.

*****************

Carlisle looked left and could not see his 1st platoon. The other two platoons were moving forward steadily. They were being fired upon but so far there were no casualties. Thinking that he his left flank was naked, he signaled for 2nd and 3rd platoons to join Company HQ behind two haystacks.

The line suddenly stopped about 15 metres from the edge of the village, and everybody hunkered down in the snow behind those stacks and stayed there, waiting for Carlisle for giving the order to proceed. Somerville tried to reach Carlisle on the radio, however there was no response.

1st platoon caught up with the company, and grouped behind the haystacks. Higgins approached Carlisle for orders but Carlisle didn’t know what to do.
“We’ve got to do something!”, Higgins yelled. Richland and the other sergeants, including Brian and Dana supported him strongly. Carlisle came up with a plan then. It consisted of sending 1st platoon on a wide flanking movement to the left, to circle the village and launch an attack from the far side. Meanwhile he would direct machine gun and mortar fire from the haystacks. For this purpose, Carlisle advised that he was keeping the platoon’s mortar and machine gun men with him, to participate in the suppressing fire. 18 riflemen from 1st platoon went out into the snow to try to get into Foy from the far side. Higgins, Dana and Murphy had only a few minutes to plan the route that would get them to an assault position. They picked a path that provided, every 10 metres or so, a tree to hide behind. The line of threes went on into the distance.

One by one, the group took off however within minutes snipers began to fire on them. Cries for medics went up and down the line. The platoon returned the fire but without noticeable effect. Butler told Private Smarelli to move behind another tree and start shooting into the buildings from there. Smarelli moved behind a tree only a little bigger than his head, but it wasn’t quite big enough to hide his ass. Sure enough, he got shot in the ass.

Higgins got on the radio. “We’re held up by sniper fire. We can’t spot the location. We’ve lost 5 men. Can you locate? Advise.” He received a call back from Company CP to say that the first haystack to Higgins’ right could be the spot. Higgins came back, “Rake that goddamn stack”, even as the platoon began firing at it.

**************

Somerville, watching from the woods, was furious. Carlisle had the rest of the company hunkered down in the snow and staying there for no apparent reason. He was frustrated that he couldn’t raise Carlisle on the radio.
“Get going!”, he was yelling. “Keep going!” There was no response, and E Company was taking needless casualties.
“Shit, Vandenberg was right”, Somerville groused. He grabbed an M1 and started to run across the field, headed for the stationary company and the pinned down 1st platoon. He intended to take command, to get the company moving. As he ran down, he realized that he couldn’t do it. He was running the battalion and he couldn’t commit himself. As he turned to race back, he saw Lieutenant Dunn from D Company standing there in front of him.
“Dunn! Take over that company and relieve Carlisle and take that attack on in.”
Dunn took off running.

Somerville commanded the machine gunners to lay down a base of protective fire so that 1st platoon could finish off what they had started, and for the mortars to concentrate on the two haystacks. A grenade launcher let go with several rounds, and when the stacks began to burn, the two German snipers were taken with them.

Regiment put I Company on the right, into the attack, however success or failure rested with E Company. This was an ultimate test, as the company had reached a low point. None of the officers who led on D-Day were with the company at that moment, and more than half of the enlisted men were new. The core of the old company that was left was the NCOs, and they had held the company together since Carlisle took over in Holland.
Dunn arrived, breathless after his run, and blurted out to Carlisle, “I’m taking over!” Richland, Dana and Brian filled him in. He barked out orders.
“2nd platoon that way, 3rd platoon that way, get those mortars humping, all out with those machine guns. Let’s go!” And he took off, not looking back, depending on the company to follow him. They did.

When the company got to the outbuildings in Foy, they realized that they couldn’t see where I Company was.
“I think they’re over there behind that low wall”, Dana said, pointing to a spot on the other side of the village.” Before she had even finished speaking, Dunn had taken off. He ran right through the German line, came out the other side, spoke with the CO of I Company, then came running back.
“Holy fucking shit!”, Dana said as she and Richland looked at each other in awe.

******************

The company surged into Foy. They fired the full range of weapons available to a rifle company: M1’s, Tommy guns, bazookas, light machine guns, mortars and grenades. They had artillery support. There were bullets zinging off buildings, explosions in the rooms of the houses from American grenades, the thump of mortars taking off, the boom when they hit, scattering bricks and dust through the air.

The Germans were not giving up without a fight, however. Snipers, bypassed in the first rush, were beginning to inflict casualties. One sniper was turning out to be elusive to locate. He had stopped movement at a corner of one building with two direct hits. Butler, with his eagle eye sight, eventually spotted the sniper, however he couldn’t get a clean shot. They needed something to draw the eye of the sniper away from the rest of the company. Dana took off running toward where the sniper was located, whilst Butler lined up the shot.
“Baby, what the hell are you doing?”, Brian yelled in fear.
“He never misses!”, Dana yelled back as she zigzagged her way toward an awning underneath where the sniper was located. As the sniper got her in his sights, he suddenly dropped his weapon with a bullet clean between his eyes.
“It never pays to be shooting at Butler when he’s got a rifle in his hands”, Hobbs commented to Brian. Brian’s heart was threatening to burst through his rib-cage as he watched Dana walked back toward the group.
“Don’t ever do that to me again”, he said, pulling her into a hug.

As Dunn moved the rest of the company forward, and threatened to cut off the road behind the German position, three Tiger tanks lumbered off, all that was left of the panzer company. A platoon or so of infantry took off with them. Some 100 Germans, mostly wounded, surrendered. E Company had taken the village of Foy.

***************

That evening, Colonel Harper called for a meeting at Regimental HQ for all the principal parties involved in the attack.
“What are you going to do about Company E?”, he asked Somerville. Somerville didn’t even have to think.
“Relieve Lieutenant Carlisle and put Lieutenant Dunn in command.” Harper agreed with the decision.

When the news was relayed to the rest of the company, there were shouts of jubilation. Not only had he failed 1st platoon, but back in the woods when the platoons were being hit with tree bursts from mortars, it was evident that Carlisle was not a competent leader and not meant to be their CO. As apparent as that was, it was also apparent that Lieutenant Dunn was a suitably capable leader, and he had already demonstrated that during the rush on Foy.