Reluctant Warriors (35 page)

“Looks like there's a bend down there maybe two hundred yards,” Wiley muttered.

“Yeah.”

The sounds built for more than a minute. The ground began to shake.

Finally, a tank came into view, the commander sitting on top of the turret instead
of standing in it. Steel tracks clanking, it rumbled past at what Wiley figured was
top speed of about twenty miles an hour.

A bad taste came into Wiley's mouth. He thought back to his first experience with
German tanks eight months before in North Africa. The same sounds had panicked him
then, and he felt somewhat queasy. But the panic was gone now. The fear he felt was
that of a veteran soldier who knew the risks of battling tanks.

I was just a kid then
, he thought soberly.
Since then I been in on the blastin' a
many a tank, some by myself.
He remembered his first.
That Mark III. Sicily. Then
Italy, southern France, and here.
He motioned to Kuehl.

“He's goin' some place in a hurry!”

“Yeah.”

As the tank went out of sight, they heard another vehicle approaching. Wiley immediately
came to a conclusion. “The enemy's not concentratin' in this sector like Division
thinks. They're shiftin' up north.”

The next thirty minutes confirmed his idea, as many vehicles came rumbling down the
lane and passed by.

“They're spacin' themselves ta keep the noise down,” he said softly to Kuehl. “And
comin' down this lane 'cause the woods are thick enough that no photo plane could
see 'em even if it wasn't cloudy. And that first guy had on the black uniform of
an SS officer. These are elements of an SS Panzer Division, headin' north ta blast
our people somewhere.”

“Okay, so what's that to us?”

“Listen, buddy boy, this is probably more important than some stupid film.”

“So what do we do, go back?”

“No, you're goin' back!”

“No way!”

“Private, I'm orderin' you ta go back. Tell Reddin' that we've seen five Panthers,
about a dozen Mark 4s and 3s and six half-tracks headin' north. No troops at all.
You got that?”

“Yeah, okay, okay, when do I leave?”

“Now. Do you have any idea where you are?”

“I was depending on you for that.”

“Where's the compass I gave you?”

“Right here, Chip. What heading do you want me to take up?”

“Ah, 190 degrees.”

Kuehl was mystified. “You told me the plane was 330 degrees, northwest. So shouldn't
I go back 150 degrees? Ain't 150 degrees 180 less than 330 degress?”

“Listen, I always go in an oval ta the east ta get ta a target, and then come back
in an oval to the west. So, go 190 degrees straight back.”

Kuehl left in a few minutes. Meanwhile, since no more vehicles appeared, so Wiley
carefully made his way down to the road.

The quiet seemed eerie to the scout after the thunderous sounds of the last forty
minutes. He noticed crates of German matériel on the side of the road. He looked
carefully up and down the lane. He could see less than two hundred yards to the south
but a long distance to the north.

He heard nothing unusual. He crept right up to a few of the crates. They were made
of wooden slats, and he could see what was inside.

“Teller mines!” he muttered to himself, “antitank mines. I could get out the old
Bag a Tricks! Boy, would I love ta put a couple a these babies in the roadway!”

Wiley didn't think what effect doing something like that might have on his mission.
Perhaps his youth took control of his better judgment. An almost childlike idea of
wishing to see something blow up seized him. Using the mines was something he could
not resist.

He used his carbine's barrel to pry a few of the slats away and took out two of the
heavy, disc-shaped mines. Moving into the middle of the road, he continually looked
both ways and listened intently.

“They were going ta mine this road for when our guys came up,” he muttered. “Two
can play that game.”

He walked a few feet up the road to the north, bent and used the butt of his rifle
to gouge a shallow hole for the first mine on the right side of the
road, then covered
it with leaves.
About 350 pounds a pressure and this sucker'll blow
, Wiley thought.

He walked up the road for two or three minutes and planted the other mine on the
left side. As he was pushing the leaves over it, he heard distant sounds to the south.

“Time ta go.”

He jumped up on the far side of the roadway and began to run perpendicular to the
roadway, again farther away from American lines. It was still only early afternoon.
The sun filtered through the trees as he ran as fast as he could uphill, with the
sounds, multiple sounds now, becoming louder and louder.

He was far enough away that he couldn't see the road any longer. He judged from the
mechanical sounds that the vehicles had come to the mines. He plopped down against
a large chestnut tree, expecting to hear a large explosion.

But none came, which baffled him.

Sounds like trucks passin' on the road, so what gives?
he thought
. Well, shit! You
never can tell. Maybe the damn trucks passed on the other side a the road. But the
road's not that wide!

Wiley shook his head, realizing that he had let his guard down. He reached for the
ever-present Colt .25 and found it right where he expected, in his pocket. Hearing
more vehicles all the time, he stood cautiously near the tree and looked carefully
in every direction.

I guess I'm okay
. . . Before he could finish his thought, there was a teeth-rattling
explosion. He smiled that one of the mines had indeed taken its toll. “Ah, the old
Bag a Tricks!”

He took out his map to figure out where he was. The woods were not as dense as before,
but no landmarks were visible. It took several minutes to find the road he had just
left. Then he heard another boom and knew that the second mine had exploded. It was
definitely a big outfit with that many vehicles.

He smiled again at knowing that he had caused the enemy some inconvenience, and then
he looked back at the map.

If it's accurate, which is alwaysa big question, this is where I'm at. Damn, the
Swede says you're not supposed ta say ‘at' at the end of a sentence
. He put his finger
on the map.
If I'm right, I'm still on my arc ta the right side of the oval and only
about three miles from where the plane should be.

He looked at his watch: 1400, six hours till dark and sixteen hours before he had
to be back in camp.
Damn, twenty hours gone already! No damn plane and more than
half my time shot.

Wiley was starting to feel very doubtful about the mission. He put the carbine over
his shoulder and headed out. As he crested the top of the hill, he could see, intermittently,
a great distance. The plane was somewhere ahead of him down there.

He looked to the left. Eight or nine hundred yards off, he could see what had to
be the continuation of the road he had just left. There were no tanks or vehicles
on it at all.

Directly in front of him, down the other side of the hill, was a large open area
containing farm buildings. For the first time, he took out his field glasses.

Better look this over
, he thought. Crouching, he spent several minutes carefully
looking at the entire area.
Two barns, outbuildings, and several houses. No P-38
or evidence of a crash. Now that I seen it, I'll avoid this open area completely.
It's just a real easy place ta get trapped.

He studied the area to his right, east.
Wooded like what I've come through. I'll
go through it. No buildings that I can see. Looks like another road too.

He shrugged. “Those trees could hide an army,” he mused to himself, “an entire Panzer
Division.”

His attention was distracted back to the continuation of the road he had left. He
could see many men coming into view, going obliquely away from him. They were being
marched double time. He pulled up his field glasses again. He guessed those men were
convicts or forced laborers.

Perhaps two hundred men had come into view when Wiley heard sounds behind him, toward
where he had planted the mines. Immediately, he dropped to the ground. About three
hundred yards away, he could see
figures coming his way through the trees below him.
Through the glasses, he could see dogs.

“Damn,” he said out loud, “how in hell did they get dogs on me?”

He thought of the answer in the next instant. It really wasn't hard to figure out.
I been here too long eyein' the country
, he thought.
They had those dogs somewhere
in those trucks, and when their pals got blown up they began ta track me. They probably
think I'm some French guy.

His heart rate quickened. A disturbing thought came into his mind.
What have I done
this time? If I get away from these guys, are others goin' ta be houndin' me all
over the place? That was stupid ta use those mines and wreck my mission. And get
myself killt.

Surprisingly, only six men and two dogs appeared. The scout sat, taking the Williams
carbine from his shoulder.
German shepherds, comin' quick. I can get these guys off
my back.

He pushed off the safety. Sitting at an angle to the enemy, he brought the rifle
around so that his left elbow rested on his left knee.

It was a long shot for a carbine. The velocity of its bullet was nowhere near that
of the regular infantry rifle, the Garand. Methodically, Wiley hiked up the iron
sights in the back.

His body absolutely motionless, he aimed at the man with the first dog, waiting until
the group came to the next open spot. Dogs had chased him before, he recalled readily,
and he knew what to do: shoot the man, not the dog. He squeezed the trigger and the
carbine sounded: CRRRACK.

In the three-quarters of a second it took the bullet to traverse the distance, Wiley
changed his target to the second dog handler. Just as the bullet hit the first man,
the carbine sounded again: CRRRACK. In an instant, the second man spun around and
fell, his rifle flying up in the air.

Wiley felt no emotion about the people that he had just killed. He never had nightmares
or even thought of the families whose loved ones' lives he had ended. He was completely
certain that he hadn't been seen and that the remaining enemy soldiers had no idea
where his shots came from.

Suddenly, a bullet came within ten or fifteen feet of his head. ZIP! It cut two leaves
off a nearby tree, delicately.

“What?”
he muttered, nearly dumbfounded.

He hadn't considered this possibility. The feeling was strong in him to remain motionless.
But in less than a second he rolled to his right.

He had no idea that the bullet had come from a German fighter plane shooting at an
American bomber thirty thousand feet above him in the overcast sky, completely out
of hearing. Other bullets had fallen to earth as well, but the nearest had hit several
hundreds yards from him. He never once considered such a possibility.

In an instant, Wiley was up and running. With two of the enemy soldiers dead and
the others apparently diving for cover, he was floored thinking that someone had
seen him and actually shot at him.

I got a damn flash-hider on the barrel!
he thought.
How could they see me? But don't
make no difference. Even without anyone seein' me, I'd have ta run. It's not a scout's
job ta fight it out with the enemy, ta take a few more with me. I'm on enemy ground,
ground I don't know. In the end, they'd kill me if I stayed there. I got ta see ta
my mission and run from the enemy.

His first long strides were to the left.
I'll fool 'em.
After a few yards, when he
knew instinctively that he was beyond the crest of the hill and no one could see
the direction he took, he cut to the right. His escape route, already set in his
mind, was the road that he had seen to the right though the dense woods, the woods
that could hide a division.

If there are troops in there, I'll run inta ‘em and be killed or captured!

Wiley ran as fast as he could down the hill toward the woods. In two and a half minutes,
he came down to the road and headed left, to the northeast. It was a dirt road of
about the same quality of the one where he planted the mines.

Now his pace picked up, and he ran almost all out. On and on he raced on the slightly
winding road, making the first mile in less than eight minutes. He maintained that
pace for a second mile, the carbine impudently banging his backside and his gear
flopping up and down, the water in his canteen sloshing violently. But he saw no
enemy.

He knew that his direction was taking him farther and farther away from the plane.
Finally, he stopped running. Breathless, he walked along the edge of the road, rainwater
dripping on him from the trees.

Wiley knew he could always hear vehicles and even troops coming in plenty of time
to hide. He felt safer now, but he also knew that a single enemy soldier standing
in any one of the thousands of square feet within sight of him could put a bullet
in him at any moment. After only two minutes, he heard something ahead on the road
out of sight and walked calmly off to the left.

“That bush. Get behind that bush,” he muttered.

He lay down about thirty yards from the road and watched a German staff car pass
by. He checked his watch. It said 1503. He decided to pause for a while to see if
he was being tailed and enemy troops were closing in.

Nothing. He stood, made his way about 150 yards from the road, and slumped down.
He noticed the sky had brightened just a little.