Fury of the Tiger, page 26
Morgan stared at Gunter. "You can get us into the town, no tricks?"
"Yes. I can give you no guarantees about what happens after. But it should work. Then again, this is war, Herr Major."
"Yeah."
An hour later, the attack started forward. Morgan had made it clear there was no way they'd abandon the 29th to go off on a freelance operation. They'd only break away when they'd cut their way through the defenses in their sector. The first problem was the Fallschirmjager, Panzergrenadiers, and infantry tucked deep into more slit trenches that crisscrossed what seemed like every field.
They fought like demons, the three Shermans and Anderson's infantry. Inside of the first hour, they were well ahead of the Allied line, pushing out a salient in the enemy lines.
"Anti-tank gun, twelve o'clock. Bastard just popped up. He's..."
Solly had already fired. There was no waiting for orders. The German soldiers disappeared in chaos of smoke and flame, leaving the gun bent and twisted, and Minnie rolled on. Grant heard him shout, "No hard feelings, this is business, pal."
Gunter Sturm held a steel stanchion behind the turret, clinging on for dear life as the Sherman bucked and lurched over the fields. There simply wasn't room to fight the tank and accommodate another man inside the cramped interior. Not without risking everything. A pile of cash was worth fighting for, but who could spend it if they were dead.
A machine gun slashed across the field they were crossing, but their infantry was advancing behind the tanks, so they were effectively safe from the gunfire. Bullets pinged against the steel hull, and both Grant and Vern sprayed down the enemy with machine gunfire. They were on the left of the trio of tanks, with Morgan in the center and Cochise on his right. The drivers kept their speed low to allow the soldiers to keep up. When they smashed through the next hedgerow, they went through in a solid bunch, tanks and foot soldiers together.
Solly was about to open fire on an armored vehicle waiting the other side of the hedge. At the last moment he saw it was an American that had somehow got ahead of the rest of the Division. An open turret M10 tank destroyer, what the Brits called a Wolverine. Built on the hull of a Sherman M4, they'd only enjoyed limited success, until the army fitted a few M10s with the 76mm M1 main gun. The effect was immediate, an increase in kills as the more powerful artillery penetrated thicker armor. German armor. Tiger armor.
The Sergeant in command of the gun crew stared at them in consternation for a moment, then relaxed and jumped down. They'd come out in a shallow bowl in the ground that was enough to hide them from enemy gunfire. Morgan, Kuruk, and Grant joined him, and they shook hands.
"I'm Greg Allendale," he introduced himself, "This ugly monster is mine. It looks like we've jumped ahead of the rest of the Division, so me and the boys decided to wait for them to catch up."
Morgan nodded. "Very wise. Have you seen anything ahead we need to worry about, any heavy armor in the vicinity?"
"Damn right we have, Major. A couple of Panthers moving up to the town, together with three Panzer IVs and a Tiger."
"You think they're at Saint-Lo now?"
"Yep, no question. They'll have hunkered down somewhere they can wait for our boys to approach, and then, 'wham.' They'll let fly with those 88s and 76mms, and all hell will break loose. That's why we're here. Ain't nobody getting inside Saint-Lo unless we take out those Jerry tanks. Otherwise they’ll tear the Shermans apart like they're made of paper."
They looked at each other. Morgan indicated they needed to have a quiet word, so they moved a few yards away.
"What do you think?" Morgan asked them.
"Another five men ain't going to make much difference," Dan Kuruk replied, "There're already plenty of us. I make it about forty-five. If the crew of that M10 wants to join us, it'll make it a round fifty. That sounds like a good number to me."
Morgan looked at Grant. "What about it?"
"I agree. We need them. We should talk to them."
Allendale was curious when they returned, and he called his crew to join them for a chat. It took all of four minutes.
"I'm in."
"Fuck, yes."
The Sergeant nodded at them. "We're with you. Equal shares?"
"That's right. Equal shares."
"What're we waiting for?"
They surveyed the advance of the 29th Division. The battle had flared and raged, and without any doubt, the defenses were collapsing. The time to enter Saint-Lo was now. The first task was to bring Gunter down from Minnie's hull. They asked him which road they needed to enter the town unseen. He glanced around for a few moments looking puzzled, and then his expression cleared.
"For a moment I thought was lost. It's okay. We're too far north. The track I'm looking for is further to the south. We need to cross the next two fields, and we should be able to cut the road and head east into Saint-Lo."
"We'll take the lead," Grant suggested to Morgan. He nodded his agreement.
"I don't like someone else leading the unit into battle, but I guess you and Gunter have got some kind of an understanding, so we need to listen to what he has to say. I'll position the M10 right behind you, and I'll follow with Kuruk in the rear." He looked around for Lieutenant Anderson, "Distribute your men amongst the vehicles. You can ride on the hulls. Watch for snipers, and if we see any armor, we'll take care of it. Oh, yeah, look out for Panzergrenadiers."
"Understood, Major. We've done this before."
"Good. Let's do it."
Half a dozen infantrymen swarmed up on the hull of Minnie Mouse. They gave Gunter hard stares, but when Grant explained he was the key to getting rich, they had a change of heart and slapped him on the back. The rest of Anderson's men boarded the other vehicles. He took a last look around and waved for them to go forward. Allendale was out of radio contact, which forced them to use hand signals.
"Driver, advance."
They rumbled forward at a faster pace than before, with the infantry riding on the tanks. They were forced to dismount when the armor punched through the hedgerows, and they waited while the Shermans checked out the adjacent fields for signs of the enemy. There were none. They'd entered a poorly defended region, and within minutes they reached the track. There was still no sign of the enemy.
"If we follow this lane," Gunter explained, "it will take us into the south of the town, and with any luck, they won't see us. At least, until we get nearer."
Grant surveyed the outskirts of the town less than a mile in front of them, the town where Margot was held in a Nazi prison under sentence of death, either from the Gestapo, or from the Americans when they started the shelling.
"I can't see any sign of defenses, why is that?"
"They expected an attack to come from the north, not from this direction."
"Except not all of our troops have come in from the north."
The German shrugged. "They'll be panicking by now. All they can think about is getting out rather than how to defend a position that's indefensible."
Grant nodded. "Okay, we'll go in."
"Any problems?" Morgan radioed.
"We're good, Major."
He held up his arm, feeling like a nineteenth century cavalry commander leading a procession of mounted troops. Then he smiled to himself. That's exactly what he was doing. He held up his hand.
"Advance!"
They rumbled forward, threading their way through the narrow lane, wedged between high hedgerows on either side. After the first two hundred yards, the bocage suddenly ended, and in front of him he could see a collection of farm buildings that straddled the road. A few hundred yards further, the first of the houses of Saint-Lo came into view. There was no sign of the enemy. It worried him.
If I was a German commander, that's where I'd put my tank, inside one of those buildings. I could be staring into the muzzle of an 88 and not know it.
There was only one way to handle it. He used the Company net to call up Morgan and Kuruk to tell them of his suspicions.
"I want both of you back up a hundred yards, then punch through the bocage on the other side and come around the rear of that farm. If there is a Kraut tank in there, I want you ready to bust his ass with a couple of AP shells. Sir," he added for Morgan's benefit.
"That's okay, Sergeant Grant. You're doing fine. Let's go, Sergeant Kuruk."
He waited for the two Shermans to maneuver out of sight, and then used hand signals to warn Allendale in the M10 what he planned. The other man waved an acknowledgement, and Grant gave the order.
"Driver, advance."
It came when they were only one hundred and fifty yards away from the big stone barn. At first it was a slight movement in the stonework, like it rippled. He was already grabbing for the transmit button when the long barrel pushed out of the building, sending more blocks of stone tumbling to the ground.
"Enemy armor!" Angel shouted, starting to swerve away.
"Tiger!" Vern shouted, "Oh my Lord, we're gonna die."
For once, he was right. The subject of his nightmares appeared in front of him. Huge and menacing, with the massive, long barrel of its 88mm main gun overhanging the hull like some monstrous appendage. They were so close Grant could see the strange anti-magnetic Zimmerit coating, with its peculiar rippled effect. The hull was painted in a gloomy dark green and gray, and it seemed almost as big as a house. In fact it was almost as big as a house.
"AP loaded!"
"Fire!"
The shell hit the mantlet of the big tank while it was emerging from the wreckage of the building. They missed. The Tiger fired, and the massive shell whistled overhead, missing them by what seemed like inches. The next one wouldn't miss. Already, the infantry had leapt off the hull and were diving for cover, and then the M10 fired. The shell smashed into the frontal armor of the Tiger and did little or no damage. Then Solly was ready.
"Fire."
The crash echoed through the hull as the shell spat out at the enemy, and the extractors sucked out the stinging fumes of the propellant. This time it was a hit on the turret armor, but the shell failed to do any obvious damage. He was about to order a change of direction when the Sherman jerked to a stop, as if they'd hit a solid wall. The next shell from the Tiger flashed past the front of Minnie, a near miss. It wouldn't work again. Next time they'd be ready for them. But what would work?
The M10 fired again, and their 76mm shell did some real damage. It impacted on the hull just below the turret where the charge exploded, although it had failed to penetrate the thick armor. Whatever it struck, the turret seemed to jam. Angel veered away to the west and the M10 to the east, to offer a harder target. Yet the big gun stayed still, unable to fully rotate the turret to bear. The German commander was no fool, and Grant heard the Tiger tracks squeal as the huge tank started to slew around, turning the entire hull to aim the 88, like a massive assault gun.
It was an act of desperation, but if they succeeded, they still had those big AP shells that could turn a Sherman into a flaming coffin. For half a minute they played a game of hide and seek, reversing and driving forward, while the German maneuvered for a shot.
It worked for a time, until the M10 stalled when the driver failed to see a stone wall with a pond in front of it. The vehicle plunged downward, and the tracks slid into the muddy bottom, the bulk of the vehicle settling against the wall. The driver hit the gas to try and get them out, and the tracks spun, but the angle was too much. Nothing short of a tow would pull them out. The Tiger scented prey like the carnivore after which it was named, and the monster tank began turning to line up on the helpless target.
"Angel," Grant shouted, "Head for the Tiger. Solly, keep firing. Distract the bastard, or Allendale and his men are toast."
The hatch of the M10 had opened and the crew was jumping to safety, but they were almost out of time. The Sherman had little protection against a Tiger, but the M10 had even less, with frontal armor an inch thinner than the M4. The German gunner opened up with the MG34, and heavy rounds chewed up the farmyard as the Americans dived behind the temporary safety of the stone wall.
They drew near, and Solly poured shot after shot at the German, but they were shooting at the front, and the heavy armor held off their AP shells.
"We need to get behind him," Grant shouted, "Angel, Solly needs a rear or side-on shot. Do what you can."
"Every time I move, he moves. I'm doing my best here."
"I know. But we have to nail this bastard before he gets in a good shot."
"Too right we need to nail him."
He grinned, that was Vern, probably pissing his pants. But they were no nearer to killing the Tiger, and the game had become a deadly dance. The German could absorb incredible punishment while it waited for a single mistake, a mistake that would enable them to fire a shell to destroy their enemy. And then Angel made that mistake. It may have been fear, or just the effect of the adrenaline slopping around his system, but instead of stopping the left track to slew left, he stopped the right track. They went right, under the direct line of sight of the huge barrel. Minnie and her crew were less than a second away from death.
There was no time to consider what might have been. One second they were ahead in the game, the next, they were about to die. The German stopped dead, about to take the shot, and Grant waited, his heart icy. His mind was numb to anything other than that huge, yawning black hole in front of them, and the monstrous shell that was about to turn a sophisticated piece of American engineering into so much scrap. The shot crashed out, a huge explosion, but oddly it wasn't as loud as the previous 88mm shell. They heard another explosion as the German fired again.
He opened his eyes and found they were alive. Minnie Mouse was still intact. Not so the Tiger, which had become a sea of flames as the gas tanks caught fire. Morgan had come up with Kuruk in the nick of time, and both Shermans slew the beast with shells into the vulnerable engine compartment. He saw the hatch open, and a black clad tanker attempted to escape.
The furious flames were too much, and the German's body slumped over the turret, the black uniform billowing smoke and flames. Then the ammunition cooked off, and a rumbling explosion inside the burning Tiger almost blew the turret off its mountings. When the noise died away, the big gun sagged down, pointed at the ground.
"Thank the Good Lord, I never want to see one of those again."
Vern had left his co-driver's position and emerged into the turret. Without asking, he threw open the hatch, put his head out, and retched over the side. He puked for a long time, and when he was finished, he climbed down to the ground and walked over to the pond where the M10 lay, with the nose under the water. He dunked his head in the pond and kept dunking for a long time.
Morgan and Kuruk stopped next to the stone wall, opened the hatches, and stared down at the crew of the tank destroyer.
"You guys look like you could do with a tow."
Allendale and his crew came out from behind the wall. The Sergeant gave them an embarrassed smile.
"That mud at the bottom of the pond, it's like glue. We could do with AAA."
"Better hurry it up, Sergeant, they're getting closer."
He meant their side. The artillery had emplaced only a half-mile away, and it didn't take a genius to know they were close to beginning the final assault on the town with a preliminary artillery barrage. Gestapo Headquarters would be one of the first targets. Allendale's crew dragged out the heavy chains and fastened them to Morgan's Sherman. His driver back away and slowly the M10 eased out of the mud. They unhitched and climbed aboard. There was a bad moment when the engine refused to fire, but after several attempts, it roared into life, spewing mud and pond water into the air from the blocked exhausts.
When they were ready to go, Morgan called them over for a brief chat.
"If we don't make it into the town inside the next hour, the artillery will likely flatten that Gestapo building. I'm afraid your girlfriend won't stand a chance."
Grant nodded. They were so near, yet so far.
"Major, if it's okay with you, I'd like to stay on point, and Gunter can guide us in. He's done all right so far."
"You go ahead, same as before, the M10 right behind to deal with the heavy armor. Always assuming their driver can stay out of the ponds. Move out."
Grant vaulted onto the hull and climbed down inside the turret. Gunter climbed back on the hull and sat next to the rear of the turret. He took a last look round to make sure the engine of the M10 was still running, and then gave the order. Angel set the tracks moving on the last stage of their journey.
As they neared the town, he was surprised not to see German strongpoints. It looked as if they might make it, as far as the Krauts were concerned; as for their own artillery, that was something different.
"You must take that street there," Gunter shouted over the noise of tracks and the roaring of the engine, "It will take us to the Headquarters, what used to be the Town Council building. There is a wide paved area in front where our troops parked their vehicles. Be careful when you take the corner, in case they have armor drawn up for the defense."
He passed the warning on to Angel, and they rumbled through the streets of Saint-Lo. He was aware they were the first Americans into the town, and he wondered what Major-General Charles Hunter Gerhardt would think about that. Maybe they should have warned him. After all, Morgan was on the Battalion net and could have got a message through.
Then again, what could he say? "Sorry, General, but we disobeyed orders and charged into the town ahead of our main force. We had to rescue a French girl held captive in a Gestapo prison. As well as the SS payroll."
Maybe not, the only way was get in and out before anyone knew they'd been there. In the smoke and chaos of the attack, no one would ever know who'd done what. Especially after an artillery barrage leveled the Headquarters building, together with most of the town. Provided they got out in one piece, the only losers would be the Gestapo and the SS.
Isn't that what we’re in this war for, anyway?
Angel jerked to a halt just before the intersection. Grant climbed out of the turret and walked forward. The soldiers riding the hull wanted to climb down, but he told them to hold tight. The last thing he wanted was a squad of American troops alarming the locals. He peered around the corner and ahead of him was the target. Two huge oak and iron doors guarded the Gestapo building. A guard stood in front, complete with helmet and MP38 machine pistol. As if to dispel any doubt about the occupants, the Nazi Swastika flag flew from a flagpole. The paved area in front was a vehicle park, with a half-dozen trucks drawn up near the doors. A sound made him look to see Solly come up to join him.
