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Our Ally, Our Enemy (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 3)
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OUR ALLY,
OUR ENEMY
A Moon Brothers WWII Adventure
By
William Peter Grasso
KINDLE EDITION
Copyright 2017 William Peter Grasso
All rights reserved
Cover design by Alyson Aversa
Cover photo: May 1945. American and Soviet forces meet in Germany. Photo courtesy of US National Archives
KINDLE EDITION LICENSE NOTES
Our Ally, Our Enemy is a work of historical fiction. Events that are common historical knowledge may not occur at their actual point in time or may not occur at all. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales or to living persons is purely coincidental
Novels By William Peter Grasso
Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series
Moon Above, Moon Below, Book 1
Fortress Falling, Book 2
Our Ally, Our Enemy, Book 3
Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series
Long Walk to the Sun, Book 1
Operation Long Jump, Book 2
Operation Easy Street, Book 3
Operation Blind Spot, Book 4
Operation Fishwrapper, Book 5
Unpunished
East Wind Returns
Author’s Note
This is a work of alternative historical fiction, not a history textbook. Deviations from commonly accepted historical facts are intentional and provided only for the purposes of entertainment and stimulating the reader’s imagination.
The designation of military units may be actual or fictitious.
In no way are the fictional accounts intended to denigrate the hardships, suffering, and courage of those who served.
Contact the Author Online
Email: William Peter Grasso
Connect with the Author on Facebook:
William Peter Grasso, Author
Follow the Author on Amazon:
William Peter Grasso, Amazon Author Page
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Novels by William Peter Grasso
Copyright
Author’s Note
December 1944
Chapter One
March 1945
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
April 1945
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
May 1945
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
About the Author
More Novels by William Peter Grasso
December 1944
Chapter One
The Ardennes Forest, Belgium
It ain’t gonna get much warmer anytime soon, Sean Moon told himself. When they tell me this is the coldest, wettest damn winter Europe’s had in years, I sure as hell believe them.
At least the bellowing engine of his M4 Sherman tank, named Eight Ball, provided a modicum of warmth to the men inside. For Tech Sergeant Moon and his crew, their steel cocoon offered another advantage against the ravages of this Belgian deep freeze, too: relative freedom from trench foot, that nasty conspiracy of cold and constant wetness which plagued GI infantrymen and claimed more of them as casualties than the Germans.
Eight Ball was at the head of a four-tank platoon in column, making their way cautiously down a snow-covered trail two miles south of Bastogne. Just a few days ago, Bastogne had been the prospective graveyard of the GIs encircled there. Three surprisingly resilient German armies had surged through Luxembourg, heading west in a lightning thrust, with the Belgian port city of Antwerp as their objective. Their battle plan was to split the Allied armies that had been sluggishly approaching the German border, seize that port so vital to the Allies’ logistical demands, and in so doing, force them to sue for peace. The American generals hadn’t expected an attack through the impassable Ardennes. Never mind that the Germans had done it twice before, with great success: once in 1914, again in 1940.
Inattentive and ill-prepared, several stunned divisions of 1st US Army troops fled or died before the Germans. Like beleaguered inhabitants of a storm-battered island, however, the defenders of Bastogne—the 101st Airborne Division—held their ground. When the Germans offered the surrounded GIs a choice of surrender or face annihilation, the American general in Bastogne replied with just one word, a bewildering but emphatic rejection: Nuts.
For over a week, the Americans in Bastogne refused to yield, repelling every attempt by the Germans to take this vital crossroads town and continue their advance to Antwerp. They had little idea the German thrust was faltering far short of its goal; the Wehrmacht’s men and machines were slowly but steadily succumbing to the brutal winter, reorganized American resistance, and the difficulties of resupply their high command had chosen to gloss over. All the men of the 101st Airborne knew was that without reinforcement, it was just a matter of time before they would be overrun.
One snowy morning, the vehicle engines they heard approaching their outposts were, at long last, American. Fourth Armored Division—the spearhead of Patton’s 3rd Army—had opened a corridor from the south, clearing a path through the surrounding Germans into Bastogne. Now it was 4th Armored’s job to keep that corridor open. That was exactly the action in which Sean Moon and his platoon of Shermans were engaged.
The radio in Eight Ball’s turret came to life. “The captain wants you on the horn, Sarge,” Fabiano, the tank’s gunner, told Sean. The message was concise: a German panzer column was trying to force open the Arlon-Bastogne highway. Tanks from the battalion’s recon platoon would be the bait to lure the panzers into the kill zone. Sean’s platoon was to then spring the trap.
The Ardennes was anything but tank country. The forests that lined the paved roadways were dense, leaving little or no maneuver room for the bulky Shermans. The jagged hills and steep ravines offered poor fields of fire for anything other than near point-blank engagements. But at least that rough terrain provided plenty of off-road places to conceal a tank hull-down, with just her turret exposed. That was the tactic Sean would employ to lay his ambush for the panzers: make his tanks small targets—but ones that could still deliver a vicious punch.
“Roll up into that next dip in the trail, Ski,” Sean told Kowalski, Eight Ball’s driver. Talking into the radio, he told the next two tanks in the column to squeeze on either side of him in a wedge formation. Finally, he told the commander of his trail tank, “Smitty, cover our tail.”
No sooner was Sean’s platoon in position than two light tanks from Recon Platoon—M5 Stua
rts, faster than Shermans but woefully undergunned—raced past them on the road to Bastogne, their turrets traversed fully rearward, occasionally firing their main guns back down the road.
“Wasted rounds,” Sean mumbled, “but if it suckers in the Krauts, it’ll be worth every penny.” Speaking into the tank’s intercom now, he said, “Shouldn’t be long now, boys. Hold on to your asses.”
From the gunner’s seat, Fabiano looked up nervously to Sean, whose head and torso were still sticking out of the commander’s hatch. “Ain’t you gonna button up, Sarge?”
“Hell, no, Fab. I need to see what the hell’s going on. Bring the tube down a couple of degrees. We ain’t gonna have no time for adjustments when the shit hits the fan.”
“C’mon, Sarge…it’s already down as far as she’ll go. Any more and I’m gonna plant a short round in the fucking trail right in front of us.”
“I wasn’t making a suggestion, Fab. Just pay attention and do what the hell I tell you.”
The radio squawked again. It was Smitty, commanding the trail tank, calling Sean: “Frostbite 2-6 from 2-4, we’ve got GI infantry moving in with us.”
“Outstanding. Keep ’em back by you and out of the way until I say different.”
Sean could hear the amusement in Smitty’s voice as he replied, “Doesn’t look like I’m going to get any argument out of them on that score, boss.”
The German tanks were just shadows at first, shafts of darkness sweeping through the trees as they rumbled toward the ambush. “Looks like we got three panzers,” Sean said. Then another moving shadow fell in line behind the first three. He added, “Make that four.”
“They’re big, too,” Fabiano said. “Too damn big. Gotta be Tigers.”
“At this range, it ain’t gonna matter much what they are,” Sean replied. “You know damn well how it works—whoever hits the bull’s-eye first wins.”
Fabiano shook his head. “You really think this new gun’s gonna be any better against a Tiger than the old one was?”
The new gun: Eight Ball had as her main armament the higher velocity 76-millimeter gun. It was a much-needed upgrade from the outclassed 75 millimeter the older Sherman models carried.
Glaring down into the turret at his gunner, Sean replied, “I ain’t worried about the damn gun, Fab, just the swinging dick who aims it. Now shut up and pay attention. Here they come.”
The first German tank rolled into plain view, a broadside look at an iron behemoth, just two hundred yards away.
“Fuck,” Fabiano mumbled, “it’s a King Tiger.”
“Who gives a damn?” Sean replied. “It’s the same gun either way, and those overgrown pieces of shit break down at the drop of a hat. I’m surprised they got four of them that all run at the same time.”
“But the armor, Sarge—”
“The hell with the armor. You’re gonna hit ’em where they ain’t got much, anyway. On my command, take the second one in line. Right in the turret ring.”
Then he quickly assigned targets over the radio to his other tanks.
It took just a second for the Sherman gunners to get their sight pictures. In that time, the Tiger crews spotted their turrets jutting above the rim of the defile. They began to traverse their guns toward the American tanks, a manual process of furiously spinning hand cranks that must have seemed rapid to the minds of the designers. But in those seconds between life and death, it was too slow.
Horrifyingly slow.
Like sledgehammers of the gods, the unspeakable violence of a close-range heavy weapons fight began. The first three Tigers in line never got off a shot; their turrets penetrated through the thinner armor of their sides and rear, their commanders and crew nothing more now than stains baked onto the walls of the turret and hull.
The fourth Tiger was saved by virtue of being last in line. It was the farthest away and had the smallest angle through which to traverse its gun and bring fire on the Americans. She showed little more of herself than her thick forward armor. The Sherman to Sean’s left—Pretty Patty—got off two shots at her. The first deflected off stout tree trunks, shattering them like a mighty woodsman’s ax. The second bounced off the cheek armor of the Tiger’s turret like a baseball fouled back into the stands behind home plate.
With one round of her 88-millimeter main gun, the Tiger turned Pretty Patty into a flaming mass grave for her five crewmen.
“Son of a bitch,” Sean muttered, the only requiem for his dead tankers the situation allowed.
But even in death, Pretty Patty served a noble purpose: she shielded Eight Ball from the last Tiger alive.
“Knock her tracks off,” Sean told Fabiano.
“I can’t see ’em, Sarge! We’re down too low.”
“How much more height you need, Fab?”
“Five feet, maybe.”
“Ski,” Sean called to his driver, “back her up the rise and put her ass at four o’clock.” Then he told Fabiano, “Start elevating the tube. We’re gonna shoot over Patty’s aft deck.”
“You sure that’s gonna work, Sarge?”
“As long as that Tiger keeps sitting still…it just might.”
While Kowalski pivoted Eight Ball into position, Sean radioed his trail tank. “Smitty, I’m gonna try to nail that Tiger in place. Get the infantry to move out and kick her in the ass. Tell ’em to pop red smoke when they’re in position.”
His eyes glued to the gunsight, Fabiano yelled to Kowalski, “STOP. THAT’S GOOD.”
No sooner had Eight Ball groaned to a halt than the gunner cried, “ON THE WAY.”
The round shattered the Tiger’s right-hand drive sprocket.
Kowalski didn’t wait for Sean’s command; as soon as the round was gone, he’d lurched Eight Ball back to the cover of the burning Sherman. They’d done all the damage they were going to do to the Tiger. Another second partially exposed as they were would probably be their last.
Fabiano asked, “Did I do good, Sarge?”
“You did outstanding. She ain’t going nowhere now. Slap her in the face with the big gun a few times. Keep her distracted while the dogfaces get behind her.”
The red smoke grenade Sean was expecting never came. But the Tiger hadn’t fired another round, either.
“This is taking too damn long,” Sean mumbled. When he checked his watch, he was startled to realize only seventy seconds had passed since that first round was fired.
But he understood how fickle time in combat could be. A second could seem like an eternity. An hour could pass like a minute.
When he looked up from his watch, there was a column of GIs on foot approaching. In their midst were five German soldiers—tankers by their black coveralls and thick leather jackets, cropped short at the waist. Their hands were clasped behind their heads. The war was over for them. They were POWs now.
As the group of captives and captors got closer to Eight Ball, Sean was struck by the stark physical contrast between the two groups. The Germans looked comfortable and warm in their winter uniforms. They walked easily through the shin-deep snow in sturdy boots. They even had winter gloves.
You could almost say they looked content.
The GI infantrymen, on the other hand, looked nothing short of miserable. They were freezing cold—not surprising, since their ragged, filthy uniforms were more suited for temperate weather. The winter uniforms they should’ve been wearing were still in pitifully short supply army-wide, despite it being the second full month of winter. The logistical miscalculation responsible for this shortage was far from being rectified. Adding insult to injury, the GIs knew all too well that whatever winter clothing was available had been appropriated by rear-echelon types who slept indoors in heated billets before it could reach frontline soldiers, who lived and died exposed to the elements around the clock.
All too often this winter, GIs were dying because of the elements.
Every step through the snow seemed an excruciating ordeal for the GIs, their feet in obvious discomfort. Sean told himself, I see
n Bowery bums wearing footwear in better shape than the waterlogged boots these poor bastards got. Looks like this whole platoon of dogfaces is just a couple of hours away from the trench foot ward.
Sean climbed out of the turret and jumped down to the ground. Calling to the GI platoon leader, he said, “Hey, Lieutenant…you search these Krauts yet?”
“Yeah, Sergeant. They’re clean. Lots of good stuff in their tank, though, if you were thinking about souvenirs or something.”
“I’ll pass, sir. Got about all I can handle. They didn’t put up a fight?”
“No. They were trying to skedaddle. Threw up their hands and started with the kamerad bullshit the minute they saw us. I guess they didn’t think much of being sitting ducks.”
“Can’t say I blame them, sir.”
Sean noticed the feldwebel—the German in charge, a senior sergeant roughly equivalent to him in rank—smirking at the sorry state of the GIs. Then that smirk shifted to Eight Ball and her crew, who were eyeballing the Germans with silent contempt.
“You seem pretty cocky,” Sean said to the German, “considering you just got your asses handed to you.” Then he laughed and added, “I’m wasting my time, ain’t I? You don’t speak any English, I’ll bet.”
“You would lose that bet, Sergeant,” the feldwebel replied in thickly accented but otherwise perfect English. With the haughty smirk still on his face, he added, “Enjoy your little victory, my friend. But it will only be temporary, I assure you. The Führer has many surprises still in store for you.”
“Well, pal, if you’re talking about this little caper of his here in the Ardennes, looks like we’re putting the screws to that pretty good. If the surprises you’re yapping about are a couple of more moves like this circle-jerk, you ain’t gonna have no army left in no time flat.”