Near midnight Lukas had realized that he was going through his ammunition very quickly, and he decided that he would have to be more careful in his selection of targets. An ordnance platoon had come around with a resupply earlier in the evening, but there was no guarantee that they would be back before dawn. And this battle, it seemed, would be resolved in the dark of the night.
For a time there was a lull, and Lukas let his head fall forward onto his forearm. He almost fell asleep, then jerked upward with a start as a rattle of machine gun fire burst through the night. This was the coaxial gun on Peiper’s tank, chattering loudly as it sent a burst toward the no-man’s-land of the cratered landscape. Russians were moving there, hundreds of them charging forward, ignoring the dead who fell out of their ranks in ever increasing numbers.
Lukas fired his Schmeisser, raking the enemy troops with a long burst until the last of his ammunition was exhausted. Finally he dropped the machine pistol, rolled down the ridge of his makeshift breastwork, and picked up the carbine that had been carried by his corporal. He crawled back up the pile of rubble and kept firing, taking care to aim with each shot, as he had been taught.
The Panther, hull down in the rubble between two houses, fired round after round of armor-piercing ammo into the darkness. Somehow Peiper must have been able to see, because several of these shots found Russian tanks, setting off fiery explosions, leaving the T-34s as burning hulks spewing flames that brightened the battlefield for dozens of meters in every direction.
Lukas saw an enemy soldier silhouetted against one of these ghastly flares. Even as the man dove for cover the young officer shot, saw his target flinch and roll over as the bullet struck home. But more tanks were visible now, at least a dozen illuminated by the fire. These opened up against his platoon, firing high explosive shells that blasted violently into the rubble, and sent shards of stone and steel zinging through the air.
The Panther blasted away again and another Russian tank exploded, and then the night was full of sounds—gunfire and explosions, the curses of wounded and dying men, the bark of Lukas’ own rifle as he fired as fast as he
could jack another bullet into the chamber. He heard a ghostly voice like something from a dream, as if his father was calling him in from the woods at the end of the day. It was a pleasant sound, and he concentrated on it, instead of the chaos of combat sounds. He fired again, loaded another clip, and still there was that distant voice.
He was distracted when someone slapped his arm, and looked around to see that one of his men had crawled over to him and was trying to get his attention.
“What is it?” asked the young officer.
“There,” said the grenadier, pointing toward the hulking, battered Panther.
“Vogel—come here!”
The voice—it wasn’t a dream at all! Instead, it was Peiper calling to him from the hatch of the Panther. Staying low, Lukas scrambled over to the big panzer, coming up to the fender and looking apologetically upward. “I’m sorry, mein Standartenführer! I didn’t know—”
Peiper waved his excuses away. “Listen, I have just talked to a runner from division HQ. The charges are taking longer than they anticipated, but they are going to try and blow the bridge just after dawn. I want you to take your platoon and bug out of here, do you understand? Get back across the bridge, and wait for me there!”
“Leave you here, sir?” Lukas was surprised, and strangely reluctant to go.
“Use the darkness, son! Remember, you are an officer—responsible for the lives of your men. Now get them together, and fall back. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!” Lukas saluted.
Peiper was right, of course—he, Lukas Vogel, Obersturmführer of the SS, was responsible for these men. He felt a flash of shame as he realized that he hadn’t even learned their names; now at least three of them were dead.
His sense of shame grew as he jogged back to the position, and one by one collected the men from their foxholes. Two more had been killed in the firefight, but the survivors helped Wolfgang—the man whose leg had been shattered in the aerial bombardment—to rise up onto his good leg. With a comrade on each shoulder; he started hobbling back toward the bridge.
Lukas waited until all of them had started to fall back, and then he came along behind—halting for a moment, then running back to retrieve the Schmeisser he had dropped after his ammo was exhausted. He jogged along, careful not to trip on the broken ground, trying to make out the road descending into the river valley, leading toward the bridge.
He heard the crack of the Panther’s gun when he was just below the crest, and stopped to look back. He saw Peiper, tall above the turret hatch, holding binoculars to his eyes as he studied the enemy positions in the sporadic light of fire and flare. Those lights faded into darkness once again, and the SS colonel was gone.
Chuck Porter made his way from the briefing room, through the equipment hangar, and out onto the crushed-gravel surface of the taxiway. The sky was still dark, but all around him the great Allied air armada was thrumming and roaring with life, with energy, with barely restrained anticipation.
He had learned in the briefing that this field was one of more than three dozen installations throughout England and France, each of which was a scene of similar controlled chaos on this chilly spring morning. Twin-engine Dakota transports were rumbling from their places along the flight line, while paratroopers were lined up just back from the runways, already organized into their single-plane “sticks.” One by one these files of men advanced to the doors in the C-47 fuselages. Each soldier was loaded with more than a hundred pounds of equipment, but they pulled themselves up and through the hatch with only a small assist from the jumpmaster—the NCO who was in charge of seeing the parachutists safely out the door over the jump zone.
A captain was directing traffic as air crew and paratroopers were milling around near the hangars. Porter went up to the man and waited for him to finish directing a couple of lieutenants toward their unit.
“Hello, Captain,” said the reporter. “Can you point me toward A Company, Captain Dickens’ plane?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Sorry—press, Chuck Porter with the AP.” He showed his pass, and the order sheet authorizing his passage on the transport.
“Shit. Now we’re sending reporters along! You know you’re taking a place that could be used by a real fighting man?”
“General Gavin assured me that he had enough transport for the Eighty-second Division, plus one reporter,” Porter said, hoping that the name of the division commander might carry a little weight with this pompous little martinet.
It worked. The captain grimaced, but pointed. “Dickens is over there, second Dakota from the end of the line. Don’t get in the way.”
“I won’t,” Porter promised, his muttered addendum—“jackass”—lost in the roar of powerful aircraft engines.
He made his way to the transport, double-checked the number, and climbed aboard after the last of the paratroopers. The interior of the fuselage was a tangle of men and equipment, the soldiers sitting with their backs against the outer shell, their legs extending into the middle of the deck. Apologizing, and stepping carefully, Porter made his way to the front of the cabin, just behind the cockpit. He found Dickens seated there, poring over a map; the captain flashed him a grin as the reporter settled into the narrow gap beside him.
“Ah, Porter. I was afraid you overslept, and were going to miss the ride.”
“I wouldn’t miss this for the world, Captain,” Porter said. “Parachutes over Berlin—this might be the last big adventure of the war.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” the soldier, a veteran of landings in Sicily and Normandy, said. “Who knows what the Russians are going to think of this whole project?”
“At least you guys will be on the ground before they hear about it,” Porter replied.
He felt a little guilty. After all, he would be coming back here for a hot meal and a warm bed tonight, while the rest of these men would be on the ground in war-torn Berlin. Some of them would be wounded, others dead.
“Well, do your best to make us look good,” Dickens said, as if reading the reporter’s mind. Porter laughed at the joke, not entirely sure if the paratrooper was kidding.
The flight to Berlin would take a couple of hours. He had been briefed on the mission, knew that the All-Americans—the nickname of the Eighty-second Airborne Division—were charged with seizing Tempelhof airport, the largest network of airfields in the Berlin area. Other Allied airborne soldiers would try to capture other airports, a ring of them surrounding the German capital. Once the paratroops were on the ground and the airfields secured, a train of transport aircraft would begin to haul in supplies, weaponry, and reinforcements. By tomorrow night, Operation Eclipse would be over.
The day was sunny, though the inside of the metal tube was cold and very loud. Porter found that if he twisted around in the seat he could get a pretty good view out of one of the oval windows lining each side of the C-47. He could see the starboard engine and the blur of the big propeller; beyond, there was a scattering of cotton-ball clouds, sparse enough to provide a good view of the countryside. For a time they flew above a region of densely forested hills, marked by occasional outcrops of weathered stone. Gradually the ground gave way to a patchwork of fields, greening only slowly in the wake of the harsh winter. Looking ahead, he could make out a broad strip of water, a cluster of industrial buildings sprawling along the bank beside a medieval town.
“That’s the Rhine!” he called out, tapping Dickens on the shoulder.
The captain looked at his watch. “Right on schedule!” he shouted back, the words barely audible over the drone of the engines and the rattling of wing against the aluminum frame.
The landscape of Germany didn’t look all that different from France, or England—or parts of New York or Pennsylvania—he reflected. He saw no signs of enemy fighters or antiaircraft as they droned on, passing another great river he guessed to be the Elbe.
He saw the twin ribbon of a great highway, and knew this was one of the legendary autobahns. They flew along, parallel to the road, and he guessed that
it would lead them all the way to Berlin. Soon the character of the land began to change: He saw more factories, a network of railroad lines—though there were still great swaths of forest and dazzling blue stretches of lakes to break up the appearance of civilization.
Now the first puffs of smoke began to appear, and he knew that a few German guns were opening up. The bursts were spread out far in front and off to the side, appearing to be silent and harmless. But there were many of them, and as the Dakota flew on they grew closer and closer.
The outskirts of the city were below them. Some of the explosions were near enough that he could hear the blasts, sharp
cracks
against the background din of the aircraft.
Porter told himself that the antiaircraft fire was light. With his face pressed to the glass of the round window, he could see only a few blasts of black smoke. They were distant and, against the backdrop of the roaring engines, soundless, yet he knew that each one had the potential to bring sudden and very violent death to a plane full of men.
He felt a tap on his shoulder, looked to see Dickens leaning close. The captain shouted in his ear, pointing to the horizon toward their course.
“That’s one of those antiaircraft towers!” he shouted. “They were plastered by bombers, but they’re still shooting.”
The reporter could easily make out the sinister structure. It was like a square block of concrete, many stories high and apparently a full city block around. It was shrouded in smoke now, with bright flashes sparkling across the roof and sides. Numerous tactical fighters strafed and bombed the tower, like insects buzzing around a picnic box. Porter could see more of those black puffs now, higher in the sky. He felt a chill as he realized that the German gunners were ignoring the direct threat of the strafing fighters to direct their fire against the precious transports.
A C-47 not more than a mile away suddenly lurched, angling downward from the formation, flames trailing from a stricken engine. Porter watched in horrified fascination as the troopers started to fling themselves from the jump door … . One … two … three men made it out before the plane flipped onto its back and spiraled away.
It was only then that he noticed the sky filling with parachutes, white silk canopies bursting into view across the whole of his view. They drifted downward with deceptive gentleness, suggesting nothing like an army on the attack.
Porter stared out of his small window, wishing he could have a view of a broader section of the sky. Everywhere he looked he could see parachutes, a rain of fighting soldiers that seemed like it must be an overwhelming force. These were elite soldiers, he knew, a select few drawn from large numbers of volunteers. Each man carried his ammunition and full kit, as well as a portion
of the company ordnance, whether that be a portion of a light machine gun, extra ammo for the gun, or any of the components of the bazookas and rockets that were supposed to serve as a defense against enemy armor.
Even so, he knew that these men landed, and entered combat, with significant disadvantages. They had no armor, no artillery to speak of—though there were a few small pieces that would land in the first wave of gliders—and no way to retreat. Furthermore, they were at the mercy of the wind and the not-necessarily-perfect accuracy of the pilots and jumpmasters. Even those who landed exactly where they were supposed to had to avoid trees, buildings, water, and enemy soldiers.
Porter’s attention whipped around at a new sound, and he saw that the door at the back of the plane had been thrown open by the jumpmaster. The soldiers had stood up while he had been looking out the window, and he saw that each man had clicked a sturdy strap, his static line, to a cable running down the center top of the fuselage. The first man stood in the door, while the jumpmaster held his hands to his earphones, concentrating on some message unheard by the reporter.
Abruptly the man looked up and clapped the first paratrooper on the shoulder. With both hands braced on the sides the door, the soldier leaned forward and leaped into space. The next came right after, the whole stick moving down the plane with precision and impressive speed.
“Good luck!” Porter shouted, as Dickens turned back to give him a wave. The reporter raised his fingers, a V for victory, and then the captain was gone, the last man through the door. The jumpmaster started to pull the portal shut, but Porter had already turned around, once again pressing his face against the glass of the window.