Fox On The Rhine by Douglas Niles, Michael Dobson Read Free Book Online

passed the shells of houses and barns in the darkness, the ruins looming like ghostly tombs to either side of the road. Often Pulaski had the impression of hedges pressing close to either side of the road, and it seemed in the eerie night that the half-track might have been rumbling down a long, narrow tunnel.
    “You’re up in the Eight Corps area, General,” shouted the MP, speaking over the throaty rumble of the engine. “Under General Bradley’s command, First Army.”
    ‘That’s what I’ve been told--so show me the way,” replied King, shouting in return.
    “Say--I hear that before too long Old Blood and Guts hisself might be coming over here to take over a field command!” the MP shouted, trying to make conversation.
    “Patton? Goddamn right he is--and then we’re heading straight for Berlin!” The general grinned in a sharp line of gleaming straight white teeth, and Pulaski couldn’t help but believe him.
    The MP proved an enthusiastic escort, pointing out the route, talking about some of the firefights that had pocked the buildings and cratered the ground. Occasionally he brandished a written sheet of orders to the other MPs manning the checkpoints that frequently blocked the way. By the time Company B pulled into the trampled field of their bivouac site, they had come a dozen miles and passed a thousand or more individual proofs of war’s fury.
    The glow of sunset still brightened the western sky mere hours after Pulaski’s landing on the beach at Normandy. As the tank engines died they were replaced by an equally persistent growl, a thunder that rumbled from beyond the horizon to the south. He knew immediately the true import of the sound. It was an artillery barrage--batteries of heavy 155-mm guns steadily pounding the Germans at their front.
    “Well, Ski,” the general commented, “it sounds like we found the war.”
     
    Wehrmacht Hospital, Vesinet, France, 1500 hours GMT
     
    A fly... no, two flies... they buzzed past his ear to thunk repeatedly, loudly against something hollow and close beside him... a lampshade, perhaps. The injured man seized on that sound, clung to it for the proof that he had not yet died, that the darkness might be parting before him.
    Rising through that small opening was pain, a pure agony that was utterly marvelous for the fact that it confirmed his vitality. The left side of his face was a mass of broken, burning flesh, and he vaguely recalled that he had been thrown from the car. And before the crash there had been the bullets from the sky, tearing into his body. He remembered that a tree beside the road had exploded, ripped apart by cannon shells. Wounds throbbed in his torso and his leg, his head was racked by a monstrous aching, and through all the sensations the most important thing was that his body was whole, would have at least a chance to heal.
    And he would live.
    Then the darkness crept upward again. Physical suffering waned, but now his mind was torn by nightmare... roaring, whining, lethal aircraft... deadly Hurricanes and Typhoons, murderous Spitfires and Thunderbolts flying everywhere, bringing flames and death to his brave men and his magnificent panzers.
    The darkness was a river, and he slipped backward... back to 1914, to the first time he’d come under fire. His guts ached from remembered food poisoning and still he led a patrol, so tired and so sick he could barely remain in the saddle. Shots rang out of the fog... he halted the platoon and went on with three men. The new lieutenant followed a path through a hedge, heard voices, and saw the enemy. Fifteen--no, twenty of them.
    His training urged him to bring up the platoon, but instead he attacked, firing rapidly as the enemy survivors scrambled for cover in nearby farmhouses, from where they returned fire. His platoon moved up and he had them ignite bundles of straw, half his men providing covering fire as the others kicked in doors and threw the flaming bundles into the farm buildings. He led