“SS, Captain,” the man gasped, more from adrenaline than from the short run. “Came out of the trees. They have submachine guns.”
“Where’s the rest of your section?”
“We were scattered around. I assume that everyone else went to ground. I think that someone was hit, but I can’t be sure.” He looked down at his feet. “They caught us by surprise and we just ran.”
“How many of them?”
The soldier shrugged his shoulders. “A bunch?”
After the initial patter of fire, the air had become quiet. Carter was concerned that the Germans would come over one of the walls, using a ladder or felled tree trunks to gain access. They might even have some heavy weapons support. He regretted not sending some scouts up the other road. For all he knew, a Tiger tank could be lumbering down that road towards them. The coming end of the war had cut into his paranoia, which gave him his edge, making him slack off.
“Scatter around, men. I want eyes on every wall, keeping watch. You see a German pop up, you shoot him.”
As the Rangers moved, Carter looked for a radioman. No such luck. The radio was back in the jeep. They didn’t even have a corpsman with them. It was like going into battle without underwear.
“Captain—I mean, Major,” came a loud whisper from above him. Carter cupped his ear and looked up. “There’s another door, sir. It’s directly to the rear, behind a building. I can see Krauts gathering behind it.”
“All men, except the BAR men, with me,” Carter shouted, running towards the back of the temple. There were three buildings up against that wall, long and low like the other buildings in the compound. Carter searched the grass and saw the faint discoloration of a trail that led around the building to the left. The door wasn’t used enough to wear a path into the grass, but often enough to make that crucial track.
Raising his hand to hold everyone else back, Carter crept around the building with his carbine held ready at his shoulder. This building was not flush up against the wall, and the regular-sized door in the outer wall was blocked from view, though the building was low enough for Peterson to see the door from high in the tree. The door had a simple latch. It was an ideal entry point for the Germans to get inside the temple and surprise the Americans.
Not if I surprise you first, he thought grimly. There was not a second to lose.
Carter hurried back to his men and whispered urgently, “Everyone take out one grenade. Move silently. No noise at all. At my signal throw the grenades all at once over the wall. Then we attack.”
The Rangers crowded in the narrow space between the building and wall, each with a metal pineapple in his hand. Carter checked each of the men, looking in their eyes when he could catch their attention. Some were too fidgety to look at his face. Carter held up three fingers. The men pulled their grenade pins and arched back like amateur baseball pitchers getting ready to throw at a home plate in the sky. Carter brought down one finger, then another. The wall was only twelve feet tall, but the alarming image of one of his men not throwing hard enough and having the grenade bounce off and land back among his troops flashed onto the stage of his mind. No time for worries. He dropped the last finger.
Ten grenades flew over the wall as cheap improvised artillery. Another ten quickly followed. They heard alarmed shouts in German, then a rapid series of explosions that left the American ears ringing. The sturdy wall visibly shivered.
Carter pushed the door open and quickly stepped out, crouching with his carbine ready. His men hurried through the doorway after him, ready to shoot at anything that moved. Their haste was unnecessary. Man-sized clumps of hamburger lay crumpled on the blood-soaked ground. One of the clumps had the jagged edges of his ribs sticking out, like an anatomy lesson gone awry. The German troopers wore grey and green camouflage uniforms, with silver-on-black SS collar tabs that showed conclusively that they belonged to the elite private army of the Nazis. He had never made the connection before, but now Carter saw that the sharp-edged SS symbol was modeled on Nordic runes. On one nearby soldier, next to his SS collar tab was a small metal pin of a grinning skull on two bones. He had only ever seen that insignia once before—on the guards at Dachau.
He counted fifteen bodies, but he couldn’t be sure, since some of the bodies were clumped together and Carter didn’t care to look too closely. He never looked at the faces of the enemy dead, because all he saw was young men like his own soldiers.
“Half of you with me.” Carter pointed to the right. “Half of you with Finney.” He pointed to the left. “We’ll catch them in a pincer movement.”
With five Rangers following, Carter charged for the corner of the temple wall. He wanted to retain the initiative and knew from experience that keeping a step ahead of the enemy came from quick decisions and fast action.
He slowed to a stop, took his shaving mirror from his shirt pocket, checked to see that the sun wouldn’t broadcast his presence with a reflected beam of light, and used the mirror to peek around the corner. No one there. Around the corner, and running again, trying to not make a thundering noise with boots on dirt. He heard firing break out in front and discarded the notion of trying to be quiet.
A glance behind showed him that Ferro was with him. The little Italian was a crack shot, especially with the scope on his M1903 Springfield rifle, and left-handed. “Ferro, you get the corner.”
The Italian rushed ahead of the pack, reached the corner and swung his rifle around. Shooting with the rifle butt at his left shoulder allowed him to use the wall to cover most of his body. He fired, withdrew, worked the bolt, went back to the corner, aimed, fired again.
Carter leaned out for a moment to get a quick glance and stepped back. The Germans were crouched behind trees, returning fire at Finney’s group with their submachine guns. The heavier burp of the BAR men joined in. They must have moved up and were shooting out of the open gate. Carter felt a surge of pride at this display of Ranger aggressiveness, without needing commands from an officer. The two sections worked like a construction crew that had built the same building over and over and everyone knew their jobs.
Carter and the rest of the men with him ran out from behind the wall to the flat ground that surrounded the temple, dropped to the grass and added their fire. Caught in the crossfire, the Germans died quickly, and so the American fire slowed, then just a few pops, and silence.
Carter pulled himself up and looked at his men. “Anyone hit?”
No casualties among his group of soldiers. Carter trotted along the temple wall. Two BAR men emerged from the gate, followed by Peterson, who must have climbed down out of that tree pretty fast. Finney brought his men up. “Anyone hit?” Carter asked the corporal.
No casualties there.
The Rangers went through the dead, making sure that there was no one faking it, then fanned out to find their own dead from earlier in the battle. They found Private First Class Billy Joe Fernández, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, crumpled on the grass near a shrub. He had survived a leg wound at the Battle of the Bulge and returned to the unit only two weeks ago. Another few days and the war would not have claimed him.
The rest of Rangers caught outside by the attack emerged from the forest in ones and twos. Normally they would have had to suffer being the butt of jokes about surviving by running faster than German bullets could fly, but the death of Billy Joe had washed out any humor that the Rangers might have felt.
“Half of you follow me,” Carter said, starting up the road that they had come down. “We need to find Napier and the girl.”
Approaching the jeep cautiously, Carter found his friend curled up on his side near the jeep. There was no sign of the girl.
“Spread out, see what you can find,” Carter ordered. “Be careful, there might still be Krauts around.”
Setting down his carbine, he examined Napier. The tough soldier was still breathing, with a nasty mess of blood and matted hair on the back of his skull. Carter felt the