Fall of Giants

Gus looked along the street. “See that flat roof, corporal? Put a machine gun there.”

“Sir, pardon me, that’s an automobile repair shop, there may be a fuel tank below.”

“Damn, you’re right. Well spotted, Corporal. The tower of that church, then. Nothing but hymnbooks under that.”

“Yes, sir, much better, thank you, sir.”

“The rest of you, follow me. We’ll take cover while I figure out where to put everything else.”

He led them across the road and down a side street. A narrow pathway or lane ran along the backs of the buildings. A shell landed in the yard of an establishment selling farm supplies, showering Gus with clouds of powdered fertilizer, as if to remind him that he was not out of range.

He hurried along the lane, trying when he could to shelter from the barrage behind walls, barking orders at his NCOs, deploying his machine guns in the tallest and most solid-looking structures and his mortars in the gardens between houses. Occasionally his subordinates made suggestions or disagreed with him. He listened, then made quick decisions.

In no time it was dark, making the job harder. The Germans sent a storm of ordnance across the town, much of it accurately aimed at the American position on the south bank. Several buildings were destroyed, making the waterfront street look like a mouthful of bad teeth. Gus lost three machine guns to shelling in the first few hours.

It was midnight before he was able to return to battalion headquarters, in a sewing-machine factory a few streets south. Colonel Wagner was with his French opposite number, poring over a large-scale map of the town. Gus reported that all his guns and Chuck’s were in position. “Good work, Dewar,” the colonel said. “Are you all right?”

“Of course, sir,” Gus said, puzzled and a bit offended, thinking the colonel might believe he did not have the nerve for this work.

“It’s just that there’s blood all over you.”

“Is there?” Gus looked down and saw that there was indeed a good deal of congealed blood on the front of his uniform. “I wonder where that came from.”

“From your face, by the look of it. You’ve got a nasty cut.”

Gus felt his cheek, and winced as his fingers touched raw flesh. “I don’t know when that happened,” he said.

“Go along to the dressing station and get it cleaned up.”

“It’s nothing much, sir. I’d rather-”

“Do as you’re told, Lieutenant. It will be serious if it gets infected.” The colonel gave a thin smile. “I don’t want to lose you. You seem to have the makings of a useful officer.”

{IV}

At four o’clock the next morning the Germans launched a gas barrage. Walter and his storm troopers approached the northern edge of the town at sunrise, expecting the resistance from the French forces to be as weak as it had been for the past two months.

They would have preferred to bypass Château-Thierry, but it was not possible. The railway line to Paris went through the town, and there were two key bridges. It had to be taken.

Farmhouses and fields gave way to cottages and smallholdings, then to paved streets and gardens. As Walter came close to the first of the two-story houses, a burst of machine-gun fire came from an upper window, dotting the road at his feet like raindrops on a pond. He threw himself over a low fence into a vegetable patch and rolled until he found cover behind an apple tree. His men scattered likewise, all but two who fell in the road. One lay still, the other moaned in pain.

Walter looked back and spotted Sergeant Schwab. “Take six men, find the back entrance to that house, and destroy that machine-gun emplacement,” he said. He located his lieutenants. “Von Kessel, go west one block and enter the town from there. Von Braun, come east with me.”

He kept off the streets and moved through alleys and backyards, but there were riflemen and machine gunners in about every tenth house. Something had happened to give the French back their fighting spirit, Walter realized with trepidation.

All morning the storm troopers fought from house to house, taking heavy casualties. This was not how they were supposed to operate, bleeding for every yard. They were trained to follow the line of least resistance, penetrate deep behind enemy lines, and disrupt communications, so that the forces at the front would become demoralized and leaderless, and would quickly surrender to follow-up infantry. But that tactic had now failed, and they were slogging it out hand to hand with an enemy who seemed to have gained his second wind.

But they made progress, and at midday Walter stood on the ruins of the medieval castle that gave its name to the town. The castle was at the top of a hill, and the town hall stood at its foot. From there the main street ran in a straight line two hundred and fifty yards to a double-arched road bridge across the Marne. To the east, five hundred yards upriver, was the only other crossing, a railway bridge.