Ardennes Sniper: A World War II Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page A

came to politics, he sometimes considered what the Roman general and emperor Marcus Aurelius had said in his Meditations : "The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." He doubted that Marcus Aurelius would have joined the Nazi party, and neither had Von Stenger.

CHAPTER 5

    In all of his eighteen years, Hank Walsh could not remember being so cold. His fingers ached, his ears stung, and his nose felt numb. It was bad enough that the air itself was frigid, but the chill seemed to seep from everything around him and into him. When he stood on the frozen ground it soaked up right through his boots and turned his feet to blocks of ice.  
    Even now, sitting in the front seat of a GMC deuce and a half truck, the cold oozed out of the seat and froze his backside. The windshield wipers swiped fitfully at the snow and ice pellets that popped against the glass.  
    "Goddamn miserable but it beats walkin', huh?" said the driver, a burly 29-year-old from Philadelphia named Ralph Moore. Moore was married and had two kids; back home he worked as a plumber. Since there wasn't much need for plumbers in an army fighting its way across Europe, Moore mostly drove a truck for Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. Hank looked up to him because he seemed eminently older and wiser—a man of the world compared to a kid fresh out of high school.  
    Back then, Hank had been eager to get into the war because it seemed like an adventure. It's not like he had ever been to Europe. Shooting Germans would be like plinking targets at the town fair.  
    Considering that he was going off to war, his prom date had felt obliged to let him get to third base in the back seat of his dad's Ford. Technically he remained a virgin—and there had been few opportunities to change that fact once Hank found himself in basic training and then shipped off to France almost immediately after that. Most of the French women he had seen were old enough to be grandmas. And they had hairy legs.
    He had once confessed to Ralph that he hadn’t yet gone all the way with a girl.  
    His older and wiser companion had laughed, but to Hank’s relief had not made fun of him. "Don't worry, Kid. Next time we get to a decent-sized town we can make sure you get laid. And believe it or not, someday you'll find yourself a good little wife and get it nice and regular every Saturday night that she doesn’t have a headache."
    Prom night had been the highlight of his teenage years. So far, the war had been a lot less exciting. It was mostly a cold, wet slog. Because he was good at math, he had been put into an artillery observation unit, on the off chance that the need might arise to triangulate fire. So far, their main role had not involved combat but shoring up bridges so that the heavy guns could cross, repairing roads and moving supplies. Most of the men of the 285th had not fired a weapon since basic training.
    "Where are we?" Hank asked.
    "Just outside of some town called Baugnez."
    "Huh."
    The name didn't mean a whole lot to Hank, so he settled back in the seat and hugged his arms around himself in some hopes of staying warm. Nobody bothered to put a heater in an Army truck. Never mind the fact that this truck had been manufactured in Pontiac, Michigan—where it certainly got plenty cold.
    The crossroads village came and went in a blur of small houses crowded close to the road. A few old men and women peered at them from doorways and windows. Five roads came together here, so that on a map Baugnez looked something like the hub at the center of an old wagon wheel, while the roads formed the spokes. Some of the Americans had taken to calling it Five Points. Just two miles away was a larger town called Malmedy. The convoy crept out of the village and back into the countryside.
    The landscape around them was flat and snowy, with a distant view of hills shrouded in a cold mist. Out the