ATOW Chapter Sixty-Six

Christmas Eve, 1944. One hundred and twenty-four frozen and terrified men huddled in trenches hacked out of ground that had turned hard as rock in the subzero temperatures. Snow had fallen again and it was hard to keep the fires going. 

Many men did not have winter coats. Many of those who did were ordered to shed them so they could march faster. Proper boots were a rarity and frostbite a daily occurrence. Snow fell constantly. Dark green uniforms stood out like glaring targets in a white world.

It was strange somehow to be so unbearably cold when the horizon seemed at times to be on fire. It was a dark night, but flashes of the explosions from bombs and tanks lit the sky all around them. The cold was unbearable pain and the wind burned like fire. It was so cold that after a while, it wasn't even cold anymore. One simply became numb to it. Finally reaching warmth again somehow caused terrible pain as life returned to frozen limbs. 

"Gonna… lose my fingers…" Andy muttered, holding his frozen, chapped hands as close as he possibly could to the flames without burning them off. He was shivering violently, his teeth chattering. 

"Rub 'em together, fast as you can," Sandy advised. "And whatever you do, guys, don't take your boots off. You won't be able to get 'em back on."

"I forgot I had any feet," Josh groaned. "They don't feel like anything. It's like trying to walk with concrete blocks stuck to the bottom of my legs."

"Stick 'em closer to the fire." Ronnie had been rummaging through his pack and now tossed Andy a pair of woolen mittens. "Put those on. I've got spares."

"Hate to admit it," Andy pulled the mittens on gratefully and leaned closer to the fire. "But I'm scared half to death." He kept his head down, staring directly into the flames, hoping nobody could see the tears in his eyes. 

"We're all scared," Ronnie answered quietly. 

"I don't want to die," Andy added, in a small voice. "I… I wanna go home. See the farm again. Mom and Dad and Riley and… Sarah. She… she promised to marry me, y'know," he stifled a half-sob and drew a deep, shaking breath. "Man, it's cold. They'll never believe me when I tell 'em how cold."

"He that abideth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty," Ronnie whispered. "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust."

✯✯✯

Midnight. Christmas day. It was even colder than before. And silent as the snow fell. Somewhere down the line, someone began singing Silent Night between chattering teeth. A few more joined in. Those who did not sing simply listened, trying to keep tears from spilling onto their frozen faces.

The German lines had remained silent. The hours crawled by. Some of the men managed to catch a few moments of miserable sleep. Dawn streaked heatless rays of fiery sun across a gray sky and then vanished beneath heavy clouds. And then... The enemy opened fire.

It was heavier than they had anticipated. Fire rained down, more fierce and savage than the cold had ever been. But the American lines remained silent. Something was wrong.

Ronnie could feel dozens of terrified eyes staring straight at him. All along the line, he could hear the frustrated cries of men left weaponless. Not a single gun would fire. The most terrifying sound in all the world somehow was the click of a worthless, frozen rifle. The enemy was advancing and there they sat, helplessly. It was a moment of fate… if they moved it could mean near-certain death, but if they stayed where they were, death was more than certain. They were as good as dead already. Better to go down fighting than to accept defeat, in spite of the fact that some were begging to surrender. Ronnie didn't think… he simply acted.

"Fix bayonets!" he shouted, rising from the trench as he slid the steel blade onto the barrel of his rifle. He had no idea what he was doing. Bayonets had barely been briefed on in training. They were only a formality… a weapon of the past. They stared at him as if he was crazy. But every one of the remaining one hundred and twenty three men rose with him, fumbling with their bayonets desperately. 

An open field, ankle deep with snow, lay between them and the enemy. It was a near impossible thing they were about to do. Like the morning they had crossed Omaha beach, they would have to run unprotected, straight toward enemy fire. But it was their only choice… charge… or surrender. 

Surrender was never an option. This battle was a death struggle and would only end when the evil was completely choked out. To surrender now meant to hand over the fate of the world to the devil. So the one hundred and twenty three men on a frozen hillside somewhere in Ardennes threw caution to the wind and charged with a wild roar. One hundred and twenty four angry, desperate men, making their last rush for victory.

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