“Tanks are eighty yards away. They’re almost at the bridge,” Harry shouted, and then a pause, “They’ve started shooting. If we don’t do this, our guys are toast.”

  He gave it everything, fed every ounce of power into the forward motion of the lumbering vehicle, and like a prehistoric dinosaur, it trundled toward the building.

  “Tanks are right outside. Another few seconds they’ll go past, and then they’ll be on the bridge.”

  At the last moment, he saw a huge crack in the masonry, and he used the levers to adjust the steering a fraction. The crane hit the crack in the masonry with a massive boom and stopped dead, yet with the powerful engine still pushing forward. The building still stood, massive and immovable. The crack widened a fraction, and he saw the leading panzer driving past on the other side of the wall, no more than a few yards away. The bastards were about to beat them, and if that rankled, it stabbed him like a knife in the guts to think of his men going down to the torment of machine gun fire from the auxiliary machine guns mounted inside those steel hulls.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing, Sarge. No, wait.”

  He sensed movement. The crane had moved forward a fraction of an inch, and he saw something incredible. The building, the entire six stories moved and trembled, as if hit by an earthquake. It stopped moving, and the engine of the crane roared as the powerful beast struggled to keep pushing forward. Something had to give, and something did give.

  Chunks of masonry fell off the top of the building, falling into the road next to the Germans. A moment later, with a huge, rending crash, the entire six stories fell into the road, the part of the road occupied by the four panzers. Cassidy saw the black-uniformed tank crews look up in terror and leap from the hatches to escape the mighty cataclysm.

  When the building smashed into the ground, the tanks disappeared amid a mound of masonry, and all that remained was a fog of brick and cement dust. Cassidy, Byrd, and Logan stared at what they’d done; hardly daring to believe they’d succeeded. Halted the might of the Wehrmacht with a mobile dock crane. Yet it wasn’t over. A dozen Jerries, the crews from the tanks saw the Allied troops blocking the way onto the bridge, and they pressed home a furious attack with submachine guns and pistols.

  “Let’s go!” the Sarge shouted.

  They leaped from the crane and ran toward the Germans. Bond was directing the fire of his men, but although outnumbered, the enemy soldiers were incandescent with rage. They kept going forward, spitting hatred and bullets at the hated Americans. They were outnumbered, but two Airborne troopers fell, and the Germans would take down more before they died beneath the hail of American bullets.

  Logan, Cassidy, and Byrd had other ideas. They drew their handguns, came out from the rubble of the building, and charged into the tankers, firing and firing again. At such close-range, the bullets ripped into the enemy. Sandwiched between fire from two sides, the survivors quickly came to their senses and threw down their guns.

  They collected the weapons and led the prisoners away. It was time to calculate the butcher’s bill.

  “We lost a lot of good men,” Bond murmured.

  “We could’ve lost a lot more,” the Sarge pointed out, “If it wasn’t for men like Cassidy and Byrd. And Steiner, where are you?”

  He appeared, and a couple of troopers shouted, ‘Sieg heil,’ a cheerful mockery he always took in good part.

  “Lieutenant, they deserve a medal.”

  He nodded. “I’ll write them up as soon as I get a spare moment.” He looked at the three men. “The kind of bravery you showed deserves promotion. How about some stripes, Cassidy and Byrd? It’s about time. You, too, Steiner.”

  As one they shook their heads. Cassidy spoke for all of them. “We’re good, Sir.”

  “If you’re sure?”

  He shook his head. “We’ve got our hands full killing Germans. Why don’t we take a rain check, and you can ask us when we get to Berlin?”

  Unusually for Lieutenant Bond, he grinned. “I won’t forget. When this is over, and we’ve kicked Hitler’s ass, you men are NCOs.”

  Harry answered for all of them. “Yeah, right.”

 

 

  Eric Meyer, Hold the Bridge

 

 

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