Snow Tigers

“What do you reckon, Ian?” Corporal James Allwood asked as he scanned the iced-over stretch of marsh stretching out before their foxhole in the gray gloom of false dawn. “Think Jerry has taken a holiday?”

“You and your wishful thinking will get us both killed, lad,” Private Ian Campbell replied with a crooked grin.

“Wishful thinking, you say? After nary a shell cast our direction in twelve blessed hours?”

“Mayhaps they stopped to keep their barrels from melting. Christ knows the blighters love their artillery from how much they use it.”

Ian showed his predilection for understatement with that last line. Since the landings only a scarce few weeks ago, the combined American and British forces had found their flanking maneuver met by every man, gun, and vehicle the German command could spare. Hardened by two years of battle, first in North Africa, then Sicily, now Italy, “the chaps do not seem inclined to give us a light duty,” as Ian quipped.

Still, the two infantrymen, accustomed to the field from their own months of hard-won experience, had made the most of their frigid days manning the perimeter. This applied both to ensuring their survival with a foxhole deep enough to withstand all but a direct hit from the Kraut field guns that ringed the heights around the frozen marsh, as well as considerations to their own comfort.

Sheltered and insulated by their steel roof, which Ian and James had repurposed after the Jerries saw fit to peel off the nice bit of armor with an 88-millimeter shell to the turret of a tank destroyer, and with feet dry thanks to the drainage sump they had dug, James took one more look at the frozen marsh.

“Would you give it a rest over there?” Ian asked as he stifled a yawn. “What’s the use of watches if you’re going to stay awake all through mine peering this way and that for phantoms?”

“Go to sleep if you want,” James muttered, keeping his eyes fixed on the marshland.

“You truly think they’re going to slink in and slit our throats like Bedouin raiders? With all that artillery and armor they’ve brought to this fight?”

“Well,” James replied, nodding to the raised dirt path that traversed the bog off to their right, “surely the Germans don’t take us for fools. They know we have the main approach covered.”

“Aye, a lot of good machine guns and mortars will do against tanks,” Ian said with a dry chuckle.

“They saw us mine the road.”

“So they send heavier tanks.”

“But why risk your greatest weapon becoming pinned down on such a narrow approach? Why not send your infantry to open the way? Once they’re across the marsh, they can spread out and maneuver with those big cannon of theirs.”

“I suppose the High Command should be happy you’re on our side then, with that clear penchant for tactics of yours.”

James finally took his eyes away from his watch to see the mocking grin on his foxhole mate’s face and responded with a great shove. “Fuck off, you.”

But he couldn’t help the laughter that followed, and he felt his shoulders relaxing.

“If you’re so convinced of your infantry assault, why not put a wager on the prospect?”

James raised a frosted eyebrow. “How much?”

“Two shillings, then?”

The two shook on it.

Against regulations, the infantrymen had dug a recess for a stove, complete with chimney. Now, retiring from the parapet, James let the heat drive away the cold that had nipped at his face while he scanned the marsh. He and Ian had agreed theirs was likely the nicest accommodations in all of the Anzio bridgehead. Inside their tiny bastion, the piercing wind and snow could reach them no better than the German shells.

The company doesn’t hurt, either, James concluded as he watched Ian rooting around in his field pack.

“Me mum sent this a while back,” Ian said, holding out a round loaf wrapped in wax paper. “Figure I might as well break into it now.”

Ian held forth a slice of the fruit cake on the end of his combat knife, which James gladly accepted. Not that he had any great love for the holiday treat, but somehow it tasted all the better knowing it came from home. From hands that had only known the boy and his brighter days.

And for a moment, the man that boy had become and the darker days surrounding him were forgotten by both men.

Until a new thought occurred to James that snapped him back to the present. “Why break this out now?”

After a moment, Ian breathed in. “Something’s in the air, lad. The same as I felt on the moors before the fox came and made off with one of our chickens.”

Spurred on by his friend’s premonition, James started to move back to the parapet when he paused.

“You feel that?”

Ian’s brow furrowed. Then his eyes widened as the slight vibration grew in intensity.

The two retrieved their rifles and crept up to the parapet, careful not to move any faster than necessary and reveal themselves in the pre-dawn murk.

Now there was no mistaking the tremors, and in a heartbeat these harbingers were accompanied by the growing roars of animals prowling the shadows beyond their sight.

Except these were beasts of metal, not flesh. And their hides were much more adept at resisting bullets than the fox Ian had faced in a far-off life as the predators revealed themselves at the opposite end of the marsh road.

“I reckon they’re Tigers,” Ian muttered. “Nasty bit of luck.”

“Perhaps your luck is still good.” James said, fishing about in his coat pocket before withdrawing a two-shilling piece and flicking it to Ian. “It won you two days’ pay, did it not?”

Ian chuckled. “Sometimes I hate being right.”

He held out a gloved hand. James shook it.

Then, the two brought their rifles to bear, waiting until the tanks were in range of their Lee-Enfields to squeeze off rounds both knew would be futile.

It was dark all around

There was frost in the ground

When the tigers broke free

And no one survived

From the Royal Fusiliers Company Z

– Pink Floyd, “When the Tigers Broke Free”