Ice Fortress

Начало книги

The general’s cold stare mirrored the bleak, snow covered battlefield he surveyed through the window. The bullet shattered glass did little to stop the numbing chill of the air penetrating his makeshift headquarters, yet sweat dampened his sharply pressed shirt. As his hands balled into fists behind his back, his impatience became almost palpable.

Abandoned German Tiger tanks littered the muddy track. The general had lost count of the number of tanks his battalion had lost to these new and extremely lethal, vastly superior King Tigers. Weighing around 70 tons, the monstrous German machines dwarfed the undersized Sherman tanks under his command at more than double their weight and size. He knew that he wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of breaking through the German lines and securing Bastogne had the Reich had time to produce more of these behemoths. He also knew, despite what the press reported back home, that the hard won victory after months fighting the Battle of the Bulge wasn’t down to his fiery command style or the audacious thrust of his 4th Armored Division through the Wehrmacht’s panzer led offensive. Had the Germans not made a series of tactical errors, the outcome of the battle might have been quite different. As he scanned the artillery scarred road for a sign that his adjutant was returning, he feared that their good fortune might soon come to an abrupt end.

Читать дальше →