ROMMEL OVER SHERMAN/WHISPERS IN THE WIND

by Cole Coonce

(excerpted from THE DEVIL’S OWN DAY; Release date: Summer, 2008.)

CHAPTER 1: ROMMEL OVER SHERMAN/WHISPERS IN THE WIND (1942)

In North Africa, on the simmering southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, Nazi Field Marshall Erwin Rommel raises his binoculars and attempts to make sense of the swirling fans of desert dunes. In a maelstrom of blood, motor oil, grinding wheels, sand and tank snot, men are chewed up like gristle in a series of slow industrial accidents. Rommel is indifferent to the suffering.

The wind blows and the Field Marshall wipes his eyes. It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult… but Berlin had insisted on splitting the Reich’s firepower and manpower into two fronts — on separate continents, making the strategic deployment of arms and bodies half as efficient and twice as bloody.

His troops are getting pummeled, but they continue an inexorable march into the shape-shifting sands of utter annihilation.

“Hit them on the end!” Rommel growls, but his famed pincer strategy cuts no muster on a battlefield mushy as Malt-O-Meal.

It all continues to turn to shit. Disorientation is now situation normal. Infantry is immolated and Panzers are pummeled. The desert heat, the fumes, the bone-shivering bombardment, the earth is made of marshmellows and quicksand. Rommel wipes his eyes with a gloved hand, disbelieving.

Still trying to gauge the size, strength and position of his foe, he looks through his glass once more and the dust parts just long and wide enough to create a hole in his consciousness. He shakes his head. He cannot believe what he is seeing: The Allied forces are not in tanks, but are on instruments from a forgotten century. It’s Yankee cavalry. From the American Civil War… “Hit ‘em on the end!” he repeats, oblivious to the absurdity of the hallucination.

“Vas is Das, Field Marshall?” an adjutant inquires.

“Sherman,” Rommel exhales.

“Sherman tanks?”

“Nein,” Rommel mutters, lowering the glass again. “William Tecumseh Sherman.”

“Scheiße,” the adjutant whispers. -30-