Against all Odds: Heroes of the 82nd Airborne Book 2

By Eric Meyer and Todd McLeod

History is being made, the vast landings on the beaches of Normandy, and Allied troops are pushing back the Germans on every front. In the lead are the men of the 82nd Airborne, and they are about to face their greatest test. Bocage. The impenetrable walls able to hide countless enemy troops. As strong as castle walls, and behind those walls the Germans are waiting to fall on them like rabid wolves.

First platoon, Company B, 82nd Airborne, struggles to get past the formidable defenses of the bocage, and their worst nightmare is tanks. Panzers, enemy armor, like the five German Mk IVs they run up against, and the battle to escape, just to survive, could go either way.

Yet they fight their way out, only to face the next objective, the city of St Lo. A strategic crossroads, guarded by artillery and thousands of troops, sheltered behind thick stone walls and hidden in deep, bombproof trenches. The Germans have a huge advantage in artillery and machine guns, together with vast reserves of ammunition, shells and bullets, stored in an underground bunker. Enough shells and bullets to keep their guns firing night and day for as long as it takes to beat back the Americans. The bunker must be destroyed, and they give the job to the best and the toughest. Hard men, paratroopers, prepared to sacrifice all. To dare to win when others hold back.

Heroes of the 82nd Airborne Book 2 – Against All Odds is the second shortread fiction set during the Second World War. The book is a collaboration between Todd McLeod and Eric Meyer, the bestselling author of more than fifty war novels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Swordworks Books
• Release date: Sep 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005969790

Eric Meyer

An internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML, CSS, and Web standards, Eric has been working on the web since late 1993. He is the founder of Complex Spiral Consulting, a co-founder of the microformats movement, and co-founder (with Jeffrey Zeldman) of An Event Apart, the design conference series for people who make web sites. Beginning in early 1994, Eric was the campus Web coordinator for Case Western Reserve University, where he authored a widely acclaimed series of three HTML tutorials and was project lead for the online version of the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History combined with the Dictionary of Cleveland Biography, the first example of an encyclopedia of urban history being fully and freely published on the Web.

Book preview

Against All Odds

By Todd McLeod & Eric Meyer

BOOK 2 of the Heroes of the 82nd Airborne series

Short Fiction

Copyright 2020 by Todd McLeod & Eric Meyer

Published by Swordworks Books

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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Chapter One

I can’t see a damn thing. It’s these damned hedges.

PFC Harry Byrd, First Platoon, B Company, glanced at his buddy, PFC Ray Cassidy. Like him, he wore the ‘AA’ embroidered flashes of the American Airborne Division, but that was their sole similarity. They were as different as chalk from cheese. Ray was an outdoorsman, where he was in his element. Wiry and tough, he was never happier than when he was in the woods, his piercing dark eyes searching for game. Frequently he’d track an animal for hours; carrying home game for his mother’s larder, and enjoying evenings in the local bar, swapping jokes with his friends, his girl Patsy Roberts, hanging on his arm giving him adoring glances. Okay, he knew he was Mr. Average, but it sure felt good.

Before he joined up, Harry was a city boy, more at home in the snooker parlors, and never happier than when watching a drive-in movie from the back seat of his Chevy convertible with his arm around his latest squeeze. Unlike Ray, whose lifestyle lent his skin the color of buckskin, Harry was pale, and he looked flabby for an Airborne trooper. Although underneath the flab lay solid muscle. At nearly six feet, he was had blonde hair, a throwback to his Scandinavian ancestors, and piercing blue eyes always ready to smile at a joke.

I heard someone say they call them ‘bocage.’ French farmers plant them to mark out fields.

He grunted. The Jerries may as well have paid them to grow them so high.

They were marching along a narrow line with the towering hedgerows on either side. The new platoon leader was Lieutenant Frank Horton, a newly minted West Point