Counterattack: Heroes of the 82nd Airborne Book 6

By Eric Meyer and Todd McLeod

The biggest airborne landings of WWII are underway. Thousands of airborne troops drop on Holland, an audacious plan to seize the many bridges across the country and hold them until Allied armor and infantry arrive.

Company B of the 82nd has taken the bridge at Nijmegen, but the Germans launch a fierce counterattack. At the forefront of the fighting, 1st platoon engages in a desperate scramble to defend the bridge at all costs from infantry and artillery. And from tanks. PFC Ray Cassidy and his buddy Harry Byrd, armed with a borrowed bazooka, embark on a mission to take on two Tigers that threaten to wipe them out. The destruction of one Tiger is cause for celebration, but the second is commanded by a wily German, not likely to allow them to get close enough to use the bazooka. Yet the alternatives are grim. Do or die. And neither man is planning his funeral. They press on, battling overwhelming odds and German ambushes, and the end is, literally, explosive.

Heroes of the 82nd Airborne Book 6 – Counterattack is the sixth 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: Feb 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005486914

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

Counterattack

By Todd McLeod & Eric Meyer

BOOK 6 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.

MY NEWSLETTER

If you’d like to receive my latest news, special offers, and free books then please sign up for my newsletter. It’s a great way of keeping up to date with my latest projects, as well as getting samples and free books throughout the year. Click on the link and join up today. You can also visit my official website and Facebook page, links below:

My official newsletter

My official website

My Facebook Page

Chapter One

Inside the forest known as the Reichswald, Oberleutnant Otto Jansen surveyed the Dutch town of Nijmegen through Carl Zeiss binoculars. A distance of around six miles, and he could see Allied troops crossing the bridge over the Waal River. More troops were establishing barricades and strong points on the bridge, and he cursed the Wehrmacht unit that’d allowed it to fall into enemy hands. On the west bank of the Waal, the wreckage of German Panzer IVs lay semi-submerged beneath the masonry that’d collapsed over them, killing their crews and preventing them from stopping the Allied advance.

He grimaced, what was done was done, and despite his distaste for the Nazis, he could see the end for his country was near. Jansen was a tall, fresh-faced young officer who'd been about to take holy orders before the war came, and his father, a leading light in the local Nazi party, had persuaded him to join the Army or he'd disgrace his family. Since taking up his post, he'd discovered any disgrace lay with the Nazi fanatics who were bringing ruin to his beloved Germany.

Yet he was a soldier, sworn to do his duty, and not everything was lost. If the counterattack was successful, the bridge would soon be back in German hands. He looked over his meager force, hidden from enemy eyes beneath the forest canopy. One hundred Wehrmacht infantrymen, four platoons each equipped with an MG-42 machine gun, his command half-track, known as a Hanomag, and four artillery pieces. Apart from the two panzers, all they could scrape up in time for the counterattack. He was relying on the panzers to deliver the knockout punch. They weren’t the older,