Berlin or Bust

^{CHAPTER ELEVEN} BERLIN OR BUST

The Fallschirmjäger tramped onto the moonlit runway toward their assigned C-53 Skytroopers, which were C-47 cargo planes modified for para drops and towing gliders. They fell out in “sticks” of eighteen men per plane and watched the ground crews load their weapons containers under the wings.

One and a half meters long and color coded by unit, each drop canister carried 100 kilos of weapons, ammunition, and other equipment and supplies. After they dropped, the first thing the paratroopers would have to do would be to locate these containers and arm themselves, which struck Jäger Muller as highly precarious.

Otherwise, he carried everything on him he’d need to survive and fight. German triangular RZ36 parachute harness attached to D-rings on his waist belt. Wool toque and brimless helmet with its camouflage cloth cover. Jump smock that buttoned down the front and around the upper legs. Knee pads to cushion his landing. Snow-camouflage quilted jacket and trousers, black leather gloves. Heavy wool socks and jump boots. Water bottle kept under the smock to keep the water from freezing. Bandolier and every pocket bulging with spare ammunition for his Mauser K98 rifle. Luger strapped over his thigh.

Three days’ supplies of rations, compass, bayonet, spade, Esbit cooker, medical kit, and four stick grenades. And as they’d be traveling over water, a Mae West flotation device hung around his neck, nicknamed for an actress with large breasts, a typically crude Ami attempt at humor.

The planes started their engines, which coughed to life in a cloud of exhaust until they emitted a steady roar in the cold night air.

Wolff nudged Muller. “Are you scared?”

“Nein, Herr Oberfeldwebel. Excited.” Which was true. He was excited about making his first combat jump, anxious about seeing Berlin.

“If you aren’t now, you will be,” the veteran said. “It’s normal to be scared. Being brave is being scared to do something dangerous but doing it anyway.”

“Jawohl, Herr Oberfeldwebel.”

“We’re all in the same boat tonight, Muller. As far as I know, the Fallschirmjäger has never made a night jump. It’s going to be interesting.”

“Interesting.” The trooper gulped in sudden dread.

“There’s nothing we can do about it. Just remember your training. If the Amis and Tommies can do it, we can.” Wolff smiled. “You should be happy you joined up in time to get issued the new jump smocks. You had to take the old smocks off if you wanted to take a crap. It’s the little things…”

The sergeant often sermonized on that theme. Dry socks, smocks that let you crap without a hassle, warm chow, a cleaned and well-oiled weapon. In his mind, these things won wars more than grand strategy and tactics.

The rest, like jumping out an airplane at night, would take care of itself.

Wolff wore his FG42 semi-automatic strapped to his back. Other men carried machine-pistols tied to their thighs, similarly risky, but it’d allow them to jump ready to fight. Muller felt naked without his rifle. All he had was his Luger, which he’d wisely held onto and hadn’t traded away for Ami luxuries.

The moonlight made the transport planes glow along the airstrip. The air filled with the acrid smell of engine exhaust.

“Jumping out an airplane sounds like a very clever way to commit suicide,” Schulte said. “But it beats marching.”

Steiner broke off a piece of the last of his Scho-Ka-Kola and passed it on. Schulte took one, then Weber, then Muller. The chocolate had a strong bittersweet flavor and packed a wallop of caffeine from the cocoa and kola nut mix.

“Come on, let’s go already,” Animal said while he chewed.

Leutnant Reiser marched up to them wearing a fierce smile. “Ready for glory, Fallschirmjäger?”

“Jawohl, Herr Leutnant!” they shouted dutifully.

“Herr Leutnant, what happens after?” Muller said.

“After what, jäger?”

“After we destroy the undead. Endsieg.” Final victory. “What happens then?”

“We all get a pony,” Reiser said. “Parachute infantry, enter your aircraft!”

The Fallschirmjäger started forward at a slow march under the weight of their kit, singing “Auf Kreta, Im Sturm, und Im Regen,” a favorite among the paras.

On Crete, while on guard duty in storm and rain, a paratrooper dreams of home, where his girl laughs…

“Give ’em hell, Krauts!” an American shouted from one of the hangars. “Berlin or bust!”

“Ja, ja,” Schulte said with his usual sarcasm. “Onward to glory.”

One by one, the Fallschirmjäger stuck their static-line parachute hooks between their teeth and heaved themselves onto the aircraft. The stick of paratroopers filled the plane, sitting knee to knee.

“Interesting question, what comes next,” the sniper told Muller.

“It interests me.”

“Interesting in that you actually think we’re going to survive this.”

“Didn’t you ever dream what it’d be like to go home?” Muller thought about it all the time. Now he was dreading what he’d find when he got there.

“Right now, I’m dreaming about whether this Ami parachute will open and whether I’ll break an ankle on my fall.”

Muller glanced at Schulte’s parachute with open envy. He’d been issued a German parachute. He wondered where it had come from, how old it was.

“‘Your honor lies in victory or death,’” Animal quoted from the Führer’s Ten Commandments to the Fallschirmjäger. “Not bustled ankles.”

“‘Agile as a greyhound, tough as leather, hard as Krupp steel, you will be the embodiment of a German warrior,’” Weber called out, laughing.

“‘Men act, women chatter; chatter will bring you to the grave,’” said Schulte.

“Berlin or bust,” Steiner said.

The Skytrooper bounced along the runway. Gravity pushed against the paratroopers’ bowels as the plane lunged into the air.

In minutes, the plane reached cruising altitude over the Strait of Dover. All the planes fell into formation and banked onto an oh-two-oh bearing toward the North Sea. Muller looked out the window and saw moonlight glimmer off the Air Force star painted on the nearest transport plane. The propeller hum purred through his spine, filled his chest, and numbed his brain.

Hurry up and wait. Two hours until Berlin.

There was little talking. It was past the time for pep talks by the officers, too late for strategy and tactics, too meditative for their usual singing. And Schulte was right, Muller’s mind had no room for thoughts other than a safe landing. Everybody he knew back in Berlin might be dead and the world might be ending, but all he cared about right now was safely getting his feet on the ground. The men chain-smoked and either looked inward or bargained with their god.

After two hours, Muller checked his watch. Berlin should be below him now, though the ground was an endless sea of black and gray. The planes veered into a circular run. They’d reached the city but couldn’t find the drop zone. The beacon drew the planes within a few miles; the lights on the ground zeroed them in.

Muller looked down and saw no lights. Which meant they were off course or the Pathfinders hadn’t completed their mission.

“God in Heaven,” Reiser swore and rose from his seat. He shambled to the cockpit to scream at the American pilots. “Can’t you people fly a simple plane?”

Muller jerked as flashes of light popped outside the window. Lightning?

No. Tracers.

A dogfight in the sky.

Berlin was still defended by interceptors.

A German airplane screamed out of the dark. A Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighter, good at night fighting. Muller’s heart swelled with a moment of idiotic pride. Opening up with its big machine-guns, the plane raked the C-53 traveling on the port side of Muller’s. One of the engines exploded in a fireball. Half the wing spun away as the plane plunged toward the ground streaming smoke.

Muller didn’t see it hit the ground.

Tracers zipped up from Berlin into the distant sky. The air shook with flak bursts.

The plane banked again, hurling the lieutenant against the bulkhead. “Get us over the drop zone or I’ll shoot you in the head!”

Muller wanted to call out that the Americans probably didn’t speak German in the hopes the lieutenant wouldn’t actually shoot them, but the plane banked hard again as it engaged in evasive maneuvers. The cabin lit up as a fighter plane disintegrated in flames outside the window. Shards of fuselage ricocheted off the plane’s hull.

Muller started praying. Immediately, something dark slammed into the window next to him and cracked it, like an answer from God.

The Skytrooper screamed now just 150 meters over the ground, traveling at a drop speed of 130 kilometers per hour. Farmland flashed past the window while fighter planes dogged it out above, Messerschmitts against Mustangs fitted with external fuel tanks that had allowed them to go all the way to Berlin.

The red light flashed on. Six minutes until the jump.

“On your feet, pig-dogs,” Reiser ordered. “Prepare and hook up!”

The Fallschirmjäger stood heavily, laden with parachutes and gear. They hooked their static lines to the anchor cable suspended across the airplane’s length.

“Equipment check!”

Each paratrooper checked the parachute of the man in front of him and sounded off.

“Any day now,” Schulte said.

The light flashed green. The klaxon blared.

“Los!” Reiser screamed. “Gehen, gehen!” Come on, go, go!

The plane shuddered. The weapons containers were dropping from the wings like 100-kilogram bombs. The line moved forward as First Squad jumped out of the plane, followed by Sergeant Wolff, Weber, Beck, Steiner, Animal, Schulte—

Then Muller stood in the doorway, feet braced wide on the ledge, gloved hands gripping the rails, facing the howling void.

“Gehen!” The lieutenant held his Luger and tapped it against his thigh in warning.

Muller bent his knees and flung himself into the wind.

The cold air smacked him hard. His stomach seemed to slam into his throat. He was falling, spread-eagled, the ground swimming in his tearing eyes. The static line deployed the parachute. The ground rushed up at him at dizzying speed. He felt a tug, a sudden resistance to gravity, as the ’chute fully deployed.

Gasping for breath, he studied the ground. They’d taught him to steer but with a German parachute he had to do it the Fallschirmjäger way, jerking and flapping his arms like an ungainly bird never designed for flight. Finally, he had himself pointed downwind, falling at five meters per second. He was going to land in a snowy plot of farmland.

Muller gasped again, this time with exhilaration. He was flying.

Around him, other parachutes swayed in the wind as they fell. It had taken only ten seconds for the entire stick to jump. In the distance, he thought he saw the colored canopies of the weapons containers, which would land on their crash pads.

No time to enjoy any of it. At the height he jumped, it would take only about thirty seconds to hit the ground. He was coming down fast, though in the dark it was hard to tell exactly when he’d hit.

Here it comes—

His feet hit the snow. He fell forward onto his padded knees and went into a roll that left him gasping on his padded elbows and knees.

Nothing broken or sprained. He’d done it.

Behind him, the parachute rustled, billowed with a strong wind, and began to pull. He snapped out of his daze and worked at the clips. He removed one before the parachute yanked him backward and began to drag him through the snow.

Muller turned himself around and dug in with his heels. He grabbed the shroud lines and pulled the deflating ’chute toward himself.

Another paratrooper approached. Good. The ideal dispersion was twenty to twenty-five meters, which would allow them to concentrate fast along the 400-hundred-meter stretch of ground where they’d landed.

“Help me here,” Muller said.

“Ja, ja.”

“Hurry, I’m tangled up.”

The soldier lurched closer, the moonlight revealing a ghastly pale face under a steel helmet. Champing jaws. Eyes missing over its lipless death grin. A gray greatcoat belted at the waist. Hands stretched into claws.

“Ja, ja,” it said like a skipping record, its mouth barely moving as it spoke.

“Scheisse!” The thing was every nightmare he’d ever had rolled into one.

The draugr continued to trudge toward him. Muller let go the shroud lines to reach for his Luger. The parachute redeployed with a crack, dragging him along the snow again.

After a few meters, he yanked on the cords and removed another clip attached to his belt. The undead soldier turned slowly with its horrible eyeless grin and began to shamble after him.

As the draugr closed, he let go again on a prayer, which was answered by the ’chute dragging him another few meters.

This time, his gloved hand closed around the hilt of the gravity knife jutting from the pocket on his right thigh. He pressed the button to release it.

He cut the cords and rolled away from the thing’s outreached claws as the parachute blew away into the dark. Back on his feet, he unholstered his Luger and aimed it with two shaking hands.

A pistol banged. The draugr shrugged, its head remaining tilted at an obscene angle to thud against its shoulder while it walked.

Muller looked around for the source of help. He hadn’t fired. Then he did.

The bullet pinged off the creature’s helmet. The head flopped back before returning, seeming to dance on the thing’s shoulders as it lurched toward him. The grin stretched on its dead face until it become impossibly wide.

Another flash and bang in the dark. The draugr toppled into the snow and lay still.

Muller fell to his knees panting.

Leutnant Reiser holstered his smoking pistol. “Los, los, you idiot. We are wasting time here.”

Muller pulled himself to his feet and followed the lieutenant into the darkness.

He’d dropped into hell.