Germanica

CHAPTER 10

Staff Sergeant Billy Hill half lifted and half dragged the trembling and writhing young Nazi into a windowless room and seated him on an uncomfortable chair. He was tied to the arms of the chair but Hill did remove the blindfold.

“How long do you want me to keep him like that, Captain?” Hill asked after leaving the room and closing the door behind him.

Tanner thought for a moment. “Maybe until after I get done with a few things. Maybe I’ll go to lunch. That ought to be enough to get him thinking. According to his papers, he’s fourteen and lived in Stuttgart. He may think he’s tough, but I’ll bet he’s scared shitless. My bet is that he’ll tell us everything we want to know about the Werewolves without much prompting.”

Hill grinned. “Sir, you telling me I can’t pull out his toenails?”

“Not without first getting his mother’s permission.”

An hour later, Tanner and Cullen entered the room and sat across the table from Gruber. Hill stood behind him. At a signal, Hill yanked Gruber’s blindfold off. Gruber gasped and blinked in the sudden light. He was wide-eyed and looked around in growing desperation. The two American officers were seated in higher chairs and looking down on him, which was intimidating.

Tanner spoke first. “Hans Gruber, you are a Nazi war criminal and you will either be shot or sent to a Russian prison camp.”

“I’m a soldier,” Gruber blurted. “I’m not a war criminal. And you can’t give me to the Russians.”

Cullen moved beside the boy. “First of all, Gruber, you were not in anything resembling a uniform, which means you are a terrorist, a franc-tireur. German soldiers shoot people like that without even a trial. You are nothing more than a bandit or an assassin and you will be treated as such.”

Hans Gruber looked frightened. “I did have a uniform. I wore an armband. They said it would be sufficient if I was caught.”

Cullen waved a piece of cloth in his face. “You mean this shitty little rag? This is not a uniform and besides, I never saw it.” With that he threw it into a wastebasket and Gruber moaned.

Tanner laughed harshly. “Do you like Jews, Gruber? Of course you don’t. Jews are the scum of the earth. They are pigs who don’t eat pork. Your dead Hitler said that Jews weren’t even human and you believed him. You were told that Jews cheat real Germans and that they murdered Christ, weren’t you? How many Jews did you beat up? How many did you kill?”

Gruber gasped at the last question. Tanner and the others caught it. “So you have killed Jews. How wonderful. Did they fight you or did you just shoot them in the back?”

Gruber had begun to sob. “It was just one and I had to do it. General Hahn made me. He said I had to do it to prove I was a real Nazi. Besides, the Jew was dying.”

Tanner suppressed a shudder. “I’m sure you did, but before we send you to the Reds, the U.S. Army has a special job for you.”

He slid a number of eight-by-ten photos across the table. Gruber’s hands were untied so he could pick them up. The photos showed men in German uniforms handling mangled and half-decayed corpses. Some of the men handling the bodies wore uniforms with SS insignia.

When Gruber tried to look away, Tanner pushed the pictures into his face. “Do you remember the Nazi joke that the only good Jew is a dead Jew? Well, these were taken at Dachau and most of them are good dead Jews. The German prisoners you see are going to spend the next few months digging up dead Jews, some very long-dead Jews whose rotting flesh stinks to high heaven. They will be identifying them and then burying them with respect. When we leave here and before you go to the Reds, that is what you will be doing. And you will be working for other Jews who will beat you if you slack off. Does the thought of handling dead Jews make you happy?”

“No,” Gruber gasped.

“Rachel, come in,” Tanner ordered.

A young woman in a nondescript uniform with a white star of David on an armband entered and stared coldly at Gruber. “Is this the little shit who’s going to be helping us? Herr Gruber, I’m with the Palmach, the Jewish Army, and we’re going to make you work with dead Jews, eat with dead Jews and sleep with dead Jews. You will forever stink of dead Jews. And do you know why?” She rolled up her sleeve and showed him the numbers tattooed on her arm. “I spent a year in a death camp watching Germans kill my people, and now it’s my turn. I managed to survive but you will not. You are going to suffer for being a Nazi, you stinking little shit.”

The woman glared at him. “Have you ever had a woman, ever had sex with something other than your left hand?” When Gruber whimpered and shook his head, she laughed. “And I’ll bet you’re not circumcised either. Well, you will be when we get our hands on you and you can bet that your virginity will last forever. You can’t get up what you no longer have.”

Now Gruber was sobbing openly. “Please don’t. What can I do? Please don’t let that happen to me? I’ll tell you anything. I just want to go home.”

“How many Werewolves are there?” Tanner asked.

“There were supposed to be fifty, but a lot of them have deserted. Now there can’t be more than twenty and General Red Star is angry.”

Tanner was puzzled. “Who or what is General Red Star?”

Gruber sensed an opening. “If I tell you, will you protect me?”

“Talk and keep talking.”

“His name is SS General Alfonse Hahn and we call him General Red Star because he has a birthmark like a red star on his cheek.”

Tanner drew in his breath. Could this possibly be the man who had murdered Tucker and Peters so many eternities ago? It had to be. “Where is this General Hahn?”

Gruber was looking hopeful, like a kid who thought he had just passed a surprise test. “He’s deep inside the Redoubt, probably in Bregenz. They say he’s an important aide to Minister Goebbels himself,” he added proudly.

“I need fresh air,” Tanner said and walked outside into the still-cold air. Cullen nodded. He would complete the interrogation. There wasn’t that much more that a fourteen-year-old boy could tell them about the inner workings of the German Army.

Tanner saw Lena using a cloth she’d dipped into a bucket to wash her arm. “Will it come off?”

Lena smiled softly. “These numbers came from a pen and I wrote them lightly and they’ve almost completely disappeared. I’ve seen too many whose numbers were real tattoos and that represented horror. I’ve been very fortunate.” She angrily threw the cloth into the bucket. “I’ve never spoken like that to anyone, anytime, much less to a stupid child. And I never thought I would feel so good doing it. I don’t know whether to hate myself or be proud.”

“Be proud. You were very helpful in there. I thought you would want to help bring down the Nazis if you could.”

“You’re right. And please call on me again, and again, and again if I can help.” She took up the cloth again and looked at her arm. The numbers were gone. “What are you going to do with that boy?”

Tanner noted that she had referred to him as a boy, not a Nazi murderer. “We’re going to find him a German uniform and send him off to be a prisoner of war. With a little luck, he’ll be allowed to go home, if he has a home, in a year or so. As to the Jew he shot, he’s going to have to live with that. Hopefully, the handful of other Werewolves out there will somehow get the same message.”

“It sounds just. Incomplete and imperfect, but as good as it’s going to be.”

“Now let’s change the subject to something a little more pleasant, Lena. Have you ever had the pleasure of eating in an army mess hall?” Ordinarily, she and the other foreign nationals working for the division either ate field rations where they worked or food was brought to them. It was highly unusual for a foreign worker to eat with the soldiers.

She laughed and he realized that she had a very nice laugh. “How’s the food?”

“Generally pretty bad, but I’ll bet it’s better than what you and the other clerks have been getting.”

“Sounds good. If that’s an invitation, I accept.”

* * *

Small world, thought Ernie. The two thugs who’d jumped him in Bern and whom he was afraid he’d killed were sitting in a café along the waterfront of Arbon. They were sipping beers and had a fine view of the lake and couldn’t see him approaching from behind. Despite the apparent prohibition against private boats on the lake, a handful of white sailboats were enjoying the day. He wondered if Winnie would have liked going on one. It wasn’t going to happen. Word had come from Allen Dulles that they were not to go out on the water again. Nor were they to venture too close to the now reinforced and sealed German border.

With three heavily armed countries now having access to Lake Constance and two of them at war with each other, the lake had just become very dangerous. Ernie sometimes wondered if he should again talk to Dulles about getting back to the air force and becoming a pilot again. The last time he’d brought up the subject, Dulles had calmly reminded him that he was doing an important job in Arbon by keeping tabs on the Nazis just across the border. He’d closed his comments by telling Ernie that the Luftwaffe was almost nonexistent; therefore, who would he fly against? He might not even get a plane. He might be stuck at some base on Iceland doing clerical work instead of intelligence and spying for the USA. Ernie had agreed.

Dulles had then suggested that if Ernie was serious about getting back into the war he could arrange for him to be sent to the Pacific. “I still couldn’t guarantee you’d get a plane or, if you did, that there would be any Japs left to shoot at except those fools who want to kill themselves and others. I could, however, assure you of jungle rot, stifling heat, and boredom. Of course you would likely never see Winnie again.”

A contrite Ernie said he would love to remain in Switzerland and with the OSS.

But nothing had been said about what to do if he saw Nazis in Arbon. Should he assume that they too had diplomatic immunity? If so, then Germany’s diplomatic corps was going to hell. Still, he wondered what the two thugs were up to.

The Nazis got up and paid their bill. He could see that they didn’t leave much of a tip. The new Reich must not pay very well. Ernie waited until they were well clear of the café and began to follow them. There weren’t many people on the streets so he was careful not to be seen. When the two men turned down a side street, he picked up the pace. They might lead him to where they were staying and perhaps using as their own espionage headquarters.

He’d barely turned the corner when he went flying. He slid forward on his hands and knees. He tried to get up, but he got a kick in the ribs that knocked the wind out of him. He managed to see the two Germans standing above him, smiling. He couldn’t get up. He was helpless as more kicks struck his chest, back, and head. I’m going to die here, he thought and his world spun. He could hear the Germans laughing.

Finally, one of them grabbed him by his now bloody shirt and yanked him to his knees. “You thought we were stupid, didn’t you? You got us one time, but not a second.”

With that, they began hitting him again. He could hear screams and shouts in the distance. One of the Germans swore and they let him drop to the pavement. One more time he tried to get up and failed. His world was spinning and he decided to let it.

* * *

Ernie awoke to find himself in his bed at the warehouse. He tried to get up but fell back. The pain in his chest was too much. He wondered if his ribs had been broken. He checked the rest of his body and everything was pretty much there, just a lot of it was swollen and painful. So how the hell had he gotten to his bed?

After several tries he did manage to sit up and swing his legs onto the floor. He realized that he was fully clothed and bloody. He heard footsteps and his OSS landlord, Sam Valenti, approached.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” he said.

“How long?”

“Just a few hours. Some passersby heard the fight and the police came right away. It’s been recorded as an attempted mugging, but nobody believes that. Dulles has been notified and he’s not too happy.”

“Is he mad at me or the Germans? The Germans, I hope.”

“Both of you, I presume. Winnie’s not too thrilled either. She was in earlier and left crying. Anyhow, this is for you,” Valenti said as he handed over a package.

Ernie opened it gingerly. It hurt too much to stretch. Inside the package was a German Luger and two clips of ammunition. “Dulles said there’s one clip already in the gun, so you should be set.”

“I thought guns were illegal in Switzerland?” Ernie said.

“They are, so don’t get caught with it.”

“Ah, did Winnie say where she was going or when she would be back?”

“She’ll be gone for a couple of days, pal. Dulles has her off to Bern as a courier. He said she’ll have a gun too.”

* * *

The last time Tanner had seen so many tanks was that terrible day in December when scores of German Panzers had erupted from their hiding places and overwhelmed the men of the outnumbered and outgunned 106th Infantry Division.

This time it was different. The tanks were American Shermans and he counted forty of them leading an infantry attack on German positions near the entry to the Brenner Pass. Accompanying them was about the same number of M3 halftracks carrying infantry. That was just what he could see. Plans called for three full divisions to attack the German lines with two more in reserve. They were positioned to exploit the expected breakthrough.

Bombers and fighters had worked over the area where the German defenses were supposed to be the strongest. A long and thunderous artillery bombardment had followed the planes and preceded the tanks. The ground had shaken and the locations where the Germans were presumed to be had been enveloped by smoke and fire. The force of the explosions could be felt where he was with the division’s command.

“Pity the poor bastards,” muttered Cullen.

“Ours or theirs?” asked Tanner.

“Anybody who had a mother,” he answered.

No one was saying that the attack would be a cakewalk. The Germans were well dug in and well camouflaged. The 105th wasn’t the most experienced division in the Seventh Army, far from it, but even the most inexperienced soldier knew that the Germans would be difficult to pry from their fortresses.

Hell erupted. Seemingly out of nowhere there were flashes of light and blasts of thunder as German guns opened fire on the tanks. The main German antitank weapon was the almost legendary 88mm antitank gun, which was capable of easily destroying an American Sherman, as it now began to prove. As they watched, two American tanks were struck and began to burn. One lone crewman emerged from a tank. A few seconds later a third tank was killed and then three more.

Occasionally, an American would manage to escape from the hell that was erupting inside a burning Sherman’s hull, but not too often. Even then, a number of the soldiers were wounded or on fire. One poor GI had lost his foot and hopped frantically towards the rear. Tanner urged him on, but to no avail. He collapsed and lay still. A medic finally got to him, checked him over, and left him. Tanner felt sickened.

The halftracks were within range of the German guns and it was their turn to begin to die. Adding to the horror were well hidden machine guns that raked the lightly armored vehicles. Men tumbled from them and tried to advance. When the bullets struck them, they went to ground and stayed there.

“Son of a bitch!” yelled General Evans. “Where the hell are our planes?”

On cue, P47 and P51 fighters began to strafe where spotters on the ground told them the Germans were hiding. The German guns kept firing, with some of them shooting at the planes, forcing them to jink and juke. One was hit. It cartwheeled into the ground and exploded. More planes dive-bombed, this time with napalm. Fires billowed, killing any life beneath or nearby.

“Why the hell didn’t we do that sooner?” asked Cullen.

“Probably against regulations,” Tanner answered. “Let the infantry suffer before doing anything that makes sense.” General Evans glared at him but did not disagree.

The attack was stalling. Even with the Germans pounded by planes and with searing flames from napalm leaping high, the American casualties were too many. The armor was the first to give up. The tanks moved in reverse to keep their more heavily armored front facing enemy fire. It was a vain hope, as three more tanks exploded. The remaining Shermans then simply turned and raced for safety. More 88mm shells followed and the Germans increased their range. Shells began to fall in and around the area where Tanner and the others now lay on the ground and tried to make themselves very small.

The earth shook and they cowered before they realized their best chance to survive was to get out of sight and far enough away to be out of range of the German guns. “Damn it, I thought we were safe,” said Cullen.

“The eighty-eights got a maximum range of nearly forty thousand feet and that’s damn near eight miles,” said Tanner. “If it can see us, it can kill us.”

“Now you tell me,” said Cullen as another shell shrieked overhead and smashed into the ground behind them.

General Evans had been quiet. All of the planning for the attack was down the drain. The area before the German lines was littered with smashed and burning vehicles and dead American soldiers. It was beginning to dawn on the American commanders that cracking through the Brenner Pass and connecting with Fifteenth Army Group soldiers fighting up from Italy was going to be a very tough and bloody proposition.

* * *

Schubert and Hummel had spent much of their day hiding and trying not to scream as American artillery shells pounded everything near them. Sometimes the concussions lifted them off the ground and sometimes they were deafened, if only temporarily. Debris rained down on the roof of their bunker like hail during a storm. They had heard that the Yanks had an overwhelming superiority in artillery and now they believed it. The German 88 might be a magnificent weapon but there were not enough of them. Worse, the Americans had artillery that was far larger than an 88-millimeter gun.

Earlier, American fighter-bombers had done their part, also proving that the Yanks ruled the skies. Luftwaffe? What Luftwaffe, they thought bitterly. Where the hell were the planes that fat Herman Goering had promised? Had he sold them all for drugs? And where was the Wehrmacht’s vaunted armor? Where were the Panthers and Tigers that had savaged the armored formations of Russia and the United States? Why, they were gone, they answered themselves bitterly, destroyed by the Allies’ overwhelming superiority in numbers. Now they didn’t even care if Lieutenant Pfister heard their complaints.

It was almost a relief when the assaults from the skies ended and the American tanks began to rumble forward. They shifted so they could see the approaching Shermans. “Remember,” said Hummel, “we don’t shoot at the tanks.”

“I’m not that stupid,” Schubert said, annoyed, “or as dumb as you look. Or did you get hit on the head?”

Halftracks filled with soldiers were moving behind the tanks, but the two Germans dared not open fire, at least not yet. Expose their positions to the Shermans and their stubby 75mm guns would be fired right down their throats. They would wait their turn.

Finally, scores of carefully hidden 88mm guns opened fire, devastating the coming tanks. Some stopped dead in their tracks while others exploded in billows of flame. Americans in the following halftracks tumbled out and began to move towards the German lines.

“Our turn,” said Hummel, almost laughing. It was a relief to be able to do something, to strike back at their tormentors. He began to fire short and well-aimed bursts at the Americans. Their MG42 made a sound like metal tearing when it was fired. Everyone hated the hideous noise the MG42 made, but Hummel and Schubert loved it. The magnificent weapon was keeping them alive.

Most German bullets missed their quickly moving targets, but many did not. American soldiers fell. Some lay still while others writhed on the ground. They were close enough to occasionally hear the cries and screams of the wounded.

Schubert kept feeding belts of ammunition. He too was grinning hugely as they hurt the Americans. The tanks were pulling back, leaving American infantry alone and exposed among the dead and burning tanks and their own dead and wounded. It was no time to show mercy. The man you allowed to live today might kill you tomorrow.

They had to pause as Schubert changed the almost red hot barrel. Regulations said they were to control the rate of fire and stick to short bursts so as to not get the barrel overheated, but people who wrote foolish regulations like that never had scores of American soldiers breathing down their necks.

“The hell with regulations,” Hummel said as he helped his partner.

The gun was soon ready and it again spouted bullets. This time they did keep the bursts to short ones. There was no longer a large number of Americans moving towards them. Now they came in small groups of two or three, sometimes only one soldier got up and raced a few feet towards them. Hummel’s aim was good as he picked off soldier after soldier and blew them away. Sometimes the Americans just fell like puppets whose strings had been cut, but sometimes they tried to crawl or run back to their own lines. Neither man was cruel. The wounded they let go back, but anyone who didn’t look wounded they killed.

Suddenly, Hummel’s eyes widened in horror. “Down,” he screamed. Seconds later, a napalm bomb exploded uncomfortably close to their bunker. They were lucky. None of the searing flames washed over them, although they could feel the heat that nearly sucked the air out of their lungs. For a few seconds it was uncomfortably hot and they both wondered what was happening to anyone closer to the explosion than they were. They were being fried to a crisp, was what they both thought.

The bombing was over. American infantry had taken advantage of it to withdraw. The two machine-gunners saw no reason to advertise the fact that they had survived and thus draw attention from the American planes, so they settled down and waited.

Shortly after sunset, their wait ended. A runner from Lieutenant Pfister told them to close up and pull back as soon as it was dark enough to be safe. When they asked why, the young private shrugged and said that the officers were afraid that the battle, although clearly won by the Germans, had enabled the Americans to pinpoint the locations of too many of the German defenses. American artillery could commence again at any time, but most likely at first light.

“Makes sense,” said Schubert as the two men prepared to move out. “It’s a shame since we definitely did win today. We shouldn’t have to retreat after a victory.”

“But what did we win,” asked Hummel, “besides the right to withdraw farther into the mountains? Someday we’ll wind up starving to death on some barren granite slope. As long as the Americans want to keep coming, we can never win.”

Schubert couldn’t help himself. He had to look around to see if anyone from the SS or Gestapo was listening in on them. No one was, of course. The only thing he could see in the fading light was the large numbers of craters left by countless bombs and shells. It was a stark and ugly moonscape, just like the pictures he’d seen on science fiction novels, only worse. Novels don’t smell of burned and exploded flesh along with gasoline and anything else that would burn. They were thankful that the darkness did not allow them to clearly see the debris around them.

“We’ll have to wait for an opportunity to give ourselves up.” Schubert said.

“If we wait too long,” Hummel said sadly, “we’ll all be dead.”

* * *

President Harry Truman looked at the report, shook his head glumly, and put it down on the table. “I thought we had won this war,” he said. “Yet this rump part of Nazi Germany continues to hold out and sends thousands of our boys to either the hospital or the graveyard. And I don’t care what some generals like to think, it was a defeat. General Marshall, about how much ground did we take?”

As usual, the Army’s chief of staff was expressionless. “On average we gained about half a mile.”

“Three divisions of infantry, reinforced by an armored division and an infantry division, tried to bull their way through the pass and made only half a mile. That might have been a major gain in the First War, but not this one. At this rate, Devers’ armies will meet up with Clark’s somewhere around summer of 1948. This first attack on the Brenner was not a victory, was not even a draw. We got our asses kicked.”

Marshall did not disagree. The two men were in a small office adjacent to the Oval Office in the West Wing. Truman had recently decided that he liked to use it for small groups. A movie screen had been set up on one wall and a very nervous Army captain had just shown them the latest unedited films from Germany.

“What we have just watched should not be made public for at least fifty years.” Truman said.

The debacle at the head of the Brenner had been filmed in glorious Technicolor. The flames were brilliant and bright, and the scenes showing the Shermans being blown up were dramatic and awful. Brave cameramen had gone in with the infantry and the graphic death scenes of American soldiers had shaken Truman to his core.

Marshall was not done. “I have other films for you to see, Mister President. They are from the last war and show the Austrians and the Italians in battle in the Alpine snows. It will give you some idea what we will face if the situation is not resolved before the next snows roll in.”

“I will see them, General, just not today. I have other problems. In just a few weeks I am supposed to meet Stalin and whoever will be prime minister of Great Britain in Potsdam, Germany. We will discuss the future of Europe. How the hell can we discuss that while this Alpine Redoubt still exists and while this asinine creation called Germanica thumbs its nose at us?”

“Are you having second thoughts about using the atomic bomb in Germany, sir?”

“I can’t begin to think about using something that hasn’t even worked yet, and God help us if the remote possibility that the Nazis have their own is true. Even if it does work and we use the damn thing to blast a path through the Brenner, it’s now very likely that residual radiation won’t let us use that path. Damn it to hell. Now it looks even more than likely that Churchill will be replaced by that dullard, Attlee. God help us, but the situation in Europe looks bleak.”

“And we still have Japan to defeat,” added Marshall. He was glad that the perpetually angry and volatile Admiral Ernest King was not present. He would have taken the last comment as an insult to his navy and exploded.

“But just like the Germans,” Truman said, “the Japanese have been defeated but just won’t admit it. The Nazi hierarchy knows that they will hang or be put in front of a firing squad if there isn’t a diplomatic solution that will allow them to escape punishment. The same holds true with the Japanese. The Japanese ruling council is a bunch of sadistic war criminals and Hirohito is the worst. I know that we might have to give in and let the four-eyed bastard remain on his damn throne, but I don’t have to like it. But there is no way that Josef Goebbels and his cohorts are going to escape punishment. Goebbels in particular is going to hang.”

“You know that the Russians are willing to help us,” said Marshall.

“Of course they will help us. I may have just become president, but I know that Stalin is a grasping, lying son of a bitch. We will likely need him to invade Manchuria and elsewhere in the Pacific to help finish off the Japs, but I do not want him to attack this Germanica and take any more of Europe then he now has. I’m catching hell from the Republicans in Congress because he’s now squatting in Poland and other countries and isn’t very likely to leave anytime this century.”

“Well sir, what do you suggest?”

Truman sagged. “Unless you or one of General Groves’ scientists comes up with a miracle, we can drop an atomic bomb or two on Japan, but not in Germany. There we’ll still have to slug it out with the Nazis.”

Or, the president thought, we might have to deal with the Nazis.

* * *

“You look as bad as I did,” Winnie said softly. She was smiling, but there was deep sadness in her eyes.

He started to rise, but she pushed him back and stroked his hair. “I leave you alone for just a little while and you manage to get into such trouble. When are you going to grow up?”

He had to admit that she looked lovely, radiant. The bruises were almost all gone, or at least covered by makeup. She had been shocked and saddened by his appearance after Sam Valenti had let her into his quarters the first time and this second time wasn’t much better.

“I didn’t know you cared. I hoped you did.”

Winnie smiled. “Of course I care. You’re like a puppy that needs lots of training.”

“I was hoping for more than that.”

“Oh yes, you stink. When was the last time you took a shower or did anything to clean yourself?”

“I believe it was the morning before I got my butt kicked by those two Nazis. Is it that bad?”

“Worse. I am now going to help you get out of bed and go down the hallway to the showers. You will clean up and you will put on fresh clothing. Then maybe we will go out in the sunshine.”

“Will you shower with me?”

“Not in this lifetime,” she said with a disarming smile that seemed to indicate that perhaps she didn’t totally mean it. “I may pretend I’m a nurse and assist you but nothing more is going to happen. And I won’t be shocked by what I see. I did have a brother. Actually, I’m afraid I might be disappointed.”

“That hurts.”

Winnie helped him to his feet. He was wearing GI boxer shorts and a T-shirt. She found clean clothing and helped him to the shower where he managed to undress himself. She did not leave as the hot water cascaded down his body. “You could change your mind and join me,” he said.

“Not a chance. Sam might come in, and a couple of Dulles’ guys are still staying here. Anybody could come in at any time. I like my privacy, thank you. Now, if you can manage to wash up without hurting yourself, I’ll go and find you some clean sheets.”

“Will you wash my back? I can’t quite twist my arm around. It hurts too much.”

She sighed. “That’s the most original excuse I’ve ever heard.” She took the washcloth and soap and leaned over far enough so she could do his back and the back of his legs without getting herself wet. He had a nice hard butt, which didn’t surprise her. She realized that something else was getting hard.

“I see you’re beginning to feel a whole lot better, so I’ll leave you to your own devices.”

“Wait just one minute,” he said. He faced her and handed her the washcloth. “It won’t take long.”

She grinned wickedly and lathered the front of his body, taking special care to stroke his manhood. She hadn’t played scrub-a-dub with a guy since her sophomore year in college with one of her brother’s friends. Her brother had been really angry when he found out. The young man she’d cleansed had joined the Marines and gone on to fight on Guadalcanal. He’d come back with his body intact but his mind totally and horribly vacant. She’d gone to see him at the Bethesda Naval Hospital and been horrified. Her once vibrant friend who might have been a lover and even a serious suitor was nothing more than a vacant shell. His eyes were focused on something distant. Winnie had stayed for only a few minutes before leaving in tears. It was all the more reason to do what she could to end this damn war.

Ah well. It didn’t take more than a minute or two before Ernie gasped and climaxed.

“I owe you,” he said.

“And maybe someday I’ll let you pay me back,” she said. She was realizing that she was reconsidering Ernie and their relationship. So what if he was a puppy that needed a lot of training? She was a good trainer. She realized that she had compared Ernie to her brother and brought up his memory without feeling like crying. Maybe Ernie was good for her. “Now finish up and get out of there. You can buy me dinner.”

* * *

Wally Oster had been as surprised as anyone when he’d been reclassified from 4-F to 1-A. His 4-F classification meant he had been rejected for military service because of his mental deficiencies. Even his grandfather said the boy was dumber than a stone. His family felt that his reclassification to 1-A, ready and eligible to be drafted, was due to several circumstances. First, the local draft board in their small west Texas town was under pressure to supply more warm bodies for the military. Thus, they had revisited a number of people whom they had deemed unqualified in the past. The second reason was that Wally had been caught vandalizing some of farms in the area that were owned by prominent citizens and even members of the board.

After being drafted, Wally had somehow muddled through basic training. The normally harsh and often brutal drill sergeants recognized that the lost and ignorant boy was a hopeless case, so they gave up trying and just passed him through. It was much like his teacher in the one-room schoolhouse out on the west Texas flatlands. She’d promoted him through to eighth grade and then he’d dropped out of school to work and earn pennies an hour as a laborer.

After basic, he’d been shipped directly to Europe where he’d wound up in the 105th Infantry Division. He didn’t realize it, but there were a number of former rejects like him in it and other divisions as the army began to scrape the bottom of the barrel and beneath.

Wally did like carrying a rifle. It made him feel powerful. So, when someone asked for a volunteer to take a German prisoner back to the stockade, he’d jumped at the chance. When he saw the scrawny young boy he was supposed to guard, he’d been disappointed. The boy was just a little smaller than he, scared, and not a threat and certainly not a superman. He’d giggled. The boy wasn’t even Clark Kent. Wally liked the Superman stories. They were even better than Batman.

Someone had worked the kid over pretty thoroughly. His face was red and bruised, his eyes were swollen and his lower lip was split. Tough shit, thought Wally. He was a Nazi.

His orders were simple. Take him directly to the stockade and do not let him escape. Wally was given an M1 carbine and a fifteen round clip of ammunition. He loaded the carbine but was careful not to release the safety.

The prisoner was handcuffed with his hands to his front. He wondered why the people from Seventh Army who had come to interrogate him had waited until it was almost dark to send him back. Wally thought that they must know what they were doing since they were officers. His real concern was that he might miss dinner. He was one of a number who actually liked army food since it was so much better than what families back home had been able to afford. He’d gained weight on mess hall chow and even liked chipped beef on toast, which was always called shit on a shingle. Some of his friends laughed at him, but he didn’t notice any of them skipping a meal. Since he spent much of his work day doing menial chores at the mess hall, he thought he could probably manage to scrounge up a meal.

They had gone about halfway when the boy announced that he had to pee. Wally had come from a German enclave in Texas and understood. “Why didn’t you go before we started out?”

“I have to pee now,” the boy announced and abruptly turned into an alleyway between several large tents.

Wally swore. He had no choice but to follow him. With astonishing quickness, the boy wheeled and yanked the carbine from Wally’s grip and pointed it at him.

“Take off your uniform and boots.”

Wally whimpered and complied. He had heard the slight click of the safety releasing. He was in grave danger. He also realized that the boy had somehow gotten out of his handcuffs. Damn. The boy had said they were too tight and one of the officers had loosened them. Damn.

“Lie down,” Wally was ordered, and now crying openly, he obeyed.

“I don’t want to die,” he sobbed. “I want my mother.”

“Coward,” Hans Gruber said as he hit Wally in the head with the stock of his carbine. Wally tried to speak, but his world had become dark.

* * *

“Captain Tanner I presume.”

Tanner laughed. They were outside a former school that had been designated as a hospital. “Doctor Hagerman, are you following me? Are you that concerned about my keeping my feet dry that you came all this way?”

The two men shook hands warmly. “No, I did not travel all the way from Belgium to see how your feet are doing. I got tired of treating GIs with penicillin for the clap and wanted to do some real doctoring.”

Tanner pretended to be puzzled. “Clap? How on earth could our innocent soldiers get the clap since Ike has forbidden any contact between our horny GIs and equally horny German women?”

“Ike is doing as well with his nonfraternization rule as King Cnut did in trying to keep the tide from coming in. There are tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of German women who would like to make an arrangement with an American to provide them with food, shelter, and other basics. And so what if it means having sex with a stranger, or even several strangers? Does desperation make a woman a prostitute? I don’t know. I’m not terribly religious, but I think I’ll let God figure that out. Talk to a woman who would otherwise starve or her child would die if she didn’t have sex with a GI, and then try to judge. I don’t think anyone has a real idea how destitute the German people are, and many who do just don’t give a damn.”

“Obviously, you really feel strongly about this.”

“Yes, and one last thing-When the savages from Russia rolled in, they gang-raped several million women. Most were German but the Reds really didn’t care where they were from. Now, many of them are suffering from venereal diseases or unwanted pregnancies. I don’t do abortions myself; they are illegal after all. But some of my associates do, and I’m not going to turn them in or criticize them.”

Hagerman took a deep breath and smiled sheepishly. “Sometimes I get worked up and I shouldn’t. I understand that Ike is going to rescind that stupid and unenforceable nonfraternization policy. At any rate, you came here to see Private Oster, didn’t you?”

The two men went down a hallway and into a ward where a curtain had been drawn around a bed. “Is he going to make it?” Tanner asked, suddenly worried. He’d been told that Oster had been wounded, but giving him such a degree of privacy was unusual if the wounds weren’t grievous.

“He should recover nicely. His physical wounds aren’t that serious. He’s got a mildly fractured skull, if there is such a thing and, ah, one other problem.”

Hagerman pulled the curtain and the two men stepped in. Oster was awake and looked at them in confusion. “Why are you here now? Did I do something else?”

There was a bandage wrapped around Oster’s skull. “He doesn’t need all this bandaging, but we’re going to keep his head wrapped until we solve his problem. Private, I am now going to shift the bandage so Captain Tanner can see.”

“No, I mean, no sir,” Oster said.

“Yes you will,” said Tanner, “but first tell me what happened.”

Oster started to tear up. “I don’t really know. One minute I’m walking with the prisoner and the next he’s got my rifle and I’m on the ground. Then he hits me and then I wake up here and I’ve been cut.”

Tanner thought he understood. The young Werewolf was still a Nazi fanatic. He either changed his mind, or something had changed it for him, or he’d been lying all along. Lena would not be happy at this turn of events. She had put so much emotion into changing the boy.

Of course, a big mistake had been made in giving this slow-witted American soldier any responsibility whatsoever. Now the Werewolves had an American uniform and an M1 Carbine along with at least one clip of ammunition.

Hagerman put his hand on Wally’s shoulder. “Private Oster,” he said firmly, “I am now going to pull off the bandage and show Captain Tanner what happened.”

“Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

They two men solemnly assured Wally that they wouldn’t. Hagerman carefully pulled back the first bandage and exposed a second one covering a large patch of Oster’s forehead. The young private was whimpering and not from pain. Tanner thought he knew what was coming next.

The second bandage was carefully pulled back, exposing a neatly gouged swastika in the middle of Wally Oster’s forehead. Neither man said a thing. After a few seconds, Hagerman replaced the bandage. He thanked Wally, and the two men went outside where Hagerman lit a cigarette.

“Jesus, Doc, how are you going to get rid of that ugly thing? He can’t go back with that obscene badge in the middle of his forehead.”

“He won’t have to. There’s such a thing as plastic surgery. Good techniques were introduced in World War I, and there have been many improvements since then. He’ll have a couple of minor operations to remove the swastika and then he’ll have a small scar in the middle of his forehead that he can wear as a badge of honor showing that he’d been wounded in action. He’s going to get a Purple Heart and maybe a trip home. I think I can convince some people that retarded boys who can barely read and write their own name should not be drafted and get him sent back home to West Crotch Rot, Texas. Who knows, maybe he’ll thank me. What I would like to do is find out just who beat the crap out of the German.”

“What?”

“Ah, something else you didn’t know. Two guys came down from Seventh Army with permission from General Patch to question the prisoner after you were through with him. I understand that the questioning turned into interrogation and then torture to get him to give them information a fourteen-year-old kid probably didn’t know in the first place. General Evans is absolutely livid and has complained upstream to Patch. It won’t make a bit of difference since Patch is sick and going to be replaced. But at least we have some idea why our Werewolf recanted.”

* * *

Staff Sergeant Billy Hill loved hunting. As a kid back home in Alabama, he’d take a rifle and hunt squirrels or rabbits. Back then he had a.22, and killing a squirrel was about all it would do. When he joined the army as a young adult he was already a highly skilled shooter with just about any kind of rifle or shotgun made.

Now what he really liked to do was hunt Germans. He had his own modified Garand M1 and it was fitted with a telescopic sight. He showed up at Sergeant Higgins’ outpost unannounced but not unexpected. The two men had been friends for years and, since Hill’s elevation to division staff, Higgins had extended an open invitation for Hill to go Nazi-hunting.

The crafty Higgins had his men build him a bunker that was well sited and camouflaged. “Do the Germans know about this place?” Hill asked.

“Not yet and I don’t want them to. If you’re gonna go hunting, don’t draw attention to here.”

“What are you worried about? One more attack on the German lines and they’ll collapse like a house of cards.”

Both men laughed harshly. “That’s bullshit and you know it,” said Higgins. “One more attack like the last one and this corps will be ruined and maybe the entire Seventh Army will cease to exist.”

The 105th Infantry had recently been joined with the newly and partially arrived Tenth Mountain Division to form the Twenty-Fifth Corps. No commander had been designated so it had temporarily fallen on General Evans.

Hill grinned amiably at the handful of soldiers in the bunker. “Any of you brave men want to come with me?”

All but one looked away or lowered their heads. That one stared at him and shook his head. “What about you?” asked Hill, directing his question towards the man who was staring at him.

“No thank you, Sergeant. I’m not crazy.”

Hill stiffened. “You implying that I am?”

The soldier, a PFC, wasn’t intimidated. “Didn’t mean that. I don’t know what you’re thinking and why you want to go out there and shoot people. I just don’t. All I want to do is what’s required of me and get home to my wife and kids.”

Hill blinked. Kids? He’d known that fathers were being drafted, but this was the first time he’d run across one. No wonder the guy didn’t want to volunteer. But that was just too bad. The guy was a soldier. “Are you saying you wouldn’t obey a direct order to follow me out there into Nazi-land?”

“Of course I would. Just don’t you go looking for any enthusiasm or any gung-ho and ‘let’s charge the machine gun’ crap. First time somebody shoots at me, I go to ground and call for help.”

“How old are you, Private?”

“Thirty-four and I want to reach thirty-five and be back home in Illinois when it happens.”

“The Germans are our enemy, Private.”

“With respect, Sergeant: says who? I’m part German and so is my wife. Some of the people you’re going out to shoot could be my relatives. Fortunately, we don’t have any Jap relations, so killing them’s okay. My point is, Hitler’s dead. Let’s send in the diplomats and let them talk and end this thing.”

“What about the Jews?”

“What about them? They’re already dead and nothing can be done about it. Fact is, I don’t totally believe all the bullshit they’re feeding us about death camps and all that. I saw Dachau and it was a terrible place, but it still won’t bring back anybody the Nazis killed. And if I get killed going out with you as some dumb volunteer, nobody’s gonna bring me back either.”

Angrily, Hill took his rifle and snuck out. He was perplexed by the man who didn’t want to fight. Higgins had told him the password and countersign and pointed out the path through the barbed wire. Warnings about mines were also conveyed. The front had stabilized since the failed American attack.

It took hours of slow moving before Hill thought he was in position to catch himself a German. He was covered with leaves and twigs and lay in a hollow part of ground. He would fire one round and then depart through a path he’d already figured out. In the meantime, he would simply be patient. He had no real choice. Haste didn’t make waste. Haste could get a man killed.

He’d been waiting almost two hours and was beginning to think there would be no hunting today when, there it was. He saw a flicker of motion. A German soldier had stuck his head over his foxhole and was looking around. Hill thought that the poor boy’s officer had probably told the soldier to see if any Americans were in sight. No, but they were within range.

Hill preferred killing officers, but none were around. He aimed at the soldier’s exposed head and gently squeezed the trigger. The enemy soldier’s head jerked back and disappeared. One more, thought Hill.

Seconds later, he was moving quickly through his escape route while machine guns and mortars fruitlessly sought him out. Another hour found him back in Higgins’ bunker. That same older soldier looked at him. “Make a kill?” he asked.

“Damn right.”

“Take his scalp, too?”

Hill turned red with anger. “Look, you little asshole, I’m out there fighting while you’re in here hiding.”

“Great, Sergeant, but tell me why we’re fighting. We’ve got ninety percent of Germany, so who cares about this piddling little part called Germanica? The way I see it, the only real enemy we’ve got left is Japan. Germany didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor, the Japs did. I say we pull out of here and let the few Nazis left do whatever they want while we get rid of the Japs.”

“Private, are you saying you don’t want to fight the Germans?”

“That’s pretty much it, Sergeant. Are you gonna have me court-martialed? Maybe you’d like to see a picture of my kid. I want to be there when he grows up. I just don’t want to die for something stupid and unnecessary.”

Hill didn’t answer. He took his rifle and headed back to the division’s headquarters. He needed to talk to people about what he’d been told. Yeah, he had made a kill and he was proud of it. Or he thought he was. It was his fifteenth that he could confirm. It was a good kill. So why the hell did he feel so depressed?