Himmler's War

CHAPTER 9

The Seine, The Seine, thought Morgan, The beautiful Seine. Only now it was wreathed in smoke and fire and punctuated by explosions as artillery and bombs took turns trying to destroy what the Nazis had made.

The men of the 74th now took these things in stride. They’d seen how the Germans could dig in and how useless bombardments sometimes were. Still, this didn’t stop the brass from making confident announcements that the attack would be a walkover. One visiting general had said that there wouldn’t be a kraut left alive when the shelling was done. Carter had then asked the man if he would like to go in with him when the troops crossed, perhaps in Jeb’s own tank? The general had snarled and walked away. Colonel Whiteside had merely rolled his eyes and pretended he hadn’t heard the exchange.

Others were also not so sure it would be a walkover. Colonel Stoddard, for example, was not impressed by the shelling although he kept up a brave front. He couldn’t have the men see that their commanding officer was worried. By this time, Jack had seen Stoddard and Whiteside often enough to know their moods and he was certain the two men were faking their enthusiasm for the battle that was coming.

In the First World War, intense and prolonged shelling hadn’t penetrated the German bunkers and the result had been the slaughter of soldiers at the Somme, Ypres, and a host of other places close to where they were going to fight.

Nor had the intense naval bombardment destroyed the German defenses at Normandy on D-Day. Even worse, the fourteen- and fifteen-inch guns of the American and Royal navies’ battleships wouldn’t be a factor since they couldn’t make it up the Seine in the first place. Nor would they make it up the Rhine, if it came to that.

In a moment of sanity, Jack had received a warm and chatty letter from Jeb’s cousin Jessica. In response he’d dashed off and mailed a letter he now wondered might have been too much too soon. He’d found himself opening up about his fears to someone he’d never seen or met. But why not? For some reason he felt totally at home talking with her even though it was by mail. Jessica had told him of her frustrations with the refugees. He jokingly invited her for dinner at Ike’s headquarters.

It was now mid-September and the advance to Germany was far behind schedule. The Germans were fighting tenaciously and it was looking increasingly like a winter campaign was going to happen and that the war would not end in 1944. They’d know for certain when winter gear was handed out. The weather was still warm, even comfortable now that the sometimes intense heat of summer was behind them.

There had been briefings regarding overall strategy and the 74th’s part in it. The Seine crossings would take place on the same day and at several places. The Germans would be overwhelmed and unable to maneuver men and armor to reinforce threatened areas. Jack thought it sounded nice, but then, plans always did.

To the north, near Le Havre and the mouth of the Seine, Montgomery was going to attack the wide mouth of the river as it flowed into the ocean. His force would include the British First Airborne Division, which would parachute behind enemy lines near the town of Bolbec, which the Brits promptly renamed Ballbuster. It was rumored that the overall attack had been delayed while Monty made his usual methodical preparations. It was also rumored that Patton wanted to strangle him. Because of the Seine’s greater width at Monty’s point of attack, he had gotten what few of the landing craft, DUKW’s, that were available, which further annoyed the Americans who would have to make do with inflatable rafts or whatever they could find.

South of Paris, Patton’s Third Army was going to cross near the town of Melun, while north of the city Hodges’ First Army would attack just above the city of Poissy, called Pussy by the troops, at a point where the river looped and the Germans could be enfiladed on three sides of American gunners. Paris had been declared an open city and the troops had been warned that great care needed to be taken to not break the fragile truce. So far, the French government had managed to keep their resistance fighters in check.

The day of battle began with the usual chaos. At dawn, American bombers flew in from the west, crossed over the river and dropped their loads. Almost predictably, the lead planes bombed their targets fairly accurately, while the following planes dropped short of the explosions created by the first. This resulted in the bombings creeping back to the river and then over to the American side of it. Fortunately, First Army’s commander, Courtney Hodges, and V Corps commander, Major General Leonard Gerow, had prudently held their men several miles behind the lines fearing just this thing; thus, only a handful of Americans were killed or wounded by so-called friendly fire. However, it took more time than planned for the engineers and assault elements to reach the river after the bombers left. The resulting congestion on the narrow and miserable French roads meant that the attack was delayed from dawn until noon. This gave time for the Germans to dig themselves out of the rubble created by the bombers.

As Morgan watched from his perch in the sky, scores of small boats, launches, and barges containing men of the 116th Infantry Division surged across while American artillery rained down on the German bunkers. The 74th Armored Regiment would follow the infantry as soon as a beachhead was established and a pontoon bridge was laid down.

Morgan’s small plane was buffeted by the shock waves caused by the artillery, and both he and Snyder tried to squash the fear that they might be hit by an incoming shell. American armor was arrayed on the west side and fired to keep the Germans’ heads down.

As the infantry’s improvised armada started to cross, engineers began to lay down a pontoon bridge strong enough to support the weight of tanks.

German fire discipline was excellent. They waited until the vulnerable small craft were in the water before scores of hidden pieces of artillery and hundreds of machine guns scythed the boats and the men huddled in them.

Boat after boat was hit and Jack heard moaning and realized it was coming from him. Some boats were burning while a few were blown apart, all sending men into the deep and cold river where he could see their heads bobbing as they were swept north towards the sea. Some managed to head towards the German side. The 116th was not an experienced unit and Jack could only imagine the horrors the men were enduring.

Despite the carnage, a number of boats made shore and unloaded their men, who were promptly pinned down by German fire. Worse, many of the boats that were supposed to return and get more men for the assault had been damaged or destroyed and could not be used as planned. The second wave was pitifully small in comparison with the first and the third wave never happened. The men who’d crossed were effectively trapped.

The German gunners turned their attention to the American armor arrayed on the western side and began to chew them up. Jack checked his fuel. They were almost out of gas and he flew the plane back to the landing strip where Stoddard grabbed him.

“Damn it, did you see anything good down there?”

Jack leaned on the fuselage. “I saw a lot of brave men dying, sir. Some of the guys who landed are trying to inch their way in, and they are using flamethrowers and bangalore torpedoes,” he said. Bangalore torpedoes were tubelike contraptions that very brave men put either under or into enemy defenses and then exploded. “But there are so few of them. When will the bridge be built?”

The colonel sagged. “Our armor is pulling back. The engineers are going to give it up for the time being. We’ve been whipped,” he muttered, then shook his head. “Maybe stalemated is the right word. Go get something to eat.”

Darkness was falling and Jack watched as shadows moved down the road leading to the rear. These were the defeated and the walking wounded, although how some of them could walk, Jack couldn’t imagine. As he drew closer to them, he saw that many had their faces bandaged, or were limping badly. Somehow, a couple of men who were missing arms were managing to head to the rear without assistance.

“Where the hell are the medics?” he asked out loud. They were overwhelmed treating the truly badly wounded, he realized.

He managed to walk to where he could see the riverbank and the sporadic fighting on the other side. Gunfire flickered like fireflies, only fireflies didn’t crackle and snarl. Occasional tongues of flame showed where a GI with a flamethrower had gotten close enough to the enemy. Curiously, it didn’t look like the Germans wanted to come out of their fortifications and fight the Americans who’d landed in their midst. Nor did the Germans have the firepower to wipe them out from the safety of their bunkers.

It occurred to Jack that there weren’t as many Germans as there ought to be or could be. He mentioned it to Whiteside who concurred. “This is not their main line of defense; in fact this loop of ground is pretty indefensible. We’ll attack again in the morning, except this time we’ll be smarter, and we’ll push them back. Besides, we just found out that Patton is across south of us and his presence will force them to abandon these lines as well as evacuate Paris. Maybe they don’t want to die any more than we do.”

That night the Germans did pull back and left only a handful of men to harass the Americans and call down artillery fire. The Germans had built a second defensive line where the river’s loop made a narrow approach the only alternative.

By mid-morning, two pontoon bridges were completed and both men and armor poured over. Again Jack was in the air watching the panorama unfold. The Germans had dug a dry moat across the neck of ground. They blew up the ends, sending torrents of water from the Seine gushing in and filling it. The moat, however, wasn’t deep enough and the regiment’s Sherman tanks plowed through and up to the new defenses, which they fired at point blank. Again, flamethrowers devastated the bunkers. A flamethrower operator was hit and his tank exploded, engulfing him in a pillar of flames. Jack hoped he died quickly. The guys with flamethrowers had to be insane, he concluded.

“My friends and comrades, it is time to leave,” Colonel Schurmer said to the handful of his men who remained in Paris. General von Choltitz and his staff and the bulk of the garrison in Paris had already departed. The city was still quiet but who knew how long that would last. The Americans had crossed the Seine both to the south and the north and, as soon as they gathered enough strength, they’d be racing to cut off Paris and capture any Germans still inside the city. French troops were reported to be advancing from the west. The designation of an open city would not last forever.

They piled into the handful of vehicles remaining to them. These included three Panzer Mk1 tanks, which were lightly armored vehicles carrying a pair of machine guns each. Obsolete for a modern battlefield, they were intimidating to the semi-trained mobs of French resistance fighters in the city, even though they would slow down the rest of the column. Or at least Schurmer hoped they would intimidate the French. Large numbers of Frenchmen armed with a miscellany of weapons freely roamed the city as de Gaulle’s supporters fought the communists and both began to fight the Germans.

The column attracted rifle and machine gun fire as they drove westward out of the city, but it did them no harm. Schurmer was in one of six Type 82 Kubelwagens, a rough equivalent to the American Jeep. They had been assembled by Volkswagen and were built on a Kafer chassis. Outside of Germany, the Kafer was known as the Beetle.

The vehicles seated four but were not armored and Schurmer felt vulnerable as they drove out of Paris. It was time to leave the fabled city of lights far, far behind and acknowledge that the Third Reich had lost yet another battle.

A surprising number of French civilians were also heading east. These were people who’d worked with Germany and didn’t want to face the wrath and vicious justice of their countrymen. It would be hell to be on the losing side, he thought, which would be his fate if Himmler couldn’t pull something out of the mess Germany was in.

He tried not to cringe as badly aimed gunfire rattled off the street and the vehicles around him. Thankfully, the FFI, the resistance, were such poor shots. Most Frenchmen were. He did not think highly of French martial abilities after their utter and shameful defeat in the debacle of 1940. Thankfully also, they aimed at the tanks and the bullets that did strike armor simply bounced off. The two men in the back seat of his vehicle aimed submachine guns in the general direction of the buildings they were passing, but did not fire. Few French civilians were in view although he felt that thousands of eyes were watching him.

Schurmer was disappointed that the Seine Line had fallen so quickly, but had learned much that would serve him well on the Rhine defensive works and the other fortifications being built before that great river. He was not confident that the Allies would be stopped before the Rhine.

A young Frenchman carrying a lighted Molotov cocktail raced towards the lead tank, his mouth contorted in anger as he screamed something unintelligible. A gunner from the second tank fired a burst that nearly cut the Frenchman in half. The incendiary cocktail ignited in his hand, covering him in flames. The dying man writhed and screamed before falling still. So much for de Gaulle being able to control his countrymen, Schurmer thought. But then, who could control a Frenchman? It would be easier to herd cats.

A rude roadblock suddenly came into view, made up of overturned cars and piled debris. A score or so Parisians, men and women, were on it and in the buildings alongside. They opened fire with rifles and shotguns as the column approached. Two of Schurmer’s little tanks paired up and blazed away with their machine guns. Several resistance fighters fell and the others melted away, dragging their dead and wounded. The two small tanks bulled their way through the flimsy barricade and the other vehicles followed through the opening.

Another partisan with a death wish and a Molotov cocktail rushed up. This one was more successful, hitting the lead tank and inundating it with flames before the guns of the second tank killed him. Schurmer cursed. The damned French would proclaim him a martyr and name a road after him. How about Rue de Fool, he thought. Before the war there had been nearly three million people in Paris, many of whom even admired Germany, and now they all hated the Reich.

The burning tank’s two-man crew jumped out and climbed onto the remaining tanks, and the column drove on. The men appeared unhurt and Schurmer was thankful. He laughed as one of them waved at him.

Safe, Schurmer thought as they reached the countryside, was a relative term. Being alive for the moment did not constitute safety. He did wonder just how far out of the city the truce extended and for how much time now that the damned Americans were across in two places. Thank God the little prick Montgomery had gotten his arrogant little nose bloodied to the north.

Schurmer got his answers a few moments later. They had just cleared the city proper on a road he thought was called Sebastopol Boulevard when he heard the sound of airplane engines over the motors of his vehicles. He turned and stared in horror as a pair of American P47’s turned to strafe the column.

“Out,” he yelled as if anybody needed any urging. His men were already tumbling out of their vulnerable vehicles.

The remaining tanks were lightly armored and were ripped by the planes’ machine guns. They wheeled and commenced to destroy the Kubels while Schurmer and his men hid in a ditch.

Fortunately, the Americans got tired of their fun when the tanks and Kubels were burning, and flew off. Perhaps they didn’t see the score of German soldiers cowering in fear. Or maybe they were out of ammunition. He was thankful the Americans hadn’t carried bombs.

Schurmer stood up and dusted off the dirt from his uniform. He checked his men. Several were wounded, but, thankfully and miraculously, none had been killed. Even the men in the tanks had moved quickly enough to survive. These were all good men and the Reich was going to have great need of good men to confront the coming ordeal.

He turned to his aide and said very loudly. “Willy, didn’t we used to have an air force, too?”

The young lieutenant shrugged and the men grinned. “I think it was just a rumor, Colonel.”

Shurmer formed his men up. “Since we have no choice unless you wish to stay here and become prisoners of war, or, more likely, be hanged by the French after they castrate you with a dull spoon, we will begin to walk back to Germany.”

He had no illusions. Some of his men would doubtless not at all mind spending the remainder of the war doing farm work in Kansas, but the thought of the viciousness of the vengeful French was sobering. Any captured German soldier would be fortunate indeed to make it to a prison pen.

Schurmer waved with forced jauntiness. “Come on my brave warriors. Germany can’t be all that far away.” He laughed genuinely as his men hooted at him. With men like these, Germany could have conquered the world. Why in God’s name had Hitler fucked up so thoroughly?

Victor Mastny counted his blessings each day but they were more than offset by his hatreds. By forging some papers and stealing others from the body of another prisoner, he was able to pass him himself off as a French prisoner of war.

In reality, Mastny was a Czech and a thief, not a POW, although he had lived for years in France. He was also a drug dealer and had been convicted of both crimes, along with a count of sexual assault. The woman had been the wife of a shop owner. Her husband wouldn’t pay Victor for drugs he’d bought and used, and Victor had used her to punish the man. Victor never dreamed that the fool would go to the police for him screwing his wife, although she did scream all the while he did it.

He was convicted and sent to a small German-run work camp where he was put in charge of a group of other prisoners who hated him with a vengeance. When an Allied air raid hit the camp, he took his phony papers and walked away in the confusion. The decision to work on the Mullers’ farm was based on the sobering fact that he could not wander Germany forever. The local police would stop him and turn him over to the Gestapo. It did not escape him that he was only marginally safer as an alleged French POW.

The farm at least provided shelter and an abundance of food and they needed workers. It wasn’t difficult to convince the Mullers that he’d been assigned to work for them.

Still, he hated the Mullers. He hated all Germans, but not because he was a patriot. No, he hated the Germans because they had interrupted his life and sent him away to prison for several years. He also hated the French for initially catching him and convicting him.

Victor had plans. When the war ended, he would return to France and begin anew plundering the people of that country. For that, however, he needed money and he currently had nothing. But perhaps the Mullers did?

He slept in the barn with a couple of illiterate oafs from Latvia, twins named Janis and Juris. He and the twins barely understood each other, but the Latvians fully comprehended that Victor would kill them in an instant if they crossed him. He could see the terror on their faces when he looked at them and he liked that. It further helped that, even though they were large, they were stupid, even for Latvians.

As usual, they were not locked in the barn. After all, where would they go? He felt that the Mullers had deluded themselves into thinking that their slaves were happy with their lot. Victor would be happy when he could piss on their smiling faces.

He slipped quietly to the house. The dogs recognized him and ignored him. He patted them to ensure their silence and they wagged their tails. Sometimes he gave them pieces of meat to cement their friendship.

Victor was intrigued by the fact that two more women had joined the Mullers. One was older, about Victor’s age, and the other just out of childhood. Both of them aroused him. He had been a very long time without a woman. The last had been one of the workers he was supervising and she’d been old and ugly, although she had worked hard to satisfy him in return for extra food.

The two new women had been out working for the Germans and had returned earlier in the evening. He heard the sound of water running and visualized them naked and scrubbing down. On a couple of occasions he’d managed to get to the bathroom window and watch the beefy and very unattractive Bertha at her ablutions. If he had to, he would fuck her, but he wanted either of the two others. He laughed. Why not take both of them? Of course, after he would do that after they told them where their money was. They’d come from Berlin, after all, and that meant they had money.

Margarete felt that all of her muscles ached, including some she didn’t know she had. The work on the Rhine Wall was backbreaking. Many of the women, boys, and old men who’d been drafted to do the heavy work weren’t very strong and some had collapsed. Their foremen weren’t cruel men and the worst of the weak were allowed to rest and some were even sent home. It was Magda’s and Margarete’s bad fortune to be healthy and thus able to pick up the pails of dirt that had been excavated and carry them away.

She had experienced a feeling of camaraderie while working with a crew of young girls her own age. They had sung songs and told jokes, some of them shockingly bawdy, while they worked and tried to ignore the growing stiffness in their joints and muscles. They were under the nominal control of a local school teacher whose name she couldn’t remember. The next time she went, it would be with a different crew and another leader, so it didn’t matter.

What impressed Margarete was the massiveness of the construction. Along with hundreds of people like her, she was told there were dozens of other sites each with its own labor force. She thought of herself as an Israelite working on the pyramids until she recalled the Reich’s hatred of Jews in any form.

When she and her mother got home, Margarete let her mother soak in the hot water filled tub first. She’d teased Magda that older people took longer to recover from hard work and her mother had stuck out her tongue and made a vulgar noise that made both of them laugh.

Finally, she slipped into her own tub and let the hot water comfort her. When she finally stepped out, she paused for a moment in front of the full length mirror on the door. She scarcely recognized herself. Her body was leaner and longer and her breasts and hips more pronounced. She smiled. Now let an adolescent idiot like Volkmar Detloff try to paw her again. Not only would he find that she was a young woman and not a girl, but she would slap his pimply face silly.

She shuddered. She had the cold and sudden feeling that someone was watching her. The window to the bathroom was open only a crack, but she closed it anyhow and latched it. Her fears were probably groundless, but it paid to be prudent. What if one of the workers had seen her? What if refugees were wandering around the farm? She was worried about the laborer called Victor. She decided to ask her uncle where he kept his hunting rifles and shotguns.

Outside, Victor waited silently a few minutes after the girl closed the window. Then he moved back to the barn. He was more than pleased by what he saw. Both women, the older and the younger, were magnificent. The older was full bosomed, wide hipped and ripe, while the younger was lean and taut.

He reached inside his pants and began to stroke himself. He would take both of them.

Colonel Tom Granville waited as usual for General Bedell Smith to notice him. Finally, he looked up. “Okay, who’s dead this time?”

“Now we think its Martin Bormann, General.”

Smith leaned back and laughed harshly. “First Hitler, then Goering and now Bormann? Hell, somebody’s doing a lot of housecleaning in the new Reich. And how do we know about Bormann? Did they announce it?”

A week earlier, German radio had informed its listeners that Air Marshal and Reichsfuhrer Hermann Goering had died of a massive heart attack and then added that the grief of Hitler’s passing had probably played a part in causing it. The announcement had been a eulogy, reminding listeners that Goering had been a fighter ace in World War I and had been one of the earliest of Hitler’s devoted followers. The announcer had glossed over the fact that the Luftwaffe’s performance in the current war had been spotty at best and successes were due to regional commanders like Kesselring, rather than to the drug-soaked genius of Hermann Goering.

“General, Ultra picked up a message that Bormann was kaput. The sender appeared to be Skorzeny. It said that the Bormann problem had been, in his words, resolved. An hour later, a very terse announcement was made to key government officials that Bormann had been killed in an accident on the autobahn.”

“Skorzeny’s a busy boy,” said Smith. “He keeps knocking off people like he’s one of Al Capone’s thugs and, even better for him, he doesn’t have to worry at all about getting arrested. Capone’s murderers had at least a theoretical chance of getting caught. But you’re telling me that no one in Germany’s too terribly upset about Bormann’s demise?”

“Correct, sir. Aside from being a totally unlovable snake, he simply wasn’t all that well known outside of government circles. He’ll be cremated so no one will notice the bullet holes in his head and then be forgotten.”

“But Skorzeny won’t be. That son of a bitch is dangerous. He came really close to killing the Big Three and did kidnap Mussolini.”

The attempt on the lives of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt had taken place at Teheran, Iran, in 1943 and Skorzeny had nearly pulled it off. At that time Skorzeny had been a fanatical follower of Hitler. Now he appeared to have transferred his allegiance to Heinrich Himmler.

“Tom, we’re gonna have to keep an eye on Skorzeny. God only knows what he’ll have up his sleeve with Himmler to prod him.”

“And with our move to Paris, sir, we’ll be that much closer to Germany, Himmler, and Skorzeny. Have you considered talking to Ike about staying someplace a little easier to guard?”

Smith rubbed his eyes. He would kill for a good night’s sleep. “Like New Jersey? We talked. He agrees it’s a good idea from a security standpoint, but, from a political point of view, SHAEF needs to be headquartered in Paris, at least for the time being. After all,” he said sarcastically, “it is the capital of our brave ally, France. Technically, we’ll be just outside the city and Ike will at all times be in a protective cocoon, surrounded by MP’s and other security types.”

“Are you and Ike aware that Skorzeny speaks both excellent French and English?”

“Just what I needed, Colonel, more good news.”

Granville grinned at the sarcasm. “At least there’ll be some good restaurants in Paris.”