Himmler's War

CHAPTER 14

The trouble with landing a plane in a grassy field was that you were never quite sure what you were landing on. Morgan had dropped his plane quite gently into tall grass and been taxiing comfortably when the left wheel hit a rock, dipping the nose of the Piper Cub into the ground and breaking the blades of the propeller. Save for mortal wounds to their pride, he and Snyder were unhurt. The plane, however, would be hors de combat until someone scrounged up a new propeller and the mechanics determined whether or not the structure had been damaged.

As a result, Morgan was now an unofficial aide to Whiteside. Now piloting a Jeep, he kept his ears on radio traffic while his eyes took in the countryside. The American army was moving even more slowly than before as the Germans grudgingly gave up the remnants of French territory that remained in their possession. If they were fighting like devils for occupied France, he wondered how they would fight when the army crossed the border into the Rhineland, that large portion of Germany that lay to the west of the Rhine. It had been occupied by Allied armies in 1918, when Germany had been forced to give up the Rhineland as part of the Treaty of Versailles. The Nazis had taken it back in 1936.

Worse, the closer they got to Germany, the more armor and artillery the Germans seemed to possess. It made a kind of sense since German supply lines were shortening, but there were rumors of German troop pullbacks from the Russian fronts and that made no sense to Morgan or anyone else in the 74th. Of course, what the hell did they know about grand strategy in the first place?

With the presidential election only days away, there was a lot of talk about whether Roosevelt would be reelected for the fourth time. He’d been President for twelve years and many younger soldiers really couldn’t recall anybody else in the White House, while older ones recalled Hoover and the other idiots who preceded him and, in their opinion, caused not only the Great Depression but this fucking war.

For his part, Jack recalled the anxiety his parents felt during the Depression and remembered the sight of people waiting in long lines for free bread. At first people they knew seemed embarrassed to be seen getting handouts, but they soon got over it. Handouts beat the hell out of starving.

Jack’s family had come through the Depression poorer and possibly wiser, but not economically destroyed like so many others had. Some meals had been sparse and he’d gone a long time wearing worn out and patched clothes, but they’d never been bankrupt and never had to stand in lines for handouts.

Another halt and they piled out of their vehicles. Levin walked up. “You voted, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Helluva strange question to ask while standing alongside a column of military vehicles, Jack thought.

“Didn’t it feel funny, filling out a ballot in the middle of combat? It was almost like what the Union soldiers did during the Civil War with McClellan running against Lincoln.”

“And the soldiers overwhelmingly voted for Lincoln even though it meant more war,” Jack said thoughtfully.

Most of the guys who’d been willing to admit their preferences said they were voting in favor of FDR. If the 74th was an example, Roosevelt would carry the soldiers’ vote and the war would go on. FDR had said there would have to be unconditional surrender on the part of the Germans and the Japanese, and Dewey hadn’t said much that Jack could remember on the topic.

Stick with the devil you know, dance with the girl you brought, and ride the horse you rode in on were some of the sayings and they all made a kind of sense to Jack. It was not time to change direction. Replace the President, and you had to replace the Cabinet and many other people in leadership positions, which might cause chaos in the short run, and chaos could result in people dying unnecessarily.

Whiteside’s voice came over the radio. “Morgan, Levin, get up here now. This is nasty.”

“Jesus,” Morgan said and covered his mouth so he wouldn’t puke. The bodies had been dead for several days and, despite the cooling weather, the stench was bad. A couple of them looked like they’d been chewed on by birds and animals. Levin looked like he would throw up as well.

Men, women, and children, some just infants, had all been shot. Some of the men looked like they’d been bayoneted as well and he wondered if the knife work had been performed before or after the shootings.

Jack moved down the rows of bodies and counted a little more than a hundred and they all looked like they were French.

“They weren’t Jewish,” Whiteside said. He used stick to show where some wore religious medals around their necks. Many of the women were naked, clearly signaling that they’d been raped, and some were mutilated. Maybe they’d pleaded with the Germans for their lives? Maybe they’d offered sex to protect themselves, their children, or their men? If they had, it hadn’t worked.

Colonel Stoddard had gone to the other side of the field of death and he looked as grim as they all did. “You’re bright, Morgan, who did it?”

“My money’s on the SS, sir.”

“Mine too. Okay, now why?”

Jack shuddered. “Because they’re a bunch of sadistic murdering mother-fucking lunatics who did it because Hitler told them they were a master race and then gave them guns to go and prove it.”

In the distance, a machine gun chattered. Nobody moved. It was just too normal and too far away. “Your dispassionate scientific analysis sounds about right,” Whiteside said.

“Over here!” a GI yelled and they trotted over to an area obscured by bushes. A dozen more bodies were lying on the ground, only this time they were GI’s. They’d been bound hand and foot and been shot in the back of the head. Jack remembered the time when the sniper POW at the roadblock had been shot by the friend of man he’d killed. But that had been an immediate act of passion and anger. This was cold-blooded. Surrender was futile was the lesson.

The firing in the distance picked up in intensity. It sounded like someone had found another German strong point. The crack of an eighty-eight followed.

Levin shook his head, despair etched on his face. “If this is what they do to Christians, what the hell are they doing to my Jews?” He looked at Jack and at Whiteside. “Tell me, should we negotiate with these fucking animals?”

Jack couldn’t find an answer and Whiteside turned away.

Otto Skorzeny drove the truck slowly on the wet and slippery dirt roads. A light snow had fallen and the last thing he needed was an accident, especially with this valuable and fragile cargo. As a colonel he could have let someone else drive, but this was too important to leave to another.

As agreed, a kubelwagen preceded the truck and it flew a white flag. He wondered if the Russians could see it and would they honor it if they did. It was strange to be driving towards the enemy without any sound of battle. Normally, artillery would be crashing even if the fighting was considered light. The truce was holding, but he wondered for how long.

A mile behind him a long column of trucks followed. These were filled with unarmed German soldiers who were doubtless fearful as they entered their enemy’s territory. It occurred to Skorzeny that the Soviets could win a decent prize by breaking their word and snatching up him and his cargo.

A Russian soldier emerged from the darkness. He waved a white flag and Skorzeny slowed. An American-made Jeep came into view and the soldier made the obvious signal that Skorzeny and his column were to follow.

They drove on for a couple of miles and stopped by a large field. Skorzeny grinned when he saw the neat rows of T34 tanks. A Soviet colonel appeared. He was wearing the insignia of the NKVD, which was the Russian government’s instrument of enforcement, state security, and terror. In Skorzeny’s opinion, they were the equivalent of Himmler’s Gestapo and SS.

The stone-faced colonel identified himself as Pyotr Orlofski. He looked in the back of the truck and grunted. Sergei Bunyachenko, Vlasov’s second in command, glared at him in feral fury. The others jammed in the truck either moaned or wept when they saw the Russian who grinned at them. Orlofski had metal teeth that made him look monstrous. Skorzeny thought he smelled urine. Maybe one of the prisoners had pissed himself, or maybe it was just too a long drive to hold one’s bladder. He didn’t care.

“Ah, if it isn’t Bunyachenko, my old comrade,” the Russian colonel said and spat in the man’s face. He pulled his Tokarev pistol from his holster and stuck under Bunyachenkov’s nose. Skorzeny thought the Russian was going to kill the traitor right then and there. “We have so much planned for you. The rest of your life will be quite dramatic, just not very long.” The Russian laughed and brought the butt of the Tokarev down on Bunyahenko’s nose, crunching it. Bunyachenko groaned and blood poured down his face.

Skorzeny understood what the colonel had said, but didn’t let on. He’d been improving his Russian skills but preferred to keep that fact his little secret. He did, however, agree with what Orlofski had just done. He had no sympathy for traitors.

Orlofski switched to German. “We will identify them, if you don’t mind.”

“They’re your toys now. Do whatever you want.”

The colonel thought that calling them toys was hilarious. He signaled and a squad of NKVD troops emerged. They opened the back of the truck and dragged the captives out and onto the ground. The soldiers were armed with the virtually indestructible Shpagin machine pistol that was so popular with the Red Army.

The colonel made a fuss of identifying the prisoners, comparing each prisoner with a photo, sometimes kicking them when he felt like it. Finally, he was satisfied. “Your new toys are there in the field. When you hand over Vlasov and the other traitors, the rest of the tanks will be delivered to you.”

Skorzeny nodded. He knew the terms of the agreement and didn’t need to be reminded. His drivers would pick up five hundred tanks today, another five hundred in a week, and a thousand more when Vlasov was delivered a week after that. They were the older model T34/76 and not the newer version with the 85mm gun. No matter, the T34’s would be upgraded by German technicians and driven by skilled drivers who would make mincemeat of the American army. It galled him that the German military machine could not any longer make tanks in sufficient quantities because the Yanks and Brits were so efficient at bombing the factories that made them. Still, two thousand T34 tanks would be a nasty surprise for the Allies. He’d been told that the original request for five thousand had been whittled down.

Germany had captured a number of T34’s and had turned them against the Soviets with impressive results. Unfortunately, many had been destroyed by German soldiers who only saw the Soviet-made tank and ignored the German markings. Pitting these and the remaining earlier ones against the Americans would solve that little problem.

The trucks had arrived and German soldiers, all tank drivers spilled out. They and the Russians glared at each other with mutual and undisguised hatred. Skorzeny was glad he’d insisted on their being unarmed. They formed up and moved out to the field where the tanks were parked. A few moments later the first of them rumbled down the road and soon a long column of what had been Soviet armor rolled down the dirt road towards Germany.

The Russian shook his head. “I still don’t believe it, Skorzeny. Yesterday we were killing each other and today we do business.”

“And tomorrow we’ll be killing each other again.”

Orlofski laughed savagely. “I look forward to it.”

With the Piper still grounded, Jack was assigned scouting and flank support by Whiteside. He didn’t mind. Even though it was much more dangerous, it was better than being a glorified clerk in Stoddard’s headquarters. At least he’d think that way until somebody took a shot at him. Levin told him he was nuts for putting himself in harm’s way.

Jack and the long-suffering Snyder led a small column of vehicles that, along with Morgan’s Jeep, consisted of a pair of half-tracks each carrying a squad of infantry. There was concern that the fighting would intensify once they finally reached the German border, now only a couple of miles away. They drove slowly and kept their eyes open for anything unusual. The last thing they wanted was to run into a German ambush or a mine. The area was densely forested in spots, leading some to wonder if they were driving into more bocage territory. There was a lot of forest in this area and intelligence said it extended well into Germany.

The distinctive sound of German machine-gun fire erupted to their left and from behind a line of thick shrubs. There was a pause and they could hear screams, then more shooting. Snyder radioed in their situation. Jack paused. He had a terrible premonition.

“Snyder, drive towards the shooting.”

Morgan stood and grabbed the. 30 caliber machine gun mounted on the Jeep, cursing that they didn’t have a separate gunner. The Jeep erupted onto a field. A score of German soldiers were methodically shooting at a crowd of civilians who were trapped by fences. The Germans were laughing as they used their machine pistols to casually slaughter their helpless victims, which, like the previous massacre they’d found, included women and children. The Germans turned in shock as the Jeep roared down on them from less than a hundred yards away at more than forty miles an hour.

Jack was nearly thrown from the Jeep as it crossed the uneven ground, but he held onto the machine gun and managed to opened fire, raking the nearest Germans and hurling a couple of them to the ground in bloody heaps. Other Germans turned to fire at him, while a few started to run away. Bullets slammed against the unarmored Jeep. One hit the engine and the vehicle came to a sudden halt. Jack fought for control and somehow managed to spray bullets and drop a pair of Nazis who were running towards him. The half-tracks appeared behind him, their machine guns and the infantry inside shooting down more of the enemy.

It was enough. Most of the surviving Germans threw down their weapons and raised their hands, while a handful managed to run off into the bushes. Jack jumped off the Jeep and took control of the situation. There would be no repeat of the killing of the sniper if he could do anything about it, although executing these murderers seemed like a great idea.

Some of the survivors of the massacre ran up to the Americans, hugging and kissing them, while others moaned and wailed beside their dead and wounded. Medics quickly appeared and began to treat them as best they could. An old French woman picked up a German machine pistol and was about to kill a Nazi prisoner when she was stopped.

“Tell her we’ll see the fucker hanged,” Jack told one of his men who spoke fairly fluent French. “But not until after a trial.”

The French woman began to weep. She said the Nazis had killed her husband and daughter. “Maybe we can let her pull the rope,” Snyder suggested.

“Not a bad idea.” Jack noticed the Germans’ insignia was different. They were SS, but not the usual ones. “Who the hell are these guys?”

“We are Germanic-SS,” a stone-faced enemy sergeant replied in decent English. “We are volunteers come from the Netherlands who’ve come to France to protect the Reich.”

Jack was incredulous. “You mean you guys are foreigners whose land was conquered by the krauts, and you actually volunteered to join the SS and kill innocent people?”

The Nazi stiffened. “They are enemies of the Reich and are racially impure. Their deaths are of no consequence.”

“Then yours won’t be either, you fucking prick,” Jack said.

Margarete had become an expert on airplanes. From the sound alone, she could tell what country it came from, and what model fighter or bomber it might be. She could also tell whether it was in distress or running normally, and this one was in great distress.

It was also flying very low. She jumped out of bed and put a coat over her nightgown and some boots on her bare feet. Her mother and the others had heard the sound of the laboring, lumbering bomber as well. As they ran outside, Margarete told them it was an American B17.

It roared overhead, missing the house and the barns by what seemed like only a matter of feet. They could see that one engine was blown away and another was on fire. The plane fought for altitude or a place to land safely. She wondered why the crew hadn’t bailed out. Perhaps they had. Perhaps the bomber was out of control and flying dead.

But then it lifted up and she knew there were living hands at the controls. The plane staggered one last time and dropped, tail first, into the ground at the end of their field and erupted in flames.

The explosion swept over them, staggering them. They covered their faces with their arms as the heat hit them. Small amounts of debris landed all around them.

“No bombs,” her uncle said. “Thank God.”

The explosion, however devastating, wasn’t large enough to have included bombs. Probably the bombs had already been dropped and only fuel was burning. And maybe the crew, they thought. Aunt Bertha shrieked and said there was a hand on the ground near her. Uncle Otto pulled her away, sobbing. Margarete swallowed and looked. It was indeed a hand, a left hand, and there was a wedding ring.

They ran to the wreckage, or at least as close as the flames would permit. Uncle Eric muttered a prayer. He hated the Americans but watching someone possibly burn to death was too much.

“There is nothing we can do,” he said. “Anyone in there is beyond help. We must let the fire burn itself out and then we will see about burying the dead.”

Margarete hugged her mother. The smell of burning fuel and scorching flesh emanated from the plane. Why hadn’t the pilot jumped? Perhaps he couldn’t. Maybe he’d been injured and couldn’t leave his post and was trying desperately to land it in the field? She wondered if it was the pilot’s hand she’d seen. It brought back too many memories of bombings in Berlin, memories she’d just about blocked out of her mind. Somewhere there must be a land where fourteen-year-old girls didn’t have to live with the sight of death and the stench of decaying corpses, but these were everyday occurrences in Germany. She wondered if this was what it was like in England or France. Somehow, she knew it was even worse in Russia.

“Mama, I want this to end.”

Magda hugged her fiercely. “We all do, Magpie,” she said using Margarete’s now forbidden childhood name. This time her daughter didn’t seem to mind. She just wanted to be a little girl again.

A few hundred yards away and back at the farm buildings, Victor Mastny prepared to slip back into the barn. He’d dashed out in the night afraid that the plane would come down on top of him and trap him inside. He was concerned that the Mullers and the two Varner women would see how easy it was for him to slip in and out of the barn, which might cause them to have second thoughts about confining him more securely.

The girl was looking in his direction, but he was certain that the shadows and the flickering flames would not betray him as long as he didn’t move. When the women turned, he slid back into the barn.

The 74th entered Germany south of the ancient city of Aachen, Charlemagne’s capital when he founded the Holy Roman Empire more than a thousand years earlier, and north of the rugged and wooded area called the Eifel. They estimated they had forty or fifty crow-fly miles before they hit the Rhine. If any of them cared, intelligence said they were up against the German Seventh Army under General Erich Brandenberger.

American troops entering the city of Aachen were meeting stiff resistance in this first major German city to be attacked. Troops were fighting street to street and even building to building, just like what they’d heard of Stalingrad and Leningrad. Street fighting in old stone cities was a lousy situation for tanks, and the men of the 74th were universally thankful to not be involved in it.

Even though there actually was a sign saying “Welcome to Germany,” it was quickly apparent that they’d entered a different country. For one thing, they noted that it was cleaner in Germany than in France. They’d concluded that French idea of sanitation was minimal at best, what with people pissing in the streets, while everything was tidy and clean in the Reich. Even the ruins had been swept, apparently by old men and women since the men were away in the army. The roads were better as well, paved instead of dirt.

To their surprise, they’d met no immediate resistance when they crossed the border. They’d half expected the sign saying they were entering Germany to be booby-trapped, but it wasn’t. Nor had they seen any discernible German defenses. The Nazis had fallen back to more defensible positions rather than fighting for every inch of homeland soil like Hitler would have insisted.

The first German village they entered was only a mile from the border, and many of the neat and well-maintained houses were festooned with white flags made from sheets.

“Apparently nobody thought surrender was a likelihood,” Jack said. “Otherwise the proper Germans would have had regular white flags already made up.”

Sergeant Major Rolfe chuckled. Snyder and a new lieutenant were up in the repaired plane with Snyder piloting. He had quickly developed into a qualified pilot. Snyder said it was because he was so smart, while Rolfe and Jack said it was because the plane was so easy. A second plane and another pilot were being prepped. Jack had written Jessica that he now commanded his own air force.

The white flags brought home the fact that they were conquering Germany, not liberating it, and that was reflected in the troop’s attitude. If they “accidentally” broke something, well, tough shit. They had freed the French and were now going to punish the Nazis, assuming of course, that any Nazis could be found. When the villagers emerged, they told them the Nazis had all gone, which the Americans found laughable, especially since a number of civilians glared at them with unbridled hate in their eyes. Blank spaces on walls showed where pictures of either the late Hitler or his successor, Himmler, had once been displayed and had been prudently taken down. A handful of young men on crutches or missing limbs, or both, watched them stonily. These were former Wehrmacht and would be watched. They had been knocked out of the war because of their wounds, but they had not surrendered. Jack wondered how he’d feel seeing enemy soldiers in his home town, and decided he wouldn’t be happy at all. He didn’t sympathize with the krauts, but he thought he did understand them.

Still, some of the people looked happy to see the Americans, admitting that they were exhausted by the war and wished the killing to end. They’d supported Hitler when he’d solved Germany’s economic woes, but, when questioned, solemnly said that they’d never supported his conquests and couldn’t believe what was said about the Jews.

“Bullshit,” Levin said. “They’re all Nazi motherfuckers. The Russians are doing it right, giving them back just what they did in the Soviet Union.”

It was common knowledge that the Reds were retaliating for the atrocities committed by the Nazis when they’d conquered large sections of the Soviet Union. They were taking a savage vengeance-looting, killing and raping their way west. Or at least they had been. There were more and more rumors that the Soviets had slowed, if not stopped.

Denying their Nazi affiliations didn’t save the German civilians from having their houses, foodstuffs, and liquor taken by the Americans as they bivouacked for the night. Stoddard wouldn’t permit any heavy looting or the abuse of women, but chickens, eggs, and other delectables managed to make it to GI dinners. It amused them to see the displaced Germans carrying bags of extra clothes on their backs as they looked for a place to spend the night. For all Jack cared, the krauts could sleep in piles of barnyard shit. They’d get their houses back, and reasonably intact, when the regiment moved on, which he felt was more than they deserved.

That night and for the first time since he’d landed in Normandy, Jack actually slept in a bed. Ironically, it was so comfortable he tossed and turned for much of the night. Still, he loved the feeling. Even better, the house he and several other officers had taken over actually had indoor plumbing, and they’d taken turns wallowing in the tub adjacent to the toilet. Carter suggested weighing one’s self before bathing and then right after to see how much the dirt on their skins weighed. Carter was told to go screw himself.

Not having to use a latrine tent or relieve oneself outdoors was another almost forgotten civilized pleasure. Snow had fallen and lightly covered the ground. Soon enough they’d have to tramp through it to squat over a disgusting latrine trench, but this night was a wonderful reprieve.

Morgan was enjoying a second cup of coffee when a PFC told him Colonel Stoddard wanted to see him ASAP. He took a couple of quick swallows and trotted to the mayor’s house, now Stoddard’s HQ.

“Jack, one of the townspeople in this little piece of heaven whispered to me that there’s a work camp just outside of here, maybe a mile away.”

“Jesus, is a work camp the same as a death camp, sir?”

Stoddard nodded grimly. “That’s what you’re going to find out. Take an infantry platoon and a couple of Carter’s tanks and see.”

Once again they smelled death before they reached it. As before, even the cold air couldn’t mask it. A dozen decrepit wooden barracks were surrounded by barbed wire forming a rectangle. Watchtowers were at each corner and were manned by guards who looked astonished at the sight of the approaching American column. Apparently, the guards were unaware of the American presence down the road. So much for Teutonic efficiency, thought Morgan.

German guards in one of towers opened up with a machine gun and were blown to pieces by a 75mm shell from the lead Sherman. German soldiers spilled out of a barracks building and what looked like a headquarters. They saw the American column and ran towards the rear of the camp where another gate was quickly opened, allowing them to run through and away.

“Shoot them,” Jack yelled. Cannon and machine gun fire cut down many of them, but a few managed to escape. Good riddance, Jack thought.

A handful of prisoners were taken and they wore the skull and crossbones insignia on their caps. Jack had heard that these the special units assigned to run concentration camps and were especially cruel. He found it satisfying that most of them looked frightened. Some of their Nazi prisoners were women guards, exceedingly hard looking and ugly women, but females nonetheless.

“Come here, Captain,” yelled a sergeant as he exited a barracks building. He turned and threw up against the barracks wall.

Jack entered the barracks and walked into a hell dimly lit by light coming through holes in the walls. Scores of eyes stared at him from stark benches. They were shapeless and in rags and it took him a few moments to realize they were women. An emaciated hand reached out for him and touched his uniform. Without thinking, he recoiled and the woman cringed as if expecting to be beaten.

“Who are you?” came a voice, timid and weak.

“American,” he said softly.

There was silence, then gasps and sobs. “You’ve come?”

“Yes.” He didn’t know what else to say.

There must have been a hundred women jammed into the small building. Some of them stirred and got up. They lurched hesitantly to the door. Jack let them pass and go out into the fresh air. It was too cold for their rags to be much use against the weather, but being able to step outside seemed worth it to them.

Several women remained on the benches. Jack checked them. A couple of them were dead and the others might be dying. More soldiers had entered the barracks and were looking around. He found a radio man who put him in contact with Stoddard.

“How is it, son?”

“Worse than you can begin to imagine, sir. We need medics, food, blankets, and, oh yeah, if you’ve got a correspondent or two hanging around send them here to take some pictures.”

At that point, Jack went out and looked at the liberated women who were staring at the open gate and the empty watchtowers. Some of the GI’s had found blankets and given them to the women to cover their nakedness and help warm them.

Sergeant Major Rolfe emerged from the headquarters building. “All gone, Captain, but you’re not going to believe this.”

“Try me.”

“We’re the 74th Armored, right. Well, this is work camp number seventy-four. Quite a coincidence, huh, sir?”

“Yeah,” Jack admitted. “But it does make me wonder how the hell many of these snake pits there are.”