Himmler's War

CHAPTER 25

“Business before pleasure,” Victor proclaimed while the two Latvians laughed. Magda and Margarete lay on the ground by the house where they’d been overwhelmed before they could defend themselves. They were bound hand and foot by ropes from the barn. Their assailants did not bother with gags. Who would hear their screams? In fact, Victor and the others wanted to hear them scream.

Uncle Eric’s body had been dragged from the barn. He was clearly dead, but Bertha was breathing and moaning. Mastny wondered how long that would last. He didn’t care. The German bitch deserved to die. The other two women were guilty but less so. Still, their punishment would be severe.

First they put out the fires in the smoke pots in the barn. Even though fires were common, attracting unwanted attention made no sense. Then they ransacked the house. The sounds of furniture being smashed and walls being broken into carried down to Magda and Margarete. Mother and daughter lay side by side on the ground, still not quite comprehending the terrible turn of events.

The two women wiggled close to each other and tried to undo each other’s bonds to no avail. Margarete began to cry. “Will he kill us?”

Even though there were three men, it was Mastny who was clearly in charge. Magda had no idea what lay before them. Perhaps it would only be rape, which they could survive as so many thousands of German women were learning to their shame and agony.

“I don’t know,” she said to her daughter. They had discussed the terrible fate befalling German women who fell into the hands of the Russians, but they never believed it could happen in the gentle lands east of the Rhine. Magda, however, had told her daughter that she should endure an assault and not fight. One could recover from rape, at least physically, but not from death or mutilation.

Shots rang out from inside the house. The two women looked at each other in shock. A few moments later, Mastny walked out carrying a small bag. He held it up to them.

“I’m disappointed. This is all you people had in the way of jewelry and foreign money? Deutschmarks are going to be useless except to wipe your ass with when this war is over. Why didn’t the Mullers have any English or American money, or even Swiss?” He cackled. “Of course. They were good little Nazis, weren’t they? They put their faith in Hitler and look what it got them.”

He set the sack on the ground. “At least I won’t have to share this with those two fools.”

Magda and Margarete stared at him in horror. The gunshots were Mastny executing his two companions.

Mastny took out a large kitchen knife. “Now, this is going to be very simple. If either of you resists, I will use this knife to cut off the nose of the other one. We are going to do it in the dirt because you are German swine and a fuck in the dirt is all you are good for.”

With that, he carefully sliced Magda’s clothes off. He stared at her hungrily for a long moment and then stroked her breasts and thighs. He ignored the fact that she didn’t respond, merely stared at a point above him while Margarete sobbed and turned away so that she didn’t have to watch her mother being violated.

Mastny’s voice was husky with excitement. “Excellent. I’d fuck the old lady first, but she’s unconscious and would probably never realize it.” He knelt between Magda’s thighs and pushed them apart. “You don’t have to cooperate. Just lie there and do nothing like all German women do when they fuck.”

He mounted her and thrust inside her. Magda bit back a scream from the suddenness and pain of the assault. She would give him no reason to hurt her daughter.

Finished with Magda, he went to the barn to get his other possessions, the stolen goods he and the others had buried. “Yes,” he said to the women. “We took these from refugees and you were too stupid to realize what was happening underneath you noses.”

He looked down on Margarete. Her eyes were closed and she was crying. He was aroused again. “Please take me again,” pleaded Magda. “Just don’t hurt my daughter. She’s only a child.”

“Shut up, cow,” he said and slapped her several times across the face. Again the knife cut through clothing until Margarete was naked. Her eyes remained closed tightly as if willing this to go away. Mastny went a little slower with Margarete, caressing her and fondling her before finally pushing his way inside her. She screamed, and he laughed.

Gasping and grinning, he lurched to his feet and arranged his clothing. He was about to say something when his skull exploded in mist of gray and red. He fell backwards and lay still.

Two hundred yards away, Alfie Swann lowered the Mauser he’d taken so long ago. “Damn good shot if I do say so.” He wouldn’t admit that he’d aimed for the chest and the shot had ridden up to the skull. He’d been lucky. He could have missed altogether.

The others grunted. They had no sympathy for Germans, but the man Alfie’d just killed was obviously committing rape and was about to commit murder.

They walked slowly forward to where the two women lay huddled and crying. Their nakedness did not arouse the three men. The women were dirty and bleeding.

“We won’t hurt you,” Rosenfeld said in German. He took Mastny’s knife and cut their bonds. It was pathetic the way they immediately tried to cover themselves with the remnants of their clothing.

Magda was the first to recover her wits. She staggered to her feet. “Who are you?” she gasped.

The three men looked at each other. Alfie nodded. It was time to take a chance. Did they have a choice? The women had seen them and the only alternative was to kill them as well.

“Do you speak English?” Alfie asked. When Magda said yes, he continued. “These two are Jewish escapees from the slaughter houses and I am an escaped British POW.”

“Then you are in grave danger, aren’t you?” Magda said. She was not surprised. There were so many stray people wandering about. “If the Gestapo or the army catch you, you’ll be lucky to be shot.”

“Yes.”

Margarete had regained her feet as well as some of her emotional poise. Magda put her arms around the weeping girl. Margarete’s lip was bleeding from where she had bit down and there was blood on her thighs.

“Then you will stay with us,” Magda said. “We had three laborers who tried to kill us and they are dead. Now we have three men who saved us. We will keep you here and pretend you are the other three. Slave laborers are faceless so one will notice. You can stay as long as you wish. Perhaps the Americans will be here soon, perhaps not. At any rate, you’ll be safe. And so will we.”

Alfie looked at his companions. Staying with the two women was perfect. Nobody would be looking for them and, as laborers, they would be invisible. The two Jews took off their jackets and handed them to Magda who wrapped them around herself and her daughter.

Alfie laughed grimly. “Well then, I suppose you had better find some clothing and clean up while my friends and I bury the dead.”

“There are two bodies in the house,” Magda said.

Alfie acknowledged the simple statement, and the other two men went inside to remove the corpses. “The three who attacked you will be buried out in a field. Your family members we’ll bury with dignity when you are ready, but please make it soon.” He looked in the sky. The sky was clouding up and he could almost smell the rain.

A fine mist had begun to cover the ground and visibility was dropping. It was Nazi weather once again. Somewhere out in front of the American lines a German army had been rendered invisible. Morgan had read the reports and heard comments from both fighters and recon planes. A mighty host of German infantry and armor was heading their way.

The 74th Armored Regiment was across the Rhine and dug in a couple of miles east of the river. More men, tanks, and supplies continued to pour across the pontoon bridges that connected the two sides. Jeb’s Pershing tanks had crossed with little difficulty, although it had been a little nerve-wracking to see the mighty tanks rumbling across the shaking and shifting pontoons. Only inches on either side kept the tanks from sliding off the unstable bridge and into the river. Jeb was annoyed that they hadn’t seen any real action yet while the rest of the regiment had sustained serious casualties both in the crossing and climbing the hills where the Germans were dug in.

“They are out there and they are coming,” Stoddard said grimly. “We are going to live up to my nickname and dig in and make stockades like we’ve never done before. God only knows when the weather will break and our planes can begin killing the krauts again. In the meantime, we’re going to fight them all by our lonesomes.”

Jeb Carter raised his hand like a kid wanting to go the bathroom. “What you’re saying is that they could be on our asses before we even know it.”

“Correct and astute as always, Captain,” Stoddard replied. “Any way we can prevent it?”

“Obviously we’ve got to send out patrols and hope they don’t get overrun before they can signal back.”

“That’s being done, Captain.”

“Great, sir, but I’d like to take it a step farther. The krauts will doubtless come down the clear land south of that fairly large stand of woods to our left. I want to send my tanks through the woods and into a position where they can take the Germans in either the flank or the rear.”

Jack and Carter had taken a Jeep through the clear ground as well as the woods to their front the day before and when the weather was better. There were dirt paths snaking through the trees and both were confident that the Pershings could make it, stay hidden, and hit the Germans hard. Nor did they think the Germans would try to bull their own way through the forest. There was no need for them to do that and it would only slow them down. Speed was of the essence for the Germans. The sky could clear at any moment.

“Sir,” said Jack. “We have maybe forty Shermans and a dozen tank destroyers left and we are digging in to let the earth provide additional protection for their thin armor. The Shermans all have either the better guns or flamethrowers and could give German armor an unpleasant surprise, especially if Jeb attacks their rear.”

“That and the tank destroyers and our 105mm guns along with the infantry would help,” Jeb added.

In addition to their own armor, the regiment had been reinforced by several battalions from the 116th Infantry Division. That unit had been badly mauled crossing the Rhine and would not be functioning as a division for a while.

Stoddard smiled grimly. “Then let’s make it happen, gentlemen, and that includes you, Carter.”

“Sir,” said Morgan, “does that mean I get to fly and try to find them?”

“It does not. At this time you will be more useful helping with the defenses. We have other men who can fly those dinky little planes and besides, there ain’t much to see right now. Former air force Captain, you just became an infantry officer. Congratulations.”

Muddy, dirty, filthy, wet, hungry and discouraged. All these terms described Volkmar Detloff as he trudged eastward accompanied by thousands of other Volkssturm soldiers and a sprinkling of totally mad SS types who actually thought they could win the war.

He no longer had any illusions. He was a coward and his men hated him. His new platoon was as bad as his first. When Colonel Schurmer told him he’d never command troops again he hadn’t taken into consideration the Reich’s desperate need for officers of any kind. Ergo, Volkmar once again commanded a platoon of old men and boys far younger than he.

Rain and snot dribbled from his nose and he wiped them with his sleeve. Somewhere up front hundreds of German tanks were approaching the American defenses. The infantry was supposed to accompany the tanks, but no one had considered the fact that there were too few trucks to transport the infantry. Many of the trucks the army had possessed had been pulverized by the American planes. Tramping through the mud, the infantry were simply incapable of keeping up with the armor.

Thankfully, no planes were overhead this day. Volkmar had seen enough of burned trucks and charred pieces of bodies to last a lifetime. A lifetime, he giggled nearly hysterically. His own lifetime could end any second now.

The German army was a mob. Not only had so many been killed by the Americans before even reaching the front, but large numbers of older men had simply collapsed and refused to move on. At first he’d been inclined to call them cowards, but many were older than his father and they were simply too exhausted to move. When they found them, SS soldiers shot them in the back of the head and called them traitors.

No, Volkmar thought, they were not traitors. They were simply old men who were poorly fed, inadequately clothed, and so tired they were incapable of moving. Was this the Reich he’d been supporting? Something was wrong. Worse, in his opinion, so many soldiers in the so-called German army weren’t German at all. Instead, they were conscripts from various nations and whose loyalty was dubious at best.

Any unit coherence had also disappeared. Instead of a platoon, Volkmar was now followed by more than a hundred dispirited Volkssturm who had no idea who he was, only that he was an officer and he was taking them in some direction.

In the distance to his front, Volkmar could hear the sounds of cannon firing. He shivered. In a while he and the others around him would close up on the tanks and attack the Americans. Volkmar was sure he would piss himself again. This time, he didn’t care.

Joachim Pieper was a veteran of the war against the Soviets and, at thirty, commanded an ad hoc mixed corps of infantry and armor. His force was supposed to penetrate the American defenses, reach the Rhine, and then turn north, cutting off the enemy defenders. Other units had similar assignments. With luck and skill they would defeat the Amis and take many prisoners.

He initially commanded two hundred and fifty tanks and an infantry brigade. He now had only maybe half that many tanks thanks to the American planes. God only knew how many infantry still followed him. They were a mixed bag of SS, regular army, and Volkssturm, and he didn’t think the Volkssturm were capable of fighting. His armor was first rate, but many of the crews were inexperienced and had never worked together. It was a recipe for disaster, but he was hell bent on avoiding that. While he preferred to maneuver and attack simultaneously from several sides, his men’s lack of experience would not permit him that luxury. No, he had chosen the simplest way and would attack straight on and smash his way to the river. They would endure heavy casualties for victory, but that was a blood price that had to be paid if the Americans were to be driven to the negotiating table.

In an attempt to reach his goal as soon as possible, Pieper’s tanks had outpaced his infantry. It was unorthodox, but he had to hit his target before the sky cleared and the bombs began to fall anew. He particularly dreaded napalm. Fire from the sky had turned so many of his Panthers and T34’s into burning pyres. If the weather turned and cleared, he might quickly find himself without any tanks at all.

Pieper opened the turret hatch of his Panther. He’d been offered a repainted T34 but had rejected it contemptuously. He would command a German tank, not a fucking piece of Russian shit. He had named the tank Sigurd after his wife, who’d tersely informed him in a letter that she didn’t necessarily consider it a compliment. Pieper thought it was funny.

His driver looked up from his own hatch. “Any idea where we are, General?”

Pieper grinned. The driver was a good man who had served with him before. “Heading right towards the enemy and that’s all that matters.”

“Wonderful,” his driver muttered and Pieper laughed. Was there anything better than fighting a war?

Muffled by the rain, he heard the sound of heavy weapons followed by the chatter of machine guns. Somebody had already made contact. He closed the hatch. No sense being a fool and getting killed by a sniper or a piece of shrapnel. They would find the Americans soon enough, maybe in minutes.

Carter’s twelve heavy Pershing tanks were lined up along the dirt road a couple of hundred yards inside the forest. They would have been invisible even on a sunny day. He’d sent out scouts with walkie-talkies but had heard nothing from them. In the distance, he could hear the rumblings of explosions. The fighting had begun.

“Damn it,” he muttered. Finally, the scouts came running back with the info that the German army was passing them and that there was a very large number of tanks. How many, they couldn’t be sure because of the crappy visibility.

“Time to earn our pay,” Carter muttered. He gave the order to move out, and the column slowly snaked its way out of the woods along paths he and Morgan had marked out with white tape on stakes the day before.

In short order they were in an open field. Carter arrayed his tanks in a line and they rumbled forward very slowly. He did not want to rear end the German army.

Shapes began to appear in front of him. Men, and they were hunched over and moving in the same direction as his tanks. Jeb keyed his radio. “We’re gonna hit the kraut infantry. Use machine guns if you have to, but not our main guns. We save those for their tanks.”

The sound of the approaching American tanks awoke the German infantry to their peril and they turned to confront the apparitions emerging from the mist. Some were puzzled. Were these more German tanks? Others saw the strange shapes and the American markings and reacted by either running or shooting. An old man leveled a panzerfaust, but a burst from a machine gun killed him. Other Pershings cut loose with their machine guns and German infantry began to drop by the score. “Kill them and keep moving,” Jeb ordered. “Don’t take chances.”

He thought he could hear screams from the outside and over the sound of his engines but wasn’t sure. He felt his tank run over something. Christ, was that a person?

Large shapes were dimly visible. German tanks. But so damn many of them, Carter thought. What the hell have I gotten myself into?

“Hit them in the rear. Kill them quickly.”

Pieper was confused. What the devil was the source of the automatic weapons fire from his rear? What Volkssturm asshole had begun shooting his own men? Ah well, it was inevitable in such crummy fighting conditions.

At the same time his mind registered the sound of cannon fire also coming from his rear, the Panther to his left exploded. A second burst into flames, and then a third.

“Turn, turn,” he ordered into his radio. “The goddamned Americans have tanks in our rear.”

He spun his tank on its own axis to face the new threat. There, he saw one. It was bigger than any American tank he’d seen before and quickly identified it as a Pershing. There’d been rumors that the Amis had some in the area and they’d just been confirmed.

Several more Panthers and T34’s exploded or started belching smoke before his men could find targets and respond. The American main gun was a killer. The attack on the American defenses would have to wait until this new threat was taken care of.

Carter was appalled. What kind of hornet’s nest had he disturbed? The weather seemed to be lifting slightly and he could see maybe a quarter of a mile. More than a dozen German tanks were burning, but what looked like every tank in the whole damned German army was turning and driving in his direction. They were already within almost point blank range and this was going to turn into a street fight.

Reports came in that several of his Pershings were destroyed and there seemed to be at least fifty Panthers or T34’s headed in his direction.

“Fall back,” he ordered. They had done their bit to hurt the Germans. Now they had to get the hell out of danger. Suicide was not on his agenda. If they got back into the woods, maybe they could hide out.

His tank lurched hard, slamming him against the turret. “Won’t move, sir,” said his driver. “I think something hit a tread.”

“Everybody out,” Jeb yelled just as a half dozen shells from German guns hit his tank and turned it and everyone inside into cinders.

They could hear the fighting but not see it. Morgan leaned on the wall of the trench and tried to will himself to see. Something was indeed coming, but it wasn’t tanks. Infantry, and thanks to the mist, they were only about a hundred yards away.

“Open fire,” he yelled redundantly as everyone in the line was already shooting. Morgan put his submachine gun on the dirt wall and fired into the crowd. It was difficult to miss and men fell, but still more came in behind them.

The few strands of barb wire did little to stop the German horde and they swarmed over it and towards the American trenches.

“Bayonets,” someone yelled. Shit, thought Morgan, I don’t even have a bayonet. A screaming German was right in front of him. Jack fired a burst and the man fell back only to be replaced by another kraut. This one too went down and another ran at him. Jack pulled the trigger. Empty. He fumbled frantically to change the clip. Something slammed into his shoulder and spun him around. He checked and found that he wasn’t shot, but his bad shoulder had been hurt again. A German jumped into the trench and started clawing at him with his bare hands. Jack tried to fight him off but his left arm wouldn’t respond.

Sergeant Major Rolfe pushed Jack aside and shot the German in the head only to be gunned down himself by another. Jack took Rolfe’s rifle and tried to fire with one hand. He hit nothing and screamed as the pain overwhelmed him.

Feeney and Snyder appeared beside him, shooting and killing. Jack pulled his pistol and shot another German in the face. He pointed the . 45 at another who threw down his rifle and raised his hands. “Kamerad,” he screamed. Others began to scream the same thing and they too dropped their weapons and held up their arms.

All around them, German soldiers were surrendering. Not only that, the sun was coming out. He paled. There were scores of German tanks approaching his position.

Overhead, Phips dropped through the clouds in his Piper and saw the German tanks heading west. He radioed in his position and gave a rough estimate of their numbers, admitting that there were so many that a proper count was impossible. Finally, he exulted, he was doing something useful.

All the American planes in the world, or so it seemed, had earlier been arrayed on landing strips for this very moment. In anticipation of the clearing weather pushing in from the west, they’d taken off and had been circling overhead, hoping to God that they’d find targets before they ran out of gas.

Even as he watched, the clouds began to part. It was like a curtain lifting on the set of an epic play with him as a front row audience of one.

Time to get out of the way, he thought, and climbed to ten thousand feet. He laughed as he saw literally hundreds of American fighter-bombers converging on his position. He whooped with glee as they began their drops through the fading curtain of fog.

Joachim Pieper could also see his shadow. More precisely he could see the shadow of his tank, Sigurd, on the ground. Overhead they could hear the growl and whine of vast numbers of American planes. In a moment they would be through the rising cloud level and rain hell on what was left of his Panzers.

While he was annihilating the American tanks in his rear, his infantry had gone ahead and tried to storm the American lines. He could see the ground covered with their dead. At least they’d died more bravely than he’d suspected they could. It appeared that they’d made some penetration in the American defenses, but he could hear enemy automatic weapons firing. No, the Volkssturm and the few SS troops would not carry the day. They needed his armor.

He opened his hatch and looked around. Fewer than a score of tanks remained in his command. He looked ahead and squinted at something reflecting in the distance. Was that the Rhine? Was he that close to success?

A plane screamed low overhead and dropped a bomb. Two of his remaining tanks were engulfed in a sea of napalm. He paled as reality sank in. His tanks could not go forward. He had too few of them, but still, he could not stand still or retreat. The American planes would kill them all.

Another tank burst into flames. “Goodbye Sigurd,” he said, hoping he was saying farewell to his tank and not to his wife.

Pieper gave the order and his men climbed out of their remaining tanks and began to run to the rear. Maybe, just maybe, the American planes would pleasure themselves by shooting up abandoned German armor.

He’d gone only a few yards when a napalm bomb detonated nearby and consumed him in a billowing cloud of flame.