Under False Flags

by Steve Anderson

  The German didn’t have to know details. He only had to imagine the ghastly deeds his black propaganda wanted him to. Lett tightened up at the prospect, cocking his arms close to him. Frings’ neck had bulged red, thick veins pulsing.

  Frings jumped at Lett, knocking him back and holding him down, his knees digging into Lett’s armpits. Lett could smell stale tobacco and that metallic reek of despair. Frings clenched his thick hands around Lett’s neck and started to squeeze, grimacing, panting, the drool slinging out in strings.

  “This, it’s exactly what they . . . want you to do,” Lett wheezed.

  Frings sucked in air, held his breath. He let go of Lett’s neck, released his breath with a pop, and crawled off of Lett. “So many medals I’ll get . . .”

  “That’s right.”

  Lett sat up, catching his breath. Frings sat back, catching his. Minutes passed.

  Frings sighed. “We once sunk an LST with GIs aboard,” he said. “No survivors. This was not the only time.”

  “You know how many young Landser I’ve put out of their misery? Just boys, too. You do not want to know.”

  They shared a grim smile. Frings raised an imaginary beer mug, with a closed palm. Lett did the same, but with fingers out. His beer was a bottle.

  Frings chuckled. “A beautiful city, Köln. Did you have a nice time?”

  “Just lovely. The Rhine, it runs right along Old Town,” Lett said.

  “Indeed. So let’s drink to that.”

  They pretended to drink.

  Lett tried more of his German on Frings. Frings grinned. He spoke in German to Lett, laying on the Kölsch dialect. Lett had to chuckle—from continents and probably centuries away, their dialects sounded similar enough in spurts.

  “Your German is terrible,” Lett said.

  “Yours is not better.”

  They laughed. It was probably too loud. Their smiles faded. They sat in silence, trading thousand-yard stares.

  “Me, I got to thinking that maybe the war would be over by Christmas. What a sap,” Lett said.

  “As in your Hollywood movie, yes? You Amis so much like to dream. Your life there keeps you dreaming too much.”

  “We all dream, in our own ways.”

  Frings nodded. “Listen. I’m sorry I attacked you just now.”

  “It’s understandable.”

  “Yes.” Frings’ eyes flashed in the dim light. “I’m trying to trust you, but really I wonder if I should just shoot you and move on.”

  “Maybe. We might be better off,” Lett said.

  Each should have laughed again. They could only shrug.

  In the morning, more snow fell and helped cover the trench hut’s log roof, making it look like any other snow drift. As Lett sat on a crate keeping watch, his legs began to cramp and his toes went numb. Worries of trench foot and frostbite hounded him again. He pulled off his boots and rubbed at his toes, squeezing and pulling them. Frings had woken and sat up, watching Lett work away.

  “I have to get out of here,” Lett said. “I don’t care how risky it is.”

  “I think it’s time,” Frings said.

  They gathered their gear and combed through it, discarding what they didn’t need. Lett had a plan, but he hadn’t told Frings. The unspoken agreement between them had become clear: They would stay together until it didn’t help either anymore.

  They heard distant artillery, like a drum corps gone mad. They heard shouts from somewhere in the forest. Frings grabbed his Thompson gun and Lett his Colt, his pulse thumping. He shoved his feet into his already cold boots.

  The shouts grew closer.

  Lett and Frings peered out, their chests pressed to the log wall. They heard the shush-shush of footsteps in snow, the rustling of brushed branches. They heard a shriek, right outside. Figures appeared in the clearing, darkened against the snow. Lett and Frings scanned the silhouettes for telltale contours, their eyes adjusting.

  Six German guards in a mishmash of uniforms herded about twenty American POWs into the clearing.

  Lett saw Tom Godfrey among them, exhausted, grimy. He didn’t even have head cover. “Oh, God,” Lett muttered.

  “You know them?” Frings said.

  “One.”

  The POWs bunched up. They kept Godfrey in the middle. Lett didn’t see rank insignia on Godfrey. He had on a GI overcoat. Were they hiding that he was an officer?

  The German guards kept the POWs in a tight group, stomping and pointing their guns. Haggard and panicked, the guards chugged from flasks and canteens, chomped on cigarette butts.

  The battles sounded closer. A few more Germans rushed into the clearing and shouted orders as the POWs screamed back, pointing in rage and waving fists.

  The German guards argued, pointing their guns at each other.

  Godfrey and the POWs gathered around tight, in a huddle. They faced the guards. The guards howled warnings at the POWs, some kneeling to aim their guns.

  Godfrey yelled “go!” and the POWs rushed the guards.

  The guards fired.

  “Tom!” Lett shouted.

  The shots flung snow and splintered the roof logs as Lett and Frings ducked.

  An immense heat rose up through Lett, and he glared at Frings with his scowl. It made Frings stand back. Lett grabbed the Colt with both hands and rushed the exit. Frings grabbed Lett by the calves and pulled him back, pinning him to the ground cover.

  Outside, the shots slowed to periodic pops.

  Silence returned.

  Frings sat up on a crate and looked out, wiping away snow and wood shards. Lett came over to look. The Germans had moved on. Out in the clearing lay the murdered POWs, looking like so many snow angels if it wasn’t for the blood and claws for hands.

  Tom Godfrey lay on his stomach, his eyes still open and directed right at them.

  ***

  In Heloise’s Stromville cellar, the incoming artillery screeched on and they didn’t even know whose it was anymore. Heloise hugged her father. She didn’t know what else to do. She had tried everything to keep this war from her home, even praying, but no one was listening. Shells pounded the world above them. The cellar rocked and shook, sending so much thick dust and slivers down that she feared the beams themselves were coming apart. It wasn’t a crazy thought. She could hear the rafters crack and split under the pressure.

  One neighbor, then another couldn’t take it. They ran screaming up the cellar stairs and out. A whole family, the Boudains, followed and shook off Heloise’s and others’ grabs at their coats. The neighbor boy Ruben used the diversion to make a dash for it, too, but her father Jean tripped him and Heloise grabbed young Ruben. She hugged him while her father whispered to him that it was okay to cry.

  After the shelling had stopped, Heloise went upstairs. Opening the cellar door brought in a wash of open morning daylight, dust and grit and smoke. The other half of their building lay in rubble. Her room was gone, collapsed onto itself, the dresser smashed. Her father wanted a look, but she pushed him back. He seized her by both arms and gave her a stern glance—the first she’d seen from him since before her mother had died.

  “You let me go up,” Jean said. “I’ve seen this before. So has your grandfather. And his. So you let me go.” His old arms shook, but he held her even tighter.

  Heloise let him out. Hand in hand, they stepped over debris and entered the street.

  Their village was a smoldering terra of rubble drifts and fires and black smoke whirling. Birds flew low and wildly, as if crazed. Animals wandered, domestic and farm. Neighbors wandered by, some burnt with hair gone, others cut all over, all coated with dust and soot. Heloise touched them as they passed. How could she console them? What was there to say? No one was listening.

  Her stomach churned, the cramps stabbing at her. Her father squeezed her hand, held her up. One lamppost still stood, she saw. She staggered over to it and they used it for support. She couldn’t see down the road into the snowy valley. A heap of rubble blocked her view.

&nbs
p; Where was her Wendell? she thought. What have they done with him now? What kind of a sick world was this?

  “He’ll come back, dear, he will,” her father whispered into her ear.

  ***

  Morning, December 18: Lett and Frings waited for their chance to make their break. Outside, enough snow had settled into the folds and crevices of the corpses to make them look like underbrush. The frozen stiff that was Tom Godfrey had become just another white drift.

  Lett hadn’t spoken much since Frings kept him from rushing out. Frings used the silence to gauge the location of faraway battles. “The action moves east now,” Frings said. “We wait a little longer. Then we go. All right?”

  “Sure,” Lett said. He felt like talking, suddenly. He told Frings about Heloise, about how she waited for him. He showed Frings her photo.

  “Pretty Belgian girl,” Frings said. “Lucky man.”

  Lett hadn’t told Frings where she lived, or her name, and Frings didn’t ask. But Lett told this stranger things he had only told Heloise:

  “I saved Tom Godfrey’s life. I guess you could call it that. We were clearing this street. Tom lost it. Wailing like a widow. He wouldn’t be right out there now if it wasn’t for me,” Lett said.

  Frings stared at Lett with one eye screwed up in pain. “I killed two of your fellow soldiers at a crossroads. Personally. I did that.”

  “The crossroads, near St. Goff.”

  Frings nodded. “Yep. And I did not take off this American uniform to do so.” He tugged at his US Army overcoat. “So my jeep comrades? They only followed my example. That’s why they fired at you.”

  “What the hell’s a sailor doing here anyway?” Lett said.

  “Lost. I can tell you. I grew up on a river. I’m from a city once called Cologne. Perhaps you know it?”

  An ache rose up Lett’s his throat, chest. He tried to swallow down the grief, but it only swelled hot. “Oh. I get you now.”

  “I could fight more on the land,” Frings said. “Kill more. It had nothing to do with the Fatherland. I wanted to kill. Battles at sea, that is another story of horror you do not want to hear.”

  “We dogfaces got our own horror. In decades from now, I’m sure they’ll say we Joes were all noble, every one of us grimy but patriotic cherubs. Because we won a war. Back home they already do think it, thanks to the publicity teams, the ads, correspondents, censors. I’m not buying it. If we have to come here and fight to do away with your Hitler and the sorry mess he created, then people ought to know just how much the effort sucks all our souls. That way, maybe no one will try a war again.” Lett grunted. “Oh, now I don’t doubt that our fight, this Allied Crusade of ours will prove to be worth something. Fighting the likes of you. You will probably turn out to have been worse than we thought, worse than the Japs even, and with more horrid secrets. We’ll find out, once we get into your Germany.”

  Frings stared into his lap, his hands loose, limp. He shook his head, but he wasn’t disagreeing.

  “We should be over here,” Lett said. “I’m just not the guy to do it anymore. I did my bit. If I do any more, I’m done for. But with my girl, I can be someone else. That’s what she tells me.”

  “She is a smart one, your girl.” Frings pushed off his American overcoat and field jacket and pulled off his German tunic. He had a GI sweater on underneath. He tossed his Navy uniform to a corner. He reached into his overcoat. He pulled out papers. Photos. They were smoke-damaged, burnt on corners and larger, frame-sized, showing crease lines from folding. He held them up. One was of a slight but cute woman with dark hair. It had to be his wife. Another, of two young daughters who had Frings’ fuller face and almost could be twins. In the third, Frings posed with his wife and daughters as just babies. Frings didn’t give names, and Lett didn’t ask. Frings fired up his lighter. One by one, he fed his photos into the flame. He looked away as he did so, unable to see them burning up. The embers sprinkled the ground cover as ashes.

  “My wife left me. My parents died in air raids. My sister died. My wife fled Cologne with my girls. She was afraid of the air raids. Afraid of being afraid. I wasn’t there.” Frings yanked out his pipe; he jammed it back in between teeth. “She left me for a Nazi pig. But it’s not the pig’s fault. Everyone loves pork. Pork is a comfort.”

  “I’m sorry. You could have kept the photos.”

  “No. I cannot. I can’t carry anything suspicious.”

  “I guess not,” Lett said.

  “So. What are we talking about here?” Frings said.

  “You have nothing left in Cologne,” Lett said.

  “Cologne has nothing left in Cologne.”

  “And I got nothing stateside. We’re already on the lam.”

  “So? We break the chain of this goddamned gear-machine.”

  “Because it’s a swindle. Let someone else lick their shiny boots. Bloody their own, I say.”

  “Exactly. This is what I am thinking.”

  “So let’s make it official-like.”

  They crawled out of the trench hut, scanning the forest. They stood. Out in the clearing, they stared down at the American POW corpses buried under drifted snow and ice. One German lay there too. Caught in a crossfire? Tried to stop it? No one would ever know.

  The contour of Tom Godfrey looked as if he froze while still crawling, clawing along. “Godspeed, Tom,” Lett whispered.

  “I could use better boots,” Frings said, seeing the iced-up, bloodied footwear.

  “Couldn’t we all?” Lett said, and marched off.

  Frings pulled out his S-boat War Badge, having retrieved it from his tunic. He flung it toward the dead, where it sunk into the snow, and followed after Lett.

  Lett and Frings trudged through thicker snow in thicker forest. Lett had the chicken in a haversack stuffed with ice. They crossed a small trickling creek, stepping across rocks. “Remember—anyone asks we’re lost, looking for our unit,” Lett told Frings. “We escaped Germans just this morning. “We can’t help your accent, your oddball English, but there are lots of accents in this man’s army. Still, we can’t have anything else that’s fishy. Deal?”

  Frings, nodding, pulled out his Pervitin pep pills and tossed them into the snow. Lett patted him on the back.

  Together they climbed a muddy hillside, slipping and banging against rocks and limbs. Panting steam. They navigated an icy creek as the thuds of battle sounded, far off. They stopped to gnaw on hard tack, and sip from their canteens. They followed a secluded and narrow forest road, which led them to a junction. An old stone bridge was the only way to the other side. They cased the junction from the edge of the woods. The bridge was empty, but across it US Army trucks were parked at random angles, some towing light howitzers. Yet no one was around. It seemed lucky to find no checkpoint. They had expected one.

  “Well? Either we walk over, or swim across,” Lett said.

  “I was a sailor,” Frings said, an attempt at a joke.

  The bridge was the only way. They walked out into the open and started across the bridge, walking fast. They cleared the bridge and headed for the forest opposite, trying not to look at the junction and vehicles. A couple heads popped up from the vehicles but no one bothered with them. A GI was working on the tire of a truck. They were steps from blending into forest again.

  “Hey! You two!” shouted a voice.

  Lett and Frings stopped and turned around. Lett smiled, and Frings mimicked him.

  A thick-waisted American strode out to them from the trucks. The man was an older lieutenant and maybe Regular Army, Lett thought.

  “Do I salute?” Frings whispered from the corner of his mouth.

  “No, not for this lug. We’re front-line Joes.”

  “What unit you guys?” the lieutenant said, stopping a few feet from them.

  “Hundred and Sixth Infantry, Four Twenty-second,” Lett said. “We broke out.”

  “You guys are a ways off.” The sergeant gave them a once-over. “You troops took a beating, we’re
hearing.” A couple of his GIs strolled out, to back up their looie.

  “Yeah, we did,” Lett said, making sure to stare at the ground in turmoil. “Just trying to get west, find a reassemble point. We don’t know no passwords, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Course not, son. How could you?” the lieutenant said.

  His GIs unslung their rifles. From a corner of his eye, Lett could see Frings’ fingers creep onto his Thompson gun. Lett stepped in front of Frings and said, “We just want to get back, you know?”

  The lieutenant looked to his GIs, and back at Lett and Frings. “Question first. What’s Gary Cooper’s latest picture?”

  Lett figured they’d get trick questions, but this was a tough one. “Jeez mac, I been up on the line a while. ‘Story of Dr. Wassell’, I guess? Wait, no—‘Casanova Brown’?”

  The lieutenant pursed his lips. “You get one more try.”

  “What’s the big idea anyway?” Lett said. “Who you take us for?”

  “No idea. We’re just talking,” the lieutenant said.

  “We been through the goddamn wringer,” Lett added, but the lieutenant looked to Frings.

  “You mind that, son?” the lieutenant said to Frings.

  “Nope,” Frings said, shaking his head.

  “So tell me: What’s the capital of Maine?”

  “Who’s gonna know that? You?” Lett interrupted. “Not unless a man is from there.”

  “Not talking to you,” the lieutenant said.

  He and Frings shared the same gritty look, their crows-feet all tightened up.

  “Augusta. It’s Augusta,” Frings said.

  The lieutenant swung around to one of his GIs, who nodded. He turned back smiling. “Hell, and I thought it was Portland.”

  “Nope,” Frings repeated.

  The lieutenant nodded, still smiling. “We’re heading east or we’d give you a jump start. Use some rations? Camp stove? Name it, boys.”

  The lieutenant’s GIs loaded them up with rations and a Coleman pocket stove. They spared the chitchat, luckily.

  Once out alone on a valley road, Lett and Frings were able to stroll looser. They gnawed on chocolate D-Bars.