by Tom Young
No one else dared challenge him. He pointed to the sergeant, still on the ground. “Get this idiot out of my sight,” Karl said. “And somebody get a medic.”
“Yes, sir,” a soldier responded. He trotted away.
Karl extended a hand, helped Gunther to his feet. Wilhelm assisted the other three guards.
“Thank you for that,” Wilhelm whispered to Karl.
A few minutes later, the soldier who had run to find a medic came back. He brought with him a man who wore a white armband with a red cross. The medic carried a musette bag.
“This is Doc Greeley,” the soldier said.
Greeley nodded to Karl and said, “What you got, sir?”
Karl, his face still clouded with anger, waved a hand toward Gunther and snapped, “Fix him. Look at the others, too.”
“Will do.” Greeley opened his musette bag, dug around, and withdrew what appeared to be iodine swabs. “Anybody speak German?” he asked.
“I do,” Wilhelm said.
“Tell him to hold still. I’m sorry about what happened to him.”
Wilhelm translated. Gunther’s expression softened from fear to gratitude—though he winced as Greeley began dabbing at the scrape. The iodine left ochery stains on the side of his face.
“I hate it when the guys act like this,” Greeley said, “but in general they’ve been pretty professional. This could have been a whole lot worse.”
“What do you mean?” Wilhelm asked.
Greeley related a scene he’d witnessed shortly after his company crossed the Rhine. Another unit had captured five German troops and couldn’t figure out what to do with them. On a field telephone, the company commander called up to battalion. He received instructions to hold them for military police from the new French First Army.
The G.I.s waited for an hour. They passed the time chatting with one of the Germans, who spoke fluent English. The English speaker wore wire-rimmed glasses and looked no more than nineteen. He said he had been a mathematics student and wanted nothing more than to get back to school. His father had served in the Great War. “If the Americans come,” his father had said, “the jig is up.” The boy added, “Here you are. If that means the war is over, then I am not sorry to see you.”
But if he’d known what was coming, Greeley said, he’d have been sorry to see the French. Three soldiers showed up, armed with Lend-Lease rifles—old bolt-action Enfields. The G.I.s mounted their vehicles and started moving out.
“I was in the last jeep,” Greeley said. “Just before we rounded the curve, I saw the Frogs put the Krauts on their knees.”
One by one, they shot each prisoner in the back of the head. Greeley described the bolts clacking, the brass tumbling, the boy’s glasses flying in a spray of blood and brains.
“Stupid waste of labor, if you ask me,” Greeley said.
“How’s that?” Karl asked.
“From what I hear,” Greeley said, “the ones they don’t kill, they’re putting to work clearing mines.”
44
The Least Bad Option
At the end of that first day of freedom, sunset painted the hills beyond the camp a red hue that bled out into purple as night approached. The fighting had pushed east; Karl heard only the occasional snap of rifle fire in the distance. After the medic’s story, he didn’t care to speculate on the reason for the shots—which came singly, or sometimes in twos and threes. Sounded more like Pennsylvania in deer season than Europe in all-out war.
The celebrating died down. Men—tired, drunk, or both—lay in their bunks or on the floors, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. For now, everyone seemed content to stay put. After all, where would they go? The ex-POWs who remained alert and talkative swapped war stories, usually of the engagement that shot them down. In their leather A-2 jackets or cloth B-10 coats, they spoke of steel in the sky. Using their hands as imaginary airplanes, their palms and fingers banked and yawed until their fingers spread apart to depict explosion and flames.
Karl visited the cookhouse in search of coffee, though he expected to find only the fake stuff. The same idea had occurred to Wilhelm. Karl found him heating water on a Nuremberg stove. Kriegies had stripped the shelves of instant coffee and nearly everything else. From the remnants of a Red Cross parcel, Karl made weak hot cocoa. He and Wilhelm sat on the cookhouse steps with steaming tin cups. For a long time, Wilhelm said nothing and wore a face of stone.
“Don’t let it get you down,” Karl said. “Like I said, we just need to find the right guy and tell him your story. Next thing you know, you’ll be driving your new Chevy in Pittsburgh.”
Wilhelm’s mouth twisted into a momentary and rare smile—which faded as quickly as it appeared. “And what if we find the wrong guy?” he asked.
“Then we keep working on it.”
Wilhelm shook his head and cracked another ironic smile. One smile was rare; two within a single minute was unheard of. “How very American,” he said.
“Huh?”
“You believe every problem has a solution. To be fair, your country’s recent experience supports that notion. But mine does not.”
Karl gave Wilhelm a gentle shove with his fist. “Come on, Lieutenant Meade,” he said, “don’t go getting all Germanic on me.”
Wilhelm sipped from his cup and seemed to stare through the camp fence, across the hills, beyond Europe and into the North Atlantic. “I cannot let you risk it,” he said.
“Risk what?”
“What is that American expression? Ja, don’t play dumb with me.”
“I’m not playing dumb,” Karl said. “I’m really an idiot. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have strapped on several tons of bombs and gasoline and flown them into Germany.”
Wilhelm laughed out loud. Now they were truly in uncharted airspace. So uncharted that Karl didn’t like seeing Wilhelm so at ease. Wilhelm had come to some new conclusion. One that Karl might not like.
“If we find the wrong guy—and it sounds like there are a lot of wrong guys out there—he may decide you are German, too,” Wilhelm said. “He might blow my head off, and in the next instant turn his gun on you.”
“Nah,” Karl said. “That’s a little far-fetched.”
“Well, then, let’s consider a more likely possibility. We don’t get our heads blown off. But I find myself on my hands and knees in France, probing for mines with a spade.”
Karl had no answer for that. He let the remark hang in the air for several seconds. Finally he said, “So, what do you want to do?”
Wilhelm put down his cup and looked at Karl. “You and your fellow Yanks have done much for me,” Wilhelm said. “But I must ask one more favor.”
“You did plenty for us, too. What do you need?”
“I would like you to help me get out of here. Tonight.”
Karl sat up straight. He had hoped to sponsor Wilhelm’s new life as an American. Now, if he honored Wilhelm’s request, he’d probably never see him again.
“What will you do?” Karl asked.
“Exactly what you suggested when we left Stalag Luft XIV. Blend in. Go home. Try to stay out of the internment camps.”
Karl sighed hard. Rubbed the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other, thinking. He hated to discard the idea of Wilhelm going to the United States, but maybe this was the least bad option. The French were already on the way to collect the former guards. What if they didn’t believe Wilhelm’s story? What if they did believe it and just didn’t care? Wilhelm could wind up in an internment camp for months while the Allies sorted war criminals from the relatively innocent—assuming he didn’t get shot or sent to the minefields. Wilhelm was correct: Not every problem had a good solution.
“All right,” Karl said. “I hate it, but all right.”
“I will find my parents, whatever family I have left. We will start over from nothing. People have suffered far worse fates.”
“No doubt about that.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, and Karl appreciated t
he quiet. No sense yammering on and getting sentimental. Decision made, and that was that. Very German, Karl thought. Of both of us.
Wilhelm began unlacing his right boot. Karl wondered why—until Wilhelm slid off the boot, tipped it over, and caught a pair of dog tags.
“That’s how you hid them all this time?” Karl asked.
“Yes, except when they took away our boots for the train ride. Then I kept them in my socks.” Wilhelm passed the tags to Karl. “Please see that Mrs. Meade receives these.”
“You bet.” Karl pocketed the dog tags. “Good of you to keep them. I thought maybe you’d just ditched them.”
“No, the widow deserves something more tangible than a telegram.”
“Yeah, she does.” Karl let a few moments go by, then changed the subject. “Let’s think about how we’ll get you out of here. Hey, here’s an Americanism for you, ‘how are you gonna blow this Popsicle stand’?”
“ ‘Blow this Popsicle stand’?” Wilhelm said. “That makes no sense.”
“I suppose not.”
Before now, Karl might have believed the easiest thing in the world would be walking out of a liberated POW camp. But when he and Wilhelm started talking about it, he realized it wasn’t so simple. Sure, the electric fence had been turned off. And there was nobody in the goon boxes waiting to shoot escapees. But Patton’s men had left sentries—not guards, but sentries—for the kriegies’ own protection. All kinds of dangers lurked outside the wire. Wandering outside at night would be so crazy, the sentries might assume Wilhelm was an escaping guard.
But Wilhelm couldn’t just sit around, either. By tomorrow, the French could show up looking for him, thanks to the story they’d told the major.
“What might we do, then?” Wilhelm asked.
“Cut a hole in the fence,” Karl said. Razor wire topped the inner fence, which made climbing it dangerous. Better to go through it rather than over it. The outer fence—which had been electrified—presented no cutting edges. Once through the first barrier, Wilhelm could climb the outer fence and make his getaway.
“Cut the fence with what?”
“Whatever we can find. Let’s check the offices and storage buildings. With all this wire around us, the Germans must have had wire cutters.”
Wilhelm considered that for a moment. “If we find wire cutters,” he said, “how will we use them without looking suspicious?”
“I don’t know. Lemme think.”
For several seconds, Karl brainstormed. Cutting the fence might take a while, even with the right tool. If he could get a few guys to stand around and block the view, he could work unobserved. How many guys would he need? Only Pell, McLendon, and Timmersby knew Wilhelm’s true identity. Better to have a couple more than that, to remain safely out of sight. How many guys could he trust? Karl explained his idea for using a screen of bodies, then asked, “Who do you think might help us?”
Wilhelm took in a long, slow breath and stared into the middle distance—a bit like a man doing math in his head. “I have an idea,” he said. “But before we approach anyone, we should see what tools we can find.”
“Yeah, first things first.”
They searched every building. In the cookhouse, they found pots, pans, and ladles. In the offices, they found pens, scissors, and paper clips. In the guards’ break room, they found cigarette lighters and broken glasses. The guards’ armory was padlocked; they kicked at the hasp until it gave way—and they found one broken Mauser and swabs for cleaning rifle barrels.
The last storage building they checked turned out to be a toolhouse, also locked. They broke down the door. The room gave off the oil and metal smell of every tool shop in the world. When the door gave way, Karl smiled because there had to be wire cutters somewhere in there.
There were no wire cutters.
Various tools rested on shelves or hung from nails on the wall: There were hammers, screwdrivers, drills, wrenches, even a lathe. Nut drivers and chisels. Handsaws and coping saws—but, of course, no hacksaw for cutting metal.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Karl said aloud to no one. “You have just got to be kidding me.”
Wilhelm picked up a pipe wrench. “What about this?” he said.
“What about it? It’s a pipe wrench.”
“Yes, it cannot cut,” Wilhelm said. “But we can use it to twist wire back and forth until it breaks.”
“That’ll take forever.”
“We have all night. And we need to make only a small opening. I am a U-boat man, remember. I’m used to climbing through a narrow hatch.”
Karl chuckled. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you are.”
They left the pipe wrench in the toolhouse and turned to the next task: finding accomplices. They tracked down Pell, McLendon, and Timmersby—all of whom whispered their regret at Wilhelm’s leave-taking. They all understood the reasons, though, after Karl related what he’d heard from the medic.
“Yeah,” McLendon said to Wilhelm, “it ain’t fair. You should get to come home with us if that’s what you want. But it sounds like you better just disappear.”
“If you were a Brit, I’d recommend you for the Victoria Cross,” Timmersby said.
“Thank you, sir,” Wilhelm said. “I will have to make do with my Iron Cross.”
“What time do you need us?” Pell asked.
“Twenty-three hundred,” Karl said. “Rear fence, as far from the lights as you can get.”
* * *
At nightfall, the searchlights mounted along the camp’s perimeter flickered on. Now their beams tilted upward, perhaps to identify the camp to Allied bombers and prevent it being mistaken for a target of opportunity. The intersecting rays lent a granular quality to the darkness beyond their range.
“You said you thought of someone else who might help,” Karl said to Wilhelm.
“Lieutenant Fox.”
Karl nodded. Yes, the bombardier and former X Committee security man—who now owed his life to Wilhelm. They found Fox in his overcrowded hut, finishing a dinner of Spam and crackers. Fox looked up and smiled when he saw Karl and Wilhelm. He brushed crumbs from his lap, stood up, and offered his hand. Wilhelm shook it.
“Evening, boys,” Fox said. “Why do you look so serious? We’re about to go home.”
“Can we talk to you alone?” Karl asked.
“Sure.”
Fox took the single remaining cracker from his plate and followed Karl and Wilhelm outside. He looked puzzled, but happy. Of course, he was happy. He was going home.
“You always did see something fishy about Meade, here, didn’t you?” Karl asked.
“I did,” Fox said, “but he came through when the chips were down. Hey, I’m sorry about—”
Karl held up his hand to cut Fox off. “It’s okay. Your instincts were right. His name isn’t Meade and he’s not a navigator. I don’t have time to explain it all, but right now, he just needs to get out of here.”
No surprise registered on Fox’s face. He paused only for a second before responding. “What do you need?” he said.
Karl explained his plan to cut the fence, how he wanted two or three more bodies to stand around and block the view. Fox placed his cracker between his teeth, crunched it, and chewed slowly. With food in his mouth, he said, “Don’t worry about asking more guys. I got this.”
“Thanks,” Karl said. “Twenty-three hundred. Back of the camp.”
“See you then.”
* * *
While waiting for eleven p.m., Karl and Wilhelm strolled the camp. They walked mainly to work off nervousness. Karl felt he had one last mission to accomplish—to get his friend away safely, and he worried about pulling it off. Few words passed between them; little remained to be said. Radial engines rumbled overhead: fighters and bombers on the way to targets so distant the explosions were not heard in Moosburg. What remained of the Reich lay to the east.
At a quarter to eleven, they returned to the toolshed and Karl grabbed the pipe wrench. He felt that same knot
underneath his breastbone that had formed on every bomb run. When they rounded the corner of the last hut, they found at least a dozen men standing at the edge of the fence. Chatting, smoking, looking nonchalant.
Karl glanced over at Wilhelm, who once more broke into that rare smile.
“That’s more than we need,” Karl said. “They came to wish you well.”
“Crewmates,” Wilhelm said.
“Yeah.”
As expected, Karl saw Pell, McLendon, Timmersby, and Fox. Fox had also rounded up Tex, the Oklahoman on the X Committee—as well as MacDougal, Sparks, Padre, and several men Karl had never met.
“Thanks for turning out, fellas,” Karl said. “Let’s get this done.”
Without another word, he set about his task. He kneeled beside the fence and placed the jaws of the pipe wrench across a length of wire mesh. Twisted the adjustment until the jaws closed down. Wilhelm stood next to him, and the rest of the kriegies arranged themselves to hide Karl from view. An observer forty yards away might have concluded they were sharing a bottle of hooch or watching a friendly wrestling match.
Karl yanked the wrench, bending the wire this way and that. After he bent the wire about forty times, it finally broke. To open a hole large enough for Wilhelm to get through, he’d need to part the mesh in at least twenty other places. And his arms were already tired. He put down the pipe wrench and stretched.
“Let me spell you for a little bit,” Pell said. The bombardier picked up the wrench and went to work. After ten minutes, he made a second break in the wire.
Wilhelm appeared moved by the team effort. “Gentlemen,” he said, making no attempt to sound American, “I wish you peace.”
“You too, bud,” Pell said.
“Maybe we’ll see one another again in better circumstances,” Padre offered. Karl wondered if Padre meant this world or the next. Karl had given Wilhelm his home address, but who knew when Wilhelm could get out a letter? For that matter, Wilhelm’s very survival over the next days and weeks looked dicey.
But I can’t do anything about it, Karl thought, except to get him out of here.
