Fox On The Rhine

by Douglas Niles

  the general was damn tired, and he knew the war was far from over.

  Excerpt from War’s Final Fury, by Professor Jared Gruenwald

  In that period of August 1944, the Allies were handed a series of unpleasant surprises based on the creative and revitalized leadership of Nazi Germany.

  Führer Heinrich Himmler’s brilliant and unexpected move of negotiating an armistice with the USSR unquestionably gave Nazi Germany a stunning opportunity, a way out of a dilemma that would otherwise have swept the war to an inevitable close before the end of 1944. After all, once they had emerged from the Normandy quagmire, the Western Allied spearheads were able to roll across France without pause, and there is little reason to believe that they would have been held by the Siegfried Line or even the Rhine, without the revitalization provided by the treaty.

  The return of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to command also had an unquestionably invigorating effect. The Somme counterattack knocked back the American spearhead and bought enough time for many Germans to withdraw behind another river line. In a series of holding actions, Rommel was able to delay the Allied onslaught until his forces were safely behind the Siegfried Line in the homeland.

  His evacuation of Southern France was a brilliant and timely maneuver, as well. When the Anvil landings swept ashore on August 15, the American and French troops found that their enemy had already withdrawn. General Truscott’s spearheads raced up the valley of the Rhone with aggression and speed, but the Germans had too much of a start, and virtually all of them got away. Otherwise, nearly a hundred thousand German troops would have likely fallen or been captured--troops that could be employed to make a decisive difference later in the war. The classic photographs of the Panther tank carrying so many German troops to safety became one of the most famous images of the war, signaling a renewed German spirit.

  At the same time, the energy of the Soviet advance was redirected--though not before the Red Army pulled up to the very gates of Warsaw.

  By then, Russian troops were taking over for the withdrawing Germans across the continent from Norway to Greece. They wasted no time in establishing powerful airbases in Stavanger, a mere eight hundred kilometers from London.

  It is perhaps well that, as yet, the Allies did not know that Stalin, in his deal with the devil, had also gained the initial capability that would lead to the development of powerful and deadly rockets.

  From Norway, these rockets were just a short flight from the British Isles.

  OPERATION CAROUSEL

  September-October 1944

  SHAEF Headquarters, France, 1 September 1944, 1030 hours GMT

  “Goddamn it, Brad, it wasn’t the boy’s fault!” Patton’s fist pounded on the table as he glared at his army group CO. Omar Bradley--Omar the Tent Maker, as Patton sometimes called him behind his back--had just made the suggestion that James Pulaski be relieved of his command, and the Third Army general’s temper had flared into white heat. “Remember, I’m the one who pushed Jack King into sending the Nineteenth ahead of Third Armored, which set this up in the first place! He was doing his job--and I still think that bridge was worth the risk!”

  “We’ve got a division shot to hell!” Bradley retorted. “They won’t be fit to fight for another month, at least. And all this because you saw a chance--”

  “That’s enough,” the supreme commander interjected, instantly silencing his subordinates. Eisenhower took a puff of his cigarette, extending the pause. Then he nodded to Patton. “All right, George, what do you want to do about this?”

  Patton took a moment to collect his thoughts. The other two American generals, and the fourth man present--Field Marshal Montgomery, commander of all British forces in the theater--waited expectantly.

  “We should keep ’em together, what’s left of CCA and the whole Nineteenth Armored. They had a helluva run--they were the first of my boys out of Avranches! They deserve another chance. Pulaski needs to get back in the saddle. With replacements to fill out his command, I know he’s going to be a fine officer.”

  Dwight Eisenhower leaned back in his desk chair, still smoking his cigarette as he pondered the recommendation. Field Marshal Montgomery, natty as always and wearing his jaunty beret, smiled a thin, superior smile at the sight of the American officers wrangling with their problem.

  Bradley was the next to speak. “And Henry Wakefield should be given command of the Nineteenth.” He glared at Patton in challenge but was surprised when the army general nodded in agreement.

  “Yes, he should. He’s a good man, steady--just what those boys need right now. And he’s Third Army.” Patton spoke sternly but left unsaid another key fact: Third Army looked after its own. Whether he liked the man or disliked him, he would only pull him out if he couldn’t do his job.

  Monty pursed his lips. “I realize this is a Yank matter, but surely that’s an invitation to disaster?”

  George Patton opened his mouth to reply, but Bradley spoke first and forcefully.

  “The Nineteenth went up against Rommel without knowing it. It was a surprise, they got chewed up, and that’s the way it goes sometimes. We can second-guess this thing to death, but frankly, we just need to realize that they slipped the varsity in on us when we weren’t looking, and the Nineteenth took the brunt of it. No need to shoot the survivors. Henry Wakefield is overdue for his second star and a division command, and I, for one, think he’s done and will do a fine job. We pull the Nineteenth back, rebuild it, then send it back into the game. That’s my recommendation.”

  “And mine,” growled Patton.

  The supreme commander sighed and crushed out his cigarette. “Brad, we’ll give Pulaski a chance for now, but I’m not completely sold on the man, understand? Let’s keep continuity of command, Wakefield in charge and Pulaski still in charge of their CCA. We’ll let the press know that we have confidence in our officers and this was nobody’s fault. Got it? Henry is acting division commander and a brevet two-star as of now, paperwork to catch up. Everything stays provisional until the Nineteenth gets bloodied again and shows it can do the job. If so, then Pulaski’s in permanently. If he screws up, he’s history. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” replied Patton with a nod. “He gets a chance, he’ll do fine.”

  Eisenhower gave Patton a hard look. “I appreciate that Third Army takes care of its own. But George, for now I think he should be attached to First Army. I’m recommending that Brad puts him under Hodges.”

  Patton clearly wanted to keep arguing, but he growled, “That’s okay with me.”

  Montgomery gave Patton a withering smile, as if to say how much he enjoyed his rival’s discomfiture. Patton glared back, then stood up to leave.

  Near Reims, France, 5 September 1944, 0910 hours GMT

  Henry Wakefield held the communique in his hand, while Jimmy Pulaski waited quietly on the other side of the desk.

  The message was brief, but the impact profound:

  19TH ARMORED DETACHED VIII CORP. THIRD ARMY. EFFECTIVE 01/09/44.

  NEW ASSIGNMENT TO RESERVE CORPS, FIRST ARMY, EFFECTIVE SAME. DIVISION IS TO BIVOUAC IN REIMS AREA AND AWAIT ORDERS.

  AUTHORIZED: GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON, CG THIRD ARMY.

  CONFIRMED: GENERAL COURTNEY HODGES, CG FIRST ARMY,

  GENERAL OMAR BRADLEY, CG TWENTY-FIRST ARMY GROUP

  “Goddamn him,” muttered the general under his breath, remembering the blistering tongue-lashing he’d received from Third Army’s commanding general at Sainte-la-Salle. “That son of a bitch wanted speed, and when you gave it to him, you paid the price--and now this!”

  Wakefield leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes, immediately regretting that his temper had led him to criticize a superior officer out loud. Besides, now that he thought about it, maybe a transfer to First Army wasn’t intended as a punishment after all. But hell, it sure felt like one.

  “I’m sorry, General,” Pulaski said miserably. “Maybe you should just court-martial me, get me out of here. Hell, if it would bring a
ny of those guys back, I’d just take myself out right now.”

  “Damn it, stop all that self-pity crap,” growled Wakefield, his temper flaring as he found a more convenient target than the distant army general. “You know as well as I do that we can’t change what’s done. The problem now is what the hell do I do with you?”

  They both knew the situation all too well: All the components of Combat Command A were shattered, reduced to mere cadres of their original battalions. Lorimar and Smiggs were dead, and Frank Ballard was in a Paris hospital, though he was expected to recover from the wounds he’d taken when a German shell had hurled him into the Somme.

  Pulaski and Lieutenant Colonel White had done the best they could in getting the battered combat command to safety. Even so, half the men and nearly all the tanks and self-propelled guns had been lost before the survivors had reached Bob Jackson’s combat command, which was coming up in support. Though CCB, the division’s other main fighting element, had taken some losses in screening the retreat, the German pursuit had been halted--and now, with the addition of division reserves, CCB was already back up to strength. As to the men of Combat Command A, they had suffered the most thorough pounding of an American unit since Rommel’s Afrika Korps had hammered another Combat Command A--that of the First Armored Division--at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, a year and a half earlier.

  “Does Intelligence know, yet, what happened at Abbeville?” Pulaski asked, shaking his head.

  “I just got the summary this A.M. It seems that Rommel is back in command. Somehow he put an attack together, scraping up tanks here and there while the whole German army group was withdrawing from France. For what it’s worth, you came damn close to cutting off two or three corps--Combat Command A of the Nineteenth Armored caused them some sleepless nights.”

  “And where do we go now?”

  “First Army is just north of Third... and we’re only a few miles from Reims, now. I guess we’ll be staying put for a little while, licking our wounds. I don’t have any orders from Hodges yet,” Wakefield continued, wondering about his new army commander. An infantry general from way back, Hodges had none of Patton’s fiery drive--but he was known to take good care of his men, and there was a lot to be said for that.

  “In any event, we’ll have a bunch of replacements coming in... though equipment, new vehicles, won’t be here for two or three weeks. For now, I want to get the new men into their units, and start training them.”

  He sighed, shaking his head. “You did a lot of good while you were on the run, Jimmy... but you stuck your neck out too far, and we’re all paying the price. I want you to take the lessons you’ve learned and try to instill them into the new guys.”

  “General--I--I know you opposed this operation, and I just wanted to say, sir--” Pulaski started, but Wakefield cut him off.

  “If I thought you deserved an ‘I told you so,’ I’d give you one. Hell, I didn’t know you were going to end up going up against Rommel. If I had, I’d of fought harder. It was a judgment call: you and General King--and General George S. Patton--” he pronounced the “S” like “Ass,”--”thought the risk was worth running, I was on the other side. If Rommel hadn’t come back into command, chances are you would have turned out to be right. So you’re not getting an ‘I told you so’ from me, not this time.”

  “Thanks, General,” Pulaski said softly.

  Wakefield’s gruff voice softened. “Jimmy, there are some lessons you can learn here. Whenever you get your ass handed to you, there’s always a lesson. We need to get more out of our intelligence staff, on the division level and in your own HQ. Recon was probably deficient, and we won’t let that happen again. But part of the lesson is that lousy things happen sometimes, soldiers get defeated, and sometimes they get killed. Think about what happened, learn from it, but be careful this doesn’t eat you up. Remember, you got pretty far before this happened.”

  Wakefield could see the strain on the young man’s face. You could never tell which ones would break under this kind of pressure and which ones would grow into better officers. And he wasn’t sure whether he could help Pulaski through it.

  Right now, the boy looked like hell warmed over. But he stood at attention like a real soldier. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Get going--you’re dismissed!” Wakefield growled, glowering at the colonel’s back as he turned around and left. He hoped the young man would recover from his defeat.

  And why did the burden lay so heavily on this old general’s shoulders?

  Dessau, Germany, 6 September 1944, 1800 hours GMT

  Paul Krueger looked out the window as the train crossed the bridge over the Elbe and pulled into the city of Dessau. On his shoulders were the twin bars and braided epaulet emblem that denoted his new rank, Oberst, or Colonel. He cared less about the rank than about what it would allow him to do: ramrod the production of Me-262s so their flaming jets would burn the skies clean of the enemy. At his side was his standard issue Luftwaffe Luger pistol, rarely used, but now, as always, fully loaded. He had plans, plans for making sure the Reich’s new weapon would succeed. And if his pistol was needed to enforce his new authority, so be it. Whoever was not performing for the Reich was the enemy of the Reich. And Paul Krueger knew what to do with enemies.

  He was anxious to proceed, knew that haste was a crucial part of his mission, but he was also aware that twilight was settling over this city. In order to perform his task in the manner he desired, he would wait until daybreak and then march into the Jumo factory with a full day before him, and the utter attention of the plant manager and his staff guaranteed.

  Dessau, an industrial city on the Mulde River where it joined the Elbe about a hundred kilometers southwest of Berlin, was one of the few parts of the Reich where Allied bombers had yet to leave their brutal stamp. There were air raids here, of course, like everywhere, but they had been minor so far, and the damage was scant and well hidden.

  It had been so long since Krueger had seen anything not scarred and burned by the war, that this place looked odd, almost alien to him. He felt a cold contempt for the softness he saw here. Perhaps it was his destiny to bring flames of strife here, flames that would purify weakness and rise up to incinerate the enemy.

  With clanking wheels and a gush of steam, the locomotive trundled the train into the station. Krueger left the car carrying his small satchel, pushing his way through a meager crowd, over several sets of rails and then past an empty ticket booth. The civilians gave him a wide berth, he suspected not merely because of his rank or imposing appearance, but because of a certain icy mask he drew across his face. They knew that here was a dangerous man.

  Galland had shared his plan and goals with Krueger. For the time being, the general had ordered a drastic reduction in the fighter resistance to the Allied bombing campaign. Krueger understood the necessity even while he raged against anything short of a full effort at all times. In the short term, more damage was inflicted upon the Fatherland, but conversely the Luftwaffe was no longer losing dozens of fighters--and, more importantly, their pilots--in the course of each day’s operations. Instead, the weary and battle-worn Me-109s and Fw-190s were being stockpiled, repaired, and replaced, while the Me-262 Swallows were being built as rapidly as possible. Under Minister of Armaments Speer, the factories were being scattered across the countryside, and--though the aircraft industry remained the primary target of the enemy strategic bombing campaign--these smaller installations had proved an effective means of defeating the enemy raiders.

  Likewise, airframes for the jets were being assembled at numerous plants dispersed around the Reich, and training of pilots was proceeding quickly. His mind was still filled with the stunning potential of the marvelous machine, the jet fighter that--if employed in sufficient numbers--could surely sweep the enemy from German skies. Krueger’s own training, which had accompanied his promotion, had been fast but effective. The Swallow was superbly airworthy, and he had quickly mastered its performance traits. T
he main difficulties came from the engines, which, although powerful, were not as reliable as a rational pilot would have liked.

  But the reliability of the engines was a secondary problem. The key problem was that the Luftwaffe simply lacked enough of them to put a sufficient number of the lethal jets into the skies.

  The task before Krueger was unique in his experience, very different from the shooting down of enemy aircraft or the precise pulverizing of ground positions. He was to improve the efficiency and productivity of the Jumo Engine Werks, the key plant in the manufacture of the power plants. And he felt certain that the same tactics that had worked so well against Soviet aircraft in the skies would prove equally effective against plodding bureaucrats and recalcitrant factory workers.

  He saw a line of cattle cars in the nearby freight yard, then stopped to watch as hundreds, eventually a thousand or more, people were prodded in a shuffling mass toward the waiting trains. These were the slave workers from the Jumo plant, he surmised, no doubt being returned to their barracks after their shift was completed. He looked at his watch...a little after 7:00 P.M. Already he had one idea for improving the production of engines. No doubt, after his tour on the morrow, he would have more of them.

  Finding a Gasthaus near the station, he quickly settled into a room. There he took out the message once again, the piece of paper that would open the doors of the engine plant and gain the complete attention of everyone he addressed:

  28 August 1944

  Luftwaffe Special Operations Order

  The bearer of this document, Oberst Paul Krueger, a combat ace of utmost capabilities, is hereby charged with an inspection of the Jumo Engine Works, Dessau. He is to be accorded every courtesy by the management of the Jumo plant. His mission bears the full authority of Commander of the Luftwaffe Adolf Galland, and Reichsminister of Armaments Albert Speer.