Fox On The Rhine

by Douglas Niles

  But Franz Steinberger, bereft of health and hope, of spirit and of future, had one thing left. It was a thing that allowed him to crawl out of the bunk in the morning, that gave him the strength to board the train, to make the long walk to the factory, and to labor over the jet engines as if he really wanted to live.

  Franz Steinberger had rage. It was a fire of fury that burned deep within the wellspring of his life. It was a hatred for Nazis, for all things German, that would not allow him to surrender, to lay down and die.

  Because he had been trained as an engineer, he understood the significance of these mysterious engines. He had seen them tested in the factory, knew the lengths to which the designers worked to keep the powerful turbines cool. He could guess at the difference they would make in a war fought in the sky, in the effort to stop the bombers that periodically, and inaccurately, tried to bomb this plant into oblivion.

  Many times in the past his rage had given him the strength to act, and today he would act again.

  Steinberger was assigned the task of driving in the screws that completed the housing encircling each turbine. The housing was an aluminum-coated shell of hollow steel, through which air had to pass in order to maintain the cooling of the engine. He did his work conscientiously, for the guards were everywhere and he had no wish to throw his life away.

  But each day there came a time when the overseers’ attention was distracted--they were rebuking another worker, or laughing about some Jewess they had raped, or merely dull-eyed from fatigue and hangover. As he did each day, Franz waited for the right moment. He saw the guards look away.

  And Steinberger took a strip of rag, the one accessory that the Gestapo did not inventory on a daily basis. He crumpled up the oily cloth, again looked to the guards--who were laughing, crowing like birds of prey he thought--and stuffed the rag into one small air passage. Quickly he dropped the last piece of the housing into place, and fastened the screws that meant that this engine was done.

  The hooks came in, lifted the sleek turbine from the line, hauled it away for testing. It would fire, and it would run, and it would show no signs of malfunctions as the German engineers put it through its paces.

  Only later, when it was run for a long time, hopefully when it was carrying a fighter plane and a Nazi pilot through the skies, would it begin to grow unusually hot.

  Third Army HQ, West of Metz, France, 18 ... October 1944, 1723 hours GMT

  “General, the Fifth Infantry has bogged down... they’ve been plastered all to hell, sir, and can’t get around that castle.” The operations colonel gave his report with just a hint of the exasperation that immediately welled up in the army commander.

  “Son of a bitch!” Patton uttered the expletive out of a general sense of frustration. He knew that his boys were being killed on all sides of the well-fortified city of Metz, and it galled the hell out of him. Even worse, he didn’t know what to do about it. He had to have that city before Third Army could advance to the German border, and yet he had been feeding his divisions into that meat grinder for weeks, now, with no perceptible progress.

  He paced around the office, bit down on his cigar, and made up his mind.

  “Get me Twelfth Army Group CG on the line.”

  Two minutes later he heard Omar Bradley’s voice through the hiss of the telephone receiver. “Brad? I’ve got troubles.”

  “George, if you’re going to ask for more fuel, you know--”

  “Now just a damn minute, Brad--no, that’s not the problem. But I need another division, something to give me a fresh punch against this goddamn Nazi rockpile.”

  “No can do,” Bradley replied. “We’re stretched too thin down there as it is.”

  Patton was looking at a map detailing the positions of Twelfth Army Group components, and he stabbed his finger at the icon for a tank unit. “What about Nineteenth Armored? They’re right on my flank as it is--and I hear they’re not on the front right now.”

  The hesitation on Bradley’s end was palpable, but Patton utilized all of his patience to wait for his commander to talk. “Wakefield’s boys, you mean? You’re right, insofar as they haven’t brought the whole division into line.”

  “Well, let me have ’em back, then!” Patton insisted. “They did good work for me in Normandy, and they need to get back into the field.”

  “You’re all right with Hank, then?” Bradley sounded wary.

  “Hell, Brad, like I told you before: he learned some things in Normandy, and maybe he’s the kind of driver that Pulaski and Jackson need to hold onto their leashes. Sure, I’m all right with him!”

  “Well, we can do that, then... I’ll get in touch with Courtney Hodges at First Army, make sure the transfer won’t cause him more problems than he can handle. I expect you’ll have Nineteenth Armored under Third Army in another few days.”

  “Thanks, Brad ... I mean that,” Patton said sincerely. The two generals broke the connection, and Patton’s eyes once again fell on his map, onto the city of forts and trenches and castles, the great roadblock that stood to block his manifest advance to Germany. One more division, three hundred more tanks, fourteen thousand men to make more grist for the mill of battle.

  He only wondered if they would be enough.

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

  After the heady days of the breakout and the liberation of France, the stiffening German resistance of autumn struck the Allies as a cruel shock. The sweep out of Normandy had been a rush of speedy maneuver, highlighted by Patton’s daring thrusts, at least until the setback suffered by the Nineteenth Armored Division at Abbeville. The rest of the Anglo-American forces followed more slowly, but still inexorably, and the enemy was driven all the way to the borders of his homeland.

  The setback at Abbeville notwithstanding, the circumstance that brought the offensive to a halt initially was not Nazi defenders so much as a shortage of fuel. Though Montgomery’s troops had swept through the great port of Antwerp in early September, the British field marshal’s attention was focused on the great prizes of the Rhine and Germany. As a consequence, he neglected to immediately clean out the enemy strongholds along the Scheldt River estuary, positions that controlled access to that key deep-water harbor. By the time the importance of these islands and swampy lowlands was appreciated, the Germans had firmly entrenched. As happened so often, it was Monty’s empire troops--in this case the doughty Canadians--who were left with the grim job of cleaning out the pockets of toughest resistance.

  Meanwhile, Patton was insisting that, if Third Army was supplied with fuel, he could seize a long stretch of the Westwall before the Germans could fortify their border. History has shown his claims to be correct, but for a variety of reasons Eisenhower decided not to allocate the supplies to his volatile armor commander.

  Instead, Ike determined that the Allies should approach Germany along a broad front, with the British in the north, and two American army groups pressing forward across the bulk of the approaches--General Patch’s Seventh Army having come up from Marseilles to come into the line on Patton’s right. Finally, the First Free French army, under General de Lattre, came into being and filled the southern part of the line, including the Vosges Mountains down to the border with Switzerland.

  As desperately needed supplies were still being brought over the beaches in Normandy, Montgomery proposed a massive airborne attack, intended to carry his own army group across the Rhine and into Germany. Ike wisely declined to authorize this attack, which under Rommel’s program of vigorous reinforcement would almost certainly have been a debacle. Instead, Monty’s forces were charged with a vigorous campaign to open the approaches to Antwerp. They faced fanatical Nazi resistance, especially on Walcheren Island, at the mouth of the Scheldt, but slowly the key port was opened to the Allied supply fleets.

  As a consequence, the major Allied attack was brought to bear against the German city of Aachen, a key link in the Westwall. Thousands of men gave their lives as First Army slowly,
deliberately clawed its way through the fortifications, though throughout October Rommel’s defenders managed to cling to the heart of the city itself.

  Patton, meanwhile, had become embroiled in his own meat grinder, the heavily fortified medieval city of Metz. Division after division was fed into the gory maw of this rugged river town, and yet the Germans stubbornly refused to yield, or to allow themselves to become encircled.

  At the same time, the Western Allies could only watch in impotence as Soviet forces rolled into Norway and Greece in the wake of retreating Nazis. Though the peoples of both countries resisted the new conquerors with the same determination with which they had faced the Germans, there was no stopping the implacable advance of Stalin’s hordes. Lacking sea power, and now facing vigorous Allied naval interdiction, the Russians were nevertheless able to use their land armies to gain utter control of both countries. The incursion, of course, was aided--particularly in Greece--by Communist elements that had formed part of the resistance to the German occupation, and were now all too willing to welcome their Soviet benefactors.

  In the meantime, the changing situation in Europe created some alterations in strategy in the Pacific War. The combined chiefs of staff in the US and UK both perceived the danger of a major setback in France, and as a consequence were reluctant to allocate any more resources to the effort against Japan. With some reluctance, however, the landings on Pelelieu, which were intended to secure a base for the subsequent invasion of the Philippines, were allowed to proceed on schedule.

  The resultant, and horrifying, losses from this offensive were enough to convince the joint chiefs, supported by the president, to cancel the impending liberation of the Philippines. General MacArthur’s objections to this change in strategy became so vociferous that President Roosevelt was left with no choice but to remove the controversial general from his theater command.

  Finally, major naval resources were dispatched from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Admiral Halsey’s Third Fleet was recalled from the western Pacific. After a brief stopover in Hawaii, this massive conglomeration of aircraft carriers and battleships made for the Panama Canal, intended to reinforce the US Army’s efforts on the European mainland.

  OPERATION BLOODY HELL

  October-November 1944

  Associated Press Bureau Offices, Fleet Street, London, England, 22 October 1944, 0800 hours GMT

  For Chuck Porter, the worst thing about a late fall Atlantic Ocean voyage was neither the seasickness nor the fear of U-boats. It was being cut off from his continual news fix. He hated being out of touch, hated not having his finger on the pulse of the military and political worlds. There was the shipboard radio, of course, but the periodic static-filled news broadcasts were hardly a substitute for the bank of teletypes delivering raw news information in a constant stream.

  His ship, the S.S. America, docked on Saturday. After debarkation and customs he caught a train to Victoria Station in London, checked into his hotel, and promptly fell asleep, the stillness of the bed perversely feeling like motion after the long days in the rolling Atlantic. He thought about playing tourist on Sunday and even went out, but the dreary wet weather drove him into the nearest pub, and he holed up for the rest of the day watching locals play darts. He wasn’t much good at the game, but he held his own with beer.

  Monday morning, his head ached from lager and travel; his mouth was dry and pasty. A good way to start a new assignment, he thought. He hailed a black London taxicab, not yet feeling stable enough to try navigating the Tube (though he was an expert on the New York subway system), and leaned back as the taxi threaded its way through increasingly narrow London streets toward the AP bureau office.

  The office was located on the second floor of a nondescript building in Fleet Street, the heart of the newspaper district. The chattering of Teletypes and clouds of cigarette smoke told him he was in the right place even before he saw the name on the door. There was a small entry way guarded by an ancient-looking harridan with her hair in a severe bun and an overflowing ashtray on a desk piled with papers. A long ash dangled precariously from her current cigarette.

  “Chuck Porter, from New York,” he introduced himself.

  She looked him up and down with critical eyes, as if he were some bum from the gutter--or some colonial refugee, he supposed.

  “I’m the acting Paris bureau chief,” he added after a pause.

  She kept staring. Finally, she yelled, “Percy! Some gent from New York,” then turned back to her typewriter, the ash grown longer.

  From the din in the inner office emerged a short, balding man wearing an unbuttoned vest over a white shirt, necktie knot loose and collar gaping underneath. A stain of blue ink leaked through a shirt pocket with three fountain pens. “Porter? Name’s Percy McCulley. Bureau chief, don’t you know. So, you’re to reopen the Paris office, eh? Fresh from New York, you say? Bad day to arrive, isn’t it?” His talking speed was so fast and his British accent was so thick that Porter had trouble following it.

  “Bad day?”

  “Yes--but then you haven’t heard, have you? Of course--no way you could have heard--goodness, Porter, it’s busy enough without all this--guess you’ll wish you were back in New York for this story!” McCulley was moving as he talked and Porter, his raincoat flapping, pushed his way through the crowded newsroom, straining to make out about every third word. Big news? he wondered, his mind racing through myriad possibilities.

  A knot of reporters clustered around the Teletype, reading the news as it sputtered out line by line. Just like home, Porter thought. He picked up the clipboard that contained the Teletype material that had already come off the machine, skimming it to bring himself up to speed quickly. And then he slowed down as he saw the headline.

  FLASH/BULLETIN

  HAVANA, 22 OCTOBER, 0100 EST

  COPY 01 ENTERPRISE SUNK IN U-BOAT AMBUSH

  DISTRIBUTION: ALL STATIONS

  HAVANA, 22 OCTOBER (AP) BY JAY WILLIS

  A SHIFT IN MILITARY POSITIONING TO RESPOND TO THE SOVIET BETRAYAL TURNED INTO A MAJOR DISASTER LAST NIGHT ADMIRAL HALSEY. BRINGING THE THIRD FLEET THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL TO REINFORCE ALLIED NAVAL OPERATIONS IN THE ATLANTIC AND MEDITERRANEAN, WAS AMBUSHED BY A U-BOAT WOLF PACK IN THE CARIBBEAN SEA.

  THE CARRIER ENTERPRISE WAS LOST WITH OVER 1,500 CREWMEN, INCLUDING ADMIRAL HALSEY. OTHER NAVAL LOSSES ARE REPORTED HEAVY, WITH INFORMATION STILL POURING IN.

  THE NAVY REPORTS THAT SEVERAL U-BOATS HAVE BEEN SUNK BUT THAT AN UNKNOWN NUMBER OF ENEMY SUBMARINES ESCAPED.

  “ALTHOUGH THIS IS A TERRIBLE TRAGEDY.” REPORTED THE SECRETARY OF WAR, “IT IS ONLY A TEMPORARY SETBACK IN OUR CRUSADE TOWARD INEVITABLE VICTORY, FIRST IN EUROPE, AND THEN IN THE PACIFIC ... “

  MORE

  AP-HAV-387509-WQ/102244

  “Goddamn,” he breathed. This was big news, and for once New York would be busier than London. And just after I transferred, he thought, annoyed.

  “Bloody hell goddamn,” agreed McCulley. “Been a busy week, what?”

  Porter shook his head. This was why he hated being away from the newsroom even for a day, much less weeks. What else was going on? He kept the clipboard as he followed McCulley back through the crowded newsroom.

  The “Paris Bureau” would be in London for the next few weeks as he got everything organized before moving across the Channel. He needed to establish his team, get his sources straight, then move to Paris and up toward the front. He hadn’t been in Europe for years. For the time being, he might even get to do some reporting again. The thought pleased him--bureau chief salary and reporter’s work. An ideal combination.

  He could tell which desk was his--it was the temporarily clean one. Old, battered, coffee rings and cigarette bums, God only knew what sort of gunk and mold lurked in the crevasses of the drawers, but it was his. He’d been a reporter long enough to check out the chair before he sat down. Sure enough, as soon as his predecessor had left, the other reporters had raided everything that worked. The chair was missing two cas
ters. You don’t have to be a vulture to be a reporter, but it helps, Porter mused.

  “Here, I’ll get you a chair that works,” McCulley said, pulling the old chair away and stealing a working chair from a reporter who was out on assignment. “This’ll do. I’ll have the old one fixed as soon as I can. Of course, the Lord only knows how long that’ll be. Here, now. Safe as houses. All comfy, just like home. Here, I’d better replace that typewriter as well. Besides, you’ll be reading for a while, won’t you, then? War moves whether you’re available or not, don’t it? Bloody inconvenient, what?”

  “Bloody hell inconvenient,” Porter agreed. He sat down to read.

  He’d grabbed a few newspapers when he got off the ship, and a few more in Victoria Station, but the English press had a pretty poor reputation outside of the Times and the Guardian, plus what with censorship he didn’t trust anything they reported anyway.

  The wire service material was all fresh and uncensored, at least until it went through editorial before going out to the clients. He and the other editors played a constant game with military censorship, trying to slip good stories through while still staying on the good side of the government. And, he remembered, there wasn’t a First Amendment in Great Britain. “Bloody hell inconvenient, what?” he murmured to himself in a phony English accent as he put his feet up on his semi-new desk.

  There wasn’t much new on the German-Soviet armistice story, though Porter suspected that there was still a tremendous amount going on behind the scenes. The American reds and pinks had made numerous excuses for the Commie pull-out from the war, even suggesting that there had been a behind-the-scenes deal between Roosevelt and Churchill to invade the Soviet Union and tear down Communism. But anti-Communist feeling in the United States had raged forth. There had been a few riots where American Reds had been beaten by mobs. Even Eugene V. Debs had come out publicly to denounce the Soviet move. Doesn’t look good for World Communism, Porter thought. Like a lot of urban Americans his age, he’d attended a party meeting or two, flirted with Marxism (and the freethinking girls at the meetings) a bit, but had put it aside.