Fox On The Rhine

by Douglas Niles

  The Desert Fox realized that he had to do the same.

  Broadcast House, Berlin, Germany, 28 November 1944, 0800 hours GMT

  The AP office in London never missed an Axis Sally broadcast. “It’s mostly lies, and the rest is exaggeration,” said Percy McCulley, the London AP bureau chief, “but there’s often a kernel or two of truth buried inside. Useful way to get some unofficial information.” He turned the radio knobs slowly, trying to bring in the static-filled signal.

  The concluding sounds of the Glenn Miller Orchestra faded into the sultry voice of Axis Sally’s propaganda program. “That was ‘In the Mood,’ and I’m in the mood tonight, just like your wives and girlfriends back in America who are so very lonely that right now they’re finding comfort in the arms of the 4-Fs you left behind.” She chuckled in a low, sensual voice. “This is your friend Sally, coming to you from Berlin, with music, news, and personal messages. Tonight we have a sad message for all our listeners. The Nineteenth Armored Division, facing the heroic defenders of Metz, massacred over a thousand German prisoners after they surrendered. Using machine guns on the helpless prisoners, many of whom still carried white flags, the savages of the Nineteenth, led by Colonel James Pulaski, carried out an atrocity.”

  “What the hell?” shouted a shocked Pulaski when he heard his name. “A massacre? What is she talking about?”

  Frank Ballard put a hand on his colonel’s shoulder. “Just Nazi bullshit,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You may remember that Colonel James Pulaski is the careless young hothead whose Combat Command A blundered into a brilliant German counteroffensive in Abbeville a few months ago, giving the Allies their worst defeat of the war. Why he wasn’t court-martialed, we don’t know. It may be because Pulaski arranged for the death of his CO, General Jack King. That was a career-advancing move for General Henry Wakefield, a man George Patton once called ‘a fat slug posing as a tank commander,’ and who now commands the Nineteenth.”

  In the Ardennes Forest, Private Billy Cooper rubbed his cold hands as his fellows clustered around the tinny radio. “Goddamn,” breathed one of the other privates. “I’m glad I’m not in the Nineteenth.”

  “You and me both, brother,” said another.

  “Do you know what I think?” purred Axis Sally. “I think Colonel Pulaski has gone crazy. First he kills his CO in collusion with his exec and leads his own men into a trap. The exec keeps him from getting court-martialed because your officers only care about each other--they don’t care whether you live or die--and don’t worry that he’s gone around the bend. His own officers have been reporting that Pulaski was falling apart, and now he massacres German soldiers who had surrendered, in direct violation of the rules of war.”

  Colonel Sanger always felt he had a professional obligation to listen to Axis Sally. But when he heard the Nineteenth being mentioned, he immediately sent an orderly to get Wakefield. The burly general came within minutes and listened in silence until she finished. “Goddamn Nazi bitch,” he swore under his breath.

  “Men of the Nineteenth Division, your own Combat Command A has disgraced you with this cowardly and despicable massacre. Worse, watch as your own officers cover it up with lies and more lies. And if your commander is Colonel Jimmy Pulaski, the Panicky Polack of CCA, watch out before that maniac leads you all to your deaths. Now, back to music, with the Andrews Sisters singing, ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else But Me.’ Of course, you know your wives and girlfriends have worn out that old apple tree by now ... “

  “Turn it off,” said Wakefield. “Get me Pulaski.” The boy was just recovering from Abbeville. Now to be tarred with a prisoner massacre--and that awful nickname--Wakefield was worried about a relapse.

  Luftwaffe Advance Airbase, Bitburg, Germany, 30 November 1944,1320 hours GMT

  Krueger carefully controlled his rudder, guiding the jet through a shallow turn, back toward the runway he had departed only minutes before. The starboard engine gave him plenty of thrust, but still the Stormbird was difficult to steer in a straight line.

  Angrily he cursed the dead weight slung under the port wing, the engine that had burned out as the Me-262 was climbing from the airbase, leading two Gruppen on a hunt-and-kill mission in search of Allied fighters. The malfunction had forced him to send his wingman in command of the two dozen jets, while he made this awkward return, infuriated by the failure of the delicate machinery.

  Despite the obstinate handling of the plane, he was able to line up on the runway and make a nearly flawless three-point landing. Rumbling up to the hangar, he popped the canopy and jumped out as the jet rolled to a halt.

  “I need a new engine, Willi!” he shouted angrily to his chief mechanic. “And I want it mounted by tomorrow morning!”

  “Jawohl, Herr Kommodore!” replied the enlisted man, turning to shout the orders to his crew.

  Krueger knew that they had several new engines in the maintenance shed, and that Willi would have no difficulty making the installation. But still, the loss of today’s mission was galling in this winter weather. Chances to fly had become increasingly uncommon. Today was a rare cloudless day, with perfect visibility and light winds, an ideal chance to make life difficult for the American and British Jabos that so relentlessly savaged the German positions on the Westwall. His rage mounted. On the one hand, he knew that the temperamental engines tended to malfunction, but on the other hand, that was the purpose of having a mechanic. His fists clenched as his temper rose.

  Though the strategic bombing campaign had been suspended, the enemy air forces were still making life dangerous for the brave soldiers in the front lines. The Luftwaffe fighters had been moved to advance bases such as this one, all along the border, and whenever possible tried to harass the Allied ground support aircraft. Krueger himself had shot down two Thunderbolts and a Mustang on his last mission, but that had been more than a week ago.

  Eight days of foul weather had kept the air forces on both sides grounded, and now it was exceptionally aggravating to have this opportunity canceled by mechanical failure. The engines were still the weak link of this magnificent aircraft; it was inevitable that, on one of these days, his own airplane would be one of the offending laggards.

  Why did it have to be today? he thought. Someone will pay.

  He advanced into the hangar, his temper flaring. He picked up a wrench and strode toward his hapless mechanic.

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

  The two key events of November 1944, Galland’s Gambit and the Metz Massacre, had a dramatic effect on the military campaign to follow.

  The devastating losses suffered by Eighth Air Force on the ill-fated raid of 12 November inevitably had a chilling effect on the entire strategic bombing campaign. Of 2,576 bombers launched on that fateful mission, more than seven hundred were shot down, and an equal number landed with serious damage and casualties. This was a loss rate higher than any other mission, and was clearly unacceptable to USAAF command. Flyer morale crumbled, and bitter recriminations flew among the American generals. Although reports were muffled, news of the debacle even leaked into the press at home.

  Galland’s Gambit, as the attack came to be known, thus paid off in an immediate cessation of daylight bombing raids. The Me-262, still plagued by engine design flaws, production difficulties, and worker sabotage, was a machine that nevertheless gave the Allied air forces serious problems. Its appearance in the skies during 12 November took the Americans by surprise; though the British had had some inkling that the machine was in the works, their warnings to the U.S. airmen had been ignored.

  Responsibility for the Metz Massacre was assigned variously to the American Nineteenth Division’s Combat Command A and to the Nazi SS, each side furiously blaming the other. The propaganda target, however, was not the American forces, who were affected relatively slightly, but rather the German regular troops, who, like all soldiers on the battlefield, tended to be a powerful conduit for rumor
s of all stripes. Dramatic and lurid rumors, such as this was, tended to have a strong effect. Whether the Germans believed that the Allies would in fact massacre their prisoners wholesale, as opposed to the occasional atrocity committed by both sides, or whether (as even some contemporary rumors had it) the SS would do it instead, made little behavioral difference. Feeling they had no option but to stand and die, they stood, and often they died. This behavioral change stiffened the resistance the Allies faced as they continued to push their way slowly through the Westwall.

  The American naval reinforcements proved of little use in the European Theater, as by now the Germans had lost all control of the seas. Even their U-boat campaigns were stifled by the loss of the French and Norwegian ports. Though some vessels, equipped with the revolutionary snorkel devices that for the first time allowed the subs to perform their entire missions while submerged, were able to leak through the Allied blockade into the Atlantic, most of these subs were intercepted and destroyed before they could reach the sea lanes. The remainder of Halsey’s fleet was most useful, perhaps, as it went into patrol off the coast of Norway and proved somewhat of a deterrent to Russian ambitions.

  For their part, during November, the Soviets made use of their skills at winter operations. They moved huge air assets and many ground troops into Scandinavia, projecting their air power far beyond the Norwegian coastline. The Soviet fleet, bottled up in Leningrad for nearly the entire war, moved forward to Oslo, and set up a base there just a short sortie from the waters of the North Sea.

  At the same time, on the ground the battles had degenerated into bloody campaigns in the autumn mud and rain. The successful but costly offensive at Aachen had ripped apart a great portion of First Army. Subsequently, in an attempt to move south of the city, Courtney Hodges’s men found themselves trapped in a grueling campaign in the Huertgen Forest. Here the offensive was measured in dozens of lives for every yard gained. And though the harbor of Antwerp had finally been opened to Allied shipping, even that mighty seaport was barely able to slake the supply needs of the insatiable armies. A steady bombardment of V-1 rockets was not successful in closing the port

  Generals such as Patton and Montgomery continued to dispute the course of the war, which Eisenhower was necessarily managing in light of an increasingly difficult political environment as well as military concerns.

  Concurrently, the German position in the Westwall was growing more solid by the day. Reinforcements from the Russian front made some contribution, though it wasn’t to be an overwhelming force; OKW decided to maintain nearly 80 percent of the eastern front troops in readiness for the eventual Soviet attack that all thinking Germans suspected to be inevitable. Still, the treaty bought some time, and some desperately needed increase in Wehrmacht strength.

  Rommel had garrisoned his fortified line from Switzerland to the English Channel, and still had enough troops to gather twelve panzer divisions as a strategic reserve. The respite from strategic bombing did not extend to the tactical air support for the ground war, but now, fortunately for the Germans, the weather became problematical. Cloudy skies, rain, blustery winds, and early snowstorms proved a great equalizer, removing the Allies’ greatest advantage, and giving the defenders a chance to strike back.

  Rommel was keenly aware of the Allies’ supply difficulties and knew that he might be able to launch a single, devastating attack. He, like Eisenhower, faced strong political pressure to act, but this time the pressure coincided with his own military aims. He saw a chance to launch an offensive, the first major German attack since Kursk in 1943.

  It was an opportunity the Desert Fox was ready to grasp.

  OPERATION FUCHS AM RHEIN

  December 1944

  Associated Press Bureau Office, Paris, France, 1 December 1944, 0946 hours GMT

  Chuck Porter shook his head as he inspected what had once been the Paris AP bureau office. Under the occupation, the Gestapo had used it as a command post because of the already-installed communications lines; on their retreat, they had savagely ripped out every bit of useful equipment and every file cabinet and left the office looking pretty much like a war zone.

  “It’s better than it looks, boys,” he said to the three reporters who had accompanied him across the Channel and into liberated France. There’d been a fair amount of competition for the initial slots: Donald Lester, originally from South Carolina, who’d progressed up through the Havana bureau, Steve Denning, an ex-army brat whose father had fought with Pershing in Mexico, and Troy Winter, who’d moved from southeastern Wisconsin to the Chicago office and then international from there. They’d worked on city papers before joining AP, and the youngest had more than ten years with the organization.

  “Let’s get busy.” Chuck pointed at some push brooms in the comer. “Now you see what reporting is really all about.”

  In spite of the inevitable grumbling, inside of an hour, they’d created the semblance of an office. There was no wire equipment, though, and at the normal rate for civilian service restoration it would take weeks to get back on line. The office had two couriers to carry stories back to London, with military censors waiting for them in Antwerp, where the primary transportation was. Troy had complained about that. “This is 1944, for God’s sake! Two to three days to file a story--hell, that’s like we’re back in the nineteenth century!”

  “Nah, look at it this way,” Porter said, leaning back dangerously in an office chair and putting his feet up on the desk, “being cut off means that they can’t send stuff to us, either. Think of it--no orders for filler stories, demands from client papers to find out what happened to their local boys or to get the East Palooka, Indiana, slant on things ... “

  “No memos!” added Steve.

  “And from my point of view, the very best thing is that we don’t have a single client paper!” smiled Porter. One of the primary duties of a bureau chief was liaison with local client papers. “I’m officially demoting myself back down to reporter for the duration!”

  “You mean promoting,” said Don.

  “Somebody’s got to teach you boys how to spell and write a decent headline,” grinned Porter.

  This was the life, Porter thought. His treasured portable Underwood in its leather case, a notebook and a pen, and a war to cover. “Boys, let’s go cover some news,” he said. “Troy, you’ve got SHAEF headquarters. Don, you get Monty and the Tommies.”

  There was an immediate complaint. “Hell, Chuck, Monty’s already got an army of reporters around him. He collects them. What am I going to find up there?”

  “Something newsworthy,” Porter snapped back. “Steve, how about some local human interest stuff?”

  “Parisienne women after liberation!” Steve replied. “I’ll have to do some in-depth digging!”

  “No fair,” complained Don. “He gets French women, I get Monty and a few Canadians. Where’s the justice in that?”

  “Justice? You expect justice?” shot back Troy. “I get to sit through briefings and get shuffled from officer to officer.”

  “So, Chuck, what are you getting?” probed Steve.

  “The Metz story and the Third Army,” he said smiling, putting his hands behind his head.

  He held up his hand to stifle the chorus of complaints. “Hey, rank hath its privileges, you know. Besides, I’ll be chained to this desk within a month. This is my last chance in the field, and I’m going to make it count.”

  War resembled a huge construction site with occasional smears of blood, thought Porter as the jeep bumped along the damaged road. He pulled the top buttons of his jacket as tightly as he could to protect himself against the cold, but it did little good. The only warmth was the glowing end of his cigarette. He wished he had brought an extra pair of long underwear. December was gray and turning harsh.

  On the other hand, he was finally in the war, and even more importantly, a reporter again, if only for a little while. That made up for almost any amount of cold, drear, and rubble.

  His few weeks in L
ondon had turned into a blur of camping out in one SHAEF office after another, soliciting the web of permits and documents enabling him to cross the Channel to begin a new AP France bureau. After SHAEF came dealings with the French provisional government and a memorable meeting with Charles de Gaulle, who evidently assumed the sole purpose of the AP was to serve as his personal press office, and virtually dictated a series of stories on his own glorious return to la belle France. Porter had met the type before: they weren’t real if they didn’t see their name in the paper. He had flattered and taken ostentatious notes, and finally ended up with a series of elegant documents topped off with the signature of de Gaulle in all the key places.

  Paris was relatively undamaged, except for places where Nazi insignia had been torn down. Dictatorships liked advertising, evidently, Porter mused, but swastika billboards grew boring in a hurry. When Porter pulled into Paris, dusty in fatigues and helmet, he was mistaken for an American soldier and nearly hugged to death by young Parisienne filles--not that he objected.

  He’d had the experience of being cut off from his daily news fix again. The disaster in the air with the new German secret “jet” fighter was still on everybody’s minds; the U-boat menace that had resurfaced with the sinking of the Enterprise seemed to be subsiding once again. Neither situation, he was assured by everyone in the command structure, was enough to change the ultimate course of the war, and his sources seemed sincere enough, so that’s what he had reported.

  The nearly universal opinion was that the Germans were finished, with the proviso that cornered rats were still able to bite. Porter hoped he wasn’t too late to at least see a little bit of action.