THE LAST GOOD WAR: A Novel

by Paul Wonnacott

  The pilot was in a hurry to take off. He had skimped on fuel, and wanted to get off while the engines were still warm; he didn't want to waste fuel on a preflight runup.

  The Liberator swung out to the end of the concrete and immediately began its takeoff run. It used the full runway, finally rising slowly over the rocks.

  Then disaster struck. The outboard right engine began to miss; the plane sank from view. A flash of fire rose from the rocks below.

  Five days later, American and British amphibious forces splashed ashore in Sicily. Their assault on the Continent of Europe had begun.

  Kaz was now back in Britain. With the new Prime Minister, he felt out of the loop; he was no longer invited to high-level meetings where grand strategy was discussed. More than ever, he lived for the weekends and visits with Anna.

  As the months rolled by, he became increasingly bored. Finally, he was transferred to the southeastern corner of England, part of a small Polish group that was to be attached to the new, powerful American First Army under Gen. George Patton. They would act as liaison, preparing to integrate the Polish Armored Division into the First Army. Patton's aggressive reputation in Sicily made his army the obvious spearhead; he would lead a thrust into the heart of the continent. Kaz was excited; he would be in on the action. But he also felt ambivalent. The time of the invasion was approaching. Once he joined Patton, the security curtain would close behind him; he would no longer be able to visit Anna.

  He was bitterly disappointed. He had been told that Patton was assembling a full 45 divisions. In fact, Patton had none. It was a hollow army, an imaginary army with only one purpose: to convince the Germans that the invasion would come directly across the narrowest part of the Channel, to the sand beaches of the Pas de Calais. Actually, sand and cement. Rommel had injected a new urgency in the German army. The defenses must be built up. The marauders must be stopped at the water's edge. If Patton ever got loose in France....

  “The phantom first” or “our grand paper army,” the junior officers called it. More accurately, it could have been called the rubber army—thousands of inflatable dummy tanks, all neatly lined up across the fields of Kent, just waiting to be photographed by the next Focke-Wulf pilot who dared a quick, five-minute dash across the Channel.

  Everyone was frustrated, but Kaz was not prepared for Patton's sulfurous temper. “Why don't they let me at those sons of bitches? I was born for this moment, I can feel it. The great throw of the dice. To determine the history of the next hundred years. What am I doing here, playing kiddies' games with toy soldiers?”

  “Calm down, Georgie. Calm down.” It was a one-star general speaking. “You're being tested. If you can just manage to control your temper, you'll get another crack at Rommel.”

  Kaz was astonished. It was the first—but not the last—time he heard a junior officer (though still a general!) call Patton “Georgie.” That sort of thing would never, ever happen in the Polish Army. And could you imagine Rommel calling Hitler, “Dolphie?”

  22

  Normandie

  Our landings… have failed…. The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and

  devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.

  Draft statement of Dwight D. Eisenhower,

  to be released if the invasion failed.

  6 June 1944. 01:50 hrs. With Patton's Phantom Army

  35 miles south-southeast of London.

  Kaz stirred fitfully; the banging on his door wouldn't stop. He had counted on a good night's sleep at last, after the break in the weather; the forecasters had promised at least a temporary interruption of the howling gusts of wind and driving rain that drummed on the thin tin top of the hut. But they must have gotten it wrong. The banging on the door was even worse than during the storms of the previous two nights. Perhaps he should jam a towel in the door to keep it quiet.

  As he stirred from the fog of sleep, he realized it wasn't the wind; it was a fist thumping on the door. He swung his feet out of bed onto the chilly floor, and shouted for his tormentor to come in. A British Warrant Officer appeared in the doorway. Kaz didn't remember having seen him around camp before. In the dim light, he could see the WO's neatly clipped mustache. Kaz thought there was a slight reddish tinge to the mustache and fair hair. Perhaps one of the new men brought in from the Northern Irish regiment.

  “Sorry to wake you, sir, but the General has ordered a staff meeting in the briefing room at 02:00 hours, in just ten minutes. Not exactly come as you are, but casual, in light of the short notice.” Kaz was already pulling his pants over his pajamas. “Something seems to be up. My guess is, this may be the big day.”

  As Kaz shuffled, half awake, into the quonset hut, he joined a bleary-eyed, unshaven, most unmilitary-looking group. But they did manage to stumble to their feet—and a few of the lieutenants could even be said to snap to attention—as the general entered, stage left.

  Incongruously, Patton was in full uniform, wearing a polished steel helmet and an open holster with an ivory-handled revolver.

  “Gentlemen. At this moment, allied paratroops are dropping into France. Within a few hours, a flotilla will appear off the coast of France. The assault on Fortress Europe is about to begin.”

  “For obvious reasons, I won't tell you exactly where the invasion will occur; you will all know soon enough. Let me simply say that it is to the west of the Pas de Calais.

  “Our reconnaissance aircraft report that our little ruse has been successful in keeping the Germans focused on the Calais area. The Boche have some of their best infantry and Panzer divisions along the Calais coast, supported by heavy guns.

  “I know that most of you will be eager to transfer back to combat units, but our job here is not done.” Kaz thought he detected a wistful wince in the general's otherwise enthusiastic face; he could not hide his pain in being shunted aside during the historic D-Day attack. “Our intelligence indicates that Hitler firmly expects our main attack to be across the narrowest part of the channel towards Calais. Our job is to reinforce this belief, to play to the Führer's preconceptions, and thus to keep an extra dozen German divisions east of the Seine. Off the backs of our boys in Normandy.”

  Kaz glanced to the officers on his left. Apparently no one else noticed Patton's slip, mentioning the location of the invasion. But it didn't matter, now that allied battleships were about to open fire on the coast of Normandy.

  “Our job is to convince Hitler and his gang that the attack in the west is just a large-scale feint, that the main attack will come within the next week or ten days right across the channel to Calais.

  “To achieve this goal, we will immediately step up our fictitious radio traffic. This will be a big task; after all, I'm supposed to be in charge of an Army Group here, with 45 divisions and thousands of tanks.” With a wry smile, Patton glanced around a room that suddenly seemed very small indeed. “Major Edwards will give you details. Oh, by the way, if you do want to ask for a transfer back to your combat units, Major Edwards will be handling the paper work. I should warn you, however, that the major will be overwhelmed with work in the next two weeks, and will not even have a chance to look at your applications until that time.” Patton smiled slightly.

  “As before, you are forbidden to have any communication with the outside world except through the mails—which will still be closely censored—or through channels which Edwards specifically authorizes and arranges. Major Edwards.” With that, Patton took his seat to the left of the lectern.

  Edwards was much more casually dressed than the General. The stresses of recent weeks were beginning to show. He looked exhausted.

  “Over the next 72 hours, we will simulate the move of a large army from our present camps towards ports of embarkation in the southeast. We will gradually move the source of our radio transmissions toward these ports. The German direction finders are so good now that they can triangulate to within a mile—or maybe a even a few hundred yards—s
o that it is important for our messages to come from the right locations. Simulated traffic jams should be in towns, please, not in pastures.

  “We will want considerable low-level traffic sent in the clear—tank commanders chewing at others over traffic foul-ups, occasional requests for help with mechanical breakdowns, and so on. One of your jobs will be to provide plausibility to these messages. But don't overdo it. Let's not have all the imaginary tanks break down at once.

  “Oh, by the way. Lt. Pitcairn will be handling arrangements to move our inflatable tanks along with the radio transmissions, just in case a Jerry pilot buzzes over and snaps our picture. It goes without saying that, during daylight hours, the inflatable tanks should be kept right side up. Four men underneath should have no trouble carrying a tank along without tipping it over.

  “Finally, to add color, we've decided to make the Poles into an undisciplined lot. Sorry about that, Jankowski, but we might as well play on German preconceptions. You Poles may include messages of a personal nature in your communications. You might even include some bitching from junior officers about incompetent generals, just to titillate the Boche.” Edwards began turning toward Patton, but caught himself. The general forced a half-smile as many in the audience smirked. “Would you see me about the details of your assignment right after the briefing, Maj. Jankowski.”

  Kaz threw himself into the deception. But, like almost all the others, he applied for a transfer. He was one of the lucky ones; his transfer back to his Polish division came through within two weeks. He would become a real soldier again, and, as the need for security lessened, he hoped that he would occasionally be able to get away to see Anna.

  The time with Patton was well spent. Hitler clung to the whisperings of his soothsayer and to his intuition that the main allied thrust would be at the Pas de Calais. For six critical weeks after D-Day, he kept 15 sorely needed divisions east of the Seine, poised to repel Patton's cross-channel assault that never came.

  In the time Kaz had been away, the First Polish Armored Division had been beefed up. It now had four times as many Sherman tanks—a full complement. Kaz was given command of about three dozen, and focused on the final stages of training. His main task was to get his tanks to attack in a coordinated way, particularly when the black team—the simulated Nazi panzers—succeeded in “disabling” several of his tanks in the mock battles. Kaz was worried. Because of the lack of space, maneuvers had to be confined to no more than 30 or 40 tanks. If he had so much trouble coordinating just a few tanks, what would happen if they were thrown into large-scale tank battles, with the Germans shooting back?

  As the days went by, news from Normandy led Kaz and his comrades alternatively to elation and depression. The Allied forces accomplished an enormous feat by establishing a foothold, and they clearly held the initiative. But the going was excruciatingly slow. In the east, the grueling battle for Caen ground on week after week. Caen was one of the early objectives of the British—they hoped to capture it on D-Day, and, in fact, allied forces penetrated to within 3 miles of its outskirts by nightfall on that first day. But it did not fall into allied hands until July 9, five arduous weeks after the invasion.

  The struggle by American armies to the west was equally frustrating. The bocage country of Western Normandy was marked by woody, marshy areas, interspersed with farmlands broken down into tiny fields separated by hedgerows—mounds of earth six, eight, or more feet in height, generally topped with heavy vegetation. To get across the hedgerows, tanks would have to climb sharply up the embankments, exposing their vulnerable underbellies to enemy fire. Furthermore, in this exposed position, their guns were aimed skyward, making it impossible for them to shoot back.

  After weeks of bloody and frustrating fighting, it was a noncommissioned officer—Sergeant Culin—who came up with a simple but brilliant solution: welding steel rails to the front of a Sherman tank, allowing it to cut through the hedgerows while maintaining its level position and firing as it went. Often, chunks of the hedgerows were carried forward on the rails, providing camouflage and protection. The sergeant's contraption, appropriately nicknamed “Rhinoceros” by grateful armored troops, was widely adopted. The Germans had accommodatingly—but unwittingly—provided the rails in building their Fortress Europe, scattering “Rommel's asparagus”—steel obstacles—profusely along the landing beaches.

  The exhausting, grinding battle wore on. The Allies urgently needed to get out of the Normandy pocket into the open, tank-friendly fields where the Germans could be overwhelmed by numbers. But now, six weeks after the invasion, the Allies had still not advanced beyond the line they expected to hold just five days after D-Day.

  They had, however, landed over a million men, with fresh troops flowing in daily. A new addition was to be the First Polish Armored Division, which would be attached to the Canadians. To prepare for their arrival, Kaz, Jan, and a dozen other Polish officers and men were dispatched to the eastern end of the front, near Caen.

  17 July 1944. With the Fourth Canadian Armored Division east of Caen.

  When Kaz and his compatriots arrived, they expected to participate almost immediately in action against the enemy. The Canadians, however, had other ideas. They and the British were on the eve of an armored attack, and it was too late to integrate Poles into the action. A young officer, Lt. Bud Swann, was assigned to them, and invited Kaz and Jan to a half-demolished farmhouse that was serving as a makeshift officers' club. In anticipation of the next day's offensive, it was almost deserted. After a few pleasantries, Swann got down to business.

  “At last, we've gotten through that Caen mess; we're now to the edge of open fields where tanks can maneuver. This may be our best chance so far to break through the German lines. Apart from the landings themselves, tomorrow may be the most decisive battle thus far in Normandy.”

  Rather stiffly, Kaz responded that he wished them luck. In spite of his years in Britain, he still didn't feel his English was up to the sort of banter that lightened the worries of soldiers.

  Swann continued. “We're going to need all the help we can get. We're up against two of the best panzer divisions—Panzer Lehr and the Hitlerjungend SS.”

  Kaz had heard horror stories about these two elite divisions, but he wanted to hear about them directly from someone with firsthand experience. He encouraged Swann to go on. “The Panzer Lehr?”

  “Yeah,” replied Swann. “They're tough. The best battle-tested veterans, brought together in a demonstration division. Originally used to train other panzers. Not a surprising name—'Lehrer' is the German word for teacher.

  “The Hitlerjungend may be even worse,” continued Swann. “Perhaps the worst of the SS storm troopers. A bunch of fanatics. A gang of teenage thugs with heavy weapons. Leaders in the Hitler Youth back in Germany. Don't take many prisoners. When they do, they shoot 'em.”

  Jan was about to say something, but held back.

  Swann began sipping his third beer. “Of course,” he glanced around the empty room, “we don't take many of them prisoner, either.”

  Kaz didn't know how to interpret that; he felt a real culture gap. He decided not to say anything. Swann apparently noticed his hesitation, and added:

  “They're too fanatic to surrender. Just like the Japs.”

  Kaz thought back to his early contact with Germans in the Polish churchyard. He wondered: Was Swann simply preventing a nasty misinterpretation, or was he putting a gloss on a horrible story? Bloody-mindedness seemed strangely out of keeping with his boyish face and floppy blond hair. Kaz's thoughts were interrupted as Swann got back to his main topic.

  “We have a big problem: how do you press an attack against hardened defenses? We expect German tanks to come out and meet us in the fields. But behind them are dug-in 88 field guns. If you get within a mile of one of them, you're dead. They can hit a small, moving target. They were originally designed as an antiaircraft gun, but proved their effectiveness against tanks in North Africa.

  “I'm not sure we've re
ally cracked the fundamental puzzle. We want to follow standard tank tactics, pushing rapidly forward to exploit any enemy weakness; we want to get our tanks behind his lines and create havoc. But we have to guard against the tactic Rommel used so effectively in North Africa—having his tanks appear to be defeated and retreat, drawing the British tanks towards his deadly 88s.”

  Kaz couldn't help but notice the disturbing trend in Swann's tone as he worked through his three beers—starting with an optimistic statement about a decisive breakthrough, but now talking about how dangerous it would be to exploit any advantage. Worse was to come.

  “I'm afraid that the last six weeks have taken a toll on our morale. In some ways, the Sherman tanks are great—fast, rugged, and easy to repair. They've introduced a whole new stage into armored warfare. Now, we don't have to worry that we'll lose more tanks to breakdowns than to enemy fire. And we don't have to nag our tankers endlessly about maintenance.

  “But we were told that Shermans were the best tank in the world, and they're not. In one-on-one engagements, their 75 mm guns are simply no match for the new Tigers with their high-velocity 88s, or even the Panthers. And some idiot designed the Sherman with a gas rather than diesel engine. When they're hit, there's likely to be a flash fire and explosion. Some of the guys call them cigarette lighters.”

  Jan was looking increasingly uncomfortable. Swann continued:

  “I should know. I made the bad mistake of tangling with a Tiger two days ago. I was the only one to get out alive. Fortunately, the Boche don't have very many.” His voice tailed off.

  They sat there, not knowing what to say—perhaps two or three minutes. Finally, Kaz broke the silence.

  “So what will we be doing tomorrow?”

  “I haven't got a new tank or crew yet, so I'll be sitting out the big one. It'll be a British, not Canadian, show anyway. I've picked a spot near the top of a hill, where we can get a view for several miles over the fields. If you have any questions, now's the time to ask. It may be too noisy tomorrow, with the artillery firing over our heads.”