Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine)

by Douglas Niles

  “Then we’re going to have the chance to improve the world, quite a bit,” said the venerable general. “This is the order we have been waiting for.” He glanced at his watch. “Execute Operations Plan Alpha immediately. Air strikes against German positions will commence this afternoon, and I want a full-scale artillery bombardment going by dusk. The tanks will roll as soon as it is dark. Comrades, once again, we are at war.”

  9 JANUARY 1945

  THIRD ARMY FORWARD HEADQUARTERS (MOBILE), TRIER, GERMANY, 1830 HOURS GMT

  Rommel looked out the smeared-glass side window of the jeep, at the countryside that didn’t look so very different from the forests and swales of Belgium or France. But it was different—this was Germany.

  This was home.

  He pondered how, exactly, he returned here. Was it as a traitor? A liberator? Conqueror? All of the above, in some measure or another, he supposed. He did feel like a stranger, a foreigner in his own fatherland. And he came here, rode the wave of a whole tide of foreigners, these amazing and energetic Americans.

  They were racing everywhere, it seemed. Throughout Belgium the roads had been jammed with columns of trucks, jeeps, tanks, and troops, all moving toward the front. The Westwall was breached in a gap a hundred miles wide, and all those men were flowing into Germany, surging toward the Rhine.

  On a purely military basis, he remained amazed at how rapidly the American columns physically moved across the ground. The HQ unit that was his destination served as a prime example: there were hundreds of men, dozens of trucks full of equipment and supplies, and when it was up and running it was like a busy and crowded office building. Yet the staff could set up or tear down that office in about an hour, and load it up for transport in less time than that. With a roar of engines and cloud of dust, the HQ was a motorized column racing down the road to the next city, or the one after that.

  There seemed to be plenty of gasoline for all of these vehicles, and ample food for the men, and even for POWs and displaced civilians. As to American equipment, he believed that the Yanks made up for in quantity what they might have lacked in quality. The Sherman tanks were light and undergunned by the standards of modern German armor, doomed in a face-to-face shootout with a Panther or Tiger. But at the same time Rommel acknowledged that they were fast and reliable, so nimble that they could move across all types of terrain, and light enough to cross rivers on bridges that would never support even a Panther tank, much less one of the gargantuan Tigers. Furthermore, there seemed to be hundreds of the things, everywhere he looked. Speidel had remarked earlier, only half in jest, that the Yankees must be growing their tanks on the vast steppes of the North American heartland. After his experiences in the past month, Rommel was forced to agree.

  The Desert Fox had been driven to Trier in a closed jeep by an American driver, and as they made their way through the narrow streets, crowded with military traffic, he saw that this town—gateway to Germany going back to Roman times—had been given over, completely, to American control.

  Third Army MPs were busy steering traffic through the town, all of it the olive drab of American military, and most of it heading east. Rommel’s driver apologized as they were halted for more than ten minutes, while an apparently endless column of Shermans rolled past on the main avenue through the city. The field marshal found it telling that, even as the great column rolled speedily along, there was enough traffic in the side streets that each of them became thronged with waiting vehicles. As the last of the M4s passed, each driver stepped on the gas, to be challenged by a chorus of MP whistles and shouts.

  Only by jockeying through a tight turn, then dashing down an alley, did the jeep driver finally break free of the crush. He turned back onto the thoroughfare with a screech of tires, and then pulled into the elegant, semicircular driveway of the grand and venerable Hotel Trier.

  “This is the HQ building, for today anyway, General,” the driver said in his passable German. Rommel ignored the mistake in rank, knowing that the Americans had no field marshal in their military hierarchy. “I’m supposed to drop you here.”

  “Thank you,” Rommel replied, getting out of the small car and stretching. His back was sore and his legs stiff, but he shook off the travel kinks and entered the large lobby, returning the salute of the MP who stood outside the door. The room was a rather jarring contrast of military functionality and Baroque overindulgence. There were great, floor-to-ceiling mirrors along one lofty wall, with vivid tapestries framed by marble columns. In between were tangles of radio and power cables, plain tables, and functional folding chairs.

  His arrival didn’t seem to cause much of a stir. That was interesting, he reflected—perhaps it might be possible for the Wehrmacht and the American army to work together after all. Instinctively he went to the table, where a large map—depicting Germany from the Westwall to the Rhine—was spread. Everything had an air of transience. Several tables were simply sheets of plywood laid across sawhorses, while the radio consoles across the room resembled a jungle of hastily laid wiring and cables. He knew that the HQ staff had moved in here a few hours ago; by tomorrow, or perhaps the day after, they would be back on the road.

  He had hoped to find Patton here, but was informed that the Third Army commander had blown through the temporary headquarters like a winter squall. He was up at the front, supervising the fast-moving spearheads of his armor divisions. Rommel nodded in understanding, and in fact wished that he could be doing the same thing.

  One of Third Army’s senior intelligence officers, a one-star, was emerging from a small office adjacent to the lobby, and he greeted the field marshal warmly in German.

  “General Patton asked me to show you every hospitality if you should visit. I am sorry not to have greeted you when you arrived, but I was just finishing up in the decoding room,” he said, with a glance at the door that had just closed behind him. “And I’ve got good news, Field Marshal! Frank Ballard of the Nineteenth is already twenty miles down the Moselle Valley. We have four more divisions through the Westwall, and they’re driving to the east and north. It looks like your Seventh Army is going along with the surrender. So our own Seventh—that’s General Patch—can move into the Palatinate south of here.”

  “Good. I expected as much, in that arena. I have been in regular contact with General Brandenburger, and he has been willing to follow my orders,” Rommel declared. “What is the latest word on Sixth Panzerarmee?” While he greatly disliked asking that question of an American officer, no matter how polite, the current status of those forces was continuously on his mind.

  Here the American general’s good cheer wavered slightly. “They’re giving First Army and the Brits a helluva tussle—they still hold the Westwall north of Dasburg, all the way to the sea. Our only breakthroughs are from here south.”

  “So the valley of the Moselle is the best route, the only fast route, to the Rhine.”

  “Right. The main threat seems to be here—” The general marked a line from Bitburg to Koblenz, which was a shorter distance than the Moselle Valley route. “There are several SS-kampfgruppe racing eastward. Panzer Lehr is in pursuit, but the Nazi panzers have slipped away for now. There’s a chance they could reach the Rhine before us, and if they do we won’t get the crossing without a nasty fight.”

  “Big news, men!” This shout came from the radio room, where a colonel rushed into the room waving a piece of paper. He skidded to stop when he saw Rommel, then threw up a quick salute. “Hello, Field Marshal,” he said hastily. “Um, this can wait.”

  “Spill it, Joe,” the general said quickly. “The field marshal is in this with us, remember?”

  “Yes, sir,” Joe replied. He held up the paper. “Intelligence reports are in from some of the Polish resistance. They report that the Red Army has opened fire—a helluva bombardment, along a hundred miles of the Vistula. Looks like the Russians are getting back into the game.”

  Rommel nodded, unsurprised. He saw the same kind of acceptance on the faces of the Ame
rican staff officers all around him. Indeed, they had expected the attack for so long that it was almost a relief to know, at last, what Stalin was planning to do.

  “Well, looks like the race is on,” the American said after a moment. “We’d better get busy.”

  “I’ll head up to Panzer Lehr,” Rommel said. “It may be that I can help with logistics, up there. It’s important to get as many of your troops through the Westwall as possible—we need to reach the Rhine before the SS can blow bridges and form some kind of defensive front.”

  “Right, sir. General Patton has already ordered the Nineteenth to aim for Koblenz, with Fourth Armored moving up right behind. You know what kind of speed they can maintain. We have two divisions driving north, moving up behind the Westwall, trying to roll up Dietrich’s flank. Unfortunately, the mobile SS elements seem to already have bugged out.”

  Rommel nodded, concerned but hopeful. The day promised another clear sky, and he was learning to think of that as a good thing—the tactical air forces would have free rein, and that should only help the Shermans as they raced for the river.

  This was a race, he knew, that the Americans—and his loyal Germans—very much had to win.

  10 JANUARY 1945

  PANZER BATTALION, TWELFTH SS PANZER DIVISION “HITLERJUGEND,” BITBURG, GERMANY, 0842 HOURS GMT

  The battalion command post had been set up on a small yard, with a Panther tank parked nearby. The engine hatch was open, with a mechanic leaning in so far that his head and both arms were invisible inside of the compartment.

  “Hauptsturmführer Friedrich?” Lukas Vogel asked, standing at attention as he reported to his new commander. He was an officer now, but the enlisted man’s reflexes were still with him—he felt a little bit awkward dealing with higher rank. The SS captain to whom he was reporting was scarred on one cheek, and his eyes were a watery clear blue. He was balding on top, and his uniform was dirty. He hadn’t shaved in a few days. Lukas ran his eyes over the man’s decorations. The Panzer Assault Badge with silver wreath signified twenty-five separate days of armor combat. That didn’t seem like a lot to Lukas. After twenty-five days of action, he would just be getting started. The captain also wore a silver Wound Badge, which meant he’d been wounded three times. He had obviously seen action, and seemed somewhat the worse for wear. When I’ve seen that much action, I’ll still know how to keep my uniform pressed and look tike a German officer, Lukas thought.

  “Yes … Untersturmführer … ?” The panzer officer looked up from his map table with mild interest, eyebrows rising as he saw the second lieutenant’s badge newly pinned to the young man’s brand-new and ill-fitting uniform collar.

  “Vogel, sir. I have been assigned to your battalion by Obersturmbannführer Schultz. That is, my men and I, sir. I was sent to the division by General Dietrich himself,” he added, reaching for the worn sheet of paper written by Dietrich’s aide-de-camp.

  “Dietrich, eh?” Friedrich looked at the boy with slightly greater interest.

  “Yes, sir.” Lukas waited for Friedrich to ask him how he knew the general, but instead Friedrich motioned toward a pile of papers and Lukas dropped his document on top of the pile. “All right, Vogel. I can use you.” He looked toward the street, where Hans Braun and the other boys were waiting outside the truck. “Do you come with that truck?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Lukas declared.

  “Good. You will need it shortly. Do you have small arms?”

  “Some, Hauptsturmführer. We have three carbines and a Schmeisser, also four grenades left. However, our ammunition for the carbines and the machine pistol is all gone.”

  “Draw what you need from my quartermaster—you’ll find him in the stables behind that inn.” Friedrich pointed at a large stone building down the street. “And be ready to move out in an hour.”

  “Yes sir! And, thank you, sir!” Lukas declared, stiffening his arm in a salute that Friedrich acknowledged with a flip of his hand. Another officer who doesn’t give a shit any longer, Lukas thought.

  “This is our new unit,” he reported to Hans as his sturmscharführer and the other boys gathered around him. “Fritzi, you bring the truck. The rest of you, come with me.”

  As they walked down the narrow street Lukas noticed other panzers tucked into alcoves and sheds, always where they would be out of sight from the air. The tanks looked battered but serviceable, manned by hard-eyed young soldiers who watched the newcomers with expressions ranging from bored to skeptical. He saw only a few trucks, and one yard contained a dozen horses and some wooden wagons. He saw a tank with its track off, several men working to make the repair, while other men were carrying crates of heavy ammunition—rounds for the tanks’ main guns, he guessed. A welder’s torch flared brightly within the shadows of a large shed. There was an easy familiarity these men displayed toward their companions and their equipment, and this made Lukas feel woefully unprepared.

  “Notice the age differences?” Hans said. “The officers and senior enlisted are all ancient—at least thirty years old!”

  “Yeah,” replied Lukas. “I bet a lot of them are wounded or washed out, sent over here to let us do all the fighting.”

  “Hey, at least we get into the war for real,” Hans replied, slapping his superior officer on the back. “You’ve brought us this far, mein Untersturmführer! We’ll go the rest of the way together.”

  “Thanks, Hans” Lukas replied. “We’ll take care of our boys and win this war yet.”

  They found the stables Friedrich had indicated, and Lukas approached an old, skinny man he assumed to be the quartermaster.

  “Hauptsturmführer Friedrich sent me to get weapons and ammunition for my men,” Lukas explained.

  “For your men, eh, Untersturmführer?” said the man, with a casual look at the group. “Are you sure you’re old enough to shoot them?” He grinned, showing missing teeth.

  “We will fight for the Fatherland—and we will die, if necessary!” declared the young officer indignantly. Old fart, he thought. Then he realized that it might not do to antagonize the quartermaster, so he adopted a slightly softer tone. “But we would do a better job of it if we were properly armed. Can you help us?”

  The old sergeant cracked a grin at that, and stepped aside to gesture toward a stack of crates within the stable. “Take what you need,” he said. “There’s plenty for everybody—just don’t load yourselves down so much that you can’t move.”

  The young soldiers entered the building and looked around in awe, recognizing grenades, ammunition crates, and several different kinds of firearms. Lukas had a memory of Christmas morning, some years before, when his father had presented him with his first folding knife. Now he claimed a Schmeisser machine pistol for Hans and a Luger sidearm for himself. Fritzi came along with the truck, and as they were loading up boxes of ammo Lukas realized why there were so many extra guns: These had been gathered from dead soldiers.

  After his detachment was fully armed, he found a kitchen and saw that the boys got some food: thin broth, brown bread, and—wonder of wonders!—fresh milk. By the time they were finished, Captain Friedrich came along and told them it was time to move. Lukas heard tank engines roaring to life, saw the horse-drawn wagons, each loaded with a dozen panzergrenadiere, rolling down the streets toward the east end of town. He and Hans loaded his boys onto the truck as Friedrich came over.

  “We’ve been ordered to Koblenz,” the captain said, leaning in the driver’s window. He had bad breath.

  “Koblenz?” Lukas was surprised; he knew that the Rhine city was far behind the front. He knew better than to question the order, but Friedrich smiled a cold smile and filled him in.

  “It seems the Americans are on their way to the Rhine, and they aren’t wasting time—are you prepared to hurry?”

  “Yes, Herr Hauptsturmführer—we will get to Koblenz before them!”

  “Indeed, my boy, we have to—since once we get there, we will have to turn around and fight.”

  “I
am ready to do that, too,” promised the young untersturmführer.

  “You’ve heard the tale of the little Dutch boy and the dike?” asked the captain. “The fellow had to stick his finger in the hole to keep the dam from washing away?”

  Puzzled, Lukas answered in the affirmative.

  “Well, good. Because right now, the Rhine is our dike. And you, my lad, you and the rest of the Hitlerjugend division, including me—”

  “Yes, Hauptsturmführer?”

  “Well, we are the finger.”

  HEADQUARTERS, FIRST BELORUSSIAN FRONT, WARSAW, POLAND, 0933 HOURS GMT

  The Polish capital had absorbed a lot of punishment over the previous six years of war. First had come the German invasion of 1939, culminating in the battle for this city. This was followed by brutal Nazi repression of rebellion, first against the Jews in their squalid ghetto, then—just the previous summer—by the Poles who mistakenly viewed the Soviet advance, and the death of Adolf Hitler, as harbingers of freedom. Naturally, they had been crushed.

  Just as well, thought Alyosha Krigoff. The last thing the Soviets wanted, in this city that would soon be part of the growing Soviet empire, was a bunch of freedom-minded Polish nationals expecting to control their own country. Of course, there would be Poles in charge of the Polish government, but they would be Party-member Poles selected by Chairman Stalin himself.

  Now that decision loomed near. More than a thousand guns, a whole galaxy of artillery, pounded Warsaw into an even finer grade of rubble. Soviet engineers quickly laid bridges across the Vistula, and Marshal Zhukov sent his armored columns surging westward, around the city and toward the prize of Berlin and all the rest of Germany. Meanwhile, more tanks and a great wave of infantry moved into what was left of the historic city.

  Krigoff had a box seat for this epic show. He rode in the observation seat of the small scout plane, watching the strings of ubiquitous T-34 tanks as the rumbling vehicles pushed through that moonscape of ruins like files of ants seeking food. Fires blossomed throughout the ruins, smoke billowing upward in black columns while buildings tumbled and streets vanished beneath ever-growing mountains of debris.