There was a sudden burst of light on his right, followed by a shattering explosion. Karl looked over to see the second main guard tower collapsing, its observation platform consumed with fire. One of the tower guards—Karl couldn’t tell whom—jumped from the blazing wreckage. His greatcoat was on fire.
That was enough. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!” he shouted to Jürgen. He pulled open the trapdoor and both men tried to squeeze in, fighting to be first out of the tower.
Neither of them saw or heard the mortar shell that exploded at the base of their tower.
“Move! Move! Move!” shouted the feldwebel. Klaus Bäker’s heart was beating fast as he scrambled toward the rear of the truck. His bayonet was fixed and pointing up in the confined quarters; he didn’t like being around all these jabbing knives and was thankful his pack served as padding for any overeager soldiers behind him.
His eyes were dark-adapted from the last hour spent waiting as the truck struggled through the snowstorm. Then there was the long moment of suspense, sitting helplessly in the dark like the soldiers in the Trojan horse so long ago, waiting for the enemy to pull them into their own fortress. The searchlights from the guard towers had swept across the truck; he could see the light through the canvas. His hands were sweaty in their thin gloves; it was funny how they could be icy cold at the same time. Time seemed to stop for a long while, until he thought anything, including close combat with bayonets, was better than continuing to sit in the dark truck.
Then came the command and suddenly time sped up again. He jumped from the truck when his time came and was blinded as the searchlight swept over him. Disoriented, he couldn’t tell friend from foe. The uniforms, the helmets, the insignia were so alike as to be indistinguishable in the intermittent light. He lowered his rifle into attack position, then saw a guard with a machine pistol that stuttered, sending a spray of bullets into the attackers. Bäker dropped into the snow, lifted his rifle and squeezed off a shot, missed, fired again. There was a scream and the machine-pistol soldier dropped; Bäker could not tell if he had killed or merely wounded him.
Another stutter of machine-gun fire, this one louder, coming from the guard towers. He felt like an exposed bug under the searchlights and scrambled through the wet snow toward the shelter of the truck body. Mortar—come on, mortar! he thought, willing the shell to fire itself, and then there was an explosion, the first shell falling short, the second one on target, and the tower exploded in a sudden flare of white light. The searchlight stayed on for a brief time; then there was darkness from the first tower. Bäker crouched, brought his rifle to his shoulder again, and began to fire from the cover of the truck. There were screams, all in German, and there was no way to tell friend from foe in the new dark.
One searchlight continued to stab into the snow outside the compound. Bäker heard a loud roar and turned his head briefly to see a massive Panzer V bearing down on the camp like a leviathan from the distant past. Then the dark was punctuated by another flash of explosive fire. The second guard tower exploded, and the Panzer V was swallowed up by the darkness.
The camp guards were firing in retreat, holing up inside one of the barracks. “Schnell! After them!” yelled the feldwebel, and Bäker began running, began yelling with the others, charging across the compound through the deepening snow. His rifle barked, and again, but he didn’t have a target in mind. There was firing coming his way again, and he dived forward, splattering into the snow and mud. Others around him fell as well; he couldn’t tell if any of them had been hit. He began to snake forward on his belly, rifle forward, until he found a few garbage cans he could hide behind, then up on his knee, rifle to his shoulder. He could see shadow figures at the barracks windows and he shot into them randomly.
And then there were shouts: “Truce! Truce! We surrender! Don’t shoot us! We surrender!” Bäker’s hands were shaking as he saw the surrendering guards coming out, still unrecognizeable shadows, with hands held high or clasped over their helmets. The feldwebel shouted his orders, “Single file! Keep your hands in the air!,” and then shouted at his men to surround the survivors, march them into a barbed-wire area where normally prisoners were received.
Bäker’s heart began to calm. He was soaking wet from the snow and the mud, and his arm hurt. He must have wrenched it when he fell, he thought, and reached in to find that the liquid was warm, not cold. Jesus Christ, I’m bleeding! he thought in horror, and then he shouted aloud “I’m shot! I’m wounded!” until the feldwebel came over. He couldn’t stop shouting until the feldwebel slapped him, and then he was terrified. “Am I going to die?” he asked, and the feldwebel replied, “God damn it, it’s just a shoulder wound, but if you don’t shut up and get hold of yourself I’ll fucking kill you. Got it?”
Hermann Pister, the camp commandant, took a final look around his quarters. He had packed everything he needed; the boot of his staff car was full. His driver was waiting; the engine was warmed up. Driving away in a heavy snowfall was a bit dangerous, but waiting until the weather cleared was probably more risky.
“All right,” he said to himself, rubbing his hands together. “Time to leave.”
He heard the gunfire and mortar explosions as he left his quarters. “Damn it!” he said. The enemy was already at his gates. They, like he, must have seen the opportunity in the snowstorm. But all the noise was from the north. The Allies hadn’t captured Weimar yet, so they couldn’t have approached from that direction. Time to move south, he thought. Opening the door to his car, he said, “Change of plans. We are leaving to the south, along the Blutstrasse.” The Blutstrasse, or Street of Blood, was the name the prisoners had given the main camp access road.
“Jawohl, mein Oberführer,” the driver said. He was glad to be leaving as well.
The wheels of the car spun in the snow and mud before getting traction. Pister leaned forward, momentarily anxious, although he was normally quite self-controlled. His driver ground the gears rather badly, and then finally the car began to move. Once out of the gate, the road was bumpy but straight, and they would pick up speed. With luck, he would be in Berlin by midmorning tomorrow.
The car stopped at the gate, and Pister rolled down his window impatiently. “Open up! Open up! Can’t you see who I am?”
He stared up into an ugly, unshaven face with a toothless smile—the teeth had been broken off and nothing but stumps remained. Suddenly he realized that this was not one of his guards, but a prisoner—a Russian, by the look of him.
“Drive! Drive! Schnell, you idiot! Break through the gate! Get us out of here!” Pister shouted at his driver. The driver floored the gas pedal, but that only sent the wheels into another spin, and in a moment the driver’s door was wrenched open and all Pister could see was an arm jerking the driver out into the snow.
He tried to roll his window up and lock his door, but the Russian’s arm blocked the glass. He pulled hard at the door handle, but the arms outside the car were stronger. His door too was wrenched open, and he felt strong arms pull him out and into the snow.
In the light from the guard shack, he briefly saw a body slumped forward. There was another body facedown in the snow, stripped of its coat and looking incongruously cold.
“Please … I can get you money, safe passage, whatever you want! I’m too important for you to kill. I can be very useful! Very useful!” As he babbled out reasons for the prisoners to spare his life, he suddenly wondered if any of them spoke enough German to understand him. “Money! Freedom! I can help you!” he said, simplifying the message.
“So, Commandant Pister, you can help us?” A deep voice, speaking in German but with a very thick Russian accent. “And we should spare your life for your help?”
“Yes, yes! I have money, some in the car, but I can get more. I can prepare passes for you, help you get your freedom!” He was relieved—someone was going to be rational, going to be sensible, going to make a deal. He forced himself to get calm; an overanxious bargainer had little leverage.
P
ister stood up, brushed the snow from his coat, prepared to deal. Then he got a look at his captor—the man had suffered severe burns; one eye and most of his face were gone. Like the other Russian, his teeth were either rotten or broken, and Pister noticed that one arm hung limp. The Russian leader saw Pister look at him. “Not so pretty, yes?” he said. “You Germans did this. And now it’s our turn.” He had a camp knife, mostly rusted scrap metal, and with it he slashed Pister across the face, cutting into his eye.
The commandant screamed, tried to run, but a foot tripped him and he fell facedown in the snow. The cold gave him momentary relief, but then he felt hands grab him, turn him over, and the Russian knelt on top of him, grinning as he brought the camp knife down again and again.
Digger O’Dell scraped a handful of snow off the sill outside the broken window to try to lower Clausen’s fever. “Just let the fucking German die,” growled Kirby, the senior POW officer. “It’s going to happen anyway, so don’t waste your time.”
Digger ignored him, and took the snow back to his bunk, wrapping it in a bit of scrounged cloth and placing the improvised cold compress on Clausen’s head. In spite of the snow and cold, Clausen’s fever had spiked even higher.
“You’re sleeping on the fucking wet spot, you hear me, Digger?” snarled one of his bunkmates.
Digger grinned. “Hell, I used to sleep with three younger brothers. Water ain’t nothing compared to sleeping in piss.” He continued working on Clausen. There wasn’t much he could do, but it beat just sitting around and waiting for the man to die.
The first mortar explosion rocked the room. “What the fuck was that?” the bunkmate asked.
Digger was already on his way back to the window, but by the time he was there, a crowd of prisoners was trying to peer out. “Hot damn, it looks like the war done got here at last,” crowed one soldier.
“About fucking time,” came the grunted reply.
Kirby was on his feet. “Men, if the cavalry has arrived, as you Americans put it, we had better do our share in this.”
“With what?” a sarcastic voice called out. “Our bare hands?”
“Do you want our friendly SS guards to make their escape unharmed, or become POWs according to our standards of treatment?”
“Fuck, no!” The chorus of replies grew in volume.
“Do we want to show our friendly Nazis what we can do?”
“Yeah!” “Hell, yeah!” “Goddamn right!” “Let’s cut those bastards’ balls off and feed ’em to them!”
“Right!” Kirby called out loudly. “Take anything you can turn into a weapon, and let’s go!”
The camp adminstration building had an ornate Art Deco door, but it was splintered into nothing by a grenade. Rommel, escorted by several machine-pistol-bearing enlisted men, strode into the room. “Deserted, damn it!” he snarled. “We’re too late.” There were desks in the open room, papers neatly put away. Rommel pulled open a drawer filled with punch cards, and pulled one out. He peered at the pattern of holes. “A man’s life and death …” he murmured. There was a Hollerith tabulating machine behind a half window in the next office.
Angrily, he strode toward the door leading to the commandant’s private office, kicking it open with his boot. It, too, was empty. “The bastard got away. How did that happen? Did he get warning of our attack?” He turned around, glaring, looking for someone to blame.
“I-I don’t think so,” quavered Müller. “It would have taken hours to clean out a space like this. We-We weren’t even near when this work started.”
Rommel stared angrily for a moment, then said, “I suppose you’re right. It was certainly no secret that we would be here eventually. All right, Müller. This is your new office space. Take the people you need and get this place cleaned up.”
Müller looked around silently, then said, “Y-Yes, sir.”
Rommel clasped him on the shoulder, calming himself. “This is an impossible job I’m giving you, Müller. You must do your very best with it; these people depend on you.”
The supply officer took a deep breath, straightened up, and replied, “Yes, sir. I’ll do everything that can be done.”
“Good man,” Rommel said, then turned to the feldwebel in charge of his escort. “I need Kranz and Smiggs at once. Resistance should be over shortly; it looks like the officers have fled. Let’s move our forces into the camp as quickly as possible.”
Rommel did not notice as Müller left the building.
Chaos had overtaken the camp. Groups of prisoners hunted down surviving guards as soldiers tried to get them to return to their barracks. Calls in German, in English, and in Russian went largely unheeded. Digger wasn’t particularly interested in revenge, though. It was medical treatment he needed. The guards could wait for another day.
Holding Clausen tightly, two thin blankets wrapped around them both, he grabbed at one of the invading soldiers. “Hey, you—my buddy needs medical help. Me-di-cal help. Hilfen? Bitte, hilfen.”
“Gehen Sie zurück!” the soldier replied, gesturing at the barracks.
“No. Listen to me. This man—German. Needs doctor! Doc-tor!”
“Rein Jetzt!” Another gesture.
“Listen, buddy. I need help. Now.”
The soldier shoved Digger, nearly pushing him off balance with his bad leg. Although gaunt from poor rations, Digger was still a strong man. He reached out, grabbed the soldier by the collar, and pulled him close. “Help. Now. Verstehen?” His German still had a Southern accent to it.
The soldier was about to push again, when suddenly an officer appeared. “Was ist los hier?” Müller asked.
The soldier tried to explain, but Digger got there first. “This man. German. Deutsch. Needs medical attention. Doc-tor. Helfen. Ja?”
Müller shined his flashlight at the strange American and his companion. The American blinked in the sudden light. Then Müller looked at the other man, delirious, nearly dead. “Mein Gott!” he whispered. “It’s Mutti!”
BLOCK 66, KONZENTRATIONSLAGER BUCHENWALD, 2024 HOURS GMT
The night and the snow could conceal some of the visual horror, but it was the smell that Sanger was never able to forget.
Rommel’s escort could barely contain themselves; it took all of Sanger’s willpower to keep him from gagging. The Desert Fox himself looked on stoically, his face wooden. Sanger had observed that this was a dangerous early warning sign of Rommel’s ferocious temper.
Rommel seemed determined to visit each building, to see each atrocity at firsthand. He said little, marching with long strides from block to block (as the prisoner barracks were called).
It was easy to recognize the kapos, the senior prisoners who translated Totenkopf-SS directives into action. They were the ones whose throats had been freshly cut. The first time they came upon a prisoner who had died in this fashion, Rommel had asked, “What happened here?”
A gaunt, dirty, unshaven prisoner stepped forward out of the pack. “He committed suicide,” the prisoner said sullenly.
Rommel looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. “I see,” he said.
The guards who had not yet been killed or captured were in hiding. If Rommel’s men did not find them, Sanger suspected that the prisoners would.
In each building there were many near death; there were dead in several of the buildings that had not yet been taken away for disposal.
“What building is this?” Rommel asked as they approached the next barracks.
One of his escorts shined a flashlight on the number. “Block 66, Generalfeldmarschall.” He opened the door and shined a light in.
It was full of children.
Silent, staring, solemn—gaunt and ragged children, bruised and malnourished, many with open sores and some with mutilations. Unlike the adult barracks, where the prisoners knew that liberation was here, these children saw only uniforms, and that was no different from their everyday lives.
Because of Rommel’s tendency for interminable car tours, Sanger had gotten in the h
abit of stuffing a few Hershey bars in his briefcase. He knelt down, opened the briefcase, and pulled one out. He held it toward a young boy who appeared to be about four years old. The boy cringed away. “Chocolate,” Sanger said in a quiet, soothing tone. No response.
After a moment, Sanger realized that the boy had never heard the word before and did not recognize the package. He unwrapped it, broke off a piece, handed it over. The boy scurried away behind an older boy, who was perhaps seven. Sanger reached out with the chocolate square and offered it to the older boy. “It’s good,” he said in German.
The boy took it and then gulped it down in a single bite. Sanger offered him another piece, which he chewed more slowly and with evident delight. He tried again with the four-year-old, but still no reaction.
Meanwhile, the guards shone their flashlights around the room. “Du lieber Gott,” one whispered. His light had revealed shackles on the far wall, from which four bruised and beaten children hung by their wrists, unmoving. Dried blood streaked their faces and the rags they wore.
Children cringed away as two soldiers ran the length of the barracks toward the hanging children. “Sie sind tot,” they called back. They were dead.
Sanger closed his eyes for a moment, and then he heard another noise.
“Gerade Stehen! Hände auf den Kopf!” the soldiers called. There was a brief scuffle. They had found camp guards. All the remaining soldiers had weapons out, moving to protect their field marshal.
Rommel’s face darkened. “Bring them here. Now,” he ordered. His voice was low, almost guttural.
His men dragged two SS guards to him, and threw them down at his feet.
“Sir! You’ve got to protect us! The prisoners—they’re murdering everybody! We’re Germans, sir! Germans! Just like you!”
“Like me? Then God help Germany, because I want no part of you,” Rommel growled, his voice nearly choking, and drew his officer’s Walther from its holster.
Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine) Page 38
