Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine)

by Douglas Niles

  REGARDING OPERATION ECLIPSE, YOUR RECOMMENDATION ACCEPTED BY PRESIDENT AND COMBINED CHIEFS. YOU ARE AUTHORIZED TO PROCEED AT THE EARLIEST POSSIBLE MOMENT. INDICATIONS ARE THAT UNCLE JOE IS PLAYING FOR THE SAME TROPHY, SO EMPHASIZE THAT TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.

  GOOD LUCK, AND GODSPEED.

  GENERAL GEORGE C. MARSHALL,

  CHIEF OF STAFF

  UNITED STATES ARMY

  Eisenhower exhaled a long stream of smoke through his nose. He was a cautious commander as a rule, and not by nature a gambling man—except of course when it came to D-Day, which had been to his way of thinking the biggest gamble of the entire war. Now he was authorized to take another chance, with an operation that would certainly have unexpected consequences. Given the Russian betrayal, with their armistice of 1944, it was a chance that the United States of America was willing to take.

  He pushed a button on his intercom. “Send in Looie Brereton and his division COs,” he told Sergeant Summersby.

  A few moments later General Lewis Brereton, commander of the First Allied Airborne Army, entered, accompanied by five generals, each a commander of an airborne division or brigade, the components of the airborne army. Their troops were elite, and could travel to battle by parachute, glider, or—once an airfield had been seized by initial lander—transport aircraft. All of them were itching to get back into the war. Since their key use during the Normandy invasion, they had been relegated to use as reinforcement and reserve troops.

  Two of them, Generals Maxwell Taylor and James Gavin, commanded the veteran American divisions, the Eighty-second “All-American” Division, and the 101st “Screaming Eagles,” respectively. Eisenhower knew and trusted them, and had a very high regard for their troops. Both formations had been instrumental in insuring the success of the D-Day landings, and had provided crucial reinforcements during Rommel’s great offensive in December. In the latter case the airborne soldiers had been trucked to the battlefield, and the Supreme Commander knew they were itching for a chance to fulfill their proper role one more time; that is, to drop out of the sky to claim objectives in advance of the ground troops.

  “Men,” Ike began, pulling down a map of Germany from a rollup on the wall. “You’re going to be out in front of the whole damned expeditionary force, this time.” The Supreme Commander’s finger pointed to the map, while he watched the generals, pleased to see the light of excitement and possibility kindled in every man’s eye.

  “You’re going to drop into Berlin, and hold the place until Third Army and the rest of Twelfth Army Group can get up there to take over.”

  “Hot damn, General!” declared Taylor. “This is the chance we’ve been waiting for!”

  “It’s a big job. Max, your boys will be assigned to these major airfields—Gatow and Staaken, with the airfield at Schönwald as a tertiary objective. Jim, the All-Americans are to take Tempelhof—that’s practically inside the city limits—and Rangdor airfields.” Eisenhower went on to round out the plans: A British brigade would take the large airport at Oranienburg, while more Brits and a reserve brigade of expatriate Polish paratroopers would serve as reinforcements.

  “This will be a daylight drop. Some of the Krauts can be expected to resist, at least those in the SS. We have hopes that the Wehrmacht units will be willing to surrender, in the hopes that we, and not the Russians, will get control of their country after the war.”

  “Are my boys going to get into the show?” asked General Eldridge Chapman, commander of the newly arrived Thirteenth Airborne Division. Chapman’s division had been created in August of 1943, activated on Friday the thirteenth in fact, and his unblooded officers were eager to prove their mettle.

  “You’ll be going in the second wave,” the Supreme Commander explained. “Your paratroop regiment will be dropped where we need reinforcements, and your two glider regiments will land at Tempelhof, as soon as Jim’s boys get the runways cleared.”

  Eisenhower turned the briefing over to his staff officers and stood back, chain-smoking while he watched the rapt eyes of the airborne generals. This was the chance they had been waiting for, and he saw the determination and excitement in their expressions. Good, he thought—they would need all that, and more.

  For this whole Operation Eclipse was a gamble, and Dwight Eisenhower was not by nature a gambling man. His greatest roll of the dice had occurred nine months earlier, when he had sent an invasion force across the English Channel in the face of a worrisome weather report, and the tenacious defense of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. That gamble had paid off, in spades.

  But could he be that lucky again?

  CCA, NINETEENTH ARMORED DIVISION, EAST OF DESSAU, GERMANY, 1207 HOURS GMT

  Frank Ballard took a whiff of the pine trees, relished the fragrance that was so thick in the air. The nearly constant overcast had blown over with the dawn, and despite the wintry season, a rare day of clear skies and sunshine had him thinking of spring. Wet snow still lay deep in the woods to either side of the road, but on the southward-facing banks and shallow hillsides the sun had almost completely eradicated the seasonal blanket. Idly he wondered which would happen first: the snowmelt, or the end of World War II.

  Certainly, the prospects for bringing the war to a close were looking good, far better than they had at any time since the attack on Pearl Harbor. It had been seven full days since CCA had lost a man to enemy action—though, sadly, a corporal had been killed and a private paralyzed with a broken neck when a jeep had rolled off of a slippery road.

  But there had been no letup in the speed of the advance, which was reminiscent of those heady days in France, during August of the last summer. After the lightning crossing of the Elbe at Dessau, CCA and the rest of Nineteenth Armored had raced northeast, knowing that the rest of Third Army, as well as friendly German forces, were advancing on their flanks. Organized resistance seemed to have come to an end, and even the vexing snipers had faded into the countryside.

  As if to challenge his complacency, a rattle of gunfire distracted him. Ballard flinched reflexively, almost ducking down through the hatch of his turret. But the shots were distant, and were almost instantaneously amplified by a barrage of machine guns from CCA vehicles. Two tanks chimed in with HE rounds and the colonel saw a small house and nearby shed, perched on a hillside with a good view of the road, vanish in a cloud of fire and smoke.

  He looked down the road, saw no signs of excitement—no one was calling for the medic, or aiding a wounded man. Good … looked like the CCA luck was holding. Still, the shots, probably resulting from an amateurish attempt at an ambush, provided a pointed reminder that the war was still on and that he, Frank Ballard, still had a job to do.

  Leaning out of the tank as it rolled forward, he looked along the column, trying to understand the source of the disturbance. He saw an infantry sergeant explaining something to the commander of one of the tanks that had just blasted the building, and directed his own driver to pull off next to the NCO.

  “What happened, Sergeant?” Ballard asked, shouting over the rumbling of his tank’s engine.

  The man shook his head in embarrassment. “One of my boys, one of the replacements, thought he saw something moving up there and took a few shots. Naturally, the rest of the company chimed in. Turns out it was only a cow, coming around that farmhouse. Poor ol’ Bessie never had a chance.”

  “Hey, Colonel?” called the other Sherman’s commander, a sergeant who had been with the unit since Normandy. “How ’bout I send some boys up there and see if we can round up some steaks for dinner?”

  Ballard laughed at the thought, but shook his head. “Sorry, Buck. But we’re in a race, remember—no time for a barbecue!”

  Buck waved good-naturedly and reached down to tell his driver to keep moving. Ballard’s tank fell in behind as a gap opened, almost magically, in the tight rank of Shermans on the road. One thing about being the CO, he reflected—you never had to wait for the column to make room for you.

  A jeep skittered along the shoulder of th
e road, coming back against the flow of the tank traffic, and he recognized Captain Smiggs. The recon officer’s driver nimbly backed the four-wheel-drive vehicle down into the ditch, facing the road, and when the command tank rolled past the little car lurched onto the shoulder and raced along beside; the two officers could talk this way without any delay in the advance, though the jeep driver was forced to wrestle with the steering wheel as he drove through the mountains of slush and mud kicked up by the column of Shermans.

  “See anything interesting up there?” Ballard shouted down.

  “Met one of Rommel’s scouts at the next crossroads,” Smiggy called back. “We should veer right there—that’ll lead us past Potsdam. Sounds like Fourth Armored and Panzer Lehr are getting into a traffic jam on the outskirts of the place, so the right turn will let us skirt around the city.”

  “Straight to Berlin, that’s what we want,” Ballard said with a smile.

  Indeed, when General Wakefield had caught up to them at the end of the previous day and given them the go-ahead, the old man had been unusually enthusiastic. Apparently some of Patton’s fire was rubbing off on the normally stodgy division commander. In any event, Berlin was a prize that had achieved almost mythical status in the minds of the GIs of Third Army. Now it was their objective, assigned by no less an entity than the president himself.

  Ballard found himself grinning at the very thought.

  “What’s so funny?” Smiggs called out.

  The colonel just shook his head. “I was just thinking about how strange this war is,” he replied. “We fight our way through France, and now that we’re in the enemy’s home country we’re racing along like it’s a Sunday road rally!”

  “Tally ho!” Smiggy shouted, mocking a British accent as his jeep sped away.

  The column continued on, but it was only a few minutes later when Ballard was tapped by his radioman, who was down inside the turret. “Colonel—it’s General Wakefield on he horn for you.”

  Ballard took the headset and microphone but stayed on top of the turret. This was too nice of a day to climb down into that metal cocoon, even if he did have the division CO talking to him. “This is Texas One—good afternoon, Dallas,” he said.

  The big man’s voice came through clearly, and the colonel had no trouble hearing. “Texas One, there’s a small plane en route to you. Set up a landing field marked with smoke, and let me know when you take delivery,” said Wakefield in his deep growl.

  “Roger, Dallas, we’re on the job,” Ballard said cheerfully. “Anything you can tell me about what it’s carrying?”

  “It may involve some diversion of forces,” Wakefield said. “Do you copy?”

  “Diversion of forces, Dallas? But we’re twenty-five miles from—” He paused a moment while he tried to remember the code word for Berlin. “—from Birthday! We could be having dinner there tonight!”

  “You can still be at the birthday party,” Wakefield said sternly. “At least most of you nineteen Texans. We have Arizona and Iowa still en route—you won’t be lonely. Dallas out.”

  “Arizona” was today’s code word for the Fourth Armored Division, and Iowa represented Panzer Lehr of the German Republican Army. Ballard lowered the mike and asked his radioman to switch to the combat command’s channel.

  There were smooth pastures all over the place, and Ballard picked one that had a good approach into the wind, with no trees to block an aircraft as it came in to land. He brushed aside the questions of his officers as they clamored for an explanation, telling them to take advantage of the break to heat up some rations or to get out and stretch their legs.

  As soon as the time interval had passed, he had one of his Shermans fire a couple of smoke rounds, one at each end of the proposed runway. Not only did they mark the spot, but the plumes trailing away from the impacts provided a good gauge of wind speed and direction for the pilot. For a few minutes nothing happened, and as the breeze finally dispersed the markers he had another two rounds fired. No sooner had these exploded than he heard the droning of a small aircraft engine, nothing like the powerful thrum of a fighter or dive bomber.

  Soon the craft was in sight, a high-winged Piper with stilt-like tripod landing gear and oversized windows around the compartment. The pilot made a low pass, then circled around until he was flying into the wind. He dropped lower, almost stalling, then set down on the bare ground, bumping along for only a hundred yards or so—barely a quarter of the available distance—before coming to a halt.

  One man, an American officer, got out of the passenger door and started across the field toward the Sherman tanks parked beside the road. Ballard climbed out of his turret and started away from the column, wanting to talk to the fellow with some degree of privacy. Even before he had taken a dozen steps, the Piper was turning around in the field, engine revving as it started a takeoff run. By the time the newcomer was close enough for Ballard to identify him, the plane was back in the air, heading west.

  “Sanger, how the hell are you?” he said, as the two men shook hands.

  “It’s good to see you again, Frank. Got some place where we can talk? And can you ask Smiggy to join us?”

  Ballard gestured to a deserted farmhouse he’d commandeered. In a few minutes, the two men were seated at a kitchen table, a fire roaring in an old stove. “Frank, before we get started, I want you to know that this is a little bit off the reservation. I talked to General Wakefield before I flew here, but this is an operation that doesn’t have top brass approval, and we could all end up with our tits in the wringer. If we’re unlucky, we’ll freeze our asses out here in the cold and waste time and men when we could be in Berlin.”

  “And if we’re lucky?”

  “We’ll put the bag on a top Nazi bugging out of Berlin with a shitload of gold and what he thinks is a get-out-of-jail-free card from one of Rommel’s top men. It’s one of those double-double-double-cross situations.”

  Smiggy grinned. “Is the man big on the camp operations side?”

  “The biggest.”

  “Count me in.” He pulled his service .45 from its holster, twirled it expertly, and slipped it back in.

  Ballard spoke up. “Okay. What do you need?”

  “I need enough forces to cover these roads and intersections …”

  11 MARCH 1945

  PRIVATE APARTMENTS OF HEINRICH HIMMLER, BERLIN, 0341 HOURS GMT

  Heinrich Himmler prowled through the darkened rooms readying himself for his departure.

  The arrangements had been made. Günter von Reinhardt would travel as a hostage with the escaping convoy. The Prussian colonel had marked a clear route on the maps, and had shown copies of the movement orders issued to the affected Allied units. At a point in Bavaria near Berchtesgarten, von Reinhardt would be released—and from there Himmler could plan his own route undetected.

  Below the release point were American units. To get through that screen, von Reinhardt would have to issue additional orders. That was his protection. He would be left with one armored car filled with twenty million marks of gold and two SS guards. When a coded radio transmission was received stating that Himmler had gotten through the lines, the SS guards were to release von Reinhardt and the gold and make their own escape. A possibility still existed of a double-cross, but that far south, Himmler believed he had an excellent chance of avoiding capture. Not wishing to leave anything to chance, he had made arrangements to split his convoy immediately on the other side of the line, so that von Reinhardt could not betray his location the moment he was again free. To ensure his safety, the SS guards would kill von Reinhardt upon receipt of still another code, and would attempt to liberate the gold. If they failed, well, money was only money.

  Foolish of von Reinhardt to think he could outwit Heinrich Himmler. Himmler had had a thousand opponents, many of whom had been considered intelligent. He had outwitted them all, and most of them were dead now.

  South America? He wondered what it would be like. Certainly there would be many changes, but h
e would have numerous loyal companions around him as well, and plenty of money. Though money was no substitute for power, it was certainly better than poverty. Perhaps one day it could be the means of a return to power … that was something to think about, to hope for, in the long term.

  His thoughts turned to von Reinhardt again. Imagine, taking that kind of risk for mere money—funds that he intended to give away! Himmler shook his head at the mere idea. But the Reichsführer did understand von Reinhardt’s unsentimental assessment that a Nazi abdication was probably best for Germany, and perhaps he was willing to sacrifice himself, a true patriot in the end. The money was simply a red herring, though he wouldn’t mind getting it if he could. Himmler wondered if von Reinhardt would end up keeping it for himself. He was willing to bet that the sight of so much untraceable gold would tempt even the imperturbable aristocrat.

  There. He was packed and ready, and there were only a few more things to do. He took his gun from his holster and screwed a silencer onto the barrel. He placed it in the top desk drawer, then sat down and reached for the buzzer. One must never leave loose ends hanging, he thought to himself.

  Moments later his aide-de-camp, Captain Wolter, came in. “Yes, Herr Reichsführer?” asked the capable, if unimaginative, bureaucrat.

  “Bring your staff attendants in here, please,” Himmler said.

  Soon the two sergeants, one a lanky Silesian who had joined the SS as a lad, the other a sturdy female who had worked as the Reichsführer’s secretary since before the war, joined Wolter in standing before Himmler’s desk.

  “You have undoubtedly noticed that there are some changes going on around here, have you not?” he asked them.

  It was the captain who spoke. “We stand ready to obey your orders, Herr Reichsführer, in any capacity you desire us to serve.”