Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine)

by Douglas Niles

  “Certainly. I am glad to hear it.” Himmler knew that the man spoke the truth, but at the same time he couldn’t know exactly what they understood about his plans: the great amount of gold that had been brought from various underground vaults, the plans, even the maps and travel arrangements that were so crucial to the secrecy of the operation. The Reichsführer opened the desk drawer.

  “I order you to attention,” he barked.

  Immediately the three staffers stood rigidly, eyes fixed on the wall above and behind Himmler’s head. “You have served the Reich well, all three of you …” His hand went into the drawer, felt the cool hilt of the Luger.

  “Your loyalty deserves a reward,” he continued, bringing up the gun.

  The silencer worked well, though by the third shot the baffles had begun to wear, and the last bullet exploded outward with an audible “whoof” of force.

  But there was nobody left to hear … nobody except Himmler himself, who started to return the gun to the drawer, then remembered that his wife was waiting for him upstairs in the bedroom.

  “No loose ends,” he reminded himself, pocketing the weapon before he walked out of the office, closing and locking the door behind him.

  12 MARCH 1945

  142ND TANK BATTALION, SECOND GUARDS TANK ARMY, APPROACHING KÜSTRIN, GERMANY, 1341 HOURS GMT

  Colonel Alexis Krigoff had never ridden on a tank before, and he found the sensation strangely exhilarating, and at the same time frightening. He had heard and watched the mighty T-34s rumble past on many occasions, both on parade and on the battlefield. He was prepared for the noise, but he had never imagined that the machines would jolt and rock so much, merely from the motion of rumbling down a road. At first he had been determined to ride outside the hull, where the view would be best, but he had quickly realized that he would very likely get thrown to the ground—an ignominious fate that he ruled as completely unacceptable.

  So he had ordered the young lieutenant who was acting as his chauffeur to climb down inside the T-34. The intelligence colonel took his place at the hatch atop the squat, functional turret. He propped himself on the commander’s seat with his upper torso outside of the metal shell, and allowed the ring of the small opening to provide at least some support around his midriff. There was a light machine gun mounted right next to him, and he secretly hoped that he would get a chance to use it to mow down some Nazi infantry.

  This battalion was one of the leading elements of Zhukov’s Front, and Petrovsky’s Second Guards Tank Army. Ahead of him he could count ten more T-34s, but beyond that lay the terrain of as-yet-unconquered Germany. It gave him a thrill to know that he was now in the vanguard of the epic advance.

  Some distance to the right, following a parallel road—really nothing more than a farm track—he could see the second company of the 142nd Battalion. Beyond them were additional columns of tanks, and when they crested a low elevation he could see them stretching for miles across the flat, open countryside. To the left was another tank division, and he knew that there was yet another beyond that one.

  In fact, he found himself thinking about the big picture of this whole campaign, and he grinned fiercely at the knowledge. Petrovsky’s army numbered some twelve divisions, four of which were armored. Zhukov’s First Belorussian Front, in turn, was comprised of three great armies—Petrovsky’s, plus two more. Beyond that, there were three additional fronts—one to the north and two to the south—all driving relentlessly forward, all striving to wipe the scourge of Nazism from the face of Europe.

  While he had been riding in his trailer, Krigoff had spent a great deal of his time studying the maps. He knew that this division, on the direct road into Küstrin, was on the straightest line toward the great prize of this campaign: Berlin. The city of Küstrin-an-der-Oder, which was already visible on the horizon before him, lay only eighty kilometers from the German capital. If they could cross that river and quickly race onward, it was conceivable that Krigoff and the Second Guards Tank Army could be in Berlin by sometime tomorrow. He delighted at the thought of waiting for the Americans there, with the Red Army already in possession of the objective that Patton and Eisenhower had striven toward for so long.

  In his most secret thoughts, he imagined another fantasy—a circumstance whereby the Americans and their British allies would provoke the Red Army into an attack. The Russians would sweep through the weakling capitalist armies, Krigoff knew. He was certain that Stalin was eager to send this mammoth war machine against the capitalists, the traditional enemies of communism. Many times, with private glee, he had looked at broader scale maps of Europe, imagining the glorious spread of communism as the Soviet military machine swept across Germany, driving the Allied rabble before it. They wouldn’t stop, not even at the Rhine, he knew; instead, they would charge westward, across the Low Countries, through France, all the way to the ultimate barrier of the Atlantic Ocean.

  What a continent this would be! The whole cradle of civilization, everything from the Pacific Ocean and Siberia across the largest landmass of the world, under the rule of the great man who sat in the Kremlin, the man who had appointed Krigoff to this important task, this historic opportunity. Perhaps it would take a long time, longer even than Krigoff’s lifetime, to spread the doctrine of Marx to the Americas, or through the teeming populations of China and India. But if he could live to see the hammer and sickle flying over Berlin, over Paris and London and Rome and Madrid, then he would die a happy man. And he, and the rest of the world, would know beyond doubt that the spread of communism was an inevitability, the true destiny of the planet.

  He twisted around on the uncomfortable metal chair. In the tank immediately to the rear rode Paulina Koninin, though he couldn’t see her, as she was currently down inside the hull. An hour earlier he had watched her scramble out and jump down to the ground, when the battalion had come upon a German antitank emplacement; he had been awestruck and terrified as she snapped pictures of the swift counterattack, as the Russian armor closed in on the doomed position and plastered it with high-explosive shells. There had been no enemy survivors, and though the battalion had lost its two lead tanks, the surviving vehicles wasted no time in resuming the advance. After the fast fire fight, Paulina had favored him with that tight smile, holding up her camera like it was a trophy before she had climbed back into the tank.

  He had been spending as much time as possible talking to her, admiring her courage, her passionate belief in the Soviet system. Her technical skills, too, impressed him. When he had remarked on her photographs she had given him a picture of Stalin himself that she had taken, a shot in which the chairman looked avuncular and charming as he sat at a small tea table, a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. Krigoff had liked the picture so much that he had asked for another copy, which he had given to Petrovsky as a gift—and also as a subtle reminder of where the true power lay in this vast military machine.

  It had been her tales of such engagements that had convinced him that he, too, needed to be up here with the vanguard. He had assigned his assistant, Major Rokov, a solid staff officer, to take over the affairs of the Intelligence Section, manning the communications center in the trailer so that Colonel Krigoff could get out here for a firsthand look at the war. It had been one of the best decisions he had ever made—there was no comparing this to the aloof contemplation of the battlefield such as he had gained from the small airplane over Warsaw. He had been baptized by fire, had known the thrill of combat, and he relished the thought of the upcoming battles. If it wasn’t for the delays that would necessarily have entailed, he would have allowed himself to hope for some stiff German resistance at the Oder, just so that he could get the experience of a true, savage engagement.

  As if in answer to his musings, an artillery shell exploded in the field before him, not too far from the road. More shells plummeted downward, sending cascades of turf and ice blasting into the air on both sides of the column. Obviously, the Germans had this road under observation, and had sighted their guns
with care. Several blasts erupted at once, and chunks of dirt cascaded downward, spattering across the road—several of them actually landed on the foredeck of Krigoff’s tank.

  Where was the Red Air Force? He scanned the skies in vexation, then relaxed as he saw a phalanx of dive bombers, fifty or sixty of them, growling out of the east. The single-engine planes roared overhead, the drone of their engines thrumming even through the hammering of the tank motors and the sporadic bursts of artillery. They would find the German guns, Krigoff knew, and allowed himself a moment’s wistful reflection, a longing that he could be up there with them.

  But here, this was where the action was, where the fight would be resolved. He grinned as another round of artillery shells plastered the landscape, and then he felt the tank lurch beneath him—as if the driver had heard the explosions, and flinched. He felt someone tugging at his leg and looked down in annoyance to see the worried face of the young lieutenant.

  “Comrade Colonel?”

  “What is it?” he snapped.

  “Perhaps it would be good if you climbed down inside the hull. The danger from shrapnel is real, and you have very much of your body exposed. It would be much safer down here.”

  Krigoff looked at the man in contempt. “I want to see what’s happening,” he retorted. “I will stay where I—”

  The next blast was so close that the concussion drove the air from the colonel’s lungs, as if forcing his words back down his throat. A spray of pebbles and dirt slashed across his face, stinging his skin and darkening his vision. He was terrified at the thought that he had been blinded, but in moments he blinked away the grit and was stunned to see that a T-34 several tanks ahead of his own had been pushed right over onto its side by the blast. The armored behemoth looked helpless and stricken as flames started to rise from the engine compartment. A man pushed open the turret hatch and started to climb out—awkwardly, as with the tank on its side the upper portion of the hatch tried to press down and hold him in. Then the ammunition inside the turret exploded, sending a column of fire out of the hatch and blasting the soldier like a projectile. Krigoff watched in awe as the fellow flew a hundred meters just above the ground, then tumbled and bounced like a rag doll until at last he lay still.

  More shells exploded, closer now, and the colonel reasoned that, in truth, it would make no sense to get himself killed just so that he could watch this violent display. He lowered the seat until just his head, protected by the steel bowl of his helmet, was outside of the hatch. But he would not go all the way down—instead, he peered over the rim of the hatch, watching the steady onslaught of Soviet arms. This was just too good to miss.

  The young lieutenant looked at the colonel, then shook his head. There was a panoramic targeting scope just in front of the commander’s seat.

  SECOND SS PANZER DIVISION, KÜSTRIN, GERMANY, 1401 HOURS GMT

  “Obersturmführer Vogel!”

  “Yes, Standartenführer Peiper!” Lukas had been sitting on the ground with his back to the brick wall, but he instantly climbed to his feet and snapped to attention, glad to have something to take his mind off the shelling. He and his platoon of lean, hollow-eyed panzergrenadiere had been waiting for more than a day in a rubble-strewn alley no more than two blocks from the Oder River. The Russian artillery had been pounding the city throughout that time, and every few minutes an explosion would erupt close enough that the men could see rubble raining down on one side or another of their scant shelter.

  The Das Reich division was steadily diminishing in size. To call it a division was a courtesy—its actual strength was less than battalion-sized by now. Standartenführer Peiper was now commanding officer—Gruppenführer Ostendorff had been killed in action.

  “It’s time to earn your pay,” said the veteran SS colonel, his scarred face looking eerily like a death’s-head as he gave the young soldier a grim smile. He was standing tall in the entrance to the alley, his hands on his hips; he barely even flinched as a shell exploded half a block away.

  “What are your orders, mein Standartenführer?” asked Lukas, tingling with excitement and fear.

  “We are taking a company of panzers across the bridge, and I need infantry support,” replied the commander. “Bring your platoon and fall in with the rest of these men; stay close behind the tanks while we’re out in the open—they’ll be your best protection against small arms fire. Once we get to the far side, spread out to the left and engage any Russian infantry that you come across. Keep your heads down—there’s a whole division of Russian tanks coming this way.”

  “Yes sir!” Lukas raised a hand in a sieg-heil salute, even as he wondered why the Germans would be advancing across the river. It had been his understanding that they were going to try and hold the line of the Oder against the enemy attack, not go on the offensive. But the panzers rolled past, first a dozen Mark IVs, then the Panther commander by Peiper himself.

  When that tank rolled forward, Lukas and his men came out of the alley and advanced at a jog. In a minute they were in the open, climbing the easy grade that led to the span across the Oder. They crouched instinctively as bullets whined overhead and more shells burst over the water of the dark, frigid river.

  Lukas got an idea of why they were crossing the river as he saw several burly engineers hauling packages of TNT and detonators down the bank, to disappear under the bridge. They were preparing the span for demolition, he understood; it would be his job, and Peiper’s, to hold up the Russians long enough so that the crossing could be properly mined. Would they let them come back before they blew it? He shrugged away the question as soon as it occurred to him, ashamed for thinking such a selfish thought.

  Two minutes later they were across, having lost no one to the enemy fire. The Panther’s engine growled and chugged as the driver downshifted, then started to drive up the steep road leading out of the valley. The grenadiers slowed the pace of their advance, bunching up behind the steel behemoth, still crouching as they made their way up the street. The tank crawled over an obstacle of shattered stone and the men scrambled after, and soon they reached the crest. The road continued on, past an array of ruined buildings and out across a flat, barren steppe, but here Peiper’s panzer turned off the road.

  Lukas led his men after, then watched as the Panther turned, jockeyed back and forth a few times, then rumbled forward to the concealment of a notch between the ruins of two stone buildings. The wicked barrel pointed eastward, but the remnants of the walls rose high enough to mask every part of the tank below the level of the gun from the direction of the enemy’s approach.

  “Deploy in this building,” Lukas ordered, grateful that, with these veterans, he would not have to assign a specific position to each soldier. Indeed, the SS panzergrenadiere scrambled over the rubble of the front wall and quickly spread out within the gaping, roofless shell of what had once been a warehouse or large store.

  He was about to follow when he saw the Panther’s hatch open up to reveal Jochen Peiper’s head and shoulders. The SS colonel waved him over, so he trotted through the broken street to stand beside the tank’s fender.

  “We’ll need to hold them for at least a few hours, maybe the rest of the day,” the colonel said.

  “Jawohl, mein Standartenführer! Long enough for the engineers to set charges on the bridge, I presume?”

  Peiper smiled. “Smart soldier, you are. Yes, that’s the reason. We had it mined to blow like all the others, but the artillery barrage shook loose the main charge and dropped it into the river. So they have to redo the whole thing.”

  “You can count on me, sir!” Lukas pledged.

  “I know I can, my boy—I know I can,” replied Peiper.

  Lukas thought that he sounded kind of sad when he said it.

  142ND TANK BATTALION, SECOND GUARDS TANK ARMY, KÜSTRIN, GERMANY, 1410 HOURS GMT

  Alyosha Krigoff put his head down only reluctantly, and felt the concussion of the explosion through the ground on which he lay. Next to him, Paulina Koninin failed
to display that caution, remaining upright to see and photograph above the rim of the muddy ditch in which they had taken shelter.

  Abruptly she cursed, finally dropping into the foxhole and clutching her bleeding hand. Her eye was wide with concern.

  “Are you all right?” asked the colonel worriedly. He saw the blood and gasped. “You’re wounded!”

  She exhaled a sigh of relief and held up her camera so that the blood dripped down her arm, and not onto the lens of her precious instrument. “I was afraid the body was cracked open,” she explained. “That would have ruined a fine roll of film—such pictures!”

  “What about your hand?” asked Krigoff, a little awed by her dedication to her craft. After all, German artillery had zeroed in on their position, and shells continued to rain down on them, exploding on all sides. Their survival under these circumstances was not something that could be taken for granted. His own tank had been crippled, a track blown off by an enemy shot. Krigoff had leaped into this ditch when the lieutenant informed him that his advance was over, and he had found Paulina down here, poking her head up to snap picture after picture.

  “Oh, that—just a flesh wound,” she explained, at last examining the injury. “A lucky piece of shrapnel must have gotten me.” Indeed, the colonel could see that her little finger was torn open along half its length, and his stomach churned as he saw a white flash within the nasty gash that could only be the bone of her finger.

  “We should get you to an aid station,” he blurted, shocked by this real proof of war.

  “For this?” she scoffed. She rolled onto her back in the muddy hole, resting her camera on her belly as she reached into her side pouch and came out with a dirty handkerchief. She wrapped her little finger alongside the ring and middle fingers of the same hand, then used her other hand and her teeth to tie the cloth into a tight wrap. She picked up her camera again and manipulated some of the controls, then flashed him a grin. “There—I can still focus, and shoot!”