Dear God.
This is all the protection Hitler can summon at the end for his German people against the Russians. Baskets of poison, government-sanctioned suicide. A Home Guard made up of old men and frightened musicians. Cities of ruins. And dead-faced boys, whose hands holding out these baskets are smaller-boned than Lottie’s.
She’s disgusted. Neither of the Hitler Youth twitches, they could be mannequins.
Her disgust twists in her gut like a dirk, twists into nausea.
The Jew in the basement is real. The Russians are real. The cyanide is real.
Doom.
Lottie loses her balance. Neither ebon boy moves to aid her. One knee buckles; she grabs hold of the gilded door frame. The theater spins. She wants to vomit.
One of the boys speaks. “Fräulein. We cannot protect you.”
Lottie lifts her chin above the tide of her rising insides. Looking into their faces, she does not know which of the boys talked. She dips a hand into the basket. The packets beneath her fingertips are white, soft, little kisses in the basket. She fingers a pill. So small, so enormous. She’ll put the thing in the Jew’s food. That’ll take care of one problem.
Her hand digs deeper. The tablets play around her knuckles. They seem gentle, competent. The pills make a vow to her: we’ll keep our promise. Trust us, but nothing else. We’re the only things in your world that will do what we say. Take me. Me! No, pick me!
She hovers over the basket.
She won’t poison the Jew. He may live like a rat in the basement but she won’t kill him like one.
Lottie’s head clears. Her hand is still plunged in the pills. They nibble at the backs of her fingers like minnows.
She chooses .You. Little friend, you are for me.
She plucks another. And you. You can come also.
For Mutti.
The Gestapo or the Russians—one or the other, when they come— will be coming for Mutti too.
Everything is real.
~ * ~
* * *
February 22, 1945, 11:10 p.m.
With the Ninth Army on the west bank
of the Roer River, near Jülich
Germany
bandy never likes night operations. he can t take photos in the dark.
He pulls a lantern closer to his lap, not for the light but the heat. The air is river-damp and chilly, even in his tent. He takes a quick look around at his setup: cot, desk and chair, blankets, magazines. He’s been living high on the hog the last ten days, staying in one place. By afternoon this’ll all be torn down, moved across the river and given to someone else. Bandy doesn’t want to spend any more nights in tents. He, along with the whole U.S. Ninth Army, wants to get going again, to Berlin. He wants to sleep in the front seat of a rolling truck on the Autobahn. In the last week he hasn’t sent one photo back to New York. Photos of what—waiting? Even so, his instincts tell him he’s in the right place.
Along Ike’s broad front, both Bradley in the middle and Patton in the south are facing a lot of opposition getting to the Rhine. Even after they’re across, they’ll be staring at the bulk of the German forces in the West. Plus, there’s a rumor that Hitler’s preparing a southern route out of Berlin for his escape to the alpine regions of Bavaria, Austria, and Italy. The story goes the Führer’s going to retreat there to a prepared redoubt, his Eagle’s Nest, set up a microphone and radio transmitter and keep the fight alive with a Nazi resistance force of maniacs in the mountains. If Hitler does get in there, it’ll take another million men to pry him out. Look at the killing in the Hürtgen; triple it. So Ike has to worry about intercepting enemy troops possibly heading south. But up here on the northern track, Monty’s free from having to cut off any breakout. He’s got Berlin in his bonnet and a straight shot once he’s across the Rhine. The Ninth Army is still under him. Eisenhower let the Field Marshal keep it. Bandy gambles that these U.S. forces will be the ones to break through, with Montgomery and Churchill spurring them on.
Jump-off this morning is at 0245. Bandy figures he’d better get in a letter to Victoria. Who knows when he’ll have another chance to write. Like all servicemen around the world at war, Bandy has his final letter written out and sealed in his breast pocket. It’s been there for three years now. In his career he’s written five of them, goodbyes to Victoria.
Her recent letter was another plaint. She’s getting more annoyed every time she writes. When are you coming home? I’m so mad at you, if the Krauts don’t kill you I might, and so on. She never acted like this before when he was gone. What’s different now?
On the cot he touches the pen to the pad. What can he say? Dear Vic, I’m not sorry I’m here. I’m not sorry I’m the man I am and drawn where and when I am. I’m not sorry that I’m risking making you a widow so I can take pictures of other men doing it worse to their own gals. How does Bandy tell her this?
He lowers his forehead into his palm and thinks, You just plain don’t tell her. The pen stands at attention, waiting for orders. Bandy writes:
Dearest Victoria,
Hi, doll. I’m here in the middle of nowhere again. Next to the Roer River with a division of the Ninth Army, about ten thousand men. We’re going across tonight. Well, they are. I’ll wait for morning.
That was some spread Life gave me on the Hürtgen, wasn’t it? It was pretty awful being there. Not as bad as being one of the soldiers. Of course.
After I got through the forest with the First Army, I came up here north with the Ninth for the Roer crossing. But the Germans blew the river dams two weeks ago and we’ve been held up here ever since, waiting for the water to recede. Dammit (ha-ha). In the downtime the men have practiced the crossing a bunch of times, and we’ve had some big brass visit, wearing ties. Even some correspondents came up to take a few notes, watch a couple artillery shells fired, then scoot back to the rear to file their reports “from the front.” Papa Hemingway was one. Everybody made a fuss over him. Me, I’m here all the time. Anyway. A prophet is not without honor. . . .
With luck, by next week I should be able to write from the east bank of the Rhine. Then it’s on to Berlin. I’m going to keep trying to find out what outfit has the best shot of getting there first and join up. That’ll be the best, Vic. Won’t it? Charles Bandy, IN BERLIN. Can you see it?
I know this is hard on you, but it’s almost over. We’re on our way, every man here feels it!
In his head Bandy hears the responses from his wife. He doesn’t want to argue with her. He writes something conciliatory.
Look, I swear. When this is over I’ll stay home permanent, just you and me, tobacco, babies, and some domestic assignments just to keep my hand in.
This is mostly a lie, everything but the part about the babies. He wants to scratch it all out but that would mar the letter, make her suspicious that he’d written something even worse. There’s worse he could have written. A kind lie’s not so bad. If he was face-to-face with her he’d say it, whatever, to make her feel better about things, to get through this.
But Bandy won’t quit Life magazine. Not so long as history gets made in the world, and that’s every dang day. After this war there’s going to be another conflict somewhere, big or small. Mankind only knows one way to exist with each other and that’s with some measure of mayhem. Victoria teaches schoolkids about things that Bandy has photographed, and will photograph. How can he give this up? How can she not understand? It’s always been bigger than one man and one woman, or it wouldn’t be history. Lies are like punches, they come best in combinations.
The brass here figure weeks, Vic, maybe a month more. The Germans are hightailing it. This’ll all be over real soon and you can give me up the country in person. That sound good?
A whopper. Hitler’s not rolling over for the West, no way. Though he ought to be. No one can figure out why the little shit is fighting so hard against the Americans and British. The guns are all on German soil now. These are German towns and cities going up in flames. The country’s being de
stroyed, while the soldiers and people and even teenage boys fight back fanatically It doesn’t make sense—for what? They’re beat. Bandy’s heard only three possible explanations: first, the National Redoubt in the Alps, Hitler’s buying time to get it ready. Second, the Führer thinks if he can give the Western Allies one more bloody nose like he did at the Bulge, we’ll make a separate peace with him and join with the Nazis against the Reds, which won’t happen. Nobody wants that fight, from Roosevelt on down. The last explanation is that the German people are scared to death of paying the piper for what they’ve done here in Europe. If they put up a good enough fight, the Allies might consider accepting something less than unconditional surrender from Germany, just to get the war over with. That’s not going to happen either. Not from everything Bandy’s heard about what went on in Russia and Poland, and what he’s seen with his own eyes, his precious history. The piper is owed far too much.
Outside the tent a convoy growls past. Bandy’s tent rattles. He shoves aside the flap. Trucks carrying the four-hundred-pound, eight-man assault boats make for the river’s edge.
I got to go now. With luck I’ll write you next from the east bank of the Rhine.
I love you. Always. Everywhere.
Charley
Bandy sticks the letter in an envelope. He gathers his camera bags, stuffs an extra blanket into his pack, and leaves the tent. He hooks a ride with a truck in the convoy and heads to the riverbank, leaving the letter with the GI driver to mail.
Along the bank, valves have been opened on giant steel canisters mounted on flatbed trucks. Clouds of oil smoke roil out, spilling across the water to obscure those engineers hoisting the assault boats to the lip of the water. The receding Roer has turned the approach to the river into a two-hundred-yard swath of marshy, muddy goop. Bandy watches the engineers go and return. He wishes for daylight to shoot them, the men are covered chin-down in muck, they steam stepping out of the fog, like swamp creatures. All around, the might of the Ninth Army slips and clutches for purchase against the river and earth. Giant trucks haul forward girders and pontoons to erect bridges once a beachhead is secured on the east bank. Dozens of assault companies, each a hundred fifty men strong, hunker in clearings, waiting; they clatter like cicadas in the dark, fidgeting with their rifles, rations, helmets, packs, fears, smokes, chatter, prayers. Their breaths, lit by passing headlamps, make false mists over the glens. Bandy knows he sees only a fraction of the activity along the twenty-mile Roer front; this gargantuan bustle is going on in dozens of other places out there in the night. Ten thousand men will attempt the crossing before daybreak; over the next few days four hundred thousand will follow.
What waits for them? First, natural barriers. The river is up to ten feet deep, with strong currents and icy temperature. After the troops make landfall there’s no cover for three hundred yards, just bald mud and backwash. Even more menacing are the man-made obstacles, almost comparable to what the Allies faced on Normandy’s beaches. The river and bank are mined, there’s concertina wire in the water, fortified trenches, minefields deep into enemy territory, presighted guns, a dug-in and determined enemy. Their objective is Jülich, a town often thousand on a low rise above the river. From there, east to the Rhine.
For two hours Bandy roams alone. He strides among trucks grinding gears, bleating men, silent huddled groups, cold equipment in high stacks. All this weight—millions of tons and dollars, millions of hopes for life and freedom, history!—resting on the shoulders of one man at a time, one soldier with a gun and running legs and a pumping heart. Bandy breathes in their glory and their coming horrors. He walks through them, wanting to touch each one, record every face and story so they will not pass unnoted. But it’s night and there is no role for him. He thinks something is unfair. He feels the way he does sometimes on the farm, like he’s just a man and the world does not know him, the way the world does not know each soldier.
At 0230, the preparations stutter to a stop. All the trucks cut their lights. The men are with the boats beside the Roer, officers stop calling orders. The engineers head for dry clothes. Bandy climbs up on the warm hood of a still truck. He stares across the gloomy swatch that is the unseen river.
Right on time, at 0245, an artillery barrage all along the front splits the night into splinters. The dark flashes on and off as though some prankster has his hand on the light switch. Bandy, warming his butt, watches the far bank of the river mushroom behind the oil smoke and gun smoke into circlets of orange flame. The sound rushes back across the wide water and thumps his chest.
For forty-five minutes the big guns rage at the Germans, killing them, stunning them, forcing them out of their holes. In both directions, up and down the river to the distant bends, the opposite bank and a mile inland are drenched in a rain of explosives. Bandy reaches into his memory and cannot recall a bombardment to equal it. The shelling at night is particularly fearsome, every explosion in its moment ignites the blackness, trembling through the fog like lightning in storm clouds.
At 0330, the shelling halts. Bandy gazes into restored dark and quiet. Neon spots ghost his vision from the shells. That was some pummeling. Right now the opposite bank must look like the moon. The first assault companies slip into the water. Engineers on thirty-two inflated boats will ferry the initial wave over, then they’ll come back for another load.
Bandy can’t see much from his truck hood. But the night is full with unseen men motoring across the misted water, clutching fear and resolve as tight as rifles. For which ones will the Roer be their river Styx? For whom will there be no return? The river is wide, the current strong. The enemy waiting. Bandy senses his own heartbeat pulse behind his breast pocket, nudging at the plastic-sealed final note to Victoria, the one letter that he and all men in war hope their women and folks never get.
In minutes the first cracks of small arms fire speed across the water, returning harbingers to report the battle is on. Muffled thumps like beaten laundry tell of detonated mines. Bandy builds for himself visions and photographs from the sounds, mosaics of imagination. Men slog through the mud into German lines, weapons bark, men fall, men ran, trenches smoke, ruins and craters pock the ground.
There’s nothing he can do until sunup but sit on this truck, or walk about some more. For now, Bandy is useless. He climbs down, pulls out his blanket, and crawls into the truck cab. He curls on the seat. The upholstery stinks of cigarettes.
Bandy’s last thought, the one he recalls when he wakes four hours later, is of tobacco. He opens his eyes. He feels as if he has dreamed, though he can’t remember a dream. But it was sad, long ago, and in another country. He thinks of Victoria. He sits up to war.
Stiff, Bandy steps down from the truck cab. He shoulders his packs and makes for the river’s edge. In the night, engineers have erected two footbridges and a cable ferry secured on the opposite bank. The artillery and the assault must have taken solid hold, dislodging the Germans. Men and materiel pour single file across the Roer. Pontoons and large beams are piled by the river to begin construction of a treadway bridge to move tanks and trucks. The engineers are like ants, crawling over everything, seeming to lift many times their own weight.
Hungry and cold, shuffling in the line to cross, Bandy bums a K ration. At 0740, he moves out over the river. The footbridge sways in the current under his feet, half the boards are underwater. He moves hand over hand along the lone cable. His balance is faulty from just waking up, his boots slosh and the oil smoke burns his eyes and nostrils.
It takes him ten minutes to get halfway over the river, fearing all the while that his hands or feet will slip and he’ll fall in. If his Speed Graphic and Leica get wet, Bandy becomes a civilian without a mission. He’d have to fall back to resupply. By the time he finagles his way back up here, Berlin might have already fallen. He moves with caution. Soldiers behind him bunch up, some call out at him to get going. Screw ‘em, Bandy thinks, I’m the oldest guy out here by fifteen years. He hears a splash through the smoke ahead, a man c
usses, the voice floats downstream. Bandy grits his teeth. This is miserable.
To add to his ordeal, artillery shells begin to fall on all sides of the footbridge. Apparently the Germans have regrouped on some high ground over there near the town and are trying to stem the flow of Americans crossing the Roer. Pillars of water fountain left and right, soaking every soldier on the river. In an instant Bandy is dripping. The frigid water seeps down to his underwear, his skin puckers. The cameras in his pack are wrapped in oilskins, they’re safe so long as he isn’t submerged. The barrage is random, the Germans can’t draw a bead through the smoke. But the crossing is made that much more dangerous. Bandy thinks how just minutes ago he was asleep.
It takes him only six more minutes to cover the second half of the footbridge. Hitting the bank, he steps into sludge that sucks his boots and legs up to the calves. As unhappy as he is, Bandy’s relieved to see so few American bodies. The attack went well, clearly. But the dead lie in such an awful, apocalyptic place, under a greasy haze, half dissolved into the mud. The charge on Berlin is on, the Allies are coursing forward with power and pace. It’s a tragedy to die at all, but a pity to die now with the end in sight. Bandy wants to take pictures. He’s reminded of scenes of World War I, smoke and filth, rushing men. But his hands are too slimy, there’s no dry or clean place on him or anywhere around him. He leaves the cameras in their protection, nods to the dead, and hurries forward with the others who cannot stop, to Jülich.
The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] Page 19
