The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02]

by David L. Robbins

Now the morning takes on a different tone. The day roars. Plane engines of every kind storm above. Small arms fire spits out of the ground and Bandy feels as though he is falling into a crackling blaze. German 88mm guns and tracers scream at the sky. Above it all, Bandy hears his own breathing.

  Then silence, so quickly. Nothing exists but the coming grass. Fast. Is it supposed to come up so fast? Bandy doesn’t remember his other jump, was it like this? No time ...

  His helmet hits the back of his shoulders, his neck smarts from the snap. His knees buckle, his ankles roll on their own, and he collapses facedown, barely able to get his hands out in front. He opens his eyes and the ground is a lot closer now, inches.

  He has bit his lip. His right knee feels jammed, his hips ache. The turf under his nose could be Tennessee on a cloudy day. It’s just grass and dirt, it has the odor of fecundity. He relaxes for a moment and lays his bare cheek to the earth.

  But the clouds are his parachute lapped over him prone. The sounds are gunplay and running and war shouts. The earth under him is behind enemy lines.

  Bandy rolls over to check that his cameras made it down safely. This tangles him in the chute and cords. He bats the silk away and after seconds of struggle sits up, feeling stupid for lying here as he did.

  Men and guns scramble everywhere. Sergeants and lieutenants shout and wave their arms for their platoons to form up. A shadow crosses Bandy’s place. There is no attendant engine blare, it’s an eerie sensation like a winged doom crossing your path, then one of the canvas-and-wood gliders comes to ground just missing Bandy with an ugly but effective landing. The plane is shredded with bullet holes though Bandy sees the young pilot alive and gripping the stick. While the thing settles ungainly and tilts on busted landing struts, Bandy is up and running. Even with legs pumping, he reaches to loose the straps holding his Speed Graphic and the 35mm Leica.

  He finds cover in a hedgerow boundary of the field where he landed. The shrubs won’t stop a bullet but they will conceal him until he gets his bearings. He squats among the branches to discover the bushes have stickers, so he lies under them instead.

  His lower body feels like it wants to swell up on him, but of his two jumps this was by far the most successful—if, he thinks, he manages to survive what he has jumped into.

  Bandy unleashes his cameras. He stows the bulky Speed Graphic in his pack and begins sweeping the Leica over the battle scene before him. He looks through the lens now, his vision and all his senses becoming more acute. The camera is his third eye and it makes him keener, the way three men are stronger than two. Through the Leica the combat is no longer helter-skelter but reveals to Bandy its linear nature, lines against light, force measured by tempo, arithmetic where men are the integers; the historic scale of war exposes its constituent, single human moments as though Bandy’s camera lens were a microscope and he views the nucleus and electrons that make up a complex atom.

  Another thousand soldiers arrive under parachutes or in gliders, all hushed until they touch the ground, then they scrabble for cover, drawing fire from the surrounding hedgerows and farm buildings, and returning it. Some of the chutes have gotten tangled in tall tree limbs, their riders have to cut their way out of the harness with a knife to drop precarious distances. The white silk splayed in the trees looks oddly decorative. One of the paratroopers is dead in these trees, shot while strung up and helpless. The soldier hangs and sags like a waiting puppet.

  Bandy uses up the first roll of film and loads another. He moves with practiced velocity, eagerly wanting the camera back in front of his face. He snaps pictures of men running in crouches, their carbines ready at the hip. He records those masses overhead still falling from planes, he composes a poetic caption: “Black dots transforming into silken flowers.” Men on the ground clamber out of shriveled chutes and mangled gliders, thankfulness in their eyes, then sudden ducking fright hits them when the first bullet whizzes by. Alarm becomes purpose. All of this enters Bandy’s lens.

  It’s time to move out of the hedge.

  Fifty yards off is the south edge of the field and a rim of trees. There the platoon Bandy jumped alongside has clotted around their lieutenant and sergeants. Bandy rises on complaining knees and ankles. Bent low, he jogs the open distance to the men. At these times, exposed and under enemy fire, Bandy inhabits not just the hands and eyes of his body like he does when taking photos; now he is in every inch of his own skin and bone and gut, his brain has sent out nervous sentries into all parts of him. He feels his toes in the hurrying boots, his brow under the bouncing helmet, the muscles in his abdomen that keep him in a running hunch. He has waited through six years of combat photography for the meeting with his first bullet. He waits now. Several rounds come to greet him in this field east of the Rhine; a few whisper “Welcome” flying past, others plow a path for his feet in the dirt, but none yet embraces him.

  Bandy slides like a baseball player into the middle of the platoon. One wag says, “Safe.”

  The lieutenant smiles. “Mr. Bandy, sir. Will you be joinin’ us this mornin’?”

  Bandy works to catch his breath. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. You just stay toward the rear. Keep your head down and follow. That okay?”

  Bandy sees his young, caterpillar-moustached paratrooper. The boy’s freckles glow when he gives Bandy another thumbs-up.

  The officer doesn’t wait for a reply. He pulls his rifle from his shoulder.

  “Fan out. Move up.”

  The platoon absorbs itself into the trees and heads west, away from the sporadic firelight in the Drop Zone. They are part of a large moving force tramping with care through the rising countryside. A gentle slope begins. The trees here are not thick, there’s plenty of room between them, and their branches bear only the first blooms, so Bandy can see well in all directions, and be seen.

  From this wooded hill Bandy hears the fight for Wesel, two miles to his right. At this height, through the trees he makes out the red roofs and steeple of the nestled town. Sporadic gunfire comes from all directions while the Americans encounter German defenders in isolated homes, barns, and cowsheds. The area is riven with streambeds, ditches, hillocks, and clay roads. Bandy knows this kind of land, was sired and raised on it. It seems a great shame to him to see blood spilled on it.

  After ten minutes, the platoon enters an apple orchard. Within ten steps of the boundary they encounter fire from a big farmhouse seventy yards away. The platoon splits instantly into three squads which seemingly by instinct head left, right, and charge the center. Bandy freezes for a moment, left without the training to go one way or the other. He dives to the ground and finds himself alone and in the open.

  Out of the farmhouse a bank of rifles opens up. Bullets spray everywhere, not well aimed. From one second-floor window a streak of smoke issues and misses trees until it crashes into a big trunk twenty yards ahead of where Bandy lies. The Germans have Panzerfaust antitank grenades. The tree cracks in the middle and teeters, flame in its branches.

  The platoon moves up in grand fashion, answering the fire from the farmhouse, getting in position to take the building from all sides.

  The lieutenant pauses in his rush forward. He drops a knee and turns back to Bandy. He shouts.

  “Mr. Bandy, you’d best run somewhere!”

  The farmhouse looks like a storage place for fireworks that have gone off; Panzerfaust smoke trails erupt out of several windows, muzzle flashes from automatic weapons and carbines jitter in every aperture. Whoever’s inside is squeezing whatever triggers they can get their hands on. Some of them are intended for Bandy.

  He jumps to his feet, girding himself for another open run. His objective is a pile of cordwood thirty yards ahead, just beyond the burning tree. He takes off. The Leica waves in his left hand, the Speed Graphic bounces in his backpack against his spine like a worrisome and ignored old friend tapping him, Hey, let me out, use me some!

  Bandy fixes his eyes on the pile of wood. Once behind it, he’ll
sit tight until this farmhouse is taken. The people inside the house are nuts. They’re firing at everything. Bullets tear into the branches twenty feet over Bandy’s head.

  Only a few more running strides to cover. Bandy thinks he’ll make it. He always makes it.

  His right thigh trips him. An electric pain rips into his leg and splashes like barbed shock over his whole body. The Leica flies from his hand and skids to the woodpile. Bandy falls forward, pitching in the air—somehow deftly, instinctively—onto his left side to avoid landing on the bullet wound. The ground receives him hard, jamming his bad shoulder, the one he’d hurt on his Spanish jump six years ago. Bandy skids and even before he loses momentum from the running fall he crawls.

  The right leg will not move. It will, but just one try to incorporate it into his fast slither toward cover is enough to tell him it’s best to rely only on the good leg, so he drags it. His left shoulder feels like a giant is pinching him. Damn, he thinks. He tries for better language than a garden variety curse, he wants some inspiration or thought of note to mark his first battle wound, but all that arrives in his head is damn. Shit. This hurts.

  Finally leaning his back against the woodpile, Bandy takes stock. The inside of his right pants leg is torn in the meat of his thigh. Another few inches higher. Damn. Christ. With careful fingers he pulls back the bloody cloth flaps and peers in. He sucks through clamped teeth, the electricity in the wound is still on.

  Lucky. He’s got a nasty gash, a perfect C the size of an 8mm bullet carved out of his flesh. The wound is dumping blood pretty fast, dribbling a rivulet that pools under his knee. Bandy’s fingers are red, tacky from probing.

  The cut smarts like it’s embedded with thorns. He has no bandage and the medic is with the platoon assaulting the farmhouse. Bandy doesn’t bother to listen to the battle going on beyond the woodpile. He unbuttons his coat. He slides out of it with grinding discomfort, his left shoulder is deeply wrenched and swelling fast. He slides one sleeve of the jacket under his hemorrhaging leg and knots it tight with the other sleeve around the wound. He’s sweating by the time he is done. A minute ago he was running for cover, Charles Bandy, Life photographer on the scene east of the Rhine. Now he’s beat to hell with one good leg and one good arm.

  He waits like this for another five minutes. His pulse beats so strong out of the wrapped leg, he feels like a clock. The noises of combat flow around the stacked wood. Men’s voices ricochet among the trees. Over there! Move, move, move! Leaves rustle, sticks break under galloping boots. Rifles bay. Bullets strike glass, dirt, bark, the siding of the farmhouse. The orchard husbands all these sounds to itself. Bandy, blinded by cover, his eyes shut in pain, hears every developing detail and for once does not concern himself with what it looks like.

  Finally the fighting wanes with the easing clop-clop of a reined-in horse. When the orchard is still, voices emanate from the farmhouse.

  “Nicht schiessen! Wir kommen aus!”

  Boys’ voices. High, choirboy voices.

  Bandy can’t believe it. No. Not true.

  He’s been shot by children.

  He wants to stand, to roll over, he wants to see for himself who shot him. To see if it wasn’t even a man, a real enemy soldier, who got him. After all these years in combat he deserved at least that much. But Bandy hears no mature voices emerging from the farmhouse. The paratroopers rush forward, shouting, to take the surrender.

  “Hände hoch!” The GI lieutenant speaks some German. He orders the prisoners to put their hands up. Then he adds, “Schnell, Kinder.”

  Quickly, kiddies.

  Bandy puts his hand to his forehead, slurring blood there. He mutters to himself, “Oh, I don’t fucking believe this.”

  He can’t stand it. He rolls over to his left, bad shoulder protesting, and once clear of the wood sees a dozen teenagers, some of them perhaps even younger, all thin and fair-skinned. Each one wears a black SS clone uniform, with silver braided piping and eagle patches. Their hands are high and empty. None wears a helmet, they have caps or are bareheaded. Only two or three have boots, the rest shuffle in street shoes. The paratroopers surround them, guns aimed. Bandy hears sniffles from the boys. One openly bawls with a cardinal face.

  These children were allowed by the Nazis to play dress-up. They were given an arsenal and told to use it on the Americans. And they did. When they ran out of ammo or they suffered enough casualties, they threw up their hands and came out cringing. How much of Germany’s youth is Hitler willing to sacrifice to defend his lost lousy cause? If he can do this, he’s desperate and capable of anything. He’s a bigger bastard and even more dangerous than Bandy imagined. What else will we find, he wonders, the closer we get to Berlin?

  Bandy doesn’t see the medic. He’s embarrassed to do it, but he calls out.

  “Hey. Medic!”

  One of the sergeants comes over.

  “Hey, pal. You okay?”

  “Sort of. No.”

  “Hang on. Doc’s busy.”

  The sergeant squats to inspect Bandy’s wound and makeshift dressing.

  “You’re gonna be all right.”

  “I reckon.”

  The soldier stands to go back to corralling the Hitler boys.

  Bandy says, “Hey.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How many were there? In the farmhouse. Any regular soldiers?”

  “No. Just these. We killed five before they came out.”

  Bandy nods.

  The soldier says, “I hate this. I goddam hate this.”

  The man is not curious for Bandy’s reaction. Though Bandy has been hit, this soldier has killed children. His wound will never heal. The sergeant mulls over his own words for a moment and decides no more are needed. He spits and starts to walk off.

  Bandy grabs his Leica off the ground.

  “Sarge.”

  The soldier stops.

  “Gimme a hand up, will ya?”

  “You want to take pictures, Mr. Bandy?”

  Yes, he does.

  “No. No, I just ... I just want to see them.”

  The paratrooper wraps a strong arm around Bandy’s back and lifts. Bandy pushes one-legged and rises with a choked groan. The knotted coat flaps and drags the ground behind him. The sergeant grips Bandy’s shoulder. This sets off a howl. The soldier sets him back on the ground.

  “Separated,” Bandy huffs. “It’s separated. Jesus. Gimme a minute.”

  The sergeant looms over Bandy rocking on his butt. Without ceremony he reaches down and grips Bandy’s left arm. Bandy can’t stop him.

  “No! Wait!”

  The sergeant anchors himself against Bandy’s good shoulder and yanks. The left joint pops in his heavy grip. Bandy feels torn apart, then just as suddenly the pain ebbs.

  “Ahhh. Ahhh, for Christ’s sake, Sarge. Jesus.”

  “Better?”

  “Yeah, but Jesus.”

  The soldier lifts him with the same strength he held Bandy down a moment ago. Together they walk to the farmhouse, Bandy hobbled and leaning on the paratrooper’s arm. Cooled blood trickles down Bandy’s calf into his sock and boot. The leg pain is no more acute walking than it was when he was sitting still. He’ll have the memento of a mean scar, that should be the extent of the injury. His shoulder grabs most of his attention. It’s fixed, yes, but banging at him.

  Twenty yards ahead stand fourteen German boys in a cluster. Their hands are on their heads and they are surrounded by stone-faced paratroopers and leveled rifles. More than one of the children has broken into tears. The oldest boy can’t be more than sixteen.

  Their eyes move to Bandy and his obvious bleeding. On a few captured faces he catches proud sneers. On most there is only relief. He wishes he could take these pictures, of fanatical delusion and weepy release, of childhood gone off the tracks.

  The sergeant lugs him past the boys, around to the side of the farmhouse. There, on the edge of the orchard, a crowd of troopers stands about a man spread on the ground and the kneeling m
edic.

  When the men see Bandy approach limping on the sergeant’s arm, they part to let him into their circle. The medic does not look up from the young caterpillar-moustached soldier lying beside him.

  The boy has been shot in the neck. The medic has wrapped gauze around the wounds; blood blotches the white bandage on both sides of the soldier’s throat. The bullet tore all the way through. The medic is busy with crimson hands unwrapping a plasma pack. Another soldier holds ready a morphine spike.

  The flush that was in the young soldier’s freckles on the transport plane has faded. His face is ashen, the freckles have receded as though they too are being bled white.

  His eyes are focused straight up. But he sees Bandy and rolls his head. The medic rips open the plastic plasma packet, stabs a needle into the soldier’s arm, and plugs him in.