The house in which they lived had belonged to a Jewish merchant who had fled to England before the war. It was very large, opulent, and even had a wing for the servants. Thus, Lena had her own room. Her bondage might have been light, but it was still slavery.
Thanks to her father’s insistence on her getting an education, she was fluent in English as well as Czech and German. She recalled someone, possibly Abraham Lincoln, saying that to the extent a man is not free, he is a slave. Well, she was not free and she was always terrified. Not only were the Schneiders capable of turning on her like animals, but the Allied victories in the war represented a threat as well. What would happen to her as the Americans drew closer? Would the Schneiders take her south to the mountains like they were talking about or would they turn her loose to fend for herself? She didn’t think the Americans raped and murdered like the Russians did, but she wasn’t certain. And the French were known to take vengeance on German women for what the Nazis had done during their occupation. That she was Czech and not German would have no meaning to them.
And if the Schneiders took her with them, then she was condemned to that much more slavery along with the ever-present threat of death.
No, what she wanted to do was run and hide until the tide of war passed over. Then she would emerge and try to begin a new life.
Chapter 2
Tanner took his first tentative steps without crutches. Doctor Lennie Hagerman watched him tolerantly. “Not bad, Captain. You won’t make the ’48 Olympic track team but you’re otherwise going to be all right. Of course, there might not be a ’48 Olympics unless this war winds down.”
“How long will I need a cane?”
“That’s up to you. I would use it for a couple of weeks. Your leg and foot are still weak and sore and, besides, people will feel sorry for you and might give you a break, or even a seat on a bus. Seriously, you don’t want to fall down and hurt yourself worse.”
“I don’t want anyone giving me a break. I want to have another chance to kill the Nazi bastards who murdered my men.”
“Understood. However, it is unlikely that you will be assigned to a line unit until your leg is totally up to par, and maybe not even then. Can’t have a crippled captain leading troops, now can we?”
Scott had been in worse shape than he’d thought when he got to the hospital just outside of Celles, Belgium. The otherwise lovely but undistinguished village had been the high-water mark of the German’s Ardennes invasion. He’d had pneumonia along with a bad case of trench foot that had taken a couple of weeks to clear up. The medics had given serious thought to amputating his right foot after stabilizing his badly twisted left knee. The knee had been easy. It just needed rest. The foot, however, raised concerns that it might turn gangrenous.
Hagerman continued. “You were very fortunate that your foot did heal. The traditional treatment of keeping the foot dry and letting the dead skin slough off and new skin grow back actually worked. We also tried you with some of that new drug, Penicillin. I have no idea if it worked or not or just made me feel better. You are now very unfortunate in that you might be susceptible to it happening again. Ergo, it is highly unlikely that you will be cleared to be in a situation where your feet could become wet and cold for a prolonged period of time.”
“What if I promise to bring extra socks?”
“As they say, Tanner, put a sock in it yourself. Keep your socks and your powder dry or you’ll wind up being a cripple. That’ll get your out of the army but won’t do a damn thing about you’re urge to kill the Nazis who murdered those two men. Not that they weren’t the only GIs who were executed like that.”
Tanner nodded thoughtfully. There had been other massacres of American prisoners. A particularly terrible one had occurred near the Belgian town of Malmedy where almost a hundred American soldiers had been butchered. There would be a lot of Germans facing trials and the firing squad when this war was over.
“Any idea where I’m going to be assigned?”
“Do I look like God? There are ugly rumors that the Krauts are pulling up stakes and heading south to the Alps. That means that this part of the war is going to wind down and the next phase will be up to Devers and the Sixth Army Group. Is that where you’d like to be? I do have some friends in low places who would do me a favor.”
“Do that, please.”
“Then get into a uniform and we’ll go out to dinner. Your treat, of course. After all, you do owe me a foot.”
Tanner laughed and agreed. The only place to eat around the hospital was the army’s mess hall.
* * *
Staff Sergeant Billy Hill sat in the last vehicle in a ten jeep convoy and tried to keep warm as the snow-flecked wind hit him in the face. He would not show the rest of the men that he felt the cold. He would not show the platoon that he was human. After all, he was the platoon sergeant. He would also never let them call him Hillbilly Billy Hill.
If the officer commanding the platoon thought that being last in line was his punishment for being outspoken, the young and inexperienced second lieutenant was very, very wrong. This was the safest place to be as the officer led his platoon from the front down the paved two-lane highway. It wasn’t quite the Autobahn, but it was nicer than anything Hill had seen in or out of his small town home in Opelika, Alabama.
According to the maps, the American army was getting ever closer to the Alps, as were the Germans they were chasing. The land was hilly, not mountainous, but there was the idea that the terrain was going to get more difficult. There were many great places for an ambush.
Hill was twenty-eight and had been in the army since a week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He’d hitched a ride from Opelika down the road to Fort Benning, Georgia, where he’d enlisted. He hadn’t intended to be a lifer, but that’s what it looked like was going to happen. He’d seen combat in North Africa and been wounded in the drive towards Tunis. He’d given some thought to going to Officer Candidate School but decided that he’d have to be a gentleman in order to be an officer and that just wasn’t in him. He smiled at the thought as he spat tobacco off the side of the jeep, courteously missing the other men with him. They nodded their appreciation.
Of course, if he’d been an officer, he could have told the young shit-eating puppy of a lieutenant that he was doing a truly dumb thing. The captain had said send a small patrol down the road to probe and see where the Krauts might be holed up. The captain hadn’t said to take the whole damn platoon and ride down the middle of the highway like a bunch of sightseers. To Hill, the captain really wanted two or three men and a radio to quietly and slowly figure things out. Rumors said that the Nazis were moving south to the mountains, but who could trust the Nazis?
The men wore white smocks which helped hide them in the snow, but the jeeps were painted olive drab and clearly stood out on the snow-covered highway. Hill swore silently and hoped that the Nazis were asleep at the switch while the column moved down the road at twenty miles an hour.
They weren’t. Just as he started to grab another chew, tracers snaked out from either side of the road, smashing into metal and flesh. Bullets swept the column, dropping screaming men from the jeeps. The lead vehicles were quickly driverless and crashed, while the others tried desperately to turn and get away from the deadly rain of bullets. Gas tanks exploded. Men screamed as burning gas enveloped them.
“Turn around!” Hill yelled. The jeeps in front of him were already trying to do just that, but they too were quickly hit with bullets. There was the loud crack of an antitank gun and another jeep simply exploded. He didn’t need his radio to tell the others to get the hell out. He was about to radio the company commander when something smashed into the side of his jeep, slowly turning it on its side.
Hill hit the ground and crawled towards the cover of a ditch. The gas tank exploded, sending debris and burning gas over him. His uniform was on fire. He rolled around in the snow and mud and finally put it out after a few seconds that seemed like forever. He hurt like
the devil from a number of burns, but he could deal with it. He had to.
More machine-gun bullets sprayed the area and made sure the dead were well and truly dead. Hill and a couple of other survivors lay in the ditch. The whole damn platoon had been pretty near wiped out. If it was any consolation, the idiot boy lieutenant was likely one of the bodies smoldering at the head of the devastated column.
“Damn it,” he snarled. He’d only been with the inexperienced unit for a couple of weeks and didn’t know any of them well, but they were still his men. Or had been, he thought angrily.
The wind shifted and he could smell burning flesh. He managed not to gag but one of the men with him wasn’t so lucky, vomiting violently. After a while, he got up the courage to look over the edge of the ditch. The Germans had come out of their holes and were headed slowly up the road. They checked American bodies and found a couple still living. They called for medics to take care of them. At least, he thought, they weren’t SS. One German shot a body that was still burning. A mercy shot, Hill thought. In North Africa he’d killed a badly burned Italian soldier who’d been screaming through charred lips to be put out of his pain.
He signaled to the other two men and they crawled slowly towards the safety of the Austrian forest. Hill waited until after darkness to go by himself to the head of the smashed column. He quickly found the sites where the shooting had come from. The Germans had evacuated, correctly feeling that American artillery or fighter planes would soon bomb and shell the area. Maybe the planes would use that new napalm to cook up a passel of Germans and call them “Fritz Fries.” He liked that thought. The Germans also likely assumed that a stronger American column would rescue the one they’d massacred. They didn’t know that all the platoon’s radios had been destroyed in the attack.
Nobody’d had a chance to pick up the dead and the German positions had been evacuated. He wasn’t going to bring back the dead either, but he did want to identify them. He gently removed one set of dog tags from each of twenty-three bodies, including the young lieutenant’s.
Hill couldn’t even recall the poor kid’s name until he saw it on his tags. The boy had arrived only a few days earlier. Now he would be buried in a local cemetery or shipped home in a box. Just because he’d been stupid didn’t mean he ought to have died.
The snow began falling again. In a few seconds it was almost impossible to see more than a few feet. Someone had told them that this was one of the worst winters in decades and he believed it. Alabama got bone-chilling cold and damp and of course it snowed every now and then, but this, he thought, was something else. At least the snow would cover their withdrawal. Thank God for small favors, he thought.
They got another small favor. One of the damaged jeeps actually started and ran, although they couldn’t get it out of second gear. Beat the hell out of walking, they thought.
* * *
General Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived without incident at Lieutenant General Jake Devers’ Sixth Army Group headquarters near the old border between Austria and Germany. The U.S. owned the skies so the handful of passengers and crew of the modified B25 bomber had little to worry about except boredom and the weather. Even so, the flight had been accompanied by a dozen P51 fighters. Nobody was leaving anything to chance. The Germans had very few planes left, but it would only take one ME109 or one of the new jet-propelled ME262s and the Allied High Command could have been decapitated. There had also been some disturbing instances where German planes had carried out suicide attacks on U.S. bombers.
Devers Sixth Army Group was the smallest of the three army groups fronting the Nazis in a line that ran from the North Sea south to the Alps. A fourth army group, the Fifteenth under Mark Clark, was clawing its way up Italy. Devers had twelve American divisions in General Alexander Patch’s Seventh Army and seven French under General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny in the French First Army.
Coffee and pastries were served by awed privates in a large house that had once been owned by a wealthy German. A large but slashed and mutilated portrait of Hitler decorated a wall. With the bulk of the war raging to the north, there was the feeling that the Sixth Army front was pretty well forgotten. The presence of Ike told them otherwise. Rumors quickly flew saying that big things were in store for the Sixth and that meant bloody fighting.
It wasn’t that the Sixth had been sitting on its collective hands. It hadn’t. They’d fought long and hard and successfully. They’d just completed eliminating what was called the Colmar Pocket, a German holdout on the west bank of the Rhine. As a result of that effort the city of Strasbourg was once again part of France. Unfortunately, Ike had not been impressed by Devers and the Sixth Army Group’s performance in that fighting. If the war in and around the Alps was to become critical, Ike had been thinking that a change in command might become necessary.
Ike gave Devers copies of the latest Ultra intercepts received from the code-breaking center at Bletchley Park in England. Only a handful of Allied leaders were privy to the fact that the U.S. and Britain had been listening to much of the German military’s communications for quite some time. He lit up a Camel, his current brand of choice, while Devers scanned the papers.
Devers shook his head and handed the documents back to Ike who stuffed them in a briefcase. They would not be left around for curious eyes to see. “This changes a lot of things,” Devers said. “A lot of people thought that the idea of an Alpine Redoubt was a figment of somebody’s imagination. The idea of the Nazis turning the Alps into a fortress is a frightening prospect. We’ve got to get across the Rhine and fast and that isn’t going to be easy.”
Ike nodded. At least Devers wasn’t saying I told you so. He’d been one of the American generals who’d thought that a German move to an Alpine redoubt was likelihood. He’d even urged Ike to let his Sixth Army Group troops be among the first to cross the Rhine and cut off a German retreat to the Alps, but Ike had emphatically shot down that idea. Without proof that a redoubt was actually going to be built, there was no reason to change Allied strategy. They would press on towards the Rhine and then the Elbe. Thus, the Rhine crossings would be to the north. But now the situation was different.
Ike accepted that Devers was right about the Rhine preventing any move to cut off a German dash to the Alps. Plans were being made for Montgomery to command an enormous crossing force near where the Rhine flowed into the North Sea. Unfortunately, that would place Montgomery’s army as far from the Alps as possible. They would be in no position to stop the German exodus. As always, hindsight was a great view.
Ike drew deeply on his cigarette. “Once we’re across, Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group will give up any and all thoughts of heading to Berlin. As planned, they and Monty’s troops will stop at the Elbe. Patton’s Third Army will swing south and east to try and cut off forces trying to make it to the mountains. Patton’s angry as hell but he’ll deal with it. This seals the fact that we will not send men to Berlin just so they can give it back to the Russians.”
The agreement between the Allies made at Yalta specified that the Elbe River would be the boundary between the Soviet sphere of influence and the Anglo-American-French lines. If the American troops crossed the Elbe, they were treaty-bound to withdraw back to it at a later date. Thus, any American casualties sustained in the effort would have been lives wasted. Regardless of how much generals like Patton and Montgomery wanted their armies to make it to Berlin ahead of the Reds, Ike had forbidden it.
Ike continued. “Once Monty’s across, we hope there will be other opportunities to cross; perhaps there’ll even be a collapse of the German forces on the Rhine. Be prepared to make the jump at the first opportunity. Once on the other side of the Rhine, can your men make an all-out effort to cut off the Germans?”
Devers winced. “You know we’ll do our damndest and then some. I’ve got nineteen divisions, which sounds like a lot, but all of them are understrength, filled with raw and inexperienced rookies, and just plain worn out. The army is scraping the bottom of the barr
el.”
“So are the Germans,” Ike said. “We’re conscripting eighteen-year-olds, but they are drafting children who are much younger.”
“Understood, but it doesn’t change the fact that this isn’t the same army that invaded France last summer. The men are counting the days until the war ends and they can go home, and those who don’t have enough time in service to get discharged are scared to death at the thought of going to fight the Japs. Until the Bulge, everybody thought the war with Germany was over and nobody wanted to be the last man killed.”
“Can’t say as I blame them,” said Ike. “Everybody’s mad and disappointed that the Krauts have shown so much life.”
Devers continued. “And don’t forget that seven of my divisions are French and they are pretty much fighting their own war. De Gaulle has instituted some troop replacement policies that are just plain nuts and that’s left their units badly understrength and undertrained. That and the fact that General Tassigny takes his orders from De Gaulle and not from me is a royal pain. And don’t forget that General Leclerc and General Tassigny won’t even speak to each other, which is why Leclerc’s division is in the Seventh Army and not the French First Army. It’s a farce.”
“Understood,” said Ike grimly. The French had shown a propensity to squabble like children both among themselves and with their erstwhile allies.
Devers had never been Ike’s favorite general and he had been considering replacing him. But now he was having second thoughts. Maybe Devers’ apparent problems weren’t all his fault. Perhaps it was also due to a fractured and fractious command. De Gaulle had been a thorn in the American command’s side from the very first. Neither FDR nor Churchill could stand the man and accepted him as the leader of France only reluctantly. Paris had been liberated some months earlier and it was felt that De Gaulle no longer saw any need to expend effort and French lives in a war that was already won. France had regained control of Alsace and Lorraine, provinces claimed by France and lost in 1940, and that further dampened their enthusiasm for future operations or even basic cooperation.
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