The MP swore, but he saw the MP brassard on the driver, and he thought he saw the glint of officer’s insignia on the collar points of the passenger. He looked to his left. There was a fifteen-foot gap between two of the M4A3 tanks about to enter on the bridge. What the fuck, if they got run over, they could be quickly pushed out of the way. Without signaling the tank to stop or slow, he waved the motorcycle into the moving line.
First with a roar of the engine to pull ahead of the tank, then the squeal of brakes to keep from running under the tank ahead of it, the motorcycle pulled into line, and then bounced over the Bailey Bridge, somewhat cockeyed: the wheels of the motorcycle rode in the tread of the bridge, and the wheel of the sidecar was on the planks of the Bailey, six inches lower than the road.
When they reached the far side of the Bailey, they were going too fast, and the motorcycle lurched dangerously as it bounced off the Bailey and onto the undamaged portion of the bridge.
Five hundred yards off the bridge, a cluster of vehicles was parked in a field to the left. There were six military police jeeps, each with sirens and flashing lights mounted in their fenders and in their rear a machine gun on a pedestal. There were four half-tracks, each with a four-barreled multiple .50 on a turret in the bed. There were three M4A3 tanks, and half a dozen GMCs with van bodies, plus another GMC guarded by two MPs. Three flags were stuck into the ground beside its rear-opening door. One was the national colors, the second was the two-starred red flag of a major general, and the third carried an enlargement of the shoulder insignia of the 40th Armored Division, a triangular patch, yellow, blue, and red, with the number forty at the top.
As the BMW motorcycle turned out of the moving tank column with its flag catching the breeze, Major General Peterson J. Waterford came out of the van. He stopped at the top of the folding stairs and put a tanker’s helmet on his head. The 40th Divisional insignia was on each side of the helmet, and there were two stars on the front. The general wore a furcollared aviator’s jacket (stars on the epaulets, the zipper fastened only at the web waistband) a shade 31 (pink) shirt, shade 31 riding breeches, with dark suede inner knees, and glistening riding boots. A shoulder holster held a .45 Colt automatic, and there was a yellow scarf at his throat.
The general smiled. “Jesus, Charley,” he said. “Get a load of that, will you?”
He had seen the BMW with the large black T/4 and the flapping American flag whose passenger was doing his damndest to hang on as the sidecar bounced him around.
The motorcycle slid to a halt, and that damned near sent the passenger flying out on his ass. The general was barely able to restrain himself from laughing out loud. The passenger stood up in the sidecar and saluted. That sight was too much. The passenger was about five feet five or six, and the helmet and the goggles nearly covered his head. He looked, the general thought, like a mushroom. The general chuckled loudly, almost a laugh, as he returned the salute. Fat Charley, his G-3, laughed out loud.
“General Waterford, sir,” the saluting mushroom said, and scrambled out of the sidecar, bending over it to pick up a Schmeisser machine pistol, and then trotting up to the van steps. The mushroom saluted again. General Waterford saw that it was a little Jew, and that the little Jew had a second lieutenant’s bar pinned to his collar.
“Lieutenant, where the hell did you get that motorcycle?” General Waterford demanded, with a broad smile.
“Sir, Lieutenant S. T. Felter requests permission to speak to the general, sir.”
“Speak,” Major General Peterson K. Waterford said, amused.
“Sir, I think we should speak in private,” Lieutenant Felter said. “It’s a personal matter.”
“A personal matter?” General Waterford was no longer amused.
“A personal matter involving the general, sir,” Felter said.
Waterford looked at him without expression for ten seconds. Then he turned around and stepped back inside the van, signaling for the lieutenant to follow him. Fat Charley, the G-3, stepped to one side to let the lieutenant pass.
The interior of the van had been fitted out as a mobile command post. There were desks and a half dozen telephones. On two of the walls were large maps covered with celluloid on which troop dispositions and the flow of forces had been marked with colored grease pencils.
“All right, Lieutenant,” General Waterford said. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
The lieutenant took off the helmet, and pushed the goggles down over his chin, so they dangled from their strap around his neck. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, and then came almost to attention.
“Sir, I am Lieutenant S. T. Felter, attached to the POW interrogation branch of the 40th MP Company.”
“And?”
“General, I believe I have located Lieutenant Colonel Bellmon.”
“Which Bellmon would that be?” General Waterford asked, making an effort—and succeeding—to keep his voice under control.
“Lieutenant Colonel Robert F. Bellmon, sir. Your son-in-law.”
“You’re sure, Lieutenant?” Waterford asked. Fat Charley stepped into the van. “He says he’s located Bob,” Waterford said.
“How reliable is your information, Lieutenant?” Fat Charley asked.
“I would rate it as ninety percent reliable,” Felter said. “I have three separate prisoner interrogations to base it on. One of the prisoners taken near Hoescht was a captain who was formerly assigned to Stalag XVII-B.”
“I heard he was in Stalag XVII-B,” Waterford said. “That’s not news.”
“The officer prisoners of Stalag XVII-B are being evacuated, on foot, from near Stettin,” Lieutenant Felter said. “May I use the map, sir?”
“Go ahead,” the general said. Felter went to a map of Germany mounted on the wall of the van, pointing out where Stalag XVII-B had been located near Stettin. Then he pointed out the route reported to be, and most likely to be, the one it would take if moving westward on foot.
Both the general and Fat Charley followed the map with interest.
“Have you any report on Colonel Bellmon’s physical condition?” General Waterford asked.
“Yes, sir. He is in good physical condition. I understand he is the de facto senior prisoner.”
“As opposed to de jure?” Waterford asked, half sarcastically. “Where did you go to school, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir. As opposed to de jure. I understand the senior prisoner is a full colonel suffering from depression.”
Cocky little bastard, General Waterford thought. He wondered where he had come from. CCNY Jew, the general guessed. Then Harvard Law.
“I asked where you went to school,” General Waterford said.
“I was at the Academy for two and a half years, sir,” Felter said.
“West Point?” the general asked, incredulously.
“Yes, sir. I resigned.”
“Well, then, Lieutenant,” General Waterford said, “you will understand my position. While I am very grateful to you for bringing me this information, you will understand why I cannot act upon it. Why I must let things happen as they will. I cannot, as much as I would like to, send a column to free them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Porky,” Fat Charley said. “Why not? We have the assets!”
“I rather doubt that Colonel Bellmon would want me to,” General Waterford said. “It would clearly be special privilege.”
“It would be freeing prisoners. Bob’s not the only one.”
“The subject is not open for discussion, Colonel,” Waterford said. He looked at Felter, then walked to the door of the van. As he reached it, he turned around.
“Charley,” he said, “get the lieutenant’s name, and write a letter of commendation to be put in his file. That was good detective work, Lieutenant, and you demonstrated a tact in presenting your information that becomes you. Thank you very much, and please keep me posted.”
Then he walked down the steps of the van.
Fat Ch
arley picked up a sheet of paper and a pencil and bent over the built-in map table.
“Name, rank, and serial number, Lieutenant,” he said.
Felter gave it to him.
Then Fat Charley made up his mind.
He took a second sheet of lined notepaper and wrote on it. He gave it to Felter. Felter read it.
Phil: Porky says he will not order a relief column because it would be special privilege. Charley.
“Two point three miles beyond the bridge,” Fat Charley said, “the one we fixed with a Bailey?”
“Yes, sir. I came that way.”
“You will find the 393rd Tank Destroyer Regiment. I want you to tell the commanding officer, Colonel Parker, precisely what you told General Waterford.”
“Yes, sir,” Felter said. “Sir, if Colonel Parker is going to lead a rescue operation, I would very much like to go along.”
“I have no idea, Lieutenant,” Fat Charley said, “what Colonel Parker may do.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What I am going to do, Lieutenant, is telephone your commanding officer and tell him that I have pressed you into temporary duty here for a few days. General Waterford is a busy man, and I see no reason to bother him with any of this. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” Felter pulled the goggles back up over his chin and adjusted them. He picked up his helmet.
“Lieutenant, may I make a suggestion?”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Felter replied. “Of course.”
“If you put a couple of handkerchiefs, or socks, or something, between the top of the straps and the inside of the helmet liner, it will keep your helmet from riding so low on your head.”
“Really?” Second Lieutenant Felter said. He took two handkerchiefs from his field jacket pocket and jammed them into the helmet.
“There,” Fat Charley said when Felter had put it on. “Now you’ll be able to see.”
“I never wore it much,” Felter confessed. “But I heard the general was very firm about helmets.”
“On your way, Felter,” Fat Charley said, smiling. He touched Felter’s shoulder in a gesture of affection as Felter walked past him. “Good luck.”
(Two)
Kilometer 829, Frankfurt—Kassel Autobahn
Near Bad Nauheim, Germany
6 April 1945
The officers and the first grade noncoms (the regimental sergeant major, the battalion sergeants major, the first sergeants, and the other six-stripers, the S-3 and S-2 operations sergeants, the regimental motor sergeant and band sergeant) gathered in a half-circle around Colonel Philip Sheridan Parker III, commanding the 393rd Tank Destroyer Regiment.
Colonel Parker, in a zippered tanker’s jacket, tanker’s boots, and with his Colt New Service Model 1917 revolver hanging from a pistol belt around his waist, stood on the curved brick entryway to a mansion the 393rd had taken over as a command post three days before.
Built into the walls of the mansion, which looked more French than German, were flag holders. The American flag hung loosely from one, and the 393rd’s flag, a representation of a tiger eating a tank, and which the colonel personally thought was more Walt Disney than military, hung from the other.
They didn’t look like the Long Gray Line, in that some of them were fat, and some of them were short, and some of them were fat and short, and all of them were colored. But neither, Colonel Parker thought, as he often did when he looked at them, did they look like a Transportation Corps port battalion.
They looked like what they were, combat soldiers, who had proved themselves under fire, and knew they were good. Colonel Philip Sheridan Parker thought, all things considered, that his men were just as good as the Buffalo Soldiers, the 9th United States Cavalry (Colored) which had charged up Kettle Hill under Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and Master Sergeant Philip Sheridan Parker, Sr.
“Ten-hut!” his adjutant said, softly.
“Rest!” Parker said.
His noncoms and officers stood at a loose but respectful parade rest.
This was not, Colonel Parker thought again, the Fow-Fowty-Fow Double Clutchin’, Motha-Fuckin’ QM Truck. These were soldiers.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I think it is pretty clear that this campaign is about over. It is equally clear to me that we are at the moment about as useful to current operations as teats on a boar hog.”
There were chuckles.
“It is my judgment that we have been committed to action for the last time. We may, and probably will, move again, but I think we have had our last action against tanks. The Germans seem to have run out of tanks, or at least out of any fuel to run the ones they have left.
“On the other hand, they are dug in here and there, and apparently haven’t gotten the word the ball game is all over but the shouting. What I am attempting to do is paint the situation as one where we can, with our heads held high for doing our duty as well as anyone, just sit still and wait for the capitulation.
“It has, however, come to my attention that about 250 captured American officers are being marched on foot from western Poland into Germany. It is my intention to lead a column to liberate them. I have not, repeat not, been ordered to do so. I am proceeding under my general authority to engage targets of opportunity wherever and whenever encountered. I intend to engage whatever targets I happen to find in eastern Germany with two dozen tracks, ten jeeps, and thirty six-by-sixes, which will carry what supplies we need and whatever American prisoners we are fortunate enough to encounter.
“I will not ask for volunteers. However, those of you who would prefer to make the intelligent, rational, honorable decision to remain here until the war is over may return now to whatever you were doing before I called this officer and noncom call. Atten-hut. Dis-missed.”
Not a man moved.
Colonel Parker waited until he was sure the lump in his throat had gone down sufficiently so that it would not interfere with his speaking voice.
“All of you obviously can’t go,” he said. “Officers may plead their cases to the exec, who is not going, and enlisted men to the sergeant major, who is. We obviously can’t have a force made up entirely of officers and master sergeants. For one thing, it has been my experience that, as a general rule of thumb, such people make lousy track crewmen.”
There was again the polite, respectful chuckling.
“I will not, repeat not, listen to appeals of the decisions made by the exec and the sergeant major,” Colonel Parker said. “We move out in thirty minutes.”
Lieutenant Sanford K. Felter was denied by Colonel Parker himself the honor of leading Task Force Parker into eastern Germany in the sidecar of his liberated BMW motorcycle. Parker felt the motorcycle was a good idea, and so was the flag flapping from its jury-rigged antenna (in fact, he ordered every American flag but one in the regiment carried along in the tracks, unfurled); but Lieutenant Felter was too valuable an asset for the operation to risk having him blown away while riding in the van in a motorcycle. Lieutenant Felter spoke Russian, and that was going to be necessary.
Lieutenant Felter rode in the third vehicle of the column, the first track, behind the motorcycle and a jeep, standing up in the rear, holding on to the mount of the multiple .50.
There was a military vehicle in the convoy that Sanford Felter had never seen before. It was constructed of aluminum and cloth and had an eighty-five horsepower engine. It was a Piper Cub. The 393rd’s self-propelled 105 mm howitzer battery was considered to be separate artillery and thus entitled to its own artillery spotter, although the normal distribution of artillery spotters was one per battalion, three batteries of artillery.
Colonel Parker elected to employ the aircraft for column control. As they made their way through badly bombed Giessen and then wholly untouched Marburg an der Lahn, it flew ahead of the convoy reporting where the road was blocked by American units waiting to advance, and where secondary roads, often unpaved, would give them passage.
Beyond Marburg an der Lahn, at Colbe, the column tur
ned dead east. Forty miles down that road, once they were in enemy-held territory, the Piper Cub began to report actual, or possible, or likely German emplacements and alternate routes to bypass them without a fight. The Cub, for which there were two pilots, landed at the head of the advancing column, swapped pilots, refueled, and was airborne again before the last of the tracks and trucks had rolled past it. The pilot now on the ground rode in Colonel Parker’s track and pointed out on the map what he had seen from the air.
Task Force Parker averaged 16.5 miles per hour over the ground from the point of departure to the point of link-up with forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics near Zwenkau, in Saxony.
This over-the-road movement time was calculated excluding the seven hours the first night Task Force Parker halted (forming its vehicles in a circle with the gas and food trucks inside, very much like a wagon train in the Wild West) and the six hours it stopped the second night on the crest of the hill overlooking Zwenkau. The convoy spent eight hours in movement the first day and fourteen the second, twenty-two hours of movement covering 363 miles on the road, about one half that distance as the crow flies.
At first light on the morning of the third day, a line of Red Army infantry skirmishers appeared, moving toward them from Zwenkau. Colonel Parker ordered one of the tracks, flying unfurled American flags, to make itself visible. It was immediately brought under heavy machine gun and small arms fire and withdrew with two of its crew wounded, but not critically.
Colonel Parker denied permission to return fire, and instead asked for two volunteers, one to drive the BMW motorcycle and the second to hold erect in the sidecar a white flag of truce. He denied Lieutenant Felter’s offer of his services. Sooner or later, they were going to have to talk to the Russians, and he was the only one who spoke Russian.
The MP whose motorcycle it was insisted on driving the machine, and Lieutenant Booker T. Washington Fernwall, who had been associate professor of Romance Languages at Mississippi State Normal and Agricultural College for Colored, and who spoke French and German but not Russian, rode in the sidecar.
The Lieutenants Page 11
