by David Healey
• • •
Hank stood with his hands in the air. He shivered, but not just from the cold. It was hard not to be frightened when enemy soldiers had their guns pointed at you.
"Jesus, Ralph, what should we do?"
"Just keep your hands up and do like they tell you, Kid. It's gonna be all right."
The Germans came closer, covering the American prisoners with their Mauser carbines and submachine guns. Hank thought briefly of making a run for it, but those guns made him think better of that plan.
"Hands up! Over here now!" shouted one of the Germans in English. Others simply shouted in German and used the muzzles of their weapons to indicate where they wanted the Americans to go.
The Germans began to fan out into the ditches, forcing out those Americans who had tried to hide or even to play possum. So far as Hank could tell, the short burst of gunfire the Germans had sent into the column had not killed anyone.
More German soldiers went from truck to truck, peering into the backs of the trucks and cabs. An American soldier who had hidden himself in the back of a truck was discovered and came out with his hands up. A German clipped him in the side of the head with a rifle butt and knocked him down for his efforts to escape capture.
An officer jumped down from one of their funny-looking amphibious vehicles.
"Merry Christmas!" he shouted. He was tall, blond and blue-eyed, like some actor playing an officer in a movie. "You will be spending the holidays with us! You were smart to surrender, or you would all be dead."
Amid the shouting, seemingly angry enemy soldiers, the arrival of the jovial officer put Hank more at ease. The officer approached an American lieutenant, who was standing nearby, hands held high.
"What unit is this?" the German officer asked.
"This is the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion," the soldier said.
"Where are you heading?"
"Saint Vith," the young officer said. "We're going to Saint Vith."
"Hey, don't tell him anything!" someone shouted.
The German officer just laughed. "Come now, these are hardly military secrets."
"You're a goddamn Kraut!" an American shouted. Then he spat on the frozen ground.
A German sergeant with a nasty scar on his cheek stepped forward and drove his rifle butt into the man's belly so that he crumpled to the ground. The soldier lifted the rifle as if about to club the man again.
"Nein, nein!" the handsome officer said sharply. The soldier stepped away. Then the officer raised his voice again and addressed the Americans. "You are all prisoners now! Do as you are told and there will be no trouble."
At gunpoint, the Germans began to herd the captured Americans away from the road and into the snowy fields. The village was within sight with its modest houses and a few small outbuildings. At the edge of the field was a low stone wall topped with a worm fence like you saw in old Civil War photographs. The edge of the forest began just beyond that.
There was enough of a breeze to give the air an icy edge. Hank wasn’t wearing gloves and his hands began to tingle in the cold. He did not dare to lower his arms, so he flexed his fingers, trying to keep them warm. Wherever they were going, it promised to be a long, cold march.
"Nothing to it, Kid," Ralph muttered. "In fact, we're lucky. We'll be sitting out the rest of the war in a POW camp eating schnitzel while the other poor bastards shoot at each other."
They stood in the field for what seemed to be a very long time, getting colder by the minute. For now, the Germans largely ignored the captured Americans, except for a few guards who had been posted to keep an eye on them. More than a few guys studied the distant stone wall and calculated whether or not they could reach it before the guards opened up on them. Nobody tried it—out in the open field, there was no way to outrun a bullet, no matter how fast you were.
Ralph seemed to read his thoughts. "Don't even think about it, Kid. You’ll never make it."
Over by the road, the Germans ransacked the convoy. The officer who had interrogated the lieutenant was all business now, shouting orders to his men. They quickly commandeered the trucks and drove them over to their own vehicles, then began loading equipment aboard. They seemed particularly excited when they came across a few spare drums of gasoline. Hank figured they must be hard up—a tank had to use a lot of fuel. Also, it appeared that the Germans had been short vehicles so that a lot of their men had to hoof it through the snow. Laughing and joking, the Germans climbed aboard the trucks.
"I guess we're gonna have to walk," somebody said. "It's gonna be hard to keep up."
"Nah, they'll send us back behind their lines."
"What lines? As far as we knew as of yesterday, the nearest Germans were twenty miles away."
Then a change seemed to come over the Germans. The activity of securing the American trucks ended, and they turned their attention back to the prisoners. Hank could not tell what they were saying, but there was a definite change in the mood, almost like the way the air changes before a thunderstorm.
Ralph felt it, too.
"Something's up," he said. For the first time, he sounded nervous. "I hate to say it, Kid, but I don't like the looks of this."
The SS officer climbed aboard a tank and waved, and the German column began to move off. However, another officer stayed behind with about twenty men, who formed a loose line between the road and the captured soldiers. One of the Germans shouted something, and the guards moved away from the Americans to join the other SS men. None of them were that far away—maybe about thirty feet, which was close enough to see the looks on the Germans' faces. What scared Hank was that they did not appear angry, just blank—as if they weren't looking at anything at all.
Then the SS sergeant with the scar on his face stepped forward, leveled his rifle at the nearest American, and shot him. In the cold air, the noise of the rifle going off was like a slap in the face, yet the prisoners were so surprised that no one so much as shouted. The German worked the bolt and shot another American.
It all happened so fast. Terrified and defenseless, the Americans stood in mute silence like cattle waiting to be slaughtered. The Kid thought it was unreal, like watching someone else’s nightmare. He kept hoping to wake up.
Then the other Germans started firing. The ones with machine guns opened up and groups of Americans jerked and danced as the bullets him them before their bodies fell into the bloody snow.
Something struck Hank like a sledgehammer and he found himself facedown on the frozen ground.
• • •
Von Stenger watched in disbelief as the SS sergeant named Breger stepped forward and shot first one American, and then another. He opened his mouth to shout an order for Breger to stop, but then the other SS men opened fire and there was no chance of being heard.
The shooting was over in less than a minute, leaving his ears ringing and a smell of cordite hanging in the winter air. At such close range, the automatic weapons had done their work all too well. The field was now littered with a mass of bodies.
A few GIs, however, had somehow survived. Two men jumped up after the shooting ended and began running toward the fence line. Fear made them fleet, because they were already out of effective range of the Schmeisser MP 40 submachine guns. A couple of SS men tried to shoot them with their rifles, but hitting a running target is no easy feat. It looked as if the men were going to make it over the fence to safety.
"Herr Hauptmann?" The driver was looking up at Von Stenger with an expectant expression, the way one might look to a politician for a speech.
Von Stenger was still too shocked by what he had just witnessed to understand what the driver’s look meant. But then he realized. The rifle. Gripped tightly in his hands. He tossed away his cigarette.
Automatically, he raised the Mosin-Nagant to his shoulder, put the sight on the back of the closest fleeing American, and shot him. The second man was even faster and was almost at the fence line. Von Stenger worked the bolt, acquired the target,
and squeezed off another round. He worked the bolt again and a second empty shell casing went spinning toward the ground. This man had been running so fast that he tumbled before he lay still.
"Good shooting, sir!" the young SS driver said with something like awe. "I thought you were going to let him get away. What a shot! Incredible!"
Even the SS sergeant looked back toward the vehicle and gave Von Stenger a stingy nod.
"It is better if there are no survivors," Von Stenger said. "The Americans will never forgive us for this. But what is done is done—at least now there are no witnesses."
The young driver seemed confused. "Witnesses to what, sir?"
"To a massacre. We just shot more than eighty unarmed Americans prisoners of war. Once word gets out, there won’t be another German taken alive."
Most of the other soldiers began to move away in order to join the column that was leaving. Breger saw that he was still there and called out to him, "Herr Hauptmann, do you wish to help us finish them off?"
"No, I will let you have that honor." He turned back to his young SS driver. "Get us out of here."
• • •
When the bullets started flying, Hank was so stunned that he just stood there, unable to move. He would have been mowed down in seconds, but Ralph tackled him and knocked him to the ground, partially covering Hank with his own body in the process.
Ralph’s actions saved him—if only for the moment. He felt Ralph shudder as a flurry of bullets struck him. Then the firing stopped, as suddenly as it had begun.
Ralph lay there groaning in pain, his body still draped partway over Hank's own. Hank realized his legs felt wet and warm. He was horrified to see that blood covered his legs. He wasn't sure if it was Ralph’s blood or his own—not that he was in any pain. Had he been shot and simply hadn't felt it in these freezing temperatures? Already, the bitter cold seeped up through the ground and into his bones.
All around him, he could hear others in the field moaning. He could also hear the grind of gears and the groan of engines. The German column of tanks and trucks—including some of their own trucks now—was on the move again.
Good. At least now they had a chance to survive if the Germans left.
But the Germans were not finished with their killing field.
Peering from under Ralph’s arm, which was flung over his face, Hank saw a group of SS soldiers standing at the edge of the field near the road, smoking cigarettes. The SS commander was nowhere in sight, but Hank spotted the sergeant with the scar on his cheek. That man tossed away his cigarette, drew a pistol, and walked out into the field, calling, "Hey, you OK?" Two more soldiers followed him, pistols drawn.
Some poor soul made the mistake of answering the SS sergeant. He heard an American voice cry out, "Over here! Over here!" Then came the crack of a pistol, and silence.
It was terrifying to lay there, wondering what was going to happen next. From his vantage point, he could see only a narrow swath of the field, but he dared not move. He heard another pistol shot, then another, as the Germans worked their way through the field.
Hank's heart pounded harder. To his horror, he realized that his warm breath was creating a cloud of vapor. It wasn't much, to be sure, but to the eyes of the Nazis walking around the field looking for survivors to shoot, he was sure his breath would look like the smoke from a forest fire.
He sucked in one last breath and held it, praying.
Then Ralph moaned. He was still alive. But he was going to get them both killed.
He heard German voices, coming closer.
"Please, Ralph, I know it hurts, but you've got to be quiet," he whispered. "Please Ralph."
Ralph moaned again. It was no use. He was too out of it to hear Hank's warning.
Sure enough, Ralph’s moans had drawn the attention of the SS sergeant with the nasty scar. Hank saw him coming, and shut his eyes. His best hope was to play dead. He forced himself not to breathe and told himself that he had to keep his body limp, no matter what.
He could hear the SS men shouting in English, "Hey Joe! Who needs a doctor?"
A few desperate men called out in response. Moments later, they were silenced forever by a single pistol shot.
He heard the SS sergeant walk up. The man smelled strongly of cigarettes and diesel fumes, with a whiff of alcohol thrown in. To Hank, it was the smell of death.
"Hey Joe. Are you OK?" The sergeant asked. When there was no answer, he kicked Ralph’s foot. Ralph moaned in response. The sergeant shot him. Hank felt the body jerk and then go limp as a rag doll.
Don't move, don't move, don't—
He knew that in spite of himself he had jumped when the sergeant fired into Ralph’s body. How could the SS sergeant not have seen it? The German may have thought it was just from the jolt of the bullet hitting the body above.
"Last chance," he said, then kicked at Hank's foot.
Hank heard him work the slide on the pistol, cycling another round into the chamber. He was so frozen with fear that he couldn’t have moved if he wanted to.
“Help me!” one of the wounded GIs called from several yards away.
Hank sensed the sergeant moving in that direction. He had thought holding his breath would be difficult. It was harder telling himself to breathe again.
He heard a gunshot and the soldier who had been crying for help fell silent.
Would the sergeant come back? Hank screwed his eyes shut and started counting to ten. It would be good to live another ten seconds.
He counted to five, heard the Germans moving through the field again, double checking their handiwork.
He got to eight, his heart pounding as he imagined the German standing over him, about to put a bullet in his brain.
Ten. Still alive. He started counting again. Just ten seconds more, God. That’s all I ask. Just ten seconds.
He got to eight again when he heard laughter and the sound of an engine starting. Having finished delivering the coup de grace to the wounded Americans, the SS soldiers drove away.
Still, Hank did not move. He did not open his eyes. What if it was a trick? The cold crept up from the frozen ground. He imagined he could hear the heat leaving the bodies all around him, in the same way that a truck motor ticks as it cools.
The Germans were gone. All around him lay a sea of silent bodies.
Finally, Hank forced himself to his knees. He glanced at Ralph’s dead body. Then he retched again and again, the contents of his stomach spilling across the snow. His vision blurred. And then everything went black.
CHAPTER 7
Hundreds of miles away at Allied headquarters in Paris, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower tossed the latest communiqué from the front down on his desk and lit another cigarette.
“It’s just a feint,” Ike said. “The Germans are stirring the pot, but it’s nothing serious. It can’t be. They don’t have enough men to staff a Rotary carnival, let alone an offensive.”
Eisenhower inhaled the smoke deeply. He was up to four packs a day. Not to mention the endless cups of coffee and terrible diet. He was too busy to eat properly. Yet for a man in his mid-fifties he looked quite fit—if one overlooked the fact that he was balding and carried a small potbelly—but it did not take much to imagine him as the West Point football player that he had once been.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, sir,” said Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, his chief of staff. His nickname was Beetle, although by nature he was much closer to a Doberman—woe to anyone who interfered with Ike’s schedule or tried to waste the general’s time.
“When’s Kay getting back? We’re supposed to see a movie tonight.”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Ike’s pretty Irish driver, Kay Sommersby, was out doing some Christmas shopping on Ike’s behalf. It was a poorly kept secret that she was the general’s mistress. Yet neither Ike nor Sommersby found anything odd in having her pick out something nice for the general’s wife, Mamie, safely out of the way statesid
e.
Ike smoked and thought. All day long reports of German activity in the Ardennes had been coming in. None of it made sense. “Listen, Beetle. You know as well as I do that the Germans are finished. It’s just a matter of time. They don’t have the resources for a counteroffensive. Why they don’t just do us all a favor and give up is anybody’s guess.”
“Because it’s Adolf Hitler, sir. That’s why.”
Ike was a man who operated on percentages and forecasts and compromise. He admired brilliant military strategists, particularly General Robert E. Lee, but Eisenhower’s great talent was as a politician and administrator. He was the glue that held together sometimes prickly Allied forces. He relied on Omar Bradley and George Patton to lead troops on the field. They were Ike’s equivalent of James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, both of whom had been Lee’s top generals during the Civil War.
Intellectually, Ike understood that Hitler was a fanatic, and yet the concept of ignoring the percentages was hard for him to grasp. Why go on fighting a war you couldn’t win?
Hitler had missed his chance. If the Germans had bid for peace six months before, in the weeks leading up to D-Day when Ike had lost sleep over the dismal casualty projections, the terms of a peace agreement would have been quite favorable for the Germans. But there was no need to negotiate terms with the losing side.
An aide entered with another report. Ike read it, his eyes going wide.
“The Germans have broken through our lines. Damn it, Beetle! Reports are coming in of hundreds of tanks, thousands of men, even Luftwaffe planes. I can’t believe it.”
