The Devil's Shield (Dogs of War)

by Leo Kessler

  ‘Thank you, Joe.’

  Within five minutes Hodges was back in bed on the second floor of Spa’s Hotel Britannique, where the Kaiser had once had his HQ in the old war when Hodges had been a humble infantry captain bogged down in the mud of France. In another five minutes he was fast asleep. But now the First Army’s communications had started to hum. Hurried telephone calls were made. Dispatch riders sprang to their machines. Orders were rapped out. Tense, weary, frightened men were roused out of their billets. Trucks roared into life, filling the dawn with the stink of gasoline. Half-warmed hash cans were handed out hurriedly. The wheels began to roll.

  And in the confusion caused by the move of a whole infantry regiment into the 26th’s sector, Colonel von Dodenburg and his handful of gasping survivors, bent, coughing and choking like a bunch of asthmatic old men, slipped through the ring held by the Big Red One and their comrades of Roosevelt’s Butchers. Half an hour later they were moving cautiously down a tree-lined country road when a thin child’s voice cried: ‘Halt – who goes there?’ Without waiting for an answer, their challenger fired. Matz gasped sharply and went down on one knee.

  ‘What’s up?’ Schulze cried.

  ‘The silly bastard shot me in the leg – my wooden one,’ Matz cried angrily and tugged off the remains of his shattered stump, as a kid of perhaps sixteen appeared from behind a tree. He was clad in Hitler Youth uniform and carried a huge Lebel French rifle, dating from the turn of the century.

  ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ von Dodenburg cried. ‘You’re supposed to wait for an answer to the challenge before you act!’

  ‘The corporal didn’t tell me, sir,’ the boy said, looking hangdog. ‘And I thought you were the Amis.’

  Von Dodenburg’s anger gave way to relief. Playfully he clapped the boy about the neck and grinned. ‘Remember it the next time – the Führer’s short enough of soldiers as it is, without the Hitler Youth killing them. Now, where’s your HQ?’

  But before the Hitler Youth could reply, Schwarz said: ‘Sir – listen!’

  Von Dodenburg spun round. ‘Listen to what … I can’t hear anything?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ the major said urgently. ‘There’s no sound coming from Aachen!’

  Von Dodenburg caught his breath. Schwarz was right. To their rear, the sky was red with flames, but there was no sound from the place where his men had fought and died for so long. The Holy City of Aachen had fallen.

  At dawn a curtain of silence fell on the burning city. All that the tense GIs pushing their way up the littered streets could hear was the steady crackle of the flames, interrupted now and again by the crash of falling masonry as yet another shell-shattered ruin collapsed. Their enemies for so long had vanished, save for their dead sprawled in the dirty gutters like bundles of abandoned rags. Al and Benny broke away from the rest of the company and slipped by the red-raw, burned-out hulk of one of Wotan’s Tigers, from which hung the obscene travesty of rags and bones which had once been an SS lieutenant.

  ‘Round the back,’ Benny said urgently, ‘before the greedy bastards of F company get their dirty paws on the loot.’

  Al nodded. Slinging his carbine and wincing with the pain of his torn shoulder where the Kraut dame had ripped panic-stricken at his flesh, he pushed his way into the rear entrance of the Hotel Quellenhof. Benny followed, grease-gun at the ready.

  The former HQ was a shambles. Dead German officers lay everywhere among the bullet-pocked gilt furniture, and not all of them had been killed by Seitz’s infantry. In front of a shattered wall mirror, a fat major lay dead, a pistol clasped in his nerveless fingers, half the side of his face blown away. While Benny covered him, Al looted the body expertly, stuffing the man’s German Cross in Gold and Iron in his pocket, thrusting his Walther in his belt.

  ‘Fifty bucks’ worth at least,’ Benny chortled. ‘Check his teeth, Al.’

  The tall GI thrust open the man’s stiffening jaws. Something at the back glinted. Swiftly he inserted the dental forceps he had looted in France and tugged. The gold tooth came out easily. He dropped it into the bagful of gold teeth which Benny held ready and rose to his feet.

  ‘Okay, let’s check the upstairs.’

  Outside the men of F Company were breaking down the main door of the hotel. Hastily they clambered up the littered stairs. The corridor was filled with empty champagne bottles. Benny idly kicked a couple of them, just in case they might be full. One was. But he didn’t pick it up. They had been caught like that before – just outside Verviers – when the bottle turned out to be filled with the urine of some fleeing Kraut soldier who had greatly fancied himself as a comedian.

  ‘Over here, Benny,’ Al rapped. ‘Cover me.’ He hesitated at the door to Donner’s office. ‘NOW!’ He smashed his foot against the door. It flew open. Benny raised his grease-gun. But there was no need to fire. The man in the black uniform, slumped back against the high chair, was dead.

  ‘Jesus,’ Benny said in disgust, ‘will you get a load of that Kraut’s kisser!’

  ‘And will ya get a load of that Knight’s Cross at his throat,’ Al breathed, unmoved by the dead man’s mutilated face. ‘Worth all of sixty bucks in Pig Alley. Come on – quick!’

  They pushed into the room, heavy with the bitter-almond smell of the cyanide capsule with which Donner had poisoned himself. Al snatched at the Knight’s Cross. Donner’s body began to slump to the floor, while Al stowed the precious decoration away.

  ‘Check his choppers, Benny,’ he ordered.

  The private hesitated. ‘I don’t know, Al,’ he said. ‘That mug he’s got turns my guts.’

  ‘Then get the hell outa my way,’ Al snorted and pushed him to one side. He pushed open Donner’s jaw. ‘Nix,’ he announced. ‘All false!’ He ran his hands expertly over the black uniform. But he found nothing save a wallet which contained cards and a few grubby Reichmark notes. He dropped them in disgust. The boys were already using hundred-mark notes as latrine paper. For a moment he stared at Donner’s mutilated face. Then he spotted the artificial eye. ‘Hey, Benny,’ he exclaimed, ‘the Kraut’s got a glass peeper!’ He pressed his dirty fingers against the scarred cheek.

  ‘What ya gonna to do?’

  ‘What the hell do you think?’ he grunted. ‘He might have diamonds or something like that hidden behind it.’ But the blood-red cavity was bare. ‘Sonavabitch!’ he cursed. ‘All that fuss and feathers for goddam nothing!’

  In a sudden fit of rage he tore open his flies while Benny stared at him open-mouthed.

  ‘Jes-zus, Al, you’re not gonna piss on him, are ya?’

  ‘You betcha!’

  Thus Devil Donner, whose soul was now undoubtedly on its way to hell, was subjected to the final indignity.

  ‘Everybody out,’ Schwarz croaked.

  Obediently they stumbled from the big open Opel trucks which had brought them to the Führer’s new HQ in the Hessian Hills, whence he would direct the last great offensive in the west.

  They were utterly weary. Leather belts and equipment had bit deeply into their bare flesh under the fraying remains of their black tunics. Their feet, without socks or foot-rags, had been rubbed red-raw in their torn, rotting dice-beakers, during their long march through the Rhineland. Slowly they formed up with their battered weapons, the blood speeding through the paper bandages covering their wounds, while elegant staff officers, all monocles, gleaming, bespurred riding boots, immaculate cavalry breeches complete with the broad crimson stripe of the Greater General Staff, stared at them as if they were creatures from another world.

  ‘Look at the pansy currant-crappers,’ Schulze grunted wearily, ‘popped up from their gold-plated bunkers to see what a front swine really looks like.’

  Matz, supporting himself on a rifle, his wooden leg slung over his shoulder, spat drily on the cobbles. ‘One wet fart,’ he announced contemptuously, ‘and yer’d kill the lot!’

  Von Dodenburg, helmetless, his tunic, the buttons removed for the mine-clearing, tied wit
h a safety pin, walked stiffly to the front of his men. Schwarz, a bandage round his head, stood to attention, the eager fanaticism gone from even his dark eyes.

  ‘Parade – parade attention!’ he commanded.

  Wearily the veterans of Wotan came to a semblance of the attention position. Schwarz shuffled forward and touched his hand to his bandaged head. ‘Two officers, seven NCOs and seventy men present, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Schwarz,’ von Dodenburg returned the salute. He was just about to command his men to stand at ease, when the two black Horchs swung into the courtyard of the Führer Headquarters.

  ‘The Reich Heini,’2 Schulze whispered hastily, ‘complete with some real soldiers.’ He nodded at the two-metre-tall giants of Himmler’s bodyguard, who were springing out in their immaculate black uniform, machine-pistols at the alert even before the Horchs had come to a stop.

  Von Dodenburg presented the parade to Himmler, the former chicken-farmer who had become the most feared man in Europe. The Chief of the SS nodded casually, his sickly pale face buried in his upturned greatcoat collar, the tip of his nose red and dripping. Slowly he inspected the men, stopping here and there to ask a question, but not waiting to listen to the answer. For a moment he paused in front of Schulze’s massive, bandaged bulk, looked at his Knight’s Cross, and muttered something about, ‘as long as we are biologically superior, we shall win’, before passing on.

  Out of the corner of his mouth, Schulze whispered to Matz: ‘What the fuck does he think I am – a shitty bull or something?’

  But Matz was unable to reply. For the great door leading to the main building was opening to reveal the unmistakable brown-booted figure of the Führer’s ‘grey eminence’ Martin Bormann. The Führer was coming!

  Von Dodenburg commanded ‘eyes front’. Himmler got out of the way, hastening to meet the Führer, a cold smile on his thin face. The men of Wotan straightened up. It was nearly two years now since the veterans had been honoured by the presence of the Führer. Bormann turned, as if he were having actively to encourage the German Leader to emerge into the cold, grey October morning. Then the expectant SS men saw why.

  In the two years that had passed since they had last seen the man who had once been master of Europe from the Urals to the Channel, he had changed dramatically. Now he was a stooped figure with a pale, puffy face, dragging one leg behind him, vainly trying to conceal the acute trembling of his hands.

  ‘Jesus, Maria, Joseph!’ Matz breathed, ‘is that the Führer?’

  Shakily, he allowed himself to be lead by the squat figure of his secretary until he was facing Wotan, his sick, old man’s face almost buried in his greatcoat collar. He ignored von Dodenburg’s salute. His glazed rheumy eyes were fixed on his men’s faces. Slowly a tear began to trickle down his face, as if he were overcome by the sight which revealed just how much his soldiers were suffering at the front.

  Bormann, his fat chest bare of any decoration save that of the Blood Order,3 wiped it away and whispered in his coarse Mecklenburg accent, ‘The speech, my Führer – the speech.’

  Adolf Hitler nodded his head numbly and wet his lips. ‘German soldiers! Front fighters! Comrades!’ he began hoarsely, his voice pitched so low that the men of the rear rank had to strain their ears to understand. He hesitated abruptly, and looked at Bormann, as if he sought encouragement or advice from him. Bormann nodded and gave a faint smile. Hitler clasped his hands together as if perhaps to control their trembling. ‘If Germany loses this war, comrades, it will have proved itself biologically inferior and will have forfeited its future existence. But … it is the West that is forcing us to fight to the end …’

  His voice began to grow in strength, as he warmed to his theme and von Dodenburg felt a trace of the old magic, but only a trace.

  ‘It is, therefore, fitting that the West should be punished for this dastardly crime. And you and I will ensure that they are punished. Since September every step has been taken to raise a strong western front. Countless new units have replaced our losses in France. Colossal artillery forces have been raised. New, secret and terrible weapons are in place.’ His hoarse Upper Austrian voice rose suddenly to the mesmeric height it had once achieved in the heady, great days of the pre-war Nuremberg Rallies and von Dodenburg felt a cold thrill of recognition. ‘Thanks to your heroic actions at Aachen, Great Germany is now in a position to pay the West back – those Judeo-plutocrats, whose hands are steeped in the blood of innocent German women and children. At this hour, the eyes of the German nation are upon you, my brave fighters of Wotan, relying on your steadfastness, your ardour, your arms and your heroism to smother the dastardly Anglo-Americans in a sea of blood!’

  The Führer broke off suddenly, an almost guilty look on his face, now flecked pink with the effort of speaking.

  A few moments later, von Dodenburg knew why. Just before the Führer went inside again, supported by Bormann, he clasped both von Dodenburg’s hands in his, genuine tears of emotion in his faded eyes. ‘Colonel, I thank you,’ he whispered. ‘Germany thanks you. You and your heroic soldiers have done the impossible. Aachen was not a defeat. You held the enemy long enough there for us to plan a new blow against him – a great new blow which will be the turning point of this bloody war. The new offensive in the west.’ His faded eyes bored into von Dodenburg’s face with a faint trace of their old hypnotism. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘A new offensive in the west, my Führer?’ von Dodenburg repeated.

  ‘Yes.’ Hitler lowered his voice, as if he were afraid of being overheard. ‘Yes, von Dodenburg. Before the year is out we shall strike again. You and your brave men, plus the many eager new recruits who will join their ranks soon, will have the honour of leading that great attack.’

  He stopped abruptly and stared at the officer, as if he expected von Dodenburg to say something. But all the bemused young Colonel could ask was: ‘Where, my Führer?’

  Adolf Hitler’s face cracked into the parody of a conspiratorial grin: ‘Where? Why where those American gangsters least expect us – the Ardennes!’

  And then he was gone, shuffling back to the warmth of his HQ guided by a solicitous Bormann, as if he were an old, old man, who had had his breath of fresh air for this day and who had now to be led back to the comforting atmosphere of his seat near the stove.

  And in the officers’ latrine, from which the two senior Wotan NCOs had hurriedly flushed out a group of elegant staff officers by means of two juicy farts and a massive discharge of what Schulze called ‘green smoke’, Schulze and Matz squatted in silence and stared at each other across the passage.

  Outside, the rest of the Wotan men were wolfing down sausage and sauerkraut from Reich Leader Bormann’s own kitchen. But Matz and Schulze were too weary even to be tempted by the best meal Wotan had eaten in many weeks.

  ‘You know, Schulze, old horse,’ Matz said, too exhausted to strain, content just to slump there on the scrubbed wooden boards and ruminate, ‘a crap like this in a proper thunder-box, instead of balancing your arse on a pole between two ration crates, is one of the finest things in the world – even better than dipping yer wick sometimes.’

  Schulze nodded morosely, only half listening. ‘What we gonna do, Matz?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean, Schulze?’

  ‘What do you think I mean, you cripple of a marmalade-shitter?’ he snorted. ‘How long are we gonna stand this? Getting slaughtered like this, reformed with a bunch of green beaks from the Hitler Youth, still wet behind the spoons, and then getting slaughtered again. It can’t go on for ever, can it?’

  Matz opened his mouth slowly. But he never answered the question, any more than anyone else did in the Third Reich during that fifth year of total war. There was no answer then to that question. Outside the same old whistles started to shrill. Schwarz rapped out orders. There was a rattle of mess-tins, followed by the survivors’ groans of protest. Schulze rose wearily, pulling up his worn black trousers.

  ‘Come on, Matz,’ he said
, his voice full of resignation. ‘Get up, yer’ve had yer crap. Duty calls.’

  Von Dodenburg, his thin handsome face grim and hard at the knowledge of what lay before him once his Battle Group had been reformed with the eager volunteers from the Hitler Youth, placed himself at the head of his ragged, bloody men.

  ‘Battle Group Wotan,’ he snapped: ‘Battle Group Wotan – forward march!’

  Marching behind the CO, knowing that everything was hopeless, yet proud of the handful of weary young veterans who made up the Wotan, Sergeant-Major Schulze bellowed in that tremendous voice of his: ‘A song!’

  ‘A song – one, two, three!’ sang out the lead singer, a tall youth marching in the front rank; his arm in a bloody sling: ‘Blow the bugle, beat the drum—’

  The survivors of the Battle for Aachen, their eyes sunk deep in their emaciated faces, marching off to new quarters and new tasks, burst into their brutal song as one:

  ‘Blow the bugle, beat the drum!

  Clear the street, here comes the Wo-tan!

  Steel is our weapon

  To hew through bone.

  Blood our purpose,

  Wotan hold close.

  For Death is our Destiny.’

  Then they were gone, leaving the silence echoing behind them.

  Notes

  1. The reference is to General Pershing, US commander in World War I, who was nicknamed Black Jack because he had once commanded Negro troops and became a 5-star general in 1919.

  2. A contemptuous name given to Reichführer SS Heinrich Himmler.

  3. Awarded to those who had shed their blood or suffered imprisonment for the Nazi cause before Hitler’s take-over of power in 1933.

  Also by Leo Kessler and available as an ebook in The Dogs of War Series