The Losing Role

by Steve Anderson

  Another sip, choking it down. Braun probably thought he was saving them with his senseless act. Or? Perhaps Braun was the smartest one. Perhaps he saw all too clearly what lay ahead for him, for Germany, for all those he loved still living. The kid had saved himself. Cashed in. Gave in. He was no fool. Only fools had hopes and dreams. Only fools kept secret plans. Max, in that case, was the biggest fool of all.

  A gulp, his tongue numbing. And yet, what else can I do? Max thought. The sad fact was he’d have to be even more foolish if he was going to make it—if he was going to save himself. Set yourself free, Max. He raised his cup in a toast.

  “Here’s to the fools,” he blurted in English.

  Around the barrack, deadpan faces turned his way. “Here’s to ‘em,” said a prisoner. “Said it, Jack,” grunted another.

  The guards came minutes before lights out. They pulled Max, Felix, Zoock, and the other undercover Germans from their barracks and kept them safe in the German section of the camp. Others had not fared well, they learned. One was knifed in his bunk (a flesh wound, luckily) while another had the gall to make a pass at a prisoner. This one was bound with wire and tied to a post in the shower hut—naked. The sorry tale had made Felix smile for the first time since Braun’s death.

  Nevertheless, the Kommandant vowed to keep the remaining fifteen in camp until their two days were up—Doktor Solar’s orders would be fulfilled. The solution? Compulsory language lessons. The next day the Kommandant offered rare ersatz beer and meat rations to any American who came to the auditorium and spoke their brand of English with the camp’s mystery guests. The prisoners came in droves. Even Sergeant Espinoza stopped by. “You got to lay off the stuffy Mid-Atlantic talk,’” he told Max, tugging on his watery beer and making it last.

  “Thank you.” The heavy ache in Max’s chest was back. He lowered his beer. “You must tell me. Why Braun?”

  “Why? No why. The kid picked himself. Might as well have had ‘kraut’ stamped on his forehead, the way he was talking and acting—till he got a baseball glove on, that is.” Espinoza shook his head, took another sip. “To be blunt? Rest of you were little help. Amish? My ass. He’s Amish, I’m a goddamn Rockefeller.”

  The language sessions were helpful, yet the day left Max with an even greater ache in his chest and head. The prisoners could have refused to take part. After all, weren’t they aiding and abetting the enemy? Yet it didn’t seem to matter to them. Max saw it in the way Espinoza and his gang smiled at him. They must be thinking: These undercover krauts are so moronic, so doomed, they aren’t even worth the fight. It was only worth the bad beer.

  By the last day in Stammlager VII A, Max had fallen into a blue funk. He needed to get back to Grafenwöhr and move onward. The show must go on. As they waited outside for the truck that would haul them away, Max nudged Felix and they shared a cigarette alone by the fence. “Don’t tell anyone how off I was,” Max said, speaking German again. “How rotten. My God, if that was not the worst performance of my life.”

  “I won’t,” Felix said. Max huffed and smoked, glaring out beyond the fence. Did Felix have to be so callous? The least he could have done was ask the same of Max. “Look, don’t fret it,” Felix added, placing a hand on Max’s shoulder. “You’ll have the chance to make up for it. We all will. I will. Not all Amis will prove so sly, of that I can assure you.”

  The fifteen exhausted and humiliated agents-in-training returned to Grafenwöhr late at night. The sky was still and pitch black, smothered by low heavy clouds. Max and Felix said goodnight to Zoock and trudged off to their barracks, Felix leaning into Max they were so tired. They headed up the steps, opened the door. All dark. All quiet. Max shut the door behind them, letting his eyes adjust. The lights flashed on.

  “Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah for the Special Unit Pielau!”

  “Long live our Pielau commandos!”

  The whole barrack had stayed up. Max and Felix stood at the door, stunned. The men clapped and stomped and knocked on the tables and bunks. Max smiled. Felix grinned. Max bowed. Felix gave Max a playful punch in the ribs. Max grasped Felix’s hand and they bowed together.

  “Zugabe! Bravo!”

  “On to victory with Special Unit Pielau!”

  The big news from camp was the fifteen were now part of an elite new unit—named after the dead man Captain Pielau himself. The men surrounded Max and Felix, asking questions all at once. Said one, “Bet your English is stellar now, eh? Tell us.”

  Max placed a hand to his heart, with fingertips. “Well,” he began in English, “ours was a tough mission. But that was the boat we were in. And it was a bad one.”

  They stared. “A poor ship?” muttered one. “Must be an idiom,” mumbled another.

  Someone tossed Felix a pack of cigarettes and lighter and he juggled them. “It’s like this. We showed the Amis who’s boss, really had them spinning—just like this,” and they passed him more to juggle—pack of cards, bullet cartridge, a knife. “Shame we can’t give you the juicy details. But just you wait and see what we got in store for them.” The men shouted and stomped some more. Felix kept it up. “These fool Americans, they can bomb us but they can’t stop us. When the going gets tough, such a bastard and lazy nation stands no chance against the likes of us.” Men hollered and punched fists in the air. They lifted Felix and carried him around the barrack like some Egyptian prince.

  Max clapped along. He shouted, too. Of course, they were no elite force. Yet to these young men in the barrack, he and Felix were the one great hope. And why not? Their illusions were probably healthier than Max’s own.

  By the morning, Felix had totally rewritten the script. “You want to know what went wrong in that POW camp? Nothing. It was the Amis’ fault,” he told Max on the way to mess. It wasn’t the Amis’ fault that Max forgot the American word for petrol. Yet Max held his tongue. “See, they set us up from the start,” Felix continued. “Like true dogs they tricked us. Only a sly and degenerate—no, evil—race could concoct such a scheme. We all agreed—you heard it last night. So how can it not be so?”

  It certainly drew the greatest applause. Max shrugged. “All I know is, Dear Felix, war will do strange things to people.”

  The first week of December. The snow was falling nonstop. The camp linguists had determined that out of all the supposed English speakers in Grafenwöhr, roughly twenty could speak fluent American English. Zoock belonged to this group, while Max and Felix belonged to the next range of twenty or so who’d mastered near-native American English. Another good hundred could speak the language, but their accents gave them away. And the rest? Beyond redemption. In a casting call, they’d barely make the cut for background extras. Once behind American lines they would not speak unless absolutely necessary, it was decided. If forced to speak, they would stick to grunting words such as “yes” and “no.” By no means would they utter any American words containing “th” or “w.” If pressured they would act crazy, shell-shocked, nauseous or even diarrheic, in which cases they might escape by holding their stomachs and wandering from the scene.

  For those who could master limited pronunciation, prepared scripts would provide stock slang phrases soldiers could employ to stall and run away—or get off the first shot. With his background, Max was recruited to help draft the scripts. One went like this:

  Situation: You face an American sentry.

  American sentry: WHO GOES THERE?

  You say: IT’S OK, JOE.

  If the sentry repeats the question, you say: IT’S OK, JOE. DON’T MIND ME.

  If the sentry is not satisfied, do not try to understand his demands, as this will only give you away. Respond in one of four following ways:

  1.) GO ON, DON’T BOTHER ME.

  2.) SAYS YOU. LAY AN EGG.

  3.) COME UP AND SEE ME SOMETIME.

  4.) SO IS YOUR OLD MAN . . .

  For Max, the language problem was only the tip of the iceberg. They’d studied US Army handbooks and could march American-style, but how good was a
ny of that at the front, under fire? Then there was Max’s own plan. He would be a crude and perverse sort of double agent—betraying Germans and conning Americans at the same time. Would he have to kill Americans to get free? Or would it be one, or more, of his own? When, how, where to act? The risks were multiplying faster than he could grasp them.

  Grafenwöhr, December 10 now. Their world had turned white. They trained on packed snow and ice. That evening, Max went for a stroll. He lit a cigarette and let himself daydream, if only a little. He had a woman here, he imagined, and he entertained her in Skorzeny’s villa. As always, he was careful not to have her be too much like his Liselotte. This time she had a deep and silken voice like Dietrich and her hair was long in the style of Veronica Lake. Max proved the old raconteur. He sang her songs. She took him right there in the den . . .

  Strolling on, the fresh snow barely swishing beneath his feet, Max rounded the front of the mess hall—and heard something. He stopped. Put out his cigarette between fingertips, let it fall to the ice. Someone was whispering, and then another, and so heatedly it sounded like hissing. It came from around the corner, from the side of the mess hall. Between the hall and another building was a dark and narrow alleyway. During the day some used it to duck from duty. Yet now, so late? From there Max heard:

  “So-called secret mission quite a fiasco, eh? Couldn’t even handle some filthy Yankees in a POW camp. So who screwed it up, then? You? I’ll bet it was you . . .”

  This sounded like Captain Rattner.

  Max heard a hollow bang—someone pushed up against the wall. He tiptoed forward, and took a peak around the corner.

  Two figures about halfway down the alley. It was dark, but the one doing the pushing was definitely Rattner—Max could tell by his thick shoulders. The one Rattner pushed was Felix.

  “Why should I tell you?” Felix shot back. “Why tell you anything? You’re just envious.”

  Rattner slapped Felix on the side of the head.

  Max pulled back, squatting low. He heard Felix say, “You wouldn’t have stood a chance in there.”

  Rattner slapped him again.

  Max could break this up. All he had to do was whistle and stroll on by. Despite his early stumbles, Felix Menning had made it into Special Unit Pielau. He’d taken part in a reputedly heroic operation. And yet Captain Rattner’s wrath over Felix had only increased. At the same time, Max had noticed a strange parallel—the worse Rattner treated Felix, the more fervent Felix grew about their looming mission. Max had judged this to be the result of longstanding, unrealized drives lurking in each of them and imagined it a sort of mutual father-son complex—only through a glorious victory might Felix the son prove himself to Rattner, the father.

  It had gone quiet down there. Max turned to look. Felix had grabbed Rattner’s cap. He tossed it. Felix kicked Rattner at the ankles and knocked the lieutenant to the ice. Crouching, Felix twisted Rattner’s arms behind his back and pushed the lieutenant farther down the alley, into the darkness.

  Felix was knocking Rattner around. And Rattner let him?

  Rattner was on his knees. Felix pulled down his trousers, slapped Rattner on the side of his head and pulled the lieutenant’s face to his crotch. Max heard a giggle, and it wasn’t Felix.

  Max pulled back, picked his cigarette stub off the ice and hustled off on tiptoes. He was no prude. A man’s company was one thing, he thought, and he’d seen it often enough in the theater world. This was something different. This was where love and hate spoke the same language.

  Next morning at mess, the men’s zeal was peaking. The rumors and theories turned so grandiose, Max found it hard to keep up. They were to capture the American General Staff, went one rumor. No, no, they would retake Paris in American uniform, said another, and push the Allies back to Dunkirk just like in 1940. Even Zoock got in the game. They were to sail to England and bag that old navy man Churchill, of that he was certain.

  “Ask me, I say we’re going to take out Eisenhower himself,” Felix shouted.

  Max was sitting at Felix’s right as always. What he’d seen the night before did not happen, he’d reminded himself three times this morning. “That sounds about right,” Max said, smiling. Then he picked at his potatoes and sipped his cold ersatz coffee.

  That evening, SS Lieutenant Colonel Skorzeny addressed Special Unit Pielau in his villa. Numbering about forty now, the commandos of Special Unit Pielau had packed into Skorzeny’s dining room. They sat shoulder to shoulder on chairs set out in perfect rows as if they were about to hear a baroque quartet. Skorzeny stood before them, where the quartet might have been, and Arno the adjutant served the men champagne glasses filled with thinned beer just like they got in the POW camp. Max was near the back, next to Felix, yet they didn’t have to strain to see the tall Skorzeny. The man wore the combat fatigues of an American Colonel, a tight-fitting and much drabber costume than his tailored SS finery. Skorzeny raised his glass and they all raised their glasses and stood on the tips of their toes. Skorzeny said:

  “Congratulations, Kameraden—you brave men in this special unit are the spearhead of what is now called Panzerbrigade 150. We move out in two days.”

  “Hurrah! Hurrah! Long live the Führer!” shouted the men. They drank and beamed at their colonel. Skorzeny beamed back, nodding, and bade them to sit. He continued:

  “Before we embark, there’s one last matter to address. Enemy uniforms. General Staff High Command West has noted that the wearing of American uniforms could make one a spy under the rules of war.”

  Spies were shot when captured. It had always been that way in war. Yet this had occurred to no one, it seemed—not even Max. The men gaped at each other, murmuring.

  “Bullshit!” someone yelled in English. “Let’s see them try!” shouted another.

  “That may well be, men,” Skorzeny answered in German. “In any case, General Staff has ordered a solution.” As he spoke, Skorzeny began pulling off the US Colonel’s garb to reveal his SS uniform. “We wear our German uniforms underneath. Like so, yes? In case of a fight, you simply peel off your Ami tops and start shooting.”

  Bullshit indeed, Max thought. To the Americans, an SS man had to be the only thing worse than a spy. All had fallen silent. Even Felix.

  Skorzeny’s eyes found faces around the room. He grinned. “Chins up, good old comrades. So what’s two sets of uniforms—it’ll only keep us warmer, isn’t that right?”

  “Right,” someone yelled. “Splendid solution,” another shouted. Some more hollered, but most stayed silent. Max’s hand was forming a fist around his glass and he wanted to pitch it against the wall. More men were shouting now, drowning each other out. “Brilliant,” Max blurted in English, “just genius.”

  “Gentlemen, Kameraden, as your good Doktor Solar, I introduce you to our bold new mission—Operation Greif!” Behind Skorzeny stood a large easel draped with silk. The shouting died, and the men began to sit. Skorzeny downed his glass, handed it to Arno the adjutant and pulled away the silk to reveal a broad map crammed with unit symbols, dotted lines and black and red arrows so packed together that Max had to squint to make out their operations area. It was the dense, vast Ardennes Forest of Belgium, a dark and cursed province and a long, long way from America in both miles and fortunes.

  Eight

  That night Max tossed and sweated in his bunk until the bedding twisted into a ball between his calves. He lay on his back and stared at the slats of Felix’s top bunk, loathing the hours he’d wasted worrying instead of sleeping. He’d gotten free of the war, only to face it again as a two-timing spy? He was a double agent of his own design. An impostor. Did he really think he could make it back to America this way? He was not sure who was crazier—he or his decadent friend Felix. If only he had hours—days, no, months—to sleep. If only he could wake up somehow back in Manhattan with Operation Greif and the whole war over. His stomach pinched and gurgled. The blood pulsed hot in his veins. His temples twinged. He never felt this bad before a first show or a b
ig casting call. He’d always slept well before a performance. Only once had he been so rattled—when he made the move to New York City.

  It wasn’t the normal route, but what was? Familie Kaspar emigrated from Kiel in 1928 and soon settled in Manchester, New Hampshire, a declining industrial town. Max’s father was a baker, his mother a seamstress—Manfred and Elise. He had a little brother, Harry. All his Vati and Mutti knew of Amerika came from Karl May westerns, silent films, and letters from relatives. Yet the Great War and its aftermath had left them penniless, so they’d saved for a boat over and never looked back. Max had stayed in Germany on a baking apprenticeship his father had set up even though young Max was already taking acting classes in secret and hitting every movie and play he could. Learning songs. He reunited with his family in America when he was eighteen, in late 1931. He could barely see New York City coming into port because of a blinding white fog. They’d missed seeing the Statue of Liberty. At the railing, people gathered around a man pouring champagne. A pretty young woman handed Max a glass, and as he drank a stray sunlight ray shot through the fog, illuminating his golden bubbly.

  “Look,” someone yelled. Men shuffled backward, their heads jerked upward and children gaped, paralyzed. A woman fainted. “Mountains!” someone screamed in Dutch, as others screamed in languages Max didn’t know. “Icebergs! We’ll collide,” someone shouted in German.

  Monstrous dark shapes loomed like colossal crates and boxes, shafts and spires piled high upon one another. The Manhattan skyline dwarfed their mighty liner.

  “All’s well, good people,” a man shouted back in Queen’s English, “it’s just the colonies.” People laughed, shook hands and hugged, and the champagne flowed again.

  As they’d inched into port the tallest buildings disappeared into the low clouds. Not even cathedrals could do that. How high could they go? Max wondered. Children rushed to the railing, pointing and calling out the names of buildings. How did they know so much?