The Second Objective

by Mark Frost

  The barrel of the panzer’s cannon smashed through the window, penetrating halfway across the room. It paused for a moment and then swung violently to the right, toppling furniture, knocking over shelves. Bernie flattened himself against the wall closest to the tank, away from where the machine gun was mounted. He heard the engine engage as the barrel swung back to the left. Muffled shouting issued from inside the tank. Someone reloaded the machine gun.

  The Americans panicked and ran for the back door. Bernie turned in time to see Von Leinsdorf cut the throat of the wounded GI. He heard the crew in the tank crank another shell into the chamber, and sprinted for the door as the cannon fired. The shot blew away the back wall of the cottage just as Bernie and Von Leinsdorf hurled themselves out the doorway. Bernie felt the concussion ripple through his body from behind, and the crack of the explosion deafened him.

  Bernie landed facedown in the snow. He turned and looked up, groggy, lost in a white, silent world. His senses haywire, he staggered to his hands and knees, trying to remember where he was. A shrill, bell-like tone screamed out of the deep silence and pierced his mind. He felt someone grabbing for him, tugging him to his feet by the sleeve—Von Leinsdorf—then pulling him into the fog. Bernie saw the spinning tracks of the panzer, reversing away from the shattered cottage wall. A boot landed in the snow near him, with a leg still in it. He felt something wet on his face, wiped at it, and his hand came away smeared with blood, the bright red shocking amid all the white.

  They lurched into the fog, Bernie trailing Von Leinsdorf, trying to keep him in sight. He knew he was shouting, but he couldn’t hear his own voice. Von Leinsdorf vanished ahead of him in the fog. Bernie turned his head to look for him, and a tree hurtled at him out of the white. He had no time to stop or change course—a low-hanging branch clotheslined him across the neck and everything went black.

  14

  Malmédy

  DECEMBER 17, 8:00 A.M.

  The order came down from First Army headquarters in Spa shortly after 7:30 A.M. to abandon the 67th Evacuation Hospital. The situation to the east had grown steadily worse during the night, as waves of new wounded continued to arrive, overwhelming the facility. Confirmation that Waffen-SS panzer divisions were moving toward Malmédy hastened the decision to withdraw; stories about their atrocities to female prisoners preceded them. Doctors and nurses were ordered to drop everything and take only what they could carry. The hospital’s chief surgeon asked a skeleton staff of five volunteers to stay behind and tend the few men who were too critically wounded to transport. Every nurse in the ward raised her hand, so they had to choose by drawing lots.

  Earl Grannit and Ole Carlson had worked through the night on a borrowed typewriter, piecing together the investigation until they’d condensed it to five pages. After placing repeated calls on deteriorating phone lines to Spa and Liège, Grannit finally got through to a reconnaissance officer at First Army headquarters shortly after dawn.

  “There’s a hundred damn rivers in this part of Belgium,” said Grannit. “We’re trying to figure out which one we’re looking at here.”

  After describing in detail the map of the river he’d found in the boot of the dead German, Grannit held on the line while the officer consulted his charts.

  “Sounds like the Meuse,” said the officer. “There’s three bridges southwest of Liège at Engis, Amay, and Huy.”

  “How far apart are they?”

  “They’re all within twenty miles of each other. You got any maps with you?”

  Carlson handed him one, folded to that section of the river. “I’m looking at it. What’s their tactical significance?”

  The officer thought for a moment. “If Jerry’s looking to get across the Meuse, that’d be a damn good place to try—”

  “How so? What good does it do them to cross that far south?” asked Grannit.

  The line crackled and went dead. Grannit jiggled the receiver but couldn’t reestablish the connection. Another shell exploded nearby outside. Ole ducked instinctively, but Grannit didn’t move, lost in thought.

  “Earl?”

  “Let’s go,” he said finally, heading outside. “Bring the maps.”

  A fleet of trucks and ambulances lined up behind the tents to convoy patients and staff back toward Liège. V1 rockets and German planes continued to scream westward above the clouds overhead. Red crosses were being hastily painted on the canvas tops of the transports, as the staff hoped to ward off attack from the air.

  Grannit climbed behind the wheel of their jeep, and they fought their way out of the congestion surrounding the hospital. He headed west, dodging around a brigade of American armor moving toward Malmédy. Their CO, standing up in a Willys at the rear of the column, shouted at them for directions. Grannit pointed them toward Malmédy, moved the jeep off to the shoulder, and kept driving.

  “I was thinking, shouldn’t we tell somebody what we know?” asked Carlson.

  “What do we know, Ole?”

  “You know, about the Krauts and the murders and—” Ole stuttered for a moment.

  “And what?”

  “I don’t know what. But somebody at HQ ought to hear about this.”

  “We tried, Ole. Nobody’s answering the god damn phone.”

  “Well, we should just drive over there.”

  “They’ve got their hands full. For all we know they’re not even there anymore.”

  “But these guys are killing GIs, Earl.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around today.”

  “But they’re Krauts—”

  “I know that, Ole, and you know that, and we’re gonna tell ’em soon as we know what the hell they’re doing here. That’s our job now. Make sense of it first.”

  Grannit swerved as another shell landed by the side of the road.

  “Everybody’s got their job today and we got ours, okay? And, by the way, mine doesn’t include having to cheer you the fuck up,” said Grannit.

  Baugnez Crossroads, Belgium

  DECEMBER 17, 1:00 P.M.

  “Private Tenella! Private Tenella!”

  Bernie came to lying on the worn wooden floor of a small café. An American sergeant was staring down at him, holding his dog tags in one hand, shaking him by the shoulder with the other. The man’s voice sounded muffled, as if Bernie had cotton stuffed in his ears. It took him a moment to connect himself to the name the man was using. He tried to answer, but his own voice came out as a dry croak he couldn’t hear. His throat throbbed where he’d collided with the tree, and his head pulsed in painful disjointed rhythms. He felt a bandage on his forehead as he sat up and looked around.

  At least thirty other GIs were huddled nearby in the room, crouched or sitting. None carried weapons. Two American medics moved from man to man, tending to the injured. Bernie thought he recognized some faces, then looked at their shoulder patches and realized they were part of the same unit they’d ridden into Malmédy with only the day before, the 291st Combat Engineers. Then Bernie saw the half dozen black-jacketed SS grenadiers holding submachine guns near the door. Their commanding officer, a tall, whip-thin captain, stood nearby, jabbering angrily at a middle-aged male civilian.

  “Where are we?” Bernie asked in a harsh whisper.

  “Who the fuck knows?” said the sergeant. “Keep it down. You gotta keep quiet, for Christ’s sake, you were moaning so loud. They just beat the piss out of a guy for less.”

  “How’d I get here?”

  “We found you in the woods, ’bout half a mile back, and carried you in.” Bernie had to concentrate, reading the man’s lips to understand him. “We were about to saddle up when this big column of Kraut tanks rolls up on us so fast we couldn’t even put up a fight.”

  “You seen my lieutenant? I was with somebody—”

  “Sorry. Just you and a bunch a dead GIs, kid. Keep your voice down. I can hear you just fine.”

  Bernie noticed the attention of the other prisoners in the room drifting toward the door. The SS captain
was shouting at the civilian, who had his hands up, flinching at every word. He wore a white shirt and stained white apron. Bernie guessed he owned the café. The captain pulled his handgun and pistol-whipped the man across the face, knocking him to the ground. He covered his head with his hands, pleading for his life. The captain twisted the barrel of the gun into his ear, toyed with shooting him but didn’t. He shoved the man to the floor with his boot, then turned to his soldiers and barked a series of orders.

  The SS men at the door fanned out toward the prisoners, gesturing with their guns. “Raus! Raus! Ausenseite!”

  The GIs stumbled to their feet and pressed together as a unit toward the front door. Swept up with the men around him, Bernie tried to maneuver near one of the grenadiers to try to say something in German, but he couldn’t get close enough. Even if he’d caught the man’s attention, what would he say? All he had with him was American identity papers. He didn’t know if any other divisions involved in the invasion even knew about their brigade. Without Von Leinsdorf to back him up, what if they didn’t believe him?

  The SS men herded the GIs outside. A main highway passed in front of the café, intersecting with a smaller road that fed down from the north around a tight corner. Both arteries were jammed with German military vehicles—artillery, rocket launchers, tanks, scout cars, troop transports—entire armored divisions pouring in from the north and east. Two SS officers stood at the intersection, shouting frantically, trying to direct the columns as they merged toward the west. The traffic stretched out in either direction as far as the eye could see.

  In a meadow to the east of the café, just south of the main road, stood a larger group of American prisoners, over fifty of them bunched together in the trampled snow and dead grass, under heavy Wehrmacht guard. Bernie and the GIs from the café were funneled down into the meadow to join them, forming a solid mass. German soldiers riding along the road shouted curses and laughed at the Americans as they passed. When one of the massive German Tiger tanks slowed to negotiate the sharp turn, an officer—Bernie thought he was a general—stood on the turret of his tank and called out to the prisoners in crisp English.

  “How do you like us now, Amis? It’s a long way to Tipperary, boys!”

  The other SS men riding on the general’s tank roared with laughter and gave the Americans mock salutes as they drove past the clearing. A burly American sergeant standing in front of Bernie raised his middle finger at them, which only made the Germans laugh harder.

  “Nice to know they took care of that little morale problem they been having since we kicked their ass in France,” said the GI defiantly, moving toward the road and shouting after them. “We’ll see you again, you Prussian pricks! Go shit in your hat!”

  Some of his buddies stepped in front of him to head the man off and shepherd him back into the crowd. Bernie didn’t like any part of what he felt brewing. The Germans were riding on a belligerent high that felt reckless and unpredictable. He worked his way to the southern edge of the crowd, away from the road, and looked back toward the café.

  Bernie thought he spotted a green American field jacket among the black-shirted soldiers. He took a few steps closer. When the SS blocking his view shifted, he realized that Von Leinsdorf was standing next to them. He had his American helmet propped against his hip, talking to two SS officers. The two men laughed at something he said; Von Leinsdorf clearly hadn’t had any trouble explaining his identity.

  Bernie took a few steps toward the café, waving his arms at Von Leinsdorf. He raised his helmet over his head, their brigade’s signal to alert other German divisions, and tried to call out, but he couldn’t make himself heard above the traffic from the road. Two Wehrmacht soldiers stepped toward him as soon as he moved out of the cluster in the meadow. He showed his helmet and raised it even further as he continued toward them, hoping they knew the signal.

  “Ich bin deutsch! Ich bin ein deutscher Soldat!” he said as loudly as he could.

  Von Leinsdorf never looked in his direction. Bernie saw Erich and the officers shake hands and part. The SS captain issued a fresh set of orders to the grenadiers around him. They hurried toward the meadow, while the captain followed Von Leinsdorf back into the café. Bernie pointed after Von Leinsdorf as the two guards closed in on him.

  “Der ist mein dominierender Offizier! Ich muss mit ihm sprechen!”

  The first soldier speared him in the stomach with the butt of his rifle, doubling him over. The second man struck him a glancing blow behind the ear. Bernie hit the ground and covered his head.

  No other blows fell. He thought for a moment that he’d gotten through. When he chanced a look up, the soldiers had turned back toward the road. The SS grenadiers from the café entered the meadow, shouting orders to every soldier in the area. The two privates dragged him back to the main body of prisoners, dropping him near the perimeter.

  Bernie heard the sound of breaking glass from the café, and moments later flames sprouted from the windows. The SS captain pushed the café owner ahead of him out the front door, shoving him to the ground, kicking him, pistol in his hand again.

  The grenadiers from the café waved down two troop transports. They pulled to the side, out of the flow of traffic. A dozen heavily armed Waffen-SS jumped down from the back of the trucks, listened to the grenadiers, and then spread out along a fence that ran the full length of the meadow. Bernie heard a loud crack. He looked back over to the café; the owner was loping down the street, comically unsteady on his feet. The SS captain fired his pistol at him a second time, laughing, shooting for sport rather than trying to hit the man in earnest. Bernie didn’t see where Von Leinsdorf had gone, but he was no longer in sight.

  The Americans in the meadow shifted restlessly in place. Bernie could smell the bloodlust in the air, and when the SS men turned to face them, he knew exactly what was coming. He backed slowly away from the rear edge of the group, the mass of prisoners between him and the guards near the road. Then he bent low and sprinted straight for the line of trees behind the meadow, fifty feet away.

  One of the Waffen-SS standing along the road stepped forward, pulled his handgun, and fired three shots point-blank at an American private in the front rank of the crowd. The GI fell to the ground, clutching his chest in surprise, crying out for help.

  Time seemed to slow; no one on either side moved. The prisoners around the man stepped back in horror and watched him drop.

  Bernie dug in his feet to gain traction with every step, as if he were running in place, his legs heavy and unresponsive. As the first fatal shots cut sharply through the meadow, all he could hear was his own labored breathing. The logic of what the SS was about to do hit him in an oblique flash of intuition.

  They don’t want prisoners. They’re moving forward too fast. They don’t want anything to slow them down—

  The meadow filled with bullets. Machine guns opened up all along the edge of the road. Gunners on top of half-tracks turned their barrels into the meadow and fired away. As the first rows of prisoners went down, the stunned Americans behind them scattered in all directions, but the relentless fire from the SS grenadiers covered every angle. Cries of anguish and terror rose from the field as panic spread. Many tried to follow Bernie toward the woods but couldn’t catch him. Only a handful covered more than twenty paces before they were cut down, blood splattering the snow. A few close to the front line never even moved, but helplessly stood their ground; some fell to their knees and prayed while they waited to die.

  Bernie reached the tree line. Bullets nicked the trunks and naked branches around him, buzzing like hornets. He didn’t know if any of the shooters had him in their sights, but he didn’t dare look back, plunging into denser stands of evergreens until he was gasping for air. He didn’t stop for half a mile, when the enfilade behind him finally ended.

  Bernie fell to his hands and knees. All he heard from the meadow now were single shots and occasional bursts. The SS killers were walking in among the bodies, finishing off survivors. He
turned back and held perfectly still, but he couldn’t see or hear anyone moving through the woods behind him.

  The snow was deeper here, slanting drifts of cold, fresh powder. Bernie’s body began to shake uncontrollably, chilled to his core, on the brink of going into shock. He pushed his back against a tree, wrapped his arms around his middle, and tried to breathe deeply. His feet and hands felt numb; his ribs ached where the soldiers had clubbed him. Some deep animal instinct told him he had to keep moving or his body might shut down. He willed himself forward, the trail of footprints behind him his only point of reckoning.

  It began to snow again, flurries thickening to a heavy shower. He darted through the woods for another mile, until he heard traffic and caught sight of another road and tried to get his bearings. A steady line of German vehicles moved along it, heading right to left; if they were going west, he was facing north. Farther down the road to the right he saw the edge of a small village. He kept going inside the tree line until he could see the first buildings more clearly.

  The town looked deserted. A few houses had been hit by shells. One structure was still burning. A vague idea drove him—that he could crawl into an abandoned basement, find some warmth and maybe something to eat—but he knew he couldn’t chance crossing the road in daylight. Just then the dull drone of a plane passed overhead, slower and lower than any he’d heard all day.

  Moments later, a shower of paper fluttered down around him. He looked up, as hundreds of white pages descended like oversized snowflakes. He plucked one out of the air as it neared him, held it up in front of his face, and willed his eyes to focus.

  It was an illustrated leaflet, written in English. It featured a line drawing of two handsome, tuxedoed men, with their arms around three sexually exaggerated women in evening gowns and jewelry carrying open bottles of champagne. Next to these decadent figures, and oblivious to them, three American GIs stood over the dead body of another soldier in the snow. The title underneath the drawing read: YOUR FIRST WINTER IN EUROPE.