Fire and Steel, Volume 2

by Gerald N. Lund

  “Can I ask what our deployment will be once we’re relieved here, sir?” That was from Sergeant Lenz, who led the Second Platoon.

  “The moment we see the White Guards, we’re to contact battalion headquarters. Depending on who’s in the fiercest firefight, we’ll either move north to the Englischer Garten to join Third Battalion or to the west to defend the train station with Second Battalion.”

  “Sounds like we’ll get action either way,” Diehls said to the men.

  Hans was only half listening. He was looking to the south, where a smaller street opened into the square. He nudged Diehls. “What’s that street there?”

  Diehls quickly consulted his map. “Rossenstrasse.”

  “A dead end?”

  “No sir, it joins Sendlingerstrasse about a block or so south of here.”

  “Is D Company deployed there?”

  Diehls looked at the map again. Hans walked over and joined him, and they studied it together. “Uh . . . I’m not sure, sir. They said D Company was going to set up here on Rindermarkt, in the churchyard here. Looks like they’re about two blocks south of us.”

  Hans muttered angrily under his breath. “Which means the Red Army could come up Sendlingerstrasse here”—he traced his finger along the route—“and cut over to Rossenstrasse without being seen by D Company.”

  “That’s not good,” Diehls grunted.

  Hans grunted an assent. “Sergeant Lenz, send a man down to D Company. Tell them to move farther south and block the entrance to Rosenstrasse.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, Hans looked at Diehls. “Bring your platoon. Let’s make sure Rosenstrasse is secure until D Company gets in place.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The rest of you men, deploy as ordered. You are not to leave your posts under any circumstances, even if we run into trouble. The Glockenspiel and Mary. Nobody gets to them.” Hans didn’t wait for an answer. Diehls’s platoon was already forming up. He hitched his rifle higher on his shoulder and went over to the men. “All right, let’s move out.”

  10:43 a.m.—Rosenstrasse, south of Marienplatz, Old Town, Munich

  Rose Street was a relatively narrow avenue with ground-level shops and boutiques with four- and five-story apartments above them. It was the apartments that worried Hans. He deployed half of the platoon with Diehls on the left, and he took the rest with him on the right. “Stay close to the buildings,” he called in a low voice. “And watch the upper windows opposite you for snipers. But there may be people who are just curious about what’s going on, so don’t get trigger happy.”

  They started forward. There were no vehicles moving and no pedestrians. But that was probably true of much of the city right now. They moved slowly, using the few automobiles parked along the curb as cover. Thirty yards down the street, Hans suddenly stopped. A familiar prickling sensation was tingling in the back of his neck. During the war, he had learned to trust that feeling.

  He gave a low whistle and motioned for the men to take cover. Then he crouched down to wait, cocking his head to one side and listening intently. It didn’t take long. First it was the sound of footsteps—a lot of them. They weren’t loud, but they were unmistakable. Then he heard the murmur of voices—men’s voices. Hans shook his head in amazement and disgust. Von Schiller had described the Red Army as undisciplined. But this? Walking into what they had to know was one of the prime targets in all of Munich, and they were talking like a bunch of schoolboys?

  The man behind Hans whispered. “Could that be D Company, sir?”

  “Not a chance,” Hans snapped back. “Not this soon.”

  A moment later, his question was definitively answered. The street itself was perfectly straight, but where it joined Sendlingerstrasse, it curved away to the right. Two men in uniform with their rifles slung over their shoulders were in the lead. Behind them was a ragtag collection of soldiers and civilians. They were not in ranks or any kind of order, just following behind their leaders like a slow-moving mudflow. They were now about fifty yards from the platoon.

  Hans signaled to his men. “No one fires until I do—or they do,” he hissed. “If things go bad, take out their leaders first, and then go for the ones carrying arms.”

  He heard the soft metallic clicks of safeties being released. He watched until all of his men were in place, and then he stood up and moved out into the center of the street. As he did so, he fired his rifle in the air. “Anhalten!” he shouted as loudly as he could. “Stop where you are!”

  It was almost comical, like dropping a fox in the middle of a flock of chickens. There was one second of stunned shock, and then men dove for cover. The leaders were frantically grabbing for their rifles. Hans fired in the air again. “Throw down your weapons, and you won’t be hurt.”

  The taller of the two leaders jerked up his rifle and fired off a round in Hans’s direction.

  As the bullet snapped overhead, Hans dropped down. At that same moment, his men opened up fire in a deafening barrage. Leaping into a crouch behind one of the cars, Hans peeked out to see the damage. Both leaders were down. Flashes of gunfire were winking like fireflies, and the blasts within the narrow confines of the street were deafening.

  “Don’t shoot them if they’re unarmed!” Hans shouted as he watched men dropping all around their fallen leaders. Diehls’s platoon was at full strength at forty-eight men. The Red Army group looked to be about that same number. But that didn’t even the odds. First Platoon’s superior firepower and accuracy tore through the ranks like a scythe. Half were already down, though whether they were hit or taking cover, Hans couldn’t tell. The rest broke and ran.

  His men leaped to their feet, firing from the shoulder now. He was tempted to call a cease-fire, but there were still flashes of gunfire from a few of the rebels, and as long as there was resistance, he wouldn’t pull his men off. But Hans lowered his own rifle and watched from behind a car. He saw two men, one young, one old—a father and son?—raise their hands high in the air. Neither carried weapons. The older went down in a spray of blood. The younger one took off in a zigzagging run. He got maybe ten yards before a bullet caught him in the back and flung him forward like a rag doll.

  In seconds, the only ones firing were Diehls’s platoon. “Cease fire! Cease fire!” Hans screamed. He stood up. Just ahead of him, one of his men was taking aim at another unarmed running figure. BLAM! He fired just as Hans kicked him hard in the buttocks. The shot went high, and the figure disappeared into a side street. “I said cease fire!” he raged.

  The gunfire gradually died away, and in moments the street was filled with an eerie silence. Hans motioned his men forward, taking out his Luger and leaving his rifle on his shoulder. As they approached the rebels, he wanted to look away. He had seen so much blood, so much carnage in the last four years. Of the approximately fifty men who had been marching up the street just moments before, about thirty were down. A few were moaning and twisting in pain. Most were still. Blood was everywhere.

  “No more firing,” he called to the men around him. “Check for wounded. Collect any arms.” Then to Diehls he said, “Get a corpsman up here.”

  11:18 a.m.—Marienplatz, Old Town, Munich

  Hans was standing off to one side, watching the White Guards unload and start setting up three machine gun nests behind sandbagged revetments. That was good. The Glockenspiel and Marian Column were safe now. How ironic that over in the tower of New Town Hall, the thirty-two life-size figures of the Glockenspiel had just finished marching, jousting, and dancing to the music of the forty-three bells. It was a macabre backdrop for the thirty-three bodies laid out on Rose Street, where two horse-drawn wagons from the graves unit were just pulling up. Fortunately, none of them were Freikorps bodies. They had four wounded, but none of them seriously.

  Hans looked up as Bert Diehls came up to join him. He was lighting up a cigarette. As he puffed it into life, he held out the package to Hans. “Want a smoke?”

&
nbsp; “You know I don’t smoke.”

  “I know. Want one?”

  Hans slid a cigarette out from the pack and lit it off the end of Bert’s. “Thanks.”

  “You can quit again tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.”

  Blowing out a cloud of smoke, Bert lowered his voice. “My men found three more Commies hiding behind a garbage bin. Do you want to interrogate them before we haul them away with the others?” The rumor was that all prisoners were to be executed, but no one had confirmed that.

  “Were they armed?” Hans asked Diehls.

  “One had a club, but he dropped it when my men appeared. They’re not soldiers.”

  Hans said nothing for a while but finally nodded. “Yes, I’ll interrogate them.”

  “Second alley on the right down Rosenstrasse. Want my men to come with you?”

  “No,” Hans said quickly. “I’ll take care of them,” he said. “Any word on where we go next?”

  “Ja. I guess Third Battalion ran into one of the Red Army’s better units as they entered the English Gardens from the north. That’s the firing we’ve been hearing to the north of us. I guess it’s a real catfight. Von Schiller’s already pulled off A and B Companies from our battalion and sent them north. He’s also sent D Company in a long sweep around to come in behind them from the north. The colonel says we are to join them as soon as possible.”

  “Okay. How soon will the trucks be here to transport us?”

  “No trucks,” Diehls said in disgust. “They’re over at the Bahnhof trying to unload supplies from some train cars, but they’re taking fire too. So we’re on foot. But it’s only a couple of miles to the park. Von Schiller wants us on the move no later than 11:45.”

  “Got it,” Hans said. “This won’t take me long.”

  Hans flipped the cigarette away as he entered the alley, even though he had only smoked a third of it. When Diehls’s two men saw him coming, they immediately came to attention. Hans came up to them and returned their salute. “You’re relieved. Report to Sergeant Diehls on the double.”

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” one of them said.

  Hans removed the Luger from its holster and chambered a shell. “I’ll be fine.”

  The three men before him, all in work clothes and battered shoes or boots, went an ashen grey when they saw the pistol. One looked like he was seventeen or eighteen; the other two were near their thirties. They had the same beaten look that Hans had seen on the faces of the marchers in Berlin—haggard, worn, crushed by the sheer relentlessness of life. Hans waited until Diehls’s men disappeared, and then he turned to the oldest man. “Do you men know each other?”

  The man hesitated for a moment, and then his head bobbed.

  “Do you come from the same neighborhood?” Hans guessed.

  “Ja,” the youngest one said. “Bogenhausen.”

  Hans nodded. “How much were you paid to join the Red Army?”

  The question obviously surprised them. The older one finally said, “Ten marks per week.”

  “If I let you go, will you give me your word you won’t go back to the army?”

  There was incredulity followed by a flicker of hope. “Ja, ja!” the oldest man said.

  Hans held the pistol above his head and fired off three shots in slow succession. Then he holstered the pistol and pointed to the west, even though Bogenhausen was to the east. “There will be fewer troops that way. But stay low. Find a safe place to hide, and wait until dark.” He turned and walked away, not looking back to see if they obeyed.

  Bert was waiting for him with the two guards that Hans had sent away. Their eyes were wide as they watched him approach. He spoke to Diehls. “They won’t be a problem anymore.”

  Diehls eyed him thoughtfully as he took a deep draw on his cigarette and then dropped it and ground the butt out with the heel of his boot. “Gut. Three less that we have to worry about.”

  Hans nodded. “All right, let’s form up and move out.”

  11:55 a.m.—Dienerstrasse, near Marienplatz, Old Town, Munich

  After studying the map carefully, Hans determined the most direct route to the English Gardens. If he kept his men marching at a brisk step, they could be there in less than half an hour.

  C Company left Marienplatz with four of Hans’s men out front on point and four more bringing up the rear, and Hans wasn’t too surprised when they found the streets pretty deserted. After the earlier battles, people were understandably cautious. Even though it was a beautiful day, most of the windows on the buildings were shuttered. And there were no vehicles—motorized or horse drawn—on the streets. Hans still moved carefully, keeping his platoons in formation, but he wasn’t too worried. A and B Companies had passed through here less than an hour ahead of them.

  As they continued northward, windows began to open and people began appearing on the balconies. At first, Hans slowed the pace and sent four more men ahead. A balcony or an upper window was a preferred perch for a sniper. But it soon became evident that there was no threat here. The people were coming out to welcome them, like they had in Berlin. They waved flags or handkerchiefs or threw flowers. They were clapping and cheering, shouting their welcome.

  Then the doors along the street began to open and people appeared, smiling and waving. At first they stayed close to their doors, but then a young woman in her twenties ran up to Hans. She had fresh red geraniums in her hand and was barefoot. “Danke, danke,” she cried, thrusting the flowers into his hands. As soon as he took them, she threw her arms around him and kissed him fully on the lips. Then, laughing, she darted away again.

  Hans’s men erupted into whistles, catcalls, and cheers. Someone behind him yelled, “Hey, Fräulein, come and say thank you to me, too.” The citizens were also delighted at her boldness, and soon others came out into the street. At first it was a trickle, then a stream, and then a veritable flood. Suddenly it seemed like every window had someone hanging out of it, and every balcony had people dancing up and down or waving wildly. Flowers, streamers, shredded paper, and wrapped candy started raining down from above. Men and women, grandmas and grandpas, young children, babies in carriages, babies in arms, men in shirtsleeves and without hats—almost unthinkable for this middle-class neighborhood—all ran alongside, calling, shouting, weeping, and laughing. They were waving anything they could lay their hands on—umbrellas, handkerchiefs, scarves, banners, Bavarian and national flags of every size.

  Children ran right up to the ranks of the soldiers, grabbing their hands and kissing them or tossing flowers before their feet. Soon there were dozens of young women racing in and out of the ranks and kissing the delighted soldiers.

  “Hold your ranks!” Hans shouted, but he was laughing too. No one would have obeyed him even if they had heard him. His men were grinning like thirteen-year-olds who had just gotten their first kiss. Hans knew that his own face was smeared with lipstick.

  And then someone started singing “Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles.” It quickly spread from person to person. People came to attention. Hans raised his hand and brought the men to a halt. Quickly it swelled until a hundred and then a thousand voices filled the air, echoing off the building in what seemed like orchestrated harmony.

  Barely heard in the tumult, a rifle cracked. A soldier three men over from Hans clutched at his chest and stumbled to his knees, eyes confused and white with pain. A moment later, a machine gunner opened up from somewhere above them, and screams erupted, drowning out the words of their beloved national anthem.

  Chapter Note

  The numbers given here for the opposing forces are accurate, but I could not find any specifics as to where the fighting was other than that there were fierce street battles. So the protection of Marienplatz, the attack up Rosenstrasse, and moving north toward the English Gardens are not based on actual accounts.

  May 4, 1919, 7:10 a.m.—Dienerstrasse, near Marienplatz, Old Town, Munich

  Hans turned off the engine of his motorbike and let it
roll to a stop. For several moments he just sat there, looking around, letting the memories of the last two days wash over him. Nothing had changed, at least not that he could tell. The street was still filled with rubble—shattered brick and stonework from the field artillery pieces, shards of glass from dozens of shot-out windows, what remained of the barricades hastily thrown up by the Red Army.

  The guilt was like a hot iron in his chest. No one was blaming him or Colonel von Schiller. Not officially, at least. But von Schiller had told them in the briefing that when the Communists had taken power, they had expropriated apartments of the middle classes and turned them over to the homeless. And the areas around Old Town center were mostly middle- or upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Why hadn’t Hans put that together? What better place for elements of the Red Army to hide than in the apartments of people who had gotten them for nothing?

  The other thing he cursed himself for was that he had accepted without question von Schiller’s characterization of the Red Army as undisciplined, untrained, working-class incompetents. Maybe some were. Maybe even half or more. But these troops weren’t. They had let two companies pass by them without revealing their position. Had they known that Hans’s company was the only one left? Was their intelligence that good?

  Who knew? But this was clear: one of the greatest signs of battlefield stupidity was underestimating your enemy.

  And now twelve of his men were dead. More than twice that number were wounded, several of them seriously. Six civilians, including an eight-year-old boy, had died in the ambush. It had taken them another twenty-four hours to dislodge the enemy, and that was with the full weight of the battalion sent in to rescue C Company. The White Guards couldn’t leave Marienplatz with fighting that close to them, but they sent up two light Howitzers, a flamethrower, and more heavy machine guns. And even then, the battle had raged through the night.