In the Dragon’s Teeth
Part 1
“Hey Sarge!
Wait up!”
Under his camo helmet, a thin smile creased
Saunders’ grimy, weather-beaten face, but he didn’t slow his pace. There had been no tone of urgency in
Kirby’s
shout. Sarge had served with
the
garrulous BAR man long enough to recognize when Kirby was simply tired
of his
own thoughts and craved some conversation. It was just Saunders’ luck
(or
misfortune, depending on how you looked at it) to be the nearest
soldier in their
single file march down yet another unmarked road.
He heard the boots behind him break into a
trot and
then Kirby fell into step beside him, sweeping off his helmet to
scratch an
itch behind one ear. “Hey
Sarge,” he
repeated, and then waited while a tank rumbled past. He coughed out the dust that clogged his throat and then
asked,
“Where exactly ARE we, anyway?”
Saunders raised his face to the sky. Gunmetal gray clouds spread unbroken
from
Holland all the way to
Luxembourg, he
supposed. The ridges on the
horizon
were strung across the landscape like an old nun’s heavy rosary –
clumps of fir
trees clustered together like so many beads, then thinning to reveal
open
pastures of outlying farms, leading up to an occasional village. Then the pattern repeated - more
woods, more
pastures and then another village.
The
valleys below were dense with dark, secretive
forests.
The terrain here held no clues to political
boundaries. The farmers and
villagers
who had toiled there for generations - what did they care what color
their land
was painted on somebody’s map?
“Sarge?”
The
private was persistent.
A mess truck roared past, reminding Saunders
that he
was hungry and his feet hurt.
Expecting
no trouble yet, his arms were draped laconically over his Thompson,
hung
centered across his waist. He
lifted
his left arm to wave away another cloud of dust, and as they crested
the hill,
he pointed toward the valley far ahead of them. “Look over there,” he said simply. “Dragon’s teeth.”
Rows of concrete pyramids jutted up from the
earth
in an uneven line, as far as the eye could see. Their jagged edges reminded Saunders of nothing so much
as the
gaping mouth of a hungry beast, defending its lair. Tanks attempting to breach the line would go belly up,
slowing
any Allied advance so the Germans could counterattack. As the Americans trudged closer,
open gun
emplacements loomed before them ominously.
“That’s the Siegfried Line,” he told
Kirby. “The West Wall. We’re in Germany now.”
The Krauts had pulled back, driven from the
hedgerows of Normandy, hunted across the Falaise Gap, chased through
Belgium. And now their very
homeland
was being threatened. Aachen
had been
the first German city to fall.
He ought to feel triumphant. Or at least encouraged. Some of the new guys talked
hopefully of
being home by Christmas. But
the truth
was, Saunders didn’t have a good feeling about this at all. There was nothing more dangerous
than a
wounded animal, threatened, protecting its own. They were entering the dragon’s lair. And the Allies’ progress had come at a high price; they
were
exhausted, depleted of men and supplies; not ready to make this
push.
That’s not how the brass saw it
though.
He thrust his hands into his jacket pockets
and
frowned. Why was he filled with
such a
pervasive sense of doom? Was it
simply
a case of battle fatigue - too long on the front lines?
Saunders turned his head to study the
soldiers
around him. So many were new
replacements; he had made no effort to distinguish one from
another. He knew them by the energy in their
step, by
their nervous, hopeful chatter.
And he
had learned the hard way not to let them get too close. You watch out for them. But you can’t count on them to watch
out for
you. You can only count on
yourself. Yourself, and the men who had fought
beside
you since Normandy.
Littlejohn and Nelson marched silently along
the
column behind Kirby. Weary and
wary. It was an ominous sign
when the
two of them weren’t chatting.
Behind
them came Caje, ever alert, his darting eyes combing the woods even
when they
were part of a convoy. Saunders
supposed it was simply habit, and what made him such an effective
scout. He paid attention to
everything.
Sarge was no slouch at being observant
either. He had noticed the swarthy Cajun was
clean-shaven for a change.
There was a
hidden side to the soldier that sometimes slipped out on those rare
occasions
when they were fortunate enough to be billeted in a French or Belgian
village,
as they had been the night before.
In
his native French, the stoic, self-reliant private could put down his
M1 for a
few minutes and became sociable, suave and charming. It seemed symbolic that Caje had taken that last
opportunity to
enjoy hot water and a close shave.
Today they would move from being liberators to being
invaders. It was as if he knew they would not
be
welcome in any villages again.
The squad rounded a curve and found the mess
truck
set up. “Hot coffee!” Kirby
shouted,
and abandoning Saunders to his melancholy, he jogged forward to jostle
for
position in line.
By the time Saunders got his tin cup filled
with
steaming black sludge, the rest of the squad was hunkered down on the
ground
against the trees that lined both sides of the road. German mines were heaped in piles an arm’s reach away,
already
disarmed by American engineers.
Sarge
hoped they hadn’t missed any.
Pvt. Dixon, a earnest young fellow whose
face
perpetually wore the wide-eyed look of someone who’d just walked into a
surprise party – and didn’t recognize any of the guests, shared the base of a broad tree
trunk with
Kirby. He seemed glad to have
an excuse
to hang around one of the veterans of the squad. Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out a well-worn scrap
of
paper and a pencil nub. “I
promised my
mom I’d write when I got assigned to a company,” he told Kirby. “And I don’t even know where we
are. Do you have any
idea?”
“Me?
Of
course I know! Don’t they teach
you new
guys anything back in the States?”
Kirby finished his coffee and stowed his gear. “Look down that valley where those concrete shapes are…”
he
started.
Saunders walked away. That sense of foreboding grew stronger. Cold sweat slid down between his
shoulder
blades and made him shiver. A
few
minutes later the rest of the platoon climbed to their feet and they
all
marched forward, into the teeth of the dragon.
* * * * *
“I do not understand, Herr Oberst,” Lt.
Steiniger
protested. “Why are we not
joining the
battalion massing for the defense of Schmidt?”
He looked around the long-abandoned school house where one small
squad
had been ordered to stay behind.
There
was Mueller, a brawny blacksmith before the war, who cared more about
horses
than people. Brandl stood
meekly in the
corner - older, mousy in size and coloring, slow-witted, superstitious,
but
generally reliable at following orders.
And standing at rigid attention was Ungeheuer, the rabid stammfuhrer just graduated from
the
Hitler Youth. There was nothing
soft
about him, despite his years.
He had
the blond good looks that every German mother-to-be prayed her unborn
child
would have. With those Nordic
features,
and chiseled arms and shoulders, Ungeheuer was an athlete who had
commanded
hundreds of younger boys in his Gefolgschaft. He would be an asset to any
army…except
that… there was something chilling about those icy blue eyes, something
not
human.
Steiniger could not voice his
reservations. One had to be careful at all times,
what one
said. To whom one spoke
it. In what tones. He wondered if he had been…incautious… in his question to
the SS
colonel.
“Are you familiar with the American holiday
called
Halloween?” Col. Drache asked suddenly.
He did not sound displeased at being questioned, Steiniger
decided. More… preoccupied with his own
plans.
The lieutenant shook his head.
“The streets of America are filled with
ghosts and
witches and monsters on Halloween,” Drache explained. His eyes had a far-off look, visions of greedy little
evil
spirits amusing him. “There,
children
go to the doors of strangers.
Really! They hope to get
treats. But sometimes,” Drache
smiled,
his thin lips curled in a line parallel to the scar that ran under his
eye
toward his sideburns, “they find an unpleasant
surprise.”
What in heaven’s name did this have to do
with his
question? Steiniger looked at
the
enlisted men around him. They
were
equally puzzled by the words of the SS officer, but knew better than to
challenge him. The threat of
the
punishment battalion stifled any questions.
Colonel Drache looked around the room, like
a
headmaster appraising his students.
His
smile turned into a smug sneer.
“We,”
he concluded, “are planning an unpleasant surprise for anyone knocking
on the
fatherland’s door.”
* * * * *
First squad and third squad marched
intermingled
along another muddy road. Dixon
was
concentrating on keeping ten feet between himself and the soldier in
front of
him, when he noticed a couple buddies from the replacement depot fall
into
step, one on either side of him.
“Hey, Dix.”
“Hey yourself, Harry. Didn’t they teach you what “single file” means, back in
Basic?”
Harrison was tall and thin, with an
aristocratic
bearing that made him cocky beyond his years.
He shrugged, as though rules didn’t really apply to him. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you and
me. We’re in the lucky squad.” His eyes shone behind wire-rim
glasses, specs
he hated because they made him look bookish.
He was eager to see some action.
“Now, Tommy, here, is in third squad.
He might have cause to worry."
“Lucky?
What
do you mean?” Dixon asked.
Tommy just
gulped.
“Lucky - sure.
Didn’t you hear? Sgt.
Saunders
is charmed.”
Dixon lowered his voice. “Charmed? I heard
he’s
got so many purple hearts he’d get a hernia trying to wear them
all. That doesn’t sound very lucky to
me. And he’s been captured – more than
once –
too!” He felt a little smug
that he’d
been privy to such information, courtesy of tagging along after the
voluble
Kirby.
Tommy’s eyes grew round as his freckled face
gleamed
with awe.
“That’s what I mean,” Harrison said. “Saunders walks into situations that
would
spell the end for any regular GI, and he always comes out
alive.”
“They don’t come any braver than Sarge,
that’s what
I hear,” Dixon conceded.
Self-doubt was written all over Tommy’s
face, but
looking around at his fellow replacements, he swallowed his fears,
unspoken.
“I’m not afraid,” Harrison boasted with a
grin. “I figure serving with Saunders is a
sure
thing for bringing home a medal!”
So intent were the three on their private
conversation that they didn’t notice Sarge coming up behind them. “Don’t bunch up,” was all he said,
and they
quickly dispersed, Tommy nodding his compliance so vigorously that his
too-big
helmet rattled around his ears.
Saunders shook his head as they fell back in
line. He had been lucky so
far. But that was the thing about luck -
there
always came a time when a man’s luck simply ran out.
* * * * *
“Mortars!”
The Americans were deep in the Huertgen
forest, near
a place called Todten Bruch on the map - Deadman’s Moor - when the
dragon woke
with a roar.
There was no shelter. No foxhole. No
one to
shoot back at.
All you could do under the hail of artillery
was run
back the way you had come, or pray.
One of the replacements, wild-eyed,
helmet-less and
unarmed, ran screaming past Saunders.
Sarge opened his mouth to yell at him and realized he didn’t
know the
boy’s name. So he lunged at him
as the
kid whipped past, wrapped his arms around the soldier’s knees and
brought him
down with a well-timed tackle.
The
kid’s hands clawed desperately at the mud, mindless of the man now
sitting on
his back, clawed until his fingers bled.
Saunders rolled off, hauled him to his knees and then dragged
him to the
nearest tree. He stood the boy
up
against the trunk of the fir and growled, “Grab
this!”
A shell exploded nearby and the boy dove for
the
ground again, shaking uncontrollably, his eyes screwed
shut.
“They’re exploding above the trees,” Sarge
shouted
in his ear, grabbing him under the arms and pulling him upright
again. “Standing up makes you a smaller
target for
falling shrapnel. Just keep a helmet on.”
He looked around; there was no sign of the boy’s helmet.
The damn kid was so young, so scared. Even his freckles were pale with
fear.
Sarge shook his head, took off his own
helmet and
put it on the boy’s mop of toffee-colored curls.
Another mortar exploded, thirty feet above
them.
Then the air was filled with the shrill
whine of
incoming shells and the deafening roar of German artillery exploding
all around
them. They were trapped in a
maelstrom
of shredded tree limbs, broken bodies, blood-curdling screams.
A canopy of razor-sharp splinters fell over
them
like a sudden downpour. One
soldier,
sprawled in a ditch, cried out as a severed branch impaled him through
his
thigh. More cries of “Medic!”
floated
through the yellow, smoke-filled air between
explosions.
“Stay here,” Sarge ordered, and scrambled
off to
help the nearest victim.
He didn’t know this kid’s name either, just
that he
was new to second platoon.
Replacements
had been rotating in faster than he could keep track of them. Saunders knelt in the wet moss and
discovered blood spurting from the soldier’s leg, a pulsing little
geyser that
soaked his uniform in seconds.
Without
waiting for help, Sarge tore off the man’s belt and wrapped it high
around the
injured leg. His knuckles
whitened with
the strain of making it tight enough… tighter… the gushing ebbed…
stopped.
Mud splattered over them as someone skidded
to a
stop beside them.
Doc.
Saunders leaned back on his heels, his hands
shaking, and realized the shelling had stopped. No more deafening, concussive blasts. Just thin cries for help.
And the acrid smell of burnt powder.
Squinting through the smoke, he sought out the men in his
squad.
Littlejohn, as usual, was the easiest to
identify in
any mass of bedraggled soldiers, camouflaged with filth. He stood head and shoulders above
the three
youngsters he had gathered with him at the base of another fir tree
nearby. He had a firm grip on
one
private’s sleeve, making sure the panicked kid wouldn’t bolt out into
the
open.
Kirby had been caught in the open, crossing
a bald
patch of earth created by an errant artillery shell from an earlier
battle. He lay curled in the
bottom of
the shallow crater now, his tightly coiled body sheltering the Browning
as if
protecting his best friend. For
a
moment he lay motionless; then Saunders saw his helmet move. And then Kirby stood up and shrugged
off a
cloak of scorched pine needles, with all the distaste of an alley cat
shaking
off the effects of a sudden cloudburst.
A cat with nine lives, Saunders thought, as Kirby scrambled
nimbly out
of the crater and went to check on another soldier who was lying
nearby, head
buried under his arms, shaking.
It took a little more effort to find
Caje. The woods-savvy scout had apparently
found a
massive fallen tree and melted under it when the shelling started. He emerged now, unfolding himself
limb by
limb, and suddenly broke into a run as he discovered a fallen
comrade.
It was Billy.
Sarge took a step in that direction himself
before
he saw Billy sit up groggily and wave Caje off with a familiar “I’m all
right”
gesture. Relieved, Saunders
turned back
to Doc, and watched the tired medic place a gentle hand across the
man’s
unseeing eyes. The corpsman
looked up
at Sarge and shook his head.
Saunders stared at the man on the ground,
and felt a
familiar numbness start to wash over him, a self-defense mechanism that
lately
seemed to rise without warning, to isolate him and protect him from the
threat
of incapacitating grief. Sound
faded
away to nothing. Color leeched
away. Doc moved in slow motion,
climbing wearily to his feet….
Then Captain Jampel’s hoarse voice
reverberated
through the silence. “Move
out!”
Adrenaline banished the numbness. Saunders gripped his Thompson.
The platoon milled together, some men
kicking the
ground nervously, some standing still rooted in shock. One of the new men, Dixon, was
losing his
lunch after stumbling over a boot on the trail and discovering that it
wasn’t
empty. No one stepped forward
at the
command. Sarge looked back,
where the
captain was tapping his compass and conferring with Lt. Hanley. Hanley caught Saunders’ eye, a
silent
communication honed by months served together, and the sergeant
nodded. Without a word, he checked his
weapon and
started off again. One by one
the men
in his squad fell in behind him - Caje and Kirby exchanging looks and
then
setting off in his footsteps.
Littlejohn held out his hand and then hauled Billy to his feet;
they
followed. Harrison was the
first of the
newbies to fall in, with all the false bravado of a high school
football player
taking the field again, pumping himself up with a muttered pep
talk. “C’mon!
Let’s go get ‘em!” One
by one,
the other men in second platoon staggered after them. In a minute everyone was on the move again, deeper into
Germany.
A minute after that, the mortar barrage
began
again.
* * * * *
“There are many ways to break a
man.”
Colonel Josef Drache’s mouth curled up in a
satisfied smile, like a man remembering the sweet aroma of warm
cinnamon
strudel, fresh from the oven on a cold winter morning. A hungry man, the lieutenant
thought, who
wanted that taste again, and soon.
Lt. Franz Steiniger squirmed inside, at
having the
SS officer attached to his company.
Himmler had recently begun inserting many of his men into the
regular
army troops, to ferret out any hints of Wehrkraftzersetzung
- an attitude of weakness that might lead, unchecked, to withdrawal
or
surrender or desertion. The SS
punished
such thoughts with swift reprisals.
When he was last in Berlin, Steiniger had been appalled to see a
soldier
– a decorated soldier! - swinging lifeless from a lamppost, a rope
around his
broken neck. For what
indiscretion,
Steiniger wondered. A placard
had been
pinned to the dead man’s chest that read “I hang here because I am too
cowardly
to defend my fatherland”.
The SS “black shirts” had no mercy.
“Yes,” Drache repeated softly to himself,
one long
finger absently stroking a scar that ran under his left eye toward his
ear. “There are many ways to
break a
man….”
Steiniger hoped the SS Colonel’s enthusiasm
for
intimidation would be directed at the prospect of new enemy prisoners,
and not
at the war-weary veterans and sickly old draftees who were awaiting his
command.
* * * * *
“Hey Sarge!”
Saunders groaned.
The brass had finally, reluctantly, called a retreat and what
was left
of the company had collapsed back at the point of departure, beside a
weed-choked, abandoned cemetery near Richelskaul, just beyond the
Krauts’
artillery range. Sarge had lost
track
of Hanley in the melee, and he wasn’t about to go looking for orders
now. The lieutenant, he figured, was
probably
holed up with Capt. Jampel, calculating how many casualties they’d
incurred per
yard gained or lost. Saunders
wanted no
part of that kind of meeting.
So he had
found a nice solid, unshakable hunk of marble - a tombstone in fact –
and let
himself sink to a position of semi-comfort against it and had just now
closed
his eyes, shutting out the day’s horrors, letting his mind search for
that
blessed state of numbness again.
This
time, it was the deep, lightly accented voice of the Cajun soldier
interrupting
his stupor. But unlike some of
the men
in the platoon, Caje wasn’t one to strike up idle conversation on the
front
lines. If he had something to
say, it
was worth listening to. The
fact that
he seemed out of breath merely confirmed Sarge’s
judgment.
Saunders raised his head to find the man in
front of
him bent over, hands on knees, blood on the front of his jacket. “Caje?”
He reached a hand out to steady his friend, but it wasn’t
necessary.
Caje saw the source of his concern and waved
it
off. “Not my blood. It’s Lt. Hanley.” He straightened, his breath coming more slowly now,
condensing in
small puffs of mist in the cold November air.
“He took some shrapnel.
Doc and
I got him back to Battalion Aid.
He’s
gonna be okay. But they want to
see you
there, right away.”
That was a half-mile back. A helluva long way to hike, Sarge thought, when he felt
like
crap. But he couldn’t complain
in front
of a man who had just helped haul nearly 200 pounds of officer and gear
that
same distance and then apparently run all the way back. Just once, Saunders mused, he’d like
to hear
Caje complain. But then again,
he
supposed Kirby griped enough for the whole squad.
Using his Thompson as a crutch to climb to
his feet,
Saunders pushed off from the carved headstone.
“Have the guys do an ammo check and get re-stocked while we
can. Don’t want anyone running short
tomorrow.”
“Right Sarge.”
The weary soldier slumped down into the spot Sarge had just
vacated,
deciding it wouldn’t hurt to check his own rifle and ammo belt before
summoning
up the energy to check on the others.
As Saunders walked away, Caje noticed that his NCO’s sleeve was
frayed
and streaked with blood. “Hey,
Sarge?” Caje started to climb
back to
his feet, but Saunders just ignored him and trudged off down the
darkening
road. He appeared steady
enough. Caje shook his head, eased himself
back
down, and thumbed back the magazine on his M1 to check his
clip.
* * * * *
Outside Battalion Aid, a couple of litter
bearers
were hard at work with scrub brushes and a bucket, trying to scour away
the
dark stains on a vacant stretcher.
The
redhead looked up when a soldier approached - another walking wounded,
he sighed.
“Lieutenant Hanley here?” Saunders asked
them,
ambling to a stop and weaving slightly.
The shorter man nodded and shrugged one shoulder toward the
tent. “They’re fixin’ to send him to the
rear,” he
said. “But he ain’t left
yet. They took the worst cases out
first. So that’s a good sign.” The corpsman paused. “Leastways, it’s a good sign if you
like
officers.”
Saunders dipped his head in a short
nod. A lot of the new officers were
nothing more
than 90 day wonders, who learned what they knew from a book and had no
patience
to listen to someone fresh from a foxhole.
But Hanley wasn’t one of those.
He was a good officer, respected, and more than that, a
friend. All Saunders said aloud though, was
“We
could use more like this one.”
Then he stepped inside the olive drab
tent. The canvas walls kept out the worst
of the
biting wind, but there was no heat.
He
shivered. Doc materialized at
his
side. “Let me take a look at
that,” he
said, taking Sarge gently by the left arm.
“What?”
“Looks like you got those stripes shot right
off,”
Doc answered, with a rueful smile.
Saunders looked down and saw it was true; underneath the muck,
his left
sleeve was torn and bloodstained and the chevrons of rank were dangling
by a
thread. He shrugged. “It’s just a crease. I’m here to see
Hanley.”
“Well, he can wait two minutes while I patch
this
up,” Doc said. When it came to
his
patients, Doc didn’t care what anyone else said. He was in charge.
And
with a speed sharpened on body-strewn battlefields, he was as good as
his
word. In two minutes he had the
sarge’s
jacket peeled off, sulfa powder and a field dressing slapped on, the
bandage
ends tied into place, and then the field jacket eased back
on.
“Now, you can see the Lieutenant,” he
said.
Gil Hanley was propped up on a cot in the
corner,
his face pale but his green eyes alert.
He held a clipboard on his lap, and set down his pen when
Saunders
approached. “Your squad all
okay?” he
asked. It wasn’t what he had
summoned
his platoon sergeant there to say to him, but there are few times in
battle for
social pleasantries. When an
opportunity presented itself, Hanley was one who felt there was value
in
observing the niceties. He knew
just
what each man in his command needed to hear – to focus – to
forget. Certainly, Saunders seemed to relax
a little
at the question.
“Yeah, yeah.
Live to fight another day,” he quipped.
“How about you?”
Hanley winced and put his left hand to his
side. “Piece of shrapnel had my
name on
it today,” he said. “It won’t
keep me
down long. But they want to do
X-rays
before they let me back up here.”
They both knew he wouldn’t be back as soon
as he
implied.
“Did you know Eddie Dugan?” Hanley asked
suddenly.
Saunders looked at him
blankly.
“Kid from third squad; just came up from the
repple
depple last week. Got hit by a
tree
burst today.”
Saunders turned toward Doc. The medic nodded; Dugan was the kid
who had
bled to death in the road while they were helpless to save him. “No, sir,” Saunders turned back to
Hanley. “I know which one he was, but I can’t
say I
know anything about him. Why
don’t you
ask Murphy?” Ed Murphy was the
tech
sergeant who mother-henned the newbies in third squad. Tim MacAllister shepherded second
squad,
while Saunders led first squad.
“Murphy didn’t make it,” Hanley said
simply. “I’m writing his folks after I
finish this
letter.”
Oh.
So
that’s why the interest.
“Well,”
Saunders scuffed the ground uneasily.
“You can tell Dugan’s family that Eddie… wasn’t afraid. And he didn’t
suffer.”
That was a lie.
They were all afraid.
But he
didn’t suffer…long. Saunders
wished he
could offer more. Some
reassurance that
Eddie had friends who cared what happened to him. But he didn’t even know if Dugan had friends. Getting to know the men more deeply,
just
cut you more deeply when they fell.
You
had to stay a little detached, didn’t you, to
survive?
What would they write his own mother,
Saunders
suddenly wondered, if it had been him caught in that tree burst?
“Tell them,” he said impulsively, “that
Eddie wasn’t
alone when he died.” Somehow,
it seemed
important that his family know that.
He
blinked, and then looked away, staring out the open tent flap, not
wanting
anyone to read the thoughts in his eyes.
A truck pulled up outside.
Soldiers
leapt to their feet to help unload the wounded. And then they fell back when they saw that the bodies in
the
truck were already cold and stiff.
Hanley broke into a coughing fit and
Saunders’
jerked his head back to offer him a sympathetic look. If there was anything more miserable than a cold, it was
a cold
when you had a hole in your chest.
“Why
don’t you rest, Lieutenant?” he said.
“You don’t have to write those letters.”
“Yes.
I do.”
And Saunders knew he would. Whether it was for the grieving
family back
home, or solace to ease his own conscience, he wasn’t sure, but he knew
Hanley
would write those letters.
Saunders was
glad he didn’t have to.
“A word of advice.”
Hanley’s voice was getting weaker, his eyes starting to look
unfocused. “Don’t be such a
stranger to
your men. Especially the new
ones. Be patient. Let them …. ” he broke off in another coughing fit.
Saunders frowned.
He knew he was tired and hurting; knew his brain felt as thick
as that
sludge they called coffee. But
he
sensed that Hanley was trying to tell him something more than those
words of
advice. He just couldn’t make
out
what. Was it possible that the
lieutenant knew he had just collapsed, there in the cemetery, without
even
checking to make sure everyone in the squad was safe first?
When had that started happening? When had he given up hoping that
everyone
would make it back unscathed?
When had
he started acting like it didn’t matter?
But the lieutenant couldn’t read his mind;
couldn’t
know what Saunders was feeling.
It had
to be something else… but what?
Hanley sagged back against the cot. His fingers lacked the strength to
hold the
pen any longer, and it rolled out of his hand and onto the floor. Doc quietly picked it up and
pocketed it.
“Captain Jampel… wants to see you, right
away,”
Hanley rasped. “We don’t have a
single
officer left. Every one got
hit.” He coughed, and winced again. “He’s going to give you a field
promotion to
second lieutenant, Saunders.
Congratulations.”
Sarge rocked back on his heels. “Whoa!
I don’t know about that, sir.”
Sending his men off on missions without him. Writing their parents when they didn’t make it back. He wasn’t sure this was an
opportunity he
wanted to take.
“Saunders.
There isn’t anyone else. You
don’t really think you have a choice about this, do you?” Hanley’s words were slurred; his
eyelids
fluttered shut. Doc took the
clipboard
from his lax hands and laid it on the floor beside
him.
“No sir.
I
guess I don’t,” Saunders said softly.
Hanley had the last word, his voice no more
than a
whisper. “And get yourself a
fresh
jacket before you go back.”
There was
the ghost of a grin. “That
blood tends
to scare the new guys.”
Saunders ducked his head in a nod. Nothing got past Lieutenant
Hanley.
“C’mon,” Doc said,
“I’ll show you where the captain has his CP,” and led him out of
the
tent.
* * * * *
Steiniger listened to the sounds of an
artillery
barrage off to the north.
Peering
through the broken window, it looked as though some giant hand had
dropped
splashes of orange paint on the broad canvas of the lead-gray sky, and
then the
clouds slowly absorbed the color until the canvas was left bare
again. Steiniger knew the 116th
Panzers
were preparing to face off against the Americans, and his own
89th
Infantry Division was there to support them.
He still did not understand why the SS officer had ordered this
one
squad to stay behind in the hamlet of Simonskall.
But Herr Oberst Drache did not seem to like
direct
questions.
Mueller and Brandt and Ungeheuer had
evacuated the
handful of civilians who had remained, and the soldiers were now
rotating watch
over the dirt road that led into the village.
Lt. Steiniger and Col. Drache were alone in the one-room
schoolhouse;
Drache studying his maps in the fire light cast by the wood-burning
stove;
Steiniger watching the orange fade to the north and rise to the west.
The
artillery was silent now; the color was the hand of God drawing the
curtain on
another day. That was what his
grandmother used to call sunset.
But
Steiniger could not share that whimsical thought with the colonel. SS officers renounced all
religion.
Drache looked up to see the lieutenant
watching
him. The young man didn’t look
young
any more, he thought to himself. Steiniger was 22 but looked twice that
age
now. Drache had a son the same
age. Or he would be 22 - if he
hadn’t
fallen on the Russian front two years before.
Franz Steiniger reminded him of Erik in some ways. Each was tall and slender, wore
glasses, and
would have chosen an academic career if the war had not
intervened. Because of this resemblance, Drache
allowed
himself to be more tolerant of the lieutenant’s questions than he would
have
been of any of the enlisted men.
It was perhaps, an out-of-character
indulgence.
Drache’s swift rise in Himmler’s favor had
not come
about because he was soft, or sympathetic.
He had first come to the attention of the SS two years before,
when he
was a member of Reserve Police Battalion 101, assigned to Poland. Drache had distinguished himself in
the Judenjagd, the Jew Hunt,
where he
had tracked down over 100 of the vermin who had tried to hide in the
Parczew
forest. He had personally
executed
dozens of them, coldly - man, woman and child - with a single
economical bullet
to the back of each head.
Actually, he had nothing in particular
against the
Jews. They were untermenschen, less than human.
There was no challenge to hunting them.
Since being recruited into the SS, Drache found it more
stimulating to
be ruthless against his fellow Germans.
After all, in this very part of Germany, he had recently
captured and
interrogated suspected members of the Red Orchestra, the German
resistance. He had not proven
their
guilt, but suspicion was enough to banish them to the KZ - the konzentrationslager. Before that, he had hanged a teenage
civilian caught looting a radio during a bomb raid. The colonel had even ordered one Hitler Youth to the
firing squad
for voicing concern about a German defeat.
No one could say Herr Oberst Drache was not vigilant against
Germans.
But Herr Leutnant Steiniger had said and
done
nothing yet to warrant such retaliation.
And he did remind the colonel of Erik.
No, if Drache was hungry to administer further punishment, he
would have
to look forward to turning his special talents on the enemy,
instead. He looked down at his watch. Soon.
Very soon.
* * * * *
Most new officers, especially anyone who
wanted to
make a good impression on the man who had recommended him for a
promotion,
wouldn’t contradict that superior on his first briefing. But Saunders wasn’t like most
men.
“Captain, pushing through the Huertgen
Forest right
now is suicide,” he said.
“We’ve got to
get some air support to take out that Kraut artillery on the
Brandenberg-Bernstein
ridge first.”
Jampel rubbed the bandage that swathed his
head like
a Hindu turban. “Saunders, we
can’t
wait for the weather to break.
It could
be weeks! Maybe you aren’t
aware of the
strategic value of this territory.
It
is imperative that VII Corps break through to the Cologne Plains; get
our tanks
across the Roer River and onto open ground.
Do you realize we are less than 40 miles away from the
Rhine?” The captain stabbed a finger at the
map in
front of him.
“Yes sir, I know….” Saunders stared down
that the
map. The push was east along
the
Germeter-Huertgen road. To the
south of
Germeter lay the villages of Vossenack, Kommerscheidt, Schmidt,
connected by a
dotted line, and then the Roer dams.
“Sir, has Battalion considered the possibility that we could be
marching
into a trap?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, sir, look there. What if the Germans have set demolitions here at the
Schwammenauel Dam? They may be
just
waiting for us to get half our battalion across the Roer River. Then, they blow the dam. The flooding would take out our men
and
equipment, worse than their artillery does.
And it would cut off the forward companies, east of the river,
so they
couldn’t pull back. They’d be
lost.” Saunders’ finger traced
the dotted
line that represented what was, at best, a dirt road. “If the Krauts could mass a counter-attack from Schmidt,
they
could box in any of our troops trapped west of the Roer River
too.”
He looked up then, meeting the captain
eye-to-eye. “We would be wiped
out,
sir.”
Jampel didn’t answer for a long moment. He frowned as though his head
hurt. Then he nodded. “We need to take Schmidt, to protect the right
flank. But we aren’t pushing off till the
day
after tomorrow – gives us a day to lick our wounds, and hope the skies
clear
enough to get finally get some air support.
You’ve got tomorrow, Lieutenant.
Send a recon patrol out to see what we’re walking
into.”
The new officer was stunned. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d
be given
the responsibility for making sure the division wasn’t walking into
disaster. He didn’t want the
job. It was force of habit that made him
the
words leave his lips without thought.
“Yes sir. I’ll do
it.”
“Not you,” Jampel clarified. “I said send a patrol, not lead a
patrol. I can’t risk losing any
more
officers.”
Saunders swallowed; his mouth felt dry. He didn’t want to go – but even more
strongly, he didn’t want to order his men to go in his place. Should he feel relieved that he was
spared
the risk? But there wasn’t time
to
dwell on it – Jampel was explaining exactly what he wanted done.
* * * * *
The sky was black when Saunders finally left
the
command post. He stopped at the
Aid
Tent, but Lt. Hanley had already been evacuated to the rear. Leaving the tent, he found a vaguely
familiar face, pale and freckled, framed by short ginger-colored
colicky
hair. The boy looked lost. He was one of the trio of newbies in
the
platoon that had all arrived on the same day last week – the one who’d
been
assigned to third squad. Not my
problem, not my squad, was Saunders’ first reaction. And then he remembered that the entire platoon was his
problem
now.
“You!”
“Yes… yes sir?”
“You looking for
somebody?”
“Well, for something, anyway.” The boy smiled weakly. “Doc told me to come up here to get
this
looked at.” He waved a
freshly-bandaged
left hand a little proudly. “So
I did. But I just realized that I left my
helmet
there somewhere. Actually … ” a
look of
guilt flashed across his face.
“I think
I left your helmet there. I
lost mine
in the barrage this morning, and you gave me yours.” He gestured at the helmet that now hung from the bayonet
sheathed
on his belt, his third helmet in 24 hours.
“I picked up another, but, gee, I’m sorry….” He looked positively miserable.
Saunders remembered then – this was the kid
from the
tree. He hadn’t thought
anything of it
at the time, but suddenly, it seemed a dark omen now. That camo helmet had seen Saunders through all those
impossible
situations that had made him a legend.
Indestructible. It was
gone
now. And if it was pure luck
that kept
him alive, maybe that was gone now, too.
“Anyway,” the boy was saying, “it’s so
danged dark
now, I take two steps away from the tent there and I can’t see a
thing. I don’t have any idea how to get
back to my
foxhole.”
Saunders banished his reverie. “Come here,” he said. “What’s your name son?” Son?
Sheesh, he was even starting to sound like an
officer.
The boy shouldered his weapon and stepped
forward. “Private T.J. Thomas,
sir. Folks call me Tommy,” he
added a
little sheepishly. “Everybody
except my
Mom.”
“I’m your new CO… Lt. Saunders.” It sounded strange. He wasn’t sure he liked it. “You ever hear of military braille …
Tommy?”
“Uh… no sir…?”
Saunders took the soldier’s right hand and
placed it
on the telephone wire that ran along the ground from the command
post. Then he picked up the strand and
straightened, so that the line was held hip high. “Military braille,” he repeated.
“Even when you’re blind, you can feel your way.”
“Wow.”
The
single word from Tommy resonated with unadulterated hero worship, and
Saunders
shook his head and turned his back on the recruit, to lead the way. A
trek that
had taken 15 minutes in daylight took four times that now. The deeper they went into the woods,
the
more Pvt. Thomas slowed. Soon
his teeth
began chattering like a Kraut schmeisser.
“You cold, Tommy?” Saunders whispered. Who wasn’t?
But a man who couldn’t keep silent when it counted could lead to
a lot
of good men getting killed.
“No, sir.
I…uh…I guess it’s nerves, a bit.”
Even worse.
It was bad enough to have a green recruit or two in the
squad. Now he had a whole platoon to worry
about,
and he didn’t have time for molly-coddling.
He remembered Hanley preaching patience to him, though, and
resisted the
impulse to just boot the kid out of his way and leave him behind. It was tempting though. Instead, he reached into a pocket
and drew
out a pack of gum. “Here.”
Thomas couldn’t see it. Saunders groped forward along the telephone wire, found
the boy’s
hand, and put the foil wrapped package in his palm. “Chew on some gum,” he told him.
The anxious private did as he was ordered,
and the
taste of spearmint seemed to soothe his nerves, as well as muffle the
chattering teeth. “Thanks,
Lieutenant!” He paused. “I – uh – ” his voice dropped to a
shameful
murmur. “I don’t think I’m cut
out for
this soldiering business, sir.”
“Oh, kid, none of us are,” Saunders
muttered. Once upon a time Sergeant Saunders
might
have taken a moment for a much-needed pep talk, but Lieutenant Saunders
couldn’t remember how. He
sensed Tommy
stumbling along on his heels like a clumsy puppy and they inched their
way
forward.
It took nearly an hour before they were back
at
their line. Tommy was hauled in
by a
shivering friend who welcomed more body heat in the half-empty
dugout. The phone wire led beyond them, to
Sgt. Tim
MacAllister’s foxhole. Saunders
staggered there, briefed MacAllister about the new chain of command,
and then
collapsed, spent, and slept like the dead.
Like the dead that haunted the Huertgen
Forest,
lifeless bodies hugging the cold damp earth, whose restless spirits
were not at
peace.
MacAllister woke when the soldier beside him
stirred
and crawled out of their damp foxhole.
He squinted at his watch.
0700. The sun may have
risen,
but it was hidden behind a cloud blanket, an infinite expanse of
blue-gray, as
though the whole planet was wrapped in the wool of the German
uniform.
Just what Hitler had in mind, he thought
with a
shudder.
Saunders reappeared, silent as a ghost. “Gather the platoon – what’s left of
it -
have them met me at the south cemetery wall at 0730. We’ve got a mission,” he said, and tersely filled the
sergeant
in.
“Yes, sir!”
MacAllister hadn’t served with Saunders long; the lanky Texan
had been
with a different unit when he’d been wounded in the foot at Melun, just
a week
before the Allies liberated Paris.
That
was followed by two months in a hospital in England. He’d been back just a week, re-assigned from the
Replacement
Depot to K Company. Hanley’s
platoon.
Saunders’s platoon now.
It wasn’t a hard mental shift for him to
think of
the man in front of him as Lt. Saunders.
MacAllister lingered, waiting to see if the other man was
expecting a
salute. But Saunders turned
away,
checking a stack of short-wave radios.
Satisfied, MacAllister scurried out into the dawn, to tell the
men about
the mission and the new promotion too.
The first foxhole he came to belonged to a
pair from
first squad. Littlejohn and
Nelson. The
big man was already awake and working on a small campfire. It seemed to MacAllister that he’d
heard
Littlejohn was a farmer in Nebraska before the war. Probably used to waking up with the roosters. MacAllister gave him the message,
left him
to wake up his buddy, and moved on.
Thomas and Dixon shared another man-made
ditch. It
didn’t matter that they weren’t in the same squad - the platoon has
been
decimated to the point where squad distinctions no longer
mattered. The new guys had gravitated to each
other,
dug in, and now they were both sound asleep, although how anyone could
look so
uncomfortable and remain asleep was more than MacAllister could figure
out. The two men were lying in a puddle
of cold
water, and the foxhole was neither long enough nor deep enough to
adequately
shelter them. I ought to split
the new
guys up, the sergeant thought, pair them each up with someone a little
more
experienced. But he knew that
would be
hard. When they’d come into K
company
from the Repple-Depple with Harrison, the old-timers had kept to
themselves,
and hadn’t exactly welcomed them with open arms. They’d nicknamed the newcomers Tom, Dick and Harry -
generic
names for three more anonymous bodies in GI uniforms. Lumped together, the three teenagers had clung to each
other,
survived their first battle together, and had already begun that
unshakable
bond that MacAllister had seen so often develop in combat.
MacAllister squatted beside Thomas and
Dixon, shook
the nearest shoulder and passed along the order.
He looked for ‘Harry’ next. Harrison was a cocky kid from a prep
school
in New England, temporarily billeted with platoon medic. MacAllister hadn’t learned the
corpsman’s
name yet, but no one else seemed to either.
Everyone just called him Doc.
As
the sergeant approached, he stumbled a little on the uneven terrain and
hissed
as his recently healed ankle objected to the sudden strain. Doc was alert in an instant, even in
his
sleep sensitive to the sounds of men in pain.
The sergeant reassured him that he was fine and told him to wake
Harrison and meet at the rendezvous.