Under False Flags

by Steve Anderson

  Florian stabbed at the map with his gloved finger, wiping away snowflakes. “I found another road. Up ahead. It runs a little steep and winding, but it meets a main one eventually.”

  “To where?” Frings said.

  “Well, east or west. It cuts through the sector, gets us back to Germany or further into Belgium, depending on the compass.”

  “So we take it,” Frings said.

  ***

  December 17. 11:50 a.m.: Wendell Lett, Weber, and Auggie rode in a jeep with a square-jawed Army Ranger assigned to help them hunt down the enemy false Americans. Archie and Selfer had sent them out at first light. They’d been at it for hours after receiving various leads and pinpoints from forward patrols. Like hunters hoping to see further, they traveled along the tops of the Ardennes’ many ridges when the roads let them. This almost seemed more dangerous than running into secret German commandos since the roads were icy, winding, and ran along precipices. Atop one ridge, Lett crouched with the Ranger at the rocky edge with binoculars, scanning a snow-covered valley below. The snow and ice crunching under their feet, knees. The Ranger wouldn’t give his name, but that didn’t stop Lett from talking to him. He’d have to scrabble as much information as he could from here on out.

  “Why they send you?” he asked the Ranger. “And spare me the gung-ho Rangers bit.”

  “S-2 said four to a jeep,” the Ranger said, shrugging. He parroted what Selfer told them. They would hunt down the fake Americans by making themselves appear equally fake. The German jeep teams had signals they were to use, to identify themselves to possible fellow jeep teams. Then, when close enough, they would lure in the fake Americans with their German.

  “And the tight-lips bit,” Lett added. “Spare me that too.”

  The Ranger sized up Lett as if he was a gun to be reassembled. “Okay. You want to know? I was at Aachen.”

  Lett remembered: In Aachen, S-2 told them when explaining their own false flag recon mission, crack Army Rangers directed by OSS had helped US units conquer the city by infiltrating the enemy line disguised as Germans. “Tough going?” Lett said.

  “Yes, and not really. Didn’t know what hit them. Killed a pile of them. Funny thing,” the Ranger added, “the Germans are doing the same to us now. You?”

  “Cologne. It was Cologne.”

  “Don’t think I’ve heard of that operation.”

  “No, you wouldn’t and never will, I’m guessing. Tell me something: You Rangers, did your brass make you wear fake GI dog tags going in?”

  “Not a chance. That there would be selling us down the river. No saving a guy.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  At their backs, their jeep sat parked on the narrow ridge road. The jeep had the telltale blackout headlights and a red strip on the bumper. The canvas top was down. Weber sat in front and Auggie in back. They were all lure, but they were also sitting ducks for friendly fire. Selfer had given them a password that was supposed to save them from friendly suspicion, but who knew if they could get close enough to give it? The other catch: They wore no German tunics underneath their American uniforms, unlike the German commandos. That was just too close to the real thing, even with safety passwords.

  They drove on and found another high ridge, with Lett in back next to Auggie. The jeep inched along the icy road, its tires spinning with horrid whirls like nylon ripping. A cliff ran parallel to them, spiked with snow-laden trees at odd angles.

  “I can’t look down,” Auggie said.

  “We’re decoys, they says. What a load of shit,” Weber said and popped another pep pill.

  The trees receded, the road ran out into the open, and they approached a steep, downhill grade. The Ranger slowed to another tricky stop, the idling jeep perched like a roller-coaster car about to plunge. They looked down the road descending ever lower.

  At the bottom was a shape. It was a jeep, also slowing to a stop. It was like a mirror image of theirs. Was this really happening? They half-stood in their seats.

  The jeep had blackout headlights on, they saw.

  Weber lifted binoculars. “There are four of them. And it’s got red on the bumper.”

  Auggie and the Ranger reached for their compact new M3 submachine guns. Lett grabbed at their barrels, pushed them down. “Put those away. Listen. Maybe we can talk them down.”

  “One has binoculars,” Weber said. “They’re watching us too.”

  “There’s that special signal they use,” Auggie said. “Selfer told us.”

  “I got it,” Lett said. He stood tall and removed his helmet. He turned it upside down, and held it up high.

  “They did the signal. They did it back,” Weber said.

  “I saw it,” the Ranger said.

  “Should we go back, find a squad somewhere?” Auggie said, his voice squeaking.

  “You heard S-2—we’re on our own,” Weber said.

  “We walk on down there, we’re too exposed,” the Ranger said.

  “Well, they’re not coming up here,” Lett said. “We’ll have to make the first move.”

  “We got to keep it moving,” the Ranger said. “Let’s just coast on down, best I can.”

  Lett nodded. “Okay, but nice and easy.”

  “You need a native. What the hell do I say?” Weber said to Lett.

  “Nothing,” Lett said, and whispered in his ear: “Don’t do anything. I’ll take care of it.”

  The Ranger released the brake, but slowly as if counting to ten, and let the jeep roll on, downward. The jeep coasted straight but picked up speed. They grasped at handles, held on. The Ranger shifted down, the jeep veered and the Ranger corrected the wheel one way, then the other.

  The jeep slid onward, veering to one side. The Ranger couldn’t correct it.

  The other jeep sat in their path, like a magnet attracting their own. Its driver scrambled to back up but the rear tires only spun, whirring on ice. The other jeep spun sideways.

  Lett’s jeep T-boned the other jeep. The crash jolted them, boxing their ears.

  Both jeeps slid along, locked to one another, steam hissing from a radiator.

  As they slowed to a stop, piling up icy snow, the Ranger stayed slumped forward. Weber nudged him and shrieked. The Ranger’s face had smashed into the steering wheel, crushing his nose inward. Blood gurgled from his eyes and mouth and the hollows that used to be his sinuses.

  Weber and Auggie scrambled out of the jeep, Lett climbed over the side and out, all of them panting with fear. Three of the enemy had scrambled out. A fourth stayed in the back seat, not moving.

  Weber and Auggie stepped out in the road holding their M3 guns, aiming at two of the enemy out in the road just as the two enemies did the same. Their boots slithered on the icy road and all nearly stumbled, like some sickly comic standoff in a western.

  Lett had a Colt handgun. He kept it lowered. He stayed next to his jeep, keeping the smashed vehicle between him and the road. The enemies’ third man kept to the opposite side of his jeep, his Thompson gun lowered. Peeking over, Lett could see his face, hard-set and stoic.

  The radiator whistled and died out, empty. Silence.

  “In Ordnung?” Lett shouted to all. “Anyone hurt?”

  Nods and head shakes all around, from both sides.

  “What’s with your man there?” Lett said to the enemy, about their back-seat comrade.

  “Dead since yesterday,” said one of the two in the road. “Froze up stiff.”

  Weber had blood on his forehead. He wiped at it.

  “You hurt?” one of the enemies out in the road said to Weber.

  “I’m fine,” Weber said.

  They were speaking German. For a moment, they seemed all Germans and fake Americans. Situation stabilized, Lett thought. But how would he persuade the Germans to give up without a fight? Surely they knew they’d be shot.

  The enemy by his jeep had moved around toward Lett, but keeping a corner of his own smashed vehicle between them. “Who are you really?” he w
hispered to Lett. “What side you on?”

  The words jolted Lett. What could he say to this? “I’m no one,” he whispered back. “I’m neither.”

  The two enemies in the road, still keeping aim on Weber and Auggie, began to pull back their American uniforms. German uniforms showed underneath, one Luftwaffe and one Army.

  Auggie gaped. Weber struggled to breathe, hyperventilating, another panic attack.

  “What’s wrong with him?” said the German from the Army.

  “He . . . he’s sick. Can’t breathe,” Auggie said in broken German.

  “Show us your tunics,” barked the Luftwaffe German. “Show us now!”

  Auggie and Weber shook their heads. They squatted lower, still aiming.

  Lett and the German by his jeep eyed each other, the German giving Lett a faint shrug and a look that seemed to say: He cannot stop his comrades, they do what they do. Lett nodded back.

  “Stand down,” Lett shouted to Weber and Auggie. “Calm it. At ease.”

  “What’s he saying over there?” the Luftwaffe German said. “Stand up, you there!”

  “You do it! Hands up!” Auggie shouted back.

  “All of you, no,” Lett said. “Stop, listen to me—”

  Shots burst from both sides. A German went down, Auggie fell. Weber and the other German staggered and fell back, ripped with bullets, bleeding.

  “They’re Amis!” one bloodied German in the road shouted, “it’s a trick—”

  The German near Lett fired at his comrade, laying him out dead.

  Lett had ducked for cover behind his jeep. He glanced over. Weber lay in the road, his chest and stomach ripped open and disgorged, his entrails creeping across the snow, steaming. Two Germans lay dead opposite him, the snow growing red around them. Auggie lay curled up beyond Weber, moaning. The German near Lett positioned to fire his Thompson at Auggie—Lett could see the barrel through the mangled jeeps, then the man’s face. The German scowled, fighting a bloodlust that Lett recognized too well.

  The German pulled up. He aimed at his frozen comrade in the jeep. He fired high into the air, to empty his magazine.

  Lett bolted out and around the jeeps, aiming his Colt.

  The German raised his arms. He still had the scowl. He still held his Tommy gun. “Shoot me. Put me down,” he said.

  Lett walked around him, still aiming but keeping his distance.

  The German set down his Tommy gun in the road, and raised his arms again. “You do it,” he said. “Put me down. Do it! They make you the big, big hero.”

  They glowered at each other, the German looking as sickened yet curious as Lett.

  Lett groaned, lunged and pressed the barrel to the German’s temple.

  “Good. So many medals you’ll get . . . and girls.” The German laughed, a screech from deep in his gut.

  Lett pulled back. “Check out my men,” he said. “Go.”

  The German sighed, shaking his head.

  The German stood over Weber as Lett followed, kicking rifles and M3 guns off the road. Weber had died with a grin, his face already turning greenish from blood drain. “Leave him like that,” Lett said. “First time I ever seen him really smile.”

  The German nodded with his lower lip out, as if approving. He moved over to Auggie, and knelt next to him. “This one lives, maybe,” the German said.

  “Get him off the road.”

  The German removed his US Army overcoat, which he wore over a GI field jacket, and Lett glimpsed the gray-green of a German tunic under that. The German lay the overcoat on the ice next to Auggie, rolled him carefully onto it and dragged Auggie over to the nearest tree trunk, tossing the overcoat aside. From his GI web belt, the German dumped out the contents of a small US Army medical kit. Auggie had taken a couple in the arm, Lett saw, and one in his hip. The German doused the wounds with wet snow to clear away the blood, but the flow kept coming, running off the strands of torn flesh, muscle.

  “Try his pockets. We all carry spare socks.”

  “Good idea.” The German found Auggie’s extra wool socks and fashioned a tourniquet from them. Auggie’s eyes opened, he yelped, and he passed out again. The German poured sulfa powder on the arm wounds, and stood back to review his work. His hurried patch-up had left all of Auggie mottled with blood swipes and blotches, even on his face.

  “Good,” Lett said. Keeping aim, he reached in a jeep and grabbed an Army blanket, and another. He tossed them to the German, who placed them over Auggie, wrapping a corner of one up and around his head.

  “He makes it, if someone finds him soon,” the German said.

  Lett could only hope someone would. A patrol could not be far. “Back up, over here,” he said. The German faced him, out in the road. “Take this road uphill. Start walking. Right on up.”

  The German eyed the path upward. “It is very . . . steil?”

  “Steep. Yes. Too bad. Go.”

  The German lunged, to provoke Lett into firing. Lett feinted, the German slipped on ice.

  Lett threw the German his OD green American overcoat. “You forgot this.”

  The German, sneering, got back up and, pulling on the overcoat, started his slow slog up the road with his back to Lett. For traction he used his boot toes to dig into ice and soon moved to a side of the road, using the packed snow for more traction with one foot. The man knew what-for. The German looked back over his shoulder, to see Lett still aiming at him.

  Almost halfway up, the German looked again to see Lett still aiming. He nodded, as if understanding that his time had come. He kept slogging, upward, with measured steps. Maybe, Lett thought, the man was hoping he would get a little ride in death—he’d slide right back down the hill. The German kept climbing. He stopped looking back at Lett.

  Lett turned away. He ran. Sprinted off the road. He galloped through the snow for the nearest tree line. He vanished inside the forest. As he ran, pushing branches aside and gaining speed over the underbrush, he imagined the German reaching the top of the hill. Near the top, still expecting to be shot, the German would have stopped, and turned, and seen:

  No American.

  Lett was gone. Lett was done. Lett was out. He ran through forest, clutching his compass and map, the haversack hanging off him full of the few rations he could carry. Just enough. He smiled, gaining speed. He jumped over streams and logs and through the new snow.

  ***

  Holger Frings stood at the top of the steep, icy road. He looked out from the ridge and remembered he still had his binoculars around his neck. Navigating the stiff, snow-laden shrubs, he moved to the cliff and scanned the valley with the binoculars, training them on the forested edge. He saw birds flutter among the treetops, and a shadow moving among the trunks below them. Could it be the American? He hustled out to the road, plopped down on his behind, and let himself slide back down the steep grade.

  Down at the jeep wrecks, the only thing left upright was his frozen-through Kamerad Kreisfeld, poised like a gargoyle with a frosted-green contorted face. Frings went back to the tree, to the wounded American. He was just a kid, as young as any replacement seaman. He sat with his back against the trunk, pale and helpless. His eyes popped open and rolled around to widen on Frings. “You? You saved me?” the kid said in his kid German.

  “Nothing saves you,” Frings said, and turned away.

  He grabbed the Thompson from the side of the road. He rummaged through both jeeps, ignoring weapons, extra ammo and their worthless field radio for maps and their wads of counterfeit Allied money.

  He marched off down the road. He found the fleeing American’s footprints, and followed them into the forest. Hearing muted voices, he crouched to watch an American patrol tiptoe from tree to tree toward the jeep wrecks. He kept going.

  ***

  Wendell Lett had stopped running, to save energy. The new snow was too deep. He heard nothing but birds wrestling with branches far above. If that German was smart and lucky, he thought, he’d strip down to his German tunic and keep on m
arching with hands up till he met the nearest American patrol. But who was lucky, let alone smart?

  He reached a village that had been pounded by bombings, from both planes and artillery judging from the horrendous destruction, and moved along the edge of a burning street using a garden wall for cover. He found woods again. He checked his compass and map and fingered his current spot, tracing its distance from Stromville. He was maybe twenty kilometers away. The adrenalin from the altercation and from fleeing had faded inside him, and his legs grew heavier, his thoughts blurry. He’d only slept a few hours in the past few days.

  Heloise had always told him: If he decided to do it, he should take his time. The game of going underground was a long one, and going without rest would only get him lost or caught or worse.

  He found a clearing in the forest. At one end lay an elongated heap, what looked at a glance like a stack of logs grown over, under a drift of new snow. He guessed better. He made his way over and kicked away snow and underbrush to discover an entrance, through a canvas flap. He hadn’t smelled anything foul, a good sign. He drew his Colt, pushed up the flap and stepped down inside a timbered hut built into the earth, the roof made of logs and grimy railroad ties. It was like something out of the Great War. It had probably last been an observation post, once the Germans’ and then the Americans’, abandoned again when the Germans attacked. The underground room was buttressed with logs and boards, and the floor had a ground cover of US Army tent material. As trench huts went it was luxury, a weatherized cabin about eight by five. No corpses but no food either, just discarded field ration boxes, cans and wrappers. Booze would have been too lucky, but someone had left a bedroll. Lett stooped inside and could almost stand. A couple empty crates standing on ends served as seats for the observation holes looking out into the clearing and forest beyond. Dirt specks covered everything, likely from the bombardments that had sent the last tenants fleeing. One crate was empty, but the other held a couple thick candles certainly plundered from some nice family’s dining room.