by David Healey
“What is it, Sister?” the officer demanded. “I only have a few minutes. I have to admit, I would not see you at all except that you represent the church.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” she said. “I have come with concerns about the prisoners.”
“The Americans?” His eyebrows raised in surprise.
“You are holding two hundred and fifty-two men in the church.”
“That’s a very exact number. How do you know?”
“I counted them.”
“Ah. What about them?”
“Many are wounded and need medical care. They need medicine and bandages that I do not have. They need food and water. They need blankets. I am asking you to provide for their care.”
“Why trouble yourself about them?”
“They are in my church!”
“Where is the priest? Perhaps he could talk some sense into you.”
“The priest ran away.”
“He did, eh? He’s a smarter man than many.”
“Sir, I am doing what I can to help them, but the prisoners are your responsibility.”
The colonel glanced at the sniper, who stood near the fireplace, warming his hands. “Do you hear that, Hauer? This nun is telling me my job. Apparently, I am to care for prisoners. I thought my job was to fight the war.”
So the Devil had a name, she thought. Hauer.
Hauer flexed his broad shoulders. “Do you want me to throw her out, sir?”
The colonel stared at her and seemed to think over Hauer’s offer. “Not yet. Sister, I would like nothing better than to shoot these prisoners and be done with them.”
“You cannot!”
“Who says? You? God?” He shook his head. “Don’t worry, Sister. We are not monsters. Besides, the Americans are very sensitive after what happened at the Malmedy Crossroads. As ridiculous as it seems when we are in the middle of killing one another, there are rules in war. The lives of German POWs hang in the balance. So you see, no harm will come to the prisoners because of the repercussions to our own men being held by the Allies.”
He moved to the open window and gestured for her to join him.
“Sir?”
“Look out the window, Sister. Do you see that warehouse across the street? It is filled with wounded. My men. Good men. They need bandages and medicine and food that I do not have to give them. If I cannot help my own men, how can I possibly help the prisoners?”
Sister Anne Marie was surprised. She had assumed that the Germans were well-supplied. “I did not know.”
“Find what supplies you can in the village,” he said. “I can’t help you, but I won’t stop you. That is all.”
He reached for a ringing telephone, dismissing her with the gesture as he turned his attention elsewhere.
As she left the room, she felt Hauer’s eyes on her, following her out.
Sister Anne Marie left the German commanding officer’s headquarters and made her way back up the street in the direction of the church. Suddenly, she felt so very tired. Each footstep in the snow and cold took an effort. It was no wonder. She had been working almost around the clock to do what she could for the POWs. When was the last time that she had eaten or slept? She could not remember when that had been. All of her efforts had been so focused upon helping the prisoners in the church.
The thought of a hot bowl of soup and a nap was suddenly quite appealing, but she forced herself to keep putting one foot in front of the other under the watchful eyes of the soldiers she passed. Tired and discouraged as she was, she kept going. Perhaps it was blasphemous, but she thought of all that Jesus had suffered. Her hardships were nothing in comparison.
She felt that she had not accomplished much in meeting with the commanding officer, but she had at least tried. That was something, wasn’t it? Anyhow, where one door closed, another opened.
Sister Anne Marie busied her mind with all of the things still left to do. She would go door to door again, asking for blankets and food. In the houses that people had fled, she might look into the empty rooms in hopes of finding some forgotten scrap of food to feed the prisoners. The German soldiers had already gone through the houses, but perhaps they had overlooked a blanket or jar of jam.
Something penetrated her fog of exhaustion, some primitive warning sense, and she looked over her shoulder.
Trailing her like an ominous shadow was the German sniper.
Hauer watched the nun leave. The colonel was busy on the telephone, so Hauer had slipped out to follow her up the street. Her nun’s dark habit fluttered around her in the winter wind. Where are you going, little crow?
Hauer did not care for nuns. Of course, outside of an overall sense of warmth toward the Reich itself, he did not care for much other than himself, but nuns were still toward the bottom of his list.
Why? He found them sanctimonious and cruel. As a boy, he had attended a Catholic school. Hauer had excelled at sports and schoolyard bullying, but he never had been keen on his lessons. Consequently, the nuns had cracked his knuckles with rulers, ridiculed him, even beaten him with a stick on more than one occasion. He had hated those nuns, yet as a boy, there was nothing he could do about it.
Or so he thought.
One of the cruelest of the nuns had been Sister Agnes. The fact that he remembered her name was a testament to the lasting impression she had made. Of all the nuns, she was the one who singled him out the most with her cruelty.
“You are stupid!” she had said, making him stand in front of the class as she diminished him in front of the others. “Dummkopf! You will never amount to more than a street sweeper!”
He had glared at her then, so much venom in his angry stare that she had looked away.
Hauer never had a clear plan in mind, but he knew that one day he would get even with this evil witch. His chance had come one day when he had glimpsed Sister Agnes headed for the stairs. It was an old building and the stairs were steep. She paused at the top and reached for the railing.
The halls were crowded with students, talking and hurrying to the next class, which gave Hauer the perfect camouflage. Quick as a cat, in the second before she had gotten a good grip on the railing, Hauer slipped up behind the old nun and shoved her with all his might. By the time she started to fall, he had already melted back into the mix of children looking on, horrified, as Sister Agnes tumbled down the stairs, her black habit flapping like the feathers of a bird tumbling from the sky. She landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, moaning, one of her legs twisted at a terrible angle.
The boy had smiled, thinking, Not such a dummkopf, am I?
None of the other children had seen him. Still, he had half-expected to be struck down by a bolt of lightning. Instead, that one moment of action had left him blissfully free from the nun’s tyranny.
Hauer had embraced the fact that officially Hitler’s Germany was agnostic—the only true church being the Third Reich. In the early days, Hitler and his minions had rounded up any meddlesome priests and nuns, then locked them inside the concentration camp at Dachau.
Hauer thought that it was a good place for them. He had long ago cast off whatever shreds remained of his upbringing in the church. After all, he had turned his back on religion many years ago, when he had shoved that witch down the stairs.
As for this nun, perhaps she needed to be taught a lesson as well.
She tried to pick up her pace, but it was no use. Hauer quickly caught up to her. Her heart hammered, recalling that he had attempted to drop a dead man on her head. She glanced at the soldiers on duty along the street, but they either watched in amusement or looked away, clearly with no intention of interfering with whatever Hauer had in mind. The sniper seemed to intimidate many of his fellow soldiers.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” he asked, falling into step beside her.
“If I cannot get help from your commanding officer, then I have much to do,” she replied without looking at him. “Besides, if you have not noticed, it is quite cold out.”
“I don’t know why you are bothering with those prisoners,” he said. “Why don’t you help our good German wounded?”
“You have your own medical personnel,” she said. “What do the Americans have?”
“I would not worry about them too much,” he said. “We might still shoot them. Who knows?”
“I pray that you are wrong.”
She felt Hauer’s eyes staring intently at her face.
“You are too pretty to be a nun,” he said. “Why would God waste you this way?”
“Waste me, how?” Sister Anne Marie was taken aback.
“Turn a pretty girl into a crow.”
“That was God’s decision, not mine.”
Hauer suddenly grabbed her by the arm. “I would like to get you alone and teach you a thing or two that you did not learn in the convent.” He gave her a lewd, knowing smile. “Maybe you can do more while on your knees than pray.”
“Get your hands off me!”
Hauer did not let go, but began pushing her toward the doorway of an empty house. “Come, come. The prisoners can wait. This won’t take long.”
Hauer’s intentions were all too clear. She slapped at his hands, but he didn’t let go, dragging her closer to the empty house. Only a small desire for dignity kept her from screaming for help.
“Hauer! That is enough!”
An older soldier came toward them.
“Never mind about me, Scholz,” Hauer said.
But the soldier wasn’t having any of that. He blocked their path, forcing Hauer to stop. “A nun, Hauer? Really? What kind of Dummkopf are you?”
At the word Dummkopf, Hauer let go of Sister Anne Marie and rounded on the sergeant, big fists clenched in his leather gloves, clearly enraged.
“What did you call me?”
Hauer was much larger than the sergeant, but the man looked tough as an old tree stump left to weather in a field. He was not the least bit cowed by the sniper. He set his feet, his own fists clenched. If it was a fight Hauer wanted, it was clear he was going to get one. “I will call you whatever I want, Gefreiter Hauer. Get back to your post. That is an order.”
Hauer glared at the noncommissioned officer, but kept his mouth shut. He turned his attention back to Sister Anne Marie. She did not think that she had ever seen such a look of malevolence. Thankfully, he had released his grip on her.
“This is not over, Sister,” he said. “All the prayers in the world will not help you now.”
Chapter Fourteen
The commander of the U.S. forces poised to attack Wingen sur Moder had called a truce. He wanted a parlay with the Germans in the village. In preparation for meeting with the Germans, Colonel Allen had gathered a team that included Lieutenant Mulholland, an Army medic, and Private Cole. Cole still felt weak from his bout with the flu, but his fever had finally broken. He felt some of his old strength return with each passing hour.
“Why Cole, sir?” Lieutenant Mulholland had asked when he was momentarily alone with the colonel.
“Because Cole and that rifle of his look scary as hell,” the colonel said. “Maybe it will help put the fear of God in these Krauts. Besides, I don’t entirely trust these Krauts and if any shooting breaks out, I want Cole to have my back.”
“I’ll be there too, sir.”
“I know you will, Lieutenant.” The colonel seemed to ponder that thought. “Come to think of it, give Cole a submachine gun, too.”
“Are you going to ask the Germans to surrender, sir?” Lieutenant Mulholland asked.
“Son, as much as I would like to do that, what do you think the chances are that the Krauts would surrender?”
“Slim to none, sir.”
“Right, so I’m not going to waste my breath,” the officer said. “They’re welcome to volunteer to surrender. Besides, for all I know they’ll be expecting us to surrender to them. We’re pretty evenly matched up, you know. This fight could go either way.”
The lieutenant looked taken aback. “I hadn’t thought about that, sir. Ich ergebe mich!”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s German for I surrender, sir. I suppose it could work in either direction, depending on how things play out.”
“Well, don’t brush up on your German phrases just yet, son. What I really what to talk to the Krauts about would be these prisoners. The villagers said they’ve got more than two hundred of our boys held in the church. From their reports, it sounds like a lot of those boy are in bad shape. I want to see if we can get any supplies to them. Food, blankets, bandages—whatever they need.”
“Do you think that will work?”
“I’m sure the Krauts will steal whatever they want first, but something will get to the prisoners.”
A response came back to the colonel’s messenger, who had been sent into the village under a white flag. It all seemed very gentlemanly, this business of white flags and truces, like something out of an earlier era. But the flag had worked. The Germans hadn’t shot the colonel’s messenger, and now word came back that the Germans would meet.
The fight that was taking place at Wingen sur Moder was being mirrored in a handful of other places throughout the rugged terrain as the German’s Operation Nordwind continued. The advance was Hitler’s version of a one-two punch. Truth be told, Hitler had hit them hard. However, the American forces were proving to be tough adversaries.
Some of the fighting took place in and around towns, while in other locations, the fighting was dictated by nothing more than the collision of troops from both sides. The much-feared German Panzers had managed to press deep into the Allied lines, creating yet another bulge known as the Colmar Pocket.
But the German advance encountered difficulties, bogging down before long. Even the heaviest Panzers struggled for traction on the steep, snowy roads through the mountain forests. There was also the matter of food and fuel. The men needed one; the tanks and trucks needed the other. The Germans simply didn’t have the supply lines to supply the essentials of food and fuel. The whole situation was like a rubber band that kept stretching and stretching—at some point it was either going to break or snap back into place, its energy spent.
Meanwhile, massive Soviet forces pressed closer to Berlin. The Third Reich was fighting for its life on two fronts against determined adversaries, a situation that was impossible to sustain.
The maps were something for the generals to worry about, however. For every soldier on both sides, the only battle that really mattered was the one that he fought in. His war was often limited to his foxhole and the man fighting beside him.
So far, the Americans held the hills to the south and west, as well as the main road leading into town, the one that led to the railroad underpass where the disastrous first encounter with the Germans had taken place. The Germans still held the big hill almost due north, overlooking the town. Though their force was divided, their defensive strategy proved quite effective.
Holding that high ground, with the ability to put machine-gun fire or mortars on all of the approaches to town, gave the defenders a distinct advantage. It was assumed that the German troops on the hill maintained contact with the rest of the unit in the town through radio communication or telephone lines. If the Americans could cut that line at some point, it would give them an advantage.
Like the Americans, the Germans had laid down endless miles of wire as they advanced because the hills severely limited radio communication.
Unlike the Germans in the village, the Americans were roughing it in the woods and fields surrounding Wingen sur Moder. They didn’t have the benefit of buildings to get out of the wind. Instead, the U.S. forces sheltered in cold foxholes.
They had enough to eat, if you could call combat rations enough. Everything was eaten half-frozen. The more fortunate soldiers warmed up their food on the engine block of a tank or truck to at least take the chill off. They didn’t even have hot coffee because orders had come down against building any fires that might give away their posi
tions to the enemy.
The men grumbled about that. It wasn’t as if the Germans didn’t know they were out here.
It would have been better if the snow and ice hadn’t turned to slush in the bottom of the foxholes. The freezing slush soaked everybody and made them colder.
“I’ve had enough of this snow,” Vaccaro said, his teeth chattering violently. “When I get back home, I swear I’m going to buy a place in Florida. Maybe New Mexico or Arizona.”
“You’ll be bitching about the heat come summer, City Boy,” Cole pointed out.
“Hell no, Hillbilly. All that I’ll need to do is think about this place and I’ll cool right off. Better than air conditioning.”
“I reckon I’d rather have it cold than hot all the time, like them fellas fighting in the Pacific. I hear tell the air is so swampy that they get jungle rot in places you don’t even want to think about.”
They thought about that anyway, and the images that came to mind made them cringe. “We’ve got frostbite and trench foot,” Vaccaro pointed out. “I’m telling you—Florida.”
Cole just shook his head. “Florida is way too flat for me. I need mountains.”
“Yeah, then you should feel right at home in this place.”
Cole was cleaning his rifle, working gun oil into the action, smoothing it over the barrel. The cold could make the oil gum up, so Cole had slipped out the bolt and put it inside his coat to stay warm. The rifle positively gleamed, which was something of an accomplishment in the grimy, slush-filled foxhole.
“I can tell that you’re feeling better,” Vaccaro said. “You were so sick before that you went a couple of days without cleaning that rifle—as if it even needed it.”
“I had to get better,” Cole said. “We’re about to launch another attack. You need me around to make sure you don’t get your ass shot off.”
“Shot off? Well, that’s a relief. For a while there, I was worried that I was going to freeze my ass off.”