by Mark Donahue
After the wall had been erected, the steel beams were realigned to expand the eighteen foot ledge that remained behind the pit and under the block wall to provide a platform for the men to paint the wall a flat black. After it was painted, it was covered with dirt and gravel then painted again.
The process was repeated five times until the wall did not look like a wall at all. It looked like mottled and uneven natural stone and created a perfect camouflage in the dim light of the cavern.
On the other side of the pit, Rolle, Willy, and Dubois seemed pleased with the results of Eric and Gregg’s labor. “You can’t tell it’s a wall, even from this distance,” Dubois said.
“True,” Rolle said. “Unfortunately, the fact remains you know there is gold behind that wall which is information a traitor cannot possess.” Rolle nodded to Willy who shot Dubois in the back of the head before Dubois could raise his rifle. He then casually dragged him to the pit and tossed him into the howling black hole.
After seeing Dubois shot and tossed away like yesterday’s garbage, Eric and Gregg had no doubt what was in store for them. But to their surprise Rolle motioned them over the steel beams.
Eric crossed first then sagged to his knees in exhaustion. But his exhaustion was more than physical; he was also tired of seeing death. Tired of lies. Tired of pain. He was tired of every damn thing. He was done. He needed rest.
When he looked back across the chasm at Gregg, Eric saw a look on his face and immediately knew what Gregg had decided. “Colonel Rolle, küss meinen arsch du Hurensohn.” Gregg then took a silent swan dive into the pit over Eric’s shout of, “Gregg, don’t!”
Rolle and Willy had no response to Gregg’s decision other than Rolle whispered something to Willy who in turn motioned to Eric to rise and move to the front of the Jasper. What confused Eric was why he was still alive in the first place. Why had Rolle shot Victor and not him? And now why was he being led back to the front of the mine? Why not just kill him and get it over with?
After they reached the front of the mine, Rolle gently put his arm around Willy’s shoulder and whispered something to him about needing rest. Willy nodded, then tied Eric’s hands and ordered him to sit on the floor with his back to the mine wall as Rolle entered the offices.
For the next several hours Willy paced back and forth in front of Eric with rifle in hand. He appeared to be in a trance. Finally, Eric posed a question: “Willy, why did you turn against us and side with Colonel Rolle?” Willy did not answer. Eric asked the same question a second time.
Willy finally said in an almost gentle voice, “Colonel Rolle is right about how the gold will help the Führer, and we must make sure it is used to keep his dream alive.”
Eric laughed quietly to himself when he realized that Willy still actually believed the lies. All of them. And because he believed the lies so utterly and completely, he was an extremely dangerous man.
Eric thought of trying to argue or reason with Willy, but he was just too damn tired. He figured he might as well get some rest before he died. He slept for five hours. When he awoke, he saw Willy was still pacing and holding his rifle, staring straight ahead, still following orders and still believing.
While the hours dragged on, Eric dozed off from time to time, sure that he would be shot in his sleep at any moment. But Rolle didn’t emerge from the offices, and Willy continued his pacing, never varying the points where he would stop, turn, and march back to where he had started.
Later in the day, it was clear that Willy was prepared to wait for Rolle to awake no matter how long it took. Willy would follow Rolle’s orders. After hearing and seeing him in action over the previous several days, Eric could see Willy had effectively lost his mind, and anything he might say or do could set him off without warning.
Willy never stopped pacing. He did not eat or drink. He did not talk other than to give Eric permission to eat dried out cheese and stale bread and drink warm water.
As day turned to dusk, Eric awoke from his latest catnap and decided to risk Willy’s wrath by posing a question. “Willy, do you think perhaps Colonel Rolle left last night? Do you think he is still asleep in the office after all this time?”
“The colonel would not leave his post,” Willy answered in a monotone.
“I am sure you are correct, Willy, but it has been over thirty-six hours, and the colonel has not come out; perhaps you might want to check and see if he is alright, or would you like me to check for you?”
“The colonel said not to disturb him.” Willy said with a finality that Eric did not want to challenge.
As the sun set and the cave darkened, Willy turned on the lights and generator brought to the cave by the Frenchman. Eric and Willy began another night waiting for Rolle to come out of the office.
Eric was now convinced Rolle was dead, but he was equally convinced that Willy did not believe that and trying to change his mind could be a fatal exercise.
Another long night on a hard cave floor began with the backdrop of ghost-like sounds coming from the pit. Eric looked at Willy as he continued to pace and could not help but feel sorry for a young man he had known since basic training. Willy was a man who seemed to epitomize many in his country. He still believed the lies. Still thought their leaders were going to prevail, still believed a dream that was a nightmare. Not able to see the truth when that truth was too horrific to comprehend.
Eric knew he would eventually have to challenge Willy and felt his best hope was to outlast him. Sleep when Willy refused to. Eat when Willy would not. Think when Willy could not. It was a sound plan.
Then Rolle appeared in the doorway leading from the office.
Rolle was in f fact not dead. In fact, he seemed more alert than before even though his face was even more grotesquely swollen and misshapen. “Good evening, Willy,” he mumbled.
“Good evening, Colonel.” Willy replied, his voice weakened with fatigue. “I hope you rested well.”
“I did, and I appreciate your concern and following my orders, Willy.” As he spoke, Rolle placed his arm around the huge young German. “You should take some food and water and get some rest.” Willy nodded and stood silently next to Rolle waiting for further orders.
Turning his attention to Eric who remained on the mine’s floor, Rolle smiled and without saying a word casually smashed Eric with a rifle butt to his left temple, knocking him unconscious.
Turning to Willy, Rolle said softly, “Unlike the traitors in your unit, you have performed above and beyond the call of duty, Willy. Your heroism and dedication to me and the Führer will be rewarded.” Willy stood in front of Rolle, his body rigid at attention, his glazed eyes staring straight ahead as his body swayed slightly.
“Thank you, sir.”
“I have one more task for you, but it is one that will allow you to rest. But to complete your mission, you must trust me, be patient, and maintain the courage you have demonstrated to me and the Führer. Do you understand?”
“Yes sir, I understand.”
“Good, Willy. Very good.”
Putting his arm around the waist of the huge young man, Rolle whispered his final orders to Willy, and at the same time, handed him some food and water he had brought with him from the offices.
Willy did not respond to the orders given him. Instead he nodded and did as he was told, as he always had. Just as many millions of his fellow countrymen had. Through the fog of a concussion and the pain and fatigue that wracked his body, Eric awoke and thought he heard two rifle shots. But after all he had been through the previous days, he was not sure if the sound was real, a dream, or a memory.
However, Eric was aware that at that moment he was alive and alone, and that realization made him work at loosening the ropes that had held him captive. He had been working at untying himself earlier when he knew Willy was not watching him, but now he wriggled and squirmed trying to extricate himself from his binds.
He succeeded but was a minute too late.
As the ropes hit the floor behind him, Rolle appeared like a specter from the darkness of the mine alone, a Luger pointed at Eric’s forehead only ten feet away. “Lieutenant, it appears you have suffered from unfortunate timing. Please sit back down.”
Eric was tired of taking orders. He remained standing, staring back at Rolle with a slight smile on his lips. Rolle ignored Eric’s refusal to sit and said matter-of-factly, “Lieutenant, I intend to make you die very slowly for what you have tried to do to your Fatherland. I am going to shoot you in each limb but will be careful to ensure those shots will not be fatal, though they will fracture several bones. I then will put a bullet into your groin to allow you to bleed and feel the pain you have tried to inflict on your country. Before you die, I will tie you to the bumper of one of the trucks and drag you to the pit and…”
Before he could finish his threat, Eric interrupted Rolle’s soliloquy. “Colonel, I really don’t give a damn if you kill me or not. What I’ve seen over the last few days and heard from men like you over the last three years makes death sound like a vacation in the Alps. I’m tired of living in a world that has vermin like you in it. I’m tired of a world that is inhabited by madmen like the Führer. So your threat of death holds no fear for me, only relief. But I strongly suggest your first shot is through my brain because I am only six feet from you, and you will not have an opportunity to hit my arms and legs.”
Taking a step backward from the now charging Eric, Rolle aimed at Eric’s face and pulled the trigger.
At a moment like that, it is difficult to understand who is more surprised—man who thought his skull was about to be invaded by a 700-mile-per-hourbullet, or the man who pulled the trigger and realized his gun has jammed. There is always that awkward, almost embarrassing second pull of the trigger, confirming that the situation had changed rather dramatically in just a few short seconds.
Rolle made a halfhearted attempt to hit Eric with the pistol, but that wasn’t a threat to a man years younger, stronger, and only moments after he had been given a new lease on life.
Eric wrested the gun from Rolle and stared at the man who had been responsible for so much death. Yet, Rolle calmly, almost without taking note of Eric or the change in his fortunes, began another speech as he stood, turned, and walked toward the rear of the mine.
“The world has not seen the true greatness that will one day be Germany, Lieutenant. But it will. Young men like you will fulfill the dreams. You will do the right thing, after all, because you are one of us. You will make sure that the Fatherland will live again in the greatness that is its destiny. The vision of the Führer will be the vision of the world and his children, children like you, will lead the resurrection. It is up to you to take responsibility of Operation Rebirth and do what you must to ensure that the Führer’s dream and our dream is finally realized.”
As Rolle spoke, his pace quickened, and he continued his march toward the back of the cave, ignoring a neatly stacked pile of gold bars that Eric knew Rolle had reserved for himself. Eric picked up a rifle and pointed it at Rolle’s back, but he knew he wouldn’t need a weapon.
As he neared the pit, Rolle slowed his pace but never stopped talking, but Eric had stopped listening. He had listened all his life, and he would listen no more to men like Rolle. Men who themselves had listened to other men and other lies, and it had all snowballed into a hideous nightmare.
Eric knew Rolle had been a murderous, treacherous man, and what he was about to do he deserved, yet he could not help but think that there were even worse men than Rolle. Men who had lied to and misled a generation. Men who had killed millions. Men who still lived. Men who had to be punished. But more importantly, men who had to be stopped.
When Rolle neared the edge of the pit, he stopped but did not turn around when Eric spoke. “Colonel, I am not like you. I have never been like you. As for the greatness of Germany? It will only be realized after the Führer, and men like you are dead and hopefully forgotten by the rest of the world. I will use the gold to make sure the horror you and the rest of the Reich has created dies with each of you.”
As Eric’s words floated on the breeze that moved from the front of the mine to where the men stood, Rolle walked into the pit as if he were stepping off a curb. Eric heard his body slam into the sides of the walls and hit debris along his path to death. Rolle never screamed or cried in fear. Eric wondered if he would be willing to give his life for what he now believed in, as fearlessly as Rolle and others had given theirs for a madman.
As silence returned to the mine and Eric regained his senses, he sank to a crouched position with his rifle aiming into the darkness at what he couldn’t see. He remembered that Willy was still in the mine.
Eric remembered the two shots he thought he had heard earlier, but he still spent several hours searching for but not finding Willy in the vastness of the Jasper. He finally concluded that the large and murderous young man had indeed been shot or had been convinced by Rolle to walk into the pit to eliminate a witness to where the gold had been hidden after Willy had sealed up the remaining hole in the wall.
In the wake of the carnage of the previous several days, Eric sat on the floor of the Jasper totally alone and entranced by the utter quiet that enveloped him. Even the winds that normally coursed through the mine were at rest.
For several hours Eric laid in the cool darkness and drifted off for hours at a time even though he was never really able to sleep soundly fearing he would be brutally awakened yet again by Rolle or Willy or even the Frenchman. He tried to reason with himself and said quietly under his breath, “They’re all dead.” The words calmed him for a while, and he would relax and fall into a restless sleep. But he would awake in a start, reaching for his rifle and searching in the half-light of the Jasper for something or someone. In the late afternoon, Eric decided he needed to act and make the most important decisions of his life. Decisions that not only impacted him, but thousands or even millions of people around the world.
Eric walked through the Jasper one last time and wondered if anyone who eventually wandered into the cave would smell death as he could or if it was just his imagination.
Eric loaded the one thousand bars of gold that Rolle had left on the dirt floor into the last Ford truck that Rolle had planned to use. It instead would become Eric’s ticket to freedom in a new country, the country of his dreams.
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In early November,1943, twenty-one year old Eric Warner Schneider left the Jasper mine in a Ford truck loaded with one thousand bars of gold with a value of over $11,000,000. He headed for a place called Cincinnati, a faraway city in the Midwest section of the country that was famous back home for good German beer, brats, and a place several of Eric’s friends and family had immigrated to prior to America entering the war in 1941. He would spend the next forty years of his life in the city on the Ohio River.
Eric left behind in the mine thousands more ingots that had been moved from Germany to rebuild a madman’s vision and legacy. He also left behind tales of lost gold that were fueled by reports of ingots, or pieces of ingots of gold, being found in or near the creek bed in the desert south of the Jasper.
Eric’s fellow soldiers, who had fallen to their deaths trying to carry the gold over the pit, had taken several ingots of gold with them. Some of those ingots made their way down the 500-foot depth of the pit that emptied into a narrow funnel in the rock and then into a creek bed that angled nearly twenty miles south of the Jasper until it dried up in the vastness of the desert. Over the years, raging waters fueled by savage spring and summer rains had pushed the ingots down the creek bed as far as five miles from the Jasper.
A piece of an ingot was discovered by Ben while he hiked through the desert on a bright Sunday morning. Tom and Jon found a complete ingot nearly twenty years later. Another complete ingot was discovered by a young man who was hunting j
ack rabbits with a rifle when he was only fourteen. He spent the rest of his life looking for more. A couple in their late sixties from Minnesota found an ingot while camping in the desert. Being from Minnesota, they turned the ingot in to the local police department. Their discovery was not reported to the press but did lead the local sheriff to quit his job and buy a metal detector.
Chapter 44
Downtown Phoenix—1943
Lester decided to start slowly. Putting the gold bar between two wooden sawhorses left behind in one of the abandoned buildings he often called home, he tried smashing the bar in two with a rock. When that didn’t work, he took the bar and succeeded in breaking it in half after slamming it over a concrete step. Breathing heavily after lifting the twenty-pound ingot several times, he slumped to the dirty floor and stared at the two large chunks and small bits of gold that had been gouged off the ingot. After regaining his breath, he scooped up the half dozen bits and stuffed them in his jeans and placed the two larger pieces in his knapsack.
Given the rather casual attitude his friends had about recognizing other people’s belongings, Lester felt he needed to keep the gold on him at all times. But given its weight, Lester surmised that toting the gold around Phoenix all day would hurt his back. Finally, he decided he had to take a chance. He wrapped the two large pieces in dirty old rags he found on the floor of the building and looked for a place to hide them. His choice was in the water tanks of two old toilets that had been pulled out of the walls. After placing the gold in them, he covered the porcelain treasure chest with assorted junk from the building. After his work was complete, Lester decided to see just how much this gold was worth.
Walking down McDowell Road, he decided to test the gold market at Ernie and Gwen’s pawn shop. After a few minutes in the shop, he learned that both Ernie and Gwen were long dead, and he would be dealing with a short, squat cigar-chomping gnome of a man named Max Greene. “Whataya need, mister?”