*
“How’re your students doing, Oma? I mean, do they get to talk German like — like us?”
“No. These young men — and there are two women — aren’t going to be taken for native-speaking Germans.”
“What are they being trained to do — after you teach them Eins Zwei Drei ?”
“Sebastian. If I knew, I would not tell you.”
“Are you training them to be spies?”
“Their German would not equip them to pass as Germans. They couldn’t do clandestine work posing as natives. But, Sebastian, we are not to speculate on the matter of what my students will be doing in the field. All you need to know is that I teach German, as your Mama did, to young military candidates. I think, from the headlines on how the war is going, we can safely suppose that my students will not be interpreting orders from German-speaking Nazis who have occupied London and Washington.”
“You’re very optimistic, Oma. I hope there will be something left for me to do.”
“The war is hardly won. Herr Hitler commands all of Europe and the Japanese most of the Pacific. There will be plenty for you to do when you go off to the army.”
“I’ll be ready to go. Now that I know that Papa is dead, I know I won’t have to, you know — run any risk of firing bullets at some place where he might be, or dropping bombs on his office.”
*
Henrietta Chapin was furtively glad, after she was assured that Sebastian would completely recuperate, that he had had the accident on the rapids. It kept him away from the war for at least a few more months.
Exactly five months, it turned out. In June 1944, his broken leg completely repaired, he kissed his beloved Oma good-bye and got into the troop train that would take him to Camp Wheeler in Georgia for something called basic training in the infantry.
Chapter Twelve
Fort Benning , Georgia , April 12 , 1945
Platoon A of Officers’ Candidate School Class #364 was engaged in maneuvers in the pine forest of Columbus, Georgia. Sixteen weeks earlier, when the candidates drawn in from basic training graduating classes and other army echelons numbered sixty, making up a full platoon, they had begun the stiff, competitive eighteen-week program. By April, they were reduced to thirty-four in number, twenty-six of them cashiered.
Most of the failing aspirants, for any one or more reasons, were simply judged less than officer material and were being sent back to the field. Others, deemed potentially qualified but doing less well than acceptable, were sent back to try, from Week #1, one more time. The surviving candidates assembled now in the opening in the pine forest around the lieutenant. He had called them in from the exercise. They had been fanning the forest for “snipers,” and responded to his whistle. They followed the whistle sound, and wearing full field packs, carrying M-1 rifles, and sweating even in the Georgia cool spring, met up with their platoon leader. They eased into the pine beds, tilting their helmets up and off, many of them lighting cigarettes. It was getting warm and the maneuver had begun at dawn. The lieutenant blew his whistle again, this time calling for attention.
He had very bad news to give them, he said. “The president of the United States is dead.”
He waited a minute or two for the buzz of soldier-to-soldier reaction. There were murmurs that could be taken as expressions of grief and sorrow and shock. But their focus, quickly, was on the single question, Might this mean an earlier end to the war ?
Sebastian leaned over to Ed Coady. “Could be good news. FDR was the unconditional surrender man, right?”
“Right.” Coady had been drafted in July, after finishing freshman year at Princeton, where he had matriculated at age seventeen. He and Sebastian had been trying diligently, in the few minutes not spoken for by the Infantry School, to keep abreast of the news. They sequestered the shortwave radio in the Rec Room at nine every night to take in the BBC broadcast, subsequently amusing themselves, while undressing for sleep in their barracks before lights-out, by mimicking what George Orwell had spoken of as the “genteel and throaty” voices of BBC newscasters. Private Edward Cooodee was repohted seen at Fort Penning in Georgia , which is an ... administrative centah of the United States ... Infantry . And Sebastian would improvise a reply built on the days news. And so we say good night to Private Reinhard , inasmuch as it is two hours pahst midnight . Sleep well , Private Reinhard . You will probably be dedd in a month .
*
“Yes,” Coady said now. “It was FDR at Casablanca who came up with ‘unconditional surrender.’ That’ll keep the German fuckers — I mean, Sebby, the Nazi — well yes, the Nazi fuckers — fighting to the last.”
The whistle blew.
OCS candidates were instantly compliant with any order from their platoon leader. To be less than attentive was to run the risk of a quiet, invisible demerit in the platoon leaders ledger. Enough of these and a candidate got called before the OCS Review Board and given the news: 1) He was out. Or, 2) he had to begin the whole nerve-shattering, bone-breaking eighteen-week business all over again.
The first lieutenant elaborated. “The president died this morning at Warm Springs. We are the closest army base. Colonel Hayes has instructed us by radio to stand by for the selection of an honor guard for the president’s removal tomorrow morning to the presidential train that will take him to Washington. The last two hours of the maneuvers today are canceled. After chow we will go back to Checkpoint Baker where the trucks will be. At 1800 the honor guard will be chosen. Report to the assembly point and stand at parade rest at 1755.”
They were there promptly, the platoon reduced, after the “death sentences” of the Review Board, to two files of seventeen soldiers. They were neatly aligned at parade rest position, their khaki shirts open at the collar, name tags on their breast pockets. A few minutes later the major stepped down from the jeep, accompanied by a Technical Sergeant. The men were called to attention and he filed by the first row, then the second. A nod of his head signaled to the T/Sergeant, who would look up, then write the candidate’s name on his pad.
Sebastian was amused by the exercise. It had happened two or three times during basic training. The criteria of the reviewing officer were never explicit, but those who had eyes to see understood what they were. At basic training in Macon, privates were selected for public viewing on the basis of whose appearance would be most appealing at the designated local function — a Veterans Day parade, a bond-selling rally, the funeral of the senator from the Armed Services Committee. Today’s men would be lined up, Sebastian supposed, to escort the coffin departing from the president’s little retreat, or perhaps alongside the presidential train. There would be lots of news cameramen, and the commanding general, back at Camp Wheeler, wanted the most photogenic young men to represent the infantry.
Sebastian had an eye for objective reality; he knew he would be picked; he always was — handsome, muscular, brown-eyed, appearing even younger than the nineteen years he had celebrated, or rather passed by, in the early weeks of the officer training course. He was certain that Ed Coady would also be picked — a pleasing-faced, freckled redhead from New Bedford, Massachusetts. As the major walked by, Sebastian let himself reflect, with a smile deeply buried, on how Resplendent Young American Reinhard and Resplendent Young American Coady would have looked if a cameraman had been there to film their writhings the Saturday night before in Phenix City, the sin city just over the river in Alabama. The camera would have caught the two All-Americans in the arms of Rosita and Sally on twin beds, abandoning, after much thought and discreet planning and beer consumed, their virginity. Well, he thought, the dead, worldly president would know all about boys being boys — he had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the other war, and that was before the docs had invented penicillin, which made nights-out-on-the-town, back then, a lot riskier.
“Paaa- rade REST !”
The candidates moved to separate their feet and allow arms to rest behind their backs. The major read out loud a very long tribu
te written by the general in honor of the departed Commander-in-Chief. Then Lieutenant Bryant called out ten names. The ten Resplendent Young Americans were told to report to company headquarters at 2000. They were told by their platoon leaders, who read from a regimental order sheet, what their duties would be. The late president’s departure on the train from Warm Springs was set for 0830.
At taps, the flag was at half-staff. On their return from the mess hall the candidates busied themselves as always. The scattering of empty beds on the thirty-bed barracks floor were stern reminders of the consequences of negligence or of flagged concern for perfection. They labored now to clean and reclean and hunt out specks of lint from their rifles. At any given moment, in the morning before reveille and at night before lights-out, up to a dozen candidates would be working on their pull-ups, using the iron pipes that served as beams across the ceiling. Most had by now achieved the required eleven pull-ups (and forty-four push-ups), but Andy and Henry, who were in their late twenties, past athletic prime, hadn’t quite gotten there, and now their brothers-in-arms, sitting on their beds or working on their rifles, egged them on and cheered when Andy, straining and breathless, reached ten. The final test would be the following Thursday-eleven pull-ups or back to the ranks. There was little conversation about the death of the president, and Sebastian knew nothing, after five days on maneuvers, about other developments on the war fronts.
By the time Sebastian and others in the special funeral detachment reported the next morning and dismounted their buses at Warm Springs the crow ds were already gathering. By 0800 two thousand paratroopers from Port Benning and three thousand from the great infantry base were massively there. The OCS detachment — in battle dress, at stiff attention, guns at their side — stood on both sides as the flag-draped green hearse inched past them, followed by the honor guard on foot, led by Mrs. Roosevelt. The file stopped only after reaching the railroad car. The coffin was taken up the ramp, the great covering flag in black crepe. From the corner of his eye Sebastian could see the coffin slide up into the cavity of the railroad car. The crowd was silent except for the weeping, which seemed uncontrolled. There was Jim Crow in Georgia, but not early that morning, on April 13, at the Warm Springs station, where the tears were copious on black faces.
On the ride back to Fort Benning not much was spoken. F,d Coady said he would try to get through on the telephone to his mother in New Bedford. “She’ll be very torn up. What about your people in Arizona?” Sebastian said there was just his grandmother there. “My Oma — my grandmother, Henrietta — will take it stoically, she’s that way.” After supper, Ed went off to the message center to try his long distance call, and Sebastian went to the radio for the BBC news. A half hour later, Ed joined Sebastian. “How’s your mother?” Sebastian asked.
“Okay. She said, well, Mr. Roosevelt was only sixty-three. But what I want to know, Eddie, is, will you be alive at twenty-three?” Ed laughed. “Either Hitler or I will be dead by then.”
Chapter Thirteen
Hamburg , February 1942
Three years before Sebastian had played his small role at Warm Springs, his father, Axel Reinhard, was hard at work in Hamburg for his firm, Heidl & Sons. It had been a very long time since the Europe pulled away from the dock, transporting to safety his wife and son, most of what Axel lived for. His own world was nothing more now than the world of his professional life.
The Gestapo official had told Axel that night, as they saw the passenger liner pulling away, that he had only to continue to contribute to the greater world of the Third Reich to live an untroubled life. His attempted deceit was marked down in the Gestapo’s dossier and an eye would be kept on him. He was at liberty, but on no account would the Gestapo ignore any future attempt to leave the country, or any effort by him to communicate to foreigners anything that “bears adversely on the interests of the state.” Wife and son, of course, were “foreigners.”
The early wars came quickly and were quickly and decisively fought to victory, but the war against the Soviet Union — it was plain in early 1942 — would not be so quickly concluded. Axel was not formally in the military, he was in commerce. And in the world of commerce, Albert Speer was king.
Axel Reinhard knew that his boss, Franz Heidl, had been a friend of Albert Speer, more exactly a sometime collaborator. That was back in 1930, before Speer became a full-time appendage of the rising political star of Adolf Hitler. The Fuehrer’s house architect , Herr Heidl had jocularly dubbed him, early on. Heidl would not use such language any longer, because although it intended only a slightly derisive reference to Speer, it was inextricably linked only to Speer’s sponsor. The Fuehrer’s title — the Leader — had been formally adopted by Hitler after the death of Hindenburg in 1934. Some wags thought it funny to go about referring constantly to “The Leader,” funnier still to salute one another, going and coming, with “ Heil Hitler .” But those voices quickly ebbed. There were no jokes anymore with the words Der Fuehrer in them.
As of now, February 8, 1942, Albert Speer was the Armaments Minister for the Third Reich. That made him the economic czar of Germany. In a nation at war, the line blurs between commerce and the military. Speer’s responsibility was to keep arms flowing to maintain 155 German divisions pressing the war on Russia, and, in western Europe, to supply the forty divisions needed to oversee Nazi occupations in Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, and France. And now, added to Speer’s burden, was the provisioning of the indomitable army of General Erwin Rommel, still driving in North Africa toward Cairo.
Seated in his office, sharing a pot of scarce coffee with Axel, Herr Heidl spoke of the demands on his own firm. He acknowledged that among other privileges of the Armaments Minister — “my sometime associate” — was to set priorities that “will involve — us.”
Axel interrupted. “Franz, there is no way the Armaments Minister of the Third Reich can use up any more of my time than he’s using right now.”
Heidi didn’t need to be reminded. “I know what you’re doing for them. I’ll look at your complete docket tonight. In general, how is it going with Camp Joni?”
“I’ve done the basic construction designs. But Governor Frank in Warsaw — of all people! — is telling me he is short of construction labor. That’s what he tells me in his morning calls. In his afternoon calls he tells me how urgent his Joni deadline is. But, let’s face it, the workers will somehow materialize. Governor Frank has great resources when it comes to producing laborers.”
Axel wasn’t indirect when with Franz Heidi. They spoke the same language. Poland was long ago, two and a half years back, western Europe, eighteen months ago. Today there were 257 German divisions under arms. The Third Reich was militarily triumphant, but the strain was increasing. It hadn’t surprised Axel when the edict went out that, henceforward, sixteen-year-olds would he required to report for military training. That would have meant Sebastian , if he had stayed on in Hamburg , Axel reflected. Forced labor, used covertly after the invasion of Poland, was now openly “recruited” from the conquered countries. Axel Reinhard didn’t doubt that, in violation of accepted procedure, prisoners of war from the eastern front would be put to work; though he allowed himself to wonder — Doing what? Eighteen-year-olds trained to fire guns aren’t trained as plumbers or electricians or carpenters. Lodz, the Polish city south of Warsaw from which he worked, was not an industrial center. It was excluded, even, from the main east-west rail line.
Camp Joni shall he structured to contain three thousand military prisoners . Those were the words heading up the commission by the War Ministry to the Heidl engineering firm. Beginning late in December 1942, the concrete foundations would he laid. Axel Reinhard, in charge, sketched out for review by his partners in Hamburg an electrical generating plant, military towers, the prisoner barracks, the command post, and the recreation yard.
But on the afternoon of Axel’s departure for Hamburg, the importunate Hans Frank had circumvented him, sending a telegram directly to Heidl & Sons impo
sing an unconventional priority on what was to be done at Joni. After arriving in Hamburg, Axel telephoned Governor Frank, who reaffirmed that what was needed — immediately — was construction of those elements of the camp that had to do with security. “What we need first, Herr Reinhard, is staff personnel enclosures. Get them set up first. String up the barbed wire and the searchlights and the towers. The amenities will have to take their turn.” Axel objected. There would have to be human shelter for the prisoners, the temperature in the Lodz area in winter descended to near zero. What he had got back from Governor Frank was unambiguous: “Adopt the Fuehrer’s priorities, not those of Heidl & Sons.”
The two partners were discussing the implications of the alteration in construction plans. “That schedule means, to me, Franz,” said Axel, “that my round trips, Hamburg to Lodz, can’t go on. I am going to have to live at Joni until the camp is pretty well completed.”
“Wars do such things to us, Axel,” Heidl said, not disguising the weariness he felt with the cliché he had used so often, and heard used so often. “But remember this. While it’s Governor Frank who sets priorities, you are a partner of Heidl & Sons. And whatever we construct, even prisoner of war camps, our work will continue to conform to the highest standards of civil engineering.”
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