Heinrich began to speak his next question, but Sebastian interrupted him. “I should say this, that I loved and admired my father.”
Heinrich nodded. And then, “Are you familiar with German military nomenclature, which of course would be required in the proposed assignment?”
“As a matter of fact, sir, I am.”
“What is an Oberschutze ?”
“‘That is the equivalent of a Private First Class.”
“Would you know what its equivalent would be in the SS?”
“That would be a Sturmmann. ”
“And an Oberst ?”
“Would be a Colonel. In the SS — ” Sebastian paused and smiled shyly. Was he maybe — showing off? “ — more exactly, Standartenfuehrer .”
Heinrich nodded, with a hint of appreciation. “If asked to render into German from the English, how would you handle: ‘Did you at any time record your objection to that command, and if so, is there any written record of your doing so?’”
Sebastian spoke out the lines, with a few pauses, regrouping German syntax to accommodate English structure. But he was dissatisfied with his handling of the last phrase, “...of your doing so.” He corrected himself: “Das Sie es so gemacht haben .”
He turned then to Major Stuyvesant, as if needing to account for his competence. “You see, Major, at home in Phoenix we always spoke in German because my Austrian grandmother always preferred German. So I didn’t stop speaking in German, except at school and at work, until I was drafted.”
The major nodded. He looked over at Heinrich. Heinrich pointed to the door and opened the five fingers of his other hand.
The major understood. “Lieutenant Reinhard, kindly step outside. I will call you back in a few minutes.”
Sebastian saluted and went out.
He paced a few steps in the direction of the entrance and paused over the neatly posted issue of the New York Times . The six-column headline announced the surrender of the Japanese. He began to read the week-old story. “ President Truman announced at 7 : 00 P . M . that Japan has surrendered unconditionally . Commanders in the field have issued cease - fire orders and the president announced that August 15 and 16 will he holidays with pay for federal employees . The president’s announcement is expected to launch a worldwide celebration — ” He read through the long story.
He heard the voice of Major Stuyvesant beckoning to him. He walked back into the room. The major did not ask him to sit down. He said merely, “We have the information we wish and will recommend your inclusion in the program. We are very pressed for time in the matter of the prosecution of the criminals. We will file our report with the regimental commander, recommending a reasonable leave of a few days before your departure from New York for Hamburg and on to Nuremberg, where the prosecution is laying the foundations for its case. You will receive orders, possibly within a few days. Meanwhile, you are to continue your duties with the infantry training program.”
The major nodded his head slightly in dismissal, and returned Sebastian’s salute.
Heinrich addressed him in German: “You are a quite exceptional young man, Herr Oberleutnant.”
Sebastian returned the civility. “ Danke sehr, ” bowing his head slightly.
Chapter Eighteen
August 1945
When on the hot afternoon of August 27 Sebastian actually saw his travel orders, he stopped breathing from excitement. Second Lieutenant Sebastian Reinhard was instructed to use public conveyance, Augusta, Georgia, to New York, New York, and report to the Transportation Officer Representative, Third Army, on August 31, at Pier 42 in New York City, where he would embark for Hamburg, Germany, aboard the SS Europa .
He ran across the parade ground at full speed and bounded up the stairs of the bachelor officers’ quarters. He pounded on the door of Felton Horchak.
“What is it? Come in.”
In his excitement Sebastian said nothing. He thrust his mimeographed order under the eyes of Horchak, who was seated at his desk, pen in hand. “Just read it,” was all Sebastian could manage.
Horchak tilted his shoulder to light up the text. He nodded his long head as he read. “...so you need to get your ass to New York City in two days. That shouldn’t kill you, Sebby, old boy. At the rate we go at it at Gordon, you could walk there — forced march speed — in two days.”
“Felton! listen! That’s the same boat my mother and I came over on ! And guess what — sailing on the same day ! August 31st! August 31st, 1939, was when we took off! The next day was when Hitler moved into Poland. So it’ll be — exactly — ” he mumbled his way through the addition— “39-40-41-42-43-44-45 — exactly six years! Gosh. Six fucking years and I get to go to the same port I left from on the same boat. I mean, that’s something else. Only this time the boat is U.S. military property!”
“Yup. There was a world war in between.”
Sebastian Reinhard was brought to earth.
“Yes. And we won it. That means the Europa belongs to us. And this time around, Uncle Sam pays my fare across the Atlantic.”
*
A company jeep was at hand, as arranged by the duty officer. Earlier in the day Sebastian had a brief good-bye with Captain Hand, the diminutive, tough company commander. He was in charge of the four platoons, each with four twelve-man squads, commanded by four second lieutenant platoon leaders, and of the company staff of one staff sergeant, six corporals, and four orderlies. If Captain Hand had been told by battalion headquarters what the reason was for detaching one of his four platoon leaders after only fourteen weeks of the eighteen-week training cycle, he gave no indication of it to the departing lieutenant. Sebastian wondered why. Surely it wasn’t an assignment shrouded by security? He hadn’t hesitated to tell his fellow officers what it was he was being assigned to do. But Captain Hand was a man of few words. His departing amenity would be confined to the ritual, “Good luck.” Sebastian was pleased and surprised to hear his company commander add, “You did a good job with your platoon.”
Three hours later his erstwhile platoon, led by a company corporal, pending the arrival of a replacement officer, returned from afternoon drill. The trainees were sweating and silent after a hot sand-besotted afternoons work on bayonet combat. Sebastian shook the hands of the forty-eight men individually. By the time he was done, Horchak, from Platoon C, was there. He grabbed the barracks bag from Sebastian, carried it to the jeep waiting in front of Company headquarters, and plunked it down in the back compartment. He and Lieutenant Jack Ponsonby from Platoon A climbed into the two back seats. They would see their buddy off.
The corporal at the wheel, they traveled the sixteen sandy miles on roads paved and unpaved. Approaching the city, they came upon the asphalt road that, bisecting the town, led to the railroad station. Augusta had golf courses and a steeplechase training park, but otherwise it was simply a Southern town spared by General Sherman eighty-one years earlier.
They were at the depot in time to have coffee. Sebastian did not say very much. Jack talked about Anchors Aweigh , the movie that would play that night, and about his determination to see it “even though that means leaving off cards early with Horchak.” Felton spoke of his loneliness for the cool of northern Wisconsin, where he grew up in Two Rivers, “right on the lake. You find this hot, Sebby, you should feel the cold of that water!”
They waited for the train to open up. “Let me know where you end up,” Horchak said. “I have your Phoenix address, and I’ll send you a postcard from Tokyo.” Sebastian mounted the train steps and, from the railroad ears vestibule, exchanged a playful salute with his fellow-platoon leaders, not without feeling.
In the Pullman car, sitting opposite a middle-aged woman engrossed in her book, he waited for the porter who would convert the space into an over-and-under sleeper. He applied himself to his paper pad, writing to his mother.
“ Saying good - bye in the military is pretty sad . I’ve done it three times now , leaving Wheeler , leaving Penning , and now leaving Gordon . Y
ou get really attached , Mama , to some of the guys . But you get used to it pretty soon , I mean , the fact is , in the army somebody else is in charge and you just do what you have to do — so you HAVE to get used to it . I wish you could meet Felton . I think you’d really like him . I’m thinking maybe of mailing this letter to you from Hamburg , probably quicker than putting it in the U . S . mail . How do you like THAT idea , a letter from me to you mailed in Hamburg six years after we left ? At least there won’t be any submarines around to sink the letter in transit...I’ll have just one day in New York City . I’ve got a guide brochure they give you at the railroad station . I’ll certainly try to get in to Radio City . Remember — we didn’t get a chance to go there when we got off the Europa? You weren’t all that happy , I remember , that Oma had us booked to Phoenix so we had only those couple of hours . On the other hand nothing mattered back then except that Papa wasn’t with us . You’ll be getting this letter after , or maybe about the same time as , the letter I mailed you when I got the orders a week ago . Maybe I’ll send you a postcard from Hamburg ! Maybe I’ll take a picture of 38 Hempelstrasse — hope it isn’t damaged TOO much . Mama , of course the first thing I’ll do is try to get some details about the ... end of the line for Papa . The Germans , I know and have been told , keep very good records . So don’t give up .” He lifted his head from the pad and said a silent prayer that he would find out what had happened to Axel Reinhard. He found himself hoping that he was a victim of an Allied bombing raid. He shrank from imagining other ends for the father whose absence he had mourned so intensively. “ Much love , Mama , can’t wait for the day I see you . If you write her first , give my love also to Oma .”
The porter was there. Sebastian went to the men’s room and came back in his trousers and a T-shirt. He nodded good night to the woman passenger who stood by and climbed up the ladder to his bunk, flicked on the reading light, closed the curtains at his side, and went back to his book, sent by Henrietta. It was The Economic Consequences of the Peace , written over twenty years earlier by John Maynard Keynes. The sleeping car rocked lazily but purposefully through the South Carolina forests and he consoled himself that he was not plodding through that distance carrying a field pack and carbine, step by step, hour after hour, day after day as, over this land of pine and clay, indistinguishable from the Georgia he felt he had come to know square inch by square inch, the armies had trod, north and south, fighting the great Civil War. He knew that Great-Grandfather Chapin had fought but when he did, it was late in the war, and Oma hadn’t told Sebastian whether he was in South Carolina in 1865 when the war ended.
How fine when wars end, he thought, leaning his head over to read on in the book that had prophesied the terrible consequences of an unjust peace.
*
It wasn’t until the midmorning of September 7 that he came upon First Lieutenant Harry Albright. September 7 was seven days after the noisy departure at Pier 42 in New York, and Sebastian, drawing deep and joyful breath for an entire week without infantry drills and joint morning exercises and long hot marches, spent his time walking on the one boat deck cleared for that purpose, sitting on whatever seat he could find, reading, and observing, with pity and gratitude for his apparent immunity, the seasickness around him.
Arrived now in Hamburg, he lugged his barracks bag to the designated Station 32. He could see, looking out from the starboard side, the long battered pier where six years ago friends and family stood and waved at departing passengers, as the band played on. Sebastian had nobody to wave to at the dock and, in fact, nobody to take poignant leave of aboard. It was oddly easy for any single passenger, traveling in the company of 3,500 others on a 936-foot liner, to cross the Atlantic Ocean without especially noticing, let alone befriending other than on a transient basis, any other passenger.
Deck stations 1 through 31 were rallying points for men and officers disembarking and bound for army divisions in Germany and France. Most were recruits who would relieve veterans qualified to return home. Some were re-enlistees. At Station 32, waiting out instructions over the loudspeakers for their turn to disembark, were two dozen army officers headed for myriad destinations. Leaning against the sturdy wooden boat rail, awaiting his call to proceed to the gangway, Sebastian looked over at the officer next to him. The nameplate read LT. ALBRIGHT. The slow movements of the long files of troops going down the gangway suggested it would be a while before they got around to Station 32. The troops making their slow, tedious way down the gangplanks would take — how long? In the army, time doesn’t matter very much. An hour. Conceivably, two hours. Sebastian addressed the lieutenant at his side casually.
“Where you headed?” And added, “I never thought about it before — now that the wars over, can you ask a fellow officer a question like that? Where are you going?”
Lieutenant Albright lit a cigarette. The pause suggested to Sebastian that perhaps he had indeed been indiscreet. Albright, short, stocky, crew-cutted, dark-haired, gave off the air of someone seasoned in life, whether by the army or by other hardship Sebastian could not know. He wore air force insignia. Perhaps he should interject his own information, Sebastian thought. He wouldn’t give up, pursuing his question with, “You know, Lieutenant — ”
“Harry.”
“You know something, Harry. Hamburg was where I lived for thirteen years. Last time I saw it was August 1939.”
Albrights face lit up. Instantly he swung into German. “So you grew up in Krautland?”
“Yes. You obviously did, too. Were you — born here?”
“Yes. Nuremberg.” He drew deeply from the cigarette. “The last time I saw Nuremberg was from five thousand feet. We managed to drop twenty tons on it. Lm talking about just my B-17. And there were six hundred of us, six hundred aircraft. I hope one of the bombs fell on Herr Hermenjat. He was my schoolteacher. After him, I was never surprised by accounts of Nazi sadism.” Sebastian smiled.
“Where are you headed?” Harry asked.
“Nuremberg.”
“So am I. Got to put some of those buggers away, right? Stretch a little rope around their necks.”
“I guess that’s the idea,” Sebastian said. “Would you show me around in Nuremberg? I’ll do Hamburg.”
Chapter Nineteen
September 1945
At dockside, a WAC sergeant sat behind a long desk sheltered from the rain by a khaki-colored awning. It was attached to either end of what the dockside building had been, converted now into a huge warehouse with tight-packed provisions for a conquering army. The sergeant, the schedules on her clipboard for the larger army units, was calling out information into a microphone. A cork bulletin board displayed schedules with troop departure times. The names of soldiers with urgent personal messages waiting were written in chalk on a blackboard. A dozen officers waited for special scheduling information as yet unposted. In the army, juniors instinctively yielded to seniors. Harry Albright was a first lieutenant. Second Lieutenant Reinhard edged casually back.
“We’re going to Nuremberg,” Albright told the WAC. “What do we do?”
The sergeant, wearing spectacles, leafed briskly through her clipboard. “There’s a troop train going to Munich at 2020. You can connect north to Nuremberg from there, only, we can’t be sure what time you’ll get into Munich.”
“What about commercial carriers?”
“There’s a train at — ” She looked at her watch. “Yes, you could make it, you’ve got just over an hour. It leaves at 1915, gets into Nuremberg at 0715.”
“Reservations?”
The sergeant looked up and managed a smile. “Reservations? There’s been a war, Lieutenant.”
“Yes. I heard.”
“No, no reservations, and there are no dining provisions. Though probably somebody will be selling something to eat. You’ll certainly get some beer.”
“How about getting to the railroad station?”
Sebastian interjected. “We can get there by subway.”
“From h
ere?”
“Yes.”
“Then...we’re off.”
Sebastian leaned down to pick up his heavy bag. They were just outside the shed when an older man, unshaved and wearing a cap, approached them. “You want help bags?”
Albright replied in German. “Yes.” He told him they were bound for the subway station. “Are the subway trains operating regularly?”
“Not regularly,” the old man said. “But not irregularly. You are going to Hauptbahnhof? I have a friend who has a jeep. A very good jeep.”
“How much?”
“Four dollars.”
“Two dollars.”
“Three dollars.”
“Harry, listen,” Sebastian interrupted. “Hempelstrasse isn’t that much out of the way, going to the station.” He turned to the old man. “We want to go by way of the park, by Hempelstrasse.”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “‘Three dollars.”
“I’ll spring for it,” Sebastian said in English to Albright.
At the dispatcher’s signal, a big woman drove up in what had once been a conventional jeep, now enlarged to serve as truck or lorry. They drove off, Sebastian, in his native city, giving directions.
‘Through his shock at the desolation, he made out the block numbers. At midblock he told the woman at the wheel to stop. Looking about he reconstructed the targeted area. He could make out the borders of the little playground. What had served as the iron fence to keep the children from spilling out was still discernible. ‘The two tall apartment buildings were a jangle of wayward beams and joists and window glass.
“Do you want a picture?” Albright asked.
“I don’t have a camera.”
“I do.” He zipped open his big bag and brought out a Brownie. “Here, you take it. But be fast about it. We’ve only got thirty-five minutes.”
Sebastian raised the camera to his eye and snapped the picture. He returned the camera swiftly to Albright, and turned his face away. Albright understood, said nothing, and signaled to the woman to get on to the railroad station.
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