How I Won the War

by Patrick Ryan

  “Good luck,” he said. “And be careful. My future is in your hands.”

  The sentry led me for a mile beyond the town and left me on the outskirts of a wire-fringed forest. Following Odlebog’s directions I made my way southwestwards through the scrub as fast as the ankle-deep peat would allow. After three-quarters of an hour I came to the edge of the pines and in view of a white road. As I worked my way down to it a convoy of German trucks came swirling back towards the bridge. I dived behind a clutter of rocks and was forced to lie there for a long time while odd parties of Boche infantry, dust-covered and downcast, struggled by in full retreat. It was gone three o’clock before the road was empty and I could safely move on. As I came out from behind the rocks there was a clatter of tracks around the bend ahead and a Sherman came grinding into view. I ran for the road waving my arms.

  “Stop! Stop! I have a message for the general.”

  Three tanks swept by before I made the tarmac and three more ignored me as I tried to shout above the roar of their engines. Two armoured half-tracks loaded with American infantry rolled past me, but the third stopped as I stood steadfastly in its path waving my contract. A top sergeant leaned out.

  “What the hell … Jesus! It’s a Limey.”

  “Take me to your general,” I said. “I have bought a bridge over the Rhine and must have his immediate approval.”

  “You bought a bridge?” His chewing gum fell from his dropped jaw. “How much you pay?”

  “Fifty pounds down and twenty-one thousand two hundred later. That’s why I must see your general. I must have his promise to pay the rest.”

  He looked at me from head to foot, nodding rhythmically.

  “Elmer!” he yelled suddenly. “Limey out front here says he just bought us a bridge. Fifty pounds down and four years to pay.”

  A prison-cropped, horn-rimmed face poked through my side of the canopy.

  “Are you in charge?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said like early Brando. “That’s right. Me and Grover. We’s in charge. You the guy bought a bridge?”

  “Yes. I have the contract all signed up, right here. I insist that you take me immediately to your general.”

  “To the general? … Yeah, yeah … sure, sure…. You jump right in feller. Me and Grover take you to the general.” I climbed in the back. There was a wireless set grumbling away. The four soldiers made room for me.

  “Poor bastard,” said Elmer. “They must have brainwashed him or sump’n, Grover. Drove him straight round the bend.”

  “They put a bucket over their heads and belt it with pick handles till their brain pans is scrambled up all which-ways.”

  The truck drove on after the Shermans.

  “Is this the way to your general?” I asked. “It is imperative he knows immediately that I have bought a bridge. Otherwise Odlebog might blow it up.”

  “Don’t you worry nothing, bud,” said Grover soothingly. “You’re all right now. No Odlebug ain’t going to get you. We gonna take you right straight to our general. Yes, sir! Right away …”

  “When d’you escape?” asked Elmer. “They had you prisoner long?”

  “No. Only about four hours. Please hurry …”

  “Only four hours, Grover!” exclaimed Elmer. “Inhuman bastards. What they do to the poor guy to break him down mad-crazy in just four hours?”

  “They got their methods,” said Grover darkly. “Psychological, that’s what they are. Bust up a feller’s mind like that.” He punched himself on the left temple. “Freud, Jung, Adler, all them head-shrinkers are goddamned Krauts.”

  “Look here,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I bought a bridge over the Rhone. I’ve got the contract to prove it. All I want …”

  “All you want is twenty-one thousand two hundred quid and it’s yours. We know. And we gonna see you get that money, ain’t we, Elmer?”

  “We sure are. So don’t you worry none, bud. You just lie down and get some rest. You want for me to get you aspirin or sump’n, huh?”

  “I don’t want any aspirin, I told you …”

  Suddenly the wireless sprang to blaring life.

  “Elmer!” bawled the loudspeaker. “There’s a bridge still standing. Get going hot-diggedy down there and start cutting wire!”

  We topped the hill above the town and there below stood my bridge, intact and splendid.

  “There it is,” I said. “That’s my property …”

  The truck accelerated down the hill like a rocket, passing the two in front, and Elmer yelling instructions as he went by. Stirling Moss would have waved on those half-track drivers as they hammered round the bends, tore through the centre of town and out on to the riverside…. We were hitting sixty and in the shadow of the bridge when Elmer yelled “Halt!” and the driver slammed on all anchors … made a teeth-shattering Disney stop and pitched me out of my seat over the wireless and into the canvas gulf beyond.

  Small arms fire rattled outside … the crump of the Shermans’ guns and the hammering of their automatics beat down from the hill … an explosion rumbled up on the bridge, then another … men were running past the truck, yelling triumphantly…. I got my head out through the front slit of the awning … the bridge stretched straight and unbroken into the heart of Germany … Odlebog was standing outside the signal hut waving his half of the contract … tommy guns crackled and he fell forward on his face.

  Another half-track rolled in … more doughboys dismounted…. I got the wireless set out of my crutch, pulled my head free and crawled down to the ground…. Running from girder to girder behind the Americans, I got across to Odlebog. He was dead. No more would he sniff the corn-store at Silberplatz. Vacancy for warehouse manager at Gradheim and Koch…. I eased the contract from his fingers and searched his pockets till I found my cheque. No point in leaving signed cheques lying about the battlefield. I tore up both pieces of paper, tossed them into the Rhine and set off back across the sleepers the way I had come.

  And that was how I captured the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, the only bridge across the Rhine that was taken intact.

  Chapter Nineteen

  You have wondered, no doubt, why our soldiers do not smile when you wave your hands, or say “Good Morning” in the streets or play with the children…. Our soldiers have seen their comrades shot down, their homes in ruins, their wives and children hungry. They have seen terrible things in many countries where your rulers took the war … every nation is responsible for its rulers and while they were successful you cheered and laughed. That is why our soldiers do not smile at you.

  F-M. VISCOUNT MONTGOMERY OF ALAMEIN—MESSAGE TO THE GERMAN PEOPLE 10TH JUNE 1945

  If left to himself the British soldier will soon be on the best terms with the local population. Unfortunately this time he was not left to himself and all sorts of regulations about non-fraternization with the German people were issued … our troops were prevented from getting to know ordinary, decent families in an open, normal way and were driven to consorting with the lowest types of German women. In spite of the non-fraternization rules I was determined somehow to make our occupation as palatable as possible for the local inhabitants … I therefore ordered all units in my corps to do everything they could to help the German children …

  LT. GEN. SIR BRIAN HORROCKS A Full Life

  BY THE TIME I caught up with the Musketeers they had joined the British Second Army which was still regrouping on the east bank of the Lower Rhine. My chaps in Twelve Platoon were so pleased to see me that they all went out on the night of my arrival and got drunk. Although some of them were undeniably edgy with hangover next morning, I felt justified in overlooking their excesses since my popularity was to blame for their jubilation. I had to disappoint them, too, by announcing that they would not, after all, be spearheading the Allied advance across the Rhine. It had been ordained that the Division would be held in reserve during the river assault ready to pass through the bridgehead when it was secure and strike out into the Westphalian
plain.

  The Regiment was settled in Gretmund, thirty miles back from the Rhine, safely out of range of the enemy but uncomfortably close to Army Headquarters. The farther you got back from the line, the stricter became the observance of the decrees against fraternization. Around the Gretmund district they had special M. P. patrols to detect and discourage any illegal looks, smiles, or unseemly badinage between soldiers and civilians.

  The Army Group Commander issued a personal letter to each officer and man under His command explaining why He had sent the Germans to Coventry. It was printed on a card which could be carried in the battle-dress pocket and I found it most helpful. Whenever I was tempted to pat the head of a Boche child or to relax my frown at its starving mother, I would take the card from my pocket and strengthen my spirit from His words. I also read it out to Twelve Platoon daily at first parade stressing the Commander’s points that “if we mix freely with the Germans, go to their homes, dance with their girls and so on, it would be resented by our own families in England and by millions of people who had suffered under the Gestapo. When we first enter Germany, it will be too soon to distinguish between good and bad Germans, we must therefore hold back and not fraternize till we can see our way clear.”

  “And so, men,” I would exhort them each morning, “let each of us resolve that this day we shall not fraternize.”

  “We don’t want to fraternize ’em,” whispered Private Drogue. “We just want to f— ’em.”

  Which jocular remark, I’m afraid, summed up the general attitude of the Musketeers. After the free and easy relations we had enjoyed with the Italians, all ranks found it doubly difficult to observe the prohibition of intercourse with the German people. And I do mean intercourse.

  We had about three weeks in and around Gretmund and the ugly head of my old enemy reared itself once again. I’ve never felt quite sure what the curse of Cain was, but if it was loose women then he’d have been at home in Twelve Platoon. In Africa, Italy, and Greece I had been forced to fight a running battle with concupiscence, and now Germany was to give me no relief. I had, fortunately, no daunting madames to contend with this time since the houses of ill-fame in the town were carefully watched by the non-fraternization patrols and for a soldier to set nose through the bead curtains was to invite immediate retribution.

  The good-time girls of Gretmund, therefore, had to operate on a lone she-wolf basis. The official anti-civilian defences were most vulnerable to such individual infiltration and the actual separation of the British soldier from the female German called for much diligence at platoon commander level. The women were naturally cunning, the men hopping alive with lustful ingenuity, and I had to exercise a high degree of personal vigilance to ensure that Twelve Platoon maintained the standard of misogynous discipline desired by the Supreme Commander.

  In Gretmund we were billeted in the remnant of a bombed hotel. The habitable wing had housed the kitchen and servants’ quarters and was a regular warren of interlocking rooms and rambling corridors. I found at the very outset that I could not rely on the wholehearted support of my N.C.O.’s in the enforcement of our segregation orders. On the first evening I placed them on watch at strategic points of entry to the billets and was bitterly disappointed when I made my snap inspection to find Corporal Dooley in trouserless fraternization on the basement steps with Little Jo-Jo, a strawberry blonde well up on my list of undesirables.

  “I trust, sir,” he said, shirt-tails flapping as he came to the salute, “that you’ll not be thinking anything untoward. ’Tis a button come off me trousers, sir, and this lady offered to sew it on.”

  Corporal Hink had retreated from his position at the washhouse door and was undressing a brunette called Loreli in the larder. He said she looked Greek to him and he was prudently searching her skirt for weapons. In the reception hall Corporal Globe was recumbent on the key counter with Red Marlene. He claimed that he was getting something out of her eye when he came over faint. The greatest blow awaited my return to operational headquarters in the kitchen, where I found Sergeant Transom wrapped in the blonde vastness of Big Magda, and so absorbed in his work that he did not even hear my approach. Discreet coughing gained not a flicker of response from either party, and I had to poke him twice on the shoulder with my swagger stick before I could gain his attention.

  “I was trying to tire her out, sir,” he said, “so that she’d not have the urge to go worrying the men no more tonight. It was a personal sacrifice as you might say, sir, for the protection of our subordinates.”

  I told him that no matter what his motives may be it was only common politeness for a senior N.C.O. engaged as he was to make pause in his passion when addressed by a commissioned officer. The flesh, I knew, was weak but there was no call for discourtesy.

  I did not feel that I should put all my N. C. O.’s on charge together without first discussing the matter with Major Arkdust. He was rather hard to get hold of at that period because most of his time was spent with Colonel Plaster and the adjutant in pursuit of a certain cache of Nazi-hidden hock which was apparently the Montepico ’92 of the Rhineland. Although, when I did catch him, I explained that the Army Group Commander’s personal orders were in breach, he refused to accept charges against my four N. C. O.’s

  “We’ve still got to fight the blasted war, Goodbody,” he said, “in spite of the Army Group Commander’s puritan upbringing. I can’t afford to have all you N. C. O.’s under arrest for fondling fräuleins. Do you think I want to assault the Rhine with you all alone in charge of Twelve Platoon?”

  I could see his point. Even though I was senior platoon commander, I could not fight my command in battle without any supporting N. C. O.’s. Not for long, anyway.

  “And furthermore,” he said, “the colonel has made it plain that while this non-fraternization edict requires his obedience, it does not command his sympathy. He will thank no one for bringing N. C. O.’s up on orders about it. I have, therefore, decided that antifrat discipline is a matter for platoon commanders. The campaign for the sexual separation of British soldiers from any available woman is henceforth a personal matter between the Army Group Commander and yourself.”

  I saluted smartly and told him how I appreciated the trust he was displaying in my judgment by devolving so important a discipline matter to my level. It was now a private battle between me and Twelve Platoon.

  As a first step, I strengthened the defences. I had all the windows on the ground floor filled in with sandbags and nailed up ever door but the main entrance. At the top of the building was an attic room that ran from back to front. There were windows in three walls and it commanded views of all approaches to the hotel. I moved into this room and made it my personal headquarters. I laid trip-wires at night and connected them to the suite of servants’ bells on the wall. From a glance at which red dodger was down I could tell immediately the quarter of the enemy’s attack. I could reach the kitchen in twenty-five seconds flat by means of the dumbwaiter. It was rather cramped crouched up in a lift built for nothing larger than a turkey, but the discomfort was worth it when I debouched the first night and caught Private Drogue and Black Bertha sporting amorously on the pastry slab.

  The main stairs provided a simple alarm route to the front of my fortress and my lightning way to the back was down a rope ladder which I fixed from a landing window to the roof of the washhouse. It was a tricky descent, but it enabled me to surprise, within a single hour, Private Gripweed grappled to Gretchen against the garden wall, and Private Spool and Fat Elsa twined in a wrestling hold of such ingenuity that he pulled a hip ligament getting out.

  I introduced a system of fraternization fines payable to the Platoon Benevolent Fund. It was a shilling for a smile at the enemy, two shillings for a kind word, half a crown for a charitable waste of Army rations, or aiding the entry of a female to billets, five bob for petting or kissing, and half if copped in full penetration. This fund mounted steadily, and I made a fine sweep on the third night when I detected Corporal Hink�
�s secret tart tunnel through the coke chute and nabbed his whole section romping erotically, turn and turn about with the dresden-sized Sukie, tiny Tilda, and Lotte and Lisa, the sixteen-year-old nymphomaniac twins. They were the only Gretmund geishas small enough to get through the coal hole. I thought at first torch light that Hink had got hold of coloured women, but quickly realized that it was merely the coal dust which had blackened their buttocks.

  I had barbed wire stuffed down all chimneys after Little Jo-Jo, at Corporal Globe’s admitted instigation, was trapped at midnight by the bend at the bottom of the main flue. She was caught with head and shoulders up the throat and her bottom half safely out and over the kitchen range. I was gratified to note that Globe still had some spark of English decency unsubmerged by lust, since he made no attempt to take advantage of the girl in her unfortunate but provocative position.

  My faith in my fellow men was disagreeably jolted when, after a buzz on my wires at three o’clock in the morning, I raced to the washhouse to find Private Clapper unbuttoned from ear to ear, in flagrante delicto with Red Marlene. When I had relieved him of half a bar I asked him what sort of reward this was for my efforts to ensure the marital fidelity of Mrs. Clapper.

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” he said, adjusting his dress before leaving, “I just don’t know what came over me. It occurred, sir, in a blinding moment of ungovernable passion.”

  I advised him to take more exercise and avoid highly spiced food in the future. One hundred per cent fit though I was, the nightly strain of watching for the red dodgers, humping in the dumbwaiter, and racing down rope ladders began to tell on me. Twelve Platoon fought back doggedly. As I sealed one loophole of lechery, they devised another. Alerted one night to the larder, I pulled at the rope for the dumbwaiter to find that it was weighing a ton. It was vertical tug-of-war all the way, and when I finally got it to the top, perspiration dripping and blisters newly bulging, I found Private Drogue and Lorelei coiled up inside in a mating position of truly embryonic economy. If I had not seen it myself I would have never believed it possible for a pair of adult humans so to perform within the confines of a dumbwaiter. I let go the rope in surprise and God knows what new depths of satisfaction were plumbed by Lorelei when the lift hit bottom.