Devil's Guard

by George R. Elford

  "It is either too late or still too early to discuss the Fuehrer's leadership, don't you think, Colonel Steinmetz?"

  "You are right. Now all we can do is hoist the white flag."

  "We have no white flags, Herr Oberst," Captain Ruell remarked with sarcasm. "White flags were never standard equipment in the Wehrmacht."

  The colonel nodded understandingly. "I know it is painful, Herr Hauptmann, but if we refuse to surrender, the Russians may treat us like we treated their guerrillas."

  "Are you expecting anything else from the Soviet, Herr Oberst?" Eisner asked.

  "The war is over. There is no reason for more brutalities," said the colonel. He turned toward me. "What do you intend to do?"

  I suggested that we should try to reach Bavaria, two hundred miles away, but the colonel only smiled at my idea. "By now, the Russian divisions are probably streaming toward the line of demarcation," he said. "All the roads and bridges will be occupied by the Russians and precisely opposite the American lines you will find most of their troops. Stalin does not trust either Churchill or Truman. He has exterminated his own general staff. Do you think he would trust Eisenhower or Montgomery? The days of 'our heroic Western Allies' are over for Stalin. In a few weeks' time the Western Allies will be called bourgeois, decadent, imperialist, and Stalin will deploy a million troops on the western frontiers of his conquest. Besides," he added after a pause, "you should not expect much from the Americans, Herr Obersturmfuhrer. I have heard many of their broadcasts."

  "So have we," Eisner remarked.

  "Then you should know about their intentions. A prisoner is always a prisoner. The conqueror is always right and the vanquished is always wrong!"

  "We have no intention of surrendering, Herr Oberst, neither here nor in Bavaria," I said softly.

  "Are you planning to go on fighting?"

  "If necessary . . . and until we arrive at some safe place."

  "Where, for instance?"

  "Spain, South America . .. the devil knows."

  "You should not count on Franco. Franco is all alone now and they might put pressure on him soon. With Hitler and Mussolini dead, Stalin will never tolerate the existence of Franco, the last strong leader in western Europe. Stalin knows that he will be able to push around everyone but Franco. He will regard Spain as a potential birthplace, or rather a place of resurrection, for the Nazi phoenix. And to reach South America you will need good papers and plenty of money. But, to speak of more immediate problems, do you have enough food to reach Bavaria? I know you have enough weapons but your trip might take two months over the mountains, and I presume that is the way you intend to go. Man cannot live on bullets."

  "We have enough food for two weeks. One can always find something to eat. It is getting on to summer now," I said. "There are villages and farms even in the mountains."

  He shook his head disapprovingly. "Are you planning to raid the farms and villages? Will you shoot people if they refuse to accommodate you?"

  "If it is a matter of survival, Colonel Steinmetz . . ." Eisner said before I could answer. He left the sentence unfinished for a moment, then added, "Have you ever seen a humane war?"

  "It will no longer be an act of war but common banditry," the colonel stated frankly. "Of course you still have the power to do it but you won't be able to do it in silence. The Czechs will know about you. The Russians will know about you and your destination. The news of your coming might reach Bavaria before you do."

  "And we might have an American reception committee waiting for us at the frontier. This is what you wanted to say, Herr Oberst?" I interposed.

  "Precisely!" said he. "And if up 'til now you haven't committed something the Allies may call a war crime, you had better not furnish them with any evidence now!"

  "Herr Oberst," I spoke to him softly but firmly, "if we do reach Bavaria, nothing will stop us from getting further. Neither the Americans, nor the devil himself. We have given up many things a man would never willingly part with, and we are ready to give up more, even our lives. But not our right to return home. On that single item we will never compromise."

  "I wish I was as young as you are," Colonel Steinmetz spoke resignedly. "But I am tired, Herr Obersturmfuhrer ... so very tired."

  Despite the old soldier's pessimism I felt that somehow we had a fair chance of getting through, saving at least our bare lives. The prospect of being hanged by the guerrillas, or at best carted off to a Siberian death camp, did not appeal to me at all. The colonel might survive. He might even return home one day. The SS could entertain no illusions about the future. No Soviet commander would lift a finger to protect us. Should their Czech allies decide to get even with us, the Russians would quickly forget about their Geneva Convention pledge for humane treatment. For seven years the Czechs had been waiting for this day, and I could not blame them either. In 1944 alone we had killed over three thousand of their guerrillas.

  "We should travel high up in the mountains, avoiding contact with the enemy. We have excellent maps of the areas involved, and if necessary we can fight our way through a Soviet brigade."

  "With a few hundred men?" the colonel asked skeptically.

  "We have at least a hundred light machine guns, Colonel Steinmetz," Eisner interposed. "We can put out so much fire that the Ivans will think a division is coming."

  "For how long?"

  "Hell, we can play hide-and-seek in the woods until the Day of Judgment, Herr Oberst!" Schulze exulted. "We should at least try! To surrender here is sheer suicide. What have we got to lose? One may commit suicide at any time."

  Bernard Eisner and Captain Ruell were of the same opinion.

  "We have mountains and woods all the way to Bavaria," Ruell said. "I am quite sure that every one of us has been through similar trips a dozen times in the past."

  The colonel shook his head slowly. "Hiding in the forest? Sneaking in the night like a pack of wolves . . . stealing or robbing food at gunpoint, shooting people if they resist? No, gentlemen, I have been a soldier all my life and I shall finish it all like a soldier, obeying the orders of those who are entitled to give them."

  "The Soviet commander down in the valley, for instance?" Eisner remarked bitterly. The colonel frowned. "I am talking of General Field Marshal Keitel and Grand Admiral Doenitz," he said.

  "Keitel and Doenitz have no idea what a dreck we are in, Herr Oberst."

  "I guess not," he agreed. "They have eighty million other Germans to worry about now. We are only a few hundred. We are not so important, gentlemen. We are neither heroes nor martyrs. We are only a part of the statistics. The death of a single individual may be very sad. When a hundred die they call it a tragedy, but when ten million perish, it is only statistics. I still believe in discipline, even in defeat. And we are defeated."

  "The only trouble is that I still cannot feel that I am licked," Schulze remarked with a grin, tapping the stock of his machine gun. "Not while I still have this thing. But I would like to see the Ivan who comes to tell me all about it."

  "Shut up, Erich!" I snapped curtly and he froze with a brisk "Jawohl." "This isn't the right time for wisecracking!"

  I turned to the colonel. "Herr Oberst, I am convinced that you will have a better chance if you surrender to the Americans."

  "I have already advised you not to expect too much from the Americans, Herr Obersturmfuhrer. All that is going to happen from now on was agreed upon by the victors a long time ago. But I concede," he added with a smile, "that an American jail might be somewhat more civilized than those of Stalin's. Stalin would kill a million Germans cheerfully. The Americans will meticulously prove that they are doing the just and legal thing. On doomsday morning they will give you a nice breakfast, a shave, a bath, and should it be your last wish, they might give you a perfumed pink rope to hang on. But the end will be the same."

  I spoke to the rest of the troopers, telling the men frankly that Colonel Steinmetz's decision was the only correct one, as far as the military code goes. But the German
Army had ceased to exist and therefore I no longer considered them my subordinates but only my comrades in peril who had the right to speak for themselves. As for myself, I stated, I would leave for Bavaria!

  The artillery platoons, the panzer crew, the Alpenjaegers decided to follow the SS rather than surrender. "You might be a bunch of sons of bitches," Captain Ruell said smiling, "but you seldom fail. I am with you!" The motorized infantry and the supply group were for Colonel Steinmetz.

  The colonel shook hands with us and I saw anguish in his face as he spoke in a choked voice. "I can understand you. It is going to be hard on the SS. The victors have already decided that you are nothing but killers, including your truck drivers and mess cooks. I wish you a safe arrival, but be prudent and do not make it harder on yourself than it already is, Herr Obersturmfuhrer."

  With a gently ironic smile he handed me his golden cigarette case, his watch, and a letter. "Take care of these for me," he asked quietly. "Give them to my wife—if she is still alive and if you can ever find her."

  "I will do it, Herr Oberst."

  His officers and the men followed the colonel's example and began to distribute their valuables among those who were to stay. "The Ivans would take everything anyway," some of them remarked with a shrug. In exchange we gave them our spare shirts and underwear, some food, cigarettes, and most of our medical supplies. Then Colonel Steinmetz assembled his troops. We saluted each other and they departed.

  We could hear them for a long time as they marched down the winding road singing: the colonel, six officers and NCO's under an improvised flag of truce, a bed-sheet. Behind them two hundred and seventy men. Beaten but not broken. The men were singing.

  Two miles down the road, around a lonely farmhouse at watch were the Russians and a battalion of militia with six tanks and a dozen howitzers. In the valley near the village we could observe more Red army troops.

  The beloved old tunes began to fade in the distant valley where the road turned into the woods as it followed the -course of a small creek. The singing was abruptly drowned in the sharp staccato of a dozen machine guns.

  Explosions in rapid succession shook the cliffs, echoing and reechoing between the peaks, and we saw fire and smoke rising beyond the bend. It lasted for less than five minutes. The howitzers and machine guns fell silent. We heard the sporadic reports of rifles, then everything was still.

  Standing on a boulder, overlooking the valley, Captain Ruell lowered his field glasses and slowly raised his hand for a salute. Tears were flowing freely from his eyes, down his cheeks and onto his Iron Cross. I saw Schulze bowing his head, covering his face in his hands. Only Eisner stood erect, staring into the valley, his face like that of a bronze statue. My own vision blurred. My stomach knotted. I turned toward my men wanting to say something but my words would not form. I felt an attack of nausea. But Eisner spoke for me.

  "There is the Soviet truce for you, men. I know easier ways to commit hara-kiri!"

  Three PO-2's rose from the fields and came droning over the hills. We dispersed, taking cover, and resolved not to reveal ourselves no matter what the enemy might do. Flying a slow merry-go-round, the flimsy planes began to circle the pass and came in low over the trees. Working the dials of our wireless. Captain Ruell quickly tuned in on the Russian wavelength. He translated for us the amusing conversation between the squadron leader and a command post somewhere in the valley.

  "Igor, Igor . . . Here's Znamia . . . ponemaies? There are no more Germans up here," the pilot reported. "You got them all!"

  "Znamia, Znamia! None of the ones here belonged to the SS. We examined all the bodies. Fjodr Andrejevich says the SS Commander and his two officers are not among the dead! Znamia, Znamia! . . . Take another look!"

  Fjodr Andrejevich, ,the Russian pilot whom we permitted to leave. Cigarettes, food, vodka. Eisner must have read my thoughts, for he remarked quietly, "What did I tell you, Hans?"

  "The positions are empty!" the pilot reported. "I can see the gun emplacements and two tanks. Znamia, Znamia! If there were more troops here they must have withdrawn into the woods."

  "Igor! Igor! Try to locate them. .. . Ponemaies?"

  Fifteen minutes later the PO-2's left and soon afterwards we spotted Soviet infantry moving up the road, two companies with three tanks to lead the way. Their progress was slow, for a dozen yards ahead of the tanks a group of demolition men moved on foot searching for mines. We allowed them to proceed up to the fifth bend below the pass where the road narrowed to traverse a small bridge between the rising cliffs. The demolition squad spent over an hour looking for mines or hidden electric wires around the place but neither the bridge nor the road around it had been mined. Our engineers had had a better idea. They had enlarged a natural cave on the precipitous slope and stuffed nearly two tons of high explosives in the crevasse.

  Observing the enemy through his binoculars, Bernard Eisner slowly raised his hand. A few yards from where he stood a young trooper sat, his hand gripping the plunger of the electric detonator, his eyes fixed on Eisner's hand. From down below came coarse Russian yells. The leading tank lurched forward. The enemy was moving across the bridge.

  Eisner's hand came down.

  "Los!"

  There was an instant of total silence, as though the charge had misfired, then earth began to rumble. The rocks seemed to rise; stone and wood exploded from a billowing mass of flames and gray smoke. The tanks stopped. The infantry scattered, taking shelter—or what they thought was shelter. High above the road a cluster of cliffs tilted, hung at a crazy angle for a second, then began to tumble down. A cascade of earth, stone, and shredded pine roared from above to carry tanks, cars, and troops into the abyss below. One car and some fifty Red army men escaped the landslide and now clung to a short stretch of road that had turned into a flat, cover-less platform, a jutting precipice with no way to escape except by parachutes. We waited until the smoke and the dust settled, then opened up on the survivors with two 88's. Direct fire with fragmentation shells, at three hundred yards. Only eight shells were fired. There were no survivors.

  "I guess this is the end of World War Two," Erich Schulze remarked when our guns fell silent.

  "Sure!" said Eisner pointing toward the debris down below. "Down there are the first casualties of World War Three!"

  We stripped off our rank badges, army insignias and emblems; tore up our identity papers and pay books; burned everything including our letters from home. The Panther tanks and the guns went over the precipice. They were faithful companions and they had served us well. None of them should fall into enemy hands.

  Ammunition for the rifles, machine guns, and submachine guns had been distributed equally among the men. We had more than enough bullets and grenades. Each man could carry five spare mags and a hundred loose bullets along with six grenades. Our supply of cheese, bacon, margarine, and other food stores had been likewise distributed. Water was no problem. There were plenty of creeks and streams in the mountains.

  We were about three miles away when the Stormoviks came buzzing over the plateau. This time they could fly the corridor unpunished. The planes bombed and gunned our vacant positions for an hour without a break. When some of them departed, others came, and their uncontested attack was delivered with true Communist zeal and determination. The action would surely be remembered by Soviet war historians as a great Russian victory.

  Seven weeks of hard trekking followed. We kept in the mountains, moving mainly at night, resting in remote ravines or in caves when we came upon some large enough to accommodate us. Only in the caves could we light small fires to boil coffee or to warm up our canned meat and vegetables. There was no need to warn the men about eating sparingly. Our self-imposed ration was one meal per day.

  Every day we spotted swarms of PO-2's as they flew reconnaissance over the woods, sometimes passing overhead at treetop level. Fortunately we could always hear them coming from miles away and had time to scatter and camouflage. We strapped green twigs around ourselves an
d onto our helmets and we looked more like moving bushes than men. When a trooper froze, no one could spot him from twenty yards.

  After about a week the planes stopped worrying us.

  The Russians had given up the futile idea of detecting us from the air. Instead they endeavored to block every bridge and every pass in our way, compelling us to choose the most impossible trails for our grueling journey. When we could cover five miles in one night, we considered it good going. It was a trying cat-and-mouse game. Death was away only in time but never in measurable distance.

  The enemy had never really known where we were and with the element of surprise preserved, we were strong enough to challenge a battalion of Russians. We could have pierced their roadblocks but the action would have given away our presence in a specific area and also our direction. By avoiding contact we kept the Russian commander in suspense. He could only guess which part of the map we were heading for. We wanted to preserve the element of surprise for the most perilous part of our trip: the crossing of the Elbe. Therefore I decided to bypass the enemy roadblocks and stick to the paths of the mountain goats. Erich Schulze, who was born and had grown up in the Alps, and some Austrian Alpine Rangers were of immense help to us.

  In a small clearing, not very far from our trail, we came upon a dilapidated hunting lodge. Eisner spotted two Red army trucks parked under the trees—a most unwelcome sight. A pair of CMC's could transport eighty men, and there was no way of bypassing the place except by making a twenty-mile detour. I decided to wait and see whether it was only a coincidence or a trap in the making. Then suddenly we heard the thud of axes and trees falling. The enemy was only cutting wood!

  We wanted to lie low until the Russians departed but fate decided otherwise. Escorted by a dozen Red army men, a small group of German prisoners emerged from the woods. Pushing and pulling at the heavy logs, the men tried to lift their burden onto the trucks. As the prisoners strained the Russians amused themselves with filthy oaths and laughter. Some of them were kicking the men as they struggled past their grinning guards.