Fox On The Rhine

by Douglas Niles

  “There!” snapped Ulrich, pointing toward a blue flare that suddenly sparked into view. The marker was off to the right, but almost immediately another brilliant speck of azure glowed to the left. The Pathfinders had marked the target zone--and they perfectly bracketed the Panzer Lehr division.

  In seconds the five men had scrambled through the Panther’s portals and snapped the hatches shut. Even within the shelter of their armored cocoon, the noise of the Allied air armada was a thunderous backdrop, an assault of sound that vibrated flesh and metal alike. Carl-Heinz drew a deep breath as his hands settled over the comfortable three-quarter circle of his steering wheel. With an effort of will he forced his fingers to relax, then almost immediately noticed that his knuckles had whitened again from the unconscious pressure of his grip.

  Another noise began to seep through the all-encompassing rumble, a whistle that began deceptively soft, quickly swelled louder and louder as strings of bombs tumbled downward. And then came the first impacts, the sounds that made all the previous thunder vanish like remembered whispers. The ground shook, and the roar of explosions came from the right, the left, from behind and before them. Blasts crumped in the middle distance, then boomed with explosive pressure from terribly near. Dirt and stones showered onto the surface of the tank, a rattling tinkle that incongruously reminded Carl-Heinz of rain on his barn roof.

  The ground heaved and the forty-ton tank lurched forward. The steering wheel became the only point of stability in his life, and Carl-Heinz clung to the steel arc as if it made the difference between life and death. For some seconds the sounds lightened, though explosions still came from all sides, and then the quaking pressure was right on top of them again. The Panther tilted sickeningly, and more debris thudded onto the roof, onto the hull and hatches.

  Sneaking a glance to his right, Carl-Heinz saw that Pfeiffer still sat gloomily, bracing himself with hands extended to the grab bars on either side of his seat at the hull machine gun and radio. Ulrich looked back and shrugged his shoulders, then opened his mouth after something that was lost in the crushing reverberations of the explosive bombardment. The driver imagined him saying “I told you so,” and for once he was forced to agree that his comrade’s relentless pessimism had a certain grounding in fact.

  A bomb smashed with a deafening roar and the Panther skidded hard to the side. Other sounds crumped in the distance, and then nearby again. Carl-Heinz lost all track of time--it seemed as though he had spent a lifetime in the midst of whistling death. He couldn’t imagine anyone living through such an assault, and with a pang of regret he sensed that his own span of life must soon be ending. The sounds, the pressure, and the violence of the bombing became a constant backdrop, and his regrets faded to a vague numbness as he awaited the imminent and inevitable blast that would mean his own death.

  The destruction was endless, incredibly so, and it amazed him to think of so many bombs being dropped on a small patch of earth. And then, finally, it was over. The explosions ceased with a suddenness that nevertheless took a minute or two to sink in. Ulrich’s lips moved, but though he was right beside him the driver heard no sounds, wondered if he had been permanently deafened by the onslaught. How long had they been bombed? Carl-Heinz didn’t have the slightest idea.

  Hesitantly, he pushed open his hatch, tentatively poking his head out of the Panther’s hull. The grassy embankment before them was gone, replaced by a torn landscape of low hills, mounds of dirt that looked like nothing so much as the brown waters of a stormy sea. Jutting from one of these hillocks was the torn turret of a Panzer IV. In another place he saw the bogey wheel from another tank--or perhaps it was the same one.

  Slowly he crept out of the hatch, then crawled up onto the Panther’s turret where the ashen-faced Lieutenant Schroeder was shakily climbing through his own hatchway. Carl-Heinz joined him in standing atop the tank, looking across a landscape that was devoid of life, of men or machinery, even of trees or grass. Their own panzer was partially buried, with clods of dirt strewn across the hull. Somehow, miraculously, it seemed that the long barrel of the 75-mm cannon was undamaged.

  Looking to the right and the left, or forward toward the line of roadway that led between St.-Lo and Periers, Carl-Heinz sought some sign of the rest of the division, of the five thousand men and hundred tanks that had composed their mighty outfit. Smoke rolled across the landscape, and he couldn’t see very far, except when a swirl of wind momentarily clearing away the dirty smudge. But even then, in the full span of his view, there was nothing, nothing but the ruin and wrack of this bizarre moonscape. The conclusion was obvious, painful, inescapable:

  The Panzer Lehr division had ceased to exist.

  First Army Advance Observation Post, Normandy, France, 1215 hours GMT

  General Wakefield accompanied Colonel Grant, the Nineteenth Armored’s intelligence officer, in following Jack King up the hill. They found space among the many First Army brass who were already crowded between the trees. Everyone was talking about the ascension of the “new führer,” though they all agreed that the German army would be just as tough as it had been last week, or last month. Conversation soon faded away, as the rumbling drone of many thousand aircraft engines drowned out any normal conversation. Most of the men had binoculars, and all had their attention fixed on the swath of green countryside visible for many miles to the south.

  “That’s the road, there... St.-Lo to Periers,” Colonel Grant shouted helpfully. Wakefield nodded, though there was only one highway visible from their vantage.

  “And the bombs are falling on the other side of it, right?” joked General King. The CO of the Nineteenth was in fine spirits, laughing at a private word shared with another division commander, then turning to urge his XO forward. “C’mon, Henry, you won’t see anything from back there.”

  Wakefield mumbled his “thanks” and stepped into the gap between a couple of major generals. It seemed that most of the First Army Staff was here, though there was no sign of General Bradley himself. They were all gathered for a look at the first salvo of Operation Cobra, to be delivered by the heavy bombers of the Eighth Air Force now droning overhead.

  “I thought they were supposed to be coming in from the west!” one of the generals barked, scowling at the river of bombers in the sky.

  “That’s what I heard, too--Brad insisted,” shouted another, also angry.

  Wakefield understood their displeasure, and he, too, was unhappy with the risk. If the bombers had come from either the east or the west, they could have made their whole bomb run over enemy positions. Any bombs falling short would still land on Germans, at least theoretically. With the current alignment of attack, however, shorts ran a danger of hitting the American troops who were supposed to lead off the attack. Had he been in charge, he would not have authorized this attack--better to have the infantry move a little more slowly, but be allowed to achieve their objectives without a threat from their own air force.

  Far away the landscape was suddenly torn by explosions. Wakefield saw the debris and smoke fly, felt the concussions of the blasts through the soles of his boots, though it was long seconds before the first sounds reached them. As soon as it began the booming violence formed a steady background roar, a complement to thunderous engines as thousands of aircraft streamed down from England to pour their explosive cargoes onto the battlefield.

  “The Old Hickories pulled back from the front, didn’t they?” yelled a general.

  “I heard a thousand yards,” Colonel Grant replied. “This is their section of the front before us.”

  Wakefield remembered the briefing, knew that the Thirtieth Infantry Division was going to lead the way. He and General King had toured the Old Hickories’ position, since the Nineteenth Armored was slated to move through them as soon as the dogfaces had punched a hole in the front.

  “Les McNair himself came out to see this show open,” King reported, drawing impressed nods from the neighboring generals. Leslie McNair was one of the highest ranking gener
als in the U.S. Army, one of the masterminds behind the Normandy campaign. For a time it had been whispered that he, not Ike, was going to command the whole operation. Now, knowing that he was in the vicinity, the men of First Army got some idea of the stakes the high command put on this operation.

  “No hilltop for McNair,” another general reported, clearly impressed. “I saw him heading out to the front--he’s going to watch this from a foxhole.”

  “Brave man,” Jack King cheerfully agreed.

  But Wakefield wasn’t thinking about army and front commanders any more. He was watching the cloud of dust raised by the bombardment, seeing it billow north, pushed by a slight breeze and the force of its own tumult. Already the road was obscured, and now the murk had enveloped the front of the Old Hickories’ position. More bombs fell, a steady plastering that must certainly be eradicating every living being in the impact zone. The swath of destruction continued to expand, until it was obvious that the positions of the Thirtieth Division, even a thousand yards back from the front, were in grave danger.

  “Goddamn flyboys!” one general cursed, while others started edging toward the back of the hill. “They’re blasting our own men!”

  And still the chaos rolled on, as subsequent bombers sighted not on the road but on the swirling dust cloud. The Old Hickory trenches, several unit headquarters, and the jumping-off positions for the attack, all vanished in the chaos. Furthermore, with the expanded impact zone moving far from its original boundaries, the destructive pounding kept moving northward. All the officers on the observation post ducked as a booming smash rose no more than three hundred yards from their hilltop.

  “Christ! Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  Wakefield didn’t know who made the suggestion, but it was the only sensible thing to do. With unseemly haste for a bunch of high brass, the officers beat a hasty retreat down the rear of the hill. The bombs were frighteningly close as the men milled about in the field where their command cars and drivers waited. As Wakefield and King hopped into their jeeps, other command vehicles were already racing away.

  Before the generals of the Nineteenth started off, an armored car rolled into view, and a furious lieutenant jumped out. He was terrified and spitting mad, and he started shouting at the first general he saw--Jack King.

  “They’re killing our boys, General!” he cried. “A whole battalion of the Thirtieth is plastered to hell--and they even got that general, McNair, come here to see how we did. Damnit, General, get on the phone to someone--you’ve got to stop ’em!”

  Only then did they realize that the thunder had ceased, reduced to the fading drone of aircraft engines rumbling into the distance. The bombardment had ended and, under a dark cloud of blood, debris, and tragic mistakes, Operation Cobra was under way.

  Berlin, Germany, 1418 hours, GMT

  Lieutenant Haeften could not sit still. He was not truly scared, not any more. He was beyond fear. He was dead already; his destiny was certain. It would merely take some indefinite amount of time to realize.

  “We’ve failed, haven’t we, sir,” he said in a clear monotone to his superior officer and mentor, who rested in his office chair as if all was normal. It was not a question.

  The one-eyed count, assassin of Adolf Hitler, looked up and grinned with a confidence that struck Haeften as nearly unfathomable. “Not the way I see it. We may not have succeeded, but we did not fail. Hitler is dead, the Nazi high command is in turmoil, and the fate of the Third Reich is sealed. May the Fourth Reich yet to come be something that Germany can be proud of.”

  Haeften shook his head. “But Himmler as the new führer--isn’t that worse? Haven’t we simply made things worse by our actions?”

  “No. Not at all.” Stauffenberg spoke with calm assurance. “If we have done nothing else, we have demonstrated that there is some honor left in Germany, some courage, some revulsion at what Hitler and his bully boys have wrought. That will be part of the history, part of what is recorded. Werner, remember this, for as long as you have left: when you do the right thing, you win.”

  The lieutenant nodded. Surprisingly, the thought gave him some comfort in the face of his death. He was otherwise completely numb.

  It was only afternoon, but with the blinds drawn and the room closed in, it could have been any time. The remnants of the conspirators, those who hadn’t scurried for cover like mice into their holes, had been meeting around the clock. Telephone calls and surreptitious communications, coded phrases meant to activate this group and that--while many who subscribed to the conspiracy with their lips had failed to follow through with the rest of their bodies, especially when it became clear the momentum had moved to Himmler’s SS, it was gratifying how many had stood up and struck their blows for a free Germany, free of Nazi tyranny and ready to rejoin the brotherhood of nations.

  In spite of Himmler’s preemptive takeover of Broadcast House in Berlin, made possible at least in part by Stauffenberg’s fateful decision to send the notifications in code, the conspirators had not simply given up. The coup had been more successful in Paris and elsewhere, and the core plotters had moved more quickly after their initial slow start. But two problems bedeviled their effort: first, that Nazi loyalists were present everywhere, and second, that many fence-sitters were unwilling to commit themselves in the absence of clear victory.

  There were moments. A room-to-room shootout in Wehrmacht headquarters in Paris between pro-Nazi and pro-coup forces left thirty dead and the coup forces officially in control of the military apparatus for a period of twelve hours. Then came a counterattack by an SS division--brave men armed with pistols were helpless against tanks and infantry. They had been brutally gunned down.

  The last meeting of the core coup plotters had ended hours ago, with the only remaining issue concerning what would happen to the ringleaders. “I will not run,” Stauffenberg had said. “Let them martyr me if they wish. A thousand more revolutionaries will grow from the soil.” Haeften could see the conflicted, even scared, expressions on the faces of the other coup leaders: Beck, Olbricht, von Quimheim. They looked back and forth at each other; none could move.

  Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, the Berlin police president, and Dr. Hans Gisevius, the German vice consul for Switzerland, were the only two nonmilitary officers present. Gisevius, a member of the inner circle since the very beginning, had resolved to stay and face his fate with the generals, but von Helldorf was contemptuous. “Don’t kid yourself, Gisevius,” he had said. “For years the generals--yes, and the colonels, too--,” he added, looking straight at Stauffenberg, “have shit all over us. They promised us everything; they haven’t kept a single promise. What happened in this coup was right in line with the rest of what they’ve said--more of their shit.”

  Olbricht began to argue, but Stauffenberg interrupted. “Excuse me, my general, but the police president is correct. We are military officers, and there is no excuse for failing to meet one’s objective. In fact, I highly recommend that you all follow Herr von Helldorf’s suggestions. If you have not been officially implicated, return to cover. Hide. Flee to the west. Return to your duties if you can. Save your lives, and more importantly, prepare yourselves for another opportunity. It’s not over. It will never be over while a single Nazi remains in power.”

  Von Helldorf looked triumphantly around. He leaned forward, hands on the conference table spread wide. Few of the military officers met his eyes. “See? Stauffenberg is right. We can hide, we can rebuild, we can try again. Gisevius, you understand, right? This isn’t about some empty idea of military honor, this is about results, about winning the war even though we’ve lost this battle. Only a few of us are so exposed we can’t just return to our duties, and those can flee to Switzerland or try to reach the Allies or the Resistance in France.”

  Gisevius shook his head. “Honor demands--”

  Helldorf interrupted explosively. “Germany demands that we try to live to fight another day! Maybe you don’t think your life means anything. Maybe it doesn’
t, but mine does, and while I’ll lose it in the right cause I’ll be goddamned if I plan to throw it away for ‘honor.’” He spat the term. “You see where ‘honor’ got all those brave officers who spoke privately against Hitler but decided that it wasn’t the right time to move their troops. I, for one, am not yet compromised, and I plan to stay that way. Who’s with me?”

  Reluctantly, Gisevius nodded. “I’ll return to Switzerland and talk to the Allies.” Haeften could see the shame on his face, even though he knew it was the right thing to do.

  Beck said, “It matters not to me. I can’t go back to my job. I’m known.” Olbrich nodded in agreement. He was too visible as well.

  “Then for God’s sake, flee! Get out of Berlin; go to Switzerland. Go anywhere! But go! Stauffenberg, tell them. You’re the most important of all.”

  The faces of the generals turned one by one in the direction of the one-eyed colonel. Suddenly Haeften was reminded of a nightmare image of his youth, a famous painting--the Crucifixion, by Matthias Grünewald. German crucifixion paintings were reputed to have therapeutic properties; the detailed and highly realistic wounds on the Christ figure were living evidence of Christ’s promise to take all the sins of the world upon him, and miraculous cures resulted for those who beheld it.

  Grünewald’s Crucifixion had made a terrifying impression on Haeften at the age of ten. A majestic ten-foot representation of Golgotha, set in the dark of the night, with Jesus dead on the cross, the Romans and onlookers long since departed, four mourners--two Marys, the Blessed Mother and Mary Magdalene, and two Johns, the Evangelist and the Baptist--below. Each of the nail wounds and scourge marks suffered by the Savior was carefully placed, but then Grünewald had added many more wounds and open sores: all the sins of the world. Haeften had tried to run away at the horrfying sight, he had shrieked and cried and had nightmares for weeks.