Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine)

by Douglas Niles

  “Thank you, sir,” Hartnell said.

  “How’s your father?”

  “Well, sir. I went to Somerset over Christmas and saw him then, along with the family.” Stone’s father had been connected to the Roosevelt circles for many years, and was well known to most of the major players in the administration.

  “Good, good,” Harriman said. “It’s been a bit chilly in Moscow lately, and I’m not referring to the weather, either.”

  “I understand, sir. I gather the president hasn’t been very happy about it either.”

  “Damned right. But Stalin thinks that he’s got the right—and the might—to write his own ticket, and on a practical level I’m not so sure he’s wrong. When the climate was a little friendlier, I’ve watched the Soviet army on the move, and I have to tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Hell, I haven’t imagined anything like it in my life. I understand you worked for a while on the Overlord plans at SHAEF headquarters in London.”

  “Yes, sir, I did.”

  “Tell me, what’s the full U.S. Army authorized military strength?”

  “As I recall, sir, about ninety full divisions—not that we’re quite at that level.”

  “And that’s Atlantic and Pacific, right? How about the British?”

  “Around twenty-seven divisions, sir.”

  “And the Germans? Know how many they fielded overall?”

  Stone had to think for a minute. “I studied what they had in the West that might oppose the invasion, but I don’t know the grand total.”

  Harriman grinned and leaned forward. “Well, I do. Two hundred and sixty, my boy. Two hundred and sixty. And here’s what’s truly amazing—the Soviets dwarf even that number. There’s no precedent for it.”

  “But what about strategic bombing? What about superior weapons and training?”

  “Well, I’ll give you some edge for that, but never as much as the generals will tell you. They like their pretty shiny toys, the generals do, and they’ll always tell you that pretty shiny toys mean that one of our boys will whip ten, twenty, even fifty of the other side’s boys. Don’t underestimate sheer weight of numbers, my lad, and make no mistake, the Soviets have a huge superiority in that department.” Harriman leaned back. “So then, Hartnell Stone. Can you tell me why the president thinks we can walk across the street and tell Uncle Joe to steer clear of Berlin and expect him to knuckle under?”

  “Honestly, sir, I don’t know. But he seems pretty confident.”

  Harriman looked out the window and sighed. “I’ve known Franklin for a long time. I think he trusts me about as far as he trusts anyone. But that isn’t much. He’s got more things up his sleeve than any other ten people I know. The hell of it is, he may have some piece of god-knows-what magic, or he may be engaged in some colossal bluff, and either way he can look you or me straight in the eye and tell us anything he likes and make us believe he knows what he’s talking about.” He looked back at Hartnell. “Sometimes he’s right. Hell, often he’s right. But you can’t always count on it. And so in a couple of hours we’re going to walk across the street and you’re going to hand your little letter to Uncle Joe and we’re going to look him in the face and act like we know what the hell we’re talking about. How’s your poker game?”

  “Middling, sir.”

  “Uncle Joe’s a little better than middling. You’re pretty tired, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Tired is good. Think about how exhausted you are from your trip. Think about how nervous you are about meeting Stalin. That will help cover up any nervousness about thinking you’re playing a big hand of nothing and pretending it’s a royal flush. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir. My father told me that it was better to emphasize a small flaw to pull attention away from a bigger one.”

  “Your father’s a smart man. Always was.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now that we’ve got the first order of business out of the way, let’s get to the next item,” Harriman said, lighting up a cigar. “How’s the president holding up? I’m hearing some disturbing news, that he’s not sleeping well, that he’s having to cancel a lot of meetings, that the doctors are getting worried. What are you hearing?”

  Hartnell looked at the ambassador. I guess my poker playing starts here, he thought. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, Ambassador, but the president looks in good health and good spirits as far as I can see. He’s sleeping well to the best of my knowledge, and I do some of the overnight shifts …”

  18 JANUARY 1945

  PANZER BATTALION, TWELFTH SS PANZER DIVISION “HITLERJUGEND,” KOBLENZ, GERMANY, 0642 HOURS GMT

  “Shoot, dammit!” shouted Lukas. He could see the American soldiers, scuttling low like bugs, darting across the railroad embankment, diving toward a drainage ditch where they disappeared from view. They were out of the effective range of Vogel’s Luger pistol, and it seemed like too many of his men—his boys—were hunkering under cover, unwilling to shoot their weapons.

  He couldn’t blame them, really. They had been under attack for more than twenty-four hours straight, now. Not his little platoon, exactly—the Americans were just now coming in sight of the tanning factory—but they could feel the battle raging nearby. The firing had moved closer, the Germans slowly giving ground against the press of enemy attackers. The Americans had tanks coming from every direction, jabos that strafed and bombed the Germans wherever they tried to stand, a seemingly uncountable number of artillery pieces arrayed somewhere out of sight, capable of sending punishing barrages that landed with uncanny accuracy.

  Yet still Lukas had kept his boys alive, most of them, anyway. He put his hand on the young soldier’s shoulder, forced him to meet his eyes. “Look, Fritzi. They’re coming to get us. There are lots of them, and if we don’t shoot at them, nothing is going to stop them. It’s not even us they want—it’s those bridges, that river—our fatherland!”

  The boy, Fritzi, stared wide-eyed at his young lieutenant, his carbine clutched to his chest with white-knuckled fingers. Lukas cursed to himself, wanting to slap the fellow across his thin, pale face. Instead, he leaned close, spoke directly into Fritzi’s ear.

  “Those Amis will kill you, sure enough, if you don’t start shooting.” He smacked the boy’s hands where they were wrapped around his rifle stock, tried to be reassuring. “You know how to use this thing. There they are; now pick it up and shoot!”

  “O-Okay, Lukas,” stammered Fritzi, shaking his head as if to clear away a fog. He twisted on the floor and rose to a kneeling position so that he could sight the weapon out the second-floor window of the tanning factory, and squeezed off a shot.

  “Good boy,” whispered Vogel, clapping the frightened youngster on the shoulder. “Keep shooting, and they’ll have to hide from you.”

  Fritzi fired several more rounds in quick succession, and Lukas crawled on to inspect the rest of his makeshift platoon. They were not being pressed too hard, yet, thanks largely to the antitank gun and the Mark IV panzer positioned to either side of this battered factory. As to his own men, he had done the best he could. He wondered if that was good enough. He remembered what General Dietrich had told him, about his responsibility for “his boys.” He was beginning to understand what it meant to be in command.

  He found Josef at another second-floor window, two dozen meters from Fritzi. One of the biggest boys in the platoon, Josef was full of bluster when he talked. Now he was showing that same spirit, rising to the window, squeezing off several rounds from his rifle, then dropping down out of sight for a few moments as American bullets plunked into the brick outer wall. Once in a while a slug would enter the open window, and Lukas could hear it zing around in the factory.

  “Do you have enough ammo?” he asked Josef. The boy scowled, and clapped his large—and still stuffed—duffel, then pulled out another box of rounds.

  “Enough for today,” he said, calmly feeding bullets into his magazine. “But you might check o
n Paulo; he wasn’t carrying so many.”

  Paulo had the last window on the second floor, to the far right of the factory, and Lukas was going to do just that. Keeping low, he left the long room where Fritzi and Josef held down the fort, then hurried down the hallway to the small storage room where Paulo was.

  He was approaching the door when a loud explosion shook the floor under his feet, sending him flying against the far wall. He tried to keep his balance, but his wobbling body fell to the floor anyway. Blinking, Lukas coughed on a cloud of dust, realized the debris—and the explosion—had originated in the room where he had left Paulo.

  Forcing himself to his feet, balancing on shaking and unsteady legs, he stumbled into that room and tried to wave away the smoke and dust obscuring his vision. The first thing he saw was a large swath of brightness where the small window had been. A hole had been blasted in the wall, probably by a tank round. Grimacing and spitting out the dust that gritted in his teeth, he ducked low.

  “Paulo!” he called, not really expecting an answer.

  He found the boy, or rather, the boy’s legs, emerging from beneath a heavy shelf that had toppled over his body above the waist. A pool of red ran down beside the legs. Touching the still calf, shouting the name again, Lukas confirmed his fear: Paulo was dead. “Oh god,” he moaned. He had seen dead men before, but this was one of his. He felt sick. Then he felt mad.

  “Fucking Americans!” Lukas cried. He peered out the irregular hole in the wall, saw more Americans scuttling forward, using the oblong boxes of some large equipment for cover. They were still too far away to hit with his pistol, but he shot angrily at the moving figures. “Bastards! I’ll kill every fucking one of you!” He couldn’t help noticing that they were much closer than they had been only a few minutes before.

  Grimly Lukas made his way back toward the stairs, stopping only to tell Josef what had happened, and to encourage Fritzi to keep shooting. Satisfied that they would do what they could, he descended the open stairway and went to the factory’s corner office, where Hans Braun was stationed.

  The young sturmscharführer squeezed off a burst from his Schmeisser machine pistol, shooting out the window as Lukas came through the door. Hans pulled back from his firing portal as an answering burst of small-arms fire riddled the frame and the surrounding wall.

  “I don’t know, Lukas,” Hans admitted, his face ashen. “There sure are a lot of them.”

  “You know what Hauptsturmführer Friedrich said: We have to hold them here, so that General Dietrich can get the SS panzers across the river.”

  “Yes, I know. And I’m trying!” Hans looked as though he was going to cry.

  “I know you are—you’re a brave soldier,” Lukas said, giving him a pat on the shoulder. God, was this what being an officer was like? For the first time he thought of Friedrich’s Panzer Assault Badge. Twenty-five days of this? He didn’t want to stand up and look calm any longer; he felt just like Hans and wanted someone to console him. More bullets chattered through the window, leaving puffs of dust where they struck, and passed through the office walls. “Just keep shooting—I’m going to see what it looks like outside.”

  “Okay, Lukas. Come and tell me what you see, won’t you?”

  “Sure,” replied the young lieutenant.

  He made his way to the side door of the factory, where he could see the panzer that was giving them flank protection. The armored vehicle looked tough, even indestructible, as it blazed away with its main gun, using the rubble of a knocked-down wall as protection for all but its squat turret. The corner of the tanning factory provided cover from the American tanks that were still trying to fight across the railroad embankment, and a large concrete blockhouse across the alley loomed like a mountain on the other side of the tank.

  The panzer’s coaxial machine gun chattered, and Lukas leaned out far enough to see American GIs diving for cover; one of them twisted in the air and toppled, and the young officer choked out a quiet hurrah. One bastard down. When the gun ceased, however, he heard another sound, the wailing drone that he had come to recognize within his first few days near the front.

  Jabos! He looked up to see three or four dive bombers screaming toward him, daring to fly very low. They were so close that he could see the bomb break free from the lead plane, seeming to plummet directly toward him. Lukas lurched away from the doorway, panic fueling his flight as he raced into the factory, then threw himself down behind a heavy tanning press.

  The concussive blast outside the door was the loudest, most terrible thing he had ever experienced. Debris and shrapnel slashed through the air, much of it clattering against the metal press he hid behind. He was deafened, and looked up in the strange silence to see a dense cloud of smoke churning through the building. As that settled he saw that the doorway where he had been standing was gone, replaced by a gaping hole.

  Stumbling over broken beams and shattered brick, he made his way to that entry, looking for the tank. His bearings were off and he wondered if he had gone to the wrong door, since he couldn’t even see the broken wall that had concealed the panzer. But there was the big concrete blockhouse, though a corner of it had been smashed away. Where the tank had been there was only a crater.

  Now the American infantry advanced in a rush. Lukas drew his Luger and fired several shots, not sure if he hit anyone as the troops again ducked down. “Bastards!” he screamed again. A fusillade of gunfire spattered around the gaping hole where the door had been, but the young officer was already gone, stumbling through the factory, trying to get to the office where Hans Braun was fighting.

  He heard shooting and realized that his hearing was coming back. Two boys, Fritzi and Josef, were tumbling down the stairs from the second floor. Shapes darkened the windows at the ground level, and he saw a fruit-shaped object come sailing into the big room.

  “Grenade!” he shouted, throwing himself down again.

  The missile exploded with a dull crack and then Fritzi was screaming, kneeling over Josef’s motionless body. The GIs wasted no time in following up the attack, tumbling through several windows at once, guns blazing. Fritzi went down, blood spurting from the ruin that was once his eye, his mouth still opened to utter a scream that would never emerge.

  Hans appeared in the door of the office. One American spun around, his carbine raised, but Lukas got him with a shot from his pistol. Another grenade exploded and the young officer was down, felt something heavy crash on top of him. It was the lid from the big press, he realized, straining to breathe. He was momentarily pinned, although apparently uninjured.

  He watched in horror as Hans dropped his machine pistol and raised his hands—not, not Hans! Not his sturmscharführer! But the Americans had him, were already herding him toward the gap where the bomb had blasted away the doorway. Hans was crying, and Lukas felt like doing the same thing. He had failed, he knew, failed Captain Friedrich and General Dietrich, failed his boys, failed his countrymen and failed his fatherland.

  Still Lukas couldn’t move. His gun was somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t even shift enough to pick it up. He could only watch as Hans approached the ring of light outlining the door.

  “Hey, Kraut—eat shit! You fuckers killed Joey!” snarled one of the Americans. He raised his carbine and cracked off a single shot, and Hans Braun toppled forward to lie motionless in the rubble of the alley.

  Lukas lowered his head then, still unable to draw a full breath. “I’m sorry, Hans,” he whispered. He wanted to scream, but he knew that meant instant death. Instead, he focused every iota of his being on revenge. He would live, live to take revenge on everyone who killed his boys, everyone who invaded his fatherland, every enemy of Germany. He lay still in the battered factory, grieving in silent rage, as the troops, the battle, the war passed him by.

  19 JANUARY 1945

  CCA, KOBLENZ, GERMANY, 0655 HOURS GMT

  Frank Ballard looked down as the Sherman rolled through the last defensive position. The Rhine was visible, a shimmering band in
the morning light, the goal of weeks of campaigning, and a day and a half of savage battle. Yet he felt no elation, just the weariness of one more battle finished, with who knew how many unknown challenges lying thick on the road ahead.

  He passed a few prisoners, SS troops mustered out of a corner police station that had been turned into a makeshift blockhouse. Ballard was shocked to see that the Germans who had held them up for the last hour were nothing more than boys.

  “Sergeant!” he shouted, as he saw a veteran NCO pushing several prisoners into an alley behind the building.

  The man looked up, annoyance flashing in his eyes for a second before he straightened up and lifted his tommy gun to a semblance of port arms. “Sir?” he replied in a sharp bark.

  “See that those prisoners make it to the marshaling yard. They have POW processing set up there, next to the stockade. Then get back to your unit!”

  “Yessir, of course, sir!” replied the sergeant. He shoved one of the young men roughly in the back. “You there—move along, quick now! Schnell, see?”

  Ballard hoped his order would be obeyed. It was common enough, he knew, for prisoners to get shot “accidentally” in the immediate aftermath of battle, especially when their captors had lost friends in the fight. The colonel himself had witnessed such acts, and he understood the motivations and had a hard time fastening blame. Still, when the enemy was a bunch of kids, it seemed even more wrong. He hoped that he might have put a stop, at least temporarily, to the practice.

  For now, he had more important things demanding his attention. Already CCA infantry was crossing the Rhine on two bridges. Engineers were inspecting the spans, and reported that charges had not even been set. Obviously, the Americans had gotten here faster than any of the SS had expected. Idly it occurred to him that, once again, the Nineteenth Armored had scored an historic victory—the first Americans to cross the Rhine! He knew that Fourth Armored, on his right, and the Twelfth Infantry, on his left, would doubtless be pulling up to the water barrier within a day, perhaps even a matter of hours. Knowing Patton, he suspected that all of Third Army would be hurled across the river within a few days, leaving the Seventh Army to the south and the First, in the north, to clean up the rest of the Krauts on this side of the Rhine. From the way things had gone during his race to the river, he suspected—and believed—that those men wouldn’t have a lot of bloody work in front of them.