The men, drivers, and mechanics and two armed guards for each truck mounted up as Groves walked around the vehicles for one last time. The plutonium and uranium elements, while key to the bomber, were relatively stable on their own. It was the last cargo, the sphere of high explosive, that presented the most danger of an accident. He looked up at the driver, who seemed calm enough in spite of everything.
“Be careful with that,” Groves noted. “If you set that thing off, this will be one memorable Fourth of fucking July!”
5 JULY 1945
HQ, THIRD ARMY, REICHSTAG BUILDING, BERLIN, GERMANY, 0321 HOURS GMT
“What’s the bad news?” asked General Patton, striding into the command center, looking as if he’d had a good night’s sleep—though Zebediah Cook knew he’d only retired a few hours before.
“I was just coming to get you, General,” said the intelligence officer. “We’re starting to get a picture of what’s going on.”
“I could hear the guns.” Patton got right to the point, as usual. “Where are they attacking?”
“In Potsdam again, sir. The Nineteenth Armored is being shelled heavily. They opened up after midnight, and it’s a general barrage. Initial reports have enemy armor moving up, as if they’re taking attack positions. But they haven’t moved against us yet.”
“Well, by damn, we’ll get the air force in there to plaster them as soon as the sun comes up. If they’re going to play rough, we can give ’em the same thing back.”
“I anticipated that order, sir. I have prepared a document with the coordinates, and the details—subject to your approval.” Cook handed Patton a piece of paper.
Patton grinned as he read. “Just the way I’d have written it,” he said with a nod. “Send it off. As soon as it’s daylight, those commie bastards are going to feel the roof fall in!”
HQ, FIRST BELORUSSIAN FRONT, ORANIENBURG, GERMANY, 0952 HOURS GMT
“Did the bombardment commence as directed?”
“Yes, Comrade Marshal,” came the reply from the Second Guards Tank Guard liaison officer. “As you directed, a thousand guns opened up at midnight on the American armored division.”
“And the tanks attacked at dawn? What progress?”
“Regretfully, Comrade Marshal, the Americans seem to be holding in place. The first wave of tanks was knocked out, and those following are having difficulty maneuvering in the city streets, blocked as they are by debris.”
“And by our burning tanks,” Zhukov said dryly. He no doubt surprised his listener when he continued. “But that is of no immediate concern. Tell me, what of the air battle?”
“The enemy commenced tactical attacks with the dawn, sir. Unfortunately, our own fighter forces seem to be standing off; I understand we suffered grievous losses yesterday. I regret to report—”
“Bah, that, too, is immaterial. The important thing is that the Americans are sending their bombers against us again? And they are, correct? Good. Now is the time to commence the general attack. Issue the necessary orders to all units.”
Marshal Zhukov put the telephone back into its cradle, leaned back in his chair, crossed his hands over his belly, and smiled. The day was progressing nicely.
NAZI POW COMPOUND, BERLIN, GERMANY, 1235 HOURS GMT
“You don’t have to be my prisoner, you know,” Rommel said to Sepp Dietrich the day the old Waffen-SS general surrendered the city to him officially. “My offer of amnesty certainly includes you. After all, Sepp, you were ready to join me nearly a year ago, before my car got shot up, before I surrendered, before the assassination.”
Dietrich shook his head, his boxer-battered face worn and tired. “Oh, I know, Rommel. But some of these kids, they won’t think about giving up the old cause, even if it is dead, and some of my old Waffen-SS men, well … you don’t want to give them amnesty, not so quickly anyway. Somebody has to be responsible for these boys. Somebody has to.”
He laughed. “It’s funny. Of all the people you’d expect to be the last Nazi officer standing, would you ever have picked me? But here I am: The last commandant of Berlin in the army of the Third Reich. The last commandant. Listen, we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, you and me. I’m an old man and I’m set in my ways, and I was never that smart to begin with. Never that smart. But I can handle a camp of resentful kids and angry beaten soldiers. Hell, it’s just like it was right after the Great War, when we all started so very long ago. So long ago. Of course, I was one of those resentful kids and an angry soldier, too, then. A young sergeant major and not a bad mechanic, either. And look at me now! Look at me now!”
Dietrich laughed coarsely and punched Rommel in the arm. “I understand my boys and they understand me. My blood used to run hot like theirs, but now that I’m old it doesn’t run so hot anymore. Not so hot anymore. I think it’s better that way, though sometimes I miss the passion. Ah, for the days of a good drunk followed by a good fight and a bad woman, eh? Oh, never mind—that wasn’t what you did even then, was it? No, you never did. You were one of the smart ones, one of the studious ones. We made fun of your type when we got drunk, but we knew who our betters were. We knew.”
“Well, Sepp, if that’s the duty you think you need to perform, it’s yours. I’ll put someone in charge officially, but you let him know what you need. If there’s a problem, let me know. You know that everyone will have to make do under the circumstances, of course.”
“Make do? What else have we Germans been doing for the last few years?” Dietrich laughed. “Frankly, my boys need work to do to keep them out of mischief. Got to keep them out of mischief. Once we get ourselves a POW facility put together, maybe we’ll go fix up some places for civilians to live, if you don’t mind. Fix up some houses, that would be a good thing.”
“That’s a fine idea. Thanks.” As Rommel’s staff car drove away, he turned to look at the old general rounding up his hardscrabble troops, many dressed in rags. Who would have thought that Sepp Dietrich, a bullyboy from the Freikorps days, would have turned into a decent man? He wasn’t that old—not much older than Rommel—but he had lived hard. Age was partly a state of mind, and perhaps by that measure Dietrich really was old. Perhaps Rommel was getting old, too.
And maybe the old could change. The thought gave him hope.
Dietrich made morning rounds every day. With the beginnings of spring at hand, there were flashes of green amidst the rubble of Berlin that surrounded the barracks he and his men occupied. For the most part, his older troops were as glad as he to be finally finished with war. The younger men—boys, really—were eager to plan escapes, steal weapons, assault their captors, take up arms once again. Although it was the official duty of a POW to escape, Dietrich clamped down on such attempts as hard as he could, or assigned would-be escape groups to the leadership of someone he could trust to foul them up. He tried to find projects for his men to do, ways they could fix up their area, ways they could work to build shelters or make repairs to benefit the trapped civilians of Berlin. Anything to keep them busy, to keep them working.
“Good morning, General Dietrich,” one of his barracks leaders said as he approached. His men were busy preparing a vegetable garden, and the boys stood at attention to salute.
“Good morning, Jürgen. Garden’s looking good. Looking good. Don’t forget me when you’ve got some good tomatoes going. I always love a fresh tomato, you know. Love a fresh tomato.”
“Don’t worry, sir. The first ripe tomato will be yours, I promise.”
Dietrich smiled. “I’ll hold you to that. Good work, boys. Good work.”
By now, he’d learned most of the men’s names, where they were from, what units they had served, and as they saluted him, he could greet them by name, tell them what a good job they were doing, help them feel good about the day.
Berlin was in ruins; Germany was in ruins; the Nazi dream for which he had worked his entire adult life was in ruins. But his boys were getting healthy and they were well fed and they had a roof over their heads, and maybe that
was enough. Those who needed medical attention were being treated, and the worst cases had been airlifted out.
The worst part was that so many were gone. People he’d known since the Great War and the hard days of struggle that followed, people who’d fought alongside him for the years of the Second World War, and the children who’d followed him into the final battles. Kids like—what was his name? The boy he’d met in Saint-Vith who’d brought the other children out from under Rommel’s nose, the boy he’d promoted then met again as he led them out against the Russians. He’d hoped the boy would have made it back to Berlin, but he wasn’t in the camp. He was probably dead, but maybe he’d escaped and gone home to his mother. Dietrich hoped so, even if it was unlikely. It would be nice if a few people survived.
CCA, NINETEENTH ARMORED DIVISION, POTSDAM, GERMANY, 1545 HOURS GMT
Two Shermans squatted behind a stone wall, barrels extending over the barrier toward the long, debris-strewn street. One cracked off a shot, an armor-piercing round that struck the front of a T-34 rumbling out of a side street. The Russian tank burst into flame, as a couple of crewmen scrambled for their lives out of the turret hatch. They rolled off the hull and crawled back into the street from which they had just emerged.
But more Soviet infantry scuttled forward on the other side of the avenue, moving closer as soon as the American tank gun turned away, then vanishing into the mounds of rubble when the turret cranked back. The gunner put a high explosive round into one of those piles, scattering shards of gravel and steel in a lethal spray.
Ballard sat on the ground beside a shattered tavern, raising his head high enough so that he could see the two M-4s, as well as the street beyond. Beside him was Sergeant Kinney, with a radiophone for the colonel’s communications—and a Thompson submachine gun for sport—and privates Sanderson and Duckett, who had come along as protection. The colonel heard a grinding of engines, looked to see two more Russian tanks roll into his field of vision. Halfway up a side street, they were screened from the view of the American tanks, and crept forward deliberately. The colonel was just about to give warning when he saw a GI run from the tavern, climb up on the tank, and shout to the crew.
Warned of the unseen threat, the two tanks pulled back. One traversed the long gun toward the gate of the square courtyard, while the other pushed into an alley, crunching over timbers and half-collapsed walls, seeking a new approach to the street. Ballard approved of the tactic—such mobility in a city was a dangerous, aggressive approach to the fight, but it was the only way they could wage the battle without giving steady ground in the face of the numerically superior foe.
“I’ve seen enough, boys. Let’s get back to HQ. Stay in these backyards—I want to see how we’re holding out in this next block.”
One private led the way, rolling over the waist-high fence before the next yard. The sergeant and Ballard came next, the last PFC bringing up the rear. They repeated the process, and between each house Ballard looked across the street. The Soviets were active everywhere, often rushing into the open to draw fire.
A stutter of gunfire erupted before them and Ballard hit the ground.
“Sandy’s hit!” growled Kinney. He popped up, holding his tommy gun at chest height, and blasted an extended burst into the next yard. Then he sprang forward, over a low hedge, and fired again.
Ballard’s pistol was in his hand, but he plunged through the hedge instead of leaping it. He burst into another yard and saw Kinney, lying down behind a little garden wall and loading another clip into his Thompson. Two Russian soldiers, swarthy and almost Oriental-looking men, were rushing toward the sergeant’s position, bayonets extended.
Some warrior’s instinct propelled Ballard’s hand, guided the notoriously inaccurate .45 toward the nearest Red. He fired once, pulled the gun down as it bucked, and shot again—even as he saw that his first bullet was knocking the man over backward. The second Soviet dropped into a crouch, bringing his carbine around toward the colonel. Holding his Colt in two hands now, Frank Ballard fired again and again, until he was sure that the bastard was down.
“Nice shooting, sir,” said Kinney, with an amused grin, climbing to his feet with his submachine gun slung easily over his shoulder. “You pulled my fat out of the fire.”
“I didn’t know I had it in me,” said Ballard, honestly.
They went to Private Sanderson—“Sandy”—and saw that he was hit in the thigh. The bullet had broken the bone, and it was an ugly but not mortal wound. Private Duckett was already applying a tourniquet, and the three of them were able to assist him back to headquarters—though they took a safer route, a full block away from the enemy.
Within the sturdy shell of the blockhouse Ballard found Hank Wakefield sitting in one of the few chairs. The general’s helmet was off, and he held a rag to his head while a medic wrapped a bandage around his knee.
“What happened?” asked Ballard. He was shocked at the wan look on the CO’s face. For the first time, he thought that Wakefield looked like every one of his years.
“Took some shrapnel through the door of my jeep,” the general said with a game shrug. “It won’t get me any time off of work.”
Ballard chuckled; the old man would be okay. He grew serious immediately, however, as he made his report. “They’re pressing us hard along the entire front, from the riverbank to the ponds. Tanks and infantry, waves of them. And that damned shelling—I guess you know about that, sir.”
“Yeah. The flyboys can slow them down, but they can’t shut them up.”
“We’ll hold ’em as long as we can, General. You know that. But there’s a point that something’s gotta give.”
“I know that, son. I know. So do Patton and Rommel, for what it’s worth—both of them talked to me after the briefing, told me to pass along the pat on the back. It’s not much, but it’s all they can send you, for now.”
Ballard nodded. A pat on the back from the Desert Fox, and another from old Blood and Guts Georgie Patton himself.
There were worse rewards.
HQ, THIRD ARMY, REICHSTAG BUILDING, BERLIN, GERMANY, 2121 HOURS GMT
“It looks like a general attack, sir, around the whole perimeter,” reported Zebediah Cook. “At least four tank or shock armies already identified, and aerial recon reports more of them massing behind the front. If they get a breakthrough—”
“You don’t have to paint me a picture,” Patton snapped. “Did the bastards take any ground?” He glared at the map on the wall of the command center, but the solid, inflexible ring gave him no information. There were no flanks to turn, no gaps to exploit; there was only dogged defense, where each determined hour of time was purchased in the blood of his men.
“I’m afraid so,” Cook replied. “In the southeast they got a big jump, hit by surprise from Königs Wusterhausen. We used every one of the heavy guns to bring them to a stop—I estimate twenty-five percent of our 155 ammo was expended there. Plus the Reds took a helluva pounding from the sky. Unfortunately, they pushed a mile or so closer to Tempelhof before they bogged down.”
“Unfortunate? Goddamned unacceptable is more like it! So, is there any good news?”
“We’re winning the battle for control of the air,” reported the intelligence chief. “For a couple of days the Russkis put a cloud of fighters up against our Mustangs. Best estimate is that the Reds got hammered at a ratio of better than five to one. A lot of American aces were made in the skies over Berlin, yesterday and today. By this afternoon, they were pretty much letting us fly wherever we wanted to go.”
“Well, that’s something,” Patton admitted. Air superiority was a powerful advantage on the modern battlefield. But he knew with certainty that you couldn’t take ground, or hold ground, with air power alone.
The truth was there, on that goddamned map: The Russians, with their overwhelming strength, were closing in on both Gatow and Tempelhof airfields. If they got those, Third Army’s tenuous supply line would be cut. This mighty fighting force, this thoroughbred o
f military accomplishment, would be forced to surrender.
George Patton knew that he would die before he saw that happen.
6 JULY 1945
HARRINGTON AIRFIELD, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, ENGLAND, 0955 HOURS GMT
Kim Philby had seen heavy bombers before. Lancasters and Halifaxes and Liberators and Flying Fortresses were all familiar to him. But he had never seen anything quite like the Superfortress, or B-29, as the Americans called it. It was immense, a gleaming tube of polished aluminum nearly a hundred feet long—he couldn’t help thinking of “tube alloys”—utterly unlike the greens, grays, and browns of the more traditional bomber fleets. The wings spanned 150 feet from tip to tip, and the immense tail towered above the top of the hangar beside it. This behemoth was destined for an outdoor life.
Behind the single Superfortress sitting on the tarmac, he saw a line of four more behind it, crowding a space normally filled by Liberator bombers. There were a few Liberators still on the field; the normally impressive B-24s of the 801st Bombardment Group looked puny compared to their new American cousins. Philby had been to this field before, although he did not make a regular habit of visiting American air bases—Harrington, though nominally Eighth Air Force, existed primarily to serve the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, his American counterparts, in various secret missions into Europe. Philby had availed himself of their services on more than one occasion.
“Quite something, eh, Philby?” Ian Weatherspoon slapped him on the back heartily. Weatherspoon had been responsible for getting Philby the invitation to see the newly arrived aircraft.
Philby straightened. He did not like being touched in a familiar way. However, Weatherspoon was an asset, and assets must always be humored. “Indeed. Quite. A bang-up job the Americans have done. Most of these have gone to the Pacific, I understand?”
Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine) Page 63