by Bodie Thoene
“There were three Gestapo officers there as well.”
“Only three?” Father Kopecky was not surprised, nor was he alarmed.
“Probably more. But I saw three myself. There is no mistaking their kind, although they attempt to blend in.”
“The presence of the secret police is to be expected these days, is it not? It is cold here since we lost the windows. Would you like to go where it is warmer?” Taking Horst by the arm, Father Kopecky led him through the cathedral to the maze of vaulted corridors in the cloisters. Before a heavy wooden door he stopped and looked up at Horst. The odd clacking sound penetrated the wood. “I knew you would come tonight.”
“How could you know that?”
“I knew.” He pulled down the latch to open the door. The corridor was filled with light and warmth and happy voices that bubbled up from a steep stairway. The priest made no move to enter but stepped aside so Horst might peer down into a deep storage cellar that now served as a dining room. Long tables set among the pillars were packed with several hundred children who laughed and talked over tin plates laden with thick stew. It was the banging of spoons against the plates that had reminded Horst of clashing swords. Horst spotted four nuns carrying pots and ladles. The sisters glided behind the benches to cheer the diners and refill empty bowls. The din was deafening.
“Three hundred and twenty-six children. Each has lost mother and father. Some were brought to us, but many made their way on their own. Some from Warsaw. Others from a great distance. Look at them, Horst. Look at their faces.”
Horst gazed at a table packed with young boys who wagged their spoons in conversation and laughed at some joke that was lost to Horst beneath the racket.
“I am glad to see happy children on Christmas Eve. I am cheered by it . . . by your good work for them.”
“Yes.” The priest’s voice was not so joyful. “I want you to remember them. Think of it. Any one of them might be the child of one of the men you saw crucified or the woman who sank into the Vistula.”
Horst’s pleasure vanished. “Why do you say such a thing to me?” He stepped back from the doorway as though he had been kicked.
The priest closed the door on the scene and shrugged as if the reason for his cruel statement was obvious. “Each of them has a story much like the one you told me. They are only children, yet all have come here along the path of grief and brutality. They are not here by their own choice. Others made this choice for them. German soldiers.”
“I did not come to hear this,” Horst snapped. “What can I do to change that now? It is not my responsibility.” He caught himself and began again. “At some risk to myself, I came to warn you. The Gestapo . . . the SS.”
“Thank you. I am warned.”
Horst stared bleakly at the black door. “You do not care if you are arrested . . . but what about the children? What will become of them?”
“You know the answer.”
The vision of the future exploded in Horst’s mind as though it were already the past:
The priest was tortured by the Gestapo and hanged. The sisters imprisoned. They died of hunger, dysentery, and typhus. Those little boys who laughed and talked over their tin bowls this Christmas were herded into a room and stripped naked. They were sorted like animals being prepared for market—Jew from Gentile. This was easiest with male children because of the practice of circumcision among the Jews. Those confirmed or suspected of being Jewish were liquidated. The Polish children were placed in Nazi detention centers, where they were abused and starved and taught to read a few necessary German commands and trained in the proper attitude toward the Reich, the Führer, and their Aryan masters. Most of them perished, too, before it was over. . . .
Horst covered his face with his hands to shut out the images. “What do you want from me? I cannot undo what is past!”
“It is in your power to change tomorrow. I knew you would be here.” Father Kopecky put his hand on Horst’s shoulder. “Come with me now.”
Horst followed him down the shadowed corridor, although he wanted to turn and run the other way. The children were singing in the cloister now. Christmas carols. Happy voices pursued the priest and the major until they turned a corner and entered a warm and quiet room with ten cribs and a dozen sleeping infants. Christ, crucified, looked down from the wall above them.
An elderly nun sat in a rocking chair near the coal fire. She held a baby boy a little over a year old in her arms. She curled his dark hair around her gnarled finger. He sucked milk from a bottle and kicked one foot free of the blanket as if in time to the old woman’s lullaby. She touched the tiny toes and tucked the blanket over his foot again. The slurping sound stopped a moment as the boy gazed at the old woman with trusting blue eyes and gurgled in happy response to her humming.
Father Kopecky glanced up sharply at Horst. Was the future clear in the priest’s mind as to the fate of these little ones as well? Horst wondered.
“Enough,” Horst whispered, staggering back to lean against the wall. His stricken face reflected in the glass of a picture of Christ surrounded by children.
“You are here tonight as one of God’s footsteps,” the priest replied quietly. “You came tonight because tomorrow may be too late.”
“There is nothing I can do to help these—” Horst waved his hand over the room as if it were already empty.
“You can save one.”
“Save?”
“It is in your hands now to change the future of one.”
“How can I . . . ?”
“I have a plan.”
“You’re talking nonsense, Father.”
“You must do exactly as I instruct you. It came to me clearly as I prayed.”
“How can anyone choose which of all these? It is impossible to save one while the others . . .”
The priest gestured toward the painting of Christ encircled by children. “Jesus said, ‘Whoever welcomes a little child like this in My name welcomes Me.’ Don’t you see, Horst? How God loves them! Their angels are constantly before His throne. To have compassion on a child . . . there is no act so holy. It is as if you carry the Christ child in your arms!”
Horst raised his eyes as the baby leaned his head against the old woman’s shoulder. Heavy eyelids began to droop in contentment. A drop of milk dripped from the corner of his mouth and clung to the black fabric of her habit.
Father Kopecky took the child from her and laid him in Horst’s arms. “It is Christmas, little one. The sword of the tyrant is poised above all the children of Israel again. You must go.” And then to Horst, who cradled the little boy with awkward gentleness, the priest said gently, “To save one small life, Horst. Perhaps one day the world might be saved by that life. His name is Yacov Lubetkin.”
The mess hall of the Maginot Fortress echoed with the sounds of shouts, laughter, and loudly sung, off-key Christmas carols. Mac had to lean close to Murphy’s ear and yell to make himself heard. “Do you s’pose these guys would even know if they were under attack?”
“Not unless they took a direct hit,” Murphy shouted back. “They’re making more noise than an artillery barrage now.”
The Christmas Eve scene inside the underground French fortification was one of raucous merriment. As Mac and Murphy watched, one corner of the room erupted with men pelting each other with pieces of bread. Across the huge, concrete-walled chamber, another set of four soldiers climbed up on the table and began an impromptu cancan, accompanied by whistles and lewd suggestions.
“How long will this go on?” Mac bellowed, giving the cancan dancers ten seconds of film time.
“Till dawn,” Murphy replied, “except for a short interruption at midnight for Mass.”
Mac took a step back to change the way the scene was framed in the viewfinder of his new camera and stumbled over an empty wine bottle underfoot.
Murphy caught Mac by the elbow to keep him from falling. “And they better pray for a hangover cure at that Mass. If the Germans attack tomorrow,
these guys will surrender at the sight of an aspirin bottle.”
Mac turned at a tap on his shoulder. A French artillery captain started to say something to the two journalists, then shrugged because of the noise and gestured for them to follow him. When the three had gotten into the corridor and closed a steel door on the merrymaking, the officer tried again. “The colonel would like you to join him for a late Christmas Eve supper.”
Up two flights of concrete steps and down two long corridors that rang with the passage of their boots, they arrived at the officers’ dining room. Once there, Mac and Murphy were introduced to Colonel Benet, the commandant.
To Mac, Benet looked like a marshal of France from the time of Napoleon. He was an elderly man but tall and straight, and he carried himself with ramrod correctness. The shock of white hair combed back from his high forehead was matched by the gleaming sweep of an elegant mustache. Among the medals and ribbons on his uniform was the Croix de Guerre.
“Please be seated, gentlemen,” the colonel urged. “We have just enough time for an aperitif before the meal.”
A junior officer rapped on a connecting door, and a nervous soldier dressed in a white apron entered, pushing a serving trolley.
“I must apologize for the poor quality of our hospitality,” the colonel said, “but there is a war on, you know.” The soldier-waiter offered each officer a choice of whiskey, sherry, port, Madeira, Armagnac, or any of a dozen other liqueurs.
“I am a banker in civilian life,” Colonel Benet explained over the first course of the supper—bowls of vichyssoise. “But old soldiers never die, as they say, so I dusted off my uniform from the Great War and returned to duty.”
“And are you expecting to have to fight the Great War over again?” Murphy asked.
“The Germans are without imagination,” the colonel maintained, carefully brushing the ends of his mustache with a linen napkin. “Right now they are holding back because they realize what an error they have made to come to blows with us at all. Sooner or later Herr Hitler will have to launch an attack—to save face, of course—and when it is repulsed, the politicians will settle things.”
Mac accepted a plate of roast pork with cauliflower in cheese sauce from the waiter and allowed the colonel to swallow a sip of wine before raising another question. “And your men are ready to face a German attack?”
Spreading his broad hands, the commandant gave an expressive shrug. “But of course! You have seen for yourself what good spirits they are in. Here we are, on our own soil, behind the greatest fortifications in the history of the world. How could we be more ready?”
The colonel studied his platter of food and then in an abrupt change of subject said, “Our cook is just like the Boche . . . completely without imagination!”
When supper concluded, Mac asked, “Has there been any activity by the Germans in your sector? Could we go to one of your lookout posts and get a peek across the line?”
Colonel Benet cleared his throat with disapproval. “I was going to suggest that we adjourn to the auditorium. The enlisted men are putting on an amateur musical performance. It should be very droll.”
“With respect, Colonel,” Murphy added, “just a quick look at what the other side is up to.”
“Very well,” Benet grumbled, “but you will not see anything. Nothing going on tonight, I can promise you.”
The observation platform of the fort was four stories above the mess hall and directly above the outpost’s armament of 75 mm cannons. The sentry on lone guard duty stamped his feet against the wintry air that swirled in through the open small-arms ports. He snapped to attention as his commandant arrived, and Mac wondered what crime the man was being punished for to draw this duty tonight.
“Anything to report?” asked the colonel.
“Nothing, sir,” answered the guard, “except that it has been snowing again.”
“What about that light over there?” Mac asked, pointing to a faint yellow glow that dimly outlined a knobby hill about a half mile off.
“Ah, that,” snorted Benet. “That is Spichern Hill. Until recently it belonged to us, but a patrol of Boche crept round behind it and captured it.” His tone sounded as if he thought the Germans had done something unfair. As if they had not played by the rules or cheated somehow. “We will retake it, never fear.”
“There seems to be some movement going on there now,” Murphy observed. “In fact, the light is brighter now than it was when we first looked, and it seems to be moving toward the top of the hill.”
“Shall I ring the battery and give the order to fire?” asked the sentry, stepping toward a telephone on the wall.
“Absolutely not!” corrected the colonel, his mustache quivering with indignation. “How can you think of such uncivilized behavior? They are enjoying a quiet Christmas celebration the same as we. Why should we do something so antagonistic? Come now, we’ve seen enough. Let us adjourn to the auditorium. I am sure the singing is already in progress.”
A soundless snowfall dropped onto the outlines of Spichern Heights. Sturmann Geiger hunched his shoulders against the cold of the western front. It was a mistake. The movement caused a tiny avalanche to cascade off the back rim of his steel helmet and into the collar of his greatcoat. A thin stream of icy water trickled down his back, adding to his misery.
Sentry duty in the Saarbrücken sector was not enjoyable in December of 1939, and especially not on this cold and sodden Christmas Eve. The tree trunks below the ridge commanded by the pillbox were black skeletal forms against the snow. Geiger had seen dead men that looked like that: Polish soldiers killed by machine-gun fire and abandoned by their comrades, left hanging over fences to rot.
The quiet western front was different, to be sure, but in the lonely darkness, it was easy to conjure up all the spectres that haunted Geiger’s dreams. Even the pride that the German soldier had felt at taking part in the capture of this tiny piece of French soil had frozen into a corner of his mind. He could take it out and examine it, but it refused to give warmth or comfort.
Instead he tried to shake off the oppressive dread by thinking about his home in Munich: the family gathered for a festive meal in a house filled with light, food, and warmth. But try as he might, he kept seeing phantoms lurking in the darkness and the reproachful stares on the remembered faces of the dead. He frowned and shook his head, reminding himself that just to the west, no more than a half mile or so away, a live French sentry was also standing guard, along with ten thousand of his fellows.
Wondering if the French would send out a patrol on this darkest night of the year made Geiger peer through the swirling flakes toward the French lines. Counting off ten paces to the end of his duty area, a slow pivot faced him back toward the concrete pillbox that guarded the unremarkable chunk of French territory called Spichern Heights.
Geiger snorted with the contempt shared by his entire regiment at the French defenses. This machine-gun emplacement was impressive enough in its solidity, but there was one major flaw: Like the entire strategy of the Maginot Line, its designers were so convinced of its invulnerability that its guns faced only toward Germany. There had been no allowance of either men or equipment that had prepared the French for the encircling German infantry patrol that had looped through the woods to attack Spichern Heights from the rear.
But that triumph had been some time before, and it was back to business as usual on the western front. Another hour to go before his relief showed up. It was difficult to judge the passage of time on the lonely walk, and it dragged all the more because Geiger stopped to listen to the night. The squishing of his boots made thin echoes that sounded as if someone else were marching when he marched and stopping when he stopped.
He made five circuits of his post before drowsiness began to replace his earlier terror. It was a cold, miserably wet night after all—nothing more. Geiger stopped again to listen, but it was more out of habit than expectation.
That was when he heard the footfalls . . . real ones that c
ontinued on though he stood rooted in place, his heart racing as apprehension flooded over him again. He tried to call out a challenge, but his voice was only a harsh croak of meaningless noise. His fingers fumbled with the safety catch of the rifle but were so numb that he could not tell if he had moved it or not.
Geiger forced himself to look down at his weapon, to visually determine what his sense of touch could not confirm. Yes, the catch was off. He raised the gun to his shoulder and sighted along its barrel . . . into a hazy yellow glow that had not been in front of him a moment before.
“Halt!” he cried, finding words as last. “Who goes there?”
An advancing mass, black against the frosty background, resolved itself into separate dark shapes approaching his position. “Halt!” he ordered again, “or I will—”
“Achtung, Sturmann Geiger!” the voice of the company commander demanded. “We are coming to inspect the post!”
The captain and four other figures moved with the glow of a shielded lantern to join the sentry on the ridge. Whether because of his earlier fear or because of the stiffness induced by his hours on guard, Geiger was slow in lowering his weapon. When he allowed its muzzle to drop, it slid across the form of a short man clad in a black leather coat.
A low chuckle came to the young man’s ears. “Would you shoot your Führer?” a familiar rasping accent asked.
The Führer! Sturmann Geiger snapped to attention—or did his best—but the leader of the Third Reich paid him no further heed. Instead, Hitler addressed the men in his entourage. There was a tone of smug satisfaction in his voice. “In 1918 I vowed to never again stand on French soil until I could give it to the Fatherland! Tonight that promise is fulfilled! You and your men, Captain, have made it possible.”
The captain made a modest rejoinder that the emplacement was a very small attainment in the scope of the war, but Hitler interrupted him.
“I am Germany,” the Führer said, “and the ground where I stand is symbolic of all of France.” His voice rose in pitch and trembled with excitement. “Of the whole world! I stretch out my hand toward the west so . . . and it is as if it were already taken!”