Behind Hitler's Lines

by Thomas H. Taylor

  The German at the foot of the ladder seemed drunk, enraged, and desperate. He pointed a machine pistol. If he'd stitched Joe, it would have been just another unrecorded incident during the fury of the invasion. Like the opening shock of his cherry jump, Joe for the first time felt a man's lethal hatred, saw it in a tightening trigger finger and spittle on the guard's lips. The Germans had something of his, even more than freedom, that would be awfully hard to get back. He'd need every bit of himself to recover it.

  He raised his arms fast, felt like a kid caught stealing hubcaps, while the guard ranted and cursed. Most of his steam seemed about Joe's bogus injury, but he was also called a gangster fighting for Jews while Germany held off the Bolsheviks. Joe meekly came down the ladder to be knocked against a wall. The guard shouted to others, identifying Joe as an uninjured actor who needed watching. He was shoved into a corner to squat with hands behind head.

  Joe's Currahee training had developed strong squatting muscles, but in an hour they began to give out as his morale also slipped. Though he'd destroyed the company radio for a respectable purpose, that thoughtless escape attempt had no merit but audacity. Even if he'd made it through the window, he'd still have been in the courtyard with no idea how to get out. What he'd done, Joe berated himself, was not brave but brainless. When a guard came over and gave him a random kick in the kidneys he only grunted as if receiving fair punishment.

  He could hear what was going on behind him. Harrison was gagging as if his throat were being slit slowly. Joe exuded sweat, thinking that no matter what pain was his it didn't compare with what he heard from Harrison. He also listened for sounds from the guards. It seemed the one who'd caught him didn't want to be around for Harrison's final agonies and went off-duty. That's when Joe decided to slip down on his butt, hoping the new guard wouldn't notice.

  He didn't, and soon Joe was pushed across a dirt lane to the orchard where about twenty unwounded POWs were seated in rows on the ground. The sergeant in charge denounced Joe to them: only a malingerer; no real soldier pretends to be wounded. A rabbit punch sent Joe sprawling. His fellow POWs were silent. He took a place among them. In the next hour he strongly needed to piss and raised his hand for permission. The answer was in German: piss where you are. It was important to pretend not to understand, so he kept his hand up and finally heard an impatient “Ja, okay.”

  As he got up a burst of machine-pistol fire made him jump, but all the other POWs stayed slumped on the ground as if this were nothing unusual. There was another burst, this one closer. Daylight had returned. He looked over into the orchard to where the fire was directed. Hanging from a tree, about ten feet off the ground, was a body so swollen in a parachute harness that it bulged as if to explode. German reinforcements marching by were using it for a little target practice.

  The body was Robert Wolverton's, pitted, caked with blood like hardened lava. With each burst Wolverton vibrated and twisted, his head tilted much farther back than it could bend naturally because his throat had been cut almost in two.

  Squads continued to swing down the lane, some whistling a jaunty marching song that goes, “When we march through the German gate, you, Madeleine, come out to watch…”

  As a German-American Joe had never used the word “krauts” before, but now in his mind that's what the Germans became—for lack of a more despicable term—overriding a respect he had grudgingly developed for the Fallschirmjagers who captured him. Considerable soldiers they, from what he knew of their record and had seen himself. Now the entire Wehrmacht were hardly soldiers at all by any definition he'd learned with the Currahees.

  Joe began to cry like the wounded he had tried to escape. Blues believed in their commander as much, sometimes more, than they believed in themselves. In the army he was their foster father. Before D Night Wolverton had gathered his battalion together to announce plans for the first postwar reunion, whenever that would be, but it surely would be because “we're going to win this war. We have to. All of us, no matter what happens to any of us.”

  Wolverton announced that the reunion would be at the Muehlbach Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. He'd buy the steaks—cheers—but couldn't afford the drinks—boos— then he asked them all to kneel and pray, pray as they were dressed and primed for kill-or-be-killed battle.*

  He asked God to notice that their heads were bowed, not downcast for themselves, but so they could then look up and see Him better.

  That's the way Blues remember Bob Wolverton: humble, not a rah-rah leader but one of the battalion, the one who led.†

  Joe seethed with a virulence that had to be converted into some directed action, as when boiling water becomes usable steam. He collected himself enough to ask a guard for permission to take Wolverton down and bury him. Joe did this by gesturing. The guard looked like he understood and agreed but shrugged—it wasn't his decision, and he wasn't about to bother an officer to ask.

  Almost like the answer of God, a huge projectile ripped overhead. Everyone ducked, the guards first. The POWs glanced at one another. That message was from a cruiser in the invasion fleet, firing a huge warhead with very high velocity and flat trajectory so that if it was off-target, the shell kept going for miles.

  The navy spoke again with the sound like a ripping newspaper, followed by another. The cruiser seemed to be ranging in on the steeple of St. Come-du-Mont, the same target Joe had peppered on D Night. It was now shot ragged, just a quarter mile from the orchard. The Germans were probably still using the steeple for observation, so the 101st wanted it leveled.

  His mind filled with jagging emotions, Joe didn't know what he wanted. Like all POWs in the combat zone he longed for the Germans to be plastered by shells and bombs but not to suffer casualties themselves, something like watching a tornado head toward them while grappling with a deadly enemy. Around St. Come-du-Mont they were prepared to take their chances because a full-fledged attack by the 101st might free them.

  Their captors were thinking along those same lines. Late in the morning a tired squad came with bayonets to herd the POWs through woods and across fields. Joe tried to get a sense of direction and whispered about it. The consensus seemed to be that they were being moved a few miles southwest of St. Come-du-Mont.

  But the seriously wounded were left behind. Some of the Americans had objected, a brave thing to do. The wounded were out of the war anyway, so for the Germans it made sense to leave them where they would be an American burden. Relying on Western humanity, they often left their own seriously wounded on the Western Front. What enraged Joe's group— and they said so loudly—was abandoning Harrison in his death throes with no medical help at all.

  This unexpected protest had caused a delay. Before the POWs were marched off, a German lieutenant came over and told them that Harrison was too far gone; to give him anything would be a waste of medical supplies, better used for casualties (German and American) with better chances. Harrison heard that and began wailing. His countrymen started to yell, though a few kicks and bayonet prods shut them up. The lieutenant was genuinely surprised by the outcry. He'd explained his logic and couldn't understand why it wasn't accepted. In the orchard, in the eye of a hurricane, he'd shouted “Who do Americans think they are?”

  TO THE VINDICATION of the lieutenant, Harrison died where he was left. When Screaming Eagles recovered Wolverton's body it was so mutilated he could only be identified by his dog tag, which had slipped down the trachea.

  * The 101st's planners, assuming there would be some early captures by the Germans, intended the cricket for use only in the darkness of D Night. Troopers were told of this reservation, but with no implication that after D Night their cricket might, as happened to Joe, be an identifier for the enemy. Everything considered, the cricket most likely saved many more lives than it cost in prisoners.

  †Screaming Eagles had been taught Hande hoch! to demand surrender. This must be considered a humane measure, allowing that German soldiers would

  * Many enlisted men in the 101st swear that
in D Night briefings they were told, literally, to take no prisoners. Obviously this was not official division policy but rather that of some officers who realistically foresaw the circumstances under which Germans would be captured in the crucial early hours. There would be no place to send them, no secure rear area for POWs to be collected and effectively guarded. This was a dilemma peculiar to the Airborne; infantry divisions establishing beachheads at Utah and Omaha could send POWs back for pickup by vessels returning to England.

  * Germany signed the Geneva Conventions before the Nazis came to power. The Soviet Union never signed. If the Soviets weren't bound, the Nazis weren't either. This was an excuse for reciprocal atrocities on the Eastern Front, in contrast to the relative chivalry observed by Germans on the Western Front.

  * Wolverton's instructions were carried out in 1947 at the Muehlbach Hotel, where Blues assembled for a reunion with the theme “J-57.” Three years of research had revealed that his stick had jumped fifty-seven minutes after midnight.

  †In the 101st, casualties among high-ranking officers became so heavy that General Taylor had to publish a stern advisory—to wit, that leading a charge in battle was the job of lieutenants and captains, not majors and colonels. His admonition was ineffective. Of the four infantry regimental commanders on D Day, only Sink stood unscathed at the end of the war. The Screaming Eagles lost a brigadier general, two colonels, and ten lieutenant colonels killed in combat. Twice that number, between the ranks of major and major general (including Taylor), were wounded.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HIGHWAY 13

  JOE'S NEW POW COMPOUND WAS AN APPLE ORCHARD ENCLOSED by both a fence and a hedgerow. This told him that the farther back the prisoners were moved, the tighter would be their security. His group from St. Come-du-Mont was joined by about twenty more. They arrived bedraggled, hands on head, eyes on ground, as if shame were the worst of their predicament. Joe looked for a familiar face, saw none, and felt that he too would not want to be recognized among the losers, those who a few days before were as potent and powerful as the Fallschirmjagers now guarding them.

  For a while the prisoners could mingle and talk, learning what misfortune had brought the others here. It was consoling for Joe that most had been captured as he had, alone.* Some had been dropped twenty miles from their intended drop zone. They'd fought till their ammo ran out, and all appeared benumbed like survivors from a train wreck. This initiation to captivity was unlike anything they'd ever experienced in the hardest training, nothing in the past they could relate to, contradicting what had been vital in their lives, which was to take prisoners, not become one. Addled by lack of sleep,

  Joe's thoughts drifted a lot, but he found some vitality in reconnecting with his countrymen. The previous days had been an evil epiphany for which he needed some sort of sounding board. The incoherent, the babblers he shunned as he had the wounded in the farmhouse, but huddling with grim POWs encouraged him, and vice versa. He kept hearing that what happened was a crap game. Snake eyes had come up, but they still had the dice to roll again. Joe saw God as his croupier, taking chips when he lost but also pushing enough across the table for another bet.

  However, there was also Third Battalion's collective gamble, which meant infinitely more, and Joe knew nothing of how it had turned out. It seemed that the Blues had dropped off the map and out of the war. Now, Joe wondered fitfully, was he their only POW, maybe the only survivor?

  Down narrow lanes like those on which the FFFs horse had carried him, he was marched with the others southwest. Guards and prisoners froze when P-47s, General Bradley's ground-support fighter-bombers, called Thunderbolts, thundered overhead. The march resumed, despite interruptions by P-47s, till in a copse the POWs were halted and seated in a circle, facing inward with one German rifleman behind them. If there was a signal, Joe pondered, they could all rise at once and overpower him. But what then? They were farther from American forces than ever before.

  One by one the prisoners were pulled to their feet and led away, never to return. Joe knew his turn was coming. He was taken into some heavy woods and nudged to stop; he looked around, got another nudge, then noticed a hole with a dark stepped passage into the ground. Guards ordered him to descend. Belowground was a huge bunker expertly excavated perfectly camouflaged from someone walking by, even less detectable from the air. Entirely subterranean, it accommodated the headquarters of a battalion of the 6th Parachute Regiment.

  Joe was faced against the bunker's earthen wall. Suddenly his knees buckled and chunks of wall calved off from an explosion above, the largest and most shaking he ever heard. It was probably one of the naval projectiles hitting a huge German ammo dump miles away. It took a moment for him to understand that this was friendly fire. It took longer for the Germans to start talking again, their voices lower than before.

  That was a morale lift for Joe. He was their prisoner, but the krauts were the ones in trouble, an impression they strove to change right away. As soon as the earth quieted Joe was shoved into a small room and stood at attention in front of a seated lieutenant who spoke with an Oxford accent.

  “Name, rank, and serial number,” he commanded.

  “Tech-4 Joseph R. Beyrle, 16 085 985.”

  “Unit.” Joe stood silent. “Beyrle, I can see the escutcheon” (What was that? Joe wondered) “on your sleeve. We are required to confirm that you are a member of the 101st Airborne Division, which so obviously has had no combat experience.”

  Joe flushed from the insult. “Sir, I am required to tell you only what I've told you.”

  “How do you expect to receive Red Cross parcels if we cannot identify you?” Joe had no idea what Red Cross parcels were and, having said what he was going to say, said nothing. “Near here we have Red Cross rations designated for confirmed prisoners of war. I request confirmation of unit so that you may be fed. Nothing more.” He looked for reaction from Joe, but there was none because he was suddenly overcome by exhaustion. His eyes drooped, bringing a smile from the lieutenant. “The International Red Cross is, of course, a humane organization trusted by both sides. Would you like to meet their representative?”

  Joe may have nodded, for the guard pushed him into a second room as the lieutenant looked at the top file on a thick pile of papers, then called for the next POW In those moments Joe came wide awake as he realized that the Red Cross representative must be a fake. After closing the door of the second room, another lieutenant seated himself behind a field desk. Greta was sitting on it with her legs crossed like Mar-lene Dietrich.

  “Hello, Joe. I've been waiting for you,” she said with convincing sincerity but belied by the lieutenant's grin. “How 'bout a dance? Remember those times in Ramsbury? New-bury? I always wondered why you wouldn't dance. Well, there's time now. Nobody to cut in, and we've got music.” She gestured to a gramophone on another desk, but Joe shook his head. So Greta tacked. “No, I don't feel like dancing either.” Her handkerchief stifled a sniffle. “Lost too many friends the last few days.”

  Joe indeed believed she had. Wolverton was very social. Greta mentioned him first. “I can't get over what happened to Bob. Harwick was luckier. McKnight too. But the Blues were pretty much wiped out, Joe. There are not many of them left. This is a horrible, horrible war. Let's get on the same side. Please?”

  Joe wouldn't reply, so the lieutenant started off on how we of the West were really together against the “Bolshi.” Joe felt like puking. The Russians hadn't cut Wolverton's throat and used his body for target practice. Greta chimed in with names of more Blue casualties, starting with officers. Joe shrank from her when she began to get very friendly.

  “I understand, trooper.” She sighed. “I just want to show you that there can be love in all the hate of this war. I know what you love—you're Jumpin' Joe. You love it. Lieutenant, Corporal Beyrle was the 101st's most accomplished parachutist.” The Fallschirmjager officer nodded respectfully. “Joe, this is an Airborne outfit you're with now,” Greta continued. “It was those lous
y static troops who killed Bob. They're going to be punished by the 6th Regiment. I know them—they're jumpers like the 506th Regiment, Joe. You're among brothers here.”

  “Did you have a hard landing in Normandy?” the lieutenant asked in a brotherly way.

  Greta winked at him. “Which one?” she asked, then exchanged some quick words in German with the lieutenant, who looked at Joe appraisingly and jotted in his file. With a flick of the hand he beckoned for the next prisoner to be summoned. Joe emerged from the bunker into daylight, then was stood in a line parallel to one entering for interrogation. He recognized the face of a Screaming Eagle, Fred Berke.

  “Watch out for Greta,” Joe muttered before he was pushed along, his head shaken as after the opening shock of D Night. She seemed to know everything. Probably, Joe suspected what Greta wanted from him was the frequency of I Company's radio, but it was her wink and rhetorical question that unnerved him. Whatever she was after, he had deflected in the only way he could, by a soldier's silence. Joe felt he had passed a minimal test after his failures so far.

  CARENTAN WAS THE 101ST'S final objective, and the Screaming Eagles were closing in. Under savage attack, the Fall-schirmjagers moved their POWs south at twilight, scores of them, a long column with just a platoon of guards trudging down Highway 13. Some miles to the east, combat sputtered and roared like an untuned carburetor, over a constant background of two-sided sniper fire.

  The road sloped down imperceptibly toward Carentan. Faking a bad leg, Joe dropped back through the shadowy column, muttering, “Sink Blue.” He was answered by Captain Harwick from H Company and PFC Tucker of I Company. The guards were nervously alert but widely spaced, so the three Blues were able to talk unheard. They guessed the krauts wouldn't move this column many miles because with deepening darkness it would be relatively easy for someone to slip away. That was the premise of Harwick's plan—that this was the time, in front of them the place, to put it to the touch and make a break. In England he had memorized the Norman terrain so well that he knew the roadside for the next half mile was flat with few bushes or trees.