by Len Levinson
“Hup, sarge.”
Mahoney stood and walked across the room, dragging his bad leg behind him. He opened the door the nurse had indicated and saw a chair, a long, narrow table, and cabinets filled with medicine. He leaned his rifle against the wall and sat on the chair, taking out a cigarette and lighting it up. The thick walls of the building muffled the sounds of fighting in the distance, and he felt as if he’d suddenly stepped out of the war. Closing his eyes, he thought of Cranepool. When he’d met the kid two years ago, Cranepool had been like an angel. He didn’t drink, smoke, or screw girls. When they went into battle, bullets would fly around, and everybody would get hit, but not Cranepool. Then, gradually, Cranepool started drinking, smoking and chasing whores. Now he was as corrupted by the war as the rest of them; finally, this morning, he’d been hit. It was as if Cranepool’s virtue had been an invisible shield that protected him from harm, but now that his virtue was gone, he had become vulnerable like any other soldier.
The nurse walked into the room. “I thought I told you to take off your pants,” she snapped.
“Take it easy on me, nursie,” Mahoney said. “I’m just a poor old soldier boy.”
“Don’t give me any of your crap,” she said, looking sternly at him. “Take off your pants and lay on that table before I call the MPs.”
Mahoney winked. “If I take off my pants, will you take off yours?”
“Don’t be funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny.”
“Listen here,” she said, “I’ve got a whole building full of wounded soldiers, and I don’t have time for your nonsense. Now take your pants off and lay on that table or else get the hell out of here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mahoney said, unbuckling his cartridge belt. “I can see that you don’t take any guff from us soldiers, and there’s no reason on earth why you should.” He unbuttoned his pants and pushed them down to his ankles. “Do you mind if I don’t take them off all the way, nurse, so’s I don’t have to take off my combat boots, too?”
“You don’t have to take them off all the way,” she said, working at one of the cabinets.
Mahoney shuffled across the room and lay on the table. She picked up his shirt and looked at the cut, deciding it might need a few stitches, too. Then she turned to the bloody bandage on his hairy leg. She couldn’t help noticing his oversized dong.
“I’ll have to give you a needle to numb your leg,” she said.
“Just don’t stab it in the wrong place,” he replied.
She smiled in spite of herself, jabbed in the needle, withdrew it, and then untied the bandage. Mahoney looked down and saw a four-inch gash on his thigh. The nurse turned her back to Mahoney and rattled around at the cabinet, while Mahoney’s leg became numb. Then she turned around and daubed his wound with a wet bandage, clearing away the clotted blood.
Mahoney couldn’t feel much and looked up at the nurse’s face. Back in New York, he wouldn’t have looked at her twice, but here in Metz she looked awfully good to him. He imagined her wrapping her long legs around him as he humped her and thought of how nice it would be if he could caress her small breasts. He began to get an erection.
“Feeling a little frisky, are we, sergeant?” she asked.
“I’m afraid so, ma’am. You couldn’t help me out, could you?”
She pulled back her arm and whacked his erection with the blade of her hand. It collapsed like a tree that had just been chopped down in a forest.
“That better, sergeant?” she asked, reaching for her needle and thread.
“You’re a heartless woman,” Mahoney replied, his eyes squinched shut in pain.
~*~
Adolf Hitler paced back and forth behind his desk, his hands clasped behind his back. General Jodl sat on a chair in front of the desk, watching his Fuehrer anxiously. Jodl just had delivered a communiqué to the Fuehrer concerning Metz. General Neubacher reported that he didn’t think he could hold out much longer.
Suddenly, Hitler stopped and looked at Jodl. “There is only one thing to do,” he said solemnly. “You will relieve Neubacher of command.”
“Yes, Mein Fuehrer,” Jodl replied, writing on his note pad. “Who shall I replace him with?”
“Who do you suggest?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to confer with General Balck.”
“And General Balck will have to confer with his chief of staff, who will have to confer with someone else, and this whole mess will drag on.” Hitler drew his eyebrows together. “The problem with this army is that there are too many conferences and not enough hard fighting. I want the decision to be made right now!”
“Well,” replied Jodl, groping in the recesses of his mind, “perhaps we can replace Neubacher with his chief of staff.”
“What’s his name?”
“Knoedler.”
“Never heard of him. He’s probably infected with the same defeatism that has incapacitated General Neubacher. I should put them both before firing squads for failure to do their duty.”
“But, my Fuehrer, the garrison at Metz is outnumbered, and they have no air cover. What can the generals do?”
“More than they’re doing.” Hitler made a fist and shook it in the air. “What we need at times like this is unshakable fanaticism. There is an SS commandant in Metz, isn’t there?”
“I imagine so, Mein Fuehrer,” Jodl said. “That’s not my department, and I can’t say for sure.”
“Then tell Himmler I want to see him immediately. He’ll know.”
Jodl rose from his chair. “Yes, Mein Fuehrer.”
~*~
It was midmorning, and Mahoney walked through the streets of Metz on his way back to Charlie Company. He passed devastated buildings and piles of rubble while tanks and jeeps rolled by on their way to the front. The main battle was taking place in the center of Metz now, and it was only a matter of time before the city fell. Soldiers at the battalion aid station speculated that the end would come in three or four days at the most.
Mahoney was in a good mood, and he whistled a song as he moved along. The nurse had sewn up his leg and chest, and he hurt less than when he’d shown up at the aid station at dawn. They’d given him a good hot breakfast and a new pair of pants to replace the ones that had been torn by the German bayonet. The rain had stopped, although it looked as though it might start up again at any moment.
He was headed toward the part of the city where Charlie Company had been placed in reserve. He’d never been in that part of the city before, but he figured that if he continued in its general direction, he’d find Captain Anderson and the boys eventually. There was no reason to hurry, anyway. He might as well enjoy his freedom while he had the chance.
He came to an intersection and saw a narrow, winding street lined with trees denuded of branches. Many of the buildings on the street were still standing, and it reminded Mahoney somewhat of Greenwich Village in New York, where he used to go before the war and screw girls who claimed to be artists. Nostalgia swept over him, and he thought he’d stroll down the street since it was on the way to Charlie Company.
He turned the corner and walked down the street. The glass was blown out of nearly all the windows, and some of the buildings were little more than facades, but Mahoney felt removed from the war, as if he were strolling through a street in Greenwich Village, looking for a good bar and a crazy girl who wore a beret and had paint stains on her fingers. They liked to go to bed with guys like him, he’d discovered. It made them feel as if they were in the real world for a change.
He stopped beside a lamppost broken in half and lit a Lucky. Dropping his lighter into his pocket, he inhaled and looked up at the building in front of him. To his astonishment, a blonde girl was in the window. He blinked his eyes because he couldn’t believe she was there, and she winked at him, crooking her finger.
Are the whores here already? Mahoney asked himself, heading toward the stoop of the building. It was a three-story residence made of brick and evidently had be
en quite nice at one time. He climbed the stoop and unslung his rifle just in case it was a trap. Entering the window, he walked through a door to the room the girl had been in, but she wasn’t there. Looking around, he saw another door, and through it, a few rooms away, was the blonde girl. What an incredible stroke of luck, he thought. That nurse got my dick hard, and now I’ll stick it into this blonde number.
He moved toward her, and she giggled, turning and running away. So she wants me to chase her, Mahoney thought with a grin. She wants to play little games. He followed her through the apartment, thinking of what the blonde would look like without any clothes on. She looked quite nice from the distance—a tall, cool drink of water.
He came to a door and saw a flight of stairs leading to the cellar. What the hell’s going on here? Mahoney thought. He looked down the stairs and saw her leaning seductively against the wall below.
“Come up here,” he told her in German.
“No, you come down here,” she replied, turning and running away.
Mahoney tromped down the stairs, wondering where she’d gone. The cellar smelled damp and musty, and he saw an empty coal bin. The two eyes of a cat glowed evilly as they looked at Mahoney from a corner.
Mahoney moved in the direction the blonde had gone when suddenly a new smell assailed his nostrils. It was sweet and flowery, her perfume. He stopped dead in his tracks when he realized that it was the same perfume he’d smelled on Kubiak’s corpse in the battalion dressing station several days ago. Oh-oh, Mahoney thought.
He sidestepped into the darkness and took a hand grenade out of his field-jacket pocket. Yanking the pin, he clasped the arming lever tightly and placed his hand and the grenade back into his pocket.
“Where are you?” the girl asked in German.
“Over here,” Mahoney replied, stepping out of the shadows.
He walked cautiously through the cellar, listening for unusual sounds. He saw the girl standing in a room, unbuttoning her blouse. Holding the grenade tightly, he entered the room and saw some blankets on the floor beside the blonde. An open door was on the other side of the room. Mahoney turned loose the lever of the hand grenade in his pocket, arming it.
“Why don’t you put down your rifle?” the girl said, opening her blouse and revealing a pink brassiere.
Mahoney pulled the grenade out of his pocket and chucked it through the open door. The girl screamed, and Mahoney dropped to his stomach. The grenade exploded thunderously, and a hurricane of dust blew into the room. Mahoney jumped to his feet, and ran toward the door, clicking the safety off his rifle. Charging into the next room, he looked around quickly and saw German SS men lying everywhere, bleeding and mutilated, one of them decapitated. Another, missing a leg, tried to get up. Mahoney shot him through the head, then retreated back to the room where the blonde had been.
She was gone. He looked through the other door and saw her running toward the stairs. He dropped to one knee, brought his rifle butt against his shoulder, aimed for the center of her back, and squeezed the trigger. She danced in his sights, her arms flailing the air, and the M-1 fired. The impact of the bullet lifted her off the floor and sent her flying through the air. She landed on her stomach, and Mahoney ran toward her.
She tried feebly to crawl to the stairs. The back of her blouse was soaked with blood. Mahoney looked down at her and thought of Butsko and Kubiak lying dead in the aid station. He inserted his foot underneath her and kicked her over on to her back, then aimed his M-1 at her face.
Blood leaked out the corner of her mouth, and she held up her hand. “No,” she begged, “please.”
“This is for Butsko and Kubiak,” Mahoney said, and pulled the trigger.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The phone rang and Colonel Anton Meier of the SS picked it up. “Yes?”
“This is Heinrich Himmler,” said the voice on the other end, and it sounded very far away.
Meier shot to his feet and stood at attention. “My Reichsfuehrer,” Meier stuttered, “this is such an honor. I hardly know—”
Himmler interrupted with his cold, metallic voice. “How are you today, Colonel Meier?” Himmler asked.
“How am I?” Meier replied. “Why, I’m fine, I’m very fine, and I—”
Himmler interrupted him again. “The Fuehrer would like to talk with you.”
“Well, I—ah—” Meier was at a loss for words. He’d never spoken with the Fuehrer in his life, although he’d attended many of his speeches, sitting at the backs of auditoriums or way up in the balconies.
The familiar, hypnotic voice of Adolf Hitler came on the wire. “Good day to you, Colonel Meier.”
Meier realized he’d better pull himself together right now. “Good day to you, my Fuehrer.”
“I am told that you are a true National Socialist and that you will do anything for your country. Is that true, Meier?”
“Most assuredly it is true, my Fuehrer.”
“I have an important task for you, Meier. I have selected you for it because I know you will have the zeal to carry it out. I hereby appoint you commander in chief of the garrison of Metz, and furthermore, from this moment forward, you will be a brigadier general.”
Meier was speechless. All he could do was make some weird guttural sounds.
“Are you there, Meier?”
“Yes, my Fuehrer.”
“I thought that perhaps we’d been cut off.”
“No, my Fuehrer. I was merely astounded by what you said.”
“Listen to me carefully, General Meier,” Hitler said. “A crucial battle is being waged in Metz even as we speak. It is imperative that Metz be held for as long as possible. Your orders are to defend Metz to the last man. Is that clear?”
“Yes, my Fuehrer.”
“And you are to use whatever means are at your disposal to do so. Do you understand?”
Meier didn’t dare to mention the Zyklon B on the telephone, so he said: “Do I understand you to mean, my Fuehrer, that I may use whatever weapons I have here to stop the Americans?”
“That is exactly what I mean,” Hitler replied. “I don’t care if you have to level Metz to the ground. Just hold on there for as long as possible. You are not to surrender or retreat under any circumstances. Is that clear?”
“Yes, my Fuehrer.”
“I have complete confidence in you, General Meier. I’m sure that as a result of your efforts Metz will always represent a shining moment in the history of the Reich.”
“Thank you, my Fuehrer.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“None whatever, my Fuehrer.”
“Do your duty, General Meier, and bear in mind that I am always with you in spirit.”
“Yes, my Fuehrer.”
The connection went dead in Meier’s ear. Meier stood and turned around, looking at the photograph of Adolf Hitler hanging on his wall. Hitler was giving a speech, holding his fist next to his heart. The energy of Adolf Hitler seemed to flow from the photograph into the being of General Meier.
“I will stop the Americans,” Meier said to the photograph, “even if it costs my life.”
~*~
General Neubacher went pale as he read the telegram from Rastenberg.
“What is it?” asked Colonel Knoedler, standing beside the map table.
“I’ve been relieved of command,” Neubacher said in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper.
“What!”
Neubacher held out the telegram. Knoedler took it and read quickly. He turned pale, too, and threw the telegram on the map table. The conference room became silent, as the younger officers looked at the two generals in amazement.
“I don’t believe it,” Knoedler said.
“I do,” Neubacher replied. “I think we should know by now that we can expect anything from those maniacs in Rastenburg.”
The door was flung open, and Meier marched into the conference room, followed by a retinue of SS officers.
“What maniacs in Rastenburg?” h
e asked imperiously.
“What are you talking about?” Neubacher replied.
“Didn’t you just say something about maniacs in Rastenburg?”
“No.”
“I thought you did.”
“You thought wrong.”
“I see,” Meier said, looking contemptuously at the army officers in the room. The insignia of a general in the SS already had been sewn to his collar. “I believe I know very well what you said, but there’s no point in arguing the issue now. You have received word of my appointment from headquarters?”
“I have.”
“Good. How soon can you clear out of here?”
“Immediately.”
“Excellent. I shall notify the troops that they have a new commander in chief, one who will prosecute this war more vigorously than has been done in the past by certain people whose names I won’t mention.”
Without a word, Neubacher and his officers filed out of the conference room. Neubacher felt relieved; his ordeal was over. “Well, gentlemen,” he said in the corridor, “you now have a new commander. I suggest you return to your quarters and await his orders. Colonel Knoedler, may I have a word with you?”
The young officers marched off to the bachelor officers’ quarters, and Neubacher hoped they’d have sense enough to try and surrender to the Americans. Knoedler drew close to him.
“Come to my office,” Neubacher told him. “I must speak with you alone.”
They walked down the corridor to Neubacher’s office, entered, and closed the door behind him. Neubacher bolted the door, then turned and faced Knoedler.
“I have a terrible premonition,” Neubacher said. “I’m afraid that idiot will use his Zyklon B.”
Knoedler took a step backward. “That’s true!” he said. “I’d almost forgotten about that stuff!”
“I haven’t. Meier is a madman, and he just might set it loose.”
“How can we stop him?”
“You and I can’t stop him. We can’t take on the SS detachment in this city by ourselves.”
“Perhaps we can rally the soldiers behind us.”
“Extremely doubtful. They’ll follow their orders and do their duty as always. That is the great virtue of the German soldier, but unfortunately it’s not much of a virtue right now.”