The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02]

by David L. Robbins

  Somehow, in the midst of the boy’s own unfolding and dire fate, he smiles at Bandy. Weakly, he lifts a fist just off the ground to give one more thumbs-up.

  Bandy returns the gesture. He shakes his own balled hand as if to rattle out some strength and good luck to the downed boy. To pour a little more sand into his hourglass.

  The boy’s gaze slides down to the Leica in Bandy’s hand. His blanched face changes, winces not in pain but refusal.

  As he did just twenty minutes ago in the commotion of the plane, the young soldier mouths silent words to Bandy:

  Don’t take my photograph. Okay?

  ~ * ~

  * * *

  March 25, 1945, 2:30 p.m.

  On the west bank of the Rhine

  Büderich, Germany

  “no.”

  One of Winston Churchill’s greatest abilities remains his tolerance for hearing that word. In his long public career, he’s learned to be patient, become an alchemist, with it.

  “Quite right, General. As you say.”

  Eisenhower doesn’t appear convinced Churchill has taken him seriously. Something about the quick capitulation followed by a long draw on the cigar.

  Eisenhower looks to the other generals in the room with him, Bradley, Simpson, and Montgomery. He wants numbers to gang up on Churchill.

  “I mean it, Prime Minister. I’m the Supreme Commander and I refuse to let you go across. You might be killed.”

  “Yes,” Churchill says, lowering his eyes; he read once this is how one defers to a silverback gorilla. “Yes indeed, I might. Quite correct.”

  Simpson and Bradley strike appropriate poses, shaking their heads at Churchill. Bradley even wags a marmish finger. But there remain amused twinkles in the generals’ eyes. Montgomery openly grins at his round leader.

  Churchill spreads wide his arms to display himself. “But I am dressed for it, you know.”

  The Prime Minister wears the uniform of his old cavalry regiment, the Fourth Hussars. Over the years he’s had it tailored more than a few times. But it seemed a wonderful choice for this particular visit to the front, for the moment Churchill’s been waiting for since September 1939: the final charge across the Rhine, Operation Varsity into the heart of Germany and then on to Berlin, led by an Englishman.

  Bradley and Montgomery do not contain their chuckles. Simpson looks away. Eisenhower exhales a puff from his ever-present cigarette. Churchill matches Eisenhower’s cloudlet with a bigger one from his stogie.

  “Mr. Prime Minister. When was the last time you rode with the cavalry?”

  “Not in this century, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s why it’s still no.”

  “I understand, General. Of course.”

  Churchill does not seem able to agree in a way that will convince Eisenhower.

  “What about yesterday?” the General insists. “Jock.”

  He refers to Jock Colville, Churchill’s secretary. Yesterday morning, without permission, Colville slipped across the river on an assault boat, returning covered in blood after a driver standing next to him on the far shore was hit by shrapnel.

  Now Eisenhower enlists Montgomery. “Monty, what did you say yesterday when you saw Jock?”

  Montgomery lifts his voice in dramatic rendition: “I said, ’Good God, man!’”

  “And what did the Prime Minister say?”

  Montgomery claps, a mimic of Churchill:” ‘Good show, man!’ “

  “No!” Eisenhower says as though the word is the punch line to the tale. He holds up a flat palm, a white stop sign. “I forbid it. And that’s it, all right?”

  Eisenhower is in a foul temper this afternoon. At lunch two hours ago the four generals and Churchill discussed the latest row with the Russians. The men ate on an elevated veranda of the riverbank castle Eisenhower has commandeered for his headquarters. The table was set with silvery gleams, ample savories, and quaffs, the way Churchill likes his lunches. The men were arrayed around a broad white tablecloth, tobacco smoke wafting about them, and Churchill thought there was something Olympian about their gathering. In full view below them, assault boats ferried to and fro across the river bearing soldiers to rout the enemy. Overhead, thousands of

  Allied planes lofted paratroops behind enemy lines. The end of the war stampeded eastward past them and Churchill watched enthralled. Lunch was intended to be celebratory. But Eisenhower was in a fit. After the meal their party was driven to this mansion in Büderich beside the river for an even closer look at the operation. It’s a lovely spring day. But the Supreme Commander has not cheered up.

  The Reds have overreacted to a very simple situation. In late February, General Karl Wolff, the ranking SS officer in Italy, expressed through an Italian businessman a desire to contact the Allies. His intention was to explore terms to surrender all German forces in North Italy. In March, Wolff was met in Zurich by OSS Chief Allen Dulles. The SS officer was told the Allies have interest only in the unconditional surrender of his forces. Wolff still had to return to Italy and convince General Kesselring, the German Commander in Chief there, of the need for surrender. A second meeting was arranged for Bern, Switzerland. The parameters were very clearly stated: this was to be a surrender on a military basis only and have nothing to do with politics. The Russian government was notified of the second impending session with Wolff. Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov agreed that the meeting should take place, but insisted that the Soviet Union be represented. Because the Bern meeting was nothing more than a preliminary to surrender, Molotov’s request was turned down by the British and Americans. It was felt that Russian attendance might scare off the Germans, and that Soviet participation would not speed the process; what might take an hour could be drawn out by Red input to weeks, and more soldiers would die accordingly. Besides, there are no Soviet troops fighting in Italy. It’s inconceivable that Stalin would invite U.S. and British observers to any surrender of German forces in the East. Molotov was informed that, at such time as there is a formal surrender of Italian forces, the USSR will be fully represented.

  But Molotov and Stalin are incensed. They smell a rat, as though the Western Allies might be plotting with the Germans a separate peace. They worry that Hitler will be allowed to transfer his defeated Italian forces or equipment to the Russian front. Or worse, that the West will agree to join hands with Germany and all turn against Mother Russia. More likely, Churchill thinks, the Bolsheviks are simply defending their prestige on the world stage, so that the first major surrender of German forces not be a purely Anglo victory. The Bern meetings are as advertised, purely military in nature, without any political consequences to the Soviet Union. Stalin is simply judging every act by his own standards of paranoia.

  In any event, Molotov and his master have sent a series of increasingly contemptuous and cutting cables to Churchill and Roosevelt. Another one arrived last night in Churchill’s red leather-covered ministerial box. Molotov’s language, in diplomatic terms, is venomous. The West’s refusal to allow Soviet attendance at the initial meetings is called “utterly unexpected and incomprehensible from the point of view of Allied relations between our countries.” Both the U.S. and British governments have officially denied the charges Molotov levels, explaining that at no stage has anything been concealed from the Soviets. Dulles acted on his own, and all talks to date have been informal and unbinding. But the vitriol has not abated.

  Churchill showed Molotov’s letter to the generals at lunch. The Soviet Foreign Secretary writes:

  in bern for two weeks, behind the backs of the soviet union, which is bearing the brunt of the war against germany, negotiations have been going on between the representatives of the german military command on the one hand and representatives of the english and american commands on the other.

  This language—”behind the backs”—is a blatant accusation that the American and British governments are liars. To Western protests that this affair is nothing more than a misunderstanding, Molotov responds:

 
in this instance, the soviet government sees not a misunderstanding but something worse.

  Eisenhower was so angered, he did not eat his lunch, which Churchill saw as a shame. The Supreme Commander thundered at the table: the Russian accusations of bad faith are unjust and unfounded. As military commander, he will accept the unconditional surrender of any body of enemy troops on his front, from a company to the entire damn German army, and this is a purely military matter for which he needs no political permission. Churchill and the others kept their counsel while Eisenhower fumed.

  After his fury was spent, Eisenhower sat sullenly exhausting a cigarette. Only Montgomery spoke.

  “Ike, this is why we have to take Berlin first. The Reds don’t respect anything else. Just strength.”

  The Supreme Commander made no response to that, he just eyed the British Field Marshal with the same smolders in his pupils that glowed in the Chesterfield between his fingers.

  For his part, Churchill is not surprised at Stalin and Molotov. He— sometimes alone—has sounded the alarm against the Communists for thirty years. Though he admits to himself he has sometimes been swayed by the charm and authority of Stalin—he has made more than a few embarrassingly effusive toasts to Stalin’s and the Soviet Union’s good fortune, health, and friendship—Churchill has never been blinded to what the Reds are and what they must have. Not the way Roosevelt has, with the averted eyes of a campaigning and forgiving lover.

  The truth is out now, like a snake dropped from a branch. Yalta is in shreds. In complete derogation of the Declaration on Liberated Europe and the earlier Atlantic Charter, Stalin has imposed communist regimes on every country he’s occupied: Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. He would have done Greece too, had it not been for Churchill’s horse trading. In every Soviet-occupied land, Stalin’s communist henchmen are systematically putting in place programs of terror, execution, and imprisonment. Churchill’s fear is that if Stalin can tear up his agreements over these nations, refusing to allow them the right to choose the forms of government they wish to live under, refusing to allow even whispers of dissent, then he might well do the same over the chief prizes, Germany and Berlin. If Stalin’s tanks sweep far across Germany, can he be trusted to withdraw to the agreed-upon boundaries? If the Reds enter Berlin first, will they dutifully hand over two-thirds of the city to the Western Allies, especially since they believe they have borne the greater share of the fighting for it?

  And what of Roosevelt? If the worst comes to pass—and nothing but the worst has been happening in this arena—-will the United States stand firm against Marxist imperialism? Will the U.S. take the Red threat seriously at last, now that Stalin and Molotov have bitten the hand that’s fed them throughout the war? Or will Uncle Sam continue to be trusting and generous with Uncle Joe, instead of putting them on a regimen of punishments and rewards, the only thing the Soviets respond to? Will the United States send up their hands in frustration, at the same time gleeful that the Soviet Union sits in a few chairs at President Roosevelt’s precious United Nations? Churchill wonders, will Roosevelt even see the mockery when Poland and Romania vote as Soviet satellites at his UN?

  The United Nations. Roosevelt’s dream palace to world peace.

  Purchased at what cost to human freedom in Europe?

  There’s one last place to make a stand.

  Churchill knows. Berlin.

  General Eisenhower glares at Churchill.

  The Prime Minister stands in the midst of these generals, war gods all. He’s done his best to infiltrate them, even draping himself for this visit in his old cavalry uniform. But these men preside over a separate realm from his. They are military commanders, he—even in his vintage khaki pleats and jackboots—is a political creature. By agreement and convention these officers serve at the sufferance of the political, but this is not wholly the case in war. Churchill and all world leaders know this, that’s why Stalin purged the ranks of his Red Army of every independent-thinking officer. This sort of man commands not through documents and parliaments but with millions of armed soldiers who march where and when they point. Their combat is decided not by votes but blood. Their deeds determine not budgets but nations. They halt tyranny. They fill graveyards.

  These men. Eisenhower. Simpson. Bradley. Montgomery. Throw in the absent Patton for good measure. There are jealousies and loyalties between them, spoils of fame to be shared or hoarded. Churchill observes, history will be shaped as much by these generals’ wisdom as by their pettiness. This can’t be helped, it’s always the way.

  Right now, Churchill must yield to Eisenhower’s decree, even while gazing longingly at the Rhine and all the transports going back and forth.

  “I’ve got to go,” Eisenhower says.

  Churchill pulls his eyes from the river. He mounts an instant beaming face.

  “Travel safely, General. We’ll speak anon.”

  “All right.” Eisenhower’s tone remains taut. He wants to go brood over Molotov’s insulting letter, maybe write a response.

  Churchill reads the Supreme Commander’s mind. In parting, he gentles, “Let it go, General. There’s no surprise in this. None whatsoever. The best response for now is silence.”

  Eisenhower nods. “Maybe. I still don’t like it.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  Eisenhower pats Bradley on the arm, who falls in behind him to depart. Eisenhower tosses a quick look at Simpson and Montgomery and turns to leave. Montgomery calls at his back, “Berlin, Ike. It’s ours for the taking.”

  Monty, Churchill thinks, needs to learn to stuff it.

  Eisenhower stalks off, trailing cigarette smoke like a plane with an engine out. Bradley follows in tow.

  Churchill and Montgomery are alone with General Simpson, commander of the Ninth U.S. Army, assigned to Montgomery. It’s Simpson’s front here.

  “Well,” says Churchill obligingly.

  “Well,” answers Field Marshal Montgomery.

  Churchill puffs and says, “Looks like two Englishmen and one Yank. Field Marshal, this may be the only time left in the war when we have superior numbers.”

  Simpson waves one slender finger in the air. “No, no, no, gentlemen. You heard Ike.”

  Churchill sidles beside the tall, gray general. He laps an arm as well as he can around Simpson’s shoulders, reaching far up.

  “Yes. I recall him ordering me not to go. But he’s not here right now. And if my memory of military protocol does not fail me, it would seem that you, being the front commander, are in charge, General.”

  Simpson does not take this seriously. He laughs.”I see what you’re getting at.”

  “And?”

  “And no, Mr. Prime Minister.”

  “Ah.” Churchill removes his awkward embrace. He walks beside Montgomery. “I do quite dislike doing this to you, General. But, I must appeal now to an even higher authority. Field Marshal?”

  “Yes, Prime Minister?”

  “The Ninth Army is still under your Twenty-first Group, is it not?”

  “It is indeed, Prime Minister.”

  Outside, a small U.S. Navy motor launch churns nearby to the mansion’s dock.

  “Why don’t we go across and have a look at the other side?”

  Montgomery is a jaunty character in his beret and red cravat. He enjoys this bit of rebellion. Churchill considers they should both be more careful about gigging Eisenhower. But crossing the Rhine as part of this great and final invasion of the German heartland, after so much loss and agony, is not something to be missed if there is any way possible.

  Montgomery grins. “Why not?”

  Churchill catches only a quick glimpse of General Simpson’s gesture of appeal. He races Montgomery for the door to get outside and reach the shore to flag down the motorboat.

  On the way through the yard Churchill passes Field Marshal Alan Brooke, his military Chief of Staff.

  “Alan, come on! We’re going across!”

  Montgomery gains the bank firs
t and gets the attention of the launch’s skipper. Churchill and Brooke arrive while the boat eases to the quay. Simpson arrives seconds behind with four other officers, all bearing sidearms.

  He says, “Ike will kill me for letting you go. But he’ll kill me slow if I don’t at least keep an eye on you.”

  The skipper of the motor launch and his one-man crew are agog at their passengers clambering over the gunwales.

  “Captain,” Churchill addresses the sailor, who is not a captain and can barely close his mouth, “be so kind as to take us to the far shore.”

  The boat moves onto the Rhine under a cloudless sky. Churchill chomps on a fresh cigar like a man in a winner’s circle. This is magnificent, he thinks, exhilarating. Surrounded by fighting men, on the forefront of the action, right here at the nib of history’s pen where you can hear the scritching of ink to the page just as history is written. Not obsessing over who attends what meeting, who insulted whom, no ping-ponging back and forth over politics and mongering for votes. No, by God, this day is real. The vibrating deck beneath his feet, the danger, the company! Churchill thinks of the two others who with him make up the Grand Alliance, one confined not only to a wheelchair but by privilege and naïveté, the other imprisoned behind walls of dogma and delusion. Alas, if the President and the Marshal could only be here alongside him, the glare of the sun and of great events would surely open their minds beyond their current limits.