* * *
Schubert and Hummel had spent much of their day hiding and trying not to scream as American artillery shells pounded everything near them. Sometimes the concussions lifted them off the ground and sometimes they were deafened, if only temporarily. Debris rained down on the roof of their bunker like hail during a storm. They had heard that the Yanks had an overwhelming superiority in artillery and now they believed it. The German 88 might be a magnificent weapon but there were not enough of them. Worse, the Americans had artillery that was far larger than an 88-millimeter gun.
Earlier, American fighter-bombers had done their part, also proving that the Yanks ruled the skies. Luftwaffe? What Luftwaffe, they thought bitterly. Where the hell were the planes that fat Herman Goering had promised? Had he sold them all for drugs? And where was the Wehrmacht’s vaunted armor? Where were the Panthers and Tigers that had savaged the armored formations of Russia and the United States? Why, they were gone, they answered themselves bitterly, destroyed by the Allies’ overwhelming superiority in numbers. Now they didn’t even care if Lieutenant Pfister heard their complaints.
It was almost a relief when the assaults from the skies ended and the American tanks began to rumble forward. They shifted so they could see the approaching Shermans. “Remember,” said Hummel, “we don’t shoot at the tanks.”
“I’m not that stupid,” Schubert said, annoyed, “or as dumb as you look. Or did you get hit on the head?”
Halftracks filled with soldiers were moving behind the tanks, but the two Germans dared not open fire, at least not yet. Expose their positions to the Shermans and their stubby 75mm guns would be fired right down their throats. They would wait their turn.
Finally, scores of carefully hidden 88mm guns opened fire, devastating the coming tanks. Some stopped dead in their tracks while others exploded in billows of flame. Americans in the following halftracks tumbled out and began to move towards the German lines.
“Our turn,” said Hummel, almost laughing. It was a relief to be able to do something, to strike back at their tormentors. He began to fire short and well-aimed bursts at the Americans. Their MG42 made a sound like metal tearing when it was fired. Everyone hated the hideous noise the MG42 made, but Hummel and Schubert loved it. The magnificent weapon was keeping them alive.
Most German bullets missed their quickly moving targets, but many did not. American soldiers fell. Some lay still while others writhed on the ground. They were close enough to occasionally hear the cries and screams of the wounded.
Schubert kept feeding belts of ammunition. He too was grinning hugely as they hurt the Americans. The tanks were pulling back, leaving American infantry alone and exposed among the dead and burning tanks and their own dead and wounded. It was no time to show mercy. The man you allowed to live today might kill you tomorrow.
They had to pause as Schubert changed the almost red hot barrel. Regulations said they were to control the rate of fire and stick to short bursts so as to not get the barrel overheated, but people who wrote foolish regulations like that never had scores of American soldiers breathing down their necks.
“The hell with regulations,” Hummel said as he helped his partner.
The gun was soon ready and it again spouted bullets. This time they did keep the bursts to short ones. There was no longer a large number of Americans moving towards them. Now they came in small groups of two or three, sometimes only one soldier got up and raced a few feet towards them. Hummel’s aim was good as he picked off soldier after soldier and blew them away. Sometimes the Americans just fell like puppets whose strings had been cut, but sometimes they tried to crawl or run back to their own lines. Neither man was cruel. The wounded they let go back, but anyone who didn’t look wounded they killed.
Suddenly, Hummel’s eyes widened in horror. “Down,” he screamed. Seconds later, a napalm bomb exploded uncomfortably close to their bunker. They were lucky. None of the searing flames washed over them, although they could feel the heat that nearly sucked the air out of their lungs. For a few seconds it was uncomfortably hot and they both wondered what was happening to anyone closer to the explosion than they were. They were being fried to a crisp, was what they both thought.
The bombing was over. American infantry had taken advantage of it to withdraw. The two machine-gunners saw no reason to advertise the fact that they had survived and thus draw attention from the American planes, so they settled down and waited.
Shortly after sunset, their wait ended. A runner from Lieutenant Pfister told them to close up and pull back as soon as it was dark enough to be safe. When they asked why, the young private shrugged and said that the officers were afraid that the battle, although clearly won by the Germans, had enabled the Americans to pinpoint the locations of too many of the German defenses. American artillery could commence again at any time, but most likely at first light.
“Makes sense,” said Schubert as the two men prepared to move out. “It’s a shame since we definitely did win today. We shouldn’t have to retreat after a victory.”
“But what did we win,” asked Hummel, “besides the right to withdraw farther into the mountains? Someday we’ll wind up starving to death on some barren granite slope. As long as the Americans want to keep coming, we can never win.”
Schubert couldn’t help himself. He had to look around to see if anyone from the SS or Gestapo was listening in on them. No one was, of course. The only thing he could see in the fading light was the large numbers of craters left by countless bombs and shells. It was a stark and ugly moonscape, just like the pictures he’d seen on science fiction novels, only worse. Novels don’t smell of burned and exploded flesh along with gasoline and anything else that would burn. They were thankful that the darkness did not allow them to clearly see the debris around them.
“We’ll have to wait for an opportunity to give ourselves up.” Schubert said.
“If we wait too long,” Hummel said sadly, “we’ll all be dead.”
* * *
President Harry Truman looked at the report, shook his head glumly, and put it down on the table. “I thought we had won this war,” he said. “Yet this rump part of Nazi Germany continues to hold out and sends thousands of our boys to either the hospital or the graveyard. And I don’t care what some generals like to think, it was a defeat. General Marshall, about how much ground did we take?”
As usual, the Army’s chief of staff was expressionless. “On average we gained about half a mile.”
“Three divisions of infantry, reinforced by an armored division and an infantry division, tried to bull their way through the pass and made only half a mile. That might have been a major gain in the First War, but not this one. At this rate, Devers’ armies will meet up with Clark’s somewhere around summer of 1948. This first attack on the Brenner was not a victory, was not even a draw. We got our asses kicked.”
Marshall did not disagree. The two men were in a small office adjacent to the Oval Office in the West Wing. Truman had recently decided that he liked to use it for small groups. A movie screen had been set up on one wall and a very nervous Army captain had just shown them the latest unedited films from Germany.
“What we have just watched should not be made public for at least fifty years.” Truman said.
The debacle at the head of the Brenner had been filmed in glorious Technicolor. The flames were brilliant and bright, and the scenes showing the Shermans being blown up were dramatic and awful. Brave cameramen had gone in with the infantry and the graphic death scenes of American soldiers had shaken Truman to his core.
Marshall was not done. “I have other films for you to see, Mister President. They are from the last war and show the Austrians and the Italians in battle in the Alpine snows. It will give you some idea what we will face if the situation is not resolved before the next snows roll in.”
“I will see them, General, just not today. I have other problems. In just a few weeks I am supposed to meet Stalin and whoever will be prime minister of Gre
at Britain in Potsdam, Germany. We will discuss the future of Europe. How the hell can we discuss that while this Alpine Redoubt still exists and while this asinine creation called Germanica thumbs its nose at us?”
“Are you having second thoughts about using the atomic bomb in Germany, sir?”
“I can’t begin to think about using something that hasn’t even worked yet, and God help us if the remote possibility that the Nazis have their own is true. Even if it does work and we use the damn thing to blast a path through the Brenner, it’s now very likely that residual radiation won’t let us use that path. Damn it to hell. Now it looks even more than likely that Churchill will be replaced by that dullard, Attlee. God help us, but the situation in Europe looks bleak.”
“And we still have Japan to defeat,” added Marshall. He was glad that the perpetually angry and volatile Admiral Ernest King was not present. He would have taken the last comment as an insult to his navy and exploded.
“But just like the Germans,” Truman said, “the Japanese have been defeated but just won’t admit it. The Nazi hierarchy knows that they will hang or be put in front of a firing squad if there isn’t a diplomatic solution that will allow them to escape punishment. The same holds true with the Japanese. The Japanese ruling council is a bunch of sadistic war criminals and Hirohito is the worst. I know that we might have to give in and let the four-eyed bastard remain on his damn throne, but I don’t have to like it. But there is no way that Josef Goebbels and his cohorts are going to escape punishment. Goebbels in particular is going to hang.”
“You know that the Russians are willing to help us,” said Marshall.
“Of course they will help us. I may have just become president, but I know that Stalin is a grasping, lying son of a bitch. We will likely need him to invade Manchuria and elsewhere in the Pacific to help finish off the Japs, but I do not want him to attack this Germanica and take any more of Europe then he now has. I’m catching hell from the Republicans in Congress because he’s now squatting in Poland and other countries and isn’t very likely to leave anytime this century.”
“Well sir, what do you suggest?”
Truman sagged. “Unless you or one of General Groves’ scientists comes up with a miracle, we can drop an atomic bomb or two on Japan, but not in Germany. There we’ll still have to slug it out with the Nazis.”
Or, the president thought, we might have to deal with the Nazis.
* * *
“You look as bad as I did,” Winnie said softly. She was smiling, but there was deep sadness in her eyes.
He started to rise, but she pushed him back and stroked his hair. “I leave you alone for just a little while and you manage to get into such trouble. When are you going to grow up?”
He had to admit that she looked lovely, radiant. The bruises were almost all gone, or at least covered by makeup. She had been shocked and saddened by his appearance after Sam Valenti had let her into his quarters the first time and this second time wasn’t much better.
“I didn’t know you cared. I hoped you did.”
Winnie smiled. “Of course I care. You’re like a puppy that needs lots of training.”
“I was hoping for more than that.”
“Oh yes, you stink. When was the last time you took a shower or did anything to clean yourself?”
“I believe it was the morning before I got my butt kicked by those two Nazis. Is it that bad?”
“Worse. I am now going to help you get out of bed and go down the hallway to the showers. You will clean up and you will put on fresh clothing. Then maybe we will go out in the sunshine.”
“Will you shower with me?”
“Not in this lifetime,” she said with a disarming smile that seemed to indicate that perhaps she didn’t totally mean it. “I may pretend I’m a nurse and assist you but nothing more is going to happen. And I won’t be shocked by what I see. I did have a brother. Actually, I’m afraid I might be disappointed.”
“That hurts.”
Winnie helped him to his feet. He was wearing GI boxer shorts and a T-shirt. She found clean clothing and helped him to the shower where he managed to undress himself. She did not leave as the hot water cascaded down his body. “You could change your mind and join me,” he said.
“Not a chance. Sam might come in, and a couple of Dulles’ guys are still staying here. Anybody could come in at any time. I like my privacy, thank you. Now, if you can manage to wash up without hurting yourself, I’ll go and find you some clean sheets.”
“Will you wash my back? I can’t quite twist my arm around. It hurts too much.”
She sighed. “That’s the most original excuse I’ve ever heard.” She took the washcloth and soap and leaned over far enough so she could do his back and the back of his legs without getting herself wet. He had a nice hard butt, which didn’t surprise her. She realized that something else was getting hard.
“I see you’re beginning to feel a whole lot better, so I’ll leave you to your own devices.”
“Wait just one minute,” he said. He faced her and handed her the washcloth. “It won’t take long.”
She grinned wickedly and lathered the front of his body, taking special care to stroke his manhood. She hadn’t played scrub-a-dub with a guy since her sophomore year in college with one of her brother’s friends. Her brother had been really angry when he found out. The young man she’d cleansed had joined the Marines and gone on to fight on Guadalcanal. He’d come back with his body intact but his mind totally and horribly vacant. She’d gone to see him at the Bethesda Naval Hospital and been horrified. Her once vibrant friend who might have been a lover and even a serious suitor was nothing more than a vacant shell. His eyes were focused on something distant. Winnie had stayed for only a few minutes before leaving in tears. It was all the more reason to do what she could to end this damn war.
Ah well. It didn’t take more than a minute or two before Ernie gasped and climaxed.
“I owe you,” he said.
“And maybe someday I’ll let you pay me back,” she said. She was realizing that she was reconsidering Ernie and their relationship. So what if he was a puppy that needed a lot of training? She was a good trainer. She realized that she had compared Ernie to her brother and brought up his memory without feeling like crying. Maybe Ernie was good for her. “Now finish up and get out of there. You can buy me dinner.”
* * *
Wally Oster had been as surprised as anyone when he’d been reclassified from 4-F to 1-A. His 4-F classification meant he had been rejected for military service because of his mental deficiencies. Even his grandfather said the boy was dumber than a stone. His family felt that his reclassification to 1-A, ready and eligible to be drafted, was due to several circumstances. First, the local draft board in their small west Texas town was under pressure to supply more warm bodies for the military. Thus, they had revisited a number of people whom they had deemed unqualified in the past. The second reason was that Wally had been caught vandalizing some of farms in the area that were owned by prominent citizens and even members of the board.
After being drafted, Wally had somehow muddled through basic training. The normally harsh and often brutal drill sergeants recognized that the lost and ignorant boy was a hopeless case, so they gave up trying and just passed him through. It was much like his teacher in the one-room schoolhouse out on the west Texas flatlands. She’d promoted him through to eighth grade and then he’d dropped out of school to work and earn pennies an hour as a laborer.
After basic, he’d been shipped directly to Europe where he’d wound up in the 105th Infantry Division. He didn’t realize it, but there were a number of former rejects like him in it and other divisions as the army began to scrape the bottom of the barrel and beneath.
Wally did like carrying a rifle. It made him feel powerful. So, when someone asked for a volunteer to take a German prisoner back to the stockade, he’d jumped at the chance. When he saw the scrawny young boy he was supposed to guard, he’d been disa
ppointed. The boy was just a little smaller than he, scared, and not a threat and certainly not a superman. He’d giggled. The boy wasn’t even Clark Kent. Wally liked the Superman stories. They were even better than Batman.
Someone had worked the kid over pretty thoroughly. His face was red and bruised, his eyes were swollen and his lower lip was split. Tough shit, thought Wally. He was a Nazi.
His orders were simple. Take him directly to the stockade and do not let him escape. Wally was given an M1 carbine and a fifteen round clip of ammunition. He loaded the carbine but was careful not to release the safety.
The prisoner was handcuffed with his hands to his front. He wondered why the people from Seventh Army who had come to interrogate him had waited until it was almost dark to send him back. Wally thought that they must know what they were doing since they were officers. His real concern was that he might miss dinner. He was one of a number who actually liked army food since it was so much better than what families back home had been able to afford. He’d gained weight on mess hall chow and even liked chipped beef on toast, which was always called shit on a shingle. Some of his friends laughed at him, but he didn’t notice any of them skipping a meal. Since he spent much of his work day doing menial chores at the mess hall, he thought he could probably manage to scrounge up a meal.
They had gone about halfway when the boy announced that he had to pee. Wally had come from a German enclave in Texas and understood. “Why didn’t you go before we started out?”
“I have to pee now,” the boy announced and abruptly turned into an alleyway between several large tents.
Wally swore. He had no choice but to follow him. With astonishing quickness, the boy wheeled and yanked the carbine from Wally’s grip and pointed it at him.
Germanica Page 20