by Leo Kessler
He flashed a hard look around their battleworn faces, knowing only too well how limited their staying power was. Snapping to attention, he thrust up his arm in that salute to a man who had brought new hope to a ruined, chaotic Germany a mere eleven years before: ‘Long live our Führer Adolf Hitler and our beloved Fatherland. Sieg Heil!’ The courtyard echoed and re-echoed to the iron stamp of their heavy boots and the great answering cry of Heil … Heil … Heil!’ In the white-stripped trees, the black crows rose in alarm, croaking their hoarse protests.
Donner waited a moment or two for the sound to, die away and then he said. ‘Now we’ll show the Ami bastards what we German soldiers are made of. Major Gehlen!’
‘Sir,’ the red-faced artillery major answered from a second-floor window. ‘I want all guns to fire a five-round salvo at the enemy positions.’
‘But that’s our total ration for the day, sir,’ the artillery commander protested.
‘I don’t give a damn. Fat Hermann1 will provide us with more. I’m going to show the pompous, over-confident swine over there that they haven’t won the battle for Aachen by a long chalk yet.’
As the first howl of the six-barrel electric mortars tore the still afternoon apart, von Dodenburg grinned and hurried back to his quarters to fetch his battle equipment. Donner had given a tremendous performance. Now he would have to be ready to withstand the Amis’ answer.
‘The arrogant, pig-headed Kraut bastard!’ Lightning Joe raged in Huebner’s cellar Command Post after the staff officer had departed who had brought the news. ‘Doesn’t he know that the chips are really down, Clarence?’
‘Apparently not, sir,’ Huebner answered, a little pleased to see Lightning Joe so rattled, as the first shells from the Kraut screaming meemie2 began to explode all around outside. ‘Just get a load of that!’
‘Yeah, I hear it,’ Lightning Joe said, pacing the cellar grimly, ignoring the white dust falling from the shaking ceiling on to his gleaming lacquered helmet, embellished with the polished yellow stars. ‘The Kraut general must be absolutely nuts. Doesn’t he know he’s had it?’ He pulled himself together, stopping in mid-stride and swinging round to face the old man. ‘Okay, if that’s kind of ball, he wants to play, I’m the guy who can give him it. And how! Okay, Clarence, what’s the deal? What are you going to do now?’
General Huebner rose heavily and poked a fat forefinger at the map of Aachen. ‘The Kraut is strapped for bodies, sir, as you know. Intelligence estimates that that crazy Kraut commander has got five to six thousand men at his disposal. But they’re enough to give us a hard time, especially fighting as they are in an easily defensible built-up area.’ He paused.
‘Go on, Clarence,’ Collins urged, as the sounds of the surprise barrage started to die away, to be replaced by the cries of the wounded shouting for the aidmen. He knew that Huebner wanted more men. But he knew too that Huebner wasn’t getting them. He needed all the muscle he had for the drive to the Rhine; Huebner would have to take Aachen with what he could spare from the Big Red One.
‘So, sir, I can’t risk my doughs in all-out attack. The Krauts would slaughter them. What I intend to do,’ he pointed to the map, ‘is to slip Colonel Seitz’s 26th Infantry into the city here and here. The left wing will cut its way right across the place from its jumping-off place on the Aachen-Cologne railroad.’
Lightning Joe nodded.
‘At the same time, Seitz’s right wing will strike out for these three hills – here. They dominate the city’s northern fringes, in particular, the Lousberg – the troops call it “lousy mountain”. It rises to a height of nine hundred feet and casts a shadow over almost the entire city.’
Collins held his hand up, ‘Spare me the guidebook details, Clarence,’ he said.
‘Sorry, sir. Well, once we’ve got the three hills, we’ve got the whole city laid out in front of our artillery, as if it were spread over a plate. Then we go in for the kill. The Kraut HQ at the Hotel Quellenhof. Once the head’s gone, the body’ll flop down and die.’ He smiled, pleased with himself. ‘I think it’s the best plan to take the place with the minimum of loss. Hit the head and let the guts die of their own accord.’
Lightning Joe was silent as he considered Huebner’s plan, glancing from time to time at the map of Aachen. The cellar shook as a convoy of self-propelled 155 cannon rumbled by on their way to the front. He waited till the last one had disappeared before he spoke.
‘You can see the weakness of the plan, can’t you, Clarence?’
Huebner’s sallow face flushed. ‘No, sir,’ he hesitated. ‘I’m sorry to say I can’t.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ Lightning Joe said with a brief smile. ‘That’s what a corps commander gets paid for – to shaft over-confident divisional commanders. Your plan is excellent in so far as it doesn’t get the main body of Seitz’s infantry involved in god-dam street fighting. Capture the heights and the town’s yours. You can blast the place to all hell until the Krauts are begging you to be able to surrender. Excellent, as I’ve just said. But look at your flank – how exposed it is! Up where you’ve linked with Hobbs’s 30th, your guys are pretty thin on the ground. One of those damn Kraut counter-attack artists could come barrelling in from the north one dawn and then you’d look kinda funny when they’d broken through the line and hit Seitz in the flank. They could be cut off just like that – and they’d have no built-up area to protect them or dig their toes into. Then it would be your turn to know what it’s like when the head goes.’ He looked challengingly at the older man. ‘Do you read me, Clarence?’
‘I read you, sir,’ he answered unhappily. ‘But what do you suggest as an alternative?’
‘Nothing,’ Collins answered a little maliciously, pleased to see Huebner caught on the hop for a change. ‘I’ve no bodies to spare to beef up the 26th. Besides I don’t want this Corps to do another Brest.3 Aachen is not going to be another pyrrhic victory for the United States Army. You play it the way you’ve planned.’ He paused for breath, the smile vanishing from his handsome face.
‘And?’
‘And? Well, Clarence, you’d better keep one good eye cocked over your right shoulder all the time you’re attacking those three hills. Otherwise,’ he looked challengingly at the older man, ‘the Krauts are gonna catch you with your drawers down. Good afternoon, Clarence.’
But for once, General ‘Lightning Joe’ Collins was mistaken in his estimate of the direction from which the German attack would come.
Notes
1. SS nickname for Goering.
2. GI name for the six-barrelled mortar.
3. The siege and capture of Brest, a useless port on the Breton coast, had cost the US Army 10,000 casualties that October.
TWO
The stench of the tunnel when the ancient, wrinkled, civilian had finally prised open the sewer lid hit von Dodenburg in the face like a physical blow. It was a compound of human waste, the coppery stench of blood and disinfectant from the dressing station drains and the heavy cloying odour of creosote.
The civilian chuckled at the look of disgust on the officer’s face. ‘Nothing to worry about, sir,’ he croaked in his Rhenish accent. ‘Just the good old honest stink of human shit. I’ve lived and worked in it these last fifty years and it hasn’t done me much harm.’ He chuckled again and showed the yellow stumps of his crooked teeth.
‘That’s what you think, you dirty old shitehawk,’ Matz growled. ‘You stink worse than that place down there.’ He indicated the dark sewer shaft below. Wrinkling his nose in disgust, he ordered. ‘Get your shitty self to windward of me, will yer?’
‘All right, that’s enough, Sergeant-Major,’ von Dodenburg snapped, instinctively keeping his voice low.
‘Sorry, sir,’ Acting Sergeant-Major Matz said and, kneeling stiffly on his good leg, joined the rest of the volunteers waiting crouched in the darkening courtyard of the city works office.
‘All right, I’ll repeat the drill,’ von Dodenburg said softly. ‘We go down in groups of four,
each under an officer or NCO. We all follow the same route – at one-minute intervals to avoid confusion in the dark – until we reach what Mr Gerhardt here calls the main square. There we split up and spread out to our objectives. At eighteen hundred hours precisely, when Intelligence estimates the Amis will be standing down for the day,’ he sniffed, ‘they’re real nine-to-five soldiers – we hit them – and we hit them hard!’ His keen blue eyes, sunk in their dark circles of strain, flashed around the thirty volunteers from what was left of his tank crews who were prepared to tackle this dangerous mission. ‘Five minutes to get inside their billets, five minutes to do the job, and then we beat it. I want bodies – a couple of prisoners will do – and one hell of a panic behind the Ami lines to put their generals off their stroke.’
‘We’ll scare the lace knickers off their lily-white arses,’ Matz said confidently, rubbing a dirty hand over his unshaven chin.
‘Let’s hope so, Matz. Now, any questions?’
A gangling rawboned farmboy, whose red hands hung out of a tunic which was much too small for him, asked awkwardly. ‘Don’t think I’ve got the wind up, sir. But how do we get back when the shit starts flying?’
‘The same way we went in.’
‘But how do we get back to the – er – main square. I mean,’ he added hurriedly, rather red in the face with embarrassment, ‘it’s dark down there and I wouldn’t like to get lost in that shit pit.’
Von Dodenburg smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Trees. That problem’s been taken care of. Every group leader has a piece of chalk of a different colour. I’m green, for example. Each group leader will mark his route from the main square to the sewer opening. On the way back, you simply play your torch on the markings which will lead you back to the main square assembly point. Major Schwarz or myself will be there then to guide you back into our own lines here.’ He smiled at the embarrassed boy. ‘Understand?’
‘Yessir,’ he answered, relieved. ‘Understood. I didn’t fancy getting lost down there in all that shit, that’s all.’
‘Go on,’ Matz cracked. ‘Shouldn’t worry you. You farmers live in shit all your life. Probably have it on bread for breakfast instead of syrup for all I know.’
The volunteers laughed softly, including Trees. Von Dodenburg took a last look at the darkening October sky, lightened here and there by the pink of the Ami evening bombardment, the last of the day. He nodded to Schwarz who would bring up the rear. ‘All right, old man,’ he said to old Gerherdt. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
The civilian pulled at his thigh-high waders and without another word swung himself with practised ease over the top and began clambering down the dripping iron ladder into the nauseous, evil-smelling mess below.
Von Dodenburg took one last deep breath of the good air and steeled himself for the ordeal in front of him. ‘All right, my section – follow me!’
‘Christ,’ Matz groaned as the stench hit him, ‘the things I do for Folk, Fatherland and Führer. Now I’ve got to fight up to my eggs in shit.’
Stiffly he started to descend the ladder and in an instant the gloom had swallowed him up. The first section had moved off on the daring operation.
It had been Schwarz who had suggested the mission in the first place. Von Dodenburg had just returned from a visit to Schulze, who was now coming out of his coma after Diedenhofen had operated on his shoulder to clean up the mess made by Matz’s knife. A panting runner had summoned him to Donner’s HQ.
Donner and Schwarz were standing in his office, faces tense and set, watching two sweating staff officers as they drew in the red arrows on the acetate cover of the big map of Aachen.
‘What is it, sir?’ he asked, putting down his machine pistol on the littered table.
‘It’s started, von Dodenburg,’ Donner rasped, not taking his eyes off the new arrows. ‘They’re coming up on both sides of the Wilhelmstrasse. There and there.’ The telephone rang again, and one of the harassed staff officers took the call. ‘Yes, yes, clear,’ he said brusquely and slammed the receiver down. ‘They’ve reached the crossroads at the Romerstrasse, sir,’ he said to Donner, and began to pencil in another red arrow.
Donner groaned. ‘Look at the strength they’re putting in, von Dodenburg. I’m sure this is their main push.’
The hotel shook as one of the huge 155 cannon the Amis were now using in their attempt to reduce Aachen, opened up at less than six hundred metres range. Plaster dust streamed down from the cracked ornamental ceiling of the first-floor room. Donner did not notice it; his one eye was fixed on the map.
‘But we can’t be sure, sir,’ von Dodenburg objected. ‘It’s clear that they’re heading for the heights to the east of us. Once they’ve got those they can dominate all our positions if they can get artillery up there. But the Ami generals know as well as we do that we can burrow into the cellars and still hang on for a while – at least as long as it takes the Führer Main Headquarters people to plan and launch their relief attack.’
Donner swung round on him and lowered his voice so that the two staff officers could not hear. ‘There will be no relief attack, von Dodenburg.’ His ruined face cracked into a parody of a grin. ‘That was something I invented to raise the men’s morale. We’re on our own here, von Dodenburg. We stand or fall on our own merits and effort.’
‘I see,’ von Dodenburg said, mechanically registering the fact that Aachen would mean the end of Wotan. ‘Well, sir, as I was saying – can we be sure that this is to be the only enemy attack? Won’t they try to throw in another one – say up towards the Peterstrasse – and cut off this HQ from the bulk of the defenders? Cut us into little groups in other words and deal with us individually. I don’t think I need tell you what the morale of the men would be, once they had lost contact with this HQ.’
‘You don’t,’ Donner agreed. ‘It would be piss-poor. They would cave in like vanilla pudding on a hot day.’
‘There could always be exemplary measures,’ Schwarz broke in forcefully, ‘Their officers and NCOs could threaten—’
Donner held up his hand to stop him. ‘My dear Schwarz,’ he said slowly and patiently, ‘let us not fool ourselves. This garrison only holds out because the bulk of my heroes are more afraid of me than they are of the enemy. Once they think they are beyond the reach of my long arm, they’ll surrender quickly enough, believe me. But you were saying, von Dodenburg.’
‘In my opinion, sir, we cannot afford to take men from elsewhere on the perimeter to help stop this new drive, that’s all.’
Donner nodded. ‘You are right, of course. Just as you were with that Rimburg business. But damn it all, von Dodenburg, I’ve got to do something! Am I supposed just to sit here and let the Amis walk through our defences until they capture the high country and then watch them pour hot steel down our throats?’
‘I was just trying to approach the situation objectively, sir.’
‘I shit on objectivity,’ Donner snapped angrily. ‘I don’t want objectivity – I want goddam answers!’
‘General,’ it was Schwarz. ‘I think I’ve got an answer.’
‘You?’ Donner said. Von Dodenburg knew Donner’s opinion of the one-armed major: he thought him brave, fanatical, loyal, but deranged. ‘The man hasn’t got his cups in his cupboard,’ he had once confided to von Dodenburg. ‘Hasn’t had them for years. He’s as crazy as a wild steer.’
‘Yes, sir. My panzer grenadiers have been having the Aachen torrents ever since they’ve gone over to eating that horsemeal goulash.’
‘Aachen torrents?’ Donner queried.
‘The shits,’ Schwarz answered. ‘The whole sewerage system in my part of the line was getting blocked up and I was worried about infections—’
‘Get on with it,’ Donner snapped irritably. The phone was ringing again, and he knew that it could only bring further bad news.
‘Well, sir, I contacted an old civilian from the works office to help me out. During my conversation with him I found out he knew the whole sewerage system like the bac
k of his hand. He’d worked in it for fifty years.’
‘My dear Schwarz,’ Donner said, restraining himself with difficulty. ‘All very interesting, I am sure. But for the life of me, I cannot see what the recollections of your ancient shit-shoveller has got to do with the present grave situation.’
Schwarz flushed. ‘Very simple, sir. We cannot attack the Amis with any strength above ground. But a handful of determined men could give them a bad shock below ground.’
Von Dodenburg’s eye gleamed. ‘You mean through the sewers?’
‘Yes, sir. We know from the civilians roughly where the Ami rear-echelon stallions are billeted behind the main station.’1
‘Yes, I know, in those former hour hotels.’2
‘Well, sir, if we hit their rear line there hard – destroying as much men and material as we could before the Amis could tumble to our way of getting there, I think we could give them a nasty shock – perhaps even throw their whole attack off there, at least, for a short while.’
Donner’s single eye blazed with renewed hope and new life. ‘By the great whore of Buxtehude, Schwarz,’ he yelled, making the two sweating staff officers at the map swing round in alarm, ‘I think you and your ancient shit-shoveller have got it!’
Now von Dodenburg, close behind the ancient civilian, waded through the stinking filth, moving at what seemed to him a terribly slow pace. But Gerhardt would not be hurried. He did not seem to notice the terrible stench. Swinging his flickering carbide lantern from side to side on the white-caked dripping walls of the main sewer, he ploughed steadily on through the hot steaming human waste, as if he were taking a summer stroll in Aachen’s Farwick Park.
Behind von Dodenburg, Matz with his Schmeisser held high above his head, gasped thickly. ‘Can’t you get that ancient sow to move a bit faster – I can’t stand this much longer. If I puke one more time, I’m going to lose my ring for good.’