None But The Brave: A Novel of the Surgeons of World War II

by Anthony A. Goodman

  How can I participate in this? Is it time for me to commit a prisoner’s ultimate act of rebellion? Should I walk into the compound and throw myself onto the electric fences that surround my world?

  This was the time-honored way of committing suicide within the camp where no weapons were available other than the very fences that imprisoned them. The irony was that a camp rule specifically forbade inmate suicide—and the punishment for breaking the rule was death! Only the Nazis could have dreamt up that one.

  Berg sat at his desk in a fugue state for an hour or so. He thought for the thousandth time of all the missed opportunities to leave Germany before it was too late. He berated himself for not following his family’s pleadings to go to America. Relatives in America as well as those in Germany had seen this coming. So why hadn’t he? Was it hubris? Was he so proud of his skill and his importance to society that he could not see what was in front of his face? How could he even contemplate exposing his family to such unthinkable danger, let alone actually do it?

  It had been so long since he last saw his Rachel. The night they dragged him away, they took her too, but at least they both were taken to the same camp. He could see her through the wires from time to time. He knew she was all right. He even took to bribing the Kapos—prisoners who worked for the Germans inside the camps, and were known for their brutality—with cigarettes he stole from dead and dying patients. He could not believe that he had been reduced to stealing from the dead! At first the Kapos would smuggle notes and sometimes food or medicines to Rachel for him. He would watch from the doorway of his clinic to make sure they got to her. She would glance his way and smile to let him know she was all right. He would nod.

  But this little glimpse of assurance lasted only a few months. It had been years now since he had seen or heard of her. He didn’t know if she had been sent to another camp or if she had become part of the smoke drifting from the chimneys of the crematorium. His heart ached every day the smoke rose across the yard. The Kapos stopped accepting his notes and gifts. He begged them for information, tried to bribe them for just a word, but they said they knew nothing. So, every night and every morning in his prayers, he asked God to watch over her and to send her back to him after the war had ended.

  Berg’s hope lived only in his children now. Before Rachel disappeared, she wrote to him on the back of cigarette papers that she paid the Kapos to smuggle back to him. It took several messages, but he learned what happened after he was taken away. Rachel was kept in the local jail for a week. When she was released, she went home for another week. She found the children hiding in the basement of one of their neighbors’ houses. They had been beaten in the streets the night Berg was taken, but they were left there and not deported to the camps. Their neighbor, Frau Meissner, took the children to her home and cared for them. She hid them in her basement and then, a few days later, she took them to a place in the country. Relatives had a farm, so the children and Frau Meissner stayed with them, away from the city where it would be too difficult to hide. Then Rachel was arrested again and sent to the camp because she would not tell the Gestapo where the children were. Finally, Rachel disappeared from the camp, and that was the last news he had of the children. That was four years ago.

  When he thought of the terrible tragedy that his people now faced; when he was overwhelmed with hatred for the Nazis and the SS and the Germans who did this to him; when he wanted God to painfully destroy each German remaining on earth, he had to remind himself every single day he was in this camp that Frau Meissner risked her life and the lives of her family to save his children. Not to save her own relatives, but rather the children of people who happened to live nearby: neighbors whom she barely knew. A friendly nod as they passed in the street. Nothing really more than that.

  And Frau Meissner was not Jewish. To think that Frau Meissner and her entire family, if they were still alive, must live in fear every minute of every day for the crime of saving Jewish children. Who knew if any of them were alive?

  Berg yawned and stretched, trying to work those old stories out of his head. Then he went into the ward. It was quiet and dark, the only noises the rasping breath of the nearly dead. He could hear the fluid bubbling through the airways of patients in their last throes of typhus. He tried to ignore the suffering about which he could do nothing, but he couldn’t. Instead, he tried to focus on his one small act of disobedience, of rebellion, against this monster regime; the only step he could take to ensure justice after the war, whether he survived or not. Frau Meissner and her family had made their stand, and he would make his.

  He walked to the end of the ward and stepped into the smaller room reserved for the most contagious cases, those with tuberculosis and other deadly infectious diseases. There were no windows, no ventilation; the air was heavy and pungent. He could smell the sepsis. Small miracle he had not been infected yet. Perhaps he had developed some immunity after all these years of exposure.

  In the far corner, the place least likely to be visited by the SS because of the risk of contamination, there was a wooden container marked with the words:

  Achtung! Gefahr! Entzündete Gegenstände nur!

  Attention! Danger! Infected Objects Only!

  Berg opened the lid, carefully removing the pus-soaked rags and bandages, using a wooden stick that he kept at the back of the container. Beneath these was a layer of cleaner rags and a box wrapped in waxed parchment. He lifted the box from the bottom of the container and replaced the cover. Unwrapping the box, he took from it a leather-bound book whose leaves were barely held in place by the worn and cracked glue of the binder. He sat on the floor behind a table and opened the book on his knees. About half of the pages were filled with his writing, first in ink and lately in pencil. There was no more ink in the camp now, so he guarded the last pencil as if it were priceless. To him it was.

  He opened the book to the next clean line and began to write in his own handwriting—the only part of his identity that might survive him in the camp. He had no typewriter, of course, but even if he had, he wanted this to be written in his own hand so there could be no mistake about the authenticity of the authorship.

  Halfway down the page, he wrote:

  11 June 1944. 2300 hours.

  Sadie Rubenstein. Age: about 35.

  Admitted following a broken mandible sustained two weeks ago:

  struck by Kapo Stein; Unable to take fluids or solids by mouth.

  Cause of Death: starvation/dehydration

  On the next line he wrote,

  11 June 1944. Abraham Ragovski. Age about 42.

  Admitted with pneumonia secondary to broken ribs sustained in

  beating by SS guard Anton Hochschuler.

  Cause of death: Respiratory failure.

  And on and on and on. He listed the deaths in his hospital. He omitted no one. He could not list the names of those who were gassed, except for the very few he knew of personally, and in those cases he did so. But most went to the showers with no one there to record their deaths. As many as ten thousand could be gassed in a single day. However, only thirty-two hundred people a day could fit into the four ovens. The cremations blanketed the camp and the surrounding countryside day and night with a gray ash that fell like filthy snow.

  To accommodate the rest, the SS dug huge open pits and dumped the bodies into them, using bull dozers to cover them with lime when it was available. Not everyone was dead when they went into the pits; some of those still alive might be shot for target practice by the SS guards. If the victims were not so lucky, they were crushed to death or suffocated by the bloated and putrefying bodies heaped on top of them as the graves filled.

  What a sad and pathetic attempt at justice was this little book, he thought. Somehow he hoped, that after he died there, as surely he must, his book would be found at the end of the war when these monsters were defeated, as surely they must be. Perhaps his documentation of these killings, like a deathbed confession, would lead to a justice in some way he could not envision
now. So, this is what he did. For, little as it was, it was all he could do.

  “Thank you, Frau Meissner,” he said as he wrote the last entry for the day and closed the book.

  Chapter Sixteen

  13 June 1944, 0200 Hours

  Field Hospital Charlie-7, Hiesville, France

  When Hammer and McClintock came back into their tent, Schneider lay facedown, still deeply asleep. The fourth cot had been empty for two days. New surgeons were rotating in and out of various field hospitals at a fast rate now that the action was escalating and the casualties increasing.

  They had been in Hiesville only three days, and it was already beginning to feel like home. Schneider was sorry to have missed the chance to operate on Sorenson, but he knew Hamm had done a great job, and he was happy Hamm could squeeze the case in before the next onslaught of wounded. Schneider hadn’t been able to say good-bye to Sorenson before the ambulance took him back to the LSTs. He wondered what the beaches must have looked like by then. Were all those bodies and body parts still there? Had they identified the dead yet? Hamm’s descriptions would remain with him until the day he died; which, the way the war was going, he thought, might be sooner than he wanted to imagine.

  Schneider enjoyed working with his team together again, though they liked to needle each other. Especially McClintock; he never let up on Hamm. It must have had something to do with the ongoing relationship between anesthesiologists and surgeons. It was a curious thing. Something in the relationship seemed to irritate. Surgeons liked to feel in command, and, like the captain of a ship, their word is law. Or should be. Anesthesiologists rankle at this, so the conflict never really went away.

  The farm was now a full-fledged field hospital, running as smoothly as could be expected. They were short of almost everything except patients, but they had grown used to that. They all just made do. None of the autoclaves ever made it ashore—or at least had not caught up with them yet. So, instead, they set up big pots and tubs of boiling water day and night to sterilize instruments, sheets, drapes, gowns, and just about anything else that might touch the inside of a patient. There were never enough surgical drapes or linens. They appropriated bedding, curtains and towels to use instead. They did have almost enough surgical instruments, with more showing up on a truck within a few days of their arrival. Plasma was always in short supply but, for the moment, there was just about enough whole blood, which turned out to be better for the wounded GIs anyway. How long the supply of type-specific blood would last was anyone’s guess. They weren’t counting on it for very long. Besides, they had a lot of O-negative, the universal donor, to keep them going.

  The snipers kept them busy every day. As the soldier had told Hamm, they were like ghosts. They might strike from anywhere. There was no pattern. It might come from the woods, the surrounding trees or rocks. Anywhere. Often from so far away that it took a few shots before they knew where death was coming from.

  Schneider was taking a break one night, sitting on a log with some of the staff and enjoying a moment of quiet, when out of nowhere a shot rang out. The man next to him silently crumpled to the ground with a bullet wound through the head. Dead on the spot.

  Schneider’s gut tightened into a knot. He instinctively dropped to the ground. It was like a conscious faint; he had no control over what his body was doing, but he was aware of what was happening.

  Schneider couldn’t tell where the shot had come from because of the echoing. Might have been from the woods, but it also might have been from the house itself. Soldiers were pointing in every direction, but no one really knew where the sniper might be. A search followed: the woods, the stables, the trees. They never found him. The sniper had done his damage and departed. A ghost.

  One day later while Schneider was operating alone on a GI with multiple gunshot and shrapnel wounds to his abdomen, a young GI ran right into the operating room and shouted, “Hey, Major Schneider, we got another one!” He meant that they had killed a sniper.

  Schneider said, “Great! Keep it up!” A few seconds after the young man had disappeared, he said aloud to no one in particular, “And next time wear a mask when you come in here for Christ sake.” Schneider looked to the tent flap as it closed behind the young GI. God, they’re all so young, he thought. Then he went right on operating. He had to keep operating, keep focused. Otherwise, he knew he would be taken away in a straitjacket.

  And young they were. The surgeons were in their thirties or forties because it took four years of college, plus four years of medical school, and about six years of residency to train a surgeon. That was fourteen years after high school. The surgeons went out into the world at about thirty-two years old. Compared to most of these GIs, whose average age was about eighteen or nineteen, the surgeons were old men. In the real world, the GIs would be calling them ‘sir’ even if they weren’t officers.

  A few minutes later Marsh wandered into the operating room, tying his mask on as he moved through the door.

  “Hey, Major. Lot’s of action out there. It’s a madhouse in Pre Op.”

  “Then it’s sure to be a mad house in here before long. Want to scrub in with me, Andy?”

  “Yes, sir. Oh, yes sir! You bet,” he said puffed up with pride.

  Marsh disappeared, and was back in flash, now scrubbed and ready for some action. He was gowned and gloved by Fred—Marsh didn’t know his last name—the circulating nurse, and then stepped up to the table.

  Schneider handed Marsh some retractors and positioned them into the wound so Marsh could keep the edges apart and the incision open.

  “It’s all about exposure, Andy. Without exposure you can’t see and you can’t operate. Then you’re just dangerous.”

  “I can see great, sir.”

  “That’s because you’re giving me great exposure. So don’t move an inch unless I tell you to. Just remember that I’m the one who has to see in there, not you.”

  “Don’t forget that, Andy.” McClintock said. ‘Surgeons believe that they are the top of the heap.”

  “Well, we are. You ever start a case without us?”

  “Y’all go on ignoring the facts of life. Makes you feel good,” McClintock said. “Doesn’t bother me.”

  “What facts, Ted?”

  “When y’all are operating down there on your side of the drapes, don’t forget that I’m the only one really taking care of the patient. I’m the only one taking care of a live patient. Down your end it’s just meat. You’re just cuttin’ and sewin’. You’re the technicians, and I’m the doctor. Don’t forget that when you’re laughing and making jokes about the gas passers.”

  Schneider looked at Marsh. Then at McClintock.

  “Sorry, Ted. Never thought about it that way.”

  “Your heartfelt apology is accepted. Now go on and finish this damn case so y’all can save another life.”

  Schneider continued to operate in silence for a few minutes, carefully running the bowel—examining each inch of the small and large intestines—which amounted to about forty feet altogether, for any bullet or shrapnel hole that needed to be sutured. Missing even a small one would very likely prove fatal to the young GI on the table. As he closed the last of the holes with Marsh now cutting the sutures for him, he looked up and stretched his tight aching neck. Too much time standing around with his neck bent over still one more casualty.

  “You know, Andy, you’re getting a hell of an education here. When this war’s over, you could go to medical school. You’ll be way ahead of the rest of them.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do. Why waste all this on-the-job training you’re getting for free?”

  “OJT’s gonna take me only so far, sir.”

  “But you’ll have all the basics. Look, take what we’re doing here every day. It’s not that hard. Trauma surgery’s always the same. The wounds may differ, but the procedures never vary. That may mean racing around in a state of emergency all the time, doing the same thing over and over again with very little imagi
native thinking required. But the procedures don’t change. You’ve seen that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It seems very complicated and dramatic. But you already know what you’re going to do every time you help another wounded GI.”

  Schneider began pulling the large gauze laparotomy pads out from the GI’s abdomen and handed them to the scrub nurse, who passed them off to the circulator for counting.

  He went on.

  “The airway has to be cleared first, because if the patient isn’t breathing, it doesn’t matter if the heart’s beating or not. Then you’ve gotta deal with the heart, and for me, most of the time the easiest way is to take a knife and open the chest and pump the heart by hand. You know, open cardiac massage. After all that, we’ll deal with the bleeding, or the sucking chest wound or the collapsed lung, or the guts hanging out of a bad abdominal laceration, or the bone fragments from the blast of a land mine, or the brain injury from a mortar, or the neck wound from a single bullet or…whatever needs attention. But, the airway, the heart, and the blood volume replacement always comes first, fast, and all at once. That’s why we need so many of you guys.”

  Schneider made one last thorough exam of the abdominal cavity, then washed it out with sterile saline. He nodded his approval to himself and said, “Okay, let’s close. Let me have some stay sutures please.”

  There was no on-call schedule at the field hospital. The medical team worked all the time, sleeping when they could. There were about twenty-four surgeons and a dozen anesthesiologists at the field hospital by then. It was impossible to keep track of all the personnel, in part because of the rapid turnover, and practically speaking, because most of the time in the OR, all their faces were covered with masks and caps—only their eyes showing through.