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

by Anthony A. Goodman

  All heads were turned toward the tent door. There in the doorway stood a man in the uniform of the Waffen-SS.

  Hamm glared at the SS Death’s Head insignia on the officer’s uniform and flew into a rage.

  “Who do you think you are?” he screamed at him. “Get the hell out of my OR! Now!”

  All eyes turned to Hamm. He detected astonishment, a crinkling of the eyes above their surgical masks.

  The officer stepped into the room and clicked his heels.

  What a Nazi thing to do! Hamm thought. He actually clicked his goddamned heels!

  “I am Obersturmbannführer Fuchs, Waffen-SS.”

  A lieutenant Colonel, if Hamm recalled their ridiculous military hierarchy correctly.

  “Well, what are you doing in my operating room Obersturmbannführer Fuchs?” he said, with sarcasm. Even as he said it, he regretted it.

  The mind is fast, and thoughts are usually quicker than words. But Hamm’s words moved too fast to keep him out of trouble right then.

  “I’m afraid this is no longer your operating room Herr…?”

  “Major Hammer,” he said. His voice cracked.

  “Well, Major Hammer.” He pronounced it My-yore Hemmeh. “This is now my operating room, and you are all now my prisoners.”

  As he spoke, Fuchs moved further into the room. Behind him, Hamm could now see a gang of Waffen-SS, standing in a file, machine pistols at the ready. They were in the pre-op tent, and through the open flaps Hamm could see the rest of his staff standing against the wall with their hands clasped behind their heads. One of the enlisted men was lying on the floor, a small puddle of blood running from his right ear.

  Hamm’s medical brain automatically made the diagnosis; blunt head trauma; bleeding from the ear equals basilar skull fracture. And no neurosurgeon nearby.

  Damn!

  Then Hamm was startled by a scuffle at the head of his table. He turned just in time to see McClintock—with blazing eyes—deliver a crushing uppercut to the jaw of a German guard who was apparently fondling one of the nurses. The Guard crumpled to the ground, and so did McClintock as another German decked him with a rifle butt to the back of his head. McClintock lay there bleeding from a laceration in his scalp while one of the new WAC nurses immediately took over his place to deliver oxygen to the wounded GI on the operating table.

  Marie bent to minister to McClintock, but the guard who decked McClintock motioned her away with his rifle and left McClintock there still unconscious and bleeding.

  The Obersturmbannführer followed Hamm’s gaze momentarily down to the wounded GI by the door.

  Then turning back to Hamm he said, “He resisted capture. It is better if no one resists. This entire field hospital is now under my command.”

  Fuchs’s tone changed in the next second. He had been calm and almost friendly. Now there was command and a not-so-veiled threat in his voice.

  “You will stop what you are doing this minute. Everyone! We have casualties among my officers who need immediate attention.”

  Hamm was boiling with anger now, the adrenaline involuntarily surging through his arteries. He recognized all the signs: increasing heart rate, elevated blood pressure, heart pounding in his chest, face flushed. Had he been able to see his pupils, he knew, they would have been so dilated as to make his irises nearly pure black. And he was ready to fight.

  Schneider stared at Hamm. He looked down at his own hands, still holding a forceps, and watched his uncontrollable shaking. He squeezed the instrument so that it would not fall from his fingers. He found himself, to his shame, clenching his sphincters, afraid that he would soil himself in his panic. Which was worse, the threat from the German or losing his urine and feces there in the OR? He couldn’t answer that question. He could not think at all. He was literally frozen with fear and horrified at his own relief that it was Hamm, not he, who was facing down the German officer.

  But no one in the room even noticed Schneider. Everyone’s eyes locked on Hamm.

  So, Hamm did the only thing he knew how to do; the only thing that could make his own hands from shaking.

  He returned to his work. He put out his hand and said, “Chest tube.”

  Marie immediately slapped a tube into Hamm’s left hand and a knife into his right. Hamm tried to focus on the field. He was making a small counter-incision in the chest, when the German officer shouted so loudly that Hamm jumped.

  “Shtopp!” he said. “Stop what you are doing and clear these operating tables for my officers! Now!”

  He had moved to within a foot of Hamm’s table.

  Hamm put down the scalpel and the chest tubes slowly and deliberately. He leaned over the table, his face only inches from Fuchs’s smug face. Suddenly, he was calm, his course clear. Inside, the adrenaline still surged, his heart still raced, his blood pressure remained frighteningly high. But now he was functioning with clearheaded resolve.

  “No, Colonel. You listen. We are going to finish these cases. Nobody is going to let these boys die here on the operating table. Then we are going to surrender to you. I will remind you that, as prisoners of war, we cannot be made to do any forced labor. Your Fuehrer and his officers have signed the Geneva Convention, and if we are now your prisoners, so be it. Find some fucking German surgeons to operate on your wounded!”

  The veins stood out on Fuchs’s neck, a scarlet hue rising in his Aryan cheeks; the same surge of adrenaline that moments ago threatened to put Hamm over the edge of his own rage.

  Fuchs’s icy blue eyes pierced into Hamm. Hamm looked away, his eyes lowering to the Death’s Head insignia on Fuchs’s lapels.

  Without taking his eyes from Hamm, Fuchs unclipped the leather flap on his holster and withdrew his nine-millimeter Luger automatic pistol. He chambered a round, released the safety, and cocked the hammer. He shoved the shiny barrel into the place between Hamm’s eyebrows. He pressed hard enough that it hurt. Only a few millimeters of trigger play separated Hamm from death. And Hamm knew it.

  “No, Major Hammer. I am in command here, and you will follow my orders exactly as I give them. Do not presume to quote the Geneva Convention to me. You, whose army is firebombing civilian targets in Germany day and night. If you do not follow my orders, exactly as I give them, you will die where you stand. Is that perfectly clear?”

  It was funny to Hamm, the things he thought about at a moment like this, with maybe seconds to live. First, he wondered where Fuchs had learned such excellent English. It was too good to be schoolboy English. Then, instead of wetting himself, or worse, as he always thought he might in such a situation, he became very calm. He didn’t know where it came from. He had drawn his line, and so there was perhaps the absolute certainty that he was going die right there, along with the conviction that there was nothing he could do about it. So, out of nowhere, and knowing he had nothing to lose, he began to do the only thing that made sense.

  He negotiated.

  “All right, Colonel. You have the guns, for now. Here’s what we’ll do. We finish these cases. No room for argument on that. I’m willing to die for that one, and then you’ll be short one great surgeon, and you can’t afford that. Then, I and my team will go on operating just as before. We have been operating on American soldiers and German prisoners anyway, according to the severity of their wounds. Everyone gets equal care here, though God knows your soldiers have been a royal pain in the ass from the start, and it was tempting to just let them die. What a bunch of cry babies!”

  Fuchs stiffened, pressing the gun muzzle harder into Hamm’s forehead. Hamm refused to back off in spite of the pain and the sure knowledge that his world might go black any second.

  “We all took oaths when we became doctors, and we don’t break them even here. You stay the hell out of my operating room, and things will go on here as usual. And if I were you, I would keep that Geneva Convention in mind. You never know when you might be looking down the barrel of a Colt .45 yourself.”

  Fuchs lowered his weapon slowly, leaving what
Hamm felt was a very deep circular impression in the skin of his forehead. He carefully released the hammer, and reset the safety. Then, he holstered the gun, and re-buttoned the leather flap.

  Hamm looked down at McClintock. He noted that his friend was stirring, and that the bleeding from the scalp laceration had slowed, forming a jelly-like crimson clot. And thankfully there was no blood coming from either ear.

  “Very well, Major. I do need your facilities and your skill. We will run this field hospital together, you and I. But never forget that I am in command here. It would be a bad mistake to forget that. Oh, and tell your friend there,” he said motioning to McClintock with a turn of his head, “that he is a very lucky man. And stupid. Be careful. One day this man’s—how do you say—temper might get you killed.”

  Fuchs turned and barked some orders to the guard with the machine pistol. The guard clicked his heels and said, “Jawohl, Obersturmbannführer!”

  Fuchs turned and walked quickly out. The room was silent for a moment.

  “OK, everyone,” Hamm said, “go back to work.”

  And they did. McClintock was awake now, but confused. Two medics helped him from the OR and took him into the post-op area. Without orders from anyone they placed him on a stretcher and began to clean the scalp wound and sew it up.

  Hamm put in the chest tubes and closed the chest. At about the same time, Schneider finished closing the abdomen on his patient and tore his gloves from his hands. He slammed them into the garbage bag and stomped from the room, still shaky from the experience, but a fire rising in his chest. He was furious with McClintock and with Fuchs, yet more furious with himself. He had been totally paralyzed. That damned fear again. Always there, always slapping him in the face.

  Hamm followed quickly behind Schneider, brushing past the guard. He gave into a childish whim and made sure to brush hard enough to make the guard stagger backwards to catch his balance.

  Stupid thing to do. Jesus! Hamm thought. But these God damned SS troops are the worst. And, he thought, the most dangerous of them all.

  He caught up to Schneider in the post-op tent. He nodded to the medics as they wiped up the excess blood that had dripped from McClintock’s neck, and applied a bulky head dressing.

  Hamm knelt next to McClintock.

  “You all right?”

  McClintock nodded, then winced at the pain in his head.

  “Yeah, I’ll live. What happened?”

  Hamm’s face darkened.

  “What happened is that your God-damned temper almost got us all killed, that’s what happened! You do something like that again, I’ll deck you myself!”

  McClintock lay his head back on the stretcher and closed his eyes.

  Schneider was furiously writing orders on the patient’s chart. Fluids, pain meds, penicillin, vital signs. The usual. Hamm grabbed his own patient’s chart and began to write. It was so routine that he could write the orders and talk to Schneider at the same time.

  “Well, what do you think?” Hamm asked.

  “What do I think? Jesus, Hamm, we’re fucking prisoners of war! Kriegsgefangen!”

  Hamm glanced up at the SS guards posted at both the tent doors.

  “Don’t let them know you speak German, Steve. It could be useful to let them talk among themselves thinking we don’t understand them,” Hamm whispered.

  Schneider chewed on that one. It was calming to have something useful they could use in the way of resistance, meager as it might be.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. But we’re in a load of shit here, Hamm. You really going to treat this as business as usual?”

  “I don’t think we have a choice. I could see it in his eyes. That son-of-a-bitch was ready to kill me to make his point. He doesn’t give a damn about the Geneva Convention. He’s not worried about a war crimes tribunal. He’s going to go down fighting, Steve. He’s Waffen-SS, man. The Aryan gods. He’s going to die anyway and go to Valhalla or wherever the hell the dead Krauts go. And if we show him we’re prepared to die, he’ll just change the rules.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If he sees that you or I are ready to die for a principle, he’ll just point that Luger at someone else. You ready to let him shoot Molly or one of the nurses?”

  Schneider squirmed and then dropped his chart to his knees.

  “No,” he said softly. “I’m not going to let someone else die for me. You’re right. He’s holding all the cards right now.” Schneider moved closer to Hamm and lowered his voice. “How did you do that?” he asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Stand up to that prick while he was pressing a loaded Luger to your forehead. Jesus, Hamm, he chambered and cocked the damned thing!”

  “What did you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know. But I was shitting my pants! Damn near literally. Hamm, I’ve been shitting since we took off from England. I’m scared all the time. It never goes away. And, I’m as scared about anyone knowing I’m afraid as I am about what might happen to me.”

  “You’re not afraid of my knowing it.”

  “No. That’s different. We’ve been through too much together. And I think you already knew about me. About my…. well…let’s say it out loud…my cowardice.”

  “‘Come on, Steve. This is war. Everyone is terrified twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Don’t beat around the bush, Hamm. I’m a coward. I always have been. Since I was a kid, I’ve been afraid. Every time there’s a fight or danger or anything, my guts turn to jelly, my heart races, and my face gets red. I can feel my blood pressure climbing”

  “That’s adrenaline, Steve. It’s chemical, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “But, I just want to turn and run.”

  “And do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Turn and run. Have you ever turned and ran?”

  Schneider thought for a moment.

  “Well, not really. Except that time with Susan. You know, with the dog. I didn’t run, but what I did was—”

  “Jesus Steve. You’re still going on about that? You were a kid. It was reflex. Anyone might have done that. Stop beating yourself up over something that happened when you were sixteen.”

  “Almost eighteen.”

  “So you were seventeen. We all feel that way. It’s normal.”

  “It’s not normal, Hamm. It’s cowardly.”

  “Steve, everyone gets those feelings in moments of danger. We’re programmed that way. You’re a scientist, for God’s sake. You should know that. It’s built in by evolution. It’s the three Fs: Fright-Fight-Flight. We all get it at some time.”

  Schneider just sat there looking at the floor, shaking his head.

  “Listen,” Hamm went on, “I was once sitting in the dentist’s office. He was going to fill a cavity. So he injects me with some Novocain, and I guess he got a little bit of adrenaline in the injection by mistake. Must have hit a small vein in my gums. So even this little bit of adrenaline in the Novocain—maybe one in a hundred thousand dilution—and I nearly went through the roof. My heart was racing and pounding in my chest, my eyes were so dilated I couldn’t focus, and I was sweating and hyperventilating.”

  “So what? That’s normal. That’s just the adrenaline talking.”

  “But I was terrified! I could barely sit in the chair. I had to hold on to the arms just to stay put. And I knew—I really knew—it was all chemical. I knew just what had happened. There was no danger. But I could hardly stand it. I even said to the dentist, ‘This is a chemical reaction, and I know it’s just the chemical, but I CAN’T STAND IT, AND I THINK I’M GOING TO RUN AWAY!’”

  Schneider laughed.

  Hamm continued.

  “So it doesn’t matter what the situation really is. Once you’re in the grips of a chemical like adrenaline, it’s all fright-fight-flight. Everyone feels that way in the same situation.”

  “Well,” Schneider mused aloud. “First of all, you’re a good friend for trying to m
ake me feel better. And second of all, you’re full of shit. Most guys don’t crap their pants when there’s danger. Look at these kids: Marsh and Antonelli. And Higgenson when he was alive. They keep on going back out there with no weapons to tend the wounded under fire. Every day, they put themselves on the line.”

  Hamm paused.

  “And you don’t think they’re scared?”

  Schneider didn’t reply.

  “For God sake, Steve, you didn’t run away or freeze when Higgenson needed you! You flew to his aid. Things were on fire. Bullets were flying around. And you never hesitated!”

  “That was Higgenson, Hamm….”

  “Listen, Steve. I can’t talk you out of this. We’re all scared. Me included. Let me tell you one thing. Everyone is terrified when their life is on the line. Everyone. The only difference between the brave and the cowardly is that the brave continue to function. The coward folds up and is incapacitated. You’re not a coward, Steve. Some day you’ll see that.”

  Hamm took his clipboard and went back to the OR. He passed the German guards in the passageway and shook his head.

  Sometime later, Schneider and Hamm were back in post-op. They were seated on low stools near the doorway.

  Schneider said, “Really, Hamm, what are we going to do about this?”

  “Nothing we can do,” Hamm said

  “Well, what about an escape? Isn’t it the duty of officers and men to try to escape when they’re captured?”

  “You’ve been watching too many war movies,” Hamm said. “Don’t let my lecture on bravery get you into trouble. You don’t need a posthumous Silver Star to prove you’re brave. Besides, we need to stay here with the post-ops. They can’t escape, so neither can we. As long as there are recovering patients, our first duty is to them. That Kraut has us by the balls. We’re not going anywhere unless we all go. Even if a few of us did manage to get away, these Nazi bastards would just execute some of the ones left behind in retaliation. They do it every time the French Resistance kills a Kraut; they retaliate by killing forty or fifty civilians in return. Nope. We’re stuck here until we get rescued or sent to a German POW camp. And don’t forget, if this guy finds out we’re both Jewish, it could get a lot worse in a hurry.”