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

by Anthony A. Goodman

  Schneider shivered.

  “I wouldn’t take a leak anywhere too public, if I were you,” Hamm added as he got up to leave.

  “No shit,” Schneider said. “I never thought I would envy McClintock’s foreskin.”

  There was nothing more to say, so they made their way to pre-op where they could get ready for the next cases.

  Of all the people to capture us, it had to be the SS! Hamm thought. Hitler’s personal killers. Jesus Christ!

  The field hospital became a well-equipped prison camp. With all the U.S. infantry disarmed and locked away, and German soldiers standing guard round the clock, the surgical group had little hope for rescue any time soon. Fuchs stayed out of the way most of the time. He would make surprise visits to the OR or pre-op or anywhere he felt inclined, but in general, he didn’t intrude. The staff members went about their duties with a chip on each shoulder. They were all tense and frightened. Hamm was most worried about the WAC nurses at the hospital. The Germans had been eyeing them, and it didn’t take a genius to know what they wanted. The nurses could barely function. They were all terrified. The doctors and medics made sure none of the women were ever left alone by keeping the nurses in the company of at least one man or several women at all times.

  They were at the mercy of the Krauts for their survival now. When the tension finally became dangerous, Hamm called Schneider, McClintock, and Molly together into the pre-op tent during a break in the surgery schedule. A few of the nurses had been mildly manhandled, saved only by their rather savage reaction. Gail, an OR circulating nurse, had her breasts fondled as she walked past a guard. She was carrying a full bedpan when he made the mistake of picking on her. She whirled like a ballerina and smashed the bedpan across his forehead, knocking him to the ground and leaving him with a gash about three inches long, not to mention a veil of toilet paper soaked in urine and feces. Everyone who saw it was delighted. Before the guard could do anything serious, Marsh, McClintock and Hamm were on him. They helped him—dragged him—to the OR to have his wounds cleaned and stitched. With each of them holding his arms and shoulders, he was helpless, though it appeared as if they had come to the guard’s aid. None of the Germans shot them, anyway. Although Hamm hated to admit it even then, he did a damned poor job of cleaning out that wound. Sewing it together was a real no-no for a wound contaminated with feces and urine. Within twenty-four hours, the guard had rip-roaring cellulitis of the face and head. Three days later, he was hospitalized for his severe infection. It could have been fatal in that particular area. This could very easily become a fatal infection so close to the venous sinuses in the center of the brain. Hamm took out the stitches, leaving an inch-wide gash in the middle of the man’s forehead. It would not be pretty when it healed, if it healed.

  As luck had it, the man survived, and Gail’s life saved.

  Hamm pretended to give him penicillin; at least, there was an order for it in the chart. They made a nurse’s note that it had been given. But they weren’t going to waste precious supplies like that on the guard. To them, he was just one more sick Kraut and one less guard to worry about. Word got around, and there was a temporary lull in the molesting and harassing of the nurses.

  But it was short lived.

  When the Germans started in again, Hamm decided that he had to make a stand before it got serious. Before someone got killed.

  He took Molly aside to ask how bad things were.

  “Bad! Damn bad. It’s hard to get anything done. There haven’t been any rapes yet, but the German officers are looking very hungry, and it’s only a matter of time. Someone’s going to get hurt, Hamm.”

  “Look,” Schneider said, “we have to preempt this. I think we need to go directly to Fuchs. He seems to want to avoid trouble. He’s an arrogant son-of-a-bitch, but aren’t they all, these SS?”

  “So?” Hamm asked. “What do we do?”

  “We go as a group. All of us, McClintock too.” Schneider said. “All the teams represented. Tell him the problem and give him an ultimatum. His guys lay off the nurses, or there will be trouble.”

  “No. No good,” Hamm said. “We lay down ultimatums, and he’ll balk. He’s too arrogant to take anything like that from us. He’s in charge. He probably knows you’re Jewish just from your name,” Hamm said, nodding to Schneider. “Mine…? He’s not so sure. But it won’t matter. He’d just as soon kill you and the rest of the Jews in the group, and any one else who pisses him off. He just wants to get back to the front. I don’t know where or what he screwed up, but this is punishment duty for him. Being here where it’s relatively safe is murder on his ego. And his career. I’m telling you, arrogance is his middle name.”

  “Well, what do you suggest?” Schneider said.

  “I say we go to him and tell him we’re worried about the instability of the situation. That we are afraid that there will be a riot if the women are manhandled, and that we are afraid that the patients, his and ours, will be hurt in reprisals. Make us the ones who are afraid. Make us the supplicants. If we do it any other way, he’ll react badly.”

  “I agree,” Molly said. “It stinks, but it’s the only way to control his men. If he gives the order, it will be obeyed. Otherwise, the groping will continue. Gail was very lucky to have gotten away with what she did. As it is, I’m walking a fine line with my women. They’re ready to strike back, and one of them could get hurt or killed. I’ll tell you this, these are a tough bunch of women—some of them have tempers like Ted’s here.”

  McClintock opened his mouth, but then closed it without speaking.

  “And none of them is going to get raped without a fight. I’ve heard that a couple of them are carrying scalpels in their pockets. I’ve given them orders to return them to the OR, but I don’t know. So when there is more violence, we’ll ultimately lose.”

  They were silent for a while, everyone thinking it over.

  Finally, Hamm stood up and said, “OK. Let’s go see Herr Head Kraut.”

  They left the tent together and walked up to Fuchs’s headquarters at the very edge of the grounds. The Obersturmbannführer was royally installed, with all the trimmings. Generators for heat and light. A shower all to himself. Very nice digs so close to the front. The guard announced them, though only Schneider understood what was said.

  When the four of them appeared at Fuchs’ desk, they were very formal. Schneider and Molly stood at Hamm’s right McClintock on the left. All stood at attention until Fuchs gave him permission to speak. Just the way the SS liked it. Hamm was seething at having to play this Hun’s game. There would be a time for revenge, he thought, but this was not it.

  “We have a problem, Obersturmbannführer.”

  “Yes, Major Hammer? What is it?”

  “As I am sure you know, there was an incident in which one of your men assaulted an OR nurse.”

  “Assault is a rather strong term, Major.”

  “An assault it was, Obersturmbannführer. Only the nurse’s quick reaction kept it from becoming more serious.”

  “From what I have heard, it has already become serious, for the guard.”

  “That’s true, but he brought it upon himself.”

  Fuchs waved his hand impatiently. “Get to the point, Major.”

  “We just want to make sure that something like this does not happen again or perhaps something more serious next time. Right now the hospital is running as efficiently as it can under such strained circumstances. But we are on the verge of chaos, and it will take very little to tip the balance. The nurses are vital to the well being of all the patients: yours and mine. It would be a disaster to lose their good will. Mistakes might be made under the strain.”

  Fuchs bristled at the veiled threat, but Hamm went on before the Nazi could say anything.

  “Perhaps you could intervene. Maybe clarify the necessity for non-fraternization with the enemy?”

  Ah, a stroke of genius! Schneider thought. Hitler would have agreed with Hamm. Pure genius.

  Fuchs thou
ght it over for a few seconds and then waved them away as if they were annoying children.

  “Very well.”

  And with that they were dismissed.

  “Where did you pull that one from?” Schneider whispered to Hamm as they left.

  “Right out of my ass.”

  Apparently the word did get out because the molestations and the abuse stopped. But, it was not to be the end of the danger.

  Late one evening, after a long two days in the OR, the team was making post-op rounds in the tents. There were a lot of recovering patients now, both German and American, as well as a handful of French civilians, admitted at Hamm’s insistence, over the mild protests of the Germans. The beds were segregated: Germans on one side and the Americans on the other, with the French alongside the Americans.

  The doctors and nurses made their way along, seeing one patient after another as usual, writing orders, changing dressings, checking on fluid intake and output, and going over the little lab work that was available. Supplies were dangerously low. The Germans had contributed none, and the Americans were on their fourth day of captivity with no resupply. They had been used to getting new supplies almost every other day at that point and were reaching the end of supplies badly needed for further surgery. Sutures and bandages were scarce. Plasma was almost gone, and there was no whole blood at all. They kept a secret stash of plasma, penicillin and morphine for their own boys. The staff gave the Germans sugar water for their antibiotic and pain meds, and the phony morphine actually worked some of the time.

  And there was also not enough help to go around. Much of the medical and ancillary staff had been out shuttling patients to the rear when the Germans captured the hospital. The staff were damned shorthanded now but made the best of it. Nerves were strained all around. No one was happy.

  Hamm was very proud of their GI patients. They kept still and cooperated. They rarely complained. Most of their inquiries were about the condition of their comrades. The Jerries, on the other hand, were mostly a bunch of crybabies. After two days in that ward, Hamm and Schneider were thoroughly convinced the Allies would win this war.

  Hamm sat on a cot next to a German kid, giving him a new clean dressing. He found it hard to sustain his disgust of the Germans when he treated the very young soldiers such as this one. Though hardly into his teens, this young man never complained, and even pitched in to help care for both the Americans and the German patients.

  “You should be on our side,” Hamm told him.

  “Was? Ich spreche kein Englisch,” the young man said.

  “I know. You don’t understand a thing I’m saying. It’s okay. Thanks for helping us out here. What’s your name?”

  The young man cocked his head.

  “Your name…Namen? Name?”

  “Ah. Horst.”

  “Okay, Horst. Thanks. Danke.”

  Schneider was two beds away from Hamm. So, they were both on the German side of the ward when Molly walked in with a late dinner tray for a recovering German lieutenant. He was only three days post-op from an abdominal injury that turned out to be nothing serious. No internal damage. He had a lot of pain from his incision—the big stay sutures hurt—but nothing wrong inside him, so he could be fed.

  Molly handed him the tray of food and had just released it into his hands, when the Lieutenant sat straight up in bed and spit in her face. Then he heaved the whole tray at her face, striking her hard enough with the metal edge to gash her forehead, sending a terrible mess of food and soup and blood down her face and uniform. He shouted obscenities at her in English as she staggered from the impact. He got to his feet and lunged for her.

  Horst was closest to the lieutenant, and leaped from his bed to intervene. But he barely made it to his feet, and the lieutenant struck him in the temple with a powerful back-fist and sent the boy crashing unconscious to the floor.

  Hamm dropped his clipboard, rising to go to Molly’s aid, but he was slow compared with Schneider.

  Schneider flew, literally flew, through the air, slamming the German in the back. He locked a forearm stranglehold around the lieutenant’s neck and dragged him back onto the bed. The much bigger German struggled, but Schneider was like a lion locked onto a zebra’s neck. Crazed with anger, Schneider pressed his forearm around the man’s neck and dug the radius bone of his forearm into the soldier’s larynx, squeezing it with all his might. It would be only seconds before the trachea cracked and the soldier asphyxiated right there in the hospital tent.

  Hamm was racing across the intervening cot when a blast shattered the air. The bullet whizzed past his ear. He instinctively dropped to the floor. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, everyone hit the deck. Even the patients, sick and weak as they were, were scrambling for cover. One GI was in skeletal traction and had a full cast up to his hip, but he dove for the floor dragging the weights and pulleys with him. He ended up almost comically suspended in the air just off the ground, covering his head and trying to burrow deeper into cover.

  Then there was silence.

  Only Schneider was oblivious to the gunfire. Only he persisted in his task, trying with all his strength to crush the laryngeal cartilage of the German lieutenant.

  Hamm peeked up over the edge of the cot. First, he saw Molly cringing next to the same cot he had ducked behind. She was covered in food and bleeding from her forehead. Some of the blood was clotting in her red hair. Then he saw Schneider with his arm still locked in a death grip around the German patient. Hamm started to get up to see whether the guy was salvageable or Schneider had killed him. But, he needn’t have bothered. The man lay there completely limp, a red entry wound square in the middle of his forehead. The exit wound had taken out the side of his temple on the left, scattering brains and bone on the pillow and just missing Schneider.

  Schneider wasn’t moving, and he wasn’t letting up on the pressure. He was going to kill the son-of-a-bitch no matter what. Never mind the guy was already dead.

  Hamm looked back toward the door flap. There in the doorway, gun still leveled and aimed, was Fuchs. It wasn’t smoking as in the movies, but there was little doubt who had fired the shot.

  Hamm leaned nearer to Schneider. He whispered, “You can let go now, pal. He’s dead.”

  “I know,” Schneider answered in a trance-like voice. “I killed him.”

  “I think the Colonel over there shot him.”

  “No,” he said. “I killed him. I broke his fucking larynx. He was dead when the bullet hit him.”

  Hamm put his hand gently on Schneider’s shoulder, trying to calm him. And trying to keep Fuchs from shooting Schneider too. “OK. If you say so.”

  “I say so. I killed him. I broke his larynx….”

  “OK…OK.” Hamm backed away, hands raised in surrender.

  Then, to everyone’s surprise, Fuchs put the pistol back in its holster and refastened the shining leather flap. He turned and left the tent without a word.

  “You think he was aiming for you or the Kraut?” Hamm asked.

  Schneider shrugged, and the German’s torso shrugged with him.

  No one stirred until Antonelli raised his head above a cot and said with a perfectly straight face, “Man! Don’t fuck around with Hoppy!” He was referring to Hopalong Cassidy, who always saved the day in the westerns. Hamm wondered if Antonelli had meant Schneider or Fuchs.

  With Fuchs gone, Hamm backed off a bit. Schneider was still strangling the dead German. Then Hamm took Schneider’s wrist gently in his hand and unwound it from the man’s neck. Schneider resisted at first, his muscles still in spasm. Then, he slowly gave in and let Hamm pry him away.

  As the German slid to the floor, Hamm put his fingers on the man’s throat. He could feel the edges of the broken tracheal cartilages, and sensed the extruded air crinkle under his fingers. He looked at Schneider with newfound respect.

  “I think you did kill him before Fuchs shot him, Steve.” Hamm said. “Anyway, Molly needs you now.”

  As he dashed over to help Molly, S
chneider turned and whispered, “I killed him, you know.”

  The whole team was in the OR.

  Schneider was getting the instruments out, when he said to Hamm, “I think you better do this repair, pal. I’m too close to Molly to do this.”

  “Good thinking,” Hamm said. “No problem.”

  They switched places at the table. Hamm started a precision plastic repair of the laceration across Molly’s forehead under a local anesthetic. Schneider played first assistant and scrub nurse, handing Hamm the instruments and medications while trying to calm Molly down. Actually, Molly was very calm. It was Schneider who was using her injury and his participation in the repair to calm himself down.

  Hamm was using the last of the very fine sutures in their supply for the cosmetic repair.

  “Can you believe what that snake did to me!” Molly was fuming. Even lying on an operating table with her face obscured by the sterile drapes, everyone could still see the anger in her eyes.

  “Well, he certainly won’t do that again,” Schneider quipped, trying to lighten the mood.

  “It’s not funny!” Molly snapped. “We’re risking our lives out here and treating them like human beings, and that’s what they do?”

  Schneider nodded solemnly and said, “I’m sorry, Molly. You’re right. It isn’t funny at all.”

  “Well, our young patient, Horst, did try to help you, Molly,” Hamm said. “I’m glad he didn’t get killed for his efforts. Just a big lump on his head.”

  Schneider had never seen Molly so angry. He was reminded of the expression “getting her Irish up.” He would try to remember not to get Molly’s Irish up any time again soon. Everything about the war was moving nearer the edge now. They all knew it.

  “I guess you don’t mess around with Fuchs,” Hamm said. “That was a hell of a shot.”

  “But, the guy was already dead. I felt his larynx snap under my wrist. Wouldn’t have lasted long, anyway.”