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

by Anthony A. Goodman

  “But, if you were a Resistance fighter—I assume that’s what they caught you at—why didn’t they kill you?”

  Joseph was silent for a moment, almost pensive. Then he looked Berg directly in the eye and said, “Doktor, I am not Joseph Meyer. Never mind who I am. I will not burden you with that secret. Joseph Meyer and his wife died in the cattle cars between München and here. I placed my identity papers on his body, and I took his identification, his clothes…I became him. There were so many of us in those cars; we were merely animals for the slaughter. There was no effort to identify the dead. Each time we stopped, we willingly handed over the bodies to make room in the cars, to rid ourselves of the dead, of the stench. And the SS had no time to waste. They threw the bodies in the ditches at the side of the tracks. The countryside is littered with the dead that were thrown from the train.

  “The real Joseph died before he could ever reach this hell. It was a blessing for him, and at the same time, a mixed blessing for me. I was not shot as a spy or as a Resistance fighter.”

  Joseph, or whoever he was, stopped speaking and turned his eyes to the floor.

  “I should not burden you with all of this, Doktor. It is dangerous for you and for me if you know too much. I’m sorry. You decide what to do. Perhaps you can help the war effort in your own way. It’s up to you. They will kill you if you are caught at this. Make no mistake about it. Doktor or not, once you cross that line, there is no going back.”

  And with that, Joseph left, his wound now bandaged, straggling back into the muddy waste of the camp, blending in like an animal into his surroundings. Joseph was the kind of inmate who survived on the strength of his cunning. He might even live to see the end of the war…unless someone in the camp betrayed him. Berg hoped to God that he himself would not accidentally betray Joseph.

  The seed that Joseph had planted grew like a tumor in Berg’s brain. He even had headaches, an ailment that, until then, had never troubled him. He couldn’t sleep and couldn’t concentrate.

  Berg knew that the SS laughed at him, at his pathetic struggles to help the poor souls who came to his hospital to die. He saved so few.

  But, Joseph had given him hope. He felt a new power. Berg could be a soldier and actually fight the enemy. All these years he had hidden behind his profession’s oath to never take a life, to never injure a patient. Could he now put that behind him and take up arms of a sort? All these years he shared the shame of a people who were led to the slaughter like lambs, who never fought back. Now he had his chance. Could he do it?

  Verdammt, kann Ich! Damned right, I can.

  Opportunity came less than a week later. Berg had spent so much time working it out in his mind that by the time the patient was on the operating table, it was almost easy.

  The man was an SS Sturmbannführer. What a prize! He had developed the most mundane sort of surgical problem: a hernia. Probably too much constipation out there, or just a bad family legacy. In any case, he could not go back to the front because his hernia had become trapped, and his annoying problem turned into an emergency. The grandest gift of all was that Berg was to do the surgery alone. Grau was away, and Berg would be alone the whole time. He only hoped that the patient recovered quickly enough after the surgery to be far away from the camp when his infection set in. If they found Berg out too soon, there was no question he would be shot.

  “Good evening, Sturmbannführer,” Berg said, as the patient lay down on the operating table in the room reserved for the SS officers. This was a different building entirely, over near the SS quarters. This room was clean and well equipped with plenty of every kind of medicine and surgical instruments. Berg salivated with envy, like one of Pavlov’s hounds. The room was kept locked and guarded at all times; it was never used for inmates no matter how sick they were.

  “Good evening, Herr Doktor,” the patient said, good-naturedly. “I hear that you were a well-respected surgeon in München before the war.”

  Berg nodded modestly. “Yes, Sturmbannführer, I certainly have done my share of surgery. Lately, not so much.”

  “Well, you haven’t forgotten how to fix a hernia, have you?” he laughed. There was nervousness behind the bravado. Surgery and operating rooms are great equalizers.

  “No,” Berg said. “I’ve done several thousand of them. It’s like riding a bicycle. I could do this in my sleep.” Then he laughed. “But I won’t. This shouldn’t take long, and you can return to your job in a few days.”

  The man nodded again, but didn’t speak. One of the SS medics prepared the anesthesia apparatus, while Berg tended to his instruments. He laid out the sponges, knives, sutures and clamps. In the real world, a nurse had always done this for him. When he arrived in the camps, Berg had to improvise a bit. He didn’t have the luxury of a scrub nurse at the table. Today that would be to his advantage.

  “Ready?” Berg asked the patient and the anesthetist.

  “Yes,” they replied in unison.

  And so begins my life as a murderer, he thought, as he picked up his scalpel and waited for the ether to take effect. The smell of the gas made his eyes water a bit and brought him memories of his days as a real healer. He had qualms with what he was about to do to this man. But, oddly, the qualms were not about the risk to himself. Somehow, over the years in the camp, he had lost any sense of fear for his own safety. What could they do to him beyond killing him?

  When the officer was asleep, the anesthetist nodded, and Berg began. It felt good to be operating again. There he was in a nearly normal operating room, his patient well anesthetized, and enough instruments to do what he needed to do. If only he had such opportunities for the rest of his patients.

  Berg made the incision with care, then opened up each layer leading to the hernia: a defect in the abdominal wall in which the officer’s intestines were now trapped like an animal trying to escape through too small a hole in a tree. He opened the thin, translucent hernial sac and pushed the intestines back into the abdominal cavity, holding them there with a wadded up sponge while he prepared the sutures for the repair of the defect. He was going to do the Halsted Repair, named after an American surgeon from Johns Hopkins, Berg remembered. He smiled at this little irony. Then, as if he did it every day, he placed a second small gauze sponge right against the femoral vein as it crossed into the thigh. He tucked it down neatly in place, and prepared to sew the hernial defect shut with strong silk sutures.

  “Stop!” the voice shouted.

  Berg was so startled that he dropped the needle holder to the floor. His hands shook, and he could feel his heart racing, beating against his breastbone like a hammer.

  The anesthetist stood at the head of the table staring into the wound. Berg had not noticed that the man had been watching the operation.

  “Why are you shouting at me, you damned fool?” Berg said, trying to regain control of the situation.

  Before the anesthetist could answer, Berg reached into the wound and pulled the sponge away from the vein. He placed it conspicuously on the surgical tray, and then took another needle holder from the set of instruments.

  The anesthetist stammered and said, “I thought you were leaving that sponge behind.”

  “Of course I’m not leaving the sponge behind! It is left in place until I am ready to repair the defect in the floor of the inguinal canal. Schwachsinnig!” Imbecile! “You’ve made me drop a valuable instrument. You’d better hope it is not damaged.”

  The man was cowed. He was not an officer, merely an enlisted man trained to give anesthesia. He started to protest, however. No Jew prisoner was going to give him orders.

  “Listen to me, you miserable kike!” he shouted.

  Just then the patient began to cough and buck. He was waking up, and though still unconscious, was responding to the pain of the incision. Berg quickly placed a handful of gauze sponges on top of the still unrepaired hernial defect in the abdominal wall and pressed down. He pressed hard to keep the patient from pushing his intestines out through the wound
and turning the case into a disaster right there on the table.

  “Put this patient back under!” he screamed at the German. “Pay attention to your anesthesia and let me worry about the surgery, you goddamned fool! If this man dies for your foolishness…!”

  The anesthetist poured a steady stream of ether onto the mesh screen over the patient’s nose and mouth. Still, the man strained and coughed, requiring Berg to do nothing but protect the wound.

  “If this patient dies from your incompetence,” Berg shouted, “you will certainly join him.”

  The anesthetist was more than worried, now. Berg was right. If anything happened to an officer of the SS because of an anesthetic error, the anesthetist would surely pay the price.

  The room was literally filled with the vapors of the ether now, making everyone’s eyes tear. Finally, the coughing and the straining stopped, as the level of anesthesia deepened, and the officer relaxed.

  Berg carefully released his pressure on the wound, testing to see if he could proceed. Now that the officer was deeply asleep again, he removed the gauze pack and placed it on the tray. He peered stealthily at the anesthetist, making sure the man was not watching. Berg smiled behind his mask as he let slip another wad of cotton gauze, pushing it with his thumb down to the place next to the femoral vein, where it had been before.

  The anesthetist was so busy trying to keep the anesthesia regulated that he never again looked up.

  Twenty-five minutes later, Berg was ready to close the skin.

  A good repair, if I say so myself. Even with such incompetent anesthesia.

  That done, he nodded to the anesthetist to stop the ether.

  “Now you can let him cough a bit as he wakes up. I want to be sure the repair will hold,” Berg said. The hernial repair now hid the retained gauze pads. He had regained some of his equanimity, though he was sure that his mask and cap were stained with telltale sweat. He had come very close.

  “Yawohl, Herr Doktor,” the anesthetist said.

  The stupid bastard hasn’t seen a thing.

  The sturmbannführer coughed twice, and the closure of the hernia strained against the sutures. But, there was no tear, no defect. It would be a strong repair. At least for a week or so. Then, if Berg were right, the gauze sponge would create an infection. The officer, hopefully back at the front with his other SS friends, would develop a fever, then increasing pain in his groin. If Berg were really lucky, the infected sponge would erode through the femoral vein and the man might bleed to death right there on the battlefield. Or, it would cause a thrombophlebitis, a clot in the vein, which could break off and go to his lungs and kill him on the spot. He’d just drop as if he had been shot.

  Shot by me! Ha!

  Better still, Berg mused, he would require some exploratory surgery to remove the infected sponge. He would become a burden to his army.

  Whether they would ever take the trouble to trace it all back to Berg, he had no idea. If they did, Berg would be shot. Or gassed. Or something. One doktor for one sturmbannführer. A good bargain if Berg could raise the price by getting in several more operations before they shut him down. Good Resistance fighters don’t last long in the field anyway. They only tried to take more enemy with them when they died. In his case, no innocent civilians would be shot for his actions.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  17 December 1944, 1200 Hours

  Filed Hospital Charlie-7, Waimes, Belgium

  It was the week before Christmas. Antonelli was at the front lines bringing in the wounded. Marsh was going back and forth between the front lines and the field hospital at Waimes. At the moment, there was a real shortage of medics.

  A massive German counteroffensive had pushed a huge westward curve into the north-south lines at the German border. The Europeans called the counteroffensive the Battle of the Ardennes Forest. Americans called it the Battle of the Bulge. Marsh called it The Big Bug Out. Whatever it was called, from day one, everyone was running for their lives.

  There were the usual rumors. The medical unit never knew what was real and what wasn’t. Often only the sight of a German Panzer—a Tiger tank—firing down on them, or a convoy of German APCs, signaled the time to get out.

  It all started on December 16th in the predawn hours. Rumor had it that whole divisions of German tanks and personnel were pouring into a highly concentrated area in the middle of Belgium and spearheading west. This was The Bulge. The Germans were trying to break through the American lines to the River Meuse to divide the American forces and then head north to capture the seaports to cut off supplies. They had diverted every last bit of manpower and machinery that they could. For Hitler, this was going to be the last battle. One way or another.

  Medical groups were set up all over the area, generally within a mile or so from the front. There were field hospitals at Waimes, St. Vith, Buttenbach, Malmédy, and many others. What they all had in common was that they were constantly within sight of the fighting. They had plenty of supplies at that point and almost enough men and women to do the job. There were enough WAC nurses at all the hospitals, even those closest to the fighting. After six months on the lines, the men and women were comrades in arms. Everyone had gotten over the idea that the women were in need of constant protection. Still, when they had to evacuate, the nurses were sent out first with the litter cases. But that was the most effective way to do it anyway. The nurses were needed to take care of the critically injured pre-op and post-op patients en route. The surgeons stayed behind to keep operating until the last minute. The medics stayed behind to bring in the newly wounded cases from the front. It made sense to evacuate the nurses first then the doctors and the medics last.

  Field Hospital Charlie-7 was now stationed at Waimes, Belgium. They had been there for some time and were set up in a real building. Pretty comfortable over all, compared to some of the places they had been. Most of the time, they were less than an hour from the front by ambulance, so the bodies kept coming in almost without letup. They treated the GIs there as best they could, then sent them further to the rear through Malmédy, Bastogne and Liège.

  Antonelli and Marsh were still working together most of the time. But now the pressure was getting to them. Too many hours without sleep. Too many casualties. They were almost always at the front and the GIs were dropping like flies. The mortality among the medics was unimaginable. Some of the medics were losing a partner a month. Those boys were getting a reputation for bad luck. It had gotten so bad that some of them didn’t want to know their new partner at all. They’d rather work alone. They were feeling as if they were jinxed.

  “Stay away from me, man,” they would say, “unless you want to get killed.”

  But Marsh and Antonelli were stuck with each other. They had survived.

  Marsh found himself unable to remember the names of the other medics anymore, and the faces were all starting to blur together. Later that afternoon, he was out in the field trying to give first aid to wounded GIs and getting ready to bring them in. Suddenly, a voice was calling, “Marsh! Marsh!”

  He knew it had to be a medic in his outfit because no other GI would know his name. The wounded would be shouting “Medic! Medic!” or “Corpsman!”

  So when he heard “Marsh!” out there, he knew it was one of his medics who had been hit. He looked to see where the cries were coming from. And he was right. It was Jankowsky.

  Jankowsky was a pretty good medic from what little Marsh saw of him. But they had been in the same group only a week, and Jankowsky had been in the field for only a month.

  Marsh raced over to where Jankowsky was lying in the snow and writhing with pain. Apparently he’d received a chest wound while bending over a GI who’d been burned by a flame thrower. Jankowsky had been starting an IV and stood up a little too high to make the fluid run in faster when he caught one in the back. Straight into the chest and out the other side. He had a pneumothorax and bubbles were coming out his chest when Marsh got to him. Marsh plugged the hole, started an IV of pla
sma, and called for some stretcher-bearers. They got Jankowsky to the clearing station, and Hamm immediately put in a chest tube. Jankowsky didn’t even need his chest cracked. That was his last day at the front with this team. Marsh never saw him again.

  The badly burned GI died in a few days. They tended to do that.

  So now, a week before Christmas, they were still in Waimes: another place Marsh and his young mates had never heard of. He had at least heard of Paris and Berlin, though he knew little about them.

  Hammer, Schneider and McClintock were all still going strong. Plus there were other new surgeons and anesthesiologists who had joined them after the invasion, or had been with them the whole time. And many of the same nurses, too. Marsh happened to like a nurse named Katherine quite a lot, but she didn’t know he was alive. He resigned himself to the fact that she was just out of his league. Still, it made him sad.

  Sometime after midnight, the medical team all heard some activity along the road. This wasn’t all that unusual since there were always a lot of jeeps and trucks and even tanks going by all the time. Marsh didn’t know what it was about this time, but he sensed something. He had, in the months of constant fighting, developed a finely tuned antenna for danger. His stomach got queasy and knotted up. Just something about it.

  Early that morning of December 17th, Marsh was sound asleep; Antonelli was out in the field helping with the incoming wounded. Staff Sergeant Donovan rushed into the tent and woke Marsh, rousting him out of bed. Marsh was awake anyway, but Donovan was more agitated than usual, which for Donovan was saying a lot.

  “Marsh, get dressed and get your gear.”

  “What’s up, Sarge?” he said.

  “We’re going over to Malmédy, to the field hospital there. We’re packin’ up here. The Jerries are mounting an offensive. A big push, coming right this way.”