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

by Anthony A. Goodman

  “No! No, Steve! Go back! Don’t come out here!”

  But he closed his ears to her pleading. He walked toward her as fast as he dared, eyes fixed on the ground, placing each footstep into hers and Franz’s steps as best he could. Then he stopped for a second and looked up. When he looked toward Franz, he could see the boy frozen in his place, now somehow keenly aware of where he had gotten himself. He was like the proverbial deer in the headlights, perhaps fifteen yards ahead of Molly in the muddy field, not a muscle moving, his eyes wide with fear.

  Molly was looking back at Schneider as he rapidly closed the distance between them. His eyes must have betrayed the wildness in his brain for she called to him, with an unreal calm in her voice:

  “Don’t. Don’t, my love. I’m OK. I’m OK.”

  Schneider stopped and settled into the footprints Molly had made for him in her walk across the field. With Franz immobile, he thought, maybe they could get the demolition crews out there to rescue them.

  Schneider stood frozen in his place, and Molly in hers. Neither of them dared to move once reality had set in. Schneider couldn’t see Franz because he was hidden behind Molly some yards farther into the field. But, since he hadn’t heard any explosions, he assumed Franz was standing still, too.

  Then he saw Molly’s eyes fixed on his as she carefully started to retrace her footprints back toward him.

  Although Schneider was more than thirty or forty yards away from Molly, he could see the fear in her eyes, the pleading. She never took her eyes off his, nor he off hers. Franz was on his own now. Schneider had to admit that right now he no longer had another thought for Franz or his safety. Someone else would have to rescue the boy. His mind was entirely focused on getting Molly and himself out of there in one piece.

  “Don’t move,” Schneider said as calmly as the situation would allow. His voice carried over the muddy, cratered field.

  Others must have come to grief here, he thought, looking at the jagged craters.

  No one outside the field was speaking. They just stared. Although Schneider couldn’t see him, he knew that Hamm would not be standing there doing nothing. He was almost certainly arranging some form of rescue by the mine removal squads who were so busy these days.

  The trouble was, his was a medical group, and they weren’t supposed to go across mine fields. They didn’t have any mine removal experts with them. Or anywhere nearby, for that matter. Who knew how long they would have to stand there? It had been only a few minutes, but already his legs were shaking. He could see that Molly was in a half-stand-half-squat, trying to relax her legs as well. Neither of them was doing very well at remaining calm, for the shaking was getting worse.

  Schneider tried to look back to the roadside, where the crowd had gathered like spectators at a sporting event. He tried to find Hamm but couldn’t see him anywhere. It gave him hope that Hamm might be off organizing a rescue. But not much hope.

  The minutes dragged on. Schneider had no idea how long they had been in the field. He tried to get a look at his watch, losing his balance as he did so and actually having to catch himself from falling by moving his foot to regain his balance. He could hear Molly gasp as he did.

  His foot hit something hard in the mud, and he was sure it was all over. There was no click, and no explosion, so it must have been a rock or something. Or maybe a dud mine. He would never know. One sound came through to him over the rest, though it was soft and distant. He cocked his head, afraid to turn his body to look. Then it came to him: it was Franz, weeping and sniveling in a low monotone.

  Schneider was tiring rapidly, and so was Molly. They didn’t speak, each trying to keep focused on maintaining balance and taking no more steps. It was absolutely amazing how hard it was to stand exactly in one spot.

  Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, Schneider saw Hamm appear at the fence. He had pushed through the crowd and cupped his hands over his mouth. His voice was calm. Too calm. Schneider knew Hamm all too well, and where his personal calm could still the fears of the most frightened patients, the tone of his voice now—it’s total lack of concern or emotions—filled Schneider with fear. Hamm had the surgeon’s ability to maintain control in emergencies, a skill that made him incredible in the face of life-threatening trauma and illness. The worse the situation, the more hopeless the injuries, the calmer Hamm became. He would shift gears, and while everyone else was moving faster and faster, too fast for safety, Hamm would slow down imperceptibly to the most efficient rate of action and deal with the trauma in a cold, calculated efficiency that had saved many lives that would otherwise have been lost.

  What sent a chill through Schneider now was that he was hearing the very same tone of voice and seeing the totally calm demeanor that Hamm assumed in the face of unthinkable danger. It meant only one thing. The situation was very bad.

  “Steve. Molly. Listen to me,” Hamm said in that unmistakable voice. “There are no anti-mine personnel anywhere near us now. So here’s what you have to do: you need to walk out of that field, one by one. And you need to keep at least thirty yards apart. That means no helping each other. No crowding.

  “Steve. Can you hear me?” he asked in the lowest voice that would reach his friend. “Pass this all on to Franz. You need to go first. Retrace your own footsteps exactly. Their weight might have saved them, and yours might be too heavy. You need to go back in your own footprints.

  Schneider tried to listen, to interpret the words. But his legs were shaking and his mind could not turn the instructions into action. He was still frozen in place.

  “Don’t answer me,” Hamm went on. “Just do it. Molly, you stay put until Steve is out of the field. Then you go. I don’t want you concentrating on Steve while you’re walking. Just focus on yourself. I know it’s hard, maybe impossible, but you’ve got to try. No other choice. OK?”

  Molly and Schneider nodded. Then Schneider translated what Hamm had said into German for Franz, who only nodded his head, the tears streaming down his cheeks. Schneider turned his body, slowly pivoting in the mud and trying to stay squarely in his own tracks. Then, as he noted the sweat trickling down his back, just as it did in that glider so many months and miles and operations ago, he took a deep breath and studied the terrain. He was about fifty yards from the place he had entered the field. Shorter if he went straight to the fence, but, tempting as it was to take the shorter route, that would be suicide. So, he began.

  He examined each footprint. He identified his own from Molly’s from Franz’s. That wasn’t too hard. His were clearly bigger boots and deeper imprints, which gave him no comfort. If these were antitank mines rather than antipersonnel mines, his added weight might not make the difference in setting them off. He didn’t know. He didn’t wish either Molly or Franz anything bad, but he envied their lightness compared to his own weight.

  And so it began. One foot after another. Holding his breath with every shift in weight. It seemed silly to do it that way. If he had to die, it would be better to be quick. Certainly, if he tripped a mine designed to destroy a tank, it should take him out quickly and painlessly. He knew that the antipersonnel mines could be rigged to bounce crotch high before exploding. He had operated on enough poor GIs to know the horrible carnage of those terrible mines.

  But, clinging to life is universal, if not logical, so he went along one breath at a time, one step at a time, his life before his eyes every minute of the way. So many thoughts of so many different things raced through his mind as he walked his desperately slow pace. He thought of Molly; he pictured his children and Susan receiving the news of his death; his parents; even the Phillies’ opening day.

  At least his brain was transported away from that field for split seconds. From nowhere, he thought of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. He wanted desperately to turn around and see with his own eyes that Molly was safe. However, he dared not turn, not only for fear of losing his own balance but more from some conviction that, if he turned, Molly, like Eurydice climbing from the depths of
Hades, would disappear. Lost forever. He was her Orpheus, and he must not turn to look at her.

  After such a thought, he took a deep breath and cleansed his mind, focusing on the next step. And he did not look back.

  He placed his heel into the toe-print of his boot, since he was going in the opposite direction from where he had come, and then carefully rocked forward to step into the silhouette of his boot print. He thought about retracing his steps backward to make a perfect print, but ruled that out as too tricky in his exhausted state. Surely if he stayed in the boot print, it didn’t matter which direction he was going.

  Schneider didn’t know how long it took, or how many steps, for he counted one at a time and started at one again after each step. When he was within ten yards of the fence, people began to move back. That was wise, but it didn’t make him feel very good. Everyone moved, that is, except Hamm. Hamm waited there at the very edge of the field nearest the fence.

  “Don’t be a hero, pal,” Schneider said quietly. “Move on back.”

  Hamm looked forlorn, but he saw the logic. He took his sweaty hands off the fence rail and wiped them on his pants. Then he backed away. Not as far as the others, but far enough so that he would probably be safe if Schneider triggered a mine.

  The last ten steps were excruciating. Schneider was exhausted and dripping with sweat. One step from the fence remained. He leaned forward looking for another boot print, but there was none. He was puzzled for a moment, looking behind himself at his tracks. He had followed his own path exactly, but somehow he was out of safe stepping spaces. One footprint short. Then it dawned on him. He envisioned himself vaulting the fence in his panic for Molly and flying a good three yards into the field from the top of the fence rail. He had cleared the first several yards in the air. Now there was no map for him to follow back, and he couldn’t leap the last few yards from a standstill.

  Schneider looked at Hamm for help. His mind was blank. He was out of energy to solve this seemingly unsolvable problem. Who knew what the odds were for a mine so close to the fence? But, he had come this far. Schneider just stood his ground. Hamm moved forward, a puzzled look on his face. He lifted his chin in a silent query.

  What is it?

  Then Hamm noticed that there were no more boot prints on the ground. “Damn!” he said. “Son of a bitch.”

  Schneider could see Hamm’s mind racing. But, it was no use. There was no answer to this one. Schneider would just have to take that step and hope for the best. There were a hundred random boot steps behind him, twice traversed, with no mines under them. So why should this one be different? What were the odds that in that one tiny place, on that very last step, he would step on the trigger to a mine?

  “God’s got a sense of humor, eh, pal?” he said to Hamm.

  Hamm nodded with that insouciance that had frightened Schneider before.

  “Don’t give me that look, Hamm,” he said. “I’m not one of your patients…not yet. Just back up a bit more, eh?”

  Hammer backed up a step. A useless gesture.

  Schneider took a breath, picked a spot, straightened his back—he would not die cowering—and stepped toward the fence.

  As his foot contacted the muddy ground, and he felt himself sinking into the depths, Schneider’s mind pictured the little steel trigger spikes that bristled like a hedgehog from the surface of the mine. He lost all self-control and leaped toward the fence before his weight could sink his boot any deeper. This was pure unreasoned panic on his part, for the sudden extension of his legs to create the leap must have certainly pressed his foot deeper into the earth than had he carefully stepped forward. Whatever was there beneath his feet, mine or no mine, he reached the fence alive, and pulled himself over the top.

  He tumbled to the other side—the safe side—and fell to his knees. Hamm was there in a fraction of a second, for he had started to move the very instant Schneider did. A stupid response on his part, too, but as unavoidable for Hamm as Schneider’s leap had been for him.

  A moment later, Schneider was cradled in Hamm’s arms and spilled the partially digested K rations out of his guts and onto the edge of the road. Schneider hung there on his knees and looked at the mess on the ground.

  As Schneider gasped for breath, he shook loose of Hamm. He was embarrassed that in his relief to be alive, he had, for the shortest moment, forgotten that Molly was still back in the field waiting her turn to step her way to safety.

  And he never even thought about Franz at all.

  Now they all gathered at the fence again. Schneider had moved along the posts to get as near to where Molly was and cut off the angled distance between them. Molly had already started moving back along her own tracks, taking each step as Schneider had done. Schneider inched along the fence, tangentially to her progress, keeping her as close as possible. Molly made her way slowly and painfully back. She had many more yards to cover than Schneider had. Nothing in his life had prepared Schneider for this, not even the worst of the emergencies in surgery. None of them had been about someone he loved so passionately as Molly. And to make it worse, this had all happened because some little boy had panicked at the site of a needle in Schneider’s hand.

  Hamm and Schneider hung over the rails, shoulders touching, breathing controlled. They whispered so as not to distract Molly from her long walk home. They shouted no words of encouragement. Nothing.

  “Isn’t there any way to lift her out of there, Hamm?” Schneider pleaded. “A crane from the combat engineers? One of those Sikorskys? Anything?”

  Hamm shook his head. “We’ve tried them all. We’ve been in radio contact with the other division headquarters nearby, and nobody can get anything like that over here in time. Molly will have to walk out of there just as you did.”

  And so they watched every step by painful step, every meter of distance separating Molly from safety. Schneider stared into her eyes, watched her red hair as she moved closer to him, closer to safety. There was no doubt in his mind what he would do when he pulled her over that fence.

  He would never leave her side again. Never.

  Molly stayed focused. She stopped to rest. She straightened up and stretched her aching back. She was now thirty yards away from the fence. Hamm and Schneider kept pace with her movement. She looked at Schneider and smiled, nodding slowly up and down, as if to say that she could do it. That she would do it. For him. For them.

  None of that relieved the tension in Schneider’s neck and back. His heart still raced and his stomach knotted with each new step she took. As her weight shifted forward, he held his breath. Twice, Hamm placed his hand on Schneider’s neck and squeezed, his fingers digging into the knotted muscles.

  And she took another step. Twenty yards.

  Hamm nudged Schneider. But Schneider could not take his eyes off Molly. She was close enough now for him to see every detail of her face. She had a fixed half-smile, which he knew was for his benefit. She was trying hard not to show the fear that was surging through her. Her red hair was plastered in strands across her forehead and cheeks, stuck in place by the glue of oils and sweat that were forming on her skin. Each time she stopped—every single step now—she looked up at Schneider with hope and longing in her eyes. The light breeze was blowing toward him, for he could smell her familiar scent. He knew that she wanted to be standing on his side of the fence, holding each other tightly and putting their ordeal into the past.

  As she crossed more ground, more potholes and craters, she would stop longer to catch her breath. The distance between them seemed to Schneider to be negligible, to be crossable, if he could just reach out to her. She looked at him and said with her lips, “I love you, Steve.” Although he couldn’t actually hear the words, he could feel them the way he did when she would whisper as they lay in each other’s arms, he inside her and all around her. It sent a chill into his ear and down his body to see her mouth the words.

  At that very same time, exactly as she said those words to him, there was a commotion to the left. P
eople, Germans and GIs, were shouting all at once.

  “Halt!”

  “Stop!”

  “Nein!”

  “No! No! No!”

  Schneider looked into the field to see what they were shouting at. It was Franz. For whatever reason, whatever seizure of fear, Franz was running from the field directly toward the fence nearest him. He was not following his footprints or Molly’s steps or Schneider’s. He was in a blind crazy run for the shortest route from that field of death. He would not be left there alone. Nothing, not all the shouting in the world, would stop him. They all watched frozen at the horror of the inevitable.

  Beyond any stretch of reason, nothing happened. Nothing at all. Franz ran through at least forty yards of mined soil and managed to escape totally unharmed. The local farmers tried to grab him as he vaulted the fence, but he evaded them like a broken-field runner. He raced toward the village with shouting Germans running after him.

  Meanwhile, Molly never stopped—not once—fixing her eyes to the ground with each step as she moved closer and closer to safety. Schneider scrambled to the fence. Reaching over, he grabbed Molly’s hand and arm, and yanked her across the fence rail. She flew over onto the safe side and landed in the mud next to Schneider. For a long moment, they both sat there numb and motionless. Then she grabbed his neck and pulled herself onto his body. She wept and shivered and squeezed the breath out of him. Then Hamm was there hugging them both in his arms.

  The three struggled to their knees, barely able to walk. No one could speak.

  Hamm helped them into a jeep and said something to the driver. The jeep roared away down that muddy road back in the direction of Leipzig. Neither Schneider nor Molly looked back.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  19 May 1945, 0800 Hours

  A Concentration Camp near Weimar, Germany