Himmler's war

by Robert Conroy

  Jack was thinking that dropping bombs in a forest wouldn’t accomplish much, when the bombs hit and erupted in billowing clouds of fire.

  Two more planes came and dropped their deadly cargo, then two more. Within seconds the area in which the Germans were supposed to be entrenched was engulfed in greasy clouds of roiling fire. He couldn’t see the base of the flames because of the trees blocking his view. He could tell, however, that the area in front was being consumed by raging flames.

  “Smokey the Bear’s gonna be angry,” laughed Snyder. A bear in a hat and jeans was the hallmark of a new homefront plan to prevent forest fires back home because lumber was needed for the war effort.

  They got the signal to move forward. Jack hoped the bombs hadn’t started a real forest fire. “Be a helluva note,” he muttered, “to be cremated by a forest fire started by our own planes.”

  The fire was not spreading. There was little wind and the wet snow was stopping it from expanding. As they approached the burn zone, they again smelled the stench of cooked human flesh. Coverings over enemy bunkers had been burned away and the machine gun crews inside turned into charred ruins.

  Not all the Germans had died that way. They found a number of bodies sprawled on the ground. “Looks like they tried to run away,” Jack said, and others nodded. “Tough shit,” said one of the men near him.

  The dead Germans were SS and that made Morgan and the others feel good. Popular wisdom said if it wasn’t for the lunatics in the SS, maybe the war would be over. Jack didn’t think it was that simple, but the SS were easy to hate for a variety of reasons, such as slaughtering American prisoners, civilians, and running concentration camps.

  As they moved through, somebody counted bodies and came up with twenty-four dead Germans. “We were held up by less than a God damn platoon,” Whiteside snarled.

  “Were those fire bombs the something new you said the air force wanted to try, sir?” asked Jack. “If it is, I like the way it cleared a path for us.”

  Whiteside actually smiled. “It’s called napalm and the top brass have big hopes it’ll clear a lot of paths for us before this war’s done.”

  ***

  Tyree Wall was thirty years old, a sergeant in the United States Army and a Negro with skin as black as the night. He loved the army. It had given him food, clothing, and a sense of dignity, all of which were lacking from his childhood as the son of hardscrabble tenant farmers rooting in the red earth outside of Columbus, Georgia. He liked to joke that they were so poor they didn’t even notice the Depression. How can you lose something when you never had anything in the first place?

  When the war started he had enlisted and excelled. A big man at five-ten and two hundred pounds, he found he had leadership abilities he never thought existed. Almost of necessity, he’d improved his reading skills and gone from scarcely literate to the point where he actually read books both for pleasure and knowledge. He’d just finished Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell and thought the depiction of the South around Atlanta was a hoot. Should’ve burned down all the damned white people’s mansions since they’d been built on slave labor, he thought. In many cases the Union Army had tried real hard, but they’d missed quite a few.

  He was giving serious thought to staying in the army if the army would have him once the war was over. He wondered about that. It was clear that whites in the army resented Negroes and kept them out of combat positions as much as possible. In a way this was fine with Tyree. If the idiot whiteys wanted to keep the honor of getting shot at and killed all to themselves, well let them. In the meantime, he’d learned to drive a truck and to lead men.

  The army had also given him an M1 carbine, which lay on the passenger seat of the truck he was driving across France en route to the front lines. He doubted that the white men who ruled rural Georgia would approve of him having it. Back home, only white people had the guns. That was one way they kept the blacks in their place.

  Tyree commanded a squad of other drivers, also black, whose trucks were strung out behind him. They were part of a long convoy of more than a hundred trucks and tankers, all part of the Red Ball Express. The vehicles carried a variety of supplies, ranging from guns and ammo to gas and oil and more mundane supplies like food and toilet paper.

  Second Lieutenant Jimmy Johnson, a complete horse’s ass even for a white man, commanded the convoy and was in the lead vehicle, a Jeep. He was from Alabama and rumor had it that the army liked to put Southern white men in charge of blacks because it was believed they “understood” black soldiers. Johnson didn’t understand shit. Behind his back, the colored soldiers joked that Johnson didn’t know how his asshole worked.

  It was dark and they’d been driving for hours. Tyree didn’t mind that. Men were dying at the front and he was not going to complain about fatigue. Being tired compared well with getting shot at.

  They drove with their lights partly blacked out. German planes were rare, but they did exist and being strafed was on nobody’s priority list. The way they were packed along the road, if a German plane did show up they were dead meat.

  Tyree jammed on his brakes. The trucks in front were stopping hard. “What the hell!” he said and barely controlled the truck.

  Men on foot appeared beside him, their faces blackened with soot. For a ridiculous instant, Tyree thought they were white men pretending to be Negroes, but realized the soot was a form of disguise. They opened the driver’s door and someone stuck a pistol in his face and yelled at him to get out. It was in French but he got the message and got out, his hands up.

  Other drivers bunched up beside him. “What the hell’s going on, Sarge?” one of them asked. It was his friend, Leon. “These boys working for the black market?”

  “Beats me,” Tyree said and tried to smile at one of the gunmen who simply glared back at him. In front of him, Lieutenant Johnson was struggling but stopped abruptly when somebody struck him hard on the head with the butt of a shotgun. He fell to the ground and didn’t move. Whoever these guys were, they weren’t all that well armed, but they were dangerous.

  When all the drivers had been rounded up, a small man wearing a beret and with a red scarf around his neck stood before them. “I am Professor Avant. Before this war I was an instructor at the Sorbonne,” he said in heavily accented English. “Now I fight to free the oppressed people of France from the capitalist warmongers and their allies. If you do not resist, you will not be harmed. Unfortunately, your officer chose to fight and has paid the price. He was brave, but stupid.”

  Tyree gulped. Did that mean asshole Johnson was dead? It probably did. Tyree was aware that the Sorbonne was some kind of French school and this Avant obviously thought it was important.

  Avant continued. “We are communists, French communists, and we are going to overthrow the fascist dictatorship of De Gaulle and those like him. Since you Americans are fighting with De Gaulle, you are our enemy. Your trucks and the supplies they carry will be destroyed.”

  Tyree and the others were puzzled. Weren’t the French our allies? “Thought we were all fighting the Germans,” he said.

  Avant stood directly in front of him. Tyree thought he was an arrogant little shit, but a shit with a gun, which meant he would be respected. “There is a greater cause and that is the freedom of the worker. You are a Negro and I thought you would understand that. You, a Negro, are nothing more than a slave of the capitalists.”

  Tyree bristled. “I ain’t nobody’s fucking slave. My granddaddy was freed by Lincoln and we may be poor but we ain’t slaves.”

  Avant laughed. “Really? Are you free to vote, to go to school, to work, or to marry a white woman?”

  He had a point, but Tyree wouldn’t admit it. “White women are ugly,” he said and his companions snickered. “And they’re afraid of black men because we all got such big cocks.”

  Avant was about to respond when one of the tanker trucks exploded, sending debris flying and all of them running for cover. Avant yelled for his men to destroy the
rest of the trucks and Tyree watched as several score French communists threw grenades into their vehicles.

  “Fuck this shit,” Tyree yelled. He ran to the other side of his truck, opened the door and pulled out the carbine. He shot at the first Frenchman he saw and the man doubled over, his leg shattered.

  Within seconds, the French were shooting at him and his comrades. Several other drivers had gotten their weapons and began shooting back. Tyree heard a scream and his friend Leon fell.

  Tyree had only one extra clip. He forced himself to be calm, aimed carefully, and shot another communist. The American soldiers outnumbered the French and soon began to overwhelm them with fire.

  Avant yelled something that must have meant retreat because the French began to pull back.

  “No, you don’t,” muttered Tyree. He jumped from behind his truck and ran to Avant. “I ain’t no fucking slave,” he said and shot the Frenchman several times in the chest and head at point blank range.

  Within minutes it was over and the surviving communists had departed into the shadows. Lieutenant Johnson wasn’t dead, at least not yet, but it did look like his skull was fractured since there was a big dent in it. Tanker fires billowed and ammunition exploded while other supplies simply burned. There was nothing to do but care for their wounded, and watch and wait for the next convoy to rescue them. It wouldn’t be long. The Red Ball Express ran an almost continuous line of vehicles across France to Germany. Another convoy would be along shortly and the fires must be attracting attention.

  Other than Leon who’d been shot in the chest and was dead, no others in Tyree’s squad had been killed, although a couple had been wounded. Maybe twenty in the entire column were casualties, and at least a dozen dead French littered the area. Tyree walked over and looked down on Avant’s shattered body.

  “Told you I weren’t no fucking slave. Maybe now you’ll believe me, asshole.”

  ***

  Morgan kept a low profile as he breasted the hill crawled down the other slope. He thought he was an innocuous target even if anyone did see him, and didn’t think anyone would shoot at him from such a distance, but why take a chance?

  Levin crawled beside him. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Morgan laughed. “Unless somebody’s moved the Nile, Roy, yes, that is the Rhine.”

  “No pyramids and no Ay-rabs and no camels in sight, so I guess you’re right. Jesus, what a barrier and what a mess getting over is going to be.”

  Their hill overlooked the German town of Remagen and the Ludendorff railroad bridge, that until only a few moments earlier spanned the Rhine. The bridge had been blown by German engineers and now lay in ruins in the river. Not only was the bridge down, but the shattered remnants blocked the river. They had watched the explosions in horror as there were still people crossing it. Those unfortunates had been tossed into the air like toys. All that remained of the bridge were the twin medieval-like towers at each end, now nothing more than useless artifacts. The railroad tracks on the German side ran slightly upgrade and disappeared into a tunnel.

  “Kind of hard to believe the Nile is even bigger and longer,” Levin continued. “So too are the Mississippi and a whole bunch of other rivers. Statistically, the Rhine is small potatoes except for the fact that we’re going to have to cross the damn thing with people shooting at us.”

  “Thanks for the redundant and irrelevant geography lesson,” Jack said. “Even though I went to what you think is a cow college, I did learn basic geography, beginning with the fact that the world is round.”

  “Jews figured that out a long time ago during their wanderings,” Levin said with mock solemnity. “They knew that because they always kept coming back to where they started.”

  The small town of Remagen was on the west bank of the Rhine and across from an even smaller town of Linz. Remagen was roughly halfway between the German cities of Cologne to the north and Koblenz to the south.

  “Too bad we couldn’t have taken the bridge intact,” said Levin.

  Jack sighed. “A pipe dream at best. And I’ll bet every other bridge across the damned Rhine is blown too. Or will be in the next ten minutes.”

  It was downhill to the river and then steeply uphill from the other side. Worse, the land on the German side was higher than the western side which meant the defending Germans had another slight advantage. The river banks were not straight up like the Grand Canyon, but they were steep enough and would be difficult for a crossing army to take and climb. Numerous gashes in the hillside were clearly visible and represented German defenses. The sheer number of them was daunting.

  “They can’t all be real,” Jack said. “But it’ll be hell figuring out which ones are and which aren’t.”

  A gust of snow swirled and momentarily hid their view. Floes of soft ice bobbed northward towards the English Channel. It was a further reminder that the water was dangerously cold and that winter was just beginning.

  “Think it could freeze solid?” Jack asked.

  “I read that it has in the past,” Levin said. “When it did, Germanic barbarians in Roman times were able to cross, but maybe it was just a bunch of krauts all liquored up so they didn’t notice they were getting wet. But who the hell knows? All I do know is that I don’t want to go swimming in that mess. I just can’t see us trying anything until the weather is a lot warmer.”

  “I suppose that’s good news,” Jack said, “but all it really does is extend the war by however many months while we just sit here. Of course, just sitting here might extend our lives.”

  Artillery boomed behind them and shells exploded near the tunnel entrance. “Oh, that’ll do a lot of good,” Jack said. “I got a nickel says the krauts don’t even respond.”

  Levin laughed. “Sucker bet. The Nazis won’t expose their batteries for no good reason. All that shelling is doing is chewing up useless ground. God, I hope it isn’t our guys wasting our ammunition getting their rocks off by shooting into Germany.”

  The bombardment stopped as quickly as it began, like somebody had told the gunners to stop. “Christmas is just a little ways off,” Jack said. “Maybe we’ll get some leave if things stay quiet. Of course, it won’t involve you since you’re Jewish.”

  “Screw you, Morgan. I’m entitled to free time, too. Besides, Hanukkah starts December 11, so I’ll be celebrating just like you.”

  ***

  Sergeant Tyree Wall quickly came to the conclusion that First Lieutenant Stanley Bakowski was all right for a white guy. For one thing, he came from up north, Chicago, which meant he wasn’t an ignorant redneck cracker, and second, he too wanted revenge on the French communists who had kept up their attacks on American truck convoys. More important, the stocky and blond-haired Bakowski seemed to treat Wall and the other Negroes with respect. Maybe he was lying about it, but he lied well. Regardless, it was appreciated.

  The lieutenant wore a cloth badge that said he was a Ranger. Tyree was less than thrilled about being a human target, but if it helped get the French communists off his back and maybe save the lives of his men, so be it.

  Thirty trucks made up the convoy of human decoys. Each driver rode alone as per usual. Bakowski tried to get the colored drivers to at least wear helmets but they said it made driving difficult, especially at night, and the Ranger lieutenant reluctantly concurred. “Keep them by you so you can put them on real fast,” he’d said.

  Instead of supplies, each truck’s cargo consisted of four heavily armed men. Slits had been cut in the canvas to facilitate shooting, and the men were prepared to jump down quickly. They too wore Ranger insignia.

  Tyree and Bakowski had gone over photos and maps of the route and decided there were only a couple good spots for an ambush. If there was no ambush tonight, they’d try again in a day or so. Bakowski didn’t think the commies could resist the sweet fat target the column presented. Tyree said he half hoped the lieutenant was wrong.

  “You boys are professional soldiers, Lieutenant. We’re just truck drivers some f
ool gave guns to.”

  Bakowski laughed. “Bullshit. You gave a good account of yourselves that time.”

  Tyree felt strange. When was the last time a white man paid him a compliment? He decided to take a chance with the lieutenant. “I hear you Rangers eat human flesh for breakfast, sir,” he teased.

  “Lunch,” Bakowski said and the men in the back of the truck roared. Damn, but Tyree thought it felt good. He had heard the word camaraderie and understood how it applied to his men, but to a bunch of white Rangers? My, my.

  They were coming up on the first likely ambush site. They had to slow to make a turn and the woods were within a few yards of the road. Suddenly, men surged from the trees and began firing at them. Tyree’s instructions were to hit the brakes hard and he did so with a vengeance. The truck lurched to a halt and he rolled to his right, grabbed his helmet and his carbine and slid to the ground.

  The Rangers in the trucks had already commenced firing on their attackers. For a few seconds it seemed like an even fight, but the firepower, numbers, and discipline of Bakowski’s Rangers began to push the communists back. Tyree and the other drivers fired as well and soon there were a number of French bodies on the ground.

  The lieutenant shouted commands and his men moved out to the left and right. Tyree wondered what the hell they were up to and then realized. They were going to flank the bastards and scoop them up.

  The shooting petered out and stopped. At least a dozen French were dead in front of Tyree and at least that many wounded lay writhing on the ground or trying to crawl away. A couple of stunned Frenchies stood with their hands up. After a while, the Rangers herded another fifty out of the woods. Some of them were walking wounded and they all looked shocked. Tyree was surprised to see a couple of scruffy looking women in the group. These French people were all crazy, he thought.