Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

  “We know what you mean. We fought in the Ardennes. Lots of our boys paid a price there, too. Many a brave man.”

  The policeman was nodding now, seeming friendly. But still, he asked, “Where are you staying here?”

  “With my cousin.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Werner Rietz.”

  The policeman nodded, but some of his ease seemed to disappear. “Could I see your papers, please?” he asked.

  Otto and Alex got out their military paybooks and their leave papers. The policeman looked them over carefully, and then he looked back at Alex. “Are you foreign?”

  “No, no. I’m German. I grew up speaking English and German both.”

  “And where was that?”

  “In America. My mother is an American.”

  The policeman clearly didn’t like that. He took a long look at Alex.

  “He’s lucky,” Otto said. “His father moved his family back to Germany when he was fifteen. And then he was in the Hitler Youth. He learned what this country is all about.”

  “Yes,” Alex said. “And I know all about America. The people themselves are not bad, but this Roosevelt, he’s a monster. It means nothing to him to bomb our cities, wipe out civilians by the millions.”

  “How long will you be here?”

  “Three days, at most,” Otto said. “Then we return to our battalion. We’ll fight again before much longer. And we’ll stop those Amis at the Rhine, I can tell you that. They’ll never march into your home. That’s my promise to you.”

  The man was studying them now. There was no telling what he was thinking. “Go ahead,” he finally said, and nothing more.

  Alex was uneasy about all this, but Otto was pleased. “It couldn’t have been better. Now we are known. We’ve told our story. I don’t think we’ll be bothered again.”

  When Werner heard the story, he was not nearly so sanguine. But he said little and let Otto’s version of it stand. Alex had the feeling that he didn’t want to worry Margarita. He did ask, “When are you scheduled to transmit?”

  “Tonight,” Otto told him.

  “Good. Tell them what you know, but don’t return to the country tomorrow. In fact, I would leave Brünen.”

  “We need to do more surveillance,” Alex said. “There must be more anti-aircraft positions. I’m thinking that they’re closer to the river, near Schneppenberg, and we haven’t searched that area yet.”

  “Be satisfied with what you’ve been able to do. You must remember, just before the invasion, we in the resistance will blow up the two railroad lines that run through that area. That will delay reinforcements. And we’ve targeted a power station—to cut off lights and create confusion. We can do our own search for guns, too. I can relay the information myself, if we find anything.”

  Alex didn’t assent to that, but he also didn’t argue. He decided to give the matter some thought overnight, and he did agree that it was time to transmit what they knew. So that night Alex and Otto slipped out onto the roof of the house. They turned on their transmitter and waited for a response. It was almost an hour before a Mosquito spy plane picked up the signal and made contact, but once it did, Alex quickly whispered his reconnaissance information. A few seconds later, a voice announced that the message had been recorded. Otto and Alex put the radio back into its case and slipped through the dormer window, back inside. Then they hid the radio in a compartment that Werner had created between the attic floor and the downstairs ceiling.

  Alex was relieved to know that that much had been accomplished. What he didn’t feel was that he had done enough. If he and Otto left, he wasn’t sure how diligently the resistance people would search for guns, and he didn’t want to learn later that the Airborne units had been decimated during their landing. He knew what kind of information he would hope for if he were making the jump himself. So in the morning he convinced Werner that he and Otto had to make one more trip to the country.

  As it turned out, this day was more productive. Alex and Otto were hampered in the morning by some troop movements in the area—large trucks rolling down the country road—but the two of them hid out for a time and then rode their bikes along a little back road that ran between Hamminkeln and Schneppenberg. Close to some railroad tracks, they spotted a double set of camouflaged field guns, so they worked their way along the tracks, staying in the woods, and found another emplacement, this one with three guns, probably 88 millimeter. They were quite certain that other guns must be placed farther down the tracks, but an open pasture lay between them and the next woods, and they didn’t dare walk across it. Railroad tracks, especially with anti-aircraft gun emplacements nearby, would certainly be guarded at various points along the way.

  By then, because of the early delays, the trip had extended way too long into the afternoon to be easily explained. Alex told Otto they had better head back. Otto wanted to search another area, but he didn’t push the matter, and the two returned to Brünen. This time Alex was relieved not to see the policeman or anyone else who might want to check their papers. But as they were setting their bikes in the Hof behind the house, the back door flew open. It was Margarita. “Leave!” she whispered. “As fast as you can. Werner has been arrested. Men were waiting for him when he came home from work.”

  “Gestapo?” Otto asked.

  “I don’t know. You must leave now.”

  “Did they mention us?”

  “No. But they were rough with him this time. If they torture him, and he breaks, they will be back for you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I’m very sorry.”

  “I’ve lost him. They’ll kill him this time.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, but it was rage in her voice, not sorrow.

  “I’m so very sorry,” Alex said again, unable to think of anything else. He thought of her boys.

  Otto was already leaving, pushing his bike, and now Alex followed. At the street, Otto stepped onto his bike and pedaled away, calmly, slowly. Alex understood. He did the same. The two had almost reached the street corner when Alex saw an armored car speeding down the road toward them, the tires whining on the cobblestones. Military police.

  Otto suddenly began to pump hard. He accelerated around the corner and down a hill toward the east. Alex was right behind him. Halfway down the hill they dodged into an alley. Otto yelled, “Follow me!” He darted behind a building and cast his bicycle aside. Then he vaulted over a fence and ran through another courtyard. He was heading up the hill to the west, back to the street the armored car had been coming down. He was obviously trying to double back and cross up the police. Alex understood the ploy, but he also knew they were returning into the village, and they needed to get outside and into a forest somewhere. That was their only hope to get away.

  Otto suddenly stopped, grabbed the door to a shed, and jerked it open. “In here,” he said.

  “No.” Alex grabbed Otto, pulled him forward. “Once we stop, they’ll throw a ring around us and hunt us down—with dogs. We have to get out of here now.”

  This time it was Alex who led out. He rushed around the house and out to the street. “Walk,” he said. “That car went down the hill after us. They’re heading the wrong direction.”

  “They’ll backtrack before long.”

  “I know. But let’s head back down the hill on a parallel street. We need to get out of town.”

  The difficult thing was to control themselves, to walk—and not attract attention. When they reached the corner, they turned downhill, to the east again. Alex knew the edge of the village was only about half a mile away, and then there were fields for another half mile—less than that probably—and finally a little valley, filled with trees. That was the only place he could think of to hide.

  The two kept walking—and watching. What would the men in the armored car do? Would they think of the alleys and head back? Would they find the bicycles? If they did, what would they assume? Would they keep driving about, or would they try to get help? Would there
be a delay as help was gathered?

  “Let’s cut down this alley,” Otto said.

  “No. Keep going. We’ll make a break down an alley or into a house if we have to. We’re better off to keep moving for now.”

  Otto was in charge of this operation, but Alex trusted his own instincts this time, and Otto seemed to accept the rightness of them. When the two men passed people on the street, Alex nodded and greeted them. And he kept from glancing back too often. Otto was doing enough glancing for both of them. They reached the edge of the village in ten minutes, maybe less, and they hadn’t seen the armored car. But ahead of them was a dirt road that cut through open fields. Everything was flat—with no place to hide.

  “Let’s walk inside the fence line,” Otto said. And Alex understood. They could keep moving east, but if the car appeared, in the distance, they could dive down next to the rock fence. Of course, if they were spotted first, hiding out there would do no good at all. They had to make it to the trees—and right now the woods seemed ten miles off.

  Another few minutes passed—and every second Alex expected to hear Otto say, “There they are.” But Alex was sure they had done the right thing. Most people, in the same situation, would have found a hiding place, and that was what the pursuers were probably thinking. They must be searching in the village.

  “Drop!”

  Alex hit the ground, but they were only about fifty yards from the woods. He wanted to make a dash into the trees.

  “I don’t think they saw us. Crawl!” Alex took off, not in a military crawl, but up on all fours, going as hard as he could while keeping his backside lower than the rock fence. He had cut the distance to the woods in half when he heard Otto shout, “Never mind. It wasn’t the armored car.”

  Alex didn’t care. He stayed down, kept crawling. And then, finally, he was descending a grassy hill toward a creek and a little valley full of brush and willow trees. Beyond that was a larger wooded area that extended north along the creek. He jumped up, finally ran, and tromped on into the creek, then turned and followed it to a place thick with growth. He climbed out of the water and burrowed into some brush and ferns under a little stand of trees. “All right. Now let’s wait,” he told Otto.

  Otto was laughing, but he pushed into the bracken and sat down next to Alex. “You were right,” he said. “This was the smart thing to do.”

  “Yes. But now what? Where do we go? What do we do?”

  Otto, of course, didn’t have the answer. Until now, Alex had thought only a few minutes ahead; now he had no idea what his next step should be. He lay back on the grass and took a couple of deep breaths.

  But as soon as he felt a bit of relief, he thought of Werner, of Margarita and her little sons. What had he and Otto done to them?

  Chapter 12

  Anna Thomas was placing a new spool on her recording machine. Sometimes the static on the radio dispatches made the messages difficult to understand and she would have to listen several times, jot down the words in German, and then, when she had it all, translate the whole thing into English. She spent her time closed off in her little booth at the OSS office, where others couldn’t hear. As this new recording began to play, she was ready to listen for German when she realized that the recording didn’t have to be translated. It was in English. In those cases, she was still supposed to write out the text. Then she used her maps to locate any geographical landmarks the speaker had mentioned.

  The sender, in this case, was recommending a series of adjustments to the drop zone for “Operation Varsity.” The recording was difficult to understand at times, the voice only a whisper. Anna was writing quickly in her own version of shorthand when she suddenly stopped. She heard something familiar in this strained, muffled voice. She listened for a time without writing.

  “We know there must be more AA emplacements in the area, but surveillance is very difficult. We plan to make another reconnaissance pass tomorrow. If we learn anything, we’ll report again. We do have a problem. My partner and I were forced to take protective action against a couple of military policemen. Our contact feels that his security has been compromised. We may have to leave this safehouse. If we are unable to transmit, employ these new coordinates for the drop zones and go forward as planned.”

  By the time the message had ended, Anna was almost certain she knew the voice. She recognized the intonation even in this faint and unclear transmission. She kept saying to herself that Alex wasn’t in Germany, that the voice couldn’t be his, but she couldn’t convince herself.

  Anna needed to know—absolutely. She left her booth and walked down the hall. She stopped at the door to her supervisor’s office and said, “Mr. Coleman, I need your help for a moment. Could you listen to a recording for me?”

  Roger Coleman was leaning over his desk. He was studying a map. “Just a moment,” he said. And then, after maybe half a minute, he stood up. “What’s the trouble?” he asked, and he followed Anna down the hallway.

  “I need to have you listen to a message and help me understand. It’s in English.”

  She stepped into her booth, rewound the wire, and then started it again. She watched Mr. Coleman. He had his head down, prepared to listen carefully. The messenger’s first statement was, “This is Driftwood.”

  Suddenly Mr. Coleman’s head came up. He looked at Anna carefully for a moment, and then he said, “I can’t answer any questions, so don’t ask.”

  “I know who it is.”

  He looked down at the floor. “Of course you do. I’ve known this day was coming since I hired you. But I didn’t know what else to do. We needed someone with your background.”

  “Can you tell me where he is, or what–”

  “I can’t tell you anything.”

  “He’s in great danger, isn’t he?”

  “All our men are in danger, Anna. You know that.”

  “May I leave now? I’ll work an extra hour tomorrow.”

  “Yes, of course. If that’s what’s best. But Anna, don’t worry too much about this. These men are well trained. We aren’t sacrificing them. They have ways of returning.”

  “Why wasn’t I told?”

  “You know why.”

  But she didn’t know. She knew the answer Mr. Coleman would give, but she didn’t accept it. Alex was wrong to have done this without talking to her about it first—no matter what the army would say about that. She listened to these messages almost every day, and she always had the feeling that she was hearing boys at play. The agents here in the office, the ones in the field—all of them seemed to love their little games. Why would Alex do this to her? He had promised to be careful, to get back to her. She knew that a high percentage of these operatives were being lost.

  “You could have stopped this. You didn’t have to let them send my husband.”

  “Not really.” He seemed to consider, and then he dropped his pretense. “I didn’t know who he was until they were ready to place him. But why would I want to stop him? Someone has to do this.”

  “I hope that’s true, Mr. Coleman. I really hope that’s true. My father is over there somewhere, too, and that’s too much. It’s unfair to send them both.”

  “Anna, the people who penetrate Germany all agree to go. Most of them are German expatriates—Nazi haters who want to help us. Sometimes we borrow military men because we need special knowledge of one kind or another. But they aren’t forced into anything. They have to know German, and Germany, and not many people have that background. It just happens that you have two in your family who could do this—and were willing.”

  “It’s still not right.” She left the booth, got her raincoat and umbrella, and walked out into the cold. The rain had stopped for the first time in two days, but the air was heavy and damp. She walked to the Underground station at Victoria Station and rode to the Baker Street Station.

  When she entered her flat, she wanted to break down and cry, to tell her mother everything, but she couldn’t do that. She went to the kitchen to say she was
home. After, she planned to disappear into her room. But she found her mother at the kitchen table with Mildred Stewart, their new boarder. The Dillinghams, the couple that had lived with Anna and her mother for many months, had decided to move in with their daughter-in-law now that their son had returned to the Royal Air Force. Mildred was eighteen and alone. Her parents had been killed during the blitz in 1940, and her older brother was in the army. He was with General Montgomery, in Holland.

  Anna saw immediately that Mildred was upset. Instead of passing on through the kitchen, Anna stopped and asked, “Is something wrong?”

  “Not really. I’m right enough,” Mildred said, unconvincingly.

  Mildred was a small young woman who looked even younger than she was. She had red hair, which she rolled under at her shoulders, and bronze-colored eyes. In truth, she wasn’t all that interesting to talk to, but she was pleasant enough, and certainly an easy person to have about the house. She worked an early shift at a military ordnance warehouse, where she dealt with the complicated paperwork involved in shipping supplies and munitions. She was tired when she came home each day, so she usually went to bed early.

  “Mildred reads the war news in the paper,” Sister Stoltz said, in English. “I tell her, ‘Don’t do that.’”

  Mildred looked up at Anna. “Bernard is going smack in the middle of things, I fear. Everyone says the boys are gathering now, getting ready to attack the Siegfried Line. I was reading in the Times just now that thousands of Monty’s troops will be lost—there’s no escaping it.” This was all said with a certain objectivity, as though Mildred wanted to sound perfectly in control. It didn’t take much perception, of course, to know that she was feeling much more than she was admitting.

  Anna glanced at the newspaper spread across the kitchen table. The headlines announced that General Patton had crossed the Rhine. Montgomery’s troops were prepared to do the same, farther north. Russian troops had reached the Oder River and were closing in on Berlin. Germany was surely about to fall, and if Anna hadn’t learned what she had today, these same headlines would have reassured her that the worst was almost over. She might even have hoped that Alex would be back in England before the baby came.