Robert Conroy

by Red Inferno: 1945: A Novel

  They each had a twelve-ounce can of something that claimed to be beef along with a soggy mass that purported to be potatoes. Originally, C rations were not intended for long-term use, but people in a siege could not be choosy. With plane drops diminishing, it was understood that all rations would have to last a long time and they would soon be sharing cans and not eating one all by themselves. When that time came, Jack hoped he’d be able to sneak something to Lis and Pauli.

  “Outstanding,” Lis said as she wiped her mouth with her hand. The food in her can had disappeared, while Jack’s was about a third full.

  “You’re joking.”

  She punched him lightly on the arm. “I was talking about the company. The food was truly awful, but at least it is filling and somewhat nourishing. A few weeks ago I would have killed for something like that. I just hope I never have to feel that way again.”

  Jack took a deep breath. “No guarantees, are there? What worries me is that all this must come to an end sooner or later.”

  “And that, dear Jack, would be both wonderful and awful, perhaps even horrible. My fear is that the Russians would win and we would all die. My other fear is that your Americans will win and we will be separated.” She laughed bitterly. “I don’t see any way this interlude can have a happy ending.”

  “I know. If we’re relieved, I’ll still be in the army and have to go wherever my unit is sent, while you’ll be left here as a refugee. In theory, at least, you’d be safe. It just scares the hell out of me picturing you and Pauli wandering all over Germany looking for a place to live and something to eat.”

  “Jack, do you want us to meet after this is over?”

  “Good God, yes.”

  “Then you’ve made up my mind for me. When this war does end, I will contact Canadian authorities and use my dual citizenship to get Pauli and me out of Germany.”

  Jack took a deep breath. It was a glimmer of hope. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small notepad and began writing. “Do you know where Port Huron is in Michigan?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. This is my address and my parents’ names and our phone number. When you get out, notify them and they will help you.”

  She squeezed next to him and put her head on his shoulder. She took a deep breath as he put his arm around her. For the moment, she felt secure and content. She had a goal. Canada.

  “Jack, when was the last time you kissed a girl?”

  He grinned. “Ages. I’ve forgotten how.”

  “Liar,” she said, laughing, and promptly proved that neither he nor she had forgotten a thing.

  CHAPTER 13

  As the prime minister entered the Oval Office, Harry Truman’s first impression of Winston Churchill was one of mild surprise that the man whose force of will had helped sustain Britain was so darned short. The second impression, and a very negative one, was that Churchill looked so very old. With a jolt, he realized that the bulldog of Britain was seventy-one, an age when most men should have retired and be writing their memoirs. Worse, Churchill showed every year. His wartime service as Britain’s leader had taken a serious physical toll. At sixty-one, Truman knew he not only looked much younger but acted much sprier.

  Truman shuddered. How would he look in a few years as president? Would the combined weight of the office and continuing aging drag him down too? Well, he thought wryly, nothing like starting a new war to set the tone of a new administration to help him find out.

  Churchill broke the brief silence. “Mr. President, it is indeed an honor to meet you. The late president has spoken well of you.”

  Like hell, Truman thought. He sincerely doubted that FDR had ever mentioned him. “I am honored to meet you too, sir. He spoke of you often when we discussed world matters.”

  Churchill laughed at the polite lies. They shook hands and took seats along a wall where they were separated by a small table. No one else was present for this brief meeting.

  Truman began. “First I should inform you that Mr. Speer has been taken to the Executive Office Building across the street. When we are finished speaking, we can go and hear what he has to say.”

  “Very good.”

  “Now, Prime Minister, let me be most frank. Obviously, I am not in the least bit happy with what has transpired with Stalin, and I am concerned by rumors that you are not displeased that we are in this new war.”

  “I did not want this war either, Mr. President,” Churchill said sadly. “I merely urged firmness when dealing with Stalin. I did not for one minute expect such an irrational onslaught. Kindly recall that my British soldiers are bleeding and dying as well as yours.”

  Churchill smiled bleakly. “I merely wanted the Russian bear caged. I wished Stalin to know that the democracies had strength and a willingness to let him go no further. There was nothing we could do about the countries he’d already seized, but we could not let him impose his will on Germany or the rest of Europe.

  “Mr. President, despite the fact that the British empire is far-flung, England itself is a small island that could be vulnerable to aggressor nations should we let it. Unlike the United States, whose moats are oceans, England’s moat is only twenty or thirty miles wide, not thousands. In these days of bombers and missiles, safety is virtually nonexistent. I might add, sir, that your moat is shrinking as well, and that your traditional emphasis on isolation may no longer be appropriate. Ergo, we allied ourselves with others, sometimes distastefully, to maintain our security.”

  “Did it matter,” Truman asked, “what the policies were of the nations you were allied with and against?”

  “Not at all,” he replied candidly. “My predecessors at Downing Street and I have always had one goal in common, and that was the preservation of the empire as a sovereign, powerful, and prosperous nation. I once implied that I would seek an alliance with the devil if I thought it would help England and I meant it.”

  Truman grinned. “Are you comparing the United States with Satan?”

  Churchill chuckled and continued. “France and Italy are hopeless and impoverished both militarily and morally, while Spain and Portugal are inconsequential. Therefore, a resurgent Germany is our only hope for stability in Europe in the face of Communist Russia. If the Russian bear is allowed to swallow Eastern Europe and now Germany, it will be strong enough to reach out with a mighty paw and smash the British empire.”

  “I see your point,” Truman said grimly.

  Churchill rose awkwardly. His joints were stiff and he was still fatigued from his trip. “The war with Russia is indeed a tragedy. However, it may have been inevitable. It is at least occurring at a time when our nations are strong, not weak.” He dramatically checked a pocket watch. “Do we not have a German waiting to see us?”

  “We do.”

  “Then, Mr. President, shall we not hear what he has to say?”

  BILLY TOLLIVER TOOK a moment to take stock of his situation. He and his platoon were settled in an unnamed village about ten miles west of the Elbe, and a narrow road ran through it that ultimately went to the very old city of Brunswick. The village was of fairly new construction and bland, with no front lawns. The road ran almost right up to the sterile houses and buildings.

  They had fallen back from a village much like it yesterday and would doubtless find a village just like this one a few hundred yards up the road when the Russian pressure became too much to bear. Bear, he thought and smiled, bear the Russian bear. Or should they shave it and bare the bear?

  “Something funny, Lieutenant?” Holmes looked confused. Was his platoon leader losing it?

  “A private thought, Corporal. Nothing important.”

  The recently promoted Holmes shrugged but did not look impressed. Tolliver sometimes thought that Holmes did not have the respect for an officer that an enlisted man really ought to, and seemed to be sneering at him in his New England accent.

  Worse, Holmes was a Jew, and Tolliver hadn’t had much experience with Jews. There were very few of them in and
around Opelika and none that he knew of at the Citadel, where he’d gotten his degree, and the only ones he could think of ran stores or pawnshops in Montgomery or Mobile. Like many people, he hadn’t given much thought to what the Nazis were doing and still wasn’t certain he believed all that stuff about mass murders. Still, he’d seen a couple of camps and was beginning to change his mind.

  Tolliver did some quick calculating just to make sure he hadn’t forgotten something important in his troop’s dispositions. He had three squads, which, including himself and Holmes, totaled only twenty-four men. With that he was to stop, or at least delay, whatever the Russians were going to send down the damn road and through the damn village. The rest of the company had similar assignments, as did the battalion, the regiment, and the division. So did the whole damn army, for that matter, he realized. Slow or stop the Russians was their only goal.

  At least this particular village wasn’t in ruins like so many of them. Germany, he decided, was a study in contrasts. While so much of the land had been reduced to rubble only a few feet high, there were other areas that, inexplicably, had been untouched by the physical presence of war. Of course, with the Russians due at any time, there was little likelihood of that continuing for this particular neat and tidy collection of brick and concrete houses and stores.

  They were in a gasthaus, a tavern, whose location gave his platoon good fields of fire down the main road from the east, as well as a secondary road that he would consider a tempting way to enter the village if he were the Russian commander. He also had men with machine guns, BARs, and bazookas in homes flanking the gasthaus.

  The gasthaus had also given his platoon something they hadn’t had in a very long time, a couple of steins of beer apiece. To their astonishment, they had found a perfectly good cask of suds in the cellar that Tolliver had carefully portioned out to his crew. The local krauts, he decided, would never miss it, and if someone complained, fuck ’em. His men deserved it. Even Holmes had seemed appreciative of the gesture.

  “Second squad hears tanks.” It was Holmes on his radio.

  “Can they see anything?”

  “No, sir, and it only sounds like a couple.”

  Yeah, Tolliver thought, only a couple. When this war with Russia first started, he had thirty-five men in his platoon. He had seen how much damage just a couple of Russian tanks could do.

  “Can we get artillery or air support?”

  Holmes shook his head. “Air is tied up. We’ll be getting artillery support in about ten minutes when they finish with other targets.”

  Wonderful, Tolliver thought. In ten minutes, they could all be dead or speaking Russian.

  “Here they come!”

  Tolliver had no idea who yelled. It hardly mattered. He saw a wave of humanity, he guessed company-strength, surge into view. Behind them came a pair of T34s. As he watched, his company’s mortars started landing in the Russian infantry, flinging several soldiers into the air. His platoon’s machine guns and BARs opened up, cutting more holes in the advancing infantry. It didn’t stop them, and the two tanks opened fire with their own machine guns as the Americans revealed themselves.

  “Duck,” Tolliver screamed automatically as the lead tank fired its main gun. A second later, the top floor of the building to his right disintegrated in a billowing cloud of dust and smoke that obscured his view. The second tank fired and smashed another building.

  As planned, Tolliver’s men fired some more rounds at the advancing infantry and retreated a few houses down the road. Cautiously, the tanks started to enter the village. Built-up areas would be death traps for tanks if they weren’t careful, and these tankers looked cautious indeed.

  Supported by their infantry, the Russians grew bolder and moved forward to about fifty yards from Tolliver’s new position. Tolliver’s gunners fired, cutting down a dozen infantry, causing the remaining Russians to dive for the cover of nearby houses.

  “No!”

  Tolliver yelled to no avail as he saw one of his men with a bazooka run out in front of the lead tank and fire. As he knew it would, the bazooka round bounced harmlessly off the front armor of the Russian tank as its machine gun opened up and, with an insane chatter, cut the soldier into bloody halves. Tolliver couldn’t tell who it was. Probably one of the newer guys. The older ones knew better than to try something like that.

  The tank rumbled on and squashed the dead American soldier. They would have to abandon the village under close fire from the Russian armor. It was the worst possible situation. Then he saw movement on the roof of a building to his left front. Another American with a bazooka, but this time firing downward. He saw the round hit behind the turret, and a moment later smoke and flames belched from the vents and openings of the lead tank as its ammo started to cook off inside. No one got out. The road was blocked by the wrecked tank, and they had a moment’s respite.

  “Holmes, any idea where the rest of the Reds are?”

  “Glad you asked, sir. We are being flanked. I suggest we phone mother and tell her we’re leaving.”

  Tolliver was about to snap at Holmes for his damn Yankee insolence, but thought it could wait for a better time. “Tell Company we’re pulling out.” Russian infantrymen were peering from behind the burning tank and firing randomly at the American positions.

  “Sir,” said Holmes. “I’ve got artillery. They want coordinates.”

  Tolliver grinned wolfishly. “Give them ours and tell them to wait five minutes.”

  Holmes paled and relayed the information. In a barely controlled panic, the platoon gathered its wounded and ran down the road, taking advantage of every wall and shrub to conceal themselves from the Russian soldiers who were now advancing into the village from both sides. Finally, they made it to their previously designated rendezvous point, just as they had done at the last several villages they’d abandoned. Tolliver checked his watch. It had taken seven minutes.

  Tolliver looked at Holmes, who shrugged. “I told artillery to wait ten. Five seemed a little close.”

  Maybe I won’t court-martial him, Tolliver thought, just have him flogged and then skinned alive. He counted heads. There were only eighteen left and two of them were wounded.

  Just as he finished his tally, the first artillery round hit the village, followed by a dozen more that caused flames and sent concussions that they could feel. In seconds, the neat little German village no longer existed except as smoking rubble. Nor for that matter did the remaining Red tank and the rest of the company of Russian infantry.

  “Who the hell’s winning this war, Lieutenant?” asked Holmes. He was gasping under the weight of his radio. “And why the hell are we even fighting it? I want to kill the Germans who are killing my people. I really don’t give a shit about the Russians.”

  “Shut up,” snapped Tolliver.

  He hated it when Holmes asked questions he couldn’t answer. But the man had a point. Who the hell was winning and why was it started in the first place? It was, he thought, nothing but a big snafu. No, a fubar—Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. They were hurting the Reds, but there were always more Soviet soldiers, while reinforcements and replacements for his platoon were nonexistent.

  Tolliver understood that modern war consisted of a large number of small skirmishes like the one he’d just fought, and not a grand epic battle like Gettysburg. His great-granddaddy had fought for the Confederacy and lost a foot at Gettysburg. Before his memory failed him, Grampa had told him a hundred times of long rows of Union soldiers in dirty blue uniforms confronting long rows of Confederates in dirty gray or butternut. He’d described battles where thousands of men could be seen shooting and falling. Now, Tolliver couldn’t even see the platoon next to him.

  So, if a hundred skirmishes were fought and the United States won more than fifty of them, then they were winning the war, weren’t they? Fewer than fifty and they were losing. So what had just happened? He’d mauled a Russian company, but lost the village. Had it been a win, loss, or draw?

  He
was too tired to care.

  “Holmes, you figure it out, and when you do, let me know.”

  IF ALBERT SPEER was awed by the presence of the two men who headed the coalition against his beloved Germany, he did not show it. An architect by education, he had risen in the ranks of the Nazi hierarchy to a ministerial rank that made him virtual czar of the production of all goods in the Third Reich.

  That he was good-looking and articulate hadn’t hurt him either. Speer was forty years old, and his last official title had been Minister of Armaments and Munitions. He had been in complete charge of Germany’s war-making capabilities.

  Truman did not shake his hand, only gestured him coldly to a seat in the room they were using. Translators were present to be used if necessary, but Speer’s English was up to the task.

  “Mr. President, on behalf of my government, I wish to have an armistice between our three nations.”

  “What about France and Russia?” Truman asked, tight-lipped. He had never seen a high-ranking Nazi before and was uncertain as to how to act. He decided on controlled belligerency.

  Speer blinked. Unused to diplomacy, he had forgotten about the importance of France to the Western Allies. “Your correction is noted. We wish peace between Germany and the western allies of Britain, France, and the United States. Even though the Third Reich is defeated, it should be obvious that we have no desire to surrender to Russia. Nor should you wish us to do so. Surely your policies of unconditional surrender and no separate peace no longer apply under the current circumstances.”

  Truman said nothing, merely stared at him, which encouraged Speer to continue. “As evidence of our good faith, Admiral Doenitz, as successor to the late Adolf Hitler, has offered the following without reservation or the need for you to reciprocate.

  “First, we will release all Allied prisoners we now hold, although that is no longer a large number. Your troops have overrun most of our POW camps. We will expedite the transfer, although some prisoners are wounded and will require special handling. Additionally, any soldiers who have wandered into our area or airmen who are shot down as a result of your new war with Russia and make it to our lines will be returned to you.”