Robert Conroy

by Red Inferno: 1945: A Novel

  Of more concern to him were the confused stories he was hearing about the battles to the west. While it was common knowledge that Zhukov had been stalled in his campaign to take Antwerp, some catastrophe had apparently befallen his armies. Some idiotic rumors even said that entire Soviet armies had been destroyed, wiped out, and that both Zhukov and Chuikov were missing. Impossible.

  Yet something had definitely gone horribly, terribly wrong in that area by the Weser. Thus, it would be best if he eliminated the problem of Potsdam and prepared his army to assist in what was rapidly becoming a general retreat.

  There was a knock on the door to the room he was using as an office. “Yes.”

  A nervous orderly told him he had a visitor. A visitor? Bazarian paled when he saw that it was a captain from the NKVD, a short, stocky, swarthy man with an angry expression and a briefcase. Despite the difference in their ranks, Bazarian knew real fear. What did the NKVD want of him? He stood to greet his “visitor” while the orderly closed the door to give them privacy.

  “Bazarian?” the man said. He had a strange accent and pronounced the name with difficulty.

  “Da,” Bazarian responded. Yes.

  The officer smiled and reached into the briefcase. When his hand emerged, there was a pistol in it and he fired twice at point-blank range. The bullets struck Bazarian in the chest, lifted him up and back over his chair. He crumpled on the floor and lay still.

  The NKVD officer replaced his pistol and calmly walked out of the room. Outside, he ignored the looks of shock and dismay on the faces of Bazarian’s staff. What, they wondered, had their general done? Why had he been executed? Would they be next? As soon as he passed, they all bolted and ran away. Nobody checked on the general.

  The stolen jeep with the Russian unit markings painted over with crude NKVD insignia waited a few yards away. Two uniformed Russian soldiers sat in the front. Tony the Toad climbed into the backseat and sat straight, looking forward. The driver started up and they drove down the road.

  When they were out of sight, Tony began to shake. “Jesus Christ, Jesus, Jesus.”

  “Quit praying,” said Vaslov. “Did you get him?”

  “Twice in the chest. Jesus, I didn’t think I could do it. I don’t speak any fucking Russian. All I did was act like that shit who killed the Jew boys, and ask for Bazarian. I snapped my fingers, and they almost shit themselves showing me where he was. It was like I had the plague and they wanted to get rid of me.”

  The late Joe Baker would have been proud. They had no idea what impact the shooting of Bazarian would have on the battle for Potsdam, but he had the feeling they had accomplished something really good.

  “Enough,” said Anton. “Now let’s find a place to hide these uniforms.”

  TOLLIVER’S FIRST IMPRESSION of the nightmare land was that it was some kind of hideous modern landscape painting by some psychotic artist in which everything was done in black. The trees were black, the grass was black, the vehicles were black, and worse, the bodies were all blackened and shriveled. Maybe it was more like some medieval painting of hell he’d seen in a college art class.

  His jeep was the third in the column that drove slowly toward where the atomic bomb—they now knew its name—had been detonated. The first jeep contained a couple of scientists with a machine called a Geiger counter that supposedly told them it was safe to go on. Safe from what? Radiation, whatever the hell that was. The second jeep carried some mid-level brass from Ike’s headquarters, and Tolliver and his men in the following jeeps were along to provide security. He had been told that a number of other columns were going to try to penetrate the area and might need protection.

  They didn’t. The only Russians remaining were vast numbers of the dead and the dying. Those who could still move and who hadn’t already surrendered had fled to the east, leaving behind a scene of catastrophe unparalleled in scope. Tolliver had never seen so many dead bodies and so many ruined vehicles in one area before. He now realized that it was true—an entire Russian army had indeed been destroyed by this atomic bomb. Someday, he might feel truly sorry for them, but not now. He thought of dead Holmes and so many others whose lives were wasted by a war that, in his opinion, hadn’t had to happen.

  A scientist in the lead jeep signaled a right turn, and the column obediently followed. Tolliver saw that they were skirting the actual center of the blast, now referred to as “ground zero.” If the bodies strewn about were any measure of the danger they were avoiding by detouring around ground zero, it was okay by him. This was yet another sight he would never forget and never be able to describe. Black death, black fire, black earth, and now the black stench of ruined bodies rotting in the summer sun. He noticed that birds were eating the dead. What effect would radiation have on them?

  Someone in the second jeep yelled out that Zhukov was probably in there, in the center of this mess. If he was, thought Tolliver, he wasn’t going to be found and he sure as hell wasn’t coming out.

  As they slowly circled ground zero they began to encounter survivors. Many of those trapped between ground zero and the American lines had already surrendered, while these pitiful remnants had been trying to make it east to supposed safety. The only thing was, they weren’t going to make it. Their wounds and burns were ghastly. The flesh had been destroyed, and some of the things crawling on the ground could scarcely be recognized as human.

  The column did find signs of attempted mercy. Some few Russian doctors had set up hospitals, which had been overrun by the numbers of wounded.

  Tolliver saw a light colonel named Burke leave his jeep and talk to a Russian doctor. The colonel then got on the radio and delivered an emphatic message. Tolliver caught only a few words but he got the gist of it: send help fast. Tolliver also noted that this Burke looked quite shaken.

  They drove on a little farther. They stopped when they saw a handful of men who appeared to be relatively unharmed. A scientist got out and waved his magic wand over them and said they were safe to approach but not to touch. The brass got out and Tolliver tagged along.

  The Russians were pale and covered with sores. Their eyes looked at the Americans with utter helplessness. The Americans might have been the enemy, but the Russians were in no shape to fight—or to surrender. They just sat or lay there. Tolliver leaned down to see if one of them was alive or dead. His face was all burned up and the skin had peeled off in gobs.

  “Don’t touch,” said the scientist, and Tolliver withdrew his hand like a shot. “Radiation sickness. Don’t take a chance.”

  A few feet away, Burke leaned over and said something in Russian to a soldier who tried to focus on them. The soldier managed to mutter a response, and then began coughing.

  “What’d he say, sir?” Tolliver asked.

  “He said his friend died an hour ago and he will die soon as well. He said his name is Suslov and we should pray for him.”

  With that, Burke began to shake and tears ran down his face. It was just too awful to even begin to comprehend.

  Tolliver tried to be helpful. He walked over and, instinctively and in total disregard of the difference in their ranks, put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Hey, Colonel, don’t take it so hard. It’s not as if this was your fault or something.”

  FIVE DAYS AFTER the massive assault on Potsdam, two battalions of the 82nd Airborne Division parachuted onto the runways of Berlin’s Gatow Airport and secured it. There was little resistance, only scattered sniper fire, which the airborne soldiers quickly eliminated. Additional drops were made and work began immediately on filling in the craters so that at least one runway would be ready for planes to take off and land. All this occurred while additional paratroops continued to descend from the sky. By nightfall, the entire division was on the ground and had linked up with the defenders of Potsdam, who had sent a strong patrol to Gatow.

  Early the next morning, C-47 transports began to arrive with supplies, medical personnel, and additional soldiers to protect the expanding perimeter. One of th
e first planes carried General Omar Bradley and a handful of his staff.

  Bradley had not announced that he was coming, so no one was waiting for him at Gatow. That neither surprised nor disturbed him. He was certain his men at Potsdam had more important things to do than arrange a ceremony for him. He and two of his staff hitched rides to Potsdam from an astonished young private.

  “Shit,” said General Miller as he ran out to greet Bradley. “You could have warned me you were coming.” He snapped to attention and saluted. Bradley returned the salute. The two men then shook hands and, spontaneously, embraced warmly. “Good to see you anyhow, Brad,” Miller said.

  “Good to see you too, Puff. What on earth have you done with this lovely little town?” he said half jokingly. “And what have you done to your head?” he added, commenting on the bandage on Miller’s scalp.

  Inwardly, Bradley was appalled by the devastation. Few buildings still stood, and the ground was pocked with so many craters that it looked like a moonscape. Broken vehicles were everywhere, as were signs that showed where graves had been dug. Soldiers’ graves were marked by crude crosses with dog tags nailed to them, while civilians had been buried in mass graves that were now large mounds on the ground. Worse, almost everyone seemed to be at least slightly wounded.

  “It was a helluva fight, Brad. I got off easy.”

  Bradley took Miller by the elbow. “Let’s go take a look around and talk about it.”

  Typically, the first thing Bradley wanted to see was the wounded. He toured the hospitals and talked to the men for several hours. He was gratified to see the fresh medical personnel moving in to take over from others who looked like they were dead on their feet. As always, he was sincerely moved, and they responded to him. He noticed German and American wounded were together while the Russians were separate. After all, they were still at war and they were still prisoners even though they didn’t look like they had any fight left in them. The Russians smiled and nodded at everyone who passed by.

  It was much later before he had a chance to sit down with Miller and talk over the situation.

  “I lost a third of my men dead and wounded in that last attack, Brad. I really thought they were going to smash their way in. They had those damned big tanks and there wasn’t anything we could do to stop them. Behind those tanks they had numbers equivalent to almost a whole field army. We would have killed a lot of them, but they might have killed all of us. When the air force came and started bombing from such low height, I knew the Reds were in for it.”

  Bradley chuckled. “Some of the higher brass wanted to bomb from greater altitude for safety’s sake. The pilots and crews wouldn’t hear of it. Many of those boys who bombed the Reds were the same ones who dropped supplies to you during the siege. I think they kind of adopted you people and were angry at the thought of losing you.”

  Miller nodded appreciatively. “Well, whatever the reason, it worked, even though they had to drop their bomb loads on our own lines and caused some casualties among our troops. It was war and it had to be done. And I have never seen anything as terrible as napalm.”

  “Then,” said Bradley sadly, “you haven’t seen what the atomic bomb did.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Puff, it was as bad as anything I’ve ever dreamed. We will never know the total butcher’s bill for that first bomb, but it looks like about thirty thousand Russian dead and another eighty thousand wounded. Worse, there are at least a hundred thousand more suffering from various levels of radiation sickness. Many of them will die within the next few weeks and months and there’s nothing we can do to treat it. The second bomb, dropped on Koniev’s troops, was just about as bad.

  “Even with precautions, we still had a couple of hundred of our boys killed or wounded by the bomb. Some were blinded by the flash, while others suffered broken bones from falls and crashes. Saddest were the handful of our soldiers who got too close afterward and got radiation poisoning. We also lost three brave OSS men who pinpointed Zhukov and died for their efforts.”

  “What about Zhukov and Chuikov?”

  “Not found and presumed dead, and Koniev is reported to be badly wounded. There are areas near the center of the explosion that we won’t be able to enter for a long time, and only then with protective clothing on. The net result is that the First Belorussian Army Front no longer exists, and Koniev’s First Ukrainian Front has been decimated. It’s as if my entire Twelfth Army Group had been destroyed.”

  Miller shuddered. “It’s awful. But it’s ending the war, isn’t it?”

  “It appears that way. Let me give you a rundown. The Germans and British in the Netherlands are now south of Hamburg and have linked up with the British airborne who retook Bremen. Alexander has Dempsey’s British troops moving south to meet Patton, who has crossed the Weser and is running free in the Russians’ rear. He’s approaching Brunswick if he hasn’t taken it already. There’s very little resistance. When our two armies do meet up, there will likely be a very empty bag, as so many of the Russians were either killed or wounded by the blasts or have already surrendered. The experts were right. Without their senior commanders, the Russians don’t know what to do.

  “Rokossovsky is pulling his Second Belorussian Front back as quickly as he can.”

  “Will we stop?”

  Bradley grinned. “Did the Russians? No, we will continue on. There have been some political changes. Truman managed to inform the Soviets that we have other bombs and told them we wouldn’t hesitate to use them on any target we wanted, and that included Leningrad and Moscow. The air force thinks they are both out of reach and too dangerous, but the Russians don’t know that. According to overtures from Molotov, the Russians are willing to return to their prewar boundaries east of Poland if we’ll leave them to withdraw in peace. I think those terms will be accepted.”

  “I think I may have fought my last campaign,” Miller said.

  “I understand, Chris. Maybe I have too. I mentioned we’ve been talking with Molotov. Well, no one’s heard from Stalin for the last few days. There’s a rumor that there’s been a coup and he’s been toppled. He may even be dead.”

  Miller chuckled. “That’d be nice.”

  “You won’t get an argument from me, Chris. It also seems that the Japs may have gotten the message. They understand how much we hate them and have figured that if we’d use the bomb on white Europeans, we’d have no qualms about bombing their cities and their culture into ashes along with their yellow skins. They may be as racially bigoted as we are, but they’re not stupid. It may be too early, but we’ll see.”

  Miller had mixed emotions about the Japanese. While he wanted no more war, he wondered if they, like the Germans, might get off too lightly considering the atrocities both nations had committed.

  Bradley continued. “Where’s your German tank commander? I’d like to meet him.”

  “Von Schumann left yesterday for Hamburg. Too many of the civilians he had been protecting were killed in the battle, and he was having a hard time dealing with it. That and the fact that the man is desperate to find his family.”

  The thought saddened Bradley. He could barely imagine the torment of someone who had to search a ravaged continent for loved ones who might be dead. Silently, he wished von Schumann well.

  “One more thing,” Bradley asked. “Are those three boys still under wraps?”

  “The soldier and the two refugees who shot Bazarian? Sure, but why?”

  Bradley shook his head. “For some reason, the higher-ups want it still believed that a Russian NKVD officer tried to kill an Armenian general. The OSS says that Bazarian will survive his wounds and has linked up with several thousand Armenian soldiers who are going crazy with anger at the Russians. The OSS likes that and thinks it might contribute to the further instability of the Soviet Union. Ours not to judge. Give our boy a medal and a promotion and order him not to talk. As to the two Poles, they can immigrate to the United States if they swear to keep what they did a secret.” />
  They turned as a couple of young men approached them and saluted. They wore the insignia of war correspondents.

  “How’re you doing, boys?” asked Miller.

  “We’re doing fine, General,” said the older of the two. “We’re gonna give this place and these boys the story they deserve.”

  “That’s great.”

  “But, sir. We’re puzzled. What happened to the guy who was here?”

  “Oh,” said Miller, “you mean Ames. I understand he flew out about a week ago. You mean nobody’s heard from him?”

  “Not a peep, sir. Damn, that’s a shame.”

  CHAPTER 31

  The calendar on Harry Truman’s desk told him it was January 7, 1946. The wars had been over for several months now and it was time to commence the rebuilding.

  Truman looked up at the distinguished-looking man who still looked a little ill at ease in civilian clothes. However, he looked refreshed and healthy. A few weeks’ paid vacation in Florida on the order of the president will do that.

  “Please be seated, General Marshall, we have so much that needs to be accomplished and so little time.”

  Marshall did as requested. “I know, sir.”

  “Have you considered? Will you serve as my secretary of state?” Stettinius had resigned to return to the private sector. “To be frank, General, I had considered nominating Jim Byrnes, but he’s been a little too controversial in the past. For this job we need a man of integrity, and that, sir, is you.”

  Marshall flushed slightly at the compliment. “I don’t know if I deserve all that, but I will serve and I will do my best.”

  Truman could not help but be relieved. “Excellent.”

  “I do have some plans for the rebuilding of Europe and Asia, but they will be expensive.”

  “General, the price of peace cannot be as expensive as the cost of war. This time we must win that peace. What can you tell me now?”

  “To begin with, Mr. President, we have been able to feed just about everyone in Europe and Japan. Nobody’s getting fat, but there’s food and people will survive. In Asia, however, there are parts of China where we cannot go because of the fighting between the Communists and the Nationalists.”