Order of Battle

by Ib Melchior

  Gerhardt was no petty official.

  There were plenty of those in Nazi Germany. Arrogant and haughty enough in their dealings with the public, but when confronted with authority, cringing and servile; the little German Beamte—the civil servant—a breed all his own. Erik knew them well from his travels in prewar Germany, and the stamp didn’t fit Anton Gerhardt.

  But Erik got nowhere with his questioning. Gerhardt stuck to his story. Things were bad in Budweis. Chaotic. The threat of Russian occupation created panic among the Germans. Orderly and regular functions had come to a standstill in the postal services, and he— Gerhardt—thought it best to return to Germany. The man seemed confident, and Erik had no proof that he was not, in fact, telling the truth.

  Except for a damned insolent little smile that never left the man’s face. And the hunch.

  Erik studied him. “I don’t believe your story,” he said flatly. His German was faultless.

  Gerhardt shrugged. “It is the truth.”

  “I’m not buying it”

  The German remained silent. Erik regarded him dispassionately. He spoke matter-of-factly:

  “You realize, of course, that if you don’t tell me the truth, someone else, with more time, will have to get it out of you.”

  The German smiled thinly. “You are making a threat? Physical violence?” There was faint mockery in his tone. “Forgive me, but now it is I who cannot believe you. I know American officers are too civilized to resort to that kind of—of Russian barbarism. And I am telling the truth.”

  That was when Erik knew what he had to do.

  He got up and walked over to the man standing before his desk. Slowly, deliberately he walked around him.

  “So you believe we won’t lay a hand on you?” he asked casually.

  “Of course,” Gerhardt answered. “I am an educated man. I never believed the propaganda ravings of Dr. Goebbels. They were designed for the more gullible.”

  “And you are not gullible.”

  “I am not.”

  “You’re too clever to be fooled, is that it?”

  “I am.”

  “But you still belonged to the Nazi party, didn’t you? Supported it?”

  Gerhardt didn’t answer. This was getting nowhere, he thought.

  He had been right; the Americans were fools. He felt gratified. It was as he had known it would be. That boy would never get anything out of him with his stupid questions. They had no idea of how to conduct an interrogation properly. How different, if the situation had been reversed!

  “And being so clever, you’ve figured out that we won’t rough you up a bit to get the truth.” Erik interrupted his thoughts.

  Gerhardt shrugged. “But you have the truth. Also, you go by the Geneva Conventions.”

  Erik nodded. “No rough stuff.”

  “Yes. No physical violence against prisoners.”

  Erik studied the German thoughtfully.

  “Do you know where you are now?” he asked.

  “No, I do not know. But I can guess. The American Sicherheitsdienst?’

  “Close enough. I’m a special agent in the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps. And it’s my job to get you to talk. Right now!”

  Gerhardt looked curiously at the young man facing him. He wondered what his rank was. The American wore no insignia of any kind—no rank, no branch, no unit—only two yellow-brass U.S. officers’ emblems on the collar tabs of his olive drab wool U.S. Army shirt. Tall, well built. A good, strong Aryan face—and so young. Twenty-five? No more. A boy sent to do a man’s job, he thought.

  “I have already talked,” he said patiently. “And you have my identification papers.”

  “Papers can be false.”

  “They can also be real. Mine are.” He shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of resignation. “I have told you the truth.”

  “Not quite.” Erik made his voice suddenly cold. “But you will!”

  Gerhardt’s thin-lipped smile drew down at the corners of his mouth. “But you will not—rough me up, as you put it, to make me say what you want to hear.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I have studied about America. I know what the Americans are like. You are fair. You do not consider a man guilty before his guilt is proved.” He smiled. “You are trying to frighten me. To intimidate me. You think if I know something I will tell you, because I am afraid.” Again he shrugged. “But you see, I know nothing. I have told you the truth about me.”

  Erik watched the German. He appeared to be entirely at ease. He believed what he was saying. No one was going to hurt him. Not the Americans. Not the soft, decadent democrats. He stepped in front of the man. He looked squarely at him.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said pleasantly. “You and I are going to play a little game.”

  Gerhardt looked at the CIC agent as if he were looking at a backward child who was being particularly exasperating. Erik continued:

  “Here are the rules. Very simple. You will stand at attention, and I will ask you questions. Every time you tell a lie, I’ll knock you across the room!”

  The faint smirk never left Gerhardt’s face. He drew himself to attention. He was humoring the childish American. Erik stood directly in front of him.

  “Do you come from Budweis?” he asked.

  “I do.”

  “Is the car you’re driving yours?”

  “It is.”

  “Were you a member of the Nazi party?”

  Gerhardt hesitated. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

  “Of course.”

  “Good. As a civil servant you’d have to be.” He stepped a little closer to the German.

  “Were you a post office employee?”

  “Yes.”

  And Erik hit the German as hard as he could. The blow knocked the man off his feet and slammed him sprawling against the wall. Incredulously Gerhardt brought his hand to his face; there was a touch of bright red at the corner of his mouth. He was unaware of it as he stared up at the CIC agent looming above him.

  Erik’s voice was harsh.

  “On your feet!”

  Gerhardt stayed on the floor. His smirk was gone.

  “Los! We’ve just started our little game! Aufstehen! Get up!”

  Gerhardt stared at him. The American had hit him. He had been proved wrong. Where else was he wrong? What else might happen to him? Were the Americans just like the Russians after all? Or like—like his own? The world of logical certainties he had built so carefully and shored up with wishful thinking was collapsing. . . .

  “Well?”

  Gerhardt seemed to sag.

  “Were you a post office employee?”

  Gerhardt slowly stood up. A little of his dignity returned, but his arrogant condescension was gone.

  Had he been like that from the start, Erik thought, I would have believed him. He said:

  “Let’s have it!”

  Gerhardt felt naked, unprotected. His rational convictions crumpled in a card house collapse, he had nowhere to seek asylum. He drew himself up with pathetic pride.

  “I am Standartenführer Gerhardt Wilke,” he said.

  “Your position?” Erik snapped.

  “Chief of Gestapo in Budweis.”

  Erik returned to his desk. He didn’t have to look in the book. The man was a mandatory arrestee. He called:

  “Murphy!”

  Sergeant Jim Murphy entered the room. Erik nodded toward the German. He suddenly felt tired.

  “We’ve got ourselves a Gestapo colonel, Jim,” he said wearily.

  Murphy shot a curious glance at Gerhardt.

  “Give him something to write with. He’s going to put down his entire Nazi career for us.” He looked at the Gestapo officer.

  “Verstanden?"

  The man nodded. “Jawohl.”

  “When he’s through put him in the enclosure. We’ll want to talk to him again.”

  “Okay, sir.” Murphy turned to the Nazi. “Come on. Let’s go.”
<
br />   For a moment Erik sat at his desk. He’d caught another one. He should feel good about it, but his thoughts were bleak.

  It was the first time he’d used physical force in the literally hundreds of cases, and the thousands of subjects, he’d investigated since splashing ashore at Omaha Beach more than ten months before. He’d always felt that to do so would put him on a par with the Nazis.

  He suddenly recalled, word for word, the bitter argument he’d had with a line officer who’d beaten up a PW.

  “Your lily-livered methods won’t get you anywhere,” the man had told him contemptuously. “There’s only one way to deal with those bastards. Beat the shit out of them! Make them talk! Be as ornery—as unscrupulous—as they are.”

  “And what does that do?” he’d countered. “Make them right? Or us wrong?”

  “What’s the matter with you? You afraid to sacrifice one of your precious principles?”

  “One? And then maybe another? And one more? Where do we stop?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake! All you have to do is show them. . . .”

  “And if that’s not enough? . . .”

  “Dammit, man! What’s more important? The creature comforts of a bunch of fucking Krauts, or a few hundred GIs ending up wearing mattress covers?”

  Erik sighed. He had not been able to agree.

  And now?

  He’d just struck a man, a suspect, with all the force he could muster. And at that single moment he’d wanted to strike him. Was he then becoming like—them? After all this time? All the pressure?

  He quickly derailed his train of thought. Hell of a time to get morbid, he thought. What I need is some bunk fatigue. Pretty damned soon!

  Okay. So he’d knocked the Kraut down. But, dammit, it had been the right thing to do!

  This time.

  Would it have been right if the man actually had been telling the truth? . . .

  It had been a textbook case. Just as he’d been taught at Camp Ritchie in Maryland by the IPWs: Do the unexpected. Break the prisoner as quickly as possible. Once he’d discovered the cornerstone of the man’s defenses, he’d had no choice but to knock it out.

  He sighed. He felt bone tired. Well, he’d asked for it. And in writing!

  He remembered the letter he’d written to the War Department, dated December 8, 1941. . . .

  He had graduated from the University of Minneapolis, after majoring in journalism, only a few months before and had returned to his native Rochester. He had been born and raised in that Minnesota town, and he felt closely tied to it. His father, Christian Larsen, had come to Rochester in 1913 from the Finsen Light Institute in Copenhagen to work as a radiation expert at the Mayo Clinic and was still there, as head of the department. Four years after he arrived he’d married a young, second-generation Danish-American girl, Karen Borg, and Erik had been born in September 1918.

  Erik spent the eighteen months following his high school graduation with his father’s sister, Aunt Birte, in Copenhagen. He studied languages and psychology at the university and spent his vacations bicycling through Europe and skiing in Norway in the winter. It was because of his intimate knowledge of Denmark, and France and Germany and their languages, that he felt he could be of special use in some military intelligence capacity, and that was what he suggested in his letter to the War Department, volunteering his services.

  Less than a week after he’d written, he received a note acknowledging his letter. It said: “This will acknowledge receipt of your recent application for Military Intelligence work.” It was on impressive stationery, headed “WAR DEPARTMENT GENERAL STAFF, Military Intelligence Division, G-2.” It was signed by a captain in MIS.

  A few days later he got another letter of acknowledgment saying substantially the same thing, but signed by a lieutenant commander, USNR. And the next day a third letter, this time signed by a civilian. He was by now totally perplexed, and his confusion was not diminished when, during the next couple of months, he got strange looks from his friends and acquaintances—including his barber—and even an occasional concerned postcard from people in places he’d visited. Finally, the direct query: “Hey! What’ve you been up to? The FBI was around asking questions about you!” made him realize he was being investigated thoroughly.

  One day he got a phone call from a young woman. She referred to his letter to the War Department and asked him to meet with two officers, a colonel and a captain, for a personal interview. Strangely, she set up the meeting at an obscure little hotel in downtown Rochester. Erik went, of course. The two men, both in civilian clothes, were friendly and relaxed. They offered him a good stiff drink before getting down to their talk—and Erik remembered very little after that. There was one thing he recalled quite clearly. A question. Perhaps the nature of it had startled him enough to make an impression. The colonel had casually asked, “Tell me, Larsen, how would you feel about sticking a knife in a man’s back?” But try as he would, he wasn’t able to remember what he’d replied. He vaguely remembered mentioning a local hardware store owned by a good friend and feeling very loyal to that store, insisting that his friend supply the knife! He returned to the hotel the next day to apologize for his peculiar performance, but the two men were not there. In fact, the hotel management protested they’d never heard of them. And Erik never heard from them either.

  But after three months he received another letter, this time signed by a Navy lieutenant. It contained a questionnaire the length of the Encyclopaedia Britannica for him to fill out, and the letter asked when, at his earliest convenience, he could put his personal affairs in order and report for duty. It didn’t say what duty. He wrote back: “You name the place and the time, and I’ll be there,” and he received a wire, stamped with the little red wartime star of officialdom, asking him to call a certain executive number in Washington, D.C. He did. He had a very nice conversation with a sexy-voiced girl, who instructed him to report a week later to Temporary Building Q. “Be prepared to remain out of communication with anyone for at least three months,” she said sweetly, “and bring nothing but your toothbrush!”

  When he reported to Temporary Building Q in Washington on the specified date he was shown to the office of the Navy lieutenant who had written to him earlier, Lieutenant Martin Harris. Harris occupied a long, narrow office. He was a stern-faced man with a great mane of prematurely gray hair. He looked up when Erik entered. “Come in, Larsen,” he said. “And close the door behind you.”

  Erik did. Lieutenant Harris studied him searchingly. “When you stepped across that threshold,” he said dramatically, “you lost your identity!” Erik almost turned around to look, but he caught himself in time. Harris pulled a piece of paper from his desk drawer and held it out to Erik. “Did you write this?” he asked. Erik looked at the paper. Indeed he’d written it. It was his own letter to the War Department. “Fine,” said Harris. He shoved another paper toward Erik. “Sign this.”

  It was a simple document, brief and to the point: “I hereby volunteer for hazardous duty, no questions asked,” and there was a space for his signature and that of a witness. Harris, presumably.

  Startled, Erik wondered exactly what he was getting himself into. Harris glared at him, and he was thoroughly intimidated. He didn’t have the nerve to refuse. He signed.

  Harris witnessed his signature. He looked up at Erik. “About your identity,” he said. “From now on you will be known as Lars G-8. That and nothing else! Your true identity must not become known to anyone through you. Is that clear?”

  Erik understood what Harris was saying—but clear? He nodded. Harris told him that for the next three months he would be in special training, incommunicado. “The others will try to find out who you are,” he cautioned. “Don’t let them. You try to find out who they are instead.”

  The whole rigmarole made not the slightest sense to Erik, but he dutifully nodded his head.

  “Have you got your toothbrush?” Harris asked. Erik showed him.

  “Good. Take off y
our clothes.”

  Erik stared at the officer.

  “All of them,” Harris ordered. He got up and took out a large paper bag from a closet. He gave it to Erik. “Put everything in there,” he said. And presently Erik stood facing the Navy officer as naked as a navy bean, clutching his toothbrush.

  “That’s all!” Harris dismissed him. He indicated a door. “Go through there. You’ll be told what to do.”

  Erik had very little choice. He did exactly as he was ordered—and walked into a large room filled with about three hundred people, or so it seemed.

  He stopped short. He held on to his toothbrush as the only link to sanity, and surveyed the situation.

  There were actually about thirty men in the room. All of them stark naked. All of them more or less nonchalantly grasping a toothbrush. All of them politely bent on carrying on a stream of small talk.

  Erik quickly entered into the spirit of things and was soon enagaged in an animated discussion about the life expectancy of a “temporary building” like Building Q with a young man possessed of an extremely hairy chest, and another, impressively hung young man with a prominent appendix scar. Everyone was pointedly steering away from anything remotely personal—a not inconsequential feat under the circumstances.

  Nothing was settled, the fate of Building Q remained undecided, when finally everyone was issued GI fatigues and loaded onto two large trucks. The trucks were closed up—hermetically, it seemed— and during the trip, which lasted a good part of the night, no one could make out where they were going.

  It wasn’t until four weeks later that Erik found out he’d ended up with the Office of Strategic Services—the OSS!

  By that time he was already well into the basic training program and settled down in OSS training camp B-5, hidden away in remote, wooded hill country. His class numbered thirty-six. The morning after they arrived at the camp they’d all been herded out at 6 A.M. They were taken to an isolated spot outside camp and found themselves in a small cemetery. There were several graves marked simply with a code-name and a number. And one open pit. Ready. Here they were introduced to their class instructor. Porter was his name. He told them that they were facing a tough course. Too tough for some. Not everyone made it, for one reason or another. And he casually indicated the graves. Then he took an Army .45 automatic from his belt holster and showed it to the group of sleepy recruits. He realized that some of them had little, if any, military training, he said. Patiently he demonstrated that one end of the gun was called the butt and the other the muzzle. “There is a big difference,” he explained, “at what end you find yourself. Like this!” And he suddenly fired the gun, emptying the clip at the group of badly startled men facing him, the bullets whizzing closely by to slam into a dirt mound behind them. Some of the men flinched but stood their ground; others hit the dirt, and a few took off. Erik was too petrified to move. The whole crazy performance was witnessed by two silent, grim-looking men, who took notes in small black books. The next day the class was down to twenty-eight.