by Ib Melchior
Already the villagers had begun the clean-up after the fighting. Some of the farmers were busy taking care of their livestock in the fields, some were even attending to urgent farm chores interrupted by the battle. The war had touched their lives, quickly, frighteningly, and moved on, but their livelihoods still needed tending.
A small group of elderly men, gingerly picking their way along the road shoulder, approached Slater’s command tank. They had an air of dignified authority about them. They stopped at the tank and looked up at Slater, standing in the turret. One of them, hat in hand, took a step forward.
“Ich bin Ortsbauernführer Tiemann, Herr Offizier,” he said, his voice shaking with emotion. His eyes, deep-set in a weathered, wrinkled face, were bright with tears. “Ich—ich möchte—”
On the road General Thurston’s jeep drove by. The general called to Slater:
“Well done, Bob! And remember—look for that third way out!”
Slater threw a salute at the general, who returned it.
“Yes, sir,” he called, a huge grin on his young face.
The jeep drove off. Slater turned to the Germans. The old man went on:
“Wir danken Ihnen, Herr Offizier. Sie haben uns das Leben gerettet! Bitte, wir—”
Slater shook his head.
“No sprechen sie German,” he said. “I don’t know what you want.” He motioned toward the village. “Go back. Go back to your homes!”
The old German bowed. The others bowed.
“Vielen Dank, Herr Offizier! Sehr vielen Dank!”
With great dignity the men turned and started toward the village.
Slater called across the road.
“Barker! We move out in fifteen minutes!”
Sergeant Barker acknowledged. He surveyed his men. They were in good shape. He looked around. In the field behind him an odd-Jooking wagon, drawn by a team of plodding horses, was slowly moving across the soil. It was a manure wagon; a large wooden tank, like a huge long beer barrel on sturdy wheels. A lone elderly fanner sat on the driver’s seat. Lazily he swatted the ancient horses with a long whip, as the beasts dragged the heavy wagon along, leaving a thin spray of fertilizer on the freshly plowed ground.
Unemotionally the farmer looked at the military activity on the road. It was of no importance to him, his attitude seemed to convey. Preparing the soil, that was important. And they had interrupted him. First the SS. Then the Americans fighting them. Now he could continue what was important. There was still an hour of daylight left. He would not be kept from using it. Not even by a war.
Barker eyed the wagon. He was faintly annoyed at the utter lack of interest the farmer took in him and his men. Hadn’t they just beat the shit out of his “supermen"? He turned to two of his men lying flat on their backs on the side of the ditch.
“Hey! Kowalski! Davis!” he called. “Go check on that rig out there.”
The men looked outraged.
“Aw, come on, Sarge!” they complained in unison.
“Get a move on, dammit!” Barker snapped. He was in no mood to argue. The men got to their feet. Kowalski looked at the sergeant. His expression was one of utter disgust. Barker glared at him.
“And wipe that opinion off your face, or I’ll do it for you. Now move!”
“Okay, okay,” Kowalski grumbled. “Don’t get your balls in an uproar.”
The men started toward the wagon.
Barker watched them. He took a swig from his canteen. The men were sidling up to the wagon, which had stopped.
Barker kept an eye on the men. Just in case. They seemed to be concentrating on staying upwind from the rig. Kowalski circled the wagon, while Davis looked the driver over. Then they beat a hasty retreat.
When they came back to Barker they plopped down on the ground beside him.
“I wisht I hadn’t thrown away my gas mask,” Kowalski complained. “That damned thing’s full of shit!”
“That ain’t what it is, you dumb jerk,” Davis corrected him. “They call it ‘natural fertilizer.’ ”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t give a damn what they call it—it still stinks! Like a whole company couldn’t keep a tight asshole under fire!”
Barker looked at the men sourly.
“Okay,” he said. “You look it over good?”
“Sure. Nothing.” Kowalski eyed the sergeant. “What’d you expect us to find? Hitler’s secret weapon?” He looked toward the wagon. “Peeee-hew!” he said with feeling. “I knew them Krauts were full of shit, but I didn’t know they were spreading it around.”
Barker was about to snap at him, when Slater called from the road:
“Move them out, Sergeant!”
Barker got to his feet.
“Okay, you guys. Let’s go!”
The driver of the manure wagon dispassionately watched the GI’s move out. He scratched his left arm. He’d wanted to do it ever since the two Americans came over and he had suddenly begun to itch. The longer he waited, the more insistently he itched, but he’d deliberately kept himself from scratching as long as the soldiers were watching him.
He wondered why. He knew it would not have mattered. He knew they’d done a perfect job back at Thürenberg. There was no scar, no sign of the tattoo. Nothing to worry about.
He checked the time, squinting at a big vest-pocket watch.
Verflucht! he thought with annoyance. They’d put him behind schedule.
He swatted the horses a couple of times with his long whip. “Kür! Kür!” he called to the beasts as they leaned into their harnesses, jerked the wheels of the heavy wagon from their ruts and slowly moved along. The farmer carefully fished a small object from his vest pocket. He held it in his cupped hand. He glanced at it.
It was a compass.
He pulled on the reins, altering his course slightly. He checked the compass again before putting it back in his pocket, and stopped the wagon.
With great care he placed his whip firmly in two metal clamps on the side of the driver’s seat.
He climbed down, walked to the rear of the wagon and turned off the spray of liquid manure. From a rack he hauled down a couple of sackcloth feedbags and walked with them toward the horses, which were watching him expectantly.
As he walked past the barrel body of the manure wagon he gave a couple of sharp raps on the wood with his knuckles.
Pitterman heard the raps.
He felt relief flooding him like a physical release. He hadn’t realized how tense his body had grown. When the warning raps had come a few minutes earlier he’d at once doused the light. . . .
He sat in utter darkness, utterly silent. He knew something was wrong, something was going on outside, and he strained to hear. But the only sound he could make out was the quick, rhythmic surge of his own blood, pounding in his ears.
He sat waiting. Tense. Taut. Alone.
The stench in his cramped cubicle suddenly became stifling to him. He was nauseated. He felt an overpowering urge to get out. Had they been discovered? Would a burst of submachine gun fire suddenly riddle the tank? What a way to die—huddled inside a stinking shit wagon!
He was suddenly angry. It was a great idea to put a compact mobile radio transmitter/receiver in one half of a working manure wagon. Who’d ever think to look there? A prima idea—if you were not the one cooped up inside for hours at a time. Waiting . . .
What the hell was going on out there? He strained to hear. Nothing . . .
The wagon slowly began to move. He could hear the liquid manure sloshing in the rear half of the tank. He gagged. Then he concentrated on figuring out what was going on outside.
The wagon was moving. Was it being lined up for directional transmission? Or was it being driven off someplace for examination?
It stopped. He heard the whip being placed in the holding clamps. He knew the metal core of the long whip was part of the directional antenna, which ran down each side of the tank, strung along the inside walls on insulator tabs. He knew the clamps completed the contact. The s
ystem was ready. But was the driver actually preparing for transmission? Or was he following orders from some enemy captor?
He heard the driver climb down and turn off the manure spray, and then came the raps—“Clear to transmit.”
Pitterman turned on the single light bulb. It glared off the sheet metal insulating his unorthodox radio shack.
He looked at his watch. They were two minutes late; in another minute contact could no longer be established. Quickly he went over his checklist. Batteries connected, compass azimuth heading correct; time/location table; frequency; recognition signal. He put on his earphones, checked the panel and began to send his call letters. Almost immediately his earphones started to emit the faint beeps of a message coming through.
Pitterman listened intently. For a while he wrote on a pad in the light of the single bulb. Then he signed off, and at once began to relay the transmission. . . .
Weiden
1739 hrs
A crisp dusk was already settling over the little town of Weiden when Erik and Don returned from Corps HQ.
They entered the jail and walked quickly toward the Interrogation Room. Erik felt keyed up. He and Don had laid their plans at Corps and started the ball rolling from there. Things had gone well. There’d been less than the usual snafu. At the door he turned to Don.
“Better pick up a couple of K rations, too. No telling how long we’ll be on the go.”
“Right.”
He pushed open the door. . . .
The girl had been crying. It was the first thing he noticed. He felt a quick surge of pity for her. She looked so damned vulnerable. He glanced away from her, acutely aware of doing so. Sergeant Murphy was sitting behind the desk. Erik glared at him.
Murphy was leaning back in his chair nonchalantly, smoking a cigarette, toying with a pencil and looking studiously self-important. He jumped to his feet.
“Oh! Hello, sir!” His surprised look changed to an embarrassed grin. “I—uh—I . . .”
He was fishing around for a face saver. He found it. He gestured toward Anneliese.
“You’ve got a visitor,” he announced brightly. “I’m sure you remember her, sir. But there’s some kind of trouble,” he finished lamely.
Erik remained silent. He scowled at the scene before him. Murphy began edging toward the door.
“Well—uh—if you don’t need me anymore, sir, I’ll—uh . . .”
He looked from one of the officers to the other.
“I thought maybe I could—help.” He was at the door.
“Thank you, Sergeant Murphy,” Don said pointedly. And Murphy was gone.
Don looked after him with a grin. Erik walked over to Anneliese. He was all right now. He looked at her.
“Now, what’s this all about?” he asked quietly. “I thought you’d be on your way by now.”
The girl looked up at him, her big eyes moist with misery.
“Yes, but—it’s only that I—I can’t . . .” Her voice broke. She lowered her head and began to cry softly. From the door Don called:
“Erik!”
Erik joined him. Don nodded toward the girl.
“Don’t get involved in anything now. We haven’t got much time.”
“I know!” Erik sounded sharper than he’d intended. It confused him. “We’re due at the farm in”—he glanced at his wristwatch—“in two hours. We’ll make it.”
“Not if you start playing Sir Galahad, we won’t. She could spell trouble.”
Erik felt a sudden flash of anger.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” he flared. “Do you have to find a witch on every broom?”
Don looked at him in surprise. He shrugged.
“Okay, old buddy,” he said pleasantly. “It’s your bonfire.”
He turned to leave. Erik stopped him.
“Look, Don,” he started. He glanced toward the girl. She had stopped crying and was drying her tears. What the hell’s the matter with me? he thought fiercely. It’s my problem. No good taking it out on Don. My damned problem, and I can’t keep walking away from it. “The kid’s in trouble.”
“Who isn’t?”
“She’s scared. Maybe I can straighten things out in a few minutes.”
“Oh, sure!”
“Why don’t you start getting the gear together? I’ll join you right away.”
“Sure you will!” Don looked at Erik. He shook his head in mock exasperation. “Okay. Go rescue your damsel in distress. But don’t fuck up the mission!”
He walked from the room. Erik went over to Anneliese. He looked at her.
“All right, Anneliese,” he said. “Now tell me what’s the trouble.”
“They will not give me a pass at your military government,” the girl blurted out. “To travel. To go home to Regensburg!” Her troubles came spilling out. “They say the road is closed for civilians. For many days closed. But I cannot stay here. I do not know anybody. And the other officer, he said I could go home. You heard him say I could go home! And you said—”
Erik interrupted her.
“Take it easy,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get it straightened out.”
She looked up at him hopefully. He started toward the door.
“Come on. I’ll take you over to the military government myself. We’ll find out what’s up.”
He felt oddly satisfied.
Only a few civilians were in the street outside the jail, hurrying to get home before darkness and curfew.
Erik did see the small flare of the match being struck diagonally across the street. It stabbed a pinpoint of light upon his peripheral vision, but it did not reach his conscious mind, which was struggling with the presence of Anneliese. Much less did he connect it with himself.
The man, standing in the deeper shadows of a boarded-up doorway to an empty house, lit a cigarette butt. The striking of the match and the lighting of the butt were done in a fluid motion, although the man had only one arm. For a brief moment the flame illuminated his face. One eye was covered by a patch. It was Heinz.
On the side street around the corner of the jail, another man was kneeling in front of a time-scarred bicycle, fixing its chain. The bicycle, leaning against the wall of the building, was loaded with bundled-up house gear and string-wrapped cardboard boxes. A torn knapsack was latched to the rusty handlebars.
When the match flared across the street, the man stood up. He tugged at his dirty leather cap and pulled the bicycle from the wall. Pushing it alongside, he rounded the corner of the building and trudged on down the street a short distance behind Erik and Anneliese. The old bicycle had no tires. The naked wheel rims clanked metallically on the cement-slab sidewalk. The man plodded on. He never took his eyes from the two people in front of him. It was Krauss.
A few houses down the street from the jail, a building had received a direct hit. Rubble and broken masonry had spilled from the ruins out across the sidewalk into the street. Two men had been clearing a narrow path through the debris. They were in the process of loading their tools and a few pieces of salvageable lumber on a wooden cart as Erik and Anneliese approached. The clattering bicycle behind them was loud in the quiet. The two workers looked up.
Erik let the girl go through the passage first, then he started after her. He was halfway through. . . .
Suddenly the man loading the cart appeared to slip on a loose brick. He fell, and slammed against Erik’s legs in a low tackle.
Erik went down.
He hit the ground at the feet of the second man. He looked up.
For a fraction of a second time stood still for him, his eyes locked on the German towering directly over him. The man’s face was distorted with fanatic hate; a pickax, gripped by two white-knuckled fists, was raised high above his head.
The man brought the pickax down in a vicious stroke. Straight for Erik’s upturned face. It seemed to obliterate the world above him.
He wrenched his head aside. For an instant he knew he hadn’t made it. Then the pickax crashed in
to the rubble inches away, showering his face with stinging chips of mortar and brick.
He twisted away, reaching for the gun in his shoulder holster.
He was sharply aware of his two assailants. The man who had fallen against him was scrambling to get up; the man with the pickax was struggling to regain his balance.
Erik’s fingers found the reassuring cool solidity of his gun.
Suddenly, Anneliese cried out:
“Pass auf!”
Instantly Erik twisted around. He lost his grip on the gun. Immediately behind him stood Krauss. He was aiming a savage kick at Erik’s temple with his hobnailed boot.
The girl’s warning had come just in time. Erik’s hands shot up and caught Krauss’s foot as it came hurtling toward his head. He didn’t have the strength or leverage to stop the force of the kick, but he managed to deflect the heavy boot. The steel-reinforced toe of the boot hit him on the neck with jarring impact. He didn’t feel it. He hung onto the boot with all his strength, and Krauss toppled heavily among the rubble.
He had an unreal sensation of being two people at once. One was strictly an observer. It’s ridiculous, he thought. It can’t be happening. Not to me! The other was acutely aware, with hair-trigger reflexes.
He rolled toward the street and came up on one knee, gun in hand.
One of his assailants was ducking into the street, shielding himself behind the few people who had begun to gather. The other man was also on his feet; he lunged toward.Anneliese and gave her a violent shove, which sent her sprawling in the rubble, and kept running. Erik’s gun instinctively shifted to cover him, but the girl was in his line of fire as she got up from the broken masonry.
Erik whirled toward Krauss. The man was just disappearing behind the remains of a collapsed wall. He squeezed off a shot knowing it would go wild.
He was suddenly aware that he was alone with the girl. The bystanders were slipping away, melting quickly into the dusk, as a couple of GIs came running toward the scene.