The Losing Role

by Steve Anderson

“You’re not gonna be in a tank,” Felix interrupted—thoroughly out of line. And Rattner said, “Exactly. What, baby actor boy doesn’t like his lines? So improvise, Kaspar—that’s the whole point . . .”

  There were perks. They now had American uniforms—for Max, tankers coveralls and windbreaker, a wool GI overcoat that was too short for his taste but thick as a blanket, a warm cap, and decent boots. Felix got the standard GI field jacket, wool pullover sweater and a knit helmet liner cap—a “beanie,” the Amis called it. Felix liked his beanie—“makes even my toes warmer,” he said, and he even liked the sound of the word.

  Two hours into the journey, and still pitch dark out. They were traveling on smoother road now—a mild thump every few seconds, which Max took for an autobahn. Few of them slept. Rocking and rubbing their cold hands together, they muttered their memorized identities to themselves. And they spoke English, frantically and all at once, trying things out.

  “Send us out like this?” Zoock was saying in English. “Here’s your hat what’s your hurry—what kinda bull is that? Really putting our dicks on the table if you ask me.”

  Max, Felix and Braun gaped.

  “Right. My thoughts exactly,” Max said.

  Zoock spat. “Ah, fuggetaboudit—whaterya gonna do?”

  And Braun opened his mouth but came up with nothing.

  “Look what rags they gave me?” Felix said, tugging at his sweater. “Can you believe it?”

  “No, I can hardly believe it,” Max said. “What a mess you look.”

  And Braun blurted: “Roger Braun, Private First Class, serial number three-two-two-four-seven-three-nine-four.”

  They sounded like madmen. They were madmen. Soon they fell into a grim silence. Quite a long way from Doktor Solar’s cozy camp villa, Max thought. He had returned from there with that warmed cognac smile on his face, just like the others. Then it wore off so quickly when lights out came. Of course, everyone who had an appointment with the “Doktor” received the same treatment. That sly Skorzeny probably didn’t finish one complete glass of cognac the whole night—Arno the adjutant just kept topping off the same glass. Put him in a special unit? Induct him into the Waffen-SS? Skorzeny was only making it harder on Max. This was why he kept Felix close to him. Felix may be playing the keen one now, but what about when they were in a real pinch?

  Zoock was teaching Braun how to say “squirrel”—one of the hardest English words for a German.

  Felix nudged Max. “For this you have volunteered me,” he whispered in English. “Didn’t you not?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, young man.”

  “Yes, you do. You hoped to protect me away from Captain Rattner—or him from me, I should say.”

  “What? Well, I—”

  “It’s okay,” Felix said. “Actually, I find myself glad you did. And do you know why that is? That day when Zoock wanted to hit me? You moved to help me. No one does this. I’ll not forget that ever. I always had to fend for myself, you see?”

  “Oh? It was nothing. Still, I regret I failed to do anything about Rattner.”

  “Please, I beg you. Who could?”

  Zoock was shaking his head at them. He slapped a hand to his forehead.

  “What?” Max said. He turned back to Felix. “You know, your accent is good but you need to work on your word order.”

  “Thank you,” Felix said. “I will. And as for you,” he added, smiling, “I’m not so sure you speak like the tank drivers.”

  They fell silent again. One by one, they tried on their blue SOS handkerchiefs. Max tied his around his neck. Felix wrapped his around his wrist, and Zoock let his hang out a back pocket. And Braun blew his nose into his.

  “Mike, Mike.” It was Felix, nudging Max. Max had fallen asleep, his head back against the truck’s tarp roof. He remembered—his name was Mike now, Mike Kopp. “Mike, wake yourself,” Felix was saying.

  “It’s ‘wake up’—not ‘wake yourself.’ Get with it,” Zoock said.

  They had the rear tarp pulled up. It brought a chilling wind and the gray morning light. They saw guard towers with spotlights and high barbwire fences, surrounding a barracks camp that seemed to stretch across the horizon. The truck was turning around and backing up, the gears jolting, and a barbwire gate opened for them. A sign read: “Stammlager VII A.”

  The German guards walked shepherd dogs—“German shepherds” to Americans—along the barbwire fences. The truck halted. A guard peeked in. They waited, listening to more voices and gates closing. “Prisoners, inside!” someone shouted in German.

  “Roger Braun, Roger Braun,” Braun muttered, hugging himself from the cold.

  And Felix gave Max a careful rub on the shoulder as if, Max couldn’t help thinking, Max was a child and it was his first day of school.

  Stammlager VII A was a POW camp for American enlisted men—for GIs, in Ami words. As falsified new prisoners, the sixteen were herded into a hut with a sign that read “Interrogation.” Windows were boarded shut, but enough light showed through the seams between the boards. They got a quick briefing and some stale coffee. “The camp guards know of you and of your blue hankies,” an elderly German captain told them, “but you should not rely on a soul. Clear, boys? Now don’t fuck up our lives too much.”

  The captain gave them cards showing their barracks numbers. Max’s group got 13. The captain left, and some of them fell asleep sitting up. They awoke to a far-off voice barking at measured intervals. “I’m guessing that’s roll call,” Zoock said.

  “Roll call?” someone said.

  “‘Appell.’ Stand up and be counted. Shit, are we in for it.”

  Footsteps. The door flew open bringing a shaft of daylight. Two guards in overcoats stared at them from the doorway. They were middle aged with old-fashioned Hitler-style mustaches. One waved his hand as if to say, come on, come on. The other yelled “Herauf! Raus! Raus raus schnell!”—for the benefit, Max figured, of any American prisoners listening on the other side of the fence.

  Daylight hit them like stage lights and they had to shield their eyes. Yet this helped the role—made them look like prisoners. The guards began a fast march toward the front gate, not bad for two old guys, and Max and the rest had to shuffle out in front. More guards joined in. All were older, it seemed, with the same stubborn look of aging schoolmasters or streetcar conductors. One shouted, “Have a nice stay, Meine Herren,” and they laughed. Max and the rest stared in shock as if they didn’t understand.

  Guards opened the camp gate and let them through. Before them, about a hundred feet away, stretched the largest horde of unkempt men Max had ever seen, all dressed in various shades of olive drab and brown. American GI Prisoners of War.

  They’d sent them in right at the end of roll call. A wave of prisoners was moving toward them. A thousand eyes on them. Max never had such an audience. They plodded on toward the horde, deeper into camp. Zoock slouched and thrust his hands in his pockets, and Max did the same. Body language was everything. “Loosen your backs, stoop your shoulders, that’s it,” Max whispered to Felix and Braun.

  The wave of prisoners began to form a loose gauntlet. Max could make out faces, the abundance of hardy Nordic features. They looked young but haggard and unwashed, like the “Okies” from The Grapes of Wrath. How far they all were from Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska.

  Max, Zoock, Felix and Braun stuck close together while the rest of the sixteen broke off into their groups of four, off in search of their barracks. No one looked back. “Good riddance,” Zoock muttered. He’d taken the lead. They were passing through the gauntlet, the prisoners lining up for a look.

  “Where ya from, Joe?” someone shouted.

  Max hadn’t decided. Somewhere no one was from was best. He blurted “Idaho” and realized he probably couldn’t find it on a map. Was it a state? Or was that Iowa?

  “New Jersey—where else is there?” Zoock was shouting. Felix and Braun didn’t try. They walked with their heads hung. Suddenly th
ey were fine slouches.

  They passed barracks, long rectangular buildings of graying wood. Max peered at the white numbers above each door. They passed Barrack 4, then 5. The gauntlet stretched on.

  “What they do, boys, do yer laundry?”

  Their uniforms were far cleaner than those of the prisoners. “No. How dare they,” Max said and stomped to show he meant this—whatever it was he said.

  “Oooh, get him,” someone shot back, flapping a wrist. Men laughed.

  “Hey Mac, how’d you all score a shave?”

  They were clean-shaven, too. So many blunders.

  “Good luck,” Zoock said. “See how lucky we are?”

  More laughs. The four kept walking, determined as if walking was the only thing not giving them away. Max patted Zoock’s back, pushing him along. A couple men were shaking their heads. They picked up the pace, passing barracks 8, 9, 10, and the gauntlet thinned.

  Barrack 13. The door was open. They strode up the steps and in. The long and vast one-story structure was so crammed it looked like the inside of a messy closet after a great quake. Zoock charged on into this mess and the other three followed, dodging the many obstacles. The double wooden bunks of cheap, splintering wood. The chairs and tables so undersized they could have been built for Kinder—these stood everywhere, at every possible angle. Laundry hung on lines strewn in all directions, forcing them to duck every few feet. Piles of blankets and cans and boxes, so many rough edges and barriers. Max caught a shin on a bunk corner; Felix held onto a bunk ladder and got a sliver; Braun staggered into a pile of wood scraps and sent them flying.

  The barrack was empty of occupants as best as they could tell. No one had followed them. “Where are we going?” Max said finally, and Zoock stopped them about halfway through. They stared at each other.

  Felix threw up his hands. “Where does one sleep?”

  “I am so tired,” Braun said, his eyes wide, his face ashen. “I am Roger-er.”

  The clop-clop-clop of footsteps and the front door swung open with a grating creak. The barracks’ occupants filed in. Max and the three turned to them showing broad smiles that felt strained and sickly on their faces.

  A short and wiry American with black curly hair led the line of prisoners, which seemed to number at least forty and they kept coming. The curly-haired prisoner touched and stroked every angle and corner he passed as if this grim barrack was his beloved submarine and he the commander. Max thought of saluting but saw no visible rank on the curly-haired one, so he waved. The man nodded, kept coming. His jaw had hard angles, just like the bunks. His skin was pocked. His exact age, unknowable—somewhere between mid-twenties and late thirties? Five feet away now. Max held out a hand and the man shook it. Max held up the card with “13” on it.

  “Morning,” he said. “Mike Kopp. It would seem we’re your new guests.”

  “That it would. How-do, Kopp. Cozy, huh? These huts were built for twenty. With you boys, that makes it about sixty.” The curly-haired man had a strange accent to Max—it was slow and rich, taking its time. He placed it somewhere in the American Southwest.

  “At least sixty,” Zoock said, staring at the men still filing in.

  “Say, could ya try the next hotel?” a prisoner said from behind the curly-haired leader. It was a joke. Satire. Irony. American jokes were like that. Max blurted a laugh and the rest followed, overdoing it.

  The curly-haired one never gave his name, Max realized. It seemed very un-American. The prisoners gathered around the four, filling the barracks and cutting off the only exit. If trouble started there’d be little chance of calling for guards, for showing the blue hankies. Then again, the Amis would have to be smarter than just attack them. That would only bring greater punishment. All these thoughts raced through Max’s head as the curly-haired one asked the standard questions. Where ya from? How’s the front? They rough you up any?

  Braun’s accent was showing, so Max explained that the private was from a German community in Minnesota. “Braun, that bumpkin,” Zoock blurted, then something about Braun being Amish, and Max hoped that didn’t make the curly-haired one suspicious, since most Amish people lived in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana.

  “What’s the word? We really home by Christmas?” a prisoner said.

  “I cannot see why not,” Max said. “Look, we have the krauts on the run. We took back Aachen, the last I have heard. We’re in Germany now. Must be only a matter of time.” Max played this up, smiling and slapping his hands together.

  Zoock, Felix, and Braun stared, grimacing. It wasn’t widely known inside Germany that the war was going that badly. Pielau had told Max. Pielau listened to the BBC.

  “Let you get settled some,” the curly-haired one said and stepped aside. Prisoners were clearing off a double bunk for Max and the other three. It meant they would have to double up or find places on the floor. Depressing. Were they going out of their way to keep them together? Could they be isolating them?

  The Americans left them to their new bunk, and the barrack routines began. Men played cards, read, napped, wrote postcard letters. Many knitted, to Max’s wonder—it turned out the Red Cross sent balls of yarn and needles, of all things. And Max noticed the smell of this place—a gritty, oily, greasy aroma that had worked itself into everything. At least the odors of the front were different every day, while this place had the same stale reek all the time.

  Soon Zoock was sleeping up on the top bunk, and so deeply that he snored. This seemed to bother no one but Max. Braun curled up on the floor before the bunk, like an old dog. Before long he slid under the bottom bunk facing the wall, which also seemed to bother no one. Meanwhile, Felix flipped through old US magazines and spoke with Max in English, but they found little to talk about that was harmless. Max thought it best to be interested in the POWs’ world, so he called a young private over and started asking questions about life in a prison camp. The private was helpful, but most of his answers involved slang not even Zoock could have known. “Ferrets” were guards who came at unexpected times and searched the barrack for contraband or tunnels. “Readers” were select POWs who listened to the BBC secretly and visited various barracks, updating the men on the war. “Goons” were the German guards, most of whom had wacky nicknames such as “Schmuck Mug” and “Turkey Neck.” And Max asked about the smell—POWs only got showers twice a month and usually cold water at that.

  At mess the four endured more questions and avoided the petrified stares of the other German undercover GIs. Their meal was a thin gray soup and some dry brown bread. Back in the barrack Max pretended to nap on the bottom bunk, his eyes cracked just enough to watch the prisoners. Men stared and studied them, and others seemed to talk about them in dark corners. All the while, the barrack seemed to have many visitors who sat with the curly-haired one.

  Evening came to the barrack, at long last. The electric lights came on, brown and flickering. Braun was back on the floor under the bunk. Zoock and Felix watched prisoners play a card game called Blackjack. Prisoners tossed an oblong American football down the long room yet managed to hit nothing, not even a clothesline. Someone put on a record—Django Reinhardt playing “Stardust,” of all things, and other men began dancing. Max thought of joining them. That could be fun.

  The curly-haired one was standing before Max. He was not smiling. Max opened his eyes fully and smiled.

  “Have a seat,” the curly-haired one said. He nodded toward a table two bunks down—well out of earshot of Zoock, Max thought. Men had been knitting at the table. Now they were clearing away their yarn and needles.

  Max stopped smiling. “All right.”

  Max’s knees banged at the bottom of the table. They sat opposite each other. “Must be your office, I take it,” Max said.

  Curly-haired nodded. “Espinoza.”

  Was this a slang word? Max nodded.

  “I never told you my name. It’s Espinoza. Manny Espinoza.”

  “Oh, right. Kopp. Mike Kopp.”

  “So you t
old me. I’m a First Sergeant too, Kopp. Not that rank matters much inside Thirteen.” Espinoza lit a Lucky Strike, and aromas of fine Virginia tobacco filled Max’s nostrils—better smokes in here than Germans had at home.

  Espinoza handed Max the cigarette. “Splendid,” Max said. “Thanks.”

  “Thank the Red Cross.” Espinoza watched Max smoke, then hand the Lucky back. “You new kriegies are always cause for excitement. And some head-scratching.”

  “Kriegies?”

  “Short for Kriegsgefangene—POW—just another kraut word that’s about three syllables too long.”

  Back over at the bunk men had gathered around Zoock and Felix, peppering them with questions. A couple others were talking to Braun, who was still under the bunk.

  “I can’t imagine why heads are scratching,” Max said. “We’re just average Joes.”

  “Yeah.” Espinoza picked tobacco from his front teeth. He watched the men talking to Zoock, Felix, and Braun.

  Say something, Max. Anything. “Say, what’s your unit?” Max said.

  “Super Sixth.” Espinoza added a smile—the tobacco still between teeth.

  Super Sixth?—Max needed more, a clue. He smiled.

  “Sixth Armored,” Espinoza said.

  Max slapped a knee. “Hey, I’m from the Armored Forces too.” The Armored forces? What was he saying? “I’m a tanker, I mean. Second Armored—‘Hell on Wheels.’” It said it on his sleeve patch. “See here?”

  “Knew a lug in that outfit,” someone said, off behind Max. They had good ears in here. “Oh?” Max said, not looking back. “Swell.”

  “Knew a couple guys,” Espinoza said. “More than a couple, fact. Lot a guys come through here since ’43. I been in that long. On account a Tunisia. That and a wily kraut named Rommel. You?”

  “Siegfried Line,” Max said. Hoping it was vague enough.

  “What’s yer hot box?”

  Max stared.

  “Your hot box. Tank. Panzer, krauts call it. You know.”

  “Sure, sure. Hearing’s not the best, sorry. It was a Sherman.”