“We should always give a commanding impression,” Membre added. “We must impress upon the conquered our fortitude and our rectitude to be sure.”
I made myself nod in approval. I wanted to roll my eyes. Here was that brand of MG swagger that I loathed. We all had plans for this place, but you had to show it, not preach it.
“Well, who are you, Captain?”
“Kaspar. Harry Kaspar. It seems there’s been a mix-up. You see, I’ve been posted CO here.”
The major laughed. “What? Come now . . .”
I set my thermos on a chair and opened my briefcase, fumbling for my orders.
The major dropped the laugh, sucking in his gut. “Who sent you, Captain Kaspar? Who?”
“Munich Regional. I checked in there. They sent me on.”
“Hah! Nuts. Frankfurt sent me. Pinpointed.”
His eyes fixed on me, Membre reached back and pulled a page from the desktop—the only document there, I noticed.
I read it. I read it again. This was no prank or secret maneuver, but rather good old army overlap, a snafu. Someone had laid an egg. My problem was, Frankfurt Zonal overruled Munich Regional and the major outranked me.
“Right there plain as day, in quad-rup-li-cate,” the major said, stressing every syllable like I didn’t know what a carbon copy was.
“Munich had held me back, something about the situation unsettled.”
“It’s all fine now, Kaspar. They just got in, a few hours ago.”
“They, sir?”
“Rest of the detachment. You’re one of the last to report.”
“The last?”
“Not to worry. I won’t hold that against you.” Membre was studying me now, eyeing my head and ears like some kind of crank phrenologist. My freckles, green eyes, and rounded features made me look more Anglo-Irish than anything. American girls had always told me that. Yet they’d also said my walk was too rigid, too precise for an American, so I’d worked on losing that part just the same. At least I didn’t have the accent anymore. Still, I knew what was coming. Something about me always gave it away. “You got a shovel head for sure,” Membre said and let out a low, rolling chuckle. “Kaspar—that a type of kraut name?”
“Kaspar was a kraut name, sir, yes.”
“You born in Germany?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t tell me you speak that awful language? Good god. Well, I expect we’ll need heaps of translating.” Membre gave me a single pat on the shoulder that he drew back with a snap as if he’d touched something hot. “Now, no sore feelings, you hear? No time for it. There’s plenty to be done and we’re as full-strength as we’re going to get. Detachment’s out scouting trouble spots. Looking into the electrical problem, the dead phone wires. One good note—water will be up again soon. We sure could use a team of GIs, someone to keep guard on things. So. A few posts are still open. Me, I’m heading up Property Control myself, and you’ll be pleased to know I already secured billets for the detachment. You’re all set up in some of the finest villas in town.” Membre added a grin. His narrow teeth were yellow and shiny as if greased, and I caught a whiff of sweet cologne.
“Very well, sir.” My legs had gone weak, tired. I couldn’t help admire this office suite that might have been mine. It overlooked the square, with wide windows. Blond wood lined the walls as bookshelves and chrome-handled cabinets. The matching desk took up a quarter of the room, and under its glass top was a Third Reich map of Europe, 1942.
Major Membre moved behind the desk and dropped down in the leather chair. He set out a tidy stack of file folders, reports, and carbon forms, his lips forming an O. “You need duty. How old are you anyhow?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Just what I thought,” Membre said, nodding.
Sure, and he could tell my fortune too.
Membre pointed at a page. “I’m giving you Public Safety. Any experience there?”
“Police? Not exactly. I studied public policy.” I didn’t mention it was grad school. Let the man figure it out.
“No matter. We need you for this Public Safety slot.”
I nodded. I was hugging my thermos and briefcase. All I could think about was getting the heck back outside. Membre fingered more carbons. I said: “In that case? I really should get cracking, sir.”
“Of course. How do you mean?”
“I need to find a new police chief. Just like it says in the MG handbook—we get things up and running as soon as possible. Permission to leave, sir?”
“ASAP! Yes.”
“One thing I’m wondering about. The locals, they look more spooked than most I’ve seen. Something rough happen here at the end?”
“Ah, that’s just their way. These people, they know a strong master when they see one.”
“We’re not exactly the Gestapo.”
Membre glared. “Of course not. Wait. Where’re you going?”
“Back out. Scour the county,” I said, stopping in the doorway. “There has to be one cop around here who fits the bill.”
“Yes. Get cracking! New men is just what we need.”
“Oh, I’m on it, sir.”
Get cracking, me and my pressed trousers. Out in the courtyard I jumped into my jeep and stomped on the foot starter and turned the key and steered out the way I came, squeezing the steering wheel tighter, my shock giving way to disgust. If that major had even read his MG backgrounders, he’d know that all the current police were either dead or fled like the rest of those Hitler-licking hacks and goons who’d been running the show here. A few might slither their way back and take a stab at rebirth, but not on my watch. That was the first thing I would tell Munich MG when I got back there and requested a transfer. I’d been assigned my own town and I’d demand one. This snafu was a sucker punch, a low blow.
I cleared Heimgau and headed north on the same country road. At my shoulder I could see, on the far horizon, a jagged wall of marbly white—the Bavarian Alps, her highest peaks smothered in a leaden bank of clouds. The sight should’ve been wondrous, but my situation got me seeing those mountains, the war, our new occupation, and my new major for what they all were—the massive weight of centuries, dumped right onto me to sort out.
You bet I was out to prove something. It wasn’t only that I was a born German. The thing was, I had never been in combat. I had been spared the ordeal. Stateside, college kids with higher IQs were kept in the Army Specialized Training Program, the ASTP. But as the war dragged on, the War Department had to abandon keeping the smart boys at home. In the last year the Army ended up needing far more replacements than planned as the meat grinder chewed up front-line units sent there for the duration, some units suffering 150 percent casualty rates counting replacements. So ASTP recruits were dispatched on the double overseas, right to the replacement depots on the front line. Not me. I was not dispatched. They say I got lucky. I instead got transferred to MG when other young minds got thrown into the Battle of the Hürtgen, the Bulge, the Rhine campaign. Just about every fellow I met through ASTP had died. Meantime, most about every guy I knew from back home had bought it in the ETO or the Pacific, and the few who had survived the front line had fewer limbs and eyes to go around. Others had lost their heads, I heard, including my former first lieutenant. On his first day of combat in the Ardennes he’d stripped naked and curled up in a ball in the cold mud. Our own phosphorus mortar salvos found him there, the scorching white powder searing and basting him right where he lay. My buddy Mike from my old unit had written me about it. Then Mike bought it too. It all horrified me. I felt so relieved I never had to see combat. I knew I would have cracked or ran; that or I should be dead. I had it licked in MG, they said. I tried not to see it that way. I had my own job to do, right here. Occupation was a front line too.
I had driven deep into the woods now. And I was coming to my senses. What if Munich MG accused me of deserting my post? I couldn’t telephone them because the phone lines were down, yet what kind of excuse was that? So go get the
lines up and running, they’d say. Who better to fix the mess than a German-speaking MG Joe?
I lit up a Lucky, driving with one hand, weighing my only option. I had to turn this jeep around. Orders were orders. The sorry truth was, limping back to Munich might be the only thing worse than losing the Heimgau CO post. Demotion and demerits were the least a man got for shirking duty. Just like an egghead kraut to ditch a raw deal, they’d say.
I steered out of a long curve and let off the gas to turn around.
Something lay along the road up ahead. I saw three lumps, pale and splotchy. But the lumps had limbs. I grasped at the wheel and shifted down, slowing up. My first thought was, they were skinny country pigs. Even after the blow I had just taken, even considering all the horrors I’d dodged by avoiding combat, I could not imagine anything much worse than that.
TWO
I stopped the jeep staring, gaping. The shreds of civilian clothes—a pant leg, sweater arm, a sock—did little to hide the welts and bruises. It was three men, dumped along the road. Their wrists were tied behind their backs. Only thin red strands kept one man’s arm attached. Another man’s mouth was open and it bled at the corners, ripped open wider by who knew what. Another had a dark burlap sack over his head. The signs of beating and torture were clear to see. There were burns, busted thumbs and toes, more burns on the feet. Bleeding from ears. Missing ears. Holes that used to be eyes.
A metallic taste hit my tongue. Nausea. I kept my knuckles riveted to the steering wheel and lowered my head, breathing deep breaths. I tried to focus on details, clues. The hooded man lay on his back, naked except for the one brown sock and soiled button-front undershorts. He was much leaner than the others, rail-thin, his limbs like those white-gray birch tree stems, his joints like the knots, his skin gray and yellowed and the blood splotches like peeling bark. His chest was battered, sunken.
The one with the torn mouth was older and yet somehow still had on glasses, the sunlight reflecting off them. The third was the youngest and curled up as if sleeping. He had a mustache, fuzzy and uneven.
I once had a mustache like that, I realized, and a horrid thought rose up in me—the last thing I’d want was to strike out with that weak fuzz on my lip.
A cold strip of sweat hit my brow. My stomach rippled in waves. Vomit gushed hot up my throat and I swallowed it back down, so bitter and burning I had to bang on the wheel.
Get it together, Harry. I needed a mouthwash, but didn’t have a canteen so I grabbed my chrome thermos and gulped the lukewarm coffee in there. I knew one thing: These bodies were not here before. This whole road was clear this morning and I would not have missed this. Another thing: The corpses’ dark-flowing blood and lack of stench meant they couldn’t have been dead longer than a day.
Or were they dead? I switched off the jeep, stepped out and bent over them, one hand ready to cover my nose. I felt neck pulses. The old man had long gone cold, as had the young one. His neck lay twisted at an angle and had to be busted.
I moved over to the leaner man, on my haunches. I felt his neck, just under the ragged bottom edge of his hood. The pulse was faint, the skin lukewarm.
“You,” I heard a groan. It came from under the man’s hood. It was in English. I could see a spot of the damp fabric suck in and push out, in, out. Then German: “Sie da . . .”
I pinched two fingers around the bottom of the hood, to pull it back.
“No,” the man wheezed. Keep the hood on, he was saying.
“You need help,” I muttered. “I can get you help.”
“No.”
“Who are you? Who did this?” As I spoke my eyes searched his bruised and dented body. I saw a line of numbers tattooed on his inner forearm, at an uneven angle. I had heard about such ID numbers from the concentration camps our troops were discovering. Those SS bastards hadn’t even bothered to line the numbers up straight, I saw. Blood rushed to my head, hot with anger.
He had said something else but I’d missed it. I leaned in close, my ear to the spot on his hood. “Can you try saying that again?”
“Abraham,” he said.
“Your name?” I said.
I felt him nod, though his head hadn’t moved.
“We got to get you help, get you in my jeep.”
“No.”
“Who did this to you?” I thought I had an idea. The proof was on the man’s arm.
He didn’t answer me. I touched the numbers.
“No!” he shrieked, his head lifting up, then striking the street with a thud.
“Okay, okay . . .”
He gurgled. The fabric sucked in. It stayed there. He rattled, from deep inside.
“Wait, no. Who did this? To all of you?”
He rattled again. Spittle shot through the fabric, making foam. But between the rasps, I thought I heard a morbid chuckle.
“Who did it!?” I shouted. I held his arm. I probably shook it too hard. It didn’t fight back. “Just tell me,” I whispered.
“They.”
“Who’s they? Stay with me, man.”
“They are you . . .”
He went still, stiff. A couple gasps escaped, but they weren’t his, not anymore. It was simply biology, trapped air.
I sat on the street, stunned. Features and colors blurred around me, like I was on a tilt-a-whirl at the carnival, but the whole goddamn earth was the ride. I might have been there a while.
They are you. Me? What the hell could that mean?
I peered into the dense forest, all around me. All those lean, pale and mottled birch trunks revealed nothing between them but dim shade and underbrush.
And then I heard it. A rumble.
Was it artillery? An earthquake? The rumble rolled, its pumping rhythm humming in my toes. My nostrils felt a gritty sting. I stood and could see barrels of black smoke surging from the treetops, off to my right.
It was a locomotive. The loco was climbing a ridge, heading for a steep hill.
We didn’t have trains this far south. The Army Air Corps had bombed every German train and station, Munich MG had assured me. The rail lines were supposed to be clear and stay that way. I flipped open my briefcase, laid my area map across the wheel and studied the grids, routes, and symbols. The map told me: The train had run parallel to this road before turning for that hill.
Could it have anything to do with these poor stiffs? These corpses would have to wait. I’d have to remove Abraham’s hood later. I climbed back in the jeep, started it up, gave it gas, and steered clear of the bodies while keeping one eye on those barrels of smoke. They were rising higher, pumping farther apart. The loco was losing speed up that hill. I could catch up. As I drove I pulled on my helmet and slung binoculars around my neck.
A sign read: “Dollendorf-Traktorwerk, 1 Km” in fading script. A turnoff. I heaved the wheel right and raced up the ridge on a dirt road, shifting down for speed, rattling across ruts, hugging the wheel.
I was no combat Joe. I didn’t even have backup. But I drove higher. Fir trees crowded out the birches and cast long, saw-toothed shadows. Then sunlight struck my windshield and the trees receded to reveal a large clearing. I slowed to a stop, taking it all in. Traktorwerk meant this Dollendorf was once a tractor factory, but it looked like a ransacked junkyard now. A garage had shattered windows and a machine shop no doors, its machines long gone. Metal shacks rusted. Wildflowers and heather grew in clumps among the cracking tarmac, rail ballast, stains of oil.
On my map, the rail line passed through this compound. I unclasped my Colt holster and had to use both hands, I was shaking so bad. I lifted the binocs. At the far end of the compound, bordering more trees and a steep rocky hill beyond, stood a wooden rail shelter.
Inside stood freight cars. I counted them. Four.
Crows bolted for the sky. I heard a whoosh-whoosh, boom-boom coming up through the woods, and the earth pounded in rhythm, trembling the trunks and shaking leaves loose. Brakes squealed and white steam hissed, flooding underbrush with its fog. The locomotive ha
d stopped at the trees’ edge. It was only the loco, no cars attached. I could see that iron beast, all right. She had to be twice my height. Her boiler, cab, and tender bore thick black sheets of armor plate.
I wheeled the jeep around and bumped up onto the tracks. I was going to block its path. I could jump out if I had to. Yet the loco only waited, the boiler clanging like pots and pans.
I heard shouts, laughs. At the other end of the clearing, a team of five American GIs emerged from the woods with their guns slung low and their shoulders slouching, the look of men reaching the end of a long hike. They saw me, they had to, but they took no notice. They were looking to the trees closest to me.
A man stood there. He was leaning against a birch trunk. He was dressed in plain GI green shirt and trousers and could’ve been mistaken for a corporal if it wasn’t for the silver oak leaf on his lapel, his only insignia. The lieutenant colonel wore no holster or helmet, and he was smiling. He strode on out.
I climbed out the jeep and marched over and the colonel to me. He looked young for that silver leaf. Could he be only 30? I stopped to salute, but the colonel kept coming, still smiling. Was he smirking at my shiny new helmet? I removed it, but had nowhere to stuff it, so I held it at my hip. The colonel came close, within a foot. I said: “Sir, I’m the MG man for Heimgau Town down the road.”
“Detachment?” the colonel said with a Southern twang.
“E-166. I’m CO—well, Public Safety now.”
“That right?” The colonel grinned. I could smell licorice. He was chewing Blackjack gum. “Looks like we’re cousins, son. I’m the CIC agent around here.”
CIC meant Counter Intelligence Corps. CIC agents were one of the advance guard. Sure, they were secretive and they got in some units’ hair, but the CIC provided plenty of good info. Munich had told me: Until things were up and running, the area CIC agent should be relied upon and given free reign. CIC trumps all. “Good to see you here, sir,” I said. “I think we got a problem. I saw corpses down on the main road . . .”
The colonel looked over to my jeep. A big GI with a thick, wide face was sitting at the wheel. “Off those tracks. Now!” the colonel shouted at him.
The Losing Role Page 23