by Kate Hewitt
Alone in the drafty room, Matthew lit a cigarette as he looked out over the embattled streets of Nijmegen. Despite the many disaffected soldiers so willing to surrender, others were determined to fight to the last man and nothing was going quite to plan. Every time another life was lost, on some nameless alleyway in a city no one had heard of, Matthew wondered why this war had to keep going on and on—and what would happen when it finally ended.
What would happen to a shattered Europe, and what would happen to his family, and to him? Were his mother and brothers and sister hiding away somewhere, frightened but safe? Had they found a place of protection? Or could they be in one of the camps he’d heard murmurs about—somewhere in the east, a place for prisoners? If they were in a camp, Matthew told himself they would at least be safe there. He knew the conditions would be hard, but they would be far from the fighting.
“Ah, here you are.”
Matthew turned to see Tom Reese surveying him coolly. His uniform was splattered with mud, his hair ruffled as he raked one hand through it. Matthew hadn’t seen Tom since they’d dropped into the Netherlands, and he hadn’t spoken to him when they’d both been in Nottingham waiting for their orders, after they’d been granted their separate leaves to London. There was enough to do, and enough men in their battalion, to make interaction far from a necessity, especially since it seemed it was something neither of them particularly wanted.
“Were you looking for me?” he asked.
“We just came back from the Volksgrenadier lines.”
Matthew raised his eyebrows. “Did they surrender?”
Tom let out a harsh laugh. “No, they damned well didn’t. The regiment had been relieved a couple of days ago, it turns out.” His lips twisted. “By Waffen-SS troops. We barely got away with our lives.”
“They’ve sent in the SS?” Matthew assimilated that information into the store of knowledge he already had. “So they’re not just giving up, then.”
Tom gave another humorless laugh. “Hell, no. They’ll fight to the last man. At least the true Nazis will. They’re real believers, those bastards. They’re not stepping down anytime soon.” He paused, taking a step into the empty room. “Smoke?”
Wordlessly, Matthew handed him his pack of cigarettes.
“I ought to tell you,” Tom said as Matthew lit his cigarette, “Sophie and I are engaged.”
He regarded Matthew with a faint smile, his eyebrows slightly raised as he waited for a response.
“Congratulations,” Matthew said.
“I’ll tell you something else, Lawson,” Tom added as he drew on his cigarette. “I don’t like you.”
Matthew cocked his head.
“But it’s not because you’re a Jew.”
“Oh?” He wondered if Tom was aware of how much that seemingly innocuous statement revealed.
“No, it isn’t.” Tom managed to sound magnanimous. “To be perfectly honest, it’s because you’ve never liked me.”
Matthew stiffened at that, and then he inclined his head in acknowledgment. It was true, after all, in the main.
“You’ve judged me from the beginning,” Tom continued with a rather boyish determination, sounding more like a hurt child than a hardened soldier. “I don’t know what you are, where you come from exactly, but I know you’ve thought I was some stupid yokel fresh from the farm, wet behind the ears, finger itching on the trigger.”
“Those were not my exact views,” Matthew returned dryly. “I am from a small town in Germany, as it happens.” Fraustadt was a market town, nothing more. “I am as much of a ‘yokel’ as you are.”
“What have you thought, then?” Tom asked, sounding tired rather than belligerent. “Because you’ve looked down on me, Lawson. I know you have.”
Matthew sighed. He did not wish to enumerate the ways he’d found Tom—and a hundred or more men like him—disappointing. He knew it revealed something in him, as much as in the men whose lives could seem so petty and small—and why shouldn’t they be? Most of them hadn’t suffered very much at all. They had a certain right, or at least a leniency, to be a bit small-minded.
He knew he could not explain how Tom’s brashness, his foolish bravado, his silly swagger and his blustering certainty that he knew what he was talking about, irritated and angered him in increasing measures, as much as he tried to blank it all out. He could not tell this truculent man-child that he had no idea about anything, because Matthew knew that wasn’t fair.
Tom had fought for four months. He’d seen his fair share of battles, of violence—more than Matthew had, now that he was kept behind the front lines for interrogations.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, even as it occurred to him that perhaps he and Tom Reese were nothing more than products of their separate upbringings; that Reese could not help being who he was, just as Matthew could not prevent it, either. They’d both been brought to this moment, so why should they hate each other for it? And he didn’t hate Tom anyway; he didn’t feel enough for that.
“Well, it matters to me,” Tom answered, his voice rising. “Sophie and I will be getting married. And if you have any intentions towards that mousy sister of hers—”
“Don’t,” Matthew said quietly. There was no menace in his voice, but Tom’s eyes widened for a second and he shrugged.
“Maybe you don’t have any intentions, then.” The sneer in his voice made Matthew’s become more lethal. Maybe he hated him, after all.
“My intentions towards Lily are none of your concern.”
“They are if we are to be brothers-in-law.”
Matthew was silent. Amazingly, this rather unappealing possibility had never even occurred to him. Perhaps because he didn’t know whether either he or Tom, never mind Sophie or Lily, would make it to the end of the war. Or perhaps because Sophie and Lily were so entirely different in their natures, that he occasionally somehow managed to forget they were sisters. He did not relish the idea of being brother-in-law to Tom Reese, but neither could he credit it as a real possibility now.
“Let’s make it to the end of the war,” he said. “And then we shall see.”
Tom set his jaw. “It won’t be long now, and I for one intend to stay alive.”
“As we all do, I’m sure.”
Tom shook his head, his expression turning grimly purposeful. From outside, they could hear the steady sound of shells falling, like a hard rain. Matthew had become so accustomed to the noise that he found it was silence that was now strange.
“I can tell you this,” Tom said. “I’m not going to die in some godforsaken foxhole or on some damned bridge I’ve never heard of, just months before Hitler finally decides to call it quits.”
“You may not have a choice,” Matthew pointed out mildly. “Although I am sure you will do your best, as will every other man, to stay alive.”
Tom looked as if he wanted to say more, but then he didn’t. He gave an angry jerk of his head as he flicked his cigarette out the window. “You’re needed, by the way,” he said as he turned to leave. “We captured some stupid sod wandering around, claiming to be a deserter. He’s lucky we got to him before his own damned army did.”
What became known as Operation Market Garden—the securing of the way into Germany from the Netherlands—turned quickly into a disaster for the Allies, with the British Airborne losing three-quarters of their troops as the Germans became the aggressors once more in a conflict that seemed to stretch on forever.
The 82nd, having succeeded in holding the bridges, were ordered to stay in and around Nijmegen, which was still being shelled, for over a month. Already eight hundred men had been lost.
Matthew had plenty of prisoners to interrogate, and was kept occupied finding out as much as he could about the Wehrmacht’s troop movements and artillery positions. By mid-November, the 508th were relieved by Canadian troops, and sent to Camp Sissonne, a former Wehrmacht base in France, for several weeks, to restock and recover, and wait for their promised Christmas leave to a newly libe
rated Paris.
In the canteen of the base, the walls decorated with remarkably unfunny German cartoons and drawings, Matthew sat with a bottle of beer at his elbow as he gazed down at the blank sheet of paper in front of him. He wanted to write Lily—he’d promised to write her, after all, although since returning to the front, he’d had neither the words nor the will. Now his head ached with all the things he didn’t want to say.
He didn’t want to tell her about the SS officer he’d interrogated who had spat in his face, or the sight of his fellow soldiers climbing on their hands and knees up the side of the Waal River, straight into gunfire. He couldn’t tell her about the hopelessness he felt that infected him like a poison, seeping through his blood and making him wonder what the point of it all was, if anything would ever get better, if he would find his family, or even, after so many years of war and devastation, he wanted to. He certainly wouldn’t tell her about the fury he felt, and how he didn’t know if it was worse than the indifference, as he veered wildly and wearily between the two.
He rested his head on his hand, and thought perhaps he would just tell her how tired he was.
Dear Lily, he wrote after a few moments of contemplation. I am writing you from a safe place, which feels like a great luxury. When I go outside, it is silent, and the only light comes from the stars in the sky. I look up at them and I think of you seeing them as well, and I hope you think of me. It feels like the only thing to hold onto in these dark days, which I know we both hope and pray will soon be over. Although I am afraid of what I will discover when they are over, whether I will find my family, or learn of their fate.
I know I have told you of dear Gertie, but I have not said much of my brothers. Arno is the older one, and he is twenty now. He was like me when we were children, quiet and studious, but he also had a bent for mischief. Once, while playing a game, he locked poor Arno in a cupboard and then forgot about him there—he went off to play outside and no one heard Arno for hours. My mother was furious, but Arno got his own back—he poured a bucket of cold water all over Franz while he was sleeping. I look back on those childish pranks and think my mother must have despaired of us, but I remember her as full of laughter. She knew we loved each other, even if we did not always show it.
Matthew put his pen down as the memories came over him like a mist, engulfing him with both longing and sorrow. He pictured the four of them—the three scuffling boys and little Gertie watching their antics from the side—and wondered how any of them could have imagined what would happen to their family, to their lives, that comfortable home, full of love and light and warmth, shot straight through with grief and loss and misery.
He thought of his father, a serious look on his face as he listened to whatever childish complaint was brought to him, determined to give whatever slight it was a fair hearing. He’d been a man who had believed in justice, and that the German people had an inherent sense of it.
How wrong he’d been.
Matthew was just putting his pen to paper again when a duty officer rushed into the half-full canteen.
“Everyone to report to their quarters immediately!”
“What’s going on?” someone called out. “Is it an airborne operation?”
“Infantry,” the man replied shortly, and everyone began to hurry out of the canteen.
Matthew stuffed his unfinished letter in his pocket.
It was clear from the charged atmosphere that something big was about to happen—or already had. Orders were given to leave dress uniform and anything unnecessary at the base, and ammunition and rations were distributed.
Matthew caught sight of the grimly determined looks on his fellow soldiers’ faces, and knew they were all thinking the same thing. They were going back into it. There would be no Christmas leave to Paris.
By dawn, they were being loaded into open-backed trucks and heading northwest, towards the Belgian border with Germany.
They were silent as they rode in rattling trucks towards Ardennes, for thirteen bone-jarring hours. The day grew colder, snow beginning to blanket the ground, a soft whiteness at odds with the violence that surely awaited. They’d been told very little, only that the Germans had broken through into Belgium.
At Werbomont, along the Bastogne–Liege line, the 82nd fanned out to take up defensive positions, while Matthew went on to find the headquarters of the operation, and see if he was needed to conduct interrogations.
As he rode along the line with a stern-faced driver, looking for the headquarters, Matthew saw sights that chilled him right through to his weary bones. Army men not trained for combat—clerks and cooks who were used to pencils or spoons—were holding defensive positions, reading the instruction manuals of weaponry they’d never even looked at before, their faces gaunt and pale with panic. The situation was more desperate than he’d ever seen it, and yet they were meant to be winning the war. They clearly weren’t winning this.
The situation was even more alarming when he finally found the headquarters in an old farmhouse, its steep roof thickly blanketed with snow. As he came in, he saw three officers in a flurry of angry panic, arguing over a battered map and the positions of Allied regiments on it.
Matthew took in the scene with a plunging sense of icy fear. These men were in command, but they did not look it. Their voices were high and taut with fear, and they seemed at a loss as to how to proceed. Matthew couldn’t even tell who was in charge, but he took a steadying breath and approached the most senior officer, a colonel.
“Sir,” he said, and saluted. “I’m with the 82nd Airborne—”
The colonel’s bushy eyebrows snapped together as he registered Matthew’s accent. Having spoken German so often in the last weeks and months, it had become more pronounced, although it hadn’t mattered as the men in his regiment now knew who he was. They even joked about it, while Matthew smiled faintly on.
“The 82nd Airborne?” the colonel repeated incredulously. “Then why do you sound like a damned German?”
“I’m with the IPW,” Matthew explained as calmly as he could, although the officer’s eyes were wild. “That is, the Interrogation of Prisoners of War—” He fell silent as the colonel withdrew his pistol and cocked it two inches from his head. The other two officers simply watched, wide-eyed, bemused.
“That’s interesting, son,” the colonel said in a voice that belied that statement. “But we’ve had reports of Germans impersonating American soldiers, so why the hell should I believe you?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
ABBY
Oak Bluffs was a pleasant “Senior Living” facility on the outskirts of Minneapolis, overlooking the wide winding path of the Minnesota River.
“Guy Wessel lives in his own apartment,” Simon explained as he pulled into a parking lot by a series of single-floor buildings. “Which is pretty amazing at his age.”
“How old is he?”
“Ninety-seven. He joined up in 1942, as soon as he turned eighteen.” He shot her a quick smile. “But that’s all I know, really. That, and that he knew Matthew Lawson, and called him a friend.”
“We’ll know a lot more soon,” Abby answered. “Hopefully.”
The last few hours of driving had been easy and companionable, relaxed rather than intense after their conversation at the cook shanty. It was as if something had loosened between them, or perhaps just in Abby herself—a tangled knot whose complicated strands were just beginning to separate and reveal themselves.
It had been so very pleasant to simply be with someone, without heavy conversation or the need to skirt serious issues. Abby had switched her phone off, not wanting to worry about calls from her father, asking where she was, or texts from Shannon, seeing how she was. Right now she was with Simon, and she was absolutely fine.
The car parked, Simon paused for a moment as he glanced at her with his wonderfully crooked smile. “Are you ready to do this?”
“Yes.” Abby wasn’t sure if she actually thought—or hoped—Guy Wessel would have inf
ormation for them or not. It wasn’t even about that, she was beginning to realize, not really. Coming to Minneapolis with Simon wasn’t even about Tom Reese or Sophie Mather. It was about her stepping out of her carefully constructed comfort zone, which hadn’t been all that comfortable, in the end. It was about daring to do something different for once, and then daring to see where it might lead.
“Let’s go, then,” Simon said with a smile, and Abby nodded.
They both got out of the car and Simon started looking for number six, Guy Wessel’s apartment. A few minutes later, as they walked along a pleasant path lined by rhododendron bushes, they found it, and he pressed the doorbell.
“Coming,” a surprisingly strong voice called out from within. “Just takes me a minute.”
Abby and Simon exchanged curious smiles and then, a few moments later, the door was unlocked and opened and a man stood there, white-haired and stooped over, his face as wrinkled as a walnut, his dark eyes full of both warmth and acuity.
“Well, well,” he said as, with the help of a cane, he shuffled back a step. “Come in.”
The apartment was small, with a spare, military neatness, a living room with a kitchenette and a bedroom and bathroom down a small hall.
Guy led them to one of two sofas underneath a picture window and gestured for them to sit down before he gently eased himself into a chair opposite, lying his cane to one side and resting his hands on his knees as he appraised them each in turn.
“So you must be Simon,” he said, before turning to Abby. “But I don’t know your name, miss.”
“Abby Reese,” she supplied with a smile. “I’m the granddaughter of Tom Reese.”
“Ah.” The man nodded, the single syllable seeming to possess a wealth of meaning that made Abby suddenly feel nervous. What if she did find something out here? She hadn’t actually expected anything more than an old man’s vague recollections of someone she didn’t even know, but what if Guy Wessel had something specific to say, not just about Matthew Lawson, but about her own grandfather? Her own life? Looking at his sharp eyes, his kindly if rather knowing smile, she had a sudden, uneasy feeling he might.