North Reich

by Robert Conroy

  Neumann felt that he had few trump cards to play, and he would indeed play them. The first thing to do, he decided, is to fill the prison camps with Canadian civilians, and it didn’t matter at all whether or not they were Jewish. At the same time, his Gestapo units would be directed to converge on Toronto and most especially the farm and the prison camps. The Gestapo could be trusted to carry out their assignments no matter how bloody and brutal they might be. He was not so certain of the remnants of the Black Shirts. Those rats were abandoning the sinking ship. Munro now had a hard core cadre of perhaps fifty men and Neumann wondered how long that number would hold. There were close to a thousand American soldiers and airmen who’d been captured and they too would have value when the time came to negotiate a safe trip back to the Reich. He knew that the Americans would not permit their people and innocent civilians to be slaughtered.

  Downing threw Grant a bone and Tom grabbed it. Master Sergeant Farnum would be coming with him. Farnum had once been a paratrooper and took it on himself to give Tom a primer on how to jump out of an airplane and survive.

  “Anybody can jump,” he’d said without a hint of sarcasm, “it’s the landing that creates problems.”

  “Sergeant, I’d already figured that out.”

  Farnum had laughed and then gotten on with training. He had Tom jump from stacked chairs and taught him to land properly by collapsing and rolling over. They did this a couple of score times in a few hours until Tom actually thought he understood what was expected of him.

  They flew in a C47 and were escorted by a pair of P51s. They didn’t think that the Germans would waste their diminishing number of planes on a lone transport, but nothing was certain.

  They flew from Buffalo, looped over the lake and on to an area west and south of Toronto. It was night and both men hoped the very young pilot could find his way in the dark. The pilot wasn’t worried. He put his faith in radar and his co-pilot’s skill at finding the fires that were supposed to be set as signals.

  Sooner than expected, they received the order to get up and get ready. They checked their own gear and then checked each other’s. A crewman opened the C47’s door and they were hit by a rush of cold air.

  “Just remember, sir, you don’t have to count to ten or yell Geronimo anything dumb like that,” said Farnum. “The chute will open automatically. If it doesn’t then you just yank on the reserve chute and pray that it opens.”

  “And I’m screwed if it doesn’t, aren’t I?”

  “Absolutely, sir, but you won’t have much time to worry about it since we’ll be jumping from a fairly low altitude.”

  “Now!” the pilot yelled over the intercom and before Tom could react, Farnum pushed him out of the plane.

  The wind was like a punch and he was hit a second time as the chute opened a few seconds later. He grabbed the risers and held on for dear life as he dropped towards the ground. It was coming up with terrifying speed. He quickly looked around but couldn’t see Farnum. Of course not; their chutes were dark and hopefully invisible to enemy eyes. Nor could he see the fires that were supposed to have been set as a target for the drop. They were not supposed to actually hit inside the fires, just be close enough so that their hosts could find them.

  He braced himself when he felt the ground was near. He hit and rolled over like he was told. Seconds later he realized that he’d survived. He gathered chute and got out of the harness.

  “I’ll take it, sir,” said Farnum who’d materialized out of nowhere.

  The sergeant hid the two parachutes and they walked west. According to their maps a dirt road should be nearby. It was and they crossed it quickly, eyes out for a German patrol that might have seen them land. There were haystacks in the field and their instructions had been to find one on the northern edge of the field and stay there. Their new friends would find them, not the other way around. Tom understood. If they’d been spotted, let the Germans take them rather than blowing the whole operation and getting locals or whoever was going to help them caught as well.

  They picked a haystack and sat down with their backs to it. Tom tried to let the tension drain from his body, but with scant success.

  Farnum checked his watch — the dial glowed in the dark. He squinted and looked around. Tom did as well, but there was nothing to see. “I think it’ll be at least an hour before anyone contacts us, sir.”

  Tom was about to reply when he felt something cold and hard against his neck. It felt suspiciously like a gun. “Apple,” a voice said in little more than a whisper.

  “Core,” Tom responded.

  Landry lowered his weapon and sat down beside them. “Just who the hell thinks of these stupid passwords?”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  They drove by truck to a rundown warehouse with a number of vehicles parked outside. The sign said “Uncle Sammy’s Used Cars and Trucks.” Tom shook his head in disbelief.

  “Now who’s using bad codes?”

  Landry grinned unapologetically. “It was suggested by our OSS contact.” He went on to explain that, after telling top brass that he was staying behind after being cut off by the German attack, he was directed to head towards Toronto and that they would be contacted by people from the OSS.

  This had occurred and they had traveled by trucks and busses that had been acquired by the OSS. Landry said he had no idea whether these were abandoned, bought, or stolen, and that he didn’t care.

  “My men refused to wear German uniforms, even though some did before when we took the Blue Water Bridge, so people are trying to get us civilian clothes or police uniforms. I favor the latter since my men all have military haircuts and would otherwise stand out.”

  “I wouldn’t want to wear a German uniform either,” Tom said, “so try to find something else in my size. Do you have a radio?”

  “Yes, sir, and we keep moving it so they can’t triangulate on us. We think the German army has other things on its mind, but that leaves their Gestapo and the shits from the Black Shirts.”

  “Any fresh messages?”

  “One that’s really unsettling, colonel. It may be that the Gestapo is planning to do something awful to our POWs and the Canadians currently held by them."

  A few score miles away, Field Marshal Heinz Guderian glared intensely at Neumann. “I don’t believe things are that desperate. I would never consider killing prisoners; nor do I believe that circumstances could ever become so dire as to necessitate it.”

  “Then you have not been reading your own casualty reports. You’ve lost a third of your armor and planes and about the same amount of you manpower. The Americans now outnumber you by at least three to one and are exerting pressure on all fronts. Patton’s army may be the farthest away, but General Raus’s command could collapse at any time. Then the race to Toronto would be on. You need a strategy that does not require a new army and I am confident that I can stop the American advance in its tracks. All I need is to show them a few bloody American and Canadian corpses stiffening on the ground and they will halt. The Jews who run America would be horrified that Gentiles are dying at our hands and on their behalf. They would do anything to prevent the blood of Christians from making the American people realize that it is the Jews who are responsible for their deaths.”

  “How and when will you announce this?” Guderian said coldly.

  Neumann smiled. “At first, quietly. We already have a conduit to the U.S. Not all their embassy and other diplomatic personnel were repatriated when the war started. A number of them remained for a variety of reasons and at least a couple of them are deeply sympathetic to the fascist cause.”

  “And the rest are spies, I’ll wager.”

  “Doubtless, but they are all are being carefully watched.”

  Neumann left. Guderian waited a couple of moments, deep in thought. He pushed a buzzer on his desk and Koenig entered.

  “Did you hear?”

  “Yes, field marshal.”

  “He is capable of doing it. I read his dossier. He on
ce led a unit into a Polish village near where partisans were active. There was no evidence that anyone in that village was in any way involved, but that didn’t matter. He had roughly five hundred men, women and children gathered up. The women and children were raped repeatedly in front of each other and the men. When they were done, all of them were stuffed into a large barn and the barn was set on fire. When burning people tried to escape, his men gunned them down. In a way, that was a mercy. So, yes, he is capable of killing all those people. He would have had that ship full of Jews scuttled if he had thought ahead and realized there was a chance that the Americans would stop it.”

  “Sir, what is my assignment?”

  “Quite simple, captain. You are to follow him, find out what he specifically plans to do.”

  “Am I to try to stop him?”

  “I will let you know what, if anything, to do at the proper time.”

  “But sir, isn’t he doing what the Fuhrer wants?”

  “Is that what you wish, Koenig? And what do you think the Americans will do when they take you prisoner and find out that you aided and abetted that monster?”

  Canfield’s battalion moved out cautiously. The beachhead perimeter had been expanded by about three miles in all directions and more troops had landed and were filling the beachhead. This time, however, they were organized and ready.

  They were still confronted by large numbers of German soldiers and the Germans had been fighting desperately. Nor had the beachheads on the German side of the Niagara River been significantly expanded. German artillery still had the range of the pontoon bridges, which meant that comparatively few tanks had crossed.

  There was a sharp explosion and everyone fell to the ground. A scream followed along with cries for a medic. One of his men had stepped on a mine. The German anti-personnel mines were terrible things. Once stepped on, a spring of some kind launched them into the air and the exploded at approximately waist height. GIs were fearful of being castrated by these things that they called ‘bouncing betties.’ The advance would halt until the mines could be cleared.

  The screaming stopped. He and Dubinski looked at each other. The guy had probably died and that was a fate worse than castration. Since the German attack, the battalion had gotten fed, been given fresh equipment, and supplied with a ton of ammo. They’d also gotten fifty fresh replacements who looked scared and innocent. Canfield thought they looked just like the others had when the fighting had first started. Everyone looked scared, but the veterans were no longer innocent. They had a haunted, desperate look in their eyes.

  Rumor had it that the krauts were pulling back and abandoning the Niagara River line, which meant that they had to pass in front of the men in Truscott’s beachhead. This also meant that the Germans would fight desperately to keep the route to the north and rear open. They were all aware of the geographic anomaly. The German escape route to the north actually led to the west because of the way the land between lakes Erie and Ontario curved. No matter. When the time came they would all head north and east to Toronto.

  German machine guns opened up with their insane chattering. They actually had a different sound than American guns and were, just about everyone thought, much better weapons. A German anti-tank gun fired and it was followed by the whump of an explosion. Another American Sherman tank had died because the Germans had better anti-tank guns as well.

  “All we can do is try to overwhelm them,” Canfield thought aloud. Dubinski and he others understood that he wasn’t talking to them and kept quiet. They also understood that overwhelming the Germans meant that a large number of them would die or be maimed.

  His radioman signaled for him to come over. “What’s up, corporal?”

  “Sir, Lieutenant Kosinski says he can see water.”

  Canfield crouched and trotted the couple of hundred yards to where Kosinski’s men waited. That a lieutenant commanded a company was a result of the heavy casualties they’d suffered. Their captain had been killed the day before.

  He found Kosinski in a stand of trees. “Where’s the water?” he asked.

  “If you climb up a tree, colonel, you can see it. It’s definitely Lake Erie and that means we’ve cut the bastards off.”

  “Either that or they’ve all escaped,” Canfield said. “And I will pass on climbing a tree. I assume your men are pushing forward?”

  “Most definitely, sir.”

  Canfield moved out with the lieutenant and was shortly looking at both the lake and the road that led to Hamilton. There were ships on the lake and he presumed they were American. The road, however, was empty. The krauts had escaped. Well, he thought grimly, what had he expected?

  Ike and Bradley were ecstatic. With the collapse of the German river defenses, it meant that they could get a proper army across the Niagara and commence pushing north. It also meant that they could send warships through the Welland Canal and on to Lake Erie.

  Only a few days earlier the first American warships since the war of 1812 had appeared in Lake Ontario. It was a flotilla consisting of two heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, and eight destroyers. Additional support vessels were arriving almost every hour. The original flotilla had been sent up the St. Lawrence under the cover of scores of land-based planes and had arrived without significant incident. A few shots had been fired, but guns and planes had put a stop to it.

  Nor did it go unnoticed that the guns of fourteen warships could savage German formations trying to escape via the road along the coast to Hamilton and then on to Toronto. The two generals now agreed that they should have had the navy attempt to run the gauntlet earlier. Their only regret was that the Germans had gotten away to fight another day.

  “We almost had them,” Bradley said.

  “They fooled us,” said Eisenhower. “They moved their men and equipment out quietly and at night. Some of our commanders suspected, but couldn’t do anything against a rear guard that fought like the devil.”

  “Well, Ike, at least we now have the Canal.”

  Ike lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of an old one. “You’re assuming that they haven’t sabotaged it too badly. Between the Germans and Canadian partisans, it might be a long while before our ships can go through it.”

  “Yeah, but I’m confident our engineers can get the thing working in short order. They might have damaged, even destroyed, the locks, but the ditch will still be there. Right now I’ve got men assessing the damage and we’ll start working and do what has to be done. One of the questions I’ve already gotten asked is what should be done about the carcasses of three U-boats in the canal.”

  Ike grinned. The raids had sealed the fate of the Kriegsmarine on Lake Erie. It reminded him that he had to find time to pin a medal on the young pilot who’d lost a leg in the endeavor.

  Most important, control of Erie meant that Americans could land anywhere they wanted along the coast. The Germans fighting Patton would have to pull back or find themselves trapped. Only this time, they might not be so lucky.

  “Blow the damn things up,” Ike said genially.

  Heinrich Stahl swore as he saw the police barricades keeping him several blocks away from his destination, a nondescript rooming house where four of his men lived. To the best of his knowledge, they were the last Germans still alive and active.

  The very large number of cops surrounding it were heavily armed and appeared to be very nervous. Why not, he thought angrily. They had found his last source of German manpower in the city.

  He wasn’t worried about being recognized. Not only were all eyes on the shabby boarding house he could barely see in the distance, but he had taken pains to change his appearance. His head had been partly shaved to simulate baldness and what hair remained had been died white. He had cotton stuffed in his cheeks and padding in his clothing gave him a fine middle-aged gut. Using a cane added to the effect and nobody cared if he had an accent. His papers said he was a Dane.

  What did concern him was losing four good men, especially when there were no other
s. It also meant he could not go back to his current residence in a cheap hotel. He didn’t think that there was anything about him in the apartment shared by the four Germans, but he couldn’t be certain. He swore at the injustice of it all. How could he continue to serve the Reich?

  Stahl prided himself on his memory, which some said was photographic. Thus, he stared at the very pretty young woman in a WAC uniform who was with another army officer. Where the hell had he seen them before? He searched his memory and found the answer. While he’d been questioning the fool scientist from that place called Camp Washington, the two of them had been sitting on a bench not too far away and pretending to be lovers. He’d thought it strange at the time that they’d been sitting together in the cold wet weather, but had put it down to idiots being in love. Now he knew better. Those two had been instrumental in unraveling his intelligence network along with the FBI and the Washington police.

  He thought about using the pistol in his pocket and blowing their brains out, but thought better of it. He might get away in the confusion, but possibly not. At any rate, he’d be on the run with pursuit too close for comfort.

  Gunfire ripped through the air and people around him screamed and threw themselves onto the ground. Stahl did likewise. It would be foolish and possibly fatal to remain standing. It would also be awful if he was wounded and sent to a hospital where they would quickly realize that he wasn’t what he appeared to be.

  The firing had come from the rooming house and the cops replied with an enormous volley that ripped wood from the side of the building. Bullets pierced the walls and Stahl wondered how many were striking flesh. He recalled a time when he and his men fired into a farmhouse in Poland, shredding it, and later seeing only the pulped bodies of the family that lived there. Too bad, he thought.