“Is he alright?” asked the younger man who found me.
The Untersharführer tapped me gently on the cheek. “You best get up now, sir. You’ve been lying in the snow long enough to keep you from spoiling, but any longer and you’ll be in a bad way.” Then to the boyish soldier. “Come on, Loos. Make yourself useful and grab his arm. Careful.”
As the dizziness subsided I felt myself being hoisted to my feet, a bolt of pain shooting through my shoulder. I gritted my teeth but kept silent.
“Can you stand, sir?” asked Loos. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen.
Fighting to regain my balance, I glanced down to see my boots buried in a foot of snow. I motioned the two soldiers away with a nod and another groan. Then another wave of pain ripped through my forehead, as if an animal trap had clamped down on my skull. I waded through the anguish and unharnessed my parachute.
Well, it had finally happened. The Yanks got me. And, through some sort of miracle, I’d survived.
“That’s quite a thrashing you got, sir,” said the Untersharführer with a comforting smile. He still held on loosely to my arm until I was stable, while brushing the snow off me with the other. “You should see your plane. It was wise to jump out of it.”
“My plane?” I uttered through the throbbing in my head. I took a step out of the straps of my chute and bent over with my hands at my knees.
“Your one-ninety went down about a half mile east of here,” said Loos. “We followed your chute.”
“You’d have died of the cold soon,” added the older man. “But it probably slowed the bleeding some. Whatever the reason, you’re lucky to be alive. And you’re doubly charmed we found you before the damned French got to you.”
“Where am I?” I asked.
The men looked at each other.
“France, sir,” Loos answered.
“France,” I said, more to myself. I looked around and found that I was in the far corner of a field with fir trees boxing it in on three sides. The clear side was bordered by a stone fence, which followed an iced-over back road. Brittle shoots of wheat stuck up sporadically through the snow. “I have to get back to my unit.”
“In time, sir,” said the Untersharführer. “You’ve had a busy day.” He looked me over again. “I’m more concerned about that blow to your head than the clipped shoulder.” He went for my cap and goggles. “May I?”
I nodded. He then took off his glove and ran his bare hand over the wound. I grimaced as he probed the laceration. “I can’t feel a skull bone, which is a never a bad thing. You’ve got a nice lump too. But that beats a cranial hematoma. You’ll live. Which is convenient, since our search for you upset our timetable. Can you walk?”
“I think so,” I said. I took a few wobbly steps. And then nodded.
“Very good,” said the Untersharführer. “Loos, take him to see the Hauptsturmführer while I collect the men.”
“Jawohl,” barked Loos.
The boy slung his rifle over his narrow shoulder and led me towards two Opel trucks parked by the side of the frozen dirt road. A handful of SS men clad in greatcoats loitered by the idling vehicles. Another group was huddled around the hood of the lead truck, studying a map.
“Herr Hauptsturmführer,” announced Loos. “We found the pilot.”
The man Loos was addressing had his back towards us, hunched over the map with his bare finger tracing a route over a line on the parchment. “And is he in one piece?” he asked, still facing the hood.
“Here he is, sir.”
The group looked up at me. The Hauptsturmführer turned slowly, tugging his gloves back on to his hands, and I went numb. I knew who it was before I even got a full look at his cold face. All I needed to see were the black eyes growing wider in astonishment as they stared back at me from beneath the Totenkopf of his visor cap.
There was a tense silence. Then he burst out laughing at the sheer chance of it all. His men exchanged confused glances.
“Oh my! This is a small world indeed. Wouldn’t you agree, Becker?” He waved his hand in the air and marched over to get in my face. “So good of you to drop in on us.”
The men chuckled at the pun.
For the third time in a week, I found myself in the presence of Johann Keitel. Only this time we weren’t in a public square or train station with civilians all around. We were instead in occupied territory among a group of heavily armed fanatics who would follow any order he gave them.
“Yes, it’s me again, Harmon.” Then he leaned in and whispered under his breath. “Today is your lucky day.” Then to Loos, “See to his wounds and help him into your truck.”
“Jawohl!”
“We’ve wasted enough time already.”
The noisy Opel troop transport bounced me and eight soldiers over the frozen dirt road of an obscure back corner of France. Despite the canvas flaps over the metal frame of the cabin like a tent, the bitter cold still infiltrated through to our bare faces. I made a pitiful sight with my crude bandage wrapped around my head. The throbbing in my skull grew steadily more pronounced as I fully regained my senses, and my shoulder felt as if someone had taken a mallet to it.
The men in the truck examined me with unnerving curiosity, as if I was some exotic zoo attraction. Most were younger than I, and by the fresh looks on their boyish faces, many had missed the combat in Russia that earned Das Reich, and Keitel, such a fearsome reputation.
The soldier who discovered me lying in the snow, Oberschütze Loos, seemed most curious of all. As I leaned back, trying not to think about the pain in my head and shoulder, the SS private equivalent peppered me with questions.
“Where are you stationed, sir?” The men leaned in, grateful that someone had broken the silence.
I answered flatly. “JG 32. Andeville in Belgium.”
“Who shot you down?”
“Alright, Loos,” the Untersharführer interrupted him. “He’s had enough for one day without you interrogating him.” Then he winked at me. “Sorry, sir.”
I waved him off and cracked a smile at Loos’ inquisitiveness. “Lightnings jumped me. Americans. Somewhere near the coast.”
Loos’ eyes lit up. “Yanks!” he said, oddly excited. “So you’ve fought Americans?”
“Seems like they’re all we fight these days,” I informed him. “Why so interested, Loos?”
Another SS man rubbed the boy’s disheveled hair and laughed. “Oh stop it, Emil. You must pardon young Loos, Herr Captain. He wants to see America after the war. America! That’s all we hear from him.”
I found that odd, but then again nothing about the war seemed to have any rhyme or reason these days. All I could do was offer him a warning. “Be careful what you wish for. You may be seeing more Amis than you know what to do with soon enough.”
The Untersharführer let out a grunt. “Bah! Why would anyone want to go to America anyway? I hear the vile place is crawling with Jews. Like roaches everywhere.”
Loos was unfazed. “Don’t fret over them. I’m sure when we conquer America, the Führer will know what to do with them, eh fellows?”
The band nodded its assent with the satisfaction of those absolutely convinced of the righteousness of their cause.
Another man nudged Loos, whom I soon came to recognize as the kid brother figure of the squad. “Hah! Your helmet was probably made by a pretty Jewish girl in Poland with curly black locks and a heaving bosom.”
Loos blushed and they chided him affectionately. I grew uncomfortable at the thought, and the Krupinskis, as they had so often since my return from home, flashed through my mind.
The Untersharführer changed the subject. “You and Herr Keitel know each other?”
“We grew up together.”
“Ah, so you’re old friends?”
“We grew up together,” I repeated.
A pregnant
pause followed as the men saw there was no love lost between me and their squad leader. I leaned back and closed my eyes, effectively shutting down all conversation for the remainder of the torturously uncomfortable ride.
Through my pain, I cursed my bad luck. I couldn’t believe that this morning I had been an expert with over one hundred victories on my rudder, and now I was a broken wreck, stuck in a frigid troop carrier in the French hinterland with a group of crazed Nazi boys and Johann Keitel of all people as my guide. But I was not entirely ungrateful. After all, it may not have been good living, but it surely was not dying, and I felt that perhaps there was a reason for my survival beyond dumb luck. Had I been killed, I wouldn’t have been a witness to what was to follow.
36
It was near dusk when we approached the sleepy village of Sainte Laurie-Olmer. It was an unassuming little town nestled in a thick woodlot with a stone chapel that had stood for five hundred years in the main square. Ringing the church were barns and modest cottages of country peasants who’d known simple lives of quiet contentment before the war. Before the Germans came. Amidst a heavy snowfall the trucks entered the town and stirred the civilian population, bundled up and just settling in for the night, to peer at us through their windows in trepidation. They had ample reason to fear us, for Keitel had a message to deliver this evening.
I can still hear the screeching of the brakes as the trucks pulled up next to a small graveyard at the side of the church. Only the very tips of the stone crosses and tombstones poked above the blanket of snow. Our truck came to a halt by a little stone gate, and that was when these boys suddenly changed before my eyes into a band of demons.
“Alright, let’s move,” commanded the Untersharführer, and the men poured out of the back of the truck. With my injuries I had to cautiously lower myself onto the film of ice that covered the lane leading through the gate. I held on to the truck to steady myself as my boots almost slipped out from under me. Then I began to stiffly make my way over to the scene being played out in the village square.
I could see the SS men shattering windows with their rifle butts and kicking down doors, screaming like hyenas at the terrified civilians. “Raus! Raus! You French pigs! Raus!” they shouted as mostly old men, women, and little children were herded or dragged out of their warm homes into the frigid air of the windswept common. Some children were still in their nightgowns and bare feet and were shivering violently as their dismayed parents pulled them close in a vain effort to protect them from the cold, and from us.
As I wandered through the scene, like an invisible ghost, SS men continued to clear out all the houses and kick, shove, and prod the French townsfolk into a crude huddle against the far wall of the church. I saw only one man of fighting age, and as he took in the situation his expression showed his fears. Even Loos, who seemed so much like a kid to me, transformed into a hector herding an old woman at gunpoint into the square with the rest. Although his expression betrayed a hint of disquiet that made me think there was some sliver of humanity in this boy.
All the while, Keitel sat in his Kübelwagen, like a Roman procurator, calmly waiting until the entire village of some eighty frightened souls was assembled before him. He yawned and checked his wristwatch.
The squad formed a single file facing the uneven line of hapless civilians. Things began to calm down now. I stood on the perimeter, leaning against a tombstone, absorbing the scene.
The Untersharführer breathlessly reported to Keitel: “Herr Hauptsturmführer. That’s all we can find.”
Keitel stepped into the ankle-deep snow. He straightened his long coat, adjusted his visor cap, and calmly paced over to the huddled townsfolk.
All was silent but for the whistling of the winds through the bare treetops and the occasional whimper of the little ones slowly freezing to death in the steady snowfall. I hobbled over to Loos, who was standing near the gate as a sentinel. He watched the scene with little expression. As I considered the helpless group, I asked Loos why there were no able-bodied men to be found.
“They’re in the Maquis,” he explained in a whisper.
“Maquis?” I asked.
“French resistance.”
Still unsure why we were here, I watched as Keitel strode from his Kübelwagen to the square, kicking up white puffs of snow.
The Hauptsturmführer passed between the line of soldiers and civilians. His breath poured out in a fog. He approached a little boy in a nightgown and wet socks. He must have been nine. “What’s your name, little man?”
The boy’s mother shivered with fear and pulled him close to her. The child stared blankly at the menacing figure in uniform, teeth chattering, clearly not understanding German. Keitel took him by the shoulder and roughly yanked him from his mother’s grasp, marching him five paces out and in between the townspeople and the rank of SS men. The woman made a move but an older man with a bushy mustache, whom I assumed was her father, held her back. By this time the boy was turning blue and shivering so violently that I thought he would come apart. Keitel put his hand reassuringly on the child’s head, which was no higher than his tormentor’s holster. While the child stood petrified at his side, and the SS squad stood immobile, Keitel began to speak.
“Yesterday the railroad marshaling yard at Château-Benoit was sabotaged. Two Wehrmacht soldiers were killed. Ten more wounded. We’ve traced the resistance bandits responsible to this village.”
There was an eerie silence as he let those words sink in. By their sudden expressions of fear I could tell most of the villagers knew enough German to realize their dire circumstance.
Then Keitel called out: “Untersharführer!”
The big man who had tended my wounds ran over to him. “Jawohl.”
Keitel released the boy from his grip. He took a step back and pointed to the shivering and utterly confused child. “Shoot him.”
“Jawohl.” The sergeant equivalent took the boy by the shoulder to lead him away.
“Laissez nous tranquile bêtes!” cried the mother. She lunged towards her son, only to be intercepted by two SS men and knocked violently to the snow. She remained on her knees, sobbing and pounding her fists deep into the powder.
Keitel ignored her. “No,” he commanded. “Let them see.” The Untersharführer shrugged indifferently and whipped out his Luger pistol and cocked it. He lowered the barrel to the cowering boy’s temple.
The mother, seeing her child’s impending execution, grew mad with maternal rage and stormed forward again. She attempted to tackle the man holding the pistol to her son’s head. “Fuis, mon fils! Fuis!” she cried to the boy, who stared wide-eyed at the pistol aimed right at his head. Somehow she reached the sergeant before the SS men could grab her again, and she bit down like a rabid dog hard on the soldier’s bare hand. He yelped in pain. The boy looked to her and, finally comprehending what was happening, made a pathetic dash for the nearest cottage, his little legs struggling through the thick powder. But Keitel himself was on the boy in two bounds and collared him, upending him and tossing him down into the snow.
“You bitch!” shouted the bleeding Untersharführer, who pried her off of him and dropped his pistol. In a swift motion he swung his rifle around off his shoulders and raised it high in the air, the butt aimed squarely at the young mother’s nose. With a powerful motion driven by his fury, he slammed the wooden stock down on her face. I couldn’t help but cringe upon hearing the sickening crunch of broken bones and seeing the blood spray in all directions before she collapsed into the snow. A crimson stain spread out from her crushed nose and cheeks but that was not enough. The rifle butt came whistling down again and again upon her skull until her head resembled a gelatinous mass oozing crimson that seeped through the white powder.
The crowd howled and the father broke into a fit of weeping. “Murdering bastards!” he shouted in German above the din.
“Mama!” the boy cried and extended his bl
ue arms to her, but he was held firmly in his place by the heel of Keitel’s boot as if nailed down.
Keitel addressed the crowd again, his voice never becoming any louder than necessary to be heard above the wind. “You can take some comfort that from your example others will learn. And then future scenes like this will be prevented as your countrymen think twice before taking up the arms again. The choice is theirs. Yours, I’m afraid to say, has already been made.”
Then he closed his eyes, as if mildly irritated with his sergeant for the sloppy scene just witnessed, produced his own Luger and aimed it straight down at the back of the boy’s head.
“No, Johann!” I shouted, unsure where my strength came from.
Keitel looked over to me and then back down at the little boy at his feet. BANG! The child’s head jerked then he lay still, as if peacefully asleep on his stomach, while a pool of blood spread out into the snow.
“You cannot do this!” shouted the young Frenchman I’d observed in the horrified crowd. “These people have done nothing wrong.” Then he changed his tone to appeal to Johann’s humanity. “Please, mon capitaine. In the name of decency, I beg you!”
Without saying a word, Keitel stepped over to the brave man and shot him between the eyes. A red cloud burst behind his head, and he fell as if his legs turned to rope. Keitel then commanded to his squad, “Achtung!” The soldiers drew themselves in a line at attention. “Aim.” They lowered their rifles and assault weapons at the huddling crowd. The older men closed their eyes, while crying women in futile attempts to shield their freezing children stood in front of them or crouched down and held them tight.
I doubt they noticed the wounded Luftwaffe captain who was hobbling over to the menacing SS commander while screaming at him in German.
“Johann!” I cried. “This is madness.”
When I got to his side he stared at me coldly. “Correction, Becker. This is policy.”
Then, while still facing me to add effect to his defiance, he shouted: “Fire!”
Of Another Time and Place Page 18