Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine) (63 page)

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Authors: Douglas Niles,Michael Dobson

BOOK: Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine)
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It was after dawn before the final medical jeep pulled away, hauling the last of the wounded toward Third Army hospital. The dead, more than two hundred of them, had been claimed by the graves registration section. Ballard, for his part, had spent the last half of the night ensuring that the CCA positions that had been smashed during the barrage were patched together, reinforced if possible. Wakefield had sent up a company each of tank and infantry from CCB, and the colonel had integrated these into his defensive position.
That position had been in a relatively pastoral neighborhood, even after the Americans had moved in and made necessary defensive improvements, piling barricades, clearing fields of fire, and so forth. For three months they had stayed here among gardens, verdant trees, and clear reflecting pools. Following the barrage, the place had become a moonscape of rubble. None of the buildings were intact, though a few walls still stood, as well as many chimneys. Everything was coated with dust, and any standing water had been rendered into mud.
But those buildings, the shells of them that remained, had saved the lives of a lot of his men. If they had been in foxholes or trenches in the open, he couldn’t imagine how many would have perished. As it was, two hundred killed out of four thousand was not terrible. Amazingly enough, only two tanks had been destroyed by the Soviet shelling, each by a direct hit. More than a score had broken treads or other damage, but by dawn feverishly working mechanics had repaired all of these.
Now, as Ballard made his way back to HQ, he looked at the brightening sky. During the previous day, the men of the Nineteenth Armored had cheered each successive wave of air strikes, thanking God and the flyboys for the respite from the shelling. He still couldn’t quite believe that the guns had fallen silent like that, but it was not something he was inclined to question very much.
As the quiet continued through the long night, he found himself hoping that it had just been a crazy mistake, some fluke, not the start of another great war. It was a bad memory, certainly, and the reminders lay in the ruined landscape all around.
“Halt! Oh, sorry, Colonel.” Ballard looked up to see one of the new guys, a green private from CCB, hunkered down in the rubble and pointing a rifle at
him. Nervously the man turned his weapon away, while the colonel saw two of his comrades in the shadows nearby.
“No need to apologize—it’s good to be alert.”
He felt sorry for these fellows, knew they had just come over to Europe in time to get surrounded by the Russians. He told them to be careful, to keep their heads down, and to do what the veterans did.
Then he crossed his fingers, and suggested that they dig their foxholes a little deeper.
Marshal Zhukov seemed to be in a foul mood, an ugly enough mood that even his most loyal aides were afraid to go near him. Colonel Krigoff would have given anything to huddle with the aides, several rooms away from the great general, but he couldn’t do that.
He, in fact, had been summoned to see the marshal in person.
He entered the office and saluted, waiting while the marshal finished a very leisurely read of some loose papers. Finally, Zhukov looked up, studied Krigoff’s face for a minute, then allowed his gaze to slowly trail down the intelligence officer’s body. Krigoff felt as though he was being measured for a coffin.
“Colonel Krigoff.” The marshal sounded very tired, or very bored.
“Yes, Comrade Marshal Zhukov! Reporting as ordered, sir!”
“Do I understand that it was you who claimed the Americans were attacking, in the Potsdam sector three days ago?”
“Comrade Marshal, I can understand how my observations were misconstrued at army headquarters. Many airplanes were crashing in the area, and when I made this report, it was interpreted to mean that … er … I had observed enemy tanks in movement. I apologize for the error.”
Krigoff didn’t know if the NKVD was waiting outside the headquarters to take him away right now, or if Zhukov had some more imaginative punishment in mind. The colonel’s knees felt weak, but he forced himself to stand straight and still. He was a dead man, he knew, awaiting only the means of his execution. For some reason, the knowledge left him strangely numb; he was surprised that his career had come to this, and still not sure how it had happened.
“It occurs to me that this might be an opportunity, a unique, and historical, opportunity,” the marshal said slowly, pensively.
Of all the things Krigoff expected Zhukov to say, that one didn’t even make the list. Still, he allowed himself to see a faint, wonderfully shimmering, thread of hope.
“I am afraid I do not understand, Comrade Marshal.”
“It is not necessary for you to understand, Comrade Colonel. It is enough for you to know that, as of nightfall tonight, I shall order the bombardment to resume. The bombardment that was commenced because of your erroneous assertion.”
“Yes, Comrade Marshal, of course.” What did this mean?
“I have grown tired of this waiting game. We are in need of a resolution, and I am going to use you, Colonel Krigoff, to bring this about. We have resumed our bombardment in the night. This morning, the Americans will undoubtedly strike back with their tactical air forces. It so happens that our direct line of communications with SHAEF remains out—it will not be repaired, until I give the order.
“And when the American air forces come down on us again, I shall commence a general attack, around the entire perimeter of Berlin. We will not rest until every block, every building, every stone of that city is under our control. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Comrade Marshal!” Krigoff lied. How was he responsible for this?
“If the attack succeeds, and I believe it will, then there will be plenty of glory to go around. But if it fails …”
Suddenly the colonel of intelligence saw, with incredible clarity, the role he was to play.
“If it fails,” Zhukov repeated, “then all the world shall know that the attack was only a little mistake.
“A mistake, Colonel Krigoff, made by
you
.”
“Be careful with that!” General Groves snapped, as one of the men slipped on a stairway and almost dropped the toolbox he was carrying.
“Why don’t you come outside, General?” said Robert Oppenheimer delicately. “I think we’re just in the way, here.” The director of the lab took the portly general by the arm and casually escorted him out of the hall and into the summer evening. The stars were brilliant, as they so often were atop this mesa, but neither of these men had any interest, tonight, in the view.
“I don’t like this, sending it off without a test,” Oppenheimer noted for approximately the two hundredth time.
“Me neither,” Groves conceded. “But we don’t have a—hey, watch that ramp! Dammit, you’re going to roll it right onto its side!” Oppie trailed along, sighing in exasperation.
The general started toward the trucks, berating the forklift operator and everyone else who was in range. Sometimes a job could only get done right with direct supervision, and this seemed to be one of those times.
Finally, the components of the gadget were loaded into the three different trucks. One contained the plutonium core itself, the small lump of strange new metal that might—
might
—be compelled into a chain reaction by the right combination of pressures. The second truck contained a natural uranium tamper, a larger shell into which the core would be embedded. The third component, in the last truck, was the means of applying the pressure that might
just cause the core to explode. This was a larger sphere of explosive, type Composition B, designed to be wrapped around the plutonium core. The theory was that this shaped charge would be so precise that it would compress the mass of the plutonium core enough to cause it to go critical—that is, to start a chain reaction that would result in the instantaneous release of God only knew how much energy. Of course, it had never been tried before, so they couldn’t know for sure if it would work.
Finally the loads were packed, and cinched down, and inspected. A dozen jeeps and cars started out in advance of the truck convoy—they would lead the caravan all the way to Wendover, a ten- or twelve-hour drive—and another group of light vehicles would follow along behind. Groves, of course, would ride in the first truck.
“All right—I want two hundred feet between each truck. And we don’t go faster than forty-five, got it? Everybody ready?”
The men, drivers, and mechanics and two armed guards for each truck mounted up as Groves walked around the vehicles for one last time. The plutonium and uranium elements, while key to the bomber, were relatively stable on their own. It was the last cargo, the sphere of high explosive, that presented the most danger of an accident. He looked up at the driver, who seemed calm enough in spite of everything.
“Be careful with that,” Groves noted. “If you set that thing off, this will be one memorable Fourth of fucking July!”
“What’s the bad news?” asked General Patton, striding into the command center, looking as if he’d had a good night’s sleep—though Zebediah Cook knew he’d only retired a few hours before.
“I was just coming to get you, General,” said the intelligence officer. “We’re starting to get a picture of what’s going on.”
“I could hear the guns.” Patton got right to the point, as usual. “Where are they attacking?”
“In Potsdam again, sir. The Nineteenth Armored is being shelled heavily. They opened up after midnight, and it’s a general barrage. Initial reports have enemy armor moving up, as if they’re taking attack positions. But they haven’t moved against us yet.”
“Well, by damn, we’ll get the air force in there to plaster them as soon as the sun comes up. If they’re going to play rough, we can give ’em the same thing back.”
“I anticipated that order, sir. I have prepared a document with the coordinates, and the details—subject to your approval.” Cook handed Patton a piece of paper.
Patton grinned as he read. “Just the way I’d have written it,” he said with a nod. “Send it off. As soon as it’s daylight, those commie bastards are going to feel the roof fall in!”
“Did the bombardment commence as directed?”
“Yes, Comrade Marshal,” came the reply from the Second Guards Tank Guard liaison officer. “As you directed, a thousand guns opened up at midnight on the American armored division.”
“And the tanks attacked at dawn? What progress?”
“Regretfully, Comrade Marshal, the Americans seem to be holding in place. The first wave of tanks was knocked out, and those following are having difficulty maneuvering in the city streets, blocked as they are by debris.”
“And by our burning tanks,” Zhukov said dryly. He no doubt surprised his listener when he continued. “But that is of no immediate concern. Tell me, what of the air battle?”
“The enemy commenced tactical attacks with the dawn, sir. Unfortunately, our own fighter forces seem to be standing off; I understand we suffered grievous losses yesterday. I regret to report—”
“Bah, that, too, is immaterial. The important thing is that the Americans are sending their bombers against us again? And they are, correct? Good. Now is the time to commence the general attack. Issue the necessary orders to all units.”
Marshal Zhukov put the telephone back into its cradle, leaned back in his chair, crossed his hands over his belly, and smiled. The day was progressing nicely.
“You don’t have to be my prisoner, you know,” Rommel said to Sepp Dietrich the day the old Waffen-SS general surrendered the city to him officially. “My offer of amnesty certainly includes you. After all, Sepp, you were ready to join me nearly a year ago, before my car got shot up, before I surrendered, before the assassination.”
Dietrich shook his head, his boxer-battered face worn and tired. “Oh, I know, Rommel. But some of these kids, they won’t think about giving up the old cause, even if it is dead, and some of my old Waffen-SS men, well … you don’t want to give them amnesty, not so quickly anyway. Somebody has to be responsible for these boys. Somebody has to.”
He laughed. “It’s funny. Of all the people you’d expect to be the last Nazi officer standing, would you ever have picked me? But here I am: The last commandant of Berlin in the army of the Third Reich. The last commandant. Listen, we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, you and me. I’m an old man and I’m set in my ways, and I was never that smart to begin with. Never that smart. But I can handle a camp of resentful kids and angry beaten soldiers. Hell, it’s just like it was right after the Great War, when we all started so very long ago. So long ago. Of course, I was one of those resentful kids and an angry soldier, too, then. A young sergeant major and not a bad mechanic, either. And look at me now! Look at me now!”
Dietrich laughed coarsely and punched Rommel in the arm. “I understand my boys and they understand me. My blood used to run hot like theirs, but now that I’m old it doesn’t run so hot anymore. Not so hot anymore. I think it’s better that way, though sometimes I miss the passion. Ah, for the days of a good drunk followed by a good fight and a bad woman, eh? Oh, never mind—that wasn’t what you did even then, was it? No, you never did. You were one of the smart ones, one of the studious ones. We made fun of your type when we got drunk, but we knew who our betters were. We knew.”
“Well, Sepp, if that’s the duty you think you need to perform, it’s yours. I’ll
put someone in charge officially, but you let him know what you need. If there’s a problem, let me know. You know that everyone will have to make do under the circumstances, of course.”
“Make do? What else have we Germans been doing for the last few years?” Dietrich laughed. “Frankly, my boys need work to do to keep them out of mischief. Got to keep them out of mischief. Once we get ourselves a POW facility put together, maybe we’ll go fix up some places for civilians to live, if you don’t mind. Fix up some houses, that would be a good thing.”
“That’s a fine idea. Thanks.” As Rommel’s staff car drove away, he turned to look at the old general rounding up his hardscrabble troops, many dressed in rags. Who would have thought that Sepp Dietrich, a bullyboy from the Freikorps days, would have turned into a decent man? He wasn’t that old—not much older than Rommel—but he had lived hard. Age was partly a state of mind, and perhaps by that measure Dietrich really was old. Perhaps Rommel was getting old, too.
And maybe the old could change. The thought gave him hope.
 
Dietrich made morning rounds every day. With the beginnings of spring at hand, there were flashes of green amidst the rubble of Berlin that surrounded the barracks he and his men occupied. For the most part, his older troops were as glad as he to be finally finished with war. The younger men—boys, really—were eager to plan escapes, steal weapons, assault their captors, take up arms once again. Although it was the official duty of a POW to escape, Dietrich clamped down on such attempts as hard as he could, or assigned would-be escape groups to the leadership of someone he could trust to foul them up. He tried to find projects for his men to do, ways they could fix up their area, ways they could work to build shelters or make repairs to benefit the trapped civilians of Berlin. Anything to keep them busy, to keep them working.
“Good morning, General Dietrich,” one of his barracks leaders said as he approached. His men were busy preparing a vegetable garden, and the boys stood at attention to salute.
“Good morning, Jürgen. Garden’s looking good. Looking good. Don’t forget me when you’ve got some good tomatoes going. I always love a fresh tomato, you know. Love a fresh tomato.”
“Don’t worry, sir. The first ripe tomato will be yours, I promise.”
Dietrich smiled. “I’ll hold you to that. Good work, boys. Good work.”
By now, he’d learned most of the men’s names, where they were from, what units they had served, and as they saluted him, he could greet them by name, tell them what a good job they were doing, help them feel good about the day.
Berlin was in ruins; Germany was in ruins; the Nazi dream for which he had worked his entire adult life was in ruins. But his boys were getting healthy
and they were well fed and they had a roof over their heads, and maybe that was enough. Those who needed medical attention were being treated, and the worst cases had been airlifted out.
The worst part was that so many were gone. People he’d known since the Great War and the hard days of struggle that followed, people who’d fought alongside him for the years of the Second World War, and the children who’d followed him into the final battles. Kids like—what was his name? The boy he’d met in Saint-Vith who’d brought the other children out from under Rommel’s nose, the boy he’d promoted then met again as he led them out against the Russians. He’d hoped the boy would have made it back to Berlin, but he wasn’t in the camp. He was probably dead, but maybe he’d escaped and gone home to his mother. Dietrich hoped so, even if it was unlikely. It would be nice if a few people survived.
Two Shermans squatted behind a stone wall, barrels extending over the barrier toward the long, debris-strewn street. One cracked off a shot, an armor-piercing round that struck the front of a T-34 rumbling out of a side street. The Russian tank burst into flame, as a couple of crewmen scrambled for their lives out of the turret hatch. They rolled off the hull and crawled back into the street from which they had just emerged.
But more Soviet infantry scuttled forward on the other side of the avenue, moving closer as soon as the American tank gun turned away, then vanishing into the mounds of rubble when the turret cranked back. The gunner put a high explosive round into one of those piles, scattering shards of gravel and steel in a lethal spray.
Ballard sat on the ground beside a shattered tavern, raising his head high enough so that he could see the two M-4s, as well as the street beyond. Beside him was Sergeant Kinney, with a radiophone for the colonel’s communications—and a Thompson submachine gun for sport—and privates Sanderson and Duckett, who had come along as protection. The colonel heard a grinding of engines, looked to see two more Russian tanks roll into his field of vision. Halfway up a side street, they were screened from the view of the American tanks, and crept forward deliberately. The colonel was just about to give warning when he saw a GI run from the tavern, climb up on the tank, and shout to the crew.
Warned of the unseen threat, the two tanks pulled back. One traversed the long gun toward the gate of the square courtyard, while the other pushed into an alley, crunching over timbers and half-collapsed walls, seeking a new approach to the street. Ballard approved of the tactic—such mobility in a city was a dangerous, aggressive approach to the fight, but it was the only way they
could wage the battle without giving steady ground in the face of the numerically superior foe.
“I’ve seen enough, boys. Let’s get back to HQ. Stay in these backyards—I want to see how we’re holding out in this next block.”
One private led the way, rolling over the waist-high fence before the next yard. The sergeant and Ballard came next, the last PFC bringing up the rear. They repeated the process, and between each house Ballard looked across the street. The Soviets were active everywhere, often rushing into the open to draw fire.
A stutter of gunfire erupted before them and Ballard hit the ground.
“Sandy’s hit!” growled Kinney. He popped up, holding his tommy gun at chest height, and blasted an extended burst into the next yard. Then he sprang forward, over a low hedge, and fired again.
Ballard’s pistol was in his hand, but he plunged through the hedge instead of leaping it. He burst into another yard and saw Kinney, lying down behind a little garden wall and loading another clip into his Thompson. Two Russian soldiers, swarthy and almost Oriental-looking men, were rushing toward the sergeant’s position, bayonets extended.
Some warrior’s instinct propelled Ballard’s hand, guided the notoriously inaccurate .45 toward the nearest Red. He fired once, pulled the gun down as it bucked, and shot again—even as he saw that his first bullet was knocking the man over backward. The second Soviet dropped into a crouch, bringing his carbine around toward the colonel. Holding his Colt in two hands now, Frank Ballard fired again and again, until he was sure that the bastard was down.
“Nice shooting, sir,” said Kinney, with an amused grin, climbing to his feet with his submachine gun slung easily over his shoulder. “You pulled my fat out of the fire.”
“I didn’t know I had it in me,” said Ballard, honestly.
They went to Private Sanderson—“Sandy”—and saw that he was hit in the thigh. The bullet had broken the bone, and it was an ugly but not mortal wound. Private Duckett was already applying a tourniquet, and the three of them were able to assist him back to headquarters—though they took a safer route, a full block away from the enemy.
Within the sturdy shell of the blockhouse Ballard found Hank Wakefield sitting in one of the few chairs. The general’s helmet was off, and he held a rag to his head while a medic wrapped a bandage around his knee.
“What happened?” asked Ballard. He was shocked at the wan look on the CO’s face. For the first time, he thought that Wakefield looked like every one of his years.
“Took some shrapnel through the door of my jeep,” the general said with a game shrug. “It won’t get me any time off of work.”
Ballard chuckled; the old man would be okay. He grew serious immediately,
however, as he made his report. “They’re pressing us hard along the entire front, from the riverbank to the ponds. Tanks and infantry, waves of them. And that damned shelling—I guess you know about that, sir.”
“Yeah. The flyboys can slow them down, but they can’t shut them up.”
“We’ll hold ’em as long as we can, General. You know that. But there’s a point that something’s gotta give.”
“I know that, son. I know. So do Patton and Rommel, for what it’s worth—both of them talked to me after the briefing, told me to pass along the pat on the back. It’s not much, but it’s all they can send you, for now.”
Ballard nodded. A pat on the back from the Desert Fox, and another from old Blood and Guts Georgie Patton himself.
There were worse rewards.

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