Fox On The Rhine (46 page)

Even as he was internally ticking off these reasons, a dull rumble began to penetrate the walls, the foundation of the Continental Hotel. A chandelier rattled slightly, and Rommel felt an unmistakable sensation in the pit of his stomach.

“Bombers.” Speidel, the chief of staff, was the first to speak.

“Coming here?” asked the supply officer, Müller, his voice squeaking comically. At first, Rommel had wondered about the fat little supply officer but had discovered that the man was competent and detail driven in his work, which was the most important element of the job.

“Let’s go have a look,” Rommel said coolly. The droning of thousands of engines, in any event, would bring a postponement to the rest of the meeting.

Indeed, the thunder of Allied aircraft all but drowned out further attempts at conversation. The officers looked grimly around the room, each of them knowing they heard another great bomber raid, a veritable river of bombers moving on the Reich. Rommel led his staff out onto the hotel’s highest balcony to witness the event.

Tiny specks in the distance, the American bombers formed a swath that stretched from the right to the left horizon. The massive formation of four-engined aircraft was passing north of the city, obviously destined for a target farther to the east. The leading elements had already crossed into Germany, but there was no sign of antiaircraft fire, or harassment from the Luftwaffe. The aircraft rumbled on, toward whatever targets the enemy, with utter impunity, elected to bomb. The great airplanes formed an implacable testimony to the might of Allied air power.

“How many of them are there?” Bayerlein asked softly.

No one answered. There was no obvious response, except that they could all see thousands of individual specks.

“Like stars in the night sky,” Rommel finally mused.

“If we could only strike at them, hurt them the way they hurt the Fatherland,” growled Speidel, “then we might just have a chance.”

“Maybe we do have a chance,” Rommel suggested. He recalled those marvelous fighters and wondered if this was the raid that would draw them into action. “It will be interesting to see what develops.”

For once he was without fear, contemplating the aerial might of his enemies. Without further explanation he led the group back to the conference room.

After the meeting, Rommel assumed that Bücher would call Berlin; what surprised him is that he asked permission first. “Mein Feldmarschall, because of your decision to abandon Metz in contradiction to der Führer’s orders, I’m afraid that I am required to contact Berlin in this matter. I regret the necessity, but I must follow my orders.” Bücher stood at rigid attention in Rommel’s office, his scarred cheeks still blazing red, as if he was afraid to be reprimanded.

Rommel nodded. “Of course, General Bücher. You must follow your orders, and I took for granted that you would. You’re a good soldier. And as for me, I do not lightly disregard these directives, but you see, my superiors are the General Staff. Führer Himmler can make suggestions, but ultimately his only power is to remove me from this position. As the field commander, I must make tactical decisions as I see them.” He spoke mildly, his eyes fixed on Bücher all the while.

Bücher kept at attention. “Mein Feldmarschall, I believe you are correct in theory about the chain of command, but in practice that is not the way it is. Please take my advice, sir, and reconsider your orders regarding Metz. You cannot go against our führer. You simply cannot.”

“I know you mean well, General, and I understand your concerns. But I am a soldier, like you. And I am a German as well. I cannot and will not abandon my fellow Germans to needless destruction, nor will I sacrifice unnecessarily soldiers who can be used more productively from a military perspective. If there is personal risk to me in my decisions, so be it. I make others risk their lives each and every day; it is only fair that I assume the same risks for myself. Call Berlin, General Bücher, and say what you must. We are all soldiers, and we must all do our duty as we see it.”

The SS general paused for a long moment before saluting Nazi-style. “Yes, sir,” he said, clicking his heels before pivoting to march out of Rommel’s office. The Desert Fox watched him go and wondered whether he had just signed his own death warrant. He hoped that it would not have to be Bücher’s duty to kill him. He respected the man and knew that following those orders would hurt Bücher deeply.

Skies Over Augsburg, Germany, 1300 hours GMT

Colonel Krueger scanned the skies before him, seeing a virtual landscape of enemy bombers. He had never in his life seen so many aircraft gathered in one place. As the forty-three airworthy jets of his Geschwader raced closer to the leading heavies, he could not help yielding to a momentary doubt. Could they possibly have any impact on this huge force? But then the fiery rage leaped up into his heart and he howled with glee. For they were sheep and he led the wolves, and before the day was over everyone would know who was who.

He knew that other Gruppen, more jets and hundreds of Me-109s and Fw-190s, were sweeping against this massive force from all directions. In the distance he saw dogfights between Luftwaffe fighters and the P-51 Mustangs of the bombers’ escorts, angry specks wheeling through the skies, snarling into combat, here and there trailing plumes of smoke or bright fingers of flame.

Others of the speedy American fighters were above him, and they dove like buzzing bees, anxious to give combat. A quick glance showed him at least sixty, maybe even eighty or more Mustangs, all diving toward Geschwader 51. With a tight smile, the Oberst in the jet with the painted nose knew that he could ignore these pests. His throttle fully open, he felt his powerful fighter pull away from the enemy escorts, and he laughed out loud at the thought of the enemy fighter pilots’ consternation.

His Me-262 raced in the lead, diving toward a B-17, closing at an impossible velocity, a combined speed that must have exceeded one thousand kph. Together with all the rest of his pilots, he had practiced this head-on approach. At these speeds, they had to aim quickly. At the same time, the hope was that the speeding jets would be virtually impossible to target by the U.S. gunners.

The American formation was flying directly into the heart of the Reich, and Krueger led his wing of fighters to stop them, a storm of defending interceptors breaking on the massive bulwark of heavy bombers. He was acutely conscious of this epic confrontation indeed, surely God Himself would have held His breath, except that it all happened too fast. Tracers from the bombers’ turrets and nose guns flared outward, falling short or veering wide of Krueger’s shrieking aircraft.

Swiftly aligning his gunsight, the kommodore drew a bead on the leading bomber and released a short burst from the four cannons mounted in the Schwalbe’s nose. His aim was true, and he saw the B-17’s cockpit glass shatter in a series of small explosions. Immediately the Flying Fortress lurched out of formation, canting to the side and tumbling earthward in a spiral of doom.

By then, Krueger was into the midst of the formation. He snapped off a shot at another bomber above him, and the massive aircraft disappeared in a blossom of smoke and flame as its bomb load ignited. Unconsciously yelling in his exultation, the German pilot flew his jet through the fireball and found himself racing away from the bomber formation. Around him the other jets of the Geschwader were also breaking into the open, leaving a number of burning, smoking, and lumbering B-17s in their wake. Once more those tracers reached, like striking, venomous snakes, for the fighters... but again they fell short.

Krueger led the jets through a long arc, still ignoring the fighters that dove toward them only to vanish in the rear as the Me-262s curled around for their next attack. He looked to the right, to the left, and behind... good, most of his men were still with him. Acutely conscious of the fuel burning up in his tanks, he banked, dove toward the bombers again, knowing that they had to attack quickly.

This time they came against the bombers from the starboard quarter, and the closer relative speeds of the two formations allowed him to take a more deliberate aim. He fixed his sights on the base of a Fortress’s wing, and sent an extended burst into the joint with deadly accuracy. He saw the wing crumple away, and the aircraft plummeted from the skies, twisting in a spiral so tight that the centrifugal force held the crew in place. There would be no parachutes from this one.

More of the big bombers were blowing up on all sides, as they were beset by a greater number of fighters than they had ever before encountered. Nearby Me-109s screamed past, with Mustangs in close pursuit. Elsewhere, Fw-190s pulverized the four-engined American aircraft with their lethal cannons. Here and there a German fighter spiraled downward, trailing flame and smoke, but for the first time in a long time, perhaps forever, the invading bombers were suffering appalling losses. Equally important, their escorts were overmatched in their desperate efforts to protect their charges.

Krueger found himself coming up behind a formation of B-24 Liberators. Ugly planes, he thought, as he blasted the twin-ruddered stern of the nearest, leaving the plane to cartwheel chaotically, spinning downward in its last descent. He noticed that his fuel was low, and though he snapped off another salvo he couldn’t stay to determine the effects of his rounds. Instead, he arced away, leading his pilots toward the replenishment offered by their giant airbase.

Minutes later, on a course for home, he flew through a wheeling dogfight between Mustangs and Me-109s, and though he took a quick shot at one of the Americans his speed was so great that he knew he had little chance of scoring a hit. He saw another jet fly clear of the combat, but then a blossom of flame trickled along the wing of the Me-262 as the engine overheated and caught fire. Immediately the fighter tucked into a dive, but before the pilot could open the cockpit the inferno had spread to the fuselage. Krueger shook his head, imagining the sheet of flame covering the pilot, consuming him in fire, and shuddered. He couldn’t think of a worse way to die.

And finally his guns were empty, and his fuel tanks nearly the same. Only with the greatest reluctance did he lead his fighters back toward Lager-Lechfeld, and when he looked behind he saw, for as far as his vision could carry, a sky that was filled with blotches of smoke, bursts of violent explosion, the detritus of dying bombers, and everywhere glorious plumes of fire.

Finally, the broad runway beckoned, and as he nursed his jet through a low-power landing he saw ground crewmen running forth, fuel carts rumbling and ammunition wagons already in place. They would refuel, rearm, and once again take this fight to the American bombers. With luck, the Geschwader could hit the attackers perhaps twice more before the battered survivors finally made it to the safety of their bases back in England.

578 Squadron Base, Wendling, Norfolk, England

UNSENT LETTER FOUND IN “DIGGER” O'DELL’S FOOT-LOCKER

November 20, 1944

Dear Mama,
You won’t get to read this letter until after the war is over or earlier if I don’t make it home. I don’t want to send it now because it would just make you worry even more and there’s nothing I can do about it anyway. But I need to write down what happened today and then put it away.

Harry Glass, the other waist gunner, is dead, and I saw him get shot and killed. Ford’s Folly is full of holes; Lieutenant Sollars, the bombardier, and Sergeant Wagner, the upper turret gunner, and I are all in the hospital, and I’m lucky to be alive and I’m not hurt too badly. A lot of other B-24 crews aren’t so lucky. Over 700 bombers, B-24s and B-17s, are down. Planes have gone down in our bomb group before, but never so many. It’s so bad that for the time being, there won’t be any more raids. Can’t say that bothers me a whole lot, to tell the truth.

I want to write down all the details of the raid while it’s still fresh in my mind.

Fry, our nose turret gunner, had washed out of navigation school, so he was the assistant navigator on our crew in case our navigator was hit or killed, and he always went to the navigation briefings. So one of my duties was to go to the gun shack and clean and oil his guns as well as my gun and it was also my duty to pre-flight his turret to make sure everything was in working order. But we had all gotten away from that sort of thing, which was really stupid because in large measure our lives depend on how well we do every part of our job. I guess part of it is laziness and another is just being fateful and maybe showing how brave and nonchalant you are when you really aren’t that brave at all, you’re just being stupid.

In any event, I put his guns in the turret and didn’t turn on any electricity and didn’t check anything at all. As a matter of fact, I took me a blanket and went out and laid it in a wheat field that grew right up to the edge of the runway and laid down and took a nap.

It was finally time to take off, and Lieutenant Russ said, “All right boys, let’s go!” I always get on board through the camera hatch, which is about a three-by-five hole in the bottom of the airplane with a door over it that a camera can fit in and take pictures. For some reason, I dropped back out of the camera hatch and scrubbed my feet on the ground once or twice before going back in. So we took off.

While we were forming the group, Fry got into his turret and started checking it out. He called me and asked if I had preflighted his turret, and I, of course, said I had, because the lieutenant could hear everything on the interphone. He said, “Well, the reticule in the sight doesn’t work. The bulb doesn’t light.” I told him to take the bulb out of the trouble light, which is a light on a flexible kind of fixture that you could shine and move around like a portable flashlight in the turret. He said there was no bulb in the trouble light. So he had no sight whatever in his guns, which could have been real trouble, but I don’t remember any attacks coming from the nose, in any event. See, that’s the trouble with flying an airplane that had got washed out on a raid; there was lots of stuff wrong with it and we’re still finding it all out.