After that things toughened up and there were heavy battles at Wurzburg and Donauworth before they conquered Munster and crossed the Lech. Then an escapee from the concentration camp at nearby Dachau stumbled up, crying desperately for aid, and the men of the Second Battalion raced for the camp ahead of their armor, in jeeps and trucks, on bicycles, any way they could get there.
Vick was in one of the few jeeps in which, along with an armored car, General Linden sped ahead of his troops to the camp. Beside Vick bounced Giszczewski, that pigheaded Yankee from Detroit who contended stubbornly about the terrible way black people were treated in the south.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Vick would argue in exasperation. “There’s segregation but hell, Giszczewski, all those tales about them being mistreated are Yankee propaganda.”
“You can’t tell me,” Giszczewski maintained. “I know. I spent six months in the South once.”
Such disputes were still regionally based in those waning days of World War II. To Vick there was no inconsistency that he should feel close comradeship with fellows from Vermont, from Illinois and New York, and yet hold to his passionate conviction that their grandfathers should have lost the War Between the States (if, indeed, they had even fought in it).
“I suppose you’ve never read Uncle Tom’s Cabin?” George Lassiter, a PFC from Massachusetts, contributed once to the argument between Vick and Giszczewski.
“Of course I have,” said Vick. “A long time ago. To the extent it wasn’t abolitionist propaganda it described conditions that undoubtedly occurred but rarely. I’m not a racist and I’ve no sympathy for the Klan and nuts like that. But the historical fact is that slaves were generally treated well, even with affection. Look at it reasonably, George: a slave-owner wouldn’t damage valuable and expensive property.”
“That’s the whole point,” said Lassiter. “Property. Human property. Slavery was an evil that could no longer be condoned.”
It was a running argument forgotten as they moved through the poplars outside Dachau and exchanged fire with a few SS defenders. The skirmish was over quickly—the men of the 45th (Thunderbird) Division coming in from the east were the ones who ran into the sharpest fighting.
They approached the main gate by way of the marshaling yard, where trainloads of deportees arrived and departed—and Vick was sickened to see dozens of boxcars filled with piled corpses, from Birkenau.
“God!” muttered Giszczewski in horror. “God, God, God!” He turned away and vomited.
At the Jourhaus, the main gate with its inscription ARBEIT MACHT FREI, a tank had to take out the SS guards in a watchtower before they could enter. They were greeted by an SS lieutenant, blond and perfumed, impeccably uniformed, who surrendered the camp with a Nazi salute and a “Heil Hitler!” The major just ahead of Vick spat in the lieutenant’s face and growled, “Du Schweinehund!” A few minutes later Vick heard a burst of machine gun fire; he learned later the outraged men of the 45th summarily exterminated the scores of SS guards remaining in the Dachau Konzentrationslager. Even their dogs were shot.
Vick would never forget the aura of horror into which they walked that day in Dachau: the thousands of skeleton-thin prisoners, screaming and yelling in their prison-stripe garb, the mountain of pitiful corpses outside the crematorium, the arched ovens with vault-like doors opening on human ashes… the stench of death everywhere.
The memory of Dachau was dulled for Vick over those forty years before he found the opportunity to go back in time, but it did not vanish. It was a memory put to one side because there was no way to cancel its horror.
The gathering darkness converted the two men to mere shadows and Rich, in the background, was invisible. It was getting uncomfortably cold on the veranda. Before Jem could sort out Vick’s peculiar response the front door opened and the silhouette of a very large black woman was framed in it.
“Suppuh’s on table, Mistuh Jem,” she announced.
“Be right there, Aunt Jessie,” said Jem, arising. “I reckon you’re ready for somethin’ to eat, Mr. Vick—and a warm fire.”
Rich took charge of both men’s guns and Vick followed Jem into the house. It was not a mansion like some in Nashville but it was spacious, with white-columned veranda two stories tall. Jem’s folks had lived their lives here and he had been born in the big bedroom upstairs. They passed through the tall-ceilinged hall, past the musty-scented parlor, Tammie preceding them with a lighted candelabrum. When they turned into the dining room, where a fireplace at one end sent out a welcome warmth, Prudence was already there, seated at the foot of the table in a low-cut, hoop-skirted red dress with puffed sleeves. She arose as the two men entered.
“Mr. Vick, this is my second cousin, Prudence Hardaway,” Jem introduced them. “My parents are dead and Pru’s stayin’ here to run the place while I’m away. We’ll be married as soon as the South wins this war—I’m guessin’ late this year or next.”
“Glad to meet you, Miss Hardaway,” said Vick and took the seat she indicated halfway down the table between them. “You have a nice place here.”
Prudence rang a small bell beside her plate and Aunt Jessie came in from the kitchen.
“Aunt Jessie, you may start serving now,” instructed Prudence.
“Miss Hardaway, I wish you and the lieutenant all happiness,” said Vick courteously, “but I’d advise you folks not to wait but get married now. This war’s going to last into 1865 and times will be hard for the South—if I fail.”
“Mr. Vick,” Jem informed Prudence, seating himself at the head of the table, “fancies he knows what’s goin’ to happen, ahead of time. Mr. Vick, that’s the second time you’ve said the South is going to lose the war unless you… get to Fort Donelson, I think you’re sayin’. Now, sir, I don’t like to doubt the prediction—I don’t say ‘gumption’—of a guest, but I question if any one individual can decide the course of this war.”
Vick smiled at him. Slaves brought in the food: fried chicken, potatoes, snap beans canned in jars from the previous summer, spiced peaches, good strawberry wine from last spring.
“Grant is such an individual, who will determine the course of the war,” Vick said. “Before you dispute my word, think where the South would be now if it weren’t for General Lee.”
“Lee? He’s doin’ all right in Virginia but General Albert Sidney Johnston’s the military genius of this war,” said Jem.
“Johnston’s made a mistake about Fort Donelson,” replied Vick wryly. “It’s mistakes like that that’ll lose the Civil War for the South.”
“The War for Southern Independence, Mr. Vick,” corrected Prudence somewhat stiffly.
Jem was puzzled and a little irritated at Vick’s air of absolute certainty about the way things were going to happen. But Vick did seem very sure of his knowledge of Yankee troop movements and it might be wise to listen to what he had to say.
“The South’s going to win the war, Mr. Vick,” Jem said. “If you’re right that we’ve lost Fort Henry then it’s a setback, but even if Donelson should fall—which I doubt—this is only the rim of the Confederacy. Our generals are better’n the Yankees have and we fight for a sacred cause, our freedom, our Southern ideals of chivalry and liberty. The rabble Lincoln’s gathered for his armies will get tired of fightin’ to put money in the bankers’ pockets after a few more defeats like Bull Run. But you’ve got me curious. What makes you think Donelson’s goin’ to fall?”