“And I ...”
“You know what you have to do, Mrs. Milford.”
“Has it been ghastly for him?”
“I have seldom seen a human being suffer so deeply.”
“My poor Sean ... my poor darling.”
Nan pressed her folded hands tightly, drew a deep breath, and shook her head quickly. It was over just like that! In the end, which she had always known would come, Nan reverted to her breeding. The dreaded loneliness, the fear of time stretching endlessly before her suddenly vanished in a well of compassion for Sean. General Hansen knew why Sean loved her so ...why he needed her and why she could not have him now.
“I shall be leaving in the morning for Plimlington East to see my children. I have been thinking that a holiday for just the three of us would be a wonderful tonic. We could disappear somewhere up in Scotland. I know of places where they don’t even have a telephone.”
Hansen set his glass down, walked to her, and took her hand.
“Will he forget me?”
“No, but he’ll get over you.”
She nodded. “That’s it then, isn’t it? ...”
“You do love him very much.”
“General,” her voice cracked, “please go ...”
Chapter Thirteen
April 20,1945
IT WAS EVENING. MAJOR Sean O’Sullivan sped down a German country road, second in line in the convoy of jeeps, command cars, and trucks making up Pilot Team G-5. Sean always took the second jeep, Maurice Duquesne the first. The Frenchman drove like a maniac; no one dared drive with him on his tail.
The cobblestone road was rain-slick and jarring. They passed through never ending forests, birch trees adding dark and eerie patterns to the miserable rain-soaked road. Sean hunched closer to the windshield.
Dr. Geoffrey Grimwood grimaced alongside Sean. From time to time low mumbles emerged through his moustache protesting the monstrous construction of the jeep.
In the back seat, Sean’s orderly, Private O’Toole, attempted to dismember three sticks of chewing gum. The massive Shenandoah Blessing slept, crushing O’Toole against the side of the jeep. His moon face rolled loosely on his neck and fell on O’Toole’s shoulder. The son of a bitch sleeps anywhere, O’Toole thought ... through the Siegfried Line, across the Rhine, anywhere. Look at the ugly son of a bitch sleep with the rain leaking in and falling down his ugly neck. O’Toole shouldered Blessing’s head off him and tried to displace the limp body. It all rolled back on him.
A roadblock loomed ahead. The convoy drew to a halt before a submachine-gun-toting corporal. Sean got out, drew his poncho about him, and approached the guard.
“Password.”
“Wishing well,” Sean said, using the pair of “w’s” designed to twist the most willing German tongue.
One of these days I’m going to say “vishing vell” and scare the hell out of one of these guards, O’Toole thought.
“Glenn Miller,” said the guard.
“ ‘Moonlight Serenade,’ ” Sean answered.
“Hit me again.”
“ ‘Tuxedo Junction,’ ‘Little Brown Jug,’ ‘Pennsylvania Six Five Thousand.’ ” Sean imparted distinctive Americanisms.
“Pershing Square.”
“Queers.”
Silly damned game, Grimwood thought. The Americans go to ridiculous extremes to identify each other.
The guard was convinced the convoy was not German infiltrators. He advised Sean they were at the end of the line and a regimental headquarters was in a farmhouse in a clearing a few hundred yards removed.
“All right. Pull the convoy over. Put on a guard. Set up a bivouac.”
Sean, followed by his watchdog, O’Toole, slushed his way to the clearing and the farmhouse. Colonel Dundee welcomed them grumpily. “Dandy” Dundee, a self-made soldier, attempted to live up to his legend. His ulcer was killing him. He scratched his stubble jaw. “You guys from Military Government are always up my back.”
“Matter of fact, Colonel, we’ve been waiting to get to Rombaden for almost a year.”
“Ever drink this crap? Steinhager.”
Sean accepted the bottle, took a belt, passed it to O’Toole.
Dundee brought him up to date. He had sent a patrol into Rombaden and it had gotten clobbered. He drew back, dug in, and brought up two battalions of Long Toms and a battalion of tanks. They were now getting into position in the forest. Heavy mortars were pushed up forward so they could at least reach the suburbs. Dundee meant to hit Rombaden throughout the night with everything that would reach the city. In the morning a hundred air sorties were promised. Dundee belched the belch of a man whose stomach was in constant rebellion. Then he looked at Sean devilishly, as though he were about to impart a monumental secret. “Major,” he said with solemnity, “I’m going to cross the Landau tonight, two miles downstream.”
“Got a bridge?”
“Hell no! The goddam engineer battalion is lost. We’re going over in rubber boats.”
Dundee reckoned he could shuttle a battalion of men across the river under cover of darkness. Morning would find Rombaden cut off. Furthermore, he could move part of his men to the Schwabenwald Concentration Camp to engage the expected resistance from the Waffen SS.
Sean returned to the bivouac to check his team. They had been living off the countryside since they had passed through the Siegfried Line. Blessing’s men had already rounded up enough local livestock and three-in-one ration for a decent meal. Shelter halves had been set. The older men on the team—Tidings, Trueblood, Collier, Duquesne—were given the back of the trucks to sleep in. Geoffrey Grimwood qualified by age, but his long military service made him proudly refuse; he slept on the ground.
Sean went to the edge of the forest. There were only waterlogged shadows ahead. The Landau River could not be seen on the horizon, gray on gray. Rombaden was out there somewhere. The colors of the earth had been turned sallow, muck and mud alive and moving with infantrymen.
The perimeter was an open field close to the suburbs of Rombaden, interlaced with crudely dug foxholes and trenches of riflemen, mortars, and machine guns.
By nightfall the rain had stopped. In their forest bivouac the wind blew down endless sheets of water from the leaves, keeping everyone in a state of soggy discomfort.
But by now weariness had overcome the men of Pilot Team G-5. They had reached that state of delicious numbness when all pain and misery ceased, when one could hardly remember living without mud. They had devoured a pig and a half-dozen German chickens, so life was not without its redemptions; and then they slept. They slept except for the commander, for when others sleep, the commander ponders.
The Long Tom cannons and the tanks flashed up lights every few seconds as their muzzles spewed gunflame. Up forward the heavy mortars hissed and the red tracers of machine-gun bullets darted toward Rombaden.
Sean leaned against a tree at the edge of the forest. O’Toole hovered a few yards away, hands on his carbine, alert for intruders.
Well Tim, Sean thought, I have seen the Germans. I did not see them through the window of a streaking airplane, scrambling like ants from a stream of hot water. I saw them herded by the acre, dull-eyed and beaten. I saw them limp along in endless lines with their hands over their heads. I saw them slurp water from our canteens with trembling hands, and dive for our cigarette butts. I saw them too weary and disgusted to care about the disgrace of capture.