CHAPTER 11
The dead american soldier more resembled a pancake with flattened arms and legs than a human being. He looked like a cartoon character that could have been peeled off the ground like a coat of paint. Being run over by a tank will do that. The pounding rain made matters worse.
“What the hell happened?” Whiteside asked. The half dozen wet infantrymen in ponchos from the 116th Division looked stunned, while the driver of the tank that had run over the GI stood a few yards away, puking his guts out.
Finally, a corporal spoke. “Sir, we was hitching a ride when it happened. For some reason the turret turned and the barrel swept Hickey right off and under the tracks of the tank behind. He didn’t scream, he just kind of squished. I don’t think he knew what hit him. Hell, I hope he never knew it.”
Infantrymen were always hitching rides on the hulls of tank. It beat the hell out of walking and the infantry and armor were supposed to support each other, so riding on the tanks made sense.
Whiteside turned to the sergeant who commanded the tank that had thrown the man off. The man looked stunned and near tears. “I thought I saw something suspicious to my left and I instinctively swung the turret. I completely forgot about the guys riding topside.”
Medics had arrived and were gawking at the flattened corpse. “Get him out of here. Now!” Whiteside barked.
Two medics lifted, almost slid, the distorted caricature of a corpse onto a stretcher. The ground was soft and an impression of his body remained. It began to fill with water like an obscene pool. Curiously, there was very little blood and it was being diluted and washed away by the rain. A moment later, the ambulance was heading down the road and in no great hurry.
Whiteside looked solemnly at the tankers and infantry gathered around him. “It was an accident, men, a damn tragic accident and nobody’s responsible for it because everybody was doing what they were supposed to be doing. If you do want to find somebody to blame, try the Germans. If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be here and none of this would have happened.”
Whiteside turned and walked away quickly so no one would see the look of anguish on his face.
An infantry corporal looked at the tanker. “We’re getting back on, you know.”
The sergeant nodded sadly. “Yeah, I know.” They climbed up and the column began to move again.
Levin looked at Jack and shook his head. “I got a letter from my mother today. She’s complaining about the shortage of butter. Maybe I’ll write her and tell her about what happens when a tank runs over you. I took a picture. Maybe I should send it to her.”
Morgan managed a bitter laugh. The rain had grounded him. “It’s fun to think about doing, but you know you won’t write about anything like that. Censors don’t like any of that nasty but accurate stuff in letters to the home folks. Might make them think that war is actually dangerous and we can’t have that, now can we?”
Levin lit a cigarette. “Right. I’ll save it for my memoirs. By the way, hear anything from your girlfriend?”
Morgan flushed. “Once more, how can she be my girlfriend if I’ve never met her in person?”
“Maybe it’s better that way. If she met you and really got to know you, I’m certain she wouldn’t like you.”
“Screw you, Roy.”
“You do know that obscenities are the refuge of the small-minded, intellectually shallow and illiterate people.”
“Fuck you, Roy.”
Jessica had sent a letter saying she’d received the photo of him beside the Piper Cub. She said she’d like to take a ride in it. It sounded like a great idea, but he somehow knew that Whiteside and Stoddard would put the kibosh on it. Still, it was great to think about.
Margarete was constantly amazed at the amount of equipment and manpower brought to the defensive construction sites. Heavy artillery, including enormous fifteen-inch naval cannon that she was told could hurl a shell weighing almost a ton for more than twenty miles, were being dug in. Men from Germany’s navy, the Kriegsmarine, cheerfully told her that the guns had come from now useless warships and would be a nasty surprise for the Yanks. They said the casements housing the great guns and many others of smaller caliber would be impregnable and impervious to bombing.
Underground barracks for thousands of men were being constructed along with deep trenches and tunnels to enable reinforcements to be sent from one spot to another. It was a shortcoming that had led in part to the swift collapse of the Seine River defenses. No one wanted to say that the massive American assaults were the main reason.
Margarete no longer worked with a shovel. Both she and her mother had better jobs and she suspected her father’s hand in it. Magda worked in an office trying to make sense out of the project’s records while Margarete, to her delight, was assigned as a driver. Her learning to drive a car on the journey from Berlin and a tractor on the farm had paid dividends. The only downside of driving a staff car or a truck was that they were fair game for American fighters, while groups of civilians digging holes were generally left alone. Thus and regardless of the weather, she always drove with the windows open so she could listen for the sound of enemy planes. On a couple of occasions, she’d thought she’d heard fighters, stopped the car, and jumped into a ditch leaving whoever she was driving still in the car. She’d been scolded for doing that, but she didn’t care.
Most disturbing to Margarete were the hordes of men coming to help work on and man the defenses. Some were the pathetically thin men who, she was told, came from the various prisoner of war camps. She suspected that a number of them were really Jews and other undesirables taken from death camps. Since their alternative was to go to places like Auschwitz, whose existence she no longer doubted, she thought they were the lucky ones.
A second group was the “Volkssturm,” literally the “people’s storm,” or the people’s army. To her dismay, the consisted of the old and the very young. There were no uniforms and rank was designated by armbands. Their weapons were sparse. Some had old rifles that a few joked had seen service against France in 1871, while others carried captured weapons, and many had antitank Panzerfausts slung over their shoulders.
That a number of those men had seen service in the First World War was fairly obvious. Some men limped, many had scars, and a few were missing arms or hands. She suspected that a few had artificial legs. Was this what the Reich was coming to? Were these all that was left?
A few younger men were included in the ranks of the Volkssturm and she wondered why. Her mother told her they were men who had physical ailments that eliminated them from being in the regular army.
As a group of about fifty Volkssturm walked by-they didn’t even pretend to march-she was startled by a familiar face. “Volkmar Detloff,” she called out and a young man turned awkwardly. He smiled tentatively.
“Is that you, Margarete, I didn’t recognize you. You’ve changed.”
Yes, she thought. I’m no longer weak, plump and vulnerable. “And you as well, and what are you doing in the Volkssturm? I thought you’d be an officer in the Waffen-SS by now.”
He winced. “I hurt my knee in the training and now neither the army nor the SS want me. I am still considered a lieutenant, but now I’m stuck commanding old men and misfits.”
Several of he old men and misfits turned and glared at Detloff. “Don’t you think you should be a little more tactful?” she said.
“Why? These so-called soldiers are scum and won’t fight unless they are forced to,” he said and patted the Luger on his hip. “This will remind them who’s in charge and what happens to cowards.”
Margarete smiled inwardly as she heard one of the misfits, an old man who might have fought in a dozen earlier battles, say “arrogant little shit” just loud enough to be heard. Detloff wheeled and stared at his platoon, all of whom were looking innocently at the sky.