Well, they didn’t know how fucking tough it was, he thought. Or they just didn’t give a shit. They probably figured his rank and an occasional bottle of whiskey made up for it. Or they were too damn ignorant — he looked resentfully at the new corporal, Schmitzer, and at Trankic and the kids in the section. Laurel and Farrel, he didn’t even know the names of the others, just that they were still babies with damn little use for the razor blades they’d been issued... Still and all, he wanted their approval, and needed to anesthetize a curious irritation at the way Docker had handled whatever it was between Haskell and Larkin. So he proceeded to announce to the section what he hadn’t intended to tell them, what in fact had been told him in total confidence only that morning by Captain Grant and the battalion commander. Lieutenant Colonel Leary.
“Now I don’t want you men to be spreading this around, but you’re not rag-ass rookies, you got a right — hell, you earned a right — to know what’s going on.” Whitter rubbed his mittened hands together briskly. “Every report we’ve had for the last ten days tells us the same thing: we got the enemy in a goddamn meat grinder. They’re nothing but kraut sausage and kraut hamburger now. With any luck at all, we could be startin’ home by Christmas...”
“Come here. Little Sicily, I want to talk to you.”
Corporal Haskell took Carmine Spinelli by the arm and led him down the hill a dozen yards from the cannon, where he stopped and poked Spinelli in the chest with a finger the size of a gnarled sausage.
Spinelli tried to pull away, but Haskell grinned and tightened his grip.
“Little Sicily, when Larkin was being a fucking wise guy, I had an idea you were laughing at me.”
“No, I wasn’t. Why would I do a dumb thing like that?”
“Little Sicily, I hear you guys still got some of that black booze Trankic made in Normandy.”
“What’s this ‘Little Sicily’ shit? I got nothing against you.”
“No offense, Little Sicily.” Haskell continued to smile, his cheeks bunching and creating the flaking skin under his whiskers. When he prodded him again, Spinelli gasped with pain.
“What you want with me?”
“You’re not listening. I told you. I want some of that black whiskey.”
“What whiskey?”
“Now don’t fuck with me, ginzo,” Haskell said quietly. “The stuff Trankic made from the alcohol he stole at Utah Beach.”
“Utah Beach?” Spinelli was recovering some of his confidence; he was safe enough here, so close to the rest of the section that he could almost enjoy the anger darkening Haskell’s muddy eyes. “What you talking about?”
Haskell glanced around; no one was watching them. “I told you once, don’t fuck with me, you little wop cock-sucker.”
“Go shit in your hat and punch it.”
Haskell smiled. “Know something, ginzo? I’m gonna say you called me a mother-fucker. Which I don’t take from anybody. So they’ll understand I had to slap them words back down your throat.”
“Aw, c’mon,” Spinelli said, “I didn’t mean nothing. It was just a joke.”
He started to back away, but Haskell spun him around as effortlessly as he would a small child. Holding him by the lapels of his jacket, Haskell drew back his hand, abruptly lowered it when Docker said from behind him, “All right, knock it off, Haskell.”
“This ain’t any of your business,” Haskell said. “Unless you want to make it.”
“Let me tell you something. Everything that goes on in this gun section is my business. Take your hands off Spinelli.”
Haskell stood perfectly still for a moment. Then he nodded slowly. He put his hands on his hips and looked off at the mountains, vague, insubstantial shapes in the rolling fogs. Then: “Okay, Docker, I’ll see you around one of these days. Maybe someplace where we can forget them sergeant’s stripes of yours.”
“Kiss off, Haskell,” Docker said, and walked back to the guns with Spinelli.
Lieutenant Whitter took a small ledger and pencil from an inner pocket of his overcoat and made notes of his final orders to Sergeant Docker.
“You head out due east toward a Belgian town called Werpen, it’s on your grid maps. It’s ten, fifteen miles from here but I don’t know how in hell them mountain roads are, so be ready for some shoveling. Like I told your men, there ain’t a kraut left between here and the Rhine, but just in case you run into anything you can’t handle, you got a fall-back position, a town called Lepont on the Salm, which is about eight or ten miles northwest of here. If you don’t have to fall back, keep heading east after you get to Werpen.” Whitter studied his notes, nodded and tucked the ledger into his pocket. “I know something’s bothering you, Docker. So talk or shake a bush. It’s a democratic army, too goddamn democratic if you ask me — so go ahead and spit it out.”
“Just a suggestion that we tone down this talk about starting home by Christmas.”
“You didn’t say anything about that,” Whitter said. “I’m the one said it. And I’m about to say something else.” Whitter patted the silver bar on his shoulder. “That little piece of brass says I can say anything I want to your gun section.”
“I think I understand what Docker’s getting at,” Longworth said.
Whitter stared at him. “I wasn’t talking to you, was I, lieutenant?”
“No, you weren’t,” Longworth said, and climbed into the rear of the jeep.
Lieutenant Whitter grinned and eased himself in beside the driver, Haskell. “Okay, maybe I was wrong,” he said. “However, that’s one of the privileges of being an officer. Docker. Screwin’ up. It’s what Ah, Aich, Ah, Pee is all about. Just don’t you screw up, sergeant, ’cause that ain’t one of your privileges. You keep everybody on the ball.”
The jeep rolled down the hill, disappearing into the fogs, and soon the throb of its motor faded and the silence settled again through the valleys of the Ardennes.
Chapter Five
December 13, 1944. Koblenz. Wednesday, 0630 Hours.
The command car traveled at speed through country roads and into the blacked-out environs of the city of Koblenz. The skies were heavily overcast with smoke and fogs. General Heinrich Kroll took a sealed envelope from his pocket and gave it to Karl Jaeger.
“Don’t open it just yet,” he said.
Heinrich Kroll was slender, with narrow features and gray eyes enlarged in rather startling fashion by steel-rimmed high-correction glasses. The general’s manner was elegant, his uniform neat, and in street clothes he would have blended easily with a gathering of lawyers, engineers or civil servants.
Deep blue illumination from the headlights and dashboard surrounded the command car in a cocoon of hazy reflections that splintered softly on Kroll’s slightly bared teeth and thick eyeglasses.
“Remember what I’m about to tell you,” the general said. “Armies gain glory in victory but they achieve immortal character in defeat. From this moment on, Jaeger, you must think and speak and act as if you are under surveillance by generations of unborn Germans. What you think will be known, what you speak will be heard, what you do will be seen. Always keep that foremost in your mind.”
General Kroll had history on his mind, Jaeger realized. Appropriate for an historic mission... Operation Christ-rose, he explained, would be launched at three minutes past seven on the morning of December 16th. It would begin with infantry attacks, supported by long-range artillery, to be followed by the assault of three Panzer armies on an eighty-mile front from Monschau south to the border of Luxembourg. The units to be committed were: The Fifth Panzer Army, General Hasso von Manteuffel commanding — four Panzer, three infantry divisions. The Sixth Waffen SS Panzer Army, General Josef “Sepp” Dietrich commanding — four Panzer and five infantry divisions. The Seventh Army, General Eric Brandenberger commanding — six infantry and one Panzer division. In reserve, to be used at the discretion of Field Marshal von Rundstedt, was a force of four Panzer and four infantry divisions. One of the spearhead units to break first from the Christrose start-line would be Kampfgruppe “Peiper,” under the command of SS Colonel Joachim Peiper, whose mission would be to strike toward Vielsalm and Werbomont on its drive toward France. These elements would be supported by paratroopers, and by Colonel Skorzeny’s Operation Greif commandos, wearing American uniforms and driving captured American vehicles.