“I don’t have the authority to surrender under these circumstances. It’s a decision I can’t make.”
“What about the authority of plain common sense?”
The wind had picked up and the flying snow was like a porous wall between Docker and the German officer.
“I can’t surrender or retreat until my present orders are countermanded and I’m given new ones,” Docker said smoothly, and untruthfully. “My section receives two radio signals every twenty-four hours from Battery headquarters. Their transmitter sends at four in the afternoon and four in the morning, and shuts down between those signals. I’ll present your proposals to the battery commander when and if we’re in contact tomorrow morning. Then I’ll follow his orders.”
“You’re obviously a very dedicated soldier,” Jaeger said. “But you’re also damned stupid if you think there’s anything heroic about being slaughtered for no good reason.” Jaeger paced the terrace, his boots grinding through the crust of ice on the flagstones. “I’m a serious man,” he said. “You’d be wise to keep that in mind. If you are lying to me, I should tell you something: I received a report only an hour ago from our weather station in Frankfurt. The present weather front will hold for at least another three days and nights. So don’t put your trust in the Eighth Air Force.” Jaeger was trying to control an expanding frustration; there was something unbending about the American sergeant that infuriated him. “You think you have some God-given right to defend that hill?” His voice had suddenly become hard with tension. “Some sacred duty, some moral responsibility to travel thousands of miles from your own innocent country and drop bombs on hospitals and schools and streets filled with women and children?” Somehow his words, with their evocation of his little daughters Rosa and Hannah, calmed and steadied him. “Let me tell you something,” he said quietly now. “In every country whose borders we’ve crossed, thousands of volunteers have joined our colors. There are Waffen SS units made up of Danes and Frenchmen and Norwegians, commanded by their own officers. The Eleventh Nordland Division was raised from Scandinavian volunteers only last year. From the earliest days of the conflict, sergeant, the German armed forces accepted recruits from Holland and Finland and Belgium... yes, from this very ground we’re standing on came some of our finest combat units. And from Hungary and Romania and Bulgaria there were dozens of divisions fighting at our side against the Russians.”
Jaeger’s voice became harder. “Have you ever asked yourself what you — an American — are fighting for on this old soil of Europe? For what, sergeant? To save England’s empire? Or to help Bolshevik tyrants? Is that what you’re here for? If so I ask you to remember this: no cannons are firing across the borders of America, no bombs have smashed your cities into rubble and not one, not one American man, woman or child has yet to be killed by German bombs on your homeland.”
Jaeger put the briar pipe in his pocket and walked across the terrace to the flight of steps. Stopping there, he looked at Docker, his features blurred by the shifting snow and fog.
“I’ll hold my attack until first light, sergeant, which will be in approximately six hours. No, make that five hours and forty-five minutes. My little history lesson was on your time, not mine.”
“If I’d known, I might have paid more attention,” Docker said.
Jaeger nodded slightly. “Your inattention probably does you credit, since most history is shaped by the communiques of victorious generals. Still, I urge you to be realistic when you talk to your superior officers. I have no wish to kill you and your men, sergeant.”
Jaeger went down the steps into the garden. When the sound of his command car faded on the air, Docker walked slowly back to his jeep through the shadows of topiary and weathered white statues.
Chapter Twenty-Four
December 23, 1944. Mont Reynard-sur-Lepont. Saturday, 0100 Hours.
Private Edward Solvis sat hunched in the front seat of Docker’s jeep, protected from the winds by a blanket and a tarpaulin pulled around his shoulders.
He warmed his gloved hands around a canteen cup of coffee, and when he felt heat and life in his fingers, took a notebook from his pocket and began to bring his diary up to date.
His life as a soldier had been a time of profound change for Solvis and from the date of his induction, he had resolved to keep a complete written record of it. The weeks of training and range firing in the sweltering humidity of a Georgia summer, he had put that down. And shipping out from Boston at night in an atmosphere charged with secrecy and tension, all that was in his notebooks, as was the invasion and the sound of guns on Beach Red and Beach Tare... all fully recorded in his neat, precise handwriting, because Solvis realized with a sure intuition that these adventures would become the literal peaks of his existence, and that if he survived the war the rest of his life would serve only as a vantage point from which to look back on these dangerous and uniquely alive years...
Now he wrote: “It’s after midnight, about one o’clock. The usual snow and wind. Docker told us about meeting with the German officer, Colonel Jaeger. We know they’ve shot and killed hundreds of unarmed prisoners at Malmédy, so surrendering (this is Docker’s point) would be pretty goddamn stupid. But something isn’t kosher here and Docker knows it. There’s no way we can stand off a Tiger tank. So what are they waiting for?”
“We could fire point blank at that tank with our .40 and not even dent it. Maybe time’s working for them. Could be Bastogne is gone and the Germans are on their way to Paris. That colonel won’t risk casualties because he doesn’t have to. Kind of ironic to risk your life in a mopping-up operation that doesn’t mean anything.
“Docker’s got Linari, Trank and Laurel on the edge of the hill with bazookas and grenades. They’ll cut loose when and if the tank makes a move, so at least we’ll know it’s coming. I’m monitoring the X-42, but haven’t had a signal for a couple of hours. The last one sounded like an RAF crew down east of Frankfurt, that’s all I could get. I took Baird some coffee a while ago. He asked me for something to write with. Maybe he feels this is a last chance for a letter to somebody. A girl or his family. Everybody knows now who his father is.”
Solvis heard a whisper of static from the X-42 but as he fine-tuned the frequencies, the sound faded to a windy silence. He tried several times to pick up the elusive signals, then began writing again:
“Thinking about Baird made me decide to put down some thoughts of my own. But I don’t really have any ‘last thoughts,’ about the bank or Davenport. Which is kind of strange. I worked and lived there seven years but the things I remember could just as well have happened to another person. This seems to be the only important time of my life. Not heroic or anything, that’s not it, but it means something. I know I’ll never forget Gelnick and the others. His body is wrapped in a tarp pinned down with rocks on high ground in the woods. What I keep thinking about is why he couldn’t save himself, why he just froze like that...”
Solvis glanced over what he had written and saw that some of the words were already blurred by the melting snow.
Tex Farrel and Jackson Baird walked across the crown of Mont Reynard through the darkness, stumbling, trying to avoid the stretches of bare earth polished and frozen slick by the winds.