“Yes, Sergeant,” Repp replied. His hand had edged cautiously inside his tunic.
“You’re another wanderer, I suppose. Separated, but still trying to join up, eh?” Rich amusement showed in his eyes.
“I have papers,” Repp explained.
“Well, damn your papers. Wipe your ass with them! I don’t care if you’ve got a note from the Führer himself, excusing you from heavy duty. We’re preparing a little festival for the Americans down at the bridge and I’m sure you’ll be happy to join us. Everybody’s invited. You’ll fight one more battle and fight it as an SS man, or you’ll taste this,” the STG.
Repp stood. Should he shoot the man? If he did, the only way out was down, fifty meters, the face of the cliff.
“Yes, sir,” he said reluctantly.
Goddamn! he thought. What now?
He bent to pick up the rifle.
“Leave that, my friend,” the sergeant said sweetly, as if he were delivering a death sentence. “It’s no good against tanks and tanks are on the menu tonight. Or had you thought I’d turn my back and you’d let me have it?”
“No, Sergeant.”
“Major Buchner said round up bodies, and by God I’ve done it. Sorry, stinking cowardly bodies, but bodies just the same. Now move your butt,” and he grabbed Repp and threw him forward contemptuously.
Repp landed in the dirt, scraping his elbow; as he rose, the sergeant kicked him in the buttocks, driving him ahead oafishly, a clown. Repp stood, rubbing his pain — some of the men in the half-track laughed — and ran forward like a fool, the sergeant chasing and hooting.
“Run, skinny, run, the Americans are coming.”
Repp scurried to the half-track. Hands drew him in and he found himself in a miserable group of disarmed Wehrmacht soldiers, perhaps ten in all, over whom sat like lords two SS corporals with machine pistols.
“Another volunteer,” said the sergeant, climbing into the cab of the vehicle. “Now let’s get moving.”
That Repp had been taken again and was about to fight in what must certainly be counted a suicidal engagement was one of his great concerns; but another, more immediate one was this Major Buchner, who, if his first name was Wilhelm, had served with Repp at Kursk.
“Okay, boys,” the sergeant yelled when the half-track, after a descent, halted, “time to work for your suppers. Sir,” he called, “ten more, shirkers the lot, but charmed to join us just the same.”
“Good, they’re still trying to get this damned thing mined,” replied a loud voice from ahead somewhere in the dark — Willi Buchner’s voice? “Now get ’em digging. Our friends will be here, you can bet on it.” His voice seemed to come from above and Repp realized, as his eyes adjusted in the night, that the officer stood atop the turret of one of the Panthers.
He turned to his fellows, who lounged around the informal barricade of vehicles at the bridge. “I promise you some fun before sunrise, boys, party favors and all.” A chorus of laughter rose from around him but someone close to Repp muttered, “Christ, another crazy hero.”
“Here, friend,” someone said without troubling to veil his hostility to Repp, “your weapon for the evening.” It was a shovel.
“Now come on, ladies, let’s get moving. You’re SS men now and the SS always stays busy.” Repp and the other new arrivals were directed to the approach where others were already digging under the machine pistols of patrolling SS troopers.
“I’d dig if I were you. When the Americans come in their big green tanks, you’ll want a place to stay.”
Repp saw the implication of the arrangement in a fraction of a second. The SS men would be clustered around the dug-in vehicles at the barricade with the heavier weapons — he’d seen a 75-millimeter gun as well as the two tanks, and several MG-42’s; the rest of them, the new recruits rounded up at gunpoint, would be out here in the open in holes. At the last moment they’d be armed with something—Panzerfausts, Repp supposed, but their main job was merely to die — to attract some fire, knock out a tank or two, confuse the invaders, impede their progress for just a moment while the Panthers and the gun took their bearings to fire. Then the SS boys would fall back across the bridge on the time bought by the conscriptees, and blow it, and wait out the end of the war in Tuttlingen; for the Wehrmacht there’d be no retreat, only another Stalingrad.
“Herr Sergeant,” a man next to Repp protested, “this is a mistake. I’ve got leave papers. Here. I was in the hospital — Field Number Nine, up near Stuttgart — and they let me out, just before the Americans came. I’m no good anymore. Blown up twice in Russia and once in—”
“Shut up,” said the SS man. “I don’t give a shit what your papers say. Here you are and by God here you stay. I hope you can work a Panzerfaust as well as you do that tongue of yours.” He stalked away from the fellow.
“It’s no fair,” said the man bitterly, hunkering down next to Repp to dig. “I’ve got the papers. I’m out of it. I did my part. Pain in my head, bad, all the damn time. Headaches just won’t stop. Shake so bad sometimes I can hardly piss.”
“Best dig for now,” Repp cautioned. “That doesn’t count a bit with these shits. They’d just as soon shoot you as the Americans. They hanged a bunch of engineers back a way.”
“It’s just no fair. I’m out of it, out of the whole thing. I never thought I’d get out of Russia but somehow—”
“Keep down,” Repp whispered, “that sergeant just looked over here.” He threw himself into the shoveling.
“You know what this is about, don’t you?” the man said.
“I don’t know anything except a man with a gun says dig, so I dig.”
“Well, it’s nothing to do with the war. The war’s over. What I hear is the big shots are escaping with the Jews’ gold. That’s right, all the gold they stole from the Jews. But the Americans want it. They’re going for the Jews’ gold too. Everybody wants it, now the Jews are finished. And we’re caught right in the middle. That’s what it’s—”
“To hell with fancy talk, Professor,” Repp said. “You can’t argue with a man with an automatic.”
They dug together in silence for a while, Repp working hard, finding a release in the effort. He squared his part of the pit off, packing the dirt into a rampart on the lip, sculpting a firing notch. Around him he could hear the clink of shovels going into earth and men quietly groaning, resigned. SS troopers prowled among them. Meanwhile, back among the vehicles on the bridge, other SS men moved about, arranging sandbags, tinkering with their weapons, uncrating ammunition. Now and then a single detonation sounded in the distance, and once a long sputter of automatic weapon fire clattered out.
“We ought to build a grenade trap,” said Repp, sweating profusely in his labor, his skin warm in the cool night air. He was half worried about blisters that might throw off his shooting, but he couldn’t take the possibility too seriously. If he didn’t get through tonight somehow, there’d be no shooting.
“Yeah, you’re right,” said the professor. “In case the bastards get in close.”
They bent to the bottom of the pit to scour out an angled hole into which to kick grenades to contain their blast, and suddenly the professor whispered into Repp’s ear, “I think we ought to make a break for it. Not now, but later, when the holes are all dug and the SS bastards are back by their tanks. We can move on down the river, get away from the fighting. When the Americans wipe out this bunch, we can—”
“Never make it,” Repp said. “Man on the turret has a machine gun. He’d have us cold unless we could fly like one of those fancy jets. I checked it out, first thing.”