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*Devil's Guard*
George Robert Elford
*BOMB FOR BOMB, BULLET FOR BULLET, MURDER FOR MURDER...*
/_Scanned: September 2002 by 1vpmc._//_ Version 1.0. Scanned with
FineReader 6 Pro, and edited with Frontpage 2002._/
/_Page numbers removed. Links to chapters added. Can not vouch for
correctness of French or Vietnamese words, but German is pretty accurate
as far as a English spell-checker can make it. For example, all u's
with umlauts (ü) were read as double i's (ii) by my FineReader OCR
program, so I changed them to u's without umlauts._/
*A DELL BOOK*
Published by
Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
New York, New York 10017
/To my dear Canadian friend, Roy Cooke/
Copyright © 1971 by George Robert Elford
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher,
except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press,
New York, New York.
Dell TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co., Inc. ISBN: 0-440-12014-4
Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press Printed in the United
States of America
One Previous Dell Edition
New Dell Edition First Dell printing—May 1985
Printed in USA
In 1954 the French were trying to fight the Viet Minh with armored
convoys and isolated garrisons. But "the war against guerrillas," says
the man who calls himself Hans Josef Wagemueller, "is not a war of
airplanes and tanks. It is a war of wits."
And, as fought by "Wagemueller" and his comrades in the French Foreign
Legion's Nazi battalion, it was also a war of terror. It was a war in
which bamboo land mines were countered by booby traps that combined
Teutonic precision with primal bloodlust. A war where one side fought
with children and the other slaughtered them. A war where every
soldier—German, French, or Vietnamese— prayed to die without
torture...and to be buried with his body in one piece.
*PUBLISHER'S NOTE*
This book is being published to provide the reading public with a clear
insight into the mind and personality of an unregenerate Nazi, to show
the dehumanization of men in war, and to illustrate the ironies and
hypocrisies to which men are driven in defense of their actions.
The publication of this book in no way indicates that the publisher
agrees with or condones the points of view it expresses.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
South, cruel south, Dreary nights and days, Green, rolling green,
Where Death rides on the trails.
You're weary? Carry on!
Until the bitter end,
You are Devil's Guard,
The Battalion of the Damned.
A LEGION MARCHING SONG
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/ /
/ /
/
INTRODUCTION
FOREWORD
1. UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
2. THE TARNISHED FATHERLAND
3. THE BATTALION OF THE DAMNED
4. "THE CONVOY MUST GET THROUGH!"
5. OPERATION "TRIANGLE
6. HUMANE AND INHUMANE INTERLUDES
7. THE MAN-HAO INCIDENT
8. RAID INTO CHINA
9. THE END OF A GARRISON
10. WITH BAYONETS AND ARSENIC
11. AMBUSHED
12. DIALOGUE WITH AN AGITATOR
13. THOSE INNOCENT NONCOMBATANTS
14. ACTION AND VENGEANCE
15. MOVE QUIETLY—KILL QUICKLY!
16. THE LITTLE TRAITORS
17. THE RED HIGHWAY (OPERATION "DELUGE")
18. THE LAST BATTLE (OPERATION "FIREFLY")
by Tim Hildebrand Printed in USA
*INTRODUCTION*
Working in the Far East as a zoologist I met many interesting people
and, occasionally, a few truly extraordinary individuals. One of them
was the real author of this manuscript: Hans Josef Wagemueller, the one
time SS /partisan-jaeger/—guerrilla hunter—who later became an officer
of the French Foreign Legion in Indochina, now known as Vietnam. We met
in a bar in the capital city of a small Asian nation of which he is now
a citizen. He was interested in my anesthetic rifle equipment, which I
was using to immobilize wild animals for scientific research.
"I used to be a hunter myself," he said to me with a smile I will never
forget. "I was a /kopfjaeger/—a 'head-hunter' as you would say in
English. You hunt elephants, rhinos, tigers. I hunted the most agile of
all beasts—man! You see, my adversaries were by no means any less
ferocious than their counterparts in the animal world. My game could
think, reason, and shoot back. The majority of them were what we now
call the Vietcong. They posed as gallant freedom fighters, the redeemers
of poor people. We used to call them 'the mechanized hordes of a
space-age Genghis Khan.' If there was a spark of truth in the Hitlerian
credo about the existence of superior and inferior races, we met the
real subhumans in Indochina. They tortured and killed for the sheer
pleasure of causing pain and seeing blood. They fought like a pack of
rabid rats, and we treated them accordingly. We negotiated with none of
them, and accepted no surrender by those who were guilty of the most
horrible crimes that man or devil can conceive. We spoke to them in the
only language they understood—the machine gun."
The life story of Hans Josef Wagemueller is a long and unbroken record
of perpetual fighting. He fought against the partisans in Russia during
World War II; he spent over five years in French Indochina, fighting
against what he described as "the same enemy wearing a different
uniform." When that was over, he moved into a small Asian country to
train its token, archaic army in the intricacies of modern warfare and
the use of modern weapons. "I have managed to turn a horde of primitive,
superstitious, and undisciplined warriors into a crack division of
daring soldiers," he stated with pride. "You could incorporate them in
any European army without further drilling."
The head of state where he now lives has granted him citizenship. The
local university has bestowed upon him the title Honorary Professor of
Military Sciences. He is now Hindu by religion and has a local name. At
the age of sixty-four, he is still going strong. His day begins with
rigorous physical exercises. Target shooting is still his favorite
pastime, and his steely blue eyes are still deadly accurate when looking
through the gunsight.
When the United States became entangled in the Vietnam conflict, Hans
Josef Wagemueller offered his experience to the American High Command in
a long letter that remained unanswered.
"I probably made a mistake by having written a somewhat haughty and in a
way maybe a bit lecturing letter," he said. "But our own long and
unbroken record of victories against the same enemy in the same land was
still fresh in my memory, and the unnecessary death of every American
soldier, every debacle that could have been avoided, hurt me deeply. I
could not think of the Vietnam war in any way except that it was my own
war. Those GI's scouted the same jungle trails where we had trekked for
many years. Many of them had to die where we survived. Somehow it was an
inner compulsion to regard them as comrades-in-arms. And you know what?
I am not surprised that young Americans are tearing up their draft cards
and refusing to go to Vietnam. To take young college boys out of their
super civilized surroundings and cast them into the primitive jungles of
Asia is nothing but murder. Sheer murder. Only experts, highly skilled
and experienced antiguerrilla fighters, can survive in the jungles of
Asia. It takes at least a year of constant fighting before a recruit
turns into an expert."
After that evening together—which left me shaken and sleepless for the
rest of the night—I asked Wagemueller if he would tell me his entire
story. He obliged by talking into the microphone of a tape recorder for
eighteen consecutive days. I have merely altered some of his technical
military phraseology for the sake of better understanding. This is a
true document with nothing essentially changed except the names.
Wagemueller obliged me to keep his true identity, as well as that of all
the others, undisclosed.
"I am requesting this not because of my being a war criminal. I have
told you the true story. I can give you my word of honor on it. I still
consider myself a German officer and a German officer will keep his word
of honor no matter what. But I have an eighty-seven-year-old mother whom
I would never expose to endless inquiries by the authorities and by the
press. And there are certain people mentioned in my story who are still
living in my hometown near the Swiss frontier and who helped many other
fugitive German officers to avoid prison and prosecution after the war.
I do not know who the other fugitives may have been, but what I do know
is that there were close to two thousand comrades in distress who left
Germany the way I did in 1945. The escape route was extremely well
organized and it is quite possible that some important Nazis used it too.
"Another important consideration is that I should not embarrass certain
high officials of my adopted country who have been helping me ever since
my arrival here. Besides," he added with a smile, "I was not very
popular with the Chinese People's Army—and China is not very far from here."
He wants his share of the author's royalty to go to the widows and
orphans of those Americans who fell in Vietnam. "I have all I need for
the rest of my life. I want no money, only justice to German officers
and soldiers who were correct to the core, yet had to share the disgrace
of a few. And I want to show the enemy stripped of its mask of gallantry
and heroic myth."
I have refrained from adding any comment of my own. It is up to the
reader to form his own judgment, as it is up to history to pass the
final mandate upon him, his companions, and their deeds.
*GEORGE ROBERT ELFORD*
1971
*FOREWORD*
I have seen many deadly landscapes, from the Pripet swamps in Russia to
the jungles of Vietnam. Unfortunately most of what I saw was seen only
through a gunsight, with no time to enjoy the scenery. I was a
/kopfjaeger/—"headhunter," as our comrades of the Wehrmacht used to call
us. We were a special task force of the /Waffen /SS—the "fighting
SS"—which had nothing to do with concentration camps, deportations, or
the extermination of European Jewry. Personally I never believed that
the Jews could or ever would become a menace to Germany and I hated no
people, not even the enemy. I never believed in German domination of the
world but I did believe that Germany needed /lebensraum. /It was also my
conviction that Communism should be destroyed while still in its cradle.
If my beliefs should be called "Nazism," then I was indeed a Nazi and I
still am.
During the Second World War my task was to frustrate guerrilla attacks
and suppress insurgency in our vital rear areas and around communication
centers, seldom farther than fifty miles from the front lines.
Regardless of age or sex, captured guerrillas were, as a rule, executed.
I was never interested in their race or religion and tolerated no
outrage against prisoners. My orders were to hang them, but I permitted
the brave ones to die /a /soldier's death, facing the firing squad.
During five long years we executed over one thousand guerrillas. If
there were Jews among them, we shot them too—but without any religious
prejudice.
I have not stayed away from Germany because of my crimes but because I
have no desire to behold what they call Germany today—a land of bowing
“Jawohl Johanns” who can only repeat "yes, sir" or "da, tovarich" in
either American or Russian servitude. The present German Army is only a
shadowy midget of its former self. The old Wehrmacht needed neither
foreign advisers nor protectors. It is a fact that we have lost two
offensive wars, fighting alone against the World. But I doubt that the
Wehrmacht would have lost a defensive war had the frontiers of the
Fatherland been invaded from the outside.
Once our German engineers built the best fighting aircraft in the world,
and I believe that we can still build the best if given a chance.
Instead we must use Starfighters in which the young German airmen are
obliged to fly kamikaze missions. About eighty of them have already
crashed without having been shot at. Germany is obliged to purchase
foreign rubbish; tanks, for instance, many of which are probably
inferior to our wartime Tigers and Panthers. Our formidable NATO allies
will not permit German industry to produce equipment for the army. Our
best brains are siphoned away by foreign countries because our
government will not pay them the wages they deserve. Should another war
come, Germany will be expected to stand by her allies, who are,
nevertheless, still scared of the Teutons, and any proposal for a German
rearmament remains anathema for them. Our Western allies have yet to
realize that the map of the world has changed. Now the nations of all
continents may choose between only two camps. Any thought of neutrality
between those two camps is nothing but self-delusion that will crumble
under the first serious pressure from the outside.
Fortunately the East German regime fares no better. The Russians, too,
would think twice before giving the People's Army any sophisticated
weapon. But the Volksarmee has an ideology to follow and it certainly
does not have draft dodgers.
I spent five years in Indochina, fighting the same enemy that I had
fought in Russia, wearing another uniform. I know well the marauders of
Ho Chi Minh. We fought them and routed them a hundred times, in the
mountains, in the jungles, in the swamps. We beat them at their own
game. We never regarded the terrorists as demigods or specters who could
not be destroyed. After our years in Russia we could put up with
hardship and misery. When we arrived in Indochina we were not
beginners. When we moved into Communist-dominated territories, there
was soon peace. Sometimes it was the peace of the bayonet, sometimes the
peace of a cemetery. But it was peace. Not even a lizard would dare to
move. If history records any French victory in Indochina, it was won
either by the French paratroops, who were magnificent fighters, or by us
Germans.
The war in Indochina was not lost on the battlefield but in Paris. The
Americans are losing the same war in Paris —right now. Paris and Geneva
. . . the only battlefields where the Western world has suffered
debacles, and where the Western world will always lose.
It is, of course, nonsense to say that the American Army cannot defeat
the guerrillas in Vietnam by force of arms. After all the American
fighting men defeated Japan. The jungles and swamps of Guadalcanal or
Okinawa offered no easier going than, for instance, the Mekong delta.
Besides, what army in military history was more effective in jungle
fighting than the Imperial Japanese Army?
But now American generals are compelled to fight world opinion instead
of the Vietcong. History will only repeat itself. At the beginning of
the Second World War the German generals were free to plan and conduct
their own battles and they won every battle on every front. Then Hitler
took command and everything was lost. When General MacArthur was
permitted to act to the best of his abilities, the world saw a marvelous
landing at Inchon and the North Korean rout. But when he had to obey
orders coming from ten thousand miles away, American soldiers had to
sacrifice their lives for no gains whatever.
C'est la guerre!
HANS JOSEF WAGEMUELLER
*1. UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER*
The news of the German capitulation reached us by radio deep in the
Czechoslovakian mountains, east of Liberec. We had been up there for
almost a month, holding an important pass, waiting for the Russians to
come. But as the days went by, nothing disturbed our positions and even
the local partisans refrained from engaging us in a major skirmish.
Unusual stillness blanketed the peaks and the valleys—the sort of sullen
tranquility that, instead of relaxing the mind, only charges it with
tension. Strange as it may be, after five years of war and hundreds of
engagements with the enemy, both regulars and insurgents, we were in no
condition to bear the quiet of peace. Of all the natural human functions
which we had once possessed we seemed to have retained only those that
were important for our immediate survival: to eat, to sleep, to watch
the woods—and to pull the trigger.
None of us doubted that the end was near. Berlin had fallen and Hitler
was dead. Military communications had long since broken down, but we
could still listen to the foreign broadcasts, including those of the
victorious Allies. And we knew that our saga would not end with the
capitulation of the Wehrmacht; that there would be no going home for the
tired warriors of the vanquished army. We would not be demobilized but
outlawed. The Allies had not fought only to win a military victory.
Their main objective was revenge.
The last dispatch which we had received from Prague eight days before
had ordered us to hold our positions until further orders—orders that
never came. Small groups of haggard German soldiers came instead.
Unshaven and hollow-eyed troops who had once belonged to every
imaginable service in the Wehrmacht—the SS, the Luftwaffe, and the SD
(Security Service). Among them were the surviving members of a decimated
motorized infantry brigade, a Luftwaffe service group, a panzer
squadron left with only two serviceable tanks; there were also five
trucks of a one-time supply battalion and a platoon of field gendarmes.
The remnants of an Alpenjaeger battalion had survived the retreat all
the way from the Caucasus to end up with us, near Liberec. We were all waiting for a last
sensible order, the order to evacuate Czechoslovakia and return into
Germany. The order to cease hostilities came instead.
For us, deep in hostile territory, the news of the armistice sounded
like a sentence of death. We had no one to surrender to except the
Czech guerrillas or the militia, neither of which recognized military
conventions or honor. Up to the very end we expected to be ordered back
to Germany before the weapons were laid down. We could expect no quarter
from the partisans—-we had killed too many of them. As a matter of fact
we could expect no prisoner-of-war treatment from the Red Army either.
The truck drivers of the supply battalion might be pardoned but not the
Waffen SS, the archenemy. In a sense we felt betrayed. Had we known in
advance that we were to be abandoned to our fate, we would have
withdrawn despite our orders to stay. We had taken more than a soldier's
share of the war and no one could have accused us of cowardice.
For five long years we had given up everything: our homes, our families,
our work, our future. We thought of nothing but the Fatherland. Now the
Fatherland was nothing but a cemetery. It was time to think of our own
future and whether our beloved ones had survived the holocaust wrought
by the Superfortresses during the last two years of the war.
Our headquarters had ordered us: "Stay where you are and hold the pass."
Then our headquarters returned to Germany. Like the Roman sentry who had
stood his guard while Vesuvius buried Pompeii, we too remained soldiers
to the bitter end.
We had survived the greatest war in history, but if we were to survive
peace, the most bloodthirsty peace in history, we had to reach the
American lines two hundred miles away. Not because we thought much of
American chivalry but at least Americans were Anglo-Saxons, civilized
and Christian in their own way. Around us in the valley were only the
Mongolian hordes, the Tatars of a mechanized Genghis Khan—Stalin. I had
the notion that it was only a choice between being clubbed to death by
cavemen or submitting to a more civilized way of execution.
To reach Bavaria and the American lines we had to cross the
Soviet-controlled Elbe. We were still confident of our own strength. We
had survived more hell than could possibly wait for us on the way home.
German soldiers do not succumb easily. We could be defeated but never
crushed.
All day long Captain Ruell of the artillery had been trying to reach the
headquarters of Field Marshal Schoerner. No one acknowledged his signals
but finally he did manage to contact General Headquarters at Flensburg.
I was standing close to him and saw his face turn ashen. When he lowered
his earphones he was shaking in every limb and could barely form his
words as he spoke: "It's the end. . . . The Wehrmacht is surrendering on
all fronts. . . . Keitel has already signed the armistice. . . .
Unconditional surrender." He wiped his face and accepted the cigarette
which I lighted for him. "The Fatherland is finished," he muttered,
staring into the distant valley with vacant eyes. "What now?"
Suddenly it dawned on us why the Russians had refrained from forcing the
pass. The Soviet commander had known that the war was about to end, and
he did not feel like sacrificing his troops only minutes before twelve
o'clock. But he was aware of our presence in the neighborhood. Within
six hours after the official announcement of the German capitulation,
Soviet PO-2's appeared overhead. Circling our positions the planes
dropped a multitude of leaflets announcing the armistice. We were
requested to lay down our weapons and descend into the valley under a
flag of truce. "German Officers and Soldiers," the leaflets read, "if
you obey the instructions of the Red Army commander you shall be well
treated, you will receive food and medical care due to prisoners of war,
according to the articles of the Geneva Convention. Destruction of war
material and equipment is strictly prohibited. The local German
Commander shall be responsible for the orderly surrender of his troops."
Had our plight not been so bitterly serious we could have sneered at the
Russians quoting the Geneva Convention, something the Kremlin had
neither signed nor acknowledged. The Red Army could indeed promise us
anything under the articles of the Convention; it was not bound by its
clauses.
The following morning our sentries spotted a Soviet scout car as it
labored uphill on the winding road to our positions. From its mudguard
fluttered a large white flag of truce. I ordered my troopers to hold
their fire, and called a platoon for lineup. Everyone was shaved and
properly dressed. I wanted to receive the Soviet officers with due
respect. I was astonished to see the car stop three hundred yards short
of our first roadblock, and, instead of sending forward parliamentaries,
the enemy began to deliver a message through loudspeakers.
"Officers and soldiers of the German Wehrmacht. . . . The Soviet High
Command knows that there are Nazi fanatics and war criminals among you
who might try to prevent your accepting the terms of armistice and
consequently your return home. Disarm the SS and SD criminals and hand
them over to the Soviet authority. Officers and soldiers of the
Wehrmacht. . . . Disarm the SS and SD criminals. You will be generously
rewarded and allowed to return home to your families."
"The filthy liars!" Untersturmfuhrer Eisner sneered, watching the
Russian group through his binoculars. "They will be allowed to return
home! That is a good joke."
It was amusing to note how little the enemy knew the German soldier.
After having fought us for so many years, the Soviet High Command
should have known better. Cowardice or treason was never the trade of
the German soldier. Nor was naivete. They had called us "Fascist
criminals" or "Nazi dogs" ever since "Operation Barbarossa." In the past
they had made no distinction between the various services. Wehrmacht,
SS, or Luftwaffe had always been the same to Stalin, yet now he was
endeavoring to turn the Wehrmacht against the SS and vice versa.
The loudspeakers blared again. Eisner pulled himself to attention.
"Herr Obersturmfuhrer, I request permission to open warning fire."
"No! Nothing of the sort, gentlemen," Colonel Stein-metz, the commanding
officer of the small motorized infantry group protested. "We shouldn't
fire at parliamentaries."
"Parliamentaries, Herr Oberst?" Eisner exclaimed with a bitter smile.
"They are sheltering behind the flag of truce to deliver Communist
propaganda."
"Even so," the colonel insisted. "We may request them to withdraw but we
should not open fire."
Being an officer of the Wehrmacht, Colonel Steinmetz had no authority
over the SS. He was, however, a meticulously pedantic officer and much
our senior both in rank and age. I did not feel like entering into
futile arguments, especially in front of the ranks. Trying to avoid the
slightest offensive quality in my voice I reminded him that I was in
charge of the pass and all the troops therein. Even so the colonel
stiffened at my remark and said, "I am aware of your command. Herr
Obersturmfuhrer, and I hope you will handle the situation with the
responsibility of a commander."
The Russian loudspeakers kept blaring. Eisner shrugged and began to
observe the enemy again. I exchanged glances with Erich Schulze and saw
defiance in his eyes. Both men had been my comrades for many years.
Bernard Eisner had been my right hand since 1942. He was a cool and hard
fighter. Having been well-to-do landowners, Eisner's father and elder
brother had been beaten to death by a Communist mob during the
short-lived "proletarian revolution" after the First World War. It was
Bernard's conviction that no Communist on earth should be left alive.
Schulze, who had joined my battalion in 1943, was rather hotheaded but
always polite and considerate.
A few steps from where we stood two young troopers sat behind a heavy
machine gun, which they kept trained on the Soviet scout car. Their
faces were tense but lacking emotion, as though they were statues or a
part of the gun. Both were young, only nineteen years old. Drafted in
1944, they had not experienced the real trials of the war.
I asked for a loudspeaker and addressed the Russians:
"This is the German commander speaking. We have not received an official
confirmation of the armistice and we will hold our positions until such
confirmation can be obtained. I request the Soviet commander to furnish
an authentic document related to the question of armistice. I also
request that, in the meantime, the Soviet propaganda unit refrain from
using the flag of truce for communicating subversive propaganda. I
request that the Soviet propaganda unit withdraw from our positions
within five minutes. After five minutes I shall no longer consider them
immune to hostilities."
"German officers and soldiers. . . . Disarm the SS and SD criminals and
hand them over to the Soviet authority.
You shall be generously rewarded and allowed to return home."
"I request that the Soviet propaganda unit refrain from using the flag
of truce for communicating subversive propaganda," I repeated. There was
a pause; then the loudspeakers blared once more. "German officers and
soldiers. .. . Disarm the SS and SD criminals. , .."
I ordered, "Fire!"
The scout car burst into flames, then exploded. When the smoke and dust
settled we saw two Red army men scurrying down the road. "That should
fix them for the time being," Eisner remarked, lighting a cigarette.
"Bullets are the only language they understand."
An hour later a squadron of Stormoviks dived out of the clouds with the
intention of strafing and bombing our positions. To reach us, however,
the planes had to come in level between a cluster of high cliffs, then
drop sharply over the small plateau which we occupied. The Russian
pilots flew well, but they had bad luck. I had deployed eight 88's and
ten heavy MG's to cover that narrow corridor and our gunners were
experienced men. Within a few minutes five of the planes had been shot
down. Trailing smoke two more had escaped toward the valley and a third
one had banked straight into a three-hundred-foot rock and exploded,
fuel, bombs, ammunition and all. At that point the four remaining planes
had given up and departed without having fired a shot. We spotted two
Soviet pilots parachuting downward. One of them hit a cliff, slipped his
chute, and tumbled to his death at the bottom of a ravine. The other
one, a young lieutenant, landed right on one of our trucks. He was made
prisoner.
"Zdrastvuite, tovarich!" Captain Ruell, who spoke impeccable Russian,
greeted our astonished visitor.
My men searched the pilot. I looked into his identification book but
handed it back to him. And when Schulze gave me the officer's Tokarev
automatic, I only removed the bullets and returned his gun as well. He
was so surprised at my unexpected behavior that his chin dropped. He
tried to smile but he could not. He only managed to draw his lips in a
paralytic grin.
"The war is over," he muttered. "No more shooting," he added after a
moment, imitating the sound of a submachine gun. "No tatatata." His face
showed so much terror that we could not help smiling. He must have been told that
Germans were man-eaters.
"No more tatatata, eh?" Erich Schulze chuckled, mocking the Russian.
The pilot nodded quickly. "Da, da. . . . No more war."
Schulze poked him in the belly. "No more war but a minute before you
wanted to bomb the daylight out of us here."
"Ja, ja," the Russian repeated, his eyes glued to Schulze's SS lapel.
Erich poked him gently again, and the Russian paled.
"Leave him alone," Captain Ruell interposed. "You are scaring the shit
out of him."
"Sure," Eisner added, "and we don't have many extra pants up here, Erich."
The captain spoke to the pilot briefly and his presence seemed to lessen
the Russian's fear. "Don't let the SS shoot me, officer," he pleaded. "I
have been flying for only eight months, and I want to go home to Mother."
"We have been fighting for five years. Imagine how much we would like to
return home," Captain Ruell replied with a bitter smile.
"Don't let the SS shoot me. .. ."
"The SS won't shoot you."
Schulze offered the Russian a cigarette. "Here, smoke! It will do you good."
"Thanks." The pilot grinned, taking the cigarette with shaking fingers.
Erich opened his canteen, gulped some rum, then wiped the canteen on his
sleeve and offered it to the pilot. "Here, tovarich. .. . Drink good
SS vodka."
Realizing that his life was not in danger the Russian relaxed.
"Our commander says that you don't want to surrender," he said, shifting
his eyes from face to face as though seeking our approval for what he
was saying. "You must surrender. . . . There are two divisions in the
valley; forty tanks and heavy artillery are expected to come in a day or
two."
"Tovarich, you have already told us enough for a court-martial,"
Schulze exclaimed, slapping the pilot on the back.
"You shouldn't tell the enemy what you have or don't have." Captain
Ruell interpreted for him.
"I only said that heavy artillery is on the way."
"Who cares?" Eisner shrugged. "There is a mountain between your
artillery and us."
"The mountain will not help you." The Russian shook his head. He turned
and pointed toward a ridge five miles to the southeast. "The artillery
is going up there."
"Nonsense!" I said. "There is no road."
"There is a road," Captain Ruell interposed, "right up to hill
Five-O-Six. We had four Bofors there in early March."
Looking at the map I realized that Captain Ruell was right and what the
Russian pilot was saying had a ring of truth. Should the Soviet
commander mount some heavy artillery on that hill, he could indeed shell
our plateau by direct fire.
We gave the Russian a hearty meal and allowed him to leave. He was
immensely happy and promised to do everything for us should we meet
again after surrendering. "Food, vodka, cigarettes, Kamerad. My name
is Fjodr Andrejevich. I will tell our commander that you are good
soldiers and should be well treated."
"Sure you will," Eisner growled, watching the Russian leave. "You just
tell your commander and you will be shot before the sun is down as a
bloody Fascist yourself."
The pilot walked away slowly, turning back every now and then as though
still expecting a bullet in the back. Having passed our last roadblock
it must have occurred to him that he was still alive and unhurt, and he
began to race downhill as I had never seen a man run. Eisner was not
very enthusiastic about the Russian's departure.
"He saw everything we have up here," he remarked with barely concealed
disapproval in his voice.
"We had no choice but to let him go," Colonel Steinmetz challenged him
sharply. "The war is over, Herr Untersturmfuhrer,"
"Not for me, Herr Oberst," Eisner replied quietly. "For me the war
will be over when I greet my wife and two sons for the first time since
August 1943, and it isn't over for the Russian either. He came here
flying not the white flag but a fighter bomber."
"I haven't seen my family since June 1943," the colonel remarked.
I drew Eisner aside. "You should not worry about the Ivan," I told him
with an air of confidence. "What can he tell? That we have men, weapons,
tanks, and artillery? The more he tells the less eager they will be to
come up here." I put an arm around his shoulder. "Bernard, we've killed
so many Russians. We can surely afford to let one individual go."
He grinned. "I have read somewhere what the American settlers used to
say about the Indians, Hans. The only good Indian is a dead Indian. I
think that is also true of the Bolsheviks."
"Maybe the pilot was not a Bolshevik?"
"Maybe he wasn't—yet. But if you ask me, Hans, I can tell you that
anyone who is working for Stalin is game for me." He lit a cigarette,
offered me one, then went on. "I know that we are defeated and that
there will be no Fatherland to speak of for a long time to come. For all
we know the Allies might break up the Reich into fifty little
principalities, just as it was five hundred years ago. We scare them
stiff, even without weapons, even in defeat. But I cannot suffer the
thought of having been defeated by a rotten, primitive, lice-ridden
Communist mob. I know that no conqueror in history was ever soft on the
conquered enemy. We might survive the American and the British but never
the Soviet. Stalin won't be satisfied with what he may loot now. He will
not only take his booty, but he will try to take our very souls, our
thoughts, our national identity. I know them. I've been their prisoner.
It was for only five days but even then they tried to turn me into a
bloody traitor. The Russians are mind snatchers, Hans. They will not
only rape our women, they will also turn them into Communists
afterwards. Stalin knows how to do it and now he will have all the time
on earth. He is going to increase the pressure inch by inch. I could gun
down anyone who is helping Stalin."
"You would have quite a few people to gun down, Bernard. Starting with
the British and finishing with the Americans. They have not only helped
Stalin, but also brought him back from his deathbed and made him a giant."
"Stalin will be most obliged to his bourgeois allies," Eisner sneered.
"Just wait and see how Stalin will pay for the American convoys. Give
him a couple of years. Mister Churchill and Mister Truman are going to
enjoy a few sleepless nights for Mister Roosevelt's folly."
"That won't help us much now, Bernard!"
"I guess not," he agreed- After a brief pause he added, "If you decide
to surrender, Hans, just let me have a gun and a couple of grenades. I
will find my way home."
"You won't be alone." I gave him a reassuring tap. "I don't feel like
hanging in the main square of Liberec, either."
"I don't feel like submitting myself to what comes between the surrender
and the hanging," he added with a sarcastic chuckle.
Early in the afternoon the PO-2's returned, but we did not fire on the
flimsy canvas planes which carried no weapons. The Russians had sent us
another load of leaflets, among them newspaper cuttings announcing the
armistice, and photocopies of the protocol bearing the signature of
General Field Marshal Keitel. Again we were requested to lay down our
weapons and evacuate into the valley under the flag of truce.
"This is it!" Colonel Steinmetz spoke quietly as he crumpled the Soviet
leaflet between his fingers. "This is it!" And as though providing an
example, he unbuckled the belt which supported his holster, swung it
once, and tossed the belt on a flat slab of stone. I expected nothing
else from Colonel Steinmetz. He was a meticulously correct officer, a
cavalier of the old school who would always keep to the letter of the
service code. He could see no other solution but to comply with that
last order of the German High Command, or what was left of it. Moving
like automatons, his three hundred officers and men began to file past
our sullen group, the troops casting their rifles and sidearms onto the
mounting pile. But the artillery, the small panzer detachment, and the
Alpenjaegers kept their weapons, and, with a skill born of habit, the
SS took over the vacated positions.
"I am sorry," Colonel Steinmetz said quietly, and I noticed that his
eyes were filled. "I cannot do anything else."
"There is no longer a high command, Herr Oberst, and the Fuehrer is
dead. You are no longer bound by your oath of allegiance," I reminded him.
He smiled tiredly. "If we wanted to disobey orders we should have done
it a long time ago," he said. "Right after Stalingrad. And not on the
front but in Berlin."
"You mean a successful twentieth of July, Herr Oberst?"
"No," he shook his head. "I think what Stauffenberg did was the gravest act of cowardice. If he was so sure of doing the right thing, he should have stood up, pulled his gun, shot Hitler, and taken the consequences. But I don't believe in murdering superior
officers. The Fuehrer should have been declared unfit to lead the nation
and, removed. Had Rommel or Guderian taken command of the Reich, we
might have won—if not the war, at least an honorable peace."
"It is either too late or still too early to discuss the Fuehrer's
leadership, don't you think, Colonel Steinmetz?"
"You are right. Now all we can do is hoist the white flag."
"We have no white flags, Herr Oberst," Captain Ruell remarked with
sarcasm. "White flags were never standard equipment in the Wehrmacht."
The colonel nodded understandingly. "I know it is painful, Herr
Hauptmann, but if we refuse to surrender, the Russians may treat us
like we treated their guerrillas."
"Are you expecting anything else from the Soviet, Herr Oberst?" Eisner
asked.
"The war is over. There is no reason for more brutalities," said the
colonel. He turned toward me. "What do you intend to do?"
I suggested that we should try to reach Bavaria, two hundred miles away,
but the colonel only smiled at my idea. "By now, the Russian divisions
are probably streaming toward the line of demarcation," he said. "All
the roads and bridges will be occupied by the Russians and precisely
opposite the American lines you will find most of their troops. Stalin
does not trust either Churchill or Truman. He has exterminated his own
general staff. Do you think he would trust Eisenhower or Montgomery? The
days of 'our heroic Western Allies' are over for Stalin. In a few weeks'
time the Western Allies will be called bourgeois, decadent, imperialist,
and Stalin will deploy a million troops on the western frontiers of his
conquest. Besides," he added after a pause, "you should not expect much
from the Americans, Herr Obersturmfuhrer. I have heard many of their
broadcasts."
"So have we," Eisner remarked.
"Then you should know about their intentions. A prisoner is always a
prisoner. The conqueror is always right and the vanquished is always wrong!"
"We have no intention of surrendering, Herr Oberst, neither here nor
in Bavaria," I said softly.
"Are you planning to go on fighting?"
"If necessary . . . and until we arrive at some safe place."
"Where, for instance?"
"Spain, South America . .. the devil knows."
"You should not count on Franco. Franco is all alone now and they might
put pressure on him soon. With Hitler and Mussolini dead, Stalin will
never tolerate the existence of Franco, the last strong leader in
western Europe. Stalin knows that he will be able to push around
everyone but Franco. He will regard Spain as a potential birthplace, or
rather a place of resurrection, for the Nazi phoenix. And to reach South
America you will need good papers and plenty of money. But, to speak of
more immediate problems, do you have enough food to reach Bavaria? I
know you have enough weapons but your trip might take two months over
the mountains, and I presume that is the way you intend to go. Man
cannot live on bullets."
"We have enough food for two weeks. One can always find something to
eat. It is getting on to summer now," I said. "There are villages and
farms even in the mountains."
He shook his head disapprovingly. "Are you planning to raid the farms
and villages? Will you shoot people if they refuse to accommodate you?"
"If it is a matter of survival, Colonel Steinmetz . . ." Eisner said
before I could answer. He left the sentence unfinished for a moment,
then added, "Have you ever seen a humane war?"
"It will no longer be an act of war but common banditry," the colonel
stated frankly. "Of course you still have the power to do it but you
won't be able to do it in silence. The Czechs will know about you. The
Russians will know about you and your destination. The news of your
coming might reach Bavaria before you do."
"And we might have an American reception committee waiting for us at the
frontier. This is what you wanted to say, Herr Oberst?" I interposed.
"Precisely!" said he. "And if up 'til now you haven't committed
something the Allies may call a war crime, you had better not furnish
them with any evidence now!"
"Herr Oberst," I spoke to him softly but firmly, "if we do reach
Bavaria, nothing will stop us from getting further. Neither the
Americans, nor the devil himself. We have given up many things a man
would never willingly part with, and we are ready to give up more, even
our lives. But not our right to return home. On that single item we will
never compromise."
"I wish I was as young as you are," Colonel Steinmetz spoke resignedly.
"But I am tired, Herr Obersturmfuhrer ... so very tired."
Despite the old soldier's pessimism I felt that somehow we had a fair
chance of getting through, saving at least our bare lives. The prospect
of being hanged by the guerrillas, or at best carted off to a Siberian
death camp, did not appeal to me at all. The colonel might survive. He
might even return home one day. The SS could entertain no illusions
about the future. No Soviet commander would lift a finger to protect us.
Should their Czech allies decide to get even with us, the Russians would
quickly forget about their Geneva Convention pledge for humane
treatment. For seven years the Czechs had been waiting for this day, and
I could not blame them either. In 1944 alone we had killed over three
thousand of their guerrillas.
"We should travel high up in the mountains, avoiding contact with the
enemy. We have excellent maps of the areas involved, and if necessary we
can fight our way through a Soviet brigade."
"With a few hundred men?" the colonel asked skeptically.
"We have at least a hundred light machine guns, Colonel Steinmetz,"
Eisner interposed. "We can put out so much fire that the Ivans will
think a division is coming."
"For how long?"
"Hell, we can play hide-and-seek in the woods until the Day of Judgment,
Herr Oberst!" Schulze exulted. "We should at least try! To surrender
here is sheer suicide. What have we got to lose? One may commit suicide
at any time."
Bernard Eisner and Captain Ruell were of the same opinion.
"We have mountains and woods all the way to Bavaria," Ruell said. "I am
quite sure that every one of us has been through similar trips a dozen
times in the past."
The colonel shook his head slowly. "Hiding in the forest? Sneaking in
the night like a pack of wolves . . . stealing or robbing food at
gunpoint, shooting people if they resist? No, gentlemen, I have been a
soldier all my life and I shall finish it all like a soldier, obeying
the orders of those who are entitled to give them."
"The Soviet commander down in the valley, for instance?" Eisner remarked
bitterly. The colonel frowned. "I am talking of General Field Marshal
Keitel and Grand Admiral Doenitz," he said.
"Keitel and Doenitz have no idea what a dreck we are in, /Herr Oberst."
"I guess not," he agreed. "They have eighty million other Germans to
worry about now. We are only a few hundred. We are not so important,
gentlemen. We are neither heroes nor martyrs. We are only a part of the
statistics. The death of a single individual may be very sad. When a
hundred die they call it a tragedy, but when ten million perish, it is
only statistics. I still believe in discipline, even in defeat. And we
are defeated."
"The only trouble is that I still cannot feel that I am licked," Schulze
remarked with a grin, tapping the stock of his machine gun. "Not while I
still have this thing. But I would like to see the Ivan who comes to
tell me all about it."
"Shut up, Erich!" I snapped curtly and he froze with a brisk "Jawohl."
"This isn't the right time for wisecracking!"
I turned to the colonel. "Herr Oberst, I am convinced that you will
have a better chance if you surrender to the Americans."
"I have already advised you not to expect too much from the Americans,
Herr Obersturmfuhrer. All that is going to happen from now on was
agreed upon by the victors a long time ago. But I concede," he added
with a smile, "that an American jail might be somewhat more civilized
than those of Stalin's. Stalin would kill a million Germans cheerfully.
The Americans will meticulously prove that they are doing the just and
legal thing. On doomsday morning they will give you a nice breakfast, a
shave, a bath, and should it be your last wish, they might give you a
perfumed pink rope to hang on. But the end will be the same."
I spoke to the rest of the troopers, telling the men frankly that
Colonel Steinmetz's decision was the only correct one, as far as the
military code goes. But the German Army had ceased to exist and
therefore I no longer considered them my subordinates but only my
comrades in peril who had the right to speak for themselves. As for
myself, I stated, I would leave for Bavaria!
The artillery platoons, the panzer crew, the Alpenjaegers decided to
follow the SS rather than surrender. "You might be a bunch of sons of
bitches," Captain Ruell said smiling, "but you seldom fail. I am with
you!" The motorized infantry and the supply group were for Colonel
Steinmetz.
The colonel shook hands with us and I saw anguish in his face as he
spoke in a choked voice. "I can understand you. It is going to be hard
on the SS. The victors have already decided that you are nothing but
killers, including your truck drivers and mess cooks. I wish you a safe
arrival, but be prudent and do not make it harder on yourself than it
already is, Herr Obersturmfuhrer."
With a gently ironic smile he handed me his golden cigarette case, his
watch, and a letter. "Take care of these for me," he asked quietly.
"Give them to my wife—if she is still alive and if you can ever find her."
"I will do it, Herr Oberst."
His officers and the men followed the colonel's example and began to
distribute their valuables among those who were to stay. "The Ivans
would take everything anyway," some of them remarked with a shrug. In
exchange we gave them our spare shirts and underwear, some food,
cigarettes, and most of our medical supplies. Then Colonel Steinmetz
assembled his troops. We saluted each other and they departed.
We could hear them for a long time as they marched down the winding road
singing: the colonel, six officers and NCO's under an improvised flag of
truce, a bed-sheet. Behind them two hundred and seventy men. Beaten but
not broken. The men were singing.
Two miles down the road, around a lonely farmhouse at watch were the
Russians and a battalion of militia with six tanks and a dozen
howitzers. In the valley near the village we could observe more Red army
troops.
The beloved old tunes began to fade in the distant valley where the road
turned into the woods as it followed the -course of a small creek. The
singing was abruptly drowned in the sharp staccato of a dozen machine guns.
Explosions in rapid succession shook the cliffs, echoing and reechoing
between the peaks, and we saw fire and smoke rising beyond the bend. It
lasted for less than five minutes. The howitzers and machine guns fell
silent. We heard the sporadic reports of rifles, then everything was still.
Standing on a boulder, overlooking the valley, Captain Ruell lowered his
field glasses and slowly raised his hand for a salute. Tears were
flowing freely from his eyes, down his cheeks and onto his Iron Cross. I
saw Schulze bowing his head, covering his face in his hands. Only Eisner
stood erect, staring into the valley, his face like that of a bronze
statue. My own vision blurred. My stomach knotted. I turned toward my
men wanting to say something but my words would not form. I felt an
attack of nausea. But Eisner spoke for me.
"There is the Soviet truce for you, men. I know easier ways to commit
hara-kiri!"
Three PO-2's rose from the fields and came droning over the hills. We
dispersed, taking cover, and resolved not to reveal ourselves no matter
what the enemy might do. Flying a slow merry-go-round, the flimsy planes
began to circle the pass and came in low over the trees. Working the
dials of our wireless. Captain Ruell quickly tuned in on the Russian
wavelength. He translated for us the amusing conversation between the
squadron leader and a command post somewhere in the valley.
"Igor, Igor . . . Here's Znamia . . . ponemaies? There are no more
Germans up here," the pilot reported. "You got them all!"
"Znamia, Znamia! None of the ones here belonged to the SS. We examined
all the bodies. Fjodr Andrejevich says the SS Commander and his two
officers are not among the dead! Znamia, Znamia! . . . Take another look!"
Fjodr Andrejevich, ,the Russian pilot whom we permitted to leave.
Cigarettes, food, vodka. Eisner must have read my thoughts, for he
remarked quietly, "What did I tell you, Hans?"
"The positions are empty!" the pilot reported. "I can see the gun
emplacements and two tanks. Znamia, Znamia! If there were more troops
here they must have withdrawn into the woods."
"Igor! Igor! Try to locate them. .. . Ponemaies?"
Fifteen minutes later the PO-2's left and soon afterwards we spotted
Soviet infantry moving up the road, two companies with three tanks to
lead the way. Their progress was slow, for a dozen yards ahead of the
tanks a group of demolition men moved on foot searching for mines. We
allowed them to proceed up to the fifth bend below the pass where the
road narrowed to traverse a small bridge between the rising cliffs. The
demolition squad spent over an hour looking for mines or hidden electric
wires around the place but neither the bridge nor the road around it had
been mined. Our engineers had had a better idea. They had enlarged a
natural cave on the precipitous slope and stuffed nearly two tons of
high explosives in the crevasse.
Observing the enemy through his binoculars, Bernard Eisner slowly raised
his hand. A few yards from where he stood a young trooper sat, his hand
gripping the plunger of the electric detonator, his eyes fixed on
Eisner's hand. From down below came coarse Russian yells. The leading
tank lurched forward. The enemy was moving across the bridge.
Eisner's hand came down.
"Los!"
There was an instant of total silence, as though the charge had
misfired, then earth began to rumble. The rocks seemed to rise; stone
and wood exploded from a billowing mass of flames and gray smoke. The
tanks stopped. The infantry scattered, taking shelter—or what they
thought was shelter. High above the road a cluster of cliffs tilted,
hung at a crazy angle for a second, then began to tumble down. A cascade
of earth, stone, and shredded pine roared from above to carry tanks,
cars, and troops into the abyss below. One car and some fifty Red army
men escaped the landslide and now clung to a short stretch of road that
had turned into a flat, cover-less platform, a jutting precipice with no
way to escape except by parachutes. We waited until the smoke and the
dust settled, then opened up on the survivors with two 88's. Direct fire
with fragmentation shells, at three hundred yards. Only eight shells
were fired. There were no survivors.
"I guess this is the end of World War Two," Erich Schulze remarked when
our guns fell silent.
"Sure!" said Eisner pointing toward the debris down below. "Down there
are the first casualties of World War Three!"
We stripped off our rank badges, army insignias and emblems; tore up our
identity papers and pay books; burned everything including our letters
from home. The Panther tanks and the guns went over the precipice. They
were faithful companions and they had served us well. None of them
should fall into enemy hands.
Ammunition for the rifles, machine guns, and submachine guns had been
distributed equally among the men. We had more than enough bullets and
grenades. Each man could carry five spare mags and a hundred loose
bullets along with six grenades. Our supply of cheese, bacon, margarine,
and other food stores had been likewise distributed. Water was no
problem. There were plenty of creeks and streams in the mountains.
We were about three miles away when the Stormoviks came buzzing over the
plateau. This time they could fly the corridor unpunished. The planes
bombed and gunned our vacant positions for an hour without a break. When
some of them departed, others came, and their uncontested attack was
delivered with true Communist zeal and determination. The action would
surely be remembered by Soviet war historians as a great Russian victory.
Seven weeks of hard trekking followed. We kept in the mountains, moving
mainly at night, resting in remote ravines or in caves when we came upon
some large enough to accommodate us. Only in the caves could we light
small fires to boil coffee or to warm up our canned meat and vegetables.
There was no need to warn the men about eating sparingly. Our
self-imposed ration was one meal per day.
Every day we spotted swarms of PO-2's as they flew reconnaissance over
the woods, sometimes passing overhead at treetop level. Fortunately we
could always hear them coming from miles away and had time to scatter
and camouflage. We strapped green twigs around ourselves and onto our
helmets and we looked more like moving bushes than men. When a trooper
froze, no one could spot him from twenty yards.
After about a week the planes stopped worrying us.
The Russians had given up the futile idea of detecting us from the air.
Instead they endeavored to block every bridge and every pass in our way,
compelling us to choose the most impossible trails for our grueling
journey. When we could cover five miles in one night, we considered it
good going. It was a trying cat-and-mouse game. Death was away only in
time but never in measurable distance.
The enemy had never really known where we were and with the element of
surprise preserved, we were strong enough to challenge a battalion of
Russians. We could have pierced their roadblocks but the action would
have given away our presence in a specific area and also our direction.
By avoiding contact we kept the Russian commander in suspense. He could
only guess which part of the map we were heading for. We wanted to
preserve the element of surprise for the most perilous part of our trip:
the crossing of the Elbe. Therefore I decided to bypass the enemy
roadblocks and stick to the paths of the mountain goats. Erich Schulze,
who was born and had grown up in the Alps, and some Austrian Alpine
Rangers were of immense help to us.
In a small clearing, not very far from our trail, we came upon a
dilapidated hunting lodge. Eisner spotted two Red army trucks parked
under the trees—a most unwelcome sight. A pair of CMC's could transport
eighty men, and there was no way of bypassing the place except by making
a twenty-mile detour. I decided to wait and see whether it was only a
coincidence or a trap in the making. Then suddenly we heard the thud of
axes and trees falling. The enemy was only cutting wood!
We wanted to lie low until the Russians departed but fate decided
otherwise. Escorted by a dozen Red army men, a small group of German
prisoners emerged from the woods. Pushing and pulling at the heavy logs,
the men tried to lift their burden onto the trucks. As the prisoners
strained the Russians amused themselves with filthy oaths and laughter.
Some of them were kicking the men as they struggled past their grinning
guards.
Schulze suddenly swore, "Gottverdammte noch'mal . . . look over
there!" He exclaimed and handed me his binoculars. "They are officers!"
I could distinguish two officers among the working prisoners. They were
the ones the Russians seemed to abuse the most. "The taller one is a captain," Eisner announced. "The other one I can't tell."
"What shall we do about the poor devils?" Schulze queried. "We cannot
sit here and look on."
I glanced at my men, deployed along the forest's edge. Filthy, unshaven,
and worn as they were, I could see on their faces that they would have
resented inactivity. "I am all for freeing them," I said briskly,
answering their silent question. "But if we still want to reach Bavaria,
we should stage a pretty good diversion afterwards."
For some days we had been moving northwest, making a beeline for a small
German town, Sebnitz, where we hoped our people could help us< in our
trip across the Elbe. We could not liberate the prisoners without
killing the Russians and consequently revealing our presence to the
enemy, the very thing I was trying to avoid all the way. A line drawn on
the map between the pass which we had evacuated and the small clearing
down below would inevitably point at the border near Sebnitz. I turned
the problem over and over in my mind but it seemed more hopeless at
every new angle.
Captain Ruell found the only feasible solution.
"We wanted to move toward Sebnitz," he began excitedly, motioning us to
have a look at the map. "Having hit the Russians here, we will probably
have all night before the enemy sends someone up to investigate. We are
about . . . here!" He placed his finger on the map, then looked up.
"After liberating the prisoners we should turn south. Away from Sebnitz
and the German frontier. Here is a small village. We could make it by
midnight. We need some civilian clothes anyway. I don't think our folks
at home will have many clothes left. A quick raid on the village might
confuse the Russians, especially if we grab every Czech identity paper
we come across."
"Czech papers!" Schulze exclaimed. "What for?"
Ruell grinned. "The Russians might conclude that we are heading inland,
toward Austria. Otherwise why should we collect Czech papers?"
"I think it is a good idea, Herr Hauptmann," a young lieutenant of the
Austrian Alpenjaegers remarked cheerfully. "Austria is precisely the
place we would like to go. After the raid we might as well keep going
south."
"And run into a Soviet blocking party," Eisner grunted.
"You had better stick with us, taking the longer way but arriving safely."
"After the raid on the village we should double back toward the north
and cross the border at Sebnitz," Captain Ruell concluded.
"So be it!" Eisner stated and I agreed. Captain Ruell's plan seemed as
feasible as any we might conceive.
By five o'clock in the afternoon both trucks were loaded and the
prisoners had been lined up for head count. There were twenty-three of
them, escorted by twelve Russians. Schulze deployed three sharpshooters
for each Red army man. "Drop them with a single bullet, otherwise some
of the prisoners may get hurt."
"Don't worry," one of the troopers remarked. "At two hundred yards we
could hit a field mouse between the eyes."
Schulze waited until the prisoners had climbed aboard the trucks.
Standing in a small group the Russians watched them with their
submachine guns ready.
"Fire!" said Schulze.
Thirty-six rifles fired a single volley. The bewildered prisoners threw
themselves flat thinking that they were about to be killed. But our
sharpshooters had aimed well. There was no return fire.
Our liberated comrades, as we soon learned, had been captured five days
before the capitulation. The majority were officers. The captain, whose
rank Eisner had recognized, was the former commanding officer of a
signal battalion. He had naively believed that the Soviet commander
would react chivalrously to his protest against compelling captive
officers to remove roadblocks, fill antitank ditches, and perform other
manual labor. The Soviet officer in charge, whose name Captain Waller
never learned, had been quite drunk at the time, and having booted the
"Fascist dogs" from his presence, he had ordered his troops to strip the
"Gerrnanski" officers of their rank badges and insignias. Then roaring
with drunken laughter he yelled: "Now you are no longer officers but
ordinary ranks, .. . . tvoy maty!" Captain Waller and Lieutenant Mayer
were, however, permitted to retain their badges "to serve as an example"
of what happens to complaining Fascist officers. "Now you go and cut
wood, we need telephone poles." The Soviet officer swore. "You destroyed
all the telephone poles. . . . Now you are going to make new ones from
here to Moscow."
"You are lucky, Herr Hauptmann, that we came by here," I said after
our mutual introduction.
"You were more lucky that you could come by here at all," he replied
with a smile. "There's no prisoner-of-war treatment for the SS, Herr
Obersturmfuhrer. I saw with my own eyes how the Russkis lined up and
machine-gunned four hundred of your men into the Vistula."
"They did that, eh?" Eisner grunted.
"Not the officers, mind you," the captain added. "The officers are to be
tried and hanged. It was all agreed upon between the Americans and
Stalin." He uttered a short sardonical snort. "And that will be about
the only Soviet-American agreement Stalin will keep! You had better
watch out."
"They won't get us, Herr Hauptmann ... at least not alive," I stated,
more resolved than ever to reach Bavaria. "Not me, that's sure!"
Schulze nodded, lifting his gun. "First they'll have to take my toy away."
"I expected nothing else," Eisner fumed. "Now comes the great carnage .
. . the revenge, gentlemen. There is going to be such a bloodbath in the
Fatherland that all the SS ever did will look like a solemn church
ceremony in comparison. .. ."
"You may thank Himmler," Waller said. "To kill the Jews was a great
folly, my friends. He could have gotten away with anything but the Jews.
. . . The Jews are a world power, but not those wretched bastards whom
Himmler was busy exterminating around the clock. These had done nothing
and would never have done anything against the Reich. Nevertheless their
ghosts are returning now, many of them wearing the conqueror's uniform
or the judge's stola."
"But what have we got to do with the whole bloody affair?" Schulze
cried. "I was hunting partisans in the Gottverdammte Russian swamps
and in the forests of Belgorod. They should hang the 'Einsatzkommandos'
or the Gestapo. It was their lousy job to kill Jews, not mine. Are we
responsible for what those loafers did?"
"Don't ask me, ask Stalin!"
"What does Stalin care about the Jews? He always regarded them as
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