When they saw the crematoria where human beings were turned to ash and smoke, all Bennett could think was that there was no sense to it at all – no way to rationalize the Nazis’ actions within the limited vocabulary of human emotions.
The tour took nearly three hours. They were back at company HQ just after noon. The general announced that Officers’ Mess would be at 1300 hours and dismissed the men. As they dispersed, Linc waited to question Shelton.
‘Sir, I know you’ve caught a couple of their guards. What are you going to do with them?’
‘Those that make it will go to trial, I’m sure.’
‘What do you mean by “make it”?’
‘Well,’ the general replied without apparent emotion, ‘sometimes the prisoners get to them first. You’d be surprised how even the weakest, sickliest inmates can find the strength to tear those bastards into shreds before we can stop them.’
‘Do you try to stop them?’
‘Of course, Linc,’ Shelton answered. And then he added in a lower tone, ‘We just don’t make a point of hurrying.’
Just then Linc heard a voice calling frantically, ‘Colonel – wait, sir, please wait!’
He turned to see Herschel hobbling up to him, his eyes ablaze with urgency. ‘You must help Colonel Bennett. Please, please, I beg of you. It’s Hannah, my wife—’
‘You’ve found her?’
Herschel nodded and then blurted, ‘She is with the doctors. You must help. Come quickly, please.’
Linc tried his best to calm the man. ‘Hey, listen, if she’s getting medical care—’
‘No, no. You do not understand. She is not getting treatment. They are going to let her die. Come, please.’
As Linc and Herschel approached the hospital building, they could see patients lying on litters in the open air, waiting their turn to be brought inside. From the building came the pungent, far-reaching smell of germicide.
Inside was bedlam, cries of pain intermingled with frantic orders shouted by doctors and nurses to one another. Linc lost no time locating the physician in charge.
Lieutenant Colonel Hunter Endicott, the chief of medical operations, was tall, bespectacled, and white. In fact, being from Jackson, Mississippi, he was extremely white. He was also extremely busy. He had little time to squander on chit-chats with black visitors, even if they were officers.
With Herschel babbling frantically in German a few paces behind him, Linc calmly inquired after the state of health of the former prisoner’s wife. Endicott’s response was more curt than courteous.
‘I’m afraid she’s been triaged out,’ he explained matter-of-factly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got lives to save.’ As the doctor started to turn away, Linc suppressed the urge to grab his sleeve.
Instead he simply shouted, ‘What in hell do you mean by “triaged out”?’
‘Hey, look, I told you I’m busy—’
‘May I remind you,’ Linc said quietly but firmly, ‘I’m your superior officer. And I’m giving you an order. Tell me about this man’s wife!’
Endicott sighed.
‘Okay, Colonel,’ he said pointedly, ‘“triage” is the term we use for classifying the wounded. Now I don’t have to tell you how many sick people we have here, or that everybody’s got typhus or is damned likely to get it. Our terms have triaged the patients into S, MS, and NS. I know this is going to sound brutal to you, but the first group is “salvageable”, then there are “marginally salvageable”, and then there’s those who – in our estimation – are “not salvageable”. I’m afraid this man’s wife comes into the last category.’
‘Why what’s wrong?’
The doctor shook his head. ‘I don’t really think you want to hear this, Colonel – and I’m sure her husband doesn’t.’
‘Correction, Endicott.’ He glanced at Herschel and persisted. ‘At this point he can take anything.’
‘Okay,’ the doctor replied with a sigh of resignation.
There was an empty cart alongside that once was used for hauling – they did not wish to think of that. Endicott pulled himself up to sit on it as the two men stood nearby.
‘Now, gentlemen, listen carefully. For a concentration camp, this place has got extraordinary medical facilities. Not for the prisoners’ benefit – but for the Nazi “scientists”. The doctors performed experiments using the prisoners as human guinea pigs …’
He paused to let the information sink in.
‘I’ve heard sketchy reports about other camps and I know some of their “research” was pure sadism. But the Doctor Staengel who ran the operation here saw himself as advancing the science of medicine, and so forth. He killed and tortured and maimed – allegedly for the benefit of mankind. Anyway, this bastard had orders from Berlin to come up with something better than sulfa drugs to combat venereal disease. You see, even supermen can get the clap.’
He smiled wryly. The other two men merely nodded.
‘Well, Staengel was a meticulous sonovabitch and kept a detailed record of everything – so I know exactly what they’ve done to this woman. On March twenty-eighth they injected her intravaginally with Neisseria gonorrhoeae.’
Herschel’s face was a chalky, expressionless mask.
‘And on April second they started “treating” her – if that’s the word – with an experimental antibiotic they called RDX 30. Staengel had the exact formulation down here. But the only important thing is that it contained a small but significant quantity of sodium hydroxide, otherwise known as lye – the stuff your mother put gloves on to clean the drains with because it was so strong.
‘Anyway, instead of dealing only with the injection, it acted as an abrasive. The whole lining of her uterus was inflamed and stripped bare. That so-called “wonder drug” burned through the epithelium and started corroding the blood vessels underneath. She’s anemic, she’s infected, and her fever’s a hundred and four. There’s no way …’
He paused for a moment and then realized that the patient’s husband had just heard him pronounce her death sentence. So he added a few words of consolation. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but she’s too far gone to be saved. Now, if you’ll excuse me—’
Herschel suddenly screamed like a wounded animal and fell to his knees.
Before the doctor had taken his third step Line bellowed, ‘You’ll wait right here – I’m still in charge here and I haven’t dismissed you.’
The strain on his vocal cords made him cough again.
Endicott turned slowly with a smirk that seemed to say Fuck you, nigger, but whispered, ‘I beg your pardon, Colonel. I didn’t realize there was any more to say. How can I help you – except by giving you something for that cough?’
‘Are you married, Endicott?’ Line demanded.
The doctor nodded and added, ‘Three kids.’
‘Just imagine for a minute it was your wife that got triaged out. How would you go about saving her?’
The doctor paused for a minute, ransacking his mind.
‘Listen … sir,’ he finally answered, ‘nobody there’s got the time to perform a hysterectomy—’
‘You mean that could save her?’ Line interposed quickly.
The look on Endicott’s face told him that he had finally gotten the physician up against the wall.
‘Look,’ Endicott protested as calmly as he could, ‘she’s bleeding so badly she probably wouldn’t survive the operation anyhow.’
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t got blood,’ Line retorted.
‘Not enough to waste on hopeless cases, Colonel. Now if you’ll excuse me—’
‘You are not dismissed,’ Linc snapped. ‘I’m not finished. I want somebody to perform that operation. Christ knows they’ve suffered enough. They at least deserve a chance.’
The gauntlet was down. It was now a question of who would flinch. Linc was taller and his eyes were incendiary.
‘All right, Colonel,’ Endicott said, affecting a cordial air, ‘suppose I get someone to perform this futile pro
cedure at, say, 2300 hours or so. Where do you propose that he’ll get the four or five pints of whole blood he’ll need?’
‘Just tell me how much and I’ll deliver it …’
The physician relaxed, certain that he had now led his adversary into a trap. ‘Colonel, a man in your position is certainly aware of U.S. Army rules. Under no circumstances are we allowed to use Negro blood on white patients. That is by order of our supreme commander, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Do you read me?’
‘Doctor, I’m afraid you’ve overlooked one small detail. That woman isn’t in the U.S. Army. She isn’t even an American. In fact she was designated by her own government as a nonperson. So Washington’s legislation has no bearing on her case. Do you read me?’
In the silence that followed, Linc could almost hear Endicott’s teeth gnashing. ‘If I bring a half a dozen men, will that be enough, doctor?’
‘Yeah – yes. I’ll let you know what blood type,’ Endicott answered wearily and stamped off.
Linc turned and caught sight of Herschel’s face. Tears were streaming down his cheeks.
‘Come on, man, cheer up. We’ve got it squared away. I promise you, your Hannah’s gonna make it.’
‘I … I don’t know what to say. Five years already army soldiers have been torturing us and now you go and do this for me—’
Linc was at once touched and embarrassed. He put his arm around Herschel’s frail shoulder as the man continued to weep.
‘This Dr Staengel must have been a real cutie. I sure as hell hope they catch him.’
‘I don’t care,’ Herschel sobbed, ‘I don’t care about anything except that Hannah lives.’
A little after 1 A.M., Hannah Landsmann was carried by stretcher into the astonishingly well-equipped surgery, where seven units of blood had been stacked in an ice bucket. Her gaunt face made her look like a woman of sixty, though Linc knew she was barely half that age. Even the beads of sweat on her brow seemed gray. Herschel held her hand tightly as he whispered reassuring words she was too delirious to understand.
Perhaps out of sheer revenge, Dr Endicott had assigned his most junior surgeon, Andrew Browning, to perform the complex operation.
Linc’s heart sank when he saw the young doctor prop up a dog-eared copy of the Atlas of Surgical Techniques. This student needed an instruction book.
At this point Browning turned to them and said, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you gentlemen to leave.’
Herschel still remained immobile. Suddenly a nurse joined them. She looked at Linc and said reassuringly, ‘Colonel, I’ve worked with Browning before. He may be new at the game but he knows how to use a scalpel – and he’s very, very careful.’
Linc nodded in gratitude and then gently led Herschel from the room.
The two men went outdoors and sat on a step to wait. It was a warm spring night and stars dotted the peaceful sky.
Linc had brought cigarettes. Withdrawing a slender silver case embossed with the Third Army emblem, he took out two of them, lit them both, and handed one to his friend.
Linc broke into a rasping cough. His good sense told him that he should not be smoking at all. But, dammit, he needed something to take his mind off all this.
‘Are you married, Colonel?’ Herschel asked.
‘That’s kind of difficult to answer, Herschel,’ he replied uneasily. ‘We were in the process of getting a divorce when I was called overseas. Only it’s hard to find a state that will accept “mutual disdain” as grounds. I suppose by now she’s cut me loose from her life. In any case, she left our son with my mother.’
‘A son?’
‘Yeah – Linc Junior, he’ll be ten this summer. To be honest, the thought of seeing him is what’s kept me going all this time. What about you?’
‘We had a daughter,’ Herschel answered, seemingly without emotion. ‘She was nearly four when we arrived at our first detention camp. They told us they were taking her to a nursery. We believed it because we wanted to believe it. But we knew when we kissed her that night it was goodbye.’
He inhaled deeply on his cigarette and added, ‘It’s a strange thing, you know. After that, Hannah and I could not even speak her name. We just looked at one another, already feeling so guilty that we were still alive and our little Charlotte was somewhere dead.’
There was an aching silence.
Then Herschel continued, ‘Not much after that they separated us. If you can believe it, I was once a gymnast, strong as an ox. I even belonged to one of the rigorous Turnvereine for Christians only. And so they sent me to the quarries as a slave. Until this week I never knew what happened to Hannah.’
They had nearly finished all the cigarettes when Browning, still in his bloodstained white overalls, stepped outside, rubbing his eyes.
Both men leapt to their feet.
‘How is she?’ they asked, almost in unison.
‘She pulled through the operation okay,’ the young man replied. ‘We just have to hope she’s strong enough to heal.’
‘Can I see her now?’ asked Herschel anxiously.
‘Really, it would be better to let her sleep it off. In fact that would be the thing for all of us.’ Browning took a deep breath and then in the boyish tones of the Oxford student he had been until a few weeks ago, he added, ‘I mean it, chaps. With all the germs floating around this camp, the best thing we can do for our own health is to turn in.’
Linc walked Herschel back to his bunk. There were moans emanating from within. The inmates had been freed in life, but they were still prisoners of their nightmares.
‘How can I thank you, Colonel Bennett?’
‘For one you can start calling me Linc. And I think we should both say a few prayers and go to bed.’
‘Prayers?’ Herschel asked incredulously. ‘To whom could I possibly pray?’
‘To the Lord, our Rock and our Salvation,’ Linc replied with conviction. ‘Psalm One Hundred and Thirty – “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord … Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy.” You know that one, don’t you?’
Herschel nodded. Yet something deep inside him could not let Linc’s faith go unchallenged.
‘God? You talk to me about God? I was once an observant Jew. I led an honorable life. I went every Sabbath to the synagogue – and look at my reward. Do you think I can pray now to a God who allowed my whole family to be killed for no reason? Could I believe in a God that gives punishment where there is no crime? I am sorry, my faith disappeared with the smoke from the chimneys.’
Line could find no appropriate answer. So he merely offered Herschel his hand, which the frail Jew grasped in both his own, and confided, ‘You know the only thing I can believe in now? I can believe in what you gave to me. I can believe in human kindness.’
The two men parted. Linc walked slowly back past the sentries, giving them a perfunctory salute, and pondering. How am I going to explain this to my son?
He sat on the edge of the bed, lowered his head into his hands, and began to pray.
He woke up groggy the next morning. His temples throbbed, his back and limbs were aching. That damn flu, he could not seem to shake it. As he showered, trying to clear his head, he vaguely noticed some bluish splotches on his chest and abdomen.
That’s all I need, he thought to himself, bugs in the damn bed or something.
He swallowed a couple of aspirins, then put on his warm coat and went out for roll call.
A little before noon he was able to steal a few minutes from his duties to see how Hannah was faring. She had been taken back to her bunkhouse. Herschel was sitting by her side.
‘How is she?’ Linc inquired.
Herschel smiled. ‘We have been talking all morning. Her fever is much lower and that young doctor seemed hopeful. Please come over, I want to introduce you.’
Herschel presented his American savior in long German sentences that Linc took to be exaggerated praise.
Hannah tried to smile and whispered hoarse
ly, ‘Herschel tells how very much you did for me.’
‘No, ma’am, he did it all. I was just the go-between.’
‘No, no,’ Herschel insisted. ‘If we can ever find happiness again, we will have you to thank.’
Linc was touched. ‘Is there anything I can get you folks? I mean, are they feeding you all right?’
‘Everything is fine,’ Herschel replied. ‘The demons are gone and we can breathe the air. That is what matters.’
Suddenly Linc Bennett began to sweat. Perhaps the place was overheated. No, the Nazis did not bother with heating for these bunks. Maybe he should not have worn his winter coat. He felt dizzy and needed air. He walked as quickly as he could to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the brisk April morning. Then he collapsed and lay sprawled on the ground.
He awoke slowly, and then only to a state of semiconsciousness. He could sense a pillow, so he knew he was in a bed – and he could hear angry voices somewhere in his vicinity.
‘Shit, as if we haven’t got enough on our hands, this dumb jigaboo colonel has to go and get himself typhus. I mean, considering it’s something you can fight off if you’re even halfway healthy, the guy must have been actually trying.’
‘With due respect, sir, if you’d just glance at his x-rays, you’ll see that he’s been walking around with bronchial pneumonia for quite a while.’
‘Listen, Browning, I don’t need a goddamn x-ray, I can hear that cottonpicker’s chest from across the room.’
‘Dr Endicott, his spirometer is just about fifty percent. He can barely breathe. Isn’t there anything more we can do to help him?’
‘For God’s sake, we’re flooding him with sulfamethazine. The only thing I know that’s stronger is that Nazi doctor’s RDX 30. Face it, man, he’s a lost cause.’
Linc had been sweating, but now chills convulsed his body. In a matter of moments the young medic was at his side, helping a nurse spread another blanket over him.
‘Browning, is that you?’ Linc gasped.
‘Take it easy, Colonel, you’ll pull through,’ he replied, patting him reassuringly on the shoulder.