Another man came past, older still, pushing a wheelbarrow, piled high with whatever possessions he thought worth saving. He stopped beside the women, low greetings, people who knew one another, neighbors perhaps, people who shared the misery. He saw one woman crying, the mother and baby moving closer, comforting, anguish and tears spreading through them all. More of the big artillery pieces moved past him, blocking his view, and Patton tried to focus on the guns, heard more cheers from his men, but his eyes went back to the refugees.
Beside him, Middleton said, “Terrible. War always hurts the innocent.”
Patton shook his head.
“They’re not innocent of anything. This is their war. You expect me to feel bad about that? Hell, General, I did this to them! I blasted their homes to rubble and erased their villages from the map. And if they can’t get out of the way, I’m going to do it some more. I won’t feel sorry for Germans, you hear me? Let’s get across that goddamn river.”
In the pitch darkness on March 22, Company K, the Eleventh Regiment of the American Fifth Infantry Division, part of Walker’s Twentieth
Corps, paddled their way across the Rhine River in small boats, reaching the east bank without arousing any response. The German forces that stood to oppose them had been caught completely off guard. Throughout the following day, the remainder of the Fifth Infantry crossed by boat, while engineers began to lay dozens of pontoon bridges strong enough to support vast columns of tanks and heavy artillery. The bridgehead was expanded, the Americans driving away the disheartened enemy forces, who knew with perfect certainty that their last great barrier had been breached.
Patton had made his crossing of the Rhine without any direct orders from Omar Bradley to do so. Despite the overwhelming number of heavy artillery pieces available, the crossings by each of Patton’s corps commanders were made at night, in silence, with no artillery bombardment at all. Thus, without advance warning that the Americans were coming, every crossing was successful, with minimal casualties, utterly surprising the Germans who waited on the other side. Given the rapid construction of the bridges, the engineers paved the way for the rest of Patton’s mechanized forces, and within three days the Third Army was driving into the outskirts of Frankfurt.
On March 24, Patton could not resist a typical stunt that would put his name back in the headlines. Walking across one of his bridges, he made great ceremony of stopping his entourage in midstream. Undoing his trousers, Patton urinated into the river.
To the north, Montgomery pushed across the river on the schedule Eisenhower had been promised. Montgomery’s operation began with a parachute drop that included twenty-three thousand men, the largest airborne assault of the entire war. Dropping close to German lines in daylight, the paratroopers and their transports endured heavy losses from German ground fire, but support from two thousand Allied fighter planes helped drive the enemy away. Joining the paratroopers as a preliminary to the main assault, Montgomery employed hundreds of heavy artillery pieces in a spectacular show of strength, a massive bombardment that preceded a crossing by eighty thousand British and Canadian troops. As had happened all along the Allied front, the Germans backed away, overwhelmed by the power they faced. Despite Montgomery’s extraordinary display, which was trumpeted loudly in the British newspapers, once more Patton had won the race.
With the bridgeheads quickly secured, six Allied armies crossed the Rhine River. To many of the Allied generals, the next logical target should have been Berlin. But that decision had been made weeks before, at the Yalta Conference. Despite the rapid collapse of organized German opposition, the Allied forces were ordered to extend their advance only as far as the Elbe River, some forty miles short of the German capital. No matter how vehemently Patton and Montgomery hoped to wage war against both the enemy and each other for the great prize, President Roosevelt had already promised that prize to the Russians. Eisenhower continued to hear grousing from Winston Churchill, objections to the Yalta agreements that carried no weight. Directed by the politics he tried to avoid, Eisenhower had no choice but to focus his advances more to the south, rolling over crumbling German resistance on a path that would push into southern Germany and beyond, bypassing the Berlin area altogether. Eisenhower had accepted the same political realities as Churchill. At Yalta, Joseph Stalin had demanded that his army alone would take Berlin. No one but the Germans would stand in his way.
REPORTER: Will the Nazis go underground when the Allies get to Germany?
PATTON: Six feet.
NEAR NANTES, FRANCE
MARCH 31, 1945
On March 14, the remnants of the 106th Infantry Division were pulled back from the fighting on the Rhine River front and transferred west, to assist in dealing with an annoying problem. Throughout the great push inland from the Normandy beachheads, the Germans still maintained strongholds along the Atlantic coast in Brittany, the territory that Patton had first swept through on his breakout in August. But clearing the Germans out of the fortified seaports of Saint-Nazaire, Lorient, and La Rochelle would have required considerable time and possibly casualties that weren’t worth the prize. Throughout the late summer and fall of 1944, as the Allied armies pushed eastward, the German ports were hemmed in both on land and at sea and essentially ignored. The only advantage the Germans had were their fortifications, but there was little chance that they were going anywhere, even if Hitler had ordered them to break out. None of the German commanders had sufficient strength to try such a move, and Eisenhower knew that if the war was won in Germany, those strongholds would surrender anyway. There was no reason to charge the battlements at the cost of American lives.
Still thought of as orphans, the men of the 106th were attached to the 66th Division, who were part of the forces keeping watch on the Brittany ports. Word had come that a vast new wave of recruits was soon to rejuvenate the 106th, but since those men would be as green and untested as any in the army, it was highly unlikely that the newly re-formed division would see combat again, unless the war continued long enough to drain away American strength on the front lines, something Eisenhower did not expect to happen. Rather than have a newly strengthened 106th sit idly by, accomplishing little more than the consumption of rations, SHAEF determined that the division could fulfill a job that was becoming more essential every day. The inflow of German prisoners of war was overwhelming the small contingents of military police and other troops who had been guarding them. Enormous compounds had to be constructed, and quickly, and an organization had to be assembled to offer medical assistance, food, and shelter for what had already become hundreds of thousands of POWs. The order soon came: The 106th Division would become the prison guards.
They are out of their damn minds! No way in hell I’m gonna stand around and poke a bayonet at prisoners!”
Benson had seen Mitchell angry before, but this was different, a fury bordering on panic.
Higgins looked at the captain, said, “Sir, my apologies. If you’ll allow me a minute or two with my men.”
The captain had not expected this kind of reception to his news, held up both hands, backed away.
“They’re your men, Sergeant. I’ve got three new lieutenants to check on, make sure their baby bottles are full. I’ve got no time for this kind of bitching.”
The captain moved away, and Benson could see the rest of the squad looking at Mitchell like he was far stranger than they had thought.
Higgins turned toward him, hands on his hips, said, “What the hell is wrong with you? You mouth off like that, you’re lucky the captain didn’t toss you in the stockade. We’re being given a noncombat assignment. Every damn unit in this army would jump at that. Besides, once the Four Two Two and Four Two Three are re-formed, they’re gonna need veterans.”
“Why? To teach them how to do what? Stand outside a fence? Even those new lieutenants can handle that on their own. Dammit, Sarge, I want to fight.”
Higgins looked at Benson. “What about you? You as nuts as your buddy?”
&nbs
p; “I don’t know, Sarge.”
Benson had wondered if this would happen, if Mitchell would explode from the gloomy boredom that Benson had felt for weeks now. He had never been as manically driven to killing Germans as Mitchell, but he knew exactly why Mitchell was upset. He looked at the others, saw surprise, heads shaking.
To one side, one of the new men spoke up. “You are nuts. Going home in one piece makes a whole lot more sense than trying to find a way to get your brains blown out. I got a wife waiting for me.”
Mitchell kept his stare on the sergeant, said, “I don’t intend to get anything blown out except this damn rifle. Dammit, Sarge, I want to volunteer for some other duty, something besides nursemaiding POWs. I’ve seen too many guys get hit, too many guys get hauled away, not to do something about it. Hell, this unit spent lieutenants like pennies at an arcade. I’m just not done yet, that’s all.”
Benson could feel the emotion in his voice, the man’s words driving into him. He looked down at his boots, a growling nervousness in his stomach. He thought of Yunis, the helpless soldier curled up in a mass of fear, left behind in the frozen foxhole. The image of that had risen up late at night, and Benson gripped hard to the fantasy that maybe Yunis had survived. But what then? Would he go home to some kind of hero’s welcome? Would Yunis be one of those old bigmouthed soldiers at family gatherings who spouted off all kinds of stories about exploits that none of them had ever experienced? And what about these guys, right here? Most of them are new, and they’ll never even see a German who’s not already done for. The rest of us spent most of our time running for our damn lives. Nice thing to tell your grandkids.
He knew that the others thought Mitchell was a fanatic, had already heard low talk about keeping their distance from the man who might go off like some kind of human grenade. But dammit, he’s my friend, and he saved my ass more than once. Maybe I need to return the favor.
“Me too, Sarge. I wanna volunteer to go back. Maybe we’re both nuts, but Kenny and I been through everything together. When they pulled us out of Kraut land, I thought I’d be ready to quit, to go home, or whatever else. But there’s something we haven’t done yet.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Mitchell nodded toward Benson, said, “Yep. He’s right. Look, Sarge, we came over here to do a job, a job every damn one of us knew was important. We spent months learning how to fight, all that baloney the officers fed us. And for what? All we did was get our asses kicked. We didn’t start moving in the right direction until somebody else had bailed us out. We took more losses than any division in the army, far as I know. Our whole damn regiment disappeared! There’s something to be proud of! I can’t just go home and pretend I left here a soldier. I’ve gotta do my part, and damn it all, if that makes me nuts, fine. But there’s a pile of Krauts out there who are still trying to kill our guys, and I need to do something about that.” He looked toward Benson, a quick nod. “Thanks, Eddie.”
Higgins looked at the others, no one else joining in Mitchell’s enthusiasm, and the sergeant thought for a long moment.
“Tell you what. I’ll talk to the captain. The repple-depple is crawling with orphans, mostly brand-new guys. There’s gotta be someplace they’d want veterans to go.” He looked at Benson. “You sure you wanna do this? So far, you’ve both been lucky as hell. We made it out of this stinking mess alive, two arms and two legs.”
Mitchell looked at Benson, then at the others, no one else speaking up.
“I’m not saying everybody oughta feel this way. And I’m not calling anybody a coward. But from what we hear, the Krauts are still kicking up a fight. I need to be there. I joined up to help win a war. I feel like I’ve done a piss-poor job so far.”
Higgins turned away, said, “I’ll be back. You two are either heroes or morons. It’s a toss-up.”
Benson had boarded the truck last, as he always did, still carried the embarrassing fear that he would get motion sickness. But his stomach was calm, even if his brain was racing with thoughts of what they had volunteered to do. His mind flashed to Higgins, the last handshake, the sergeant offering them one more chance to change their minds. Higgins had done as he’d said, and the captain had agreed to allow any volunteers who wanted to transfer to the replacement depot, where there was still the urgent need for experienced riflemen. Benson and Mitchell had been the only two to volunteer from the entire company. Benson was surprised by that, but many of the others were veterans of the 424th, the only organized combat regiment that still existed from the 106th. Those men had fought tenaciously throughout the Bulge, had not been as scattered, had not lost their leadership and most of their numbers, and Benson could find no reason to fault them for feeling that they had done enough. Benson had been disappointed that Higgins didn’t join them, but the sergeant owed them no explanations. Before the transfer orders came, Benson heard talk that Higgins might be promoted to lieutenant. That’s gotta be worth something, Benson thought. Not just the prestige, or whatever those ninety-day wonders think about. He knows how to lead people, and he knows what he’s doing, and he ought to go home with something besides a combat infantry badge. The sarge knows that all those replacements are gonna need their butts whipped pretty often, and he’ll be a good one to do it. I’ll bet the captain knows that too. No way the brass would have let Higgins come with us. And I bet he wanted to, no matter what else he said.
Mitchell’s urgent need to keep fighting was no surprise at all to Benson, but his own decision had given him waves of second thoughts. He carried the same horrors as Higgins and Mitchell, had escaped the same disasters, had survived a fight too many had not.
They rode in a convoy of trucks, the deuce-and-a-half one of several dozen, mostly supply trucks. The roads were better than any Benson could recall, the good work of the engineers, bomb craters repaired, mud holes filled. Across from him, Mitchell had been quiet, staring out through the canvas covering, the calm vacant stare, the M-1 resting against one leg. Benson followed his gaze, out past the truck in line behind them. The sky was a dull gray, a smattering of rain, and Benson thought of the first time they had done this, frozen misery through Belgium, vomit and ridicule. We had no idea, he thought. I was terrified and didn’t really know why. Those guys with the big mouths, Lane, the others, they’re happy as hell to go do guard duty, aim all their big talk to German POWs. And they will. Talk.
He glanced down at his rifle, caught the smell of gun oil, a slight turn in his stomach. Stop that, dammit! He looked out the back of the truck again, his mind racing with memories, flexed his fingers, no stiffness, a mild chill in the air. Thank God for spring. The truck slowed, a rumble beneath him as the truck eased one side off the road’s edge, crawled to a stop. He heard shouts, saw trucks moving slowly past, going the other way. They were open-topped, no canvas, filled with filthy bareheaded men. The driver began to yell curses, others from the convoy joining in, and Benson saw jeeps following, a man standing at a machine gun, two more jeeps, another truck. He saw more of the uniforms of the passengers, gray, some wrapped in rags of blankets, bandaged wounds. Prisoners. He felt his heart jump, tried to see their faces, but they were past, their war over. He curled one hand hard around the stock of the rifle, tried to breathe, calming himself, saw no expression on Mitchell’s face. He leaned back against the railing of the truck, felt a rush of energy. That’s why I needed to do this. I hate those bastards, I hate what they did to our guys, what they did to the civilians. He felt a shiver, the image in his mind that was never completely gone. It had been there in his nightmares, one awful memory, the rows of Belgians, old men and children simply executed, and then, the body of the woman, violated beyond description, the kind of horror that has no explanation. He looked at Mitchell again, still no response, thought, he remembers that too. That’s why he’s here. But, I gotta admit, he is a little strange. The sarge was right about that. He spoke to Mitchell in his mind. Don’t you go and do anything stupid, Kenny. I still want us to get home in one piece. I’m
not sure you care one way or the other. Guess that’s why I came along, to keep an eye on you.
The truck lurched into motion again, the other men adjusting to the movement, shifting in their seats. Benson heard the groans, didn’t know much about them, except that they were all replacements, green soldiers. He looked at the man beside Mitchell, saw youth, wide eyes, pimples and pale skin. Eighteen, maybe. You have no idea, kid. You guys must be draftees, somehow got caught up in that mess of army paperwork that put you in the repple-depple. No loyalty, no rah-rah of those idiotic pep rallies we had in Indiana. Yeah, the 106th is the best. Sure we were. Ask the Krauts about that. Benson knew little else about the dozen other men who rode with them in the truck, no names, only bits of small talk among them as they gathered to load up. They were a part of several detachments being sent eastward, plugging holes in some of the units where the fighting had been hot. Benson had heard some of the unit designations, meaningless to him now, no identity that mattered. Except one. This time, they would be fighting under Patton.
NEAR GOTHA, GERMANY
APRIL 3, 1945
They rode on a tank, what seemed at first to be one more grand adventure, the tank commanders offering the invitation as though these foot soldiers were among the very privileged. Despite the rapid progress along the roads, a far cry from the usual march, Benson was regretting his own stupidity. The convoy of armor rolled along a narrow farm road, stirring up vast clouds of dust, the half dozen men huddled around him doing what he was doing, pulling his jacket over his face, trying to breathe something besides a fog of German dirt. With every lurching dip on the uneven road, the men would fight to hang on, hands gripping every kind of hardware, coils of rope, grease, and gas cans. There was no need for extra warmth, but it was there anyway, swirling around them in a stink of black exhaust. Benson bounced high, came down hard on solid steel, his rifle barrel slapping his helmet, nearly dislodging it. He glanced at Mitchell, saw the man’s face buried in his jacket, thought, boy, this is some fun, huh, Kenny? I wonder where in hell we’re going. I guess having a Sherman for a companion might be good, no matter where we end up.