Soldiers of ’44

Chapter Sixteen

December 21, 1944. Salmchâteau-sur-Amblève. Thursday, 1030 Hours.

They were traveling at a labored pace through columns of military traffic over roads churned into pools of mud and ice. Visibility was poor; their driver was leaning over the steering wheel, rubbing the windshield with a gloved hand and gesturing helplessly at the lines of stalled trucks that made the twisting roads of the Ardennes forests nearly impassable.

General Kroll swore softly, and as he did Karl Jaeger understood his impatience and anger. The 2nd SS Panzer Division was almost thirty-six hours behind the timetable assigned it by Operation Christrose. But of greater immediate significance was the fact that an ME-262 had been shot down by an American gun section and Kroll, whose units were closest to where the V-4 disappeared, had been ordered by OKW-Berlin to locate and destroy it.

On December 16th Das Reich had moved out at dawn from a start-line east of the Losheim Gap, but after the first hours of triumph and exultation, with glowing cables of congratulations from the Führer himself, tanks and infantry had been stalled by snarled skeins of their own tanks and truck traffic backed up on the narrow mountain roads.

In contrast, von Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army had captured one American division intact, the 106th Infantry, and savagely mauled two others, the 9th Armored and the 28th Infantry. From that point, two of Manteuffel’s crack units, the Panzer Lehr and the 26th People’s Grenadier, had smashed across the Clerve River, capturing Noville and Wiltz and laying siege to the great Allied rail network at Bastogne. Other elements of Manteuffel’s army had bypassed the trapped town and were now charging toward Namur on the Meuse.

Jaeger looked out at fields covered with snow and black trees with ice ridged along their limbs. The first phase of Christrose had been therapy for him; he had been grateful for the narcotic effect of the action, which distracted him from his leave in Dresden and thoughts of his wife and daughters and his father, the single eye blazing at him with intensity.

“The reading of history is never enough,” Kroll said, speaking rapidly and chopping the air with a hand for emphasis. “Squeezing the truth from the past is a waste of time unless you understand and act on it.”

Jaeger took his pipe from his pocket and tried to keep his mind on what Kroll was saying, but a sudden dizziness was eroding his selective faculties.

“We are buying time, Jaeger, to launch a political attack. Certain of our leaders have sympathetic friends in the highest councils of Great Britain and the United States. Thus, we have the means to appeal for an honorable peace and concentrate our mutual energies on those mongrel hordes out of Russian who, mark this, will be at the throat of the world when the German shield is broken... Jaeger, what is it? You’ve cut your hand with that pipe...”

“It’s nothing, sir, a scratch.” Jaeger folded his arms so that his hands were covered by the sleeves of his greatcoat.

General Kroll looked at him, obviously concerned by his behavior, but he accepted Jaeger’s explanation and returned to his original subject. “Bastogne will fall in twenty-four hours. Even Patton can’t prevent it. His army is moving north, a quarter of a million men and more than one hundred thousand vehicles, but he can’t bring it off. Not even Rommel achieved anything like that in Africa, or von Rundstedt on the way to Dunkirk.”

Yet something, Jaeger knew, was hardening the spines of the Americans. They had regrouped after the first shattering attacks and were fighting savagely for every crossroads and village on the route of the Panzers. Perhaps it was the knowledge that Patton and his Third Army were on the way, or possibly because this kind of terrain and warfare was ideally suited to the descendants of plainsmen and Indian fighters. In intelligence reports he had seen lists of American soldiers receiving honors and decorations, information culled from papers in the States, and he had been impressed by the numbers of the solid old yeoman names — Thompsons, Jacksons, Hayworths, Boyds, Reeds, Stoners, Smiths — he could imagine men like that in the hills and trails of America, scouts and trappers living off the country and through the winters with sacks of salt and flintlock rifles. He envisioned their grandsons, descendants of the men he’d read about in Harte and Cooper and Jack London, fighting the Tiger tanks at Bastogne and St. Vith and Trois-Ponts. And now Patton in the van of his tanks with the arrogant scarf and ivory-handled revolvers... there were copies of the general’s speeches clipped to division bulletin boards all over Germany... “I don’t want to hear of any man in my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight and that’s no bullshit.” And the frenzy of profanities and gestures... “Men, if you’re men, you won’t leave the fucking to the cowards back home. They’ll breed us nothing but litters of cowards.” The stars of his rank gleaming openly and defiantly on his helmet and tunic... “Sure, we all want to go home, but just remember this: The quickest way home is straight through Berlin.”...

The command car drove past sentries into the courtyard of the farmhouse serving as Kroll’s headquarters near Salmchâteau. Staff vehicles, hospital vans and supply trucks were parked on the muddy driveways in front of the house.

In the parlor, officers monitored situation maps and radio operators manned field transmitters and telephones. Orderlies were distributing barley soup in mugs and platters of coarse bread heaped with ground sausage and mashed potatoes.

While Kroll listened to reports from his senior officers, Jaeger told a sergeant he wanted a telephone line to the executive officer of his battalion. Major Bok. In an adjoining dining room, Kroll then introduced Jaeger to Captain Hans Schenk of Luftwaffe Intelligence. The tables and sideboard were heaped with military gear — rifles, duffel bags, helmets and greatcoats. On the walls were pictures of children in Holy Communion costumes and an old-fashioned wooden clock with Gothic numerals and a silent, motionless pendulum. Captain Schenk indicated a tripod and map rack on which were spread several large photographs of the terrain above Lepont.

“The peak in the foreground is called Mont Reynard,” Schenk said. “On the opposite peak” — he indicated a small stone house with the tip of a pencil — “is a gatehouse and above it a castle. The ME-262” — he pointed to an elevation behind Mont Reynard — “crashed here and slid down into a narrow ravine about a thousand meters above the American gun position, which is” — the pencil moved again — “there, colonel, at the edge of the precipice.”

“You have a magnifying glass?”

“Yes, colonel.”

Jaeger took the glass and studied the photographs, scanning the details of the castle, the gatehouse and the narrow roads twisting up to the American gun position. The road between the castle and Mont Reynard, Jaeger decided, was too narrow and winding for a tank to maneuver, which left him one obvious alternative: a frontal attack up the steep mountain face at the 40-millimeter cannon emplaced behind the military crest of the hill.

General Kroll had already given Jaeger the strategic parameters of his mission: to demolish and burn the wreckage of the ME-262 and to eliminate any persons who could conceivably identify it for what it was — a revolutionary jet-propelled aircraft, potentially the most sophisticated and powerful weapon to be developed in all the years of this war.

The V-4S represented the second phase of Christrose. They would support the hammer blows of the tri-pronged operation on the ground, the capture of the Belgian port city of Antwerp, the destruction of all supplies and communications between American and British forces and the eventual seizure of open plains all across France into Paris.

“When did you take these photographs?”

“Just before dawn, colonel. The pilot of the ME-262 managed a signal before he crashed yesterday, but it took us most of the night to triangulate his position.”

“Was the enemy aware that you took these photographs?”

“No, colonel. We used film and lens developed for high-altitude night missions.”

Jaeger turned to General Kroll. “I have no other questions, sir.”

When the captain saluted and withdrew. General Kroll indicated one of the photographs and traced a line with his finger up the steep slope of Mont Reynard to the American gun position. “You see the problem, Karl?”

“Yes, general. With respect, you seem to forget I’m also a graduate of the Berlin Military Academy.”

The remark put Kroll in a better humor. “Yes, and I shouldn’t imagine any of the Americans on that hill have similar credentials.” Abruptly his mood changed; he sighed and looked at Jaeger. “This isn’t the time for exhortations. The banners, the torchlight parades, the voice from Berlin sounding from the loudspeakers, that’s all over for now. But we’re depending on you, Karl. The terrain is so difficult we couldn’t risk paratroops or infantry without compromising security. Your mission is truly vital. The Luftwaffe has eighteen hundred fully operational ME-262S, and with Christrose, they represent the last hope for our future. If we lose the element of surprise, this final throw of the dice will come to nothing. So remember what I told you when we left Adlerhorst, Karl. My command car is available when you need it.”

When Kroll left the room, Jaeger studied a large-scale map of the Ardennes, making careful estimates of the distance and terrain between Salmchâteau and the peaks of Mont Reynard. It was a straight run to Vielsalm, from where he could travel north to Stavelot, swinging west into the Salm Valley and the village of Lepont.

When a lance corporal advised him he had raised Battalion, Jaeger spoke into the headset. “Major Bok, Jaeger here. Please record. You will detach the lead tank from Third Sturm and Sergeant Trakl’s crew from our reserve.” Trakl had been with Jaeger in Russia at Kursk, as had the sergeant’s crew — corporals Elbert, Henze, Wesse and Gratz. Jaeger told Bok where he wanted the tank to rendezvous, a crossroads near Salmchâteau, and then ordered a vehicle for his own use with extra supplies of petrol and ammunition.

At Adlerhorst Kroll had said to him... “Think and speak and act as if you were under surveillance by generations of unborn Germans... what you speak will be heard, what you do will be seen...” And with the memory Jaeger was suddenly aware that confusion was once again maddeningly reducing his convictions to impotence... Broken, as in the death of Cornet Rilke, the rose broken as one would break a host, the foreign petal under his tunic, rising and falling on the waves of his heart... be proud, I carry the flag...

When he received the confirmation of his orders from Bok, Jaeger took a deep breath, buttoned the lapels of his greatcoat and strode out into the sleet of the courtyard, where a driver waited for him at General Kroll’s command car.