Soldiers of ’44

Chapter Twenty-Three

December 22, 1944. Mont Reynard-sur-Lepont. Friday, 1800 Hours.

Winds swept the dark Salm Valley, making keening sounds as they battered the mountainside. In the thickening dusk, Docker could no longer see the Tiger Mark II but he knew it was still there in the stand of fir trees; if it had changed positions, they would have heard the noise of its engine and tracks. However, he wasn’t sure whether the officer had returned; the wind at times had been strong enough to muffle the sound of any motorcar.

The men of the section were deployed in defensive positions on the perimeter of the hill, Kohler, Linari and Dormund with grenades and bazookas while the others manned the cannon and machine guns. Docker had nothing in reserve and no way to relieve the soldiers who had been at their posts for hours. With Baird under technical arrest and Farrel detailed to guard him, the section’s already slender strength was cut by almost twenty percent. In addition, Docker decided as he patrolled the cliff’s edge, Larkin had probably stopped somewhere, curled up with a bottle for the night, so they couldn’t expect any help from him until the morning.

Trankic joined him to report they were still out of radio contact with Battery and Battalion. “But I got a couple of signals from First Army and some Kraut outfits at St. Vith and Bastogne. Christ, Bull, the whole fucking front’s falling apart. Bastogne ain’t gonna last the night, they’re throwing heavy stuff in there from three hundred and sixty degrees. So we got the Fifth, the Tenth Armored and the Twenty-sixth on the way, and up north the First and Second and Ninth are on the line, but what about now...?”

Farrel came around the revetment and said, “Sarge, maybe you better take a look at Baird, okay?”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Well, I don’t know.” Farrel shrugged. “I tried talking to him but he’s kind of mixed up, like he’s got a fever or something.”

“All right, get back to your post, Farrel. I’ll see him when I can.”

“Right, sarge.”

Baird sat on the cold floor of the cave and stared at the small wood fire, hardly conscious of the icy wind forcing its way around the sagging tarpaulin. His skin felt hot to his hand and the occasional eddies of sleet stung the cuts and bruises on his face. He moistened his cracked lips and tried to think of the farm in Middleburg, Virginia, but his memories were so confused and erratic that he found it difficult to keep them in a consecutive line.

Section Eight was more a home than the big farm had been, where he was alone most of the time except for the housekeeper and the old black groom, Mr. Skipper, who slept in the tack room and took care of the horses. There was only one room in the house he felt comfortable in, and he thought about it now, the library with the gun cases and the hunting ledgers and maps. He liked to go there after school when the late sun was coming in the windows facing the pond.

There was a silence in that house you could almost listen to, even when the rooms were filled with his father’s friends, tall rangy men who knew everything there was to know about hunting and guns and horses, even when they argued or laughed over their drinks, still there was the silence you could hear if you listened for it, and somehow this had always saddened him, because it was a tantalizing but deceptive conduit that led almost, but never quite, to his father’s attention...

He blinked and looked down at his combat boots. They were stiff with mud, the cross-laced thongs frozen hard and gleaming with flecks of ice, stiff and brittle as pieces of straw, and he thought of the library with the sun turning everything into warm colors — the shining old campaign desk, the animal skins and deep suede chairs, the round, leather game table and the framed portraits of soldiers in their uniforms from the wars against Germany and Spain and England and the Civil War in America.

He remembered holidays on the farm and family dinners and his father and his brother and other men shooting skeet in the high meadows beyond the pond, with Mr. Skipper releasing clay birds when they shouted, “Tull!” and the sound of shotguns with silver trim on their stocks booming through the brilliant fall countryside, and he remembered, too, the feeling of pride and terror his father’s guns evoked m him when he was small, and Baird almost began to cry then, the heat of the wood fire stinging the cuts on his face, because he was thinking of the German soldiers in the woods and the sound of their artillery and rifles that had sent him stumbling in panic toward the shelter of the woods...

He was so sick, so depressed and so near delirium that he didn’t hear the tarpaulin pulled back from the entrance to the cave—

“What the hell’s wrong with you, Baird?”

He looked up then, rubbing nervously at the tears that finally had appeared on his cheeks. Docker was crouched by the fire, watching him.

“I’m all right.”

Docker unstoppered his canteen and handed it to him. “Take a drink of this.”

He shook his head, but Docker said impatiently, “Goddamn it, it’ll do you good.”

He took a small sip of black whiskey, and began coughing.

Docker looked at the boy’s wet boots and at the bruises on his face. “Use some more sulfa powder, then I want you to rig this tarp to keep the wind out and take off those boots and dry them at the fire. And don’t sit on that frozen ground, get some blankets under you.”

“I’m all right,” Baird said again. “Really, sergeant, I’m fine.”

“Yeah, you look great.” He took a short drink of the cold whiskey. “Baird, you’ve been lying ever since you hooked up with this section. So now how about leveling for a change.”

In the shifting light, Baird’s eyes were empty. “I wanted to tell the truth,” he said, his voice so low the words were almost lost in the wind rustling through the cave.

“But you sure as hell didn’t. You want another drink?”

“No, but I think it helped.”

“Good.” Docker put the canteen away. “Okay then. Let’s have it.”

“Just turn everything around one hundred and eighty degrees and you’ve got the truth. Shorty was right all along. I’m a deserter. That’s why I lied about everything.” Baird’s voice had begun to break and there was an unnatural brightness in his eyes. “I just ran when I heard the artillery and saw those German soldiers.”

“And threw away your rifle?”

“That happened later. I tripped in the woods and fell. I dropped my rifle and didn’t look for it. I just got up and kept on running.”

“What about your dog tags?”

In a listless voice Baird said, “I threw them away.”

“Is Baird your real name?”

The boy laughed softly, but there was no humor in it. “Sure, that’s my real name. But I wanted to get rid of my Army serial number, I didn’t want anybody checking it out. I was too scared to think straight.” He looked away and wet his lips. “If I had guts, I’d be in a German stockade with the other guys. I disobeyed a direct order from you, I pulled a gun on everybody in the section. What do the dog tags matter? What more do you need?”

“Damn it, Baird, this isn’t a court-martial... But you’re still holding out on me. You know a helluva lot about weapons, and you know a lot about West Point. You mentioned taking snapshots on Lee and Jefferson Roads — that’s where the superintendent of the academy lives, an area about as restricted as Ike’s privy at Versailles.”

“Trankic didn’t believe me either, I guess.”

“He’d sure as hell like to,” Docker said. “You handled yourself fine when Gelnick got hit.”

It was obvious to him that Baird wasn’t listening now. His voice was tired, threaded with pain when he said, “They usually had drinks in my father’s library before dinner. That’s where the family portraits are...” Baird smiled at the fire. “My family called it the Hall of Gentlemen. On holidays the ranking officer would propose a toast. It was always the same: ‘To absent friends.’ ”

“Who is your father, Baird?”

“I lived at the Point for eight years when he taught there. He was a full colonel then. Now he’s a major general on MacArthur’s staff at Port Moresby in New Guinea, the last I heard. Major General Jonathan Baird. My brother, he’s twelve years older than I am, he’s a major with the Eighty-eighth Infantry in Italy.”

Docker heard someone outside the cave calling his name, the words blown into grotesque rhythms by the wind.

“When they both went overseas, I stayed at our farm in Middleburg. My mother died years ago, there was nobody there but a cook and the groom. I knew if I missed this war I’d never have anything to talk to my father about. It would just be” — he made a helpless gesture with his hands — “it would just be all over, my whole life, like I’d never been born. So I enlisted. I was going to surprise him so that when we all got together again...” With an obvious effort, Baird raised his head and looked at Docker. “Now do you understand about those dog tags? Can’t you see how it was?”

Docker didn’t, probably no one else would either. He’d learned that much in the olive groves and deserts, had matured with the sound of gunfire, and at least knew that it was pointless and ultimately presumptuous to try to “understand” how another person might react when he was fired on.

“Does your father know you’re over here?”

“He does now. I wrote him from basic training, and when the One hundred sixth shipped out.”

Docker heard heavy footsteps outside the cave. The tarp was pulled back by Schmitzer, whose impassive face was tight with excitement. He handed a white scarf to Docker. “You better come over to the machine gun, sarge. The Bonnard kid just brought this up. She’s talking French so I ain’t sure what she’s saying. All I can make out is that the German officer is at the castle and wants to talk to you.”

The scarf was made of heavy silk, the initials KJ at one of the fringed ends, the letters embroidered in a Gothic style with black and yellow threads.

“Let’s go,” Docker said, and went outside and told Farrel to find Sonny Laurel and send him over to the machine guns.

Corporal Schmitzer leaned against the multiple gun mount and looked at Laurel, who was staring after the lights of Docker’s jeep, the spinning snow lightly touching his lips and eyelashes.

Docker had first wanted to know from Felice how the German officer had got to the castle past their machine guns. With Laurel helping to translate, she had explained that the village priest, Father Juneau, had guided the German up a logging trail from the other side of the village... Schmitzer’s thoughts were as bitter as the winds around them as he watched Laurel looking down the road where the blackout taillights of Docker’s jeep were turning toward the iron gates of Castle Rêve. He’d got the little Belgian girl, Schmitzer knew; maybe that’s why they’d stopped calling him Goldilocks. It was no secret, but even if he hadn’t known, it was there in the way they looked at each other, the way he watched her eyes and her lips, solemn and breathless, as she told Docker about the German and the priest.

Docker was stalling for time, but there was no hope for any of them now and the sergeant must damn well know it. Some of Schmitzer’s frustration and anger dissolved with that knowledge because he could almost welcome what was coming, if it didn’t take too long... Now he watched as Laurel turned without looking at him and walked to the crest of the hill, where the wind was bending the scrub trees almost flat to the ground and the sleet made dry, clicking sounds on the outcroppings of rock and shale. Schmitzer stood alone, under the barrels of the machine guns, and watched Laurel go from him.

Docker left Felice Bonnard at the gatehouse, parked the jeep and walked up the winding drive to Castle Rêve looming high against a sky of driven snow and heavy clouds. The German officer’s command car was parked near the stone steps at the entrance of the castle.

Docker stood motionless until his eyes adjusted to the darkness and shifting shadows, then checked the area around the car, scanning the formal gardens, the overgrown clusters of topiary, and listening to the sound of the wind in the crowns of the big trees.

He went through the gardens and up to the wide flagstone terrace that overlooked the river and the valley. Standing at the railing with his back to Docker was a German officer in a greatcoat and visored garrison cap.

“Herr Oberst.”

Karl Jaeger turned and looked thoughtfully at the American sergeant. “Ah, ’n Abend, Feldwebel. Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

Docker nodded. “Ja, ein wenig.”

They exchanged names. The German officer was almost as tall as Docker. The name of his division, Das Reich, was stitched on the cuffs of his coat, the letters in yellow against a field of black.

Docker handed him the silk scarf and Jaeger accepted it with a faint smile.

He said, “Schön. Sie sind wohl Deutsch-Amerikaner?”

“Ja, aber—” Docker began, then, in English: “Let’s get to the point, colonel.”

“Von mir aus. Bin ich allzu optimistisch, aus Ihrer Gegenwart hier zu entnehmen, dass Sie die Lage begreifen?”

Docker’s German was not that proficient. He said, “Sorry, Oberst. Ich nicht ganz verstehen.”

Karl Jaeger unbuttoned his coat and looped the white scarf about his throat.

“So? Und da glaubt’ ich nun Sie verstehen die Sprache unserer Vorfahren, die Sprache Goethes und Schillers, Uhlands and Mörikes.”

The German’s condescension was as puzzling to Docker as it was irritating. “Sir, let’s save all this for the next literary tea party,” he said. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

The sergeant was intelligent, Jaeger realized, obviously cultivated, but seasoned and hardened by this war. A good soldier, probably a good man, and Jaeger found this gratifying because leniency toward a respected enemy was not a weakness. “Your guns are no match for the firepower of a Tiger tank,” he said. “I think I’ve demonstrated that. But if I am forced to attack your position again, sergeant, I’ll destroy it. With the war coming to an end, what would be the point of sacrificing yourself and your men?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“That you immediately surrender your men and weapons to my command.” Jaeger took a briar pipe from his pocket and cupped it in the palm of his hand. “Unconditionally, but honorably, sergeant. You will drive alone to the square in Lepont, bringing all rifles, handguns, grenades and so forth. The rest of your men, unarmed, will then come down the hill in groups of three at fifteen-minute intervals.”

“You seem convinced we’ve got no alternative.”

“Not a practical one. Your presence tells me that. You wouldn’t be here unless you hoped something would be gained from it.”

“Doesn’t the same apply to you, Oberst?”

“Of course not. And you will regret it, sergeant, if you force me to prove that you are wrong. Your men will be allowed to keep their personal effects, letters, diaries, toilet articles, cigarettes and rations. We’ll require only names, ranks and Army serial numbers.” Jaeger tapped the stem of the pipe against the back of his hand. “What do you say?”

Something didn’t hang together here. Docker thought; like a picture taken slightly off focus, the situation had a blurred, disturbing look to it. Why bother asking the section to surrender? Why all this Geneva convention bullshit about toilet articles, cigarettes and rations? The German tank could destroy their position in seconds. If these had been war games in training areas with military umpires and judges vetting the action. Section Eight would already have been checked off as a destroyed target with eighty to ninety percent casualties. Why was the officer avoiding a firefight? Why did he prefer surrender? He could be concerned about his own casualties but there was more to it than that. Docker was suddenly convinced. Not knowing the German’s purpose, Docker decided he’d better play for time.

“I don’t have the authority to surrender under these circumstances. It’s a decision I can’t make.”

“What about the authority of plain common sense?”

The wind had picked up and the flying snow was like a porous wall between Docker and the German officer.

“I can’t surrender or retreat until my present orders are countermanded and I’m given new ones,” Docker said smoothly, and untruthfully. “My section receives two radio signals every twenty-four hours from Battery headquarters. Their transmitter sends at four in the afternoon and four in the morning, and shuts down between those signals. I’ll present your proposals to the battery commander when and if we’re in contact tomorrow morning. Then I’ll follow his orders.”

“You’re obviously a very dedicated soldier,” Jaeger said. “But you’re also damned stupid if you think there’s anything heroic about being slaughtered for no good reason.” Jaeger paced the terrace, his boots grinding through the crust of ice on the flagstones. “I’m a serious man,” he said. “You’d be wise to keep that in mind. If you are lying to me, I should tell you something: I received a report only an hour ago from our weather station in Frankfurt. The present weather front will hold for at least another three days and nights. So don’t put your trust in the Eighth Air Force.” Jaeger was trying to control an expanding frustration; there was something unbending about the American sergeant that infuriated him. “You think you have some God-given right to defend that hill?” His voice had suddenly become hard with tension. “Some sacred duty, some moral responsibility to travel thousands of miles from your own innocent country and drop bombs on hospitals and schools and streets filled with women and children?” Somehow his words, with their evocation of his little daughters Rosa and Hannah, calmed and steadied him. “Let me tell you something,” he said quietly now. “In every country whose borders we’ve crossed, thousands of volunteers have joined our colors. There are Waffen SS units made up of Danes and Frenchmen and Norwegians, commanded by their own officers. The Eleventh Nordland Division was raised from Scandinavian volunteers only last year. From the earliest days of the conflict, sergeant, the German armed forces accepted recruits from Holland and Finland and Belgium... yes, from this very ground we’re standing on came some of our finest combat units. And from Hungary and Romania and Bulgaria there were dozens of divisions fighting at our side against the Russians.”

Jaeger’s voice became harder. “Have you ever asked yourself what you — an American — are fighting for on this old soil of Europe? For what, sergeant? To save England’s empire? Or to help Bolshevik tyrants? Is that what you’re here for? If so I ask you to remember this: no cannons are firing across the borders of America, no bombs have smashed your cities into rubble and not one, not one American man, woman or child has yet to be killed by German bombs on your homeland.”

Jaeger put the briar pipe in his pocket and walked across the terrace to the flight of steps. Stopping there, he looked at Docker, his features blurred by the shifting snow and fog.

“I’ll hold my attack until first light, sergeant, which will be in approximately six hours. No, make that five hours and forty-five minutes. My little history lesson was on your time, not mine.”

“If I’d known, I might have paid more attention,” Docker said.

Jaeger nodded slightly. “Your inattention probably does you credit, since most history is shaped by the communiques of victorious generals. Still, I urge you to be realistic when you talk to your superior officers. I have no wish to kill you and your men, sergeant.”

Jaeger went down the steps into the garden. When the sound of his command car faded on the air, Docker walked slowly back to his jeep through the shadows of topiary and weathered white statues.