Soldiers of ’44

Chapter Thirty-Three

February 16, 1945. Brabant Hall, Liège, Belgium. Friday, 0100 Hours.

General Adamson asked Major Karsh to wait in the anteroom of his office, a converted drawing room in one of the chateaus at Brabant Park. The general sat on a divan facing a marble fireplace topped by a dark wooden mantelpiece that held an ormolu clock and clusters of diminutive jade animals arranged among fronds of fir branches.

He adjusted his reading glasses and examined the envelope that Jackson Baird had addressed to Buell Docker. After studying the grain of the paper and Baird’s handwriting, he lifted the flap and removed the two sheets of ruled paper. “Lieutenant, there’s coffee on my desk. Also some brandy. Now let’s see what we’ve got here.” The general began reading Baird’s letter.

Docker poured himself a canteen cup of coffee. There had been an interval of cold tension when they first arrived. Colonel Rankin’s telephone call had preceded them by several minutes, and it was only after Docker, at the general’s insistence, had repeated his story a second and a third time that General Adamson waved Karsh from the office and agreed to read Baird’s letter.

Sipping the strong black coffee, Docker glanced around the large room, which was hung with faded tapestries and furnished with a clutter of civilian and military effects. Overstuffed furniture, hunting prints, portraits topped by gallery lights shared space with flag-dotted situation maps, field telephones, a short wave radio transmitter and the general’s carbine and gas mask.

When General Adamson finished reading Baird’s letter, and after checking the blank sides of the pages to make sure he had missed nothing, he stood up and paced in front of the fire. Finally he said, “Well, lieutenant, if all my decisions were this simple, I could probably log four to six hours sleep every night.” He turned and walked to a situation map that was propped up on a tripod in front of a wall of books.

“I was pretty damn good at running a division,” he said, and nothing in his tone or manner marked the transition. “That’s pretty much like riding a horse — one source of power, one target to aim it at. But a corps — that’s like riding two horses, with one foot on each of their backs. Up at Army and Group you need to be a politician more than anything else. You’ve got to pussyfoot around the government-in-exile people, stand back and let de Gaulle go first up that big street to liberate Paris, make sure the VIPs have comfortable quarters and a safe look at the action. Imagine an army commander destroying a town like Lourdes because it was the best and quickest way to save lives. They’d crucify him for it. Lieutenant, the closer I get to that kind of decision, the less 1 feel like a soldier. Take Dresden...”

Docker heard a new tone in the general’s voice, a bitterness as his eyes moved across the flags on the situation maps, gaudy little pennants signaling death and victory.

Docker carefully put the canteen cup on a desk and stood watching General Adamson, but his thoughts had turned to the German officer who had died on Mont Reynard...

“There wasn’t any military reason to hit Dresden,” the general was saying. “No industry there, no depots, no troops, no logistical significance. But we killed about one hundred and thirty thousand people in twenty-four hours, old men and women and children, and do you know why, lieutenant? We killed those people because Uncle Joe Stalin told us to. He chewed the ass out of Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta because of the way we fell apart in that German counteroffensive in the Ardennes. And so to shut him up Churchill turned Bomber Harris loose and, of course, we had to go along with him. Ike was against it all along. Vaporizing those civilian cities wasn’t warfare, he said. It was just terrorism, and Ike wanted no part of it. Hell, it was a holiday in Dresden when our raids began, some kind of religious celebration that tied in with Lent. The children were in the streets in carnival costumes when the bombers came over... Maybe every soldier’s got just one good war in him. If that’s true, I’m glad this one’s about over.”

“Do you believe that, sir? That it’s about over?”

“Well, I hope so. Take a look.” The general pointed to the map. “The Russians are ready to strike on a line stretching seven hundred and fifty miles from East Prussia into Poland and clear down to the northern frontiers of Hungary. They’ve got fifty artillery divisions and about five hundred infantry divisions out there. Five million soldiers ready to pull the noose tight. We’ve beaten Hitler and the Nazis, something thirteen countries in Europe couldn’t do. MacArthur will be having his uniforms made in Tokyo within a few months. What happens then, God only knows. So let’s take care of a simple problem, lieutenant.” He picked up a telephone. “Corporal, put me through to Colonel Rankin.”

The general sat on the edge of his desk to wait for the connection, but his eyes stayed fixed on the situation map. “But you can count on this, lieutenant, the Germans won’t surrender. They’ll fight until every building in Berlin falls down on their heads. I read this somewhere, I don’t know which of them said it, Goebbels or maybe Goering, but one of them said that when the Nazis left the scene of history they’d slam the door on themselves so hard the rest of the world would hear the echo for a thousand years. I think I believe that...”

The general straightened and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Yes, I’m waiting for Colonel Rankin.” Then: “George, I’m sending a driver to the hotel with Private Jackson Baird’s letter. The driver will also have a personal note from me to his father. I want you to put a hold on that transcript that’s on its way to SHAEF. You will send the original transcript in its place by tomorrow morning’s courier plane, with the two letters I’ve mentioned — mine and young Baird’s.”

Adamson listened for a moment or so then, nodding occasionally and glancing at Docker. Then he said, “George, I understand your concern. And I appreciate your opinion. But I don’t intend to pursue the matter. So we’ll consider it settled. Now there’s one other thing you can do for me. I’m going to write a supporting recommendation for young Baird’s decoration. But I’d like you to put it into good, clear English for me. Will you do that? Fine.”

The general replaced the receiver, walked to the fireplace and stood with his back to it. “You see, lieutenant, that was a real simple decision. Simpler for me than Colonel Rankin because General Baird is a friend of mine. We were classmates at the Point. Rankin’s like a guard dog. He wants to protect us. And maybe that kind of loyalty serves a useful function. But I believe General Baird would prefer the truth to anything else. He asked courage from his sons. He wouldn’t want us to ask anything less of him.”

Adamson’s mood changed now. “But we’re still soldiers, lieutenant, and there’s still a war on, so I think you’d better get started back to your outfit.”

“Yes, sir. And thank you, sir.”

Docker saluted and joined Major Karsh for the ride back through the snowy countryside to Liège.

They drove back to the city on roads flanked at intervals by First Army sentries. It was two o’clock in the morning and bitterly cold, winds from the stubbled fields and frozen ground twisting and gusting inside the jeep.

They didn’t speak until the dark outlines of Liège loomed ahead of them. “How come, major?” Docker said then. “Did we finally run out of gray areas?”

Karsh lit a cigarette and put the box of GI matches back in his pocket. Settling himself deeper in the hard canvas seats, he fastened the top button of his overcoat and looked out at the spray of ice frothing up from the wheels of the jeep. When he finally turned to speak to Docker, his faint smile was reflected in the slick icy windshield. “No, it wasn’t any shortage of gray areas, Docker. At any rate, I don’t think so. Maybe I realized I would have to live with myself as a civilian longer than I would as a soldier. Or maybe it’s what you said about Gelnick. Or a combination of things.” He sounded tired then. “But who knows, Docker? Not even my mother calls me Sid.”

Karsh flipped his cigarette from the jeep, and when it struck the ground, tiny sparks flared in the darkness behind them.

At five-fifteen the following morning. Docker came downstairs from his room in the Hotel Leopold. The lobby was cold and dimly lit and two old men in heavy sweaters were sweeping the marble floors.

Sergeant Trankic got up from a sofa and came to meet him. His helmet was pulled down over his forehead and a cigarette slanted up from his mouth. “I found a mess open. Bull. I got coffee and some fried eggs on bread. They’re in the jeep. Want to eat here or on the road?”

“Let’s hit it,” Docker said.

They drove through the city with Docker at the wheel, the jeep moving slowly in a column of heavy trucks. As they approached the river. Docker swung off the road and slowed near the courtyard of the Hotel Empire, where several ancient civilian cars were parked in the drive near the doorman’s empty kiosk.

Docker knew the look of this place would always be with him, like the fields and towns of the war, one more place where a piece of him would remain when he set out on the last road home. He felt like he had won some kind of victory for Jackson Baird here, and maybe for all of them, and now he could leave that young man in peace, linked with the memories of the other men whose lives, and deaths, had formed a brotherhood on the peaks of Mont Reynard.

“What are we stopping for?”

“We’re not,” Docker said.

He turned back into the traffic and soon they were winding through the foothills that led from the city into the forests of the Ardennes.