Iron Sniper: A World War II Thriller

Chapter Fifteen

To his surprise, Rohde found that in the wake of the interview with the SS major that he was more excited than he might have expected. It was not the prospect of being on the front page of a newspaper going out to enemy troops that enthused him so much as the thought of being noticed by one enemy soldier in particular — the sniper that he had wounded in the field.

Given the vagaries of the battlefield, they might never meet again. Major Dorfmann's newspaper would pour salt in the enemy sniper's wound and doubt upon his soul.

He had seen that sniper shoot, and the American was very good. If they ever did encounter one another in the field, Rohde was certain that he would now have the mental edge over the American.

The SS major had said that the American journalist Ernie Pyle had made this Cole into a hero. Now, he would be a tarnished hero, having been bested by a German sniper. With a single bullet, Rohde had shown him what was what and given him a taste of German superiority. Rohde had definitively answered the question of who was the better man.

Most of all, the article left him excited by the prospect of being noticed by someone other than Captain Fischer. The article was not the Iron Cross, but it was an affirmation of Rohde's talents. His coveted medal might very well follow.

What if he did get put into the Berlin news and the paper crossed the desk of none other than Hitler himself? It was a daydream, of course, but it could clinch the Iron Cross for him.

How he ached for that bit of metal. The other soldiers sometimes joked about an Iron Cross being worth no more than a few pfennig. And yet, it was so much more than a piece of cheap tin. In Rohde's mind, the Iron Cross represented respect and redemption. He did not doubt his older brother, but others did. Winning the Iron Cross would put those doubts to rest for once and for all. The Iron Cross was not just for Dieter or for Carl; the medal would be for them both.

Carl had been six years older. The family had lived just outside Mannheim — so far, the family home had been spared destruction by Allied air raids. His father worked in one of the factories that the British bombers were so intent on destroying. Many of the small city's beautiful old buildings were now ruined or damaged, including the Mannheim Palace that had once been home to German aristocrats and whose grand architecture had been the pride of the city. He could not quote poetry, but he knew what Goethe had said about architecture being frozen music. He remembered how he and Carl had both been awed by the palace as boys; it was likely a ruin now, another vestige of childhood.

Dieter thought back to those years before the war. If he and Carl had been closer in age, there might have been more competition, more of a sibling rivalry, and thus different feelings toward his brother. But a difference in age of six years between two boys is vast. It meant that Carl was always the bigger and stronger one. The one that Dieter could look up to. And Carl looked out for him. He had even shown Dieter how to shave.

Once, an older boy had gotten it into his head to pick on Dieter, as boys will do. There was no real rhyme or reason for it. It started with some name-calling and shoving in the schoolyard. Dieter was no coward, but when he squared off against the bigger boy, whose name was Lenerz, Dieter did not have a chance. The older boy must have outweighed him by forty pounds and was a good fifteen centimeters taller. Dieter went home that day with a fat lip and a black eye, but it was mostly his pride that was wounded.

"Who did this to you?" Carl wanted to know.

"Never mind," Dieter said. The last thing he wanted to be was a tattletale, especially to his brother. He could fight his own battles. "It doesn't matter."

"Was it that fat bastard Lenerz?"

Dieter just shrugged.

"I thought so. He is my age! He ought to know better than to go around picking on you — or anybody else, for that matter."

That was all that Carl said about it. But the next day at school, it was Lenerz who had a fat lip and a black eye. He never again so much as looked in Dieter's direction.

It was simply Carl's nature to stick up for others. He was indignant on behalf of the underdog, whether it was his little brother or a war-torn nation. Germany had seen itself as the underdog, and so naturally, Carl had come to its defense, like so many other young men.

The only time that Dieter had been jealous of Carl was when his brother had first come home in his SS uniform. Dieter ached to be a soldier, but he was much too young.

Then the war began. Everyone could remember that day in 1939 when the news came that German troops had invaded Poland. Then France fell. The English army was nearly driven into the sea at Dunkirk. Those were heady and glorious days when anything seemed possible, when Germany was on the march, and any young man who could was eager to rush into uniform.

When word arrived that Carl was dead, it was delivered in a terse telegram from the SS. A single sentence stated that Carl Rohde had been shot for desertion.

Neither his father nor his mother, and especially not Dieter, had believed a word of it. They had their theories. Carl must have been visiting a girl — he had been handsome enough — or some other adventure had taken him away from his unit. Perhaps he had defied orders by being drawn into the defense of another underdog, to his detriment. There were rumors about darker things being done by the SS, and Carl may not have felt that he had signed on for that.

It was likely that they would never know the truth of what happened, not when the SS was involved. But could Carl have been a coward? Had he deserted his duty? Never. Never in a thousand years.

In unguarded moments, Dieter sometimes wondered how it must have been for Carl in his final moments, waiting to be shot. His last thoughts would have been of home and family. Then the clap of a gunshot, a flash of white light, and eternal nothingness. Death was like the time before one was born, a return to nonexistence. Imagining Carl's last moments pushed Rohde toward despair, so he did his best not to think about it.

While there had never been any official announcement about Carl's fate, rumors had gotten around back home. There were whispers. Some of their neighbors looked at Dieter and his parents with disgust, but what was even worse was the fact that far more looked at them with pity, especially the ones who had sons and husbands in the military. They knew very well that any one of them might be the next to receive such a telegram. Dieter hated those pitying looks worst of all.

And now, here was his chance at redemption by being a sniper who won the Iron Cross, not just for himself, but for his mother and father. And most of all, in some small way, it would mean redemption for Carl.