Germanica (25 page)

* * *

Doctor Lennie Hagerman was still wearing scrubs when Tanner showed up after being requested. “I want to show you something,” Hagerman said. “That last group of prisoners had some unusual problems and you might want to report it upward.”

“Sure,” said Tanner. He’d helped interview several of them and, aside from looking hungry and miserable, he hadn’t noticed anything unusual. They were prisoners who’d been beaten down both physically and mentally.

Hagerman pulled out a folder with a number of photographs in it. “I know you’re not a doctor, but try to figure out what’s wrong with these people.”

Tanner agreed that he was not a doctor but agreed to look anyhow. The photos were in color, which made the Germans look terrible. They were all staring at the camera with their mouths open and their teeth and gums exposed. “Okay,” he said after a moment, “what am I looking for?”

“See how their gums are discolored? Take my word for it but there were sores all over their bodies.”

“Jesus, please don’t tell me it’s something contagious like the plague. Something like that could wipe out the entire German army.”

“Along with a few million other people,” Hagerman added. “No, this is nothing that bad. These poor dumb Nazis are suffering from scurvy. Being a kind and gentle soul, I’ve prescribed vitamin C, which should solve their problems. When they go to a prison camp they’ll be somebody else’s problem. However, if too many Germans facing us get it, there will be large numbers of men too sick, too lethargic and in too much pain to do much of anything in the way of fighting.”

Tanner thought of how Lena had been weakened when he’d first met her. He’d put it down to lack of food and not necessarily to incomplete diet. Perhaps she had been in the beginning stages of scurvy herself. Hagerman was right, however, this was something that had to be bumped upstairs and quickly. Out of curiosity, he would ask Lena if she’d ever suffered any of the symptoms.

After that he would try to find out when the army would make its inevitable next attack through the Brenner.

* * *

“Private Gruber, it is wonderful to see that you escaped from the clutches of the Americans.”

Gruber grinned widely at the compliment from General Hahn, a man he worshipped almost as much as he had his late Fuhrer. “It wasn’t all that difficult, General. They had a fool guarding me. I tricked him, hurt him, and then took his uniform and rifle.”

Hahn rubbed his hands with glee. What a resourceful and violent boy young Gruber had turned out to be.

“And when you were in their clutches, what information did you give them?”

“I admit I told them everything I knew, which wasn’t much at all. They already knew about the Werewolves, so I embellished everything I said. I told them there were hundreds of us and that we were well armed and trained. I begged to be saved and promised them everything if they wouldn’t send me off to Russia.”

Hahn nodded amiably. He had read the young man’s detailed report and didn’t doubt that Gruber had told the Americans everything that he knew. While there might have been some embellishment in telling of his escape, Hahn was confident that Gruber had been basically truthful. He also doubted that the Americans had believed everything Gruber had told them. The Americans were not fools, after all. They would know that a skinny fourteen-year-old wouldn’t have access to anything important.

“What would you like to do now, Private Gruber?”

Gruber smiled. “I wish nothing more than to serve Germany.”

“Excellent answer and you shall. It is an added bonus that you brought an American uniform. We can never have too many of those and, to be frank, they are in short supply. The rifle was a bonus as well. The uniform you brought will be given to an older and more senior soldier to use when infiltrating American positions.”

Gruber was crestfallen. He had hoped to wear it.

Hahn reached out and fondly patted Gruber’s shoulder. “I know what you are thinking, but, even though the American you took it from was a small man, he was still larger than you. The Americans would not hand out a uniform that was too large and ill-fitting. You were quite fortunate to make it through to us without getting caught and then hanged for hurting that guard. I do admit, Private Gruber, that carving a swastika in his forehead was a marvelous idea. And don’t worry about being left out of any future Werewolf operations. There will be a special place for you. Who knows, we might even let you use the rifle you stole.”

* * *

“Hey Tanner, who the hell is, or was, a Mildred Ruffino?” asked Cullen.

He had been reading the latest issue of
Stars and Stripes
, the newspaper printed for the men and women of the American army. The paper was editorially independent of the Army’s hierarchy and frequently printed items that the higher-ups did not always want published. The paper’s editors had gotten into trouble with a number of senior commanders including General George Patton who’d tried to have the newspaper shut down—only to be overruled by higher powers.

“Isn’t she that lady who passed out and died in Harry Truman’s arms?”

Cullen laughed. “If I found myself in Harry Truman’s arms I’d pass out too. Yeah, I recall her now. They’re talking about peace marchers using her name as if she was some kind of damn martyr or saint. Hey, I guess she was sort of a martyr, wasn’t she?”

The soldiers of the 105th had mixed emotions about the peace efforts. Yes, they wanted the war to end and they didn’t much care if it was through a negotiated peace or the abject surrender of either or both Japan and Germany. But they knew they couldn’t go home until the Germans gave up. And then it would likely be a brief stop while on their way to invade Japan. There was an uncomfortable feeling that well-meaning people like Mildred Ruffino were inadvertently encouraging the Germans to hang on, that the United States would grow genuinely war weary and give up. That could not be allowed to happen.

All of which meant that the Army was going to have to attack again. There had been a significant lull that was about to end. Ammunition and other supplies had been stockpiled. Destroyed tanks had been replaced and large numbers of replacements had arrived.

“Tanner, do you realize that the division is two thousand men understrength?”

“Yep. We’ve lost three thousand and only gotten one thousand to fill in. Worse, those replacements are very miserable specimens, both physically and mentally.”

“And don’t forget morally,” Cullen added and Tanner agreed. There had been more and more incidents of soldiers finding ways to avoid combat without getting court-martialed for cowardice or for disobeying a direct order. Large numbers of soldiers had managed to wound or injure themselves. Some of the more creative ones had discovered that you could live quite nicely without a big toe, so they “accidentally” shot it off. Now such wounds were automatically considered criminal and court-martials were convened. Sadly, some soldiers considered jail time and a dishonorable discharge a better alternative to being killed or horribly maimed. Nobody either Tanner or Cullen knew felt that way, but another disaster could change matters.

“So when do you think we’ll attack?” Cullen asked. “We can’t sit here all summer with our thumbs up our asses. We wait too long and we’ll be climbing the Alps in the dead of winter. Did you hear about the latest plan to bomb the Germans?”

Tanner laughed. Someone in Ike’s staff had a relative in Congress who suggested that the air force commence low-level night bombing since it had become obvious that the Germans were moving men and supplies at night.

Whoever it was had given no thought to the difficulty involved in flying through mountains at night, the problems with sudden winds, and, of course, the inability to hit anything when pilots and crew were focused on not smearing their planes all over the Alps. No, that idea had been laughed away with the result that the Germans were still safe in the mountains and the land adjacent to Switzerland.

Cullen laughed harshly. “So the ghost of Mildred Ruffino lives on.”

“And on,” said Tanner.

“What’s your best guess as to when we’ll hit them again?”

“Sometime between a couple of days and a couple of weeks,” Tanner answered.

“Jesus, Tanner, you’re no help whatsoever.”

* * *

Lena had no difficulty locating Father Shanahan. She’d been wanting to for a while, but had been too busy. She owed him a debt of gratitude and wanted him to know it.

“You’re looking well,” he said. “There’s color in your cheeks and you’ve gotten some decent food in you.”

“Not too much, Father, I don’t want to become some plump German dumpling.”

“I don’t think there’s a chance of that, at least not a
German
dumpling. So how can I help you?”

“Does everyone who comes to see you want your help?”

“Generally, yes. I don’t lead that exciting a life, so how can I help you?”

Lena took a deep breath. Some things still hurt. “I understand that the Red Cross is establishing a registry of refugees, or displaced persons as they’re now being called. I was wondering if you would be able to help me find my father.”

Shanahan pursed his lips. “I don’t see why I can’t at least try. Now, do you still have that lovely Luger?”

She laughed. “Yes and it’s still not for sale. There’s a war yet to end, and who knows, I might have to use it to protect myself.” And protect Captain Scott Tanner, she realized with a jolt.

* * *

The M4 Sherman tank was not the best tank in the world, but it was being mass-produced by the tens of thousands. While it could hold its own against German Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks, it was totally outclassed by the Panther and Tiger tanks. Fortunately, these German monsters did not exist in great numbers. Germany’s lack of production capacity was the cause of that shortage, and most of those that had rolled off production lines had been destroyed. It was widely understood that the Sherman was vastly inferior to the Red Army’s T34, which was also being produced in enormous quantities. The Sherman tank had been upgraded with a 76mm high-velocity gun, which was superior to the original 75mm gun the tanks had been built with. Still, no one would want to fight a Panther or a Tiger or even a T34. Originally, the upgraded Sherman had been sent to the British, but with them now effectively out of the war, the tanks were going to American units.

The Sherman had a crew of five and weighed in at about thirty tons. Along with the main gun, it had a .50 caliber machine gun and two .30 caliber guns. The tank had a gasoline engine that allowed for a range of one hundred and twenty miles and could go upwards of thirty miles an hour. Mileage and speed were dependent on a number of factors, including terrain and the skill of the driver. Her shortcomings were the fact that she was underarmored and, standing at nine feet, far too tall. Thus, she could be spotted fairly easily by enemies lying low in the grass.

But to Sergeant Archie Dixon, the Chrysler-built tank named “Mimi” was lovely. Even lovelier was the anatomically correct painting of a half-naked blond with huge boobs on her hull. A couple of prudish officers had complained, but Dixon had not received any direct order to cover it up. If he had, he would have used some cardboard that had been painted olive drab to temporarily cover the offending boobs and hope that nobody important noticed when he removed it. Getting Mimi painted had cost the crew ten bucks and some liberated cognac.

Dixon, the tank, and the 14th Armored Division had been in Europe for only a few months and had missed much of the heavy fighting after Normandy, something that didn’t bother Dixon one little bit. They had played a minor part in the first assault on the German positions in the Brenner Pass and had taken some casualties. That attack had cost the division dearly when the Nazis fought tooth and nail. They were preparing to launch a second attack and Archie wondered if their luck would still hold. He and his crew considered themselves a band of brothers and he wouldn’t want anything to happen to his brothers.

But now the Nazis did not appear to have any armored capabilities. Those splendid Panther and Tiger tanks had almost all been destroyed or captured. What remained were a relatively few enemy tanks in the Alpine Redoubt. As a result, the battalion Dixon belonged to had been broken off from the division and attached to the 105th Infantry as support when they attacked through the Brenner Pass.

“Piss break,” said Dixon as he jumped off the tank and stretched. The Sherman was consistently uncomfortable. In the winter it was too cold and in the summer it was too hot. The rest of the four tank column had pulled off to the side of the two lane paved road the treads of the tanks were chewing to pieces. Their crews were also savoring the moment.

As he relieved himself, Dixon had to admit that the land around him was beautiful, heavily forested, and hilly. A city boy from the Bronx, he’d never had the chance to be in the woods, and this part of southern Germany had some incredible scenery. On the other hand, the hills were getting higher and more foreboding as they drew closer to the Alps.

“At least we won’t have to fight in the mountains,” Archie said as he buttoned up his fly. He hoped he was right. He’d been a buck sergeant for only two weeks and then only because his predecessor as commander of Mimi had gotten himself shot in the face by a sniper. It was a hideous wound and the man had still been alive when an ambulance carted him off. He had been trying to scream but the blood gurgling up from his mouth kept cutting off any real sound he’d been attempting to make. They’d been in an area they thought was safe and was proof that the Nazis, while defeated, were still able to kill.

It further pointed out that the 14th Division, known as the “Liberators,” was through liberating. Now they were conquering and sometimes having a good time of it. It gave them some pleasure to see German civilians weeping and groveling and begging. Fuck them, was the consensus. They had started the war and now they could suffer the consequences. And so what if some buildings got destroyed or some silverware went missing. If anybody resisted, they might get shot. They drew the line at raping frauleins. The brass was hell on that and anyone who did rape a German woman could count on decades at hard labor.