On Desperate Ground (52 page)

“Now it all makes sense. As much sense as it can make.”
 

Mack hung his head and both men were quiet, content to let the time pass and watch the river flow by them. Finally Dieter spoke, looking out at the river and the sky beyond.

“I don’t think you traveled all this way, after fifty years, to wrap up loose ends, my friend.”

“Dieter, I don’t know what I expected. All I know is, I keep seeing old men like us who have had good lives, families, and careers. But we left over a thousand men dead out there somewhere, men who never had that chance. They haunt me still, those young boys. Americans, Russian Hiwis, and Germans, too. They never had a chance at life, and nobody remembers them.”

Dieter laid his hand on Mack’s shoulder. “I have something to show you. First, where are you staying?”

“I don’t know yet. I came straight here from Leipzig this morning.”

“Then you will stay with me, no arguments. Come, you can follow me there.” Dieter got up, and with a quickness in his step he had not felt in months, led Mack to his car.

Mack followed Dieter out of Torgau, onto back roads that led through meadows and pastures. The landscape looked familiar, and he remembered walking cautiously through the countryside with Rosie and the others. It seemed surreal to be driving out in the open, as if on a Sunday ride back home. He saw the sign for Bad Schmiedeburg, and recognized the small castle that had been the Gambit headquarters. It was now a restaurant and café, a colorful sign,
Gasthaus zum Schloss
, hanging over the door. He left his car there and got into Dieter’s. They drove a few minutes, and with a shock Mack realized they were crossing the scene of the battle. He hadn’t been prepared for this. The woods that had been blasted and burning had grown back. The meadows that had been full of craters were now cultivated fields, farmers turning over the soil for spring planting. It was beautiful and quite normal.

“I had to drive by here almost every day when I worked,” said Dieter. “In one way, I became quite used to it. In another way, I never have.”
 

He said nothing else. They drove to the hill.

“Hill 182. That’s what we called it.”
 

Dieter nodded and drove up the road. It was a nice, wide paved roadway, instead of the rutted gravel path that Mack remembered driving the scout car down. At the top, they came to a small parking area and a path leading to the outlook. Mack looked at Dieter questioningly.
 

“After your Colonel’s men left with the American remains, we went down and buried ours quickly in common graves where they laid. We didn’t have the time or the men to bury them too deeply. Several years later, when they began plowing the fields, the remains started to surface. I petitioned the Soviets for permission to exhume them and give them proper military funerals.”

“Did they allow that?”

“The exhumation, yes. But there had been persistent rumors about Russians in this area, since many of the locals had heard Russian spoken by our men, I had to manufacture some sort of story.”

“What did you tell them?”
 

Mack was intrigued by what Dieter was going to show him, but also admired how his re-discovered friend had survived the Soviet occupation and obviously manipulated the authorities.

“I told them that there was a large group of Russian POWs working as transport laborers with a German column that got hit by an Allied air attack here. Since the bodies were mixed together and not identifiable, they didn’t give permission for an official military cemetery. But they did allow us to remove the remains—bones by then—to a common grave and maintain it as a local cemetery. Come.”

Dieter lead Mack to a path where a sign marked
Denkmal
, or memorial, pointed to the outlook. Dieter walked quickly over the familiar ground, while Mack took his time, age and curiosity keeping him at a slower pace. He tried to remember where they had climbed up the hill and first observed Dieter and the others. But everything had changed.
 

The path turned and emptied out to a large flat area. Encircled by a low stone wall, a cemetery sat in the middle. An iron gate opened into it, and the cemetery extended to the edge of the outlook. A tall stone stood by the gate, with the year
1945
chiseled into it. Inside was another large rough stone, ten feet high and four feet wide at the bottom. A German cross was carved on it, and Mack read the inscription, slowly, understanding only a few of the German words.

Hier ruhen 99 Deutsche Soldaten die in April 1945 bei den Kämpfen im Dübener Heide gefallen sind, und unbekannt Russische Soldaten die als Kriegsgefangene in Transporten ums Leben Kamen.

Dieter translated. “Here lie 99 German soldiers who fell fighting in April 1945 in the Dübener Heide, and an unknown number of Russian prisoners of war who gave their lives as transport workers.”

“Do you know how many?” Mack asked.

“Over 400 Hiwis and more than a hundred Cossacks. I never could admit the real number or the Soviets would have been suspicious.” He walked over to one of three squat German-style military crosses that were the only other monuments within the walls. It read simply
Die Unbekannte Russische Soldaten
. Unknown Russian soldiers. There were fresh flowers at the base. Opposite it, there was a similar stone cross commemorating the unknown German soldiers at rest here, also decorated with fresh flowers.

“I came here before the Torgau ceremony this morning,” Dieter said, explaining the flowers.
 

“Is this all your doing?” Mack said, gesturing.

“Well, some. But mostly Elsa’s. She insisted on an adequate memorial, within the constraints of what the Communists would allow. My being the Chief Criminal Inspector didn’t hurt either. No one asked too many questions.”
 

Dieter paused, thinking of Elsa. The same sad smile played across his face again.
 

“The fruit trees were her idea also. She said the blossoms always gave her hope in the spring.”

On two sides, apple trees had been planted, flanking each side of the cemetery with rows of white flowering blossoms. Combined with the view, it was a beautiful spot. Mack felt a lump in his throat. He drank in the air, the scent, the blue sky above, the soft green grass under his feet, and the flowers under each cross. He put his hand against the hard rock, wanting to remember everything, to etch this peaceful place clearly in his mind, to lay to rest the other memories of a lifetime ago. Mack felt Dieter take him by the elbow.

“Come, there is one other thing Elsa did before she died, shortly after reunification.”
 

They walked over to the third cross, at the far end of the cemetery, near the stone wall. It was smaller, and newer than the other two. In small letters, inscribed in the stone, it read
für der Amerikaner
.
 

For the Americans.

Mack put his hand on Dieter’s shoulder, to steady himself, and to say all he could not say. He closed his eyes and prayed, tears welling beneath his eyelids.
 

Finally
, he thought,
finally.

A strong gust of wind, traveling up the
Dübener Heide
, hit the side of the hill and swirled in the branches of the apple trees. A flurry of thick, white petals blew across the cemetery and played about the feet of the two old men, scattering across the grass and drifting against the stone marker in front of them, cushioning and blanketing the ground with their pure whiteness.

Author’s Note

Johann Faust, Mack Mackenzie, and Dieter Neukirk are fictional characters. Operation Gambit is also a product of the author’s imagination. The historical context within which these characters are found is not.

The movements of American, Russian, and German units are accurate and follow the course of the final battles in the last days of the Second World War in Germany. The meetings with Hitler, at which Faust is present, did occur on those dates. Fegelin did propose recruitment of British POWs to fight against the Russians, an idea denounced by Hitler as fantasy. Faust’s more ambitious plan for Operation Gambit is grafted onto those historical events.

The Russian volunteers, or Hiwis, serving unofficially with the German army, were commonplace on the Eastern Front. Their actual numbers are undocumented. German commanders often did not report them as part of their combat strength, since the Nazi High Command did not approve of their use. The Soviets dealt with them when captured by instant execution, and they in turn did not wish to acknowledge the large number of their soldiers who went over to the enemy.

Saint Ludwig’s Hospital in Berlin is the fictionalized version of an actual hospital, Saint Hedwig’s. At Saint Hedwig’s, which is within sight of the New Synagogue, a social worker named Marianne Hapig coordinated medical care for hidden Jews in wartime Berlin. Using documentation from bombing victims as described in the book, she saved many lives. Elsa Klein is the fictional counterpart of this real-life hero.
 

The author visited Saint Hedwig’s during a 1991 trip to Berlin. Standing on the steps to the hospital entrance, it was easy to imagine the fear and terror of an ill or injured person leaving the relative safety of a hiding place to seek out medical care during the Nazi terror. The bravery of those who survived, and of those who helped them, can only be remembered in awe.

Finally, the inscription on the monument described in the epilog also is real. Hiking through the Harz Mountains in central Germany in 1999, my wife and I came upon a small, remote hilltop German war cemetery, accessible only by a wooded path. Within its gates was the marker, or
Denkmal
, exactly as described in the narrative.
 

A memorial to Russian dead in a German military cemetery was thought provoking, to say the least. The graves showed that the soldiers, mostly very young boys, had died during the last week of the war. The German dead had their names, birth and death dates listed. Stones engraved with “Unknown Russian Dead” marked the Russian graves. On that day, fifty-four years after those final battles, fresh flowers decorated the Russian graves. That moment provided the inspiration for the climax of this story.
 

What is the truth behind the grave markers we found? Is it stranger than this fiction? Who hiked up that mountain trail that day, and placed flowers on the graves of long-dead Russian soldiers? And why?
 

Mysteries—large and small—from the most devastating conflict of the last century are still with us, a living challenge to consider how we would act under circumstances of which we can barely conceive.