The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (68 page)

He should go home. This isn’t news. This isn’t war either. It’s politics.

There is a letter in his pocket from Victoria. He’s been in one place long enough for it to catch up to him. In Tennessee too the seeds are slow getting into the earth. Where are the young men? Where are you, Charley?

A metallic whine startles the crowd. The villagers step back from Bandy and stare up at the swinging turrets of the two tanks. The people retreat together into a clump. The German-speaking captain drops the bouquet, splashing pastels against his tank’s armor plating. The treads of the second tank leap forward, tearing the dirt road while the tank pivots to stand beside its partner. Both big guns come around to face north. Bandy hears the machine guns bolt. He doesn’t know what’s happening but makes for his jeep.

He sees why the tankers moved to defensive postures. Out of the north, three vehicles approach the village. From a distance they look just like American jeeps; they may be American-made. But the stars painted on the hoods are not white. They’re red.

The Russians slow their advance into the village. The tanks see to that. About a hundred yards away, two of the cars stop. Only one progresses, a few miles an hour. The soldier in the passenger seat stands and waves his hands over his head.

“Hello,” he shouts. “Amerikanskis, hello!”

The captain in the first tank speaks down into his hatch. “Let ‘em come. Keep an eye.”

The Soviets creep closer. Bandy gets out of his jeep and walks to them.

“Mr. Bandy,” the captain calls, “stay where you are, sir.”

The villagers recoil further from the nearing Russians. The Red soldier, noticing this, turns his greeting on them.
“Gut Morgen, gut Morgen.”
The citizens make no move.

The Russians pull right up to the cowlings of the tanks, beneath the big barrels. Bandy’s never seen Red soldiers before; he guesses the talking one is an officer, he wears only a sidearm. The man is young. His uniform is dirty. So is the driver’s.

The officer dismounts his jeep. He strides up to Bandy and proffers his hand.

“Hello. Hello.”

Bandy takes the mitt and shakes. “How are you?”

“Good. Wonderful. Very, very wonderful. You are good to ask.”

The officer looks up the side of the tank to the American captain. He snaps to attention to present himself.

“I am lieutenant. First Byelorussian Army. Seventh Guards Cavalry Corps. Oleg Borisovich Antsiferov. Sir.”

The tanker beams down at the Russian’s formal and funny announcement of his name and rank.

“Captain Lerberg. Second Armored, U.S. Ninth Army. Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant.”

“Yes! “The Russian claps his hands. “Pleased to meet you!”

The officer snaps his finger. His driver reaches to the backseat of the vehicle for a muslin sack. Bandy hears glass bottles jostle. For the moment, the villagers are ignored by the men of the two armies. Bandy lifts his camera and records the Russian lieutenant holding high a clear bottle of vodka to toast the Americans. The lieutenant drinks, then waves the flask in the air to Lerberg. The tank captain says, “No thanks.” The Russian shrugs and turns the bottle to Bandy.

“Picture taker. You can take drink?”

“Sure.” Bandy swallows a slug. The Russian claps him on the back. The vodka has the flavor of potatoes and gasoline.

“Yeow.” Bandy wipes his lips and returns the bottle. He looks up to the tank captain. He gasps. “Stop me next time.”

Lerberg waits for Bandy to finish coughing and the Russian lieutenant’s enjoyment to subside.

“Lieutenant, where’s your unit?”

The soldier stoppers the bottle and tosses it to his driver. “Northeast. We are in Brandenburg.”

That’s just twenty miles from Berlin’s city limits, the last large town west of Potsdam.

“We are sent to find you. Hello.”

The captain grins. “Hello again.”

The lieutenant turns. He waves to the two waiting cars, telling them to come ahead.

“Nein!”
the villagers shout.
“Nein!”

The lieutenant stops the cars. He turns to the packed people.

“Is okay,” he says in English. “Is no harm.”

“Nein!”
they scream back. The woman who handed Lerberg the flowers rushes forward. She throws herself at the side of the tank, stabbing a finger at the Russian.

“Shoot them!” she begs.”Shoot!”

The captain answers.
“Ich kann nicht.”

Lerberg looks past her. He speaks to the Red officer.

“Tell your men to come ahead. The town’s yours.”

The woman pounds a fist into the turret on the emblem of the American army. She whirls on the Russian soldier, unleashing a biting torrent. Behind her the villagers stand silent.

The lieutenant cannot translate what she yells. He was sent to find the Americans because he speaks English, not German. But he understands.

“No harm,” he says to the harping woman, “no harm.”

Bandy snaps this photograph, the German villager shouting, the conqueror promising.

Lerberg does not intercede. He speaks only to the men at his feet, the hidden ones at the controls of his tank. The engine whirs, gears shift. The other tank follows suit.

“Lieutenant,” he shouts to the beleaguered Russian, “tell your commander we’re three miles south of this village. We’ll keep a lookout for you.”

The Russian splits his attention between the woman and the American tanker. He doesn’t want to take his eyes from her, she might belt him.

Lerberg calls down, “Can you do that, Lieutenant?”

The Russian asks, “Will please you tell her to be quiet?”

Lerberg adds his voice:
“Fräulein, Fräulein!”

She clinches her lips and listens, hands on hips, chest heaving. Lerberg talks and motions to the waiting Russian cars, his two tanks, the Ninth Army’s lines just a few miles away on the river. Bandy takes this picture too. A caption forms in his head: “The explanation.”

Bandy climbs into his jeep. There is hatred on the woman’s face for all of them: the departing Americans, the powerful force sent from a free nation, failed and reluctant, not saviors for them at all; the Russians whom they’ve been taught to dread, despite this placating young officer; and her own neighbors for standing by and saying nothing.

Just pawns, Bandy thinks. This outcome was rigged long before it was played out, decided not on the battlefield but in some quiet room somewhere in Washington or Moscow, with pencils and rulers for weapons. Warlords and politicians have turned the whole world into a game board. Money and power are more prized than lives and blood. History doesn’t have this brave village woman’s name on it. Not like Eisenhower and Roosevelt and Stalin. No. She disappears.

Quiet follows the captain’s words to the woman. The Russian brings his eyes around to Bandy.

“Mr. Picture Taker. You understand this woman?”

“No.”

“No. Me neither. But I know what she say.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“I tell you something.”The Russian lifts his gaze to the tankers. “I tell you truth. In friendship. Is sad thing. This girl, she is right.”

The woman stomps away from the chatting Americans and Soviets. Bandy watches her go to a small house. An old woman holds the door for her. The crone shakes a fist at Bandy, then closes the girl inside.

The Russian shakes his head.

“The frontline soldiers. We are discipline. We are not to harm German people. We get vengeance, yes. But not on them. On Nazis. On fighting men, yes. But on civilians, what kind of soldier does this? You understand?”

“Vengeance?” Lerberg asks from his turret. “Soldiers fight, Lieutenant. We follow orders. It’s not for us to take revenge. Not on civilians. Not in combat. Never.”

The Russian makes a sardonic snort. Now Bandy realizes what this dirty man represents.

“Yes, well. When the Germans come to America to fight next war, you will tell me what you see then. Yes, Captain?”

Lerberg’s moralizing is halted by this notion.

The lieutenant pivots to Bandy.

“Mr. Picture Taker. Understand. Is not my men. Is the ones behind. Second wave. This girl, she should be afraid. Those men, they are crazy with fighting. What they do .. .”The officer narrows his eyes. He says no more.

“Mr. Bandy,” the captain calls. His tank revs. “Let’s saddle up.”

Bandy does not wish to shake the Russian’s hand in departure. He turns for his jeep.

“You would like to come with us?”

Bandy stops. The lieutenant points up the road, past his other waiting vehicles.

“To Brandenburg, Mr. Picture Taker? You see for yourself. What Russian troops do. What German troops do. “

Bandy looks up to Lerberg. “Captain?”

“It’s up to you, Mr. Bandy.”

This might be Bandy’s only chance to get to Berlin. If he can latch on to a Russian unit, he can go all the way. The only American photographer witnessing the fall of the last city, the true end of the war in Europe.

The letter in his pocket asks again: Where are you, Charley?

Dear Vic. I’m in Berlin.

“All right, Lieutenant. I’ll come with you.”

The Russian inclines his head.

Captain Lerberg tosses Bandy a quick salute. The two tanks lurch as one and grind south out of the village, spitting exhaust. The lieutenant offers Bandy a seat in his vehicle. Bandy wants to stay with his own jeep.

The villagers watch the U.S. Army tanks lumber away. They are an accusing chorus while the one remaining American makes some arrangements to go off with the Russians. Bandy catches their eyes for a last time. They glower at him and Bandy can tell they think he’s a coward.

“What about these people,” he asks the Russian, “this village?”

The lieutenant asks, “What is your name?”

“Bandy.”

“Bandy. You have seen war?”

“Yes, Lieutenant. Plenty.”

“Then do not ask about this village. You already know.”

The Russian climbs into his car. The driver wheels in a tight turn and sprays dirt and gravel. Bandy is left to follow out of the village.

The road runs north. Bandy follows the three Russian vehicles at a close distance, wanting to be sure that anyone seeing them knows his American jeep is part of this little Soviet convoy. After ten miles they pass through the eastern fringes of Magdeburg, a medium-sized city on the Elbe. The road skirts an industrial district; Bandy notes widespread destruction, the result of Ninth Army’s artillery duels with German guns in the city to prevent an Allied river crossing here. He drives past warehouses stripped to their beams, brick buildings charred and bald. No one is out walking in the ruins. They’re hiding. The Russians are coming.

The road rolls east to Brandenburg, passing through a dozen more villages and small towns. Nowhere is there evidence of organized German troop activity. Bandy judges that every available man, gun, and machine has been withdrawn east to help defend Berlin from the Reds. This entire plain between the Elbe and Berlin has been essentially vacated. The U.S. Army could have made it through here with minimal danger. This is neither a shock nor a revelation; everyone in the Barby bridgehead has figured this out.