ory
T.J. Seitz
Copyright 2011 by T.J. Seitz
The regiment was sent Northward into the heart of France. Many of them were recently transferred into this particular unit immediately after fighting their way up the boot of Italy. They were exhausted. Preliminary rumors hinted that it wasn’t going to be an easy advance but providence was in the air and it was obvious now that the Germans were concentrating most of their efforts further North in Normandy and Belgium, therefore abandoning most of their holdings in this part of France.
Everyone in the two platoons was accustomed to misery, except for Lieutenant Randal Smith III. The commanding officer was barely twenty one and as green as graduates from West Point can come into the field.
His thirty troops witnessed the worst side of mankind under previous superiors and knew Smith’s ability to command was worthless. It was in their favor that the war was winding down and the Allies were winning. Their main objective now was to rout the few remaining pockets of starving, under equipped German soldiers from the countryside and force them north-eastward toward the rest of their lot.
Lieutenant Smith was a braggart and enjoyed carrying on about how he came from a family fortune amassed through inherited plantations and careful investments made in South American silver mines during the 1870’s. Also, his father, Retired Colonel Randal Smith II, was a very influential businessman back home in Mississippi as well as in Washington DC.
The Lieutenant stood five foot eight and weighed around one sixty five. His brown hair was trimmed in a short cropped military style that complimented his clean shaven baby face. He talked with an effeminate lisp. Randal’s eyes held the naive look of a man who never spent a sub-zero night laying next to a dead friend in a snow filled foxhole while being shot at.
Smith took methodical showers twice a day and always wore spotless, wrinkle-free clothes. His cleanliness was ridiculous within the given substandard conditions. It made him a laughingstock amongst his superiors, who were being forced to baby-sit him, and his underlings, who were subjected to his frequent lapses of reasoning.
The only reason that Randal was there is because his daddy persuaded a five star general back in Washington, who owed a him a few favors, to send the boy over.
Randal originally planned on going to graduate school after West Point. Gossip amongst high brass insinuated that the younger Smith would have never been sent into battle if his father hadn’t been so insistent on it. The headstrong Colonel proclaimed at the beginning of the war that if he was brave enough to lead troops into battle during The Great War his son must do the same in this war for the sake of family honor.
Soldiers were desperate for distractions from the surrounding horrors. Playing practical jokes on the naive officer became a popular pastime. Many bags of shit were lit on fire outside his tent, just to watch him dirty his boots. Examples of other pranks played on him were when someone put black die in the shower head of his specially commissioned private stall and when a pit was dug and filled with muddy water during a rainy night so the Lieutenant would witlessly fall into it on his way to the latrine in the morning.
Smith did everything by the rules. Unfortunately those rules only applied to theoretical classroom warfare, not the real thing. He insisted that everyone salute him and call him Sir whenever directly spoken to in every situation, including going to the latrine.
The Lieutenant was also condescending and never asked his experienced sergeants for any input on the absurd decisions he made, like the time he ordered six of his men to blindly fire hundreds of M1 rounds into the dark because he thought they were being ambushed. The next morning they found the riddled remains of what might have been a few deer. Both sergeants knew that a heard of deer were nearby but didn’t bother wasting their breath on Smith’s indiscretion.
Whenever someone did get the nerve up to question his strategy he’d throw a temper tantrum like a five year old. It was funny to watch his face turn red and listen to him howl with anguish. When provoked to the limits of his phony etiquette he’d even start jumping up and down with squinted eyes and clenched teeth. Meetings with his superiors frequently sent him into those kinds of fits.
Men cringed at the thought of going into genuine combat under him. He was basically passed around place to place and assigned minor duties that would keep him alive and out of trouble’s way. There would be hell to pay if he was sent back home in a body bag or missing a limb.
His own people would blow his brains out if they were forced to fight with him as their leader, if he didn’t do it to himself beforehand. Bets were made from time to time about his actual capacity, or lack thereof, to handle a firearm properly.
Smith first earned his reputation within this unit when he was first appointed to the lead officer position of the restructured platoons. It happened soon after Lieutenant Bourgeois was killed by massive shrapnel wound he received during a surprise ambush on their camp one night back in Italy. He lost his right leg and too much blood to survive long enough for the medics to find and bind him up properly.
The next week, new orders were received, half of the remaining platoon, seven men, were transferred to Toulon, France to help create a fresh section for another Allied advance. The rest were sent to a base in Libya to help clean up the remaining mess in North Africa.
Lieutenant Smith eagerly waited for his new unit in France. He assumed a lot about all the men who were being transferred under his command and had big plans for them.
Platoon one, Sergeant John Hecker’s, was assigned to menial grunt duties like patrolling or guarding because he was a steelworker from Pittsburgh. Platoon two was overseen by Sergeant William Pinkerton. Billy’s boys were bestowed all the cushy work like running meaningless errands or tattling on members from Hecker’s platoon. Pinkerton was also a good ole boy from Mississippi. His status was founded solely on the basis that he and Smith were apparently very distant cousins through marriage. This pissed all of Sergeant Hecker’s platoon off and caused problems right from the start.
Pay back was to come during the late Summer, while a small group of Hecker’s men were on a routine scouting assignment inside the region along the Mosell River where France, Germany and Luxembourg meet. It was there that the three patrolling men found an abandoned chateau.
It’s original owners were probably Jewish, guessing from some of the rubble surrounding the place, but it’s recent inhabitant, a locally appointed Nazi party leader and his family, appeared to have left the dwelling in quite a hurry.
Flies covered everything. There was maggot infested food set out on the dining room table and the bedrooms were in shambles, like someone just whipped through them quickly grabbing the jewelry and a few pieces of clothing out of the dressers and wardrobes before leaving the premises. Many valuable looking sculptures and paintings still remained in place. Also, the fireplace, full of half burned incriminating official looking papers with swastika stamps all over them . Its ambers were still warm.
While searching the garage, storage house and property for stray Germans, the men found a locked wine cellar inside the storage house. They decided to take their orders literally. Radioing their potential find in though might cause an unnecessary commotion. Lieutenant Smith would insist that they leave the spoils alone for him and Pinkerton’s platoon to inspect first. Smith would then call in his commanding officers and/or the local authorities to divvy the leftovers amongst themselves. Hecker’s platoon had already tolerated too much bullshit to let a couple of Confederate minded fools like Smith and Pinkerton steal their due reward. Besides, no one important would notice a few extra bottles of fine wine being passed around the campfire anyway.
After shooting the padlock off the gate, the three soldiers went down the stairway into the st
orage rooms below . There were three large adjoining chambers packed full of kegs and bottles of Europe’s best wine and a second locked gate that blocked yet another descending passage way. A couple good whacks from the butt of a rifle took that one off easily enough.
At the end of that passageway there was an unexpected surprise. The large door to a combination locked safe. No need for the combination. Sergeant Hecker was carrying a bazooka. He ordered Corporal Byron Kelly and Private Alfred Wiggens upstairs and discharged the weapon into the vault’s door.
What they saw after the smoke cleared and prying the broken door open was a mother load. Millions of Deutch Marks. Former resident Herr Nazi’s bribes, salary and extortion money locked away and hidden under the assumption that no one would find and/or take it before he returned secretly in a few months to reclaim it after things cooled down. All three men filled their backpacks and some found pillow cases with wine and money before heading back to camp.
They stashed their prize in the woods by their tents and waited till nightfall to reclaim the loot and tell the twelve others in the platoon. It took fifteen men about three discrete trips a piece, usually while on their patrols, during the next five days before the vault was completely emptied. Everyone’s foot locker and bags were packed full with enough money and wine to easily last them through several more years of war.
For the time being, Deutch Marks were still an accepted currency in parts of France and Luxembourg. Also, to effectively launder some of the evidence, a third of the money was quickly converted into other more stable currencies in nearby Remich during the five days they spent emptying the vault.
It was arranged that two of the off duty soldiers would take duffle bags of money into town to exchange. The bankers surprisingly asked no questions, probably because the majority of the cash was being made out into cashier’s checks and a few Luxembourg Francs.
There was still too much money to just carry around, without Smith or Pinkerton noticing. Most of the men found creative ways to convert and telegraph at least half of their plunder portions back home within a couple months during weekend leaves to Geneva before it lost all of its value. The soldiers all agreed that this was the best solution to dispose of the remaining evidence that wouldn’t inconspicuously fit inside their trunks and backpacks.
The booze on the other hand was easily overlooked because it was so easy to buy anywhere in Europe. Any money the men did decide to keep was effortlessly used in nearby pubs, shops and brothels, who accepted all forms of cash for payment.
A week after cleaning out the cellar, Sergeant Hecker radioed in the chateau’s discovery to Smith and said that it was empty. He wanted to cover everyone’s ass. Smith didn’t believe Hecker though and had Pinkerton’s men search the property for anything valuable. By then the locales had thoroughly scavenged the place of it’s artwork and antique furniture. Pinkerton reported to Smith the place was cleaned and devoid of everything, including a good sized wine cellar and vault. Smith was pissed that Hecker and his platoon didn’t find the place sooner and let them know it. He restricted their leave time for the next week but by then all the remaining evidence had been divvied, disguised or hidden in anticipation of this kind of repercussion.
The unit was eventually sent back to their main base just over the border in France. The next few months were spent partying off the spoils and staying put. The war lay further North and other troops were doing their duty there.
After drinking all the wine they would go across the border back into Luxembourg and buy more things with their found money. The treasure trove didn’t make anyone rich but certainly helped ease a lot of tension and was also well spent by the platoon member’s families back home.
Smith was promoted and reassigned, while still in France. They sent him to the Philippines to help McArthur with rebuilding things in the Pacific Arena.
Rumors surfaced that he died there after accidentally shooting himself in the head while cleaning his sidearm. Sergeant Hecker believes that someone shot him and because Smith was such an asshole they covered it up with an even more believable story.