‘No, I lived the first ten years of my life in a little town called Millersburg, Georgia.’
‘And are you going to Zurich for the holiday?’
‘Not really. I’ll be meeting my parents to go skiing in Crans-Montana.’
‘In Valais? Oh, it’s a beautiful spot.’
‘Yes, I’m looking forward to it.’ He shut his eyes and continued the dialogue with himself. I may ski in Europe, but I’m sure as hell not German. In fact I’m not even Bennett Landsmann. That is to say, it isn’t the name I was born with …
It was April 1945. The Allied forces had crossed the Rhine and were advancing toward the heart of Germany. With the Red Army on the outskirts of Vienna, it was clear that the Nazis could not avoid defeat.
On April fourth the all-Negro 386th Tank Battalion of Patton’s Third Army under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Abraham Lincoln Bennett entered the peaceful village of Ohrdruf.
On the outskirts of the picturesque German hamlet, they came upon a deserted Nazi labor camp. That is, deserted of life. Gruesome piles of contorted, emaciated corpses were strewn everywhere. The bodies were rotting, filthy, crawling with lice, entwined into knots so tight they could hardly be separated.
Colonel Bennett’s men had been among the first black soldiers to see frontline duty in Europe. They had landed on the beaches of Normandy the previous June, part of the Allied High Command’s desperate rush for replacements to meet the enemy’s massive Ardennes offensive. They had seen heavy combat in the fog-rimmed valley of the Meuse River. As a ‘reward’ for their success, they had been transferred to George Patton’s Third Army, joining the battle for every inch of icy ground on the push eastward through the Siegfried Line into Germany.
They had seen close friends wounded or killed. They had learned to harden their hearts. But now even the strongest of them were unable to restrain their feelings of revulsion. Some could not keep from vomiting. The stench of death and decay polluted their every breath.
Shocked and disoriented, Colonel Bennett ordered his staff photographer to record the ghastly scene. He was determined to send the photographs to General Eisenhower so that Ike could see this obscenity with his own eyes.
As the tall, heavyset commander stood staring at the carnage, one of his lieutenants approached hesitatnly to report. ‘Sir, we’ve found sort of a mass grave outside the camp. There must be thousands of bodies. Some are only half buried. Uh – what do you think we oughta do, sir?’
Line struggled to regain his powers of speech.
‘See that they’re interred properly, Lieutenant,’ he answered crisply. ‘I intend to make a personal inspection.’ Then he added softly, ‘And have the chaplain say some prayers.’
They remained in Ohrdruf for more than a week, while Linc personally supervised almost all of the ‘proper’ burials. Occasionally when the chaplain’s voice began to falter, he would read the prayers himself.
During that whole period, Linc was unable to sleep. The fever and cough that had been plaguing him all through the damp and feezing winter had returned with a vengeance.
Though he had spent many nights sweating and gasping for breath, whenever he thought of seeing a medic, he convinced himself that it was just a lousy little flu.
Finally, on the morning of April fourteenth, three other of Patton’s units arrived, the first bearing a welcome directive to press northward. Tired as they were, his men quickly assembled, anxious to leave the atmosphere of this slaughterhouse.
By twilight, as they were moving on the road toward Gotha, small clusters of strange wraithlike figures began to materialize by the sides of the road. One of them, a skeleton who had once been a man, pointed tremulously at the white star on the flag of Colonel Bennett’s jeep and called in a hoarse, quavering voice, ‘Amerikaner! Die sind Amerikaner! Wir sind gerettet!’
More living ghosts appeared. The colonel ordered his convoy to halt. Self-conscious at his own well-padded girth, Bennett stepped down from his jeep and walked toward a pale, frightened group of scarecrows. They shrank back as he approached.
‘It’s okay, folks, there’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re here to help you.’ He extended his arms in a gesture of reassurance.
They did not understand his words but were joyfully aware that he was not speaking German. One of them, a tall, stoop-shouldered man of indeterminate age, expressed a thousand dizzying, jubilant thoughts in a single phrase, ‘You are really America?’
Linc nodded. ‘That’s right, we’re from the U.S.A.’
The next thing he knew the man was embracing his ankles, sobbing, and howling, ‘God bless America!’ Linc could not restrain his tears as he barked at his soldiers to gather these tattered fragments of humanity into their vehicles.
Line helped the tall man into his own jeep, hoping to learn more precisely who these people were. With halting English (‘In Berlin my parents had for me an English tutor’) the man explained that most of them had escaped from the Ohrdruf camp a few days earlier as the rest of the inmates were being rounded up for a march to Bergen-Belsen (‘Either way it was death, so there was nothing to lose’). He also said the refugees had not eaten for days. Line had the word passed back to his men to get some food into these people, pronto. Chocolate bars appeared from every khaki breast pocket and were offered to the survivors, who devoured them ravenously.
To the soldiers’ horror, in less than an hour three of them were dead – from the shock of overeating.
When he delivered his passengers to a makeshift Red Cross station outside Gotha, the tall man was especially effusive.
‘God bless you, General.’
Line could not keep from laughing. ‘Thanks for the compliment, mister, but I’m not even a full colonel.’
‘Well, for your kindness, you deserve to be a general.’
The two men shook hands and parted. Linc’s soldiers then entered the village itself to find several white units of the division had already arrived.
Captain Richard McIntyre of Birmingham, Alabama, was in the process of interrogating one of the local inhabitants – a plump, middle-aged man whose lederhosen made him look like a fugitive from a cuckoo clock.
The captain was at first disconcerted at the sight of a black man in so remote a place. But then, noting the silver oak leaves on Linc’s shoulders, he saluted reflexively.
‘Who is this gentleman, Captain?’ Bennett inquired tersely, inured to the discomfiture of white junior officers when in his presence.
‘He’s the Bürgermeister – the mayor of this place – uh, sir.’
‘Have you inquired whether he’s holding any prisoners?’
The captain nodded. ‘He was, sir. There were Jews working in the quarries – but they were marched off two days ago. From what the mayor understands, they were being taken to Buchenwald.’
‘Why, what’s there?
McIntyre turned and posed the question to the Bürgermeister. He then looked back at Linc and explained, ‘He thinks it’s just another work camp.’
‘Oh,’ said the colonel sarcastically. ‘And that’s all he knows, huh?’ He then glared at the German. ‘Just another “work camp,” huh, Krauthead?’
The mayor, uncomprehending, but trying frantically to ingratiate himself, smiled. ‘Na, ja. Ich weiss nichts von diesen Dingen. Wir sind nur Bauern hier.’
McIntryre quickly translated. ‘He says he doesn’t know anything. They’re just farmers around here.’
‘Sure, sure,’ Linc murmured, and then addressed the officer. ‘As you were, Captain.’ McIntyre gave a smart salute which Bennett returned with equal formality, and then started back to the rustic inn his men had commandeered as a temporary HQ.
As senior officer of the battalion, Colonel Bennett was naturally assigned the largest room. His tall narrow windows looked out onto a flowered courtyard.
He sat down at the desk, took a swig from the cognac he had confiscated from the innkeeper, withdrew a sheet of paper that bore the doubly encircled ‘A’ Third
Army insignia, uncapped his fountain pen, and began a letter to his nine-year-old son in Georgia.
Somewhere in Germany
April 15, 1945
Dear Linc Junior,
Sorry I haven’t written for a while but the tide’s been turning in our favor and we’ve been constantly on the move.
I’d like to say that I’m overjoyed by our successes (our guys have been decorated more times than a Christmas tree), but we’ve all lost good friends along the way.
I’ve seen a lot of bad things this past week that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to describe.
I often think of Pastor Stedman’s Sunday sermons about ‘man’s inhumanity to man.’ But up to now I always took that to mean the way our people have been treated in America.
I wonder what the Reverend Stedman would say about the forced labor camps we’ve just seen? Men were literally starved to death.
I’ll grant the Negro hasn’t been treated with kid gloves in America and the Army’s not much better. But son, we have never been gassed by the thousands or burned in ovens …
The telephone rang. Linc sighed wearily, took another swig, and picked up the receiver. It was Major General John Shelton, his division commander, calling from somewhere in the field. The connection was faint and full of static.
‘Bennett – what kind of shape are your men in?’
‘Well, General, to be honest, they’re pretty bushed – physically and emotionally. Most of them are just kids, and these past few days they’ve been shocked by what they’ve seen.’
‘But have you seen hell, Linc – absolute hell on earth?’
‘Yes sir, I believe I have – two forced labor camps and a huge pit with maybe eight thousand bodies.’
‘Then you’ve been in Coney Island, mister. I want your men up here tomorrow by 1900 hours. We’re in Nordhausen.’
‘That’s about thirty-five miles north of us, sir?’
‘Check. But you’d better prepare your men.’
‘For what, sir?’
‘Nordhausen isn’t a labor camp. It’s a death camp.’
Linc slept especially badly that night. Partly because of the pain in his chest – and partly because of the bruise in his soul. When he did drift off he had terrifying nightmares from which he woke up in a pool of sweat. At 6 A.M. he showered and went downstairs for a cup of coffee.
Standing there like a wizened statue was the tall man whom he had left at the Red Cross station the day before. Linc wondered how long he had been waiting.
‘Hi,’ he said amicably, ‘will you join me?’
The man nodded, eagerly. ‘Thank you.’
The next moment he was seated on the wooden chair across from Linc, gnawing at a chunk of bread.
‘Hey, why don’t you slow down and put some butter on that, my friend?’
The man nodded, his mouth full. His hands somehow conveyed the message that he had been too hungry to wait. Perhaps he would allow himself the luxury of butter on his next slice.
Linc sipped a mug of coffee and then asked, ‘Shouldn’t you be back at the Red Cross station?’
The man shook his head strenuously. ‘No, no, no. By Red Cross I meet a woman also from Berlin, a friend of family. She say she saw my wife some few days ago – at Nordhausen. I hear that you go today to Nordhausen. You must take me.’
Linc was baffled. He had no idea what the rulebook would say about this. But this nightmare transcended any normal protocol.
‘Do you think you’re strong enough for the journey, Mr –?’
‘Herschel. Just call me Herschel.’
‘Don’t you have a last name?’
‘Sir, until yesterday I had only a number. “Herschel” is fine.’
‘Well, Herschel, if you think you’re up to travelling in one of my supply trucks, be my guest. I can’t promise that your wife will still be there.’
They could smell it before they could see it. Even from miles away – and even though the ovens had ceased to operate – there was still the lingering smell of burning flesh in the air.
They passed farmhouses where the peasants were going about their daily tasks as if the sun were not blocked by clouds of death. They were plowing and sowing as if divorced in time and place from this vortex of evil.
Linc studied some of them through his binoculars. They seemed robust and happy, sowing in the farmlands of this fertile oasis in the midst of the Hartz Mountains of Thuringia. The scene could have been the inspiration for Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.
Indeed, Linc could not fathom how the nation that had produced such angelic music could also have committed such satanic atrocities.
No one of the 386th Battalion led by Lieutenant Colonel Bennett would forget that evening. They had been horrified enough at the sight of the gaunt and starving, but now they were beholding the true living dead.
And there were thousands. Though nominally freed by the U.S. Third Army the day before, they were still prisoners of their own wretchedness – too frightened to breathe. The sheer magnitude of their numbers was staggering. And the filth, the excrement, the lice, the rats were worse than in any sewer.
With their sunken cheeks, protruding ribs, and distended bellies, they were barely recognizable as human beings. Their gait was slow and faltering, their movements feeble.
As soon as the convoy came to a halt, Herschel lowered his aching legs to the ground and limped as quickly as he could toward the long rows of bunkhouses from which, even at this distance, the agonized groans were audible.
Linc’s soldiers hovered as the medics struggled to keep the ‘liberated’ prisoners alive.
The Nazis might have gone, but the Angel of Death lingered.
Some could manage a faint smile, wave their hands – however weakly – as a welcome to the black Americans. But even happiness required strength and it was there in pitifully short supply.
To endure the ungodly sights and smells, Linc lit one of his fat cigars and tried to keep composed as he walked through the camp to Division HQ to report for duty.
‘Welcome to Dante’s Inferno,’ said Major General Shelton, a balding midwesterner in his early forties. The two men shook hands. ‘Sit down, Linc, you look terrible.’
‘So do you, General. I only got a quick glance coming over here, but this must be the absolute depths—’
‘Shit, man, you think this place is bad? The British entered Belsen up north today and if you can believe it, things are even worse there. Have you seen the ovens yet?’
‘No, sir, and I’m not really in a hurry.’
‘You know, the amazing thing is this place didn’t even have a gas chamber. They worked the poor bastards so hard that at the end of the day there were enough corpses to keep the crematorium operating around the clock. Of course, they had a little help from dysentery, T.B., and typhus, but most of the credit should go to the boy scouts of the SS.’
Linc was speechless for a moment. Finally he asked, ‘What’s being done to help these people?’
‘We’re commandeering all the medical supplies we can lay our hands on. We’ve got doctors here and doctors on the way, even some kids from British med schools. But our soldiers have got to help them out. There’s so damn many …’
‘I know, General,’ Linc said grimly.
Shelton looked at Bennett’s weary face and sensed his fellow officer’s dejection. Suddenly, in dramatically exaggerated formal tones he ordered: ‘Lieutenant Colonel Bennett, will you stand?’
Lincoln rose to his feet, for a split second unsure of Shelton’s intent. But then Shelton reached into the drawer and withdrew a small box. It contained a pair of silver eagles.
He was about to become a full colonel.
‘Will you remove your silver clusters?’ Shelton requested, again in formal tones.
Linc complied.
As Shelton pinned the new insignia on Linc’s broad shoulders, he remarked, ‘This promotion’s been chasing you all over Europe. Congratulations, Colonel Bennett.’
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br /> ‘What can I say, John?’ he replied.
‘Save your words—’cause sure as God made little green apples, there’s a silver star around the corner for you.’
To which Linc smiled and retorted, ‘No, John, I don’t think the Army’s ready to make the likes of me a general.’
That night Colonel Bennett completed the letter to his son. He could not possibly describe what he had seen that day. He could barely allude to it in a way that might be tolerable for an innocent boy. He was a deeply religious man.
All he could think of was Calvary and Matthew’s description of Christ’s words on the cross, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ For clearly both heaven and earth had turned their backs on these wretched victims until it was too late.
His head ached – that damned fever again. And his chest hurt from coughing. Better finish the letter and get some sleep. He merely told his son to keep the faith, give Grandma all his love, and pray that they would be united real soon.
He closed the envelope, folded it into a pocket of his coat, untied his boots, and leaned back on his cot.
At assembly the next morning, Colonel Lincoln Bennett assigned his troops to the various other units already at work. Some were hunting for prison guards who had escaped into the surrounding woods when the Army arrived. Others helped distribute medicine and food. He himself went to join the senior officers whom General Shelton had summoned for a tour of the entire camp.
As they walked past row upon row of bunkhouses whose residents were lying outside, motionless in the spring sunshine, he saw soldiers passing in open trucks piled high with corpses.
An officer from another regiment asked Shelton, ‘With respect, sir, isn’t there a more … dignified way of removing the dead?’
The general shook his head. ‘I sure as hell wish there were, but we’ve got a problem with the living. There’s already an epidemic of typhus in the camp and God knows what kind of pestilence those rotting corpses might bring. Some of these people would drop dead if you just patted them on the shoulder.’
Or gave them a chocolate bar, thought Linc.
They saw the ‘work area’ – where inmates had been forced to carry heavy rocks from place to place for no other purpose than to exhaust them. They saw the barbed wire, which until forty-eight hours ago had been charged with electric current.