IX
The ringing of axes is a pleasant sound, especially to a man from Wisconsin where there are lumber camps; it brings memories of hunting and fishing trips, and now it brought hopes of more ration cans, and even of hot food and coffee. When they got near Ike Abramson volunteered to do the scouting; he had been trained for it, he was younger and fresher, and called himself expendable. If he found it was the Army, he would shout “OK”; if he didn’t shout within three minutes by the watch, they had better make a “sneak,” as he called it. Let them go north away from the road, and if he could make his escape he would look for them there. The code word would be “gefüllte Fisch”—one of the Kraut phrases most familiar to a Brooklyn Jew.
He crept away, and they lay hugging the snow and keeping one eye on their watches. The hands moved, and their hearts began to fail them. The three minutes were up, and they were in the act of starting their sneak when they noticed that the sounds of chopping had ceased; moment later came the gladsome shout, “OK, Monuments!” They turned and ran toward the road and came out into sight of it, holding their hands in the air.
It was the Army! They didn’t shout, for it was no time for that. They came running, with all the strength they had left, and with joy in their faces. There were half a dozen woodsmen with double-bitted axes, and other GIs with various weapons mounting guard. What they had done to the road was a crime, at least from the point of view of Jerry, otherwise known as Heinie, the Hun, or the Kraut. The woodsmen had cut trees on both sides of the road so that they fell across the road and made a tangle of branches that would take a lot of chopping to remove. Smaller trees underneath and bigger trees on top, an ungodly mess covering perhaps a hundred yards of road. It would hold the Tigers for at least a couple of hours.
The gang had been just ready to call it a job and get out of there when Ike had put in his appearance, calling his name and his unit. Now came three noncombatants, holding their hands high lest they be taken for an enemy masquerade. There was no need of explanations, for such groups were coming in everywhere, in numbers from one to a thousand, and they all had the same story to tell. The three introduced themselves to the sergeant in command, who saluted and gave his unit: Task Force D, 10th Armored. “We are holding on at Longwilly,” he said. Like all Americans below the commissioned ranks, he was contemptuous of French pronunciations. If they wanted you to say “Lonhveeyee,” why didn’t they spell it that way? These GIs, no doubt, thought of this village as belonging to somebody named William who happened to be tall and thin.
“Will you take us in with you?” asked the assimilated colonel.
“Sure thing, sir, if we can. Heinie’s all over the place, and we never know where he’ll show up in force. We sneaked out by a side road and hope to get back the same way. Pile in, boys.”
Each of the Monuments had a seat, and then took a man on his knees. The man was armed with a “burp” gun, and he had to be prepared to use it in the tenth part of a lightning flash. There were six jeeps, and they started with a rush; they turned off the highway onto an unpaved track, and just then there was a tremendous explosion behind them. “Tank,” said the man in Lanny’s lap. “We put some of his own Tellers there for him, and I hope they got it.” The Teller was a German land mine, round and flat like a plate; in a paved road you chipped out a chunk of the pavement of the right size, set the mine in the hole, and laid the block of pavement gently on top. When a tank came along and its tread hit that spot—“Zowie!” said the man with the “burp” gun. He was talkative, but all the time he sat with his head high, turning it swiftly this way and that, for all the world like a scared partridge on a tree branch.
The jeeps bounced and almost threw people out, but not quite. Their axles did not break, they went through snow and mud, and if ever they got stuck you could lift them; they were marvels for dependability, and the Army loved them. They sped through the forest, down into ravines and up again, and presently came to open fields with houses; presumably that was the town of the man named William who was tall and thin. Shots were fired at them and bullets whined overhead; they hit it up to sixty or seventy miles an hour, and it was most exhilarating. “We’re surrounded,” shouted the “burp” man, “but we don’t know it!”
X
So here was Lanny Budd, back with the Army, where he had wanted to be, and right in the midst of action, which he hadn’t wanted. Now and then a shell came in and crashed near by; the line was out on the ridges beyond the village, the GIs explained. They stopped in front of the town hall, which was the CP, busy as a beehive. The passengers got out and announced themselves.
The commander here was Lieutenant Colonel Cherry, who came from Georgia and was courteous, like all Southerners; he was a much worried officer and looked as if he hadn’t slept or eaten since the day before yesterday. “I hope that I can send you out, gentlemen, but at present all communications are cut, including our telephone lines.” He turned the visitors over to one of his staff officers, Captain May, who took them into an improvised dining-room, it being lunchtime. They tried to remember their manners in the presence of a plate of hot beef stew, coffee with milk and sugar, and bread with canned butter. Never had there been any food like that!
“Let us be of use while we stay here,” Lanny said, and the staff officer asked what they could do. The P.A. told how he had served as an interrogation officer with the Seventh Army, all the way up from Cannes to Lyon; having lived most of his life in Europe, he knew French and German well, and the other two Monuments officers had scholars’ knowledge and could soon pick up various German dialects. “If you have prisoners,” Lanny added.
The other replied that they had not a few; some had come in of their own impulse, anxious to get out of the mess. “But they’re right in it,” he added. “If we’re forced out of here we may not be able to hold them. Meantime, of course, the more we can get out of them the better. We’ve been pretty well blinded; we have only the radiophone and have to be careful what we ask or tell over that, since the enemy will be recording everything.”
Lanny said, “The weather is against us,” and the answer was, “Oh, God, yes! If it were clear there’d be a swarm of planes helping us. As it is, we’ve heard some but we haven’t seen a single one.”
The three “Docs” bade good-by to the eager Brooklyn boy who had been so great a help to them. The boy would have a sleep, and then he would go into the line, which now had men from a score or two of units who had come straggling in. Lanny told him, “When the war’s over, go and see my father in Newcastle, Connecticut, and he’ll give you a good job.” It was the first time the boy had known that this “Colonel” Budd was Budd-Erling, and he was quite awe-stricken.
The three officers also had a sleep, undisturbed by the thunder of guns all around them. Out there in the woods and thickets tanks and tank-killers were chasing one another about like prehistoric pachyderms; men crouching behind trees and rocks and in trenches were shooting streams of steel at one another and throwing deadly grenades when they got a chance. Guns small and medium were hurling shells into the village and out of it—that was referred to as “arty,” meaning artillery. Here, as everywhere in the Ardennes, the American forces knew only what was within a couple of miles of them, and had no idea what might be coming in the next half hour. “Intelligence” had failed; or, rather, as Lanny learned later on, “Topside” had failed to pay attention to what “Intelligence” had sent it. This “Bulge” represented the greatest defeat the Army had sustained since Bataan, and its greatest peril since the beginning of the war.
XI
The three Monuments officers received only the briefest briefing. Lanny knew the job, and the other two listened, and after they had learned how to proceed they were put off in a corner by themselves. A stern-faced soldier brought in a prisoner and stood on guard while the officer asked questions. There should have been a stenographer, but in a jam like this each interrogator had a pad on his knee and made his own notes of what seemed to him important.
What is your name? Where do you live? How long have you been in the service? What is your unit? Who is your commander? Where did you start from? What other units have you seen? Where were you captured? And so on.
Some of the men lied, of course; some were cocky and defiant, victory being in their hands at last. Others were humble and talked freely, hoping to win favors; for the promise of a cigarette they would betray the German Army. Many of them were sick of the war; many of them hated the Nazis—when they got behind the American lines. It was necessary to speak sternly because that was what they were used to. “Ich bin ein einfacher, gewöhnlicher Mensch. Was konnte ich tun?” Lanny had heard it a hundred times. I am a poor, common man. What could I do? Lanny didn’t say that he had heard a hundred thousand such poor common men yelling their heads off for Hitler in the old days.
When you put all this together a pattern emerged, its outline blurred and dim, but still it was there. The offensive had been in preparation for weeks, with extraordinary precautions being taken to keep the troops hidden in forests. The assault had been made on a front of at least fifty miles, and there were more than a score of divisions named as taking part: Paratroopers, Panzers, Panzer grenadiers, Volksgrenadiers, everything the enemy had. Field Marshal von Rundstedt was commanding, and the Führer himself had come to the Rhineland and briefed the higher officers, telling them that this was the great crisis of the war, that they were going to take the huge American supply base at Liége, break through to the port of Antwerp, cut off the American First Army and the British to the north and annihilate them. Word of this had been spread among the troops, and now they were sure it was all coming true. Their great armored forces weren’t bothering with small towns and villages like Longwilly, but were leaving them to be mopped up later; they were driving straight through for the great strategic bases, Sedan and Namur and Liége. Sieg Heil!
4
Deeds of Courage
I
The Allied armies were facing the Germans over a front of some four hundred miles, extending from the North Sea, first eastward, and then southward. There were, in order, the Canadians and the British, then the American Ninth Army, then the First, then General Patton’s Third, and then the American Sixth Army Group, including the Seventh Army with which Lanny Budd had traveled in the late summer. Farthest to the south were the French, closing the Belmont Gap, near the Swiss border. The Ardennes lay at about the center of this four-hundred-mile line, and the divisions which had been caught there and were fighting for their lives were a part of the American First Army. About fifty thousand men had been holding fifty miles, a thousand men to the mile, or one every five feet, and no reserves; that was spreading them thin indeed. There was a group of highly trained brass at SHAEF—Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force—who had been quite sure the Germans would not attack through such uninviting country; they had overlooked the fact that to be so sure was the way to invite an attack.
Now it had come, with every division the enemy could spare from the rest of the front, plus all the reserves he could scrape together in besieged Germany. He had rolled over the American 28th and 106th Divisions and the 9th Armored, which had been directly in front of him; he had scattered them, driven them back, captured perhaps half of them; but the rest had reassembled and were making a stand wherever they found themselves. The tactics were to destroy bridges and culverts and block and hold the roads. It was possible for tanks and heavy vehicles to move through snowbound forests, but only at great expense of time and fuel, and both these were vital to the Germans if they were going to reach Namur and Liége, to say nothing of Antwerp.
There was a paved road running east and west through the little town of Longwilly, and that made it vital. Out there on the ridges, behind rocks and in hastily dug trenches, men of many different units and types of training were fighting where they stood and dying where they fell. It was a wild kind of, brawl because neither side was sure what it held, and when the Americans were surrounded they tought their way out and got more supplies and then fought their way back in again. “Hold on at all costs,” was the order, and they held, day and night; every hour they denied the use of this road to the Germans was that much time for the defense to rally and for new divisions to gather on the sides of the Bulge. Apparently there was nothing much at the tip; the enemy could go fifty or sixty miles, and farther if he dared.
II
Sleep when you can is one of the first lessons a soldier learns. Lanny slept two or three hours that Sunday night, and before dawn he was awakened. “Come,” said a voice. “We have to move.” The three Monuments sprang awake, gathered up their pencils and records, for no army can exist for even one day without what it calls “paper work.” Headquarters was moving, they were told; they were surrounded in force and would have to fight their way back westward and take another stand. Tanks and halftracks were going ahead to clear the way, and troops would spread out into the forest to protect them.
The three sat on a bench and waited. There was an incessant thunder and rattle of guns, all kinds and sizes. Apparently the three had been routed out too soon; the fighting men were having a harder time than had been expected. The three conversed for a while in whispers, then they dozed. When they were told “All out!” they bolted outdoors, and there was an armored car waiting. Office people of all sorts were packed into it, a halftrack preceded it a length in front, and away they went down the main street of Longwilly. It was good-by forever—at least so far as the son of Budd-Erling was concerned.
Out into that dark forest, with only a dim light to guide the driver. A ride not soon to be forgotten, with shells exploding here and there, and the rattle of machine guns on both sides, and the thought every moment: Are we going to hit a mine? Are we going to turn over in a ditch? Shall we meet a Tiger, or a Royal Tiger? Shall we find the road blocked and have to get out and tramp in the snow again?
Their destination lay some five miles to the west, a larger town called Bastogne. It too was being defended with desperation; it too might be surrounded now, or in the next hour. The headquarters staff would go there, but the fighting men would stay out on the ridges, in the trenches and foxholes which the defenders had dug. Bastogne was of supreme importance because no fewer than eight roads ran out of it, and five of them were paved; it lay pretty close to the middle of the Bulge, and so long as it was held the enemy would be greatly handicapped. It had some four thousand inhabitants; just one more Belgian town, dull and dingy, but it was destined to immortality, like that other one called Waterloo, and another called Ypres.
III
The procession of cars arrived without serious losses, and Monuments found themselves established in a new headquarters. The commanding officer was Colonel William Roberts, of the 10th Armored; Longwilly might have been named in anticipation of him, for he was tall and lean. He came from Louisiana, and was scholarly in appearance, quiet in manner—but he was called “the Stone,” because he was so hard to move when he didn’t want to go. “Gentlemen,” he said to the new arrivals, “we are being pressed hard, but we are staying and we are going to stay. Confidentially, we have been promised help. At all hazards, we must deny these roads to the enemy.”
It was the biggest battle that Lanny Budd had ever been near, and it was much too near for comfort. Five enemy divisions surrounded the town, and their artillery was pouring shells into it; also, they seemed to have a new-style rocket bomb, smaller than the V-2 but more precisely directed. Houses crumbled on top of the terrified inhabitants crouching in the cellars. The Americans were out on the high ground; they had tanks and tank-killers, but the biggest German tanks carried 88 mm. guns, so heavy that they could knock out even the tank destroyers. Expert marksmen fought them with rifles, aiming into the firing slits, and men hidden in foxholes threw bottles of gasoline. Forests were good places for the American style of fighting, every man ready to be on his own and to think for himself.
Heavy fog lay everywhere, and it began to rain again; how the officers and
men cursed this weather! If only there had come one hour of sunshine the fighter-bombers would have been all over the place, knocking out enemy tanks and paralyzing his communications. As it was, this might have been an old-time battle, before air power existed. No doubt the Germans had planned it so; their weather stations in Greenland and Spitsbergen had been captured, but they got the same information by wireless from their submarines, so they knew what kind of weather was coming. Lanny could guess that the Führer’s meteorologists had promised him what he wanted, and that the date of the blitz had been set by them.
Soon after Lanny’s arrival in Bastogne a terrible item of news was reported to him. On the previous day, near the town of Malmédy to the north, a group of a hundred and twenty-five Americans had been surrounded by tanks and forced to surrender. The 12th SS Panzer had disarmed their captives and taken their valuables from them, then herded them into a vacant space and turned machines guns on them; men had fallen in heaps, and afterward officers had tramped among them, shooting all who showed any signs of life. A score of men had thrown themselves down when the shooting began and were buried under the heaps; these escaped to tell the story. It spread quickly, and American soldiers made note of the designation of those black-uniformed murderers.
Soon afterward came an episode in Bastogne, showing again what kind of battle this was going to be. There was a large hospital in the suburbs, to the northwest, and it was full of wounded soldiers. There came a group of tanks and some Nazis in civilian clothes and began shooting up the place in the darkness and rain. A doctor went out with a white flag and asked them to stop. The reply was that they would give him and his staff a half-hour to pack up and get ready to move. They carted off not merely the staff and the supplies, but all the wounded men.