“I said you could ask. I didn’t say I would tell you. You’re dismissed, Private Oster.”
2
Grafenwöhr
NOVEMBER 1944
Bernie tried to bury his fear by losing himself in the camp’s routine. Over two thousand men from every corner of the Reich arrived during the following week. Bernie helped conduct their initial interviews, asking questions to determine their level of competence in English, both speaking and comprehension. They were then classified into four categories. One: fluency in English and working knowledge of American slang. Two: fluency without knowledge of specific American idioms. Three: general comprehension and the ability to conduct limited conversations. Four: restricted comprehension, men who had studied English in school without real-world application.
Bernie quickly realized that most of the “volunteers” had vastly overstated their abilities. By the end of the week, as the last men arrived, he had picked fewer than twenty to join him in Category One. Fifty went into Category Two. The third category had about one hundred men in it, and the fourth another two hundred. As for the rest, over two-thirds of the men who had been summoned to Grafenwöhr, their English was limited to single-word responses. Bernie barracked with the rest of the Ones and Twos; Threes and Fours occupied separate quarters across the yard, and the rest stayed on the far side of the compound.
The men were issued neutral olive-green uniforms without insignia. All previous ranks were erased, and officers received no preferential treatment. They dined together in the same large mess hall, eating meals that far surpassed normal army fare. Contact with friends or family was forbidden. Every man signed an oath of silence, and letters home had to pass a censor’s strict review. Medicine and prescription drugs were dispensed freely to prevent illness, since no one was allowed out of camp to see a doctor. This taut atmosphere fueled rumors and speculation about their brigade’s reason for being, which flew through the camp, mutating on a daily basis. Their true purpose remained a mystery.
They heard their first explanation when Bernie and the rest of the brigade were called one day at dawn to a general assembly in the compound. Captain Stielau addressed them. They were now part of the 150th Panzer Brigade, he said, operating under the command of Colonel Otto Skorzeny. The mention of his name sent a ripple through the yard; he was without rival the most notorious figure in the German armed forces. Stielau told them their mission was called “Operation Greif,” and they were being trained to defend Cologne when the Allies attacked across the Rhine. It sounded plausible, but Bernie found it impossible to reconcile with what they were being taught.
Their training began each morning with English lessons, focusing on American slang, and tutoring to eliminate native accents. Bernie helped craft a crash course on American culture, using newspapers, magazines, sports sections, and comic strips. Tests were given each day to drill this information into long-term memory. The men were ordered to use only English; anyone heard speaking German was disciplined with solitary confinement.
Each afternoon they were put through Skorzeny’s commando training: demolition, communications, reconnaissance, special weapons, light artillery, night fighting in both urban and forest environments, hand-to-hand combat. They were schooled in map reading, the basics of movement under combat conditions, camouflage techniques, and communications. They were taught how to drive and service captured American jeeps, scout cars, half-tracks, and tanks. Each man in Categories One and Two was issued an M1 rifle. Ammunition was too scarce for target practice, but they learned to carry, field strip, and maintain their rifles as rigorously as any GI.
After dinner they gathered in the mess hall to listen to U.S. Armed Forces Radio. Beer was served and they were encouraged to sing along with the popular songs of American recording artists. On some nights they watched American films, in English, with orders to observe and mimic the actors’ mannerisms. Seeing these familiar faces again, the first Hollywood stars he’d seen in years, made Bernie desperately homesick. His dread about what Skorzeny was really preparing them for grew with each passing day; only exhaustion kept it from overwhelming his mind.
At the end of the second week, the fluent English speakers, about eighty men, were placed directly under the command of Captain Stielau. Except for meals, they now spent their days apart from the others, and their language training intensified. Whenever shipments of new Allied material arrived—uniforms, boots, weapons—Stielau’s men received it first. Bernie believed that the future objectives of the two groups, whatever they might be, had begun to diverge.
Bernie met one other American-born man in Category One, a U.S. Army deserter named William Sharper. He had served in the American Army until after the invasion of Normandy. Sharper took a lead role during training, teaching the men specific GI behaviors; the way they slouched, chewed gum, how to rip open a pack of cigarettes with a thumbnail, and the fine art of swearing. Bernie stayed clear of him, disturbed by the violence he saw in the man’s eyes. A handful of others were former members of the German diplomatic corps who had learned English serving in foreign embassies. The rest came from the merchant marine, itinerant seamen who at some point had worked on American or English ships. One was a former porter on the Queen Mary. Their isolation, intense physical training, and the airtight atmosphere of secrecy brought them quickly and closely together as a unit.
At the start of the third week, each man in Bernie’s unit was assigned an American name. American dog tags were issued bearing these names, along with a new rank, and they were ordered to refer to one another only by these new names and ranks. They were told to create and memorize a fictional American history: place of birth, family members, education, hometown history, favorite pets, girlfriends left behind, baseball teams, local geography. Bernie decided the only way to create a life story he could remember under pressure was to keep it as close as possible to his own. A New Yorker from Brooklyn, the son of immigrant parents, he became Private James Tenella.
That Tuesday Bernie was summoned to the interview cabin. A new arrival sat joking with Stielau’s lieutenant, waiting to go through the evaluation process. Unlike the hundreds who’d preceded him, he still wore his German uniform: the crisp black tunic of a Waffen-SS lieutenant. He was in his mid to late twenties, wiry, compact, with close-cropped blond hair and a ready, dazzling smile.
Stielau’s lieutenant waved Bernie into the room: “Private Tenella, meet our latest arrival, SS Unterstürmführer Erich Von Leinsdorf.”
Von Leinsdorf stood up to shake his hand, and looked him in the eye. “A pleasure. They tell me you may be able to iron the starch out of my plummy Mid-Atlantic tones.”
Von Leinsdorf spoke perfect English, with a crisp upper-class British accent.
“Whatever it takes, sir,” said Bernie.
Stielau’s lieutenant handed Bernie the clipboard and left the room. Von Leinsdorf perched on the edge of the table and opened a sterling silver cigarette case engraved with his initials.
“I suppose I’ll have to start smoking Lucky Strikes,” he said. “No more English Players for me.”
Von Leinsdorf torched his cigarette with a matching silver lighter and smiled again. He smoked like a movie star, or someone who had studied movie stars smoking. Despite his easygoing charm, Bernie felt a visceral wariness of the man. He seemed to take up more space than he physically occupied. The superior airs seemed characteristic for someone from his class, but Bernie was reacting to something starker than the aristocratic “Von” in his name. He pulled back the chair Von Leinsdorf had been using and sat down facing him.
“How was your trip?” asked Bernie.
“Appalling,” he said with a smile, making no effort to keep the conversation going.
“Where’d you come in from, Lieutenant?”
“Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking? Your English is astonishing.”
“I’m from New York. Brooklyn.”
“Is that a fact? How fascinating. Born and bred?”
“That’s right. How about you?”
“Munich, but as you may have gathered, I spent my formative years in England. Father was in the diplomatic corps, stationed to the embassy in London. We went over in twenty-eight. I was ten at the time. Father enrolled me at Westminster, public school. All those incestuous aristocratic family trees, it’s a breeding ground for degenerate half-wits. So in I waltzed from the hinterlands, armed only with my meager schoolboy English. Bit of a wonder I survived.”
“Hope the education was worth it.”
“Oh, I got an education, all right. Where were you at ten, Brooklyn?”
“Fifth grade. PS 109.”
“Of course you were. How charming.”
“So you spoke only English in school?”
“Not just in school, old boy. At home, in the park, in the bath with my proper English nanny. Even family dinners. Father didn’t want any guttural German consonants ruffling the feathers of our hosts.”
“When did you come back to Germany?”
“Once the unpleasantness broke out, the tea bags ushered us straight to the door. Imagine my father’s disappointment. He’d spent the better part of his life trying to penetrate this ironclad veil of courtesy. He never realized that’s the reason for their obsession with manners: a coat of paint covering a hatred of all things foreign. And they seem so polite until you get to know them.” Von Leinsdorf flashed a smile, stood up, and walked to the window. “So we both came back to Germany at the same age. Strange, feeling the outsider in your own country, isn’t it?”
You don’t know the half of it, thought Bernie.
“Where the devil are we, by the way? I was hoping I might be headed to Berlin. Has anyone told you what this is about?”
“Not a word,” said Bernie.
“Very hush-hush all this, isn’t it? Have they tipped their hand about what we’re doing here, Brooklyn?”
“All they told us is that this guy Colonel Skorzeny’s running the show.”
Von Leinsdorf spun around. “Skorzeny? Otto Skorzeny?”
“That’s what they said.”
“Have you seen him? Has he been here?”
“No. Why?”
“I tried to transfer into his commando unit last year—”
“Where you been stationed?”
“Dachau,” he said casually, flicking his cigarette.
Bernie had heard about the Munich suburb the SS used as a training center. Lurid stories about their concentration camp had been circulating through Berlin, but he knew better than to ask. He’d learned never to ask an SS man anything.
“I’m going to write up this report that your English is first rate,” said Bernie. “They’ll probably put you in Category Two.”
Von Leinsdorf leaned over to glance at Bernie’s notes. “That sounds suspiciously like a demotion. Why not Category One?”
“That’s only for guys who come in knowing a lot of American slang.”
“But you could teach me, couldn’t you?”
“If that’s what they want—”
“It’s what I want,” said Von Leinsdorf, sharply. He softened his tone and turned the charm back on. “Just between us, old boy, I hate thinking I’m not good enough for the top category. Sheer vanity, really.”
“It’s not up to me.”
“I’m not asking for much. Wouldn’t want the officers to think you’re reluctant to help a fellow soldier. All this cloak and dagger, they must be watching you more closely than the rest of us. I’m sure they’d take a dim view of wobbly loyalties.”
Bernie smiled, trying not to let him see that he’d even heard the threat. “I’ll try to help you out, sure, what the fuck.”
“What the fuck?”
“Most popular word in the GI language. Fuck this, fucking that. Fucking camp—”
“Fucking Krauts—”
“Now you’re cooking with gas.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Means you’re on the money, on the beam, moving down the right track.”
“Right. So, Category One, then. I’ll make it up to you, Brooklyn, see that you’re assigned to my squad. We should fucking stick together, don’t you think?”
“Sure, what the fuck.”
Both men laughed. Bernie couldn’t help liking the man, in spite of his initial reservations.
“What took you so long getting here?” asked Bernie. “They brought the rest of us in two weeks ago, you don’t mind my asking.”
“Haven’t a clue. I assume it was some bureaucratic foul-up.”
“A snafu.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s a whatchamacallit, a word you make from initials, an acronym? Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.”
“Yes, brilliant. Snafu, indeed. The thing is, Brooklyn, I only heard about this two days ago. We were near the end of a major project, so they couldn’t bear to part with me.”
“At Dachau.”
“That’s right,” said Von Leinsdorf, smiling as he lit another cigarette.
“So did you finish it? Your project?”
“A ways to go yet. Afraid they’ll have to carry on without me.”
Von Leinsdorf motioned with his head for Bernie to follow, and they walked into the darkening evening, back toward the dining hall. Von Leinsdorf tossed away his half-smoked cigarette and asked Bernie for one of his Lucky Strikes.
“Do you mind?” he asked. “I should get used to these.”
“Help yourself.”
Von Leinsdorf pulled the cigarette from the pack with his lips and torched it. “What do we call these? Smokes?”
“Smokes, nails,” said Bernie.
“Nails?”
“Coffin nails. Sticks, butts.”
Von Leinsdorf nodded, then lit and studied his cigarette. “So what are they training us for, Brooklyn? I get a different answer from everyone.”
“They say we’re going to defend Cologne when the Allies invade—”
“Come on, that’s pure codswallop. All this trouble just to have us dig and wait for Patton to cross the Rhine? This is a Skorzeny mission. Hitler’s commando. Start with the name: Operation Greif—the griffin. You remember what it looks like? Half German eagle, half Allied lion. Our purpose is in that image. We’re going to cross the line disguised as an American brigade, a surprise attack. Something to shock the world.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Bernie, trying to sound casual as he heard his worst fear realized.
“I’m sure of it. And I’ve got a good idea what our target might be.”
Bernie’s eye caught a metallic flash of light above them in the darkness, from a guard tower directly above the courtyard.
“Somebody’s up there,” he said.
Von Leinsdorf turned to look. A tall, sturdy officer in uniform leaned forward, lighting a cigar, his face visible in the flame of the lighter a soldier held for him.
“It’s him,” said Von Leinsdorf.
“Who?”
“Skorzeny’s here.”
3
Grafenwöhr
NOVEMBER 20, 1944
The entire 150th Panzer Brigade was called into the commons at six-thirty A.M., before the morning meal. Bernie, Von Leinsdorf, and the rest of Captain Stielau’s commando group stood in the first two rows facing the dining hall as a light mist fell from an overcast sky. Five minutes later the brigade snapped to attention as the camp’s brass marched out ahead of Colonel Skorzeny. He wore his dress uniform but no overcoat, unlike the rest of the officers, and a confident smile that seemed oblivious to bad weather and any other adversity. Skorzeny stopped and surveyed his men for nearly a minute, studying faces, before he uttered a word. The Iron Cross hung at his throat, between the lightning SS runes and insignia of rank on his high, stiff collar. His bright eyes and sharp features suggested to Bernie the image of a hyper-intelligent fox.
“We are not here to turn you into soldiers,” he said in English, his voice ringing out over the yard. “That was someon
e else’s job. If they failed, there’s nothing we can do for you now. Nor is there time to train you properly as commandos; the urgency of our mission is too great. It is the responsibility of every man to do the best he can with what we give you. Your principal weapons will be intelligence, ingenuity, and cunning.
“What I do expect from you is this: the willingness to change your entire pattern of behavior. Nationality, race, and culture are qualities you express unconsciously in your basic instincts, habits, and attitudes. They are much more deeply ingrained in your mind and body than you know. As far as the outside world is concerned, these qualities, these ‘German characteristics,’ have to change if you have any hope of surviving what lies ahead. It is no use dressing you in olive green and teaching you American slang if you click your boot heels and snap to attention like a Prussian grenadier the first time one of their officers barks out an order.”
He gave a comic, self-deprecating demonstration, like one of the boys in the ranks. A big laugh spread through the assembly. Bernie glanced over at Von Leinsdorf, standing down the row. He watched Skorzeny with almost religious rapture. Skorzeny smiled and waited for the laughter to subside with the polished air of a comedian.
He’s got them in his hands. They’re ready to die for him right now.
“No similar operation of this size has ever been attempted in the history of warfare. I won’t minimize the dangers you face. But I assure you the Führer has entrusted us with a responsibility on which the future of our country depends. You have his full support and absolute confidence. I know in my heart that you will not let him, or Germany, down. The rest is up to God and chance. Heil Hitler!”
Skorzeny turned with a click of his heels and marched away, his adjutant and officers falling into step behind him. He radiated command and iron confidence, tempered by empathy for his troops and self-deprecating humor. Von Leinsdorf and the others around him glowed with patriotic zeal; they looked ready to burst into song.