“Good, they’re still trying to get this damned thing mined,” replied a loud voice from ahead somewhere in the dark — Willi Buchner’s voice? “Now get ’em digging. Our friends will be here, you can bet on it.” His voice seemed to come from above and Repp realized, as his eyes adjusted in the night, that the officer stood atop the turret of one of the Panthers.
He turned to his fellows, who lounged around the informal barricade of vehicles at the bridge. “I promise you some fun before sunrise, boys, party favors and all.” A chorus of laughter rose from around him but someone close to Repp muttered, “Christ, another crazy hero.”
“Here, friend,” someone said without troubling to veil his hostility to Repp, “your weapon for the evening.” It was a shovel.
“Now come on, ladies, let’s get moving. You’re SS men now and the SS always stays busy.” Repp and the other new arrivals were directed to the approach where others were already digging under the machine pistols of patrolling SS troopers.
“I’d dig if I were you. When the Americans come in their big green tanks, you’ll want a place to stay.”
Repp saw the implication of the arrangement in a fraction of a second. The SS men would be clustered around the dug-in vehicles at the barricade with the heavier weapons — he’d seen a 75-millimeter gun as well as the two tanks, and several MG-42’s; the rest of them, the new recruits rounded up at gunpoint, would be out here in the open in holes. At the last moment they’d be armed with something—
“Herr Sergeant,” a man next to Repp protested, “this is a mistake. I’ve got leave papers. Here. I was in the hospital — Field Number Nine, up near Stuttgart — and they let me out, just before the Americans came. I’m no good anymore. Blown up twice in Russia and once in—”
“Shut up,” said the SS man. “I don’t give a shit what your papers say. Here you are and by God here you stay. I hope you can work a
“It’s no fair,” said the man bitterly, hunkering down next to Repp to dig. “I’ve got the papers. I’m out of it. I did my part. Pain in my head, bad, all the damn time. Headaches just won’t stop. Shake so bad sometimes I can hardly piss.”
“Best dig for now,” Repp cautioned. “That doesn’t count a bit with these shits. They’d just as soon shoot you as the Americans. They hanged a bunch of engineers back a way.”
“It’s just no fair. I’m out of it, out of the whole thing. I never thought I’d get out of Russia but somehow —”
“Keep down,” Repp whispered, “that sergeant just looked over here.” He threw himself into the shoveling.
“You know what this is about, don’t you?” the man said.
“I don’t know anything except a man with a gun says dig, so I dig.”
“Well, it’s nothing to do with the war. The war’s over. What I hear is the big shots are escaping with the Jews’ gold. That’s right, all the gold they stole from the Jews. But the Americans want it. They’re going for the Jews’ gold too. Everybody wants it, now the Jews are finished. And we’re caught right in the middle. That’s what it’s—”
“To hell with fancy talk, Professor,” Repp said. “You can’t argue with a man with an automatic.”
They dug together in silence for a while, Repp working hard, finding a release in the effort. He squared his part of the pit off, packing the dirt into a rampart on the lip, sculpting a firing notch. Around him he could hear the clink of shovels going into earth and men quietly groaning, resigned. SS troopers prowled among them. Meanwhile, back among the vehicles on the bridge, other SS men moved about, arranging sandbags, tinkering with their weapons, uncrating ammunition. Now and then a single detonation sounded in the distance, and once a long sputter of automatic weapon fire clattered out.
“We ought to build a grenade trap,” said Repp, sweating profusely in his labor, his skin warm in the cool night air. He was half worried about blisters that might throw off his shooting, but he couldn’t take the possibility too seriously. If he didn’t get through tonight somehow, there’d be no shooting.
“Yeah, you’re right,” said the professor. “In case the bastards get in close.”
They bent to the bottom of the pit to scour out an angled hole into which to kick grenades to contain their blast, and suddenly the professor whispered into Repp’s ear, “I think we ought to make a break for it. Not now, but later, when the holes are all dug and the SS bastards are back by their tanks. We can move on down the river, get away from the fighting. When the Americans wipe out this bunch, we can—”
“Never make it,” Repp said. “Man on the turret has a machine gun. He’d have us cold unless we could fly like one of those fancy jets. I checked it out, first thing.”
“Damn! Come on, friend. It’s death here for sure. That’s what they got us here for — to die. They don’t care a shit for us; in fact they never did. They just want to take a few more Ameri—”
But Repp was listening to the officer — Buchner? perhaps — as he said to the sergeant, “Get me a driver and a machine gunner. I’m going to take a
“Sir, I could get some of the fellows—”
“I’ll do it myself,” said Buchner, typically. Yes, it
“I’ll blink my lights when I’m coming in. Got it?”
“Yes, Herr Major.”
He was gone then, and Repp waited with the professor in the trench.
“We can’t wait until the fight begins. We’ll never get out then. We’ll just get the Amis good and mad and they’ll blow our brains out,” the professor said. “They smell that gold.”
Heavy firing broke out ahead. The American column must have run into some resistance in the hamlet. Repp could hear machine guns and tank cannon. Whoever was left up there was putting up quite a fight.
“We’re right in the zone of that gun,” Repp replied. “He’d just chop us down. He’d make sausage of us. There’s no point to it. Relax for now. Do you have a cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke. I was hit in the throat and lost my taste for it.”
“Okay, you men,” the sergeant called out. “Be alert. Any minute the show begins.”
“I can’t see a goddamned thing,” said the professor. “They must really want that gold. They usually don’t like to advance in the dark.”
“Now don’t get excited, fellows,” crooned the sergeant from back at the vehicles, low and gentle, “just take it easy.”
“We don’t have any guns, you bastards,” someone yelled from nearby.
“Oh, we haven’t forgotten the Wehrmacht.”
Repp could hear MP-40 bolts snapping. A report almost made him flinch — one of the Panthers kicking into life so there’d be power for its turret. The other joined and the smell of exhaust floated down, and over the engine purr came a deeper moan as the turrets tracked, aligning their long 75-millimeter barrels down the approach.
A man suddenly leaned over the edge of their hole.
“Here,” he said, his breath billowing foggily in the cool, “ever use one of these rocket things? Line up the target through the rear sight against the pin on the warhead. Trigger’s up top, the lever, crank it back to arm it, jam forward to fire. She’ll go like hell and blow anything the Amis make to smithereens.”
“Jesus Christ,” moaned the professor, “that’s all you’re giving us,
“Sorry, brother. I do what I’m told. Go for the tanks first, then the half-tracks. But watch them too, they’re more than just troop carriers. Some of them mount four half-inch machine guns on a kind of wire frame. Devilish things. And remember, no firing till the major gives the word.”
He was gone into another hole.
“We’re cooked,” said the professor. “This is suicide.” He held up the
