Suslov was about to make a witty remark when he saw the look on Martynov’s face. He was almost distraught. “What is it, Pavel?” he asked with genuine concern.
Martynov shook his head as if it was difficult to speak. “Just come. Please.”
Suslov walked with him across a field toward a farmhouse and barn. Beyond it he could see the tops of a row of trees. As he walked the field, he looked nervously skyward in case an American fighter appeared. He did not think it likely that anyone would waste ammunition on two people walking, but one could never be certain. They were not that far from the front, only a handful of miles, and they could hear the rumble of artillery in the west and the sound of bombings in other directions. It was not the time for a carefree hike.
Martynov directed him to walk around the farm buildings to where he could see the row of trees. Suslov stopped suddenly and gasped. “Sweet Jesus,” he whispered.
There were about ten trees, large and lush with fresh spring growth and with strong limbs. Each limb was festooned with the naked bodies of dead women and young girls hanging by their necks. He wanted to puke. Behind him he heard Martynov weeping. There had to be at least fifty bodies swaying in a macabre dance to the tune of the gentle breeze.
He willed himself to walk among them. They were of all ages, from the very young to the withered and shockingly old. Some had been mutilated before being hanged, with their breasts cut off and bellies slashed open so that their entrails hung down toward the ground. A couple had had their eyes gouged out. Except for blackened faces caused by the slow strangulation they’d endured by hanging, they had not yet begun to bloat or discolor. They hadn’t been hanging there all that long.
“Who was here before us?”
Ivan Latsis arrived and stood beside him. He was grinning at the sight. “I believe they were Siberians. I’ve heard about these Hitler Christmas Trees, but I’ve never seen one before.”
Suslov had also heard of this particular atrocity. Some Red Army soldiers, almost always the Asian savages from places such as Siberia, had picked up the habit of murdering their victims after they were through with them and leaving them as macabre decorations on trees. A brigade of Siberians had passed through the day before, as his tank battalion had been taken out of line. This must have been the Siberians’ previous encampment.
“God help us,” muttered Suslov.
Latsis laughed bitterly and lit his own Lucky. “There is no God, or had you forgotten, Sergei Alexievich. Religion is the opiate of the people and we live to serve the state. You think this is horrible, don’t you? Do you want me to tell you again what the Germans did to my family?”
Suslov did not want the story retold. “It doesn’t make this right.”
Latsis sneered. “I can’t wait until the first American women get passed around and used as ornaments like these. The Yanks do have women in their hospitals and with their rear units, don’t they? They’ll squeal as well as the Germans when we get our hands on them.”
“You would do this to Americans?” Martynov was shocked.
“With pleasure,” Latsis answered. “They betrayed their true colors by becoming allies with the Germans. It was one thing for us to fight just them. That could have been an honorable war, if there is such a thing, but by making a treaty with the Nazis, they betrayed their true colors. They are as bad as the German scum.”
They had been joined by the fourth member of their crew, Popov, the part-Asian loader. “We are wanted back at the tank.”
“Why?” asked Suslov.
Popov grimaced slightly. “The political officers want to give us another lecture.” At first Suslov had thought Popov was a spy for the NKVD, but he no longer did. He had proven too reliable.
I can hardly wait, Suslov thought. Perhaps we should tell them to hold it in the shade of these trees. “Yes,” he said instead, “let us go and hear why we must win this war.”
CHAPTER 15
G eneral Marshall accepted the cup of coffee from his subordinate and friend, Dwight Eisenhower. The two men were alone in Ike’s tent near Reims while Burke and a number of aides waited outside, chatting, smoking, and wondering what the great men were talking about.
Marshall sipped his coffee. “I had planned to be here sooner, but it was necessary to travel circumspectly to avoid Red planes.”
Ike smiled slightly. The danger from Russian planes had become a fact of life to those in the European theater, but was something new for someone coming over from the States. Marshall and his staff had also been delayed by the violent peace riots taking place in war-fatigued Britain. They were a clear message that their main ally, Britain, was no longer as reliable as she had been.
Marshall refused an offer of more coffee. “Ike, what’s the latest on the ground war?”
Ike lit another cigarette. “We are fighting them every inch of the way and making them pay. In a couple of days we’ll have to quit Brunswick and be back to the Leine River north of the Harz Mountains. The Reds are beginning to flank Montgomery.”
“Can you hold them at the Leine?”
“No.”
The simple statement silenced both of them. Ike briefly explained that the Leine River was not a major obstacle. Even though there had been time to prepare defenses and fortifications, the river was not particularly wide or deep.
“We can delay them,” said Ike, “but that’s about all.”
Marshall sighed, accepting the fact. “You are still hoping to stop them at the Weser?”
In some places the Weser, a wider and more formidable stretch of water, was only twenty-five or thirty miles west of the Leine. Neither man felt it would be long after the Russians forced the Leine that they would be on the banks of the Weser.
Ike shrugged. “We will make a hell of an effort to stop them there. If that doesn’t work, it’ll be at the Rhine, which is about a hundred and fifty miles away from the Leine. If they cross the Rhine, well, they won’t have much left in the way of natural obstacles to stop them before Antwerp, or much left of Germany for that matter. It’ll have to be flesh and blood that stops them, not rivers.”
Both men paused and pondered the potential cost.
“Get me more troops,” Ike said simply.
“Not likely,” said Marshall. “The only available force is Clark’s Fifth Army in Italy, and it was stripped and nearly cut in half to support the campaign in France. The Fifth is a mere shell of itself and cannot supply the reinforcements you need, especially since the Italian Commies and the Italian government have decided to start killing each other.
“Do you have any good news?”
“A little,” Ike said. “Potsdam is still holding out. They were attacked by a pretty large Russian force, but they managed to defeat it although they took a lot more casualties and the city is pretty well destroyed. There is long- term concern about supplies since we’ve had to stop airdropping, but right now they’re in pretty good shape.”
“Good. Now, what about the Germans?”
Ike paused, then brightened slightly. “Well, with very few exceptions, the German armistice is going well. German units under General Blaskowitz are passing through the British on their way to Holstein and the Kiel Canal defense line without incident, and are joining some other Wehrmacht units under the overall command of Kesselring. Only a couple of fanatics have caused any trouble and just about anyone with an SS background has tried to disappear, probably to South America. Some other German forces are lying low in Austria and likewise behaving themselves.”
Ike leaned forward. Marshall stiffened. He knew what his general was going to say. “General Marshall, what do you think about incorporating German military units into our defenses? We have hundreds of thousands of them as prisoners and a large number of units are still fairly intact. The Germans will fight for their country if we let them and all they need are weapons. It’s repugnant, but necessary if we are to win this war.”
Marshall nodded. He had already come to that unwelcome conclusion. However, there were problems that
