airplanes. For this purpose he had two flatcars with raised platforms carrying a pair of 20 mm antiaircraft guns each. He did not think it much of a deterrent. Darkness, he felt sincerely, was the best protection from the Reds.
Nor was Travis thrilled about the men he was commanding. Most of the ones in the security detachment had been culled from the stockades, where they had been serving time for various minor offenses, or from labor battalions where there was not a high premium paid for intelligence. Only his gunners seemed above average. He felt that all of them looked down on him.
Travis had doubts about himself. Only recently commissioned as a ninety-day wonder straight out of Officer Candidate School, he had never seen combat. Instead, he had been working in a personnel office in England when the call came for more officers to help free the truly qualified soldiers to fight the Russians.
Even though he had taken the express only a couple of times, the route was beginning to become familiar. He looked about through the grimy windows of the caboose and, even in the night, knew roughly where they were. He figured they were about twenty miles from the border and that the closer they came to Germany, the more danger there was from the air.
Travis put on his helmet, left the relative comfort of the caboose, and stepped over to the rearmost gun platform on the adjacent flatcar. It was also the only gun he could safely reach. He was not going to clamber over more than fifty freight cars to get to the first one just to be told that everything was fine. Instead, he depended on a walkie-talkie to communicate with both the sergeant in charge of the front gun and the train’s engineer.
Travis was about to call them when he both heard and felt the train slowing. Then the squeal of brakes became an insistent howl and he had to hang on while the train came to a complete and sudden halt. He looked around. They were out in the country.
“What the hell?” he asked. The gunners, also surprised, only shrugged. Then one pointed. The train had stopped on a curve and they could see a barricade about a hundred yards in front of the engine.
Travis picked up the walkie-talkie and called the French-speaking soldier in the old steam engine with the engineer and fireman.
“Lewis, what’s going on?”
“Sir, we got a pile of stuff on the tracks and it looks like people around it.”
Travis began to get nervous. “Well, tell them to get the hell out of our way. And tell them to move that shit off the tracks.” He wondered if the train could push its way through the barricade if it had to. If the people who manned the barricade were looters, this could get dangerous. He drew his. 45 automatic.
There was silence as Lewis tried to communicate with the leaders of the crowd, who were now alongside the engine. Travis saw women as well as men. The men on the front gun platform called in and said they were being surrounded by Frenchmen, some of whom were armed.
What the hell is going on? Travis thought. Aren’t the French our friends?
Lewis’s voice, tinny and distant, came over the walkie-talkie. “Sir, they say they’re taking the train from us because we’re fighting their Communist brothers. Sir, they’re coming on board!”
“Stop them,” he yelled.
Immediately there was the sound and flash of small arms as the French and the Americans fired on each other. Then the front antiaircraft guns, depressed as low as they could be, opened up on the crowd. Because of the curve in the tracks, the rear guns could see the barricade and they began to chop it up with their weapons.
A fire quickly started, lighting up the night sky with a fierce glare. French civilians, men and women, tumbled about in death. Travis saw well-armed Frenchmen firing on the exposed American soldiers on the train. He heard screams and knew that his men were dying as well.
Thousands of feet overhead, two Yak-9 fighters saw the sudden conflagration. From the Soviet 16th Air Army, they had been part of the large fighter escort for a hundred Ilyushin bombers that had been formed to attack the railroad yards at Cologne. It was a long attack run for fighters whose range was far less than that of the bombers, and they had been worried about having enough fuel to return to their base.
Their concerns were justified. Well before Cologne, they had been jumped by a horde of American and British fighters who had pushed the fighter-bomber swarm south while they cut the bomber force to pieces. If any bombs had fallen anywhere near Cologne, it would have surprised the two pilots immensely. Their respect for the Allies’ air power increased with each day and each bloody incident.
As a result of the air battle, the two Yak fighters had been separated from the remains of their force and pushed both south and east. Petr Dankov, the senior of the two, flew close to the other plane, turned on his flashlight, and gestured with his hands. He did not want to use the radio lest it give away the fact of their existence. Dankov had flown combat against the Nazis and had shot down fourteen of them. He had a great respect for the Luftwaffe, and the actions of the Americans over Cologne and other places had shown them to be formidable enemies as well. Two American fighters had fallen to his guns.
Dankov signaled that he wanted to take a look at the fire. They dropped to a thousand feet and flew parallel to the train, which he quickly recognized as an American supply train and not one loaded with passengers. He signaled that he would lead the attack. It was strange, he thought, that the American train would be stopped by some kind of fiery accident in front of it. And why were all those people swarming over it?
No matter, he chuckled. If the Yanks wanted to make a gift of the train before he was forced to bail out from lack of fuel, then he would thank them. There was no way he could now make it safely back to base, so he decided to end his last flight as a free man by doing something useful.
They came on a front-to-rear pass. They had no bombs, but their 37 mm cannon chattered and the shells walked the length of the train. First the engine exploded in a billowing cloud of steam, then one of the boxcars flamed. He saw the men on the rear gun platform look for him, and he was over them before they could react.
On the train, Travis watched in horror as the first Soviet plane streaked overhead. He had seen them seconds earlier as they flew alongside. His fervent wish was that they were Americans. The dimly seen red star on the wings disposed of that wish.
As the shells ripped through the boxcars, he tried to remember the train’s manifest. There was ammo in three of the cars!
“Run for it,” he shrieked. He jumped off the train and ran across the field. He saw a couple of his men do the same thing as the second plane flew overhead. The men on the front car were ready for it and the Yak flew into a wall of shells and commenced to fall apart. Travis watched as it fell into the ground about a half mile away and explode.
Explode! He remembered the ammo. Getting to his feet, he began to ran as fast as he could. His urgency communicated itself to a couple of Frenchmen who dropped their weapons and ran with him.
The first ammunition car blew up while they were running. The force of the blast flung Travis to the ground while the shrapnel from the exploding shells ripped his body to lifeless shreds as he tried to get to his feet.
Petr Dankov, now alone in the dark sky, watched the conflagration below. He was now truly alone in a strange land, and with about half an hour’s worth of fuel and very little ammunition left. Another explosion from the ground distracted him so that he never saw the first of four RAF Spitfires, also attracted by the flames, take up position on his tail and open fire at a range of a hundred feet. He felt the bullets impact the plane and then, for a brief, final instant, his body.
• • •
The corpse lay where it had been found that morning. By this time the number of curious had diminished to only a couple of people and only one bored American guard was still on duty. He straightened to something resembling attention as Logan approached with Elisabeth Wolf beside him.
“How much longer is he going to stay there, Private?”
The soldier glanced nervously at the bloody corpse. “I’ve been told about another hour, sir. I guess somebody might want to take a picture or do some kind of an investigation. Not that it’ll do much good.”
Elisabeth leaned over the restraining rope, stared at the dead man, and grimaced. “I remember him only slightly. Of course, back then his head wasn’t bashed in. I’m glad Pauli isn’t here to see it, although I’m afraid he’s seen much worse.”
They had walked the short distance upon first hearing of the violent death. This was the first time that a refugee had been killed by another refugee since the siege of Potsdam had begun.
