consequence.”
“Then yours won’t be either, you fucking prick,” Jack said.
Margarete had become an expert on airplanes. From the sound alone, she could tell what country it came from, and what model fighter or bomber it might be. She could also tell whether it was in distress or running normally, and this one was in great distress.
It was also flying very low. She jumped out of bed and put a coat over her nightgown and some boots on her bare feet. Her mother and the others had heard the sound of the laboring, lumbering bomber as well. As they ran outside, Margarete told them it was an American B17.
It roared overhead, missing the house and the barns by what seemed like only a matter of feet. They could see that one engine was blown away and another was on fire. The plane fought for altitude or a place to land safely. She wondered why the crew hadn’t bailed out. Perhaps they had. Perhaps the bomber was out of control and flying dead.
But then it lifted up and she knew there were living hands at the controls. The plane staggered one last time and dropped, tail first, into the ground at the end of their field and erupted in flames.
The explosion swept over them, staggering them. They covered their faces with their arms as the heat hit them. Small amounts of debris landed all around them.
“No bombs,” her uncle said. “Thank God.”
The explosion, however devastating, wasn’t large enough to have included bombs. Probably the bombs had already been dropped and only fuel was burning. And maybe the crew, they thought. Aunt Bertha shrieked and said there was a hand on the ground near her. Uncle Otto pulled her away, sobbing. Margarete swallowed and looked. It was indeed a hand, a left hand, and there was a wedding ring.
They ran to the wreckage, or at least as close as the flames would permit. Uncle Eric muttered a prayer. He hated the Americans but watching someone possibly burn to death was too much.
“There is nothing we can do,” he said. “Anyone in there is beyond help. We must let the fire burn itself out and then we will see about burying the dead.”
Margarete hugged her mother. The smell of burning fuel and scorching flesh emanated from the plane. Why hadn’t the pilot jumped? Perhaps he couldn’t. Maybe he’d been injured and couldn’t leave his post and was trying desperately to land it in the field? She wondered if it was the pilot’s hand she’d seen. It brought back too many memories of bombings in Berlin, memories she’d just about blocked out of her mind. Somewhere there must be a land where fourteen-year-old girls didn’t have to live with the sight of death and the stench of decaying corpses, but these were everyday occurrences in Germany. She wondered if this was what it was like in England or France. Somehow, she knew it was even worse in Russia.
“Mama, I want this to end.”
Magda hugged her fiercely. “We all do, Magpie,” she said using Margarete’s now forbidden childhood name. This time her daughter didn’t seem to mind. She just wanted to be a little girl again.
A few hundred yards away and back at the farm buildings, Victor Mastny prepared to slip back into the barn. He’d dashed out in the night afraid that the plane would come down on top of him and trap him inside. He was concerned that the Mullers and the two Varner women would see how easy it was for him to slip in and out of the barn, which might cause them to have second thoughts about confining him more securely.
The girl was looking in his direction, but he was certain that the shadows and the flickering flames would not betray him as long as he didn’t move. When the women turned, he slid back into the barn.
The 74th entered Germany south of the ancient city of Aachen, Charlemagne’s capital when he founded the Holy Roman Empire more than a thousand years earlier, and north of the rugged and wooded area called the Eifel. They estimated they had forty or fifty crow-fly miles before they hit the Rhine. If any of them cared, intelligence said they were up against the German Seventh Army under General Erich Brandenberger.
American troops entering the city of Aachen were meeting stiff resistance in this first major German city to be attacked. Troops were fighting street to street and even building to building, just like what they’d heard of Stalingrad and Leningrad. Street fighting in old stone cities was a lousy situation for tanks, and the men of the 74th were universally thankful to not be involved in it.
Even though there actually was a sign saying “Welcome to Germany,” it was quickly apparent that they’d entered a different country. For one thing, they noted that it was cleaner in Germany than in France. They’d concluded that French idea of sanitation was minimal at best, what with people pissing in the streets, while everything was tidy and clean in the Reich. Even the ruins had been swept, apparently by old men and women since the men were away in the army. The roads were better as well, paved instead of dirt.
To their surprise, they’d met no immediate resistance when they crossed the border. They’d half expected the sign saying they were entering Germany to be booby-trapped, but it wasn’t. Nor had they seen any discernible German defenses. The Nazis had fallen back to more defensible positions rather than fighting for every inch of homeland soil like Hitler would have insisted.
The first German village they entered was only a mile from the border, and many of the neat and well- maintained houses were festooned with white flags made from sheets.
“Apparently nobody thought surrender was a likelihood,” Jack said. “Otherwise the proper Germans would have had regular white flags already made up.”
Sergeant Major Rolfe chuckled. Snyder and a new lieutenant were up in the repaired plane with Snyder piloting. He had quickly developed into a qualified pilot. Snyder said it was because he was so smart, while Rolfe and Jack said it was because the plane was so easy. A second plane and another pilot were being prepped. Jack had written Jessica that he now commanded his own air force.
The white flags brought home the fact that they were conquering Germany, not liberating it, and that was reflected in the troop’s attitude. If they “accidentally” broke something, well, tough shit. They had freed the French and were now going to punish the Nazis, assuming of course, that any Nazis could be found. When the villagers emerged, they told them the Nazis had all gone, which the Americans found laughable, especially since a number of civilians glared at them with unbridled hate in their eyes. Blank spaces on walls showed where pictures of either the late Hitler or his successor, Himmler, had once been displayed and had been prudently taken down. A handful of young men on crutches or missing limbs, or both, watched them stonily. These were former Wehrmacht and would be watched. They had been knocked out of the war because of their wounds, but they had not surrendered. Jack wondered how he’d feel seeing enemy soldiers in his home town, and decided he wouldn’t be happy at all. He didn’t sympathize with the krauts, but he thought he did understand them.
Still, some of the people looked happy to see the Americans, admitting that they were exhausted by the war and wished the killing to end. They’d supported Hitler when he’d solved Germany’s economic woes, but, when questioned, solemnly said that they’d never supported his conquests and couldn’t believe what was said about the Jews.
“Bullshit,” Levin said. “They’re all Nazi motherfuckers. The Russians are doing it right, giving them back just what they did in the Soviet Union.”
It was common knowledge that the Reds were retaliating for the atrocities committed by the Nazis when they’d conquered large sections of the Soviet Union. They were taking a savage vengeance-looting, killing and raping their way west. Or at least they had been. There were more and more rumors that the Soviets had slowed, if not stopped.
Denying their Nazi affiliations didn’t save the German civilians from having their houses, foodstuffs, and liquor taken by the Americans as they bivouacked for the night. Stoddard wouldn’t permit any heavy looting or the abuse of women, but chickens, eggs, and other delectables managed to make it to GI dinners. It amused them to see the displaced Germans carrying bags of extra clothes on their backs as they looked for a place to spend the night. For all Jack cared, the krauts could sleep in piles of barnyard shit. They’d get their houses back, and reasonably intact, when the regiment moved on, which he felt was more than they deserved.
That night and for the first time since he’d landed in Normandy, Jack actually slept in a bed. Ironically, it was
