so comfortable he tossed and turned for much of the night. Still, he loved the feeling. Even better, the house he and several other officers had taken over actually had indoor plumbing, and they’d taken turns wallowing in the tub adjacent to the toilet. Carter suggested weighing one’s self before bathing and then right after to see how much the dirt on their skins weighed. Carter was told to go screw himself.
Not having to use a latrine tent or relieve oneself outdoors was another almost forgotten civilized pleasure. Snow had fallen and lightly covered the ground. Soon enough they’d have to tramp through it to squat over a disgusting latrine trench, but this night was a wonderful reprieve.
Morgan was enjoying a second cup of coffee when a PFC told him Colonel Stoddard wanted to see him ASAP. He took a couple of quick swallows and trotted to the mayor’s house, now Stoddard’s HQ.
“Jack, one of the townspeople in this little piece of heaven whispered to me that there’s a work camp just outside of here, maybe a mile away.”
“Jesus, is a work camp the same as a death camp, sir?”
Stoddard nodded grimly. “That’s what you’re going to find out. Take an infantry platoon and a couple of Carter’s tanks and see.”
Once again they smelled death before they reached it. As before, even the cold air couldn’t mask it. A dozen decrepit wooden barracks were surrounded by barbed wire forming a rectangle. Watchtowers were at each corner and were manned by guards who looked astonished at the sight of the approaching American column. Apparently, the guards were unaware of the American presence down the road. So much for Teutonic efficiency, thought Morgan.
German guards in one of towers opened up with a machine gun and were blown to pieces by a 75mm shell from the lead Sherman. German soldiers spilled out of a barracks building and what looked like a headquarters. They saw the American column and ran towards the rear of the camp where another gate was quickly opened, allowing them to run through and away.
“Shoot them,” Jack yelled. Cannon and machine gun fire cut down many of them, but a few managed to escape. Good riddance, Jack thought.
A handful of prisoners were taken and they wore the skull and crossbones insignia on their caps. Jack had heard that these the special units assigned to run concentration camps and were especially cruel. He found it satisfying that most of them looked frightened. Some of their Nazi prisoners were women guards, exceedingly hard looking and ugly women, but females nonetheless.
“Come here, Captain,” yelled a sergeant as he exited a barracks building. He turned and threw up against the barracks wall.
Jack entered the barracks and walked into a hell dimly lit by light coming through holes in the walls. Scores of eyes stared at him from stark benches. They were shapeless and in rags and it took him a few moments to realize they were women. An emaciated hand reached out for him and touched his uniform. Without thinking, he recoiled and the woman cringed as if expecting to be beaten.
“Who are you?” came a voice, timid and weak.
“American,” he said softly.
There was silence, then gasps and sobs. “You’ve come?”
“Yes.” He didn’t know what else to say.
There must have been a hundred women jammed into the small building. Some of them stirred and got up. They lurched hesitantly to the door. Jack let them pass and go out into the fresh air. It was too cold for their rags to be much use against the weather, but being able to step outside seemed worth it to them.
Several women remained on the benches. Jack checked them. A couple of them were dead and the others might be dying. More soldiers had entered the barracks and were looking around. He found a radio man who put him in contact with Stoddard.
“How is it, son?”
“Worse than you can begin to imagine, sir. We need medics, food, blankets, and, oh yeah, if you’ve got a correspondent or two hanging around send them here to take some pictures.”
At that point, Jack went out and looked at the liberated women who were staring at the open gate and the empty watchtowers. Some of the GI’s had found blankets and given them to the women to cover their nakedness and help warm them.
Sergeant Major Rolfe emerged from the headquarters building. “All gone, Captain, but you’re not going to believe this.”
“Try me.”
“We’re the 74th Armored, right. Well, this is work camp number seventy-four. Quite a coincidence, huh, sir?”
“Yeah,” Jack admitted. “But it does make me wonder how the hell many of these snake pits there are.”
CHAPTER 15
FDR was livid. The photographs on his desk were damning beyond belief. One showed emaciated dead bodies stacked like cordwood, while another displayed the decomposing bodies of inmates hung on barbed wire, shot while trying to escape. Others were equally horrible. He glanced at them all, overwhelmed by the agony and inhumanity they showed.
As the camps near the French border were overrun, the depth of the accumulated horror was becoming apparent, and no one had yet gotten near the most terrible places of all, a series of camps near the city of Auschwitz.
“First, I want these pictures released to the troops and the American public. We must show them what we’re fighting for and what’ll happen if we lose. Above all, show these to our so-called allies, Great Britain and France. They most definitely need their spines stiffened.”
Churchill had lost a vote in Parliament, which would almost certainly require a new election. Winston might be a hero to much of the British public, but he was not well loved even by his own party. The English people were exhausted by the long and bloody war and wanted it to end. They had been fighting since 1939 and had endured bombings and catastrophic battles. As long as victory was achievable, they were on board, but the increasing German resistance was demoralizing them. It reminded so many of the stalemate of World War I. All that was needed to cause England’s collapse was the sight of trench lines snaking along the Rhine.
A growing number of people in England were clamoring for a negotiated peace, and the same clamoring was beginning to be heard from America’s citizens. So what if a Nazi stayed in power was the increasingly strident cry? Hitler was the monster responsible for the war, and Hitler was dead. Wouldn’t his successors be more reasonable? After all, wasn’t the little dictator insane? They couldn’t all be crazy, could they?
Yet how could he negotiate with the authors of these atrocities? But so many wanted him to, and they included congressional members of his own party. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and Treasury Secretary Rosenthal as well as a number of Jewish-Americans had screamed their anguish at what was happening to their fellow Jews. Frankfurter, a man who at first disbelieved the atrocities, now wondered if many of his faith remained alive in Europe. It was a good question.
FDR and Churchill had had a number of disagreements and Churchill was fighting the fact that Great Britain was now a bit player in the global conflict. Still, Churchill was a cut above whoever would replace him, in particular the colorless and, in FDR’s opinion spineless, socialist, Clement Atlee.
Ultra intercepts said that the Nazis were slowing or stopping the shipment of Jews to death camps, but would that truly save the remaining Jews and other concentration and death camp inmates? Or did it make sense to negotiate an end to the war that included getting the Jews and others out of the clutches of the likes of Himmler. FDR rubbed his forehead. He had a miserable headache. He had won his fourth term, and, God willing, another four years in office. But at what price? Christ, his head hurt and it felt like his heart was racing to get out of his chest. He needed a rest, but had no idea when he would get one.
