Ready and waiting, the German commander responded. 'This is Colonel Fritz Junger, commander, 27th Parachute Brigade. The pathfinder detachment of my brigade has prepared drop zones for your division. We are ready to assist the drop of your division and will not resist. I repeat. We are ready to assist the drop of your division and will not resist. Acknowledge, please.'
Looking up at the jump master with a dumbfounded look, Matthew was about to ask him if he had heard right but remembered that the jump master couldn't hear. Instead he keyed the radio again. 'Eddie, did you hear the same thing I heard?'
'That's a roger. It seems the German commander has gone over and wants to help us.'
Since Matthew's conversation was still going out over the radio, as he knew, the German commander heard his conversation with Bower. 'I have, after conversations with the Chief of the German General Staff, General Otto Lange, ordered my soldiers to stand down and avoid contact with the soldiers of your command. I have declared, in cooperation with the civil authorities, Bremerhaven as an open city. You may jump if you desire or land at the military airfield. If you decide to drop, my operations officer is ready to turn on beacons to guide your aircraft in. All drop zones are marked using standard NATO markings and have smoke pots ready to be lit for wind direction and identification. Over.'
Still unsure what to make of this, Matthew looked about at his men and pondered the most difficult question of his life. To trust this German, a man whom he was until seconds ago prepared to fight, could result in the failure of his mission and the loss of not only his division but the Tenth Corps. On the other hand, Matthew realized that if the German commander really had gone over, so to speak, to the American side, then a peaceful drop, assisted by the German Army, would mean a great deal when it came time to end this conflict. Matthew, as had all commanders, had been alerted that German commanders were starting to break with Berlin and that they were to take advantage of these defections whenever and wherever possible. 'Ben, this is Eddie. Drop zone in six minutes. Right now we're committed to a jump. To make radical changes in direction would be difficult, not to mention potentially hazardous. What are we doing?'
With one more look at the upturned face of a young paratrooper seated across from him, Matthew decided. 'Colonel Junger, have your operations turn on the beacons. We will drop using your drop zones. Please meet me on the ground as soon as possible. I will be the first man coining out of the lead aircraft. Over.'
'I acknowledge that you will be dropping at our designated drop zones. Please have your lead pilot switch to frequency 27.05 for meteorological update and frequencies of guidance beacons. General Lange and I will meet you on the ground. Over.'
'This is Matthew. I'll be on the ground in less than six minutes. Out.'
Finished, Matthew took off the jump master's headset, handed it back to the jump master, and began to put his helmet back on. Ready, he looked up to the master sergeant who had as many years and jumps as he and shouted, 'Okay, Sergeant, it's all yours now. Let's hit the silk.'
On the ground, Colonel Fritz Junger, Major General Horst Mondorf, and General Otto Lange turned their faces up to the pale blue early-morning sky as the first olive drab parachutes of the 17th Airborne Division began to blossom over the flat, muddy German countryside. For a moment Junger looked around at his men standing idly about the drop zone, rifles harmlessly slung over their shoulders with their muzzles pointed down. He then looked at the two generals. 'I am sure, General Lange, that you understand that we might be branded traitors.'
Lange, without turning his face away from the spectacle of a mass airborne drop, sighed. 'When von Clausewitz refused to submit to French rule and went over to fight with the Russians against Napoleon, the Prussian King called him a traitor. When the Saxon Corps, with drums beating and flags flying, marched across the fields of Leipzig in 1813, leaving the French and joining the Allies, the French, who had occupied Germany for years, called them traitors. When Count Von Stauffenberg planted the bomb on July 20th, 1944, in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the Nazis called him a traitor. If I am allowed to join the ranks of men such as they, who put the best interests of Germany over their own, then I will lift my head with pride every time I am called a traitor.'
Junger, still unsure, was about to say something more when he noticed that there was no sign of stress or strain on either Lange's face or Mondorf's. They simply stood there watching the American invaders slowly drift down to earth under their huge parachutes as if this were a peacetime NATO maneuver. These generals, Junger realized, were committed. They had made up their minds and were convinced that what they were doing was right. If that was so and they were right, Junger thought, how can I do otherwise. They were the voice and conscience of the German Army. It was, after all, his sworn duty to follow them. Satisfied, Junger turned to his operations officer standing next to the radio van and ordered him to start looking for the American airborne general after the first wave was on the ground and before the second wave began to exit their aircraft.
The major, untroubled by concerns of right and wrong, since there were so many senior commanders present to do that for him, carried out his orders as directed.
Like dozens of others separated from units that had ceased to exist or had moved north long ago, Hilary Cole was alone, frightened, hungry, cold, and lost. Fear and a sense of alienation dominated Cole's reactions. And the manner in which she dealt with her separation could only be termed reaction, for she had no clear idea of where she was, what was happening, or what to do. In fact, it could be said that Cole, like other ragtag survivors of the Battle of Central Germany, no longer was responsible for her actions. Nothing in all her training or even in her wildest dreams had prepared her for being so lost, so isolated, so miserable. She was in every sense hanging on to the lower rung of Maslow's ladder by her fingertips.
In a dreamlike state Cole wandered about without purpose, without direction. After days of being bombarded with horror after horror, that was the only state in which her mind could function. Even as she walked from tree to tree in the pale light of a new day, images of the dead and dying drifted before her eyes. And it didn't matter whether she was awake or asleep. The images came as they saw fit, confusing her efforts to deal with reality and causing her to swing from the depths of depression to an animated state of terror when she would start running in whichever direction she happened to be facing at the moment. Though she, like other members of her unit, had received rudimentary training in fieldcrafts and survival on the battlefield, no one and nothing had ever prepared her for the carnival of death that she had so recently been a player in.
In those brief moments when Cole was able to compose herself and think clearly, she was able to piece together some of what was happening. That she was alone, lost, and hungry was clear. All she had was the parka she had taken with her from the truck. She had no water, no food, no emergency medical kit, nothing. Even worse, she had no idea where she was and what was happening. There were only a few things that Cole did know. After watching the annihilation of her field hospital by German tanks, she was convinced that the Germans would kill her. So she never went back, even after the sounds of battle had faded. Nor did she dare approach any place where there might be Germans. They were the enemy in every sense of the word.
So Hilary Cole had spent the entire day after the destruction of her unit wandering about the woods aimlessly in the vain hope that she would somehow find another American unit. She didn't. Most units, once the word was out that there was a rogue unit roaming throughout that area, avoided it. That left Cole to spend another night alone in woods that were beginning to take on the appearance of a prison. With nothing but her parka to keep her warm, Cole threw herself on the ground and, between the shivers and sobs, cried herself to sleep.
On that morning, when stray beams of the morning sun came dancing through the trees and lit upon Cole's face, it took her several minutes to understand where she was. When she finally realized that her situation that morning was no better than it had been the night before when exhaustion had compelled her to drop to the ground and sleep, Cole began to cry. There was no sense to this. Crying would do nothing to improve her situation. Crying offered no solution. But then nothing made sense anymore.
In the midst of her own despair she heard a voice. It wasn't a very strong voice, and it had a rather mournful quality to it. But it was a human voice. Though she couldn't be sure if it was real or her imagination, that voice was the only thing she had. Pulling herself up with the aid of the tree she had slept huddled up against, Cole looked about, trying to determine where the voice came from. At first, with her mind still clouded by sleep and despair, Cole was unable to determine from which direction the voice came. It was as if the trees and her mind were playing a cruel trick on her, mocking her.
Then, as if it had suddenly been conjured up out of thin air before her very eyes, Hilary Cole saw it. At a distance of only twenty, maybe thirty, meters was the wreckage of some kind of overturned vehicle, half hidden by the wild chorus of trees that had been both a prison and a safe haven to Cole. She realized that she had spent the entire night not more than a few simple steps away from another human being who was probably as lost as she
