“With a few hundred men?” the colonel asked skeptically.
“We have at least a hundred light machine guns, Colonel Steinmetz,” Eisner interposed. “We can put out so much fire that the Ivans will think a division is coming.”
“For how long?”
“Hell, we can play hide-and-seek in the woods until the Day of Judgment, Herr Oberst!” Schulze exulted. “We should at least try! To surrender here is sheer suicide. What have we got to lose? One may commit suicide at any time.”
Bernard Eisner and Captain Ruell were of the same opinion.
“We have mountains and woods all the way to Bavaria,” Ruell said. “I am quite sure that every one of us has been through similar trips a dozen times in the past.”
The colonel shook his head slowly. “Hiding in the forest? Sneaking in the night like a pack of wolves… stealing or robbing food at gunpoint, shooting people if they resist? No, gentlemen, I have been a soldier all my life and I shall finish it all like a soldier, obeying the orders of those who are entitled to give them.”
“The Soviet commander down in the valley, for instance?” Eisner remarked bitterly. The colonel frowned. “I am talking of General Field Marshal Keitel and Grand Admiral Doenitz,” he said.
“Keitel and Doenitz have no idea what a dreck we are in, Herr Oberst.”
“I guess not,” he agreed. “They have eighty million other Germans to worry about now. We are only a few hundred. We are not so important, gentlemen. We are neither heroes nor martyrs. We are only a part of the statistics. The death of a single individual may be very sad. When a hundred die they call it a tragedy, but when ten million perish, it is only statistics. I still believe in discipline, even in defeat. And we are defeated.”
“The only trouble is that I still cannot feel that I am licked,” Schulze remarked with a grin, tapping the stock of his machine gun. “Not while I still have this thing. But I would like to see the Ivan who comes to tell me all about it.”
“Shut up, Erich!” I snapped curtly and he froze with a brisk “Jawohl.”
“This isn’t the right time for wisecracking!” I turned to the colonel. “Herr Oberst, I am convinced that you will have a better chance if you surrender to the Americans.”
“I have already advised you not to expect too much from the Americans, Herr Obersturmführer. All that is going to happen from now on was agreed upon by the victors a long time ago. But I concede,” he added with a smile, “That an American jail might be somewhat more civilized than those of Stalin’s. Stalin would kill a million Germans cheerfully. The Americans will meticulously prove that they are doing the just and legal thing. On doomsday morning they will give you a nice breakfast, a shave, a bath, and should it be your last wish, they might give you a perfumed pink rope to hang on. But the end will be the same.”
I spoke to the rest of the troopers, telling the men frankly that Colonel Steinmetz’s decision was the only correct one, as far as the military code goes. But the German Army had ceased to exist and therefore I no longer considered them my subordinates but only my comrades in peril who had the right to speak for themselves. As for myself, I stated, I would leave for Bavaria! The artillery platoons, the panzer crew, the Alpenjaegers decided to follow the SS rather than surrender. “You might be a bunch of sons of bitches,” Captain Ruell said smiling, “but you seldom fail. I am with you!” The motorized infantry and the supply group were for Colonel Steinmetz.
The colonel shook hands with us and I saw anguish in his face as he spoke in a choked voice. “I can understand you. It is going to be hard on the SS. The victors have already decided that you are nothing but killers, including your truck drivers and mess cooks. I wish you a safe arrival, but be prudent and do not make it harder on yourself than it already is, Herr Obersturmführer.”
With a gently ironic smile he handed me his golden cigarette case, his watch, and a letter. “Take care of these for me,” he asked quietly. “Give them to my wife—if she is still alive and if you can ever find her.”
“I will do it, Herr Oberst.”
His officers and the men followed the colonel’s example and began to distribute their valuables among those who were to stay. “The Ivans would take everything anyway,” some of them remarked with a shrug. In exchange we gave them our spare shirts and underwear, some food, cigarettes, and most of our medical supplies. Then Colonel Steinmetz assembled his troops. We saluted each other and they departed.
We could hear them for a long time as they marched down the winding road singing: the colonel, six officers and NCO’s under an improvised flag of truce, a bed-sheet. Behind them two hundred and seventy men. Beaten but not broken. The men were singing.
Two miles down the road, around a lonely farmhouse at watch were the Russians and a battalion of militia with six tanks and a dozen howitzers. In the valley near the village we could observe more Red army troops.
The beloved old tunes began to fade in the distant valley where the road turned into the woods as it followed the -course of a small creek. The singing was abruptly drowned in the sharp staccato of a dozen machine guns.
Explosions in rapid succession shook the cliffs, echoing and reechoing between the peaks, and we saw fire and smoke rising beyond the bend. It lasted for less than five minutes. The howitzers and machine guns fell silent. We heard the sporadic reports of rifles, then everything was still.
Standing on a boulder, overlooking the valley, Captain Ruell lowered his field glasses and slowly raised his hand for a salute. Tears were flowing freely from his eyes, down his cheeks and onto his Iron Cross. I saw Schulze bowing his head, covering his face in his hands. Only Eisner stood erect, staring into the valley, his face like that of a bronze statue. My own vision blurred. My stomach knotted. I turned toward my men wanting to say something but my words would not form. I felt an attack of nausea. But Eisner spoke for me.
“There is the Soviet truce for you, men. I know easier ways to commit hara-kiri!” Three PO-2’s rose from the fields and came droning over the hills. We dispersed, taking cover, and resolved not to reveal ourselves no matter what the enemy might do. Flying a slow merry-go-round, the flimsy planes began to circle the pass and came in low over the trees. Working the dials of our wireless. Captain Ruell quickly tuned in on the Russian wavelength. He translated for us the amusing conversation between the squadron leader and a command post somewhere in the valley.
“Igor, Igor… Here’s Znamia… ponemaies? There are no more Germans up here,” the pilot reported. “You got them all!”
“Znamia, Znamia! None of the ones here belonged to the SS. We examined all the bodies. Fjodr Andrejevich says the SS Commander and his two officers are not among the dead! Znamia, Znamia!… Take another look!” Fjodr Andrejevich, the Russian pilot whom we permitted to leave. Cigarettes, food, vodka. Eisner must have read my thoughts, for he remarked quietly, “What did I tell you, Hans?”
“The positions are empty!” the pilot reported. “I can see the gun emplacements and two tanks. Znamia, Znamia! If there were more troops here they must have withdrawn into the woods.”
“Igor! Igor! Try to locate them… Ponemaies?” Fifteen minutes later the PO-2’s left and soon afterwards we spotted Soviet infantry moving up the road, two companies with three tanks to lead the way. Their progress was slow, for a dozen yards ahead of the tanks a group of demolition men moved on foot searching for mines. We allowed them to proceed up to the fifth bend below the pass where the road narrowed to traverse a small bridge between the rising cliffs. The demolition squad spent over an hour looking for mines or hidden electric wires around the place but neither the bridge nor the road around it had been mined. Our engineers had had a better idea. They had enlarged a natural cave on the precipitous slope and stuffed nearly two tons of high explosives in the crevasse.