Artillery fire erupted from the shore. Shells splashed among the small craft, sending up geysers of water and shell fragments. One came close to their boat, dousing them with water and spent metal. No one was hurt.
Another shell hit a landing craft directly, and it erupted in flames. Men jumped overboard and into the cold lake. Only a few managed to get out of their gear. Most of them sank, a couple waving their arms futilely as they disappeared under the water.
“We don’t stop,” yelled the young ensign in charge. Tanner understood. War consisted of terrible equations and values. They were still about a mile away from shore. More men loosened their gear to the point where it was barely hanging on them. If they were thrown into the water, the hoped they could get out of the gear and not be dragged down to drown.
The line of destroyers began shelling suspected German positions. Insanely, some of the German gunners began shooting at the destroyers and not at the landing craft. But not all. A shell hit the bow of their craft, shaking them violently and destroying one of the machine-gun mounts. Tanner crawled over to see if he could help. The two men working the gun had been pulverized. Someone was screaming. The skipper of the LC had been hit by shrapnel and disemboweled. The only thing Tanner recalled was his name, Kubiak. He’d seemed like a decent guy and now he was going to die. Medics were swarming over him, but they would only ease his passing by heavily dosing him with morphine.
The landing craft was taking on water and in danger of sinking. No, Tanner thought, it was definitely sinking. The water was up to his ankles and rising quickly. They were only a few yards from shore when the LC hit ground and stopped. Someone in the crew ordered the ramp dropped and men poured out into the still frigid waters. This is just like crossing the Rhine, he thought, and realized irrelevantly that the lake was part of the Rhine. His feet were getting wet along with the rest of him. He jumped into the lake and waded the last few yards to the shore.
He looked around and saw the general helping people make it to land. “I hope he’s happy,” Tanner said to a bedraggled Cullen.
Cullen looked skyward and over the coast where a white cloud was advancing. Above the cloud, waves of planes were flying over and out into the center of the lake after dropping their loads. “Oh, God. Now we’re gonna find out whether the army was lying to us or not.”
* * *
Sibre and Schafer hadn’t seen so many airplanes in their young lives. Hundreds of fighters were escorting many hundreds more bombers. They would carpet bomb Bregenz and the areas around the German capital.
The two pilots were towards the rear of the extended column. The lead planes had the task of taking on German planes and positions. There would be no enemy planes, so that left them free to attack antiaircraft batteries. By the time they arrived overhead, however, many of these had been silenced by other planes or naval gunfire. This gave them a clear view of what was going to transpire. They had heard the denials of the use of gas and kind of believed them. Better, they were many thousands of feet above ground, and gas couldn’t climb to their height. They hoped. They didn’t have gas masks. None had been issued to pilots despite their protests that they might be forced to land and might need them.
Bomb bay doors opened in the bellies of hundreds of bombers. At a signal they began dropping thousands of small bombs. From where they were, it looked like a snowfall. A minute later, the bombs began impacting. Clouds of white smoke erupted and, taken by the wind, began swirling towards the lake, blanketing the German lines.
“Dear God,” muttered Sibre. “Can you begin to imagine what’s going on down there?” Schafer could not. What looked like blankets of death were heading though Bregenz and towards the lake. It was a vision of the Apocalypse. Inside the cloud, he visualized four deadly horsemen riding their skeletal steeds and mowing down victims with their scythes. He shuddered. Sometimes having a vivid imagination was a curse.
He shook off his bleak thoughts. He and Schafer were the victors and to the victors belong the spoils. Tonight a bunch of them would go to Stuttgart and head directly to that whorehouse where the hookers pretended to be nuns and the place a convent. Both he and Schafer had gone to Catholic school, so it was deliciously decadent to screw pretend nuns in a make-believe convent. They had to admit that the madam, Sister Columba, ran a hell of a fine place.
* * *
Hummel screamed as the cloud enveloped him. He and the others had tried running, but the gas was inexorable. Like an all-consuming monster, the wind, favorable to the Americans, drove it towards them and the lake, finally overtaking them.
As it approached and in their panic, they had thrown away their weapons, clawed out of their bunkers, and headed away as fast as they could run. Mindlessly, they’d headed in the direction of a once peaceful Lake Constance that was now covered by American landing craft that were moving ever closer. They could see that the Yanks were wearing gas masks and would be safe. They, poor German soldiers, would not be. Once again, their Nazi government had sold them out. Hummel cursed as his eyes watered and he choked. He was going to die and he wanted vengeance and it didn’t matter who would be on the receiving end.
An SS officer, his mouth covered with a rag, confronted them. “Get back to your positions, you fools. This is just tear gas. You aren’t going to die!”
Hummel had never endured tear gas before, so he had no idea whether the officer was telling the truth.
The officer, his eyes wide and running and streaming tears, waved his Schmiesser machine pistol and pointed it at Schubert. Without thinking, Hummel fired his own pistol, shooting the SS fanatic in the head and dropping him instantly. He looked around to see if he was going to be arrested and realized that nobody cared. It was the same as when Schubert had killed that other SS man. The body had never been discovered and no fuss had been made about one more soldier gone AWOL. It didn’t matter if the missing man had been SS or not.
Hummel was in the middle of a swirling mass of humanity all headed towards the lake. He also realized that he wasn’t dying. His eyes burned and he had begun coughing but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He had never smelled tear gas, but realized the SS man had been right. Coughing and retching, he grabbed his comrades. “Get to the lake. We can wash this shit out of our eyes.”
“Then what?” asked Pfister, all pretenses at differences in rank forgotten.
Hummel howled with glee. “Then we throw down our guns and surrender to those monsters who are arriving from the sea.”
The U.S. boats were close enough that they had begun disgorging their human cargo, and they indeed looked like monsters. They were also protected by masks that the German military couldn’t provide.
Up and down the shore, Hummel could see hundreds of German soldiers throwing away their weapons and throwing themselves into the lake. They did the same, and the irritation from the gas was soon controllable. The three of them raised their hands and hung close together as Americans disarmed those who still retained their weapons. There was confusion but no resistance.
A moment later, an American medic, still masked, looked at Schubert. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked in passable German.
Hummel answered. He was now their leader. “Shell shock. He got it a couple of months ago.”
“You want me to get him to a hospital or you gonna watch out for him yourselves?”
“We’ll take care of him,” Hummel said softly. “He is our comrade.”
* * *
Goebbels had finally found somebody with a radio. After a couple of tries, he made contact with Doctor Esau and ordered him to launch the rocket immediately.
Goebbels heard nothing but silence for a few moments, but finally, “It will be as you wish. We will launch in a couple of minutes.”