“Welcome to Festung Seine, Colonel Varner,” Colonel Hans Schurmer said with a wry smile.
Ernst Varner laughed and they shook hands warmly. They’d been friends for many years, starting with their early days as eager young officers in the army. Schurmer was short and plump, a no-nonsense engineer who was in charge of developing the defenses north of Paris along the Seine. He was also an intelligent and sophisticated man with a wicked sense of humor.
All around there was evidence of hurried activity. Hurried, not yet frantic, as the Americans were still more than a hundred miles away. German guards armed with submachine guns oversaw gaunt and half-starved French prisoners of war and freshly drafted civilians who worked with shovels, while German and French engineers worked with heavy machinery. The prisoners were unenthusiastic, to put it mildly, and had to be prodded by guards and prisoner overseers whose efforts often constituted beatings. The newly drafted French civilians looked in horror at the human wrecks who once had been French soldiers and then with hatred at their Nazi captors.
Varner looked on the scars the construction work had made in the earth. The bunkers and trenches would be visible to Allied planes as well as eyes on the ground once the Americans and British got close enough. Camouflage would be too little too late.
The work being done was impressive, but Varner still had his doubts. He took a puff of his cigar. It was a Cuban and thoughtfully provided by Schurmer who had gotten it and others from a Spanish diplomat in Paris. “Hans, do you really think this will stop them?”
“Of course not. The Seine is a miserable place to plan a defensive line. It twists and turns all over France and the embankments are no threat whatsoever. We will, however, attempt to correct nature’s deficiencies.”
“What I see is impressive,” Varner said. “But you will be attacked from the air as well as by artillery.”
As if to punctuate the statement, sirens began to wail. Workers laid down their tools and moved quickly to the shelters. Bombs did not discriminate between prisoners and guards.
Schurmer steered Varner to a slit trench as antiaircraft batteries opened up, attempting to set up a wall of flak. “We’ll be safe enough here. I have this deathly fear of being buried alive; ergo, I will take my chances on being obliterated by a lucky bomb. If that kind of death was good enough for Hitler, it’s good enough for me.”
“Why do the workers leave their tools behind?”
“So my soldiers don’t get their heads split open by a French prisoner’s shovel while they’re in the shelter. They don’t like us.” He grinned wickedly. “Surely even those in Berlin understand how unloved we are.”
Bombers were now clearly visible overhead, B17’s by their silhouette. Varner saw something flickering in the air and realized bombs were dropping.
Schurmer laughed harshly. “Don’t worry, Ernst, we are safe here. As usual the Yanks dropped their bombs too late when coming in from the west, which means they will pass over us. And if they fly north to south, their accuracy’s even worse. They have a devil of a time hitting a long, thin target like this. A large sprawling city like Berlin they can find and bomb, but not defensive works like these. After a number of terrible incidents in Normandy, the Allied bomber pilots are desperately afraid of dropping too soon and killing their own men. They are now doing a marvelous job of plowing various farmers’ fields for them.”
The bombs impacted. Explosions rippled and sent artificial winds over them. But Schurmer was right. The bombs fell harmlessly well to the east.
Schurmer took a happy puff on his cigar. “Oh, sometimes they get it right and we lose some men and we have to rebuild something, but the normal day’s bombing is of no consequence. Generally, they fly too high for precision bombing. They depend on their so-called secret Norden bomb sight, which is fine by me. Also, I don’t feel that their pilots have their hearts in the effort to bomb us.”
The all-clear sounded and the guards prodded the workers out of the shelters and back to work.
“As you can tell,” Schurmer said, continuing the tour, “our primary ground defenses consist of tank traps, large ditches, and bunkers made of sandbags and concrete. The whole area is or will be saturated with numerous antitank guns along with soldiers armed with machine guns and Panzerfausts. In front of the bunkers, we’ve sown tens of thousands of antipersonnel and antitank mines. When the Allies do break through, there are several hundred Panzer IV and about fifty of our precious and carefully rationed Panther tanks waiting to counterattack and nip the Allies in the bud while the bulk of our army withdraws to the next line.”
“So what should I tell von Rundstedt so he can tell Himmler?”
Schurmer chuckled. “I suggest you tell Rundstedt the truth and let him decide what to tell Himmler. In the meantime, I suggest we go to my quarters for some dinner and brandy. There is no reason for war to be altogether hell, now is there?”
“They’re fattening us up, you know,” Levin announced as he stood in his clean and creased new boxer shorts and undershirt. “From here it’s on to the Seine and God knows what else.”
Carter grinned. He was similarly attired along with the rest of the officers in the 74th. “You’re probably right, but, in the meantime, put a sock in it. Preferably a clean sock.”
Officially the 74th had been pulled back to get some rest and new equipment. Unofficially, the regiment had suffered badly and needed to get over the shock of their losses. Of the seventy tanks, twenty-one had either been destroyed or were so seriously damaged that they were not repairable by the regiment’s mechanics. Nor were other categories of equipment immune. Many Jeeps, trucks, and half-tracks had been damaged or destroyed.
Nor had they yet run into heavy German armor. While other units had fought the Panthers and the Tigers, the 74th had not.
Most significant was the human toll. Of the three thousand who’d landed in Normandy only a few weeks earlier, more than two hundred were dead and another three hundred wounded. Six men were reported missing and at least two of them had likely deserted. Nobody wanted to talk about desertion, but rumor said that thousands of GI’s were wandering around France looking for a safe place to wait out the war. Morgan wondered what they’d do when it did end, and concluded that many probably hadn’t thought that far ahead. They just wanted to get out of the horrors of the fighting no matter what the future price.
Thus, Jack and the others had the chance to have a long, hot shower and wear clean fresh clothing for the first time in more than a month. Even the mess hall food wasn’t as bad as remembered. After all, it was hot and had been prepared by actual human beings. The time off was a major morale builder even though the coming advance to the Seine and beyond was on everybody’s mind. The Germans were fortifying the east bank of the river and what once had been a romantic tourist destination now seemed like it would be a voyage to hell.
“I never thought I’d praise shit on a shingle,” said Carter after they made it to the mess hall in their new uniforms. Nobody ever called it chipped beef on toast and it was almost always universally despised.
“And here I thought everyone else smelled terrible or it was the stench from all the dead bodies around,” added Levin, “but now I realize it was me. How did you ever stand me?”
“We didn’t,” gibed Morgan. “We attributed it to gas from all the kosher food you eat and tried to be tolerant of your religion.”