Deep down Brock recognized that he hadn’t always been the best person, having used his brawn to bully people all his life. Just a few minutes ago he had stolen a bottle of booze from another GI. He knew that was wrong, but during a war, what was the point of doing what was right? Also, he knew that he was small potatoes compared to the likes of Adolf Hitler, the biggest damn bully the world had ever seen, along with all his Nazi minions.
Thinking about helpless Americans being gunned down by the Krauts made his blood boil.
“Promise me!” Charlie repeated. It was clear his strength was fading after his sudden desperate burst of anger. Brock’s sleeve slipped from his grasp, and he suddenly faded back into his sweaty blanket, his eyes still bright in his hollow, frostbitten face.
Brock nodded down at him, his expression grim. “If there’s any justice in this world, somebody has got to put that Nazi in the dirt,” he agreed. “And the sooner, the better.”
Corporal Brock was a mixed bag as a soldier. On the one hand, he got the job done, and that job was fighting the enemy. Looking at his combat record, it would be hard to find a better soldier. He and the rest of his squad always seemed to be in the thick of it. Wherever they went, they gave the Germans hell.
However, he was the kind of soldier who was surly to officers and gave anyone who outranked him a hard time. Then again, he knew better than to cross the line, knowing when not to push his luck. There were plenty of tough officers and seasoned sergeants who would’ve chewed him up and spit him out. He either steered clear of these men or kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t stupid, after all.
On the other hand, Brock could smell weakness like a shark smelled blood in the water. When he smelled that weakness, he went in for the kill.
If he had been stronger of character, he might have made an excellent sergeant himself. But everybody in any position of leadership knew that Brock Sumner was trouble, a good man in a fight but unreliable when the bullets weren’t flying.
He also wasn’t one to make idle threats. He hadn’t made hollow promises to his wounded friend from home just to make them both feel better.
Not long after leaving the hospital where he had seen Charlie, Brock was hanging around the kitchen area that was being set up to prepare hot grub, hoping for some coffee, talking to a couple of guys doing the same thing. It wasn’t just coffee that Brock was after. He had found that the best way to learn anything in the army was to keep your ears open. A lot of guys ran their mouths to show off how much they knew and how important they were. Unless it was top secret, somebody gossiped about it eventually.
“All we want is some hot coffee,” a soldier groused. “Is that too damn much to ask?”
“I hear they’ve got some Nazi officer that they captured in there. I’ll bet they give him all the hot coffee that he wants.”
Brock’s ears pricked up. “You say they’ve got a German officer in there?”
“Sure they do. I heard he’s locked up in the cellar at HQ. They’re keeping him down there because it would be an awful shame if a bomb from his own side killed him.”
“Sounds more like justice if you ask me,” another soldier said.
Brock picked up his rifle, which had been leaning against the building, and started walking away.
“Hey, where you goin’? Don’t you want that coffee?”
“I’ve got somewhere else to be,” he said gruffly.
Suddenly Brock wasn’t interested in hot beverages. He had bigger fish to fry. If the German officer really was being held at HQ, then Brock knew what he had to do.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Contrary to what the Americans may have wanted to believe, not all the residents of Bastogne were sympathetic to the Allies. A few had ties to Germany, either having been born there or having family there. Others favored the Nazi cause, having believed Hitler’s poison. There were even a handful who, as in all wars, didn’t take any side other than their own.
One such person was Benoit Dauvin, who had worked on the Belgian railroad before the war shut it down. Bastogne had once been a somewhat important rail hub until the railroad had been destroyed in WWI. The rails had been rebuilt, only to be destroyed once more in this more recent war.
Consequently, Dauvin had worked at nothing more than odd jobs since then. He had also served in the Great War. Between the wars, he had worked with many Germans in his railroad career and found them professional and efficient. He was not all that surprised by Germany’s initial military successes.
Though he was past fifty, Dauvin had a young family to feed, due to having remarried later in life after his first wife died of a fever. He did not have enough money to buy food at the inflated wartime prices, but he did have information to trade. It helped that he leaned toward being a German sympathizer. When he spotted the German officer being escorted from the hospital, he had trailed along in hopes that this might be useful information.
Obviously, this was a prisoner of some importance. Dauvin had pieced together the story from townspeople he knew who helped at the hospital. He also spoke a little English and had managed to pick up a few things here and there from eavesdropping on the Americans, who tended to ignore a fiftysomething resident of the city they were defending. In their eyes, he was nearly invisible.
From scraps of fabric, one could sew a quilt, and that was exactly what Dauvin did with the scraps of information that he gathered. A few townspeople running errands for the Americans liked to gossip and inflate their own importance. Even a soldier on guard duty let slip a bit too much when trading a bottle of the local juniper-flavored Jenever liquor for packs of cigarettes. Dauvin would trade the cigarettes later for something to eat.
Through his wheeling and dealing, he soon had the name of the German officer and the reason the Americans took such an interest in him. He also learned of the plan to spirit the German out of Bastogne.
That night he made his way through the no-man’s-land between Bastogne and the German lines. It was dangerous, to be sure, but hunger and the need to feed one’s family was a great motivator.
The German that the spy reported to in this case was Hauptmann Messner. What Dauvin did not know was that since most of Messner’s unit had been lost in the devastating fight in the clearing, he had been put to use as a kind of factotum, and this included interviewing the occasional German sympathizers who wandered in to exchange tips for food.
Messner found that he liked the independence and even the small amount of power that his new role provided. The information that he gathered gave him the ear of higher-ranking officers.
Soon enough, he would be back in the fight. Every German soldier in the Ardennes Forest would need to fight, if they hoped to win. Until he was reassigned to a combat role, Messner got a new perspective on the war.
He was surprised that a few old men and boys had even volunteered to fight alongside the Germans, but he had sent them away. Still, he had admired their spirit. As for men like this informant, he found them barely tolerable, like dogs hoping for a few table scraps.
Messner’s eyes had widened at the news of the German officer being held prisoner by the Americans, especially when he heard the prisoner’s name.
“That traitor?” Messner muttered upon hearing Bauer identified. “I thought he was dead!”
“No, sir. He is being moved.” The informant quickly summed up the plan.
The informant was rewarded with a loaf of stale bread, some Landjäger, or dried sausages, and a few tins of rations. He put them all into a cloth sack and began his return journey to Bastogne. If he made it through no-man’s-land once again, his family would eat for a few more days.