Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

We turned north from there, but within half an hour, as the MP had warned, the road was choked with trucks and armored vehicles streaming south in full retreat. Many of these units were in complete disarray, separated from command and driving on only to find safety. We came upon an armored battalion stopped on the side of the road, completely out of gas. A young boy, a buck private, was sitting on a wheel well, crying with abandon, wailing and looking around as if he expected someone else to tell him how to stop. Every minute or so, another soldier gave him a few pats on the shoulder. A sergeant explained that the boy's best buddy had been blown to bits not three feet from him this morning.

Back in the jeep, Biddy said, "Sir, this here ain't no time to be arresting somebody, not in the middle of a battlefield."

"We have orders, Biddy." I really didn't know what else to do.

"I'm just saying, sir, gotta have a way to carry out your orders. Better to hold back here for a day or two till the smoke clears. Wherever the hell Martin was, Captain, he's gotta be on the move now, probably comin right this way."

He was making sense. We headed west again, where we were stopped twice more by MP patrols pushing back deserters. Near dark, we finally arrived in Neufchateau. It was a postcard of a town, with a crush of pretty, narrow buildings and steep streets of cobblestone, but there was an air of chaos. We reported to the rear-echelon headquarters for VIII Corps, in the columned Palais de Justice, where they were receiving grim reports from forward command in Bastogne. Men seemed to be rushing in and out of every office, shouting information that someone else immediately screamed was wrong. Several regiments had given up under white flags, while many other units were unaccounted for. Whenever I could get someone's brief attention, his eyes seemed to wander to the windows, expecting to see the German Panzers out there any second. Clerks were in the halls boxing papers, separating what needed to be carried along so the remainder could be burned at the inception of the retreat.

After a long wait in the signal office, I finally got a young corpsman to send a wired message to General Teedle, giving our current position and asking for further direction. Then I conducted a reconnaissance for a billet. I was directed to officers' quarters that had been set 'up two blocks away in the city hall. As I passed down the corridors, looking for an empty bunk, I encountered little knots of off-duty officers, huddled and often passing around whiskey as they talked in suppressed murmurs. No one seemed able to accept what was happening. There hadn't been a day since I'd landed in Europe that the Germans had made progress across a broad front. A fellow who claimed to have seen the latest maps said we'd been suckered too far east, that the Nazis were about to split the Twelfth Army group, dividing the First Army from the Third, and the Ninth from the other two, with pincer actions to follow on the northern and southern flanks. No one knew the limits of today's German advance, but it was clear they had the upper hand, and several of these officers remarked about earlier reports of Nazi movements that General Bradley had ignored. Every face reflected the same thoughts: We were not going home soon. We were not going to win the war by Christmas, or New Year's, or even Valentine's Day. When I bedded down, I finally asked myself the question that nobody would utter: Were we going to win the war at all?

We were, I thought then. We had to. We had to win this war. I would give my life in order to stop Hitler. And I knew, despite whatever panic gripped the replacement troops who'd deserted on the front, that most of the seasoned officers sleeping in this building felt the same way. I turned off the light and realized only then that I'd forgotten to eat. There was a K ration in my pack, but I was too tired and disappointed to bother.

Light across my eyes woke me a few hours later. My first thought was another explosion, and as I gathered myself I couldn't understand how I had missed the sound. Instead, I found the young corporal from the Signal Corps who'd taken my message to Teedle holding the flashlight against his face so I could recognize him. My watch said z:Io a. M. He whispered to avoid waking the other five officers snoring around me in the old office, and led me into the hall, still in my briefs.

"Captain, this signal just came through, sir, labeled 'Immediate Attention." I could see from the boy's face he had read the telegram in the envelope and thought immediate attention was warranted. It was from Teedle, and had arrived in code, the boy said, requiring deciphering by the cryptographers.

Classified Information/Top Secret/Destroy After Reading OSS states man you seek Soviet spy STOP Arrest top priority STOP Further instruction by radio 0600 STOP

Teedle never got through on December 17. Many of the Allied communications centers around Saint-Vith had been cut off by the Germans. Although we were south of there, the remaining lines and relays were dedicated to signal traffic more important than the fate of one man, even a spy, and I spent approximately forty hours on a bench in the VIII Corps signal office, waiting to hear from the General.

In Neufchateau, like many other places, the Signal Corps had established its headquarters in the dusty offices of the PTT-Poster, Telegrapher et Telephones-which was housed in a narrow pinkish building on a corner. Topped by a strange iron cupola, it looked as if it were wearing a helmet.

From my seat inside, I could watch the young women, with their bright lipstick and the sleek hairdos required to fit under their headsets, plugging and unplugging the lines in the tall switchboards. American enlisted men strolled back and forth to keep an eye on them, just as the Germans had been doing a few months ago. Every now and then, civilians would enter to mail a letter or package, which the dour clerks accepted with no assurance that the item would ever get through.

The one compensation in my wait was that this was probably the most informative location in Neufchateau. I asked no questions, but overhearing the messengers and aides who rushed up the stairs made it possible to piece. Things together. The news was almost completely dismal. Sepp Dietrich's 6th. Panzers were rolling steadily in our direction, overrunning the thinly manned VIII Corps positions. Nor was it clear yet if any force could come to their aid, since the 5th Panzer Division was advancing south to hold off Patton.

Listening from my outpost on the bench, it was difficult not to admire the Nazi strategy, however reluctantly. Given the salient Dietrich was cutting, Runstedt's plan seemed aimed at severing the American forces, then crossing the Meuse and driving on toward Antwerp. If the Nazis succeeded, the Allied troops in Holland and northern Belgium would be cut off entirely, without avenue for retreat.

Dunkirk would look like a minor setback by comparison. With a third of the Allied forces held hostage, Hitler might be in position to negotiate an armistice. Or, if his madness prevailed, he could destroy them and then turn south, with other forces roaring out of Germany in one last effort to reconquer western Europe. The betting in the signal office was that, insane or not, Hitler would make peace, if only to give himself time to rebuild his military. On the bench, I thought repeatedly about Martin's predictions of war and more war. It was hard to believe a victory that had seemed inevitable could be imperiled in only days. Every few minutes the same simple resolve lit up in me like a flashing sign, as it had since I arrived here. We had to win this war. I had to help.

Now and then, in mild desperation, I would cross the street to the rear headquarters in the Palais de Justice, a vast columned building of orange stone, to see if my orders had been misdirected there. Biddy also visited on occasion, and we walked in circles up and down Neufchateau's tiny sloping streets, although the cobbles proved icy and treacherous on the steeper grades. It snowed both days, heavy flakes descending from a sky so low it seemed only a few feet over our heads. Hitler had either planned well or been lucky, since the cloud cover made it impossible for us to put planes in the air, unless they wanted to fly right over the barrels of the German antiaircraft guns.