Уильям Макгиверн - Soldiers of ’44

Docker came to attention then, snapped a salute at Karsh and Colonel Rankin and walked out of the room.

“Goddamn it, soldier, you leave this hotel, you’re under arrest,” Rankin shouted after him.

Docker crossed the slippery brick driveway outside the Hotel Empire and turned into the street where his jeep was parked behind a row of American command cars.

He felt nothing at all, and was grateful for that; for the relief from the insistent pain he’d felt when he’d looked at Baird’s cramped handwriting. Someone called his name, the voice light on the churning winds, and he turned and saw Elspeth Corey running toward him on the snow-packed sidewalk. She wasn’t wearing an overcoat and when she stopped she hugged her elbows tightly against the gale pounding through the narrow street.

“The major told me to ask you to wait for him,” she said.

“You’d better get back inside.”

“Will you wait for him?”

“Did he say why?”

She shook her head. “The colonel is phoning for the MPs. Major Karsh asked me to try to catch up with you and tell you to wait for him.”

“I don’t see any point in that.”

A few strands of hair heavy with snow fell across her forehead. She pushed them away. “Do you always have to be so stubborn?”

Docker glanced past her and saw Karsh turning into the street from the driveway of the hotel. He was struggling to thrust his arms into his overcoat, but the wind had caught the tails and sleeves of the garment and the erratic flappings sent dim shadows leaping ahead of him on the sidewalk.

When he joined them, Docker saw the tension in his eyes. “I’ll take you to General Adamson,” he said. “I can get you in to see him, but you’d better be damned sure what you want to say.”

Docker got behind the wheel of his jeep. “Get in, major.”

He stepped on the starter and said to the girl, “Thanks, sergeant. Now for Christ’s sake get back to the hotel.”

However, when he accelerated past the curved driveway, he checked the rear vision mirror and saw that she was still standing there looking after them, arms tightly hugging her body.

February 16, 1945. Brabant Hall, Liège, Belgium. Friday, 0100 Hours.

General Adamson asked Major Karsh to wait in the anteroom of his office, a converted drawing room in one of the chateaus at Brabant Park. The general sat on a divan facing a marble fireplace topped by a dark wooden mantelpiece that held an ormolu clock and clusters of diminutive jade animals arranged among fronds of fir branches.

He adjusted his reading glasses and examined the envelope that Jackson Baird had addressed to Buell Docker. After studying the grain of the paper and Baird’s handwriting, he lifted the flap and removed the two sheets of ruled paper. “Lieutenant, there’s coffee on my desk. Also some brandy. Now let’s see what we’ve got here.” The general began reading Baird’s letter.

Docker poured himself a canteen cup of coffee. There had been an interval of cold tension when they first arrived. Colonel Rankin’s telephone call had preceded them by several minutes, and it was only after Docker, at the general’s insistence, had repeated his story a second and a third time that General Adamson waved Karsh from the office and agreed to read Baird’s letter.

Sipping the strong black coffee, Docker glanced around the large room, which was hung with faded tapestries and furnished with a clutter of civilian and military effects. Overstuffed furniture, hunting prints, portraits topped by gallery lights shared space with flag-dotted situation maps, field telephones, a short wave radio transmitter and the general’s carbine and gas mask.

When General Adamson finished reading Baird’s letter, and after checking the blank sides of the pages to make sure he had missed nothing, he stood up and paced in front of the fire. Finally he said, “Well, lieutenant, if all my decisions were this simple, I could probably log four to six hours sleep every night.” He turned and walked to a situation map that was propped up on a tripod in front of a wall of books.

“I was pretty damn good at running a division,” he said, and nothing in his tone or manner marked the transition. “That’s pretty much like riding a horse — one source of power, one target to aim it at. But a corps — that’s like riding two horses, with one foot on each of their backs. Up at Army and Group you need to be a politician more than anything else. You’ve got to pussyfoot around the government-in-exile people, stand back and let de Gaulle go first up that big street to liberate Paris, make sure the VIPs have comfortable quarters and a safe look at the action. Imagine an army commander destroying a town like Lourdes because it was the best and quickest way to save lives. They’d crucify him for it. Lieutenant, the closer I get to that kind of decision, the less 1 feel like a soldier. Take Dresden...”

Docker heard a new tone in the general’s voice, a bitterness as his eyes moved across the flags on the situation maps, gaudy little pennants signaling death and victory.

Docker carefully put the canteen cup on a desk and stood watching General Adamson, but his thoughts had turned to the German officer who had died on Mont Reynard...

“There wasn’t any military reason to hit Dresden,” the general was saying. “No industry there, no depots, no troops, no logistical significance. But we killed about one hundred and thirty thousand people in twenty-four hours, old men and women and children, and do you know why, lieutenant? We killed those people because Uncle Joe Stalin told us to. He chewed the ass out of Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta because of the way we fell apart in that German counteroffensive in the Ardennes. And so to shut him up Churchill turned Bomber Harris loose and, of course, we had to go along with him. Ike was against it all along. Vaporizing those civilian cities wasn’t warfare, he said. It was just terrorism, and Ike wanted no part of it. Hell, it was a holiday in Dresden when our raids began, some kind of religious celebration that tied in with Lent. The children were in the streets in carnival costumes when the bombers came over... Maybe every soldier’s got just one good war in him. If that’s true, I’m glad this one’s about over.”

“Do you believe that, sir? That it’s about over?”

“Well, I hope so. Take a look.” The general pointed to the map. “The Russians are ready to strike on a line stretching seven hundred and fifty miles from East Prussia into Poland and clear down to the northern frontiers of Hungary. They’ve got fifty artillery divisions and about five hundred infantry divisions out there. Five million soldiers ready to pull the noose tight. We’ve beaten Hitler and the Nazis, something thirteen countries in Europe couldn’t do. MacArthur will be having his uniforms made in Tokyo within a few months. What happens then, God only knows. So let’s take care of a simple problem, lieutenant.” He picked up a telephone. “Corporal, put me through to Colonel Rankin.”

The general sat on the edge of his desk to wait for the connection, but his eyes stayed fixed on the situation map. “But you can count on this, lieutenant, the Germans won’t surrender. They’ll fight until every building in Berlin falls down on their heads. I read this somewhere, I don’t know which of them said it, Goebbels or maybe Goering, but one of them said that when the Nazis left the scene of history they’d slam the door on themselves so hard the rest of the world would hear the echo for a thousand years. I think I believe that...”

The general straightened and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Yes, I’m waiting for Colonel Rankin.” Then: “George, I’m sending a driver to the hotel with Private Jackson Baird’s letter. The driver will also have a personal note from me to his father. I want you to put a hold on that transcript that’s on its way to SHAEF. You will send the original transcript in its place by tomorrow morning’s courier plane, with the two letters I’ve mentioned — mine and young Baird’s.”