Armageddon - Leon Uris

“There couldn’t be! God almighty, there couldn’t be!”

And then the horrible silence fell on them again.

My brothers died for this! What fools ever claimed they knew the Germans! Make the sick well, General Hansen? Sure! Come have a look.

Geoffrey Grimwood rediscovered life first. “We must get on with the job,” he said. “I’ll need all the help I can get. Can you assign me some of your doctors and medics?”

Dundee said he could.

“I’ll have to ask for supplies and advice. I don’t know if anyone knows much about this. Is there any idea how many there are alive in there?”

“Maybe three or four thousand,” Captain Armour said.

“We’ll need a very large place to hold them.”

“How about the castle?”

“No. I’d best have them moved into Rombaden. We’ve got to utilize the facilities of the hospital and Medical College ...”

Sean heard the conversation only in blurs.

“We’d best sort them out and get the dead buried at once. Sean, do you have any objection to putting those captured SS brutes to work on the burial detail? I say, Sean ... we’ve got to bury the dead.”

“The dead will not be buried!” Sean cried.

“Come now, old man. We are all shaken up over this thing. They must be buried at once.”

“No! They will not be buried. Not until every goddamned son of a bitch in Rombaden walks over every inch of this camp.”

“It will take a lot of doing to force them,” Dundee said.

“No one ... no one will be issued a food-ration card until he goes through this camp.”

“It’s six miles to Rombaden. They’ve got a lot of old people and kids. You’re not going to make the kids look at this,” Dundee said.

“Like hell I’m not. They’ll walk like they made the slaves walk every day and every night to the factories. And if they’re too old let them be carried on the backs of their fellow Germans.”

“The children?”

“Their mothers may cover their eyes, but they’ll take the stench of this place to their graves. As for the SS ... Blessing, lock them up in the gas chambers. Let them live in there awhile.”

Sean’s burst had been spent.

“I’m not going to let you do this, Major. We’re buying all kinds of trouble,” Dundee said.

“I take full responsibility.”

“But you’re irrational.”

Sean walked slowly to the colonel and stood nose to nose. “As military governor, my authority supersedes yours, Colonel. If you have a beef, register it with headquarters. If you try and stop me, I’ll have you locked up. Blessing! Find out the colonel’s pleasure!”

Colonel Dandy Dundee, a rough fighter from the ranks, was neither prepared for the ultimatum, the fury of the major, nor the consequences. Everyone about them hung frozen. Dundee broke, turned, and walked away.

“All right, Doc. You said something about needing room?”

“Yes. Although many of them are near the end. We must prepare for a dreadful fatality rate. It would be useless to move some of them out.”

“It is not useless. All of the living will be taken out of here. If they are to die at least they won’t die looking at this goddamned barbed wire. They’ve seen enough of it.” Tears of pain for those poor human animals fell down Sean’s cheeks. “Colonel Dundee. Could you please place your motor transport at my disposal?”

“Yes, Major.”

“Thank you, Colonel. Maurice. Have all German patients removed from the hospital in Rombaden. Commandeer the cathedral. Remove all the benches. Take beds and bedding out of as many German homes as we will need to accommodate these people. But for God’s sake, get them out of this place! Get them out of here!”

O’Toole was ill at ease at the presence of Father Gottfried from the cathedral. The priest wore slightly different garments than American priests, his voice was deep and booming, his face dark, and his eyebrows thick. In fact, he looked very much like a German soldier to O’Toole. In one way he was the enemy, O’Toole reckoned. On the other hand he was a priest and therefore could not be the enemy. It was perplexing and made him nervous. He ushered him into Sean’s office.

“I would have paid my respects earlier,” Father Gottfried said, “but I can understand the urgencies you have been under.”

“What’s on your mind, Father?” Sean asked.

“The requisition of Marienkirche.”

“What about it?”

“I understand it is going to be turned into a hospital.”

“That’s right.”

“Of course I am in great sympathy with those poor souls, but you must try to realize, my son, that the Marienkirche is not only a house of God but a tradition unbroken for centuries that is important to us here ...”

“Father Gottfried,” Sean interrupted, “let’s not horse around with each other. I don’t give a damn for your unbroken traditions or what the people think. As far as you are concerned, if we examine your hands closely we will find Nazi dirt under your fingernails. I am, however, a Catholic and I cannot in the conscience of my faith jail a priest.”

Father Gottfried was hardly prepared for the harsh words. Sean had cut from under him the common bond with which he hoped to appeal and he groped for words.

“Your congregation can pray with the Lutherans. The Lord will forgive them. It is about time a cathedral bearing the name of the Virgin Mother is returned to God’s work.”

“You are no doubt aware,” the priest blurted, “that there exists a concordat signed by the Pope with the German Government over ten years ago.”

“I do not believe that the Catholic Church and the Nazis are compatible. In this district I happen to be more powerful than the Pope.”

“Be careful of what you say!”

“Father Gottfried. I am prepared to answer for my acts in heaven, hell, or purgatory. The Holy Father will have to answer for his.”

“You are no Catholic!”

“And you, sir, are no priest of my church. The men of my church who served God properly have been locked up for five years in Compound A of the Schwabenwald Concentration Camp. You will be at the head of the line with Graf Von Romstein and lead the people of Rombaden to the camp ... and take a good look at the fruits of your fine traditions, Father.”

Chapter Eighteen

THE MARCH MACABRE LASTED for the entire day. The line of grumbling shufflers stretched from the pontoon bridge for six miles along the road to the forest. Graf Ludwig Von Romstein, Baron Sigmund, and Father Gottfried led them. In the opposite direction truckloads of half-dead inmates were raced out of Schwabenwald to the cathedral. The marchers turned their eyes away. At Ludwigsdorf the villagers of the district joined those from Rombaden, and together they walked, the stench growing stronger.

They saw it all. Most of them looked on in silence. Some fainted, some vomited, a few wept. The mothers, indeed, held their hands over the eyes of their children.

And when it was over they clutched their food-ration certificates in sweaty hands and stumbled back to Rombaden.

“I am old. I had nothing to do with it. Why did they make me see it?”

“Hitler brought us to this.”

“It was Hitler’s fault. Hitler and the crazy Nazis.”

“We did not know.”

“Hitler’s fault.”

“We did not know.”

“We did not know.”

“We did not know. How could we know?” asked Herr Himmelfarb, the district recorder.

Sean and Dante Arosa glared at the bureaucrat coldly.

“You must believe me,” he repeated.

“Himmelfarb. How long have you been the Landkreis recorder?”

“Since 1924,” he said proudly. “January 4, 1924.”

Dante lifted a huge ledger and handed it to him. “What is this?”