Armageddon - Leon Uris

Sean stood musing in the great square ... from the Romans to the jackboots. He glanced up to his office and to the statue of Berwin and Helga, and across the square to the cathedral. The statue of Mary had been repaired. Tomorrow the cathedral would be returned to the people as a place of worship as the last of the Schwabenwald inmates had been moved to the field hospital in Castle Romstein.

The bell tolled the hour. Berwin and Helga ... Christ and Mary. Would Christ, the Son of God, ever emerge over Berwin, Son of the King of the Gods, in the souls of the people?

Chapter Thirty-three

ANDREW JACKSON HANSEN TOSSED and turned. Sean’s words pounded through his drowsy brain. He snapped the night lamp on. “Goddamned stubborn Irish son of a bitch!”

He fished for his specs, focused on the clock. Three in the morning. Sean’s time was up. He would be reporting in by noon. No sir, that hardheaded Irish son of a bitch wouldn’t change his mind. He’d march in, walk the thirteen steps, lay his neck on the chopping block, and wham!

Hansen turned off the lamp and tried to settle down, grumbling at the overheated discomfort caused by the heavy German down comforter. He made a mental note to get a couple of army blankets issued.

“General Hansen. I have sat here, day in, day out, week after week listening to one German after another repeat the same story like broken records. They say ... we were only following orders ...just following orders ... just following orders. I’m not going to commit murder in the name of my country for you or anyone else just because orders are orders ... I’ll take full responsibility for my decision ...I’m sorry, I believed in you ...”

The light went on again. Hansen kicked off the comforter and stared sullenly at his knobby big toes. In a moment a chaw of tobacco was tucked deeply into his jaw and he sighted in on the spittoon at bedside.

Sean was a rare officer. He had emerged from personal tragedy, assumed a vital command, performed with near brilliance. In this Army ... no, in this whole goddam world ...there are so few men who have the courage of their convictions ...it’s so easy to pass the buck, as he, Hansen, knew he was trying to do. That one rare man in ten thousand who says with quiet simplicity, I’ll take the responsibility ... that’s it! Smack on the button. No buck passing, no wishy-washy whining.

What had happened when Sean fired Dante Arosa? General Hansen never knew. Sean merely said, once again ... I’ll take the responsibility. Those two were close friends. What made Arosa resign from the Army? It takes guts to punish a friend ... and even more guts to defend an enemy.

What the hell ... didn’t Sean know there are times when every man must bend a little?

And what the hell was the use of trying to rationalize? Hansen knew, in his heart, that Sean O’Sullivan had made a great decision. It was that type of decision a man makes alone when all well-meaning advice is to the contrary. It is a decision in which the maker leaves himself knowingly open to scorn and danger. There were so precious few men capable of making a great decision that it was an awesome thing to know such a man.

“Okay, you son of a bitch,” he grumbled, “we go down together.” Hansen snatched the phone. A half-dozing operator answered. “Find Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury and have him report to my quarters immediately.”

With that he dressed, went to his writing desk, and began the first of many drafts of Proclamation 26.

It was two full hours before Big Nellie could be located in Wiesbaden at the tail end of a serious drinking bout with the Air Corps. He had to be pried loose and sobered enough to comply with the unusual summons. When he arrived he was in a suspended state of silliness.

“Got here as soon’s I could, General. What’s up?”

“This,” Hansen snapped, handing him a paper.

Nellie’s great paws lined the paper up for reading.

PROCLAMATION #26 MILITARY GOVERNMENT HEADQUARTERS, FRANKFURT A/M

Upon complete re-examination and reconsideration it is deemed that PROCLAMATION #22 (calling for special tribunals) is inconsistent with democratic ideals, the vision of our founding fathers, and the meaning of the American Republic. Even suspected Nazi war criminals are entitled to due process of law as we understand it. Therefore, PROCLAMATION #22 is hereby null, void, and rescinded.

A. J. Hansen, Major Gen. United States Army

“Jesus H. Christ! When did you people decide all this?”

“We people didn’t decide nothing. I decided. Frankly, I don’t even know if I have the authority. However, lad, you are going to see to it that this is on the front page of every AP newspaper in America by their morning editions simultaneous with its being sent through channels here. So, if it isn’t official, you make it official.”

Big Nellie knew what he had to do. There was not much time. He folded the proclamation and put it into his breast pocket. “You’re an ace, General Hansen,” he said, and left.

It was about noontime of the following day, two hours after Proclamation 22 was nailed dead, that Sean maneuvered his jeep through the streets of another German rubble pile. This one was called Frankfurt. Supreme Headquarters for Germany had been established in the I. G. Farben building, formerly the heart of the world chemical cartel. The fact that the building stood intact while nearly everything around it had been leveled was an irony of war. The building was a gargantuan affair comparable in miles of halls and millions of square feet and numbers of elevators to the Pentagon and the Chicago Merchandise Mart

Sean O’Sullivan, a mere major, was lost in the flood of silver oak leaves, eagles, and stars. Everyone here walked with a chipper air. None of that tired drag of the combat man. Each man felt that he carried in his briefcase the most important problem in Germany ... if not the world.

After much ado, Sean was able to ascertain where General Hansen’s office was located.

He stepped into one of those odd, open-faced, one-man elevators that move continually on a vertical conveyor belt so that stepping in and out through the open shafts on each floor called for correct timing, particularly when one was juggling one’s briefcase.

“Major O’Sullivan is here, sir.”

“Send him in.”

Sean stepped before his desk, and accepted the extended hand. “I heard the news sir. I heard about it when I was driving through Mainz an hour ago. What will they do to you, sir?”

“What the hell do you think? They’ll pin a goddam medal on me!” Hansen waved Sean into a chair. “Well, so far my ass has been chewed out by Ike and four of his deputies and three people from the State Department. At the present moment, my future is being discussed by the Pentagon and the White House. We might as well have a game of checkers while we’re waiting ... you do play checkers?”

“How about blackjack?”

Sean lost forty-two consecutive games of checkers while they waited. It was evening when the statement was released from the White House. A single sentence summed up the entire affair: THE RESCINDING OF PROCLAMATION #22 WAS CORRECT.

“You know,” Hansen said, “we Americans have the damnedest luck. The Lord has granted us a rare thing ... that chance to take a second look at things. And on that second time around, we usually come out all right.”

Hansen looked at his watch. “Well, now that we know we are in the Army for a while longer, I’d like you to stay over. There is something very, very important I was saving to discuss with you.”

From the tone of Hansen’s voice, Sean knew that another fateful decision was looming up ahead of him.

Chapter Thirty-four

DURING AND AFTER DINNER the two men spoke of the matters of the day. General Hansen had completed a tour of the British, French, and American zones. The statistics on Germany’s demise, now pouring into Frankfurt, staggered the imagination. Frankfurt itself had 150,000 dwellings before the war; 40,000 of these now stood. Never in the history of modern civilization had a country been so thoroughly demolished.