Deserters

(Source)

"Where do you figure we are L.T.?" S/Sgt Bradley Woodstock had dismounted from his tank, "Catamount," and had gone forward when the column had stopped.

"That's gotta be Kreuzau down the hill and across the river, the river has to be the Roer. Look here at the map," 2nd Lt. Stephen Hernandez pointed to his map, "that's Lendersdorf, here by the bend in the river, that's Kreuzau."

"Aren't we too far south?" Sgt. Rob Horner, commander of "Dilemma" asked when he walked up to the group.

Hernandez and Woodstock both turned and looked at Horner, "By a mile or so, not a big problem. My question is, where are the Krauts?"

In truth, they had been pushing forward for the better part of an hour and had not seen any sign of the Germans, other than a wrecked halftrack and two dead bodies, one in the wreckage, the other in the road.

"So L.T., maybe we've hit a gap in the German lines, I mean they are getting pretty thin on the ground, they can't be everywhere, right?" 2nd Platoon's platoon sergeant, S/Sgt Jack Wilson had been over in the woods answering the call of nature. When he saw the field glasses and the maps come out, he figured that he should find out what was going on. Though Hernandez had been a sergeant not that long ago, Wilson loved to give him grief over his "2nd lieutenant map reading skills."

"Have a look, Top, I'm pretty sure I'm not lost." That comment drew an odd look from the tankers, so Hernandez said, "Inside joke fellows, I used to be a sergeant, Top here says that when I was commissioned I started acting like a butter bar, of course he's full of shit. But don't tell anyone I said so."

The men around Hernandez all had a laugh at that.

"All kidding aside, gentlemen, Top, where are the f**king Krauts?"

"Send a patrol down this hill, check things out along the river?" Wilson suggested.

"Yup, we're on the same page, Top. Send Stump's squad. Have them look for a crossing while they're down there."

"Roger that, Sir." Wilson set off to brief Sgt. Stump Gentile on his squad's mission.

"Dumbass, Posey, slide on down that little ravine, you should have a clear view of those houses near the river. If I was a Kraut, I'd have somebody in there." Sgt. Gentile pointed where he wanted his two scouts. While it was true that Privates Robert Dumas and Ross Flowers hated the nicknames the vets in the squad had given them, they had also learned that if you protested too much, the names would stick. They had, they did.

After moving further down the hill, following the ravine which kept them out of sight of the river, Bob Dumas came to a stop and signaled to Ross Flowers to hold up. He hissed at Flowers, "You see that, Ross, looks like a little pier. Two Krauts."

Flowers carefully raised his head, staying near the trunk of a tree to keep out of sight. "Yup, looks like the f**kers are washing their clothes."

Dumas, the more senior of the two, told Flowers to stay and watch the Germans, he'd go back and tell Gentile what was going on. "Keep an eye peeled, where there's two, there's gotta be more."

Making his way back to the squad, he saw his sergeant cock an eyebrow. He moved in close and described what he'd seen, brushing away the pine needles on the ground, Dumas scratched a sketch in the dirt. "Right here there's a little pier, next to that is a ruined house, three walls, no roof. All we saw at first was the two men, looks like they were washing clothes, some kind of cloth anyway. They were both fully dressed, but no helmets and no weapons."

Gentile nodded, "Okay, nice job Bob, head back to Flowers and you two keep an eye on things, if the Krauts get antsy, shoot 'em. I'm gonna put the rest of the squad on line to either side of you and see if we can't get a reaction from anyone else over there."

Jürgen Krebs and Wilhelm Zerbst were done washing out the civilian clothes they had found in one of the ruined houses of Kreuzau. Krebs had an odd feeling, he stood up and carefully scanned the trees across the river. Why did it feel like they were being watched, that's all they needed, have the Feldgendarmerie show up before they could get away across the river.

The two men were deserters from the 85th Infantry Division, they had slipped away from their unit the night before and had managed to get all the way to Kreuzau, where Zerbst had a cousin. Needless to say, the two men were alarmed that the town was completely deserted. They would have no help from Zerbst's relatives, on the other hand, there were no German military units around either.

They had found men's clothing in the ruins but they were filthy. Krebs had the idea to wash them down by the river, let them dry overnight, then they could put them on and find a way over the Roer. They both knew that the Americans were closing up to that river all along the line, once across they should have no problem surrendering to the first Americans they met.

Provided they could avoid their own army first!

Cpl. Charlie Gammell was watching the two Germans through his rifle scope, he had an idea that these guys were trying to desert. "Looks like civilian clothes they're washing, Sarge. What would two German soldiers want with civilian clothes?"

"Think they're deserters, Charlie?" Sgt. Gentile asked.

"Yup, and... Shit! Hold the phone!" As he said that, Gammell moved his rifle, there, looked like a German military car moving slowly down the street leading to the river. "Field police, Sarge, think they got a tip on our two guys over there?"

"Wouldn't surprise me, Charlie. Watch those cops." Turning to one of the men nearby, Pvt. Juan Estrada, Gentile waved him over. When Estrada joined them, Gentile whispered, "Get up the hill to the L.T., Estrada, tell him we've got two Kraut deserters over the river. There's also a Kraut Kübelwagen with two field cops in it in the town, probably looking for deserters. If he hears shots, that's us trying to help them desert. Got it?"

Estrada nodded, so Gentile sent him on his way.

"Klaus, there's somebody down by the river, I saw a head pop up. Might be our two Überläufern¹."

Gefreiter Klaus Brinkmann brought the Kübelwagen to a stop, "Yes, I see them, two of them, yes?"

Oberfeldwebel Horst Mackensen opened the passenger door to the car and stepped out. He checked his MP-40 to make sure that it was ready to fire. He had no intention of bringing these men back to justice. "Go left Klaus, I'll go right. Stick to the sides of the street, we'll surprise these two clowns. If you have a shot, take it. Why waste the Reichsmarks needed for a trial?"

"Jawohl, Herr Oberfeldwebel, bullets are cheap!"

"Scheiße! Die Feldgendarmerie, verstecken!²" Krebs shoved Zerbst down to the ground next to the pier when he heard a car door slam. He recognized the sound, a Kübelwagen, had to be the Kettenhunde!³

Both men were hugging the bank of the river, they didn't know that they had been spotted already.

"Shit, they're almost on top of them, what do I do, Sarge?" Gammell whispered to his sergeant, he had the higher ranking, and closer, field cop in his cross hairs, in another moment the two deserters would be caught, or worse.

"Shoot the cops, I want those deserters." Gentile hissed back.

Oberfeldwebel Horst Mackensen grunted, then dropped to his knees, he had a look of shock and surprise on his face. Gefreiter Klaus Brinkmann, without thinking, rushed over to his sergeant.

"Horst, what is it, what happened?"

Mackensen's face twisted into a rictus as the pain hit him. He looked down in disbelief and saw the rapidly spreading bloodstain on the chest of his greatcoat. He dropped his machine pistol then began to desperately try to tear his coat open, he had to see where he was hit. Then he pitched forward onto his face. Dead.

Brinkmann watched all this, the entire scene playing out in less time than it takes to take a breath. Then Brinkmann's world went black as another .30-06 rifle round sped across the river and into the side of Brinkmann's head, killing him instantly.

Gammell worked the bolt of his rifle again, saying to Gentile, "I've got the deserters in my sights, what next, Sarge?"

Both of the Germans by the pier had turned in shock when they heard the bark of Gammell's rifle. They had cowered even lower, expecting at any moment to be killed.

Gentile acted on impulse, he stood up, his rifle aimed at the Germans, he bellowed, "Handy hoke⁴, you Kraut bastards!"

Zerbst looked at Krebs in confusion, "Americans?"

"I think so, let's do as he says, they have a sniper with them."

Slowly and deliberately, Unteroffizier Jürgen Krebs and Grenadier Wilhelm Zerbst got to their feet, their arms stretched up over their heads, the palms of their hands open and facing across the river.

At that moment Krebs realized that they had a problem. The river. He looked at Zerbst who shook his head, he had cousins in the area, but he wasn't from here.

Pvt. Juan Estrada came scrambling down the bank with Sgt. Melvin Katz in tow, "Sarge, L.T. sent Sgt. Katz with me, figured you might need a German speaker!"

Katz looked at the situation, then said to Gentile, "We need to get those two to our side of the river, right?"

"Yup, any thoughts on that?" Gentile asked.

At that point Katz began yelling over to the two Germans, in German of course. After a few minutes of shouting back and forth, Katz turned to Gentile, "One of the Krauts, a sergeant, says he thinks there's a weir just a bit downstream, they might be able to cross there."

"What the Hell is a weir, Cat?" Gentile had no idea what Katz was talking about.

"It's like a dam, you know across the river, holding back the water."

"Then why didn't you just say 'dam,' Cat?"

"Huh, sorry, the German word, which the sergeant used, is 'Wehr,' dam in German is 'Damm,' almost the same as our word, but he said 'Wehr,' so I said 'weir.' Sorry Stump."

"All right, now that we've got that little educational moment out of the way, let's find the damned dam. Or weir, or whatever it is!"

There was indeed a weir, which the two Germans got across without much trouble, the river was lower than normal due to ice farther upstream.

The two Germans were happy, they had achieved their goal of being captured by the Americans, 2nd Lt. Hernandez was happy, he had a way across the Roer. By nightfall he had two squads in Kreuzau with the Shermans of Woodstock's platoon covering the approaches to the town from the high ground across the river.

Which made Captain Palminteri at company happy, which in turn made Major Josephson at battalion happy. The happiness spread up the chain, the next day engineers were at the weir, laying a pontoon bridge over the Roer.

Next stop, the Rhine.

¹ Deserters.

² Shit, the Feldgendarmerie, hide!

³ Chained dogs, a rude slang term for the Feldgendarmerie.

⁴ American corruption of "Hände hoch" - "Hands up"

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