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Praetorium Honoris

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

New Orders, New Guys

Bonn, Germany - 1945
(Source)

Leutnant Manfred Sauer was waiting to see the station master, along with a number of other people in uniform. Sauer and his 5th Company had made it to Bonn, damage from an air raid farther up the line just outside Köln had halted their train here. Now they were stranded, nearly 60 kilometers (by road) from their destination - Düren. As he was patiently waiting in the queue, he saw a party of Feldgendarmerie coming down the platform, checking papers from the looks of it. Eventually there was one of the Kettenhunde¹ standing in front of him.

The man actually snapped his heels together, saluted, then said, "Herr Leutnant, your papers and movement orders, please?"

Sauer noted immediately that the Feldgendarm only had three fingers on his right hand. Sauer took a chance, "Russia?"

"Yes Sir, winter of '41. Froze my arse off."

"More than that, ja? I was there, outside Leningrad. Later we were at Kharkov, we..."

"223rd Infantry Division?" The Feldgendarm took a guess, he had been in the 223rd.

"Yes, you?" Sauer asked, what were the odds of meeting someone from the old outfit.

"Jawohl! The very same! Back then I was an artilleryman, after losing two fingers and a large part of my left foot, they made me a cop."

"Ouch! Frostbite?"

"The fingers, yes, the foot was courtesy of a Russian mine. Lost the fingers in '41, messed up my foot in '42. Been in the Feldgendarmerie since then."

Apparently Sauer had a look of surprise on his face as the Feldgendarm continued, "Not all of us are assholes, Sir. Your papers? In case my lieutenant asks..."

"Certainly, Feldwebel...?"

"Brunner, Franz Brunner, Herr Leutnant. From Meissen."

"A pleasure Feldwebel Brunner." As he said this, Sauer handed over his paybook and the company's movement orders.

Brunner took them, after handing back Sauer's paybook, he looked hard at the company's orders, "Is this correct Sir, 5th Company, II Battalion, 294th Grenadier Regiment?"

"Yes, it is, why, is something wrong?" Sauer was a little alarmed, while Brunner seemed like a decent chap, the Feldgendarmerie lieutenant coming their way might not be.

"Brunner, Leutnant." The Feldgendarm Oberleutnant nodded to the two men, "Is there a problem Feldwebel?"

"Don't we have new orders for any units of the 294th Grenadier Regiment?" Brunner asked.

"Just the 2nd battalion of that regiment, why?"

Sauer spoke up, "Manfred Sauer, acting commander of the 5th Company of the II Battalion of the 294th Grenadiers. Is there a problem, Herr Oberleutnant?"

"Come with me Leutnant Sauer, there is no problem, but I do have new orders for your men. Have they detrained yet?"

"No Sir, I was hoping to find out what the new plan was, we were bound for Düren, but..."

"I know, the English terror bombers were very busy last night, all the lines through Köln are out right now. But you're not going to Düren just yet. Your entire battalion has been attached to the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division, they're at Euskirchen, reforming. I think we can get your train there tonight. But you'll have to wait here until dark."

"Here in the station?"

"No, no, there are still a few buildings nearby where your men can rest, get some food into them. Your battalion commander is in my office as we speak."

"Oberstleutnant Siegesmund? He's here?"

"Um, no, he's not your battalion commander anymore, he was arrested yesterday."

"Arrested?"

"He was caught on an eastbound train in civilian clothes, I assume he decided he'd had enough of the war."

"I had no idea..." Sauer didn't know the man very well, he had seemed, flighty. But now?

"Ah, here we are Sauer, my office, such as it is."

As the two men entered the battered building, the door was broken and most of the windows were boarded up, a man inside, sitting with his back to the door reading some papers, stood up.

Though the light was dim, there was something familiar about the officer, then Sauer noticed that the man had his right arm in a sling. The officer stepped forward, into the light.

"It took you long enough to get here, Leutnant." The man had a big smile on his face.

It was Jürgen von Lüttwitz.

Stavelot, Belgium - 1945
(Source)

"They sure beat the Hell out of this place, Sarge." Pfc. Franklin Barnett was looking at the ruins of the town of Stavelot. Snow-covered, very few buildings intact. Next to one building was a wrecked King Tiger.

"Well, those SS bastards came through here. Murdered a bunch of civilians, those who could get out fled west. Those that couldn't well, a lot of them died here. Women and kids too." Sgt. Stump Gentile was angry and saddened at the same time. He couldn't imagine the sort of soldier who would kill civilians. He resolved that no SS men would ever be captured by his squad.

"Any chance of us getting a beer while we're here, Sarge?" Pvt. Ken Buchanan, Barnett's assistant gunner, had asked the question. The B.A.R. team's ammunition bearer chimed in when he heard the word "beer."

"Yeah, how about that, Sarge?" Pvt. William Zerbst didn't look old enough to drink, Gentile doubted the kid had started to shave yet. All the guys in the squad called him "Baby," he looked so young.

Gentile came up short in his thoughts when he remembered, his squad was down to eight men. Word from headquarters was that they'd be getting replacements soon. Stump really hoped there were some veterans among them.


S/Sgt Jack Wilson, platoon sergeant for 2nd Platoon, and Sgt. Woodrow Sherman, the platoon guide, were standing in front of nineteen men. Wilson noted at least two noncoms, a sergeant and a corporal, the remainder were all privates. Too many looked too damned young, probably draftees to boot!

"All right, listen up! When I call your name, sound off with 'Here.' None of this 'yo' bullshit. You hear your name, you sing out with 'HERE!'"

"Cruz, Enrique!"

"HERE!"

"Ryan, Maurice!"

"HERE!"

"Kelley, Larry!"

"HERE!"

"Price, Arthur!"

"HERE!"

"Cortez, Ignacio!"

"HERE!"

"Schultz, Rick!"

"HERE!"

"Page, Billy!"

"HERE!"

"Gomez, Javier!"

"HERE!"

"Allen, Eric!"

"HERE!"

"McBride, Wayne!"

"HERE!"

"Higgins, Leon!"

"HERE!"

"Perkins, Kurt!"

"HERE!"

"Webb, Kenneth!"

"HERE!"

"Stanley, Rudy!"

"HERE!"

"Phillips, Randall!"

"HERE!"

"Fuller, Jonathan!"

"HERE!"

"Estrada, Juan!"

"HERE!"

"Holloway, Raymond!"

"YO!"

"What's that you f**king numbnuts?!!"

"Sorry Sarge. HERE!"

"Hawkins, Allan!"

"HERE!"

"Okay, you privates will follow Sgt. Sherman here. He'll get you assigned to your squads and get you some chow. He'll get you squared away, Sgt. Cruz, Cpl. Ryan, you come with me, I'll introduce you to the L.T., let's go people, we don't have all f**king day!"

The lower ranking men followed Sgt. Sherman, who actually marched them away, which surprised Wilson, he didn't know Sherman had it in him, but hey, it's still the Army, isn't it? Wilson chuckled as he watched the new guys move off.

"Sarge, Corporal, I gather you guys are returning from hospital?"

Sgt. Cruz answered first, "Trench foot in the Hürtgen, trust me, you don't want that."

Cpl. Ryan then chimed in, "Shrapnel, left leg. Also the Hürtgen. I'd like to say I'm glad to be back, even if it is 1st Battalion, but I'd be lying."

"All right then, glad you guys are here, we're short of experienced people. Let's go meet the L.T., name of Hernandez. Good man."

As the three men went up the street, Wilson had to wonder, how long would these new men last?





¹ Literally "chained dog" German military slang for the Feldgendarmerie.

Link to all of The Chant's fiction.

42 comments:

  1. Always feels terrible to see and hear of the destruction inflicted on the civilians, their cities, villages and farms. Bad enough the soldiers slaughtering each other...

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    1. Yup, the civilians always suffer in the theater of war.

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    2. What is weird about WWII, and WWI, is that, in comparison to many previous wars, civilian casualties were actually light, well, in comparison to the 30 years War or the English Civil War or the Albigensian Crusade...

      But, yes, civilians in a war area, not good.

      And that's something both WWI and WWII did. They expanded the reach of the war area to basically everywhere. Especially when some snodgrass does something underhanded like loading war supplies on a civilian liner...

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    3. Light as a percentage of population? Certainly not light in terms of numbers of deaths, 50 to 55 millions civilians died in WWII. That's deaths, not injuries and deaths.

      That's a lot. 30 Years War, in which a large percentage of people living in modern day Germany died, had no more than 8 million deaths, military and civilian. Percentage-wise, a lot, but more than WWII? I don't know...

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    4. Meant as an average across the population, not in total numbers.

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    5. I would still hesitate to call them "light."

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  2. When I was stationed on that reserve can in New York, the National Park Service was beginning to open Ellis Island as a museum.
    And in '76 I went through there on a tour.
    The last part of the tour was a role call, they asked you to write down your name, but they called out the names of the previous tour, and used what your group wrote down for the next tour.
    It was intended to give you the jarring feeling of multiple names called out in a language you might not be quite familiar with.
    Your role call brought back that memory, as well other times I have been standing in ranks.

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    1. Roll call was always interesting with a new sergeant or officer, especially in units with a lot of guys of Polish ancestry.

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    2. I actually got hired for a job, a phone message service, because I could pronounce Eastern European names. Weird job. Glad to not have to do that...

      "Dave's Direct Cremation and Burial, how may I help you?" Yeah, not a fun job sometimes...

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  3. One old name and a bunch of new names including Mr. YO! (always have to be one of them in every group). Ya......back then no Bobcats were around to pick debris, just people using shovels and hands.

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    1. I have been that guy on occasion.

      "Mr. Yo," I like it.

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  4. Assistance gunner. I am not the only victim of autocorrect!

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    Replies
    1. Nope, I made that mistake all by myself. Autocorrect has been disabled because my vocabulary is much larger than the Google's.

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    2. Yes, I find myself amongst the herd of people whose vocabulary is not MicroSerf approved...

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    3. (Don McCollor)...Bobcats were not appreciated even Golf War II. A friend in a Guard unit were told they were not authorized to take them. Right. They went into the boxes of their big dump trucks and were buried under supplies and equipment. One deployed, the powers that be: "those are real handy little things"...

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    4. Bureaucrats, they're everywhere...

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    5. Amanda Dragonimov loves her Bobcat.

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  5. Oh, that looks cold. And I confess, I've done my share of "Ho Yes!" "What?!?!" "Ho No! Ho I don't know!"

    I read a story of the German aviation industry. We'd bomb the factories during the day, the Brits would at night, and they still made things. Turns out a lot of that was cottage industry. They made sand cores for castings in houses and barns all around the town where the factories were. Short of a nuke, the wasn't any way to stop it. When I hear "terror bombers" or they "targeted civilians", I remember things like this. Every place they supported the war effort were targets.

    The Japanese bombed Oregon IIRC to start forest fires. There is a great video about DeWalt radial arm saws and how many were used in one place to make the parts to build barracks. The wood was a strategic resource, so it was on the table.

    vid: https://youtu.be/HiGH0Qsu3ak

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    1. As the war went on, more and more of German industry was displaced into smaller villages and towns.

      Wood is definitely a strategic resource.

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    2. At least one Japanese balloon bomb made its way to Nebraska.
      Frank

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    3. The way the wind blows out there I'm not surprised!

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    4. Cottage Industry was the excuse LeMay used to justify firebombing Japanese population centers.

      By '44, a lot of German industry was underground, either in tunnels or caves. Same with Japan, especially in final assembly.

      If either country had long ranging bombers, there would have been a massive shift of manufacturing to east of the Rockies and west of the Mississippi, or at least west of the Appalachians, though, come to think of it, a lot of manufacturing was already west of the Apps... But you get my drift. We didn't have to move things off the coast. We could afford to have shipyards not on the Great Lakes or high up the Mississippi or Columbia rivers, and aircraft factories in Los Angeles...

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    5. (Don McCollor)...We did have shipyards on the Great Lakes. Manitowa Michigan was building submarines and destroyer escorts. At head of navigation of the Mississippi, Cargill (a grain company) was building Navy tankers at Savage, Minnesota. All up the Illinois Ohio and Missouri rivers, small yards were building landing craft. All through the Midwest and West, small companies would build chunks of aircraft carrier and send them west to to the Kaiser yards at Vancouver. Six months before it had been a swamp. Now it had seven building ways, and they were launching an escort carrier every week for a year. Strangest of all was a shipyard in Denver, Colorado. Eight hundred miles from the sea and a mile above it building destroyer escorts. Shipped to the west coast. In pieces for final assembly to be welded together like a model kit...

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    6. The GATOS, and BALAOs made in Manitowoc were of such high quality, that they were known in the Fleet as Cadillac Boats.

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  6. Building up to the next "adventure"... glad to see Herr Major back, hope he survives, but as you say, it is in the hands of one of the Muses...

    one typo spotted - "the Feldgendarmerie lieutenant coming their way might not be." No "i" or second 'e' in leutnant, ja?

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  7. Never ever hide and run back to your own side if you're going AWOL. Sideways, or away from your homeland, yes. Idiot.

    Other than that, glad Herr Major is back. Though he can and will be a pain in our Americans' side, he'll treat his own troops with respect.

    Nice work on the chained-dogs. Being an MP has got to be one of the most miserable jobs in any military.

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  8. Nice to encounter the rare "good" Kettenhunden. Told ya Herr Major would be back, fracture or no. Hope this bodes well for them without boding evil for 2nd Plt.
    Boat Guy

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    1. One never knows which way the Muse will lean.

      (I sure don't!)

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  9. Yes, that roll call brought back memories! And I am suspecting that the AWOL Col will be facing a firing squad.

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    1. At this stage of the war, they were starting to hang deserters. No papers, military age? No trial, summary execution.

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    2. I read about a conscientious objector in the German army late in the war. He was so paranoid that he slept ON his rifle. One morning, it disappeared while he was on it. He couldn't find his rifle, was going to be punished (executed) and their group got surrounded just before he met his Maker. He was pretty thankful to be a PW. I didn't realize how crazy that period was. Your comments are eye opening.

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  10. Dang, there IS a tiger in the village!
    Great tidbit for the story!
    Your photo selections are really great!
    JB

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    1. I've been to Stavelot, the Tiger wasn't there anymore, but there was an American halftrack near the main bridge into town!

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  11. I am happy to see The Major back, even in such (what will be) a terrible time. I think he has quite become my favorite.

    Given any crowd, anywhere, there is always the "Yo-ster". Any crowd. And they are forever thinking they are original.

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    1. Heh, the "Yo-ster," I like it. I think one is issued to every unit.

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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