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Praetorium Honoris

Thursday, April 8, 2021

"Diehards"

(Source)

"Hold it Brad, something ain't right." Sgt. Melvin Katz had seen something which seemed out of place. As S/Sgt Brad Woodstock's tank rolled to a stop, Katz had his field glasses out.

On either side of the road he had seen brush and early spring foliage as expected, but something on the right side of the road seemed, he wasn't really sure, odd. Then he spotted it, pine boughs which seemed to grow out of the ground, rather than from a tree. Someone had gotten lazy in their camouflaging efforts.

"Ya see it?" Katz had pointed out the anomaly to Woodstock, who decided that a little reconnaissance by fire was in order.

"Mark, we've got HE loaded, right?"

The loader, Pfc. Mark Workman, responded in the affirmative, as he said that, the gunner, Sgt. Jerry Parsons, already had the turret slewing to the odd pine boughs planted in the earth. "We're on target, Brad."

"Fire! Load HE."

"HE up!"

"Fire!"

Woodstock and Katz were both glassing the area of the anomaly. The first round had gone a bit high, the second was on target. Katz swore he saw something fly into the air which looked a lot like a human arm, seconds later he and Woodstock saw a man in a greatcoat come staggering out of the smoke.

A short burst from the bow machine gun knocked that man to the ground. Katz had his squad dismounted and in a skirmish line shortly thereafter. Carefully they advanced as Woodstock's tank covered them.


Volkssturmmann¹ Peter Bach lay shivering at the bottom of the trench he had helped dig. He wasn't cold, he was wounded and in shock. He had seen his friend Walter Busch blown to pieces and another man in his unit unwisely stand up and try to get away. Machine gun fire from an American tank had cut him down.

He could hear people advancing on his position as his hearing started to return. He tried to get up but a shooting pain from his groin convinced him to hold still. Looking down he could see that his trousers were soaked with blood. He remembered the first war, one of his comrades had been emasculated by a French grenade, the man had begged to be shot.

Bach now understood why the man had begged for a bullet. It hurt beyond belief.

Bach looked up, saw a man looking down at him, rifle at the ready. He thought, "So that's what the Americans look like..." Then he reached for his rifle.


Pfc. Bogdan Nowak looked down at the badly wounded German. The man seemed far too old to be a soldier. Nowak noted the bloody trousers and was wondering if he should call the medic up. Nowak was a Pole, it was his natural inclination to hate Germans. Why not let the poor bastard bleed out?

When the German reached for his rifle, Nowak thought briefly about shooting the man. But why bother? The man's rifle was ruined, the barrel bent enough that attempting to fire a round would just cause the weapon to blow up in the man's face. If it fired at all. So Nowak decided to wait. If the old German pointed the thing at him, then he'd shoot.


Bach's hand reached out and he felt the stock of his rifle, then he realized that there was no way the thing would fire, so he let his hand drop. He heard the man standing over him sigh and then yell something over his shoulder in a language Bach didn't understand.


Doc Milbury spent no more than a few minutes trying to patch the old German up, then he turned to Sgt. Katz and shook his head.

Katz knelt down next to the German and said a few words in German to the man. The old German nodded his head, then closed his eyes. In seconds he was dead.


Zugführer² Oswald Hirsch watched from cover some 40 meters away from where his men had been manning a trench. He noticed that one of the Americans had looked at the lone survivor of his small squad, then had seen that man shake his head and stand up.

Were they not going to treat his wounded man?

Hirsch had not been with his men, he had stepped back into the woods to relieve himself, he had seen the tank fire and destroy his position and the men manning it. He felt like a complete failure. His job had been to block this road, or at least slow the American advance. He supposed that he had slowed them, by about 15 minutes.


Pfc. Alex Boone was off to one side of the road, well clear of the men and tanks near the road.  As he was scanned the brush to the rear of the German trench, he swore he saw a man there. He yelled out, "Man in the woods, to your front!"

The squad went to cover and trained their rifles towards the brush that was situated some 50 yards behind the German trench. No one could see anything, it seemed that Boone had a better view. Sgt. Katz yelled towards the wood.

"Wir wissen, dass Sie da sind, kommen Sie jetzt raus oder wir schießen!³"

Moments later a rifle came flying out of the woods, followed by a feeble voice yelling, "No kill, I am out coming!"

Out of the brush, hands extended as far into the air as he could manage, was an old man with snow white hair. He was not wearing anything on his head other than a thick bandage wrapped around the top of his head which extended down around his neck. One eye was nearly swollen shut and the left side of the bandage was brown with old blood.

"Do you speak English?" Katz yelled at him.

"Ja, yes, a little, I vas school teacher before ze war."

"What are you doing here Grandfather?" Katz inquired.

"The SS came to ze village, told us fight, or die. So we fight, but I sink we die anyway." The old man nodded at the trench and the bodies of his men as he said that.

"Doc, check him out, then get him to the rear. Jesus, one minute we're killing them, the next we're trying to save them." Katz was shaking his head as he walked back to Woodstock's tank.

1st Lt. Hernandez and his command group were on the scene moments after two men had escorted the old man to the rear, after Doc Milbury had dressed the man's wound and rewrapped his head.

"More diehards Cat?" Hernandez said as he looked around.

"Yeah, L.T. the poor bastards died hard all right. If we'd waited a day or so they would've died of old age." Katz said as he remounted Woodstock's tank. "Shall we press on, Sir?"

Hernandez looked in the trench, dead old men in worn uniforms, why won't those Nazi bastards surrender, he asked himself. Looking up at Katz he yelled, "Yup, move out, Cpt. Palminteri says take it slow, take no chances, you got that?"

"Got it Sir."

Turning to his radioman, Cpl. John Myerson, Hernandez said, "If we have to kill every old man in Germany, every boy, and every SS bastard to get you guys home, f**k it, I'll do it."

Myerson nodded, he watched the second tank roll by then told his lieutenant, "We're okay with that Sir. They started this shit, we'll finish it."


In one day and three weeks, Adolf Hitler will kill himself. The Third Reich will survive him by eight days...




¹ Volkssturm equivalent of a Private.
² Volkssturm equivalent of a Lieutenant.
³ We know you are there, come out now or we shoot.

Link to all of the Chant's fiction.

50 comments:

  1. Man you would think any rational German would know by the time you’ve got to draft old men and boys it’s over.

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    1. There were no rational Germans in the government.

      Kinda like now.

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  2. When I saw that rank Zugfuhrer I assumed it meant a locomotive engineer 😁

    I was wondering what he was doing out in the field 😁

    Zug = train fuhrer = leader

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    1. Zug also means platoon.

      Lokomotivführer is closer to what you were thinking.

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  3. I had the same thought as William. Guess that comes from knowing enough German "to be dangerous".
    The Americans are rightfully weary yet committed; you gotta drive on and through. No wonder so few of them would talk about any of this - except those few pleasant and light moments.
    Boat Guy

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    1. They just want it to be finished so they can go home. Many Germans are starting to feel that way as well.

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    2. Tis the way of war. One of my boss's boss loved reminiscing about rolling white phosphorus grenades downhill in Vietnam. Loved the beauty of the boom and the sparkly stuff, the way it would set vegetation on fire, stuff like that. That's all he'd talk about.

      And you see it in Civil War letters, They'll talk about the wounds, the land, marching, the bad food, etc. But very few wrote about the killing. They'd write about the fighting in grand manner but not about the killing.

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  4. Which is a roundabout way of saying,Sarge; that you've captured those feelings and the reasons for them exceptionally well.
    BG

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  5. Interesting article at the Source for that photo, reflects that German obsession for record keeping even during Götterdämmerung. Today's post really conveys the futility of the waning days of the war and as a guy made me grimace reading about Bach.

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    1. Some interesting weapons in that article as well.

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    2. Interesting indeed. The numbers do tell the story; they're down 5-6 figures worth of 98k's? You have in fact LOST at that point.
      The modified Sten was noteworthy.
      BG

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    3. Yes, that modified Sten caught my eye as well.

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    4. Very interesting that though the Germans reduced the cost of production of their 'Sten,' they still improved the design. Even in late term defeat, they're still searching for perfection.

      And it's interesting that the Volks rifles have the 10 round mag that many in the Heer wanted on new rifles. Very interesting. Wonder how they shot?

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    5. So does an AK, but if it's rough and it works, well, that's what matters. Still probably better than the Zip-22.

      Obligatory link to 'Forgotten Weapons' video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9bULArrKs4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3fd4goVs-4

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  6. Had the honor of having several conversations with a British sniper from WWII who told me many good stories. He said at this stage in the war, they never knew if the village they were about to enter was occupied by villagers who were relieved to be 'liberated' or Hiltlerjugend or committed Vollsturm who would fight like corners cats. Anecdotally, it was on a recce of such a village that he spied a pretty young German girl that he ended up marrying (three times, actually, since the bureaucrats kept changing the rules for marrying German nationals).
    Hope our guys can hang in there another month!!

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    1. That pretty much tells the story of April 1945: will they fight or have they already quit?

      Most have quit, but all it takes is a few who want to go down fighting to make things dangerous as Hell.

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  7. As we get closer to the end I think about the 300 or so Americans who died in the first war between 0600 when the coming end was announced and 1100 hrs when it actually happened. Victims of leaders who wanted more war...

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    1. A name to remember. The last American to die in WWI.

      And another. The last American to die in WWII.

      Delete
    2. Heh. Scrolling down on the WWII story, saw a suspicious fin and odd-top of fuselage and said to myself, "Beans, must be a B-32." And it was.

      Otherwise, yes, die-hards almost screwed it up for everyone. Sucky to die after surrender.

      Now I'm wondering when the cut-off for 'death by die-hard/peeved surrendered enemy' is? Were these two the actual 'last' deaths or was this some administrative stroke of the pen?

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    3. I'm sure there were more casualties after the war had officially ended. Especially in the Pacific!

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    4. "Hey, Hank just got shot and died!"

      Shoeclerk checks watch and calendar, "Oh, first death of the Occupation."

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    5. Rob I recently read a great book on that - 10,000 allied soldiers died between the signing of the Armistice and 1100. Some American commanders refused to send their men "over the top" and risk court martial - but there was no retribution. The Germans were disbelieving.

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    6. Gotta watch out for the glory hounds.

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  8. One or two men can make a difference. Far more often, they just die when confronted by a squad or platoon of trained infantry or militia (see Selco's writing on the Bosnian War). I'm old enough to think I would know the difference between a glorious death with Valhalla following or would it just be a useless death? My late father-in-law (Johnny) would gladly tell stories of the rare but fun/funny times while walking across France/Belgium/Germany, but it was only thrice he revealed the moments that continued to haunt him; frozen bodies laying in the snow in Belgium, a German patrol passing a few paces in front of him while he hid in a patch of stinging nettles, the time he lost his rifle and his prisoner picked it up and handed it back to him. He would smile and appear somewhat smug when he would tell how Stateside his platoon would make fun of his Cajun accent right up until they realized (in France) he could translate between his platoon buddies and the local mademoiselles. I miss the guy and I wish he had been willing to share more; at the same time I can understand he preferred to lock it away and not examine his experiences. - Barry

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    1. My two uncles were much the same. They'd tell me the funny stories, and nothing else.

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  9. I sympathize with the Volksturm. Old guys and pensioners, set to fight and die just to slow the advance.

    And then I look around, and think, gee, we're all potential Volkssturm in the coming storm. Sad, maudlin thoughts these days.

    They wiped out their children, their child-bearing males, their Opas and the walking wounded. Weird to think that Germany's Best Hope for recovery are all the prisoners in the hands of the Western Allies. And I wonder how many of those prisoners and survivors were thinking "Why should I ever have children, the State will just throw them away in 20-30 years?"

    Good thing it's warm outside, else the chilly thoughts would freeze.

    Good, as in excellent darkness, story as usual. Your Muse seems to have gotten over her blankness.

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    1. Well...yes and no Beans; 60 these days isn't exactly like 60 then, at least where I live. Plenty of active and fit folks, many of whom are hunters and shooters.
      Boat Guy

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    2. Beans, your first two sentences reflect my thoughts exactly...
      -Barry

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    3. Yeah. As the Intrepid Reporter said a while ago, when Serbian War Criminal (his words, not mine) starts getting scared, well, that says it all.

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    4. BG - Back then 60 was like, old. Nowadays not so much. (I tell myself as I approach 68...)

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  10. Charles Coolidge has passed away.
    Frank

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    1. Dusty in here. No. Not dusty, I'm outright crying for the loss of such a soul. The world is slightly less shiny now.

      Godspeed, good Sir.

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    2. Seems to get less shiny every day...

      Just saying.

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  11. I wonder in this time frame how many Heer units were still actively fighting?

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    1. There were still a lot of units in the field, but they were vastly understrength and under-equipped.

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  12. I remember once at chez Lex, one commenter asked if it was ever OK to lie, cheat or steal. It was remarkable to me how many said there was never any reason to do any of that.

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    1. That was a stellar group of people, I miss that.

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  13. Literally scraping the bottom of the barrel to delay - if even slightly - the inevitable.

    It easy to be a spendthrift with the lives of others when it is your own hide.

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  14. When you are coming across abandoned towns that are defended by kids and old man, war is definitely nearing its violent end. I wonder how long those situations were happening, when was the German Army on the run?

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    1. In many cases they had nowhere to run, so large portions of the Army were surrendering in the West by the spring of 1945. In the East? Not so much, the Soviets weren't as merciful.

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