The Innocents

(Source)

Pvt. Jack Magruder rushed into the Charlie Company CP and looked around frantically. There were two other men in the room of the small farmhouse in the Harz Mountains. 1st Lt. Nathan Paddock, C Company's Executive Officer, and Pfc. Santos Clarke, the company orderly. They were going over some of the endless paperwork necessary to keep an army functioning in the field.

Paddock looked up, "Private Magruder, is there a problem?"

"Sir, is the Captain around?" Magruder panted as if he'd run a mile before showing up at the CP. Which he almost had.

"No, he's up with 3rd Platoon. Best tell me what's going on." Paddock was a little impatient, Magruder was a green recruit, a volunteer, not a draftee, and was prone to excitability.

"Sir, 2nd Platoon has found some sort of prison camp. Not soldiers but foreign civilians, a lot of 'em from Poland according to Lieutenant Hernandez. Seems they're slaves or something. Lieutenant Hernandez sent me to tell the Captain. I ran the whole way Sir!" Magruder was starting to catch his breath, he had been a track man in high school after all, as he liked to tell people.

"Slaves?" Paddock stood up to grab his helmet, web gear, and carbine.

"That's what Pfc. Nowak called 'em. The guys he talked to said that very word in Polish. There aren't any guards, but there are quite a few dead prisoners in the camp. The other prisoners said that the SS shot a bunch of people yesterday, then they took off to the east." Magruder was obviously worked up over what he'd seen and what he'd been told.

"Santos, get me a jeep and a driver, Jack, you'll come with me."

"Of course Sir."

The jeep rolled up to a small town, which had a medium size prisoner enclosure built nearby. T/5 Leo Ramsey, the company armorer, was driving the jeep and Pvt. Albert Samson, another of the company messengers, like Magruder, was providing security. Paddock saw 1st Lt. Hernandez with one of his men speaking with an emaciated-looking  man wearing the striped clothing of a prisoner.

Hernandez turned as Paddock came up, "Nate, you remember Pfc. Nowak, right?"

"Sure do, how are things Bogdan?"

"Very good Sir. This man," he nodded to the prisoner, "is Władysław Kaminski. He's one of the slave laborers at a factory near here, an underground factory, which makes parts for German aircraft."

Paddock nodded to the man and offered his hand, the two men shook hands and then Paddock turned to Hernandez, "This is a pretty big deal, isn't it Stephen?"

"Yeah, we've heard of places like this, where the Nazis work people to death. According to Mr. Kaminski, there were five hundred men and women working here as late as five days ago. Then two days ago, the SS marched two hundred of them to the east, the relatively healthy ones I gather, the remaining guards shot the rest, then headed east. Mr. Kaminski and about thirty others were on a work detail away from the camp."

"So they weren't caught up in the evacuation and the executions, lucky for them." Paddock said. "Were there SS men guarding them?"

Nowak turned to Kaminski, after a brief exchange in Polish, Nowak said, "There were five Volkssturm and one SS man guarding them. They overpowered the SS man, the Volkssturm ran away. They returned here this morning and found the others had been slaughtered or had left. One of the women the SS shot, lived long enough to tell them what had happened."

"Jesus..." Was all Paddock could say.

Sgt. Charlie Gammell's 3rd Squad was providing security for Doc Milbury inside the camp. There were over a hundred dead lying against the side of one long barracks. The men in 3rd Squad were stunned at the brutality of what had happened here.

Doc was treating a few of the survivors of the party which had been away from the camp when the atrocity had occurred. Most of what he was seeing was malnutrition and exhaustion. Two of the men he'd looked at wouldn't have lasted much longer without treatment, he and Gammell had been on the radio arranging transportation to get the survivors to the rear.

"These folks need food and rest. I can treat their physical wounds but..." Doc said.

"Yeah, their eyes look haunted, most of 'em have that thousand yard stare, they've seen too much for too long." Then speaking into his walkie-talkie, Gammell inquired, "Any word on transport Jake?" He listened for a moment then said, "Copy, out."

Turning to Pvt. Jesse Noble, Gammell said, "Jess, go tell the L.T. that battalion is sending trucks up to evacuate these folks. Ask him what our next move is..."

Twenty miles away a column of bedraggled and exhausted slave laborers were struggling to keep pace with their SS guards. Occasional shots would ring out as yet another exhausted prisoner fell to the ground only to be shot by one of the guards.

The commander of the guards, an SS-Obersturmführer,¹ needed to keep the prisoners moving. He only had twenty men to guard two hundred plus prisoners. If the guarded became aware of the weakness of those guarding them, they might, in desperation, try to overwhelm the guard force.

So they kept marching down the road which led east, out of the mountains. But as the terrain leveled out, the road became more exposed. The last thing Odo Schäfner wanted was to be spotted in the open by Allied aircraft. This far behind the lines there would be no mistaking the column for Allied soldiers. They would be a target. He wasn't in the least worried about the prisoners, whether they all lived or died. He was, however, worried about his own skin at this point in the war.

Schäfner was already looking into attaining a set of false papers, he had no illusions that Germany could still win the war. He would abandon the prisoners and his own men at the first available opportunity.

(Source)

Flying Officer Nigel Williams and Pilot Officer Jimmie Macallum were not flying their usual mount, their kite was laid up, as Macallum put it, with a malfunctioning radar. As night ops were becoming scarce, the Luftwaffe had trouble getting any sorties into the air these days, so Williams had volunteered them for day missions. As opposition was nearly non-existent, Macallum hadn't protested.

Much.

"Nigel, old boy, you're so keen to pitch in, I understand that, but to drag your poor crew mate with you, that's just not sporting old chum." Macallum had looked askance at his pilot as they had taxied out for the day's hop, a reconnaissance flight over the Harz Mountains.

"After all sport, isn't the Harz in the Yanks' backyard?" Macallum had added.

"Well it is, but all their efforts are being expended in the Ruhr pocket, blowing up the silly buggers who are too dim to surrender. So we're pitching in, helping our valiant cousins as it were. Besides, a flight is a flight is a flight. We haven't had one in a week. Don't want you getting stale now do we old chum?" Williams explained.

His pilot could be bloody insufferable at times, Macallum thought as he shifted in his seat. It was then that he noticed something up ahead on the road.

"Hello, what's this? We might have some trade up ahead, Nigel!"

Schäfner cringed as he looked up to see the twin engine aircraft come booming over, powerful piston engines roaring. He could tell by the roundels on the wings and fuselage that it was an Englishman.

"Get into cover, keep the prisoners in the road!!" Schäfner bellowed at his men. Let the Tommies shoot up the prisoners, he didn't care. But he still needed his men. At least until he could make his escape.

"Did ya see that Jimmie? Looked like prisoners in striped clothing. Concentration camp inmates maybe? Being evacuated to the east d'ya think?" Williams said all that while banking the Mossie around to have another pass.

"I think you're right Nigel. Looked like guards along the edge of the road. You're not going to strafe them are you?" Macallum didn't like the idea of harming the downtrodden slaves of the Nazis. They'd been briefed on the camps which had been liberated, it made Macallum hate the Nazis all the more.

"Heavens no old boy, I don't want to take a chance on harming the good guys. Maybe strafe down the side of the road, scare the buggers, maybe they'll run off and leave the prisoners. I don't feel right not doing something!" Williams was lined up now, his cannon fire would hit well to the right of the road, far enough from the prisoners but sending a message to the guards.

"You're mad Nigel, you've gone 'round the bend."

Schäfner stood well back from the road, he was watching the British aircraft coming in, low and fast. If they strafed the road, he was safe. Then he had a thought, the aircraft seemed too wide to hit the road, what were those winking lights on the nose?

That was the last thought to go through SS-Obersturmführer Odo Schäfner's head as the Mosquito's 20mm cannons ripped a line in the earth some twenty meters to the right of the road, precisely where Schäfner was standing.

The other guards ran into the woods when they realized that the aircraft was coming back. The one sergeant present tried to get the Latvian SS guards to stand, but to no avail.

As the slave laborers mobbed him, he realized, far too late, that he should have run as well.

1st Lt. Hernandez was getting his men up onto S/Sgt. Woodstock's tanks, Cpt. Palminteri had briefed him over the radio of a report, from a British aircraft, of slave laborers streaming down the road back towards the camp. With the tanks were ten trucks which Palminteri had commandeered from the Supply folks, with the blessing of Major Josephson at battalion, to bring the prisoners back to American lines.

Hernandez and 2nd Platoon were to get the prisoners aboard the trucks and send them back, then probe forward until they hit resistance. Reports from their sister regiment, the 18th, were that resistance was starting to crumble, though the 18th had had a lot more fighting than their own regiment the 26th, in the Harz, things were getting easier.

As easy as war ever gets, Hernandez thought.

"Let's move out Brad, we're on a mission of mercy this time!"

S/Sgt Brad Woodstock ordered his tanks forward, turning to Hernandez, again riding the platoon leader's tank, "Be nice to help people, instead of killing 'em, for a change."

Hernandez nodded and said, "Amen to that brother..."

¹ First Lieutenant

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