Brotherhood Of War: The Lieutenants Part 2

Father McGrory took a long time to reply.

"Are you sure you want to, Barbara?" he asked, finally.

"What else should I do?" she replied. "Sit around here and have hysterics?" Fighting back the tears, she walked" across the living room and down the corridor to the front door and outside. She looked up at the flag, and went to the pole and lowered it to half-mast.

Then she looked up at it. She leaned her forehead against the flagpole, and fought back the urge to weep.

"What the h.e.l.l am I doing?" she asked aloud, pus.h.i.+ng herself erect. "I'll believe he's dead when I see his casket, and not before." Then she ran the flag all the way back up the pole again.

She wept a little later that day, with Mrs. Sanchez, but that was for Mrs. Sanchez, not for Bob or herself. She didn't weep again, not that evening at dinner, looking at her mother's face, nor that night, when she went to bed, nor the next morning when she woke up early and lay in bed and told herself that the way the army worked, the odds were that Bob really had bought the farm, and the only reason they hadn't come out and said so was because they hadn't found his body. And that meant that this was the first day of her life that she could remember that Bob wasn't going to be around.

She wept ten days later when they called from the Western Union office and said they had a telegram for her, and did she want them to read it to her. She knew what it would be, and she didn't want to hear it read over the phone, so she said she would be in the village and would pick it up herself. After she wept, she got dressed and drove the old Ford convertible into the village and picked up the yellow envelope in the Western Union office and carded it out to the car to read it.

WAR DEPARTMENT WAs.h.i.+NGTON DC.

MRS. BARBARA BELLMON CASA MANANA CARMEL, CALIFORNIA.

A LIST FURNISHED BY THE GERMAN AUTHORITIES VIA THE INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS STATES THAT LT COL ROBERT F. BELLMON, 0-348808, IS A PRISONER OF WAR. NO CONFIRMATION IS AVAILABLE, NOR IS ANY OTHER INFORMATION OF ANY KIND AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY NOTIFIED IN THE EVENT ANY INFORMATION DOES BECOME AVAILABLE.

INFORMATION REGARDING PRISONERS OF WAR GENERALLY IS A V AILABLE FROM THE PERSONNEL OFFICER OF ANY MILIT AR Y CAMP POST OR STATION. FOR YOUR INFORMATION, THE CLOSEST MILITARY INSTALLATION TO YOUR HOME IS: HUNTER-LIGGETI MILITARY RESERVATION, CALIFORNIA.

YOU MIGHT ALSO WISH TO MAKE CONTACT WITH THE PENINSULA INTERSERVICE OFFICERS LADIES a.s.sOCIATION, PO BOX 34, CARMEL, CALIFORNIA. THIS UNOFFICIAL GROUP OFFERS ADVICE AND - SOME FINANCIAL a.s.sISTANCE IF REQ~ED.

EDWARD F. WITZELL MAJOR GENERAL THE ADJUTANT GENERAL.

When she learned Bob was alive, then she let it out, right there in the car, and then she went home-and told her mother that it would be all over Carmel that she'd been on a crying jag, right downtown.

(Four) Bizerte, Tunisia 9 March 1943 The POW enclosure had its prisoners under canvas, much of it American, captured during the German offensive. The enlisted men were separated from the officers, and the company grade officers were separated from the field grade.

The squad tent in which Major Robert Bellmon was housed also held a lieutenant colonel of the Quartermaster Corps" who had been captured while looking for a place to put his ration and clothing dump, and an artillery major who had been captured while serving as a forward observer.

They had been treated well, so far, and fed with captured American rations. The camp was surrounded by coiled barbed wire, called concertina, and wooden guard towers in which machine guns had been mounted. There was no possibility of escape for the moment.

A Wehrmacht captain, accompanied by a sergeant, walked up to Bellmon's tent and called his name.

"Yes?" Bellmon replied. He looked up from the GI cot on which he sat, but did not rise.

"Come with me, please, Herr Major," the captain, a middle-aged man wearing gla.s.ses, said in thickly accented English.

He gestured with his hand. Bellmon walked out of the tent. The QM light bird and the artillery major looked at him quizzically. Bellmon shook his shoulders. He had no more idea of what was going on than they did.

The German sergeant took up a position behind him, and Bellmon followed the captain across the compound and through a gate. It had been cold the night before, but now, just before noon, the sun had come out, and it was actually warmer outside than it had been in the tent.

He was led to the prison compound office, a sunlit comer of a single-story building within the outer ring of barbed wire of the prison enclosure, and separated from the prisoner area by a double ring of barbed wire.

"The major. wishes to see you," the captain said, pus.h.i.+ng open a door and motioning Bellmon through it.

Bellmon was faced with a question of protocol. The code of military courtesy provides that salutes be exchanged between junior and senior officers, even when one is a prisoner of the other. For the life of him, he could not recall what was expected of him, in his prisoner status, when reporting to a German major. In the American army, he would not have saluted another major. He decided that if it was good enough for the U. S. Army, it was good enough for where he was now.

He marched up to the desk, and stood at attention, but-did not salute. If he were British, Bellmon thought, he could have stamped his foot as a sort of signal that he was now present as ordered.

The major. behind the desk was an older version of the lieutenant who had stuck the captured .45 in his face the day he was captured. A good-looking, fair-skinned blond German, very military in appearance, very self-confident: The German officer looked up at Bellmon, smiled, and touched his hand to his eyebrow in a very sloppy salute. There was nothing to do but return it. The German smiled at him.

"Major Robert Bellmon," Bellmon said. "0-348808. 17 August 1917. " Name, rank, serial number, and date of birth, as required by the Geneva Convention.

"Yes, I know, Herr Oberstleutnant," the German major said.

"Won't you please sit down?" He indicated a folding chair.

Bellmon recognized it as American. So was the bottle of bourbon on the major's desk.

"I have some pleasant news for you," the German major said. "Herr Oberstleutnant."

"My rank is major," Bellmon said.

"That's my pleasant news, Herr Oberstleutnant," the major, said, and he slid a mimeographed sheet across the desk to Bellmon. It could easily be a forgery, but it looked perfectly authentic. It was a paragraph extracted from a general order of Western Task Force, and it announced the promotion of Major Robert F. Bellmon, Armor (1st Lt, RA), to the grade of Lieutenant Colonel, Army of the United States, effective 16 February 1943-the day before he was captured.

"And I have these for you, as well," the major said. He opened a drawer in the desk and took from it a small sheet of cardboard, to which two silver oak leaves were pinned. The name of the manufacturer was printed on the face of the card.

The insignia were American.

"Thank you," Bellmon said. "May I have this as well?" he asked, indicating the promotion orders.

"Certainly," the major said. As Bellmon folded them up and put them in the breast pocket of his newly issued-Olive drab s.h.i.+rt, the major poured whiskey into two gla.s.ses. He handed one to Bellmon. Another problem of protocol, Bellmon thought. 'Is accepting a gla.s.s of captured whiskey from an enemy who has just presented me with a light bird' s leaf and the orders to go wit-h it considered trafficking with the enemy?

"I don't normally drink at this hour," Bellmon said.

"A promotion is a special occasion," the German said. "No matter what the hour or the circ.u.mstances." Bellmon picked up the gla.s.s and drank from it.

"Congratulations, Herr Oberstleutnant," the major said, raising his gla.s.s. "Danke schon, Herr Major," Bellmon said. His German was fluent.

"You will be given an extra POW postcard," the major said.

"I've sent for one. I'm sure General Waterford will be pleased to learn that you know of your promotion."

"Bellmon," Bellmon said. "Lieutenant Colonel. 0-348808. 17 August 1917." He said it with a smile, but it reminded the major that he was not going to discuss anything that could possibly be of use to the enemy.

"While this is technically an interrogation, Herr Oberstleutnant," the major said, tolerantly, "I really am not trying to cleverly get you to reveal military secrets."

"I'm sure you're not," Bellmon said, pleasantly sarcastic.

"No, I'm serious," the major said. "We know most of the things about you that we try to find out. You're an academy graduate, seventeenth in your cla.s.s, of 1939. Your father was Major General Bellmon. You are married to Brigadier General Peterson K. Waterford's daughter Barbara." Bellmon just looked at him and smiled. The major took a copy of the U.S. Army Registry and laid it on the table. Bellmon smiled wider.

"And we know where General Waterford is," the major said.

"I'm sure you do." Bellmon suddenly thought that if he was seeking information, he would have said where General Waterford was to get confirmation, or simply to check his reaction.

"And I really think, Herr Oberstleutnant," the major went on. "That I know more of the present order of battle than you do. You were captured during the fluid phase of the battle, and couldn't possibly know how things stand now."

"Even if I were not bound by regulation and the Geneva Convention," Bellmon said, "and could talk freely, I rather, doubt there is anything of value I could tell you."

"Probably not," the major said. "Front-line soldiers either know very little of interest to their interrogators, or have entirely the wrong idea of what's really going on." What he's trying to do, Bellmon decided, is lull me into making some kind of slip. But what he says is true. I don't know any more about the order of battle of the II U.S. Corps than a cook in a rifle company.

"But just between us, Colonel," the major went on. "What do you think of we Germans, now that we have met on the field of battle?" Bellmon didn't reply.

"Certainly someone who speaks German as well as you do can't believe we're savages?" d.a.m.n it, why did I speak German.

"Not all of you, certainly," he said, in English.

"Some of us, you will doubtless be surprised to learn, are civilized to the point where we scrupulously obey the Geneva Convention," the major said. "And adhere rigidly to the standard of conduct expected of officers."

"I'm very glad to hear that," Bellmon said.

"Rank has its privileges," the major said, "even in confinement. You will be flown to Italy, and possibly all the way to Germany. Majors and below are sent by s.h.i.+p."

"I see," Bellmon said, with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

He had had a desperate hope that the Americans would counterattack, and that he would be freed.

"We make a real effort to insure that once senior professional officers are out of the war, they stay out of the war," the major said. "You can conscript soldiers. Staff officers and battalion commanders cannot be trained in six months."

"I have to agree with your reasoning," Bellman said.

A sergeant knocked, was told to enter, and laid a POW postcard on the major's desk. The major took a fountain pen from his tunic and handed it to Bellmon. There was s.p.a.ce for name, rank, serial number, and a twenty-word message, one blank line provided for each word.

Bellmon filled it in, addressed it to Barbara Bellmon in Carmel, California, had a moment's painful mental image of the house there, and then wrote his message: "Alive, well, uninjured. Kiss the children. I love you. Bob." He wondered when he would see them again. He capped, the fountain pen and handed it and the card to the major.

"Thank you," he said.

"My pleasure, Herr Oberstleutnant," the major said. He put out his hand. "Good luck, and may we meet again under different circ.u.mstances." Bellmon took his hand. He told himself that if the circ.u.mstances were reversed, he hoped that he would behave as the major had behaved toward him: correct, and compa.s.sionate.

He realized he had been dismissed. Thirty minutes later, he realized that he had given the enemy information. He had confirmed that he was indeed Porky Waterford's son-in-law.

He should not have gone even that far. He didn't know how they could use that information, how valuable it was to them, but he knew he should not have handed it to them on a platter the way he had.

(Five) Friedberg, Hesse 12 April 1943 The bunker had been excavated under the castle at Friedberg, which stands at the crest of the ring of low mountains ringing the resort of Bad Nauheim, thirty-five, miles north of Frankfurt am Main, in Hesse. The excavation had been conducted with the secrecy and the disregard of costs a.s.sociated with anything that had Adolph Hitler's personal attention.

The bunker itself was beneath at least twenty feet of granite, and where there had been an insufficient layer of granite, reinforced concrete had been poured to provide the required protection. Siemens had installed an enormous communications switchboard, which provided nearly instantaneous telephone, radio-telephone, and teletype communication with Berlin and the various major commands in the East, West, the Balkans, and North Africa.

A battalion of the Leibstandarte Adolph Hitler, augmented by a reserve regiment of Pomeranian infantry and a regiment of Luftwaffe antiaircraft artillery, provided security.

Camouflage netting, placed twenty feet off the ground in the thick groves of pine which surrounded Schloss Friedberg, concealed the fleet of cars and trucks necessary to support a major headquarters. It was changed to reflect the coloring of the seasons. The Fuhrer's train, when he was present, was protected from either view or a.s.sault by a concrete revetment, long enough to contain. both his train and one other.

The bunker itself was an underground office building, four stories deep; access was by stairs for the workers and a private elevator for the senior officers. The Fuhrer today was in Rastenburg, in East Prussia, so there was an acrid cloud of cigarette smoke throughout the bunker. When the Fuhrer was in the bunker, smoking was forbidden.

The lieutenant colonel of the Feldgendannerie, a portly, balding middle-aged officer, delivered his report to the generalmajor with a.s.surance. He had been a policeman all his life, and thus trained to present facts-separate from conclusions and theory-to his superiors.

The Generalmajor, who was a.s.sistant to the chief of the Politico-military Affairs Division, asked several questions, all intelligent ones, and carefully examined the physical evidence which the Oberstleutnant of the Feldgendannerie had brought in two bulging briefcases from Smolensk.

There were b.u.t.tons from Polish Army uniforms; regimental crests; insignia of rank; identification papers; labels from uniforms bearing addresses of tailors in Warsaw; and a half-inch thick sheath of photographs of bodies, open graves, and close-ups of entrance and exit wounds in skulls.

"There is no question in your mind, I gather, Herr Oberstleutnant, of what happened here?"

"There is no question at all." The unspoken question was whether the SS could possibly have been involved. Both of them knew that the SS was entirely capable of an atrocity like this one. The unspoken question continued unspoken.

"If you will be good enough to wait for me, Herr Ooerstleutnant," the Generalmajor said, "Perhaps we can arrange to route you via Dresden on your way back."

"I am at the Herr Generalmajor's pleasure," the portly policeman in uniform said.

The Generalmajor walked out of his concrete office, down a flight of stairs, and presented himself to a Generaloberst in his slightly larger office.

"I have the full report, Herr General," he said. "Together with some insignia taken from the bodies." The colonel Generaloberst stopped him, with a wave of his hand, from opening his briefcase.

"Has intelligence come up with the name of someone who can handle this matter?"

"Von Greiffenberg," the Generalmajor said. "For the moment, he's the only one readily available. He's on convalescent leave."

"And is he physically able to undertake the journey?"

"Yes, sir."

"His wife is a member of the Russian n.o.bility," the colonel general said. "It will be suggested that he would believe the communists to be capable of anything."

"He was at Samur with General Waterford. It is considered important that Lieutenant Colonel Bellmon voluntarily inspect the site." The Generaloberst shrugged. "What do you need from me?" he asked.

"Travel doc.u.ments, and authority to take the American from the stalag."

"And if he won't give his parole?" the colonel general asked.

But even as he asked it, he pushed a b.u.t.ton which summoned a badly scarred Oberstleutnant, who stood at the door at attention. "The general will tell you what he must have," the Generaloberst said. "See that he has it, please." He dropped his eyes to the doc.u.ments on his desk, and then raised them.

"Let me know what happens, will You?" he asked, politely.

The Generalmajor clicked his heels, walked out Of the office, and picked up the telephone on the Oberstleutnant's desk.

"Would you get me, on this number, Colonel von Greiffenberg at his home in Marburg, please?" he said, and then hung up and told the Oberstleutnant what he was going to need in the way of transportation, money, doc.u.mentation, and supplies.

While the necessary arrangements were being made, the telephone rang. The operator reported that the Colonel Graf von Greiffenberg was not available, but that he had Frau Grafin on the line.

"My dear Frederika," the Generalmajor said, in Russian, which caused the badly scarred Oberstleutnant to raise his eyebrows. "Would you be so good as to tell the Graf that I would be very grateful to be received by him at half past two?"

The Mercedes was crowded. There were four flat-sided cans of gasoline in the trunk, filling it, and two more on the floorboard in the back seat. The fumes filled the car, whose canvas roof was up, and this made smoking impossible. There was salami and a half dozen tins of b.u.t.ter, captured from the English, and four cartons of American cigarettes. The Generalmajor's aide-de-camp rode in the back with the groceries under his feet and the cigarettes, wrapped in gray paper, on his lap.

The Generalmajor rode in front beside the driver.

They drove north from Freidberg on the road through Bad Nauheim which took them past the rear of the Kurhotels that faced the large munic.i.p.al park. In the old days, a Kur had meant bathing in the waters of Bad Nauheim and taking a saltfree diet. Now the Kur was for convalescent wounded. The roofs of the Kurhotels, small Victorian-era structures, were now painted with the Red Cross, and the streets and the park were full of soldiers, some ambulatory patients, some pushed in wheelchairs.

They entered upon the autobahn at Bad Nauheim, and drove fifteen miles until they turned off onto another country road-sometimes cobblestone, sometimes macadam. This took them through Giessen. From Giessen, they followed the Lahn River to Marburg an der Lahn and drove to the center of town.