Brotherhood Of War: The Lieutenants Part 3

Marburg, one of the ancient university towns, was built up around the old castle which rose from the top of the rocky upcropping in the center of town. They were stopped by a Feldgendarmerie roadblock, and for a moment the Generalmajor wondered if he should have taken the Feldgendarmerie Oberstleutnant with him. Embarra.s.sing questions could be asked about the petrol and the food. He immediately decided he had made the right decision. The less the Feldgendarmerie knew about what he was doing with the information they had provided, the better. The Feldgendarmerie was entirely too cozy with the SS and the Gestapo. Tomorrow or the next day he would turn over what he had found to the Sicherheitsdienst, as a matter probably falling under their responsibility; but he would not let them know what the army was doing on its own about the situation.

They drove past Schloss Greiffenberg, which was several hundred meters off the road. Its-steep roofs were also painted with the Red Cross. The Schloss was serving as a neuropsychiatric rehabilitation center.

Three miles beyond the Schloss, they turned off the highway onto a fairly wide dirt road that cut through a pine forest. A mile down the road they came to a cottage. There was a bicycle chained to a steel fence in the stone wall around the cottage, and the tiny garage next to it was open, revealing a tiny two-seater Fiat inside.

"This is the place," the Generalmajor said, when it-seemed the driver was about to pa.s.s it up." The driver braked the car sharply.

"Help the lieutenant with the packages, and then put the gasoline out of sight in the garage," he said. "h.o.a.rding" of gasoline was a serious offense, even for a man like Greiffenberg.

"Jawohl. Herr Generalmajor." Colonel Graf von Greiffenberg came out from the cottage.

He was a tall gaunt man with wavy silver hair, who wore a shabby tweed jacket, plus fours from some prewar golf-course locker, and a faded cotton plaid s.h.i.+rt.

"The Generalmajor will forgive me," he said. "I was walking in the woods, and just this moment got home." Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg was not at all pleased with the Generalmajor's visit. He believed that it had nothing whatever to do with a discussion of any future command. He suspected that it had something to do with airing dirty linen, and he was not at all interested in that.

"I believe, Colonel," the Generalmajor said, "that convalescent officers are encouraged to play golf and other sports, which will hasten their return to full physical capacity."

"I have been poaching," the Graf said, "not golfing." The remark was a hair's breadth away from insolence.

"Any luck?" the Generalmajor asked with a smile.

"Yesterday and today," the Graf said, wondering what it was that had made him try to provoke a lifelong friend. Possibly, he thought, because he finds me dressed like a peasant and living in a forester's cottage.

"A boar yesterday," von Greiffenberg said, now smiling.

"For our lunch today. And a roebuck today. For tomorrow." The Graf's eyes fell on the sergeant, who was busy taking fuel cans from the trunk. "The Generalmajor is more than kind. I especially appreciate the petrol."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Colonel," the Generalmajor said. "Certainly you are aware of the regulations prohibiting the diversion of petrol to nonmilitary channels." A tall woman and a thin girl of about fifteen were now in the doorway of the cottage. The woman had been born a d.u.c.h.ess in what was once Petrograd. She had married a count. She carried herself like an aristocrat, the Generalmajor decided, but no one would have mistaken her for a d.u.c.h.ess. Her clothing was worn and faded, and she wore neither makeup nor jewelry except for a thin wedding band. The girl, who curtsied as the Generalmajor approached, looked more like a forester's daughter than the product of the union of two ancient and n.o.ble families.

"You are soon going to be quite as lovely as your mother," the Generalmajor said. He bowed and kissed the woman's hand. "Elizabeth, you are as lovely as ever."

"Welcome, Herr Generalmajor, to our forester's cabin," the woman said. She spoke in Russian. "Ilse and I have gardening. Carrots and cabbage. No roses."

"Better times will come," the Generalmajor said. "We must believe that, mustn't we?"

"As we devoutly believe in the final victory," she said, with exquisite sarcasm. The Generalmajor thought that Greiffenberg was wise to keep his wife here in the country. She was 'unable to conceal that she held the n.a.z.is in nearly as much scorn as' she held the communists of her homeland.

"I must, I'm afraid, Frederika, pa.s.s up the great pleasure of your company at lunch," the Generalmajor said. "I must speak privately with Peter-Paul."

"Have you a command for him?" Frederika, Grafin von Greiffenberg asked.

"Not quite yet," the Generalmajor said. "The hospital has not seen fit to declare him fit for field service. But I need him to do an errand for me."

"Isle," the Gratin said to the young girl. "Would you please remove two place settings from the table? And then you and I will take a walk in the woods."

"I am grateful for your understanding," the Generalmajor said.

"I am grateful that you are not sending my husband back to Russia," the Grafin replied, somewhat icily. "Perhaps there will be time for a gla.s.s of wine together.

"Of course," the Generalmajor said.

When the wine had been drunk, and the loin of roast boar put onto the table, and the Grafin, and her daughter had left, the Generalmajor decided that he would eat his lunch in peace before opening the briefcase and talking business. What was in the briefcase would ruin anyone's lunch.

(Six) Near Szczecin (Stettin) Poland 15 April 1943 There were still patches of unmelted snow here and there on the ground, and it was cold in the rear seat of the Feisler Storche, but the sun was s.h.i.+ning brightly, and it was evident that spring would soon bring green to the brown land.

Colonel Graf von Greiffenberg was in pain. His shattered knee hurt from the vibration of the four-hour- flight in the small airplane. They had refueled in Leipzig after taking off from the Luftwaffe's fighter plane airstrip in Marburg an der Lahn. Because he had been badly frostbitten in Russia, his toes, fingers, ears, and nose ached-in spite of his woolen socks and gloves and the woolen m.u.f.fler wrapped around his head. From time to time s.h.i.+vers of pain swept through his body as if his fingers were broken.

He had waited all the previous day for the two Storches to show up. There had been some problem getting two of them at once. When they did finally shown up in Marburg just before dark, he had decided to wait until the following morning to leave. It was a question of his getting where he was going without problems. It would have been foolhardy to make the flight at night, although the pilots, two boys who looked as if they should still be in a Gymnasium someplace, were disappointed at his decision.

Their orders, marked SECRET, directed them to pick up the colonel in two airplanes, and fly him and anyone else he so designated anywhere he desired within lands controlled by the German state. Since they thought that what they were up to was quite different from the facts, they were eager to get at it.

They had taken off from the fighter base at Marburg, which was a one runway affair, built right down the center of what once had been a 160 hectare cornfield. This had been von Greiffenberg land, "rented" to the Luftwaffe for "the duration." Their destination in northern Poland Was another fighter strip laid down on what, too, had once been a field owned by a landed member of the aristocracy.

As they approached the field, the colonel saw the stalag next to it. It contained a barracks, and to judge by the line of one-story stables off to one side, a cavalry barracks. There didn't seem to be an artillery park, so it must have been a cavalry barracks. It had once housed, perhaps, some of the Poles who had been sent out to challenge Panzerkampfwagen lIs and Ills with sabers and glistening lances.

It was now a prisoner-of-war camp, Stalag XVII-B, surrounded by barbed wire, guardhouses, and probably, von Greiffenberg thought, a minefield. They had captured vast quant.i.ties of Russian and English mines early in the war, and there had been a period of madness when any flat surface which even remotely could pose a threat to the security of the, German Army had been mined.

The pilot of the Storche was. unable to establish radio contact with the field, so they flew over it once, to let them know they had arrived, and then landed. A bored junior Luftwaffe officer swaggered out to the Storche, then saw the colonel's insignia on yon Greiffenberg's greatcoat, and snapped to attention.

The colonel, once a car had been arranged for him, gave the senior of the two boy pilots .their ultimate destination and told him to prepare the most careful possible flight plan-with alternate landing fields and refueling sites. The second pa.s.senger must not be endangered in any way, von Greiffenberg told him.

He showed the major commanding the fighter strip enough of his orders to impress him with the fact that he was traveling with the highest priority under .the authority of the Oberkommando of the Wehnnacht. And then he went out to the POW compound, taking a strange pleasure in seeing that he was right. It had been a cavalry barracks. G.o.d, what a b.l.o.o.d.y shame, those horses! Some of the finest in Europe! Slaughtered senselessly.

The stalag commander was an elderly lieutenant-colonel of infantry; his uniform carried wound stripes from World War I. A decent chap, yon Greiffenberg decided on the spot, given this duty because he was too old for any other.

"How may I be of service to the Herr Oberst Graf?"

Von Greiffenberg produced his orders.

"I wish to confer with Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bellmon," yon Greiffenberg announced. "I may take him off your hands for a few days." That roused the commandant's curiosity, but he was a soldier of the old school. He would ask no questions. If he was to have an explanation beyond the official orders, it would be given to him.

"I'll send for him. And may I offer the Herr Oberst Graf a brandy and something to eat while he is waiting?"

"Yes, please," yon Greiffenberg said. "And bring enough to serve Colonel Bellmon, too, if you would be so kind." While he was waiting, yon Greiffenberg left the food untouched-a plate of cold cuts, bread, and what looked like real b.u.t.ter; but he helped himself twice to the French brandy, wondering idly where the commandant had gotten it. The early days of the war, when there had been a good deal of French wine and perfume available to the services, were long over.

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bellmon marched in, wearing a faded tanker jacket and woolen olive-drab pants. He stopped before the desk and saluted.

"Lieutenant Colonel Bellmon reporting to the Herr Oberst as directed, sir." His German was fluent. He was a fine-looking officer, von Greiffenberg thought.

"I'm comfortable in English, Colonel," Colonel Graf von Greiffehberg said. "But please don't take that as a reflection upon your German. It's quite good."

"I have been working on it rather hard, Herr Oberst," Bellmon continued in German. "There isn't much else to do here."

"I daresay not," Von Greiffenberg said, in English. He unfastened the lower right-hand pocket of his tunic and took from it an envelope and handed it to Bellmon without explanation. Bellmon opened the small envelope and took a picture from it. It was of the Colonel Graf von Greiffenberg as a young cavalry officer. He held a child, a girl most likely, of about eighteen months in his arms, beaming down at her with pure delight.

Bellmon looked at it, then at von Greiffenberg, and then started to hand it back.

"You don't recognize the lady, Colonel Bellmon?" von Greiffenberg asked. "I rather hoped you would."

Bellmon looked at the picture again without-Recognition, and shook his head. "Sorry," he said. "Never saw her before."

"You are married to the lady, Colonel," von Greiffenberg said. "That is Barbara Dianne Waterford Bellmon at age sixteen months."

Bellmon looked again. Now there was no question about it. The baby had Barbara's eyes. He looked at von Greiffenberg for an explanation.

"It was taken at Samur, the French cavalry school," von Greiffenberg said, "by, I recall, your mother-in-law. Your father-in-law was at the time-as he did frequently----cooking beefsteaks over an open fire. The usual result was meat charred on the outside, raw inside, and generally inedible. This never discouraged him in the least." Bellmon had to smile, although in the back of his mind there was a feeling that he had best be very careful dealing with this man..

"I am sorry, Colonel," Bellman said. "But I don't recall my father-in-law ever mentioning your name."

"We last exchanged 'Christmas greetings in 1940," the colonel said. "After that, obviously, it was awkward."

"What is it you want of me, Colonel?" Bellmon asked.

"I had hoped to find that you were the sort of officer who does not hate his enemy," von Greiffenberg said. "Who is aware that there are some events which transcend the war immediately at hand. And I hoped that -you would believe that despite our present situation, I regard Porky Waterford as a dear friend and colleague, and I dare to presume he feels the same way about me."

"I regret the war, of course," Bellmon said. "But I must in honesty tell you that 1 believe the government which you serve is morally reprehensible."

Von Greiffenberg neither reacted to that nor seemed even to hear it.

"Colonel, it has come to the attention of the High Command that the Soviets, in the Katyn Forest, near Smolensk, executed approximately five thousand Polish officers and cadets, who were their prisoners, and buried them in a ma.s.s, unmarked grave." Bellmon didn't reply. It sounded like something from a propaganda movie. But Colonel von Greiffenberg was real.

And unless he had lost all powers of judgment, he knew von Greiffenberg was dead earnest, not at all the sort of man who would be capable of invoking an old friends.h.i.+p for some propaganda gimmick. Bellmon looked at van Greiffenberg and waited for him to continue.

The colonel opened his briefcases and placed thirty or more large photographs on the desk and then, next to them, he laid out corroded and rotting insignia, identification papers, tailor's labels, the evidence that had been turned over to him in the forester's cottage outside Marburg.

"Identification of the remains is, underway," von Greiffenberg said. "So far we have positively identified the remains of two general officers, sixty-one Colonels, large numbers of other grades, and more than 150 officer cadets. Each was shot in the back of the head with a .32 caliber pistol. And each had, his hands bound behind him at the time."

"Forgive me, Colonel," Bellmon said, trying very hard to keep his voice under control, "but how do I know this atrocity took place under the Russians?"

"At the site, at this moment, are fourteen forensic scientists, all from neutral countries. They are prepared to give their professional judgment as to how long the prisoners have been dead. Even given the widest lat.i.tude so far as the date of death is concerned, there is absolutely no possibility that German forces could have been involved. During the time of the atrocity, Soviet forces, and Soviet forces alone, held the area."

"Doubtless, you will make these facts known, via the International Red Cross, and other agencies."

"And doubtless, our accusations will be rejected as anti-Soviet propaganda," von Greiffenberg said.

"And that's where I come in?" Bellmon asked.

"I rather doubt that even you, Colonel Bellmon, would be believed outside the military establishment," von Greiffenberg said. "Our thinking is this. The honor of the German officer corps is involved. We want a member of the American officer corps, the son of a general, the son-in-law of a general, a man likely himself to become a general officer, to see this outrage with his own eyes. To spare him, if you like, from having to decide from secondhand information whether or not this is anti-Soviet propaganda."

"To what end?" Bellmon asked.

"That should be obvious," von Greiffenberg said. "What I would like from you, Colonel, what I beg of you, is your parole for whatever time it takes us to fly to Katyn, which is near Smolensk. There you will confer with the neutral physicians and scientists on the scene and then return here."

"If you're going to win the war, what difference does it make?" Bellmon asked.

Von Greiffenberg paused a long moment before replying.

"When we Win the war, Colonel, I shall take great pleasure in bringing the barbarians who did this terrible thing to justice."

"But there is the possibility, which you must consider by now, that the war is lost," Bellmon said. "Is that it?"

"As a loyal officer, of course, I believe in the final victory" Von Greiffenberg said.

"You understand, of course," Bellmon said, "that I could not make any statements of any kind so long as I'm a prisoner."

"Naturally. not," von Greiffenberg-said. "However, it is our routine practice to exchange the severely wounded and the dying, and routine practice to a.s.sign several officer prisoners to accompany the wounded and dying."

"If I go along, you're offering to have me exchanged?" He wondered if he was being bribed.

"It would be in our interests to do so," von Greiffenberg said. "And in yours. Should you become convinced this was a Soviet atrocity, as I believe you will by the evidence, you will then be in great danger should the fortunes of war see you come into Soviet hands."

"I'm sure you have considered the possibility that. I would accept the offer to be exchanged, and then accuse your side," Bellmon said.

"The evidence is irrefutable," Von Greiffenberg said. "And furthermore, Colonel Bellmon, I believe you to be an officer and a gentleman."

I am being soft-soaped, Bellmon thought. But then, he thought, what possible harm could it do? "Very well," Bellmon said. "I will give you my parole.

When do we leave?"

"Immediately."

(Seven) Stalag XVII -B, Stettin 11 October 1944 There had been Christmas packages from the Red Cross. By some fluke in the distribution-system, they had arrived In Stettin, in northwest Poland, a week after they had come into German hands in Sweden. The commandant had agreed to Issue them immediately. There would be powdered coffee (real coffee ) and chocolate and gloves and handkerchiefs and paperback copies of Ernest Hemingway novels. There was no sense in putting the packages into a warehouse for issue on Christmas Day: Christmas Day here would be 25 December 1944, no different at all from 24 December and 26 December, just one more day in a former cavalry barracks in northwest Poland.

Bellmon had made the decision that he would drink his powdered coffee full strength, black. He would not, drink it all at once, but save it for when he really wanted a cup of coffee, and then have a real cup of coffee, strong and black. He would not try to stretch it, to make it last longer. He would have as many cups of strong coffee as there were in the tin, whenever he wanted one, and then he would do without.

He had never felt quite so alone, quite so fearful for his sanity.

Eighteen months had pa.s.sed since his trip to the Katyn forest. During that time there had been thirty-one letters from Barbara, single sheets of paper which folded to make a self-contained envelope. Some of these had arrived out of sequence, and none had arrived on any sort of predictable schedule. He had once gone five months without any letters at all.

He kept the letters in a Dutch Masters cigar box on the table beside his bed. The cigars had come without explanation six months before, half a box for each officer. Before the cigars had come, he had kept Barbara's letters wrapped up in a sweater.

Bellmon was executive officer of the prisoner staff. The senior prisoner was an infantry full colonel who had never served in the infantry. He was a professor of art history at the University of Wisconsin who had been commissioned as a military government officer, and who had been captured in Italy. He was not a soldier, although he wanted to behave like one, and he vacillated between relief that he had a professional soldier on whom to rely for decisions, and presentiment toward Bellmon, based on the fact that Bellmon's competence pointed out his own incompetence.

Bellmon had not told the colonel about Katyn, and he had not told him about the package he kept hidden within the thin cotton mattress on his bed. The package, according to a letter from Colonel Count Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg, contained twenty-four eight-by-:ten-inch photographs of the horrors of Katyn. Others showed Bellmon at the site with the neutral forensic experts. It also contained identification papers, letters, and insignia taken from the corpses. It was sealed with a wax seal of the Oberkommando of the Wehrmacht, and beneath a sheet of acetate was a letter on OKW stationery, signed by Generaloberst Ha.s.so von Manteuffel, stating that the package was in the possession of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bellmon, United States Army, by direction of the OKW, and that it was neither to be examined, nor taken from him~ by any member of the German military or security forces for any reason. The letter bore the seals of both the OKW and the SS. Belmont could not read the signature of the SS official.

He was clearly being used by the Germans. And he bad been tempted, more than once, to throw the package into the small cast-iron stove, to remove any suggestion at all that he was offering aid and comfort to the enemy.

But there was no question in his mind that the Soviet secret police, with the full support of the Red Army, had in fact taken 5,000 captured Polish officers-among them at least 25Q cadets, some of whom were no older than fourteen-tied their hands behind their back, forced them to lie in open trenches, and then shot each of them in the back of the neck with a small caliber pistol.

There was no question in his mind, either, after seeing this atrocity with his own eyes, that at Katyn he had become one with Colonel von Greiffenberg and other Germans like him, and that now the Russian ally had' become~ his enemy. Sure, war by its very nature was obscene, and there were atrocities on battlefields. He'd heard about those all his life, and he'd seen some in North Africa. Indeed, he had expected to be shot, instead of taken prisoner, when they got his tank.

But that was the battlefield. What the Russians had done was barbaric beyond understanding. They had decided to subdue the Poles for the future by wiping out their leaders, young and old, even their chaplains. Bellmon had identified with the dead Poles. Many of them wore cavalry boots. They were cavalry officers, captured probably as he had been, without real fault of their own. Because they had been taught to expect it, they would have expected the treatment required by the Geneva Convention. Instead, they had been slaughtered like cattle.

At first, he had told himself that when he was exchanged, as Colonel von Greiffenberg said he would be, he would wait thirty days to regain control of his emotions and of his ability to think clearly and objectively, before he turned the package over to the proper authorities.

But then it had become apparent that he was not to be exchanged. He didn't understand why, and there Were fifty possibilities. But he had come to accept that he was not going to be exchanged, that there would not be thirty days' liberation leave to spend with Barbara in Carmel, at least not until the war was over. He had no idea what had kept him from being exchanged as yon Greiffenberg had promised; but he sensed, somehow, that it had nothing to do with the German officer. As executive officer of the prisoner staff he was ex-officio chairman of the escape committee. The escape committee was brave, enthusiastic, imaginative, and in Bellmon's professional judgment, incredibly stupid. There was no way that they could get out of Poland, much less out of German-occupied Europe.

There was no underground here who could help them, as there was supposed to be in France. That was the primary reason the Stalag had been established in Poland. The Germans were not fools.