Fox On The Rhine (42 page)

Meanwhile, Patton was insisting that, if Third Army was supplied with fuel, he could seize a long stretch of the Westwall before the Germans could fortify their border. History has shown his claims to be correct, but for a variety of reasons Eisenhower decided not to allocate the supplies to his volatile armor commander.

Instead, Ike determined that the Allies should approach Germany along a broad front, with the British in the north, and two American army groups pressing forward across the bulk of the approaches--General Patch’s Seventh Army having come up from Marseilles to come into the line on Patton’s right. Finally, the First Free French army, under General de Lattre, came into being and filled the southern part of the line, including the Vosges Mountains down to the border with Switzerland.

As desperately needed supplies were still being brought over the beaches in Normandy, Montgomery proposed a massive airborne attack, intended to carry his own army group across the Rhine and into Germany. Ike wisely declined to authorize this attack, which under Rommel’s program of vigorous reinforcement would almost certainly have been a debacle. Instead, Monty’s forces were charged with a vigorous campaign to open the approaches to Antwerp. They faced fanatical Nazi resistance, especially on Walcheren Island, at the mouth of the Scheldt, but slowly the key port was opened to the Allied supply fleets.

As a consequence, the major Allied attack was brought to bear against the German city of Aachen, a key link in the Westwall. Thousands of men gave their lives as First Army slowly, deliberately clawed its way through the fortifications, though throughout October Rommel’s defenders managed to cling to the heart of the city itself.

Patton, meanwhile, had become embroiled in his own meat grinder, the heavily fortified medieval city of Metz. Division after division was fed into the gory maw of this rugged river town, and yet the Germans stubbornly refused to yield, or to allow themselves to become encircled.

At the same time, the Western Allies could only watch in impotence as Soviet forces rolled into Norway and Greece in the wake of retreating Nazis. Though the peoples of both countries resisted the new conquerors with the same determination with which they had faced the Germans, there was no stopping the implacable advance of Stalin’s hordes. Lacking sea power, and now facing vigorous Allied naval interdiction, the Russians were nevertheless able to use their land armies to gain utter control of both countries. The incursion, of course, was aided--particularly in Greece--by Communist elements that had formed part of the resistance to the German occupation, and were now all too willing to welcome their Soviet benefactors.

In the meantime, the changing situation in Europe created some alterations in strategy in the Pacific War. The combined chiefs of staff in the US and UK both perceived the danger of a major setback in France, and as a consequence were reluctant to allocate any more resources to the effort against Japan. With some reluctance, however, the landings on Pelelieu, which were intended to secure a base for the subsequent invasion of the Philippines, were allowed to proceed on schedule.

The resultant, and horrifying, losses from this offensive were enough to convince the joint chiefs, supported by the president, to cancel the impending liberation of the Philippines. General MacArthur’s objections to this change in strategy became so vociferous that President Roosevelt was left with no choice but to remove the controversial general from his theater command.

Finally, major naval resources were dispatched from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Admiral Halsey’s Third Fleet was recalled from the western Pacific. After a brief stopover in Hawaii, this massive conglomeration of aircraft carriers and battleships made for the Panama Canal, intended to reinforce the US Army’s efforts on the European mainland.

October-November 1944

Associated Press Bureau Offices, Fleet Street, London, England, 22 October 1944, 0800 hours GMT

For Chuck Porter, the worst thing about a late fall Atlantic Ocean voyage was neither the seasickness nor the fear of U-boats. It was being cut off from his continual news fix. He hated being out of touch, hated not having his finger on the pulse of the military and political worlds. There was the shipboard radio, of course, but the periodic static-filled news broadcasts were hardly a substitute for the bank of teletypes delivering raw news information in a constant stream.

His ship, the S.S.
America
, docked on Saturday. After debarkation and customs he caught a train to Victoria Station in London, checked into his hotel, and promptly fell asleep, the stillness of the bed perversely feeling like motion after the long days in the rolling Atlantic. He thought about playing tourist on Sunday and even went out, but the dreary wet weather drove him into the nearest pub, and he holed up for the rest of the day watching locals play darts. He wasn’t much good at the game, but he held his own with beer.

Monday morning, his head ached from lager and travel; his mouth was dry and pasty. A good way to start a new assignment, he thought. He hailed a black London taxicab, not yet feeling stable enough to try navigating the Tube (though he was an expert on the New York subway system), and leaned back as the taxi threaded its way through increasingly narrow London streets toward the AP bureau office.

The office was located on the second floor of a nondescript building in Fleet Street, the heart of the newspaper district. The chattering of Teletypes and clouds of cigarette smoke told him he was in the right place even before he saw the name on the door. There was a small entry way guarded by an ancient-looking harridan with her hair in a severe bun and an overflowing ashtray on a desk piled with papers. A long ash dangled precariously from her current cigarette.

“Chuck Porter, from New York,” he introduced himself.

She looked him up and down with critical eyes, as if he were some bum from the gutter--or some colonial refugee, he supposed.

“I’m the acting Paris bureau chief,” he added after a pause.

She kept staring. Finally, she yelled, “Percy! Some gent from New York,” then turned back to her typewriter, the ash grown longer.

From the din in the inner office emerged a short, balding man wearing an unbuttoned vest over a white shirt, necktie knot loose and collar gaping underneath. A stain of blue ink leaked through a shirt pocket with three fountain pens. “Porter? Name’s Percy McCulley. Bureau chief, don’t you know. So, you’re to reopen the Paris office, eh? Fresh from New York, you say? Bad day to arrive, isn’t it?” His talking speed was so fast and his British accent was so thick that Porter had trouble following it.

“Bad day?”

“Yes--but then you haven’t heard, have you? Of course--no way you could have heard--goodness, Porter, it’s busy enough without all this--guess you’ll wish you were back in New York for this story!” McCulley was moving as he talked and Porter, his raincoat flapping, pushed his way through the crowded newsroom, straining to make out about every third word. Big news? he wondered, his mind racing through myriad possibilities.

A knot of reporters clustered around the Teletype, reading the news as it sputtered out line by line.
Just like home
, Porter thought. He picked up the clipboard that contained the Teletype material that had already come off the machine, skimming it to bring himself up to speed quickly. And then he slowed down as he saw the headline.

FLASH/BULLETIN
HAVANA, 22 OCTOBER, 0100 EST
COPY 01 ENTERPRISE SUNK IN U-BOAT AMBUSH
DISTRIBUTION: ALL STATIONS

HAVANA, 22 OCTOBER (AP) BY JAY WILLIS

A SHIFT IN MILITARY POSITIONING TO RESPOND TO THE SOVIET BETRAYAL TURNED INTO A MAJOR DISASTER LAST NIGHT ADMIRAL HALSEY. BRINGING THE THIRD FLEET THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL TO REINFORCE ALLIED NAVAL OPERATIONS IN THE ATLANTIC AND MEDITERRANEAN, WAS AMBUSHED BY A U-BOAT WOLF PACK IN THE CARIBBEAN SEA.

THE CARRIER ENTERPRISE WAS LOST WITH OVER 1,500 CREWMEN, INCLUDING ADMIRAL HALSEY. OTHER NAVAL LOSSES ARE REPORTED HEAVY, WITH INFORMATION STILL POURING IN.

THE NAVY REPORTS THAT SEVERAL U-BOATS HAVE BEEN SUNK BUT THAT AN UNKNOWN NUMBER OF ENEMY SUBMARINES ESCAPED.

“ALTHOUGH THIS IS A TERRIBLE TRAGEDY.” REPORTED THE SECRETARY OF WAR, “IT IS ONLY A TEMPORARY SETBACK IN OUR CRUSADE TOWARD INEVITABLE VICTORY, FIRST IN EUROPE, AND THEN IN THE PACIFIC ... “

MORE
AP-HAV-387509-WQ/102244

“Goddamn,” he breathed. This was big news, and for once New York would be busier than London. And just after I transferred, he thought, annoyed.

“Bloody hell goddamn,” agreed McCulley. “Been a busy week, what?”

Porter shook his head. This was why he hated being away from the newsroom even for a day, much less weeks. What else was going on? He kept the clipboard as he followed McCulley back through the crowded newsroom.

The “Paris Bureau” would be in London for the next few weeks as he got everything organized before moving across the Channel. He needed to establish his team, get his sources straight, then move to Paris and up toward the front. He hadn’t been in Europe for years. For the time being, he might even get to do some reporting again. The thought pleased him--bureau chief salary and reporter’s work. An ideal combination.

He could tell which desk was his--it was the temporarily clean one. Old, battered, coffee rings and cigarette bums, God only knew what sort of gunk and mold lurked in the crevasses of the drawers, but it was his. He’d been a reporter long enough to check out the chair before he sat down. Sure enough, as soon as his predecessor had left, the other reporters had raided everything that worked. The chair was missing two casters.
You don’t have to be a vulture to be a reporter, but it helps
, Porter mused.

“Here, I’ll get you a chair that works,” McCulley said, pulling the old chair away and stealing a working chair from a reporter who was out on assignment. “This’ll do. I’ll have the old one fixed as soon as I can. Of course, the Lord only knows how long that’ll be. Here, now. Safe as houses. All comfy, just like home. Here, I’d better replace that typewriter as well. Besides, you’ll be reading for a while, won’t you, then? War moves whether you’re available or not, don’t it? Bloody inconvenient, what?”

“Bloody hell inconvenient,” Porter agreed. He sat down to read.

He’d grabbed a few newspapers when he got off the ship, and a few more in Victoria Station, but the English press had a pretty poor reputation outside of the Times and the Guardian, plus what with censorship he didn’t trust anything they reported anyway.

The wire service material was all fresh and uncensored, at least until it went through editorial before going out to the clients. He and the other editors played a constant game with military censorship, trying to slip good stories through while still staying on the good side of the government. And, he remembered, there wasn’t a First Amendment in Great Britain. “Bloody hell inconvenient, what?” he murmured to himself in a phony English accent as he put his feet up on his semi-new desk.

There wasn’t much new on the German-Soviet armistice story, though Porter suspected that there was still a tremendous amount going on behind the scenes. The American reds and pinks had made numerous excuses for the Commie pull-out from the war, even suggesting that there had been a behind-the-scenes deal between Roosevelt and Churchill to invade the Soviet Union and tear down Communism. But anti-Communist feeling in the United States had raged forth. There had been a few riots where American Reds had been beaten by mobs. Even Eugene V. Debs had come out publicly to denounce the Soviet move.
Doesn’t look good for World Communism
, Porter thought. Like a lot of urban Americans his age, he’d attended a party meeting or two, flirted with Marxism (and the freethinking girls at the meetings) a bit, but had put it aside.

The big story--at least until the Enterprise disaster--seemed to be Aachen and Metz. Rommel’s counterpunch had slowed Patton’s lightning march through France briefly, then it was hell for leather, with the Allies chasing the Nazis all the way back to the Westwall. General Hodges’s First Army had nearly pushed the Germans out of Aachen, but then the news stories had been saying he’d “nearly” cleared out the city for over a month now.

And Patton was still bogged down in Metz, taking heavy losses in men. Porter followed the details of Patton’s campaign much more closely, flipping through page after page of Teletype paper. While Hodges and the First Army might be strategically important, Patton always made the best copy, no matter what he was doing. His drive across France had restored some of the luster Patton had lost in Sicily in the famous “soldier-slapping” incident. Now, however, his reputation was being tarnished in Metz. There had been lots of casualties already, and new divisions were being assigned to the operation, including one that had served under Patton during the Cobra breakout. Metz was a meat grinder, no doubt, and Porter was sure that Rommel, the Desert Fox, was at work.

That was a great story: the ultimate rematch of the war. Patton vs. Rommel. It sounded like a title fight, the tough-but-tarnished good guy up against the noble villain for the heavyweight championship of the world. He liked a story with a clear dramatic thrust, and he was already rehearsing phrases and angles. It was only the morning of his first working day in London, and he was ready to go. He looked at the team of reporters, each working on his own stories. Time for an editorial conference, and then to work. He lit a cigarette in anticipation before calling his first meeting.

Reichstag, Berlin, Germany, 25 October 1944, 1550 hours GMT

“Come in, General Galland,” purred Heinrich Himmler, leaning back in his chair so that his face was covered with shadow. “I’ve been reading your reports on the Me-262 program. Excellent work. Your group has been consistently ahead of schedule. One day I must come to see one of your hangars. Herr Speer tells me they are a sight to behold.”

“Yes, Führer” replied the Luftwaffe commander, taking his cap and placing it under his arm. “It’s always interesting to be there when someone sees the underground excavation for the first time. Even when you’re told how big it is, it just doesn’t penetrate until you see it for yourself.”

“Well then, I shall certainly come at my very earliest opportunity,” said Himmler. He looked down at the papers on his desk and picked up one sheet with a gesture that was oddly dainty. “But I gather that with all your successes, you continue to report one problem.”

“Yes, Führer” Galland shook his head. “All the technology in the world means nothing without the fuels. We’ve been running on less than ten percent of the fuel we need--and that’s the minimum level. It doesn’t matter how brave our pilots or how superior our aircraft. Without fuel, all this is a waste.” Himmler nodded in return, then tilted his hands together under his chin. “Every day a line of people come to visit me, and the one thing they all plead for is more fuel, more fuel. Each need is real, of course, but priorities must be set.”

Galland’s shoulders drooped slightly. He expected yet another “no” answer; that’s all he’d gotten for weeks and months, but without a “yes,” he was helpless.

But then the Führer leaned forward. “Without recapturing air superiority, at least for a period of time, there is little chance of getting the fuel stocks we need. So I have decided that all the output of the synthetic fuels plants will be diverted to Luftwaffe needs. Your job is to plan a raid so huge, so utterly devastating, that you can shut down the Allied bombing campaign, at least for a time. Can you do it?”

“Can I?” Galland’s eyes brightened. “With the new jet fighters, I can tear them apart as long as there is a supply of fuel.” Then he paused. “You said, for a time?”

“Yes, for a time. Your mission will be to interdict the Allied bombing campaign. On the ground, the mission will be somewhat different. You see, I know where there is a virtually unlimited supply of fuel.”

“Where?” asked Galland.

“In the stockpiles of the Allies,” replied the Führer.

Nineteenth Armored Division Headquarters Building, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, 30 October 1944, 1447 hours GMT

Colonel Frank Ballard was supposed to use a cane for the next month, but he could walk well without it. Besides, what he always liked best about tanks was that you didn’t have to do a lot of walking. The jeep pulled up in front of the building in Luxembourg City that had been commandeered as division HQ, and he stepped out quite steadily, only using the cane for a moment to steady himself on the downward movement. “Here you are, sir,” said the driver.

“Thanks, corporal,” Ballard said, before striding confidently through the door. The last time he’d seen the Nineteenth, it had been dying around him, but now it looked almost back to normal. The staff was busy, but the men stopped working long enough to offer a hearty round of applause to their returning tank commander. The MP grinned and said, “Welcome back, Colonel. The general is in his office.”

Ballard walked inside, conscious of his gait, wanting to look as healed as possible. Another lesson from his boxing days: don’t let ’em know how much it hurts. He swung his cane jauntily, even though he could feel the lance of pain each time his leg came down on the concrete floor.

“Frank! I’m glad you’re back!” Henry Wakefield roared in his deep voice, obviously delighted to see his returning officer. “How’s the leg? More to the point, how were the Paris nurses?”

“The leg reaches all the way to the ground, General,” replied the lieutenant colonel with a smile, then winced slightly at Wakefield’s ham-handed grip. “And the nurses--well, vive la France, as they say.” The men laughed together. In fact, the nurses had been all American and all business, but Ballard knew what he was supposed to say.

“Well, Frank, you’ve got your old command back.” Wakefield nodded to Pulaski, who was standing off to the side. “Jimmy’s been patching it up while you were gone, and I think you’ll find it nearly as good as new.”