Slaughter City Page 20

  A victory beyond his wildest imagination?

  Electrified by the thought, Meier stood up and paced back and forth amid the crates of Zyklon B. Yes, I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’ll do it! he thought. Tomorrow I’ll have the stuff carried up to the courtyard, and we’ll set it off. First thing in the morning.

  Who knows, perhaps it will change the course of this war?

  ~*~

  As General Meier paced the floor in the basement of Gestapo headquarters, Mahoney and the five men with him crossed the German lines on the same length of railroad track that Colonel Knoedler had used. They continued moving along the tracks, staying in the shadows and maintaining strict silence.

  They all wore black SS uniforms and SS helmets. Their weapons were Schmeisser submachine guns, and Colonel Knoedler had told them the password for the night. Meanwhile, XX Corps was subjecting the Germans to a heavy artillery bombardment, hoping to cause confusion and help camouflage the movements of the American commandos.

  Captain Harry Engel, the officer in charge of the group, held up his hand. They stopped, and he looked at his map. Like Mahoney, he spoke German fluently. His parents were Germans who’d emigrated to America a few years before the First World War. He had a big, square German face with a prominent nose and a strong jaw. His voice was deep and strong, and Mahoney thought he was very impressed with himself, for reasons Mahoney could not yet discern.

  Also in the group were Sergeant George Beerbower, the child of German-born parents like Engel; Cpl. Raymond Collins, who had studied German culture before the war and had visited Germany many times, and Pfc. Jack Frohlich, born in Germany of Jewish parents who’d emigrated to America in 1931 when it appeared to them that nothing could prevent the Nazis from coming to power.

  “I think we should get out of this track now,” Engel said, “and start moving into the city.”

  They climbed the side of the ditch and began walking toward the center of the city as artillery shells exploded around them. Mahoney looked at his watch and hoped they could get everything over with by morning because he didn’t want to walk around in broad daylight behind German lines if he could help it.

  “Halt!”

  They stopped, realizing they had reached the first sentries.

  “Who goes there!”

  “Captain Engel of Company Two,” said Engel, using his real name and rank.

  “Advance to be recognized.”

  Engel and the others moved forward, seeing two sentries aiming rifles at them. One of the sentries asked for the password, and Engel told him the one General Knoedler had given him, hoping it was still operative.

  “Pass on,” said one of the sentries, and Engel knew it was.

  The group passed the sentries, and Mahoney breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been ready to whip around his submachine gun and start firing, but it hadn’t been necessary yet.

  The five American soldiers made their way into the center of Metz, feeling naked in the midst of so many German soldiers and German tanks, with American shells falling everywhere. Mahoney began to wish that he’d been sent in alone to do this job because he thought one person would attract less attention than five. But in the confusion of battle, as the Germans were preparing to fight last-ditch battles for the defense of Metz, no one noticed them. The artillery barrage from XX Corps kept the Germans too busy.

  At 0325 hours, the American soldiers turned on to the Rue Serpenaise and saw Gestapo headquarters straight ahead.

  Colonel Knoedler had explained the layout of the building to them, and they knew where to find General Meier’s office. The building formerly had been the main headquarters of a wine wholesale business, and the cellars where wine had been aged now were used for incarcerating and torturing real and imagined enemies of the Reich.

  “Well, are we ready?” Captain Engel asked.

  Nobody said he wasn’t, so they lined up and marched toward the front gate of the building. When they reached the gate, Engel ordered them to stop, then he marched to the sentry, who saluted him. The sentry asked for the password, and Engel gave it to him. The sentry opened the gate, and the five Americans marched on to the grounds of Gestapo headquarters. Another sentry opened the front door, and they entered the building.

  Now they no longer could chat among themselves and make plans. All they could do was behave like SS men and try to follow the plan they’d concocted in General Donovan’s office, and that plan had been quite simple: to find out where Meier was, kill him, and get away somehow. Mahoney hoped some of the Germans had noticed that no American shells were falling on the building, although they were landing in the vicinity. He hoped none of them might start wondering why.

  They walked through the corridors of the building, their hobnailed boots striking hard on the wooden floors. They passed SS men with worried looks on their faces, attired just like them. Finally, they came to the office of General Meier.

  “I would like to speak with General Meier at once!” Captain Engel said to the secretary, an SS man.

  “I’m afraid he’s not in, sir.”

  “Could you tell me where he is, please?”

  “I believe he’s in the basement.”

  “The basement?”

  “Yes, in his quarters down there.”

  “Thank you.”

  Engel and the others turned around and made their way to the stairs that led to the basement. Mahoney was starting to get a little worried; the longer they roamed the building, the more likely they’d be noticed. Finally, they reached the stairs that led to the basement. They descended them and came to a door made of iron bars.

  “Yes?” asked the sergeant behind the door.

  “I have an urgent message from the front for General Meier. Is he down here?”

  “As a matter of fact he is, captain. Right this way.”

  The sergeant opened the door, and the five Americans entered the notorious dungeons of the Metz Gestapo headquarters. It reminded Mahoney of the Gestapo dungeon on the Avenue Foch in Paris, which he’d helped to capture along with a few hundred French maquis. The sergeant directed them to the rooms where General Meier was.

  “He’s alone?” asked Engel in an offhand way.

  “Yes.”

  The American soldiers followed the directions the SS sergeant had given them, passing down a series of corridors and hearing screams of pain from all directions. Finally, they came to a quiet part of the dungeon area and saw a sentry standing in front of a door.

  “I have an urgent message for General Meier,” Captain Engel said.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the sentry said, “but he’s asleep right now, and he left word that he did not wish to be disturbed.”

  “I said it’s an emergency!” Engel told him.

  The sentry was unmoved. “I’m sorry, sir, but I have my orders.”

  Mahoney silently removed his bayonet from its scabbard and moved to the side of the sentry.

  “I’m not leaving here,” Engel said, “until I speak with General Meier!”

  “Why don’t you speak with his adjutant, Colonel Reiter?”

  “Because I don’t want to speak with his adjutant. I want to speak with General Meier himself!”

  “I’m sorry sir but—”

  Mahoney lunged, clasped one hand over the sentry’s mouth, and plunged his bayonet to the hilt in the sentry’s heart. The sentry went limp, and Mahoney let him fall to the floor. Sergeant Beerbower opened the door, and they entered a dark room, Mahoney dragging the dead sentry with him.

  “Who’s there?” asked the sleepy voice of General Meier. A light went on in a room down the corridor.

  “Captain Engel!”

  “Who?”

  Private, First Class Frohlich closed the door behind them, and they walked down the corridor toward the light.

  “I left strict orders that I was not to be disturbed!” General Meier complained. “Who’s there?”

  The five American soldiers entered the bedroom, Mahoney holding his bloodied knife beh
ind his back.

  “What’s the meaning of this!” demanded General Meier in his blue pajamas. “Who are you!”

  General Meier reached underneath his pillow for his pistol, and the Americans opened fire on him. They’d wanted to kill him silently, but it was too late for that now. Their bullets ripped into General Meier and splattered his blood all over the white sheets of his bed. He writhed and twisted, clawing at the holes in his body, but then his heart stopped beating, and he was still.

  Corporal Collins stepped forward and took his pulse. “He’s dead,” he said.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Mahoney said, putting the bayonet away.

  They looked at each other anxiously, knowing that it wouldn’t be easy to get out of that basement. They also knew that the longer they waited, the worse it would be for them.

  ~*~

  Captain Engel led them out of the room and down the corridor. They opened the door to the hallway, looked around, and left General Meier’s quarters, running toward the stairs.

  Three SS men rounded the corner in front of them. “Halt!” one of them shouted.

  The American soldiers opened fire on them and kept running. The Germans returned their fire, and their bullets cut down Corporal Collins before they themselves were shot to bits. The four remaining Americans jumped over their bodies and continued their wild dash toward the stairs. They turned a corner and saw a dozen Germans running toward them. Mahoney and the others backed up, spraying them with bullets, shooting down some of the Germans, but one of the German bullets passed through Captain Engel’s head, and he fell at Mahoney’s feet.

  “This way!” Mahoney said.

  He stepped over Engel’s body and ran back toward Meier’s room, with Beerbower and Frohlich behind him.

  “Halt!” shouted the Germans behind them.

  The Germans fired, and their bullets ricocheted around the corridor, but the three Americans disappeared around a corner and ran swiftly into General Meier’s room, bolting the lock behind them.

  “What do we do now?” asked Frohlich, who was round-shouldered and had eyes that turned down at the corners.

  “There must be another exit down here,” Mahoney replied.

  They ran through the suite of rooms, opening doors frantically. They found closets full of clothes and food, more rooms, and a small kitchen. Then Mahoney pushed open a door and found another corridor.

  “Let’s go!” he said.

  They ran down the corridor and came to a flight of stairs. Vaulting up the stairs, they reached a door that was locked. Mahoney lowered his submachine gun, fired at the lock, and blew it away. He crashed through the door and landed in an office area where two SS clerks sat at a desk. They stood and looked at the three Americans in alarm. The Americans riddled their bodies with bullets and filled the room with gunsmoke.

  Beerbower opened the door to the corridor and saw hordes of SS men running toward him from all directions. He pulled back the door and closed it, turning to Mahoney.

  “The corridor is full of krauts!” he said.

  Mahoney spun around and saw a window. He picked up a chair, threw it through the window, and cried: “Follow me!”

  Running across the room, he jumped out the window, holding his arms and his carbine in front of his face. A piece of jagged glass slashed across the side of his ribs, and he dropped to the grass lawn. Germans were shouting everywhere. Frohlich and Beerbower fell to the lawn and rolled over. Mahoney pulled a hand grenade out of his pocket and ran toward the steel fence that surrounded the building. He hurled the grenade at the gate and dropped to his stomach; the explosion blew a hole in the metal bars.

  “Let’s go!” Mahoney said.

  They ran through the opening as Germans fired at them from the windows of the building. Other Germans fired from the lawn, and one of the bullets brought down Sergeant Beerbower.

  Frohlich bent over Beerbower. “He’s still alive!”

  Just then, a bullet hit Frohlich in the chest, and he fell on top of Beerbower. Mahoney, meanwhile, kept running because he knew it would be instant death to stop for any reason. He ran in a zigzag pattern, heading straight for the battered buildings across the street. He knew that once he got in that mess, he’d have a chance of getting away, but it looked as far away as China.

  Bullets whistled past his ears and kicked up fragments of cobblestone around his feet. Blood dripped out of the cut in his side, and he expected a bullet in his back at any moment. He took a running dive and landed behind a pile of rubble on the other side of the street. Protected for a moment, he took a few deep breaths.

  “After him!” shouted a German.

  Keeping his head low, Mahoney crept into a nearby alley and at its other end ran like mad across the next street. He was moving into the area where American artillery shells were falling, and he continued to run around ruined buildings and through the hallways of buildings that were still standing, continually changing his direction and not stopping for anything, not even to look at the wound in his side. Artillery shells exploded near him, and he kept going. German soldiers told him to halt, but he paid no attention to them. He ran with all his strength and finally reached a desolate part of the city that looked as if it might have been the poor section before the bombs started falling.

  Mahoney hid in some shadows, trying to catch his breath and looked at the old, broken-down buildings. Germans liked to set up command post and billets in fancy chateaus and mansions, so he didn’t think any would come near this neighborhood unless they were forced to fight here. He decided it might be a good idea to go into one of the cellars and hide until the Americans took the rest of the city. Then he could come out and not have to go through the danger of trying to pass through the German lines. Presumably, an alert had been posted for renegade SS men. This definitely would be a good time to drop out of sight.

  Silently, like an alley cat, Mahoney crept toward the nearest building, holding his hand to his bleeding side. I really can’t take much more of this war, he thought. What I need now is about two years of R & R.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  On November 23, General Patton rode into Metz in the turret of a tank. It had stopped raining, and the sun was shining. All resistance had ceased in the city the previous afternoon. Behind the tank was a column of other tanks, jeeps, and trucks.

  Patton was ebullient as he gazed at the buildings of the battered city. Metz hadn’t been captured by assault since A.D. 451, but his Third Army had taken the old fortress city in only fourteen days. Surely, the world would remember the Third Army and him for that.

  Soldiers along the road stopped whatever they were doing and saluted Patton, who saluted them back. What a great thing victory is, Patton thought. It raises morale more than anything else and makes the men confident. Some of the men cheered after they saluted, and Patton gave them the thumbs up.

  The convoy rolled toward the center of the city and stopped before an old municipal building that was the new headquarters for XX Corps. Patton climbed down from the tank and, surrounded by staff officers and aides, marched toward the building. The MPs guarding the building saluted smartly, and General Walker, the commander of the XX Corps, came down the front steps to meet him, followed by an entourage of his own that included his division commanders, among them General Donovan of the Hammerhead Division.

  Patton shook hands with Walker and congratulated him on a job well done. “I knew you could do it, Bobby,” he said, “and I knew the weather wouldn’t stop you.”

  “Well, it was touch and go for a while there,” Walker said with a grin. “That poison gas had us worried for a while there.”

  “Yes,” agreed Patton, “and I want to give medals to the men who took care of that.”

  “Only one of them came back,” said Walker as the group of officers entered the building.

  “Only one?” asked Patton. “Who was he?”

  “A master sergeant named Mahoney. He’s in the Hammerhead Division, sir.”

  Patto
n touched his hand to his cheek and looked at the ceiling. “Mahoney. It seems to me I’ve heard that name before.”

  “He’s practically a legend in the Hammerhead Division, sir. Used to be in the Rangers. Speaks German and French fluently.”

  “Is that so?” asked Patton.

  “He’s also the heavyweight champion of the Hammerhead Division.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  They entered the conference room, and Patton appeared deep in thought. The officers gathered around the map table, waiting for him to speak. Patton leaned on the edge of the table, his eyebrows knitted together.

  “You know,” he said to General Walker, “we’ve been having a lot of trouble behind our lines with German commando teams who’ve been blowing up ammo dumps and communication lines, ambushing troops, and stuff like that. We haven’t had much luck at catching them, but I just was thinking that maybe we should sic this Mahoney character after them. If he’s as sharp as you say he is, maybe he can track them down. What do you think?”

  Walker shrugged. “It’s as good an idea as any I’ve heard. We can give him as many men as he thinks he needs and turn him loose. He’s just liable to catch the bastards.”

  “Good,” said Patton. “Take care of it and keep me posted.” He looked down at the map and pulled off his leather gloves. “Okay, gentlemen, now we’ve got Metz. Let’s try to figure out where we’re going next.”

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