Chapter 22

Berchetsgaden, April 1945

 

 

The three of us in the heavily laden trucks are ambling along about ten miles from Berchetsgaden. We are heading north towards Munich. A few more miles from here, I intend to make a sweeping right turn and head back toward Lintz. At least that’s what the others think I’m going to do.

We left Berchetsgaden with about as much food as we could carry; Reinicke kept the rest. We have more than he does, but he’s satisfied because Ralph told him where he could get more, much more. Ralph told him to go straight to the officers’ mess when he returns on the 26th. Ralph knows the departing SS can carry only a small part of what is stored there. Walter thanked him and left for the infirmary with Steinmann in good spirits. That is, Walter was, I can’t speak for Steinmann. But I should think he would be; after all, he was alive. And both of his great toes showed a reaction to a pin being dragged across the bottom of his foot, so I suppose his spinal cord is intact, fortunately for him.

When I talked to Oddlie on the radio, I gave him the address of Lothar Horner’s gasthaus in Siegesdorf, asking him to send me another truck and the rest of my first squad. We’re going to need help transferring the gold. But most of all, I suspect we might need help defending it.

My new instructions from Oddlie were to head for Lintz and George Patton’s forces as soon as I made contact with Carl. Patton had been advised that O’Daniel’s Third Infantry, part of Patch’s Seventh Army, was about to start on their way to Salzburg from Munich. Patch expects Munich to be completely secured by the 30th. When Patton found out his friend O’Daniel and not LeClerc was to be first on the Obersalzberg, he gave up on the idea of moving one of his divisions in ahead of everyone else. He told Oddlie he would wait at Lintz for me. Patton said: “The big plumb making the headlines was going to be the gold, and not some undefended bombed out pile of rubble.” Pure rationalization. But then again, he might be right.

Patton was my friend and, as it stood now, one of his trusted friends was going to let him down. I was going to cheat him out of his last big coup. Furthermore, If I hijacked the gold, he would be expected to keep it a secret for fear of being embarrassed by the usually hostile press. But eventually the story will leak out, these kinds of things always do. And then he’ll be criticized just for knowing me. I don’t like it, and it’s going to make me feel bad. I know I’m going to be uncomfortable for a few days. I expect to be ashamed of myself, but I figure I’ll get over it.

As we slowly motored along, a crazy thought crossed my mind: I would be willing to give Patton some of it, enough to make him wealthy, certainly enough to assuage his conscience if he would take it. But he won’t. I know he won’t. But not necessarily because he has more honor than I do, which he does. But because he also has plenty of money. He’s reputed to be the wealthiest general in the service, having inherited a large undisclosed sum from his family. Still, I have inherited a large undisclosed sum myself; you might say it, too, came from my family. And I might even be richer than the general. I’m sure I am, and that’s important to me for some reason. But that’s what comes of being dirt poor all your life. You establish a different set of values regarding money. He can have the honor–I want the money.

 

It was just before sun-up when we heard them. We had stopped for the second time to refill our radiators in yet another small village. We were having difficulty keeping them from boiling over, what with our heavy loads and all.

A few minutes later we saw them, their dark forms plainly visible in the dawn of the early morning. What looked to be several squadrons of sleek American fighters were escorting several groups of ungainly looking British Lancasters. And they were all heading for the Obersalzberg. People began pouring from their homes in their nightclothes when they heard the rumble. One citizen even asked Eric if he knew where they were headed. Eric told me this guy knew all right; they all knew. They had been expecting this particular raid for years. They just didn’t want to come to terms with the inevitable. The death knell was sounding for Hitler’s beloved Berghof and all it stood for. It was the final blow to the Third Reich, which was supposed to have lasted a thousand years; it was supposed to have ushered in a new age of enlightenment, peace, and prosperity to rival The Golden Age of Pericles. But it did nothing of the sort. And now all they have to look forward to is chaos, uncertainty, and even imprisonment for their returning veterans. But worst of all, hunger and poverty will be their new bedfellows for many years to come, just the way it was following the First War. And they expect it to be the same again, only many times worse. They have George Patton to deal with this time. They have all heard of him. And everyone knows he is worse than their own Waffen SS. Everyone is talking about how he is the consummate warrior, a throwback to the Khans, a barbarian who will exact a terrible retribution on a defenseless enemy if left to his own devices. They’re saying the American people are angry, and that they have no intentions of meddling in his affairs. Whatever he wants to do with Austria and Bavaria is all right with them. From one end to the other, they’re discussing whether he’ll be given free rein to do as he pleases–there’s no doubt about it, they figure they’re going to be in for hard times. However, as it would turn out, nothing was further from the truth. The best friend the Germans ever had was George Patton, who almost single-handedly saved those in his sector from starvation during the next winter.

A few minutes later, we heard the deep thrump, thrump of bursting 500 lb. bombs. I knew Hitler’s digs were getting a terrible pasting. And I knew Berchetsgaden might be devastated as well. I looked at Ralph, who muttered something about hoping Reinicke and his sons had sense enough to heed my advice about getting clear of the place. If they hadn’t, in all likelihood, we might never see them again. I didn’t care all that much. To me, at the time, they were just another unfortunate German family who had brought the War upon themselves. But Ralph cared. Walter was his close friend and had been for many years.

The SS was not going to suffer much. Ralph told me they were well prepared for this raid so as to not be caught off guard. He said it was like lifeboat drill on a ship, only instead of once or twice during a voyage, they had simulated it hundreds of times through the years. Everybody knew exactly what he was supposed to do when the siren sounded. Non-essential personnel, those not manning anti-aircraft artillery, were to take cover in underground living quarters. And they would have had plenty of time to get there. The panzer units up ahead, the ones waiting in the forests for O’Daniel, would have warned them. Whether they would have been able to activate the fogging unit in time, though, was another matter.

Ralph told me about this fogging thing. He said they had an artificial fogger that could lay in a bank of fog sufficient to cover the valley and obscure the compound. He said this machine worked using dry ice. At first I thought he was kidding me. But he was serious. He told me in great detail about their genius, and how they had invented this huge fog-making contraption. But the effectiveness of the fog depended on the humidity at the time. Usually, it took some twenty minutes’ notice to rev it up, according to him. RAF crews would report weather over the area as being clear and the target unobstructed; so weather conditions must have been ideal for bombing but not suitable for the making of fog.

I began wondering what might have happened to Kurt Steinmann. I never said anything to Ralph, but he guessed what was on my mind. If, indeed, I was concerned about my friend, as he put it, I shouldn’t worry. He said they had a fully equipped underground hospital that occupied several large rooms cut from the granite mountain. But I was not worried about him lying about somewhere during the raid. I knew he was in their sheltered hospital. But what were they intending to do with him after it was over and they all took off?

The mention of Steinmann’s name set Ralph’s curiosity in gear again. He came right out and asked me for the third time if I had known Steinmann before, even though he knew I must have.

When the sound of explosions finally ceased, we watched the airplanes slowly turn in formation and head back in the direction of England. All of them did except for one trailing smoke from two engines. We watched it move out of formation, and with a fighter escort, it headed toward our lines and a probable crash landing. If they had crashed in one of the fields near us, the townspeople might have set upon them. This had happened to a number of our crews, before German military authorities could arrive on the scene and rescue them. Somehow, though, I doubt it would happen here. These people have only heard about the War on their radios; they have never experienced a bombing first-hand, and at this point, they’re not interested in revenge; they’re only interested in ending the War as soon as possible. Still, you can’t be too sure. Most families in Germany have lost at least one member of their immediate family in a bombing raid or in combat. And many of them have lost several.

And it’s true they have seen large numbers of American aircraft on their way to Salzburg, which was bombed a total of fifteen times. But never to the Obersalzberg. The reason being: the Allies were waiting to catch Hitler during one of the many times he was in residency. The notification never came from Ralph, something I considered curious at the time; and it did make me wonder about Ralph, as it must have Oddlie.

Later in the day, I espied a large mural of a harp on a building. It was the same as the one Lother Horner previously described to me. We stopped and verified the town as being Siegesdorf, his home. I looked up his address in my notebook. A few minutes later we were parked in front of his mother’s inn, situated on a corner lot.

The sign on the building was made of polished brass, mounted on a tasteful oaken plaque. It read simply: Gasthouse Horner. The woodwork had recently been sanded and re-stained, making it appear as though it was a quality piece of furniture. The front of the building had been newly painted an off-white. Several beautifully carved geranium boxes, fastened below the windows of the two-story structure, had been refurbished and replaced by a carpenter who knew his trade. Scaffolding was standing along the southern side facing the other street; somebody, probably Lothar, had just begun another major clean up and repainting project. More geraniums were newly planted along the sidewalk in front and in small beds on both sides of steps leading to a bright red door, trimmed in brass. The color of the door blended perfectly with the color of the flowers. The whole effect was anything but offensive to the eye. As a matter of fact, it looked as though it had been planned to do just what it was doing; it was beckoning a stranger to look more closely if he was in the market for a reasonably priced clean room.

I could see Lother had hit the ground running, and he must have employed some help. He had accomplished wonders with the place in the limited time he had. He had explained to me how it had fallen on hard times during the War. However, as a result of his hard work, I could see it was recovering rapidly to its former state.

Eric went to the door and knocked. A woman answered and Eric asked her if she was open for business. They talked for a minute and then she invited him in. A few minutes later he emerged with Lothar, who was sporting a big grin. Somehow, I felt he was genuinely glad to see me. I really felt he was not putting on some kind of show, all the better to con me for food he suspected might be in the trucks. I confess I’m suspicious. I’m having a hard time grasping the idea that my former enemy could eventually become my friend. I was not alone in this–it took years before citizens of our two countries were able to form genuine friendships, due in part to laws prohibiting fraternization.

Lother had already told Eric they were open for guests. He said he had two rooms ready for occupancy. Two more would be ready when they were cleaned up tomorrow. I nodded, and the two of us walked around the side of the truck to talk.

“Lothar,” I said, “is our presence here going to cause you trouble with your neighbors if they find out who we are?”

“I do not care if it does, although I do not see why it should. Anyway, they have more important things to think about. They are afraid. They are expecting your General Patton in a few days, and that is all they talk about. There are several dozen soldiers in town, just like me, who have left their units; they are even more afraid than the others. They think your general is going to put them in a concentration camp for safekeeping. They are talking about running off to Italy or up into the high Alps until things become more settled. There is no doubt they would if they had something to eat when they got there. They cannot take it with them because there is almost no food left. The SS went through here last month and confiscated everything.”

“That’s what I want to talk about, food I mean. I want to make you a deal….” I saw his perplexed look and realized my regular speech consisted mostly of slang, interspersed with profanity and army patois–a kind of army Creole he was having a hard time understanding.

“I mean, I want you to do some things for me. I’ll pay you with food and silver American money–enough food to keep you and your mother supplied for several weeks–and enough money to finish your project here.” I turned and looked toward his scaffolding as I said it. “I’m expecting some more of my people. When they get here, I’ll give you a supply of military rations.”

I had his undivided attention; he was listening closely. He knew what they were. It seems his unit once over-ran an American stronghold, and he became the benefactor of several trucks loaded with K rations. He especially liked the cigarettes, to say nothing of the canned meat and real coffee.

“Listen, let me start from the beginning. First, I want you to show me where I can park these trucks. Then, I want to tell you I am carrying valuable cargo belonging to General Patton. But there are no military stores; there’s no ammunition or weapons of any kind involved, so you can relax. And I want you to help me keep it secure until the people I told you about arrive in a few days.”

I could see the wheels in his head beginning to turn. He knew the truck’s cargo must be very important if it had brought us this far behind enemy lines and in civilian clothes. If we had been caught, we would have been immediately shot as spies. Nobody ventures into such dangerous waters as Eric and I have, not unless they’re after something very valuable. But at the sound of food and money, Lothar went into survival mode, telling himself he could not afford to be curious. He agreed without further conversation.

At the time, I thought I was putting him at risk with the local authorities. But what I didn’t know–he was the authority. As the ranking Wermacht officer in town, he had assumed the job of Burgermeister. Backed by other members of his army, he had all the support he needed to enact ordinances and to ensure the continuance of what he referred to as the peaceful tranquility. He likened himself to a town marshal in the movies.

I plan to give him the German trucks when we leave. But I have to be careful; I don’t want him speculating on why I no longer need them. On the one hand, he knows they’re a liability; on the other, he might conclude we’re carrying such heavy loads we have to switch to something larger. He’s most familiar with the German three-ton, so he might start thinking about how heavy our cargo really is. The last thing I want is for him to become curious and then conclude we might be carrying gold or some other precious metal. If he does, all bets are off; anything can happen then. Of course, the last thing I want is trouble, which might lead to an attack on us by the townspeople. Yet, if the cry of gold is ever raised, you can rest assured there’ll be a stampede far exceeding the Klondike rush of ‘98.

“I want you to promise you’ll keep our presence here quiet. And I want your word you’ll not attempt to discover what it is I’m carrying. This is most important. Both our lives depend on it. If you do, there’ll be bloodshed. And then George Patton will have our Gestapo transport your entire town to Russia.” I had no idea what I was taking about. But no matter, he recognized some of the buzzwords; they matched some of those already indelibly implanted in his psyche. We were friends, but with that last remark, we became even more so.

 

That night we sat around Frau Horner’s table and talked. She had cut into one of the large cured sausages and converted it into gravy. She also made some flour out of some of the wheat we gave her. The simple meal of meat-gravy and biscuits was one of the best I have ever eaten. And I know for a fact it was the first real meal they had had in weeks. Quality of food, I concluded, is dependent upon how hungry you are.

I was not sure exactly when Carl was arriving. But it would be after the first columns of O’Daniel’s armor passed through town.

The next afternoon we heard sporadic cannon fire. Lothar told me it was .88 millimeter, probably from Tigers engaging our Sherman’s. But, thankfully, we had air support for our tanks. Once the Germans opened up, they gave their positions away and waiting fighter-bombers descended on them almost immediately.

As the two of us had discussed, the Sherman was no match for the Tiger; but the Tiger was no match for our fighters and medium bombers. So the unfair fights started up, only to be ended in a flurry of gunfire. And then they started again, only to end the same way as Third Infantry, supported by the Air Corps, moved steadily toward Salzburg.

Oddlie told me, when I talked to him on the radio, that O’Daniel’s timetable called for him to arrive at his final objective on the fifth of May. He also told me the now famous 102nd Airborne was following in reserve, as were the French under LeClerc. That means we’ll not see Carl and my gang for another two days. What we are going to do in the meantime, is what we were talking about as we scarfed down Frau Horner’s dinner.

Lother is going to a meeting tonight with his town council to discuss some matters of no interest to me. I figure it might be a good opportunity, though, to tell them what it is we’re doing here. We have to be coming from somewhere for a reason. And we had to have a reason for staying when we got here. A social call between friends and relatives was just not very believable. And the last thing I wanted was to become the subject of general conversation among a highly volatile and potentially hostile citizenry.

Lothar suggests he tell them we’re cousins from Salzburg, and that we’re afraid of Patton, who is moving north from Lintz. We swiped the trucks and fuel, and we plan to stay until it’s safe to go home. He also plans to tell them we’re deserters, and that we were afraid of being placed in a concentration camp had we remained there. Since we’re Lothar’s relatives, we’re going to help him with his remodeling projects to earn our keep until after the American army arrives and takes over. In short: we’re afraid of Patton and hope it’s not his soldiers who occupy Siegsdorf. At any rate, we don’t want to be seen driving these stolen trucks. We want a place to hang out until things settle down.

It sounds good to me. Now, all we have to do is spread the word, which Lothar intends to do momentarily.

That night at sunset, I posted a guard on the trucks. I fully expect somebody will come snooping around looking for food. It might be more than one–and this same town council of Lothar’s might even be involved in organizing it–unbeknownst to him, of course.

We took turns with four-hour shifts. Nothing happened, maybe tomorrow night. Maybe it’ll take them a little longer to get organized, but I’m sure it’s going to happen eventually. I never believed Lothar’s story would be bought so easily. Still, if we’re not who we say we are, then who are we?

The next morning, we started work on the new gasthaus. While Eric and Ralph painted, I talked to Lothar.

I asked him where he intended to put the additional rooms he told me about. With a stick, he laid out what he had in mind. It was a simple, straightforward add-on of two rooms on top of two more on the ground floor. There was to be an outside entrance with a hall leading through the kitchen to the restaurant.

I noticed Lothar was not approaching the project with much enthusiasm. When I asked him why, he said he didn’t think this was the appropriate time to be thinking of such things. Anyway, he said he had no money. This is the kind of thing one thinks about and then it usually takes years before it ever happens, he said. I told him this might be the way things were done in his country, but not in mine. Still, where was the money coming from? It was one thing for me to finance the finishing up of the painting, and maybe popping for a mural on the sidewall if he could find one of the traveling mural painters, the kind who used to wander around before the War. But where was he going to get the money for a major remodeling of the building?

We went inside and sat down with a pencil and paper. It took him an hour to come up with a fair estimate of what had to be done and what it was going to cost. He kept saying he didn’t know how much this or that was going to be, or whether he was going to be able to do this or that because of the situation–and so on.

When he realized I was not fooling around, and that I actually planned to give him some real money, he began concentrating on some realistic figures. He was afraid if his estimate was too high I might back out. He needn’t have worried. I planned to give him at least one ingot just before we departed.

That afternoon we made a drawing and laid out the footings. Then he borrowed several shovels from his neighbors, and we all started digging. I hadn’t used a shovel in years; I was enjoying the fresh air and the exercise. Eric was quite surprised to see me digging away. He was even more surprised to see I was more familiar with a shovel than he was. Digging fox pens and rough-necking on an oilrig called for my having a certain expertise on what I always looked upon as an ignorant stick.

Dinner was as satisfying as it had been the night before. It was the same thing, but I enjoyed it; I was having fun. The cool air and the pleasant surroundings were getting to me. To tell you the truth, there’s nothing I would have liked better than to have stayed right there for the rest of the summer, doing just what I had been doing for the past three hours. I was getting into the spirit of the thing. I wanted to stay and see it finished. Eric felt the same way, and so did Ralph. One thing for sure, I told Frau Horner: “I’m coming back often and staying for a very long time.” I had the money. I could come back any time I pleased, and stay as long as I liked. How prophetic these comments to her would turn out to be. Over the next six or seven years, I was to be her guest over and over again. But I wouldn’t return for any walk down memory lane or for a vacation. But come back I did, for another altogether different reason than you can possibly imagine–and for lengthy stays each time.

The morning of the third day of May saw the first of the Sherman’s crawling into town. And then for the next couple of hours they became a seemingly endless, deafening parade. There was no shouting or waving; neither side showed any emotion. For the most part, the German population stayed indoors. Nobody wanted to call attention to themselves. Nobody knew what was going to happen. They were confused, expecting the worst. They didn’t really know whether they were going to be rounded up, shot, or fed. They knew nothing at all, and they were afraid to ask. Then, too, who were they going to ask?

The division rumbled through without stopping. They were here, and then all of a sudden quiet reigned. They were gone. All the time the sky overhead was full of menacing low-flying airplanes waiting for word of trouble. The town would have been reduced to rubble at the slightest hint of resistance. I knew it, and so did they. If Lothar and his mother were examples, then everybody in town realized what was at stake. They were afraid some die-hard Nazi would start shooting and end it all. They kept asking me if this might be General Patton’s army. Why even his own men called him Old Blood and Guts, which sounded no better in German.

Carl and three more of my first squad arrived just before noon. I noticed the look on Frau Horner’s face when she saw the extra mouths to feed. It was not the extra work, particularly. This return to the old days, when she ran her small restaurant at near capacity, was welcomed. But at this rate, the food we had given her was not going to last very long. Then she was introduced to the K ration. You should have seen the expression on her face when she opened her first can of Spam. And when she realized Carl had brought her a couple of months’ supply of the stuff, her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.

We started transferring the gold, after we got the American trucks off the street and away from prying eyes. There would be no time now for anything but hard work until the job was finished. Now the neighbors might become a problem. But now the American uniforms would dissuade any and all troublemakers. However, our story would have to change accordingly. Our two trucks had engine problems and had left the column of tanks just passing through. My soldiers had just happened to see the gasthaus and had decided to stay there until they could get them fixed. It sounded plausible enough to me, even if it didn’t explain away the coincidence of us already being there and in German trucks.

Ralph was in charge of the transfer, which went smoothly. He had the trucks backed up to each other, tail to tail, with planks between them. He tried a wheelbarrow first. However, that was too slow. He finally settled on passing each ingot from hand to hand from one truck to another, hours of backbreaking labor. But there was no faster way. I came around back, after talking some more with Lothar. I was in time to see the job finished and Steinmann’s box being transferred from the German truck.

It was suspended from some kind of a carriage thing. It looked for all the world like a miniature sedan chair with the box suspended below in an antique metal cradle. From what I could see, it was ornately hand carved. It was too heavy for secret documents. Documents had been my first guess. But my guesses were running wild and changing at the rate of one a minute. First, as I said, I thought it might contain names, places, and secrets–things like that. Then I thought–since this Waffen SS was some kind of a cult organization–it might be loaded with books containing their secret writings, beliefs that sort of thing. But if it was, why was it so heavy? And why then was Ralph taking it so slow and being so careful not to damage the contents? And why was he so surprised to see me? Was he trying to get it out of sight before I saw it? The look on his face said he was.

I asked Lothar if it might be possible to make a sign from some of the one-by-six pine lying in a scrap pile near the trucks. He told me yes with a smile, which indicated he would be glad to undertake what I thought was a simple project.

It’s customary in some parts of the country, maybe throughout Germany, as far as I know, to give your visiting friend a small present, a kind of memento, a token of your esteem or some such. I suspect he had been searching his brain for something appropriate. And certainly the sign I asked about filled the bill. When I saw his work, I was surprised. He had stayed up most of the night, carving, sanding, and varnishing one for each truck. He presented them to me now. They read in bold letters Keep Off. And then below it read, again in bold letters, Graves Detail. Hanging by a small brass chain was another smaller one that read, simply: Morte Homme. The look on my face was all the thanks he needed.

I couldn’t believe the work that must have gone into these signs. They were obviously the work of an expert woodcarver. Then I realized it must have been Lothar who made the geranium boxes and the hand-carved and scrolled eves around the building. He told me no, it was his father. Then he told me his father wasn’t coming back from the War. More than that he didn’t care to discuss. But he did show me his wood carving tools, telling me his father had taught him the trade when he was a boy. Then I watched him permanently fasten one of his signs to the end gate. The other one he fastened to the front winch of our lead truck.

That night, Frau Horner ironed our newly washed khaki uniforms. After we finished with the gold transfer, we put them on and prepared to say our goodbyes. Now, of course, the gold was no longer a secret. I suspect most everyone in town was aware of what we had really been up to. But it doesn’t matter. Now our two five ton trucks are cordoned off by three of my soldiers with machine guns. As we all shook hands, and I kissed and hugged Frau Horner, we promised to return again as soon as we could. It was then that I gave Lothar two of the ingots. I started to give him just one but felt magnanimous. I gave him another just to see the expression on his face. We were friends for life. It might be said we were the first American and German after the War to become friends. Gold has a way of cementing friendships like nothing else in the world