CHAPTER 1

“Always Ready”

“If it should be necessary for us to fight the Russians, the sooner we do it, the better.”

General George S. Patton

Oppenheim, Germany, March 24, 1945. General George Patton, a riding crop grasped in one gloved hand, strode purposefully across a pontoon bridge spanning a wide river, a retinue of staff officers jogging to keep up with the US Third Army commander. Military traffic passed slowly over the bridge, causing it to creak and groan under the weight of Sherman tanks, half-tracks, trucks and jeeps. Everything was headed in one direction—east.

Both banks of the river were deeply scarred from heavy shellfire and fighting, houses reduced to burnt-out smoking shells or collapsed into piles of rubble and timber. The GIs passing over the bridge on foot, their weapons slung over their shoulders, were surprised and excited to see “Old Blood and Guts” Patton in the flesh, helmet festooned with three stars, pearl-handled revolver at his waist and tan riding breeches tucked into high brown boots.

Halfway across, Patton suddenly stopped and went to the rail. He looked down at the fast-flowing brown water before unbuttoning his fly and urinating into the river.¹ His shocked staff paused and then followed his lead. Grinning fiercely, Patton buttoned up and continued to the far bank, where he stooped and grabbed up two handfuls of mud. He announced in a loud voice: “Thus William the Conqueror!”²—a reference to the Duke of Normandy’s famous declaration to his followers at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 when he snatched up two handfuls of earth and shouted, “See, I have taken England with both hands!”

It was an important moment not just for Patton but for the entire Allied cause. Later in the afternoon Patton sent a message to the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. It consisted of one line: “Today, I pissed in the Rhine!”³

The Allies’ most aggressive commander and one of its best armies were into Germany, and there was little to stop them. In less than a month the Third Army cut a glorious swathe through central Germany. They took over 400,000 prisoners and seemed poised to charge on to Berlin. But then General Eisenhower ordered Patton to turn south. “Old Blood and Guts” was beside himself—what the hell was south that mattered more than the lair of the Nazi beast, Berlin? Eisenhower told him that the Nazis planned to make a final stand amid the lofty crags of the Alps. Allied forces would head south into Bavaria, Austria and the Czech borderlands to prevent this nightmare scenario from becoming a reality. The “Alpine Redoubt” must be destroyed.

Patton, promoted to a four-star general, protested but was powerless to change Eisenhower’s mind. Berlin would be left to the Soviet Union. Patton was appalled—he hated communism with a passion, and he felt personally robbed of a great victory. But he followed his orders. The mighty Third Army turned 90 degrees and headed south. Its 2nd Cavalry Group threw out its reconnaissance squadrons to protect Patton’s flank as he advanced, dipping into western Czechoslovakia to secure small towns and villages. The Germans continued to resist fiercely in some places, but were also casting nervous looks over their shoulders at the Eastern Front, which by now stood just outside the Czech capital Prague and the Danube River. The distance between the American and Soviet lines was narrowing with each passing day. If the German armies protecting northeast Czechoslovakia collapsed, the Soviets would have Prague as well as Berlin, and all of the country up to the American lines. General Patton didn’t much like this scenario for he secretly harbored another ambition—to piss in the River Danube as well as in the Rhine.

“Give me ten years and you won’t recognize Germany,” Adolf Hitler had declared shortly after he became chancellor in January 1933. This prophecy had come to fruition as far as 27-year-old Captain Ferdinand P. Sperl was concerned as he sat in the front passenger seat of a US Army jeep in Nuremberg.

The medieval city of Nuremberg, once one of the most famous historic centers in Europe, was now a smoking ruin, its once beautiful half-timbered Hansel and Gretel heart, the Old Town, reduced to piles of rubble, burnt wooden beams and the ghostly shells of buildings. As the spiritual home of Nazism, Nuremberg, infamous for its prewar torchlit rallies, had received special attention from British and American bombers and had been blown to pieces—all except the great Nazi Party rally grounds, which ironically survived perfectly intact. The city immortalized on celluloid in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will was now just a brown smudge on the map of Germany, 95 percent of its historic quarter gone, a story that had been repeated the length and breadth of the “Thousand Year Reich.”

Any further progress by Sperl’s jeep was impossible—the road ahead was covered with several feet of rubble and charred wood.

“We’ll never get through this lot,” said Sperl to his driver. “Let’s find another route.” The private driving the jeep executed a rough three-point turn in the street, tires crunching over broken glass, the following jeeps and trucks doing likewise, as the little convoy slowly worked its way north through Nuremberg, headed for the American front lines on the Czechoslovak frontier.

Although Captain Sperl wore the olive-drab uniform of the US Army, he wasn’t an American by birth but a “Ritchie Boy.” The US Army realized that it needed language specialists for service overseas, and who better than natives of the countries that the US Army would fight through? To this end, over 15,000 young men either volunteered or were drafted into the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) and received intelligence and interrogation training at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. Among them were over 2,000 German and Austrian Jews who had fled the Nazis.

Sperl was a typical Ritchie Boy. Born into a family of hoteliers in Berne, Switzerland in 1918, he had come to America in 1939 as an exchange student at Cornell University.⁴ He’d joined the army in 1941 and his language skills had led to his selection for intelligence work. Sperl had received further specialist training in England from the British Army’s Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC), the intelligence outfit concerned with gathering information from captured enemy personnel. Sperl had landed in Normandy in the summer of 1944 with Interrogation Prisoners of War (IPW) 10, the US Army’s version of the British unit. Each US division’s G-2 intelligence section included a Military Intelligence Interpreter Team, an IPW team and an Aerial Photo Intelligence Team.⁵

IPW 10 was on a special mission that had been sanctioned directly by the Supreme Allied Commander, General Eisenhower. They had orders to move up to the Czech border where the 2nd Cavalry Group had established its headquarters. For several weeks now IPW 10 had been trailing American combat formations as they advanced steadily across southern Germany. Captain Sperl and his men, who were all German-speakers, were on the lookout for prisoners-of-war who might be candidates for detailed interrogation, but primarily they were interested in finding high-ranking Nazis in disguise. Reports had been circulating for some time that many senior Nazi officials and SS officers were passing themselves off as ordinary German soldiers in an effort to escape the Allied net that was rapidly closing around the remaining German-held areas. Particular targets were the SS who had commanded and operated the concentration camps, Abwehr and SD intelligence agents, Gestapo officers, SS field police, Nazi Party officials and German military field intelligence units, not to mention the big “personalities”—the men closest to Hitler. Secret documents and files were sought that might prove of use to the Allies after the war.

Whenever Sperl and his unit came upon an American outfit that had taken prisoners they would question any who looked like good prospects or who behaved suspiciously. Any prisoners that they were especially interested in were sent back to the Seventh Army Interrogation Center established in Augsburg in Bavaria for detailed and often aggressive questioning. It was a nightmare job considering the number of prisoners the Allies were taking—in the Third Army’s sector alone upwards of a thousand German servicemen a day were putting up their hands, providing many opportunities for the more unsavory Nazi leaders, functionaries and scientists to escape the Third Reich’s rapidly sinking ship.

Captain Sperl and his unit had headed northeast towards Nuremberg, stopping for gas at a GI depot along the way where they had learned some momentous news. The American and Soviet armies had met somewhere along the Elbe River, meaning that Germany was now cut in two. More scuttlebutt told that communist partisans near Lake Como had shot Benito Mussolini, the strutting Italian dictator, along with his mistress, and that the Red Army was on the outskirts of Berlin.⁶ To Sperl and his men, this news meant that the war couldn’t last but a few more weeks at the most.

What they saw of Nuremberg confirmed in their minds that Germany had truly lost the war. And it was not just Nuremberg. Practically every city and large town that Sperl’s unit had passed through had been heavily damaged by aerial attack, and almost every major bridge was down, either destroyed by Allied aircraft to stop the Germans escaping or demolished by the Germans to prevent the Allies from advancing. The roads between the devastated towns were filled with desperate refugees all trudging forlornly in one direction—west. Their only concern was to place as much distance between themselves and the brutal Red Army that was steamrollering in from the east and leaving a trail of human misery in its wake. But still the war went on. Sperl pointed his jeep in the direction of Czechoslovakia and started forward. Last reports were that the forward elements of 2nd Cavalry Group had been embroiled in a stiff fight for some town by the name of Asch.

A little American M-24 Chaffee tank crawled slowly down a narrow medieval street in the small town of Asch, just across the Czech border from American-occupied Bavaria. The tank’s tracks crunched over shards of broken glass from windows blown out by artillery fire, with the dismounted soldiers of a platoon of Troop C, 42nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Group hugging the house fronts behind. Wooden shutters had been torn off many of the windows and lay in the streets, or hung at crazy angles on the faces of the stone and wood buildings. Black smoke billowed here and there from doorways and windows while some roofs showed the evidence of artillery strikes, with tiles missing and the gnarled stumps of broken wooden roof beams visible. No civilians were to be seen on the streets—they huddled in terror in their basements as the roar of the armored vehicles made the houses vibrate. Here and there Nazi propaganda posters remained pasted to walls, exhorting the populace to heroic resistance against the hated invader.

The GIs moved mostly silently, half bent over, communicating only by hand signals, their carbines and machine guns ready for instant action. Only their footfalls and the occasional curse as one of their number stumbled on smashed wood or masonry broke the men’s steely silence. Their uniforms were dirty and stained, grenades dangling like green pineapples from their equipment straps, their young faces serious with concentration and grimy from the smoke and dust. Hardened veterans almost to a man, the GIs were taking no chances. Many had fought all the way from Normandy the summer before. No one wanted to be the last man to get shot in the European campaign.

Farther back along the road was a German motorcycle combination lying on its side, its rear tire shredded and almost torn from the wheel rim, a widening pool of gasoline flooding the road from its ruptured fuel tank. Its three occupants had been shot to pieces by the devastating fire of a four-barreled anti-aircraft gun mounted on the rear of an American half-track that the troops had grimly nicknamed “The Meat Chopper.” Two of the Germans lay sprawled face-down in the road, dead, their bodies hideously mutilated by the thumb-sized machine-gun rounds—one almost decapitated—while an American medic, a red cross in a white circle painted vividly on four sides of his helmet, was patching up the third German, who lay groaning and half-conscious in a pool of his own sticky blood.⁷ Different town, the same sights and sounds. The GIs had a word they used for almost every situation they encountered—“FUBAR.” It meant “fucked up beyond all recognition.” It was about the only word the troopers uttered now as they shuffled on with their mission. France, Germany and now Czechoslovakia. Different countries but always the same outcome: “FUBAR.”

The 42nd Armored Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized), numbering 755 men, along with its sister unit called 2nd Squadron, formed the 2nd Cavalry Group. They were the eyes and ears of XII Corps, one of two corps that formed Patton’s US Third Army, and they were always in the vanguard of each new assault. After landing in Normandy on July 19, 1944, the 2nd Cavalry Group’s two squadrons had fought through France, in the bloody snows of the Ardennes, then crossed the Rhine into Germany, punching across Bavaria to the western border of Czechoslovakia.⁸ Their job was to push ahead of the slower infantry divisions, seeking out the Germans and sometimes fighting them single-handed until help arrived. It had meant nine months of unremitting slaughter and stress for the young men of the 2nd Cavalry Group, and the route from Normandy to Asch was liberally dotted with the cold graves of their comrades and friends.⁹ The 2nd Cavalry Group’s assault on Asch was the first attempt by the Americans to capture a town of any significance in German-occupied Czechoslovakia.

The 2nd Cavalry’s lineage was ancient by American standards and stretched back to two regiments of light dragoons that had been formed in the first decade of the 19th century. Every GI in the 2nd was proud of his regiment’s lineage and battle honors, and like their forbears they had added only glory to an already glorious story.

The early dragoon regiments had seen plenty of action during the War of 1812, fighting against Britain. Amalgamated into a single regiment in 1814, when the war ended the following year it was disbanded. President Andrew Jackson re-activated the unit as the Second Regiment of Dragoons in May 1836, and for much of the 19th century it was present at the seemingly incessant Indian Wars that ravaged the western US as the nation sought to force the Native Americans on to reservations and appropriate their tribal lands for exploitation and settlement. The 2nd Cavalry first saw action against the Seminoles in Florida in the 1830s, lost men at the horrific Fetterman Massacre on the Great Plains in 1866, and was at the battles of Powder River and the Rosebud in 1876, shortly before George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry were obliterated at the Little Bighorn. In 1898 the 2nd were shoulder-to-shoulder with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in Cuba, and were fielded by General “Black Jack” Pershing during the Aisne-Marne Offensive in France in 1918, which also marked the regiment’s last occasion in combat as horsed cavalry.

Their motto was, appropriately enough “Toujours Prêt” meaning “Always Ready,” and as General Patton’s vanguard reconnaissance unit for the Third Army in Europe they had earned the proud nickname “The Ghosts of Patton’s Army” for their uncanny ability to get behind German lines time and again.

Since the mechanization of the US Army in the late 1930s, old horsed cavalry units like the 2nd had either morphed into the new armored divisions of the modern field army, or were re-roled as mechanized scouts. The 2nd had become a “Cavalry Group” in December 1943, one of a series of lightly equipped cavalry reconnaissance units that fulfilled for the modern battlefield a role equivalent to the horsed troopers of yesteryear—riding ahead of the line of advance to seek out the enemy, and often pinning him in place with aggressive offensive action until the armored and infantry boys arrived to finish him off.¹⁰ The group was highly mechanized to an extent not seen in most armies at the time, reflecting America’s massive industrial might, guaranteeing that the cavalry group was almost constantly in the van during the advance across Europe, with all the danger that that entailed. That danger hadn’t diminished as Patton’s forces entered Czechoslovakia, as the 42nd Squadron soon discovered.

“Contact left,” yelled Major Robert Andrews, the squadron’s S-3 or Operations Officer, who was personally leading the assault on Asch standing on the rear deck of the leading Chaffee tank manning its large .50 caliber Browning machine gun. Three German soldiers, rifles slung casually over their right shoulders, had unexpectedly emerged from an alleyway between two solidly built ancient houses. They appeared surprised to be confronted by the tank, which was advancing cautiously.¹¹

Walking beside Major Andrews’ tank was the young second-in-command of the 42nd’s Troop C, First Lieutenant Bob McCaleb. When Andrews shouted his warning, McCaleb, his Colt .45 pistol drawn, motioned towards the three German soldiers who had wandered into the road, shouting “Kommen sie hier!”¹² Recovering from their shock, the Germans, instead of throwing up their hands in surrender, darted towards an alleyway between two tall brick buildings, unslinging their Mauser rifles as they ran. But they were not quick enough. Major Andrews swung the .50 cal. and loosed off a long thumping burst, the big rounds knocking two of the Germans down. The third just managed to make it into the alleyway before the tank gunner fired a 75mm high explosive shell that literally blew the two wounded Germans to pieces, scattering body parts all over the road in a gory dénouement.¹³

The GIs were not shocked by the mess spread across the road or hanging from a nearby lamppost—most had become desensitized to such horrific sights after months on the front line. Though most were barely out of their teens, they already had the weary look of veterans.

Although the 42nd had seen very hard fighting over the past months, recently everyone had started to notice a change in the enemy. More and more regular German soldiers were giving themselves up without much of a fight. They often presented a pitiable sight, with their uniforms worn and shabby and their bodies lean from food shortages. Many of Hitler’s regular army soldiers, excluding the SS, were now frightened half-trained teenagers or middle-aged men, the scrapings of the Wehrmacht’s manpower barrel, drafted into increasingly patched-together units to stave off a seemingly inevitable defeat.¹⁴

But though the Americans heavily outnumbered German forces along the Czech frontier, the fighting spirit of some enemy formations was startlingly undiminished. Though offensive action was now virtually impossible owing to a lack of tanks and a critical shortage of gasoline, some German units were able to man strongpoints and roadblocks, and could yet spring many a nasty surprise on the Americans as they invaded western Czechoslovakia. Towns and villages proved to be particularly difficult locations to take, with American armor funneled into narrow, mediaeval streets and squares overlooked by tall houses and churches.

The tank that Major Andrews rode on started to grind jerkily forward, the accompanying GIs hugging the buildings on either side of the road, many crouching even lower than before in an attempt to make themselves the smallest possible target as they nervously passed windows and doorways, ready to engage any lingering enemy soldiers. Suddenly, machine-gun rounds tore over their heads, stitching a neat row of holes in the wall above them, the weapon’s unmistakable ripping report identifying it as a “buzz saw,” as the GIs had nicknamed the German MG42 because of its stupendous rate of fire.

The bullets thudded into the upper stories of the surrounding buildings or ricocheted into the road, kicking up spurts of dust from the cobbles as the GIs hit the dirt or pressed themselves into narrow doorways. Andrews snatched up the field glasses that he was wearing around his neck and put them to his eyes. He could see puffs of smoke coming from a loading bay some distance away on the left.¹⁵ He made ready to direct fire on to this new target when there was a sudden blinding flash and the road filled with smoke and flying debris.

Andrews was blown off the top of the tank, landing hard on the road surface where he lay stunned and winded as debris showered down all around him. Several other American soldiers were down, some wounded, others stunned by the concussive blast. Andrews rolled onto his back. All was confusion. Thick smoke and a pall of dust made it hard to see, and the explosion had temporarily muffled his hearing. He could see that Captain Harris, the commanding officer of Troop C, was down, both grimy hands clamped to one of his legs, red blood oozing from between his fingers as his lips pulled back from his teeth in a silent snarl of agony.

Lieutenant McCaleb was crouched in a nearby doorway and was shouting something, his combat jacket and trousers neatly sliced as if by claws, but the skin beneath miraculously untouched.¹⁶ Andrews couldn’t hear what McCaleb was yelling. He groaned and sat up, automatically checking his body for wounds. His clothes were also torn, but apart from a few cuts and scratches and having the wind knocked out of him, he appeared to be unwounded. The Company F Chaffee tank rolled on ahead of him, apparently out of control, smoke pouring from a neat hole drilled through its turret. Andrews knew then what had happened. One word was on his lips—“Panzerfaust.”

Andrews’ Chaffee had fallen victim to precisely the thing that American tankers most feared. It had been ambushed in a narrow, built-up street and hit by a weapon that the Americans were encountering in fearsome numbers all along the front, a last-ditch answer to the Allies overwhelming superiority in tanks and armored cars: the world’s first rocket-propelled grenade. This cheap, throwaway tubular weapon with its bulbous shaped-charged warhead was being issued like candy to German foot soldiers and Volkssturm home guards. The weapon was shoulder-fired using a rifle bullet as a primer and could penetrate the armor of all Allied tanks, including the Sherman and the brilliant Soviet T-34. A little, lightly armored reconnaissance tank like a Chaffee stood no chance, particularly if the weapon was launched from just a hundred feet or less.

Andrews watched dazed as the mortally wounded Chaffee suddenly picked up speed, its engine whining as it blundered out of control up the road before slamming into the corner of a house, partially collapsing the building’s façade. No sooner had the tank impacted the wall than there was a whoosh and a tremendous bang as another Panzerfaust round drilled through the turret. No one baled out of the burning tank, and Andrews knew instinctively that the five men inside were all dead.¹⁷

Andrews, his hearing gradually returning, picked up his helmet and yelled across at Bob McCaleb. “Get your men moving, Lieutenant!” McCaleb was to assume command of Troop C now that Harris was out of commission. Troop B hurried forward to take point while McCaleb got his men together and his casualties evacuated.¹⁸

Within seconds the dismounted troopers were hurrying forward ready to tackle the German position with carbine and grenade. Andrews moved with them, his body sore from being thrown from the tank. The war was supposed to be practically over, but it was clear that the defenders of Asch hadn’t yet got the news. Andrews ducked as a sniper round pinged off a wall above his head. Breaking into Czechoslovakia was proving to be as costly and dangerous as any of the fights the 42nd had encountered since landing in Normandy nine bloody months before. He pulled his pistol from its leather holster, cocked it and stumbled forward, keeping low as he joined his men beside the road at a half-run.

When Captain Sperl and IPW 10 arrived at the 2nd Cavalry Group’s headquarters on April 25, 1945, they discovered that the unit had requisitioned an old farmhouse outside the battle-scarred Bavarian town of Vohenstrauss, located just ten minutes by motor vehicle from the Czech frontier where the forward platoons had dug in following the battle for Asch.

Sperl ducked through the medieval building’s low door and into a dining room that the 2nd Cavalry had hastily converted into a command center. A large oak dining table was covered with military maps, while a signaler sat at a small camp table in one corner monitoring a large green-painted army radio transmitter that occasionally buzzed with static and disjointed voices as units made reports. Clerks and staff officers bustled about, while the aroma of strong fresh coffee wafted from the kitchen down the hall. Sperl removed his helmet and sought out Colonel Charles Hancock “Hank” Reed, the illustrious commanding officer of the 2nd Cavalry Group.

Hank Reed, 44, was of average height and well built with dark brown hair neatly parted in the middle. He stood up from his desk to shake Sperl’s hand and enquired about his journey in his courtly Southern accent. An orderly handed Sperl a tin mug full of steaming hot coffee.

Reed was a cavalryman of the old school who had started out in the horsed cavalry and been switched reluctantly to the impersonal steel beasts of modern mechanized warfare. Born on a farm near Richmond, Virginia, Reed was the son of a wealthy local merchant. He had grown up always with horses, riding before he could properly walk. Graduating from West Point in 1922, Reed had proved to be a great horseman, though an average academic student. His equestrian skills had seen him make the Army Horse Show team in 1930 and 1931 and he had been a reserve for the 1932 Olympics.

A graduate of the Advanced Equitation Course, the top military cavalry course in the army, Reed played polo and show jumped. He and his wife Janice had no children, but Reed doted on his polo ponies and rapidly rose up the ranks until he shipped out to England in 1943 at the head of the 2nd Cavalry Group bound for the coming invasion of Europe. He missed horses passionately and hadn’t ridden since an occasional hack in between breaks from the hectic pre-D-Day training program in England. His two chestnut polo ponies, Tea Kettle and Skin Quarter, were safe at home at the Reed family place at Stanford Hill, Richmond. In many ways, Hank Reed shared much in common with his commander, General Patton, who had represented the United States at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. With a strong background in running, fencing and shooting, Patton had finished fifth in the first modern pentathlon. But it was at riding that Patton really excelled, being like Reed a highly accomplished polo player.

Colonel Reed beckoned Captain Sperl over to the map table. Something interesting had occurred requiring Sperl’s particular skills, he said.

“Corps wants a priority snatch mission, Sperl,” said Reed, leaning over a map of the Czech borderlands. It was an order that had trickled down to him from XII Corps headquarters. “They have received some intel that a Kraut air force unit is stranded here”—Reed indicated a point on the map called Dianahof near the town of Waier,^* just inside the Czech frontier. “It’s an old hunting lodge in the forest. The Krauts number about twenty men and they’re babysitting a whole bunch of records and files that Corps wants. Your orders are to proceed to Dianahof and persuade their commander to surrender to us. The priority from up above is to keep the documents safe, at all costs,” said Reed. Sperl nodded.

“Do you think that you and your team can handle it?” asked Reed with some concern.

It was an ideal IPW mission, and the prize that awaited Sperl at Dianahof could be of immense value to the Allied cause.

“Yes, sir,” replied Sperl. The very nature of IPW work was fraught with dangers, and Captain Sperl had had his fair share of close calls in the campaign across Europe. But as he chatted more with Reed it was clear that the material at Dianahof should be worth the risk of dipping behind enemy lines. Reed told him to make his plan, brief him and be ready to leave on the mission the following day, April 26. If Sperl had worries, he didn’t share them with Hank Reed. In his line of work, often only daring action could secure the prize. It was part and parcel of the job he’d been selected for.

Later that evening he would coin a humorous name for this mysterious little mission: Operation Sauerkraut.

^* Now Rybník.