Chapter Fourteen

They headed for Munich. Most times, the Germans fled, and they were able to go miles on the backs of tanks and trucks instead of walking on eggshells through the countryside. Quite often, they didn’t see a single German soldier, and the countryside was deserted in an unnerving way.

Still, they pushed on. No use complaining about an enemy that didn’t want to fight, and the days passed slowly as their advance paused and scouted and started up again.

They were one hundred miles outside of Munich when they saw the first body.

Starved, emaciated, and so thin that the man’s skin was paper thin and stretched taut over broken bones with no muscle or tissues left, only the shape of a skeleton beneath the starved flesh. Face down, in the dirt, arms and legs spread akimbo. Torn, tattered striped pants, covered in dried mud.

A single pink badge sewn on the pants.

They didn’t know what to make of it, not at first. Rumors had swirled about evil camps of death, about the extermination of so many thousands of people, but no one knew what to believe. Were people so evil that they could truly exterminate thousands of other human beings? It seemed like the resistance, desperate for help, had been trying to make the occupation worse than it was, and Army intelligence hadn’t put much stock into the rumors. Officially.

Staring at an emaciated body in prison garb in the forest, Will felt his doubts growing. Henry crouched next to the body, carefully trying to examine the remains with Akers, the replacement medic for Second Platoon. They were talking softly to each other, pointing out this and that as the rest of the troopers stood apart, respectfully not looking. The lieutenant and Giordano hovered over the medics, glaring down at the body and at the countryside.

They moved on after an hour, and Will caught Henry’s hooded eyes. Henry frowned, and they fell back, walking together in the group of dismounted troopers as they moved down the mountain road they were traveling. Munich lay ahead, but silence—eerie silence—enveloped the troopers.

“Any ideas?” Will asked Henry as they fell in step together.

“Starved, beaten, tattooed.” Henry shook his head. “No idea what it was, though. Some kind of escaped criminal?”

“P-O-W?”

Henry shrugged. “The lieutenant didn’t know of any P-O-W camps near here.”

They shook their heads and moved on in silence, watching the trees on either side of the road, and the sky. Not a bird flew, and the forest was unnaturally silent. Still. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.

Ahead, the first strangled shout caught their attention. Murmurs shot through the troopers, then curses and cries of disbelief. Men jogged ahead, moving to the front to see what had happened.

Glancing at each other, Henry and Will jogged alongside Gillen, moving to where the troopers had fanned out on one side of the road just past a break in the trees. They were all staring, open-mouthed, at the field in the distance.

Henry’s footsteps faltered as he pushed through the troopers. He froze, staring slack jawed at the barbed wire−enclosed pen and the starved, emaciated bodies staring out through the wires. Empty guard towers stood at intervals, imposing and daunting, and in the center of the pen’s side facing the road, a double walled gate with a sniper tower rose over the camp.

The troopers whispered among themselves. “What the hell is this?” “Who are these people?”

Will spotted the same pink badge sewn into the striped shirt of a starved prisoner. His shirt was open, unbuttoned, showing an emaciated frame. Will could count his ribs even from the road.

The lieutenant pushed forward, talking fast to Giordano, who shoved and pushed troopers back into formation, barking orders for them to form up in a perimeter and secure the road as the lieutenant moved toward the gate, Ramirez at his back. Ramirez called for Henry and Akers to join them, and Henry jogged to their side.

Will watched him cover his nose, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. Akers gagged, turning away to collect himself, and then ran back to join the lieutenant and the others as they reached the gate. Ramirez cut the chain around the fence, pulling the gates open, and then they were inside the camp.

*

Starving skeletons wrapped in flesh limped toward them, pressed against them, shaking hands grasping at their uniforms. Broken German, Czech, Polish, and Austrian stuttered from scabbed and chapped lips, words of thanks and praise. Some collapsed, other cried. Some just stood, motionless, staring into the distance. Their tattered, striped uniforms rustled in the breeze, revealing an assortment of badges sewn to their clothes. Yellow stars. Pink triangles. Black, purple, and blue shapes.

“Giordano, get me a translator. Someone who speaks German.” The lieutenant sent Giordano back to their transports, and Giordano shouted that anyone who knew German had better get a move on, double time. They had all picked up phrases and sayings, but only a few spoke it with any attempt at fluency. Two ran forward, one each from First and Second Platoon, following Giordano into the camp.

Henry and Akers were looking over the men closest to them, helping them to sit and shedding their uniform jackets for their cold, thin, bony shoulders. Henry could see the trench foot and the gangrene eating away at their flesh. Bruises the size of fists and boots covered their torsos, along with the stink of infection and a complete lack of hygiene. His hands fluttered over their wounds, taking in injury after injury, external and internal.

Finally, the two translators arrived, breathless and wide-eyed, and they stood next to Giordano and the lieutenant as one of the men tried to speak. He stumbled over words, halting and stuttering, and doubled over in pain at one point. Henry helped him stand, holding his weight with his body. The man weighed nothing, and Henry felt as if he was holding a child.

Through the translators, they learned this was a work camp, one of the work camps set apart from Dachau and commanded by the same Germans. They were working in munitions factories, marched to the factories every day, no matter if they could make it or not. Dozens died daily on the march, and then more afterwards when they did their morning and nightly inspections. They were shot, beaten, burned, left for dead. There was no food, only a tiny bit of cracker and water every other day. They were meant to die.

Henry saw the lieutenant’s face tighten, saw his anger spreading. It matched Henry’s, the rage swirling in his chest.

The translator kept going, telling them the guards had fled, but not before taking more prisoners on a march that morning. They’d heard shots an hour after they left, and they feared all of their friends were dead. The guards had tried to kill them all, setting fire to the huts the prisoners had been sleeping in. Others tried to stop them, but they were shot.

Smoldering huts and burning piles of what looked like garbage and debris stretched across the left side of the camp. In the earth-packed walkways between the huts, bodies lay in ruined contortions, some shot and bled out, others fallen and dying where they lay—of exhaustion, of starvation, of their broken, abused bodies finally giving up.

More and more men were stumbling toward the gate, thousands of them, pouring from huts in the ground that seemed designed to hold only a fraction of what they saw. Men carried other men, or held them up, and it looked like gaunt skeletons were trying to carry other skeletons. Wails rose, both cries of pain and cries of joy, at the sight of the soldiers by the gate.

“Why are they here?” the lieutenant asked through the translator. “Are they criminals? Is this a prison?”

After translating, the prisoner laughed, once, and then folded in on himself. He shook, trembling violently against Henry, and shook his head no. His fumbling increased, and his stilted German almost failed him, but he was able to push the words out when Henry rubbed his back. No, not criminals, he said. He pointed to other prisoners, the ones with yellow stars. “Juden,” he stuttered. “Roma, zigeuner,” he tried to say. “Auslander.” Foreigner. “Zeugen Jehovas.” Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Their translator swallowed when the man pointed to himself, to his pink triangle, and said, with a sob, “Homosexuelle.”

No one needed a translator for that.

Henry felt their eyes flash to him, felt their stares, felt their shock. The man came apart in his arms, sobbing so hard he lost his footing. He fell, but Henry caught him, lowered him down to the ground as he wrapped him up in his arms, stroked his back, and tried to make calming noises in his ear. The man sobbed harder, his fingers digging into Henry’s uniform and holding tight, and Henry knew he was sobbing away his life, all of the lives he’d seen lost, and the years he’d lost inside the camp. Sobbing for the horrors he’d witnessed, and for wondering—and knowing, in a primal, gut-sure way—he wouldn’t survive the camp.

Giordano traded words with the lieutenant and then went back to the troopers outside. He ordered them all into the camp, minus a small rear guard, and told them to strip their jackets, winter gear, scarves, everything. Get everything off and distribute it, then get out all of their rations, every last bit, and their canteens. “These men need everything,” Giordano said, his voice unnaturally quiet. “Give it to them. Care, clothes, warmth, your food, the socks off your feet. I don’t care. Give it all to them.”

When the rest of the troopers moved into the camp, laying jackets on boney shoulders and scarves around emaciated necks, the liberated men clung to them, sobbing into their uniform jackets and trying to hold on to the only sign of human compassion they’d seen in years. The troopers hugged back, too shocked to react in any other way than with pure compassion.

Henry laid out his patient, the man they’d spoken to, in a nest of his jacket and a swiped blanket from one of the arriving troopers. The man cupped his cheek, blessed him in German and told him he loved him, and then closed his eyes and let the warmth of the blanket surround him. Moving forward with food, Second Platoon offered sips of water and dried meat and cheese.

Henry spread out a tarp at the front of the camp and grabbed three troopers, sending them off to collect those who couldn’t walk. He and Akers had their medic bags out and gear spread in moments, and then they were pulling the prisoners toward them, bandaging wounds, cleaning cuts, and offering warmth and care where they’d had none.

Some they couldn’t save, too far gone in disease and starvation and abuse. They wrapped them up as best they could and made them comfortable, smiling down at their gaunt faces, their mouths unnaturally open with their lips and skin so thin they peeled back. Henry felt the tears forming but shoved them down, ruthlessly ignoring his own body.

Sometime in the evening, trucks roared down the road, fresh supplies and troops arriving from their headquarters. Crates of rations and blankets rolled in, more than the troopers had ever seen. There were clean clothes and soap, and Second Platoon volunteered to help bathe the prisoners. They set up buckets of water, warmed over fires, and sponged off the prisoners one by one, then handed them fresh clothes and more food.

Physicians arrived with the convoy, and they cautioned the prisoners to go slowly with their new food. They’d hurt themselves if they tried to eat too much, and more than one prisoner vomited after eating only a single cracker.

Taking over the dead, First Platoon gathered up the bodies that had already passed and lined them on the far side of the camp. Starved, emaciated bodies, broken bodies, burned bodies. Shot bodies. Every type of horrifying injury they could imagine. Badges in every color, but mostly yellow and pink.

Henry felt his fellow troopers’ eyes on him at all times. Word of what the pink badges meant had spread like wildfire, and he knew all of his fellow troopers now knew. Their eyes only added fuel to the fire of his temper, raging and pulsing just beneath his skin. He felt like his heart would explode, and he was only keeping it together for his patients, for the prisoners he took into his arms, bandaging, cleaning, and caring for with all of his compassion.

He didn’t know he was crying until one of the prisoners brushed his cheek, wiping away the tear tracks with a smile. The man was missing all of his teeth, his jaw was fractured, and he had a rancid bullet wound in his shoulder. But he smiled at Henry, whispering his thanks endlessly as Henry took care of him, and Henry couldn’t take his eyes off the pink triangle sewn into the man’s pajamas.

Finally, he spoke, pressing his hand to the man’s badge. “Homosexuelle,” he whispered, repeating the German he’d heard.

The man froze, his eyes going wide. His lips moved, soundless words trying to escape.

Henry brought his hand to his own chest, right over his heart. “Homosexuelle,” he whispered again. He forced himself to smile at the man through his tears, though his vision was blurring, and he could barely see the man’s face anymore.

He saw the man smile though, his gummy smile from hollowed cheeks, and felt the warm touch of his hand once again stroking away Henry’s tears. He lost it, then, pitching forward into the man’s lap and letting himself cry.

It was Will who found him, sobbing into the lap of the queer prisoner. Will gently passed the prisoner over to McConnel to take him to the baths and then gathered Henry into his arms. They knelt on the medical tarp, Will holding Henry together as Henry let his rage explode, let it wash over him in torrents and rivers of drowning, soul-soaking rage. Henry’s fist struck Will, beating him on the back, pounding into him, screaming into his shoulder as he sobbed.

No one said a word, and when Will helped Henry stand, pulled him to his feet after over twelve long hours working at the medical station he’d set up himself, First and Second Platoon clapped as Henry and Will stumbled back to their command’s impromptu camp. The troopers gave them space, leaving the bedrolls behind; no one was sleeping anyway. They headed back into the camp to keep volunteering, giving more assistance, more aid. Nearby, the officers huddled around a map spread out over a jeep hood, discussing the other camps other units had found.

“Henry,” Will said softly, trying to wipe away the tears. “Henry. It’s okay to let it out.”

Gasping, sobbing, collapsing, Henry fell into Will’s arms and held on, letting the rest of the world go. He didn’t want to think about it anymore. Not about the war, not about the evil men inflicted upon each other, and not about the raw, ragged hatred that had driven the camp, and the Nazis, into trying to exterminate whole swaths of people.

He was floating on nothing, exhausted to his soul, and barely clinging to awareness when he spoke again. “That could have been me,” Henry whispered. “If I was German. Or Austrian. Or Polish. I would be in there.” He paused. “I would be dead, actually.”

Will’s stroked his hand down Henry’s face, and Henry felt Will’s tears hit his skin. “It’s over now,” he whispered back. “You’ve saved them. You saved these men.”

“Not soon enough,” Henry said, as the black of unconsciousness dragged him down. “Not soon enough.”

* * * * *

In the morning, more supplies and reinforcements arrived. More medics, more physicians, more food and clothing. The prisoners were overwhelmed with the sudden change in their fate and some wept openly, rocking back and forth, while others tried to rally their fellow survivors to hold on for just another day. They lost another ten overnight, but more than that were improving. The prisoners were smiling again, wrapped in warm clothes and blankets, and they grasped the hands of the soldiers who liberated them and kissed their knuckles and wrists.

The chaplain spoke words over the dead, welcoming any and all of the prisoners who wanted to attend to come. The troopers came as well, and both troopers and prisoners cried together.

Henry walked the camp, side by side with Will, and took the hands of every prisoner he found. He kissed their cheeks, and they kissed his, most remembering him from the day before. He told every prisoner he came across with a pink badge that he was one of them, pressing their hands to his chest as he repeated the word for homosexual. Will spoke too, identifying himself with Henry, and they let the prisoners cup their faces and kiss their foreheads.

Hours later, they continued on, pressing once more to Munich, Henry walked out of the camp with both First and Second Platoon forming lines on either side of him. They reached out, echoing the moves of the prisoners and gripped his shoulders, squeezed his hands, clapped for him. Henry saw sorrow in their eyes, saw the shadow of tears on their faces, and he tried to smile back at them all.

Giordano, as always, summed it up best when they were marching out. Eyes drifted toward the camp they were leaving behind, and the waves and farewells of the prisoners sending them off.

“Everyone ready to go kill some Krauts?” Giordano bellowed from the front.

Cheers rose, thunderous, as they set off.