The first indication of trouble came in the form of a radio call to Patton from Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges, commander of the U.S. First Army, who had felt the brunt of Operation Fuchs am Rhein. The normally mild-mannered voice was trembling with rage.
“Georgie, I sent the Ninety-ninth Infantry to take the surrender of the Sixth Panzer Army yesterday, but they’ve been double-crossed. Those Nazi bastards have massacred my men. I’m treating this as a cease-fire violation and am passing back to the attack. Somebody who holds up a white flag and starts shooting again is a no-account bastard in my book. I don’t know what you and your Nazi pal are up to, but I hope you’ve got some firepower, because your head sure as hell is in the lion’s mouth.”
“Goddamn!” snapped Patton. “Court, are you sure?”
“Goddamn right I’m sure. George, you better find out what the hell is going on and you better find out right now.”
“Hell, Court, I’m sorry. Do what you have to do. I’ll do the same here, and I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got some real information.”
“It better be real this time,” growled the general on the other end of the line. “Hodges out.”
Reid Sanger, standing behind Patton, listened carefully to the entire conversation—he could hear Hodges’ roar quite clearly on the other end of the field telephone—before deciding whether to translate for the benefit of Rommel, who was standing right behind him. “Herr Generalfeldmarschall, it looks as if
all your forces did not surrender, or that they did not stay surrendered.”
“Verdammt!”
replied the Desert Fox. “Who?”
“It seems that Sixth Panzer Army headquarters has ambushed American infantry in a massacre committed after the white flag was shown.”
Rommel shook his head. “That can’t be right. That’s Guderian. Such an action would be impossible for any officer with honor.”
“Then it must not be Guderian,” suggested Sanger quietly.
The Desert Fox looked at him. His right eye seemed to penetrate into Sanger’s innermost soul; the left seemed watery and weak. A scar from that eye moved upward along the edge of his cheek from his wounding the previous summer. Finally, Rommel nodded. “You are correct, I’m afraid. He’s a prisoner, or he’s dead.”
“Sixth Panzer Army has more Waffen-SS divisions than the others in this operation, correct?”
Rommel nodded agreement. “I had just replaced Sepp Dietrich as their head. And Dietrich—”
“—founded the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler,” finished Sanger.
Patton turned around angrily. “What the hell are you jabbering about?” he demanded. “Speak English.”
“Yes, sir,” Sanger instantly responded. “We believe that Guderian has been involuntarily removed from the command of Sixth Panzer Army. Directly under him are multiple Waffen-SS divisions, including Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler.”
“Jesus Christ!” growled Patton. “So it’s a bunch of SS bastards—”
“That’s a guess, sir, but probably,” Sanger replied.
Patton looked directly at Rommel. “So, what now, Field Marshal?” he growled.
“I would imagine they would most likely withdraw to the Westwall and fortify the Rhine—I can’t see Himmler issuing a ‘stand and die’ order in this situation.” Rommel seemed to be thinking out loud, Sanger observed. A man after his own heart. “This means that all of Sixth Panzer Army, the reserves not yet committed, and the other forces supporting the Western Front are all available to refortify the Westwall and also to move to block that portion of the Westwall and access to the Rhine normally occupied and controlled by Fifth Panzer Army and Seventh Army,” the Desert Fox continued.
The two generals began to work this new strategic problem, but Sanger interrupted.
“Pardon me, sirs,” he interjected in between translations. “There is one additional possibility to consider.” He said it in both languages, drawing the stares of both generals, who were unused to having subordinates interrupt with their own thoughts. He took advantage of the pause to continue. “An attack on Armeegruppe B headquarters, especially if it should kill the
Desert Fox as well as Old Blood and Guts—excuse me for putting it that way, sir …”
“Go ahead,” growled Patton, who was looking at him with a somewhat jaundiced expression.
“ … would be a significant propaganda and morale achievement, especially at the hands of a division that already had a good deal of fame.”
Rommel at first shook his head. “I’m not that important …” he began.
It was Patton who interrupted first. “Hell, Rommel, I’d have called it a propaganda and morale achievement myself—especially if you could kill Old Blood and Guts at the same time … .” He gave Sanger a hard look, softened by a slight twinkle in his eye. “Yes, I think the kid here has a point.”
Sanger felt he deserved the “kid” reference after calling Patton by his famous nickname to his face. He felt himself blushing slightly under the attention of the two senior generals.
“Perhaps you’re right,” replied Rommel. “General Patton, I am a surrendered enemy officer, but the forces available are primarily under my command. A surrendered soldier cannot take aggressive action, but can defend himself under these circumstances, if you agree.”
“Absolutely,” said Patton. “Let’s shake on it.” He reached out his hand to grasp that of the Desert Fox. “Now let’s make sure we have one hell of a surprise waiting for any son of a bitch that decides to take on the two best goddamn tank generals in the world!”
At that, even Rommel had to smile. “Very well, General Patton,” he said. “It’s time for us to earn our pay.”
A small group of warehouses right at the city’s edge afforded some cover. “We’ll stop here,” announced Hauptsturmführer Diefenthal. His two companies of mobile artillery began to set up, trucks pulling the wheeled guns into a wide lot screened by a brick wall and a line of evergreens. Diefenthal climbed to the roof of one of the warehouses to look around.
He could see through his binoculars the humpbacked shapes of several American tanks nestled at the outer base of the citadel wall. There was undoubtedly an enemy scout at the top of the onion-shaped bulge of the large church. Looking downward, he noted tanks near the shore. Engineers had nearly finished a pontoon bridge near the twisted wreckage of the destroyed span.
Farther ahead, along the main road, he could see concentrations of armor and half-tracks, mostly German. The bustle of activity indicated that enemy headquarters—it was still odd to think of Rommel in that way—was somewhere in that area.
Sliding back down the roof to the waiting ladder, he descended to his men and ordered the artillery to test the range.
“Panzers in the city, moving south! No white flags seen!” came the call from the church tower scout Frank Ballard had put in place.
“Yes, sir, General Wakefield,” he said into his radio. “We’ve just seen them ourselves. No immediate hostile indications, but they aren’t waving white flags, so we’ll regard them as hostile. We’re getting their range now and are ready to open fire.”
“Hold on for another few minutes, Frank. Not quite till you see the whites of their eyes, but let’s give them a chance to smarten up.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Ballard.
He hoped he looked less haggard than he felt. The last few days hadn’t given him much chance for a good night’s sleep, and it had been longer than that since he’d washed. He itched and he stank. The only good news was that it didn’t bother the soldiers around him; they stank too.
Thrust into a larger command role, he had suddenly become responsible for the remnants of a large and battered force holed up in the ruins of a city. He had set up liaison with the elements of the Panzer Lehr division that had been his enemy only hours earlier, and worked with their commander to exchange prisoners, help the wounded, and ensure that the cease-fire didn’t accidentally come unraveled.
Even after the surrender, there was still the need for caution, the worry that something would come unraveled. He and his men were completely outnumbered by the forces ostensibly their prisoners. These few short days felt like weeks to him, and now with the dim, clouded December sun past midday, it was looking like he was going to have to engage in combat with exhausted troops and damn little remaining ammunition.
He took a deep breath, consciously straightened up, and began issuing orders.
“I want you, you, and you to move down to the corner of Rue Saint-Pierre and Saint-Jacques.” He pronounced the street names in American English with no attempt to mimic the French pronunciation. “The top of the church will provide fire direction, but nobody fires until my say-so. Infantry—dig in facing north to fire up the river, again on my order, then firing at will. If you’re providing food or medical services, move to the south side of the church; I don’t want anybody blocking us if we have to pull back. Anybody who’s fit but can’t get back into the line, you’re ammo runners. We don’t have much, but we’ll use what we can get.”
He paused and looked behind him, where the engineers were continuing work on the pontoon bridge. He picked up the telephone again. “General Wakefield?”
“Yes, Frank?”
“I’d like to get the Germans to cover the engineers if that’s possible. I don’t think it’s a good idea to put them in the front lines.”
“You’re right. I’ll get the okay from this end, but send a runner to your Panzer Lehr guys and tell them what’s up.”
“Got it. We’re getting pretty good at sign language and drawing stick figures. Ballard out.”
“Enemy at eight hundred meters and closing,” came the call from the church tower.
Peiper could see the church clearly in the city center, the citadel high above him. “Now!” he shouted, and the roar of all his guns firing at once echoed in the valley.
The attack was on. Waving his arm, the task-force commander urged his panzer forward, relished the fire and fury of the assault. There were panzers to both sides, adding their ordnance to the barrage, rolling over barrels, crushing sheds, smashing fences in this shoddy industrial neighborhood.
Peiper was elated as he went into battle. This time he would be fighting Germans, rather than Russians or Americans or British. But these Germans were traitors. And killing traitors was joy of the highest order.
The panzer lurched as it fired again. The high explosive shell exploded against the stone wall of a tall building, bringing down a cascade of debris. More plumes of smoke and flames were visible in the town ahead of him, as Diefenthal’s guns joined in. The artillery battery rained shells upon the citadel and the church, both places that had been identified as possible headquarters for Rommel and his staff.
A machine gun opened up, tracers ripping toward the lead panzer. Two more tanks concentrated fire, machine guns and tank cannons joining to blast the outpost to smoky shards. Peiper’s tank, a modern Panther, rolled over the pile of rubble, and he saw that the gunners were German—he sneered at these “prisoners,” allowed to man a weapon by the Americans. If he had needed any further convincing of the worth of his cause, this was it.
Another gun opened up, a light antitank gun that cracked a shot off the armor of a Panzer IV. Peiper’s own gunner had seen this target, and the colonel grinned fiercely as the turret purred around, the gun barrel parallel to the ground as it blasted out another deadly shell.
And still more of the city began to burn.
The roar of cannon fire surprised Rommel as he exited the headquarters building. It was sooner than he had anticipated. Part of him was gratified—his Germans had organized, reacted, and moved well ahead of schedule. That was
professionalism of the highest order, and he was proud to see them—at least, part of him was. It would be difficult, he realized, to separate his new position from the loyalties that had so far dominated his entire life.
But at the sound of the guns, his reflexes took over, and he was running into the street, his long greatcoat flapping behind him like a cape. There was the expected chaos as shells burst in the compound, but at the same time there was more order than he expected. Then he noticed the American division commander, Wakefield, sitting in the jeep parked in the compound, one hand clutching a cigar, the other his radio, seemingly heedless of the enemy fire landing all around him. Standing next to him was the reporter Porter, desperately trying to keep up a stream of translation and cringing every time a shell exploded nearby.
Rommel was impressed that Wakefield had been able to exercise command over German forces so easily. His original impression of the overweight and unkempt man had not been an inspiring one.
As Rommel approached, he heard Wakefield issuing orders, the German translations coming close behind from both Porter and Sanger. “Bob, have you got the range on the enemy artillery yet?”
“Working on it,” came the crackling voice of the CCB commander. “We’ll have counterbattery fire going in less than two minutes.”
“Porter, I want a fire lit under those Germans. We need that pontoon bridge operational
now,
got it? That means more engineers on the job.” Another shell exploded close to his jeep and the resultant spray of dirt showered everyone around, including all three generals.
“I’ll take care of that, General Wakefield,” interjected Rommel, shrugging the dirt off his shoulders. His wounded eye was giving him fits again, making him blink rapidly in the dust and dirt that filled the air around him.
The American general acknowledged the German field marshal. “Thank you, Field Marshal. We need to get some ammunition down to the river for my boys and some of your Panzer Lehr troops to repel this attack. My boy Bob Jackson is up in the citadel; he’s directing counterbattery fire and spotting troops. You need to get your boys into their tanks and into the fight, and, if you’ll pardon me, sir, you need to get yourself the hell off the field. I think they’re gunning for you personally.”
Rommel could figure out most of what the American general was saying even before the translation was finished, both because of his hand gestures and because of Rommel’s own
fingerspitzengefühl,
or battlefield intuition.
“General, I’ve never commanded from the rear and never will. I’ll get my troops moving, but I’m not planning to go anywhere.”
“If that’s your decision, sir,” responded Wakefield, giving the distinct impression he thought it was the wrong choice. Then he turned his attention
back to his own responsibilities. He put the cigar back in his mouth and picked up his radio to issue new orders.