Chapter 2 Interrogation
After two hours of questioning, his grenade-addled brain became fuzzy in relation to 'name, rank and serial number.' He even forgot part of the latter, but he never forgot his rank.
"Buck sergeant," he said for the umpteenth time.
Once for some infraction of army regulations in North Africa, his three stripes had been reduced to two, those of a corporal. A few months later, they had reappeared in Salerno, Italy. There, wounded and barely conscious, he had saved the life of his own sergeant in battle, and had been meritoriously promoted again.
The long day ended with some much-needed rest for the weary GI. He might have guessed it earlier, but now he began to believe it in earnest. He had hit that rock harder than he thought. A raging headache, blurred sight, shaky hands, all of it spelled a concussion. A slight one to be sure, but still …
He was led from the kitchen to a bedroom. The floor boards creaked. It was a sturdy house, rugged and true, but with age, mice and Krauts, it was showing a bit of wear. His clothes dry at last, he lay down on a straw tick on a wooden cot and composed himself to sleep. He didn't even need the mattress. A GI could sleep anywhere he lay his head.
A guard sat on a stool in the room, yawning and scratching intermittently. Just for something to do, Saunders counted them. The scratches won the contest, he noted, and then let sleep whisk him away. Maybe three, four hours' worth. Not such a bad night. But what about the next day?
Another round of questioning in the offing? After he 'broke down' and gave the Third Reich a bloody eye, like his own, what would happen to him then?
Would he be a POW? Have to sit out the war in a barbwire-encircled camp? Live on cabbage soup? Which had to be worse than the chow at the CP's mess. At least there, he was free to dump it if he chose and eat K-rations. But in a POW camp, it was that or nothing. He'd have to eat it. He had to live.
And he intended to live, to get back home someday, to his small farm, the mules, and the rusted-out old tractor and whatever he could put in the ground that would grow.
Day broke. It came chill and with a sprinkling of rain. On waking, he felt the chill and pulled a wool blanket up closer to his chest. As sprays of raindrops hit the panes of the twin windows in a corner of the room, he lay, mesmerized, watching them. In addition, he listened to the sounds of the old farmhouse as its new occupants moved about. It was called 'keeping tabs on the enemy.'
His guard had nodded off, his head lolling back against the wall and his gun all but slipping out of his fingers. He could have taken it so easily, but it was not the right time to try to escape. He hadn't 'broken' yet.
Coughing dryly, he sat up on the edge of the cot and turned over the left sleeve of his jacket, ripping it slightly to see the path a bullet had made. He'd been lucky. Not much of a wound—he could still move his fingers.
The Sani came again and changed the sticky plaster on the cut over his eye, then he cleaned, dressed and put a piece of sticky plaster over Saunders' bullet wound. After that, he took him to a place to wash up. The German medic impressed Saunders with a good spirit and a kind heart, much like Doc's.
Still shaky from the grenade, he moved along the hall leaning on the medic's arm. In the W.C., the boy pointed to a dry sink where there were a couple of towels and a basin with a jug of water beside it.
"Danke," he said, even as he eyed the room for an escape route. The only window proved to be too small to crawl out of. No trapdoors existed in the floor, walls or ceiling. There was no escape here. "Danke," he repeated.
"Bitte," came the boy's answer. You're welcome.
After a quick face and neck wash, feeling a bit on the mend, Saunders threw the towel onto the dry sink next to the basin and knocked on the door. It opened. The Sani was still there.
As they moved back to the kitchen along the short hall, its walls puckered and bowed with age, he asked, "What's your name?"
"Heinz," his guide answered. "Heinz Leibowitz."
Saunders cocked an eyebrow and stopped for a moment, his hand on the plastered wall. "Leibowitz?" he repeated and the young medic nodded his uncombed, light-colored head.
"Any relation to the Leibowitzes on Central Avenue, back home? Jewish family of four?"
Heinz shook his head, dubiously, evidently not understanding the implication of a Kraut soldier bearing a Jewish last name.
"I didn't think so," muttered Saunders, moving on again. The smells from the kitchen, of sausages cooking and some kind of bread baking, drew him on.
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After a bite to eat, the day began with a few pleasantries of the feldwebel's. How had he slept, how was he feeling? All translated by Heinz, to none of which Saunders responded.
With the stove-warmed kitchen, the filling meal, it would have been a welcome respite from the war if the four or five Germans hadn't been swirling around him, or the feldwebel asking questions.
Saunders clamped his lips together and gazed at his hands on the table-top, fielding the feldwebel's inquiry concerning Allied troop strength in this sector, and others like it, by remaining mute. Heinz Leibowitz began to doubt his translations.
"You understand me, sergeant?" asked the private, humbly.
Saunders looked up and down the tall length of the private and then dropped his eyes again, brooding on his fingers.
Herr Hauptmann Frosch had come in. He still smelled of wine and rubbed his belly, easy enough to do as it hung amply over his belt. Now he moved over and Leibowitz knew well enough to step away.
"Ash him about his mission. Why was he at the stream? What was he doing there? Where's the rest of his patrol?" All said in a long stream of German.
Leibowitz moved into view again as the captain stepped back. "Sergeant, where are your men? You lead … how many?"
Saunders shrugged. He didn't even give name, rank and serial number. That game had gotten so old. He had no fear of torture—these men were no pros at the job of interrogation. It was almost as if they were ashamed of hurting him. Even the feldwebel who had hit him last night had done so lamely and without malice.
"Water," he asked, and then, "Wasser."
A cup of water from the kitchen pump was put in his hand. "Danke," he said and drank slowly, deliberately, then the cup disappeared, snatched out of his hand by Frosch, who had just realized that he'd broken the first rule of interrogation—no water. These guys are catching on, thought Saunders.
Frosch put forth his question about troop strength again; Heinz translated, and Saunders ignored it.
"My stomach hurts, American," said Frosch, in German. "You do not know the pain I'm in—no, Heinz, don't tell him that. Tell him, he must answer me. We can't be at this all day."
Leibowitz began again. "Sergeant, listen to me. I think … I mean … Herr Hauptmann, Captain Frosch, is … in a hurry. He wants to know about … why you were at the river?"
Saunders himself wanted to rush things a bit. But instead, clasping his hands together, feeling his fingers one by one, and with no hint of humor in his voice, he said, "Tell him to go to blazes."
Leibowitz gasped. "You want me to say that to him?" He nodded at Frosch. "I will not. He'd shoot you, or me!"
Frosch continued to stand over Saunders, rub his belly and wince.
"Now's as good a time as any," Saunders said. "Tell him what I said."
When the words met Frosch's ears, an angry red spread over his already-florid face. Saunders was jerked to his feet and hustled outside into a misty day. He was taken up a hill to a wide-spreading tree, where he waited, a bit hunched over in the cold. Not sure what he was waiting for, he watched warily.
And then he saw it. It was huge, nearly as big as Littlejohn, but not quite. As the human leviathan strode up the hill at Herr Hauptmann's command, Saunders paled. Though he didn't realize it, he backed up and grasped the not-too-protective bole of the tree.
He was in a dilemma. Talk now, and maybe get shot. Talk later, and get beat up now, and then shot.
Frosch and his men had gathered around, Frosch's face redder in the pale early light. Also standing about were the feldwebel and the five or six privates assigned to the observation post. Several of the privates stomped the butts of their rifles into the ground and started a quiet betting.
Heinz, his hair wild from raking through it with his nervous fingers, moved about at the edge of the other men, as if he couldn't settle down.
Once he gathered his nerve, Saunders stood out from the tree and faced off with the big ox. There were rules for prisoners to follow, just as there were rules their for captors to follow on their behalf. Fighting this man, he could lose his prisoner status, and thus become fair game to shoot.
He wanted to remain a live prisoner, not end up a dead enemy. In that case, if this man beat him, he'd have to take it. Could he do so?
For some reason, maybe so the big ox would not look so huge, Saunders wished to know his name. Frosch, hands on hips, called out something to "Ernst," and the big ox turned his head. Saunders' keen ears picked up the name.
In the blink of an eye, he felt the impact of a giant fist and fell. The ox backed up. Rubbing his lower face, moving his jaw to see if it was broken, Saunders lay on his back wondering should he rise to his feet, or not?
He looked around at a half-dozen Schmeissers, thinking how fast they could be hoisted to hip level and fired if he got up and turned himself into a windmill of fists and pitched his opponent into the mud. He didn't get that choice. Ernst dragged him to his feet and swung again, slamming him back. Saunders stayed on his feet this time, even as blood spurted from his lip.
Ernst barreled after him, lifted him in a giant bear hug and squeezed him until his eyes popped. He couldn't strike back as his arms were clenched at his sides. Ernst dropped him and he rolled down the slope of the hill. Ernst followed, hoisted him to his feet again and threw more punches, caving in his midsection until finally Saunders could take it no more.
The rules of prisoner conduct against his captors were suddenly tossed out of the equation. He drove a fist into Ernst's solar plexus, and landed another against the giant's jaw, snapping his head back. Saunders followed that with a blow to the side of Ernst's head that toppled the big ox off his feet.
Now the men roared, clapping and gesturing at the two fighters. They wanted a show, but such a show, Saunders knew, as could only end in one way for him. Broken up, and in traction.
Doubled over, blowing out with hands on his knees, Saunders clenched and unclenched his fists. Too quickly for his liking, the human M4 General Sherman tank recovered, got up and lurched at him again. Saunders sidestepped him and pushed him off.
Ernst tripped and rolled in the grass. He came up spitting mad, thinking he'd been played for a fool. He looked at the other men to see if they were on his side, but his comrades didn't give a copper pfennig about him one way or the other, not really.
Once on his feet again, he yelled like a horse in the jaws of a mountain lion and grabbed Saunders by the neck, spinning him around in a chokehold of chokeholds, his arm pressing like a two-ton block on Saunders' Adam's apple. Nothing could stop the ox's arm from crushing his windpipe.
Trying to break the bigger man's hold on his neck, Saunders kicked back at Ernst's legs. When kicking didn't work, he raised his hands up over his head to Ernst's eyes and pressed as hard as he could. Ernst snapped his head out of the way, but Saunders kept his fingers where they were, pressing, pressing.
In Ernst's death hold, the GI sergeant began to feel his knees going. His spine bent unnaturally, he fell to one knee, then to his side. Ernst followed, bending with him but not easing up on Saunders' neck. Another minute of this, the NCO thought, and the information he had been sent to relay to the Germans about the fake Allied push to the south would be swallowed up by the grave. His grave.
"Private Schubert! Ernst! Cut it out," cried Frosch. "He can't breathe." Feeling more dyspeptic than ever, Frosch trotted down the hill himself to pull the ox off.
His men, unasked, eagerly joined him for a free for all, slugging at each other or roughing Ernst up, after first flinging him off Saunders, who fell away, choking, and wondering if his neck was broken. Breathing harshly, he wasn't getting enough air, and there was plenty of it that cool November morning! Heinz fell to one knee beside him and looked at the marks beginning to form on the American sergeant's neck.
"You ought not make Ernst mad," Heinz cautioned, a bit late. "He has a … how do you say … a bad temper."
Unable to say anything at the moment, Saunders nodded, extending his arm so Heinz could help him up. A dip or two later, he was getting his sea legs again, but needed Heinz to help him negotiate the hill and get back inside the kitchen. It was time. Time he told.
"What—what do you want to know?" he croaked out, still raspy from Ernst's chokehold on his neck.
Heinz repeated what Frosch had said earlier. "Why were you at the stream?"
"Courier. Had a job to do," Saunders lied.
Anticipating Frosch's next question, tilting his head to one side, Heinz asked, "Courier? What's that?"
"Messenger. I had a … uh … message. I can't talk, Heinz."
"What's he saying?" asked Frosch, his feldwebel, Bruno Kroll, close by, peering over his shoulder.
"Just that he was taking a message somewhere, sir."
"To where?" Frosch urged.
"Sergeant?" asked Heinz. "The message. Where were you … ah, going?"
"To Item Company. Radio silence in this sector. Had to deliver the message in person."
"What is it?" asked Frosch, now drawing closer to Saunders at the table.
Heinz translated. This was it. "A big push," Saunders said, "to the south."
"Push?" asked Heinz. "What is that?"
"I—I can't say," said Saunders, almost truthfully, his neck badly bruised.
"What, sergeant?" Heinz implored. "What is it?"
Taking his hand away from his throat and recalling the words he had to say, Saunders paused and refused to go on, baiting them by his stubborn refusal to give in. He hoped by showing that he found it very hard to be a traitor, he could make them believe what he had to say. Even if it was a lie.
Frosch called in Pvt. Ernst Schubert from his guard duty outside. Saunders saw him and hastily said, "Alright, I'll tell you. Allied forces are going to … uh … make a big push south of here, beginning at the town of … oh, this is not right."
Upon waking that morning, he had rehearsed the names of a string of French towns in the southern half of Normandy to be divulged as part of the fake Allied push in that direction.
"What town, sergeant?" pleaded Heinz, who didn't like the look of the big man either. "Where?"
Saunders seemed to give in all at once, no more fight left in him. He rattled off the names of three towns in a map-like sequence. Each name met with Frosch's head-bobbing approval, though he didn't yet understand how they were interrelated.
"The Allies will move from …" Saunders filled them in on the first name, then the other two, "as they move south." Heinz translated.
When Saunders was through, he was treated to another cup of water from the kitchen pump and enjoyed every blessed drop of it. He had put on a good show, and now the die was cast. It would be up to Frosch and his feldwebel to pass along the information—the false information. After that, Saunders hoped to see them in hell.
But that not too soon.
Up Next: Chapter 3 Escape