Chapter Text
Somewhere in France
The damp weather and late night led the porter at the gate to pull his cloak closer about him. There was a tiny fire in the gatehouse, which seemed to do little to warm either the building or its occupant. Although there were few visitors, it was his task to remain at the gate to greet them. Although it was the middle of summer, the rain that day had made for a chilly night. Brother Étienne was crouching closer to the fire, when he heard the bell jangling at the gate. Who would that be, after Matins, hours before dawn, on a Sunday? Perhaps an emergency of some sort, or a lost traveler, or perhaps refugees—there was a constant stream of them, these dark days.
He arose from the chair and went out of the gatehouse into the dark. His heart sank within him as he recognized the unmistakable silhouette of a German officer, wearing a belted overcoat, high boots and peaked cap, standing before the great iron gate. Mother of God, thought the middle-aged monk to himself, don’t tell me he’s hunting some poor fellow and thinks he’s here... However, he had sufficient sense to keep these thoughts to himself as he approached the tall figure at the gate. “How may we serve you, sir?” Étienne asked, with humility.
The German’s voice was quiet and weary, but his French was passable. “I must see your abbot. I have come to ask a favor.”
“At this hour?” exclaimed the porter, forgetting to be humble. “Sir, all the brothers have risen for matins and are now gone back to their beds. Can you not return in the morning, at a more suitable hour, Colonel?” he asked, seeing enough of the visitor to recognize his rank markings.
“No. It is impossible,” explained the burly grey-haired officer. “You see, I seek sanctuary.”
“Sanctuary? For whom?” Étienne did not see anyone else standing out in the road. It was not that odd for military men to see their wives or children into the cloister for protection against the devastation of war, but there was no one there.
“For myself, good brother. Will you let me in?”
It was almost a minute before the porter could take in what the man had said. For himself? Then... He fumbled for the keys with cold-stiffened fingers. “Yes, yes, sir. I will go and get Father Simon.”
Somewhere in Kent
July 17. 1943
As Friedrich Arnheiter took his turn shaving, Gustav Weitzel—another of the defectors now working for Intelligence— stuck his head in the door. “Hallo, Fritzi,” he said.
Arnheiter detested being called “Fritzi”—it made him feel like someone’s pet Dachshund—but Weitzel was enough senior to him that he didn’t protest. At least it was better than some of the other men calling him das Afrikakind: the “Africa kid.” He nodded in reply, but didn’t speak, as he was in the process of trimming his straw-colored moustache.
Weitzel continued, “Oberleutnant Hardy sent me to tell you, there will be a visitor for you after breakfast.”
“A visitor? Für mich? Who could it be?” This was odd. No one whom he knew, with the sole exception of Herr Doktor MacNeill, far away in western Scotland, had any idea where he was. He and his closest friend, Konrad Genscher, had been separated as soon as they had reached Britain and the processing center for POWs. He finished his moustache, and turned to look at the senior NCO.
Weitzel shrugged. “How do I know? They didn’t say. Wait and see.”
.- ..-. .-. .. -.-. .-
The English officer in charge of the prisoners regarded Sam Troy with frank astonishment. “Who is it you want to see? Oh, that fellow… Are you quite sure?”
“Let’s just say we need someone with… certain qualifications.” The leader of the Rat Patrol handed over a thin file of papers. “Everything should be in order.”
“Oh, quite…” the officer murmured as he read the material Troy had given him. “But…”
“Is there a problem, sir?”
“Oh, no. We’ll have him brought in. The clerk there will show you to the interview room.”
It had only been two months since the end of the North African campaign, but the Rat Patrol had been there even before the fall and surrender of the Afrika Korps. Once it became obvious that there was very little left for the crack team of commandos to accomplish, the Rat Patrol had been reassigned and transferred to England. They had been detailed to work in cooperation with Military Intelligence, and the major in charge of their assignment was a cheerful red-haired Scotsman, named Rory MacDonald. He had been in the Western Desert himself, and showed a great deal of energy and indefatigable good humor.
The young man who was seated in the chair under guard looked so different from the last time Troy had seen him, about a year before, that for a moment the American wasn’t sure it was the same man until he recognized the faint white scar from a laceration on the man’s forehead. It was Corporal Arnheiter, all right, who on that long-ago day had begged the Rat Patrol to accept his surrender and save Dietrich’s life [1].
Everything else, however, was different now. Now the scene was not in Africa, but in England, and Troy was on a mission like none he had ever attempted before. This was one of the few camps for POWs who were considered ‘friendly’ Germans, in category ‘A’, who had volunteered to defect and to help the Allied cause. The young man’s hair had been bleached almost white back in the desert, but now it was straw-gold, and he had cultivated a neat blond mustache, which made him look older than his twenty-three years. The sunburned desert tan had faded over the long English winter, leaving him very pale. In addition, there was a pair of crutches propped against the table. “Hello,” said Troy quietly, sitting down. “I’m Sergeant Troy. Do you remember me?”
The young German nodded. “Yes, I remember. You capture us, and you helped me and der Hauptmann.” He smiled slightly. “I thank you for this, again.”
“Don’t mention it. How are you? Guess you’ve had a pretty rough time.”
“Rough time?” repeated Arnheiter, clearly not comprehending.
Oh, boy, this is gonna be interesting, he thought. Back in the desert, Dietrich’s English had been so good that he understood everything you said, and a lot of what you didn’t say, too. This kid was obviously still learning the language. “I mean, you have had a difficult time because you’ve been wounded… when was that?” Troy knew, of course, from reading the dossier, but it was polite to ask.
“Oh,” the corporal said. “At El Alamein. The English have me a new leg gegeben—given,” he corrected himself. “In the camp in Scotland I learned walking again,” he added. “In Scotland, Herr Doktor MacNeill helped me very much. From his help, I can do most things. I am slow, but I can do them. But I cannot run, climb things, or drive.” Then he frowned slightly, looking confused. “Why you come here?”
Troy leaned back a little in the chair, and began to explain. “I and my men—the same three men I had in the desert—need someone to help us. You remember them, right? We want a wireless operator to send us messages and receive our messages while we are on our missions over there across the Channel. We want him to be a German, so other German radiomen will hear him sending code and not take notice too closely. If you are willing to do it, we’d like to have you.”
“Why me? Ich verstehe nicht.”
“Because your name was on the short list of defectors with radio experience that Intelligence gave me. And we’ve met you already.” Troy smiled, trying to put Arnheiter at ease. “You seemed like a good man back in Africa, and, well…let’s just say you have a pretty good reference.” If you were a Nazi, Dietrich would’ve never had you as his clerk—he couldn’t have trusted you. But he did. Troy changed the subject. “If I can ask, what made you decide to defect?”
Arnheiter did not answer at once; the reason was difficult to explain. Probably this American would not understand. However, he had been in the Western Desert too—maybe he would. How do I say this with my little English? “Berlin sends us there,” he replied slowly. “And leaved us there to die. We needed more men, more supplies, more fuel. Our General himself asked for that, he went there himself. They—the OKW—did nothing.” Being German, he pronounced it oh-kah-veh, but Troy understood.
The American sergeant sighed, and nodded in agreement. “Yeah. We saw that ourselves. The High Command left the Afrika Korps high and dry, just wrote them off.” He had, of course, been glad of the Axis surrender in North Africa on May 8, several weeks before, but he could certainly understand how it would have felt to have been in their position.
That was not all Arnheiter wanted to say. “There is more. They have destroyed our own country first, and then many others. I want my country again, as it was before the Party.” He looked back at Troy again, and decided to ask—just perhaps, as a miracle, the leader of die Rattentruppe might know the one thing he was desperate to find out. “I ask a question?”
“Sure,” said Troy. “What is it?”
“When have you leave Afrika?”
That’s a strange question… “April,” he answered. “The second week in April. They pulled us out and transferred us here. Why?”
The fair-haired corporal hesitated, but his expression was pleading. He bit his lip for a moment, apprehensive. “When have you last seen der Herr Hauptmann?”
Oh, now I get it. He’s trying to find out what happened to Dietrich. When were we at Koorlea? “Let’s see, we had a mission to a place called Koorlea, about the end of February. That’s the last time I actually saw him, but that’s all I know.”
Arnheiter nodded—that squared with what he had been told in letters. “He wrote my family after El Alamein to tell them I was killed.”
“Dietrich thought you were dead?”
“Yes. He sent them a letter and a box of my things.” He paused to figure out how to say the next sentence. “But also the Red Cross sent them a letter I wrote from the hospital ship, so they were very happy. My uncle wrote Hauptmann Dietrich to tell him I am really alive, but it never found him. The letter came back.” He could not keep the sorrow from his voice, but it was mingled with anger. That was the heart of the matter; the only way he could avenge his beloved captain’s death was to destroy the National Socialist government with his bare hands. There was no way that he could accomplish that; therefore, as one man alone, a cripple and a prisoner, defecting was as close as he could come. “So, for that I will help fight against Berlin, against the Führer.”
Can’t say I blame him. “Makes sense to me.”
“Where you take me now?”
Troy shook his head firmly. “No, Corporal, you don’t understand. I’m not taking you, I’m asking you. It’s your decision. If you want to come work for us, come. If you want to stay here and keep on with your listening post duties, then stay. You choose.” He put it another way. “You have to volunteer for this job—nobody can make you do it if you don’t want to.”
“I choose? I decide?” This was new—it was the first time since his capture that anyone in authority had offered him a choice about anything.
“Yes. It’s up to you. I only want you if you are willing to do it.” Troy explained further. “We are billeted in a house in a suburb of London, all of us. That’s where we are when we’re not ‘over there’ making trouble.”
“You say you have still the same men?”
“Yeah, the same ones. Anyway, you’d live in the house with us...no barracks like this, no guards, except for a guard on the house when we are away. You’d have a room all to yourself, with the radio equipment in there. It’s not complete freedom—you can’t leave the house except under guard. That’s called ‘house arrest’. But it’s as much freedom as I can give you. If you want to come, the authorities will release you to Major MacDonald’s custody—he, and I, will be responsible for you.” He got up from the chair. “You don’t have to decide right now, but you’ve only got a couple of days to make up your mind. They’re giving me a week to get this set up. If you want to do it, tell the commandant, and we’ll take it from there. If you don’t want to come, tell him that too, so I can request one of the other guys I talked to. But I’d rather have you, if you’re willing to do it.”
.- ..-. .-. .. -.-. .-
After Troy and the others finished their evening meal, he made an announcement. “I think I’ve found the man we want.”
“Yeah, Sarge? That was fast,” Hitch croaked. He’d had a cold for the last week.
Moffitt frowned. I know that look…. “Who?”
“I told you MacDonald gave me the list of defected POW’s who’d be willing to work with MI. I talked to a couple of them at Ascot. Well, it turns out, there’s a guy on that list that we know…. Remember the time that we captured Dietrich when he had sunstroke?”[2]
“Yes, of course,” the English sergeant replied thoughtfully. “Why?”
“Remember his driver? The kid who surrendered to us?”
“Of course I do—I talked to him quite a lot, you know.”
“He’s on the list of defectors, and he’s a trained wireless operator. And he’s already working for Military Intelligence at a listening post down in Kent. I went down and saw him today.”
Tully let out a long, low whistle.
“Wait a minute,” said Hitch. “That blond kid who was with Dietrich that time? You mean one of Dietrich’s guys actually defected?”
“Yeah. When I saw his name, it kind of rang a bell, but I couldn’t think why. Then when I looked at his file, I recognized the picture and asked about him. It’s the same guy, all right, and I want him. What do you think?”
“I think you’re barking mad.” The Englishman was shaking his head. “He’ll never do it, Troy, not for us. We made a regular practice of attacking their unit—in case you’d forgotten, we’re responsible for a lot of casualties in that company. Probably chaps that he knew.”
“He knows that. At any rate, he didn’t say no. And I think he’s trustworthy.”
“I don’t know, Sarge.” Tully looked dubious. “I can see all kinds of things going wrong with that.”
Moffitt chuckled, amused by the irony. “I can just see you explaining this to Colonel Hughes. Or trying to... Let’s see, you want this particular POW on the recommendation of one Hans Dietrich—whom Hughes does not know from Adam, nor would he want to.”
“Hell, I’m not going to tell him that,” replied Troy. “I’ll tell him I wanted that particular POW because I had encountered him in the desert and he seemed like a responsible kid. Which is the truth.”
“Why are you so sure this is going to work?” Moffitt frowned, curious. Troy often had these odd hunches or instincts about people, and nine times in ten he was right. There was always that tenth time, though…
“He’s got some pretty good reasons for doing it. And he’s been opposed to the government all along, apparently—it’s not exactly a new decision for him. And around the middle of June, he volunteered to defect to the Allies.”
“Good for him,” said Moffitt. “That can’t have been easy. And that does explain a few things.”
“Must be why Dietrich trusted him,” added Hitch. “We knew he’s no Nazi. And he wouldn’t have a clerk he thought would betray him to the Gestapo.”
“Yeah. There’s just one more thing,” Troy explained. “He’s lost a leg since we saw him last, at El Alamein when he was captured. If he’s here working with us, he might need some help now and then.” He looked around at all of the others. “How about it?”
Tully shrugged. “Don’t know why not. Only fair to help him some—he’s helping us, isn’t he?”
“Don’t know yet. I told him he had 48 hours to let us know.”
Moffitt drained the last drops from his teacup. “Then it’s up to him, isn’t it?”
Gustav Weitzel looked up from his bunk in the barracks, as Arnheiter made his way back into the room and went over to his own bunk. “So, was gibt’s denn? What did they want?”
Arnheiter sat down on the narrow iron bed. “There is an Ami—a group of Amis—who want me to come and help them. They want me to send and receive code for them.”
“Why? Don’t they know how to do it themselves?”
“Ja, natürlich. But they want a wireless operator who sends code like a Deutscher, not like an Engländer.”
“Could be useful,” Weitzel mused. “Are you going?”
“I don’t know. The Ami sergeant said I must decide.”
“Why? And why does he want you especially?”
“He knows me, that’s why. We encountered him in the desert, der Hauptmann and I.”
“So what? He’s still an Ami. Stay here, with the rest of us. You don’t want to always be with foreigners, do you? They’ll never understand you, Fritzi. At least here we are all Germans together. Exiles, traitors, defectors, but we know what we are—and why. And you and I, we do good work together.”
“That’s not all, Gustav. This Sergeant Troy once helped us in the desert, and for saving Herr Hauptmann’s life, I owe him.” Not once, but twice... he thought to himself. Once when we were stranded in the desert together, and once when Hauptmann Dietrich was lost alone in the sandstorm. I will owe this American sergeant as long as I live.
Weitzel shook his head, confused. “Your Captain Dietrich is dead, you told me.”
“Yes,” said Arnheiter sadly. “Still, I owe them a debt, whether or not they know it.”
“You should forget about that, Fritzi. I am certain they have already done so.”
Later that evening, Moffitt came into the kitchen to find Troy sitting there, nursing a bottle of Bass. “Well?” the Englishman asked. “Do you think he can do the job?”
“I think so.”
“Hughes will think you’re stark raving. MacDonald won’t—he’s pretty unconventional himself or he wouldn’t have approved the project. But the Colonel will start having kittens.”
“Yeah, I know... what else is new?”
The English sergeant chuckled, but only briefly. “Look here, just between us—what is it about this Arnheiter fellow? Why do you want him so badly?”
“Well, for one, he’s not an unknown quantity. We already know a lot about him, just from that twelve or fourteen hours he was in our camp. We’ve got a pretty good idea of his character. Better him than some guy we know nothing about.”
“Maybe. But that’s not all,” Moffitt replied, shrewdly. “Is it?”
Troy sighed and took a pull of his beer, while Moffitt got one for himself. “Yeah, you’re right. There is more to it. We owe Dietrich a favor. A big one.”
“Troy, I doubt we will ever see him again. His whole company was all but wiped out at El Alamein. He survived that, but after Kasserine, there’s no telling what’s become of him. He could be anywhere… or nowhere. You can’t make decisions based on what might have been.”
“Well, according to this Arnheiter kid, Dietrich probably bought it; I figure sometime in February or March, after that Koorlea business. Even so, I still owe him one. If it wasn’t for Dietrich, you wouldn’t be sitting here to argue with me. That half-crazed SS officer would’ve shot you.”
“There is that,” Moffitt admitted. “So he would have done.” No “half”-crazed about it; he was round the bend and then some... “But sentiment is not a good enough reason to take this fellow on board.”
“No, it’s not. But I think we’ve got enough reasons to give it a shot.”
Moffitt sighed and got himself a beer as well. He had hoped he wouldn’t have to play this card. “That’s not all that worries me, Troy.”
“All right. What’s eating you?”
“He’s turned his coat once. How do we know he won’t change sides again?”
“If the Nazis in his camp couldn’t get him on their side by main force, I’m pretty sure he’s not going to go that way now.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s been in a camp up in Scotland—where there were a bunch of hard core Nazis among the prisoners. According to his dossier, and a letter from the camp doctor up there, things got pretty ugly—some of them even tried to kill him for not falling in line. More than once. And he kept resisting anyway.”
.- ..-. .-. .. -.-. .-
Late at night, Arnheiter lay awake in his iron bunk, thinking about the choice that the American sergeant had offered him. What to do? Friends and comrades of his had been killed by this same man, this Sergeant Troy, and his patrol... could he now work for them? On the other hand, if not for them, he and Hauptmann Dietrich would have surely died in Africa.
Perhaps Weitzel was right. An airman for the Luftwaffe, shot down during the Battle of Britain, Gustav Weitzel had been in England longer than many of the other POWs. He had had no compunctions about turning to help the Allies, having never been a Nazi nor a supporter of their regime. He’d already been a prisoner for almost three years, and as a seasoned airman, he was a natural leader for the younger POWs with less experience. He had a point—here at this compound, there were a number of defected Germans working together. They had similar reasons and similar aims...to help bring down the Nazi regime any way they could. They understood one another, being all exiles for the same cause. Whereas, if Arnheiter went with the Americans, he would be alone among enemies and foreigners who would never understand who he was, or why he had done this thing, choosing to defect.
But Troy and his men had been in the desert. They knew what it was to take shelter from the deadly khamsin; they had had the same experiences as he had, in much the same places. They knew about oases and sand fleas and hunger and thirst. They had seen the Mediterranean, and the wasteland of the Qattara Depression just as he had. The taste of sweet dates and cool water was as familiar to them as it was to him. There were so many things that he would never have to try to explain, because they would already know. Konrad knew these things, too—but Konrad had been sent elsewhere as soon as they had arrived in the processing center at Kempton Park, as the British policy was to separate prisoners who were from the same unit, and Arnheiter doubted he would ever see his cheerful Bavarian friend again. At least I know his address, he thought, and his parents have mine. Suddenly, his heart ached with a wave of homesickness—not for Germany, but for the arid deserts of North Africa. His friends, the sea, the salt air, the flavor of fresh hummus and roasted goats, the calls of the camel drivers, the relief of arriving at one’s destination safe and sound after days of trackless wastes. There had been fear as well; fear of sandstorms, fear of the enemy shells, fear of the dreaded pestilences (of which there were all too many). But it was the kind of fear that made one glad for each day that one survived, unlike the fear at home that never went away—the fear of what might follow a knock on the door at night.
And these Americans had known the same things that he knew...and they had known der Hauptmann, too. They knew who he was, and what sort of man he had been: something Gustav, who had a poor opinion of all officers, would never understand. Among Troy and his men, Arnheiter would never have to explain why he would have followed Hans Dietrich to the ends of the earth. They had been there in the desert, and they knew. They might be foreigners—but they were not strangers. He sighed, settled himself on his left side and fell asleep, his decision made.
I will go.
.- ..-. .-. .. -.-. .-
France
“Colonel Krebel, what exactly do you wish us to do?” asked Father Simon, the abbot of the monastery of St. John.
“I wish to defect, Father.”
“That I cannot help you with.”
“No,” the officer admitted. “But you can give me sanctuary. I am myself a Catholic.”
The abbot eyed him in some surprise. “For a brief time, it could be done. But not for the remainder of the war, certainly. What do you propose to do then?”
“I have heard that the Church has certain—connections. It could be arranged to get me out of the country, perhaps?”
Careful, thought the abbot. He could be telling me all this to trap me into admitting our contact with the Résistance. How could he assure himself that this Colonel was telling the truth? But, on the other hand, if he were a true penitent and a son of the Church, then it would be a grave sin to turn him away and refuse him mercy.
“I am not aware,” Father Simon replied stonily, “of what you are talking about.” He considered the situation, idly fingering a pen on the desk. “However, you may remain here for the present time. I will write to other Benedictine houses, between here and Spain. For now, be at peace. You are safe here.”
But are we safe? Father Simon could not help wondering as he returned to his prayers.
[1]“The Quality of Mercy Raid”, Of Dreams and Schemes 8. The Quality of Mercy Raid.
[2] “The Quality of Mercy Raid”, Of Dreams and Schemes 8. The Quality of Mercy Raid.