Das Fever of Dachau

The major spoke up, saying one word, “Prokhorovka!”

“YES!” he replied very loudly, surprising everyone and having the guard behind him start to pull his club, expecting the young man to lunge at the officer. “Yes,” he said once more in a lower tone. “We were supposed to surprise and overtake the Russians, but so many tanks, anti-tank guns, rockets. “ The half-track, I was knocked over by an exploding shell. “

He remembered scrambling out of the wreckage; smoke filled the air the sounds of shells rocketed overhead in each direction. He watched one of the other men scurry out of the half-track to be struck by a Russian tank; the tank slowed and went over the soldier very slowly. The man screamed for the longest time till he vanished in the treads of the tank.

He watched as he saw other communist tanks do similar things to other German troops fleeing from vehicles or wounded in the open.

After pausing in thought, he looked around the room. “The Russian tankers would find wounded enemy troops crawling or trying to stand up with limbs blown off.” He paused again for a moment, “I watched a comrade as a tank changed direction. It slowed and went over him ever so slowly. He seemed to scream until the tracks tore him to shreds.”

“War happens,” said the lieutenant.

As tired and scared as he was, he ran to a fallen soldier and pulled a Panzerfaust from his dead hands. He laid low in a puddle of cold, dirty water and lying as if he was wounded, keeping the weapon out of sight.

“I crawled on the battlefield till I found a panzer grenade, and I laid motionless till a tank changed direction towards me. I fired as it got close and blew a track off. I did this three times; I did not know that a SS officer observed me do this at least twice.”

"Your record shows you disabled or destroyed three T-34 tanks and two armoured vehicles that day and suffered numerous injuries,” said the captain as he held his service record up.

“I do not know; I just gave the barbaric Communists what they thought they wanted. Someone to torture to death.” He replied.

“You went to Germany for treatment of injuries and were sent back to the Das Reich Division in early October 1943.” said the captain. “The division was refitted. You assisted as an interpreter sometimes for the Waffen SS and the Gestapo.”

"My officer got me up one night and had me go into the farm complex in Southern France. It was late at night, and I did not know exactly where it was. My officer told me he would stay close by, and I was to do as instructed and not comment or disagree with the staff there. Inside a small building, there were two men and a woman. The men were hanging on what appeared to be beef meat hooks.” He remembered seeing one of the men, an eye was hanging out of the socket, and he was muttering. A second man was also hung up but had not received the same treatment, at least not at that moment. "They believed the woman was Russian, Slavic, or maybe a Gypsy. They wanted to know if she had escaped from a camp. They suspected she was a runner between various Partisan groups. I asked the questions they wanted to be asked of her. When she refused to answer or spat at me, two heavy-set men would slowly start to remove fingers from one of the men. I asked her to please give them some answer as they would prolong the men’s agony for hours.”

The British Major, at this point, walked over to the captain, opened a file, and tossed a photo of a blonde-haired man with a receding hairline toward Albert. “Is this the officer doing the questioning?” He asked as he stepped back.

He stared at the photo for a long moment; this man was forever trapped in his mind. The man could speak politely and kindly to him then would do such barbaric things to his prisoners. “Yes, he was a Gestapo Officer; I will never forget him.”

The captain turned to the typist, “Please make sure this gets sent in a report to the Special Branch War Crime Investigators.”

The Typist stopped for a moment wrote a note on the photo before placing it into an envelope. She almost mechanically went back to her keyboard.

Albert wanted to put his hands over his ears; he could almost hear the moans and cries of the man in this very room. “She gave a little information; she admitted to being in a labour camp and escaping in November 1942. Since then, she was proud to have killed many Germans, Italian and Romanian soldiers.” He could remember after she spoke, one of the men smiled and removed a revolver from his belt as he shot the most tortured man in the torso. A few moments later, he was escorted out of the building by his officer. He heard her defiant screams followed by the sound of several pistol shots. “I heard gunfire as I left the building with my officer escorted me out. I never saw any of them again.”

“Tulle, France, you were there?” Said the lieutenant.

“NO!” he replied. “I was supposed to be, but our half-track overheated."

“A breakdown,” said the captain.

“Yes, I knew what the division was to do, the partisans were randomly killing our officers and men, and something had to be done to stop it. I did not know the others would be so brutal. But after our officers were burned alive in a vehicle, things got out of control.”

“OUT OF CONTROL,” said the lieutenant. “Du hast Menschen lebendig verbrannt“

He almost replied in German to the officer, but instead choose his native French, "Vous avez tiré sur des soldats qui se sont rendus et sur des blessés à Dachau."

The British Officer could not help but like this boy as he said, "We are not dealing with alleged crimes of American forces at Dachau."

"During the Normseveral Offensive, you questioned several prisoners?" the captain said, wanting to move on.

"Yes, at one point, I questioned two American doctors from an American Paratrooper Division. After questioning, I learned that my commending officer had them shot to death," he responded.

The facial expression on one of the doctor's faces still haunted him sometimes at night. Some might call the watershed moment when the doctor realized he was to be shot.

"Why were they shot," asked the lieutenant.

"I heard one of the other soldiers laughing and saying, "SS High Command hates people that look like Jews, no matter what uniform they wear."

"You were wounded around the seventeen or eighteen of June?"

"Yes, a fighter plane strafed our post; I was wounded in the leg when an explosion tossed me aside like a doll. As I lay waiting for a medic, one of the officers joked with me, and he said he did not know privates could fly."

"You never rejoined the Second Das Reich Division," said the captain. "You were transferred for your growing language skills and abilities.

"I tried very hard to get transferred to a rear position in intelligence," he said as he once more looked at the major, who was now sitting in a chair against the wall.

"When did you first meet SS Commando Otto Skorzeny?" the major cleared his throat, which appeared to cause the young lieutenant to toss his pencil along his table. The young man tried to smile as he pushed it back to the young officer.

The young man thought hard for a moment; he really liked the kind, very tall, very well respected Waffen SS leader. "He looked past the two men at the table, answering the major directly, "When I was injured, I was asked to give a briefing on how without formal education, I could pick up languages so quickly and at times seem to almost be from that land."

The American Captain lit one cigarette from another as he listened to the young man speak. "Explain yourself,"

The young man stretched slightly, which appeared to get everyone's attention. He moved his mouth around. He spoke in English but almost with no European accent at all. He sounded like he could be from Canada or the Pacific Northwest of the United States. "Captain, when will this be done. I want to get home before the whole ball season is over."

Everyone in the room did not know if they should applaud or shoot him as a spy at that very moment. "How long can you keep that up, "asked the captain, knowing he had just beaten the major to the question.

He spoke back in his normal tone, "It varies with language and how long I have observed the people I am mimicking."

The lieutenant was waiting for his opportunity to rejoin the conversation, " You were briefly assigned to Operation Greif."

"Yes, I freely admit, I was ordered to cross the frontier to the American lines in the Ardennes with four others. Three men and one female."

"Your orders?" said the captain.

He remembered it being bitterly cold as they moved away from several units of soldiers. It was nearly completely back as they moon along until the voices they heard were American. He pulled his knife out and moved behind a single U.S. soldier struggling to keep warm as he shuffled his feet.

"We were ordered on December 15th, 1944, to go through a small gap in American front lines. We were to cause chaos behind the lines. But I do not know what the female member of the team's orders was. Once across the frontier, she went on her own. I only ever met her the day before the operation and never again."

"Her name, rank?" said the major.

He looked the major in the face, "I honestly did not know. This woman was dressed as a French Nun when I saw her last."

"Things did not go well, did they?" said the lieutenant with a grin.

"After a day during heavy snow, we became separated. I was on my own briefly when the attack started. In the confusion and the heat of the battle, I pulled several Americans out of a burning pillbox." he looked around the room. "I was not much of a spy, and I saved the life of an American Colonel and several others. Their men had already run away as the German tanks advanced."

"Can this be verified," asked the captain.

"Lieutenant Colonel Taylor, Twenty-sixth Division, he took my name and wanted to put me in for something called a Bronze Star."

The captain got up, "Hang on," he motioned to the lieutenant and the major, and they spoke against the far wall for several moments.

They all went back to their previous positions, " What name were you using?" asked the captain.

"Name?"

"Yes, name, what did you call yourself in the American uniform." the captain answered.

" PFC Kevlin Walker from Seattle Washington, Field Artillery Spotter for the 106th Artillery."

With that, the lieutenant scribbled some notes and left the room. The captain looked at his papers, "Did you end up back with the unit?"

"The following day outnumbered, outgunned, and out of ammunition, I was captured by advancing Wehrmacht armour wth a number American soldiers. I spoke to the most senior officer I could find, gave a special code, and released me to find my way through our lines. The problem was I was still in an American uniform, so when our truck hit a landmine, I ended as a prisoner of war, for the second time in two days."

"How unfortunate," said the captain.

"A SS officer went to interrogate me, and after some effort found out they had made a mistake." he went on, ignoring the captain's comment.

"You went to a Waffen SS Hospital in Germany." the captain said as he checked his notes.

Authors' Notes

You have now read Chapter Three of "Das Fever of Dachau" I look forward to your comments, suggestions and more. Please feel free to subscribe so you do not miss the other chapters of this original short novel.

Thank you, Chapter Four begins the journey to Dachau as the war reaches it's last cruel months is "Oward to Dachau?"