Will's War

By Joseph Bakewell

Growing up in New York City before WW2, Will Mahoney attends Fordham Prep and, at the behest of a family friend and German teacher, studies that language. When the war starts, he leaves college, joins the Army, and, through the efforts of a Jewish friend, is sent to England, where he is assigned to interrogate German prisoners of war. English Intelligence operatives train him for this work. They later recruit him for a mission with the Partisans in Yugoslavia, during which, he will impersonate a German officer.

The mission goes wrong; he is wounded and, assumed to be a German officer, taken to a German hospital. When released, he finds himself inside Nazi Germany, trying to avoid discovery while he plans an escape. He finds comfort in discovering that not all Germans support Hitler and Nazism. Relationships build, and his efforts to escape are complicated when he falls in love with a German war-widow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Bakewell
• Release date: May 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9780971870154

Joseph Bakewell

I have been writing for more years than I care to admit to. I've attended workshops and conferences almost every year including the Stone Coast Conference in Maine, Poets' and Writers' Conference at Vermont College, and the Colgate Writers' Conference in Hamilton, NY. I'm a member of the New Hampshire Writers' Project.I've self-published six novels, the latest,Class Rules tells the story of a writer, working at a prep school where he encounters a gang rape, scandal and corruption while working to save his marriage at home. My current work, untitled, is about n old man and a young woman thrown together in extraordinary, life-threatening, circumstances.Born in New York City, and raised in that area, I'm married, have four adult children, and live in Boxford, MA. My sports include skiing, snow shoeing, cycling, and hiking. All of which take an occasional back seat to snow removal or house repair.

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WILL’S WAR

by

Joseph J Bakewell

SMASHWORDS EDITION

********

PUBLISHED BY

Joseph J Bakewell on Smashwords

Copyright © 2009 by Joseph J Bakewell

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WILL’S WAR

COMING OF AGE INSIDE

NAZI GERMANY

JOSEPH J BAKEWELL

CHAPTER ONE

No one wished me a Happy Birthday. It was just as well. Who in his right mind would call this day happy?

Have you ever gotten yourself into an utterly ridiculous predicament by taking a series of small logical steps, each one moving you closer to what you thought, but never really believed, would happen? I remember buying a magazine subscription once from a guy who came to the door and asked me a number of inconsequential questions. I felt compelled to say yes to each in turn. How could I switch to no when he asked for my signature?

There were different salesmen pushing me along the way from England to Italy, but that’s essentially how I found myself, in April of 1944, flying from a training camp south of Rome across the Adriatic Sea to Montenegro, where I would parachute into the night. All this because, as a kid, I began to learn German. Prior to this adventure, I considered my fluency an asset.

My only companion in that C-47, other than the cockpit crew, was Dubchek. We sat on hard, fold-down seats, facing each other across the narrow aisle of our two-engine aluminum can. I could barely see the airframe with its small windows, tubes and wires defined by a dim light glowing from a single overhead fixture.

Dubchek, a major in the Partisan army of Yugoslavia, was my superior officer. I was a 1st lieutenant, United States Army. In Italy, we had trained together for almost a month, and he never bothered to learn my first name. I could have introduced myself to him as a number. I could have been Seven, instead of Will Mahoney. It would have suited him.

I wondered what he was thinking—maybe nothing. He sat there, his dark eyes staring into space from behind lids that never seemed fully open. He was my guide, my only hope of getting out of this thing alive. And as near as I could tell, he didn’t give a tinker’s damn about me except as a tool for blowing up some Nazi power station in Yugoslavia.

I could see him but not much else. The noise was awful. I tried to distract myself, to keep from thinking about the jump and wondering if I would shit in my pants before I hit the ground, or maybe even before I left the plane.

The co-pilot got up and walked toward us waving a flashlight. The beam reflected off the aluminum skin of our fuselage, casting a dim glow over Dubchek’s head and shoulders and over the dark packs we would take with us. The small windows of our plane looked like huge eyes, staring in at us, waiting for us to come out. My heart pounded. It can’t be, I thought. The co-pilot yelled, I gotta take a leak, I leaned back, feeling the blood pulsing in my temples. Dubchek didn’t blink.

Learning German had been a good idea, my ticket to an education. It started on a warm Sunday afternoon in our apartment on 233rd Street in the Bronx. What year was it? 1934? My father’s old school chum, Otto Hanish—Uncle Otto to me—had come for a visit. Otto taught German at Fordham Prep and had just returned from a trip to Germany. They told me that I speak the language of the stage and radio, he said. I sat on a hassock, listening and watching. Through the open window, came the voices of boys playing stick-ball down the block somewhere. A soft breeze stirred the curtains ever so slightly. My father drank beer and wiped his brow although the day hardly qualified as a scorcher.

Later, Otto turned to the subject of my high school education. Will should go to Fordham Prep, John. Like you and I did.

A waste of money, my father said. Even at that age, I knew that he saw no benefit in spending on anything but the bare essentials for kids. Later, I understood that it was his way of keeping more money for booze. Anything I got came through my mother, my aunts, or my grandmother.

Somehow, Otto prevailed, and that fall I enrolled at Fordham Prep where I starred in German and basketball. Otto considered basketball a waste of time, but I got a partial scholarship out of it. He took a proprietary interest in my German, often tutoring me at his home. He and his wife, Anna, had a son—Little Rudy—about four years younger than me. Whenever I came over for lessons, I had to spend time with Rudy. I would rather have been with my friends but I wanted Otto to keep liking me.

On occasion, Otto entertained guests from Germany. I was expected to put in an appearance and to converse with them. They seemed to get a big kick out of an Irish kid speaking German.

What else could I think about to keep my mind off the jump? Girls, I tried girls. I thought about Stella and wondered if by now she had found herself a Jewish husband. I recalled our first date when we walked in Van Cortland Park and visited the Mansion. We bent over a glass case to read some document. And then, realizing how close our heads were, we turned, and she smiled as I pushed against her and stole a kiss before she pulled away.

That brought me to Paul. I had met her at one of his parties. He tried to warn me. Her family is very traditional, he said. They will tolerate you for a while, but she will be expected to marry a Jew. I argued. Paul put it this way: I give you one chance in ten.

I didn’t care. We were in love and with each other at every chance. Her parents were friendly enough, and I knew that a love like ours would win out in the end.

Paul and I met after we had seen each other several times on the subway, coming home from classes at New York University. We both got off at 230th Street and walked in the same direction. After a week of this, he introduced himself. I’m Paul Goldstein. Looks like we’re neighbors.

Paul was in his last year at N.Y.U. He studied mathematics, and, from what I could tell, was very highly thought of. I was studying to become an engineer but I could barely understand some of the ideas that seemed to excite him. At least not until he explained them. Paul had a knack for putting complex thoughts into plain language without giving me the feeling that I was being patronized. He was an admirer of Albert Einstein and once explained his Theory of Relativity in a way that gave me at least a modest understanding of it.

I always felt welcome at the Goldsteins’. His father, Isadore, was seldom home. He worked as a cutter in the ladies garment district in midtown Manhattan, and it always seemed to be the ‘season’ for something. His mother, Rebecca, was always there, and I came to count on a bowl of some kind of soup whenever I showed up. She liked to tease me about it. I would like your opinion on something, she would say, taking my arm. Please come into the kitchen. This is a recipe from my grandmother. Of course she knew what an Irish kid, raised on boiled potatoes, overdone meat and hard-fried fish would say. My mother’s arsenal of seasonings consisted of salt, pepper, and some thyme cloves stuck into a ham on Easter.

Paul was invariable amused by the exercise. His only comment was, It beats potatoes and fried fish, yes? He became my best friend.

Paul, ever the mathematician. What kind of odds would he quote on this mission? If it hadn’t been so secret, and I’d told him about it, he would have been too kind to put a number on my chance of seeing him again. He would have said, Don’t go.

I whispered, It’s too late, Paul.

In what seemed only minutes later, Dubchek looked at his watch and glanced over at me. He made a motion with his shoulders, indicating that I should get my pack on. I had to pee. I got up and went into the tiny toilet, but I couldn’t go; I was too nervous—scared out of my wits would be more accurate. I went back and put my gear on, he nodded and came over to check my straps. I guess he wanted to deliver me in one piece.

As much as I hated to admit it, there was a certain comfort in his presence. A bear of a man, thick through the chest and shoulders, the kind of guy you want on your side in a street fight. I’ll never forget our first meeting: no handshake, just a nod and a look-over. It was as if he were taking delivery of a horse. I had the impression that I was a bit of a disappointment, barely adequate for the job at hand.

After that, we trained together. Dubchek turned my life into hell on earth. He drove me and himself constantly; there was no time to rest, to enjoy a meal or see any of the Italian countryside. It was more of a test than a conditioning program. He wanted to be sure that I wouldn’t lag behind or do something stupid, getting him or his companions killed. He had me slogging up muddy hills with a heavy pack and lying in wet grass for hours without moving or speaking. He made me pee without getting up. Conversation was minimal, his English only fair. Mostly, he queried me about my German.

Your German very good? he asked one day at lunch.

Yes. I’ve studied for years. I even got some money for college from the German-American Bund. I didn’t think that he would get the irony in that so I didn’t explain. And my job in England was to interrogate German prisoners.

They going to believe you a German officer?

I think so. We tried it out on some German prisoners. I got by.

He looked dubious. You are young.

I was almost twenty-four. I have some stuff for my hair.

He got up and stalked out into the rain, as if ignoring it would keep him dry. I followed, trying to get my poncho on without falling behind.

Now, that all seemed in the distant past. Dubchek made an adjustment to my parachute harness. He looked at his watch, and we sat back down. I stared into his face. He gave me a soft nod and a motion of his hand. He moved his head around, stretching his neck and wrung his hands together. Until then, I had never seen him look at all anxious.

The co-pilot came back. Two minutes.

Getting ready for this thing, I had made three jumps in England, one of them at night. All were well prepared, and other guys jumped with me. The night jump took place by moonlight; I could see the ground coming. This night was chosen because it was dark. The ground was going to be a surprise.

Two minutes feels like a long time when you’re waiting for something you want. I measured the co-pilot’s two minutes in heartbeats. Each pulse came with a frightening speed after the last. I could hear them coming like a drum roll, announcing a death-defying leap by an acrobat in the circus—or the fall of a headman’s axe.

Dubchek got up and opened the door. He hooked up my parachute release and stood me at the edge of black nothingness, waiting for the signal. The roar of passing air and engines almost blotted out my thinking. Frantically, I tried to remember everything I was supposed to do. A shove, and I was out, feeling for my emergency rip cord. Whonk. For an instant, my body jerked, stopped, and then whooshed downward into blackness. My open chute was barely visible overhead. All I heard was the diminishing drone of our plane, my last connection to anything familiar and solid. I twisted around but failed to locate Dubchek’s chute. I clearly saw my boots. The sound changed to the soft whirring of passing air, and I wished for time to stop.

I bent my knees and concentrated on the black space beyond them. I thought that I saw the ground and, a split second later, hit and rolled.

I lay there for a moment, getting a sense of my body. Nothing hurt. I got up to gather my chute and then to lie on it and wait in the tall grass and bushes. I felt my heart, still pounding. I had made it this far. Would I look back and recall this time as having been the easy part? The chute under me was soft and comforting; my breathing came easier, slower. I wanted the moment to last. Was it euphoria I felt, or just relief? What lay ahead was a great unknown—a journey with strangers in a land unlike any I had ever seen. I listened as a soft movement of air produced a whispering which stood out against a backdrop of blessed silence.

I walked across the George Washington Bridge with Paul once. We stood on the Palisades, looking back at a busy city but heard no sounds. Later, we lay in the grass, watching clouds slide over a field of blue. He said, Let’s just listen to nothing. And we did

A rustling sound interrupted, then some soft voices speaking a strange language. Fear returned— adrenaline pumping. Suppose these were the wrong people? A dim flashlight in my face and a heavily accented voice saying, Welcome to Montenegro. Dubchek was with them. He must have known how to signal his location after he landed. He stepped forward and gestured at me, addressing his comrades. I don’t know what he said, but it was probably something like, How do you like what they sent us for a German officer? They laughed, and then we got moving.

They took my chute. I was left to carry the rest of my gear. We spread out side-by-side in a line, and two men trailed behind to straighten up the grass. We leave no path, someone explained for my benefit. We moved quickly along some hedgerows, over walls and fields until we reached the edge of a forest. Two men waited with horses. They took my pack, and I mounted one of the horses, displaying the skill I had picked up during the four or five hours I’d spent on horseback up to that point in my life. One rider went ahead and five, including Dubchek and me, followed in single file. Six men stayed behind.

We moved at a steady pace along a trail that was not obvious to me. I held a hand up in front of me to keep from getting clunked by low-hanging branches. About an hour into the ride, we stopped and dismounted. The man in front of me came back to handle my horse, to keep him quiet. I looked back at Dubchek, just to my rear. He stood, holding his horse; neither of them moved. We remained, dead silent, for at least a half hour and then remounted. No one bothered to explain.

Dawn approached, and trees emerged from the shroud around us. A mist obscured the ground and left wetness on all the trunks and branches. We halted again, but this time, for a discussion. Dubchek moved past me and the others gathered around him. The last man in the column stayed behind me. With sign language, he showed me what he had been doing, picking up any horse manure from the trail and putting it into baskets slung like saddlebags behind him. Were there that many Germans around, I wondered, that they would discover our trail and follow it? Dubchek came back. We stop soon, he said.

Shortly after, we stopped and unloaded the horses. One man strung the horses together. He and another man headed back along the trail with all of them. The rest of us carried our packs uphill to a large outcropping of rocks about fifty yards off the trail. There was a flat area behind the rocks, making a bowl surrounded by large rocks. We spread out, each looking for a place to sit. We removed our packs, and they opened some canvas bags, producing some cheese, sausage meat, bread and water. I thought about eating some of my K rations but decided that might be viewed as unfriendly, and I was going to have to get used to their food anyway. No one spoke while we ate. Then two men left the shelter of the rocks carrying rifles. Dubchek motioned me with his head. Rest. We climb tonight.

I took out my poncho, wrapped it around me and settled onto a patch of dirt that looked a little softer than the rocks. The others put on jackets or coats before leaning back to doze. The day passed slowly with my companions taking turns on watch. The sky was overcast, but by midday, I felt a little of the sun’s warmth, but the ground remained cold and hard. Occasionally, the quiet was punctuated by the sound of birds or small animals. In the distance, I heard a train and late in the afternoon, the sound of trucks. The Partisans perked up to that sound. They listened carefully, and one man went off, apparently to check the source. When he came back, there was a discussion, but they all seemed unworried.

As darkness approached, we shared another light meal. One Partisan, Olag, who had first greeted me in English, struck up a conversation. I learn English because I want to be an architect—make big money in America. He appeared to be the youngest of the group, probably no more than twenty. His brown mustache was thin, not bushy like the others, and his eyes spoke of mischief.

I said, Good. I studied to be a construction engineer. Maybe we can work together.

He translated this for the others, and they all laughed. Next, he wanted to know about my German. Really good?

I explained while he listened with a concerned look on his face. When I finished, he said, We find out.

And then we were up, getting ready to move.

CHAPTER TWO

We hiked under trees close to the edge of a forest. It was not full dark when we emerged, and the sky had cleared, allowing me to see a good distance. We skirted the sides of an open field. Like the others we passed, it was planted with some kind of grain, wheat perhaps, or hay, just starting to sprout. We moved toward some hedgerows on the far side. Beyond them were more fields sloping upward, and I could just make out a mountain in the distance. At the hedgerow, which ran along the edge of a road, we regrouped before crossing.

One man dashed across and disappeared into the hedgerow on the other side just as we heard what sounded like a motorcycle. Everyone dropped down. The sound stopped, and there was a soft signal from the man across the road. I peered into the twilight, and in the next field, I saw German soldiers searching for something with dogs. I slipped my carbine off my shoulder and crawled into position behind the mound of the hedgerow, taking aim at the Germans.

I was scared and breathing hard. Up to now, the planning, the training, were all make-believe—all preparations. I fired weapons, including machine guns, threw hand-grenades, set off explosives. Most of it was fun, and nobody ever shot back. These Germans were the real thing and they wanted to kill me. Dubchek crawled next to me and pushed my head to the ground. You no fight, he said and then put his finger to his lips. I wasn’t to talk, either. He rolled away and prepared his own weapon.

We waited for what seemed a long time but was probably not more than fifteen minutes. It got darker, and a quarter-moon emerged above the mountain. Visibility was about as dim as it was going to get. When I peeked, I could still see the Germans in the field across the road. They would easily spot us if we attempted to cross. They came toward us. No one moved. I heard a German voice say, They were here. Who? What the hell were they talking about? I only had to wait a minute for my answer. Blap! Blap! Blap! Machine gun fire sounded from somewhere to our left. A German screamed, another yelled, and they ran. Engines started up down the road. Seconds later, explosions sounded. Dubchek was up and running;