Blitz Police

By J. Thomas Callahan

While hunting in the mountains outside of American-occupied Salzburg, Austria, shortly after the end of World War II, decorated US Army Sergeant Jacob “Jake” Wells discovers a crate buried in a cave. When he opens the crate, he unwittingly opens a Pandora’s box that will have him fighting for his life—and have his son questioning his integrity nearly seventy years later. Within hours of opening the crate, he and his best friend find themselves propelled into a world of danger greater and more personal than they faced while battling the German Army. In the rubble that had once been the Greater German Reich, the two Constabulary troopers are confronted with corrupt Army officials, black marketers, arms dealers, fugitive war criminals, and desperate Army investigators, and they have to fight for their very lives just to be able to return home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781684099962

Book preview

Prologue

I knew my father had served in the Army, that he’d been in The War as World War II is known to his generation. I also knew that he had fought against the Germans and been wounded during the Battle of the Bulge, but he never talked much about it, and the only visible reminder of his service when I was a child was one photograph hanging on the wall in his den. The photo was a candid shot of Dad and his best friend, a man I grew up knowing as Uncle Ron. Dad was wearing mud-splattered tanker’s coveralls and leaning against the side of an equally mud-splattered M8 Greyhound armored car with the US Constabulary insignia painted on the turret while talking to Uncle Ron. They were both holding weapons; Dad casually cradling an M3 submachine gun across his abdomen, and Uncle Ron was holding an M1 carbine at his side. When Dad did mention his time in the service, it was usually some vague reference to drive home whatever point he was trying to make to me or my younger brother.

Like most sons of my generation, I never expressed any interest in his experiences until it was too late. Some people thought it was really strange that we never talked about it after I returned from my service in Vietnam and we finally had something in common, but from my experiences in Vietnam, I began to understand his reluctance to discuss the subject. That, life’s challenges, family, and all the other excuses we make kept that from ever happening. Then one day, it was too late for us to talk about it. He was gone.

After leaving the service in late 1947, my father finished college on the GI Bill, married my mother, and spent the next thirty-five years working for Lockheed, mostly at their facility in Marietta, Georgia. He worked long hours and often traveled, and, much to my regret, I can’t say we were ever really close. Of course we did family vacations and other activities, and we would occasionally go hunting or fishing together, but we were not as close as some fathers and sons, something I have always regretted.

When Dad retired from Lockheed, he and my mother relocated to Florida’s Gulf Coast and settled in a golf community a few miles north of Naples. I talked to them regularly, and I saw them maybe once or twice a year on vacations with my wife and children, and later when the kids had grown, with just my late wife. Occasionally, they would make the drive back to North Georgia to visit family and friends, but their trips became less frequent as they aged and their friends moved or passed away.

Then one sunny spring afternoon while he was drinking beer and playing a round of golf with some of his VFW buddies, he had a massive heart attack. He was eighty-one years old when he passed away on the fairway of the eleventh hole. I know it sounds cliché, but if he wasn’t sitting in his boat with a fishing pole in one hand and a cold German brewed beer in the other, playing golf with his buddies is probably how he wanted to go. Anyway, I never really got the chance to talk to him about his experiences in the war or in the Army. A little more than three years later, my mother joined him.

My name’s Clint Wells. I’m a widower and a retired sheriff’s deputy and a part-time private investigator. My kids have all grown and have families of their own. Being retired and having no pressing family or business matters, I was able to take the time to travel to South Florida to make all of the arrangements for my mother’s funeral and close out her estate after she passed away.

It was during this time that I realized just how little I knew about my father’s military experiences. While cleaning out the third bedroom that had been my father’s home office, I came across his two olive drab military footlockers, one stenciled with his name and serial number and the other without any identifying markings. I had frequently seen them as a child and had been curious as to their mysterious contents, but Dad never showed me what was in them. I would have to wait a while longer. As they had been when I was a child, both still had heavy-duty padlocks securing them. I didn’t know where the keys were, and there wasn’t a pair of bolt cutters handy.

Three weeks after my mother’s funeral, I returned home to North Georgia. I was pulling a U-Haul trailer loaded with the footlockers and the other items my brother and I did not want disposed of at an estate sale. That rainy afternoon when I arrived home, I piled everything into my spare bedroom and vowed to go through it when I had the chance, and after more time separated me from the loss of my mother. Then I became distracted by a case that took most of my time for the next several months.

I finally got around to opening my father’s footlockers and going through their contents some ten months after my mother’s funeral. The contents of his lockers were well organized, just like every other dimension of his life. As soon as I opened the first one, I was met with a strong odor of mothballs. The first locker, the one with his name and serial number, held few surprises. The top tray had a shoeshine kit, rolled Army issue socks, handkerchiefs, neatly folded Army issue boxers, undershirts and wool long johns, and a ditty bag containing his shaving kit. There were also several gold-trimmed blue and red boxes I knew would contain medals and ribbons. I had a few of those tucked away myself from my years in the service. He had never mentioned anything about them; I assumed they were the usual medals and ribbons associated with military service, so I placed the tray aside and didn’t look at them immediately.

Neatly folded at the top of the left side of the trunk under the tray were two sets of uniforms, an olive drab Class A dress uniform and a set of pinks and greens; khaki slacks and shirt with an OD green Ike jacket. Both uniforms were complete with his Combat Infantry Badge (CIB), ribbons, devices, and staff sergeant’s stripes. The Class A jacket had unit patches for the Thirtieth Infantry Division and the brass disc with crossed rifles insignia of the Infantry. The Ike jacket had the US Constabulary patch on one shoulder and the 106th Cavalry patch on the other and the brass disc with crossed sabers insignia of the Cavalry on the lapels.

I was surprised that in addition to his European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, American Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, Army Occupation Medal with a Germany Clasp and Oak Leaf Cluster signifying two tours and ribbons signifying awards for the Purple Heart Medal and Good Conduct Medal that I had assumed were in the boxes in the top tray, there were ribbons signifying awards for valor. There was the Soldier’s Medal with an Oak Leaf Cluster for a second award, a Bronze Star Medal with the V device for valor, and a bronze Oak Leaf Cluster also signifying a second award. There was a foreign medal I later learned was a Belgian Croix de Guerre, and there was the Army Commendation Ribbon with two Oak Leaf Clusters. Above the right breast pocket was the Meritorious Unit Citation. He had never mentioned any of his awards for valor to me.

Below the neatly folded uniforms were two large sealed envelopes marked 201 File in heavy black marker. The 201 file is the US Army’s personnel file, and the envelopes contained duplicate copies of my father’s official military records from his draft notice to his discharge papers, to include training records, transfer orders, and the citations for his medals and other documents, which I would read with interest later.

On the right side of the trunk was a large stack of age-yellowed letters, mostly mail from my mother and my grandparents and some V-mail letters from Dad to my mother, all tied into neat bundles with some manila twine and an envelope of black-and-white photographs of him and his buddies. There was also a tattered, mud-stained pocket Bible with a large, narrow gash through the center. Under the letters and photos were two sets of field utilities, a clean but worn and heavily stained pair of khaki tanker’s coveralls, probably the same pair Dad was wearing when the photo in his office was taken, and a pair of well-worn but highly polished tanker’s boots.

After going through the contents of the first trunk, I cut the lock off the second. There was no tray in this trunk. Inside were two woolen army blankets. Each blanket was wrapped around a well-finished wooden box. Each box was about fifteen inches square and ten inches high, and together they took up nearly the entire volume of the trunk. The boxes were nearly identical and had a hinged lid kept closed with two brass flip-type latches and an embedded lock. In faded and heavily scuffed black paint, the underside of both boxes were stenciled

Official US Army Records

Fourth Constabulary Regiment

Transport by NCO or Officer Courier

US Army Historical Division

Those were the only markings on the boxes. Each box weighed about twenty pounds. There were no keys to the locks in the trunks or in any of my father’s other belongings.

Not wanting to damage such nice boxes, I retrieved some tools from the garage, and I was able to pick the simple locks in a matter of minutes with little trouble. The first box I opened contained nothing but file folders with military forms and legal pads of my father’s handwritten notes and miscellaneous papers along with a few handwritten journals or diaries. A quick thumb through indicated they were mostly carbon copies of forms from the Army Occupation Forces after the war and probably related to my father’s service with the US Constabulary in occupied Austria and Germany.

The second box was much more interesting. On top were a dried and cracked black leather belt with a holster and a tarnished stamped metal buckle inscribed GOTT MIT UNS, a second calfskin holster for a smaller pistol, and a US military web belt and well-worn but dried out and cracked black leather flap holster stamped US on the flap. Under the belts were three pistols, a 1911A1 Model Colt .45 service pistol stamped Property of US Army, a German Luger with Wehrmacht markings, and a Walther PPK stamped Salzburg Sicherheitspolizei, the German Gestapo’s Security Police. All three were liberally coated with Cosmoline and wrapped in oil cloths, then wrapped in a rubberized military poncho. Under the pistols was a heavy metal box similar to a fireproof documents box many people keep in their closets to store important papers. The box was locked, and as with the others, I could not locate the key.

After about an hour with all the tools available in my garage, including a heavy hammer and chisel, I was finally able to force open the box. I would never be able to close and lock it again. What I found inside was most intriguing and caused me to question my father’s integrity for the only time in my life. On further review of his papers and journals, it also caused me to question the comments he had always made minimizing his experience about his time in the military to anyone who questioned him. Before coming to any conclusions, I decided I should at least read my father’s 201 file and every document in the box of journals and papers I had found. What’s next is my father’s story, told more than sixty years later, and taken directly from the journals that I never knew he kept.

CHAPTER 1

Jacob Jake Wells was born to Irwin and Anita Wells in 1923. He grew up on his family’s forty-acre plot a few miles outside the town of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. His father owned and operated a small lumber mill that provided lumber products to local businesses and contractors and occasionally picked up business from contractors and other customers as far away as Nashville. The Great Depression impacted the family business, but Jake’s father was able to get enough contracts to keep the mill open. Though money was sometimes tight, he and his younger brother never went without meals and always had a new pair of shoes at the start of the school year.

His childhood was uneventful in the rural community. When he was old enough, he was given chores before and after school and on weekends, which included feeding the family’s laying hens and milking their cow. Later, when he was old enough and strong enough, he helped his father in the saw mill after school and on Saturdays. The mill was located just a few hundred yards from their home. Sundays, Jake and his little brother went to Sunday school at the United Methodist Church of Murfreesboro before they joined their parents for Sunday services. He attended school and was an average student, dated a few girls in high school but never had a serious relationship, and hung out with a few friends when he had the time. Despite having to work at the mill, he played on the school’s football and baseball teams with his father’s blessing, but he was an average player and not good enough to attract any college scouts. He dreamed of being able to attend college, but he knew after he graduated high school, that would probably be it as far as his education went. The family could not afford it, and he and his brother would stay and work the sawmill, probably taking over from his father.

Jake was halfway through his senior year when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he realized that in all likelihood, he would be going in the service soon after he graduated high school. A few days after the sneak attack, he and some of his buddies skipped school and went to the Murfreesboro recruiting office to join up, but they were told by the recruiting sergeant that they should wait until they finished school. The recruiting sergeant explained that Hundreds of thousands of patriotic young men just like you boys are enlisting or trying to enlist. There’s just too many of you, and the system can’t accommodate everybody yet, so you’ll have to go home and wait till we call you. Don’t worry though, there’ll be plenty of this war for everybody now that the Germans and Italians have declared war on us too.

As advised, Jake waited for the Army to call him. He graduated from high school and spent the first summer of the war working at the sawmill turning tree trunks into lumber for the Army. His father had received more orders than it could fill to help with the construction needs of the rapidly expanding military. As promised, the military called Jake in late September 1942, when he received his draft notice. It was less than a year after the attack on Pearl Harbor and just three months after he graduated from Murfreesboro High School. It was just two weeks after his nineteenth birthday. He and other draftees and volunteers were given physicals and sworn in to the United States Army at the induction center in Nashville, Tennessee, in November 1942. He and fifty-seven more young men and boys from central Tennessee boarded a train the following morning. They joined more than two hundred more inductees from eastern Tennessee, northern Georgia, and the Carolinas already on the train.

Once away from parental supervision, liquor bottles, cigarettes, and playing cards immediately emerged from their luggage as boys and young men of seventeen to twenty-seven departed on the grand adventure of their generation. It was an adventure that was to demand too many of their young lives, maim and scar many more of them, and inexorably change the lives of the rest of them.

Most of the young men and boys, Jacob Wells included, had never traveled more than a hundred miles from their place of birth. Jake had always considered a trip to Nashville to be a big event that had previously occurred only once or twice a year if the school’s football or baseball team happened to play a Nashville team, or the rare occasion when his father had business in The City as his parents referred to it, and he and his brother were allowed to tag along. Prior to his induction, limited finances, school, and helping at the lumber mill had precluded any other long-distance travel.

After departing Nashville, the train proceeded in a westerly direction, stopping at every large town or city along its route through Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and finally Texas. More young men and boys from all over the eastern half of the United States joined the ever-more crowded railroad cars at each stop. Jake was fascinated to watch the winter landscape change as they headed across the southeastern United States and into western Texas. It was nearly 4:00 a.m. two days after he departed Nashville that he and more than eight hundred other volunteers and draftees arrived at their first destination as US soldiers—the train station at Mineral Wells, Texas.

It was a miserable cold and rainy morning in Mineral Wells that day, and Jake and the other proto-soldiers were rudely awakened. Tired and mostly hungover, the young recruits found two dozen irate sergeants and corporals waiting for them on the rain-slickened platform as they stumbled off the train. With much cursing, screaming, and shouting by the NCOs, the draftees and volunteers, each hauling his luggage, were formed into ragged lines on the platform. After the first of what would be many roll calls, they were herded past the long single-story red-brick train station. The weary recruits and draftees were packed on to twenty olive drab buses for the short ride to the Reception Center of the US Army’s Infantry Replacement Training Center at Camp Wolters.

***

As soon as the bus came to a stop outside the two-story Reception Center, the door swung open, and a sergeant covered in a rubberized poncho against the cold rain climbed in. From what little Jake could see through the few square inches of rain-streaked window he had access to, the other buses were also met by similarly dressed noncoms.

The sergeant welcomed the new soldiers to Camp Wolters and to the US Army with a kindly Gentlemen, I’m Sergeant Calhoun. On behalf of General Simpson, commander of Camp Wolters, welcome to the US Army’s Infantry Replacement Training Center. While we hope you will enjoy your stay with us, you are all here for one reason and one reason only—to learn the basic skills necessary to become soldiers and earn the privilege of fighting for your country. While you are here, you will undergo rigorous physical and mental training and learn the skills necessary to survive and prevail as an infantryman in combat against your country’s enemies, whether it be Jap, German, or Eye-talian. This post has numerous amenities to offer that you are free to use in your spare time, to include religious services, the PX, a movie theater, athletic fields and facilities, a service club, a bowling alley, and a library.

He continued, "You have a busy few days before your real training begins. First, you will be processed into the Army and on to this post, which involves filling out lots of paperwork. You will also have a thorough medical exam so that we can be sure you are physically fit enough to fight your country’s enemies. You will be photographed and fingerprinted, and your records will be checked against the FBI’s criminal records. You will receive haircuts and be issued your uniforms and basic equipment, be assigned to a training unit, and you will be fed.

Now, gentlemen, you have three minutes to get off this bus and get into that line over by that door, he stated and pointed to the door of a two-story rectangular building some fifty yards away where inductees from other buses were already beginning to line up in the downpour. His voice began to rise as he continued, And we have just used up two and a half of those minutes, so move it, you maggots! Get yer asses off this bus and get in that line now! Move it!

Forty-seven young men, Private Jake Wells included, grabbed their bags and rushed to the door of the bus at the same time with the expected outcome while Sergeant Calhoun and some of his colleagues continued to scream and holler incomprehensibly at them, dropping many of them into the mud to do fifty push-ups before they were allowed to continue.

The next sixteen hours were a blur for Jake, who, like most of the inductees, was tired from being up most of the previous two nights and still half hungover, then chilled and soaked from standing in the cold rain for the first two hours of the morning.

Dozens of forms were filled out, usually in triplicate. They underwent a medical inspection, including the indignity of a short-arm, or genital inspection for venereal disease. They received a series of inoculations—three shots in each arm and two in the buttocks—to protect them from whatever diseases they might be exposed to while in the service of their country. After their physical examination, they were rushed to a barbershop for the traditional thirty-second haircut by a civilian barber that cost each man a quarter, which would be deducted from his pay. Then over to the supply depot at a run where they waited in long lines to be marched through rows of tables where indifferent and often irate civilians handed them an article of clothing or piece of equipment without concerning themselves with the recipient’s size. The only exception being for footwear, where each recruit was handed a pair of twenty-pound weights while standing on a Brannock Device. A quick read of their shoe size, and two pairs of brown boots and a pair of low-quarter shoes of the appropriate size was thrown at them. The neo-soldiers amassed a growing pile of ill-fitting clothing and equipment, which they stuffed haphazardly into a duffel bag, the first item they had been issued.

Breakfast was a barely remembered few minutes to shovel down greasy scrambled eggs, undercooked grits, half-cooked bacon, and burned toast and pour down some scalding black battery acid that someone had mistakenly identified as coffee. Lunch was some kind of greasy stew over lumpy mashed potatoes with a hard roll and a glass of tepid milk. Dinner was similar to lunch, with lukewarm unsweetened tea instead of milk.

All activities were at a pace known in military circles as double time and accompanied by much shouting and cursing, and frequently by push-ups; twenty-five for minor transgressions and fifty to one hundred for more serious offenses. Late in the evening, the exhausted trainees were assigned to two-story barracks. Barracks assignment, like most things military, was based on the draftee’s never-to-be-forgotten serial number. There were fifty trainees to a floor and a corporal or sergeant in charge of each floor. The trainees were ordered to shower in the communal shower at one end of the barracks. After showering, they were introduced to some of the traditions of barracks life when the Charge of Quarters and Fire Watch rosters were posted and explained by the NCO in charge of the floor. Lights out was at 9:45 p.m., or 2145 hours military time.

The second day at Camp Wolters began at what most of the men perceived as only five minutes later, but in reality was at 4:45 a.m., or 0445 hours to the Army. Jake’s day started forty-five minutes earlier when he was awakened by another recruit for his turn on Fire Watch duty. Fire Watch consisted of walking the length of the barracks and back every ten minutes to ensure that no fire had started in the overcrowded building. It harkened back to early days when barracks were heated by coal or wood-burning stoves and fire was a serious concern, rather than being left unheated as Jake’s building was due to wartime shortages.

Reveille was a scratchy recording of a bugle played over tinny loud speakers set at maximum volume and mounted on a pole outside each barracks, and it occurred simultaneously with the NCO in charge of each barracks walking the length of the building while alternately blowing a whistle and shouting in the most loud and profane manner imaginable for the lousy yard apes to get their lazy asses out of their nice warm beds while he kicked or threw the floor’s galvanized trash can down the center aisle of the barracks for added emphasis. The trainees were given just fifteen minutes to complete their morning ablutions, including the mandatory shave, dressing in their new ill-fitting uniforms, making their bunk, and falling out onto the parade ground in front of the barracks for roll call. Roll call was followed by calisthenics and a nice leisurely two-mile run in the fresh morning air, with extra push-ups in the mud for those men who were inevitably late to the morning formation or fell out on the run.

They returned to the barracks at 0600 and had fifteen minutes to clean up before marching to a traditional Army breakfast of chipped beef on toast, more commonly referred to in all polite military circles as shit on a shingle. It was washed down with more scalding battery acid, still mislabeled as coffee.

The rest of the second day was filled with more administrative functions, aptitude testing, and instruction on how to stand at attention, how to march, how to make their bunks in the proper military fashion, how to fold or hang their clothing, how to organize their footlocker, and how to mark, wear, and care for their newly issued uniforms that a benevolent Uncle Sam has spent so much money on. Jake found it unbelievable that the Army had rules for every aspect of their attire, from how they wore their hats to how they polished and laced their boots to how they folded their socks and underwear.

The third day started off with calisthenics and a three-mile run before breakfast, with extra push-ups for anyone the cadre felt was slacking. After breakfast, the trainees returned to the barracks and packed their civilian belongings for shipment home. After they had packed away the last remnant of their civilian identity, they packed their government-issued clothing and equipment into their duffel bags in the prescribed Army fashion, cleaned the barracks to the satisfaction of their shepherds, turned in their bed linens, and left the reception center. The trainees were assigned to their permanent training battalions and companies and marched to one of six regimental areas, carrying all of their worldly belongings with them. Private Jacob Wells was assigned to Fourth Platoon, B or Baker Company, Fifty-fifth Battalion, Twelfth Regiment, and housed in Area 2.

Baker Company was commanded by First Lieutenant Walter Doyle and Fourth Platoon, commanded by 2nd Lieutenant Patrick McClanahan. After a brief introductory speech, none of the trainees had any interaction with their officers for the remainder of their time at Camp Wolters except for their weekly