“This is General Custer calling for Major Reno. Do you read?”
Ballard winced at the code names he and Smiggy were using for the day. They had seemed kind of amusing at first, but the present was turning out to be just a little too close to the past for his comfort. The connection was undeniably apt, however, for if any U.S. Army unit was venturing into the equivalent of Indian country right now, it was the Nineteenth Armored.
How long had it been since they’d had a good, American presence on their left flank? More than two weeks, by Ballard’s reckoning. And during that time they had done nothing but race onward, as fast as they possibly could. Once again, good old Nineteenth Armored was forming the vanguard of Third Army. That army was spreading out across the country, liberating towns in Germany even more quickly than they had in France. Ballard knew that the US Seventh Army and the French First Army had crossed the Rhine south of them, and these forces were moving strongly through the Black Forest, driving on Nuremberg and Munich. Hodges’ First Army, too, had crossed the great river barrier, and was moving into north Germany, though its front remained a hundred miles or more behind Third Army’s. Farther to the north the Nazis had kept control of their armed forces, and were making a staunch defense of the Ruhr Valley and the north German plain against British and Canadian forces.
Of course, there were good, solid German units on Ballard’s left flank, most notably Rommel’s favored Panzer Lehr. Just a month ago Ballard’s men had been engaged in a knock-down, drag-out battle with that same unit, and now they were protecting each other from the rogue units of SS and loyalist Wehrmacht that still made the German countryside a dangerous place.
As if to underscore his thoughts, Ballard heard a crackling chatter of machine-gun fire in the distance, underscored by the crump of several tank or antitank guns. At least one of them was a deadly 88, the colonel could tell by the sharp crack of sound.
“General Custer—this is Major Reno!” the radio chattered into life.
“This is Custer—go ahead,” snapped Ballard anxiously.
“We have a strong defensive position in front of us,” Smiggy reported. “One 88 with a commanding view of the road and the fields—no good cover,
and I have a report of tanks moving around my left. Can you get some guns on the bastards?”
“I’ll patch you through to Crazy Horse,” Ballard responded, using the code name for Major Diaz and the artillery battalion. “They’re not far back—if you can give him some coordinates, he should be able to help you out.”
Meanwhile, the Sherman tanks of CCA were breaking off of the road in near-instinctive reaction, pushing through a copse of light woods that provided little serious obstacle to the churning M4s. Ballard sat in the turret of his command tank and, for the time being, simply watched. These were veterans, these men of the Nineteenth Armored, and they knew what to do and how to do it.
For the first phase of the fight, they gave ground—stubbornly—and allowed the Germans to reveal their strength and dispositions. The American tanks fired rapidly, high explosive shells exploding in the woods. The Germans played it cautiously, firing from concealment, but pressing forward with enough armor to convince Ballard that he was facing his first major enemy formation since the Rhine crossing. One of the Shermans exploded in an orange billow of fire, and several more kicked into reverse, rolling backward through the trampled saplings, firing as they retreated.
At the same time the tanks of his second company were moving quickly. He saw them disappear into a little draw, driving over the lip of the embankment and dropping out of sight one after the other, and he knew that they had discovered some sort of road—or even a forest cart path; the nimble tanks didn’t need much of an avenue to make headway—leading around the enemy flank. The tanks of Company A retreated only far enough to conceal their hulls behind the raised roadway, and from here they blazed away furiously. Now the tankers were loading armor-piercing rounds, and at least one scored a direct hit on a panzer pushing through the ravaged woods.
Moments later, artillery shells screamed overhead and plunged into the lightly forested terrain, sending rippling shock waves through the air and great bursts of fire, smoke, dirt, and splintered timber showering through the air. Ballard could sense the hesitation in the German tanks, which couldn’t have numbered more than an understrength company. Still, it was a little startling to encounter even this much of an enemy force, after the days of open-field running that had brought them already halfway to Berlin.
But now the momentum of the attack was clearly broken. At least two more panzers were burning, struck by some combination of Sherman antitank rounds or lucky artillery strikes. His infantry, firing with small arms and a few .50-caliber machine guns, had forced the German troops to ground. Everywhere the enemy was seeking shelter, the men more concerned with saving their own lives than pressing home the offensive against the American veterans.
It was time for the coup de grâce.
“This is General Custer, for Wild Bill—come in, Wild Bill.”
“This is Wild Bill, General. What do you want me to do?” Captain Kelly, of his infantry company, asked the question in his Boston twang.
“Time to take the action home—can you get your boys up and moving?”
“Roger, General Custer—we’ll be at them in a minute.”
“Sitting Bull, this is Custer. Are you in position?” Next he got in touch with the captain in charge of Armor Company B, and learned that the Shermans that had vanished into the woods had moved far past the German armor, and were ready to smash the enemy in the rear.
“All right, Sitting Bull, Wild Bill, let’s get this wagon train on the road!”
The counterattack unfolded in textbook fashion. The German tanks were using a low ridge as cover but a half-dozen speedy Shermans burst from the woods directly behind them, coming up on the panzers and knocking out two of them with the first volley of shots. The others quickly withdrew, driving wildly along the crest of the ridge, then skidding down into a ravine on the far side. The whole platoon was composed of obsolete Mark IIIs, a sign of just how far down into the barrel these Nazi bastards were scraping.
Only that 88 was providing a serious threat, and Ballard had his driver move forward so that he could get a look as his infantry crawled forward down a long, deep ditch, looking to take the antitank gun in the flank. The GIs moved quickly but carefully, and he was pleased to see that they were avoiding casualties even as they drew ever closer to the gun, which was dug in behind the stone wall of a small farmyard.
Even so, Ballard was surprised by how quickly the shooting stopped; he expected that it would take another fifteen minutes before his men could have brought the defensive position under direct fire. But he saw Germans coming forward with their hands up, and his own men advancing to take them prisoner. Their morale must have been even lower than he had thought.
He was even more surprised when the radio again chattered, Smiggy sounding quite surprised, although quite pleased as well. He even forgot to employ the code.
“Colonel, you won’t believe this, but the sons of bitches are surrendering! We have a hundred prisoners already, and more of them are coming out of the woods with their hands up!”
“More than a hundred?” Ballard said, surprised in his own right. “Are we bagging a whole battalion?”
“Actually,” Smiggy said, chuckling, “from what this captain is telling me—mind you, my German’s not so good, and his English is worse—it sounds like the whole of Army Group H has just gotten orders to hand over their weapons, and turn themselves in to the first Americans they can find.”
Ballard whistled, and put down the microphone. He could see whole columns of Germans coming into view, far more than the hundred men of
Smiggy’s first estimate. He’d seen plenty of things, good and bad, in this war, but this was one of the most memorable.
“Move out,” he told his driver, and the Sherman started to rumble forward, as the prisoners were gathering themselves into long, disciplined ranks.
“I’ll be damned” was all the colonel could think to say.
General Leslie Groves passed easily through White House security. It was, he noted with dry amusement, much less strict than the security surrounding several of his own facilities. He signed in, showed his military identification card, allowed the uniformed Secret Service guards to inspect his briefcase, pinned on his access badge, and waited for the escort to take him to see the president. He wasn’t patted down; he could think of two or three different ways he could have smuggled a pistol in. He had no intention of doing so; he always looked at any building with an eye to how its security could be compromised. It was part of his job.
As he was escorted into a working office area, no one covered up papers or folders and file drawers were open. One file cabinet actually had its key sticking in its lock! He would have been giving out demerits, if not courts-martial, right and left if any facility of his had been so careless about security procedures, but then this was the civilian world, for all that the president was his commander in chief.
The difference in discipline was one way the White House stood apart from Leslie Groves’ world. The other one that struck him most strongly was its age. The Pentagon, where Groves kept his main office, was brand new. All the facilities of the Manhattan Project were new. The White House was old. Not only old, but run-down, worn, even shabby. There were holes in the carpet. Areas of paint were peeling. Much of the furniture was secondhand. The upholstery had tears in it. The first time he’d ever been in the White House it had come as a great shock to him, a shattering of an illusion he hadn’t been aware he held.
In the secretarial area outside the Oval Office, one of the president’s staff was fitting a stencil onto a mimeograph, an A. B. Dick drum-ink machine that had seen better days. She pressed the ink lever a few times and began to turn the crank. Dissatisfied with the first few copies, she kept pressing the ink lever, until suddenly the ink can burst, and thick black mimeograph ink oozed over the machine, her hands, and onto her dress. “Damn it!” she said, jumping back. “Look at this! My dress is ruined!” She ran out of the room to try to wipe off as much ink as she could.
Grace Tully, the president’s personal secretary, had gone over to see what could be salvaged from the mimeograph disaster when she saw Groves. “Oh—good afternoon, General Groves. Sorry about this little mess. After you finish
the project you’re working on, maybe you can turn your attention to copying technology.”
Groves laughed. “Oh, I’m afraid that’s far too difficult for me. I’d better stay with simpler challenges. But I do agree there’s got to be a better way.”
“I don’t blame you. The president’s running a little late today, but the people in there need to be shooed out anyway. Why don’t you just go right on in?”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Groves replied.
The chaos outside was nothing compared with the chaos inside. Groves had figured out that this was President Roosevelt’s preferred style of management, but it still seemed somehow improper as far as he was concerned. There were several conversations going on at cross-purposes, including two telephone conversations, neither currently involving the president himself. A large stack of papers resided in the inbox, and the stack seemed to be growing rather than shrinking. But what alarmed Groves most of all was the way Roosevelt seemed to have shrunk since their last meeting. He was failing fast. The human dynamo that once could thrive in the center of the whirlwind was now unable to control it, and the people surrounding the president could not step past their own individual agendas to serve him properly. Roosevelt had always refused to appoint a chief of staff, but he needed one desperately. This job was going to kill him, and he needed to survive a few more months at least. The way he was going, that seemed unlikely to Groves.
He stepped forward. “Mr. President. I’m your twelve-thirty appointment,” he said in full parade voice, coming to attention, cap under his arm. Everyone else stopped talking and looked at him.
He stared at each one in turn, and slowly, one by one, they made their exits. “Gotta go,” said one of the men on the phone, and the other quickly hung up as well. Finally, the room was down to Groves, FDR, and one man who did not budge. The man wore a Navy captain’s uniform.
“Who are you, Captain, if I may ask?” asked Groves.
“His doctor, sir,” replied the Navy captain.
“Are you cleared for Top Secret, Captain?” asked Groves.
“He’s cleared for anything I’m cleared for,” said FDR in a weak voice. “It’s okay, Leslie. I’ve got his firstborn locked up in a safe place.” He smiled. “Sit down.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Groves.
“We already know what we’re going to talk about, don’t we?” FDR said. He managed a slight smile. “I’m a little tired today, so I thought we’d cut out the middleman.”
“All right, Mr. President. You’re going to tell me how much you need me to have the bomb ready more quickly, and I’m going to tell you how we’re already pushing ahead as fast, if not faster than humanly possible. You’re
going to ask me to go faster, and I’m going to tell you I’ll do everything I can, but there’s only so much that can be done. Is that about right?”
“I like the military mind, Leslie. Right to the point, don’t beat around the bush, don’t waste time. I believe you. I believe you’ll do the best any human being can possibly do, and I am as confident today as I have been from the start that this program is in the best of hands. Thank you Leslie. Thank you very much.”
“No thumbscrews today, Mr. President?” Groves asked.
FDR laughed, but the laugh turned into a cough. “I’m fresh out of thumbscrews. I’m going to have to order Third Army and the German Republican forces into Berlin, where they’ll be sticking out like a thumb. The Soviets will be able to surround them, and we won’t be able to shore up their position. There’s only one thing that will get them out, if the Soviets decide to get sticky about it. I can slow things down with talk-talk, but only for a while. Then, I hope I’ll have something available to use to pry them out. April, I think it will be.” He reached forward and patted Groves on the hand. “You’ll do your best. I know it.”
“April.” Groves shook his head. It was an impossible deadline. The old man had twisted his arm again. Somehow, he’d have to find a way to shave even more time out of his project. He had no idea if it would even be physically possible.
Groves looked at the dying old man in the wheelchair. He fit well with the shabby old White House. Yet this man had, through little else than force of will, shaped the greatest coalition the world had ever seen to fight the biggest war in history. He had, in the process, changed the direction of Leslie Groves’ life and made him responsible for the most complex scientific and engineering project ever undertaken. He started to chuckle.
“Thought of a good joke, Leslie? I could use a laugh,” FDR said.
“I just realized, sir, that I was only working on the second-most-powerful weapon in this war.”
“Oh? What’s the first?”
“I’m looking at him, sir.”