Gunslinger

The chain link fence in front of them was at least eight foot high, with curled rolls of barbed wire running along the top. The stabilising posts were skinny tree trunks that had been taken from the woods from where the group had just emerged.

Dana could make out what looked to be huts half buried in the earth, and the huts continued as far as her eyes could see. The group stood in stunned silence, as they saw men slowly approaching the fence and watching them curiously.
“What is this place?”, O’Shea asked quietly. No-one could find an answer at that time, as they were stunned to silence. More men were approaching the fence, and they all noticed that the men were wearing pyjama style striped shirts and pants. There were gold stars on the left front of the shirts. Dana paled even further, as her mind was trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
“Oh, please no”, she muttered. “Don’t let it be what I think it is”.
“What is it baby?”, Brian asked her, his eyes not leaving the men on the other side of the fence.
“I think it’s a concentration camp”, Dana replied in a hollow voice. Brian turned to look at her, as did O’Shea.
“What’s a concentration camp?”, O’Shea asked her.
“Where the Nazis killed Jews, gypsies, basically anyone they wanted to wipe off the face of the earth.” O’Shea’s eyes widened in alarm.
“But, that’s just propaganda”, he replied.
“Does this look like propaganda?”, Dana snapped at him. He threw up his hands.
“So the rumours were true then”, Murphy said quietly.
“We need to get help”, Brian stated. They started to walk along the fence line, mindful of the small group of emaciated men who were trailing after them on the other side of the fence. When they got to the gate to the camp, Brian cursed when he realized that it was locked with a padlock and chain.
“Smarelli!”, he yelled. “Get back to HQ on the double. Get everyone back here, and bring bolt cutters!”. Smarelli turned and took off running back the way the patrol had come.

As the five of them sat waiting for help for arrive, Dana looked into the interior of the camp. One of the men reached through the fence, and Dana took his hand.
“Help is coming”, Dana said softly to him, not knowing if he could understand.
“Amerikaanse”, the man said, then broke into a gap toothed smile.

What felt like hours, but was only about 20 minutes later, jeeps and trucks began to arrive outside the camp. Dunn and Somerville hopped out of the first jeep and walked over to where Brian, Dana, Butler, Murphy and O’Shea were standing. Somerville’s sombre eyes took in the sight before him, before he called Smarelli over with the bolt cutters. Smarelli made short work of the lock, and pulled the chain free from the gate. He tossed the chain and lock aside, and he and Somerville pushed open the gate and walked into the facility, with everyone trailing after them in shock. Dana picked up her M1 and walked, seemingly as if in a daze, into the camp after the men.

Some gaunt prisoners, some barely managing to move themselves, were emerging from the huts. Dana was crying uncontrollably as an elderly man so painfully thin his ribs were showing, shuffled up to her and kissed both her cheeks before throwing his thin arms around her, and crying uncontrollably on her shoulder. She put one arm around him, as her other hand still held her M1.

The smoke and smell was much thicker the more the company moved into the camp. Brian and O’Shea stooped and moved into one of the half underground huts and lit their flashlights. Their eyes widened when they saw that the interior of the hut was made up of 50 cots cut sideways so that the men slept with their heads pointed into the centre passageway. Each cot had a man laying inside. They were emaciated and did not appear as if they had to strength to move to find out what was going on outside.
“Oh my God”, O’Shea muttered. “I feel like I’m in a bad dream.”

When Brian and O’Shea emerged from the hut, they told Dunn what they had discovered inside. Dunn’s eyes were haunted as he looked further down the line of huts, noticing the lines of smoke coming from a good number of the huts.

The man who had latched onto Dana eventually let go. After some charades, she realized that the man was Polish and she called over Private Wisniewski.
“Ask him what this place is, and find out where the Germans are”, Dana ordered. After a brief conversation, Wisniewski turned to Dana.
“He says that it is a work camp. When the Germans found out we were coming, they burned as many of the huts as they could, and killed as many as they could until they ran out of ammunition. They locked up and left a couple of days ago.”
“Oh my God I can’t believe this”, O’Shannessy said brokenly, his eyes welling with tears. He was young, Dana thought. He was just a boy really. Butler walked up to her.
“The Russians liberated a camp yesterday that was ten times the size of this. Something called Auschwitz. They had huge shower rooms and ovens”, he shuddered. “What the hell would they use those for?” Dana gulped a little before replying.
“They used to tell the prisoners they were taking them for a shower, but the shower heads were actually filled with some kind of nerve gas. Once the prisoners were dead they were put in the ovens.” Butler stared at her, horrified.
“How do you know all of this?”, he asked.
“I heard some rumours”, Dana replied. “It was in the propaganda.” She hated having to lie to Butler, but when she caught Brouchard’s eyes she knew that Brouchard understood that what had happened here was widely known in the future.

“Get HQ on the phone”, Somerville demanded. “We need food and medical supplies and we need them now!”
“Haner, you and Sharkey take some men in the trucks and go into Landsberg. “Get whatever food you can find and bring it back as quick as you can.

******************

Brian, Sharkey and Melville grabbed two of the privates and drove one of the trucks into Landsberg. One there, Brian and Melville walked into one of the bakeries, whilst Sharkey walked into the local delicatessen and began grabbing cold meats and large cheese wheels.

Brian and Melville began grabbing loads of bread off the shelves in the bakery and giving them to the privates to put into the truck. The baker, a heavy set man, began yelling at them in German, and was chasing after the privates as they loaded the bread onto the truck.

“Shut up!”, Melville yelled at him, but he continued his tirade. Melville walked inside the bakery, and instructed the privates to take it all. The baker, who obviously understood English, began to rail at Melville and Brian. Finally having enough, Brian grabbed the baker and threw him down over the counter, his gun to his head.
“Shut up you Nazi fuck!”. The baker’s eyes went wide.
“I’m not a Nazi”, the now terrified baker stammered.
“Oh, my mistake”, said Brian coldly. “Listen here you fat fucking prick. How can you lie there and tell me you never smelt that fucking stink?!” The baker gave no response, his silence telling Brian and Melville everything they needed to know. Brian tossed the baker aside, who stood wide eyed and silent as the soldiers grabbed whatever they could.

The bread was taken back to the camp, along with large barrels of water. The privates were tearing up the bread and handing it out to the camp prisoners. The medical team arrived, and yelled orders not to feed the prisoners. Dana turned and looked incredulously at the doctors.
“What!?”, Dana yelled. “You can’t be serious! They’re starving!”
“Exactly”, the doctor nearest her replied. “They haven’t been fed properly in a long time, maybe years. If we give them too much at once, they’re going to gorge themselves, which might possibly kill them. We need to look after them properly, and feed them gradually until their stomachs recover. For now, we have to give them fluids and medicine until they’ve recovered enough.”

Dana was further horrified that the doctors also instructed that the camp gates be locked, and the camp prisoners began crying when they realized that they were going to be locked in again.
“We will help you”, Dana told many of them in German, whilst Wisniewski spoke to them in Polish. “The doctors need to keep everyone in one place so we can ensure that everyone gets the proper medical treatment.”
“But what about the other camp?”, one man asked Dana in broken English.
“What other camp?”, Dana asked, with a feeling of dread running along her spine.
“This is the men’s camp. The women’s camp is a mile up the train track.”

In a daze, Dana advised Dunn what she had discovered, and a small group of doctors and E Company men had raced off as quickly as they could.

***************

The company ended up staying in Buchloe for two nights. They were present in the morning when the residents of Landsberg turned out, carrying rakes, brooms, shovels and headed off to the camp. General Ripley had been so incensed at what he had seen, he had declared martial law and ordered everyone between the ages of 14 and 80 to be rounded up and sent to the camp, to bury the bodies and clean up the place. Dana stood watching them, her eyes cold. She felt a cold satisfaction when she noticed the woman that she had had the run in the day before being forced to clean up her husband’s mess.
“Fucking Nazi scum”, she muttered to herself. With the proximity of the town to the camp, she was under no illusions that the townsfolk were not aware of the camp’s existence, and she just knew that many of the women who had walked past her were possibility relatives of the guards or SS. She hadn’t previously given much thought to the reasons for the war, only that she had been brought back in time. However, seeing the sight of the camp, which she learned was part of Dachau, had brought it all home for her. This was the reason why the war was being fought in Europe. She had read about the holocaust in school, but seeing it first-hand was eye-opening and distressing and it wasn’t something that she would ever be able to forget.

******************

On 3rd May, Colonel Harper got orders to have the 506th ready to move out 9.30am the next day, with the objective being Berchtesgaden.

Berchtesgaden was a magnet for the troops of all the armies in southern Germany, France and northern Italy. South of Salzburg, the Bavarian mountain of Berchtesgaden was Valhalla for the Nazi gods, lords and masters. Hitler had a home there and a mountain-top stone retreat called the Aldershorst (Eagles Nest), 8000 feet high up the mountain. Thanks to a remarkable job of road building, cars could get to a parking place within a few hundred feet of the Eagles Nest. There a shaft ran into the centre of the mountain to an elevator which lifted into the Eagles Nest. The walls of the elevator were gold leaf.

The highest-ranking Nazi leadership flocked to Berchtesgaden to be near the Fuhrer: Himmler, Goering, Goebbels and Bormann all had houses in the area, and there was an apartment complex for the SS. It was to the Berchtesgaden area that much of the loot collected by the Nazis from all over Europe had come, and the place was stuffed with money, in gold and in currency from a dozen countries, with art treasures, booze, jewellery and fabulous cars.

Berchtesgaden was really two magnets: the symbolic home of Hitler’s mad lust for power, and the best looting possibilities in Europe. Everybody wanted to get there, French advancing side by side with the 101st, British coming up from Italy, German leaders who wanted to get their ill-gotten possessions, and every American in Europe.

E Company got there first.