“Including the Nazis?” Cronley asked softly.
“Yes, including the Nazis. There weren’t many of them, but there were Nazis. And of course their families.”
“How could you do that?” Cronley asked.
Mattingly glanced at Harry, then went on: “The Nazis posed the greatest problem, still pose it. The non-Nazis—I’ll get into this in a minute—could be kept in Germany. But Nazis are—and should be—subject to arrest for investigation of what they might have done, and then be brought before a war crimes tribunal. Once they were arrested, the Russians would demand they be turned over to them.”
“So, what did you do?”
“We got them, are getting them, out of Germany.”
“To Argentina,” Cronley blurted.
Mattingly nodded. “We entered into an unholy alliance with the Vatican—how’s that for a turn of phrase?—who for their own reasons were helping Nazis—and Nazi collaborators, French, Hungarian, Czech, et cetera—escape the wrath of the victors.”
“Jesus Christ!” Cronley said softly.
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“Right now, the Nazis don’t concern us as much as what we’ve come to call the ‘Good Germans’—the officers and non-coms who were just soldiers doing their duty—which is where you come into the equation.”
He motioned for Harry to resume the narration.
Harry said, “General Gehlen—Abwehr Ost—buried all their intelligence files in steel barrels in the Bavarian Alps and then moved north. On May twenty-second, 1945, Gehlen and most of his senior officers surrendered to the CIC at Oberusel, which is not far from here. That arrest was reported to SHAEF, and SHAEF dispatched a CIC team to thoroughly interrogate them.”
“Commanded by Major Harold N. Wallace, Signal Corps, of the OSS,” Mattingly furnished, “newly equipped with the credentials of a CIC special agent, through the courtesy of a senior SHAEF intelligence officer whose name you don’t have the need to know but probably can guess.”
Cronley looked between Mattingly and Harry.
In other words, you, Mattingly.
And that means Harry is Major Wallace.
Harry Wallace saw the look on Cronley’s face, nodded his confirmation, and then went on: “Meanwhile, our people—the OSS—were retrieving the material buried in Bavaria, and taking it to a former monastery in Grünau, Bavaria. The monastery was made available to us by the Vatican in exchange for services rendered.”
Mattingly, glancing at Tiny, added: “Enter First Sergeant Dunwiddie and Company C, 203rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, Second Armored Division, which, less officers, had been placed on temporary duty with the OSS sometime before to provide security for OSS Forward. No officers because we didn’t want a captain and four lieutenants about to be returned to the United States for discharge or reassignment to regale the fellows in the Fort Knox officers’ club, or their hometown VFW, with tales of the interesting things they saw here at Kronberg Castle or at a monastery in Bavaria.
“When Tiny said that ‘his people’ have always held Aggies in high regard, he was referring not only to his family but to other black soldiers, cavalrymen, who have a proud and extensive history of service to the U.S. Army. The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry—black soldiers led, as was the 203rd Tank Destroyer, by white officers—did most of the Indian fighting on the plains after the Civil War. As Tiny will tell you—probably frequently—the Tenth Cavalry beat Teddy Roosevelt to the top of San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.”
“The Buffalo Soldiers,” Cronley said.
“You know about them, Lieutenant?” Dunwiddie asked, as he patted the tight black curls of hair on his head. The Indians had thought the hair of the black soldiers they were fighting was like the hair on buffalo.
Cronley nodded and smiled. Dunwiddie smiled back.
“Most of Tiny’s men are already at the Grünau monastery, as are just about all of General Gehlen’s officers and some of their families,” Major Wallace then went on. “Good Germans and some Nazis that we haven’t yet been able to get to Argentina. The rest of Charley Company will move there in the next couple of days, when OSS Forward goes out of business and this place becomes a senior officers’ club.
“Ultimately, the South German Industrial Development Organization, which is our new name for Abwehr Ost, will set up in a little dorf called Pullach, south of Munich. The engineers are now erecting a double fence around a twenty-five-acre compound, and rehabilitating the houses inside. And the barracks, just inside the outer fence, to house Company ‘C,’ which has just been placed on indefinite temporary duty with the newly formed Twenty-seventh CIC Detachment, Major Harold Wallace commanding.”
Wallace then looked at Mattingly, who said: “Tiny has pointed out that a company of black soldiers with no visible white officers is liable to make people curious, and that’s the last thing we want. My problem in that regard is that I have no one to fill that role.”
“Which is where I fit it?” Cronley said.
Mattingly nodded. “Almost all of my people are going home, and in any event, most of them are senior captains and better, and wouldn’t want the job anyway. So, yes, Lieutenant Cronley, that’s where you come in. Interested?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right now—Tiny will fill you in on the details—what we’re doing at the monastery is trying to stay inconspicuous—keeping the Nazis inside in case they decide to leave before we can get them out of Germany, and keeping out everybody else in the world.”