September 1944
“Let me tell you what I know.”
Matthew gazed at the anxious Wehrmacht soldier sat forward on a chair in a room in an abandoned monastery by the Waal River and did not reply.
Three days ago, after cooling their heels in Nottingham for six weeks, paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division had been dropped over Nijmegen, with an order to secure the bridges across the Waal and Maas rivers immediately, to prevent the Germans from blocking the Allies’ relentless push into Germany.
The jump, made on a sunny day in mid-September, had gone well, with all but two of the planes reaching their target areas. Matthew had landed with a dozen others in a muddy potato field, the sky full of planes and parachutes, the drone of engines filling the air and thrumming through his chest.
The nearby antiaircraft guns did not release a single shot as the sky darkened with the relentless force of the Allies’ assault. The artillerymen had their hands up in surrender as the paratroopers landed, and Matthew began his interrogations that evening, in this abandoned monastery overlooking the medieval city of Nijmegen, the 508th fighting in its streets towards the bridge over the Waal River.
Interrogations had become, for the most part, ludicrously easy—soldiers babbling in their eagerness to reveal what they knew, and to be considered helpful to the onslaught of Allies. Matthew struggled against a complicated disdain for men who so quickly abandoned the cause they’d fought for, even as he knew how evil that cause truly was, and was convinced with the utmost certainty they were doing the right thing, if not always for the right reason.
Yet many of the conscripted soldiers, he’d come to discover, were not actually Nazis. Many weren’t even Germans. They were desperate Poles, disaffected Communists, dissenters and free thinkers and undesirables of any sort who had all been forced to fight under the swastika banner. While many were volunteering information simply because they wanted to save their own skins, others did so out of a genuine desire to help the Allied cause.
Since the Allied forces had dropped down into the Netherlands, the Germans were surrendering in droves, entire units and battalions at a time, hurling their guns to the ground and their hands up into the air, so the Allies were struggling to find places to contain them. It hadn’t taken long to realize this part of the Netherlands had been a neglected corner of the Nazis’ war strategy, and was populated with units of barely trained soldiers who had been forced, often under great duress, to march and to fight.
It was Matthew’s job to ask them questions, note their information, and sift through the useless chaff to find the all-important
grains of wheat. He’d become both assured and hardened in his interrogation manner, refusing to be moved by a Communist weeping that he’d never wanted to fight, or an eighteen-year-old recruit shaking so much he couldn’t even hold the cigarette Matthew always proffered.
Matthew knew he was playing a role, whether it was soothing confidant or disdainful officer; whether he was thanking a penitent private or dismissing the information an officer offered as unimportant even when it was actually crucial. Never, ever giving the game away—for that’s what it was, a game, and yet one on which they were all gambling their lives.
That afternoon, Guy Wessel had gone with another team to attempt to convince a nearby German unit to surrender, a job considered now to be a veritable stroll in the park. Matthew was here in the monastery with a soldier who had promised to tell him whatever he liked.
The trouble, Matthew had discovered, was that what the man told him could just as easily be a lie. He had to sift the truth from the wished-for; frightened soldiers would sometimes pretend they had more knowledge in order to be helpful, which wasn’t, of course, helpful at all, especially when they plucked numbers and positions out of the air.
“What is it you think I wish to know?” he inquired of the man, his hands in his pockets as he leaned against the curved arch of the monastery’s window.
The man shrugged. “Numbers of guns? Troops?” His eyes darted to the right and left, and then back again. “I know there are explosives all along the Waal bridge—”
“We have already secured that bridge,” Matthew told him. Even though it had come at a bloody cost, with two hundred lives lost as they’d fought their way up the steep riverbanks, straight into gunfire, three days after they’d been meant to secure it.
The soldier shrugged again, looking defeated now, with no more to offer. “Do you have a cigarette?” He looked hopefully at Matthew’s pocket.
“No, I’m sorry. I do not.” The man didn’t know anything more. Matthew had done dozens, even hundreds, of interrogations by this point, and he had learned to tell when a prisoner was out of information. He nodded towards the GI waiting by the door. “Take him back, Private.”
Alone in the drafty room, Matthew lit a cigarette as he looked out over the embattled streets of Nijmegen. Despite the many disaffected soldiers so willing to surrender, others were determined to fight to the last man and nothing was going quite to plan. Every time another life was lost, on some nameless alleyway in a city no one had heard of, Matthew wondered why this war had to keep going on and on—and what would happen when it finally ended.
What would happen to a shattered Europe, and what would happen to his family, and to him? Were his mother and brothers and sister hiding away somewhere, frightened but safe? Had they found a place of protection? Or could they be in one of the camps he’d heard murmurs about—somewhere in the east, a place for prisoners? If they were in a camp, Matthew told himself they would at least be safe there. He knew the conditions would be hard, but they would be far from the fighting.
“Ah, here you are.”
Matthew turned to see Tom Reese surveying him coolly. His uniform was splattered with mud, his hair ruffled as he raked one hand through it. Matthew hadn’t seen Tom since they’d dropped into the Netherlands, and he hadn’t spoken to him when they’d both been in Nottingham waiting for their orders, after they’d been granted their separate leaves to London. There was enough to do, and enough men in their battalion, to make interaction far from a necessity, especially since it seemed it was something neither of them particularly wanted.
“Were you looking for me?” he asked.
“We just came back from the Volksgrenadier lines.”
Matthew raised his eyebrows. “Did they surrender?”
Tom let out a harsh laugh. “No, they damned well didn’t. The regiment had been relieved a couple of days ago, it turns out.” His lips twisted. “By Waffen-SS troops. We barely got away with our lives.”
“They’ve sent in the SS?” Matthew assimilated that information into the store of knowledge he already had. “So they’re not just giving up, then.”
Tom gave another humorless laugh. “Hell, no. They’ll fight to the last man. At least the true Nazis will. They’re real believers, those bastards. They’re not stepping down anytime soon.” He paused, taking a step into the empty room. “Smoke?”
Wordlessly, Matthew handed him his pack of cigarettes.