Chapter Twenty-Four
Ludwigslust, Germany
April 1945
The 82nd Airborne crossed the Elbe on the last day of April, after months of shelling and fighting, a relentless, bloody push into Germany. As the snow melted and the world came to life again, trees and flowers budding into blossom under an indifferent blue sky, as if it were any other spring, Matthew entered his homeland for the first time in seven years, coming face to face with a destroyed Germany, its cities and towns devastated by Allied bombs, its people by starvation and loss, its culture and its hope by over a decade of Nazi rule.
Hundreds and even thousands of soldiers were surrendering every day, arms up in the air, faces gaunt, resigned yet also hopeful. The war was over all but in name, and yet still people were dying. Soldiers. Civilians. Jews.
Three days before the 82nd crossed the Elbe, a reconnaissance patrol was sent across by cover of night in small, flat-bottomed boats; all but two were lost to enemy fire. It felt even more pointless, to make it this far, knowing that peace was finally imminent, only to
die in a futile exercise, just days before Hitler himself committed suicide.
Every day, there was another soldier for Matthew to interrogate—desperate conscripts, arrogant officers, broken men, terrified soldiers. Some gabbled in their eagerness to be helpful, while others remained icily aloof, infuriatingly disdainful to the very end.
Still, there were odd moments of humor amidst the unrelenting grimness—when Guy came up with the idea of posing as Commissar Karkozy, Matthew had felt a spark of amusement at his friend’s absurd get-up, the absolute farce of the thing, although mostly he felt too weary to laugh or even smile. He wondered if he had either in him anymore, and then told himself he had to, for Lily’s sake. He held onto his humanity so he could return to her. It was that stark, that simple.
It had been four long months since what had become known as the Battle of the Bulge had been fought in Ardennes, where Matthew had shot Tom Reese as he’d tried to desert, and then taken command himself. They’d managed to hold off the SS assault throughout the night and retain their position, something that had garnered him a promotion to master sergeant.
As for Tom, Matthew hadn’t known whether he’d actually killed him or not until after the battle. Tom had been taken by orderlies to the nearest field hospital, and Matthew had visited him there as a matter of duty rather than desire, knowing he needed to see him face to face. Tom had been shot in the thigh, a deep but non-threatening wound that would have him see out the war recuperation back in England before being demobbed.
“You shot me,” Tom had stated flatly, when they were alone, the poor sufferer next to him, with a bad head wound, thankfully lost to unconsciousness. “I can’t believe you actually shot me. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“I’m sorry,” Matthew had said, and wondered if he meant it. In the moment he wasn’t sure what he’d been thinking, or what had prompted him to fire. “But you were deserting. You could have been court-martialed for cowardice in the face of the enemy and sentenced to prison, if not death.”
“So you were saving me?” Tom had sounded disbelieving. He’d glanced away, a closed look coming over his face. “You could still tell them, if you wanted. You’ve never liked me, anyway. Maybe this is what you’ve hoped for all along.”
Matthew had shifted where he stood. Outside, the sky was slate gray, intermittently offering an icy, unforgiving drizzle. His boots were constantly wet, and he couldn’t remember what it felt like to be either full or warm. “I don’t hate you,” he’d said after a moment.
Tom had turned back to him with a huff of laughter. “That’s something, I guess. I don’t hate you, either, for what it’s worth.”
“I’m glad,” Matthew had answered, deciding he meant it. Tom gave a small smile, and he’d smiled back. It seemed absurd that they might find some point of sympathy in this after everything, and yet perhaps they had.
After a second, Tom’s smile had faded and he’d looked away. “I thought we were all going to die, you know.” Color had suffused his face as he kept his gaze averted. “Those SS guys were crazy… crazy. Shouting the way they did, and how they just kept running at us… they would have killed us all, Lawson. Did you see them?”
“I did.”
“It looked completely hopeless,” Tom had said in a low voice. “You know it did. They would have mowed us down.”
Matthew had said nothing. What could he say? How could he possibly offer Tom the absolution he seemed to crave? The sergeant who’d been next to him had taken a bullet in the head. Three others had been critically wounded, not including Tom. And yet they’d held the position.
“I wasn’t thinking straight,” Tom had confessed. “I wasn’t thinking at all. I couldn’t…” He’d lapsed into silence, shaking his head. “Why did you shoot me?” he’d finally asked. “You could have just let me go. Let me face the consequences, be imprisoned or worse. Maybe they would have had me shot. Maybe they still will.”
“You don’t deserve that, after everything you’ve been through.” It might have been an act of mercy to have shot Tom in the leg, but Matthew knew he could have easily missed. What if he’d killed him, or wounded him terribly? What had he been thinking in that moment? Matthew wasn’t sure he could even remember. He recalled standing in the snow, and how cold he’d felt inside, as if something hard and elemental was taking over his soul.
He didn’t want it to, he fought against it, but with every passing day he remained in this war, every sneering SS officer he looked in the face, every corpse he gazed at, unmoved, by the side of the road, he felt it close another inch over him. He wanted to have something left to offer Lily, but some days he didn’t know if he would.
Looking at Tom, his leg swathed in thick bandages, his expression close to despairing, Matthew had felt no compassion at all, not so much as a flicker of pity, even though he knew he should. “I won’t say anything,” he’d said, because that was what he suspected Tom wanted to hear, and he knew he could promise at least that much.
“Well, the war’s over for me.” There was no disguising the relief in Tom’s voice. The push into Germany would continue, taking months and many lives, and yet Tom would not fight again, and he was glad. Perhaps, if Matthew were in the same position, he would feel likewise. He knew there was nothing more to say but goodbye. He’d walked out of the field hospital without looking back.
Now, as April turned to May, the end of the war was perhaps only days away, here in the pretty town of Ludwigslust, fifty miles east of the Elbe. On Eisenhower’s orders, the 82nd Airborne had been told to push forward as fast as possible, to keep the Soviets from gaining any more territory than they had to. The war was changing shape, the German army collapsing, to be replaced by another, more insidious enemy, yet that battle was one Matthew had no wish to fight.
He wanted to go home, even though he no longer knew where that was. He wanted to find his family, even though he wasn’t sure he could. Both prospects filled him with despair, and so he tried not to think at all, and welcomed that cold hardness even as he fought against it, for Lily’s sake. Always for Lily.
While the other GIs were daydreaming about huge steaks and grateful girls back in America, Matthew’s future felt like a disturbing blankness, a yawning emptiness of uncertainty. He’d had no letters from Lily in over a month, and he hadn’t written any, either, since he’d been dropped into the Netherlands. It hurt to think of her at all, even as he tried to cling to some shred of hope that there could be a future for them, somehow. Somewhere. When this was finally, really over, when he could see a future emerging from the dust and death of war.
In the stately palace in Ludwigslust, General Gavin was poised to accept the surrender of a hundred and fifty thousand men. Hitler had killed himself, the government was collapsing. There was nothing left to fight for. Finally, finally the fight could truly end.