Outside the prison building, a captain, a lieutenant, two sergeants, a corporal, and a PFC of the 26th Infantry regiment guarded the entrance. All of them were armed with pistols. The sergeants had Thompson submachine guns slung from their shoulders. They were backed up by two jeeps, each with a pedestal-mounted .30 caliber machine gun.
Although the captain obviously in charge greeted Cohen by name when he saluted, that recognition didn’t get them into the prison building. There was a protocol to follow.
First, they had to produce identification. After their CIC credentials were carefully examined, their names were checked against a roster of Accredited Personnel mounted on a clipboard.
Cronley saw another clipboard marked Authorized Visitors, but it wasn’t consulted.
Cohen, who runs the whole show, must have gotten Augie and me on the Accredited list right after I asked him to.
&n
bsp; “And your weapons, if any, gentlemen, please,” the lieutenant said.
He was visibly impressed when, after Colonel Cohen had surrendered his .45, Cronley and Ziegler hoisted their Ike jackets, revealing their pistols, holstered in their “Secret Service High Rise Cross Draw” holsters.
“Nice,” he said. “I didn’t think either of you were armed.”
“That’s the whole idea, Lieutenant,” Cronley said. “We like to surprise people before we shoot them.”
When Cronley and then Ziegler took their pistols from their holsters, it was immediately apparent from the drawn-back hammers and the position of the safety levers that they were “cocked and locked.” All it would take to fire them was for the shooter to move the safety lever and squeeze the trigger.
The captain and the lieutenant were visibly surprised. The captain’s face showed surprise and disapproval. Carrying holstered pistols in that ready-to-fire condition was forbidden in the Army.
Ziegler picked up on this: “When I was a Boy Scout,” he said, “they had a motto. ‘Be Prepared.’”
One at a time, the lieutenant removed the magazines from the pistols, and then racked the actions back to eject the rounds in their chambers. Each time, a cartridge flew out of the pistols. When the lieutenant was finished, the captain looked relieved that a dangerous situation had been dealt with.
Cronley saw that both Ziegler and Cohen were amused.
“And which of our guests are you going to visit, Colonel?” the captain asked.
“We’re going to have a chat, a brief one, with Herr Kaltenbrunner,” Cohen replied, “and we may visit, or at least have a look at, Herr Göring.”
A third clipboard was produced. The lieutenant wrote on it, and then extended it first to Cohen, then to Cronley, and finally to Ziegler. This one had to be signed, attesting to the fact that they were entering the prison at 0825 21 February 1946 to visit prisoners Kaltenbrunner, Ernst, and Göring, Hermann.
—
One of the sergeants unlocked a door with a massive key Cronley thought probably weighed a half pound and passed them into the prison.
They found themselves in a three-story building. The ground floor was lined with cells on both sides. A 26th Infantry private or PFC armed with only a billy club stood before each door, or leaned on it, peering momentarily through a small window in the recessed cell door. These guards all appeared to be in their teens.
Above the ground floor were two more tiers of cells. Outside them was a fragile-looking metal walkway with a railing. Two even more fragile-looking bridges, one on the second tier, the other on the third, connected the walkways.
There were no soldiers peering into the upper-level-tier cells, and as he followed Cohen down the twenty-foot-wide corridor between the cells, Cronley thought, Now is not the time, but when we get out of here, I’m going to ask Cohen to explain this to me. Who’s in the upper-level cells, and why are GIs standing outside the ground-floor cells and not the ones above?
—
Colonel Cohen stopped before one of the cells and told the PFC standing next to it now—suddenly standing at rigid attention in the presence of a colonel—“Open it up, son.”
The PFC first put a large key in a lock and turned it, then moved a heavy wooden slide away from a slot in the door frame. Then he pushed the door inward.
Cronley saw the cell was about twelve feet wide and maybe twenty feet long.
Cohen waved him in.
A very tall, trim man—Cronley judged six-feet-four, maybe a little taller, and about 210 pounds—rose to his feet from a narrow bed, the thin mattress of which was covered with a U.S. Army blanket. He was wearing a sleeveless gray underwear shirt, black breeches, and thigh-high black boots. A double red stripe with a black middle ran down the center seam of the breeches, identifying the wearer as a general officer. There was a scar, looking to Cronley like evidence of a bungled operation, on his left cheek.
So that’s what a sword fight/car accident does to you.