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The 82nd, having succeeded in holding the bridges, were ordered to stay in and around Nijmegen, which was still being shelled, for over a month. Already eight hundred men had been lost.
Matthew had plenty of prisoners to interrogate, and was kept occupied finding out as much as he could about the Wehrmacht’s troop movements and artillery positions. By mid-November, the 508th were relieved by Canadian troops, and sent to Camp Sissonne, a former Wehrmacht base in France, for several weeks, to restock and recover, and wait for their promised Christmas leave to a newly libe
rated Paris.
In the canteen of the base, the walls decorated with remarkably unfunny German cartoons and drawings, Matthew sat with a bottle of beer at his elbow as he gazed down at the blank sheet of paper in front of him. He wanted to write Lily—he’d promised to write her, after all, although since returning to the front, he’d had neither the words nor the will. Now his head ached with all the things he didn’t want to say.
He didn’t want to tell her about the SS officer he’d interrogated who had spat in his face, or the sight of his fellow soldiers climbing on their hands and knees up the side of the Waal River, straight into gunfire. He couldn’t tell her about the hopelessness he felt that infected him like a poison, seeping through his blood and making him wonder what the point of it all was, if anything would ever get better, if he would find his family, or even, after so many years of war and devastation, he wanted to. He certainly wouldn’t tell her about the fury he felt, and how he didn’t know if it was worse than the indifference, as he veered wildly and wearily between the two.
He rested his head on his hand, and thought perhaps he would just tell her how tired he was.
Dear Lily, he wrote after a few moments of contemplation. I am writing you from a safe place, which feels like a great luxury. When I go outside, it is silent, and the only light comes from the stars in the sky. I look up at them and I think of you seeing them as well, and I hope you think of me. It feels like the only thing to hold onto in these dark days, which I know we both hope and pray will soon be over. Although I am afraid of what I will discover when they are over, whether I will find my family, or learn of their fate.
I know I have told you of dear Gertie, but I have not said much of my brothers. Arno is the older one, and he is twenty now. He was like me when we were children, quiet and studious, but he also had a bent for mischief. Once, while playing a game, he locked poor Arno in a cupboard and then forgot about him there—he went off to play outside and no one heard Arno for hours. My mother was furious, but Arno got his own back—he poured a bucket of cold water all over Franz while he was sleeping. I look back on those childish pranks and think my mother must have despaired of us, but I remember her as full of laughter. She knew we loved each other, even if we did not always show it.
Matthew put his pen down as the memories came over him like a mist, engulfing him with both longing and sorrow. He pictured the four of them—the three scuffling boys and little Gertie watching their antics from the side—and wondered how any of them could have imagined what would happen to their family, to their lives, that comfortable home, full of love and light and warmth, shot straight through with grief and loss and misery.
He thought of his father, a serious look on his face as he listened to whatever childish complaint was brought to him, determined to give whatever slight it was a fair hearing. He’d been a man who had believed in justice, and that the German people had an inherent sense of it.
How wrong he’d been.
Matthew was just putting his pen to paper again when a duty officer rushed into the half-full canteen.
“Everyone to report to their quarters immediately!”
“What’s going on?” someone called out. “Is it an airborne operation?”
“Infantry,” the man replied shortly, and everyone began to hurry out of the canteen.
Matthew stuffed his unfinished letter in his pocket.
It was clear from the charged atmosphere that something big was about to happen—or already had. Orders were given to leave dress uniform and anything unnecessary at the base, and ammunition and rations were distributed.
Matthew caught sight of the grimly determined looks on his fellow soldiers’ faces, and knew they were all thinking the same thing. They were going back into it. There would be no Christmas leave to Paris.
By dawn, they were being loaded into open-backed trucks and heading northwest, towards the Belgian border with Germany.
They were silent as they rode in rattling trucks towards Ardennes, for thirteen bone-jarring hours. The day grew colder, snow beginning to blanket the ground, a soft whiteness at odds with the violence that surely awaited. They’d been told very little, only that the Germans had broken through into Belgium.
At Werbomont, along the Bastogne–Liege line, the 82nd fanned out to take up defensive positions, while Matthew went on to find the headquarters of the operation, and see if he was needed to conduct interrogations.
As he rode along the line with a stern-faced driver, looking for the headquarters, Matthew saw sights that chilled him right through to his weary bones. Army men not trained for combat—clerks and cooks who were used to pencils or spoons—were holding defensive positions, reading the instruction manuals of weaponry they’d never even looked at before, their faces gaunt and pale with panic. The situation was more desperate than he’d ever seen it, and yet they were meant to be winning the war. They clearly weren’t winning this.
The situation was even more alarming when he finally found the headquarters in an old farmhouse, its steep roof thickly blanketed with snow. As he came in, he saw three officers in a flurry of angry panic, arguing over a battered map and the positions of Allied regiments on it.
Matthew took in the scene with a plunging sense of icy fear. These men were in command, but they did not look it. Their voices were high and taut with fear, and they seemed at a loss as to how to proceed. Matthew couldn’t even tell who was in charge, but he took a steadying breath and approached the most senior officer, a colonel.
“Sir,” he said, and saluted. “I’m with the 82nd Airborne—”
The colonel’s bushy eyebrows snapped together as he registered Matthew’s accent. Having spoken German so often in the last weeks and months, it had become more pronounced, although it hadn’t mattered as the men in his regiment now knew who he was. They even joked about it, while Matthew smiled faintly on.
“The 82nd Airborne?” the colonel repeated incredulously. “Then why do you sound like a damned German?”
“I’m with the IPW,” Matthew explained as calmly as he could, although the officer’s eyes were wild. “That is, the Interrogation of Prisoners of War—” He fell silent as the colonel withdrew his pistol and cocked it two inches from his head. The other two officers simply watched, wide-eyed, bemused.
“That’s interesting, son,” the colonel said in a voice that belied that statement. “But we’ve had reports of Germans impersonating American soldiers, so why the hell should I believe you?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
