A Well-Placed Grenade

THE OVERLOOK

By Tom Clavin

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            [This week, St. Martin’s Press is releasing the latest Drury-Clavin collaboration, The Last Hill: The Epic Story of a Ranger Battalion and the Battle That Defined World War II. In a blatant effort to promote the book, here is another excerpt. It is September 1944 and the 2nd Ranger Battalion is slogging its way across France. A big obstacle is a strong fortress which controls much of the Brest Peninsula.]

            On September 9, 1944, the sun had barely cleared the eastern horizon when the “Fool Lieutenant,” Bob Edlin, was again out in front of his usual four-man scout patrol. They were squatting behind a garden wall eleven miles northeast of Brest’s inner city and eyeballing the 50-acre Lochrist Battery complex. At its center sat a three-story fortified bunker – “the fort,” to the Americans – housing the German command center and the observation post from which range finders spotted targets for the 280mm cannon. The four German naval guns were in a camouflaged depression in a pastureland about seven-hundred yards to the east. They were encased in ten feet of concrete, thick enough to withstand both shelling and aerial bombardments. Three of the guns were set in open ring positions whose bases could rotate three-hundred and sixty degrees. The barrel of the fourth was fixed permanently, pointed toward the harbor and the sea beyond.

            The German base also included a smaller outlying building nearer to the coast overlooking the harbor’s U-Boat pens. This was connected by tunnels to the fort, which rose like a landlocked battleship amid the former potato fields, strawberry patches, and dairy farms seized from the French in 1940. Allied intelligence reports indicated that beneath the structure the Germans had dug out barracks large enough to house nearly one-thousand soldiers. Pocking the surrounding acreage were innumerable concrete pillboxes reinforced with “lugged” steel bars, sandbag-protected anti-aircraft bunkers, garages, warehouses, and even a laundromat and blacksmith’s shop. Marked mine fields – “ACHTUNG! MINEN!” – were everywhere. As the four Rangers took in the compound, they were stunned by its breadth.

            Edlin, Bill Courtney, Bill Dreher, and Warren Burmaster had been tasked with charting the locations of the pillboxes, machine gun nests, and minefields shielding the perimeter of the fort. If possible, they were also to snatch prisoners. Lt. Col. Rudder and the Intel Officer Harvey Cook wanted to gauge the morale of the Wehrmacht soldiers occupying the grounds. Meanwhile, three Ranger companies – Able, Baker, and Charlie – had dug in a quarter mile or so to the rear of Edlin’s patrol. Dog, Easy, and Fox had taken up blocking positions along the adjacent roads in the unlikely event the enemy took flight without a fight. Behind them, an additional task force of two infantry regiments from the 29th Division supported by two tank battalions, as well as several units of the FFI, had been diverted from the Brest assault to assist the Rangers in overrunning the complex. Major Richard Sullivan’s 5th Ranger Battalion, which had arrived on Le Finistere ten days earlier, had moved further east, poised to take a string of occupied coastal villages. The coordinated attacks were scheduled for the next day.

Edlin’s reconnaissance patrol had moved out from behind the garden wall and reached the edge of a minefield protecting one of the battery’s large pillboxes when he signaled to pull back; it was a dead end. But Courtney sidled up to Edlin and whispered. “I think I see a way through.” With that, Courtney broke into a dead run.

            Dreher hissed, “Stop, Courtney! Stop!” But Courtney, once again displaying a rum attitude toward peril, plunged ahead. The others followed. For the first time since the Channel crossing, Edlin was frightened. Gen. Middleton’s VIII Corps artillery outfits and Army Air Corps bombers had been softening up the Lochrist Battery compound for weeks, and it took Edlin a moment to realize that Courtney was following a path of bomb craters that had disabled the mines.

Hopping from hole to hole like jackrabbits, the four Rangers found themselves crouched near the open door of the pillbox. Incredibly, no guard was posted. Above them, hanging by the neck from a thick rope knotted to a stanchion, was the rotting corpse of a German soldier. Likely a deserter, left to dangle as a message. His boots were missing.

Edlin weighed their options. If they snuck away now, back through the minefield, they possessed a trove of information to deliver to Lt. Col. Rudder, not least of which was a lightly guarded pathway onto the base. On the other hand, if they attempted to capture the pillbox, a gun fight would alert the entire German contingent of their presence. Even if they cleared the enemy outpost, there would be no way out after that. The four would have to hold out against God knows what for nearly twenty-four hours and hope the next morning’s assault found them alive.

Edlin looked to Courtney, who nodded. He turned toward Dreher, who did the same. Burmaster wordlessly dropped back to the edge of the minefield, the getaway man ready to bolt if the plan went south, to report what had happened.

Edlin took a deep breath and dove through the doorway. Courtney and Dreher followed. Electric lights were blazing in the window-less bunker, silhouetting perhaps twenty stunned German paratroopers. A few of their Mausers were scattered about the floor; the rest were stacked in a corner. Two unmanned heavy machine guns sat mounted at slit embrasures facing the minefield. The three Rangers hollered in unison, “Hande hoch!” Every soldier raised his hands.

Bill Courtney started to say something in his high school German. An officer stepped forward. Eyeing Edlin’s lieutenant’s bars, he said, “Sir, I speak fluent English.” He added that he’d gone to college in the United States.

Edlin suspected that Col. Rudder would bust him to buck private, but he asked anyway. “How do we get into the fort from here and to your commander?”

“I can take you to the commander,” the German said.

Edlin glanced at Courtney and Dreher. Again, both nodded. Edlin moved to the door and waved in Burmaster. He and Courtney, he’d decided, would accompany the guide. Dreher would remain to guard the prisoners. Burmaster was to hie back to Able Company and radio Lt. Col. Rudder to call off any planned artillery fire.

It took Burmaster but moments to retrace his steps. When he raised Ike Eikner, Rudder and Len Lomell happened to be in the coms bunker talking to the veteran New York Herald Tribune war correspondent Lewis Gannett. All four heard Burmaster relay his message to hold fire. “That Fool Lieutenant,” Burmaster said, was heading into the fort. Gannett scribbled furiously. The sub-headline to his subsequent, seven-hundred-word front-page story took into consideration the journalistic etiquette of the era. “‘Fool Lieutenant’ Breaches Bastion,” it read, “Holds Grenade to Nazi Colonel’s Midriff.”

            A long, well-trodden path traversed the middle of the German compound. The two Rangers, their tommy guns slung over their soldiers, kept the Wehrmacht officer between them. They walked as casually as their racing hearts allowed. They conversed informally with the German, the subjects ranging from his university experiences in the United States to Edlin’s memories of growing up in Indiana. Bill Courtney tried to practice his German language skills, such as they were. They passed several armed soldiers. None challenged them. All the while Bob Edlin fingered the hilt of his trench knife.

            At the base of the fort they descended a long tunnel. It reminded the Americans of the chute from which college football players ran onto the field. A set of large doors opened automatically. They were the first electric doors either Ranger had ever seen. They found themselves in an underground hospital. Half of the three-hundred or so beds held wounded soldiers. Doctors in white coats and female nurses gaped. Courtney hollered, “Hande hoch!” The medical staff, and even some of the wounded, complied. Their German prisoner asked if he could speak. Edlin warned him to talk slowly, so Courtney could follow. The officer announced that everyone should sit and remain calm. The Americans, he said, were on their way to the commandant’s office to negotiate a surrender. Everyone sat.

            Leaving the infirmary, they paused at an elevator. Edlin shook his head, “No,” and pointed toward the stairs. Armed sentries were posted on the landing above. The German from the pillbox spoke to them – slowly – and they immediately lowered their rifles. They passed down a brightly lit corridor and stopped in front of an ornate wooden door. The commandant’s office, the German said. He raised his fist to knock.

Edlin pushed him aside, threw open the door, and rushed in. Courtney was on his hip, slamming the door behind him. Edlin raced across the large office and pressed the barrel of his gun into the commandant’s throat. Col. Martin Furst, wearing his Fallschirmjager paratrooper’s uniform, barely blinked.

The officer pushed his swivel chair away from a mahogany desk large enough to accommodate several craps games. As he stood, Edlin removed the Mauser HSc pistol from the holster on his hip. Furst stood, walked to a side table, and poured himself a cognac. He took a sip and looked at Edlin. Neither of the Rangers had shaved or bathed in weeks, and Edlin felt the contempt in the paratroop officer’s stare.

“What do you want,” Furst said, in English.

            Courtney began to say something in German. Furst, his eyes still on Edlin, held up a hand, palm out. “You don’t need your interpreter, Lieutenant. I speak excellent English.”

            “Fine,” Edlin said. “Why don’t you just surrender your fort and get this whole thing over with.”

            “Why should I do that?” Furst asked.

Bob Edlin was becoming impatient. The arrogance in the German’s voice grated.

            Edlin told the German that the compound was completely surrounded. An exaggeration. Then he lied outright. Even as they spoke, Edlin said, Rangers were infiltrating the grounds. Furst picked up his telephone receiver. Edlin thought about stopping him. He looked to Courtney, who said nothing.

The German spoke too fast for Courtney to catch most of the conversation. When he cradled the receiver, he told the Rangers, “They’ll call back in a few minutes.” In the meanwhile, he asked if the Americans would care for a drink? Bob Edlin could not recall the last time he would not care for a drink. His stomach was churning again. When the telephone rang he nearly jumped out of his skin.

Col. Furst listened for a moment, then said something in German. Edlin looked at Courtney, who frowned and shook his head.

Col. Furst hung up and grinned. “There are only three of you,” he said. “You two, and one in the pillbox. You are my prisoners now.”

Edlin’s mind raced. They could kill the cocky bastard right here, push his big desk against the door, and empty their tommy guns at whomever managed to crash through. Or.

“Courtney,” he said, “hand me a grenade.” Edlin took the fragmentation grenade and – contrary to the newspaperman Gannett’s euphemism – shoved it, hard, into the colonel’s crotch. “You’re going to die right here,” he said.

“Well, so are you,” the German said. His voice sounded less smug.

Edlin pulled the pin and released the lever, pressing the grenade deeper into Furst’s nutsack. Each man in the room knew well that within five seconds, fifty-eight pieces of shrapnel would obliterate them. “One,” Edlin counted, “two …”

The German shouted, “Okay.”

Edlin stuck the pin back into the grenade’s hammer. He asked if the office contained a public address system. Furst pointed with his chin. Courtney picked up the microphone and passed it to the colonel. Edlin instructed him on what to say. Furst flicked a switch and began speaking in German. The Rangers raced to the window. German soldiers were pouring from buildings and underground passageways across the complex, walking to the courtyard below the fortress, stacking their weapons to the side, and falling into formation. Surrendering.

            To Edlin it looked like thousands of men. It was, in fact, eight-hundred and fourteen.

            Lt. Col. Furst had a final request. He would prefer to surrender to an officer of higher rank than a lieutenant. Edlin and Courtney looked at each other and shrugged. Fine.

To the Ranger rank and file it was all too decorous; too, well, Nationalist Socialist. A large white sheet billowed from a makeshift flag staff above him as Lt. Col. Rudder waited in the town square of the small village of St. Mathieu. The hamlet, where Rudder had agreed to conduct the formal surrender ceremony, lay in the shadow of the Lochrist Battery fortress. On his drive to the village, Rudder had passed close enough to see the long barrels of the 280mm guns. Once so menacing, now gone silent.

The Battalion Sergeant Major Len Lomell stood to Rudder’s left. Behind both men, arranged as an ad hoc honor guard at Rudder’s specific request, were Bob Edlin, Bill Courtney, Bill Dreher, and Warren Burmaster. To their rear, Able Company stood at parade rest. A few Army photographers and newspaper correspondents circulated. Facing the Rangers were more than eight-hundred sullen Wehrmacht prisoners.

            When Col. Martin Furst strode into the square with his pet German Shepherd, Asgaard, loping at his heels, his soldiers snapped to attention. Rudder in turn called the Rangers to attention with a bellowing “Ten-Hut!” Furst, his boots buffed to a sheen, the sun glinting off his gleaming belt buckle and the silver buttons of his tunic, halted before the American commander. Furst saluted and reached for his Mauser to present it to Rudder. His holster was empty. Furst looked flustered. Rudder turned to the honor guard. “Where’s his pistol?”

            Trying not to look abashed, Bob Edlin withdrew the gun from his waist band beneath his filthy field jacket and handed it to Rudder, who in turn passed it to the German commandant. With a Teutonic formality, Lt. Col. Furst holstered the weapon, half-bowed and clicked his heels, drew the gun out, and handed it back to Rudder. As Edlin watched the exchange he wondered how many bottles of whiskey such a souvenir might have brought in a trade.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival, and now, The Last Hill. To purchase or order a copy, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.