Brock nodded down at him, his expression grim. “If there’s any justice in this world, somebody has got to put that Nazi in the dirt,” he agreed. “And the sooner, the better.”
Corporal Brock was a mixed bag as a soldier. On the one hand, he got the job done, and that job was fighting the enemy. Looking at his combat record, it would be hard to find a better soldier. He and the rest of his squad always seemed to be in the thick of it. Wherever they went, they gave the Germans hell.
However, he was the kind of soldier who was surly to officers and gave anyone who outranked him a hard time. Then again, he knew better than to cross the line, knowing when not to push his luck. There were plenty of tough officers and seasoned sergeants who would’ve chewed him up and spit him out. He either steered clear of these men or kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t stupid, after all.
On the other hand, Brock could smell weakness like a shark smelled blood in the water. When he smelled that weakness, he went in for the kill.
If he had been stronger of character, he might have made an excellent sergeant himself. But everybody in any position of leadership knew that Brock Sumner was trouble, a good man in a fight but unreliable when the bullets weren’t flying.
He also wasn’t one to make idle threats. He hadn’t made hollow promises to his wounded friend from home just to make them both feel better.
Not long after leaving the hospital where he had seen Charlie, Brock was hanging around the kitchen area that was being set up to prepare hot grub, hoping for some coffee, talking to a couple of guys doing the same thing. It wasn’t just coffee that Brock was after. He had found that the best way to learn anything in the army was to keep your ears open. A lot of guys ran their mouths to show off how much they knew and how important they were. Unless it was top secret, somebody gossiped about it eventually.
“All we want is some hot coffee,” a soldier groused. “Is that too damn much to ask?”
“I hear they’ve got some Nazi officer that they captured in there. I’ll bet they give him all the hot coffee that he wants.”
Brock’s ears pricked up. “You say they’ve got a German officer in there?”
“Sure they do. I heard he’s locked up in the cellar at HQ. They’re keeping him down there because it would be an awful shame if a bomb from his own side killed him.”
“Sounds more like justice if you ask me,” another soldier said.
Brock picked up his rifle, which had been leaning against the building, and started walking away.
“Hey, where you goin’? Don’t you want that coffee?”
“I’ve got somewhere else to be,” he said gruffly.
Suddenly Brock wasn’t interested in hot beverages. He had bigger fish to fry. If the German officer really was being held at HQ, then Brock knew what he had to do.
Contrary to what the Americans may have wanted to believe, not all the residents of Bastogne were sympathetic to the Allies. A few had ties to Germany, either having been born there or having family there. Others favored the Nazi cause, having believed Hitler’s poison. There were even a handful who, as in all wars, didn’t take any side other than their own.
One such person was Benoit Dauvin, who had worked on the Belgian railroad before the war shut it down. Bastogne had once been a somewhat important rail hub until the railroad had been destroyed in WWI. The rails had been rebuilt, only to be destroyed once more in this more recent war.
Consequently, Dauvin had worked at nothing more than odd jobs since then. He had also served in the Great War. Between the wars, he had worked with many Germans in his railroad career and found them professional and efficient. He was not all that surprised by Germany’s initial military successes.
Though he was past fifty, Dauvin had a young family to feed, due to having remarried later in life after his first wife died of a fever. He did not have enough money to buy food at the inflated wartime prices, but he did have information to trade. It helped that he leaned toward being a German sympathizer. When he spotted the German officer being escorted from the hospital, he had trailed along in hopes that this might be useful information.
Obviously, this was a prisoner of some importance. Dauvin had pieced together the story from townspeople he knew who helped at the hospital. He also spoke a little English and had managed to pick up a few things here and there from eavesdropping on the Americans, who tended to ignore a fiftysomething resident of the city they were defending. In their eyes, he was nearly invisible.
