Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine) Read Online Free Page B

equipment.
    “Günter? It’s me—Wolfgang,” he said in a voice only slightly above a whisper.
    The eyes of the patient remained closed, but his lips moved slightly. “Did you do it?” Oberst Günter von Reinhardt, Rommel’s senior intelligence officer, had been the first to try to stop Bücher and was shot in the process. Müller had found him near to death, and had taken over the mission simply because no one else was there.
    “Yes, Günter. Bücher is dead. It’s over.”
    “And our field marshal lives?”
    “Yes, he lives. I’m glad you live, too. I thought you were dead.”
    “So did I. The surrender—did it go all right?”
    “Yes, yes, Günter. It’s all over now.”
    “Not quite, I think,” said the gravely wounded intelligence officer. “But this is good news. Wolfgang, you did well.” He seemed to drift into unconsciousness at that point, surrounded by reflections of his own face. Müller reached down and touched his hand lightly, then followed the doctor out of the room.
    “He’s in bad shape, isn’t he, Doctor?”
    The doctor nodded. “Yes. He’s young and strong and there’s a good chance he’ll escape death, but he’ll never be quite the same. The bullet punctured one of his lungs, which collapsed. We were lucky that he didn’t die before we got him here.”
    “When will he be out of here?”
    “Within a few weeks, assuming no serious complications. But that means out of the hospital, not a return to duty. For that—well, it’s too early to tell.”
    “Thank you, Herr Doktor,” Müller said, shaking his hand with both of his own. “Thank you very much.”
    “It’s mostly God’s work,” the doctor said, waving off the compliment with a smile, “but I’m happy to take the credit.”

28 DECEMBER 1944
    NEARING NAMUR, BELGIUM, NORTH SIDE OF THE MEUSE RIVER, 0946 HOURS GMT
    Private Billy Cooper was marching along with his fellow infantrymen. The day was cold and somewhat dreary, but spirits were high. Rommel had surrendered and it looked as if the war would soon be over.
    The infantrymen sang as they marched.

    “There’s the highland Dutch
And the lowland Dutch
The Rotterdam Dutch
And the goddamn Dutch
     
    Singing glorious
Glorious
There’s one keg of beer
For the four of us
     
    Praise be to God
That there are no more of us
For the four of us
Can drink it all alone
Damn near!”

    Billy stayed quiet on the “goddamn” and “damn.” He had first tried to substitute of “gosh darn” and “darn” but he was tired of being kidded about his reluctance to use bad language. He knew he was one of the more innocent and naïve members of his company, but he still was not convinced that it was a failing on his part. His Iowa upbringing had stuck with him, at least mostly. Once or twice he’d caught himself using some words he didn’t even know before he went into the army.
    Billy hadn’t ever had a particular desire to see the world, though he always liked reading copies of National Geographic, which his parents received in the mail each month. Some of his friends liked to look at National Geographic because you could occasionally see some woman from Africa or Asia or one of those places where girls didn’t wear anything on their tops, but the pictures
mostly just embarrassed Billy. His fellow soldiers seemed real interested in that stuff. Sometimes it seemed that they weren’t interested in anything else, except maybe getting that “million-dollar wound” that would let them go home.
    Billy wanted to go home, too. And it was looking like a good day for it. They were marching to accept the surrender of a German general, a pretty famous one too, except for the fact that Billy had never heard of him before. The scuttlebutt was that this surrender pretty much meant the end of it all, like there was nothing else remaining between here and Berlin. Billy hoped that was true, but if there was one thing he’d learned from all this, it was not to get your hopes too