The Second Objective Read Online Free PDF Page A

knew in any way that required expressing an opinion. Stielau interpreted his silence as disapproval.
    “In any case, since he is of such concern to you,” said Stielau, “we’ll have the man executed tomorrow.”
    “No, Stielau, you miss my point entirely. He’s perfect.”
    “If I may ask, in what way, sir?”
    “It’s all very well to send our little brigade across enemy lines. If the stars align, and we catch them napping, there’s even a slight chance we might succeed.”
    “Sir, I think you’re discounting a very good chance we might change the course of the war—”
    “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Captain Stielau, and your devotion to our cause. But realism is the harshest discipline. The longer view suggests that a bleak future awaits us all, regardless of our interim efforts.”
    Stielau said nothing, and Skorzeny instantly regretted his frankness.
    “We are soldiers, nevertheless,” said Skorzeny, closing Von Leinsdorf’s dossier. “We play the hand we are dealt. And this man could turn out to be a wild card.”

    Bernie saw the change in Von Leinsdorf as soon as he returned to the barracks. A hard set in his eyes, jaw taut. He recruited his first two squad leaders that same night: a fellow SS officer,
Unterstürmführer
Gerhard Bremer, and an Army Intelligence translator named Karl Heinz Schmidt. Bernie watched these conversations take place. When Von Leinsdorf returned to his bunk, Bernie asked what was going on but got no answer.
He’s following new orders,
thought Bernie.
From Skorzeny himself
.
    Von Leinsdorf recruited his third squad leader the next morning, the former American Army sergeant William Sharper. After four years as a GI in North Africa and France, Sharper had deserted to the Wehrmacht three months earlier after beating his superior officer half to death during a barracks poker game. He’d spent those months in the custody of German Intelligence, before being cleared and released for this mission. Von Leinsdorf sized up Sharper as a working-class hooligan, more suited to life as a Nazi storm trooper than in the conformist U.S. Army. He authorized each of the three men to recruit his own four-man squad. When Karl Schmidt pressed for details about this “second objective,” Von Leinsdorf said it had to remain classified until the night before the mission.
    That night Von Leinsdorf asked Bernie Oster to join his squad, along with a middle-aged merchant seaman named Marius Schieff and a former bank clerk from Vienna named Gunther Preuss, both Category Two men. Von Leinsdorf told them nothing about what the new assignment involved, but it was clear to Bernie that his status within the brigade had changed for the worse. He no longer feared discovery for what he’d done in Berlin. The path Von Leinsdorf was leading him down now felt far more dangerous.

    A week before the launch, Otto Skorzeny attended a final briefing with the Army General Staff at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Skorzeny walked through his brigade’s role in the invasion, and they agreed on procedures to protect his commandos from German attack. His disguised American tanks would bear two yellow triangles within the unit insignia stenciled onto their armor. If any regular Wehrmacht and commando units met on the battlefield during daylight, the men of Operation
Greif
were to remove their American helmets and hold them over their heads. At night, when encountering regulation German forces, they were to use pistol-fired flares, known as Verey lights, to reveal their identities.
    Skorzeny was told that weather forecasts for their target day appeared favorable, calling for heavy cloud cover that neutralized Allied air superiority. All signals were go.
    The counteroffensive into Belgium and Luxembourg known as Operation Autumn Mist would begin at dawn on December 16.

 

    4

    Grafenwöhr
    DECEMBER 10, 1944

    S hortly after dark on December 10, the men of Operation
Greif
left their camp at Grafenwöhr and loaded onto a