Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine) by Douglas Niles, Michael Dobson Page A

the back of his chair on the way. At the door, two German guards snapped to attention. Seeing two Americans, one with stars on his shoulders, confused them.
    “Halt! Excuse me, sirs, you can’t leave this building without proper permission,” the guard said in German.
    “This is an American general,” Porter replied, also in German. “He can go wherever he likes.”
    The guards looked warily at each other. “We must have a pass before you can exit.”
    Porter thought for a moment, then smiled. “One minute.” He pulled out his reporter’s notebook and scrawled a few words on it. “General, please sign here.”
    “What’s this?” Wakefield growled.
    “The Germans need a pass so they can let us through.”
    “Hrrumph!” Wakefield snorted, but he signed the form.
    The German guards looked carefully at the pass, then back at Porter and Wakefield. Porter said, in German, “He is the American general. He is able to issue any required pass or order.”
    Finally, the guards decided that the pass was satisfactory, snapped back to attention, and opened the door.
    The outdoor air cut through Porter’s jacket at once, making him shiver. Wakefield, no more warmly dressed, seemed not to notice. The smoke cloud from his cigar grew larger as he puffed; Porter’s cigarette made its own smoke cloud.
    There were several jeeps parked outside Armeegruppe B headquarters,
one flying Patton’s three-star flag, another flying a single star. Wakefield got into the one-star jeep and started the engine; Porter climbed in beside him.
    It seemed strange wending their way through German armor in an unarmed American jeep, but then nothing much seemed normal right now. Porter didn’t know if he should initiate a conversation, but Wakefield did it for him.
    “Reporter, eh?” said Wakefield in his gruff voice.
    “Bureau chief, actually,” Porter replied.
    “German bureau?”
    “No, sir. Paris.”
    “Paris.” Wakefield put the cigar back in his mouth, puffed a cloud of blue smoke as he thought about it. “This ain’t Paris,” he observed.
    “No, sir. But the Paris bureau covers a lot of territory, especially right now. It’s not like we can set up shop in Berlin, at least not yet.”
    Wakefield grunted in response. “How’d you get here?”
    Porter decided that short and quick was the best communication style for this man. “Captured.”
    “Yeah? Where?”
    “Trying to get out of Stavelot when the Germans captured the fuel dump. I was there looking for a story.”
    “Story’s simple. Hell of a lot of good men died, and it looks like it’s about over. That’s the story,” the general replied.
    “Well, General, some of us get paid by the word, and I think I’d better find a few more to write down.”
    Another grunt, and a nod, then silence.
    They passed through the German cease-fire line into the part of Dinant that lay hard against the waterfront of the Meuse, quickly reaching the wreckage of the final bridge. Across the ruined span he could see tanks from Wakefield’s own division, CCA of the Nineteenth, lined up along the shore and covering approaches from the left and right. The onion-shaped tower of the Church of Notre Dame dominated the ruined town. Directly behind the church was a cliff face, and at the top of the cliff face was a huge medieval citadel dominating the view. Both the citadel and the church seemed oddly out of scale for the tiny city.
    Wakefield stared across the frigid Meuse for a moment. “Find me a German officer,” he ordered.
    Several curious Germans had followed the strange solitary Americans, and Porter picked out one with officer’s insignia, a major. “Entschuldigen Sie mich, bitte!” he called out.
    The officer responded. “Jawohl, Herr …” he replied, letting the sentence trail off.
    “Ich bin Herr Porter. Dies hier ist Generalmajor Wakefield.” A one-star
was a brigadier general in the U.S. Army, but a major general in the German Wehrmacht.
    The German saluted and clicked