Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [7]
The program was G-5, Military Government.
In the beginning, G-5 trained lawyers at the University of Virginia. After the landings in North Africa if became apparent that military government law could not stop epidemics, do police work, counter-intelligence, mend broken roads and sewers.
Hansen searched both in and out of the Army for former mayors and city managers, for doctors, port and sanitation engineers, and bankers, newspapermen, linguists, and food experts and transportation and communications people, and made them officers.
At the Hore-Belisha Barracks at Shrivenham, England, he assembled two thousand experts with their British and French counterparts. Although they were older men, they worked as strenuously as paratroopers. They were assigned future German cities and towns in A, B, and C units according to size.
And in London at Queen Mother’s Gate fifty hand-picked men worked and lived under rigid security. These men broke down and studied every detail of the Nazi and German structure. Decisions came after laborious, detailed appraisal and went into the manuals often only after hot arguments.
Hansen stretched his squat body, blinked his eyes open, and returned at half pace to his desk.
How damned lucky, he thought, we have been able to fight our wars, pack up and go home. This was the true heart of the matter now. The military had been given the responsibility of G-5. Yet, American generals have never had to worry about combining a military victory with a political victory. Their minds could only think and plan the destruction of the enemy. Lord give me the strength to fight our own people as well as the Germans.
Chapter Four
SEAN WORKED FAR INTO the night, even after General Hansen had retired. He pondered on the revisions of PREROGATIVES OF MILITARY GOVERNMENT COMMANDERS IN GERMANY until they were within the framework of top policy. To hell with it, Sean thought. He’d ask Hansen to transfer him into a combat unit. But the general was even more alone than he, and battling greater forces. There was that instinct between men that told him Hansen needed him.
There would be little the German people would have to answer for beyond the misery they had created for themselves. Some reparations, some personal suffering, but nothing to compare with the tears and the blood they had caused. Already the damned lawyers had determined there was a difference between “criminal” Nazis and “noncriminal” Nazis.
Sean penciled through his passage on hostages and wrote instead: “When we enter Germany the purpose of Military Government is to expedite Allied victory. We will rule firmly but fairly, keeping in mind American tradition of not using brutality on the enemy civilian population. Military Commanders shall use armed force only in the event of resistance. Failure of the German population to carry out orders will be combated by imprisonment, fines or loss of food ration in extreme cases.”
Sean jerked the paper from the typewriter. “Gott bless the gutt kind Amerikan soldiers,” he cursed, ripped the paper up and threw it into the wastebasket He rubbed his temples. “Oh God, Liam, what shall I do?”
Did his brother cry out from the grave for revenge? Did Liam really want an answer for his death? Even when Liam had been bloodied by a bully and Sean and Tim sought to avenge him Liam said, let him go, don’t hurt him. Can’t you see, he attacked me because he was scared and confused?
Fight back, Tim said. Fight back, Liam. Too many people will drink your blood if they know you won’t fight back.
Liam said, revenge for the sake of revenge is immoral.
What do you remember most when it all fuses in blurs at two o’clock in the morning and when it all must be remembered in a few golden moments? Tim, Liam, Sean in the caves below Sutro Baths. The ocean pounding against the rocks. The water leaping up, trying to defy gravity. Liam O’Sullivan reading Eugene O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon to his two older, spellbound brothers....
“Oh, Liam. Your life was too good for them to take. Twenty-two-year-old