Summary: When Kurt Hilfer, Dietrich’s driver, questions Troy’s honor, Dietrich sets him straight.
Category: Rat Patrol.
Genre: WW II Drama
Rated: PG
Word Count: 1591
“They don’t care about you, Herr Hauptmann,” said his driver, Pvt. Kurt Hilfer. “They only want to take you back with them, as a prisoner of war!”
Hans Dietrich, in the throes of a fever caused by a stray .50 cal. bullet, reached up and clasped Hilfer’s arm. “Private, I’m not so sure of that. Troy’s usually a fair man. He only wants to help me. Don’t misjudge him.”
“They’re out there, in the jeeps, just waiting for you to appear, sir. What can I do?”
“Step out, Kurt, and say that I’m wounded, that I need medical care. Troy will listen. I’m sure of it.”
With his wayward mind, his inability to concentrate for more than a few seconds, the half-delirious German captain pressed hard on Hilfer’s arm, as hard as his weakened state allowed. To Hilfer, a big man, it was no more than the grasp of a ten-year-old. He hung his head thinking of what his commanding officer was asking him to do. He had to go out there and tell that ragtag bunch of desert vermin that he and Dietrich were giving up.
Kurt didn’t fear so much for himself. He had been able to roll with the punches since he was eleven. That’s when the man who used to take him fishing in the Isar River had died, his father.
But with the captain’s wound, the fever, the delirium, Kurt didn’t want to take a chance on the ‘fairness’ of Sgt. Sam Troy, leader of the Rat Patrol, and fabled to be a very cunning man in all the stories Hilfer had ever heard of him in the base mess with the other gefreiters.
“Captain Dietrich!” yelled Troy from the position of safety he had taken behind a boulder. “If you come out now, you’ll be treated honorably.”
That day, in a skirmish between Willys jeeps and his German column, Dietrich had been wounded. Hoping to keep his captain from being captured, Hilfer had sped away from the smoking scene and in a few miles had found this old way station, situated on an old camel route. Herr Hauptmann could go no further.
Half-tracks, blown up. Supply trucks, riddled with bullets. And twisted like pretzels, the dead lying on the sands. Troy had checked for survivors, to radio an ambulance for them. Finding none, he and his men had gone on the hunt for Dietrich and Hilfer. The captain’s Kubelwagen’s tracks ended at an old ruin.
Hilfer, who had five rounds in his rifle, and more in a pouch at his waist, knew why Sgt. Troy had not yet rushed them. It would be bloody.
“If you’re not going out there, Kurt,” said Dietrich, using Hilfer’s first name—they’d been together now for over two years—“I’ll go myself. Help me up.”
“No, sir. I’ve never disobeyed a direct order from you, Herr Hauptmann, but I will not help you to get killed.” Hilfer thought a moment, then decided. “I’ll go. Sgt. Troy must understand how badly hurt you are.”
“Moffitt can translate for you, Kurt. He knows Germans. Is that alright?”
“I suppose it’ll have to be, sir. Can’t be helped, I guess. How will I know he’s telling Sgt. Troy what I say?”
“Trust, private, simple trust. Moffitt wouldn’t lie against you or me.”
“You seem to know a lot about them, sir. They’re the enemy, shouldn’t we be more cautious?”
“I am practical,” said Dietrich, wincing in pain. “My shoulder needs attention. Who gives it to me, or what the consequences are, I do not care. If I die, my war is over. If I live, I can live to fight another day.”
“I see, sir,” said Hilfer, and he really did see. His captain was a man of honor. He expected other men to be as well. “Is there anything I can do for you before I go out?”
“Just be confident, Kurt, that all will be well. I believe it will be.” Dietrich next fell into a sleep, a very deep sleep, Hilfer saw.
“Sir?” he asked. “Sir … “
When Dietrich did not reply, Hilfer got up to go. At the door of the ruin, he stopped and called out. “Sgt. Troy. Sgt. Moffitt. Herr Hauptmann Dietrich is wounded. He may not live.” He spoke in German, the only language he knew.
Moffitt conferred quickly with Troy, and then said, “Is he not able to come out on his own?”
“He sleeps. His shoulder is bad, Sgt. Moffitt. He has a fever.”
Another short conference between the two Allied sergeants. “May we come in?” asked Moffitt. “We will not rush you, take your time in thinking it over.”
Hilfer looked over at his captain, lying in the sand in the shade of a still standing wall. He was a man who had always treated Kurt like a younger brother, not just a driver of his Kubelwagen. If he didn’t get help soon, he might well die.
“I will let you come in,” he said. “Just you, Sgt. Moffitt, and Sgt. Troy. No one else.”
Troy whispered aside to Moffitt, and Moffitt ordered, “Throw out your weapons, if you still have them.”
Hilfer had his standard-issue Kar98 k and Dietrich had his Luger. He hesitated, then threw out the rifle, and afterward bent to retrieve the handgun from Dietrich’s holster. He took it to the door and threw it out also.
“That’s all we had. Come in now.”
Troy and Moffitt gave each other a look, then holstered their weapons, Troy’s 1911 Colt .45 and Moffitt’s English Webley. They’d go in with trust alone as their protection. Troy hoped that it would be enough.
Once inside the dark coolness of the ruin, Moffitt, who had brought a medical kit, knelt over Dietrich and began to check his wound.
“It’s not terribly serious, Troy,” he said. “It’s festering, and he’s lost a lot of blood, but he’ll live.” Then he looked up at the concerned Hilfer, a boy too young to have so much gravity in his hazel eyes, and repeated the same thing in German.
Moffitt gave Dietrich a syrette of morphine, then when he’d feel no pain, he cleaned the wound and dressed it. All three men lifted him up and brought him out to the jeeps. It would not be an easy ride for the German officer, but getting him to a medical facility—a field hospital, for instance—would be the saving of him.
After Moffitt and Troy consulted an up-to-date regional map, they drove for twenty miles. Hilfer rode on the spare tire of Troy and Hitch’s jeep, his hand on Dietrich’s chest, making sure his captain didn’t roll too much with the vehicle’s motion.
For his part, Hitch drove slowly, avoiding rocks and potholes. He knew in the back of the jeep was a man whose life depended on his driving. He’d do his best to see that Hauptmann Dietrich reached the hospital or aid station no worse off than when the trip started.
Right at the top of a hard plateau, overlooking a deep wadi, Troy motioned Hitch to stop.
Looking down, the group, including a now very alert Kurt Hilfer, gazed at the field hospital spread out below—tents and ambulances marked with red crosses, nurses and orderlies with stretchers dashing to and fro, even an occasional doctor in a white lab coat.
“That’s looks like the whole shebang,” Tully said, pulling up alongside Troy, with a characteristic screech of the tires.
Troy called over. “Moffitt, tell Hilfer the rules.”
“Private Hilfer,” Moffitt began. Hilfer, who had been staring transfixed at the enemy hospital on the plain below, raised his eyes and shortened his gaze to the English sergeant.
Turning the cold, wet compress on Dietrich’s forehead one last time, he asked, “Yes, sergeant?”
“Take the captain down to the hospital in that jeep. Then you must return the jeep to us.”
“Will we be prisoners, Sgt. Moffitt?”
“Just do like Sgt. Troy wants you to do,” said Moffitt. “Take Dietrich down there, and bring the jeep back.”
Hilfer obeyed. He got out of the jeep and nodded at Mark Hitchcock as ‘Hitch’ stepped out of the jeep to let Hilfer take the driver’s seat. Hilfer got in behind the wheel and put the jeep in reverse. Troy had already got out and stood beside the jeep.
“Danke, Sgt. Troy,” said Hilfer directly to the American sergeant, backed up, and straightened out.
Troy smiled, nodded, and then slapped the back of the jeep like he’d slap a horse’s flank to make it move. Hilfer put the jeep in forward, and took off. A little while later, after leaving Dietrich with the orderlies who rushed out to help him, Hilfer returned.
It had been hard getting away, especially in an American jeep, but he had done it.
“Here’s the jeep,” he said, beaming. “I’m happy to say I’m not a prisoner.” He grinned widely and started to ‘hoof’ it down to the camp again.
Moffitt moved over to Troy, who seemed to be full of himself right then. “That’s the hundredth time you’ve let Dietrich go, Troy. Are you going for some kind of record?”
Troy looked down at the German field hospital, his smile deepening. “No, I just thought it was the right thing to do.” He turned to Hitch and Tully, now both behind the wheels again. “They might get wise we’re up here and send some ‘real’ soldiers out to get us. Let’s shake it!”
–THE END–
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