Chapter II: Part XXIII
Chapter II: The Gambit of the West
Part XXIII
April 25, 1936
The cold water of the stream stung Victor Reinert’s calves as he slowly crossed to the far bank. It was already late into the afternoon, and Reinert had hoped to have been safely indoors hours ago.
“Do you need help, Herr Reinert?”
“No. I am crossing well on my own, thank you.” Reinert fought to maintain his balance as he looked up at the uniformed Army men who had crossed before him.
Unteroffizier Roggen and Leutnant Kaufring waited for Reinert to make it across before carrying their large crate up the rocky slope and setting it down on the grass. Kaufring squinted into the eastern sky and pointed a thickly-gloved hand into the distance.
“That might be Mörder!”
Reinert followed Kaufring’s gaze but couldn’t see anything. He chuckled softly to himself. Just days into the war, Canaris had learned that the French were making extensive use of homing pigeons to carry messages from forward commands. Through Acting Field Marshal von Küchler, he had ordered each frontline division assigned a falkner -- a specialist who maintained specially trained falcons used to hunt homing pigeons. The effort had initially yielded little of value, and was sneeringly derided by Himmler and Göring as soon as they learned of it. Nonetheless, von Küchler had maintained and even increased the numbers of falconers at the front.
The French military used converted vehicles such as this one to maintain large numbers of homing pigeons.
Reinert smiled at the Spymaster’s uncanny intuition. Three days earlier, a homing pigeon had been snatched out of the air north of Augsburg by a falcon attached to 2. Infanterie-Division. Its coded message had been transmitted to HGr.KdoAB in Regensburg, and thence to the Abwehr in Berlin for decryption.
When Canaris had read it, he had immediately summoned Reinert to his office. The message, the Admiral had said, was seemingly mundane. It provided locations of the divisional headquarters units in Blanc’s 4ème Armée. Canaris had asked Reinert to count the locations listed. “Four, Admiral,” he had said.
“According to our last reports, there should be six divisions under Blanc.”
“Aerial reconnaissance?”
“Cannot make anything of what they see. Major Drewes insists that while they are unable to find these divisions, they may still be there somewhere.”
“What does this mean?”
“I do not know. But I believe it means that Bayerlein’s plan has worked. That is, it seems that Blanc has detached -- or had detached -- one third of his force to plug the independent penetrations by 4. 8. and 35. Infanterie-Divisionen of the French lines near Strasbourg. Unfortunately for Blanc -- if this is indeed the case -- it appears that he has detached the only divisions in a position to guard him against a sort of left hook punch that II Armeekorps could deliver in a day or so to the rear of 4ème Armée. Unfortunately for us -- if this is not the case -- the unaccounted-for divisions could very likely smash Hausser where
he least expects it.”
“I understand the difficulty, Admiral.”
“Have you any ideas as to how we might confirm the truth, Victor?”
Reinert’s idea had taken him -- after a morning of intense trigonometry -- out here, to the wild country near Reutlingen. It was here that Reinert calculated any homing pigeons sent by Blanc to the detached divisions, if they were indeed detached, would pass briefly over German-held territory. Canaris had had von Küchler assign him one of his best falconers, and soon the falkner, his aide, and Reinert had bundled into a car and set off southward to stake out the area.
Kaufring’s falcon, Mörder, had proven one of the most ill-tempered creatures Reinert had ever seen. While Roggen drove, Kaufring had let the falcon have free run of the vehicle’s cramped interior -- a privilege which Mörder wasted no time in using to repeatedly charge at Reinert with outstretched talons. “Don’t cover your face; you’ll only make him interested in scratching at it,” Kaufring had conversationally urged the cowering Reinert.
They had at last reached their destination, which turned out to occupy a gray area between German and French lines, and Kaufring had let his raptor go. They had spent the ensuing hours scanning the horizon for any sign of the falcon or his quarry. Nothing.
Reinert had been prepared to encamp for several days if necessary, and suggested as much to the expert falkner. “No need, Herr Reinert. Mörder is never denied.” Kaufring had chuckled in a manner that struck the Abwehr agent as vaguely unsettling.
Thus, Reinert had stayed; desperate for good news, desperate for a victory.
Absorbed as he was with his own personal adventure -- “deep behind enemy lines” as he had decided to phrase it in his war memoirs, if he ever wrote them -- he had been all too aware that the war had shifted back in favor of the West.
Despite appalling losses, Royal Air Force bombing had paralyzed VI Armeekorps, which had taken and held the northern outskirts of Paris on the twenty-third, only to be forced out thirty-six hours later by fierce counterattacks. Worse, with Hausser having moved east, von Blomberg now lacked vital armored support.
In the south, Blanc had scored stunning back-to-back triumphs. He had first invested Munich with two divisions, sending the remainder of his force barreling northward before General Liebmann could even hope to stop him. On the twenty-fourth, Blanc’s cavalry -- despite its decimation at Pforzheim -- had paraded unopposed into a city of great symbolic significance to National Socialism. Reinert’s secretary had wept at the news: Nuremberg, Capital of the Party, and ancient seat of Emperors, was in French hands. Scant hours later, word arrived that Munich had fallen. Hitler had cashiered Liebmann on the spot.
Munich fell only after artillery had inflicted serious damage to the city center.
“Aha! My boy did it!” Reinert turned to see Kaufring looking through his binoculars.
“What is it?”
“He’s got a pigeon!”
“How can you tell it’s a pigeon at this distance?”
Kaufring eyed Reinert darkly. “
Mörder doesn’t pick up rats and voles.”
Soon, even Reinert could see a bird clutched in the falcon’s talons. With a rending screech, the great bird swooped over the three men and dropped its bloody prey onto the crate before alighting on Kaufring’s gloved forearm.
“Very good, Mörder! You are a fine killer, Mörder.” Kaufring chuckled as he stroked the bird, revealing a row of bad teeth. His falcon, now placidly hooting, ate a strip of something fleshy Roggen threw to him.
Reinert knelt next to the crate. The pigeon was still alive, but was badly injured. Slipping off a narrow tube that had been tied to the pigeon’s leg, Reinert managed to push out a tightly rolled piece of thin paper. He unrolled it, and quickly read the French. It was addressed to
Général de division Barreau.
Whom Blanc wants us to think is with him in Munich right now.
Reinert clenched his fist. Hausser’s left hook could go forward immediately. With luck, Blanc would be cut off before he was any the wiser.