Watch on the Rhine

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For Anna Glinberg and Mania Halef… and all the others whose names and faces we will never know.

The soldier wore black. Silver lightning bolts flashed on his right lapel; the three rosettes of a Hauptsturmführer — or captain of the Schützstaffeln, the SS — shone on the left.

He stood in the hatch of a Tiger I tank, peering with binoculars through the gloom of the battlefield. Arising out of the gloom he saw the rising smoke from the engines of an enemy armored column halted on the road below. The soldier counted twenty-five or so enemy vehicles, mixed half-tracks and tanks. There were likely more, unseen. So much he suspected, in any case. He was unimpressed.

Though he stood alone, and though his tank was alone, the black-uniformed soldier knew no fear. If he had ever known true fear there were no witnesses to tell of it. His comrades had never seen it and few of his enemies could have detected it, even had they lived.

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