The 11th Armored crossed into Austria on the last day of April. As if to show what it thought of the invasion, the country’s temperatures plummeted and it even snowed in the early days of May.

The unit slogged through Zwettel and onto Gallneukirchen. Their POW enclosure became so overrun with German surrendered troops, it became difficult to handle them all.

Rumors and intrigue rippled through the ranks. The war was over. No, it was almost over. The Germans had surrendered. No, they hadn’t. Soon, though. Not yet. Move on. Keep going.

“Don’t get arrogant,” O’Hara said. “Relax now and you’re a dead man.”

Honest news came down the line: Hitler was dead. In Berlin. Confirmed. The son of a bitch shot himself in the head. The unit went mad, whooping and hollering and firing their rifles in the air. The soul had been ripped out of the Nazis. The brains of the operation splattered on a bunker wall.

Now, surely, they were close to the end. Close enough to taste.

Almost there, Kennet thought. Almost done. Almost home.

He almost relaxed.

But then, on the 6th of May, the half-tracks of B Company, 21st Armored Infantry Battalion, rolled into Mauthausen concentration camp.

Part Three: The Fisherman Adrift

“I find myself regarding existence as though from beyond the tomb, from another world; all is strange to me; I am, as it were, outside my own body and individuality; I am depersonalized, detached, cut adrift. Is this madness?”

—Henri Frédéric Amiel in
The Journal Intime, July 8, 1880

“Where by the marishes boometh the bittern,

Nick the soulless one sits with his ghittern.

Sits inconsolable, friendless and foeless.

Waiting his destiny, – Nick the soulless.”

—Sebastian Evans,
Brother Fabian’s Manuscript

“The prisoner should compare themselves to a rock, one untouched by the filth and horrific events. He who has pity, will break. Look away when you see someone dying. Whatever you do, do not look back. If you cannot learn how to quickly forget, you will not survive the camp. You will be devoured by the events and lose your mind.”

—Renata Laqueur,
Diary from Bergen-Belsen

May 1945

True Hunger

If war smelled like a million dirty diapers, the hellscape of Mauthausen carried the stench of a million wars. It hit the American column like a shock blast of poison gas, assaulting noses, throats and lungs with a thick cloud of charnel, filth, blood, disease and despair. The pall of human excrement pressed down on all the available air until you could punch through it with your fists.

“What in the name of God…” Anderson whispered.