I Must be a Part of this War: A German American's Fight against Hitler and Nazism

Chapter 4: Into the Abyss: 1944–1945

4 Into the Abyss: 1944–1945 The Battle of the Bulge began on 16 December 1944, when the German army staged a surprise attack against the weakest section of the American front, which stretched for fifty miles between Monschau, Germany, and Echternach, Luxembourg. The focal point of the German offensive was the town of Bastogne, a major road junction. The battle raged for three weeks, and casualties were heavy on both sides, but in the end U.S. forces prevailed.1 Korf remembered: ‘‘Bastogne held, and that was vital. The Germans never crossed the Meuse River; they were stalled there because they literally ran out of gas. I saw a tank abandoned in the field. But right behind Namur we had one of the largest gas depots. Had the Germans known about it, we would have had little resistance to offer and it could have prolonged the war quite a bit.’’2 By the time of Korf’s arrival shortly after Christmas, the battle was still in full swing. In this situation, everything had to be done in haste. He recalled: ‘‘There was no time to organize teams, equip and send them out. Specialists were needed immediately.’’ As Korf journeyed to the front lines, he felt confident about his intelligence team, which included four enlisted men (Sergeant Kurz, Technical Sergeant Kaufman, and Privates Koll and Koref); all had trained at Camp Ritchie. Two of them were Jewish; he did not know about the religious background of the others. As far as Korf was concerned, it made no difference. He and his men became a closeknit group. The enlisted men appreciated how Korf had attended to Into the Abyss: 1944–1945 | 89 their needs during the harrowing crossing to England. All of them, by Korf’s lights, ‘‘proved to be of great value to the war effort.’’3 As Korf traveled past abandoned farmlands in the vicinity of Namur, army trucks made stops to collect stacks of ‘‘Jerry cans’’— five-gallon gasoline cases that had been dropped by a supply unit known as the ‘‘Red Ball Express,’’ which got credit for refueling the army during the battle. Korf later learned that many members of the unit made a fortune selling gasoline on the black market in Paris. One man was rumored to have made so much money that he bought a brothel in Paris. The trip to Namur was treacherous, because the Battle of the Bulge had expanded to the Meuse River north of Namur, and because most bridges over the river had been blown up to stop the advance of the Allied forces. In Namur, Korf and his men were put up in roofless houses and in a former prisoner-of-war enclosure. There was some grumbling among officers and intelligence specialists who had never suspected that they would come so close to actual combat. They were frequently heard to say that this was not their job. A postwar official evaluation of military intelligence service specialist teams bears this out: ‘‘The biggest single criticism of MIS personnel is their seemingly ingrained idea . . . that they are of a different mold than the average soldier, should be treated as such, be given unusual privileges, and allowed to be their own bosses.’’4 Korf recalled that several of them were permitted to return to Paris without threat of a court-martial. Thanks to the departure of such men, Korf and his men were on duty most of the time at Namur. There was little opportunity for recreation. He saw a couple of movies in French with Flemish subtitles. The nightly spectacle consisted of watching German V-1 rockets flying overhead, headed for Antwerp and southern England.5 Korf was fascinated by the way the French and Belgians viewed the American soldiers. He reported to his wife: ‘‘Kids cling to your shirttail insisting upon ‘gum,’ the only English word they know. 90 | ‘‘i must be a part of this war’’ They are convinced, and so are their parents and grandparents— that Americans are some of the strangest people on earth, loaded with chewing gum and money who jitterbug all night.’’6 Although the Battle of the Bulge was finally won by 7 January 1945, the war was far from over. Korf’s job was to obtain information from German prisoners of war that would help to advance the Allied assault on Germany. Korf remembered his day-to-day...