The Hunting Lodge
At the end of World War II, an American soldier finds something that could change history
I’m talking now because everyone else who was there is dead, and I figure the paper I signed back then is long lost. Besides, who’s going to lock up an old man for telling his war stories?
In June 1945, I was a butterbar — second lieutenant — commanding a unit of the 7th Infantry regiment in southern Germany. The war was over, and most of the German soldiers we saw were trying to get back to their families, or just headed west, hoping to get captured by us instead of the Russians. My platoon had fought their way through North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany, and we were tired and ready to go home ourselves.
We were posted to a little town in Bavaria that had been mostly missed by the war. There we drank beer, played cards, and traded Lucky Strikes for cheese and sausage. It wasn’t home, but after two years of bombs and bullets, it was a comfortable station.
Two days after we moved in, the town’s mayor dropped by the HQ we’d set up in the former City Hall. I summoned Corporal Visser, who‘d grown up speaking German to his grandparents in Iowa.
The mayor was a short man in his fifties who looked like he hadn’t missed many meals. He was in my office clicking his…
