Morning formation, cleaning rotations, physical training in the main chamber.

Says routine keeps men from breaking.

I believe him.

Already saw what happened to Walsh.

Kids 19 started crying last night.

Couldn’t stop.

Russo, our medic, sat with him till dawn.

We can hear the war above us.

Artillery distant but constant.

Soviet guns from the east, maybe American from the west.

The guards know they’re finished.

You can see it in their faces.

Dylan turned the page.

The entry for April 15th was shorter.

Matter of fact, Brennan documented meals, watery soup, black bread, water that tasted of rust.

He wrote about the guards rotating in shifts, about how they avoided eye contact, about the sound of bombing runs overhead that made dust rain from the ceiling.

April 16th, Mercer found a loose stone in the wall.

Thinks we might dig our way out if we’re careful, if the guards don’t notice.

But the Germans are getting nervous.

We heard gunfire above ground today.

Small arms lasting maybe 10 minutes.

Then silence.

One of the guards came down afterward.

Young kid, maybe 17.

His hands were shaking.

April 18th.

The guards left.

Dylan stopped reading, set the journal down, stood up, and walked to the window.

But the darkness outside showed him nothing except his own reflection.

The guards left.

He picked up the journal again.

Just walked away.

No warning, no explanation.

We heard them arguing in German yesterday.

Heated conversation we couldn’t follow.

Then this morning, they were gone.

Left the entrance unsealed, the door open.

Mercer went up to check.

He came back 10 minutes later, told us to stay put.

His face was white.

The wars moved on.

We’re in Soviet territory now.

The Germans pulled back in the night and the Red Army’s already passed us pushing west.

We’re behind Soviet lines in a German bunker wearing American uniforms.

Mercer says we need to be careful about how we approach them.

Says the Soviets might not be friendly, might think we’re deserters or spies or god knows what.

Says we wait until we hear American units then make contact.

So we wait.

The next entries were dated days apart.

Brennan wrote about rationing the food the Germans had left behind, about the weather turning warm, spring arriving above ground while they stayed in their concrete cage, about Walsh having nightmares, screaming himself awake.

About arguments among the men, some wanted to leave immediately, take their chances with the Soviets, but Mercer insisted they wait for Americans.

25th April, 1945.

It’s been 11 days.

The food’s almost gone.

Russo says we need to make contact soon or we’ll be too weak to travel.

Mercer finally agreed.

Tomorrow he and I will go topside, try to find Soviet command, explain we’re American soldiers in need of repatriation.

I asked him what we do if the Soviets won’t help.

He didn’t answer.

Dylan read the next entry three times before it made sense.

26th April, 1945.

They’re killing prisoners.

We found a Soviet patrol half a mile from the bunker.

Four soldiers, conscripts from the look of them, Asian features, maybe Usuzbck or Kazak.

They took us to their captain who spoke German but not English.

We tried to explain using hand signals and the few Russian words Klowski taught us.

American friend, allies.

The captain seemed to understand.

Had his men give us water, bread.

Then he told us to wait while he radioed his command.

That’s when we heard the gunfire.

Behind the farmhouse, they were using his headquarters.

Single shots, methodical, one every few seconds.

We couldn’t see what they were shooting at, but we could hear the screaming between shots.

German words, begging.

Mercer grabbed my arm, told me not to react, not to show anything on my face.

The Soviet captain was watching us.

The shooting stopped after maybe 20 shots, then silence.

Then we heard a bulldozer start up.

The captain came back 10 minutes later, very polite.

Said we’d have to wait for orders from higher command about repatriating American prisoners.

Said it might take a few days.

Communications were difficult.

Everything was chaos with the German surrender coming.

Said we should go back to our bunker.

Safer there.

He’d send word when they got instructions about what to do with us.

We walked back in silence.

didn’t talk about what we’d heard until we were underground again, door closed, alone in the dark.

Mercer made us all swear we’d say nothing about the shooting.

Said it didn’t matter.

Probably just vermached soldiers who’d fought to the end.

Said, “We don’t know the whole story.

Don’t know what those Germans did.

Maybe they deserved it.

” But his hands were shaking when he said it.

And when Walsh asked if we were going to try again tomorrow, try to find different Soviets to take us to American lines, Mercer said no.

Said we wait for the Soviets to come to us.

Said we keep our heads down and we don’t make trouble and we pray the Americans find us first.

Dylan stood up, paced the small kitchen.

His coffee had gone cold hours ago.

Outside Clarksville was dark, quiet, normal.

people having dinner, watching television, living their lives without knowing that 50 years ago, 18 American soldiers had heard Soviet troops executing prisoners, and realized they were trapped behind lines controlled by an army that might not let them go home.

He sat back down, kept reading.

The entries became shorter.

Brennan documented each day with clinical precision.

Soviet patrols passing near the bunker.

The men staying inside, staying quiet.

Food running out.

Russo trying to keep everyone healthy on near starvation rations.

Walsh getting worse, talking to himself.

Mercer having to restrain him during the night.

3 May 1945.

Germany surrendered yesterday.

We heard it from Soviet soldiers celebrating above ground, singing, “Gunfire into the air.

Hours of it.

The war in Europe is over.

We should be going home.

Mercer won’t let us leave the bunker.

Says we wait for official word for American forces to arrive for someone to tell us it’s safe.

Some of the men are arguing with him now.

Brennan says we can’t hide here forever.

Says the Soviets are our allies.

Says we’re being paranoid.

But Mercer heard what we heard, saw what we saw.

And he says no.

8th May 1945, VE day, the official end.

Europe is free.

We’re still underground.

Food’s been gone for 3 days.

We’ve been drinking water from a stream that runs past the bunker, but Russo says we’re all getting weaker.

Walsh can barely stand.

Two others are sick with dysentery.

We need medical attention.

We need food.

We need to get out of here.

Mercer finally agreed.

Tomorrow, he and I go out again.

Find Soviets.

Explain we’re American soldiers who need help.

There’s no reason they’d keep us.

The war is over.

Everyone wants to go home.

Everyone.

Dylan turned the page.

The entry for May 9th was written in different handwriting, shakier, less controlled.

The ink was smeared in places like Brennan’s hand had been sweating.

9 May 1945.

I’m writing this with Mercer sitting next to me.

His hands are bandaged.

I had to help him hold the pen.

We went out this morning.

found Soviet positions a mile east.

Larger force than before, maybe a whole company occupying what used to be a German supply depot.

We approached carefully, hands up, calling out in Russian that we were Americans.

They brought us to their commander, major, maybe colonel.

Hard to tell the insignia.

He spoke English, educated, Moscow accent.

asked what we were doing here, why we hadn’t reported to Soviet command earlier, why we were hiding in a bunker like criminals, Mercer explained.

Captured by Germans, liberated by accident, trying to get back to American lines.

The colonel listened, nodded, said he understood.

Then he asked what we’d seen.

Mercer said nothing.

The colonel asked again.

What did you see? What did Soviet forces do? Did you witness anything unusual? Mercer stayed quiet.

The colonel smiled.

Said it was important we tell the truth.

Said there were criminals among the German prisoners, SS officers, war criminals who deserve justice.

Said if we’d seen Soviet forces administering justice, that was a good thing.

That was proper.

Mercer said we hadn’t seen anything.

The colonel stopped smiling.

He called in two soldiers, had them hold Mercer’s arms.

Then he took Mercer’s right hand and bent his fingers back until two of them snapped.

Mercer didn’t scream, didn’t make a sound, just stared at the colonel.

The colonel asked again, “What did you see?” I broke, told him everything.

The farmhouse, the shooting, the begging, the bulldozer.

Told him we’d heard it all.

That we knew what happened.

The colonel nodded.

Said that was honest.

Said honesty was important between allies.

Then he broke three of Mercer’s fingers on his left hand.

Said, “These things we’d witnessed.

They were complicated.

Said the Americans wouldn’t understand the necessities of the Eastern Front, the justice that needed to be done, the debts that needed to be paid.

Said it would be better for everyone if we forgot what we’d heard.

Said we should go back to our bunker.

Said we should stay there until Soviet command decided what to do with us.

Said that might take a while.

We walked back.

Mercer hasn’t spoken since.

His hands are swollen, the fingers bent at wrong angles.

Russo did what he could, but we have no splints, no medical supplies.

The pain must be unbelievable.

But Mercer still isn’t making a sound.

I think he knows what I know.

I think we all know.

We’re not going home.

Dylan closed the journal, set it on the table, walked to the bathroom, and threw up coffee and nothing else.

His body rejecting what his mind was trying to process.

18 American soldiers buried alive, not by enemies, by allies, by the men who were supposed to help them get home.

He rinsed his mouth, went back to the kitchen.

The journal sat there, brown leather and yellowed pages, and Dylan knew he should stop reading, should take this to Vance to base command to someone with authority to handle what this was.

But it was his grandfather in that bunker.

his grandfather with broken fingers.

His grandfather who’d lived through something that command had decided to bury.

Dylan sat down and kept reading.

Dylan called in sick the next morning.

First time in six years of service.

He sat at the card table with Brennan’s journal and read while sunlight moved across the kitchen floor and his phone buzzed with messages he didn’t answer.

The entries after May 9th documented a slow descent into something worse than imprisonment.

Brennan wrote about the Soviets sealing the bunker entrance with concrete, working through the night while the Americans listened from below.

About the ventilation shafts, how they tried to climb up, but the Soviets had welded grates over the tops 30 ft above ground.

about Mercer’s hands, how the broken fingers healed crooked because Russo had nothing to work with except torn strips of shirt for splints.

15.

May 1945.

Walsh died today.

The dysentery combined with starvation.

He was talking to his mother at the end.

Kept apologizing for something over and over.

Said he was sorry he broke her radio.

He was 19.

We buried him in the corner we’ve been using for waste.

Mercer said words over him.

The Lord’s Prayer.

Some of the men cried.

I couldn’t.

I’m too tired to cry.

We’re down to 17.

Dylan stopped, checked the dog tag he’d photographed with his phone yesterday before the site was fully locked down.

Walsh, Edward J.

found near the entrance, right where someone would have set it after burial, a marker for a grave that was also a latrine because there was nowhere else to put a body underground.

He kept reading.

22nd May, 1945.

Soviets came today, opened the entrance, brought food, bread, canned meat, water.

Enough for a week, maybe.

The same colonel from before stood at the top of the stairs.

Didn’t come down, just watched while his soldiers left the supplies.

Mercer asked when we’d be repatriated.

Asked if there was word from American command.

The colonel smiled.

Said soon.

Said these things take time.

Paperwork, coordination between allies.

Said we should be patient.

Then he left.

Sealed the entrance again.

Kuzlowski started laughing after they left.

kept laughing until he couldn’t breathe.

Russo had to sedate him with a sock in his mouth until he calmed down.

Patient.

We should be patient.

It’s been 6 weeks since Germany surrendered.

The entries became sporadic after that.

Days would pass without writing.

When Brennan did write, the careful penmanship had degraded into something hurried, urgent, like he was racing against time or sanity.

3 June 1945.

Mercer’s making plans.

won’t say what kind.

He’s been studying the ventilation shafts, measuring distances, calculating something in his head.

His hands barely work anymore.

The fingers healed wrong.

He can’t make a fist.

But he’s moving around the bunker at night, testing things.

Some of the men think he’s going crazy.

I don’t.

I think he knows what I know.

No one’s coming for us.

The Soviets are never going to let us go.

We witnessed something they can’t allow to become public.

American soldiers who saw Soviet forces executing prisoners of war.

That’s a war crime.

That’s something that could poison Allied relations maybe start a new conflict.

So, we disappear, officially listed as killed in action during the final push.

Our families get telegrams.

We get a bunker in the middle of nowhere.

Mercer’s going to get us out or die trying.

Most of us are going to die anyway.

Dylan’s phone buzzed again.

Hayes, this time the fifth call this morning.

He let it go to voicemail.

Outside, traffic moved through Clarksville.

Normal Tuesday, people going to work, to school, to lives that didn’t include reading about American soldiers being buried alive by their own allies.

He forced himself to keep reading.

8 June 1945.

Three more dead.

Starvation, sickness.

We’ve been eating one meal every two days trying to make the supplies last until the Soviets come back, but they haven’t come back.

It’s been over 2 weeks.

Mercer says that’s deliberate.

Says they’re waiting for us to die.

Easier than execution.

Starvation leaves no bullet holes, no evidence of murder, just American soldiers who got lost in the chaos of wars end and died before anyone found them.

He’s right.

I know he’s right.

We’re down to 14.

10 June 1945.

Russo is organizing the strong ones for Mercer’s plan.

Six of us can still stand, still think clearly.

The rest are too weak, too sick.

They’ll stay below.

Mercer is going to use the ventilation shaft.

We’ve been working on the great using spoons filed to points, scraping at the welds.

It’s taking days, but we’re making progress.

Once we’re through, someone climbs up, gets out, finds American forces, or tries to.

The Soviets might be watching.

Probably are watching.

But Mercer says we’re dead if we stay here.

Might as well die trying.

He can barely hold the spoon with his broken hands.

But he’s been scraping at that great for hours every night.

I think he blames himself for all of this, for getting us captured, for not leaving sooner, for trusting the Soviets.

He doesn’t say it, but I can see it in his face.

He’s going to get out or kill himself trying.

The next entry was dated June 12th, 1945.

The last entry in the journal.

The handwriting was barely legible, scratched across the page like Brennan had been shaking.

12th of June, 1945.

They came back.

We were working on the shaft when we heard vehicles above.

Soviet trucks, heavy equipment.

Mercer told us to get down, stay quiet, but they weren’t interested in us.

They were bringing more prisoners.

We heard them.

German voices begging, pleading.

And then gunfire, methodical, one shot at a time, over and over.

Must have been 50 people, maybe more.

Execution by firing squad, except there was no squad, just one shooter taking his time.

It lasted an hour.

When it was over, we heard the bulldozer burying them right above us, burying German prisoners in a mass grave in the middle of nowhere.

Mercer put his hand over Kslowsk’s mouth.

Kuzlowski was trying to scream.

We all wanted to scream, but we stayed quiet because the Soviets don’t know we’re here anymore.

They’ve forgotten about us or they think we’re already dead.

Either way, we have a chance now.

A slim chance.

Mercer says we go tonight.

The shaft is almost open.

We get out.

We move fast.

We head west.

We find Americans or we die trying.

I’m writing this in case we don’t make it.

In case someone finds this bunker years from now and wants to know what happened.

We’re American soldiers.

28th Infantry Division.

We didn’t desert.

We didn’t abandon our duty.

We got captured and we survived.

And we tried to get home, but our own allies buried us.

Tell our families we tried.

Tell them we didn’t give up.

Corporal James Brennan signing off.

That was it.

No more entries.

Dylan turned the remaining pages, but they were blank.

He sat there for a long time staring at that last line.

Tell our families we tried.

His grandmother had died believing her husband was killed in action in Germany.

Died believing he’d fought bravely and fallen honorably.

The telegram from the War Department had said as much.

Staff Sergeant Robert Mercer killed in action 23rd April 1945 during operations in Germany.

The nation honors his sacrifice.

Except Robert Mercer hadn’t died in April.

He’d survived.

He’d been captured, imprisoned, tortured by allies, sealed underground, and left to starve.

And on June 12th, 1945, he’d tried to escape.

Dylan didn’t know if his grandfather had made it out of that shaft.

Didn’t know if he’d died climbing, died running, or died somewhere in the Kentucky wilderness after Soviet bullets found him.

But he knew one thing for certain.

The Army had lied.

The War Department had lied.

Someone in command had decided that 18 American soldiers were expendable, that whatever they’d witnessed was too dangerous to acknowledge, and that their families deserved nothing but a telegram full of noble lies.

His phone buzzed.

Vance, this time he answered.

Mercer, where the hell are you? Home sick.

Get to base now.

The criminal investigation command is here.

Dylan’s chest went tight.

C.

They’re taking over the bunker site.

Want to interview everyone who went inside yesterday.

That includes you.

She paused.

They’re also asking about missing evidence.

A journal.

Someone saw you carrying something when you came out.

Dylan looked at Brennan’s journal on the table.

Evidence of war crimes.

Evidence of a conspiracy.

Evidence that would destroy careers, ruin reputations, maybe start an international incident even 50 years later.

I don’t know anything about a journal, he said.

Dylan.

Vance’s voice went quiet.

Don’t do this.

Whatever you found, turn it over.

Don’t throw your career away.

I’ll be there in an hour.

Continue reading….
« Prev Next »