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It had been ingrained in the GIs to see the Germans as enemies, but that perception faded at the sight of the desperate women and children and middle-aged fathers—along with more than a few men who had likely been German soldiers until very recently, but had returned home to help their families escape ahead of the Russian hordes. Another uncomfortable fact was that the Germans looked so much like the Americans themselves. Hardly a man could watch a German family struggling along with small children and a few possessions, without thinking of his own family back home.

Cole and Vaccaro found themselves stationed near the twisted ruins of a railroad bridge spanning the Elbe at a town called Tangermunde. The SS had blown up the bridge in an attempt to slow the American advance toward Berlin. As it turned out, politics had done a better job of that than TNT. Much of the bridge still stood, knitted together by twisted irons rails and girders. The tangled wreckage dipped down into the water in places. Crossing it was so precarious that a knot of refugees had formed on the other bank, uncertain of their chances. A few strong swimmers took directly to the turbulent water, while others were attempting to build makeshift rafts.

“Looks more like a roller coaster ride than a railroad bridge,” Vaccaro remarked.

“There sure as hell won’t be any tanks getting across,” Cole said.

Cole had never been to an amusement park or seen a roller coaster. He had gone straight from the mountains where he had grown up near Gashey’s Creek to basic training, and then on to England and Normandy. He thought that the bridge looked much like the ruins of the old trestle bridge across Gashey’s Creek that the Union army had dynamited during the Civil War. Things being as they were back home, the bridge hadn’t been rebuilt even eighty years later.

Ostensibly, Cole and Vaccaro were helping to guard the bridge against SS units using it for a final dash to the defense of Berlin. That seemed unlikely at this late stage of the war. Now, there were rumors going around that there would be trouble if the Russians tried to cross into American-held territory. The jury was still out on that possibility.

Cole was waiting to see his first Russian, but there were plenty of German refugees. They watched a father wearing a suit and an overcoat, holding a suitcase in one hand and his daughter’s hand in the other. The girl was six or seven. Slowly, they picked their way across the bridge. At one point, they had to wade where the iron rails disappeared below the river’s surface. The little girl lost her footing and was almost swept away by the current. The man dropped the suitcase and grabbed the girl with both hands, struggling to keep her from going under.

Cole, who had faced some of the Germans’ deadliest snipers and dodged bullets and bombs for the last few months, found that his heart was pounding from watching the two try to make it across. He had almost drowned once as a teenager, running a trapline in an icy creek. That experience had left him leery of any kind of water.

He breathed again when the father and daughter made it out of the water. The suitcase had drifted out of reach and was beginning to sink. Their next leg of the bridge was dry, but just as treacherous where missing sections of ties left gaping holes high above the river.

“To hell with this,” Cole said. He handed his rifle to Vaccaro.

“You’ve got that look, Hillbilly. I don’t like it when you get that look.”

“I ain’t gonna stand here and watch, no matter what our orders say.”

“The lieutenant won’t like it.”

“Tell him I went to take a leak and got lost.”

“Cole, what the hell are you up to?”

“You’ll see.”

Cole started down the bank. There were several rowboats down there, battered things, but they had made it across the expanse of river. Refugees had rowed them across, but then abandoned the boats on the bank. Nobody wanted to row back across once they had made it to safety. Meanwhile, desperate refugees crowded the river banks without any way to get across. The boats were all on the wrong side.

Official military policy was that the refugees would not be stopped—not unless they appeared to be Germany military. At the same time, U.S. troops were not to give any active assistance to refugees.

Cole was about to break that rule.

He tied three boats together and clambered into the one that seemed the most seaworthy. There were a couple of oars lying in the bottom, and he took hold of them, trying to figure out what to do next. What Cole knew about boats could fit into his back pocket.

The sound of someone coming down the bank made him look up.

“Those are called oars,” Vaccaro said. “You have to put those in the oarlocks in order to row. Also, it helps if you keep your back toward the bow.”

“The what?”

Vaccaro sighed. “Move over. My uncle has a place at the Jersey shore, so I’ve been in a boat at least once in my life, Hillbilly. I don’t suppose you have much use for boats up there in the mountains.”

“I reckon not.”