Minor Fictional Characters in The War That Came Early

This article lists the various minor fictional characters who appear in The War That Came Early series. These characters are identified by name, but play at best a peripheral role in the series. Most were simply mentioned once, or had a very brief, unimportant speaking role that did not impact the plot, and never appeared again. As the series is ongoing as of this writing, certain characters may suddenly gain importance.

Anton
(The Big Switch)

Anton was a German soldier in World War II. He served in the same squad as Arno Baatz and Willi Dernen but was not in Baatz's section.

In the late winter of 1940, Anton and a number of comrades were sitting in an abandoned house in an occupied village in northeastern France. They were listening to the radio. An official newsreader announced the Soviet surrender to Japan and made the logically suspect statement that the Soviets would soon surrender in the west as well. Anton pointed out the illogic of this editorial comment. Dernen attempted to warn him that it was not safe to say such things publicly, and Baatz impugned Anton's patriotism.

It was apparent that Anton truly did not understand the political considerations at work and became very defensive about his right to express so self-evident a feeling. This drew him into a vicious argument with Baatz. Most of the soldiers in the house sided with Anton because of Baatz's unpopularity, but Baatz left the house. Dernen said he was likely going to denounce Anton to the authorities. Anton still could not understand what he'd done wrong and proceeded to bicker with Dernen, pointing out that Dernen had been close to the defector Wolfgang Storch. (The German authorities did not know that Storch had defected, but they did know that his disappearance during a French bombardment had conveniently come right before the SS had the opportunity to arrest him, and suspected--correctly--that Dernen had been involved in the disappearance.) Anton eventually stormed out of the house himself when other soldiers told him to shut up so they could listen to the music.

Benno
(West and East)

Benno was a friend of Sgt. Hermann Witt's. The two went through basic training together and though Benno went into the infantry and Witt into panzers, they stayed in touch. They found themselves in the same sector while fighting the Soviet Red Army in Poland and renewed their friendship. Benno told Witt about one of the patrols he went on where they found the mutilated bodies of soldiers from another patrol. The Soviets had cut off their cocks and stuffed them into their mouths as a terror tactic. When Witt told this to his panzer crew, Adalbert Stoss expressed the hope they were dead before it was done to them.

Denis Boucher
(West and East)

Denis Boucher was a French soldier during Second European War. After finishing basic training in 1939, he was assigned to Corporal Luc Harcourt's squad. Though he was only one year younger than Harcourt, he was in awe of the NCO, and of NCOs in general. He asked Harcourt for advice on how to deal with his woman, whom he expected of being unfaithful in his absence. Harcourt advised him that, if she was not willing to wait for him to return, she wasn't worth worrying over anyway. Boucher indignantly responded that he loved her.

Several days after this incident, Boucher failed to answer roll call. Harcourt reported him MIA to Sergeant Demange. Both NCOs reflected indifferently that he might have been killed in action or he might have deserted, but either way he was no longer their concern.

Claude
(Hitler's War)

Claude was a tall, broad-shouldered Frenchman living in the village of Watigny where he owned and operated a tavern. He had served in the French army during World War I and had been wounded in the head losing an eye which he covered with a patch. He had spent two years as a POW where he picked up some German.

The village was overrun and occupied by the Germans during the Battle of France and the divisional commander ordered marks be accepted at ten francs to the one. Claude kept his tavern open and had German soldiers in addition to his usual patrons. One evening, Willi Dernen and Wolfgang Storch came in and, avoiding the table occupied by Cpl. Arno Baatz and some other non-comms, sat down and ordered drinks. They were served by Claude's pretty young daughter which upset Baatz since Claude served him directly. When Claude refused to have his daughter serve him, Baatz attacked Claude giving him a blow that should have knocked the older man down if not out. But Claude just blinked his good eye and then smacked Baatz with a blow that knocked him over backwards causing him to smash his head on the stone floor. Baatz didn't move and Dernen fearfully asked if he were still alive. Claude checked and then laconically replied that "He lives". Claude then turned to Baatz's companions and told them Baatz was no longer welcome and to remove him.

Dalrymple
(Coup d'Etat)

Dalrymple was a seaman aboard the USS Boise. He escorted Pete McGill to the Marines' quarters after McGill came aboard in January, 1941.

Defective Mongolian Officer
(HW)

In October, 1938, a Mongolian Officer who believed himself to be in danger of being arrested and purged by Khorloogiin Choibalsan fled to Manchukuo to escape the communist dictator's reach. There he surrendered himself to a squad of Japanese soldiers led by Sergeant Hideki Fujita. In a broken Chinese conversation with Shinjiro Hayashi, he promised significant information on the disposition of Russo-Mongolian forces in the disputed border region between the two puppet states. He also provided Fujita and his comrades with the very valuable intelligence that the Soviet authorities in Mongolia were planning to grow far more cautious and conservative in their prosecution of the running war with Japan in the face of developments in Czechoslovakia.

Eddie
(TBS)

Eddie was an usher at a rally for Franklin D Roosevelt in Philadelphia in the fall of 1940.

Douglas Green
(TBS)

Douglas Green was a CPO in the Royal Navy during World War II. He was in London in the summer of 1940 and paid his respects during the funeral procession of Winston Churchill. He overheard a boisterous young man express agreement with a group of Silver Shirt-uniformed hecklers organized by the British Union of Fascists and provoke Alistair Walsh into a fight. Green was prepared to attack the rightist from behind but Walsh managed to knock him out cold with just one blow. Green then invited Walsh to join him at a pub, where they listened to Churchill's funeral liturgy on the radio. Both senior non-coms were incredulous when they heard Neville Chamberlain announce that the Government intended to honor Churchill's memory by going to war with the Soviet Union.

Sam Grynszpan
(W&E)

Sam Grynszpan was a stateless Jew originally from somewhere in Europe. After being displaced, he eventually found himself in Shanghai, where he owned and operated the Golden Lotus Dance Hall. He employed Vera Kuznetsova, a White Russian dance girl. Grynszpan may have been attracted to Vera himself, but he advised her to take advantage of American Marine Pete McGill when McGill became infatuated with her. Grynszpan and Vera agreed that he could offer her a good meal ticket.

Herb
(W&E)

Herb was a judge advocate officer of the United States Marine Corps stationed in Shanghai. He met daily with Captain Ralph Longstreet, for whose company he was responsible. In 1939, Longstreet promised one of his men, Pete McGill, that he would speak to Herb about McGill's request for permission to marry Vera Kuznetsova.

Elijah Jones
(Coup d'Etat)

Elijah "Jonesy" Jones was a Marine private who served as a shell jerker aboard the USS Boise at the outbreak of war between the United States and Japan. Because of his bad back, his immediate superior, Corporal Joe Orsatti, opted to replace Jonsey with Pete McGill. During a Japanese attack, a piece of shrapnel ripped Jonesy's throat out. He was buried at sea.

Koch
(W&E)

Lieutenant Colonel Koch commanded Theo Hossbach's panzer regiment on the Eastern Front in Poland. By all accounts he was a brave officer with a good tactical sense. However, the Waffen-SS found him complicit in in a coup d'etat attempted by some Wehrmacht generals in the High Command. He was arrested and executed before his troops as an example of what happened to officers who went against the German government.

The gathered panzer crews were not happy and close to mutiny. A dozen Waffen-SS troopers would not stand a chance but the fear that it would lead to fighting between rebel and loyalist Wehrmacht units helped keep this in check. As the order for the firing squad to aim their weapons rang out, Lt. Col. Koch could have sparked the rebellion by denouncing Hitler but instead shouted "Long live Germany!"

After Koch was pronounced dead, the SS captain in charge allowed the panzer crews to bury him. In a show of respect, Koch received a much fancier grave than most with a large cross that had "Fallen for the Vaterland" written on the horizontal arm. Sgt. Hermann Witt looked at it and remarked to Hossbach and Adi Stoss that a letter from his father had commented that death notices sometimes said "Fallen for the Führer and Vaterland" while others indicted just "Fallen for the Vaterland".

Koral
(HW)

Major Koral commanded Sgt. Ludwig Rothe's panzar battalion from the beginning of hostilities in 1938. After certain generals failed in a coup d'etat against Adolf Hitler, the SS investigated associated Wehrmacht officers including Koral. Koral was suspected because of his long association with Generals Fritsche and Halder, his possible membership with the Social Democrats before 1933 and that one of his cousins had been married to a Jew. A SS captain interviewed Rothe and his subordinates Fritz Bittenfeld and Theo Hossbach but they did not provide any suspicious information. Nevertheless, Major Koral was arrested and taken back to Germany.

Koral had been quite brave in combat, wounded twice, and awarded an Iron Cross, First Class during the course the current war.

Friedrich Lauterbach
(Hitler's War)

Friedrich Lauterbach was a professor of ancient history at the university in Münster. He had studied under Samuel Goldman as a graduate student and still felt kindly towards him even after the passage of the Nuremberg Race Laws. This prevented Goldman from teaching but Lauterbach helped him out by publishing articles written by Goldman in Pauly-Wissowa under his own name and passing the fee to Goldman. This lasted until Lauterbach was called up for military service. He gave Goldman twice the going rate for his final article and exchanged best wishes before leaving Goldman's house.

Ralph Longstreet
(W&E)

Ralph Longstreet was a United States Marine Corps captain stationed in Shanghai in 1939. He was Pete McGill's superior officer.

McGill asked Longstreet to authorize his marriage to Vera Kuznetsova. Longstreet did not deny McGill's request out of hand but explained to him that for an active duty US serviceman to marry a stateless person in a foreign country posed extreme legal difficulties.

Longstreet, who came from the Deep South, may or may not have been related to James Longstreet.

Luis
(HW)

Luis was one of two aides to General José Sanjurjo while the general was in exile in Portugal. Luis and the other aide, Orlando, initially load Sanjurjo's wardrobe into a small two-seater plane that was destined for Burgos. However, after some careful words from the pilot, Major Juan Antonio Ansaldo, Sanjurjo relented, and had Luis and Orlando remove the general's clothing from the cargo hold.

Willi Maass
(HW)

Sgt. Willi Maass was in Sgt. Ludwig Rothe's Panzer company during the invasion of the Netherlands. He commanded a captured Czechoslovakian LT vz 35. Rothe admired the Czech machine which had thicker armor and heavier gun than his own Panzer II although it did have an even more underpowered engine. The two shared cigarettes and discussed when the invasion would go forward while maintaining their machines at a concentration point near the border.

Marie
(W&E)

Marie was the girlfriend of Denis Boucher. When Boucher was conscripted into the French army during the war, he worried that Marie might cheat on him while he was gone. She was always flirtatious, and had had a fight with Boucher before Boucher reported to Basic Training, a fight which was not resolved when Boucher left. Boucher confided all these things to his corporal, Luc Harcourt. Harcourt told him, not unkindly, that if she proved faithless in his absence, Marie was never worth Boucher's affection anyway, and he'd be better off forgetting her. Boucher took scant comfort in this advice, for he insisted that he really and truly loved her.

Several days after Boucher spoke with Harcourt, he failed to answer roll call. Harcourt was unable to determine whether he'd been killed in action or deserted to return to Marie. Harcourt did not particularly care either way, and neither did his superior, Sergeant Demange, to whom he reported Boucher as MIA. Demange, far less patient with raw recruits' foibles than was Harcourt, hoped that, if Boucher had deserted, he would find that Marie had been unfaithful and that she infected him with a venereal disease. Despite being more compassionate than the senior NCO, Harcourt found he agreed with the sentiment.

Lorenz Müller
(HW)

Lorenz Müller was a Berlin police officer in his fifties. Peggy Druce happened to look at him when he came out of a tavern and suck beer foam out of his mustache while on duty. To cover his embarrassment, he demanded her papers. She showed him her American passport but he demanded she come with him to the police station. They appeared before a desk sergeant where Müller spoke in German too quickly for Druce to follow. The sergeant then asked Druce what happened. She explained she was an American and a neutral and showed him her passport. He looked at it and told her she was free to go. Müller spluttered in surprise and then was thoroughly reamed out by the sergeant.

Orlando
(HW)

Orlando was one of two aides to General José Sanjurjo while the general was in exile in Portugal. Luis and the other aide, Luis, initially load Sanjurjo's wardrobe into a small two-seater plane that was destined for Burgos. However, after some careful words from the pilot, Major Juan Antonio Ansaldo, Sanjurjo relented, and had Luis and Orlando remove the general's clothing from the cargo hold.

Paul
(TBS)

Paul was a French soldier in World War II. His political orientation was right wing. He brawled with a comrade, Boileau, after Boileau, a communist, expressed his unwillingness to go to war with the Soviet Union as it became increasingly apparent that the French government intended to switch sides. Paul appealed to the two men's squad commander, Sergeant Luc Harcourt. Harcourt warned Boileau that he would be executed if he attempted to incite a mutiny, much to Paul's satisfaction. However, Harcourt was equally harsh in disciplining both men for fighting in the ranks.

Maximilian Priller
(HW)

Due to casualties among officers, Sgt. Ludwig Rothe commanded his Panzer platoon for short periods on more than one occasion. He didn't mind when Second Lieutenant Maximilian Priller took command, since while young he did have some notion of what to do with Panzers. Outside Coucy-le-Château Priller held a meeting with his Panzer commanders and outlined their line of attack past the town. While he made it sound easy, it proved to be anything but.

Marcus Puttkamer
(W&E)

Marcus Puttkamer (d 1939) was a German sergeant and sniper sent to hunt Czech sniper Vaclav Jezek in France in 1939. He befriended Willi Dernen and recruited Dernen to be his assistant in the snipers' duel--a very dangerous job, but one which allowed Dernen to escape Arno Baatz's chain of command. Puttkamer was so pleased with Dernen's performance that he trained Dernen to become a sniper himself. His plan was for the two snipers to operate in loose cooperation to bag Jezek. However, he wound up training Dernen as his replacement instead: The day Dernen began operating fully as a sniper was the day that Puttkamer fell to Jezek's rifle.

von Rehfeld
(W&E)

Major von Rehfeld was a major in the German army during Second World War. He served as a staff officer to General Leonard Kaupitsch, commander of German forces in Denmark. von Rehfeld helped Peggy Druce obtain a Danish exit visa and passage to Sweden.

Friedrich Reinberger
(HW)

Lieutenant Commander Friedrich Reinberger commanded a destroyer during World War II. He was in Berlin making a report on New Year's Eve 1938 and decided to celebrate at a local hotel. There he met Peggy Druce and joined her at her table. The two chatted and since Druce found him not a bad guy for a German, agreed to dance. The party was interrupted by an air raid forcing everyone into the hotel's bomb shelter.

Paul Renouvin
(HW)

Paul Renouvin was a college student who had been drafted just before the outbreak of a new European war. He was assigned to Sgt. Demange's squad and fought well enough. One day Demange boasted about the Calvados which he had found and filled his canteen. Renouvin surprised the rest of the squad by not being at all impressed stating "C'est rien", that is, "That's nothing". Demange demanded to know what he had and Renouvin replied Scotch from a dead Tommy officer. Demange scoffed and bet him his Calvados that he was lying. However, when Demange had a taste, he found Renouvin did have Scotch. Demange was disgusted but did pay off the bet which Renouvin shared with the rest of the squad.

Rolf
(TBS)

Rolf was a German casualty of war in World War II. Toward the end of the winter of 1940, he and a number of his comrades were listening to the radio in an abandoned house in an occupied village in northeastern France. Their relaxation had been interrupted by a politically-charged argument among Arno Baatz, Willi Dernen, and Anton. After the argument ended and Baatz and Anton left the house, the soldiers, unsettled by the reminder that they lived under an increasingly totalitarian government, tried to recapture their earlier mood of relaxation by listening to the music of Barnabas von Geczy. Rolf inadvertently defeated these attempts by commenting that, while he enjoyed von Geczy, he would have preferred a jazz piece--jazz being a style of music under Nazi suppression.

After von Geczy's selection, the radio played a piece by Richard Wagner. Rolf left the room rather than listen to the opera composer. He was soon killed by a French sniper while crossing a broad, straight street before Dernen, a former sniper, could warn him to be careful.

Rothstein
(HW)

Rothstein was a Jewish butcher who owned a shop in Berlin. Under the Nuremberg Race Laws, he was forbidden from doing business with any non-Jewish Germans.

In 1938, Peggy Druce bought a leg of chicken from his shop. Rothstein was nervous to be selling to a Gentile but took Peggy's business. He also gave her good service, offering to bone the chicken leg so it would weigh less and she would have to use fewer ration coupons.

As Druce left the butcher shop, the Gestapo was enraged that she had defied the Nuremberg Race Laws. They demanded to see her identity papers. Instead she showed them her US passport. She knew they dared not offend a powerful neutral country by unduly molesting its citizen, and she relished their frustration at their inability to punish her. Unfortunately, her triumph was short-lived, as the policemen simply brutalized Rothstein instead.

Josef Stein
(W&E)

Josef Stein was a German Jew who owned a grocery store in Münster. During the war, the twin pressures of wartime rationing and anti-Semitic race laws forced Stein to sell low-quality produce at high prices. When his customers complained, Stein bitterly insisted that he was doing the best he could under the circumstances.

Tannenwald
(W&E)

Tannenwald was a commander of the Kriegsmarine. In 1939, he was a staff officer for Admiral Karl Dönitz.

When U-30 returned from the Scandinavian campaign, Tannenwald met its skipper, Julius Lemp, and ordered him to report to Donitz "at his convenience" for a debriefing. After the debriefing was interrupred by news of a coup, Lemp asked Tannenwald for information, and Tannenwald urged him to return to his assigned barracks.

Mr. Terwilliger
(TBS)

Mr. Terwilliger was a campaign operative for the Franklin Roosevelt campaign in 1940. At a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Mr Terwilliger confirmed that Herb and Peggy Druce were on the list of people authorized to attend the rally and dispatched the usher Eddie to walk them to their seats.

Bradley Worthington III
(W&E)

Bradley Worthington III was the US consul-general in Shanghai. He was a prosperous Rotarian from the Midwest. He was also deceptively shrewd and intelligent.

In December 1939, he stepped outside the consulate to see the cause of several explosions. While outside, the sound of further explosions drove him to hit the deck, suggesting the reflexes of a World War I veteran. A Japanese soldier trained a rifle on Worthington, but his NCO prevented him from firing.

Sergei Yaroslavsky's Mother
(W&E)

Sergei Yaroslavsky's Mother had died well before the hostilities that began in 1939 between the Soviet Union and Poland.

At one point during the war, Yaroslavsky took shelter in a trench during a German air raid. Yaroslavsky remembered the smell of damp earth from his mother's burial and associated it with graves. Since he was being attacked with deadly force, the association was one he wished he had not made.