Hitler's war

Chapter Eighteen

Victory will come soon. So the official from the German department in charge of interned neutrals had assured Peggy Druce. Konrad Hoppe, that was the bastard’s name. Well, Herr Hoppe wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. Here it was a month later, and Germany was still fighting hard.

Here it is, a month later, Peggy thought. More than a month. Pretty soon it’ll be spring. And here I am, still stuck in goddamn Berlin.

The RAF had come over several times. French planes had dropped bombs once or twice. Even the Russians had shown up, flying all the way across Poland and eastern Germany in bombers said to be bigger than anybody else’s.

None of that had done a hell of a lot of actual damage. Berlin was a long way off for enemy planes-a long way off from anywhere civilized, in Peggy’s biased opinion. The bombers had to carry extra fuel, which meant they couldn’t carry so many bombs.

German searchlights ceaselessly probed the night sky, hunting marauders. German antiaircraft fire was like a million Fourths of July all folded into one. It didn’t do much good, though.

That had to be part of why Berlin seemed so jumpy to Peggy These days, Berliners talked about Hermann Call Me Meyer Goring as Hermann the Kike-but in low voices, to friends they trusted, in places where the Gestapo was unlikely to overhear. They were less discreet than they might have been, though. Peggy wouldn’t have heard-and chuckled about-Hermann the Kike if they weren’t.

But she was careful where she chuckled, too. She judged that most of Berlin’s Angst came simply from victory deferred. Had the Wehrmacht paraded through Paris when Herr Hoppe thought it would, chances were the generals wouldn’t have tried whatever they tried. Or had that happened earlier? Nobody officially admitted anything. After whatever it was didn’t work, Peggy stopped hearing so many juicy jokes. Passing them on didn’t just land you in trouble any more. You could, with the greatest of ease, end up dead.

SS men in black uniforms and soldiers in field-gray seemed to compete with one another in arresting people and hauling them off God knew where to do God knew what to them. Peggy had never been so glad she carried an American passport. It was sword and shield at the same time. You couldn’t walk more than a block without somebody snapping, “Your papers!” at you.

And when you showed them, what a relief it was to pull out the leatherette folder stamped in gold with the gold old American eagle and olive branch rather than the German one holding a swastika in its claws. “Here you are,” Peggy would say, and show off the passport with all the pride-and all the relief-she felt.

So far, the talisman had never failed. Whether she displayed it to SS man, Abwehr official, or ordinary Berlin cop, it always made him back off. “Oh,” he would say, whoever he happened to be this time around. Sometimes the German would salute after that; sometimes he’d just turn away in disappointment, or maybe disgust. But he would always let her go on.

Then, three blocks farther along, some other jumped-up kraut reveling in his petty authority would growl, “Your papers!” The whole stupid farce would play out again.

Once, a particularly reptilian SS man-again, in Peggy’s biased opinion-tried out his English on her, demanding, “What is an American doing in Berlin?”

“Trying to get out, pal. Nothing else but,” Peggy answered from the bottom of her heart. “You want to send me home, I’ll kiss your shiny boots.” And were they ever. She could have put on her makeup using the highly polished black leather for a mirror.

For some reason, the SS man didn’t like that, either. “It is a privilege to come to the capital of the Reich,” he spluttered.

“I’m sure the RAF thinks so, too,” Peggy said sweetly.

The SS man was a fine, fair Aryan, which only made his flush more obvious. “Air pirates!” he said, proving he not only read but believed Goebbels’ newspapers. “They murder innocent civilians-women and children.”

“Sure,” Peggy said, and then, incautiously, “What do you think your own bombers are doing?”

“We strike only military targets,” the SS man insisted. The scary thing was, he plainly believed that, too.

Peggy wanted to yank off his high-crowned cap and beat him over the head with it, in the hope of knocking some sense into him. But she held back-it was bound to be a lost cause. If you were the kind of jerk who joined the SS, you had to be immune to sense. She contented herself with, “Can I go now?”

“‘May.’ It should be ‘may.’” Proud of winning a battle in her language, the SS man handed back her passport and waved her on.

She turned a corner-and walked straight into a police checkpoint. “Your papers-at once!” a beer-bellied cop shouted. Peggy produced the American passport. The policeman recoiled like Bela Lugosi not seeing his reflection in a mirror. As the SS man had before him, he barked, “What are you doing in Berlin?”

And, as she had before, Peggy answered truthfully: “Trying to get out.” Only later did she wonder about taking a big chance twice running. How many chances had she taken? Too damned many-she was sure of that. Hadn’t she been proud of acting more mature? She sure couldn’t prove it today.

But she got by with it one more time. “Pass,” the cop said, writing a note on a sheet clipped to a flat board. Any Gestapo official who examined all the reports various Berlin security officials compiled could figure out everywhere she went. For all she knew, some Gestapo goon did that every day. If she were a spy, it might have meant something. But she was only an interned tourist with a big mouth.

She couldn’t even have fun shopping. Window displays had nothing to do with what you could actually buy. And everything you could buy required ration coupons of one kind or another. She got enough for food to keep her going. For almost everything else, the Germans didn’t seem to feel obligated to take care of her.

And, after the Athenia went down, she couldn’t get out. She’d tried to arrange another train ticket to Copenhagen. She’d tried to arrange a plane ticket to Stockholm. Once she was in Scandinavia, she could get to England. Once she was in England, she could get to the States…if the Germans didn’t torpedo her on the way. And if they did, well, going down with her ship sometimes seemed more appealing than staying in Berlin.

But they wouldn’t let her out. She got “Your papers!” when she tried to buy her tickets, too. And when she flashed her passport then, it wasn’t magic. It was more like poison. They would frown. They would check a list. Then they would say, “I am very sorry, but this is verboten.” They liked saying verboten. Telling people no was much more fun than saying yes would have been. You got to watch your victims throw the most delightful tantrums.

Peggy refused to give them the satisfaction. She just walked away both times. After failing to get the plane ticket, she hied herself off to the U.S. embassy. If she couldn’t get help there, she figured, she couldn’t get help anywhere.

By all the signs, she couldn’t get help anywhere. The embassy personnel spoke English, not German, but they might as well have clicked their heels and intoned, “Verboten.” What they did say amounted to, “Sorry, but we can’t make the German government get off the dime.”

“Why not?” Peggy snarled at an undersecretary-she’d made herself obnoxious enough at the embassy that the clerks had booted her upstairs to get rid of her. “Denmark’s neutral. Sweden’s neutral. We’re neutral, for crying out loud. Why won’t the Nazis let me out of this loony bin?”

The undersecretary-Jenkins, his name was, Constantine Jenkins-had shiny fingernails-painted with clear polish?-and a soft, well-modulated voice. Peggy guessed he was a fairy, not that that should have had anything to do with the price of beer. “Well, Mrs. Druce, the long answer is that the Germans say they’re at war and they fear espionage,” he replied. “That weakens any arguments we might make, because it means they can tell us, ‘Sorry, emergency-we don’t have to listen to you.’”

“Espionage, my ass!” Peggy blurted, which made the faggy undersecretary blink. She went on, “The only thing I’ve seen is what a horrible, run-down dump this place is.”

“That is information the Germans would rather keep to themselves,” Jenkins said seriously. “And besides, the short answer is, the Germans are just being Germans-sometimes they enjoy being difficult. And when they do, you can shout till you’re blue in the face for all the good it does you.”

“Being pissy, you mean. Shit,” Peggy said. That made much more sense than she wished it did. She also made the American diplomat blink again, which was the most fun she’d had all day. She went on, “Can’t I just sneak over the border somewhere? All I want to do is go home.”

“I would not recommend it,” he said seriously. “We can be of no assistance to anyone caught violating the regulations of the country in which she happens to find herself, and whether those regulations are just or humane is, I’m afraid, beside the point.”

“Shit,” she said again, and walked out of the embassy. A man standing across the street wrote something down. Were the Nazis keeping tabs on her in particular or on everybody who went in and out? What difference did it make, really?

They wouldn’t let her go to Sweden. They wouldn’t let her go to Denmark. They wouldn’t let her go to Norway or Finland, either-she’d also found out that Oslo and Helsinki were off limits. The bastards wouldn’t let her go anywhere decent, damn them to hell.

She thought about Warsaw. Regretfully, she didn’t think about it long. Maybe she could get to Scandinavia or Romania from there, but she feared the odds weren’t good. The Russians had pushed Poland right into bed with Germany. The Poles probably didn’t want to land there, but what choice did they have when the Red Army jumped them? She wished Stalin such a horrible case of mange, it would make his soup-strainer mustache fall out. That’d teach him!

Then she had a brainstorm-or she hoped it was, anyway. She turned around and went back to the American embassy. The guy across the street scribbled some more. Maybe the Gestapo would have to issue him another pencil.

This time, Peggy didn’t have to be so difficult to get to see the queer undersecretary. Constantine Jenkins eyed her as if she had a case of the mange. “What can I do for you now, Mrs. Druce?” he asked warily.

“Can you help me get to Budapest?” Peggy asked. Hungary wasn’t exactly a nice place these days. Admiral Horthy’s government (and wasn’t that a kick in the ass? a landlocked country run by an admiral) was a hyena skulking along behind the German lion, feeding on scraps from the bigger beast’s kill. When the Hungarian army helped Hitler dismantle Czechoslovakia, England and France promptly broke relations. So did Russia. But she didn’t think any of them had gone and declared war on the Horthy regime. And if they hadn’t…something might be arranged.

“Well,” Jenkins said. “That’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“I hope so.” Peggy sent him a reproachful stare. “Why didn’t you think of it yourself?”

For his part, he looked affronted. “Because chances are the Germans won’t let you go, even if Hungary is an ally. Because getting to Budapest doesn’t mean all your troubles are over, or even that any of them are.”

“If I can get into Hungary, I bet I can get out,” Peggy said. “Romania-”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” the undersecretary warned. “Romanians and Hungarians like each other about as much as Frenchmen and Germans, and for most of the same reasons. Romanians spite Hungarians for the fun of it, and vice versa. But if you’re trying to get out of Hungary, you need to worry about Marshal Antonescu’s goons, not Admiral Horthy’s.”

“Oh.” Peggy knew she sounded deflated. Hell, she felt deflated. She paused to visualize a map of southeastern Europe. “Well, if I could get into Yugoslavia, that would do the trick, too. Anywhere but this Nazi snake pit would.”

“I don’t suppose you want to hear that the Hungarians have territorial claims against Yugoslavia, too,” Jenkins said.

“Jesus! Is there anybody the Hungarians don’t have territorial claims against?” Peggy exclaimed.

“Iceland, possibly.” Jenkins didn’t sound as if he was joking. He explained why: “If you think Hitler hates the Treaty of Versailles-”

“I’m right,” Peggy broke in.

“Yes. You are,” he agreed. “But Horthy and the Hungarians hate the Treaty of Trianon even more-and with some reason, because Trianon cost them more territory than Versailles cost Germany. A lot of it wasn’t territory where Hungarians lived, but some of it was…and they want the rest back, too. They aren’t fussy, not about that.”

“I’m sure.” Peggy sighed. “People couldn’t have screwed up the treaties at the end of the war much worse than they did, could they?”

“Never imagine things can’t be screwed up worse than they are already,” Constantine Jenkins replied. “But, that said, in this particular case I have trouble imagining how they could be.”

“Right.” Peggy sighed. She got to her feet. “Well, I’m going to give it a shot. What have I got to lose?”

“Good luck.” For a wonder, the American diplomat didn’t sound as if he meant And the horse you rode in on, lady.

So Peggy went off to the train station to try to get a ticket to Budapest. When she displayed her passport, the clerk said, “You will need an entry visa from the Hungarian embassy and an exit visa from the Foreign Ministry. I regret this, but it is strictly verboten” -that word again!-“to sell tickets without proper and complete documentation.”

“Crap,” she muttered in English, which made the clerk scratch his bald head. “It’s a technical term,” she explained helpfully, “meaning, well, crap.”

“I see,” he said. By his tone, he didn’t.

Peggy did, all too well. She went off to the Hungarian embassy at 8 Cornelius-Strasse. “Ah, yes-an interesting case,” said the minor official who dealt with her. His native language gave his German a musical accent. Had he spoken English, she supposed he would have sounded like a vampire. Maybe, for once, German was better. He relieved her of fifty Deutschmarks and stamped her passport. So she was almost good to go.

Last stop, the Foreign Ministry. Nobody wanted to come right out and tell her no, but nobody wanted to give her an exit visa, either. And nobody did. Finally, one of Ribbentrop’s flunkies sighed and squared his shoulders and said, “It is not practical at this time.”

“Why the devil not?” Peggy blazed. “I’d think you’d be glad to get rid of me.”

The man shrugged “My orders say this visa is not to be issued. I must, of course, follow them.”

By the way he talked, it wasn’t that something very bad would happen to him if he didn’t-though something probably would. But not following an order was as dreadful to him as desecrating the sacrament would have been to a devout Catholic.

“Aw, shit,” Peggy said, and that pretty much summed things up.

* * *

Vaclav Jezek had never liked quartermaster sergeants. As far as he was concerned, most of them were fat pricks. This miserable Frenchman was sure wide through the seat of his pants. And he was acting like a prick, all right. He thought he personally owned everything in the depot near the village of Hary.

Vaclav had been arguing with him through Benjamin Halevy, because he still hadn’t picked up much French himself. Since that wasn’t getting him anywhere, he fixed the French sergeant with a glare and asked him, “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

He got exactly what he hoped for: indignant sputters. Then the Frenchman spoke to the Jewish noncom doing the translating: “He wants to know why you think he should speak the enemy’s language.”

“Does he?” Vaclav pounced: “Tell the son of a bitch I figured he would because he’s doing more to help the Nazis by sitting on his ammo till it hatches than he could any other way.”

“Are you sure you want me to say that?” Halevy asked. “He really won’t help you if I do.”

“Fuck him. He’s not helping me now. He’s got rounds for my antitank rifle, and he won’t turn them loose,” Jezek said.

“All right. I’ll try. I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were doing.” In the Jew’s French, Vaclav’s insult sounded less nasty than it would have in Czech or German-French was better for kissing ass than for telling somebody off. No matter what it sounded like, the crack got home. The quartermaster went as hot-and as red-as iron in the forge. He said several things that sounded heartfelt.

“What’s all that mean?” Vaclav asked with clinical curiosity.

“You’d break your piece over his head if you knew,” Halevy said.

Vaclav laughed. “Not this goddamn thing.” Antitank rifles were huge, heavy brutes. The heavier the weapon was, the less it kicked when it spat one of its honking big bullets. Jezek approved of that. As things were, his shoulder was sore all the time. You could stop an elephant with an antitank rifle. Sometimes, you could even stop a tank. Elephants couldn’t grow more armor. Tanks, unfortunately, could. The rifle would be obsolete pretty soon, and you’d need a field gun to deal with enemy armor.

In the meantime, Vaclav wished he had a field gun to deal with this goddamn quartermaster sergeant. The Frenchman and the Jew went back and forth. Halevy chuckled. “He doesn’t like you, Jezek.”

“Suits me-in that case, we’re even,” Vaclav said. “I’m trying to defend his lousy country. It’s more than he’s doing, Christ knows. You can translate that, too.”

Halevy did. The French sergeant didn’t just sputter-he bleated. Then he sprang up from his folding chair. Vaclav thought the fellow was going to try and slug him. Monsieur le Francais would get a dreadful surprise if he did; Jezek promised himself that.

But the quartermaster sergeant spun on his heel and stormed away. The view from the rear was no more appetizing than the one from the front. “If he’s going after military policemen to haul you off-” Halevy began.

“They’ll grab you, too, ‘cause you’re the one who said it in French,” Vaclav said happily. The Jew seemed less delighted. Too bad for him, Vaclav thought. Just to be helpful, he added, “It’s called shooting the messenger.”

In Yiddish, French, and Czech, Halevy told him what he could do with a messenger. To listen to him, shooting was the least of it. Vaclav listened in admiration. He didn’t understand everything Halevy said, but he wanted to remember some of what he did understand.

The quartermaster sergeant came back. A thunderstorm clouded his brow. He said several pungent things of his own. French might lack the guttural power of Czech or German when it came to swearing, but the sergeant did his damnedest. Vaclav hardly cared. At the same time as the Frenchman was cussing him out, he was also handing over half a dozen five-round clips of long, fat antitank-rifle cartridges.

“Tell him thanks,” Jezek said to Benjamin Halevy.

“Sure.” The Jew eyed him. “It won’t do you any good, you know.” He spoke in French. The quartermaster replied. Halevy translated for Vaclav: “He says you can shove a round up your ass and then hit yourself in the butt with a golf club to touch it off.”

“A golf club?” Vaclav had to laugh. “Well, that’s something different-fuck me if it’s not.”

“He’d say fuck you anyway,” Halevy replied. “Let’s get out of here before he decides he really does have to shaft us, just on general principles.”

That seemed like good advice. Vaclav took it. The quartermaster offered a couple of poignant parting shots. Vaclav glanced toward Halevy. The polyglot Jew declined to translate. That was bound to be just as well.

Civilians streamed away from the front. They didn’t want to get caught by bombs and shells and machine-gun bullets. Well, who in their right minds would have? Vaclav didn’t, either. But when you put on a uniform, that was the chance you took.

Some of the Frenchmen and-women eyed the Czechs suspiciously. They weren’t poilus. They weren’t Tommies, either. British soldiers were familiar sights in France. The damnfool locals probably thought they were Germans-it wasn’t as if that hadn’t happened before farther east. Vaclav would have thought German uniforms were plenty familiar here, too. Maybe he was wrong.

Soldiers came back with the civilians. The ones who clutched wounds, pale and tight-lipped, were simply part of what war did. The ones who didn’t seem hurt worried Vaclav more. He’d watched the Czech army fight till it couldn’t fight any more. Then, when the Nazis kept the pressure on, the Czechs went to pieces.

Would the same thing happen here? As far as Vaclav could see, France was in better shape than Czechoslovakia had been. The country seemed united in its fight against the Nazis. Czechoslovakia sure hadn’t been. Half the Slovaks-maybe more than half-wanted the state to come to pieces. Their precious Slovakia was supposed to be independent these days, but Hitler pulled the strings and made Father Tiso dance.

As for the Sudeten Germans, the miserable bastards who’d touched off the war…Vaclav muttered something foul. The Czechs had been pulling them out of the army because they were unreliable. He muttered something else. Too little, too late. Back right after the last war ended, Czechoslovakia should have shipped all those shitheads back to Germany. If they wanted to join the Reich so much, well, fine. So long.

It hadn’t happened. Too goddamn bad.

A French captain spotted the enormous rifle Vaclav had slung over his left shoulder. He said something in his own language. Vaclav only shrugged and looked blank. “Do you want me to understand him?” Halevy asked-in Czech.

Vaclav didn’t even have to think about it. “Nah,” he said. “He’ll pull me off to do something stupid that’ll probably get me killed. I’d rather go on back to camp.”

“Makes sense,” the Jew agreed. Like Vaclav, he stared at the French officer as if he had no idea the fellow was talking to them. The Frenchman said something else. Vaclav and Halevy went right on impersonating idiots. The captain tried bad German. Jezek understood that. He also understood the captain did have something dangerous for him to try. He didn’t let on that he understood one damn thing. He was willing to risk his life: as he’d thought before, that was why he wore the uniform. But he wasn’t willing to get himself killed without much chance of hurting the enemy.

“Ah, screw you both,” the captain said in German when the Czechs wouldn’t admit they followed him. They went right on feigning ignorance. The Frenchman gave up. Vaclav had his ammo, and he didn’t have to try anything idiotic. As far as he was concerned, the day was a victory so far.

* * *

Once upon a time-probably not very long ago-the froggies had had themselves a big old supply dump outside a place called Hary Willi Dernen eyed what was left of it with something not far from disgust. The Frenchmen had hauled away whatever they still had a use for, then poured gasoline on the rest and set fire to it. The stink of stale smoke was sour in his nostrils.

“Come on. Get moving,” Arno Baatz growled. “Nothing worth grabbing in this miserable place.”

“Right, Corporal,” Willi said. Whenever Baatz talked to him these days, he had to fight like a son of a bitch to keep from giggling.

Every once in a while, that showed in the way he sounded. The underofficer favored him with his best glare. “Did I say something funny?”

“No, Corporal,” Willi answered hastily, and bit down hard on the inside of his cheek so the pain would drive mirth from his voice. Awful Arno remembered getting slugged in the tavern back in Watigny. He knew it had happened, anyway-you couldn’t very well not know when you woke up with an enormous bruise on your chin and a knot on the back of your head.

But Baatz showed no sign of remembering that Willi and Wolfgang Storch had been in there to see his piteous overthrow. He also didn’t remember he’d been jealous because Michelle brought drinks to them but not to him. He’d stopped a good one, all right. And that was highly convenient. Since he didn’t remember, he didn’t blame them for the damaged state of his skull.

Lieutenant Erich Krantz had replaced Lieutenant Gross the same way Gross had replaced Neustadt. Gross had kept his arm after all; he might even come back to duty one day. Neustadt hadn’t been so lucky. Krantz was here now-at least till he stopped something. Junior lieutenants seemed to have an unfortunate knack for doing that.

And, if the enemy didn’t get them, they were liable to do themselves in. Krantz stooped and started to pick up a charred board. “Sir, you might want to be careful with that,” Willi said, getting ready to shove the officer aside if Krantz didn’t feel like listening.

But the lieutenant did hesitate. “What? Why?” he asked.

Corporal Baatz butted in: “Sir, Dernen’s right.” He didn’t say that every day, so Willi let him go on: “The French pulled out of here just a little while ago. That’s the kind of thing they might booby-trap.”

“Is it?” Krantz looked surprised and intrigued. “Well, how about that? All right, I won’t mess with it.”

“That’s a good idea, sir,” Baatz said. His narrow, rather piggy eyes said Krantz should have figured this out for himself. Luckily for him, it wasn’t easy to gig a man-especially a noncom-on account of the look on his face. And Baatz looked mean and scornful most of the time, so maybe the lieutenant didn’t notice anything strange.

Krantz was looking south and west. “Now that we’ve driven the French out of here, we should be able to go on to Laon without much trouble.”

We? As in you and your tapeworm? Willi thought. The way it looked to him, the froggies had hung on so hard at Hary because it shielded Laon. They were probably digging in a little closer to the city even now-as well as anyone could in this miserable freezing weather.

Krantz was an officer. Wasn’t he supposed to know stuff like that because he was an officer? He didn’t have much experience, obviously. And if he kept poking around in a gutted supply dump, he wouldn’t live long enough to get any, either. Willi didn’t want to be standing close by when something Krantz was playing with went boom.

He couldn’t say anything like that to the lieutenant. Yes, the Fuhref’s Wehrmacht was a much more democratic, easygoing place than the Kaiser’s army had been. Old sweats who’d put in their time in the trenches in the last war all said so. Of course, Hitler was an old sweat himself. He’d fought almost from first to last without getting seriously wounded. The way things were on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918, that was either amazing luck or proof of the Gott mit uns on a Landser’s belt buckle. (But that was just the Prussian buckle the last time around, not the national one. Hitler had served in a Bavarian regiment, and would have had a different motto in front of his belly button.)

Yes, the Wehrmacht was more democratic now. Still, a private couldn’t explain the facts of life to an officer. Not even Corporal Baatz could. A grizzled Feldwebel might have done it. But Sergeant Pieck was wounded, too, and hadn’t been replaced. Krantz would have to learn on his own-if he lasted.

As if to show the platoon commander he wasn’t ready for General Staff Lampassen on the outer seams of his trouser legs, the French put in a counterattack later that afternoon. Whether Krantz had or not, Willi’d been fearing one. He was no General Staff officer, either, but he could see what a long southern flank the Germans held. The Wehrmacht had gone around the Maginot Line to the north, not through it. Evidently, the generals had counted on keeping the enemy too busy up there to worry about down here. Unfortunately, what you counted on wasn’t always what you got.

By the time the 75s started whistling in, Willi already had himself a foxhole. It had belonged to a poilu, who’d dug himself a cave in the northern wall to protect himself from German shells coming in from that direction. Willi hacked and scraped at the nearly frozen dirt in the southern wall of the hole with his entrenching tool to try to make himself the same kind of shelter from French artillery.

No splinters flayed his flesh or broke his bones, so he supposed he’d done well enough. No shells burst especially close to him, so he couldn’t prove a thing. But proof didn’t matter. All that mattered was, he didn’t get hurt.

He wasn’t sorry to let the Frenchmen come at him for a change. Sometimes-mostly when there were panzers around-attackers had the edge. More often, defenders crouched in the best shelter they could find or make and tried to murder the fellows coming at them.

His mouth went dry. He recognized that creaking, clanking rumble. As far as he knew, the Germans didn’t have any panzers in the neighborhood. If the French did, it wasn’t such a good day to crouch in a foxhole.

Boom! The report behind him was one of the sweetest sounds he’d ever heard. A split second later, he heard another one. That unmusical Clang! was an antitank round slamming into a French panzer. And the smaller pop s and blams that followed marked ammunition cooking off inside the stricken machine. Willi wouldn’t have wanted to be a French panzer crewman, not right then, not for anything.

He stood up and fired at the foot soldiers loping along with the hastily whitewashed French panzers. The poilus threw themselves flat and shot back at him. Boom! The 37mm antitank gun had found another target-found it and missed it. Behind their steel shield, the German artillerymen frantically reaimed and reloaded. Meanwhile, the French panzer’s turret swung inexorably toward them.

Both guns spoke together, as near as made no difference. The enemy panzer slewed sideways and stopped with a track shot off. But its highexplosive shell ruined the German gunners. Their shield did some good against small-arms fire. If a shell burst behind it…well, tough luck.

But then another antitank gun off to the left fired two quick rounds. The crippled French panzer started to burn in earnest. Behind the line, German artillery woke up. Shells started raining down on the ground south of Hary. Willi ducked back into his hole. Some of those shells would fall short. Your own side could kill you, too-one more lesson he wondered whether Lieutenant Krantz had learned.

Before long, the French attack petered out. The froggies didn’t seem to have had their hearts in it, not that that helped the crew of the antitank gun. Willi knew more than a little sympathy for the sorry bastards in Adrian helmets and worn khaki uniforms. Like him, they were at the mercy of officers who sent them forward and hoped something grand would come of it.

He lit a cigarette and stuck his head out for another look around. The two killed French panzers in front of him would burn for a long time. A few khaki-clad bodies lay on the snow-streaked ground. A raven glided down out of the sky and pecked at one. Scavengers never waited long.

And there was Lieutenant Krantz, peeking out of his own hole in the ground like a Feldgrau marmot. He’d come through another scrap. A few more and he’d start having an idea of what was going on out here. As much as I do, anyway, Willi thought. As much as anybody does. He took another drag and blew out a long, happy plume of smoke. He’d made it again.

* * *

Theo Hossbach was messing with the Panzer II’s radio set again, methodically taking out one tube after another, replacing each with a fresh one, and trying the radio again. “How’s it going?” Ludwig Rothe asked him.

Since Theo was wearing earphones, it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t follow. It also wasn’t surprising that he didn’t take them off so he could. Ludwig had often thought that Theo cared more about the radio than about either of his crewmates.

Direct action, then. Ludwig yanked the earphones off Theo’s head. The radio operator gave him a wounded look. “What did you go and do that for?” he asked.

“So I could talk to you?” Ludwig suggested.

By the way Theo blinked, that hadn’t occurred to him. “Are you a goddamn blackshirt, so you have to interrogate me right this fucking minute?”

“Gott im Himmel!” Ludwig’s head might have been on a swivel as he looked around the panzer park. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to his panzer, for which he was duly grateful. “Are you out of your mind, Theo? Do you want them to haul you away?”

“Nah. If I did, I would’ve-” But even Theo stopped short, swallowing whatever he’d been about to come out with. He was definitely an idiot, but maybe-just maybe-he wasn’t quite an imbecile.

Would’ve done what? Ludwig wondered. The first thing that sprang to mind was would’ve plugged the Fuhrer when I had the chance. Ludwig didn’t ask him if that was what he meant. For one thing, he feared Theo would say yes. For another, letting Theo know such a thought had crossed his own mind would give the radioman a hold on him.

And so Ludwig pointed to the set Theo was working on and asked his original question over again: “How’s it going?”

“Haven’t found the new bad tube yet.” As Theo spoke, he extracted another one. “They give out faster when we bang all over the landscape, you know.”

“Sure, but what am I supposed to do about it? Keep working. We’re as deaf as the damned Frenchmen till you do.” Ludwig had examined quite a few knocked-out French panzers. Most of them had no radios at all. French panzer leaders signaled their subordinates with wigwag disks. The Germans carried them, too, but only for emergencies. They worked well enough on the practice field. In real combat, with dust and dirt flying, they were much harder to make out. And, of course, a panzer commander who stood up in the cupola to semaphore with wigwag disks was as likely to get shot as any other suicidal damn fool.

Theo grunted and forgot about Ludwig. He put the earphones back on. After a moment, he nodded, not to Rothe but to the radio set. “You finally find the dead one?” Ludwig asked hopefully.

A moment later, he remembered Theo couldn’t hear him any more. He didn’t want to tear the earphones off the radioman’s head again; that was pushing things, even for a sergeant.

For a wonder, Hossbach doffed the earphones of his own accord. “We’re back in business,” he reported.

“Outstanding!” Because Ludwig had given him a hard time before, he made himself sound enthusiastic now. Yes, Theo lived in his old little world and visited the real one as seldom as he could get away with, but he did his job pretty well anyhow. Ludwig had heard plenty of other panzer commanders bitch about their radiomen and drivers in terms that horrified him. All in all, he was more lucky than not.

French artillery came down about half a kilometer in front of the panzer park. Somebody was getting it in the neck-probably a bunch of poor, damned infantrymen, as usual-but the precious panzers stayed out of range of enemy guns when not actually fighting.

Planes buzzed by overhead. Ludwig looked up, more curious than worried. Sure enough, Stukas and Messerschmitts flew west to punish the French and the English. The enemy didn’t use planes against German forces anywhere near so much. Ludwig was damned glad of it, too. He’d seen what air power could do to soldiers. He didn’t want anybody doing that to him.

German 105s opened up. Maybe they were shooting at the French guns. Maybe they were softening up the poilus so the next German thrust could finally break through them instead of just pushing them back. Maybe…Ludwig laughed at himself. Not for the first time, he was pretending he’d joined the General Staff. No Lampassen on the legs of his black coveralls.

Something off in the distance blew up with a hell of a bang. Even Theo noticed. “Ammunition dump?” he said.

“Christ, I hope so,” Ludwig answered. “Damned Frenchmen have already thrown more shit at us than we ever thought they had. The more we can get rid of, the less they’re liable to hit us with.”

Theo blinked in owlish surprise. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

“You’re always off in Radioland,” Ludwig said. “Half the time, I don’t think you even remember there’s a war on.”

“Oh, I remember,” Theo said. “I’d be doing something better than this if they hadn’t stuck a uniform on me. So would you.” He still looked like an owl, but a challenging owl now.

Getting that much of a rise out of him took Ludwig by surprise. “Watch your mouth!” the panzer commander said again. “The way things are, if anybody in the other blackshirts hears you go on like that, you’re down the shitter.” He was proud of those panzer coveralls, but wished the SS didn’t wear the same color.

Theo nodded slowly. He seemed much more…engaged with the real world than he often did. He even looked around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping before he said, “Well, you’re right about that, too. And things shouldn’t work that way, either. You know damn well they shouldn’t.”

“We’ll fix it after the war,” Ludwig said. “We can’t waste time worrying about it now. If France and England beat us again, we’re screwed. Remember how it was when we were kids, when they occupied us and we needed a bushel of marks to get a bushel of turnips? Do you want to see those days back again?”

“Who would? Only a crazy man.” But Theo looked around again. Softly, he added, “The other thing I don’t want is, I don’t want our own side fucking us over. And that’s what we’ve got.”

He’d just put his life in Ludwig’s hands. If Ludwig reported him the way a dutiful sergeant was supposed to, he’d have a new radioman in short order. What would happen to Theo after that was none of his business. He would be better off not wondering about such things. Theo wouldn’t, but he would.

But he didn’t want a new radioman. Theo spent too much time in his own little world, but most days he did a good job. If he doubted whether Germany was always wise…well, so did Ludwig. Gruffly, the sergeant clapped the other man on the shoulder. “We’ll take care of that after the war, too. They’ll have to listen to us then.”

“Nobody has to do anything.” Theo spoke with unwonted conviction. But then he must have realized he’d taken things as far as they could go, or more likely a few centimeters farther. He seemed to shrink back into himself. “Well, we’d better worry about the Frenchies right this minute, eh?”

“Now you’re talking!” Relief filled Ludwig’s voice. Something else on-he hoped-the French side of the line went up with a hell of a bang. That relieved him, too. He knew how hideously vulnerable to antitank rounds the Panzer II was. As with the previous bang, the fewer of them the enemy could aim at him, the better.

The panzers rattled forward an hour or so later. Foot soldiers in Feldgrau loped along with the armor. One of them waved to Ludwig, who stood head and shoulders out of the cupola. He nodded back. Panzers could do things the infantry only dreamt about. Everybody knew that, and had known it all along. But the war had taught a different lesson: that panzers needed infantrymen, too. Without them, enemy soldiers could get in close and raise all kinds of hell with grenades and bottles full of blazing gasoline and whatever other lethal little toys they happened to carry.

Stukas screamed down out of the sky. Fire and smoke and dirt rose into the air a few hundred meters ahead. Even at that distance, blast from the big bombs rattled Ludwig’s teeth. What it was doing to the bastards in khaki on whom the bombs fell…Ludwig felt a curious mixture of sympathy and hope that nobody up ahead was in any shape to fight any more.

A forlorn hope, and he knew it. Some of them would be dead. Some would be maimed, or too shellshocked to know sausage from Saturday. But there were always some lucky, stubborn assholes who’d…He hadn’t even finished the thought before a French machine gun started banging away.

A Landser toppled, clutching at his chest. Other German foot soldiers hit the dirt. Ludwig was back inside the turret a split second before several bullets rattled off the panzer’s armor. Small-arms ammo couldn’t get through. That never stopped machine gunners from trying.

“Scheisse,” Fritz said. Like Ludwig, the driver must have hoped the Stukas would do all their work for them.

Ludwig swung the turret toward the closest French machine gun. He fired back, hot 20mm cartridge cases clattering down onto the fighting compartment’s floor. The enemy Hotchkiss fell silent. The panzer pushed on.