West and East

Chapter 22

Luc Harcourt looked around. More and more poilus kept coming into the line. More and more tanks and other armored contraptions sheltered in groves or under camouflage netting not far behind it. "I think they really mean it this time."

The other members of his machine-gun crew shrugged in a unison that looked staged, all the more so as Pierre Joinville was small and swarthy while fair Tiny Villehardouin was anything but. Tiny said something incomprehensible, presumably in Breton. Joinville said something perfectly comprehensible, in southern-accented French: "The cons have meant it before. That doesn't matter for shit. What matters is whether they can do it right for a change."

Tiny nodded, so either that was what he meant or it was something else he might have said. You never could tell with him. But he was strong as an ox and he'd go forward when he got the order, so who cared? You didn't know what he was talking about? Big deal. As often as not, you didn't want to know what a private was saying. That was one of Luc's discoveries since becoming a corporal.

"We've got a chance this time, I think," he said. "Damn Boches don't have their peckers up the way they did before they started fighting in Poland, too."

"It could be," Joinville said: as much as a private was likely to give a corporal. Luc remembered that from his days with no rank at all. Oh, yes. The Gascon went on, "Other question is, do we have our peckers up now?"

That was the question, all right. Its answer would also go a long way towards answering the other question, the one from the English play. To be or not to be? Luc glanced down at his hands. They were battered and scarred and filthy, the nails short and ragged. But they opened and closed at his command. They could yank the cork from a bottle of cognac or cup a girl's soft, warm breast or knock down half a dozen Germans at five hundred meters with the Hotchkiss gun. They were marvelous things, marvelous.

Hanging around in the trenches was pretty safe. Oh, you might be unlucky, but your odds were decent. But if the French advanced… There he'd be, out in the open, just waiting for a shell fragment or a machine-gun bullet to do something dreadful. And how much would his clever hands help then?

They could slap on a wound bandage. They could give him a shot of morphine so he didn't hurt so much. It seemed… inadequate.

He hunted up Sergeant Demange. If anybody was likely to know what was going on, Demange was the man. He greeted Luc with his customary warmth: "What the fuck do you want?"

"Love you, too, Sarge," Luc said. Demange grunted and waited. He wouldn't wait long. He'd start snarling-or worse. Luc hurried ahead: "Are we really going to give the Feldgraus one in the teeth?"

"Sure as hell looks that way," Demange answered. "Any other questions? No? Then piss off, why don't you?"

Instead of pissing off, Luc asked, "How bad will it be?"

"All things considered, I'd sooner get a blowjob," the sergeant said, and lit a fresh Gitane.

"Merci beaucoup." Luc left. Behind him, Demange didn't even bother laughing. And yet he'd found out what he needed to know. The attack was coming, and the sergeant wasn't looking forward to it. Demange had done his attacking in 1918. The dose he'd got then cured him of eagerness forever after.

Luc gauged the temper of the new fish instead. When the war first broke out-good God! was it really a year ago now?-he and his buddies had tiptoed into Germany, then tiptoed right back out again. They'd been waiting to get kicked in the teeth. As soon as the Boches were ready, they'd got what they were waiting for, too.

The new guys weren't intimidated by the Germans, or by the idea of advancing against them, the way Luc and his buddies had been. Or maybe their officers weren't intimidated the way the fellows with the fancy kepis had been a year earlier. They thought they could go forward and win. That was half the battle right there. If you weren't licked before you even set out, you had a chance.

4 October 1939. 0530. The day. The hour. Luc had his machine-gun team ready. Villehardouin and Joinville were pretty much self-winding. They tolerated Luc not least because he didn't try to pretend they couldn't do it without him. They knew damn well they could. So did he.

It was chilly and drizzly in the wee small hours, but nowhere near enough rain came down to bog the tanks that had rattled forward under cover of darkness. At 0435, right on schedule, the French artillery roared to life. "See how you like that, cocksuckers!" Luc yelled through high-explosive thunder.

German artillery started shooting back inside of five minutes. Some of the Boches' shells went after the French batteries. Others pounded the front line. The Germans knew their onions. A big barrage meant the French were going to follow it up. The worse the Germans could hurt them, the better… if you were a German.

At 0530, whistles shrilled in the French trenches. "Forward!" officers shouted. Tanks growled toward the German lines, cannon blasting and machine guns braying. Joinville and Villehardouin lugged the machine gun and its tripod ahead. A pair of glum new fish carried crates full of ammunition strips. Luc had his rifle and an infantryman's usual equipment. For the moment, nothing more-rank did have its privileges. But he would turn into a beast of burden in a hurry if one of his crew went down. A machine gun was important in the grand scheme of things, a corporal's dignity much less so.

The French guns increased their range so they didn't land shells on the advancing poilus. The German guns shortened range so they did. A round from a 105 came down right on top of a tank. Fire fountained from the stricken machine. A black column of smoke mounted to the sky. Machine-gun ammo cooked off with cheerful little popping noises.

"Poor buggers," Joinville said.

"Wouldn't even be that much left of us if the shell hit here," Luc answered. The Gascon grunted and nodded.

A German MG-34 the bombardment hadn't silenced started spitting death across the field. Luc envied the Boches their weapon. It was lighter than a Hotchkiss gun, and it fired faster, too. You could carry it and fire it from the hip if you had to. He tried to imagine firing the twenty-odd kilos of the Hotchkiss from the hip. The picture wouldn't form, and for good reason.

Tracers from the German machine gun sparked closer to the Hotchkiss crew. "Down!" Luc yelled. He followed his own order, diving into a shell hole.

"We set up?" Joinville asked.

Anything that gave Luc an excuse not to stand again sounded good right then. "Yeah, let's," he said. Joinville and Villehardouin got the heavy Hotchkiss onto the even heavier tripod. One of the new guys fed a strip into the weapon. Staying as low as he could, Luc peered over the forward lip of the shell hole. The MG-34's bullets had gone past it; now they cracked by again, maybe a meter and a half above the ground: chest-high on an upright man.

Those shapes in the misty, rainy morning twilight were Germans: Germans trying to get away from oncoming Frenchmen. Having been a Frenchman trying to get away from more oncoming Germans than he cared to remember, Luc relished the sight of field-gray backs. He fired a couple of bursts at them. Maybe he'd knock some of them down. He'd sure as hell make the ones he didn't hit run faster.

A French tank shelled the MG-34 into silence. "Come on," Luc said. "Let's get moving again." His crew hid their enthusiasm very well, but they obeyed. Luc didn't want to hit his own countrymen in front of the gun.

Tanks smashed paths through the German wire. Here and there, Fritzes still stayed and fought in their battered holes. One by one, they died or gave up. A Landser with a scared, whipped-dog grin on his face showed himself, hands high. "Ami!" he said.

"C'mere, friend," Luc said, and relieved him of his watch and wallet. Some of these Germans carried fat wads of francs-on their side of the line, French money wasn't worth much. Luc gestured with his rifle. "Go on back."

"Danke! Uh-merci!" the new prisoner said. Hands still over his head to show he'd surrendered, he stumbled off into captivity. He didn't have to worry about the war any more.

Luc did. "Let's go," he said. They pushed on through the shattered German defenses. It couldn't be this easy, could it? It had never been this easy before-he was goddamn sure of that. He had no idea how long it would stay easy, either. As long as it did, he'd go along with it. OF COURSE THE REPUBLICANS set up a radio outside the POW camp in the park in Madrid. And of course they always tuned it to their own stations. Joaquin Delgadillo hadn't listened to those when he fought in Marshal Sanjurjo's army. It wasn't that the Nationalists jammed them, though they did. And the Republicans jammed Nationalist radio. Sometimes the whole dial sounded like waterfalls and sizzling lard.

But this was Radio Madrid, and they were right next to the sender. It overpowered the jamming with ease. The Republican announcer might have been standing right there, reading from a script. "And now the news," he said. "French and English armies have gone over to the offensive against the German invaders. Gains of several kilometers are reported. So are rumors that German commanders in France have been sacked because their troops retreated."

"Sacked? I'm surprised they didn't shoot them," someone behind Joaquin said. He found himself nodding. Both sides in Spain had executed officers who went back when their superiors thought they should go forward. As for common soldiers… That went without saying. Common soldiers always got it in the neck-or the back of the head, depending.

"In Poland, the forces of the workers and peasants, the glorious soldiers of the Red Army, continue to press forward against the Fascists and their sympathizers," the newsreader went on. "Many Germans and Poles willingly surrender to join the Socialist cause."

Nationalist radio continually reported German and Italian triumphs. Somebody had to be lying. Before Joaquin was captured, he would have been certain it was the Republicans. He wasn't so sure any more. These days, he wasn't sure of anything. Maybe both sides were lying as hard as they could. That wouldn't have surprised him-oh, no, not even a little bit.

"American President Roosevelt has proposed an end to the war on the basis of all sides' returning to their positions before the fighting began," the announcer said. "In rejecting this, Hitler likened it to unscrambling an egg. He said Czechoslovakia would never be independent again, and that Germany would fight on to ultimate victory." The man let out a dry chuckle. "How Germany can gain ultimate victory while retreating in both east and west, Hitler did not explain."

Joaquin didn't know what to make of that. Every time he saw the Germans in action here in Spain, they made things go forward. The Italians who came to help Marshal Sanjurjo didn't care about the fight one way or the other. But Germans… Germans made things happen.

He made the mistake of saying that to Chaim Weinberg. The Republic agitator from the United States turned the color of a sunset. "Fuck 'em all," he said. "Fuck their mothers, too, up the ass."

"You hate them so much because they're Fascists?" Delgadillo said.

"Because they're Fascists, si," Weinberg answered. "And because they hate Jews."

A light dawned. Weinberg was a Jew himself. He might have put that reason second, but he meant it first. "Spaniards hate Jews, too," Joaquin said. "Do you hate Spaniards? Why did you come here if you hate Spaniards?"

"It's different here," the American mumbled.

"Really? Different how?" Joaquin asked, honestly puzzled. "Hate is hate, isn't it?"

"With you Spaniards, hating Jews is only a-a tradition, like," Weinberg said. "You don't go out of your way to do it."

"How can we?" Joaquin laughed out loud. "You're the first Jew I ever saw in my life. We threw ours out hundreds of years ago."

"Maybe that's it," Weinberg said. "You people just know you used to hate Jews. There are still plenty in Germany, and the Nazis go to town on them."

That had to be an English idiom translated literally; Joaquin had heard Weinberg do such things before. The American made himself understood, but you never doubted you were listening to a foreigner. After working out what he had to mean, Delgadillo said, "What about the Estados Unidos? Is your country a Jews' paradise?"

Weinberg snorted. "Not hardly. But it could be worse. Some people there do hate Jews, yes. But more of them hate Negroes worse. They treat Negroes the way Europeans treat Jews."

"But you would sooner change how Spain does things than how your own country does them, eh?" Joaquin said shrewdly.

The American-the Jew-started to say something. Then he closed his mouth with a snap. When he opened it again, he let out a sheepish chuckle. "Well, you may be right," he said, which surprised Joaquin. He hadn't thought Weinberg would admit any such thing. Weinberg went on, "Other Americans are trying to make things better for Negroes. I thought fighting against the Nazis was more important."

"How many of the Americans working for your Negroes are Jews?" Delgadillo asked.

"Quite a few. Why?"

Now Joaquin found himself surprised again, in a different way. "I would have guessed your Jews would let your Negroes go hang. As long as other Americans have Negroes to hate, most of them leave Jews alone. Isn't that what you said?"

"Yes, I said that, but it doesn't mean what you said it means." On the far side, the free side, of the barbed wire, Weinberg paused to figure out whether that meant what he wanted it to mean. He must have decided it did, because he went on, "Injustice to anyone anywhere is injustice to everyone everywhere. You have to fight it wherever you find it."

"You must enjoy tilting at windmills." Joaquin had never read Don Quixote. He'd read very little. But Cervantes' phrases filled the mouths of Spaniards whether they could read or not.

"Fighting against Fascism isn't tilting at windmills," Weinberg said. "Fascism is the real enemy."

"On the other side of the line, they think the same thing about Communism," Joaquin said.

"On the other side of the line, they're wrong." Weinberg sounded as sure of himself as a priest quoting from the Bible. Delgadillo didn't think that would be a good thing to tell him. The Jew went on, "Communism wants to treat every man and every woman the same way."

"Badly-they would say over there." Joaquin still more than half believed it himself. He couldn't insist on it too strongly, though, not when he depended on good will from these people if he wanted to keep breathing.

"How well did they treat you over there?" the Jew asked. "You were a peasant, and then you were a private. Do you want your son to live the way you used to live?"

Through most of Spain's history, the only possible answer to that would have been Well, how else is he going to live? Things changed only slowly here, when they changed at all. But Joaquin had seen that there were other possibilities. He didn't like all of them-he liked few of them, in fact-but he knew they were there. Stalling for time, he said, "I have no son."

Weinberg snorted impatiently. "You know what I mean."

And Joaquin did. "Well, Senor, I mean no disrespect when I say this-please believe me, for it is true-but I am sure I do not want my son to grow up a Red."

"Why?" Weinberg challenged. "What's so bad about equality?"

"Making everyone equal by pushing the bottom up would not be so bad," Joaquin said slowly. "Making everyone equal by pulling the top down… That is not so good, or I don't think so. And it seems to me that is what the Republic aims to do."

He waited for the top to fall down on him. He'd probably said more than he should have. But the American had asked, dammit. On the other side of the wire, Weinberg paused thoughtfully. "You really are smarter than you look," he said at last. "The only thing I'll say to that is, sometimes you have to tear down before you can build up."

"Well, Senor, it could be," Delgadillo replied, by which he meant he didn't believe it for a minute.

Weinberg wagged a finger at him. "What are we going to do about you?"

"It is your choice. You caught me."

"Maybe I should have shot you when I did."

"Maybe you should have. I thought you would."

"Better to reeducate you," the Jew said. Joaquin wondered if he was right. PETE MCGILL ENJOYED TALKING with officers no better than any other Marine corporal in his right mind. Officers, to him, were at best necessary evils, at worst unnecessary ones. Sometimes, though, you had no choice. Like St. Peter, officers had the power to bind and to loose.

Captain Ralph Longstreet had never said he was related to the Confederate general of the same last name. Then again, he'd never said he wasn't. He did have a drawl thick enough to slice. A hell of a lot of Marines-and even more Marine officers, it seemed-were Southern men. Looking up from his paperwork, he said, "Well, McGill, what can I do for you today?"

"Sir, you may have heard I've, uh, got friendly with a lady here in Shanghai," McGill answered. His own New York accent was about as far from what Longstreet spoke as it could be while remaining American English.

The captain capped his fountain pen and set it on his battleship of a desk. "A dancer named Vera Kuznetsova," he said. "Vera Smith, that would be in English."

"Uh, yes, sir." Pete hadn't known what Vera's last name meant. He hadn't cared, either, and still didn't. But he knew exactly what Longstreet's tone meant. "It's not like she's Chinese or anything, sir. She's as white as you or me."

"White Russian, to be exact," Longstreet said. "What nationality does she have on her passport?"

He had to know the answer before he asked the question. "Sir, her folks got out of Siberia a length ahead of the Reds. She got out of Harbin a length ahead of the Japs. They had papers from the Tsar. I guess she did, too, when she was a baby. Now-" He shook his head.

"Officially, she's stateless, then." Captain Longstreet made it sound like a death sentence. For a lot of people, it had been. The wrong papers or no papers at all could be a disease deadlier than cholera.

"Well, sir-" Pete took a deep breath. "She wouldn't be, sir, not any more, not after she married me."

Longstreet had been about to light up an Old Gold. He paused just before striking the match. "Why don't you shut the door, son, and sit your ass down?" he said. Gulping, Pete obeyed. He didn't think Longstreet sounded friendly all of a sudden-the tone was more like the warden asking a condemned prisoner what he wanted for his last meal. Pete's anxiety only grew when Longstreet offered him a cigarette: it made him think of firing squads. Not knowing what else to do, he took the coffin nail anyhow. Longstreet waited till he'd got halfway down the smoke before continuing, "You've got it bad, don't you?"

"Sir, I'm in love," Pete said. "She loves me, too. Honest to God, she does."

"Well, it's possible. I reckon stranger things have happened," Longstreet said. He was a captain; Pete couldn't bust him in the face. Marrying Vera while he was stuck in the brig would be hard, to say the least. Longstreet went on, "But do you figure she hasn't got you tabbed for a meal ticket, too?"

All of Pete's buddies said the same goddamn thing. He was sick of hearing it. "Well, what if she does, sir? She could've picked other guys to play games with, but she didn't. She does love me, and I-" He stopped, his tongue clogging up his mouth. Talking about what he felt for Vera-even trying to talk about it-was far and away the hardest thing he'd ever done. Charging a Jap machine-gun nest would have been nothing next to it. The Japs could only kill him.

Had Longstreet yelled at him (or, worse, laughed at him), he would have sat there and taken it, but something inside him would have died. He expected one or the other. Looking for sympathy from an officer was a losing game. But the captain said, "Well, your sentiments do you credit. And you aren't going into this with your eyes shut tight, anyhow. That's something."

"How do you mean, sir?" Pete asked.

"If you reckon you're the first Marine to fall head over heels for a Russian dancing girl or a Chinese singsong girl, I have to tell you you're mistaken," Longstreet said. "A lot of 'em think their sweethearts were virgins till they charmed the girls off their feet and into bed. You seem to know better than that."

"Er-yes, sir." Pete's ears heated. He'd wished he might have been Vera's first, but he hadn't been able to imagine he really was. He mumbled, "She never tried to pretend anything different."

"One for her, then," the captain said. "You've got it bad, but you could have it worse."

"All I want to do is make it legal. She does, too."

"I'm sure she does." Longstreet's voice was dry as dust. "The advantages for her are obvious. I'm sure the advantages for you are obvious, too, but they aren't the kind that's got anything to do with what's legal and what isn't."

Pete's ears caught fire again. "Well, sir, what the… dickens am I gonna do?"

"It's not a simple question. First, there's the issue of whether you ought to marry the, mm, the young lady." Captain Longstreet raised a hand. "I know you think so now, but whether you will a year from now may be a different story. Like I said, you aren't the first Marine I've seen in this boat."

"Yes, sir," Pete muttered. As far as he was concerned, whatever Longstreet knew about love he'd got out of books. You could read about bar brawls, too, but reading about them wouldn't tell you what getting into one was like.

"And I hate to have to remind you of it, but you are a Marine on active duty," Longstreet added. "You can't just go marrying somebody, the way you could if you were a couple of civilians back in the States."

"I understand that, sir. That's how come I came to see you."

"Okay. Now we get down to the really hard part. It's not easy for a Marine on active duty to get married. He's supposed to be a Marine first, not a husband first. The country does expect that of him." Longstreet sighed. "And if you reckon it's hard for a Marine to get hitched in a regular way, it's at least five times as hard for him to tie the knot with a stateless person. At least." He spoke with a certain somber satisfaction.

"Tell me what I've got to do. Whatever it is, I'll do it," Pete declared.

To his surprise, the captain smiled. It was a wintry smile, but it was a smile even so. "You sound like a Marine, all right," Longstreet said.

"Sir, I am a Marine, sir!" Pete sprang to his feet and came to rigor mortis-like attention.

"At ease, son," Longstreet told him. "At ease. Sit down. Relax. Take an even strain. This may happen. I won't tell you it's impossible. But it won't be easy, and it won't be quick. If you think it will, you'll burn out your bearings and you won't get anything for it but heartache."

"Tell me what to do," Pete repeated.

"You've done the first thing you needed to do: you've brought it to my attention. Now I'm going to have to talk to the judge advocate. He'll tell me where the mines are, and how you can go about sweeping them." Longstreet must have had a lot of sea duty, to think of mines in the water instead of mines buried under the ground. Well, he wasn't old enough to have gone Over There in 1918.

"When will you talk with him, sir? When will he figure out what needs doing?" Pete was all eagerness.

It was his life, of course. It was only Ralph Longstreet's job, and a small, annoying part of his job at that. "I see Herb every day, of course," he answered. "I'll fill him in on what's troubling you, and after that it's in his hands. He may have to talk with some other people, too."

Pete had thought-had hoped-this might be a matter of days. Now he saw all too plainly that it would be weeks or months if not the threatened year. His shoulders lost the iron brace they'd kept even while he sat in the hard wooden chair in front of Longstreet's desk. "Well, thanks for starting things, anyway, sir."

"You did that," the officer said. "And if you're still as ready to go through with it by the time we're all done as you are now, I'd say your chances with this girl will be a lot better than they are today." He picked up the fountain pen. "Anything else on your mind as long as you're here?"

"Uh, no, sir."

"Okay. Dismissed." Longstreet went back to work. Pete stood up, saluted, and left the captain's office. He wondered if he'd done himself and Vera more harm than good. WILLI DERNEN DIDN'T KNOW where the hell he was. Somewhere in France-somewhere between where he had been and the border with the Low Countries. He couldn't smell Paris, couldn't taste victory, any more. All he smelled was trouble.

He shivered under his summer-weight tunic. It was cold as a witch's tit. If the winter was as bad as it gave signs of being, it'd freeze his balls off. His breath smoked. That was bad. An alert enemy soldier could spot the fog puffs rising into the chilly air and lie in wait to pot the poor bastard who was making them. But he didn't know what he could do about it. Stop breathing? No, thanks!

A gray-haired French peasant watching sheep in a meadow stared at him with no expression at all. Chances were the fellow'd gone through the mill in the last war. Would he sneak off to tell the poilus where the Germans were? He might.

The froggies had been polite, even friendly, while the Wehrmacht had the bit between its teeth. And why not? They'd figured they would stay German a long time, the way they had after 1914. Now they were wondering. That would mean more trouble down the line, sure as hell it would.

Something else moved. Willi's scope-sighted rifle swung that way as if it had a life of its own. But it wasn't a poilu. It was Corporal Baatz coming out of the bushes. Reluctantly, Willi lowered the rifle's muzzle. Tempting as it was, he couldn't go and plug Awful Arno. He didn't suppose he could, anyhow. The unloved corporal was his lord and master again. He'd been reattached to his old unit within hours after Oberfeldwebel Puttkamer got his head blown off. He was still surprised they hadn't made him turn in the fancy Mauser. Somebody'd slipped up there.

Baatz saw him, too, and waved. He didn't raise his hand too high. You never could tell what would draw a sniper's eye. Willi wondered what had happened to the goddamn Czech with the antipanzer rifle. He was probably still busy nailing Germans. Puttkamer wasn't around to quarrel with him any more, that was for sure.

"Wie geht's?" Awful Arno asked.

Willi shrugged. "I'm still here. If I get hungry, I'll shoot me a sheep." He paused, considering. Hell with it, he thought, and went on, "War's pretty goddamn fucked up, though, isn't it?"

He might have known Baatz wouldn't admit what was as plain as the nose on his piggy face. "You can't talk like that," the noncom insisted.

"Why the hell not?" Willi said. "It's true, isn't it?"

"It's disloyal, that's what it is," Baatz answered. "I knew the Gestapo guys knew what they were doing when they started sniffing around you and your asshole buddy Storch."

And they had, too. All the same, Willi said, "Oh, fuck off, man. If you can't tell we screwed the pooch, you're too dumb to go on living."

Awful Arno turned red. "Watch your big mouth, before you open it so wide you fall in and disappear. You keep going on like that, I'll report you-so help me God I will."

"Go ahead," Willi said wearily. "Maybe you'll get me yanked out of the line. If you do, I'll be better off than you are."

That only made Baatz madder. "You don't know what the devil you're talking about. Wait till they chuck you into Dachau. You'll wish you only had machine guns to worry about."

The blackshirts had said the same thing. Willi wasn't about to take it from Awful Arno. "Give me a break. If telling the truth is disloyal, then I guess I am. Jesus Christ, the war is screwed up. Even a blind man can see it. Even you should be able to."

"You're not just talking about the war," Baatz said. "You're talking about how we're fighting it. And if you say that's gone wrong, you're saying the Fuhrer's leadership isn't everything it ought to be."

"Yeah? And so? He's the Fuhrer. He's not God, for crying out loud. When he takes a crap, angels don't fall out of his asshole," Willi said.

Awful Arno's eyes widened. He looked like an uncommonly sheltered child hearing about the facts of life for the first time. "He's the Fuhrer," he said, on a note as different from Willi as could be.

"Ja, ja, and the Grofaz, too," Willi said: the cynical contraction of the German for greatest military leader of all time. "But if he's so goddamn great, how come we're retreating? How come Paris is way the hell over there?" He pointed west.

Before Baatz could answer, a mortar bomb burst a hundred meters behind them. They both threw themselves flat. More bombs came down, some of them closer. Fragments whined and snarled overhead. Willi looked around without raising his head. Sure as hell, that Frenchman had bailed out. And a couple of sheep were down and kicking. Spit filled his mouth. Mutton chops!

Arno Baatz shielded his face with his arm, as if that would do any good. "So Dachau is worse than this, is it?" Willi said.

The corporal nodded without raising his head. "You'd better believe it is. And everybody who doubts the Fuhrer will end up in a place like that." Conviction filled his voice.

"Scheisse," Willi said. "If he messed up the war-and he damn well did-somebody needs to doubt him, don't you think? I hope to God I'm not the only one, or Germany's even more screwed up than I figured."

"He's the Fuhrer. If we live through this, Dernen, I will report you."

"Go ahead," Willi said, wondering if he would have to make sure Awful Arno damn well didn't live through it. He would if he had to, but he didn't want to. Killing someone on his own side in cold blood wasn't what he'd signed up for. He went on, "I'll call you a motherfucking liar and say you always had it in for me-and that's the truth, too. You think the officers don't know what kind of asshole you are, Baatz? Yeah, report me. It's your word against mine. I bet they believe me, not you, and you end up in the concentration camp."

"You don't get it, do you?" Baatz sounded almost pitying. "This is security we're talking about. Of course they'll believe me."

"They'd believe somebody with a working brain, maybe, but not a fuckup like you," Willi retorted. "Like I said, they know better. Go ahead, report me, cuntface. You'll find out." Maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong. Maybe nobody'd take any chances, and they'd both wind up in Dachau. If they did, he was willing to bet he'd last longer than Awful Arno.

And maybe they wouldn't live through this, and it would all be moot. Willi lifted his head a few centimeters. Something that wasn't a sheep moved atop the next little swell of ground to the west. Willi brought his rifle to his shoulder and snapped a shot at it. It disappeared down the back side of the hillock.

"What was that?" Baatz asked.

"Well, it might have been a hippo escaped from the zoo. Or it might have been a Frenchman." Willi chambered a fresh round. "Odds were it was a Frenchy. So if you want to live long enough to rat on me, get your empty ostrich head out of the sand and start acting like a soldier." He'd never had the chance to tell off a noncom like this. It was fun. It might almost be worth getting shot. Almost. If Baatz got shot, too…

Two French soldiers came over that hillock. They were more cautious than the first fellow had been-they knew there were Landsers on this side, which he hadn't. Willi fired at one of them. Then he rolled away from Baatz and into the bushes. Once the shooting started, you wanted as much cover as you could find.

Awful Arno fired at the poilus, too. He was a decent combat soldier; even Willi, who'd despised him for a year now, would have admitted as much. He headed for something that might be cover, too. Off to the left, a German MG-34 started sawing away. A small smile crossed Willi's face. He loved machine guns-his own side's machine guns, anyhow. They were the best guarantee a poor ordinary ground pounder had that he'd go on pounding ground a while longer.

The MG-34 didn't just knock over enemy soldiers. It made them concentrate on it, so they forgot all about Willi and Baatz. He got a clean shot at a fellow crawling along in a khaki greatcoat. The fancy Mauser thumped his shoulder. The poilu doubled up. Sorry, buddy, Willi thought, but you would have done the same thing to me.

They held the French in place till the late afternoon. By then, Willi had a well-positioned, well-protected foxhole-but no sheep carcass to keep him company, dammit. Even so, he was ready to stay a while, but a runner came up to order the line back half a kilometer. The Germans withdrew under cover of darkness.

Willi and Arno Baatz almost tripped over each other. They exchanged glares. "Grofaz," Willi said again, defiantly. If the Fuhrer was so fucking smart, how come they were going backwards? Pretty soon, even Awful Arno would start wondering about things like that. Wouldn't he?