trench for a full five minutes and then ordered them back out to take up positions a thousand meters to the rear.
It wasn't until Ivan began to lay artillery and heavy mortars on the position they had just left that he understood why. By going back to the gully and firing they let Ivan think they were still there and let them shell empty positions all night while they rested in peace further back. Once the new defensive perimeters were set and the sentries stationed, the rest could settle down for a few hours of badly needed sleep. They had been lucky this night. If Ivan hadn't tried to get so cute and creep up on them without any artillery or mortar fire beforehand, it might well have been a different story. As it was they had only nine dead and seven wounded, two critically, and these were laid by the Wespes and were being cared for by their medics.
Langer and Teacher took the first watch. Teacher filled his ever-present pipe and sucked in deep on the aromatic smoke while Langer lit up another Juno.
'A long day, right. Teacher?'
'It could have been longer or shorter. It's all a matter of perspective.'
Carl stripped to the waist and rinsed himself with a careful measure from his canteen, wiping away the surface grime and powder. The water, even though lukewarm, felt cool on his skin. Teacher looked at the mass of scars on his tank leader's torso. Some were thin lines like threads of white; others were deep gouges that puckered at the edges and one on his left wrist that ran all the way around. . . .
'I don't guess you're ever going to tell me how you got so chopped up, so I guess I'll just have to ask. If you don't want to talk, it's all right.' He took a couple of short puffs to keep the pipe lit.
'It's all right. Teacher. The old scars came from when I was a kid and in a car wreck; I went through the windshield and got cut up pretty good. The others came from an assortment of accidents—some from a train wreck in Switzerland in 1934 and the others from jealous husbands; they look worse than they are.'
Teacher moved to where he could see Carl's chest and pointed to a long deep scar right in the center of the chest. 'What about that one! I know that had to be serious.'
Langer touched the scar. 'Well, let's just say that's one I don't want to talk about.'
Teacher nodded. 'As you wish. Now tell me, how are things at home? What news? We really haven't had a chance to talk since you got back from the training regiment.'
Letting the air dry him, he sat down next to Teacher on the turret. 'Not good. The Americans and British are bombing night and day and all but the essentials are gone, though the black market is active enough, if you have money—or something to trade. But what bothers me the most are the rumors and stories of what's going on at places where civilians are kept in camps. A couple of names that have cropped up are Auschwitz and Buchenwald. I don't know, Teacher, I have seen trainloads of Jews being sent back from Poland and Russia, whole families in cattle cars. I asked an SD man about it at one of the stations and he said they were going to relocation centers . . . but I just don't know. The things I have heard are not good.'
Teacher nodded slowly. 'I know what you are talking about. I have heard them too. It's the SS, the bully boys of the Totenkopf, the Jew baiters and toughs from the streets of the thirties.' Teacher spat on the side of the tank, missing his mark on the ground.
'Bastards.'
'Here at the front we don't get any of that shit or hear much of it, but recently they have been sending some of those black-uniformed heroes to the front to fill out the ranks of the Waffen SS and with them, they bring their sickness.'
Langer shook his head, the thin hairline scar giving him a bitter look that came out in his words, 'I don't know if we deserve to win if the stories are true. Teacher. I don't know if we're going to win anyway. Russia is just too big, and for every tank that's turned out in the factories in Germany, the Russians turn out twenty. They can afford the losses. If we don't win soon, I don't think we ever will, and if the stories are right, I don't want us to. Look, we have all shot some prisoners when it was necessary, when we couldn't take them with us and couldn't send them back or let them go. That's one thing. But the horrors I have heard are too much and believe me. Teacher, I have been around more than you might believe.'
Teacher thumped his pipe out in the cup of his hand, dropping the ashes. 'You can talk to me like that, but be careful what you say around anyone else. You know the punishment for spreading sedition and defeatest talk.'
'Well, it's time to wake Gus and the youngster up. We can still get a couple of hours sack before morning.'
Gus and Manny took their places on the turret while Teacher and Langer rolled up in their blankets. Like all soldiers they knew how to sleep instantly—one deep breath, close the eyes and out.
Gus spent the hours until dawn regaling Manny with stories of his amorous adventures while working as a whorehouse bouncer in Stuttgart. Manfried learned more that night about female anatomy than he could have in twenty years of normal living, but then whoever said Gus was 'normal.' Everything he did was oversized and exaggerated; he ate more, talked more, drank more and lied more than anyone in the army and that included the general staff and Herr Schiklegruber, as he referred to the SS's holy German, the Austrian Fuhrer.
Manny was aghast at the disrespect shown the leader. Never had he heard anyone say anything detrimental about him before. It was unheard of, but he couldn't help laughing when Gus told him that Hitler would have never made it, if he had kept his real name. After all, it would nearly be impossible to imagine 20,000 black-dressed SS men at a party day rally in Nuremberg shouting 'Heil Schiklegruber.' No indeed, there was a lot to a name.
By the time of the first false light of predawn creeping over the fields, he was certain he was sitting next to either a madman or superman—possibly both. Scratching the stubble of beard, Gus stood up on the side of the tank and undid his pants and took a leak, his stomach rumbled and he leaped from the tank telling Manny to watch things and ran off to do some looting for breakfast. The four pounds of sausage was eaten before last night's attack. Gus was a man who needed to keep his strength up. After all, one never knew when he might run into some of the Russian female mortar crews. God. How he would like to have a week interrogating some of the large-titted, broad-hipped Russian female officers. He would teach them soon enough who the master race was; after all, did not a pecker bear a strong resemblance to the German helmet. And he, being the pride of the Panzer Corps, had the finest example of one available for miles.
Gus's logic escaped Manny, but then most of the things Gus said he missed. After Gus left, he selfconsciously opened his trousers and took a good look at his own organ. Controlling a giggle, he thought: 'You know, it does look like a German helmet, but doesn't everyone's look the same?' He'd have to ask Gus about that when he came back.
