paid the least attention to the Frenchmen tramping up to the front. He really wouldn’t have thought they could tell one regiment from another. And he really wouldn’t have thought that, even if they could, they’d be able to pass the word on to their countrymen so fast.
That only went to show how much he knew. With noxious good cheer, the French-speaking Russian went on, “Now that you’re back, we should welcome you the way you deserve!”
“Jump for the bombproofs, boys!” Demange shouted, a good twenty seconds before mortar bombs started raining down on the trenches.
His instincts saved lives. Luc had already curled up in a place where fragments couldn’t get him when the shooting started. But not everybody was so lucky. Machine guns and German artillery kept the Russians at bay. Stretcher-bearers hauled off the wounded Frenchmen.
“Those fucking stovepipes are bad news,” Demange said, lighting one more in his endless chain of Gitanes.
“How did the Russians know who we were?” Luc asked.
“How doesn’t matter. But they knew, all right. That jeering prick… He sounded just like a captain I served under in the last war. That asshole stopped a 77-or maybe it was a 105-with his face. Hardly enough left of him to bury. I hope the same thing happens to this son of a bitch, too.”
“He was just the mouthpiece,” Luc said. “It’s the ones who told him what to say who need killing.”
“They all need killing,” Demange said. “And they think we all need killing. And if everybody gets his way, nobody’ll be left when this stupid war’s done, and you know what? The world’ll be a better place after that. For a little while, till the cats or the rats learn how to lie.”
“Heh,” Luc said uneasily, not at all sure the older man was kidding. He decided to change the subject: “What are we going to do now?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to shore up these works the best way I know how.” Demange stopped, an evil smile lighting up his face. He shook his head. “No. Fuck that. I’m an officer now, right? I’m going to have a bunch of sorry-ass privates shore this shit up for me.”
“Sounds good, Lieutenant.” Luc grinned. With a sergeant’s hash marks on his sleeve, he wouldn’t have to thicken up the calluses on his palm with an entrenching tool so much, either.
“And then,” Demange went on, “and then, what I’m going to do is sit right here on my ass and not move a centimeter forward till some cocksucker in a fancy kepi makes me do it.”
“That sounds good, too,” Luc agreed. “But what about the crusade against Bolshevism?”
“What afuckingbout it?” Demange retorted. “I’m here, aren’t I? You’re here, aren’t you? As much as you’re ever anywhere, I mean.”
“I love you, too, sir,” Luc put in.
Demange ignored him, not for the first time and no doubt not for the last. The veteran went on, “We’ve both shot Russians. If they come at us again-no, when they do-we’ll shoot some more of them so they don’t shoot us. I’ll do whatever I’ve got to do to stay alive. But if you think I’m enough of a jackass to give a fart about any of that political horseshit, you’re even dumber than I give you credit for.”
“Mmp.” Luc left that right there. He looked up and down the trenches. No one was paying special attention to him and Demange, except perhaps to see what kind of nasty orders the lieutenant and sergeant doled out next and who’d get stuck with them. Lowering his voice, Luc continued, “Some of the guys in the ranks are still Reds, you know. They didn’t come close to weeding all of ’em out before they sent us east.”
“Oh, sure.” Lieutenant Demange nodded. “But so what? Most of ’em’ll shoot Ivans to keep from getting killed themselves, and that’s all they’ve really got to do. A few of ’em’ll desert.”
“A few of them have already deserted,” Luc pointed out.
“Uh-huh.” Demange nodded again. “And you know what? I bet the fucking Russians ate ’em without salt. We’re only here because Daladier’s got his head up his ass. Those miserable Russkis, they’re here on account of the Nazis and Poles and us, we’re in their country. It makes all the fucking difference in the world. Even a sorry turd like you didn’t fight too bad when the Fritzes invaded France.”
“That’s the nicest thing you ever said about me.” Luc tried to sound sarcastic. He did less well than he would have liked, mostly because he meant it. That was about the nicest thing Demange had ever said about him.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t know your ass from your elbow when you started out. But you were luckier than most of the other poor stupid new fish: the Nazis didn’t nail you or blow you up right away, so you got the chance to learn,” Demange said. “By now, you know what you’re doing. One more time, you’d be even dumber than I figure you for if you didn’t.”
“Thanks a bunch,” Luc said, deflated. He’d been cut and scratched and bruised, but he never did get badly hurt. Was that all it took to make a good soldier? Staying in one piece long enough to learn the ropes? The more he thought about it, the likelier it seemed.
Even a good soldier, though, had to stay lucky all the time. Things had to keep missing him. Superiors had to steer clear of idiotic orders that put him in a place where things couldn’t help hitting. Otherwise, he’d go down and thrash and scream just as loud as any clodhopper fresh out of training. He knew that, too.
Chapter 7
Colonel Otto Griehl commanded the panzer regiment of which Theo Hossbach was a small and none too vital part. Theo didn’t think the regimental commander was such a bad guy. Had the colonel known as much, that doubtless would have warmed the cockles of his heart, whatever the hell those were. But even if Griehl wasn’t such a bad guy, he did like to hear himself talk.
“Men, we’ve been stuck in the mud too damn long,” he declared to the troopers in black coveralls with the silver panzer Totenkopf on their collar patches. “Now we can move around again, so we’re going to go out and give the Ivans what-for.”
Some of the assembled panzer troopers clapped their hands. Adi Stoss leaned close to Theo and muttered, “Who’s this we he keeps going on about? Him and his tapeworm?”
Theo snickered. He might not think Griehl was a bad guy, but that didn’t mean he took authority any more seriously than he had to. Contemplating the exalted colonel’s equally exalted tapeworm was as good a cure for that as he could imagine, and better than most.
Hermann Witt clucked in reproof-mild reproof, but reproof even so. “Griehl comes forward with the rest of us,” he said.
“Ja, ja,” Adi said. Theo nodded. It was true enough. In a panzer regiment, company commanders and the regimental CO did lead machines of their own, and did advance with-sometimes ahead of-everybody else. They didn’t inflict their wisdom on the troops from kilometers behind the line, the way high-ranking officers had in the last war.
Well, Witt was a sergeant himself, and a panzer commander. Being a small-scale leader had to give him more sympathy for the worries of a large-scale one. Theo had no urge to tell anybody else what to do. He also had no desire whatsoever to have other people tell him what to do.
He wasn’t an ideal fit for the Wehrmacht, then. Ideal fit or not, here he was. He glanced over at Adalbert Stoss. Adi wasn’t such a great fit, either. He might not mind giving other people orders, but he was even less thrilled about taking them than Theo. To Theo, other people were equals, and equals had no business telling other equals what to do. As far as Adi was concerned, other people were idiots until they proved otherwise.
He wouldn’t have deferred to Sergeant Witt if Witt hadn’t shown he knew what he was doing. That was part of the trouble he’d had with the previous panzer commander. The rest of that trouble, though, had been more on the order of two rams banging heads in the springtime. Heinz Naumann wouldn’t do any more head-banging. He lay somewhere to the west, under a cross unless the Russians had desecrated his grave.
Woolgathering meant Theo’d missed some of the colonel’s harangue. He wouldn’t lose any sleep over that. As he started paying attention again, Griehl was saying, “-will surround Smolensk in a ring of steel and fire. Along with our brave allies, we’ll smash the Russians inside that ring.”
He got some more applause. Theo marveled that he could talk like that with a straight face. The English and French were here, but didn’t want to be. The Poles were more enthusiastic, but short of everything bigger than a
