three-man machines weren’t obsolescent any more. They were obsolete, and everybody who had anything to do with them knew as much. They soldiered on regardless. A veteran crew, which his panzer certainly had, could still get good use from one. And any panzer at all made infantry very unhappy.
Besides, there were still nowhere near enough modern Panzer IIIs and IVs to go around. When the best weren’t available, the rest had to do what they could.
What Theo’s company was doing now was protecting a stretch of front that ran from a village to a small town closer to Smolensk than to Minsk. Just exactly where the village and town lay, Theo wasn’t so sure. A good atlas might have shown him, but he didn’t have one. What difference did it make, anyhow?
All he really knew was, the front had gone back and forth a good many times. Lately, it seemed to have gone back more often than it had gone forth. The Ivans were marvelous at slipping companies, sometimes even battalions or regiments, of infantry in white snowsuits behind the German lines and raising hell with them. They weren’t so good at taking advantage of the trouble they caused-which was a lucky thing for everybody who had to fight them.
Theo still wore the black coveralls of a panzer crewman. They looked smart and didn’t show grease stains. No doubt that was why the powers that be had chosen them. But odds were a man in black coveralls running toward a hiding place through the snow wouldn’t live to get there.
“Got a cigarette, Theo?” Adalbert Stoss asked.
“Here.” Theo passed the driver a tobacco pouch. He doled out the fixings for a smoke more readily than he parted with words. Adi tore off a strip from a Russian newspaper none of the panzer men could read. He sprinkled tobacco from the pouch (taken off a dead Ivan) onto the cheap pulp paper, rolled the cigarette, and lit it-he did have matches.
“Ahh,” he said after the first drag, exhaling a mixture of smoke and fog-it was well below freezing. “Much obliged.” He returned the pouch. Unlike a lot of soldiers Theo knew, Adi didn’t steal everything that wasn’t nailed down. His family must have raised him the right way… which didn’t necessarily make him the ideal man for life in the field.
On the other hand, if anybody in a black coverall could make it to shelter running through the snow, Adi could. He was the best footballer Theo had ever seen except for a handful of professionals-and he was in their league. He was fast and strong and agile. And he was smart, which only added to his other gifts. With a sergeant’s pips, or even a corporal’s, he would have made a fine panzer commander.
I should be jealous, Theo thought. He’d been in the war from the very beginning. Adi hadn’t. But Theo knew he would be a disaster trying to command a panzer. He was the kind of fellow other people didn’t notice, which suited him fine. Give orders? Talk all the time? No thanks!
Sergeant Hermann Witt, who did command the panzer, had machine-made cigarettes of his own. Theo preferred the captured stuff. It might not be especially good, but by God it was strong. Everything that came out of Germany these days was adulterated-well, everything but the ammo, anyhow. The cigarettes that got issued along with rations tasted of hay and horseshit. The coffee was ersatz. People said the war bread had sawdust in it as a stretcher. Theo didn’t know if he believed that. People also said the war bread was better than it had been in the last fight. Theo didn’t know if he believed that, either. If the last generation had it worse than this, no wonder they threw the Kaiser out.
The Nazis said Germany got stabbed in the back in 1918. Well, the Nazis said all kinds of things. Theo took them no more seriously than he had to. Since he said next to nothing himself, he wasn’t likely to get in trouble on account of that.
He glanced over at Adi. Stoss smoked as intently as he did everything else. By all the signs, he didn’t take the Nazis very seriously, either. And chances were he had better reasons not to than even Theo’s.
No sooner there than gone. Theo didn’t want to think about Stoss’ reasons. He didn’t want to, and so he didn’t. No matter how little use he had for the Nazis, he’d learned a thing or three since the Fuhrer came to power. He wasn’t even consciously aware that he had, which meant nothing at all. Ideas, thoughts, went into little armored compartments. When he wasn’t actively dealing with them, they might as well not have been there. No one else would ever notice them. More often than not, he didn’t notice them himself.
Somebody who lived in a free country wouldn’t have to think that way. Theo understood as much. But, since he couldn’t do anything about it, he kept his mouth shut. Come to that, he kept it shut as much as he could.
Even though he didn’t love the Nazis, he did love the Vaterland. And, regardless of what he thought of the current German regime, it had placed him-along with millions of other young German men-in a position where his country’s enemies would kill him if he didn’t fight hard.
That was underscored when mortar bombs started dropping near the panzer crewmen. Russian rifles barked. “Urra!” the Ivans roared. “Urra! Urra!” They sounded like fierce wild animals. Their officers fed them vodka before sending them into action. It dulled their fear-and their common sense.
Theo’s first instinct when the mortar rounds came in was to hit the dirt. His next instinct was to get inside the panzer. That was the better notion. He’d be at a little more risk while he was upright and running, but the machine’s armored sides would protect him against fragments and small-arms fire.
Sergeant Witt and Adi Stoss also sprinted for the Panzer II. Other men in black coveralls dashed toward their machines, too. A couple of them didn’t make it. Those coveralls and their blood bright against the snow reproduced the German national colors. A bullet sparked off Theo’s panzer just a few centimeters from his head. He dove through the hatch behind the turret and slammed it shut. A Schmeisser hung on two brackets above his radio set. If somebody started climbing up onto the panzer, he’d open a hatch and start shooting. Otherwise, the submachine gun was there more to ease his mind than for any other reason.
“Start it up!” Witt screamed at Adi. The order made sense-a panzer that was just sitting there was a panzer waiting for a Molotov cocktail. Theo didn’t want to think about burning gasoline dripping into the fighting compartment and setting things ablaze in here.
But would the beast start? In a Russian winter, that was always an interesting question and often a terrifying one. The self-starter ground. Maybe Adi would have to get out and crank the engine to life-assuming he didn’t get shot to death before he could. Maybe even cranking wouldn’t get it going. German lubricants weren’t made for this hideous weather. Sometimes crews kept a fire burning through the night under the engine compartment to keep the engine warm enough to turn over in the morning.
Adi tried it again. This time, to Theo’s amazed delight, the grinding noise turned into a full-throated roar as the engine fired up after all. “Forward!” Witt said, and the driver put the Panzer II into gear. Forward it went. Back against the fireproof-he hoped-bulkhead that separated the fighting compartment from the engine, Theo started to warm up. Heat came through slowly, but it came.
Witt could traverse the turret by muscle power even if the gearing froze up. He could, and he did, spraying machine-gun fire and occasional rounds from the 20mm cannon at the oncoming Ivans. A few more bullets spanged off the panzer’s steel hide, but bullets didn’t bother it. Anything worse than a bullet would, but…
“They’re running!” the panzer commander exclaimed. In the Russians’ fine felt boots, Theo would have run, too. If they had no armor of their own in the neighborhood, they were helpless against panzers. A little German victory. This time. For the moment. How to turn that into something more lasting, Theo had no idea. Did anyone else, from Hitler on down?
Chapter 2
Alistair Walsh had spent his whole adult life in the British Army-which, unlike the Navy and the Air Force, wasn’t Royal. The former sergeant sometimes wondered why not. His best guess, based on long experience, was that no King of England in his right mind wanted to lend his regal title to such a buggered-up outfit.
Almost as soon as Walsh got to France the first time, in the summer of 1918, he stopped a German bullet. The Kaiser’s men had pushed as far as they could then, and soon started getting pushed instead. Walsh was back at the front before the Armistice. He saw enough action to decide he liked soldiering. He certainly liked it better than going back to Wales and grubbing out coal for the rest of his life, which was his other choice when the war ended. He managed to stay in the Army while it hemorrhaged men after peace came.
And he went to France again, this time as a staff sergeant rather than a raw private, when things heated up
