“Swell. Now figure another one. I can go down to the waterfront, too,” Pete said.
Herman Szulc snorted. “You try it, you’ll end up wearing cement overshoes. You’re a nice guy, Pete. You know what the Shanghai waterfront does with nice guys? Trust me, you don’t want to find out.”
“I can take care of myself.” Pete believed it.
Szulc, by contrast, giggled. So did the bartender, though right away he tried to pretend he hadn’t. His reaction did more to persuade Pete he was talking nonsense than Szulc’s did. And Herman came down-some. They drank and haggled, haggled and drank. The guy behind the bar soaked in every word.
Theo Hossbach gathered with the rest of the panzer crewmen in his company to hear the word come down from on high. It came down through Captain Werner Schellenberg, the company CO. He read from a piece of paper that he must have got from regimental HQ: “To ensure continued loyalty amidst the pressures of our ruthless war against Bolshevism and international Jewry, we are going to introduce National Socialist Leadership Officers into the command structure. They will give the troops support in creating and maintaining a proper National Socialist worldview, and will see to it that all orders issued by the regular officer corps are in complete accord with National Socialist doctrines and ways of thought. This change in the command structure is to be implemented immediately.” He looked out at the men he led. “Questions?”
Several hands shot into the air. Had Theo been a man who asked out loud the questions that formed in his head, his would have been one of them. Since he wasn’t, he kept his hand down. So did Adalbert Stoss, though his expression was eloquent.
Captain Schellenberg pointed to one of the men. “Go ahead, Rudi.”
“Sir, how are these National Socialist Waddayacallems different from the Ivans’ political commissars?”
That would also have been the first question Theo asked. By the way the rest of the panzer crewmen nodded, it was uppermost in their minds, too. Everyone eyed the company commander. What would he say? What could he say?
“I’ll tell you how they’re different, boys. They’re ours, that’s how,” Schellenberg answered.
That was blunt enough and then some. But it raised as many questions as it answered-probably more. “What do we need ’em for?” Rudi demanded, which was certainly one of those questions. “Are people in Berlin saying we’ve gotta read Mein Kampf before we plan an ambush? Soldiering doesn’t work that way.”
There was an understatement. Theo had looked at Mein Kampf. He admired Hitler for making Germany a respected nation once more. Looking at the Fuhrer ’s book did nothing to increase his admiration. It struck him as rubbish-energetic, passionate, sometimes clever rubbish, but rubbish all the same.
Schellenberg chose his words with obvious care: “We need men who are loyal to the state and loyal to the government. If this is how we get them, I’m for it. Don’t forget, we had generals trying to overthrow the government in the middle of a war. How can we win when something like that happens?”
Maybe the government shouldn’t have started the war in the first place, Theo thought. But Schellenberg had a point. Nothing good would happen to the Reich if the government were toppled at a time like this. The war effort would surely have gone straight down the WC.
Then again, nothing good would happen to Germany if she lost the war Hitler had started, either.
“Other questions?” Captain Schellenberg asked… “What is it, Bruno?”
“Sir, are these Leadership Officers”-Bruno spoke the name with obvious distaste-“going to squeal on us if we say anything they don’t happen to like? You know how soldiers go on. If we can’t blow off steam every once in a while, life’s hardly worth living.”
Several other men nodded, Theo and Adi and Hermann Witt among them. Bruno had it right. Soldiers would call their superiors and their civilian leaders a pack of idiots. Sensible officers paid no attention to most of that kind of talk. But what were the odds a National Socialist Leadership Officer would turn out to be sensible? Long, mighty long. The clumsy title seemed made to draw fanatics, people who know everything there was to know about Nazi doctrine but not a goddamn thing about panzers or rations or anything else that really mattered.
“They’re not here to be rats,” Schellenberg said firmly. “Honest to God, they’re not. The government wants the Wehrmacht to follow its lead, that’s all. So when we do have one of these fellows assigned to us, give him a chance, all right?”
Nobody said no, not out loud. Nobody in Theo’s crew complained where he could hear it. Were he a more outgoing sort, he might well have complained himself. But keeping his mouth shut was his natural style.
He wasn’t at all sure about Sergeant Witt’s politics. The panzer commander did his job. He did it well: he was smart and brave. But, if he hated Hitler and everything the Nazis stood for, he had the sense not to shout it from the turret on the Panzer II. By the same token, if he pawed the ground and whinnied every time he heard the Horst Wessel Lied, he didn’t advertise that, either.
Theo thought Adi Stoss had reason not to want a National Socialist Leadership Officer anywhere within a hundred kilometers of him. Then again, Adi also had reason not to discuss his reasons with anybody else.
Unless, of course, Theo was all wet. The radioman chuckled, very softly, to himself. Me, all wet? he thought. Impossible! Couldn’t happen! I’m much too shrewd to make dumb mistakes.
The Leadership Officer got to the company after a nasty skirmish with some Soviet officer. Bruno went back to an aid station swathed in bandages. Scuttlebutt was, he might not keep his arm. Neither of his crewmates was even that lucky. The panzer men weren’t in the mood to welcome Lieutenant Horst Ostrowski with open arms.
He didn’t look like a wild-eyed fanatic. He wore an Iron Cross Second Class and a wound badge-he hadn’t been commanding a desk in Dresden or something before he got this assignment. He talked about the need to beat the Russians so Central Asia didn’t grab a foothold in Central Europe.
Everything he said seemed harmless enough. All the same, Theo wished he were back at that desk in Dresden, or whatever his previous assignment had been. Again, the radioman didn’t think he was anywhere close to the only guy with the same wish.
Back in the trenches in front of Madrid, Chaim Weinberg didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. He did know he ought to be pissed off, and he was. He had a good notion of who’d screwed him, and he hadn’t even got kissed. That pissed him off, too. La Martellita had a blowjob mouth if ever there was one-to look at, anyway. He’d never got to feel it on John Henry. Not against his lips, either, for that matter. She couldn’t stand him, so she’d put him back where he started.
Only a handful of old sweats from the States were left in the Abe Lincolns. Spaniards filled out the ranks, as they did in all the International Brigades these days. The surviving Americans thought his return was the funniest thing that had happened lately.
“Watsamatter wit’ you, boychik?” said another New Yorker, a Jew who went by the name of Izzy. “You had it soft in Madrid. How’d you manage to screw it up this time?”
Chaim didn’t like that this time, not even slightly. “Talent,” he said, and tried to let it go at that.
No such luck. Izzy was a born agitator. He was a New York Jew in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade-of course he was a born agitator. “What did you go and do?” he asked, eyeing Chaim shrewdly. “Get somebody important mad at you? Can’t get away with that, boychik, not even in the classless society you can’t.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Chaim answered. Izzy laughed like a loon. Chaim almost hauled off and belted him. He would have, if that hadn’t been the same as admitting the other guy was right.
Izzy wasn’t the only veteran who thought he was the most comical-and the dumbest-thing on two legs. He couldn’t fight all of them, not if he wanted to live to do anything else. He didn’t know what all he wanted to do later on, but one thing seemed glaringly obvious. He wanted to get an apology from La Martellita. If he couldn’t get an apology, a blowjob would do just as well. Maybe better.
First he had to live long enough to collect one or the other (even both, if he got really lucky). He hadn’t got sent to the trenches just because La Martellita put in a bad word somewhere. He hoped like hell he hadn’t, anyhow. The Republic was trying to push the Nationalists away from the capital. Whenever the Republic tried something that took hard fighting, in went the International Brigades. That had been true ever since the Internationals got to Spain.
And, though Spaniards filled out the Brigades’ ranks these days, it remained true even now. The Americans and Englishmen and Poles and Germans and Italians and Hungarians and God knew what all else who remained gave the International Brigades experience and esprit de corps no purely Spanish outfit could match. The foreign volunteers had and passed on experience the Spaniards couldn’t match, too. Germans who hated Adolf Hitler’s guts
