Nobody in the officers’ lounge seemed to want to meet anyone else’s eye. The USSR was having all it could do to hold off Germany and Poland. Poland was… not much. However reactionary England and France might be, they were great powers. If they came after the Soviet Union with the Nazis, what would happen next? Nothing good, not so far as Sergei could see.
The newsreader went on in somewhat brighter tones: “In England, Winston Churchill continues to speak out strongly against the proposed misalliance with the Nazis. While a reactionary himself-he tried to strangle the glorious Red Revolution in its cradle-Churchill is not blind to the dangers of Hitlerism. ‘The lamb may lie down with the lion,’ he said, ‘but only the lion will get up again-full.’ ”
That sounded good even after being translated into Russian. Most foreign gibes lost their flavor once they left their native tongue. Churchill must have seemed uncommonly witty in English.
“Although Churchill is a member of Prime Minister Chamberlain’s Conservative Party, Chamberlain has gone out of his way to assure the English Parliament that Churchill does not speak for him or his government,” the newsreader said portentously.
“Chamberlain is playing with his dick again,” one of the pilots said in disgust. The Chimp couldn’t have put it any more plainly-and probably would have put it about the same way. The news didn’t sound good. If Chamberlain was criticizing Churchill, and Churchill was criticizing cutting a deal with the Nazis… What was the likely result? Trouble for the Rodina, that was what.
More trouble for the Rodina, Sergei mentally corrected. The Soviet Union already had as much country as any self-respecting country needed.
After music replaced the news, Major Konstantin Ponamarenko-Colonel Borisov’s replacement as squadron leader-said, “You men will know-not everything that happens comes on the radio right away.”
Heads bobbed up and down, Yaroslavsky’s among them. The main purpose of Radio Moscow news was to hold up morale on the home front. Sergei had thought as much himself not long before. He hadn’t looked for the new squadron commander to acknowledge it so openly.
Ponamarenko went on, “You will also know that the situation in the field is developing in a way that might possibly be better.”
He waited for more nods. He got them. Sergei admired him. The pilot had rarely heard a more graceful way of admitting the USSR was getting the snot knocked out of it.
“Don’t waste time worrying about those French and English whores,” Ponamarenko said earnestly. “They can’t get at us yet, and we can’t get at them, either. Worry about the German cocksuckers, and about their Polish lap dogs yapping along behind them. We can hit back at them, and we damn well will.”
Sergei nodded one more time. You had to show you agreed. Somebody was always watching you. No: somebody always might be watching you. You always needed to stay on your guard. It was all right to remember that Stalin had started the fight with Poland the winter before, looking to pick up Wilno on the cheap. If the General Secretary hadn’t, the Soviet Union would still be at war with Germany, but only in a formal sense, since neither side could have struck at the other without violating some buffer state’s neutrality. Well, now the USSR had done just that, and this was what the Soviet workers and peasants got for it.
Yes, it was all right to remember Stalin might well have outsmarted himself. But it wasn’t all right to show you remembered such things. You never could tell who might notice, and report. You never could tell when you might disappear.
“What I’m saying is, we are going to be flying missions inside what was Soviet territory before the war,” Ponamarenko continued. “We will try to drop our bombs only on the heads of the Fascist jackals, of course. Of course.” He bore down on the repeated phrase. “But accidents happen in war. I don’t have many virgins here. You know that. And I need to tell every one of you-don’t worry about them. Some of our explosives may do a little harm to Soviet citizens. If the rest of our loads help drive the invaders out of the Motherland, though, that’s a price worth paying. Do you hear what I’m telling you, Comrades?”
By the way the flyers’ heads moved, they might have been on springs. This also was nothing that hadn’t occurred to Sergei before. He didn’t want to hurt his own people. He’d never dreamt such a dreadful thing might be possible when he first put on the uniform he wore.
However dreadful the possibility might be, it was here. And Ponamarenko had it right. If the bombers hurt the invaders worse than the locals, their strikes were bound to be worthwhile in the long run. A surgeon cut you up to make you healthier in the long run.
But you still had a scar after the operation. And it still hurt while you recovered from it. Sergei wished he hadn’t thought of any of that.
Every once in a while, war seemed easy, even to someone like Theo Hossbach who knew better most of the time. When the German panzers smashed through the Low Countries and into northern France, it was obvious the Wehrmacht was playing a faster, deeper game than the Dutch and Belgians, the English and French, who tried to slow it down. Unfortunately, the enemy caught on just before Germany managed to slam the sword all the way home.
Now, again, the panzers rolled forward as if nothing in the world could slow them down. The experienced German troops outclassed the Ivans as effortlessly as Adi Stoss had outclassed the infantrymen he played against on that snowy Polish football pitch.
Maybe-probably, even-an individual ground pounder was in better shape than Adi. Russian panzers were often better than German machines. But when Stoss got the ball, he knew what to do with it. And even when he didn’t have it, he knew where to go so he might get it, or so he might keep the guys on the other side from causing trouble.
The Germans were like that as they pushed from Poland into Byelorussia (and into the northern Ukraine, too, but Theo knew about that only by rumor and by brags on Radio Berlin). The panzers struck, then sped on, leaving it for the German and Polish infantry slogging along in their wake to clean up the Ivans they’d shattered.
And the Ivans couldn’t figure out what to do about it. It was as if their manager had to shout in directions from the touchline to get them to move. Left to themselves, they would defend in place till they got smashed up, but they maneuvered only slowly and awkwardly. They might have those formidable panzers, but they didn’t know how to use them.
The Germans did. They took advantage as quickly and eagerly as a guy trying to screw his girl. And they were screwing the Russians, all right. People talked about Smolensk and Vyazma. When people got excited, they talked about Moscow and Leningrad.
Theo talked… very little. When he sat in the bowels of the Panzer II, he relayed orders from the platoon CO, the company CO, regimental HQ, division HQ… Whatever came in through his earphones, he faithfully passed on to Hermann Witt. And he sent back the panzer commander’s responses. Witt had to needle him only every once in a while to make sure he exercised his voice enough to do that.
“Don’t keep it all to yourself, Theo, my dear,” he would say. “They put that set in there for a reason, you know.”
And Theo would nod. And he’d do better for a while. But only for a while. He was too much a creature of the deep silences inside his own head ever to grow comfortable with the racket of the outside world.
While they drove, while they fought, he didn’t have much to do with Adalbert Stoss. How could he, when they had their places at opposite ends of the Panzer II’s fighting compartment? Adi talked to Theo-who didn’t?-but he wasn’t a guy who yakked all the time for the sake of yakking. And his job needed him to pay attention every single second, which Theo’s didn’t.
When they rolled into bivouac at the end of one of the midsummer days where the sun never wanted to set, Theo sometimes felt Adi’s eye on him. The driver rarely went beyond commonplaces when they talked, but Theo figured there was more to him than he let on. What would he say if he spoke up? Something like You don’t have to pull in your head like a turtle to hide, perhaps. Or perhaps not. Theo knew his own imagination and guesses sometimes ran away with him.
He didn’t know what he could do about it. Adi seemed happy thundering up and down the pitch with everybody else. Goalkeeper suited Theo better. Most of the time, the action was far away, so he could daydream. There were the stark moments when he had to make the save or botch it, but they were mercifully few and far between. Even if he did botch one, he could get by as long as he didn’t screw up too much more than anyone else would have. Sometimes you just couldn’t do anything about a shot.
