“Does he speak English too?”
“Yes, fairly well.”
“Gotcha,” said Logan. He turned and walked away briskly while Elisabeth smiled at his large, retreating back. Americans, she thought, were so very much like large toys.
Pauli saw her and got up from where he was sitting. He walked over and hugged her tightly. Every time she had to leave him he was afraid she wouldn’t come back. Could she blame him, with all that he had endured? She hugged him tightly in return and drew comfort from the presence of his small body. Pauli was all she had as well.
CHAPTER 10
The rumbling sound of the diesel engines of a score of Russian tanks made attempts at normal conversation a difficult task. Sergei Suslov wondered precisely where in Germany he and his men were and what was happening to the rest of the world. All he was certain of was that he was a couple of miles west of the Elbe, and that they were fighting the Yanks instead of the Nazis.
The crossing of the Elbe had been uneventful for him, although he had seen a handful of burned-out T34 hulks and the remains of a shattered pontoon bridge that told him earlier crossings had not been as peaceful as his had been.
The ground he was driving on was fairly level and he could see the silhouette of a number of buildings and a church steeple ahead. Word had earlier come down that there were Americans in the village. This had resulted in a nighttime attack that had been a disaster.
The battalion had gone forward in improper order with the infantry well behind the tanks instead of alongside for mutual protection. When the lead tanks had gotten to the buildings, they were assailed by antitank weapons, machine-gun fire, and bazookas. American bazookas, he’d been told, would not penetrate the armor of a T34. But that referred to the front armor, and the damned Yanks had waited until the tanks passed by and fired into their more vulnerable rear. In the confusion, a half-dozen T34s had been destroyed and a hundred belatedly arriving infantry were killed or wounded before the order to withdraw had been given.
Now they were going to go into the damned village the way they should have. Artillery had pounded it and Stormovik fighter-bombers had sought out targets, although rumor had it there were no American tanks in the village for the Soviet planes, whose specialty was killing enemy armor. Even more important to Suslov’s personal safety, Russian soldiers were trotting alongside his tank. No more would American infantry get behind him.
“Any targets?” yelled his gunner, Pavel Martynov. The previous night’s slaughter had shaken him. It had shaken all of them. Now they knew the Yanks would fight and fight well.
“I’ll let you know, comrade gunner, when you can shoot your big gun.” Suslov spoke gently, almost teasingly. He didn’t want the boy panicking.
“Fuck this shit,” snapped Ivan Latsis as he maneuvered the iron monster around an obstruction, grazing a brick wall and causing a metallic screech as the tank bulled along. “I want to kill the fucking Germans, not the fucking Americans.”
Everybody has an opinion, thought Suslov, just as they have an asshole. Only the loader was silent. Sasha Popov rarely spoke. He was half Asian and seemed to resent being with Russians. Or maybe he was NKVD? There were a number of them in all units to spy on the troops and ensure loyalty. Who the hell knew nowadays?
Of course Suslov wondered why they were fighting the Americans today when yesterday’s sworn enemy was the Germans and the Americans were their allies. It was a question he kept to himself, as one never doubted the orders from on high. The speech from the political officer, which said that the Americans had betrayed some damned agreement and had sworn to overthrow the People’s Revolution, seemed to ring just a little hollow. How could yesterday’s ally be today’s enemy? However, one does not argue with a commissar.
The tank rocked over a ruined wall and lurched into a debris-filled street. Suslov had closed the hatch, and he squinted through the tiny slit that gave him an inadequate view of the world. He couldn’t see very much, but it was safer that way. A tank commander had been shot through the eye by an American sniper last night while looking brave at the top of his tank. The hell with bravery, Suslov thought.
His radio crackled, ordering him to halt. He waited, and the word came that the infantry had completed their sweep through the village and it was abandoned. Suslov considered himself fortunate to have a radio. So many of the Russian tanks didn’t. He had heard that all the American tanks did, but he found that hard to believe. He had also been told that American tanks were more comfortable and thought that ludicrous. Whoever heard of a comfortable tank?
Suslov opened his hatch and stuck his head and shoulders out. The fresh air was a delightful alternative to the diesel-and-sweat stench-filled air of the tank. Latsis had stuck his head out as well.
“Hey, Sergei,” yelled Latsis. “Look at that.”
Suslov followed where Latsis was pointing. He saw a couple of dead bodies and realized that the bloody lumps were Americans. He had never seen Americans close up before and wanted to get out and take a look at them. Of course, he wouldn’t dare.
A nearby explosion shook the tank. “Where the hell did that come from!” he screamed and prepared to duck down into the relative safety of the tank.
“Planes,” yelled Latsis.
Suslov gazed skyward. While they had been fighting their personal battle on the ground, another one had been going on high in the skies above them. In amazement, he watched the swirl of planes dancing and darting among one another, the contrails painting delicate white lines in the sky. He saw a plane get hit and blow up, while another seemed to lose interest in life and started to dive toward the ground. Perhaps that was the explosion he’d felt-a crashing plane.
Still another explosion shook him even harder and almost knocked him down into the turret. As he closed the hatch, he felt stones clattering onto his vehicle. This was followed by more pulsating explosions, and he knew they could not all be crashing planes. The Yank planes had broken through and were bombing his position.
“What do we do now?” asked Martynov. He was almost in tears. The Red Army, Martynov knew, never had much to fear from the Luftwaffe. The German air force had been pretty much wiped out as an effective weapon by the time Martynov had been given a tank to drive. Suslov, however, did remember the early days of the war when the German planes wreaked havoc on the Russian tank formations.
Now they had a new enemy, one with its own powerful air arm, and the Russian tanks were once again vulnerable from the air.
What the devil should we do? Suslov thought. If we stay in the village we’ll get bombed. If we retreat without authorization, we’ll be back in the open field and be even better targets. And, oh yes, the fucking commissar would scream at them for being cowards and possibly have them shot or, at best, sent to a penal battalion where death was just as certain. He decided to advance.
Before they could move, another bomb exploded close by and caused the tank to rock violently. Latsis cried out in pain as his body bounced off the inside hull of the tank. Suslov had hit his head, and he touched his forehead. There was a little blood, but it was not much of a wound and not his first. He ruefully thought it would not be his last.
Finally, word came. They would retreat, not advance. Perhaps they could make bombing difficult for the Americans if they were on the move. Suslov also realized they were giving up the shitty little village that had cost them so much already.
Shortly after he managed to pull his tank out, the bombing ceased. Either the Americans had been chased off or they had run out of bombs. While Martynov praised the Soviet fighter planes for saving them, Suslov quietly thought it was likely a lack of bombs and bullets that had caused the Americans to depart.
He opened his hatch and climbed out to the top of his turret. Without appearing obvious, he counted the remaining T34s in the battalion. Fourteen. Yesterday there had been twenty-six. Maybe a couple were only stuck in the village or had minor damage that could be repaired fairly quickly, but certainly not all of them. They had lost six in that nightmare last night and six more from the bombings. He watched as a wounded man was helped out of the tank next to him and realized that even some of those tanks that had survived had men who’d been hurt.
