Baker took out his knife and began to sharpen it. “I’ll bet you’re right, Tony. I’ll bet I speak German too, and maybe a little French. Why? You got an idea?”
Now it was Tony’s turn to smile. He knew Joe didn’t think much of Tony’s brainpower although he did respect him as a survivor. “I was thinking, Joe, why don’t you just walk up to them trucks and blow them up.”
Joe shook his head and grinned tolerantly. “And what would you put on my tombstone? That the dumb shit thought he could get away with it?”
“Joe, what if you were wearing a Russian uniform? One of their NKVD things that seems to scare the shit out of the regular Russians.”
“Tony, if I had one of those I could cause so much damage it would make your head spin.”
Tony laughed and told him about the uniform they’d taken and hidden, along with the weapons. Joe’s jaw dropped. Then he too started laughing.
CHAPTER 19
Elisabeth Wolf was entranced. It had been years since she had seen a baseball game and she had forgotten how much she liked the sport. It was like a touch of an earlier home, of Canada, a time and a land that belonged to another her. Pauli, however, was simply confused by all the running and yelling. He would much rather have had a ball that could be kicked.
Jack Logan had explained to her that the baseball tournament had been a source of controversy for some time. There was the real fear that the Reds would either bombard or attack during a game and cause needless casualties, while others had feared that the exertion of playing might unnecessarily weaken young men who were already on short rations.
General Miller had asked a number of the men what they had thought. They had frankly and tersely responded to both fears. “Fuck it, General,” one soldier had summed it up, “we all gotta die sometime. If it’s gonna be here, I’d just as soon be playin’ ball as hiding in some goddamn trench waiting to starve to death or get hit on the head by a Russian shell.”
Thus inspired, the engineers had used lathes to fashion a kind of bat and made baseballs out of discarded tires. Gloves and catcher’s masks were in short supply, so the rules of the tournament were adjusted to fit the fact. Even so, the games were a huge success and a boost for morale, and now football games were being planned.
Ball hit bat with a solid thwack and there were cheers. Pauli looked up and tried to figure out what was happening as a runner slid gracelessly into third base. Elisabeth looked up from where she was sitting on the ground and noticed a number of German women cheering on their particular soldiers. It would appear that she was not alone in having an American friend.
Logan trotted over from the field and plunked himself down beside her. “You look great,” he said.
“Thank you.” For the first time since he’d met her, she was wearing a skirt. She had made it from some blue drapes she’d found in a house. It was a little long, but it did make her feel a little more feminine than the men’s clothing she had been wearing. She knew she had nice legs and knew that the reduction in food hadn’t created any problem for her in that area.
“How come you stopped playing?” she asked.
“I took myself out. I wasn’t playing all that well and I really should let the enlisted men have their fun. Besides, I’d rather sit here with you.”
Elisabeth smiled. Jack had made two errors in the field and struck out once. Captain Dimitri had yanked him and sent him off with a swat on the rear while his team hooted in good-natured derision. He hadn’t pulled himself out; he’d been booted.
Elisabeth shifted, and Jack caught a quick glimpse of knee and thigh that widened his eyes despite the fact that women wore far shorter skirts in the States. God, he thought, am I that horny? Yes, he answered. I am.
A familiar shape darkened their horizon. “Am I intruding?” It was Lieutenant David Singer. His one hand rested on a cane.
“Hardly,” Elisabeth answered as she gestured for him to take a seat with them. “How are you feeling?”
Singer, still wan and thin, looked far better each day. “Almost ready to go out there and play. Don’t laugh- don’t the St. Louis Browns have a one-armed outfielder?”
“If anyone would, it would be the Brownies,” Logan said.
Singer beamed. “I got a letter from Marsha.” Two nights before, they had been overflown by a bomber flight that had dropped some essential supplies and, surprise of surprises, a number of sacks of mail. Once again, morale had soared. “It was written before I got hurt and we got stuck here, but it was really good to hear from her. She’s working in Boston as a waitress and she’s gone back to college. When this is over, she’ll get a job and support me while I go back to school and finish my education.”
“Good idea,” said Jack, thinking of his own interrupted studies. But that had been in another world, hadn’t it? “How are you doing at the hospital?”
“Well, they’re still letting me work with the more badly wounded. I either read to them or help them to try and realize they still have a life to live.”
“That’s great, Dave,” Jack said. Elisabeth had slipped her hand into his. It was a wonderfully comforting feeling.
“Jack, you have no idea how good it feels to be useful. After all, I still have two of the three arms I was given-right arm and short arm.” Logan grinned and Elisabeth smiled tolerantly. She got the joke. “Seriously, I do have a life to live and a career to build when I get home and, no, I was not going to be a surgeon or a paperhanger.”
Elisabeth laughed. “Then what?”
“An accountant. And like I once told Jack, I can juggle figures just as well with one arm.” Singer looked around and saw some friends, said he’d talk to Jack and Lis later, and went over to visit.
Elisabeth squeezed Jack’s hand again. “Did you get any mail?”
“Nope. A lot of people didn’t. I was hoping, but what the heck, I’ll live.”
“Does that upset you?”
“I’ll live. Really, I’m used to it.”
Despite his denial, there was a hint of sadness in his voice. There was a moment’s silence while Elisabeth reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a plain envelope.
“Here,” she said.
“What’s this?”
“A letter. It’s from me. See, you do have someone who cares for you and writes to you.”
Elisabeth turned her head so that she could not see the stunned expression on Jack’s face and so that he could not see the look on hers. He pulled her closer and said how much he appreciated it and yes, he really did want letters from home, but this was even better. He said he would read it later, which was what Lis wanted. Despite being a soldier, Lis thought he was such a good and gentle man. Perhaps this was one way of letting him know that she felt that way about him.
On the other side of the playing field, Wolfgang von Schumann confronted General Miller. “Well, General, have you made up your mind?”
“Ike would crap.”
“But wouldn’t he also crap if he found out that you looked a gift horse in the mouth?”
“True enough, Herr Oberst.” Miller looked longingly at the ball game and thought of gentler times gone by. He knew he now had a decision to make.
A belated survey of the Potsdam area had revealed the existence of a large number of German antiaircraft guns and a quantity of ammunition. They had been Potsdam’s defense against bombers. Von Schumann had also located a warehouse that contained, among other things, a quantity of panzerfausts, the shoulder-carried antitank rockets that could be useful at close range.
Almost simultaneously, a census of the remaining German population of Potsdam had revealed several hundred veterans or soldiers in hiding, along with the crews of most of the antiaircraft guns, which included a
