Wolff said, “You’re far better than the Americans, though.”
Wilkins shrugged. “They seem all right.”
Steiner said, “They just throw everything they have at you.”
Wolff nodded. “They’re aggressive, but their tactics are simple and outdated. They send in their tanks, you knock out a few, the tanks run, the infantry ends up stranded, and then they call in a big artillery strike.”
“Their artillery is very good.” Steiner shuddered. “And their planes.”
“We’d rather fight them than the English any day,” the oberfeldwebel said. “Especially you Red Devils. We’ve heard stories about the Battle of Arnhem.”
Wilkins looked down at his stew. “That was a rough party.”
He’d been with the 4th Para Brigade then. Out of 10,000 men dropped on Arnhem, only around 2,000 made it out. After that disaster, the brigade had disbanded, with most of the men going to the 1st Brigade. Wilkins ended up freelance, performing special missions for Colonel Adams.
Another splash of gunfire outside. This time, the men ignored it.
“A waste of good infantry,” Wolff said. “Your Market Garden operation was doomed from the start.” Wolff spooned stew into his mouth and chewed. “No, I’m with Steiner. I’d rather fight draugr than you Red Devils or the American airborne.”
“We fought some of you Fallschirm blokes at Arnhem. We called you the Green Devils.”
“Now we’re all on the same side,” Schulte said from his nest. “How inspiring.”
“Ja, ja,” Steiner said, imitating Leutnant Reiser. “Everybody gets a pony.”
The men chuckled at that.
“Steiner does all the wet work with his MG,” Weber said. “The rest of us just carry his ammo around our necks.”
This observation raised another round of laughter along with groans. Everybody carried ammo belts for the MG.
Steiner grinned. “An army of mules led by lions.”
The men hooted and threw crumpled-up Nazi documents at him.
Muller said, “What will you do after the war, Herr Feldwebel?”
Wilkins shrugged. “This gopping war has gone on so bloody long, it’s hard to imagine anything else. I try not to think about surviving it. The only way to be effective in combat and survive—”
“Is to believe you won’t,” several Fallschirmjäger finished together.
“There’s a girl back home, though.”
The paratroopers perked up and went quiet.
“Go on,” Steiner leered, all ears.
“Her name’s Jocelyn. The only thing I allow myself to see in my future is being with her. It gave me something to fight for besides king and country.” The sergeant set his meal down and lit a cigarette. “What about you blokes?”
“Rebuild Germany,” Weber said.
“That goes without saying,” Steiner said. “From the looks of it, we’ll be rebuilding the rest of our lives. Me, I’d like to get a girlfriend and get busy repopulating it.”
“I’d like be an artist,” Muller said. “Travel a Europe at peace.”
“Get my old job back at the post office,” said Schneider.
Steiner looked at Wolff. “What about you, Herr Oberfeldwebel?”
“I’d like to go back to my farm,” the sergeant said. “And never shoot a gun again.”
“You have a girl back home?”
“I did, but I haven’t written her. I hope she moved on.”
“I tried to end it with Jocelyn before my first big operation,” Wilkins said. “I’d rather break her heart that way than have her see me come home in a coffin. I just couldn’t.”
“I understand,” Wolff said. “It was not an easy choice for me.”
The British sergeant pinched off ember at the tip of his cigarette so he could save it for later. “I do hope this draugr menace is the end of war. Once we beat these things, I want peace between our countries. More than that, friendship. I don’t want my sons to have to fight yours in twenty years.”
The men nodded. None of them wished this on their children.
“Ja, we’re all the same under our uniforms,” Schulte said. “How touching.”
Steiner laughed. “Shut up, Erich—”
“Alarm geben!” somebody screamed in the distance. “Alarm, alarm!”
Rifles popped. An MG42 opened up with a ripping snarl Steiner knew well. Machine pistols and submachine-guns joined in, turning the crashes of fire into a steady roar. Figures flickered past the doorway shouting. Tracers and muzzle flashes burst in the darkness. Mortars thumped.
The squad jumped to its feet and collected weapons. The mortar rounds crashed louder than they expected. The mortar teams were firing almost on top of the regiment’s position.
Leutnant Reiser entered the facility as they were coming out. “Seal the door!”
The paratroopers looked at each other. Otherwise, nobody moved.
“The samples must be protected,” Reiser snapped.
Wolff frowned. “Herr Leutnant, the regiment—”
“Will take care of itself. Our mission is to protect the samples.”
Men screamed in agony and terror out in the dark amid the steady flashes of gunfire. The paratroopers looked each other again with wide eyes.
The lieutenant unholstered his Luger. “Schnell!” He kicked Steiner in the leg, making him jump. “Move, pig-dog!”
The squad rushed to the steel door and heaved it shut, shutting out the sounds of combat and slaughter.
CHAPTER TWENTY
REICHSTAG
Sergeant Wilkins sat on the floor on his doss bag while the battle raged all night and Lieutenant Reiser paced in front of the door. The German officer still had his Luger out and tapped it against his thigh like a nervous tic.
The door was staying closed.
A soldier pounded on the entrance with his rifle butt, shouting something, the words tinny and distant as if coming from deep underwater. Wilkins didn’t know what the man was shouting, but he felt certain it was along the lines of, Let me in, mates, before I’m torn to shreds by chomping jaws.
Reiser ignored the pounding. His platoon tried, flinching at each blow.
As for Wilkins, he imagined finding a nice, quiet space to vomit. The horrific sounds left too much to the imagination. The gunfire, the cries for help or ammo, the dead chanting what sounded like, sie, sie, sie, sie, the German word for you.
He just wanted it to stop, especially the screaming. These were men who only a few weeks ago could have all dropped dead without him losing so much as a single tear, men he would have happily shot himself. But the death the Germans faced outside was the kind you didn’t wish on your worst enemy.
The pounding stopped. The muffled rattle of gunfire went on.
He kept his eye on the lieutenant, who paused his pacing long enough to down another tablet. Benzedrine to keep himself awake.
Pep pills. Wakey-wakey pills.
The British War Office issued them as well. The Red Devils ate them like candy during the endless days of fighting at Arnhem, though nobody liked them much. They had a way of making you quite thirsty, and when the drug wore off, you had a nasty tendency to nod off, even during combat.
Then there were the side effects among a few who popped the stuff, which included panic, anger, and homicidal urges.
Wilkins suspected Reiser was the high-strung sort even without adding heavy stimulants to the mix. The sergeant’s stereotype of the average German was a neurotic. He knew for sure the lieutenant had it in for him and that they’d knock heads at some point, German severity clashing with British mettle.