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While the mess detail packed the field kitchen away again, I sat behind the tank to check that my eyes weren’t swollen or my belly dried out or my leg gone rigid — all of these could be brought on by that curse! But there was nothing wrong with me, so I gave a sigh of relief and got to thinking how good it would be if the mermaid were there among all those women and girls and kids! She’d tell them I’m different, that I’m a good guy… But I couldn’t see anyone in the field wrapped in a blue, white and red flag, though I really strained my eyes. I went looking for Mrs Kropek and Hanka, because they must have finished eating by now, and Kantariya was dragging a girl out from the pack of women and kids who were still stuffing their faces. I couldn’t tell it was a girl until I saw how she moved, lashing out with her bare knees when her dress rode up her legs, and also from how she shouted as he dragged her along. Another sub-machine-gunner had grabbed another girl from the crowd. He was pushing her ahead of him. If she fell, he picked her up. Then the women formed a wall around the other girls, who lay flat on the ground in the field, but for all their swearing at the soldiers and threatening them with sticks and fists, it did no good. The sub-machine-gunners dragged another one out. She twisted and turned and jerked her shoulders like she didn’t want to go with them, but she had to.

I expected Captain Yegorov to bark a command and tweak Kantariya, who was dragging the first girl, by the ear and give him a slap, but Captain Yegorov did no such thing and Kantariya dragged the girl off behind the roadside bushes. The soldiers took away whatever girls they wanted to the same spot.

After a time, Captain Yegorov stood up, slid deftly from the tank and went into the bushes as well.

I was glad that Hanka looked so haggard and gaunt that they didn’t want her. At least, I didn’t see anyone grab her.

It took me just a few hops to get across the road and fly into the field. I dashed about looking for them. I knew I had to find them. If I didn’t find Hanka, it would be terrible. I’d beg the Captain to let her come with our column. Hanka and the other girls might be able to perform in the circus, as Czechs. Why not? I roamed and ran about the field, looking for Hanka, but I couldn’t find her. Had they run away while I was checking myself over behind the tank? I didn’t know.

The women stared at the tanks and the tank men gawped back at them. It was quiet now. The almost still air was riven only by the loud wailing of some kid. The huddle of women, surrounding the one who was trying to soothe the bawling child, moved off towards the forest. Perhaps that was where they lived. Tank columns are equipped with lots of stuff, but nothing for calming screaming infants. The women left.

I never saw Hanka again. Or Mrs Kropek. They did a runner or something. That was the worst thing. I kept losing sight of people. Not like round a bend in a corridor or behind a tree. People were suddenly gone for ever.

The girls in the bushes came crawling out quite quietly. The soldiers were chatting very loudly, and they were laughing and dusting themselves down from top to bottom. The girls who’d crawled out of the bushes went and joined the others in the field. Then they all moved off, leading the children by the hand, carrying the tiniest ones, going further and further away into the dusty field, where there was nothing.

I returned to the lead tank. The ropes were there all right, but Dago was nowhere. He had gone. I was lucky nobody asked about him. After all, he’d been in my care.

The hamlet of Ctiradův Důl was the last stronghold before the final attack on Siřem.

The soldiers, excited by the women, were now hurriedly preparing their arms and equipment. We were about to break into Siřem and destroy all resistance, assuming there was any.

Well, I wasn’t looking forward to that one bit. I wasn’t feeling my best. After all, I’d lost Hanka again. And Dago, who was under my guard.

And to top it all, the Third World War broke out.

The Czechs unleashed it.

Once again, I heard about Commander Baudyš.

It was like this. Captain Yegorov and Gunner Kantariya and several of the NCOs and me were bivouacked in the only cottage that hadn’t been burnt down, and where the Czechs hadn’t even had time to switch off the television. And that, before we went on the attack, was something we welcomed, because the Radio Free Siřem transmitter had stopped transmitting and we lacked any reports from the Siřem military district.

On the Captain’s orders, we surrounded the overheated television, each sitting or squatting down wherever he happened to be.

And we learned that the Third World War had broken out.

The Czech announcer said that the Czechoslovak people had been betrayed. He spoke of Czechoslovaks dying for the civilized world of Western Europe in an unequal contest against the Eastern hordes, all the while expecting that the former would come to their aid. They were standing up to an invasion from Russia’s Asian steppes, just as their forebears had stood up to the invasions of the Tatars, and they were dying with their proud Czech or Slovak heads held high, having believed that the betrayal of civilized people would not be repeated, that there would be no repeat of Munich.

I translated and the NCOs muttered their displeasure and rolled their cigarettes, and then the news continued and now all the tankmen were cursing and swearing, and Kantariya even spat at the television, because it reported in words and pictures that many army corps of the Warsaw Pact nations had struck at the rear of the Soviet Army, alongside gangs of Czech bandits.

Many Polish and Hungarian divisions had torn up the Warsaw Pact and were engaged in battle with Soviet divisions. The numerically weaker Bulgarian and East German corps were fighting their way back to their own frontiers, or surrendering to the Czechs. But more and more new guards units of the Soviet Army kept rolling in and dealing severely with the betrayal.

Then we saw on the screen various army groups in various states of collapse and misery. We didn’t find that funny… But then I stiffened and almost yelped, because there on the screen was a smiling Commander Baudyš!

He sat on a tank, waving a Czechoslovak flag on which was written THE TRUTH PREVAILS… and sitting next to him on the tank was Karel! I’d never have guessed I’d see one of the Bandits again one day.

It was Commander Baudyš and his partisan unit that had attacked West Germany. The thing was that Czech and Slovak partisans were impatiently looking out for the Americans and the forces of the Free World allied in the Atlantic Pact, Nato, and couldn’t wait to get bedded down in suitable spots among the rocks and shoot down Soviet helicopters with American Redeye rockets, but the Americans hadn’t shown up… The Americans and the forces of Nato weren’t showing up… So Commander Baudyš had invaded West Germany to provoke a Third World War, at last giving the Americans and the Atlantic Pact a perfect opportunity and excuse for self-defence, and for stamping on the necks of the Soviet Communist hydra. And our heroic Czech and Slovak lads were making incursions across the western frontier on tanks and even in Soviet-made jeeps, carrying their recoilless Kalashnikovs, to tell the world about Communist atrocities so that the Free World would finally stir itself and not just stand by and watch Czechoslovakia’s heroic resistance against the tide of brutal sovietization, but the world cared damn all and sod all and bugger all about Czechoslovakia.

The Atlantic Pact wasn’t going to upset its tense relations with the Warsaw Pact over Czechoslovakia, so all sides agreed with all sides, and they hurled the rebels right back into the jaws of the Soviet hydra, and the situation changed for our Czech boys in the attack divisions that went into Germany. German bullets started whistling around their heads, and our boys tried in vain to show that their hands were up and that they’d come armed with nothing more than the Idea of Freedom… West German troops and the forces of the Atlantic Pact and American soldiers from bases in West Germany were now driving our boys back towards the Czechoslovak frontier — where, of course, the Soviets were waiting for them, as, having seized control of the situation, they had brought the rebellious Hungarians and Poles to heel. And our boys, who had attacked Germany to provoke a Third World War, were now being thrown back by the Germans towards the Russians, and the Russians were furious at their losses, so our boys really copped it, squashed between German and Russian millstones. The ones who weren’t killed surrendered.