Pete felt so rotten, he almost forgot about the long column of Japanese troops he'd seen the night before. Almost, but not quite. He reported to Captain Horner, his company commander.
Horner heard him out, then nodded. "Uh-huh," the officer said thoughtfully. "You think they were going to head north?"
"Well, I don't know for sure, sir," McGill replied. "If I was a betting man, though, that's how I'd lay my money."
"If you were a betting man…" Horner snorted. "You'd bet on how many raindrops landed in a pail in twenty minutes." He had a Tidewater accent thick enough to slice. A hell of a lot of Marines, and especially Marine officers, had a drawl. And Captain Horner knew him damn well.
"One good thing, sir," McGill said. The captain raised a blond eyebrow. Pete went on, "If the Japs are heading north like that, they ain't gonna jump on us right away."
"You hope," Horner said. Pete nodded. The company CO was right. He sure as hell did hope. INTERNED. OFFICIALLY, VACLAV JEZEK WAS classed as a displaced person. It wasn't quite the same as being a POW. The Poles were treating all the Czechs who'd got over the border-soldiers and civilians, men, women, and children-the same way.
Yeah, they were treating them all the same way, all right. They were treating them all like dogs.
Barbed wire fenced off the Czechs' encampment from the rest of Poland. Poles with rifles and sandbagged machine-gun nests made sure the Czechs didn't come through the wire. The DPs lived under canvas despite rain and cold. They ate Polish army rations. That was what the Poles claimed, anyhow. If it was true, Vaclav pitied Polish soldiers.
Most of the Polish guards treated the Czech men-and especially the soldiers-like animals in the zoo. (Quite a few of them were friendly to the Czech women-what a surprise! And some of the women gave their all, too, for better food or more food or whatever else they happened to need.)
A few of the guards turned out to be human beings in spite of being Poles-that was how Jezek saw it, anyhow, though he wasn't an unbiased observer. He could talk to them in bits of Czech and Polish and in (dammit!) German. "We don't want you people here," one of the decent guards said. "You embarrass us."
"Why?" Vaclav said. "All we did was get out alive after the fucking Nazis went and jumped us."
"But Poland and Germany are friends," the Polish soldier said. "That's why we don't want you here."
"Friends with Germany? God help you!" Jezek said. "Is the pig friends with the farmer? Till he's a ham, he is."
The Pole-his name was Leszek-pointed east. "Germany keeps the Russians away. Better Hitler than Stalin any day."
"Better anybody than Hitler," Vaclav said stubbornly. "Anybody. Better the Devil than Hitler."
Leszek crossed himself. "Stalin is the Devil. He turns churches into stables and brothels. And half the Reds who run Russia are kikes. Hitler knows what to do about them, by God. We ought to give ours what-for, too. If we don't, they'll steal the country out from under us."
Vaclav didn't care about Jews one way or the other. He just said, "If you end up in bed with the Nazis, you'll get it as bad as the Jews do."
"You're only mad because the Germans beat you," Leszek said.
"Sure. And Poland never lost a war," the Czech retorted. Even if Leszek wasn't a bad guy, that reminder was more than he could stomach. He stomped off. Vaclav wondered if he'd come back with his buddies to do some real stomping. But Leszek didn't, which only proved he had an even temper.
A few days later, a Czech-speaking Polish officer addressed the displaced persons. He used Czech words, all right, but he pronounced them like a Pole: with the accent always on the next-to-last syllable, not at the beginning of a word, where to Czech ears it belonged. "A Czechoslovak government-in-exile has been formed in Paris," he said. "Its leaders say they will care for anyone who comes to them. I am looking for volunteers at the moment."
Never volunteer. Any soldier knew that ancient basic rule. Vaclav's hand shot up all the same. Anything had to be better than this. And what would the Poles do to Czech soldiers who didn't volunteer? Ship them back over the border into German hands? Then it would be a POW cage for the rest of the war-if it wasn't a bullet in the back of the neck.
Several other men also raised their hands, and a few women as well. The rest stood where they were without doing anything. The Polish officer's lips thinned. He must have expected a bigger response. When he saw he wouldn't get one, he said, "All right. Take whatever you have and meet me by the east gate in fifteen minutes." He strode away, his polished boots gleaming.
Vaclav didn't need fifteen minutes to gather his belongings. The Poles had relieved him of his rifle and ammunition and helmet and entrenching tool. He'd eaten the iron rations he'd carried. About all that was left in his pack were a blanket, a spare pair of socks, a housewife for quick repairs-he'd never make a tailor-some bandages, and his bayonet, which the Poles hadn't wanted. It made a perfectly good eating knife.
A couple of Czechs who hadn't raised a hand joined the men and women who had. They must have decided, as Vaclav had, that anything beat this.
The Polish officer led a squad of riflemen. "Come with me," he told the Czechs. "Make sure you come with me. If you try to run off, I promise you will never do another foolish thing again."
Off they went, at a brisk military march. Some of the Czechs weren't young, and couldn't keep up. Grudgingly, the Polish officer slowed down for them. He might have laid on a truck or two. He might have, but he hadn't.
They marched for eight or ten kilometers. It didn't faze Vaclav; he'd done far worse with far more on his back. Other interned soldiers also managed easily. But some of the civilians looked ready to fall over dead by the time they got to a shabby little railroad depot sitting there in the middle of nowhere.
Half an hour later, a train chugged up from out of the west. "Get aboard," the officer said.
"But-it's going east!" one of the women complained.
"Ano." The Pole nodded. He said that in perfectly proper Czech; in his own language, yes was tak.
"Paris is that way!" The woman pointed in the direction from which the train had come.
"So is Germany," the officer reminded her. The woman's face fell. The Pole went on, "The train will take you to Romania. There are supposed to be arrangements to transport you from there to France. If there aren't…" He shrugged. Vaclav had no trouble understanding that. If there weren't, it was the Romanians' worry, and the Czechs'. It wouldn't be the Poles', not any more.
He wasn't the only one to figure that out. Three or four people balked and refused to get on the train. The woman who thought they would cross Germany to get to France was one of them. She wasn't bad-looking, but Vaclav felt better about boarding after she didn't want to. If someone stupid wanted to stay, leaving looked like a better plan.
The conductor spoke no Czech, only Polish and German. Those were enough. One car seemed reserved for the DPs. "No dining car for you," the conductor told them. "We bring you food." His scowl said they weren't paying customers, so they didn't deserve anything good. Jezek sighed. He didn't suppose they'd let him starve.
And they didn't. Cabbage and potatoes with little bits of sausage wasn't his idea of a feast, but it wasn't so bad as it might have been. It was better than he'd got in the displaced persons' camp.
Krakow. Tarnow. Przemysl. Lwow. Kolomyja. And then the Romanian border. Polish and Czech were close cousins. Most Czechs and a lot of Poles knew enough German to get by. Romanian was something else again. The Romanian customs men who knew another language spoke French. That must have made them very cultured. It didn't help Vaclav one damn bit.