"Our next stop is Coucy-le-Chateau." Priller pointed the place out on a map he unfolded on his knees. His German sounded funny in Ludwig's ears, but he spoke fluent French. "Well, not our next stop-where we go through next. It's only about five kilometers ahead. We ought to drive the enemy out by the middle of the morning. Questions, anybody?"
"Do we soften them up with artillery first, or do we break through with the panzers?" another sergeant asked.
"With the panzers. That way, we've got surprise working for us." Priller cocked an eyebrow. "We see who gets the surprise-us or them."
The four sergeants who commanded the other panzers in the platoon all chuckled, Ludwig among them. It was laugh or scream, one. Maybe the French troops in front of the Germans would panic and flee. On the other hand, maybe they'd be waiting with panzers of their own, minefields, antitank guns: all the things that made life in the panzer force so…interesting.
"We've bent them back a long way," Max Priller said. "If we break through here, we drive the sword into their heart. We want them all disordered. Then we can race them to Paris. Better than even money we win."
"Paris…" Ludwig and a couple of the other sergeants said together. Back in the Middle Ages, knights went on quests for the Holy Grail. In the twentieth century, Paris was the Holy Grail for Germany. The Kaiser's army had come so close. Armchair generals kept talking about von Kluck's turn. If he hadn't made it, or if the Russians hadn't caused so much trouble off in the East…
Russia was making trouble again. The Wehrmacht had done well here, or Ludwig thought it had. In a month, it had knocked Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg out of the fight. The radio said German bombers were giving England hell to pay back the British terror raids on German cities. Maybe this attack would have gone smoother in better weather. Only God could know something like that, though.
"Tell your men," Priller said. "We go at 0600."
It would still be dark. Somebody'd get a surprise, all right. Well, what could you do? Rothe went back to his panzer. Fritz was toasting some bacon he'd liberated from a farmhouse. Theo was swapping tubes in and out of the radio, trying to figure out which one was bad.
Fritz looked up from the little cookfire. "It's going to be bad," he said. "I can see it on your face. How bad is it?"
"We hit the town up ahead at 0600," Ludwig answered bluntly.
Theo paused with a tube in each hand. He looked down at them, muttering; Rothe guessed he was remembering which one he'd just pulled and which was about to go in. Fritz stared up from the sizzling slab of bacon. "Fuck," he said.
"I know," Ludwig said. "What can you do, though?" He pointed to the bacon. "Is that done? Let me have some if it is."
Off in the distance, some guns opened up. French 75s, Ludwig thought, recognizing the reports. The damned things dated back to before the turn of the century. They'd been the great workhorses of the French artillery during the last war; Ludwig's father swore whenever he talked about them. They could fire obscenely fast. This time around, German 105s outranged them. That did you no good if you ended up on the wrong end of things, though.
These shells came down a good distance away. Fritz cut the bacon into three pieces. "Well, maybe we'll surprise them," he said. "They don't seem to know where we're at…Here you go, Sergeant."
"Danke." Ludwig blew on his share, then took a bite. It tasted about the same as bacon would have back home. He might have had it boiled there, but he might not, too. He gulped. "Yeah, maybe we will," he said, and bit into the bacon again.
Theo stared at the orange glow inside the tube he'd just swapped in. "That does it," he said. "Now we'll be able to hear all the stupid orders we'll get from the shitheads back of the lines-and from Lieutenant Priller, too." His faith in those set over him had, well, limits. Ludwig suspected Theo didn't have much use for him, either. He also suspected-no, he was sure-he wouldn't lose any sleep about it.
The French 75s quieted down. Had somebody given them a target, or were they shooting at some jumpy officer's imagination? Ludwig laughed. He had no use for French higher-ups. Why did he think the men who ran the Wehrmacht had a better handle on what they were doing?
Because we're in France, and the damned Frenchmen aren't in Germany, he answered himself. And maybe that meant something and maybe it didn't. They'd all find out some time not long after 0600.
He slept by the Panzer II. So did the driver and the radioman. If shelling came close, they could dive under the panzer. The treads and the armored body would keep out anything this side of a direct hit.
Lieutenant Priller came along at half past four to make sure they were alert and ready to go. "We can do it," he said. "We're going to do it, too."
"Have we got any coffee?" Ludwig asked plaintively. And damned if they didn't. It wasn't the ersatz that came with army rations, mixed with burnt barley and chicory. It came from the real bean, no doubt taken from the French. It was dark and mean and strong. Ludwig dumped sugar into it so he could choke it down. Sure as hell, it pried his eyelids open.
As they had in the runup to the strike against Czechoslovakia, engineers had set out white tapes here to guide the panzers forward without showing a light. Rothe cupped a hand behind his ear, trying to hear if the French up ahead had any idea they were coming. He couldn't tell. Fritz had the engine throttled back, but its low rumble still drowned out the little sounds he was looking for. Nobody was shooting at the Germans as they moved up to the start line, anyhow.
Ludwig glanced down at the radium-glowing dial on his watch. 0530. A couple of hours later, he checked again. 0550. He laughed at himself. Time stretched like a rubber band when you were waiting for the balloon to go up.
When it did go up, it went all at once. One second, quiet above the engine noise. The next, German artillery crashed behind the panzers. German machine guns stuttered to life, spitting fire to either side. "Let's go!" Rothe yelled through the din. The engine grew deeper and louder. It had to work like a bastard to shove all that armored weight around.
A couple of French Hotchkiss machine guns returned fire, but not for long. The panzers and assault teams with submachine guns and grenades silenced them. Standing head and shoulders out of the turret, Ludwig whooped. The last thing he wanted was tracers probing toward him.
The Germans had jumped off just before earliest dawn. As day broke, the French landscape seemed to stretch out ever farther before them. Rothe fired a few machine-gun bursts at soldiers in khaki. If they were here, they were bound to be enemies. He was at the spearpoint of the field-gray forces pressing down from the northeast.
Bam! A French antitank gun belched flame. The 37mm round missed the Panzer II. A good thing-a hit would have turned it into blazing scrap metal. Rothe almost shit himself even so.
More to the point, he traversed the turret and fired several short bursts at the gun. Seeing bullets spark off its steel shielding, he gave it a few rounds from the 20mm cannon. Those got through. French artillerymen tumbled like ninepins. "There you go!" Fritz shouted. Theo, tending to his radio in the bowels of the Panzer II, couldn't see a damned thing.
But one stubborn Frenchman fired the gun again. The 37mm shot snarled past, a few meters over Ludwig's head. He shot back with the panzer's main armament. And he gave an order you didn't hear every day in armored warfare: "Charge! Run that gun down!"
"Jawohl!" Fritz said. The Panzer II's engine snarled. The stubborn French soldier was still alive behind the riddled shield, trying to serve the gun by himself. Seeing the panzer bearing down on him, he finally turned and fled. Ludwig shot him in the back with the machine gun. A guy like that was too dangerous to leave alive.