Czechs and Frenchmen and a few Englishmen were all intermingled here. They shouldn't have been, but the latest German drive had thrown the defenders in the Ardennes into confusion. Jezek had seen that in Czechoslovakia, to his sorrow. After a panzer thrust pierced the line you were trying to hold, you had to scramble like a madman to piece together a new one farther back. And the Germans were still pushing forward, and shelling you, and bombing you…
"Anybody have more clips for the antitank rifle?" he called in Czech. He could have said the same thing in German, but it probably would have got him shot. He didn't speak French or English.
But one of the French noncoms assigned as liaison to the Czechs translated for Vaclav. The man's Czech was none too good, but he spoke French fine. And a couple of soldiers coughed up the fat clips Vaclav needed.
"Thanks," he said as he stowed them in a sack on his belt-they were too big for standard ammunition pouches.
"Any time, pal. I bet I've hated the Nazis longer than you have," the sergeant said. He had a slight guttural accent, curly auburn hair, and a formidable plow of a nose.
Another Jew. They're fucking everywhere, Jezek thought. The guy named David was back of the lines with a bullet through his leg right now. He'd get better. Whether the line would wasn't so obvious.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Vaclav said aloud. This fellow wouldn't duck out of the fight the way the damned Slovaks did, anyhow.
German 105s started tearing up the landscape a few hundred meters off to the south. Nobody in Vaclav's bunch even flinched. That wasn't close enough to worry about. The noncom said, "Maybe there'll be some cows down, and we can get ourselves fresh beef."
"Or pork." The words came out of Vaclav's mouth before he thought about them.
He didn't faze the noncom in French uniform. "I've eaten it," the guy said. "Beats the crap out of going hungry."
"Yeah, well, what doesn't?" Jezek replied.
They never got the chance to see if the Germans had done some worthwhile butchery for a change. Stukas screamed down from a treacherously clear sky. "Down!" Several soldiers yelled the same thing at the same time. Vaclav and the Jewish sergeant were two of them. They both fit action to word. Vaclav was already tearing at the muddy ground with his entrenching tool when the first bombs hit nearby.
Blast jumped on him with hobnailed boots. Fragments of bomb casing screeched malevolently through the air. He kept on impersonating a mole. Stukas came in bigger waves than this.
Sure as hell, more of them wailed down on him and his buddies. He'd heard they had sirens mounted on their landing gear to make them sound even scarier than they would have otherwise. As far as he was concerned, that was overdoing it. The damn things were scary enough anyhow.
The sergeant lay on his back, firing up at them with his rifle. That took guts, but it was bound to be a waste of ammo. How could you hit something that was going 500 kilometers an hour?
People were shrieking and wailing in a godawful Babel of languages. Medics ran here and there, slapping on bandages and lugging wounded soldiers away on stretchers. The medics wore Red Cross armbands and smocks. Some of them had painted Red Crosses in white circles on either side of their helmets. Every so often, they got shot anyway. German medics wore the same kind of outfits. Vaclav had never aimed at one of them on purpose. Still, he was sure they stopped bullets, too.
A French officer shouted something. It might as well have been in Japanese for all the sense it made to Vaclav. The redheaded Jew-just like Judas, Jezek thought-translated: "We've got to get back over the Semoy. They're going to blow the bridges pretty soon, he says, to help stop the Germans."
"They think that will?" Vaclav didn't believe it for a minute. The Nazis were too good with pontoon bridges and rubber boats and parachutists and what have you.
"That's what he says." After a moment, the sergeant added, "Do you want to get stuck here?"
"Well-no," Vaclav admitted-the only answer that question could have.
A crackle of machine-gun fire made him hit the dirt again. Here came an obsolete but nasty little Panzer I, spitting bullets from both guns in the turret. No French tanks anywhere close by, of course. They were like policemen-never around when you needed them.
But a Panzer I wasn't so goddamn tough. Vaclav had heard they were originally intended as nothing more than training vehicles. They got thrown into combat when Hitler jumped Czechoslovakia. Even their frontal armor was only thirteen millimeters thick. That kept out small-arms fire. Anything more…
He worked the bolt and chambered a round. He wasn't shooting at a Stuka; the little German tank made a fine target. The tank commander, who was also the gunner, sat right between the machine guns. As always, the antitank rifle kicked like a son of a bitch. He'd have a nasty bruise on his shoulder. He didn't care, though, not when the Panzer I's machine guns suddenly fell silent.
"Good shot!" the Jewish sergeant yelled. The tank drove on, but so what? The driver couldn't shoot while he was driving.
And the Allied soldiers on this side of the Semoy couldn't stop the Nazis. Vaclav thanked God no German bombers struck while he was tramping over the bridge. He would have thanked God a lot more had He done worse to the enemy sooner. In a world where you didn't get many big favors, you needed to be properly grateful for the small ones. "COME ON! THIS WAY!" THE engineer called in a low, urgent voice. Willi Dernen assumed he was an engineer, anyhow. It was the middle of the night, and as black as the Jew Suss' heart outside. The man went on, "The pontoon bridge is right here. It has rope rails, so hang on to those. And so help me God, you assholes, we'll drown the first fucking Dummkopf who lights a cigarette before he's half a kilometer away from it!"
Who would be that stupid? Willi wondered. But the question answered itself. A Dummkopf would, that was who. Like every other outfit in the world, the Wehrmacht had its share and then some. A jerk who decided he needed a smoke right now would damn well light up, and so what if he gave the game away to some watching Frenchman?
Willi's feet thudded on planks. He reached out and found the rope. It guided him across the Semoy. The bridge swayed under his weight and that of his comrades, almost as if he were on the deck of a boat.
"You heard the man," Corporal Baatz said loudly. "No smoking!"
The engineer spoke in a deadly whisper: "Whoever you are, big-mouth, shut the fuck up!"
Snickers ran through Baatz's squad. One of them was Willi's. He was only an ordinary Landser; he didn't have the rank to tell Awful Arno where to head in. The engineer sure did-or acted as if he did, which was every bit as good. Baatz didn't let out another peep, even to protest.
Somebody up ahead said, "Careful. You're coming to the end of the bridge." Maybe fifteen seconds later, he said it again, and then again, to let the troops gauge where he was. Willi almost tripped anyhow, when the planking gave way to mud.
"Second platoon, form up on me!" That was Lieutenant Georg Gross, who'd taken Neustadt's place after the former platoon commander bought his plot. Gross seemed like a pretty good guy, even if he didn't ride herd on Arno Baatz hard enough to suit Willi. To an officer, Baatz probably looked like a pretty good noncom. That only showed officers weren't as smart as they thought they were.
Somebody stepped on Willi's foot. "Ouch!" he said-quietly. "Watch it," he added.
"Sorry," the other soldier said, and then, "Willi?"
"Wolfgang?" Willi chuckled. "Well, that's one way to find each other in the dark."
"Listen to me, men," Lieutenant Gross said. "Listen to me, dammit! The objective is Charleville-Mezieres, southwest of here." The way he pronounced the town's name said he spoke French, as Neustadt had before him. Much good it had done the other platoon leader. Gross went on, "We've got about ten kilometers of marching to do before we get there, maybe twelve. We'll go through the Bois des Hazelles-the Hazelwood-for part of the way. It should give us some cover."