Singer, still wan and thin, looked far better each day. “Almost ready to go out there and play. Don’t laugh-don’t the St. Louis Browns have a one-armed outfielder?”
“If anyone would, it would be the Brownies,” Logan said.
Singer beamed. “I got a letter from Marsha.” Two nights before, they had been overflown by a bomber flight that had dropped some essential supplies and, surprise of surprises, a number of sacks of mail. Once again, morale had soared. “It was written before I got hurt and we got stuck here, but it was really good to hear from her. She’s working in Boston as a waitress and she’s gone back to college. When this is over, she’ll get a job and support me while I go back to school and finish my education.”
“Good idea,” said Jack, thinking of his own interrupted studies. But that had been in another world, hadn’t it? “How are you doing at the hospital?”
“Well, they’re still letting me work with the more badly wounded. I either read to them or help them to try and realize they still have a life to live.”
“That’s great, Dave,” Jack said. Elisabeth had slipped her hand into his. It was a wonderfully comforting feeling.
“Jack, you have no idea how good it feels to be useful. After all, I still have two of the three arms I was given-right arm and short arm.” Logan grinned and Elisabeth smiled tolerantly. She got the joke. “Seriously, I do have a life to live and a career to build when I get home and, no, I was not going to be a surgeon or a paperhanger.”
Elisabeth laughed. “Then what?”
“An accountant. And like I once told Jack, I can juggle figures just as well with one arm.” Singer looked around and saw some friends, said he’d talk to Jack and Lis later, and went over to visit.
Elisabeth squeezed Jack’s hand again. “Did you get any mail?”
“Nope. A lot of people didn’t. I was hoping, but what the heck, I’ll live.”
“Does that upset you?”
“I’ll live. Really, I’m used to it.”
Despite his denial, there was a hint of sadness in his voice. There was a moment’s silence while Elisabeth reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a plain envelope.
“Here,” she said.
“What’s this?”
“A letter. It’s from me. See, you do have someone who cares for you and writes to you.”
Elisabeth turned her head so that she could not see the stunned expression on Jack’s face and so that he could not see the look on hers. He pulled her closer and said how much he appreciated it and yes, he really did want letters from home, but this was even better. He said he would read it later, which was what Lis wanted. Despite being a soldier, Lis thought he was such a good and gentle man. Perhaps this was one way of letting him know that she felt that way about him.
On the other side of the playing field, Wolfgang von Schumann confronted General Miller. “Well, General, have you made up your mind?”
“Ike would crap.”
“But wouldn’t he also crap if he found out that you looked a gift horse in the mouth?”
“True enough, Herr Oberst.” Miller looked longingly at the ball game and thought of gentler times gone by. He knew he now had a decision to make.
A belated survey of the Potsdam area had revealed the existence of a large number of German antiaircraft guns and a quantity of ammunition. They had been Potsdam’s defense against bombers. Von Schumann had also located a warehouse that contained, among other things, a quantity of panzerfausts, the shoulder-carried antitank rockets that could be useful at close range.
Almost simultaneously, a census of the remaining German population of Potsdam had revealed several hundred veterans or soldiers in hiding, along with the crews of most of the antiaircraft guns, which included a number of the splendid 88 mm guns that could stop most tanks as well as shoot down planes. The German soldiers had stayed to defend their city and been swept up by the advances of the Russians and the Americans.
Von Schumann had reviewed the situation and made a modest proposal that they all be put to use in the defense of Potsdam. The Germans were willing, and the American soldiers had no apparent qualms, so what was the problem? Miller asked himself. Certainly, no one was concerned about using the other side’s weapons. That had been done many times in the war.
Von Schumann had argued that it really didn’t matter that use of German personnel wasn’t yet authorized by SHAEF or Truman or anyone else, although there were rumors that it soon would be. What did matter was that they use every means possible to defend themselves. War is hell, he reminded Miller, and it contains no rules except to destroy one’s enemy. He was reminded that the Germans in Potsdam would be slaughtered by the Russians if they broke through and would, therefore, fight like tigers. He added that they had a right to have weapons to defend themselves, and Miller couldn’t rebut him.
Miller smiled and patted his pocket for some tobacco. Once again there wasn’t any. “Advisers,” he said smiling.
Von Schumann blinked. “What?”
“They cannot be allies and they cannot be part of the American army. At least not officially and not yet. However, they can be advisers. Someone must teach my soldiers how to use those nice antiaircraft guns of yours and how not to shoot themselves in the foot with the panzerfausts. Therefore, they will advise our soldiers.”
Von Schumann thought it over. “Should it become necessary, or even helpful, can these advisers man guns and shoot them?”
“Of course, Herr Oberst,” Miller said sweetly. “How better to advise?”
The planes that had ravaged the oil fields and other vital areas of the Caucasus had come from airstrips in Iran and Iraq. There had been as many as a thousand fighters-P-51s and P-47s-and they had simply overwhelmed the inadequate defenses of the area and destroyed virtually all the planes left to defend the precious oil-producing area. These had been followed by the bombers, hundreds of B-17s and B-24s along with a few score of newly arrived B-29s.
For the Russians, the final tally was 139 of their planes shot down, and nearly 350 destroyed on the ground. Even allowing for the wildly inflated claims of the surviving aircrews and those gunners on the ground who had found targets worth shooting at, the Americans had lost only about fifty planes of all types. To make matters worse, it appeared that the Americans had overflown Turkey and then entered Russian airspace from the Black Sea. They had been wolves among the Russian sheep before there was any reaction from the Russian defenders, even the handful who had been looking westward.
The simultaneous raid on Ploesti had been staged from bases in Italy and North Africa, and the planes, again more than a thousand, had crossed the Adriatic, and then Yugoslavia, and been above Ploesti only seconds after the alarm had been sounded. It was noted by the Soviet leadership that the Yugoslav Communists under Marshal Tito had not been terribly efficient or prompt in communicating the presence of Allied aircraft to Stavka. It was a lapse of fraternal socialist brotherhood among ostensible Communist allies that Stalin swore he would remember. It seemed to some observers that Tito did not look with total favor upon the thought of Russian hegemony in Europe.
Stalin, Beria, and Molotov had traveled from Moscow to this dismal German city of Kustrin on the Oder to acquaint Marshal Zhukov with the new realities confronting him. At least the place for the meeting was better repaired than the last time. Now the windows were glassed over and there was electricity. Otherwise, Kustrin was still a city in ruins.
But first there were matters that had to be settled in the traditional Soviet matter.
“This motherfucking Guchkov,” Stalin asked, “it is confirmed that he is dead?”
Zhukov saw the dread look in Stalin’s eyes and was glad he was not Guchkov. It was the look of a snake stalking its prey. Stalin was openly expressionless but his eyes gave him away. He looked to be mad for revenge. Zhukov replied. “Yes, Comrade Stalin. He is dead, a suicide.”