“Take it easy with him,” Angst shouted, but it was Braun who seized Schroeder and separated him from the frail Ukrainian.
“Lay off before you break all his bones!”
Shocked by the brazen interference, Schroeder glared.
“He can’t speak anything but the local dialect,” Braun continued. “What do you expect to learn by beating the old boy to death?”
Although challenged, Schroeder regained his composure. “See if you can get anything out of him, Braun. As for the rest of you, clear out. Set up defensive positions. I want this shit-hole covered on all sides. Observation posts. You know what to do. Angst, find Richter and do a thorough search of all the houses. See if there’s anything to eat around here other than garbage.”
Once the three filed outside, Schmidt said, “I hate to leave Friedrich in there alone with him. Besides, I don’t think his knowledge of Russian is any better than the corporal’s.”
“Don’t worry about Braun. If anybody can handle Schroeder, he can,” Angst said.
Although his estimation of the foul-mouthed, back-talking grenadier had grown over the past several minutes, Minnesinger had his doubts. “I don’t think the likes of Corporal Schroeder can be handled.”
Wahl appeared from around the corner of a shack in the company of two little boys about seven or eight years old. Shoeless and covered with scratches, their spindly legs stuck out from baggy trousers that stopped just below the knee. One boy wore an adult’s cap that fell over his eyes. He had to lift his head and look under the brim to see the giants that surrounded him.
“Where did you find these two?” Minnesinger asked.
“I caught them trying to sneak out the back of one of the houses. They were headed for the ravine.”
“What’s he got in his hand?” Minnesinger gestured toward the boy in the cap, who held a small metal object.
“A tin of fish, but nothing to open it with,” Wahl said. “They don’t trust me to do it. Afraid I’ll take it away from them, I suppose.”
The children had the wide-eyed stare of feral kittens, abandoned, hungry, and afraid. The smaller of the two boys exhibited a stunted quality due to chronic malnourishment.
“I wonder if they’re any relation to the old Popov,” Angst said.
Wahl looked perplexed. “What Popov”?
Angst proceeded to explain about Oleksander, but Wahl shook his head. From the little he could understand, the boys were orphans and had been abandoned when the townsfolk left with the unit that passed through earlier that morning.
“And the Russians?” Minnesinger asked.
“They were here. Lucky for us, we just missed them.”
They now knew which side kicked up the dust as it made pursuit to the west, but this knowledge was of little comfort.
“You better tell Schroeder what you’ve learned,” Minnesinger told Wahl, and pointed to the old man’s tar paper residence. “He’s in there.”
The boys followed but remained outside as Wahl entered the shack. Minnesinger decided to look for a well. It would be polluted, more than likely, but it might be worth the effort. Standard practice was to foul the water supply when in retreat, usually with the rotting carcass of an animal; sometimes poison, if available. As Minnesinger departed, he instructed Schmidt to keep an eye to the west. “The Russians may come back this way again.”
Angst tagged along with Schmidt to the edge of the balka. It was steep-sided and broad in width, with a depth of approximately three meters, and bone dry. Angst turned over the binoculars to his friend.
“It wouldn’t be at all pleasant if the Russians did decide to return,” Schmidt said, as he took the binoculars.
Angst doubted the likelihood of that happening. “The Bolsheviks have the entire Sixth Army to chase. They’re not going to bother themselves over a few stragglers.”
“Where are you off to, Johann”?
“As Herr Corporal has ordered, to snoop around.” Angst left Schmidt to his picket duty at the edge of the balka and poked around in several shacks in an effort to find Richter or something edible. He walked past a particularly squalid hovel and noticed the barrel of an MG42 protruding from an open window. Ganz sat at the other end of the weapon inside the house and eyed Angst with suspicion.
“Have you seen Richter?”
“Don’t know him. What does he look like?”
Angst was about to describe him but realized the number two gunner was applying his own peculiar brand of humor. “Maybe he’s taking a crap in the ravine,” Ganz suggested with a smirk. Angst did not bother to comment. There was a loud noise; something had overturned, followed by a muffled squeal. He walked around to the rear of the shack to investigate. There was an addition or hut of some kind attached to the back end. He could see movement in the spaces between the dried sunflower stalks that formed the walls. A struggle was taking place. Suddenly, the dried stalks burst outward, and amid a cloud of fibered motes that gleamed in the sunlight, a girl bounded out. The strings of a dingy apron were untied, and her sleeveless blue dress had been torn at the bust. Her kerchief had either fallen or was pulled to the back of her head, revealing lank, sandy-colored hair. She nearly ran into Angst but was able to stop, eyes wide with terror, and, without missing a beat, sprang out his way with the agility of a fawn and ran for all she was worth. Detwiler ploughed through the remains of the wall with one hand clutching at his unfastened trousers and the other extended uselessly as he tried to grope for the girl as he ran. Angst took his carbine, bent down, and extended the weapon neatly between Detwiler’s ankles. He went down solid and hard, the air forced out of his lungs from the impact of the fall. Angst picked up his rifle and watched as the machine gunner tried to rise to his knees, spluttering, and coughed up dust and saliva. “I’m going to kill you,” Detwiler managed to say between gasps.
Angst knew he was serious. “She’s only a kid, for Christ’s sake.”
Ganz called out from the window. “Detwiler’s got a bigger appetite than most. Best to let him do as he pleases.” She was no more than fifteen, Angst guessed. He watched as Richter caught the girl in midflight and, with Wilms’s help, held onto her as she squirmed and kicked. Fed up with the struggle, Wilms cuffed her savagely on the back of the head. Stunned, she immediately turned docile.
Detwiler drew a knife from his boot and planted himself, if a trifle unsteadily, in Angst’s path. The gunner was an impregnable wall of meat and weapons that would not allow circumvention. Angst knew he could not go against him in a fight without being mauled, or worse. He threw the bolt of the carbine with a distinctive click and pressed the muzzle firmly to Detwiler’s gut. Angst had nothing to prove, but he understood that if he dropped the panzergrenadier in this manner it would be the last thing he would ever do. His Kamerad, Ganz, and Schroeder would certainly see to that.
A voice started to scream the same foreign word, repeated over and over. “Tridsatchetverka! Tridsatchetverka!” It was the girl. While they sized each other up, warily, the meaning had finally penetrated Detwiler’s fury and Angst’s fear. Thirty-four. It was the Russian word for T-34.