“Fuck you, Dernen,” Baatz replied, wasting no time in proving that a wound hadn’t changed him. “I was wondering if they’d finally managed to kill you off.”
By wondering if, he plainly meant wishing. No, he hadn’t changed a bit. “Not me,” Willi said. “And to tell you the truth, things around here have run a lot smoother since you stopped one.” If he suggested that Awful Arno go stop another one, preferably with his face this time, he’d be insubordinate. If he let Baatz color in the picture for himself, on the other hand …
Awful Arno was plenty capable of doing that. “Smoother, huh?” he grunted, scowling. “You mean you’ve been screwing off more, is what you mean.”
“We’re farther forward than we were when you got hit,” Willi said.
“And I’m sure it’s all thanks to you and your asshole buddy, Pfaff.” Awful Arno was full of snappy comebacks. Maybe they’d issued him some new ones at the hospital. He looked around the wrecked Russian village. “Where is Pfaff, anyway?”
“He’s around somewhere,” Willi said. “I think he went off to use the latrine trenches. He must have known you were coming.”
“Nah, he’s always been full of shit, just like you,” Baatz retorted. He looked around again. “God, these Ivans live like swine.”
The village no doubt hadn’t been this bad before it got overrun a few times. Even so, Willi didn’t think it was ever a place where he would have wanted to live. Finding he agreed with Awful Arno about anything annoyed him. Here came Adam Pfaff from the direction of the latrines. He carried his gray-painted Mauser. That was sensible. The Russians had the nasty habit of bushwhacking Germans they caught easing themselves-and of doing nasty things to their bodies, with luck after they were dead.
Willi waved to him. “Look at this!” he called. “Your old friend was just asking about you.”
Pfaff controlled his enthusiasm at seeing Corporal Baatz. “Old friend?” he said, deadpan. “Where?”
“Ahh, your mother,” Baatz said.
“Well, the voice is familiar,” Pfaff allowed. “So is the charm.”
Awful Arno told him where he could stick his charm. Then he noticed that Willi’s rifle had a telescopic sight and the downturned bolt that went with it. “Still got that worthless sniping piece, do you?”
“It’s not worthless,” Willi said indignantly.
“In your hands, it is,” Baatz said. “You can’t aim well enough not to piss on your own boots.”
“Bullshit.” Willi pointed to the marksman’s badge on his left tunic pocket.
“So you got lucky one day. Big deal,” Baatz jeered.
That’s what they said to your old man, too. Regretfully, Willi swallowed the crack instead of coming out with it. It might make Baatz swing at him, and then he’d have to try to knock Awful Arno’s block off. He was pretty sure he could do it, but so what? If you brawled with a superior, you were the one who caught it every single time. It wasn’t fair. Again, though, so what? Willi’d spent enough time in the service to know how little fair mattered.
Rather than making things worse, Adam Pfaff tried to defuse them: “What’s the Vaterland like these days?” he asked Baatz. “None of us Frontschweine’ve seen it for a long time.”
Some days, you just couldn’t win. Awful Arno was as touchy as ever. “What? You telling me I’m no Frontschwein? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, Corporal. I’m not saying that. God forbid I should say that.” Pfaff spread his hands in exaggerated patience. “What is the Vaterland like?”
“Chilly. Hungry. Not starving, but hungry. Pissed off at the froggies for changing sides again. Pretty much what you’d expect, in other words.” Baatz hesitated, maybe wondering if he’d said too much. He made haste to add, “But everybody’s behind the Fuhrer one hundred percent, of course.”
“Aber naturlich,” Willi agreed. Pfaff nodded. Both men made sure they didn’t sound sarcastic. Baatz was just the kind of pigdog who’d report you to a loyalty officer for defeatism if you opened your mouth too wide and let him see what you were really thinking-what any soldier with a gram of sense had to be thinking.
The really crazy thing was, what a Frontschwein thought about Hitler didn’t matter a pfennig. The Ivans would slaughter you whether you thought the Fuhrer was off his rocker or you went around shouting “Sieg heil!” all the goddamn time. You were up against the Red Army any which way. To the Russians, that was the only thing that counted. Which-aber naturlich-made it the only thing that counted to the guys in Feldgrau, too.
Cannon rumbled, off in the distance. Like Willi and Adam Pfaff, Awful Arno cocked his head to one side, listening. He delivered the verdict: “Ours.”
“Ja.” Willi nodded this time. “You remember that much, anyhow.”
“Like I said before, Dernen, fuck you.” With what he might have meant for an amiable nod, Baatz stumped away, boots squelching in the mud.
Willi sighed. His breath smoked. It wasn’t snowing any more, but it wasn’t what you’d call warm, either. “Why the hell did they have to give him back to us?” he said-quietly, because Awful Arno had ears keen as a wolf’s.
“Most of the time, putting wounded guys back in the slots they held before they got hurt is a good idea. It helps morale, right?” Pfaff said.
“Right.” Willi didn’t sound like someone who believed it-and he wasn’t. “Whoever wrote the rule book never ran into Arno Baatz.”
“I’d like to run into him-driving a Kubelwagen,” Pfaff said.
“A truck’d be better,” Willi observed. They went on in that vein for some little while.
Baatz pissed and moaned about the barley-and-meat stew the field kitchen dished out. Nobody else complained. Willi was just glad the stew had meat in it. He didn’t care about what the meat was. He suspected it had neighed while it was alive, but he would have eaten it even if he’d thought it barked. He’d spent too long in the field to be fussy. As long as there was plenty of it, he’d spoon it out of his mess tin. He’d go back for seconds, too. He would, and he did.
Afterwards, he did a good, thorough job of washing the tin and his utensils. No matter what Awful Arno said, he wasn’t slack about anything important. Eat from a dirty mess tin and you were asking for the shits or the heaves. With what you got in Russia, you always took that chance. Making your odds worse was stupid, nothing else but.
Baatz also pissed and moaned about the pallet of musty straw where he was supposed to lay his head. “Poor baby,” Willi said. “He’s been sleeping on a mattress too long. He’ll toss and turn all night.”
“What a shame!” Adam Pfaff exclaimed.
They both laughed. They had straw pallets, too, and were damn glad to lie on them. Willi wondered how many nights he’d spent rolled in his blanket on hard ground or huddled in his greatcoat in the snow. To be fair, Awful Arno had also passed his share of nights like that, but he seemed to have forgotten about them.
Next morning, right at sunrise, the Russians launched a volley of Katyushas at the village. Most of the horrible, screaming rockets landed in the fields beyond it. All the same, Willi jumped into a muddy foxhole while they were still in the air.
Blast knocked Awful Arno off his feet, but he scrambled into a foxhole a few meters from Willi’s. After the volley ended, he stuck up his head and said, “Jesus Christ, I forgot how much fun this is.”
“Fun,” Willi said. “Ja. Sure.”
“You know what I mean,” Baatz said.
“You bet I do-and don’t I wish I didn’t!” Willi agreed with deep feeling. He stuck up his head, too. As he lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, he looked east to make sure a million drunken Ivans weren’t swarming forward shrieking Urra! Not this time, for which he thanked heaven. The Russians just wanted to harass the German positions. The bastards knew how to get what they wanted, too.