“All is in readiness,” said Dunkel, the Red. “Not less than fifty thousand protesters are converging on the base at Sennelager to combat the Fascists.”
“The army has no objections to this,” announced the one gray-uniformed human present, a representative of certain elements in the General Staff. “Even if some portions objected to the trashing of our own bases, virtually no one wants these hideous SS men to remain in uniform.”
Günter, the Green, sat silently for a while. “We have our people there as well, at least sixty percent of the protesters are Green.”
The Tir, eyes still closed and breathing still shallow, said in a strained voice, “You have all done well. There will be rewards for good performance…”
Sennelager, Germany, 14 June 2005
A helmeted Dieter Schulz, now rewarded for his talents by sporting the insignia of a Stabsunteroffizier — a staff sergeant — and Rudi Harz, a sergeant himself, formed their troops in ranks before taking their places to the right.
“What’s going on Dieter?” asked Harz.
“No clue, Rudi. Maybe we are going to celebrate Bastille Day.”
Harz snorted. “Somehow, I think not. Not with the orders being to wear helmets and gas masks, and to carry clubs.”
“Should we ask Krueger?” queried Schultz, in a whisper. “I hate asking that bastard anything.”
Krueger — now sergeant major of the headquarters detachment of Schwere Panzer Abteilung, heavy tank battalion, 501 — heard both his name and the word “bastard” whispered despite the distance between himself and the boys. He assumed that “bastard” could refer only to himself and smiled at the knowledge.
Standing in front of the detachment, Krueger turned his head over one shoulder and announced, “We’re going to bust some fucking heads, Knaben.[25] That is all you need to know.”
In front of the formation, thirteen blocks of twenty or twenty-one men — all that had been trained so far — plus a larger block to the left composing the service support detachment, the adjutant called the unit to attention. The men stiffened.
Brasche strode out. He, like the boys, was dressed in field gray. The more modern camouflage pattern, not one whit more effective against Posleen visual rods, was in short supply. It mattered little, in any case. Brasche and the rest of the Korps’ cadre were more comfortable in field gray than they ever would have been in the kaleidoscope of color that was more modern German battle dress.
There was an exchange of salutes. The adjutant moved to one side and marched to a position behind Brasche.
Hans was short, curt even, in his speech. The duty ahead promised to be unpleasant and, while he would perform that duty, he had little genuine enthusiasm. “Boys, there are some people outside the main gate trying to break in and trash our little home away from home. On my command, you will don your protective masks. This is so that the newspapers and television and, incidentally, the legal system cannot identify you by face. Then we will march singing — singing the “Panzerlied” — to the main gate. If they go away when we do this, so much the better.
“But if they do not, we are going to put them, as many of them as possible, into the hospital.”
Schultz distinctly heard Krueger chortle with unrepressed glee. He thought, but could not be quite sure, that he heard a whispered, “Just like the good old days.”
Brasche bellowed a command which was echoed down the ranks. The men fumbled with gas masks. These now — since the Posleen war — had gone largely obsolete, the Posleen being quite immune to any terrestrial war gas. Indeed, the only reason the men had even been issued and trained on masks was that the German chemical industry, working in close cooperation with the Russians, believed that a militarily useful toxin might someday be developed from the venom of the grat, a wasplike pest of the Posleen.
At another command the men ported their makeshift clubs. Still another and the battalion faced to the right. A last command and they began to march down the cobblestones towards the main gate to the Kaserne.
No command was required to begin the singing.
Though muffled by the masks, the sound of tens of thousands of throats belting out the German Army’s — be it called Reichswehr, Wehrmacht, SS or Bundeswehr — traditional song for its armored forces made the woods and the stones of the barracks ring.
So deeply involved were they in the process of trying to force the Kaserne’s gate that the foremost ranks of the rioters scarcely noticed the approach of the Korps. Indeed, the sounds of smashing signs and grunting, struggling men and women quite drowned out the marching song for those nearest to the struggle. Not one of those rioters saw any incongruity in the fact that the signs bore slogans such as “Peace Now” and “Don’t Grease the Wheels of the War Machine.” Not one marcher found anything amiss in the attempt to sabotage the training of men who would save the Earth, if they could, from the Posleen who would destroy it. The protesters simply refused to acknowledge that the Posleen were any threat. Many of them refused even to acknowledge that the aliens existed.
Back a distance, watching the struggle but taking no part in it, sat a reasonably well doped-up Andreas Schüler. Tall, thin, not too recently washed, Schüler wasn’t here because he cared about “saving” the Earth. He wasn’t here because he really objected to the army, except that in his own very personal way he had once objected to finding himself in the army and had instead done his “social year” in an infinitely more comfortable nursing home.
Andreas had no great objection even to the 47th Panzer Korps. He, frankly, didn’t care that that Korps was in everything but name a resurrection of the dreaded SS. Indeed, in his younger days he had once flirted with the skinheads, though he had found no satisfaction in the movement.
Schüler had come — as he had come every time the German left had massed to break and demoralize another part of the army — for the dope, the girls, and the visual spectacle. He was by no means alone in this.
The spectacle had amused for a while, but then it had paled. Everything pales, in time. He recalled laughing as he watched a few protestors paint bright silver Sigrunen, SS, on the window of a Bundeswehr recruiting station. The marching crowd had laughed with him.
Even so, Schüler could not feel a part of the amorphous mass of humanity in whose march from the train station he had taken part. There had been singing on that march… but the singing failed to move him.
Despite the struggle at the gate, Schüler, like hundreds of others nearby, found himself more involved in conversation with the opposite sex than in any apparent cause.
But then he heard. And then, from his high perch, he saw.
From all corners of the Kaserne poured in gray-clad men at a steady, even a stately, pace. The boots resounded on the pavement, audible at hundreds of meters. Noncoms kept order, automatically interweaving the columns while still keeping units and ranks largely together. It was a spectacle not seen in Germany in many years.
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