Fire from the French panzers paused. They had to traverse their turrets to bear on the new threat. And their commander was also the loader and gunner. They couldn't shoot fast no matter how much they wanted to. The German Panzer I and II suffered from the same problem. Not the III. Commander, loader, and gunner all fit within its angular turret.
Because of that edge, the Panzer III knocked out two more French vehicles in quick succession. Its hull machine gun sprayed death at the advancing foot soldiers and made them sprawl for cover. But then the froggies started shooting back, damn them. Some of their panzers mounted 47mm cannon. The III was armored better than the I and II, but Willi didn't know of a panzer in the world that could stop 47mm AP rounds. The German machine showed smoke, and then flame. Willi hoped some of the crewmen got out.
A few Panzer Is and IIs still tried conclusions with the French armor. Willi could see how that would play out, even if it took a while. He didn't like the ending on the movie that ran in his mind. He didn't like retreating, either, but… He just hoped he could do it without getting shot in the back.
Then Corporal Baatz yelled, "Fall back through Etrepois!" That was the tiny village behind the stretch of line the section was holding. Willi had heard the Frenchies who lived there pronounce the name. Awful Arno made a horrible hash of it.
German artillery came to life then, pounding the ground in front of the line. That would make the poilus take cover if anything did. Trying not to think about short rounds, Willi scrambled out of his hole. He ran hunched-over and zigzagged. Maybe it did a little good, maybe not.
He dove into a crater a 155 round must have dug. A moment later, another Landser joined him. "Boy, this is fun," Wolfgang Storch panted. "Fun like getting all your teeth pulled out."
They'd gone through basic together. They still argued about who hated Awful Arno worse. Wolfgang was more apt to speak his mind than Willi, who usually had a sunnier disposition. But there wasn't anything to be sunny about, not right now there wasn't. "Fun. Yeah. Sure." Those were all the words Dernen had in him.
Storch fired a couple of rounds from his Mauser. "That'll make 'em keep their heads down," he said in some satisfaction. "C'mon. You ready to do some more moving?"
"I guess." Willi hoped he'd find reinforcements rushing up through Etrepois. He didn't. The village was only a few houses and a tavern marking a crossroads. Frenchwomen with impassive faces watched the Germans retreat. A few weeks earlier, their own men had been the ones giving ground.
The Wehrmacht was on the move then. Willi'd had his pecker up. Now… Now he was discovering what the Frenchies had known ever since December, when the German blow fell in the west. If you had the choice between advancing and retreating, advancing was better.
Now there was a profound bit of philosophy! Shaking his head, Willi left Etrepois behind him. AFTER SO LONG on the Ebro front, Madrid was a different world for Chaim Weinberg. It was different for everybody in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, for everybody in all the International Brigades.
That didn't make the embattled capital of Spain (though the Republican government had been operating out of Barcelona for quite a while now) an improvement over the trenches in the far northeast. Looking at the devastation all around him, Chaim said, "They had to destroy this place in order to save it, didn't they?"
Mike Carroll only grunted. The hand-rolled cigarette in the corner of his mouth twitched. "Fascists destroyed this fuckin' place to destroy it," he answered. "That's what Marshal Sanjurjo's assholes do."
He talked slow, like a foul-mouthed Gary Cooper. He looked a little like him, too: he was tall and fair and lean and rugged. Chaim, short and squat and dark, fit in fine in Spain. People stared at Mike, wondering if he was a German. Better to be thought a Gary Cooper lookalike. No one in Republican Spain loved Germans.
Grimacing, Chaim shook his head. That wasn't true. No one in Republican Spain admitted to loving Germans. That wasn't the same as the other. Just as Republicans had to lie low in land Sanjurjo's Nationalists held, so the jackals of Hitlerism needed to smile and pretend wherever the Republic still ruled. One side's firing squads or the other's took care of fools who slipped. As far as Chaim was concerned, the Nationalists massacred, while the Republic dealt out stern justice. That somebody on the other side might see things differently bothered him not a peseta's worth.
Somebody on the other side wouldn't have seen what the Fascists had done to Madrid. Spanish bombers-and those of their Italian and German allies-had been working the city over for two and a half years. Buildings looked as skeletal and battered as a bare-branched forest at the tag end of a hard winter. Spring would clothe the forest in green. Spring was here in Madrid, but this town still smelled like death. It would be a long time recovering, if it ever did.
Well, that was what the International Brigades were here for. They were the best fighters the Republic had. Chaim would tell people so, at any excuse or none. Few Spaniards seemed to want to argue with him. They knew they had no military skill to speak of. That shamed a lot of them. Maybe it should have made them proud instead-didn't it argue they were more civilized than most?
Many Internationals, including some of the Abe Lincolns, had fought in the last war. Chaim and Mike were both too young for that. But, like the rest of the Marxist-Leninists and fellow travelers who'd come to Spain to battle Fascism, they were motivated. They hadn't stood on the sidelines when reaction went on the march here. They'd come to do something about it.
"Funny, y'know," Chaim said, looking away from a skinny dog snapping at something disgusting in the gutter. "They were set to take us out of the line six months ago, when the big war fired up." He jerked a thumb toward the northeast toward the rest of Europe, the world beyond the Pyrenees.
"Yeah, well…" Mike paused to blow a smoke ring. He owned all kinds of casual, offhand talents like that. "Bastards back there finally figured out we knew what we were doing down here."
"Better believe it!" Weinberg had his full measure of the New York City Jew's passionate devotion to causes. How could you not be enthusiastic about putting a spike in Hitler's wheel? Plenty of folks, even Jews, seemed not to get excited about Fascism. Dumb assholes, Chaim thought scornfully.
Artillery rumbled, off to the northwest. The Nationalists were closest to the heart of the city there. In fact, they'd pushed into Madrid in the northwest. Most of the university lay in their hands. It had gone back and forth for the past couple of years. Whenever one side felt strong, it tried to shove out the other. Now it looked as if both sides had decided to shove at the same time, like a couple of rams banging heads. Only time would tell what sprang from that.
The university was less than two miles north of the royal palace. Chaim had been by the palace, just to see what it looked like. Marshal Sanjurjo had declared he would restore the King of Spain if his side won. That sure hadn't kept the Nationalists and Germans and Italians from knocking the snot out of Alfonso XIII's digs. If he ever came back, he could live in the ruins or in a tent like everybody else.
When Chaim said as much, Mike Carroll made a sour face. "If the reactionary son of a bitch comes back, that means we've lost."
"Yeah, well, if we do we probably won't have to worry about it any more," Chaim said. He didn't mean they would get over the border to France, either. The Nationalists didn't take many prisoners. Come to that, neither did the Republicans. Chaim didn't know which side had started shooting men who tried to give up. That didn't matter any more. The Spaniards might not make the world's greatest professional soldiers, but when they hated they didn't hate halfway.