They slept in tents guarded by Waffen-SS men. When they got mush and doughy sausages and ersatz coffee the next morning, the fellow who served them wore the SS runes on his fatigue uniform. No one said much at breakfast. Even Hans-Ulrich was sure the mess-hall attendants who carried off the dirty dishes were listening.
Going back to the airplanes was a relief. Flying off toward the front in the east was a bigger one. At the front, things were simple. You knew who was a friend and who was a foe. Politics didn't get in the way-not so much, anyhow.
Before long, the communication from the ground came from men who spoke German with an odd accent, stressing the next-to-last syllable of every word whether they should have or not. "I'd say we're over Poland," Dieselhorst remarked through the speaking tube.
"I'd say you're right," Hans-Ulrich answered. A flight of gull-winged monoplane fighters badged with the Polish red and white four-square checkerboard paced the Stukas, escorting them through an ally's airspace. That Poland was an ally most Germans disliked almost as much as the Soviet enemy didn't matter… for the moment.
Hans-Ulrich eyed the fighters with wary attention. He didn't think they were anywhere near so good as German Bf-109s. Of course, they wouldn't have to be anywhere near that good to make mincemeat of a Stuka squadron. But they just flew along, friendly as could be. One of the Polish pilots caught Rudel's eye and waved. Hans-Ulrich waved back. What else was he going to do?
He also kept a wary eye out for Russian fighters. The Reds had monoplanes and biplanes, both models with noticeably flat noses. German pilots who'd faced them in Spain said they weren't so good as Messerschmitts, either. Again, though, they didn't need to be to shoot him down. How did they stack up against these Polish planes? He didn't know, and hoped he wouldn't have to find out.
A couple of antiaircraft guns fired on the Stukas when they flew over Warsaw. Colonel Steinbrenner screamed at the Poles over the radio. The firing abruptly cut off. It hadn't hit anybody. What that said about Polish air defenses… It sure didn't say anything good.
They landed at an airstrip about forty kilometers east of the capital. When Hans-Ulrich got out of his Ju-87, artillery was grumbling in the middle distance. Well, it wasn't as if he hadn't heard the same thing plenty of times in the Low Countries and France. He wasn't used to hearing it come out of the east, though.
And he wasn't used to the scenery, either. The land looked almost as flat as if it had been ironed. A cold wind that had a long start did its best to blow right through him. He was glad for his fur-and-leather flying suit. Off in the distance, a shabby village looked like something out of the seventeenth century, at least to his jaundiced eye.
To Sergeant Dieselhorst's, too. "Jesus, what a dump!" the noncom said.
"Now that you mention it, yes," Hans-Ulrich said.
"Don't let the Poles hear you talk like that, or they'll smash your face for you," a groundcrew man advised. "They think we're on their side, not the other way around."
That made Hans-Ulrich laugh out loud. "And the flea thinks the dog is his horse, too," he said scornfully. "We've got our soldiers and our planes here, and we aren't going to leave until we're good and ready." If the Poles didn't like that, it was their hard luck. They were only Poles, after all.
Chapter 25
No one had ever claimed Wales was a place where you went to enjoy the weather. There were good and cogent reasons why no one had ever said such a damnfool thing. Alistair Walsh had seen plenty of bad weather there, and even more in his army service. All the same, he'd never imagined anything like winter in central Norway.
The wind howled like a wolf. Snow blew as near horizontal as made no difference. He had a wool balaclava under his tin hat and a sheepskin coat a herder had pressed on him that was far warmer than his British-issue greatcoat. He wore greatcoat and sheepskin one on top of the other, and two pairs of mittens on his hands. He was cold anyway.
A British captain who was stumbling north with him said something. Whatever it was, that vicious wind blew it away. "Sorry, sir?" Walsh shouted back.
"I said"-the captain put his mouth as close to Walsh's ear as a lover might-"I said, without the bloody Gulf Stream, this country wouldn't be habitable at all."
Walsh considered that. "Who says it is, sir?"
"Ha!" The officer nodded. "Makes you understand why the Vikings went pirating so often, what?"
"Damned if it doesn't," Walsh agreed. "Even Scotland looks good next to this, and by God I never thought I'd say that in this life." The country up in the north there was bleak as could be, but this outdid it.
After nodding again, the captain said, "No fucking Germans in Scotland, either."
"Right." Walsh wished there were no Germans in Norway, either. Unfortunately, wishing didn't make them go away. They weren't nearly far enough behind the retreating Allies. German mountain troops had snowshoes and skis, and moved much faster than poor ordinary buggers stumbling up these indifferent roads.
Oh, the Norwegians had ski troops, too, and a few French chasseurs alpins were also equipped for winter warfare. But most of the allied expeditionary force was plain old infantry. And the plain old infantry was in trouble.
"One good thing," the captain bawled into Walsh's none too shell-like ear.
"What's that, sir?" Walsh answered. "It's one more than I've come up with."
"With the weather so beastly, the Luftwaffe can't get off the ground."
"Mm. There is that," Walsh said. "We can get shot and shelled, but the blighters won't bomb us for a while."
"Of course, our own planes are also grounded."
"Yes, sir," Walsh replied, and said not another word. The Luftwaffe ruled the skies in Norway and above the seas west of it. The RAF, along with a few French planes and what little was left of the Norwegian air force, did what it could against the Germans, but it wasn't enough. Stukas swooped, sirens screaming. Messerschmitts strafed almost as they pleased. The Fritzes' artillery spotting planes, the ones that could take off and land in next to nothing and hover in a headwind like a kestrel, flew here, there, and everywhere, showing the Nazis what to strike next. Clear weather favored the enemy. Well, there hadn't been much of it lately.
He trudged on. For all he could tell, the Germans were shelling them right now. The wind and snow cocooned him tightly. If the bastards didn't score a direct hit, he'd never know it. And if they did, he figured he'd end up in a warmer place than this. At the moment, eternal flame didn't seem half bad.
"Do you think they'll be able to pull us out, sir?" he asked.
"Maybe. If the bad weather holds and lets our ships into Namsos," the captain answered. He studied Walsh. The veteran noncom wondered why; neither of them showed more than his eyes. "What about you, Sergeant? I daresay you have more experience in these matters than I do."
Walsh only shrugged. "I may be older than you are, sir, but I've never been in anything like this."
"Last bugger who was in anything like this was Scott, and look what happened to him." The captain laughed harshly. "No, there was bloody Amundsen, too, and he was a Norwegian himself. He must have felt right at home at the South Pole, eh?"
"Wouldn't surprise me one bit." Walsh turned away from the wailing wind, cupped his hands, and lit a cigarette. Some people could strike a match in any weather, no matter how dreadful. The harsh smoke-he'd taken a packet of Gitanes off a dead Frenchman-gave him something to think about besides the blizzard.