"I felt the same way till they promoted me," Halevy answered easily. "Now I see that sergeants are the salt of the earth. It's the officers who're silly clots."
"Shows what you know." Vaclav dug a grubby pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Benjamin Halevy looked hopeful. The Czech gave him one. It wasn't as if he hadn't bummed butts from the Jew.
After a while, Vaclav cautiously peered over the lip of the shell hole. There in the distance, between a couple of tree trunks… Was that the painted shield on the Germans' antitank gun? Something-no, somebody-moved behind it. Yes, the son of a bitch wore Feldgrau. Grunting, Vaclav heaved his heavy piece up onto the dirt lip. He flipped off the safety and stared down the sights. The Nazi had crouched down again. Maybe Vaclav could put a round through the shield; it wasn't made to stop anything more than ordinary ammo. But he might get a better target if he waited.
And he did. The German stood up and looked out through field glasses to try to spot the trouble heading his way. The worst troubles, though, were the ones you didn't see. Vaclav exhaled slowly to steady himself. He pulled the trigger. The antitank rifle slammed his shoulder. The German threw his hands in the air and fell over.
Vaclav worked the bolt as fast as he could, chambering a fresh round. As he'd guessed, another German jumped up to find out what had happened to his buddy. Vaclav fired again. The second Fritz's head exploded into red mist.
"Two?" Halevy asked.
"Two," Vaclav agreed. "One dead for sure. The other I don't know about." Any hit from the antitank rifle might kill. Rubbing, he added, "They ought to requisition me a new shoulder, too."
"Talk to the French quartermasters," the Jew said.
"Fuck 'em," Jezek replied with great sincerity. "Maybe the Germans have a supply dump in Laon. If we can chase 'em out of there, I'll go through it and see."
"If we can chase them out of Laon, we really are doing something," Halevy said. "They took it early on. Maybe we can push on up to the coast and cut them off."
"Maybe we'll get out of this shell hole in a while," Vaclav said. "One goddamn thing at a time." Halevy nodded and scrounged another smoke.
Chapter 24
Theo Hossbach hadn't had much to do with Lieutenant Colonel Koch. A radio operator who was happiest by himself didn't hobnob with a regimental commander. Theo wouldn't have hobnobbed with his crewmates if he could have helped it. But he'd never heard anything bad about Koch. The officer was supposed to be brave. He didn't punish his troops because he enjoyed punishing people. Men who knew about such things said he had a good tactical sense. Theo hadn't seen anything to make him disbelieve it.
None of that did Koch any good now. He stood blindfolded, tied to a post in front of a stone wall in a Polish town. Along with quite a few other panzer crews, Theo and Adi Stoss and Hermann Witt had been summoned to see what happened to officers who dared go against the German government.
A Waffen-SS captain-they had their own silly name for the rank, but it amounted to captain-spoke in a loud voice: "This man is guilty of treason against the Reich and against our beloved Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. For treason in wartime, there is only one sentence-the supreme penalty."
He turned to his own men: a dozen more asphalt soldiers. They all carried rifles. When he looked at them, they stiffened to attention.
Maybe they didn't realize it, but the watching panzer crewmen packed a lot more close-range firepower than they did. Lugers, Schmeissers… The SS men could wind up dead before they knew it. None of the Wehrmacht troops in black coveralls looked happy at what was going on in front of them. What would it take to turn dismay to mutiny?
Not much, not if Theo was any judge. A word from Koch would have done it. And what would have happened after that? War between the army and the SS? Theo would have been ready, even eager, for it. He knew he wasn't the only one, either-nowhere close. But it might also have been war between rebel and loyalist Wehrmacht units. He couldn't stomach that. And, while the Germans were bashing one another, what would the Red Army do? Stand around watching? Not likely!
"Raise your weapons!" the SS captain ordered. The firing squad obeyed. "Aim your weapons!" he said, and they did.
Lieutenant Colonel Koch did cry out then. Had he yelled Save me! or Down with Hitler!, the mutiny might have started then and there. But all he said, in a loud, clear voice, was, "Long live Germany!"
"Fire!" the SS man shouted. A dozen shots rang out as one. Koch slumped against his bonds. Blood darkened the front of his tunic. The sergeant who headed the riflemen went over to him and felt for a pulse. He must have found one, for he grimaced. "Finish him!" the SS captain snapped. The sergeant drew a pistol and shot Koch in the back of the head. That surely ended that. The SS captain looked out at the panzer troops. "You may bury him," he said, as if he were granting some large concession. By his lights, he probably was.
He and his men piled into a half-track and a truck and sped away. What other luckless officer was next on their list?
"Fuck," Adi Stoss said next to Theo. "I hope I never see anything like that again."
"Amen," Hermann Witt said. "He was a good soldier."
The sergeant who commanded another panzer in the platoon said, "You can't plot against the government, not in the middle of a war you can't."
"If he did that," Adi said, which made that sergeant's jaw drop. Theo thought it was a reasonable comment. The SS did things and chose victims for its reasons, which often made no sense to ordinary mortals.
"And even if he was a lousy politician, he was still a good officer," Witt added. "As far as I'm concerned, that counts for more, 'cause chances are it saved my ass-and yours-a few times."
"Huh," the other sergeant said, and walked away.
"Well, that's that. We just went on his list." Adi sounded cheerful about it.
"As long as we're fighting the Ivans, it doesn't matter." By contrast, Witt sounded like a man trying to convince himself.
"Here's hoping," Theo said. His crewmates eyed him in mild surprise, the way they did whenever he opened his mouth.
He never found out how the panzer men decided who would bury the regimental commander. But Koch got a much fancier grave than most German soldiers who met death at the front. And the large cross had Fallen for the Vaterland written on the horizontal bar in big black letters.
"If the SS goons see that, they'll pitch another shitfit," Adi predicted.
"Good," Theo said. They exchanged conspiratorial grins. Again, they could ruin each other with a few words whispered in the wrong ears. It wasn't the first time. It wouldn't be the last. They wouldn't have said such things if each didn't already have good reason to trust the other with his life.
Hermann Witt came up and looked at the grave, and at the inscription on the cross. "I got a letter from my father a few days ago," he said, after looking around to make sure no one but his crewmates could hear him. "He says some of the death notices in the paper go 'Fallen for Fuhrer and Vaterland' and others just say 'Fallen for the Vaterland.' It's a way of letting people see how you feel about things, you know?"
"I'm surprised he talked death notices with you," Stoss remarked. "Doesn't he think it's bad luck or something?"
"Nah. He's a freethinker, my old man," the panzer commander said, not without pride. "The way things are these days, he has to keep his mouth shut more than he used to. I'm the one he can let loose with."
"As long as the army censors don't come down on him," Theo said. He liked Witt much better than Heinz Naumann. He didn't want anything bad to happen to him, or to his family.