The War That Came Early: West and East Read online

  Quietly, Jock said, “That’s murder, is what that is.”

  Walsh nodded. “Nothing else but. Whoever expected them to be able to fight in those sorry machines ought to come up on charges. They haven’t got a chance.”

  “Like Bren-gun carriers against proper tanks, ain’t it?” Jock said.

  “It’s just like that, by God,” Walsh answered. “How the bleeding hell are we supposed to fight a war if the equipment they give us is ten years behind what the Nazis have?”

  “Isn’t that what they call muddling through?”

  “That’s what they call fucking up,” Walsh said savagely. In the last war, the Germans had said their English counterparts were lions commanded by donkeys. Some things didn’t change from one generation to the next.

  More German planes appeared overhead: broad-winged He-111s and the skinny Do-17s that Englishmen and Germans both called Flying Pencils. The level bombers ignored the troops outside of Trondheim. They started pounding the docks. Thick black clouds of smoke rose. Walsh wondered what was burning. The town? Or the ships that kept the defenders supplied? Which would be worse? The ships, Walsh judged. You couldn’t keep fighting without munitions.

  Or, for that matter, without food. Maybe you could live off the land in summertime, but summer in this part of Norway was only a hiccup in the cold. The Fritzes could bring things up from the south. The defenders had to do it by sea … if they could.

  A Heinkel spun toward the ground, flame licking across its left wing. It blew up with a hell of a bang: it hadn’t got rid of its bombs. Several Tommies cheered. Walsh wasn’t sorry to watch the bugger crash, either—not half!—but how much difference would it make? Any at all?

  Chapter 20

  Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.

  What the devil was that from? For the life of her, Peggy Druce couldn’t remember. She’d studied way too much literature in college, but how much good did it do her? She could remember the quote, but not the source. Her professors would have frowned severely.

  Well, tough shit, she thought. Even if she couldn’t remember who’d written the line, it fit her all too well. The Nazis had even extended their hell to keep her in it. She’d thought getting into Denmark meant escaping. Sadly, just because you thought something didn’t make it so.

  No more flights from Copenhagen to London. No more ships plying the North Sea from Denmark to England, either. The Nazis were acting as mildly as anybody could after invading and overrunning the country next door. They loudly proclaimed that Denmark was still independent. If you listened to them, they were only protecting the Danes from invasion by England or France.

  If.

  Had any Danes invited them to protect the country? “Not fucking likely!” Peggy said out loud when she first thought to wonder. She was having lunch in a seaside café at the moment. Her waiter did a double take worthy of Groucho. Peggy’s cheeks heated. She’d already seen that a lot of Danes spoke English. Quite a few of them spoke it better than your average American, in fact. She couldn’t just let fly without scandalizing somebody. She left the waiter a fat tip and got out of there in a hurry.

  Moments later, she wished she hadn’t. A couple of dozen Danish Fascists were parading down the street behind a Danish flag—white cross on red—with the words FRIKORPS DANMARK in gold where the stars would be on an American flag. She wasn’t the only person staring at the collaborators. Every country had its Fascist fringe, but now the Danish loonies enjoyed Hitler’s potent backing.

  Slowly and deliberately, a tall blonde woman turned her back on the homegrown Fascists. One by one, the rest of the people on the street followed her example. Peggy was slower than most. She got a good look at the Danish would-be Nazis. By their expressions, they might have bitten into big, juicy lemons.

  From behind them, somebody called out something in Danish. Peggy didn’t understand it, but the local traitors did. Their faces got even more sour. She hadn’t dreamt they could. More and more people took up the call, whatever it was. As the Fascists rounded a corner and disappeared, a helpful Dane who must have noticed Peggy’s blank look spoke a few words of English: “It means ‘Shame!’—what we shouted.”

  “Good for you!” she said. If she’d known the word, she would have yelled at the goons herself.

  The worst of it was, she had to deal with the Germans again. Her disappointment seemed all the crueler because she’d thought she’d escaped both Nazis and Wehrmacht forever. No such luck. No luck at all, as a matter of fact. The Germans might say Denmark was still independent, but the “free” Danes had no control over travel between their country and neighboring Sweden. The occupiers damn well did.

  Knowing Nazi arrogance, Peggy would have expected the Wehrmacht to take over the royal palace and to run Denmark from it. But General Kaupitsch or his aide had better sense than that. King Christian X went right on reigning. Even his Danish bodyguard remained intact. The Germans administered their new conquest from a drab modern office building three blocks away.

  If that was where they were, that was where Peggy had to go. She wished Hitler had issued her a letter instead of calling her on the phone to let her know she could go from Germany to Denmark. (And had he been laughing up his sleeve when he gave her that permission? Sure he had! He must have known his own army would be only a few days behind her.)

  No big swastika flag flew over or in front of the German headquarters. The Wehrmacht wasn’t going out of its way to be hated … unless you counted invading Denmark to begin with, of course. Peggy would have bet the Germans didn’t. She had no doubt whatsoever that the Danes damn well did, and always would.

  She displayed her American passport and told one of the sentries, “I want to see General Kaupitsch. Sofort, bitte.” Sofort sounded a lot more immediate than immediately.

  “Why?” one of the Germans asked. Under the beetling brow of his helmet, his features were blank.

  “Because the Führer said I could come to Denmark so I could go on to the States, and this invasion has screwed things up. That’s why,” Peggy answered. “Do you understand that?” Or shall I bounce a rock off your goddamn Stahlhelm and wise you up?

  Both sentries’ eyes widened. One set was blue, the other brown. You’re a crappy Aryan, kid, Peggy thought, feeling how far out on the ragged edge she was. “Please wait,” the one with the blue eyes said. He disappeared into the office building.

  If he didn’t come out pretty damn quick, Peggy was going to lay into his buddy with both barrels. But he did. He conferred with Brown Eyes, who spoke up: “I will take you to Major von Rehfeld.”

  “Oh, yeah? How come not to the general?”

  “I am ordered to take you to Major von Rehfeld.” For a German, nothing else needed saying. “You will please come with me.”

  Peggy please came with him. Major von Rehfeld proved to be a tall, handsome man of about thirty-five who was missing the lower half of his left ear. That and a wound badge said he’d seen real fighting somewhere. “So you are the notorious Mrs. Druce,” he said in excellent English.

  “That’s right, buster. Who in blazes are you?” Peggy snapped.

  “Among other things, I am the man assigned to get you to Stockholm,” the German officer answered. “Believe me: we do respect the Führer’s order to give you all the help we can. Once you reach Sweden, you are on your own, however. I do not know how soon you will be able to travel from there to England and on to the United States. It is a pity, but Norway remains a war zone.”

  “And whose fault is that?” Peggy said.

  The major shrugged. “I would say it is the fault of France and England, but I am sure you would call me a lying Nazi if I did. So I will not say anything about that. Never mind whose fault it is. It is a war zone. Nothing travels through it without grave risk of being attacked by both the two sides. Is this so, or is it not so?”

  It was so. Of that Peggy had no doubt whatever. Nobody in her right mind could. “How long do you think I’ll have to stay in Stockholm
?” she asked.

  “This I cannot say.” The major spread his hands, doing his best to look and sound as reasonable as he could. “It is not up to the Reich alone, you know. The enemy has also something to say about it. I can tell you that we are making much better progress in Norway than we were only a few days ago. We prove that air power is stronger than sea power. The Royal Navy is sorry to learn this, but learn it they do.”

  Maybe that was so, too. Or maybe he was parroting Goebbels’ propaganda line as if it were Polly wants a cracker! Peggy couldn’t tell. Since she couldn’t, she asked, “How do I get to Stockholm?”

  “The usual ferry is sailing again. Tickets are easy to come by. You will have no trouble with an exit visa—I promise you that,” Major von Rehfeld replied.

  “Will you have German soldiers on the ferry, the way you did on the ships in Copenhagen harbor?” Peggy gibed.

  To her astonishment, the major blushed scarlet. “We saved needless bloodshed,” he said, but he sounded none too proud of it. A moment later, he added, “It was a legitimate ruse of war,” but that didn’t seem to convince him, either.

  If he meant what he said about getting her to Stockholm, Peggy wasn’t inclined to be fussy. “How soon can I go?” she asked.

  “As soon as you have your ticket, come back. I will provide you with an exit visa. No one will stand in your way,” von Rehfeld said.

  “You aren’t planning to, uh, protect Sweden as soon as I get there, are you?”

  “Why would we? With Denmark and Norway safe from English interference, iron ore can travel from Sweden to the Reich without risk of interruption.”

  Had the major claimed that Germany would never do such a wicked thing, Peggy wouldn’t have believed him for a minute. When he talked about national self-interest, he was much more persuasive. That didn’t mean he was telling the truth. It also didn’t mean Peggy would be able to get out of Sweden once she got in. But she was willing to try it. What can go wrong now? she asked herself. But the question had a simple, obvious answer. Damn near anything could.

  SERGEANT HERMANN WITT MADE a panzer commander very different from Heinz Naumann. Theo Hossbach noted the differences with nothing but relief. Most important, Witt could laugh at himself. He didn’t have to feel he was better and tougher than everyone else in the panzer to give orders. He didn’t go out of his way to give people a hard time to show he was tougher than they were.

  If that came as a relief to Theo, it had to be something close to heaven for Adalbert Stoss. Witt hadn’t taken long to realize the driver was missing something most German men had. Imagining three men living closer together than they did in a Panzer II was next to impossible. Theo sure didn’t want to think about it, anyhow. Only bedbugs and lice lived closer to him than his crewmates did.

  Naumann hadn’t been able to quit riding Adi Stoss about his circumcision. No wonder they hadn’t got along. Theo wouldn’t have wanted anybody razzing him about his dick, either. A couple of days after taking charge of the panzer, Witt looked up from the skinny little chicken he was roasting and said, “Ask you something, Adi?”

  “Sure, Sarge. What’s up?” Stoss answered—about how Theo would have responded to a casual question.

  “When they drafted you—”

  “They didn’t, Sarge. I volunteered.”

  “Did you? Well, all right. Good for you. When you did, you filled out about a million forms, right?” Witt said.

  Adi nodded and made a face. “Sure. Pain in the ass, but you’ve got to do it.”

  “Yeah. You do. You gave all the right answers on the one about your ancestors, didn’t you?” the new panzer commander said.

  Stoss didn’t even try not to understand him. “You bet I did—in spite of the operation, if you know what I mean.”

  “I expect I do,” Sergeant Witt replied. “That’s what I needed to know.” He turned the chicken’s carcass on the branch that did duty for a spit. “And I think this bird’s about ready to eat. White meat or dark?”

  As Theo gnawed the meat off a drumstick and thigh, he belatedly realized Witt hadn’t asked Adi if he was a Jew. He’d only asked if the driver had given the right answers on the military paperwork. Of course Adi had. They wouldn’t have let him into the Wehrmacht if he hadn’t. But the question covered the sergeant’s ass. If by some chance Stoss did turn out to be Jewish, Witt could say the driver had denied it.

  Theo’d wondered himself. Yes, some gentiles did have a medical need to part with their foreskin. But if you ran into somebody without his, what would you think first? You’d think the guy was a Jew, that was what.

  The idea made Theo want to giggle. A Jew in the Wehrmacht was like a chameleon on a green rug. You wouldn’t look for one on the rug to begin with, so of course you wouldn’t notice it if it happened to be there. Theo wouldn’t have said anything about his wonderings, even if the Gestapo decided to interrogate him. He never said much about anything. And he had his reasons not to. When you didn’t love the regime under which you lived, keeping your mouth shut was the smartest thing you could do.

  Besides, if Adi really was Jewish, wasn’t that about the richest joke anyone could play on the Nazis? Theo might have thought otherwise if Stoss were a bad soldier, or a gutless one. He wasn’t. He did fine. As long as he made a good Kamerad, who gave a rat’s ass about the other crap?

  With sizable help from the Polish infantry—which seemed to view retreat as a worse affront than treason—it looked as if they’d be able to hold the Red Army outside of Warsaw. The Poles had managed that after the last war, too. If they hadn’t, Germany and Russia might not be quarreling on Polish soil right now. They’d be at each other’s throats, the way they had been in 1914.

  Quite a few Polish foot soldiers were obviously Jews. What did they think of fighting on the same side as the German National Socialists? Theo was tempted to ask some of them. A German who put some effort into it could make sense of Yiddish. In the end, though, the radioman kept his mouth shut. That was what he usually did, so it wasn’t hard for him. And his sense of self-preservation warned him his fellow soldiers would give him funny looks if he all of a sudden started chatting up Jews.

  Some of the villages they went through were full of them: men in beards, wide-brimmed hats, and black clothes straight out of the eighteenth century. One of the guys from another panzer in the company said, “Boy, you can sure see why the Führer wants to clean out the kikes, can’t you? They’re like something from Mars. Shame we can’t wipe these places up any which way.”

  “Poles wouldn’t like it,” another crewman said.

  “My ass,” the first fellow replied. “They don’t like Jews any better’n we do—less, maybe. I bet they’d cheer us on.”

  “Maybe,” the other man said. “But then all the kikes would go over to the Reds. We need that like a hole in the head.”

  “I guess,” the first man said unwillingly. “Their day’s coming, though. It’s gotta be. I mean, they’re like niggers or Chinamen or something, only they don’t even live a long piss away from us.”

  Theo glanced over at Adi. The panzer driver kept his head down and shoveled stew into his face from his mess tin. That meant exactly nothing. Most of the Germans in black coveralls were doing exactly the same thing.

  A sergeant with the ribbon for an Iron Cross Second Class and a wound badge said, “The less people who want to shoot me or plant mines or pour sugar in my gas tank, the better I like it.”

  No one seemed eager to quarrel with that. Theo knew damn well he wasn’t. He hadn’t liked it when the French shot at him. His own wound badge—and the half a finger he could still feel sometimes even if it wasn’t there any more—said he had good reason not to argue. The Czechs could have done the same to him, or even worse. The Russians might yet.

  They got another chance the next morning. A Polish cavalryman rode back to warn the crew that enemy panzers lay ahead. The Poles called them pancers, pronouncing it the same way German did. To the Russians, they were tanks;
they’d borrowed the word from English instead.

  “Big pancers,” the horseman warned. The Poles used cavalry as if they’d never heard of machine guns. Their riders had more balls than they knew what to do with. To an outside observer, that often made them nutty as so many fruitcakes. Germans who’d been in Poland longer than Theo talked about horsemen in the square-topped caps called czapkas charging Russian panzers with lances. Maybe that was true, maybe not. That Theo could wonder spoke volumes about what Polish cavalry might be capable of.

  “Well, let’s see how big they are,” Hermann Witt said. “Forward, Adi. Take it slow till we find out what we’re up against.”

  “Will do,” Stoss said, and he did. Back in his own armored space, Theo might not find out how big the enemy panzers were till a shell hit the Panzer II and either did or didn’t smash the soft-skinned people inside and set the machine on fire. He wondered if getting surprised by death was worse than seeing someone take dead aim at you before you got it. Pretty bad both ways, as a matter of fact.

  “Ha!” Sergeant Witt said, and then, “Those damned fast panzers, Theo. Report ’em to division.”

  Theo did. His gut clenched. No way in hell the Panzer II’s armor could hold out a 45mm round. But this machine had teeth, too. Witt fired several short bursts from the 20mm gun. His shouts and whoops and curses said he was doing some good.

  Adi’s voice came through the speaking tube: “They’re running away!”

  A couple of other German panzers had come forward with theirs. All the same, Theo wasn’t sorry to hear Witt say, “I think I’m just going to let them go. You borrow trouble, half the time you’re sorry later on. More than half.”

  Heinz Naumann would have charged after the Reds. Theo was sure of that. He was also sure Heinz was dead. They still hadn’t scrubbed all the former commander’s blood off the floor of the fighting compartment; it clung in cracks and crevices. Neither Theo nor Adi had said anything about that to Sergeant Witt. Theo knew he didn’t intend to. He didn’t know whether Adi Stoss had equal discretion. No, he didn’t know, but he thought so.