Hitler's War Read online

  “It’s hell on wheels,” Peggy said. “You understand? Comprenez?”

  “Yes. But what am I to do?” He spoke good British English. “I was for two years a prisoner in the last war. If the Boches come here, they will intern me again, as an enemy alien. I do not wish this at all.”

  If the Germans came to Marianske Lazne? No, when they came. The border wasn’t more than a long spit to the west. Peggy had her passport. The United States was neutral. The Nazis would treat her better than that poor Frenchman…if they or the Czechs didn’t blow her to the moon while they were bashing each other over the head. Right this minute, that looked like a pretty big if.

  “Maybe you can get a train out of town if you hustle,” she said.

  “It could be, Mademoiselle,” he said, not noticing the ring on her finger. Herb was still in Philadelphia. He’d been set to join her in Paris in a couple of weeks. Well, that wouldn’t happen now. All kinds of things wouldn’t happen, and all kinds of worse ones would. The man went on, “Will you accompany me? This is no more—no longer—a good place to be.”

  He was dead right—no, live right—about that. “Let’s go,” Peggy said.

  As soon as she got her first look at a bomb crater, she wasn’t sure outside was the best place to be. Marianske Lazne sat in a valley with pines and firs all around. The hotels and other buildings were mostly Austro-Hungarian leftovers from before the war (before the last war, she thought). They had more architectural gingerbread than the wicked witch’s house in the Grimm fairy tale.

  Right now, Peggy was trapped in a grim fairy tale of her own. Some of those buildings had chunks bitten out of them. Several were burning. Wounded people, bodies, and pieces of bodies lay in the streets. And everybody who wasn’t wounded or blown to bits seemed to be running toward the train stations.

  All kinds of people took the waters here. Some were ordinary Czechs and Slovaks. Some were Germans. Some came from other European countries. Peggy spotted half a dozen Jews in long black coats and wide-brimmed black hats. If the Frenchman beside her didn’t want to deal with the Germans, they really didn’t want to—and who could blame them?

  There was a shriek in the air, getting louder by the moment. The Frenchman knocked her down and lay flat on top of her. She started to scream. Then more explosions shook Marianske Lazne, and she realized he hadn’t gone mad and wasn’t trying to assault her right out in the middle of the street.

  “Artillery!” he bawled in her ear. “When you hear that sound, for God’s sake get down!”

  Peggy did scream then, but on a note different from the one she might have used a moment earlier. Through the shell bursts she heard more shrieks, men’s and women’s and Lord only knew whose. Something warm and wet and sticky splashed her hand. She looked at it. It was blood—not hers, or she didn’t think so. With a little disgusted cry, she wiped it off her robe. No, not hers: no more welled out.

  More and more shells landed on and around Marianske Lazne. How many guns did the Germans have, anyway? “Make it stop!” she yelled to the Frenchman. “Jesus, make it stop!”

  “I wish I could, Mademoiselle,” he replied.

  Peggy heard guns going off, too, in the woods around the spas. The Czechs were making a fight of it, anyhow, or trying to. But Marianske Lazne was within artillery range of the border, as she knew much, much too well. How long could this little country hold off Hitler’s armored legions?

  After what seemed forever, the bombardment eased. Peggy raised her head and looked around. She wished she hadn’t. Her husband had fought in the Great War. He’d never talked much about what he’d done and what he’d seen. If it was anything like this…Peggy understood why not. She would spend the rest of her life wishing she could forget what artillery did to the civilians in Marianske Lazne. She remembered one thing Herb had said, talking to someone else who’d seen the elephant: “Artillery—that’s the killer.” Jesus, he wasn’t kidding.

  As politely as she could, she tapped the Frenchman on top of her on the shoulder. “Could you move, please? You’re squashing me.” He had to weigh close to 200 pounds, and there was nothing between her and the sidewalk but two layers of silk.

  “I do apologize,” he said, and rolled to one side. “This is…very bad. Very, very bad. But if you hear that sound in the air, you must get down at once, without hesitation. It is your best chance to save yourself.”

  “God forbid I ever hear it again,” Peggy said. The Frenchman crossed himself.

  No trains went out. No trains came in. Maybe the Germans had bombed the tracks. Maybe Czechoslovakia was using the railroads to haul troops around. Peggy saw no dun-colored Czech uniforms in town. Every so often, though, the guns in the woods boomed. What kind of forts lay between the border and Marianske Lazne? How long would the Germans take to break through them. Two good questions. Peggy had no good answers.

  The town was full of clinics. They weren’t equipped for carnage like this, but they did their best. Unhurt people did what they could for the wounded. Peggy carried stretcher after stretcher. She got more blood on her robe, but hardly noticed. The hotels set out the usual massive spread of cold cuts for breakfast. She ate…somewhere.

  About ten o’clock, the mist retreated and a wan sun came out. Airplane motors throbbed overhead. Peggy looked up. She’d never seen anything like those ungainly vulture-winged planes before. One after another, they peeled off in dives. It was fascinating to watch. But the shrieks they let out as they dove reminded her of incoming artillery. She got down, as the polite but portly Frenchman had said she should.

  People gave her funny looks—for a few seconds, till the first bomb went off and the vulture-winged planes started machine-gunning the town as they zoomed away.

  Half a dozen Czech biplane fighters showed up then. They looked like last year’s models next to the vulture-winged jobs with the swastikas on their tails, but they shot down two of them. Peggy wasn’t the only one cheering her head off.

  She went on lugging stretchers till her feet started to bleed. Somebody gave her a pair of flats. They were too big, but still an improvement. She moved more casualties, and more, and more yet.

  By midafternoon, she heard small-arms fire off to the west. It kept getting closer. She feared she knew what that meant: the Germans were pushing the Czechs back. She spotted more of the Nazi dive-bombers. Now that they’d delivered their terror message, they were doing serious work, pounding Czech positions.

  The hotels kept putting out food. It was about all they could do. One displayed a sign in several languages: WE HAVE LOCKED UP OUR GERMANS. That was brave. It might also have been stupid. If the Nazis rolled into town, they wouldn’t be happy.

  When the Nazis rolled in, Peggy feared. That evening, she got a blanket and a chair and counted herself lucky. Sleep wouldn’t come, no matter how exhausted she was. She would have looked to play more bridge, but fireplace and candles didn’t give enough light. The electricity stayed off. She sat there and listened to the advancing gunfire.

  About midnight, Czech soldiers fell back through Marianske Lazne. One of them, dirty, weary, harried—peered into the hotel. He shook his head and walked on. The Czechs didn’t try to fight in the town. Peggy supposed she should have been grateful to them for not causing more civilian casualties. She hoped it wouldn’t hurt their defense.

  Rattling, clanking German vehicles entered Marianske Lazne at 3:17, Czech cuckoo-clock time. Peggy went out to look. She almost got shot. A peremptory wave from a tough-looking, black-uniformed man in a tank sent her reeling back into the hotel. Under new management, she thought, and finally started to cry.

  LUC HARCOURT DIDN’T LIKE SERGEANT DEMANGE. What private in his right mind did like his sergeant? Demange was little and skinny and tough, with a tongue sharper than a bayonet. He looked unwontedly serious now as he gathered his squad together. Without preamble, he said, “The French Republic is at war with Germany.”

  Along with the rest of the men, Luc stared at the sergeant. He was just a
conscript himself. All he’d ever wanted to do was serve his time and get out. The first thing he found out when he put on the uniform and the Adrian helmet was that nobody gave a damn about what he wanted.

  Demange paused to light a Gitane. He even smoked like a tough guy, with the cigarette hanging down from the corner of his mouth. “England is with us,” he said. “And the Russians have declared war on Germany, too.”

  “Oh, joy,” Paul Renouvin said. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he’d been at a university somewhere before the draft got him, and he liked showing off how much he knew. “That would matter a lot more if Russia bordered Germany. Or even Czechoslovakia.”

  Sergeant Demange looked as if he wanted to spit in Renouvin’s eye. He contented himself with blowing smoke in the college kid’s face. “Shut up, punk,” he rasped. “The point is, we’ve got allies, dammit. So when we march into Germany, it’s not like we’re marching in all by ourselves.”

  We? Luc wondered. We as in France, or we as in this squad? He wanted to know—it was his neck, after all. But he didn’t ask. One way or the other, he figured he’d find out pretty damn quick.

  And he did. “We move out in half an hour,” the sergeant said. “Remember, we’re doing this for the poor goddamn Czechs.” He sounded like a guy telling his girl they’d be doing it for love. Who cared why? They’d be doing it.

  “What happens if the Boches shoot at us?” somebody asked.

  “Well, we’re supposed to be cautious,” Demange said. “But we’re supposed to move forward, too, so we will. And we’ll shoot back, by God.”

  “My father did this in 1914,” Luc said. “Red kepi, blue tunic, red trousers—there are photos at home. Not color photos, of course, but you know what the colors were.” Several of the other soldiers nodded.

  So did Sergeant Demange. “They were targets, that’s what,” he said. “I did it myself in 1918. We wore horizon-blue by then. Not as good as khaki”—he tapped his sleeve—“but Christ, better than red. How many times your old man get wounded?”

  “Twice,” Luc answered, not without pride.

  “Sounds about right. He was luckier than a lot, that’s for goddamn sure.” Demange glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes now. If we aren’t marching at 0630 on the dot, I’ll be in trouble. And if I’m in trouble, you sorry assholes are in big trouble.”

  Luc wondered why 0630 was so sacred. Would the war be lost if they started five minutes late? As far as Czechoslovakia was concerned, they were starting three days late. The Czechs said they were still fighting hard. The Germans claimed enormous victories. Somebody was lying. Maybe two somebodies were.

  The border bulged south below Saarbrücken. At 0630 on the dot—Sergeant Demange and his ilk knew how to get what they wanted—French soldiers started moving into the bulge. A few French guns fired at the German positions ahead. A few German guns shot back. Both sides seemed halfhearted. Lou had been through much scarier drills.

  Fields on the German side of the border looked—surprise!—just like fields on the French side. The only way Luc could be sure he’d crossed into Germany was by looking over at a German frontier post, abandoned now, that lay athwart a two-lane macadam road a few hundred meters off to the southeast.

  Soldiers from another company poked through the frontier station as if they’d just occupied Berlin. Then, without warning, something over there went boom! Sergeant Demange hit the dirt. For a moment, Luc thought he’d been hurt. But then he got up and brushed wheat stubble off himself, altogether unselfconscious. “You hear a noise like that, you better get flat,” he remarked. “I bet those Nazi cocksuckers booby-trapped the station.”

  Something had blown out part of one wall. Now the French soldiers over there scurried around like ants in a disturbed hill. Luc saw one man lying in the roadway. Even from this distance, he would have bet the poor bastard wouldn’t get up again.

  “Lesson number one,” the sergeant said. “If it looks like they want you to pick it up, they probably do. Wouldn’t be surprised if there are mines in these fields, too.”

  “Merde alors!” Luc muttered. The very ground under his feet might betray him. He tried to walk like a ballerina, on tippytoe. It didn’t work very well in army-issue clodhoppers with a heavy pack on his back. Feeling foolish, he gave up after a few steps.

  A belt of trees lay ahead. Did Germans lurk there? Sure as hell, they did. A spatter of rifle fire came from the woods. After the first bullet cracked past him, Luc needed no urging to flatten out. Prone, he fired back. His MAS36 slammed against his shoulder. In between rounds, he dug a scrape for himself with his entrenching tool.

  Very cautiously, the French advanced. They took a few casualties, which made them more cautious yet. The Germans didn’t make much of a fight, though. They melted back toward their fancy Westwall. It wasn’t supposed to be as good as the Maginot Line—nothing was, not even the Czech forts—but everybody said it was tough even so.

  When Luc finally reached the woods, he found several countrymen exclaiming over a dead German. The redheaded guy in field-gray had taken one in the chest. He didn’t look especially unhappy—just surprised. Luc wondered if he’d killed the Boche himself. Not likely, but not impossible, either. He felt like a warrior and a murderer at the same time.

  It was six in the morning in Peking, which meant it was yesterday afternoon back in New York City. Corporal Pete McGill and several of the other Marines at the American Legation clustered in front of a shortwave set, listening to the World Series. The Yankees were up on the Cubs, two games to none. They were leading in game three, too. Joe Gordon had already singled with the bases loaded and homered, and Hoot Pearson was cruising along on the mound.

  “Cubs are history,” McGill said happily—he was from the Bronx. “Three straight Series for the Yanks, it’s gonna be. Nobody’s ever done that before.”

  None of the other leathernecks argued with him. He would have liked to see them try! When the Cubs got done losing today (or yesterday, or whatever the hell day it really was), they would have to sweep four to take the championship. Nobody did that, not against the Bronx Bombers!

  A Polack named Herman Szulc—which he insisted was pronounced Schultz—said, “I bet they won’t be as good next year.”

  “Oh, yeah, wise guy? How come?” McGill had brick-red hair, freckles, and the temper that went with them. And if you affronted his team, you affronted him, too.

  “Only stands to reason. Shit, look at Gehrig,” Szulc said. “He didn’t even hit .300 this year. He’s getting old, wearing out.”

  “Nah, he’ll be back strong. You wait and see,” McGill said. “Sheesh! A little bit of an off year for one guy, and you want to write off the ball-club.”

  Before the argument could go any further, a Chinese servant brought in a tray with coffee and sausages and rolls stuffed with this and that for the Marines. None of it except the coffee was what McGill would have eaten in the States, but it would all be tasty. Duty at the Legation was as sweet as it got.

  “Sheh-sheh, Wang,” Szulc said as the servant set the tray down on a table. That meant thank you in Chinese. McGill had learned a few phrases, too. They came in handy every once in a while.

  Wang grinned a toothy grin. Several of his front teeth were gold. A twenty-four-carat smile meant you were somebody here. “Eat,” he said—he knew bits of English, the way the Marines knew bits of Chinese. He waved at the tray. “Hao.” That meant it was good.

  And it was. “Wonder what’s in the sausages,” somebody said with his mouth full.

  “Your mother,” somebody else came back, which almost made Pete squirt coffee out his nose.

  “The Missing Link,” Szulc suggested. That wasn’t even so far-fetched. They’d found prehistoric human bones in these parts that were God only knew how old.

  It also wasn’t so far-fetched for another reason. Chinamen would cook and eat damn near everything. You could get snake. It was supposed to be good for your one-eyed snake. You could get dog, which was also supposed
to make John Henry perk up. You could get fried grasshoppers. McGill had eaten one once, on a bet. It wasn’t even bad, and he picked up five bucks crunching it.

  Out went the Cubs again. A singing commercial came on. Szulc fiddled with the radio dial. “What the hell you doing?” McGill asked.

  “Seeing if I can find some news between innings,” Szulc answered. “Check what’s up with the war.”

  “Oh. Okay,” McGill said. The war was as important as the Series. Back in the States, people wouldn’t have believed it. McGill was sure of that. But back in the States, people weren’t right around the corner from the Japanese Legation and its garrison of tough bastards—not as tough as Marines, McGill was sure, but tough. Back in the States, people were doing their best to forget the Japs had bombed the crap out of the Panay the December before, even though she was flying the American flag.

  Japan apologized, didn’t she? She paid an indemnity, didn’t she? That made everything all right, didn’t it? Maybe so—back in the States. Not in Peking. Not even close.

  Back in the States, people forgot the Japs had a zillion more soldiers sitting in Manchuria. Manchukuo, they called the puppet state there these days. If they decided they wanted a war with the USA, how long would this garrison last? Hell, back in the States, most people didn’t know it existed.

  If the balloon goes up with the Japs, it’s my ass, McGill thought.

  Szulc got a couple of bursts of static. Then he found the BBC. The announcer had a much posher accent than most of the Royal Marines at the British Legation. They called themselves leathernecks, too, and they made damn fine drinking buddies even if they did talk funny.

  “—vakia continues to offer stout resistance to Hitler’s aggression,” the announcer said. “Russian volunteers and aircraft have begun appearing in Ruthenia and Slovakia. Both Poland and Romania deny consenting to their crossing.”