Hitler's War (17 page)

“Why?” Vaclav said. “All we did was get out alive after the fucking Nazis went and jumped us.”

“But Poland and Germany are friends,” the Polish soldier said. “That’s why we don’t want you here.”

“Friends with Germany? God help you!” Jezek said. “Is the pig friends with the farmer? Till he’s a ham, he is.”

The Pole—his name was Leszek—pointed east. “Germany keeps the Russians away. Better Hitler than Stalin any day.”

“Better anybody than Hitler,” Vaclav said stubbornly. “Anybody. Better the Devil than Hitler.”

Leszek crossed himself. “Stalin is the Devil. He turns churches into stables and brothels. And half the Reds who run Russia are kikes. Hitler knows what to do about
them
, by God. We ought to give ours what-for, too. If we don’t, they’ll steal the country out from under us.”

Vaclav didn’t care about Jews one way or the other. He just said, “If you end up in bed with the Nazis, you’ll get it as bad as the Jews do.”

“You’re only mad because the Germans beat you,” Leszek said.

“Sure. And Poland never lost a war,” the Czech retorted. Even if Leszek wasn’t a bad guy, that reminder was more than he could stomach. He stomped off. Vaclav wondered if he’d come back with his buddies to do some real stomping. But Leszek didn’t, which only proved he had an even temper.

A few days later, a Czech-speaking Polish officer addressed the displaced persons. He used Czech words, all right, but he pronounced them like a Pole: with the accent always on the next-to-last syllable, not at the beginning of a word, where to Czech ears it belonged. “A Czechoslovak government-in-exile has been formed in Paris,” he said. “Its leaders say they will care for anyone who comes to them. I am looking for volunteers at the moment.”

Never volunteer
. Any soldier knew that ancient basic rule. Vaclav’s hand shot up all the same. Anything had to be better than this. And what would the Poles do to Czech soldiers who didn’t volunteer? Ship them back over the border into German hands? Then it
would
be a POW cage for the rest of the war—if it wasn’t a bullet in the back of the neck.

Several other men also raised their hands, and a few women as well. The rest stood where they were without doing anything. The Polish officer’s lips thinned. He must have expected a bigger response. When he saw he wouldn’t get one, he said, “All right. Take whatever you have and meet me by the east gate in fifteen minutes.” He strode away, his polished boots gleaming.

Vaclav didn’t need fifteen minutes to gather his belongings. The Poles had relieved him of his rifle and ammunition and helmet and entrenching tool. He’d eaten the iron rations he’d carried. About all that was left in his pack were a blanket, a spare pair of socks, a housewife for quick repairs—he’d never make a tailor—some bandages, and his bayonet, which the Poles hadn’t wanted. It made a perfectly good eating knife.

A couple of Czechs who hadn’t raised a hand joined the men and women who had. They must have decided, as Vaclav had, that anything beat this.

The Polish officer led a squad of riflemen. “Come with me,” he told the Czechs. “Make sure you come with me. If you try to run off, I promise you will never do another foolish thing again.”

Off they went, at a brisk military march. Some of the Czechs weren’t young, and couldn’t keep up. Grudgingly, the Polish officer slowed down for them. He might have laid on a truck or two. He might have, but he hadn’t.

They marched for eight or ten kilometers. It didn’t faze Vaclav; he’d done far worse with far more on his back. Other interned soldiers also managed easily. But some of the civilians looked ready to fall over dead by the time they got to a shabby little railroad depot sitting there in the middle of nowhere.

Half an hour later, a train chugged up from out of the west. “Get aboard,” the officer said.

“But—it’s going east!” one of the women complained.

“Ano.”
The Pole nodded. He said that in perfectly proper Czech; in his own language,
yes
was
tak
.

“Paris is that way!” The woman pointed in the direction from which the train had come.

“So is Germany,” the officer reminded her. The woman’s face fell. The Pole went on, “The train will take you to Romania. There are supposed to be arrangements to transport you from there to France. If there aren’t…” He shrugged. Vaclav had no trouble understanding that. If there weren’t, it was the Romanians’ worry, and the Czechs’. It wouldn’t be the Poles’, not any more.

He wasn’t the only one to figure that out. Three or four people balked and refused to get on the train. The woman who thought they would cross Germany to get to France was one of them. She wasn’t bad-looking, but Vaclav felt better about boarding after she didn’t want to. If someone stupid wanted to stay, leaving looked like a better plan.

The conductor spoke no Czech, only Polish and German. Those were enough. One car seemed reserved for the DPs. “No dining car for you,” the conductor told them. “We bring you food.” His scowl said they weren’t paying customers, so they didn’t deserve anything good. Jezek sighed. He didn’t suppose they’d let him starve.

And they didn’t. Cabbage and potatoes with little bits of sausage wasn’t his idea of a feast, but it wasn’t so bad as it might have been. It was better than he’d got in the displaced persons’ camp.

Krakow. Tarnow. Przemysl. Lwow. Kolomyja. And then the Romanian border. Polish and Czech were close cousins. Most Czechs and a lot of Poles knew enough German to get by. Romanian was something else again. The Romanian customs men who knew another language spoke French. That must have made them very cultured. It didn’t help Vaclav one damn bit.

An older man in his compartment translated for him—and for several other people. “I told them who we are and why we’re going through their country,” the Czech reported.

“What do they say?” Vaclav asked.

“They know about us. They know they’re supposed to let us in,” the older man replied. “I don’t think they’re very happy about it, though. They want to be rid of us.”

“Everybody does,” Vaclav said bitterly. The older man didn’t contradict him. He wished the fellow would have.

Romanian stewards replaced the Poles. Romanian cooks must have done the same thing, because the next meal the DPs got was a bowl of cornmeal mush.
“Mamaliga,”
said the man who dished out the food.
“C’est bon.”

“He says it’s good,” said the Czech who spoke French.

He could say whatever he wanted. That didn’t make it true. The
mamaliga
did fill Vaclav’s stomach, though; when he finished the bowl, he felt as if he’d swallowed a medicine ball.

Vaclav could look out the window as the train rolled through Romania. Neither he nor any other Czech was allowed to step out onto the platform at stops, though. Romanian soldiers with rifles made sure they stayed inside their car. Lenin could have been sealed in no tighter when he crossed Germany to join the Russian Revolution. “We’re in quarantine,” said the older man who spoke French.

“How come? What did we do?” Vaclav said.

“We loved our country. We still do,” the other man answered. “The Poles and Romanians don’t want to make Hitler angry—the Romanians worry about Hungary, too, because most of the people in northwestern Romania are Magyars. So they’ll get rid of us, and they’ll try to pretend we’re not here while they’re doing it.”

He proved exactly right. Even when the train reached Constanta, the port on the Black Sea, Vaclav and his fellow DPs had precious little freedom. They were herded from their car to a waiting bus. No one was allowed close enough to speak to them; they might really have been diseased.

The corporal’s first glimpse of the sea left him underwhelmed. It was flat and oily-looking. It didn’t smell especially good, either. And the Greek freighter that would take them to France was a rust-streaked scow.

“Italy’s in the war,” Vaclav said as he clumped up the gangplank. “What if they bomb us?”

“Then we sink,” the older man answered with a veteran’s cynicism—he must have fought in the World War. He went on, “But I don’t think they will. Greece is neutral. The Italians want Albania. They won’t make her neighbor angry by going after Greek ships.”

“You hope,” Vaclav said, showing off his own cynicism.

“Don’t you?” the other man returned. Vaclav could only nod.

Sailors shouted unintelligibly. The freighter’s engine groaned to life. Coal smoke belched from her stacks. Longshoremen on the wharf cast off mooring lines. The ship shuddered as she backed clear.

A couple of Romanian officials stood there watching. To make sure none of the Czechs jumped overboard and tried to swim ashore? Maybe they thought the DPs would be so stupid. France was worth going to. Romania? Only a Romanian could want to live here.

Land receded. The ship rocked on the waves. The air smelled of salt and, faintly, of garbage. Vaclav didn’t care. He was out of his cage. He
was going toward something. It might be only a bullet in the ribs when he got back into action. He knew that. Next to God only knew how long inside the displaced-persons camp, even a bullet in the ribs didn’t look so bad.

LUDWIG ROTHE ATTACKED HIS PANZER II’S
Maybach engine with a wrench. As far as he was concerned, the engine could have been stronger. Could have been, hell—
should
have been: 135 horsepower just wasn’t enough to shove nine tonnes of steel as fast as the panzer ought to go. Trying to do the job made the engine wear out faster than it would have otherwise.

Not far away, another panzer crew was working on a captured Czech LT-35. That was a tonne and a half heavier than a Panzer II, and had only a 120-horsepower motor. Its gun made it formidable, though. Rothe had seen that in Czechoslovakia. He wished the Germans could have taken the Skoda works undamaged instead of bombing them into rubble. But then he shrugged inside his black coveralls. What could you do?

Aschendorf was all the way on the other side of Germany from Czechoslovakia. The Dutch frontier lay only a few kilometers to the west. Camouflage netting hid both German and captured panzers from the air. They’d moved into position at night, with only blackout lights to keep them from running into one another or running off the road.

Nobody’d told Ludwig what the High Command had in mind. But nobody’d ever called
Frau
Rothe’s boy a
Dummkopf
, either. He didn’t figure the panzers were massing on the border with Holland to drive around looking at tulips.

He called over to the sergeant who commanded the LT-35: “Hey, Willi! Got a butt on you?”

“Oh, I might.” Willi Maass patted his pockets and came up with a pack. Ludwig ambled over. Willi gave him a cigarette and then a light.
He lit one himself a moment later. He was a big brown bear of a man, dark and hairy, with some of a bear’s stubborn ferocity, too. After he blew out smoke, he asked, “So when does the balloon go up?”

“Whenever the
Führer
wants,” Ludwig answered. The cigarette was crappy. He didn’t think it was all tobacco. Imports had gone down the toilet since the war started. During the last war, England had squeezed hard enough to make people starve. Things were nowhere near so bad now. Not yet, anyway.

The papers were full of stories about how good the war bread was, compared to what it was like the last time around. It was black and chewy, but it did still taste as if it was mostly made from grain. If it was a lot better than the last war’s version, that must have been really dreadful.

“Well, sure,” Willi said. “But when’ll that be?”

Ludwig looked around. It was camouflage netting and dummy buildings as far as the eye could see. “Can’t sit too long,” he said. “We’ll start feeling like moles in holes if they leave us here for weeks at a time. Besides, camouflage or no camouflage, pretty soon the French and the English will figure out something’s going on. Or do you think I’m wrong?”

“Not me,” the other sergeant said. “I think you hit the nail right on the head. I’d just as soon get going, too. I feel like moss’ll start growing on my panzer if we wait around much longer.”

“I’ll tell you something else makes me think we’re going to get rolling pretty damn quick,” Ludwig said. Willi Maass made a questioning noise. Rothe explained: “I saw
Waffen-SS
units coming in yesterday. Those guys are like stormcrows—they don’t show up till something’s about to pop.”

“Well, you’ve got that right,” Willi said.

They both smoked for a while and let it rest right there. You never could tell who was listening. Ludwig didn’t know what to think about the
Waffen-SS
. It looked like Himmler’s effort to horn in on the
Wehrmacht
. Not many men in the army liked that idea. Rothe knew damn well he didn’t. On the other hand, the guys with the SS runes on their right collar tabs had fought like mad bastards in Czechoslovakia. If there was trouble, they were nice to have around.

“It’ll be interesting,” Maass offered.

“Interesting. Yeah.” Ludwig stubbed out his cigarette under his boot. “I better get back to work.”

Willi Maass laughed. “Nice to know you’re eager about it.”

“Ah, fuck you—and your shitty cigarette,” Ludwig said. Laughing, he and Maass both headed back to their panzers.

Captain Gerhard Elsner came by a few minutes later. He eyed the exposed motor and Rothe’s grubby hands. “Can you be ready to move tomorrow at 0600?” the company commander asked.

“Sir, I can be ready to move in twenty minutes,” Ludwig answered proudly. “I’ve got ammo. I’ve got gas. My driver and radioman are here. Let me slap the louvers down, button her up, and we go.”

“That’s what I want to hear,” Elsner said. He’d been a noncom in the last war, and wore the Iron Cross Second Class. “Unless it rains or snows between now and then, we’re going to give them what for.”

“At 0600? We’ll be there,” Ludwig promised. “It’ll still be dark, or close.”

“No darker for us than for them,” Captain Elsner said. “We’ll be ready. We’ll know where we’re going and what we’re up to. They won’t.”

“Ja.”
Ludwig hoped it would make a difference.