Hitler's War (63 page)

“You’d better dig in,” Halévy said. “If the tanks couldn’t do for us, they’ll see how the artillery works.”

Without raising his head, Vaclav pulled the entrenching tool off his belt and started scraping out a foxhole of his own. Halévy knew how the Germans operated, all right. Even now, some junior officer with a radio or a field telephone was probably talking to his regimental HQ, telling the gunners at which map square the trouble lay. Fifteen minutes of 105 fire ought to soften things up, he’d say.

And he’d get that artillery fire, too. The Germans were mighty damn slick about such things. Vaclav had seen as much in Czechoslovakia and here in France. They wouldn’t have been half so dangerous if they weren’t so blasted good at what they did.

He wondered how good the defenders were. Czechs, Frenchmen, Belgians driven back from their own country, Englishmen, Negro troops from some colony or other…Whatever the French marshals didn’t urgently need somewhere else seemed to be jammed into a military sausage around Laon. Now if the casing didn’t split and spill soldiers all over everywhere…

Sure as hell, here came the guns. Huddling in his scrape, Vaclav wished it were twice as deep, or even four times. He hated artillery more than anything else. German infantry made a fair fight. You could even
face panzers. His monster rifle helped even the odds. But what could you do with artillerymen? Hope your own side’s guns slaughtered them—that was all. It didn’t seem enough.

Most of the shells were long—not very long, but Jezek took whatever he could get. If the troops a little farther back had hell coming down on their heads, he didn’t. He could think of plenty of times when the Nazis’ artillery had been right on target.

As soon as the shelling stopped, he came up out of his trench ready to fight. The Germans counted on stunning their opponents, at least for a little while. He kept an eye on the tank whose driver he’d shot, the one that had slammed into the oak. If the Germans could get the other driver into the machine, it might come back to life. He wouldn’t have wanted to sit down on a seat soaked with his predecessor’s blood, but war made you do all kinds of things you didn’t want to.

“We can do it!” Sergeant Halévy shouted in Czech. Then he said what was probably the same thing in French. In Czech, he went on, “They’ve got to be at the end of their tether. If we stop them, they’re really stopped.”

How could he know that? Nobody in the middle of a battle knew a damn thing. It sure sounded good, though.

The Germans came forward. Vaclav had known they would. They were bastards, but they were brave bastards. And they exposed themselves as little as they could, which made them smart bastards.

No new panzers rolled up, for which he thanked the God in Whom he had more and more trouble believing. He wasn’t thrilled about using the antitank rifle as an oversized sniper’s piece—the fight with the French quartermaster sergeant lingered painfully in his memory—but he wasn’t thrilled about getting killed in his hole, either.

He could, literally, have killed elephants with this rifle. Knocking over a few Nazis while they were still a long way off would make the rest go to ground and not move forward so fast. It would also make him
wish some quartermaster sergeant could issue him a new shoulder, but that was one more thing he’d worry about later.

It worked out just the way he’d hoped. That stood out, because it happened so rarely in this war. He hit two Germans with four shots, which slowed the rest of them down to an amazing degree. Then, of course, the antitank rifle’s loud roar and big blast of fire from every round drew the enemy’s concentrated attention. Ordinary Mausers weren’t especially accurate out close to a kilometer off, but they made him keep down. And he could have done without the machine gun probing for him.

He
really
could have done without the mortar bombs that started raining down on the Allied front. They did their best to make up for the artillery’s poor performance. If one of them landed in your hole, you were dead, because you couldn’t do anything about it.

But then, for a wonder, Allied—probably French—mortars closer to Laon opened up on the Germans. So did a couple of batteries of 75s that had stayed quiet and hidden up till now. Those 75s were weapons from the last war, and outclassed these days—which didn’t mean they couldn’t kill you if they got the chance.

The German mortars quit firing, quite suddenly. Thus encouraged, Vaclav stuck his head up—and plugged a soldier in field-gray who’d made the mistake of coming out from behind the dead cow he’d been using for cover. Jezek ducked down again right away. A good thing, too, because nothing had taken out that German machine gun. It sent a long, angry burst after him.

“Fuck me!” Sergeant Halévy called from his nearby hole. “Maybe we really will stop these assholes.” He hadn’t believed it before, then. Well, who could blame him? Vaclav hadn’t believed it, either. He still wasn’t sure he did.

More French troops came up to join the ragtag and bobtail on the front line. They wore khaki instead of the last war’s horizon blue, but
their uniforms still looked old-fashioned next to those the enemy wore. Still and all, Jezek wasn’t inclined to fuss. Old-fashioned or not, they were here and they were shooting at the Germans. What more could you want?

And the Germans themselves weren’t what they had been when the war broke out. They remained consummate professionals, and he’d remembered a moment before how brave they were. But they were also flesh and blood. They were every bit as worn out and ragged as the Allied troops they faced. It was like the later rounds of a championship prize fight. Both sides were bloodied, both half out on their feet, but they kept slugging away. The prize here was even sweeter than money. This fight was for power.

Damned if one of the German mortars didn’t start up again. Several of the Frenchmen who’d just come up screamed like damned souls. The butcher’s bill rose again. Thus encouraged, the men in field-gray put in another attack.

Vaclav blew the head right off one of them with the antitank rifle. And those Frenchmen had brought along several machine guns. The German weapon might be better, but the Hotchkiss sufficed for all ordinary purposes of slaughter. No infantry, no matter how good, could advance in the face of fire like that. Sullenly, taking as many of their wounded with them as they could, the Germans drew back.

When Vaclav reached for another clip, he discovered he’d run dry. Well, he had a pistol, and at least one of those Frenchmen didn’t need his rifle any more. Any which way, it didn’t look as if the
Wehrmacht
could break into Laon.

ALISTAIR WALSH GAVE THE JUNIOR LIEUTENANT
who brought the order a hard look. He wanted to pretend he hadn’t heard it, or at least hadn’t understood it. “We’re going to do what…sir?” he said.

Normally, that tone from a staff sergeant old enough to be his father
would have wilted a subaltern. But this youngster, just up to the front from somewhere to let him keep his uniform clean and even pressed, was strengthened by the Holy Writ from Headquarters. “We’re going to counterattack,” he repeated brightly. “Can’t very well let the
Boches
have their own way all the time, eh?”

“Counterattack with
what?”
Walsh demanded. “Christ on His cross, it’s everything we can do”—
and a little more besides
, he added silently—“to hang on where we are.”

“Forces to be committed include—” The subaltern rattled off several regiments, British and French. “Those should be plenty to shift the Germans hereabouts, don’t you think?”

“Well, they would be,” Walsh said.

He finally got a frown from the young officer. “What do you mean? Aren’t they in this vicinity? This is where they are reported to be.”

“Oh, bloody hell,” Walsh muttered. He did his best to explain the facts of life: “Well, sir, pieces of them are, you might say. What’s left of them after the
Boches
spent these past weeks banging on them with hammers and rocks.”

“What is your estimate of their relative combat effectiveness?” the subaltern asked.

“Sir, I’m just a sergeant,” Walsh said. A staff sergeant who’d served in the last war wasn’t
just
a sergeant. Walsh wondered whether the second lieutenant understood that. About even money, he guessed. With a mental sigh, he went on, “The only reason we haven’t come to pieces, near as I can see, is that the Germans have it about as bad as we do.” He had much more sympathy for the Fritzes in the front line—poor bloody infantry just like him—than he did for the starched, gormless creature standing before him now. No matter what you thought, a single pip on each shoulder strap didn’t turn you into God’s anointed.

“I…see,” the subaltern said slowly. Maybe he did have some notion of Walsh’s station after all. Or maybe not: “I am here to deliver these orders, not to adjust them. The attack
will
go in. Is that clear?”

“Sir, it’s bleeding madness,” Walsh said. The lieutenant only waited. Walsh sighed and swore. God’s anointed or not, those pips meant the youngster could break him like a rotten stick…after which the attack would go in anyway. Sure as hell, sometimes the real enemy wore the same uniform as you. A precise salute. “Yes, sir. I’ll tell the men”: an equally precise reproach.

The subaltern’s cheeks reddened, as if he’d been slapped. He felt that, all right. “I should be honored to go forward with you,” he said.

“Never mind, sir,” Walsh said wearily. “It’s not your fault. It’s just war.”

When Bill got the word, he grimaced and shrugged. “Well, we’re fucked now.” In his broad northern accent, it came out
fooked
, which only added to the point.

“It’s bloody murder, is what it is,” Nigel said. “I thought Field Marshal Haig did his worst in the last war.” He had an education, all right—he hadn’t been born when Haig was doing his worst.

Walsh, who’d lost a slightly older cousin in the mud at Passchendaele, was inclined to agree. What could he do, though? Not a damned thing except go forward as long as the German guns let him. “No help for it,” he said. “Maybe the Germans really are on the ropes.”

“Maybe babies really do come from under cabbage leaves, too,” Nigel said. “Not likely, though.”

“We wouldn’t have so much fun makin’ ‘em if they did,” Bill said.

Walsh laughed at that. “Barrage should start at 1500. It’s”—he paused to look at his watch—“1310 now. As soon as the guns let up, we go forward—and may God go with us.”

On the Western Front in the last war, barrages sometimes lasted a week. They were supposed to kill all the enemy soldiers and flatten all the wire between the side doing the bombarding and a breakthrough. Well, theory was wonderful. Long barrages warned an attack was coming. They didn’t kill enough defenders, and the ones who lived always got to their machine guns before the attackers reached their line. One
reason was that bombardments didn’t flatten enough wire, but did tear up the ground so attacking troops couldn’t move fast even when they most needed to.

Short and sweet worked better. Even in 1918, they’d figured that out. Enough to shock, enough to wound, not enough to throw away surprise. And then the infantry—and the tanks, when there were tanks—would go in and clean up the mess. They
had
driven the Germans back…in 1918.

Bill had a flask of applejack. He passed it around. Walsh took a nip with the other waiting British soldiers. A little Dutch courage never hurt anybody.

At 1500 on the dot, guns back in Paris opened up on the Germans in the suburbs. German counterbattery fire started right away. Walsh didn’t mind. As long as those 105s were shooting at the Allied guns, they weren’t pounding the front lines.

After not quite half an hour, the bombardment stopped. Up and down the front, officers’ whistles screeched. Walsh’s heart thuttered in his chest. He was probably pale as paste. He told himself it wouldn’t be so bad as going over the top. But he’d been a kid then. Now he knew all the nasty things that could happen to you. He didn’t want to get shot again. But he didn’t want to seem a coward in front of his men, either.

“Let’s go,” he said hoarsely, and they went.

He’d barely crossed the street before a Mauser round cracked past him. No, the bombardment hadn’t got everybody. How many Fritzes waited in foxholes and shattered buildings? Too damned many—he was sure of that.

He almost stumbled over a German crouching behind some rubble. The man was trying to bandage one hand with the other. He threw up both of them and bleated,
“Kamerad!”
when he saw Walsh.

Who would take care of prisoners? Anybody? Or would people behind the lines shoot them to save themselves the bother? Walsh knew such things happened. He bent down and threw the wounded German’s
rifle into some bushes. Gesturing with his own weapon, he said, “Go on, go on.” What happened later wasn’t his worry.

“Danke!”
the Fritz said. Off he went, both hands still above his head.

Walsh forgot about him as soon as he was gone. Plenty of other Germans ahead, and not all the bastards would be bleeding. He was glad to hear Bren guns banging away. They brought real firepower right up to the front. You could carry one and fire from the hip, or even from the shoulder.

You couldn’t move forward fast, not in this smashed suburb. Wreckage slowed you down too much. Stubborn Germans lurking in the wreckage were liable to slow you down for good. But the enemy seemed less stubborn than usual. Maybe the counterattack had surprised and dismayed them as much as it had Walsh. Stranger things must have happened, though he couldn’t come up with one offhand.

Something warned him to throw himself down behind a burnt-out Citroën. Only a few seconds after he did, two Germans with Schmeissers came out of what was left of a house. Walsh pulled the pin on a grenade and rose up onto his knees to send it flying. A soft thump, a guttural cry of alarm, and a bang, all packed close together. Shrieks followed. Both Fritzes were down. Walsh shot them one after the other to make sure they didn’t get up again. He scurried forward and grabbed a submachine gun and as many clips as the Germans carried. He slung his rifle so he could go forward carrying the Schmeisser. At close quarters, he wanted to be able to spray a lot of lead around.