Adam Pfaff looked up from cleaning his own gray-painted Mauser. “Where did you get the fancy piece?” he inquired.
Willi grinned at him. “You’ll find out.”
Fifteen minutes later, Awful Arno came back, his face a thundercloud. It wasn’t the first time he’d made somebody under his command out to be a liar and wound up with egg on his face. Knowing him, it wouldn’t be the last, either.
He said not another word about the scope-sighted rifle. Instead, he reamed out a new replacement who hadn’t done a single thing that Willi could see. That was Arno Baatz, through and through. He wouldn’t blame himself for picking the wrong time to call a bluff. Oh, no. He’d take it out on somebody else, somebody who couldn’t hit back. Schoolyards were full of bullies just like him. Unfortunately, so was the army.
“Be damned,” Pfaff said as he stowed his cleaning kit. “The supply sergeant really did issue it to you?”
“He really did. And if Awful Arno doesn’t like it, too bad.” Willi kept his voice down. Baatz had rabbit ears, damn him. Even as things were, his head whipped around. Yes, he knew when his name was taken in vain. That was perhaps his lone resemblance to God. But he couldn’t pick out the soldier who’d used the nickname he hated. It wasn’t as if Willi were the only candidate.
After 105s pounded the Russian positions in front of them, the Germans moved forward again. The artillery fire hadn’t squashed the Ivans. It never did. They dug like animals, and popped out of their holes as soon as the shelling stopped. Rifles and machine pistols, machine guns and mortars, greeted the Wehrmacht.
Willi soon got the chance to try out the new Mauser. He knocked over a Russian at about 800 meters. It wouldn’t have been an impossible shot for an ordinary rifle, but it would have been a damn good one. With the sight and the silky-smooth action on this baby, it felt routine.
That Ivan must have been an officer, and one the Reds didn’t want to lose. They tried to avenge themselves by smashing the Germans with artillery. The Russians were brave, but they made crappy tacticians. A lot of the time, they used guns to do what brains couldn’t.
Huddling in a scrape he kept deepening every time he got the chance, Willi wished the Russians were smarter. Then they wouldn’t use so much brute force. He hung on to the rifle in case the Reds followed up their barrage with a counterattack. Right now, that didn’t feel likely. They were just trying to murder as many Landsers as they could.
When the shelling let up, Willi heard wounded men screaming and wailing. He winced and bit his lip. Under pressure like this, what kind of soldier he was hardly mattered. If a shell came down on his hole, he was a dead or wounded soldier. He couldn’t do anything about it one way or the other. A kid just out of basic training cowering in another foxhole might live where he died. Fool luck, nothing else but. It hardly seemed fair.
He’d had thoughts like that ever since the war started. He was still here. Of course, so was Awful Arno. If that didn’t prove how basically unfair the world was…
Willi might not have been able to do anything about the Russian artillery on his own, but the Wehrmacht could. A Fieseler Storch buzzed over the battleground, scouting out the Ivans’ positions. The German army co-op plane could take off and land on next to no ground at all. It was ridiculously maneuverable. It could even hover like a kestrel in a strong headwind.
And it could let an observer see what he needed to see. Not long after the Storch flew off-by all signs undamaged despite the storm of small-arms fire the Ivans threw at it-a squadron of Stukas worked over the Russian batteries. One of the Stukas got hit during its dive and didn’t pull out. A column of black, greasy smoke marked the end of the plane and its crewmen.
The others did what dive-bombers were supposed to do. A 500kg bomb would knock any artillery piece ass over teakettle. And what it did to the poor sorry bastards serving the gun…
Had they not been doing their damnedest to blow him into cat’s-meat, Willi might have spent more sympathy on the Ivans. Then again, he might not. He hated all artillerymen, no matter where they came from. They murdered honest foot soldiers without needing to worry about getting shot themselves. Dive-bombers were just what they deserved. The only reason he put up with German artillerymen at all was that they sometimes helped the Stukas keep the other side’s gunners anxious.
Whistles squealed. Officers shouted, “Follow me!” Willi and the rest of the ground-pounders did. For once, everything was easy. The Russians who didn’t surrender ran away. He cherished the feeling. He knew too well he wasn’t likely to meet it again any time soon.
Out between the Nationalist trenches and the ones the Republicans held, somebody had lain dead for too long. Or maybe it was a donkey or a horse, but Chaim Weinberg didn’t think so. Their stink was different from a dead man’s. He couldn’t have said exactly how it was different, but it was.
The wind blew from the northwest, so there was no escaping the horrible reek. He wished he could turn off his nose. Weren’t you supposed to start ignoring bad smells after a while? Everybody said so, but old Everybody’d never had to contend with a stench from hell like this one.
All the Abe Lincolns in the trench bitched about it. They all said someone ought to go out into no-man’s-land, find the dead soldier or donkey or whatever it was, and shovel some dirt over it. Nobody volunteered for the job, though, not even at night. Odds were the Nationalists knew exactly where the heap of corruption lay and had a sniper just waiting to pot any enterprising International who tried to clean up the mess.
“It ain’t fair,” Chaim groused. “They don’t even have to smell it most of the time. Cocksuckers just sit around and let us suffer.”
“And so?” Mike Carroll said.
“So fuck it.” Chaim lit a Gitane. That was fighting one stench with another, but harsh tobacco improved on dead meat. He supposed it did, anyhow. Mike looked wistful. Chaim doled out a cigarette. He wouldn’t have if the other American had suggested that he go out there and scoop dirt over the corpse. Mike hadn’t-quite. So he earned a smoke for himself.
Cigarettes were too soon gone. The death stench endured. Where were vultures when you really needed them? People talked about smells so bad they would gag a vulture. Chaim had always believed that was nothing but talk-if vultures weren’t made for rotten meat, what were they made for? But they didn’t seem to want anything to do with whatever that was out there.
“You know what’s crazy?” Mike said.
“Besides you, you mean?” Chaim returned. “ Nu? What?”
“Funny man. Ha, ha,” Mike said patiently. Then he went back to what had been on his mind before: “What’s funny is, we’re only like forty-five minutes by car away from Madrid. And we’ve got to put up with this shit all the time.”
“Front was a lot closer than forty-five minutes from Madrid when we got here. Hell, the front then was fuckin’ in Madrid. We’re the ones who pushed it back,” Chaim said, not without pride. He looked up and down the trench. Too many long-familiar faces he didn’t see. “Those of us who’re left, anyway.”
“Ain’t it the truth?” Mike Carroll took a flask off his belt, raised it-not high enough to let a sniper see him-and said, “Absent friends,” before drinking. He handed it to Chaim.
“Absent friends,” Chaim echoed, adding, “Thanks,” before he drank, too. It was Spanish brandy, snarly-strong. The Spaniards called it cognac, but that was a libel on the genuine good stuff. Chaim coughed as he gave back the flask. “Shit’ll put hair on your chest.”
“Like you don’t have enough already,” Mike said. Chaim knew he had more than the other American; they’d bathed in creeks side by side often enough. He wondered if not having so much bothered Mike. If it did, he picked dumb-ass things to worry about. He was tall and slim and blond and handsome. Not being any of those things sure as hell got under Chaim’s skin.