French artillery came down about half a kilometer in front of the panzer park. Somebody was getting it in the neck-probably a bunch of poor, damned infantrymen, as usual-but the precious panzers stayed out of range of enemy guns when not actually fighting.
Planes buzzed by overhead. Ludwig looked up, more curious than worried. Sure enough, Stukas and Messerschmitts flew west to punish the French and the English. The enemy didn't use planes against German forces anywhere near so much. Ludwig was damned glad of it, too. He'd seen what air power could do to soldiers. He didn't want anybody doing that to him.
German 105s opened up. Maybe they were shooting at the French guns. Maybe they were softening up the poilus so the next German thrust could finally break through them instead of just pushing them back. Maybe…Ludwig laughed at himself. Not for the first time, he was pretending he'd joined the General Staff. No Lampassen on the legs of his black coveralls.
Something off in the distance blew up with a hell of a bang. Even Theo noticed. "Ammunition dump?" he said.
"Christ, I hope so," Ludwig answered. "Damned Frenchmen have already thrown more shit at us than we ever thought they had. The more we can get rid of, the less they're liable to hit us with."
Theo blinked in owlish surprise. "I hadn't thought of it like that."
"You're always off in Radioland," Ludwig said. "Half the time, I don't think you even remember there's a war on."
"Oh, I remember," Theo said. "I'd be doing something better than this if they hadn't stuck a uniform on me. So would you." He still looked like an owl, but a challenging owl now.
Getting that much of a rise out of him took Ludwig by surprise. "Watch your mouth!" the panzer commander said again. "The way things are, if anybody in the other blackshirts hears you go on like that, you're down the shitter." He was proud of those panzer coveralls, but wished the SS didn't wear the same color.
Theo nodded slowly. He seemed much more…engaged with the real world than he often did. He even looked around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping before he said, "Well, you're right about that, too. And things shouldn't work that way, either. You know damn well they shouldn't."
"We'll fix it after the war," Ludwig said. "We can't waste time worrying about it now. If France and England beat us again, we're screwed. Remember how it was when we were kids, when they occupied us and we needed a bushel of marks to get a bushel of turnips? Do you want to see those days back again?"
"Who would? Only a crazy man." But Theo looked around again. Softly, he added, "The other thing I don't want is, I don't want our own side fucking us over. And that's what we've got."
He'd just put his life in Ludwig's hands. If Ludwig reported him the way a dutiful sergeant was supposed to, he'd have a new radioman in short order. What would happen to Theo after that was none of his business. He would be better off not wondering about such things. Theo wouldn't, but he would.
But he didn't want a new radioman. Theo spent too much time in his own little world, but most days he did a good job. If he doubted whether Germany was always wise…well, so did Ludwig. Gruffly, the sergeant clapped the other man on the shoulder. "We'll take care of that after the war, too. They'll have to listen to us then."
"Nobody has to do anything." Theo spoke with unwonted conviction. But then he must have realized he'd taken things as far as they could go, or more likely a few centimeters farther. He seemed to shrink back into himself. "Well, we'd better worry about the Frenchies right this minute, eh?"
"Now you're talking!" Relief filled Ludwig's voice. Something else on-he hoped-the French side of the line went up with a hell of a bang. That relieved him, too. He knew how hideously vulnerable to antitank rounds the Panzer II was. As with the previous bang, the fewer of them the enemy could aim at him, the better.
The panzers rattled forward an hour or so later. Foot soldiers in Feldgrau loped along with the armor. One of them waved to Ludwig, who stood head and shoulders out of the cupola. He nodded back. Panzers could do things the infantry only dreamt about. Everybody knew that, and had known it all along. But the war had taught a different lesson: that panzers needed infantrymen, too. Without them, enemy soldiers could get in close and raise all kinds of hell with grenades and bottles full of blazing gasoline and whatever other lethal little toys they happened to carry.
Stukas screamed down out of the sky. Fire and smoke and dirt rose into the air a few hundred meters ahead. Even at that distance, blast from the big bombs rattled Ludwig's teeth. What it was doing to the bastards in khaki on whom the bombs fell…Ludwig felt a curious mixture of sympathy and hope that nobody up ahead was in any shape to fight any more.
A forlorn hope, and he knew it. Some of them would be dead. Some would be maimed, or too shellshocked to know sausage from Saturday. But there were always some lucky, stubborn assholes who'd…He hadn't even finished the thought before a French machine gun started banging away.
A Landser toppled, clutching at his chest. Other German foot soldiers hit the dirt. Ludwig was back inside the turret a split second before several bullets rattled off the panzer's armor. Small-arms ammo couldn't get through. That never stopped machine gunners from trying.
"Scheisse," Fritz said. Like Ludwig, the driver must have hoped the Stukas would do all their work for them.
Ludwig swung the turret toward the closest French machine gun. He fired back, hot 20mm cartridge cases clattering down onto the fighting compartment's floor. The enemy Hotchkiss fell silent. The panzer pushed on.
Meaux was gone. Luc Harcourt could see the smoke in the east, much of which came from the lost town. Maybe the Boches were celebrating by burning everything they couldn't steal. Or maybe French engineers had planted charges under everything they didn't want the enemy to use. German prisoners who spoke French had nothing but admiration for the engineers.
As far as Luc was concerned, who torched or blew up what hardly mattered any more. No matter who did it, France caught hell. All he cared about was staying in one piece till the war ended.
No guarantee of that. Sergeant Demange was commanding the company. No replacement officer had come forward since Lieutenant Marquet stopped an antitank round with his stomach. It cut him in half. The top half lived, and screamed, much longer than Luc wished it would have.
Luc had a squad himself. A private first class wasn't much of a non-com, but he'd gone this far without getting hit. That put him several long steps ahead of the scared conscripts he led.
The sergeant came by, his red-tracked eyes missing nothing. The Gitane in the corner of his mouth twitched as he snapped, "Don't let 'em lay there with their thumbs up their asses, Harcourt. Set the sorry sods to digging. They'll hate you now, but they'll thank you as soon as the Germans start shelling us again."
"Right, Sergeant," Luc said wearily. He knew Demange was right, too, but he wanted nothing more than to lie there himself, and who cared where his thumb went? With a sigh, he hauled himself to his feet. "Come on, you miserable lugs. You can rest once you've got foxholes to rest in."
They groaned. Some of them didn't even have hard hands yet; their palms blistered and bled when they used shovels or entrenching tools. But they'd seen dead men-both bloodied and astonished after meeting death unexpectedly and bloated and stinking from lying in the fields four or five days unburied. They didn't want anyone else seeing them like that: worse than getting caught naked. They weren't eager, but they dug.
So did Luc. He already had a scrape of sorts. He improved it as fast as he could. There seemed to be a lull now, but how long would it last? Another twenty minutes? Another twenty seconds? No time at all?