“Alors!” Demange said in surprise. “I couldn’t have put it better myself. You’re learning, kid.”
What showed in Mirouze’s eyes was something on the order of Fuck you, too. He didn’t come out with it. Demange might have laughed if he had. Or he might have coldcocked him, not because he outranked Mirouze but because only his friends could talk to him like that, and he counted his friends on the toes of both hands.
A German MG-42 spat a few short bursts over the French line, just to remind the poilus to keep their heads down. The Germans lived better in their trenches than the French did. The French seemed to think being miserable reminded you you were at war. The Boches made the best of things. In the last war, Demange had seen a deep German bunker with electric lights and with wallpaper over the timbers that shored it up. Except for being a good many meters underground, it could have been taken from an expensive flat.
“Here,” Demange said. “You’re a smart cochon, so I’ve got an arithmetic problem for you. If we advance ten meters every day, how long till we get to Berlin?”
“Long enough so I’m not holding my breath,” Mirouze answered, which was close enough to the right answer to make Demange nod. The second lieutenant went on, “If we can push the Fritzes back to their old border, I’ll be happy enough. As long as they don’t shoot me, I will.”
“Beats the crap out of ‘On les aura!’ doesn’t it?” Demange agreed. “And it’s about as much as we can hope for on this side. Over in the East, the Boches have a little more on their plates.”
“They’ve got the Poles over there to keep the Russians off them,” Mirouze said. “Till the Poles turn their coats, anyhow.”
“Heh! You mean the way we did?” Demange said. “I was over there when that happened, remember. And I’m goddamn lucky I’m back here now.”
Off in the distance, German 105s woke up. Demange listened to the shells scream through the air. If that scream built and built till it sounded as if it were coming down right on top of you … then the chances were much too good that it was. That was when you wanted a deep bunker, like the German one Demange remembered. A direct hit from a 105 wouldn’t bother that bunker one bit. You’d need something like a 240 to make it sit up and take notice, and those babies didn’t grow on trees.
Mirouze was listening intently, too. His face cleared no more than a split second after Demange’s. “They’ll go wide of us.”
“That’s right,” Demange said. “Some other sorry salauds will suffer, but not us. And you know what? The Germans shot me in the last war. If they don’t get me this time, I won’t mind. Let the next hero take his turn instead. Fine with me, by God!”
“If everybody thought like you, we couldn’t have a war,” Mirouze said.
“Everybody does think like me. You fucking want to get your family jewels blown off?” Demange said. “But when they tell you, ‘We will kill you if you don’t go, and the Boches may miss if you do,’ what happens then? You damn well go, that’s what.”
Back behind them, French artillery started roaring. Demange carefully noted the flight of those shells, too. It was counterbattery fire, going after the Germans’ guns. He relaxed, as much as he ever let himself relax. If his own side had started raking the enemy’s forward trenches, the Boches might have felt obliged to return the favor. Some courtesies, Demange could do without.
Lieutenant Mirouze asked a new question: “What do you think of the antitank rocket the Americans have made, the bazooka?” He pronounced the name slowly and carefully, stressing how strange and foreign it was.
Demange thought the handle sounded idiotic, too, but that wasn’t what the kid was talking about. “I’ve only seen a couple of them,” he answered. “I’ve heard it can get through the armor on most German tanks-the Tiger still gives it trouble. If it can, I’m all for it. I’m for anything that gives the infantry a chance against chars. But what do you want to bet the Fritzes will start making their own as soon as they can get their hands on one? Then our tanks will start cooking, too.”
“It could be.” By Mirouze’s expression, he hadn’t thought of that. Also by his expression, he didn’t much like the possibility now that Demange had pointed it out. What a shame! Whether he liked it or not wouldn’t slow the Germans down a bit. Demange had no doubts there.
After a while, the shelling petered out. Only the rain and the chill and the machine guns to worry about then. Wasn’t life grand? It was so grand, Demange took the water bottle off his hip and swigged from it. He had cognac in there, not water. It didn’t do much about machine guns, but it sure made the rain and chill seem less annoying.
He offered Mirouze the aluminum bottle. “Thanks,” the younger officer said, surprise in his voice: Demange wasn’t usually so friendly. Mirouze started to cough when he found the bottle didn’t hold water or even pinard. But he didn’t choke and he didn’t spew the stuff out his nose like someone who didn’t know how to drink. He respectfully handed the bottle back. “Thanks is right.”
“Any time. All part of the service.” Demange stuck the bottle back into the cloth canteen cover.
“That’ll put hair on my chest,” Mirouze said. “Probably make me grow hair all over like King Kong.”
“Just don’t start pounding your chest and climbing the tallest building you can find. It wouldn’t be beauty killed the beast-it’d be the fucking Fritzes and their damn buzz saws.” As if to underscore Demange’s words, an MG-42 sprayed more death at the French lines.
“I guess I won’t.” Mirouze sighed. “I’d make a crappy gorilla anyhow, wouldn’t I?”
“Now that you mention it, yes,” Demange said. The junior lieutenant was skinny and sallow, with a long, mournful face, not quite enough chin, and a sad little mustache that looked as if someone had put burnt cork on his upper lip and he’d washed off some of it but not enough.
“You know what else is funny?” Mirouze said. “Those biplane fighters that got the ape were as good as anybody’s ten years ago. They wouldn’t last ten minutes now. Well, they would against King Kong, but not against real airplanes.”
“You’re right.” Demange sounded surprised, mostly because he was. That a punk like Lieutenant Mirouze could come up with something worth hearing, something Demange hadn’t thought of himself, had to come as a surprise. “What we had ten years ago was junk next to what we’ve got now.”
“And who knows what we’ll have in ten years more?” Mirouze said.
“Whatever it is, it’ll probably kill you before you even get born.” In his own twisted way, Demange had faith in mankind.
Every time Hideki Fujita woke up in the morning after a U.S. bombing raid, he thanked all the kami that he didn’t wake up dead. He’d seen bombing raids from the Russians, but those were only an annoyance next to the pounding Midway was taking.
The island, bigger than any this side of the main Hawaiian group, took up several square kilometers. The only thing that let the Japanese garrison remain a going concern was that that was simply too much ground for a string of bombers to knock flat even with the worst will in the world.
Had they dropped incendiaries … Fujita imagined the devastation that kind of bombing could cause in Japan’s lightly built cities, with so many walls of wood or paper. Yes, those would all go up in flames, and no one could guess how many people with them.
But the Americans were at the end of their reach here on Midway. The Home Islands lay thousands of kilometers to the west. No Yankee bombers could reach them. No Yankee bombers would ever reach them. Fujita was sure of it.