Back in the turret, Lothar Eckhardt said, “These people could be our fathers and mothers and sisters. I don’t know that I want to shoot at them.”
“Is that mutiny, Lothar?” Hermann Witt asked.
“I don’t know, Sergeant,” the gunner answered unhappily. “Do you want to shoot at them?”
“Do I want to? Of course not,” Witt said. “But I’ve done all kinds of things I didn’t want to since I put on these coveralls. That’s what war’s about.”
“You’ve never done any of that stuff to Germans, though,” Eckhardt said. “Only to the enemy.”
“If these people are enemies of the government-” the panzer commander began.
“Then maybe the government is the one with the problem, not the people,” Adi broke in.
Several seconds’ worth of silence followed. Then Witt said, “Adi, I understand why you’re saying that, but-”
Adi interrupted again: “I’m not saying it because I’m a Jew, Sergeant.” Theo’s jaw dropped all the way down to his chest, and he would have bet everyone back in the turret was just as gobsmacked. Adi’d never called himself a Jew before. He’d never come close. Now he went on, “Besides, it’s not Jews in Münster rising up against the stupid Nazis. It’s Germans, like Lothar said.”
“We swore an oath to the Führer. All of us did. Even you, Adi,” Witt said.
“I know. But we didn’t swear to be lemmings and follow him over the cliff,” Adi answered.
“He’s right,” Theo put in. He knew that might win him the attention of the SS and the SD. He didn’t care now, though he also knew he might care very much later. He felt like a free man. He hadn’t remembered how good that felt.
He looked out through his vision slits. Some of the other panzers around them were starting up. Some weren’t. If that didn’t mean the same argument was raging inside of them, he would have been amazed.
Witt saw the same thing. Since he could look out through the cupola, he was bound to see more of it than Theo. Plaintively, he said, “Do you want us to start shooting at each other right here in the encampment?”
“No, Sergeant.” Adi kept military respect, which made him more persuasive, not less. “The other poor conscript bastards aren’t the enemy. Himmler’s blackshirt goons are.”
“Adi, start the engines. We can go into Münster,” Witt said. “We’ll see what kind of orders they give us when we get there. If we can honorably carry them out, we will. If we can’t … We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. We don’t have to burn it yet.”
That sounded more like a plea than an order, but Adi said, “Zu Befehl!” and stabbed the starter button with his forefinger. The engine roared to life. He put the panzer into gear and rolled out of the encampment. He didn’t go very fast, and Witt didn’t try to hurry him.
Maybe Witt thought that, once people started shooting at them, he could get his crew to shoot back. Maybe he was right, but Theo wouldn’t have bet on it. He knew he didn’t intend to fire on any of the locals no matter what happened.
They’d just reached the outskirts of town when the radio crackled to life again. “All panzers! All panzers! Halt and return immediately to your encampment!” a sharp, unfamiliar voice ordered.
“On whose authority?” someone asked-probably a captain in charge of a company.
“I am Colonel Joachim von Lehnsdorff, of the General Staff. I have relieved your regimental commander because he has issued orders beyond his competence. Return to your encampment at once, I tell you!” That Prussian-accented voice carried the snap of command.
“Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst!” The man who’d questioned him gulped before getting his acceptance out.
Hermann Witt said, “I never heard of the General Staff canning a regimental CO before.”
“What do you want me to do, Sergeant?” Adi asked.
“Oh, go back. Go back. I’m not sorry to get an order like that, not even a little bit,” Witt answered. “But it’s like even the Wehrmacht can’t make up its mind what it wants to do.”
“It’s probably just like that,” Theo said. After that sentence, he spent another one: “The Wehrmacht has to decide whether it belongs to the Nazis or to Germany.”
Beside him at the front of the panzer, Adi grinned crookedly. “What you mean is, the Wehrmacht has to decide whether Germany belongs to it or to the Nazis.”
That was the question, all right, much more than To be or not to be. Theo found himself nodding. But it was more complicated than Adi made it out to be. The armed forces were divided against themselves. A good-sized chunk of the Wehrmacht, from the rank and file up into the officer corps, favored the Nazis.
Hermann Witt said, “I wonder what the Führer will do when he finds out about this.”
“We’ll all find out,” Adi said. By then, the panzer was clanking away from Münster. Theo was content with that. He’d worry later about whatever came next.
The man in the white coat-the doctor, Pete McGill supposed he was-shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, Sergeant, but no one who retook Midway will be leaving the island right away.”
“That’s a crock … sir,” Pete said. He had to remind himself that military doctors carried officer’s rank. “I’m healthy as a horse. All the guys who were gonna get sick, they’ve gone and done it by now.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” the man in the white coat replied. “We won’t know that for some time to come. If it makes you feel any better, I’m stuck here along with you.”
“It doesn’t make me feel one goddamn bit better,” Pete said. “Uh, sir.”
And yet, however little he wanted to admit it, he had to grant that the sawbones had a point of sorts. Leathernecks on Midway had died of plague and of anthrax. One poor bastard had died of smallpox. Pete had never seen that before, and hoped to heaven he never saw it again. It was a hell of a nasty way to cash in your chips.
“This island may never be safe for human habitation again-certainly not for anyone who hasn’t been thoroughly immunized,” the doctor said. “We can give it back to the gooney birds. They don’t seem to come down with any of the human diseases here.”
“So what did we go and take it back for, then?” Pete growled. “Way you sound, the Japs would’ve dropped dead by themselves pretty damn quick.”
“Anyone who wasn’t thoroughly immunized, I said,” the doctor answered. “The Japs were. So were you men. So am I. Things would have been much worse if that weren’t true.”
“It’s 1944 now,” Pete said. “When do we get turned loose? In 1946? Or 1950? Or 1960? Or is this a waddayacallit-a life sentence?”
“I’m sorry, but I have no idea,” the doc said. “Can you imagine the stink if you guys leave Midway and start an epidemic somewhere?”
Pete could imagine it, all right. What he couldn’t do was care. He scowled. “Terrific … sir. Least people could do for us is bring in some broads who’ve had all their shots. By the time they could leave, they’d be richer’n anybody else on the island. Bet your ass they would.”
“Good for morale but bad for morals, I’m afraid,” the doctor said primly. “You’ll just have to imagine you’re on a warship on an extended cruise. In effect, you are.”
The Japs had been stuck out here without any whores, too. That was probably one of the reasons they’d fought almost to the last man. They’d got so mean, they hadn’t cared whether they lived or died. And die they had. On an island with no place to hide, everybody on one side or the other was going to. The Japs didn’t surrender, and the Marines didn’t try to get them to.
“It’s all a bunch of crap, you ask me,” Pete said. “And if we’re here till summer, we’re gonna have half the landing craft in the Navy.”
He exaggerated, but not by much. C-47s flying off Tern Island delivered some supplies to Midway by airdrop. More, though, came by sea. A freighter would fill up a landing craft with food and fuel and whatever else the leathernecks needed. The crew would hop into a launch and go back to the mother ship. A motorboat would bring a replacement crew out from the island to bring in the landing craft. The scheme worked, but more and more big square boats crowded the beach.
“We can afford that,” the guy in the white coat said. “As far as the whole war goes, it’s just pocket change.”
“Yeah, that’s what they treat us like, sure as hell,” Pete said. “Pennies, maybe nickels if we’re lucky. Not dimes. Dimes are worth a little something.”
The doctor shrugged and walked away. If being marooned here bothered him, he didn’t show it. Maybe he couldn’t get it up. Maybe he played with himself all the time. Or maybe he was a fairy, and spending months on an island with a bunch of Marines was hog heaven for him.
Pete had no way of knowing about that. All he knew was how much he wanted to get back to Honolulu and Hotel Street. Any place with no booze and no babes wasn’t worth living in. None of the landing craft had brought in hooch yet, not even the horrible unofficial stuff that got cooked up on every warship ever launched. Life wasn’t fair, dammit.
It was warm. It was a little humid. Every so often, it rained for a while. Pete didn’t need long to get bored. He smoked like a chimney-they did have enough sense to send plenty of coffin nails. He fished in the lagoon and on the beach. What he caught tasted better than the rations they brought in.
He played poker. Everybody played poker except for the guys who shot dice and the handful of eggheads who played bridge instead. The eggheads insisted bridge stayed interesting even when you didn’t bet on it (though they did). Pete thought playing cards where no money changed hands was about as much fun as kissing your mom.
He won a little more than he lost. He was no human slide rule, able to figure odds like an insurance salesman. But he’d played a lot. He knew good hands, not-so-good hands, and hands that looked good but would let you down like a cheating cocktail waitress. And, most important of all, he knew how to lie with a straight face.
“Fuck you, McGill,” another leatherneck grumbled when Pete raked in a pot. “I can’t tell when you’re bluffing, and I’m sick of getting my ass burned on account of it.”
“Aw, gee, Edgar, you say the sweetest things,” Pete lisped in shrill falsetto. He batted his eyelashes at his victim. That broke up the whole table (though actually they were sitting on a couple of blankets). For some reason, nothing on God’s green earth seemed funnier than an unshaven, smelly Marine mincing like a fruit.
Even Edgar laughed, though he looked pained when he did it. “Whose deal is it, anyway?” he asked, trying to shift attention away from himself and Pete.
The game went on. Pete didn’t win all the time-nowhere close. The cards wouldn’t let you. The trick was to win as big as you could when you won and not to throw away too much when you lost. And Edgar might have been disgusted, but Pete disguised the truth when he delivered it fairy-style. If Edgar admitted he couldn’t read Pete, that gave Pete a serious edge.
Not everybody came equipped with a poker face. Pete had played against one guy whose eyebrows jumped every time he got a hand worth betting. The guy didn’t know he was doing it, which didn’t help him. Good cards made another fellow turn pink, as if he’d got caught peeking down a girl’s blouse. Pete didn’t think even a doctor could keep anyone from blushing. But that fellow’s color changes cost him money.
You studied the people you played against. You tried not to show you were doing it, but you did. You knew they were casing you, too, casing you like a bank vault. You gave away as little as you could by the way you acted and by the way you played.
If you were a sucker, if you bled money the way a bayoneted Jap gushed blood, the smartest thing you could do was get the hell out of the game. Some guys had the sense to see that. They threw a baseball around or read magazines. Others wondered where this month’s pay had disappeared to, and last month’s, and next month’s, too.
No Japanese planes bombed them. Bettys from Wake Island could have reached them, but the slanties didn’t bother. They had to realize they might not hang on to Wake much longer, either.
Then what? Not back to where they’d started, not with Guam and the Philippines still in Japanese hands to shield the Home Islands and the Dutch East Indies. But at least Honolulu would be able to take a deep breath and not worry so much about coming down with anthrax if it did.
No. The Marines on Midway were the ones who had to worry about that. Which was one big reason they couldn’t get off Midway, dammit.