“Don’t,” Halévy told him. “As soon as we cross the border, it’s liable to be 8 HORSES OR 36 MEN.”
“A box car!” Jezek made a face. That was what the French painted on the sides of each one so nobody could mess up the carrying capacity. “They really know how to show they care, don’t they?”
“They care that we can kill some Boches for them. They care that they can use you up-and me, too-instead of some genuine Frenchmen,” Halévy told him. “Don’t worry about it, mon vieux. Pretty soon, the Spaniards won’t care, either.”
“You know how to make me feel good, don’t you?” Vaclav answered his own question before the Jew could: “Nah. If you were a blonde with no morals, then you’d know how to make me feel good.”
“Funny guy.” Halévy glanced over at the antitank rifle leaning against the wood paneling of the second-class car’s wall. “I wish Hitler would come within a couple of kilometers of the front. Then you could do unto him as you did unto Sanjurjo. But from what I hear, Hitler didn’t take chances like that even before you plugged the Marshal.”
“Too bad.” Vaclav cocked his head to one side and studied Halévy. “How do you hear shit like that?”
“I keep my eyes open.” Halévy paused for effect. “My nose sees all kinds of interesting things, too.”
“Will it see my fist if I punch it?” Vaclav didn’t bother to find out. He was just joking around.
When they got to the border in the Pyrenees, a Spanish military band played a farewell for them even though it was the middle of the night. The French soldiers on the other side seemed much less interested. They herded the Czechs to the next train. They didn’t thrust them into box cars smelling greenly of horseshit. They did give them third-class cars with hard benches jammed too close together. Vaclav would have been more annoyed had he been more surprised.
No one on the French side of the border cared at all about the Czechs’ Spanish rank badges and medals. The French attitude was that foreign badges on foreign men meant nothing in their country. Three officers with fancy kepis did take Benjamin Halévy off to one side and question him for more than an hour before they finally let the troop train roll out of the station.
“What was that all about?” Vaclav asked. “They think you were smuggling hashish or something?”
“Worse than that-much worse.” Halévy rolled his eyes. “They said I was wearing rank badges I wasn’t entitled to. That a sergeant should become an officer while they weren’t looking … Not so long ago, it would have been a matter for Devil’s Island. We spoke of this before, and about how they wouldn’t let me stay promoted.”
“Uh-huh. Like I told you then, fucking good thing your name isn’t Dreyfus,” Vaclav said.
“You’ve got that right. But he was already an officer. Not me! They accept no such improper promotions, as they made ever so clear,” Halévy said. “So I’m just a noncom again, and lucky to be that. They also made it clear how lucky I am. They could have court-martialed me for going on with the war while they were busy sucking up to Hitler.”
“Sucking him off, you mean,” Vaclav said savagely.
Halévy waved a forefinger at him: a very French gesture. “You can talk about them like that. They aren’t your superiors. They are mine, and I’m stuck with them. They did finally admit I still enjoy the privilege of dying for my country. Isn’t patriotism grand? Oh, and have you got a cigarette?” They smoked while the train clattered north and east, toward the bigger war.
CHAPTER 20
Colonel Steinbrenner climbed up onto a wooden crate so everybody in the squadron could see him. Hans-Ulrich Rudel was up near the front of the crowd anyway, as usual. Even by German standards, he was compulsively punctual. And he wanted to hear what the squadron CO had to say.
Sergeant Dieselhorst stood behind Rudel and to his left. A cigarette dangled from the corner of Dieselhorst’s mouth. That and his elaborately uninterested expression made him look like an American gangster. Hans-Ulrich didn’t own enough of a death wish to tell him so.
Steinbrenner raised a hand. The flyers and groundcrew men fell silent. Everybody wondered what was going on. The colonel had summoned them all, but he hadn’t said why.
“The Führer’s going to talk tonight,” Steinbrenner said. “Some of you will already know that, but I want to make sure nobody misses it. This is supposed to be one of the most important speeches he’s given since the war started. You’ll want to hear it for yourselves instead of getting it by bits and pieces from the newscasts and the papers.” His arm shot up and out in the Party salute. “Heil Hitler!”
“Heil Hitler!” the men echoed, returning the gesture as they shouted the slogan.
Hans-Ulrich wanted to hear Hitler speak. Part of what made the Führer so marvelous was that, while you listened to him, all your doubts disappeared. Rudel had plenty of doubts he needed to exorcise.
“Good,” Steinbrenner said. “I hope that, after he speaks, we’ll have a better notion of where we’re going and what we’ve got to do to get there. Whatever it is, for Germany’s sake, we’ll do it.”
“Heil Hitler!” the Luftwaffe men chorused again. Along with most of the others, Hans-Ulrich gave the Party salute once more. The squadron commander returned it.
As the men drifted apart, Albert Dieselhorst came up alongside Hans-Ulrich. “Well, that was interesting,” the radioman and rear gunner remarked.
“Interesting how?” Rudel asked.
“Mm, for one thing, the colonel talked to us about this speech himself. He didn’t give the job to Major Keller. I would’ve guessed the National Socialist Loyalty Officer would have told us about political stuff.”
“That’s true. I hadn’t thought about it, but it is,” Hans-Ulrich said. “Whatever the Führer’s going to say, then, it must be important-especially since he’s speaking from Münster.”
“Yes. Especially.” Sergeant Dieselhorst’s voice was dry. Neither of them seemed to want to take that any further. The less you said about a place where rebellion still bubbled, the better off you were. After they walked on for a few more steps, Dieselhorst added, “And the colonel didn’t say anything about what’ll be in the speech.”
“I guess he doesn’t know,” Hans-Ulrich said.
Dieselhorst nodded. “I guess you’re right. But that’s interesting, too. Most of the time, when the big cheese is going to come out with one of these fancy speeches, the brass has a pretty good idea of what he’ll say ahead of time. They need to know which way to jump, and they need to get us peasants ready to jump that way.”
“Huh.” That hadn’t occurred to Hans-Ulrich, either. He eyed his worldly crewmate. “All these things you know, all these things you think about, how come you’re not a Party Bonz yourself?”
The sergeant started to say something, then plainly decided not to. After a few more steps, he took another shot at it: “I never much wanted to have anything to do with politics, sir. You have to tell too many lies to too many people. Doesn’t matter a bit which side of the fence you’re on. You just do. It’s part of the game, the same way dive brakes are part of the Stuka’s game.”
“Huh,” Rudel said again. “I never looked at it like that.”
“Of course not, sir. You think telling a lie’s a sin.” Dieselhorst sounded amused and indulgent, the way a father might while talking about his little boy’s antics. “I’m just not very good at it, and I don’t think it’s much fun. So I’m better off here in the Luftwaffe than I would be working in some Gauleiter’s office.”