“When you can’t get ’em to pull their ’eads out of their arse’oles any other way?” Scholes guessed shrewdly.
“Something like that, yes.” In a few years, Walsh wouldn’t have wanted to be the junior lieutenant who rubbed Scholes the wrong way. No subaltern would make that mistake more than once. The experience might be educational. It would definitely be traumatic.
A sentry called, “German coming this way with a white flag!”
Walsh got up onto the firing step to look east into Belgium. “We’ve seen more flags of truce since the Fritzes did for Adolf than in the whole war up till then,” he remarked.
This German looked like … a German: boots, Feldgrau, Schmeisser, coal-scuttle helmet. He had an Iron Cross First Class on his left breast pocket. After a moment, Walsh noticed he wore his shoulder straps upside down. Noncoms and officers often did that so snipers wouldn’t spot their rank badges and single them out.
“Far enough!” Walsh yelled to him. “Put down the weapon! Hände hoch!”
The German obediently set the machine pistol on the ground and raised his hands. “I carried it to protect myself from my countrymen, not to attack you,” he said in excellent English.
That Walsh believed him was a sign of how much and how fast things had changed. “Come on, then,” he called.
Still holding up his white flag, the Fritz did. His unloving countrymen started shooting at him before he made it to the English trenches. He hit the dirt with professional speed and crawled the last few yards before slithering down into what Bruce Bairnsfather had so memorably tagged “a better ’ole” during the last war.
“I hope they won’t start throwing mortar bombs at us because you got away,” Walsh said.
“I likewise,” the German agreed. “I am Ludwig Bauer. I am a major.” He rattled off his pay number, adding, “And now I am well out the war.”
“Which side were you on?” Walsh asked. When the officer hesitated, Walsh said, “I won’t throw you back either way-I promise. But I do want to know.”
“May I say I am on Germany’s side and leave it there?” Bauer returned. “Other Germans may want to shoot me, but I do not want to shoot them. I would rather a prisoner of war become than hurt my own Volk.”
As a military coup ousted England’s pro-appeasement government, some nasty Scotland Yard men hadn’t worried at all about hurting Walsh, who opposed them. “Well, I can understand that,” he said, and meant it. He turned to Jack Scholes. “Take the major back to regimental HQ. They’ll carry on from there. We don’t have to fight him any more-just feed him.”
“Roight.” Scholes gestured with his rifle. “Come along, you.” Bauer came. He seemed as happy as a sheep in clover. And why not? Unless choking on the slop POWs ate killed him, he’d live to go home again.
The clock over the stove said it was coming up on seven o’clock: time for the morning news. Peggy Druce turned on the radio. She didn’t want to miss anything. The Inquirer sat on the kitchen table, but the news it held was several hours old by now. Things had been changing so fast, she wanted to stay up to the minute.
Along with the paper, she had her first cup of coffee on the table. Her first cigarette of the day sat in an ashtray, sending a thin, twisting ribbon of smoke up toward the ceiling. She hadn’t worried about breakfast yet; she wouldn’t starve before she found out what was going on.
She suffered through a singing commercial for a brand of cigarettes she couldn’t stand and another one for an oleomargarine that promised it was just as good as “the costlier spread.” She snorted and tried without much luck to blow a smoke ring. The oleomargarine makers couldn’t call it butter because dairy farmers didn’t want the competition. A lot of places, it wasn’t even legal to add yellow coloring to oleomargarine.
But the dairy farmers weren’t the only ones trying to grease the people who bought things. Peggy’d tried oleomargarine, which had a much more generous ration allowance than “the costlier spread” did. She’d tried it once, that is. To her, it tasted more like machine oil than butter.
“This is Douglas Edwards with the news,” the familiar voice announced. “The German Salvation Committee continues to make progress in its fight against diehard Nazis. There are reports of panzer battles in the Ruhr and others outside of Berlin pitting the Waffen-SS against Wehrmacht units loyal to General Guderian and the Committee. SS casualties are said to be very heavy.”
Peggy stubbed out the cigarette. Some of that was in the Inquirer, but not all of it. She thought about lighting another one, but decided to wait till after breakfast. She sipped her coffee instead.
“German Salvation Committee members are discussing peace terms in London, Paris, and Moscow,” Edwards went on. “Certain broad outlines have become plain. Germany definitely will evacuate the Low Countries and Denmark and Norway. Her forces will also leave the western areas of the Soviet Union that they still occupy. The Salvation Committee agrees to all of this without complaint.”
The Salvation Committee had agreed to all of that a couple of days earlier. The Inquirer had already reported about it. Peggy waited to hear some of the new news she’d been hoping for, or at least to hear there was no new news.
“There seem to be a few sticking points in seeking a general European peace. One involves Austria, another Czechoslovakia, a third the district around the Polish city of Wilno, which is also claimed by the USSR, and the last the fate of the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
“German diplomats point out that the other great powers had accepted the Anschluss joining Austria to Germany in 1938, and that England and France were on the point of conceding the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland to Germany when the assassination of Sudeten German leader Konrad Henlein by a Czech nationalist touched off the Second World War. They also point out that the Slovaks are happier in an independent Slovakia than they were as, ah, country cousins in the former Czechoslovakia.
“These same German diplomats object to Stalin’s claims against Wilno and the Baltic states. They plainly don’t want to let down their Polish allies, who have also suffered severe losses against Russia. Stalin’s attitude seems to be that, if Germany can come out of the war with more than she began it with, the USSR should be able to do so, as well.
“Talks, then, continue. It seems as though neither England nor France is sure of how hard a line to take. It also seems that President Roosevelt has not yet made up his mind how hard to push them-or how hard he can push them, since America so recently entered the European war. More after these important messages.”
These messages were important only if you had dentures or were constipated. Peggy turned on the burner under the coffee pot to heat it up. Maybe Douglas Edwards would have more to say about the European situation after the commercials. She wanted to find out whether the Salvation Committee intended to start treating Jews like human beings again. If it did, and if it was willing to say it did, she figured she would have to take it seriously.
But the next story was about an American bomber raid against Jap-held Wake Island. There was also a story about a naval battle somewhere in the South Pacific where both sides claimed to have mauled their foes’ aircraft carriers. And there was a story about how all the American soldiers and sailors in Australia were popularizing baseball there.
As soon as that one started, Peggy realized she wouldn’t hear any more serious war news. She poured herself the second cup of coffee and fixed her breakfast eggs and toast. After she did the dishes, she went after the Inquirer’s crossword puzzle. The guy who put the clues together thought he was cute. As far as she was concerned, he gave himself too much credit. Gigantic trouble (2 words), for instance, turned out to be MELOTT. You wanted to throw something harder and heavier and pointier than a horsehide at somebody who did something like that.