They said necessity was the mother of invention. As usual, what they said was a crock. Pure, raw panic sparked Willi’s invention. Fumbling at his belt, he shouted, “Shoot your flare pistols at them! Maybe in the fog they’ll think they’re seeing antipanzer-gun tracers!”
He suited action to word. A red flare hissed toward the nearest T-34. And damned if the glowing flare didn’t look something like a tracer from an antipanzer cannon. The mist helped, too. It concealed Willi, and it extended the glowing trail the flare left behind in the air.
Seeing how well the first one worked, Willi frantically fired off another flare. Pfaff sent his own red ball of fire at the oncoming enemy panzers, and then one more after it. Even Awful Arno got the idea. So did several other Landsers. If all those red fireballs really were antipanzer tracers, the T-34s were rushing headlong into deadly danger.
You never could tell with Russians. Sometimes they would stolidly take poundings that would make Germans fly for their lives, and would ambush you after you thought they had to be knocked to pieces. But sometimes, if you took them by surprise, they’d run from their own shadows. Not always-not even close. But sometimes.
This time. The Ivans didn’t expect foot soldiers to try to scare them off with flares. If they saw red fireballs flying their way, they expected guns that could smash even a T-34’s formidable armor. And, believing that what they saw was what they expected to see, they turned as fast as they could and roared away toward what they hoped was safety.
“Well, fuck me!” Willi said, amazement and relief warring in his voice. “It worked. It really worked!”
“Damned if it didn’t,” Pfaff agreed. “I’d kiss you if you weren’t so ugly and if you didn’t need a shave so bad.”
“So would I,” Arno Baatz said. “That was quick thinking, Dernen.” By the way he said them, the words tasted bad in his mouth, but say them he did.
“Yeah, well …” Willi scuffed the toe of his boot in the dirt like a schoolboy embarrassed on the playground. It wasn’t as if he wanted praise from Awful Arno. After a moment, he went on, “You see T-34s coming down on you, you’d damn well better come up with something in a hurry.”
“They should put you up for a medal.” Pfaff looked pointedly at Corporal Baatz. Awful Arno pretended not to see him.
Willi cared not a sausage casing for medals. He already wore the ribbon for the Iron Cross Second Class. He couldn’t imagine not winning that one, not when he’d been a Frontschwein since the war started. If they pinned the Iron Cross First Class on him, he didn’t see how his life would change. And his stunt wouldn’t have rated the Knight’s Cross even if he were an officer rather than a lousy Obergefreiter. “Hey, we’re still here,” he said. “Who cares about anything else?”
France disgusted Aristide Demange. Well, when you got right down to it, damn near everything disgusted Demange. He supposed that meant he ought to feel at home again. He didn’t, though.
French civilians had always disgusted him. He’d been all for bashing the Nazis in the teeth as soon as they showed they were growing some. If the French army had moved when the Boche’s troops marched into the Rhineland …
It didn’t happen. France huddled behind the Maginot Line. Plenty of civilians-mostly rich ones, but not all-wanted to hop into bed with Hitler. Others wanted to roll on their backs and show the Germans their bellies. Hardly anyone wanted to take them on, dammit. Not even the French officer corps wanted another war with Germany. The officers didn’t trust England to help them out, and knew they had no prayer without her.
Well, here it was heading toward four years after France found herself in the war whether she much wanted to be or not. The civilians still hated it. From everything Demange could tell, most of them would rather have kept on fighting Stalin.
“No way in hell the Ivans would ever come this far,” said a gray-haired fellow drinking up his paycheck in an estaminet not far from the border with Belgium. “But the damned Boches, the Boches are right here.” In Demange’s ears, his northern accent made him sound halfway toward being a Boche himself.
The lieutenant felt like smashing in his stupid face. He knew that would get him talked about. Now that he was an officer, it wouldn’t do much more. At worst, he’d get busted down to sergeant again. If he did, he’d be happier than he was now.
But military discipline was a formidable thing. Instead of kicking the gray-haired con in the belly and then in the chops as he folded up like a concertina, Demange stubbed out one Gitane, lit another, and merely blew smoke at the bastard. “They won’t be so close once we push ’em back,” he growled.
“Once we do what?” By the way the local gaped, Demange might have suddenly started spouting Hausa or Cambodian. When the man spoke again, it was with exaggerated reason, as if to an obvious lunatic: “Come on, Monsieur le Lieutenant. What are the odds of that?”
He could read Demange’s rank badges. Well, not many Frenchmen of his age wouldn’t be able to. He’d probably done his time during the last war as a typist somewhere a hundred kilometers behind the line, pinching the cute secretaries on the ass every chance he got and worrying more about a dose of the clap than about gas or shell fragments.
“We can do it.” Demange tried his own version of reason: “Honest to God, man, we can. The Germans are up to their chins in Russia. They couldn’t do two fronts last time, and they can’t now, either.”
“They can bomb the crap out of us, though. They already have,” the other guy said.
“As close as you ever got to them, I bet,” Demange retorted. So much for reason.
“I did my bit last time,” the local said. Demange had already figured that out. The local’s tone disgusted him, too: full of a righteousness he’d already heard too goddamn often.
“Yeah, you did your bit, and then you forgot about your patrie and hoped like hell the old patrie would keep on forgetting about you. Your kind makes me sick,” Demange snarled.
“What do you want to do about it?” The gray-haired man reached for the bottle of pinard on the zinc-topped bar in front of him, so he wasn’t altogether a virgin at these games.
But he’d never brawled with anybody like Demange, either. Pasting on as broad and friendly a smile as his ferretlike face would hold, the veteran set a soft hand on the other man’s shoulder. At the same time, he spoke mildly: “Well, pal, it’s like this-”
Distracted by touch and voice, the local never saw the sharp, short left that buried itself in his soft midsection. “Oof!” the other fellow said, and doubled over. Demange didn’t kick him while he was down, but he sure did kick him on the way down. The local would need some expensive dentistry real soon, but Demange’s boots were thick enough that he didn’t care-the kick didn’t hurt him one bit.
The bartender yelled and reached under the bar for whatever kind of peacemaker he kept there. Demange was too busy to worry about the fine details. One of the gray-haired man’s buddies grabbed him and spun him around. That was a mistake-the guy should have hit him from behind. Demange butted him with the top of his head. That did hurt some, but his skull was harder than the other clown’s nose. He felt it flatten out. This con hadn’t been pretty to begin with, but he’d be uglier now. Demange slugged him for good measure.
Somebody did tackle him from behind then. A split second later, another soldier hauled the local off him and treated the bastard like a rugby ball. The technique of the savate left something to be desired, but never its sincerity.