“Why, to those who know such things, of course,” the soldier spluttered.
“Yeah, well, you can kiss my balls with your well-known facts, and so can they,” Demange snarled. “I’ll give you some well-known facts of my own. When the war started, you fucking Reds didn’t want to fight at all. Then when Hitler started jumping on Stalin’s corns, all of a sudden you couldn’t fight hard enough. And then, after France decided Hitler made a better bet than Stalin, all of a sudden you were yellow again, not Red. Now it’s rush the German trenches one more time!” He spat out the tiny butt and lit another cigarette. “You worthless pukes make me sick.”
“Come the revolution, you will be remembered,” the tall Communist said somberly.
“Good,” Demange growled, which made them both stare at him. He condescended to explain: “No one will ever remember you two dingle-berries for anything. I’ve shot Russians and Germans who were worth ten times both of you put together. God only knows why France doesn’t use punishment battalions. That’s where you belong.”
They licked their lips. They knew what those were, all right. If you screwed up in the Red Army-and, these days, in the Wehrmacht, too-they handed you a submachine gun and sent you where the fighting was hottest to redeem your honor. Odds against your living through it were long, but you got blown up knowing you were doing your precious country some good.
Assuming that made you happier while you were trying to shove your guts back into your belly where they belonged.
Demange had long been sure he had an easier time coping with the enemy than with people who loudly declared they were on the same side. The cons in the fancy kepis were a case in point. Francois, Jean, and Marcel were another. And the peasants of northeastern France made one more.
Well, actually they didn’t declare they were on Demange’s side. By the way they acted, he wouldn’t have bet on it, either. They were most of them big, fair fellows who looked more like Belgians-or Germans-than proper Frenchmen. He understood only about half of their clotted dialect: less than that when they larded it with Flemish words to make it harder. What he did understand, he commonly didn’t like.
For their part, they didn’t like the French Army. They’d been occupied by the Boches during the last war and the first part of this one. That gave them plenty of practice at hiding anything an occupier might want. These days, they figured their own country’s armed forces were doing the occupying.
To say they were reluctant to cough up supplies for the poilus beggared the power of language. You wouldn’t see a sack of grain or a chicken or even a turnip anywhere near their farmhouses. They would spread their hands and go “Rien.” Looking around, you’d be tempted to believe they had nothing.
But their bellies hung over their belts. Their wives had double chins. Demange knew what hungry people looked like. He’d seen enough of them in Russia, and in Germany right after the end of the last war. The peasants hereabouts weren’t hungry. They just wanted to hang on to what they had.
They weren’t shy about letting you know what they thought of you, either. After Demange and some of his men requisitioned three fat geese, the farmer from whom they took them growled, “You people are as bad as the Boches.” He could speak perfectly plain French when he felt like it.
“Ah, your mother,” Demange replied. The thought of goose fat on his tongue helped mellow him as much as anything ever did. “If we were Boches, we’d be banging on you with our rifle butts right now.”
“Merde.” The farmer spat. “The Boches were here, remember. Not that you cons did anything to keep them out. And they were correct enough. They paid for what they took, in fact.”
“Oh, it’s pay you want?” Demange flipped him a franc. “Here. And I’m giving you something else to go with it, too.”
“What’s that?” The farmer stared at the gold-colored (but only gold-colored-it was really aluminum-bronze) coin in disgust.
“Your fucking big mouth, with all its teeth still in it. And believe me, pal, you don’t know how lucky you are.” Demange gestured to his men. Off they went with the geese, leaving the farmer staring after them, his fists clenched uselessly by his sides.
The airstrip by Philippeville was every bit as grim as the barbed wire surrounding it had made Hans-Ulrich Rudel fear it would be. The locals were surly. The food was worse than it had been in Russia. That didn’t just dismay Hans-Ulrich; it horrified him.
Sergeant Dieselhorst complained about it, too. He was a noncom, after all. Pissing and moaning were second nature to him. But, unlike Rudel, he knew the ropes. Hans-Ulrich often suspected the older man had been born knowing the ropes. “Rules are different here,” he said after Hans-Ulrich made rude noises about the stew the mess cooks had ladled out.
“Rules? There weren’t any rules in Russia.” Hans-Ulrich didn’t want to think about the fat that had flavored those potatoes. If it wasn’t motor oil, it had no business tasting so much like it.
“That’s the point … sir,” Sergeant Dieselhorst said patiently. “In Russia, we went and grabbed whatever we wanted. We didn’t care whether the goddamn Ivans liked us or not. It’s different here. We don’t want the Belgians to hate our guts and go playing games with the froggies. So we can’t take as much from them as we did in the East.”
“So we get stuck with that hog-swill ourselves.” Rudel belched. The last stew didn’t improve when it came up instead of going down. “Sure makes me want to jump into the Stuka and kill things-I’ll tell you that.”
“There you go.” Albert Dieselhorst grinned wryly. “You see? It boosts morale.”
Hans-Ulrich said something he was ashamed of as soon as it came out of his mouth. He didn’t talk like that most of the time. He was a minister’s son, after all. And his father’s hard hand, applied to the seat of his pants or the side of his head, had done its best to make sure he never talked that way. Every once in a while, though …
Sergeant Dieselhorst laughed so hard, Hans-Ulrich wondered if he would have a heart attack. “Oh, shut up,” the pilot muttered.
“Jawohl, mein Herr! Zu Befehl!” Dieselhorst came to attention, clicked his heels, and shot out his arm in a Party salute all the more sarcastic for being so full of vigor. Then he dissolved in mirth again.
“It wasn’t that funny,” Rudel said. Sergeant Dieselhorst wordlessly called him a liar. In something close to desperation, Rudel added, “Shut up or I’ll pop you one.”
He got his crewmate’s attention, anyhow. Dieselhorst favored him with a mild and curious gaze. “Well, sir, you can try, anyhow,” he said.
Hans-Ulrich was larger and younger and stronger. He neither smoked nor drank, so he was bound to be in better shape, too. Sergeant Dieselhorst just stood there, waiting to see what happened next. He wouldn’t start anything, not when he was squaring off against an officer. Something about the way he stood suggested that he expected to finish whatever Rudel did start, though. How many dirty tricks had he learned, in the Luftwaffe or in one barroom brawl or another?
More than Hans-Ulrich really wanted to find out about. With dignity, the pilot said, “There. That’s better. You aren’t braying like a jackass any more.”
Sergeant Dieselhorst’s expression might have said it took one to know one. It might have, but Hans-Ulrich didn’t try to find out. Sometimes-pretty often, in fact-you were better off not knowing things officially.
RAF bombers droned overhead on nights when the English thought the time was ripe to drop some Schrechlichkeit on German cities. They didn’t bomb Belgium very often, though. Nor did the Luftwaffe pound the French positions just over the border, though German bombers hit Paris and London under cover of darkness.