As things were, Russia not only remained in the fight, the Ivans were gaining ground in the East. And, like so many rooks and carrion crows, England and France were doing their best to peck bits off Germany even before she was dead.
That she might die was what infuriated and depressed Hans-Ulrich at the same time. He could see that the Fuhrer’s foreign policy had failed, and might have failed disastrously. He could see it, yes, but he had no idea what to do about it or even what to think. It was an eventuality for which nothing in his life or training prepared him.
Right now, the only thing he saw worth doing-and the only thing that would keep him out of the stockade-was to fly against the foe whenever he got the chance … and whenever the Luftwaffe decided he could do it. With two fronts to cover, German fighters were spread thin. With none of them in the neighborhood, anything the RAF and the Armee de l’Air flew shot Stukas down without breaking a sweat.
These days, he couldn’t do as he’d done against the Russians: smash a panzer, rise into the sky to dive again, smash another, and then repeat several more times. Unlike the Reds, the Western Allies had almost as many radio sets as the Germans. Their planes would be on you by the time you were swooping down on your second panzer. So you blasted one, got out of there as fast as you could, and then tried to find another one to kill somewhere else.
It was inefficient. When Hans-Ulrich complained about it, Sergeant Dieselhorst returned him to reality with a single pungent line: “Getting a shell through the motor and going down in flames is pretty fucking inefficient, too … sir.” After that, Hans-Ulrich found other things to complain about.
An order from the Fuhrer came to all men fighting on the ground and in the air. No one was to retreat any more, Hitler declared. German forces were to die where they stood if they couldn’t advance. Thus we best protect the sacred soil of the Reich against enemy desecration, the directive thundered.
No one in the squadron said anything after Colonel Steinbrenner read the order aloud. The CO’s voice showed nothing of what he thought about the typewritten words on the sheet of paper he held. He might have been reading out the Fuhrer’s laundry list.
He might have been, but he wasn’t. Nobody said anything while the squadron was assembled in a mass, no. But after Colonel Steinbrenner turned away, small knots of friends formed and started hashing it out. They were knots whose members trusted one another not to betray them to the Gestapo.
Hans-Ulrich didn’t have any friends like that. Most of the time, he didn’t miss them. He was proud of being a white crow. Now, though, he really wanted to find out what his Kameraden thought.
He knew how he’d eventually learn, of course. Sergeant Dieselhorst would tell him. The other Luftwaffe men trusted the sergeant. And Dieselhorst trusted Rudel. You had better trust the man with whom you flew. If you didn’t, you’d both end up dead.
That didn’t necessarily make you friends, though. Hans-Ulrich knew the noncom thought he was a prig, and still wet behind the ears. He was stubbornly proud of his priggishness. In spite of being young-no, because of being young-he would have denied the other if Dieselhorst threw it in his face. Dieselhorst didn’t; he had other things on his mind.
“It’s stupid, you know,” he said without preamble. “It’s especially stupid if you’re stuck on the ground like a rat and you can’t go and fly away when you get in trouble. Sometimes the only choices you have are falling back and getting killed right where you are.”
“It’s a problem,” Hans-Ulrich admitted.
“It’s not a problem. It’s goddamn dumb, sir.” Sergeant Dieselhorst had the air of a man clinging to patience as if it were a cork life ring in the Atlantic. “The enemy will kill you if you hold your ground. Your own side will kill you if you retreat. What does that leave you?”
Victory! was the word that leaped into Hans-Ulrich’s mouth. It didn’t leap out again, and into the cool spring air alongside the landing strip. He was much too sure Sergeant Dieselhorst would laugh at him if he came out with it. Instead, cautiously, he answered, “Not much.”
“Oh, yes, it does-on this front, anyhow,” Dieselhorst said. “I wouldn’t give up to the Russians for all the tea in China. Chances are they’d kill me for the fun of it, you know? And they’d have more fun before they let me die. Am I right or am I wrong?”
“Oh, you’re right about that.” Rudel had always figured he’d stick his pistol in his mouth if he looked like getting caught by the Ivans.
Dieselhorst’s grunt was oddly warming; it said something like Well, you know a little bit, anyhow. But he went on, “Here, though … You surrender to the Tommies or even the French, you’ve got a chance to see the end of the play. They may shoot you-that kind of shit just happens-but they won’t torture you. And if they’ll kill you for sure if you keep fighting but only maybe if you give up, what are you supposed to do?”
Surrender was treason to the Vaterland. Hitler’s decree left no doubts on that score. But Hans-Ulrich wanted to come back from the war alive, too. He didn’t say anything at all. Albert Dieselhorst grunted again, and the pilot felt as if he’d passed some obscure test.
French 75S and 105S boomed behind Aristide Demange. He sneered at the popguns, as he sneered at so much in life. He wished they were all 105s, as most of the Germans’ cannon were. Then they could give the Boches just as much hell as they’d had inflicted on them in this war. But no. Too much to hope for. The enormous stocks of 75s left over from 1918 would soldier on till the Nazis blew up the last of them-and the last of the artillerists who served them, too.
Shells from the guns of both calibers burst somewhere on the German side of the line. Smoke and dirt rose into the air. The show looked impressive. Demange knew too well that it looked more impressive than it was. The 75s fired with a flat trajectory. That gave them good range for a piece of their caliber. But, unless they caught you out in the open, they probably wouldn’t hurt you. Their shells couldn’t drop down into trenches and holes the way rounds fired from howitzers could. Along with their bigger ammo, that was what made howitzers so dangerous.
“Are we going to advance now?” Francois asked Demange. Was he still eager in spite of having watched his friends get gunned down in the last brilliant assault? If so, then he really was a few pins short of a cushion, or more than a few.
“Wait a bit,” Demange said. “Unless you feel like killing yourself now, I mean. In that case, be my guest.” He waved invitingly toward the barbed wire ahead. However inviting the wave was, though, no motion showed above the parapet in front of the hole where they crouched. He didn’t know a German sniper was peering this way through a scope, but he didn’t know one wasn’t, either.
Francois, whether dumb as rocks or with altogether too much in his trousers, looked at him as if he’d started speaking Albanian or something. “Don’t you want to beat the Boches?”
“Sure I do,” Demange answered. “I want to live through beating them, too. I want to gloat about it. I want to make them die for their fucking country. I don’t give a fart about dying for mine.”
“But-” Francois started. Demange wondered if he would come out with that Dulce et decorum est bullshit. It had been outdated centuries before the last war, but some provincials never got the news.
Before Francois got the chance to make an outdated jackass of himself, the Germans woke up and started shooting back. They never needed long. Their guns went after the French cannon that had annoyed them, and they started dropping mortar bombs near the trenches to discourage French foot soldiers like Francois from getting frisky.