They all started splashing one another and wrestling in the stream, skylarking like a bunch of schoolboys. Maybe by chance, maybe not, Adi held Naumann under water for a very long time. No, Theo wasn't surprised the sergeant couldn't break Stoss' hold. His struggles were beginning to weaken when Adi finally let him go.
"Jesus!" Naumann said, gulping in air till he went from a dusky red-purple back to pink. "You trying to drown me, asshole?"
"Sorry, Sergeant." Stoss sounded so sincere, he might have meant it. "I didn't know you'd turned quite that color."
"I thought I'd have to grow fins," Heinz said. "Save that shit for the Frenchies, huh?"
"You bet." Adi watched Naumann closely. Theo would have, too. If you beat somebody like that, he was liable to try to get his own back. But Heinz just walked out of the stream and started putting his uniform on again. Whatever he was going to do, he wouldn't do it right away.
With a shrug, Theo started for the bank, too. He didn't want his crewmates squabbling. Taking a panzer into battle was hard enough when everybody got along. Another man might have tried to get them to make up. Theo was too withdrawn for that. He hoped they would be sensible enough to see the need without him. Adi seemed to have his head on pretty tight. Theo wasn't so sure about Heinz. The sergeant didn't just have his rank to worry about. He also owned a touchy sense of pride, more like a Frenchman or an Italian than your everyday German.
But the quarrel evaporated as soon as they got back to the encampment. It reminded Theo of nothing so much as an ants' nest stirred with a stick. People ran every which way. Theo watched two panzer crewmen bounce off each other, as if they were in a Chaplin film. Something had happened in the hour or so they'd spent in the stream.
He didn't need long to find out what. The company-well, never mind the company: the whole damned panzer division-was getting pulled out of the line. Where it was going, nobody seemed to know. Somewhere.
"What the hell do they think they're doing?" Heinz Naumann threw his hands in the air. "Are they going to break through without panzers? Not fucking likely!"
"Hey, come on, Sergeant-it's the General Staff," Adi said. "Just like the last war. My father used to tell stories about how the guys in the fancy shoulder straps screwed up half of what the Landsers did. More than half."
"Yeah, my old man goes on the same way." As soon as Stoss agreed with him, Heinz stopped being angry. That was good, anyhow. "But the Fuhrer was supposed to clean up that kind of shit."
"What can you do?" Theo said. Both his crewmates looked at him in surprise. He didn't put his oar in the water very often.
What they could do was follow orders, and they did. Along with the rest of the company's machines, their Panzer II clanked back to Clermont, the nearest German-held railhead. Adalbert Stoss drove it up onto a flatcar. They chained the panzer into place, then boarded a jammed passenger car. Theo hated being surrounded by so many other people. He would rather have made the train trip inside the Panzer II. Expecting your superiors to care about what you would rather do, though, was like waiting for the Second Coming. It might happen, but not any time soon.
They rolled back through France, back through the Low Countries, and across Germany. Theo started to wonder if they would go all the way to Breslau.
They didn't. They went farther than that. The train stopped at the Polish border. Polish soldiers in uniforms of a dark, greenish khaki and domed helmets smoother in outline than the ones German foot soldiers wore waved to the men in the passenger cars. Some of the Germans waved back. Theo would have felt like an idiot, so he didn't.
After a delay of about an hour and a half, the train started moving again-into Poland. Adi whistled softly. "Well, now we know what's up," he said. "We're going to give the Russians a kick in the slats."
Nobody tried to tell him he was wrong. No wonder the Poles were waving and smiling! Here were Germans, coming to do their fighting for them! Theo wouldn't have wanted to be a Pole, forever stuck between bigger, meaner neighbors. Poland offered Germany a shield hundreds of kilometers wide against the Russians. If the Red Army started biting chunks out of that shield, didn't the Reich have to show Stalin that wasn't such a hot idea?
Evidently. And showing it with a panzer division-or more than one, for all Theo knew-would make sure the Reds remembered the lesson. Of course, that could also buy the Reich a much bigger war than it had now. Again, Theo wondered whether the Fuhrer and the General Staff knew what the hell they were up to. Whether they did or not, he couldn't do anything about it but try to stay alive.
Poland sure looked like perfect panzer country: low and flat and mostly open. Every so often, the train would roll through a village or town. Some of them were full of bearded Jews, many wearing side curls. Theo glanced over at Adi Stoss, who happened to be spreading sausage paste-pork sausage paste-from a tinfoil ration tube onto a chunk of black bread. Circumcised or not, he didn't look like a Jew, and he didn't eat like a Jew, either.
Northeast to Bialystok-another town packed with them. Southeast to Grodno. Northeast again, through Lebeda to Lida. They detrained there. The grayish sky and chilly breeze said they'd come a long, long way from France. The distant thump of artillery said they hadn't come very far at all.
German and Polish officers shouted and waved at the panzer troops as they got their machines down off the flatcars. The Poles spoke German, but not a kind that made sense to Heinz or Adi. Theo had no trouble with it. Living in Breslau, he'd grown up around Poles doing their best in his language. Where he had to, he translated for his crewmates.
They went into bivouac outside of Lida. Polish infantrymen stared at the panzers with fearful respect. "They're glad we're going up against the Russians and not them," Adi remarked.
Theo hadn't thought of that, but it made sense as soon as he heard it. Sure as hell, the Poles were meat in a sandwich. Their best hope-their only hope-was that the slices of bread hated each other worse.
Chapter 6
"Hey, Sergeant!" Luc Harcourt called-quietly, so his voice wouldn't carry to the German line not too far away.
"Yeah?" Sergeant Demange said. "What d'you want?" He also kept his voice down, and didn't show himself. You never could tell when a German sniper had a bead on your foxhole. The bastards in field-gray were good at that stuff, damn them.
"What's up with the Boches?" Luc said. "They're laying barbed wire like it comes out of their asses." He didn't point toward the enemy, either.
"I wish it did. That'd make 'em think twice whenever they sat down, by Christ," Demange said. "You want to know what's going on, though? They've pulled a bunch of their tanks out, that's what. Now the foot soldiers have to hold the ground by themselves. They're digging in, the cons-digging like mad. In their boots, so would I."
Luc thought about it. Slowly, he nodded. He swigged pinard from his canteen. The rough red wine made the world seem easier to take. "How'd you find out? Where'd you hear it?" he asked. It sounded sensible, but in war that proved nothing, or maybe a little less.
"I was bullshitting with a radio operator. He told me," Demange answered. "Said we'd nicked some of their signals or something. And I haven't seen a tank over there for a couple of days. Unless they're trying to royally screw us, they really are moving their armor… somewhere. Where, I can't tell you."
"Tanks can flatten wire," Luc said. "Think we'll send ours in, and the infantry behind them?"
"I'll believe it when I see it. Swear to God, Harcourt, the high command still doesn't have its heart in the fight," Demange said, disgust in his voice. "Oh, when the Nazis tried to jump all over us we fought back, but who wouldn't? An offensive like that, though? In your dreams! In mine, too."
He wouldn't have talked to Luc that way before the fighting started. He would have told him to fuck off. Luc knew it. He was proud of himself for earning Demange's confidence, and more than a little revolted at being proud. Again, nothing in war made sense.