"Just working on my foxhole, Corporal," Willi replied. Maybe a soft answer would turn away wrath. If Awful Arno was on the rag-and he sure sounded that way-the odds were against it, though.
Sure as hell, he thought one lousy pip on each shoulder strap made him a little tin god. "Well, cut that crap out and do something useful instead," he snarled. "Go chop up some firewood."
Willi didn't think fixing up his hole so he was less likely to get killed-and so he could sleep without getting all muddy-was crap. Saying as much would only piss Corporal Baatz off worse than ever, if such a thing was possible. They did need firewood; Willi happened to know that. He didn't know how he'd drawn the short straw for chopping it, but that was just Baatz moving in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.
"Right, Corporal," Willi said resignedly, and scrambled out of the foxhole. He had some wood in there, shoring up what would be his sleeping compartment. He kept his mouth shut about it, for fear Awful Arno would tell him to rip it out.
The Frenchies had left a lot of lumber behind when most of them cleared out of this village. Willi didn't particularly blame them for bailing. If his own small home town had got shelled and bombed first by one side and then by the other, he would have wanted to get the hell out of there, too.
They'd also left behind a really lovely axe: light, well balanced, sharp. It almost made chopping wood seem more sport than work. Almost. Imagining that fine steel edge coming down on Baatz's neck instead of blond oak livened up the job, too.
Awful Arno came by after a while to check on how Willi was doing. He eyed the pile of firewood, grunted, and went away again. From him, that was the equivalent of awarding the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds. If Baatz couldn't find anything to piss and moan about, there was nothing to find.
Quitting now, though, would only bring him back and give him the excuse he wanted to come down on Willi. Willi knew as much. He kept chopping for another twenty minutes. By then, the squad had enough wood for the next six months. It did if you listened to him tell it afterwards, anyhow.
He marveled that his palms weren't blistered when he did set down the axe. Part of that was the smooth, fine helve. And part of it was the thick calluses he'd acquired. Sure as the devil, soldiering toughened you up.
It also turned you into an accomplished thief. As soon as he got done, he started going through the houses in the village. Yeah, they'd already been picked over, but you never could tell what you'd find if you poked around a little. Some canned salmon, a little flask of what smelled like applejack, 250 francs somebody'd forgotten when he got out of town… A good scrounger could come up with all kinds of things other people had missed.
He'd share the salmon and the firewater. You didn't want to get greedy with stuff like that. Your buddies wouldn't stay buddies if you did. The French money went into a tunic pocket. You never could tell when that might come in handy. He came out into the late-afternoon sunshine, more than a little pleased with himself.
He came out into that sunshine at the exact moment a black Mercedes about as long as a light cruiser rumbled into the village. Two enormous men in black uniforms jumped out. Willi had been thinking soldiering toughened you. He might be tough, but he wouldn't have wanted to mess with either one of these SS behemoths. Something in the planes and angles of their faces said they not only knew all the dirty tricks but got off on them.
"You!" one of them rumbled, raising a hand roughly the size of a ham and pointing at him. "Come here!"
"What do you want?" Willi didn't move.
"To ask you some questions," the SS man said. "If you're lucky, we won't ask about your name or your pay number. Now get over here!"
Goddamn asphalt soldiers, Willi thought. The SS looked marvelous on parade. In the field… That was the Wehrmacht's place. But the bastards with the runes on their collars were Hitler's fair-haired boys. Willi ambled over to this pair. If he didn't, they could make him disappear, and nobody would ever know where he'd gone. "Well, what is it?" he said. "You boys better watch yourselves around here, you know? French guns can reach this far, easy."
The big goons traded glances. But nobody was shooting at them right this minute. They could seem brave, even to themselves. One pulled out a notebook and flipped it open. "Do you know a certain, ah, Wolfgang Storch?" he asked, and rattled off Storch's pay number.
"Name sounds kind of familiar." Willi stopped right there. He'd see the SS men in hell before he ratted on a friend. Wolfgang and he had saved each other's bacon more times than he could count. They'd shared cigarettes and socks. They'd sworn at Awful Arno together. Would these clowns understand any of that? Not a chance in church. Willi eyed them. "How come you want to know?"
"We don't have to tell you that," said the goon with the notebook.
The other one tried to be subtle. He wasn't very good at it: "Have you ever heard this Storch make comments that reflect unfavorably on our beloved Fuhrer or the National Socialist German Workers' Party?"
"Nope," Willi said at once. Everybody in the field always swore at the idiot politicians who'd put them in danger of getting their heads blown off. Would the SS men get that? Again, not a chance. Nope was safer.
Or so Willi thought, till the blackshirt with the notebook said, "If we can show that you are lying, the two of you will be judged guilty of conspiring against the Reich."
No talk of trials or anything like that. Just You will be judged guilty. And what would happen afterwards? Nothing good. Willi didn't need a road map or a compass to figure that out.
"You said it yourselves-everybody loves the Fuhrer," Willi said. "Nobody has anything bad to say about him." Nobody did where somebody who might blab could hear, anyway. But if the SS men really believed all the Party bullshit, they might think Willi meant it.
By the way their faces hardened, he'd laid it on too thick. The one with the notebook said, "We have reliable reports that this Storch has delivered disloyal utterances on repeated occasions." He could talk that way without even realizing what a jackass he sounded like.
"Well, I never heard him do it," Willi said.
They didn't believe him. He could see it in their pale, merciless eyes. That meant his goose was cooked, too. Then he caught a break. French artillery really did open up on the village. Willi'd never dreamt he could be glad to get shelled, but he was now.
"Hit the dirt!" he yelled, and flattened out himself.
Because the SS men were greenhorns, they stayed on their feet longer than they should have. When shells started bursting and fragments screeched past, they got the message. "Hail, Mary, full of grace!" one of them gabbled as he got down. Whoever'd said there were no atheists in foxholes had a pretty good idea of what he was talking about.
Willi didn't like getting up in the middle of a barrage, but he didn't like getting hauled off to Dachau, either. He hurried toward the last place where he'd seen Wolfgang: a trench fifty meters or so south of where the houses petered out. Behind him, a 105 round turned the blackshirts' Mercedes into burning scrap metal. He laughed out loud.
"Where are you going?" one of the SS men called after him.
"To fight. You wouldn't know about that, would you?" he answered. And he even meant it. The froggies were liable to follow up the shelling with an attack. But he also had other things on his mind.
To his vast relief, he found Wolfgang right away and jumped into the trench beside him. "You trying to get yourself killed?" Storch asked.
"No. I'm trying not to get you killed. The SS wants your ass," Willi said. "I always told you you talked too goddamn much."
"Who squealed?" Wolfgang got right down to brass tacks.
"They didn't say, but my money's on Baatz. Doesn't matter now. Get the fuck out of here. Go across the line and surrender to the Frenchies. You can sit out the rest of the war in a POW camp."