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.
"So what do we do now? Wait for the Americans, the way we did in 1918?" Luc inquired with a certain amount of malice aforethought.
"Screw the Americans!" Yes, that was steam coming out of the sergeant's ears. "Cocksuckers were way late the last time. I don't think they're coming at all now."
"Here's hoping you're wrong," Luc said.
"Sure-here's hoping," Demange answered. "But don't hold your breath. Oh, and one more thing… Suppose we do send the tanks through the Boches' wire. How far do you think they'll get? How many mines have the fucking Feldgraus planted under there?"
That was another good question. As many as they could was the answer that occurred to Luc. Doubting the Germans' competence didn't pay. Luc knew he made a decent soldier now not least because the enemy was such a good teacher. If you lived, you learned.
Supper turned out to be something the cooks might have learned from the enemy: a stew of potatoes and cabbage and sausage that tasted like a mixture of stale bread and horsemeat. The only thing that suggested it hadn't come from a German field kitchen was a heavy dose of onions and garlic. Before the shooting started, Luc would have sneered at it. These days, he knew better. Anything that left him with a full belly and didn't give him the runs afterwards was not to be despised.
After supper, a private named Denis Boucher said, "Talk to you, Corporal, please?" He was a little round-faced fellow, maybe a year younger than Luc: a new conscript, just out of training, and in the line for the first time.
"What's up?" Luc asked.
Boucher looked at him the way he'd looked at Sergeant Demange when he was still a new fish. Luc still sometimes looked at Demange that way. To have somebody turn that kind of gaze on him… To the rookie, all noncoms were deities: some grander and more thunderous than others, no doubt, but all deities just the same.
"Well, Corporal… Can we talk someplace where nobody can hear us?" The kid fidgeted in what looked like acute embarrassment.
"Come on. Out with it. If we go off somewhere, people will wonder. If you talk to me right here, they'll think you're asking about cleaning your rifle or something," Luc said.
"You're so smart!" Boucher blurted. Luc didn't think he was trying to butter him up. That kind of thing hadn't occurred to him before. I could get used to being the guy who knows stuff, Luc thought. Then the little fellow in the unfaded khaki uniform went on, "It's about my girl. I'm afraid she's fooling around on me while I'm away. What can I do?"
Not even the guy who knew stuff had an automatic good answer for that one. Cautiously, Luc asked, "Why do you think she's messing around?" Some guys worried themselves sick over nothing.
And some guys didn't. "Marie's always been a flirt," Boucher said. "And we kind of had a fight before I had to go into the army."
That didn't sound so good. Luc spread his hands. "Don't know what to tell you except this: if she is messing around on you, she wasn't worth having to begin with."
"Easy for you to say! I love her!" Denis Boucher seemed as hot and bothered as a little round-faced guy could get.
"Well, if she's there for you when you get home, everything's great. And if she's not, you've got the rest of your life to pick up the pieces and find somebody else," Luc said. Sergeant Demange would have told the kid to shut the fuck up and soldier, which was also good advice. Luc wasn't so hardened. He also didn't point out that Denis was liable not to get home, or to come back so torn up that neither Marie nor anyone else in skirts was likely to want anything to do with him. No matter how true that was, it wasn't helpful.
True it was. The Germans might not have any tanks in the neighborhood of Beauvais any more, but they'd left behind plenty of artillery. It started working over the French lines in the middle of the night. It had them ranged to the centimeter, or so it seemed to Luc as he cowered in his hole. Nothing you could do about artillery fire but pray it didn't chop you up.
The barrage stopped as abruptly as it started. Wounded poilus shrieked. You could follow them by their screams as aid men took them to the rear. Luc grasped his rifle and stared wildly into the night, waiting for the fuckers with the coal-scuttle helmets to sweep down on the French trenches. Machine guns spat strip after strip of ammunition at the German lines to make the Boches think twice.
Maybe they'd already thought twice. They didn't come out of their foxholes and trenches. After a while, swearing and yawning, Luc curled up like a tired old dog and tried to sleep. No sooner had he closed his eyes, or so it seemed, than the artillery started up again.