Hitler's War (33 page)

“Maybe we ought to go up to France,” Carroll said moodily. “More Fascists—worse Fascists—to kill there.”

“Good luck,” Chaim said. Mike winced. He had about as much chance of getting up to France without authorization as he did of sprouting wings and flying there. Political officers behind the International Brigades’ lines checked everybody’s papers. If you didn’t have orders to pull you out, you were in trouble.

Even if you got past the commissars, plenty of other Republican officials in towns and on trains would want to know where you were going and who said you were supposed to go there. If they didn’t like
your answers, they would either shoot you or chuck you into a Spanish jail. Not many things were worse than front-line combat, but a Spanish jail was one of them.

“All of a sudden, the States don’t look so bad, you know?” Mike said with a grin that was supposed to mean he was half kidding, anyway.

“Maybe they’ll let you repatriate,” Chaim said. Sometimes the Internationals wanted nothing but willing fighters. Sometimes they figured you had to be willing or you wouldn’t have volunteered. It all depended on the officer, on how the fighting was going—sometimes, people said, on the phases of the moon.

“Ah, fuck it,” Mike said: the usual comment of every line soldier in every war since the beginning of time. “I’m just blowing off steam, you know what I mean?”

“Sure,” Chaim said. And he did, too. It wasn’t as if he’d never pissed and moaned since he got here. “All I wish is, people would remember us. We were a big deal till the rest of Europe blew up. Who gives a shit about Spain now? Stalin’s forgotten all about it.” That was a dangerous thing to say; the International Brigades toed Moscow’s line. But a love of truth was part of what had led Chaim to Spain. He wouldn’t give it up even here.

Mike Carroll had a tobacco pouch on his belt, too. He stuck the remains of the Gitane into it. “Well, so has Hitler,” he answered. “That’s not so bad.”

“You know who remembers?” Chaim said. He waited till Carroll raised a questioning eyebrow. “Us and the Spaniards, that’s who. It’s not just fucking politics and games and shit for us. It really matters. Do you want that fat prick over there”—Chaim pointed toward the Fascists’ lines—“running this whole goddamn country?”

He’d never talked that way in New York City. Back home, he’d always had the feeling his mother was listening and would wash his mouth out with soap. But everybody swore on the battlefield. By now, Chaim could cuss in English, Yiddish, Spanish, Catalan, German, French, and Russian.
Talk without swear words seemed as bland as food without salt and pepper.

“If I wanted that, I’d be over there myself,” Mike Carroll said. The Italians and Germans who fought on Sanjurjo’s side had no choice. But for them, only a handful of foreigners—mostly English and Irishmen—had joined the enemy. Men from all over the world opposed the Fascists. If that didn’t say something…

Before Chaim could decide what would be true if that didn’t say something, a rifle bullet cracked between him and Carroll. Both of them hit the dirt. “We’ve been standing up and waving our arms too damn much,” Mike said ruefully. “They got a sniper to take a shot at us.”

“Yeah.” Chaim hadn’t quite pissed himself, but he’d come mighty close. Well, so had the bullet. “Good thing he’s a shitty sniper.” A good marksman would have hit one of them. Maybe this guy couldn’t decide which one to aim at.

“Spaniards.” Mike Carroll’s shrug punctuated that—but didn’t expose him to any more rifle fire. “They’re brave as all get-out—the guys on both sides. But…” His voice trailed away.

Chaim knew what he was talking about. “Yeah. But,” he said, making the word sound like a complete sentence. It might as well have been. Spaniards didn’t keep proper lookout. They didn’t like digging trenches. They didn’t bother cleaning their weapons unless somebody screamed at them—and a lot of the time not then, either. Their logistics were a joke. Food and ammunition came to the front when they felt like it. That was how things looked, anyhow. Their hospitals were almost as bad as their jails.

But they
were
brave. Point them at an objective and they’d take it or die trying. Tell them they had to hold a strongpoint and it was
¡No pasaran!
You were embarrassed to falter or fall back, because you knew they wouldn’t. If only they would pull themselves together…

“Don’t hold your breath,” Mike said when Chaim suggested that. Then the other American asked, “Do you think we can nail that sniper?”

There was a serious suggestion. “Worth a try,” Chaim said. “He’ll make this whole stretch of trench dangerous unless we do get rid of him. How do you want to work it?”

“We ought to call a sharpshooter of our own,” Carroll said. Chaim gave him the horse laugh. Republican snipers were few, far between, and none too good. The other American’s ears turned red. “Okay, okay. Which of us do you think is a better shot?”

“I am,” Chaim answered without false modesty. “Let me find a position where I can look out without getting drilled. Then you hold up a cap on a stick, and I’ll see what I can see.”

“I’ll do it. Wave when you’re ready,” Mike said.

“Yeah.” Chaim worked his way fifty yards down the trench. Some bushes—brown and leafless in the winter cold—offered cover there. Cautiously, he peered out through them. Nobody fired at him. He brought his rifle up over the top and rested it on the dirt. Then, carefully keeping his hand below the level of the parapet, he signaled to his buddy.

Up went the cap. A shot rang out. Mike not only jerked the cap down but also let out a scream. Chaim saw where the sniper fired from, but the Fascist ducked away before he could plug him. Now…Was the
maricón
dumb enough to shoot from the same position twice in a row? Everybody knew you shouldn’t, but some boys did anyhow. Only one way to find out…

“Move a little and pop up again,” Chaim called, as softly as he could.

Mike did. He even put the cap on the stick sideways this time, so it would look different. Chaim peered down his rifle barrel. He had the range, he had windage.…

He had a target. Yeah, the guy on the other side was greedy and stupid, all right. He showed one shoulder and his head, and that was all Chaim needed. He pressed the trigger, not too hard. Red mist exploded from the enemy sniper as he slumped back into his trench.

“You get him?” Carroll asked.

“Uh-huh. Don’t have to worry about that for a while, anyway.” Chaim might have been talking about delousing or killing a rat. He’d got rid of a nuisance—that was all. Well, now the nuisance wouldn’t get rid of him. Nothing else counted. He lit another Gitane.

IT WAS A FINE, BRIGHT MORNING
in western Belgium—colder than an outhouse in East Prussia in February, but sunny and clear. The sun came up a little earlier than it had a month earlier, at the end of December. Chances were spring would get here eventually: no time real soon, but eventually.

Breath smoking in the chilly sunrise air, Hans-Ulrich Rudel walked to the squadron commander’s hut to see what was up. Something would be. He was sure of that. This time of year, days with decent flying weather were too few and far between to waste.

Other Stuka pilots nodded to him. He nodded back. He didn’t have a lot of buddies here. Not likely a milk drinker would, not when most of the flyers preferred brandy and loose women. But he kept going out and doing his job and coming back. That won him respect, if no great liking.

Cigarette smoke blued the air inside the hut. Hans-Ulrich didn’t like that, either, but complaining was hopeless. He tried not to breathe deeply.

“We’re going to bomb England again,” Major Bleyle announced. That got everyone’s attention, as he must have known it would. He went on, “They’ve been hitting our cities—miserable air pirates. What can we do but pay them back? We will strike at Dover and Folkestone and Canterbury, just on the other side of the Channel. Questions?”

Hands flew up, Rudel’s among them. The squadron commander pointed to somebody else—he didn’t much like Hans-Ulrich, either. But the other pilot said about what Rudel would have: “How are we
going to come back in one piece? Stukas are sitting ducks for English fighters.”

“We’ll have an escort,” Bleyle said.

“We had an escort the last time, too,” the pilot pointed out. “Some of the enemy planes kept the 109s busy, and the rest came after us.”

“We’ll have a better escort this time,” the squadron commander answered. “Not just 109s, but 110s, too.”

The pilots all paused thoughtfully. Bf-110s were brand new. If half what people said was so, they were formidable, no doubt about it. The big, two-engined fighters mounted two 20mm cannon and four machine guns in the nose, plus another, rear-facing machine gun on a mount like the one in the Stuka. If all that firepower hit an enemy aircraft, the poor devil would go down.

“And there’ll be Heinkels and Dorniers overhead,” Major Bleyle added. “The enemy won’t be able to concentrate on us the way he did before. We’re going to knock eastern England flat. Let’s see how they like it.”

One by one, the Stuka pilots nodded. Most of them had seen enough to know war wasn’t always as easy as they wished it would be. They’d signed up to take whatever happened, the bad along with the good. Hans-Ulrich suspected things would turn out to be harder than the squadron CO made them sound. By the thoughtful looks on the other men’s faces, so did they. But if the people set over you told you to try, what else could you do?

He took the word to Sergeant Dieselhorst. The gunner and radioman shrugged. “Oh, well,” he said. “Maybe she’ll have engine trouble. We can hope, anyway.”

“It won’t be that bad,” Rudel said.

“No, I suppose not…sir.” Dieselhorst spoiled it by adding, “It’ll be worse.”

The Stuka had no engine trouble. Some groundcrew man’s head would have rolled if it did. The mechanics and armorers gassed it up
and bombed it up. It roared down the runway and lumbered into the air with the others.

Bf-109s and 110s took station around the dive-bombers. The 110s—
Zerstörers
, they called them: destroyers—certainly
looked
formidable. With all that firepower in the nose, they packed a mean punch. Idly, Hans-Ulrich wondered how maneuverable they were. He laughed. His own Ju-87 dodged like a rock.

There was the North Sea. There ahead lay England. The popular song dinned in his head. He
was
going up against England. If the enemy bombed the
Reich
, the
Luftwaffe
would repay blood with blood, murder with murder.

He saw ships—boats—whatever they were—on the sea. Did they belong to the
Kriegsmarine
or the Royal Navy? Were they radioing a warning to the English mainland now? Was that how the RAF had been so quick to attack the Stukas the last time they raided southeastern England? Rudel shrugged. Not his worry, though he did think he’d mention it if he happened to remember after he got back to Belgium.

If I get back to Belgium
. He did his best to stifle that thought. You didn’t want to go into battle with your head full of doubts and worries. He was no more eager to go into
this
battle than any of his squadron mates. The Ju-87 was terrific when it enjoyed air superiority. When it didn’t…

Several 109s seemed to leap out ahead of the pack. Following their path with his eyes, Hans-Ulrich spied another plane out ahead of the oncoming German air armada. Tracers from the Messerschmitts blazed toward the stranger, which dove and spun down toward the ocean. It wasn’t a fighter. They charged after it and sent it smoking into the water.

Someone in the squadron voiced on the radio what Hans-Ulrich was thinking: “Now—did he get word out before we shot him down?”

“We’ll find out,” somebody else said in sepulchral tones.

And they did. English fighter planes rose to meet them: biplane Gladiators, monoplane Hurricanes, and a handful of new, sleek Spitfires. The RAF fighters bored in on the
Luftwaffe
bombers. They wanted no more to do with the escorts than they had to. The 109s and 110s couldn’t hurt their country. Bombers could.

What was going on higher in the sky, where the Heinkels and Dorniers had escorts of their own? Rudel couldn’t check. He was too busy trying to stay alive. Even a Gladiator could be dangerous.

Sergeant Dieselhorst fired a burst. “Get anything?” Hans-Ulrich asked.

“Nah,” the rear gunner answered. “He’ll bother somebody else, though.” That suited the pilot fine.

Cannon fire from a nearby Me-110 knocked down a Hurricane. A moment later, another Hurricane bored in on the two-engined German fighter. That combat didn’t last long. The Hurricane easily outturned the 110, got on its tail, shot it up, and shot it down.

Hans-Ulrich saw he was over some kind of city. He thought it was Dover, but it might have been Folkestone or any other English port. It lay by the sea—he could tell that much. And he could tell it was time to unload the frightfulness he’d brought across the ocean. He yanked the bomb-release lever. The Stuka suddenly felt lighter and nimbler.

“Now we get the devil out of here?” Dieselhorst’s voice came brassy through the speaking tube.

“Now we get out of here,” Hans-Ulrich agreed. No point in lingering. The Stuka sure wasn’t agile enough to dogfight against a British fighter.

A broad-winged He-111, afire from the nose back, plunged into the North Sea just off the coast from the town that was probably Dover. An enormous cloud of steam and smoke rose: a couple of thousand kilos’ worth of bombs going off when the Spade hit. Hans-Ulrich hadn’t seen any parachutes. Four men dead, then.

“You know what happens next, don’t you?” Dieselhorst said.

“What’s that?” Rudel asked. He looked every which way. He didn’t see any Indians, which was what
Luftwaffe
pilots called enemy planes. That let him ease back on the throttle a little. The Continent loomed ahead. He’d probably make it to the airstrip.

“They come over tonight or tomorrow night and bomb the crap out of some of our towns,” Dieselhorst said. “Where does it end? With our last two guys coming out of the ruins and going after their last guy with a club?”