The War That Came Early: The Big Switch (31 page)

That sounded good even after being translated into Russian. Most foreign gibes lost their flavor once they left their native tongue. Churchill must have seemed uncommonly witty in English.

“Although Churchill is a member of Prime Minister Chamberlain’s Conservative Party, Chamberlain has gone out of his way to assure the English Parliament that Churchill does not speak for him or his government,” the newsreader said portentously.

“Chamberlain is playing with his dick again,” one of the pilots said in disgust. The Chimp couldn’t have put it any more plainly—and probably would have put it about the same way. The news didn’t sound good. If Chamberlain was criticizing Churchill, and Churchill was criticizing cutting a deal with the Nazis … What was the likely result? Trouble for the
Rodina
, that was what.

More trouble for the
Rodina, Sergei mentally corrected. The Soviet Union already had as much country as any self-respecting country needed.

After music replaced the news, Major Konstantin Ponamarenko—Colonel Borisov’s replacement as squadron leader—said, “You men will know—not everything that happens comes on the radio right away.”

Heads bobbed up and down, Yaroslavsky’s among them. The main purpose of Radio Moscow news was to hold up morale on the home front. Sergei had thought as much himself not long before. He hadn’t looked for the new squadron commander to acknowledge it so openly.

Ponamarenko went on, “You will also know that the situation in the field is developing in a way that might possibly be better.”

He waited for more nods. He got them. Sergei admired him. The pilot had rarely heard a more graceful way of admitting the USSR was getting the snot knocked out of it.

“Don’t waste time worrying about those French and English whores,” Ponamarenko said earnestly. “They can’t get at us yet, and we can’t get at them, either. Worry about the German cocksuckers, and about their Polish lap dogs yapping along behind them. We can hit back at them, and we damn well will.”

Sergei nodded one more time. You had to show you agreed. Somebody was always watching you. No: somebody always might be watching you. You always needed to stay on your guard. It was all right to remember that Stalin had started the fight with Poland the winter before, looking to pick up Wilno on the cheap. If the General Secretary hadn’t, the Soviet Union would still be at war with Germany, but only in a formal sense, since neither side could have struck at the other without violating some buffer state’s neutrality. Well, now the USSR had done just that, and this was what the Soviet workers and peasants got for it.

Yes, it was all right to remember Stalin might well have outsmarted himself. But it wasn’t all right to show you remembered such things. You never could tell who might notice, and report. You never could tell when you might disappear.

“What I’m saying is, we are going to be flying missions inside what was Soviet territory before the war,” Ponamarenko continued. “We will try to drop our bombs only on the heads of the Fascist jackals, of course. Of course.” He bore down on the repeated phrase. “But accidents happen in war. I don’t have many virgins here. You know that. And I need to tell every one of you—don’t worry about them. Some of our explosives may do a little harm to Soviet citizens. If the rest of our loads help drive the invaders out of the Motherland, though, that’s a price worth paying. Do you hear what I’m telling you, Comrades?”

By the way the flyers’ heads moved, they might have been on springs. This also was nothing that hadn’t occurred to Sergei before. He didn’t want to hurt his own people. He’d never dreamt such a dreadful thing might be possible when he first put on the uniform he wore.

However dreadful the possibility might be, it was here. And Ponamarenko had it right. If the bombers hurt the invaders worse than the
locals, their strikes were bound to be worthwhile in the long run. A surgeon cut you up to make you healthier in the long run.

But you still had a scar after the operation. And it still hurt while you recovered from it. Sergei wished he hadn’t thought of any of that.

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE
,
war seemed easy, even to someone like Theo Hossbach who knew better most of the time. When the German panzers smashed through the Low Countries and into northern France, it was obvious the
Wehrmacht
was playing a faster, deeper game than the Dutch and Belgians, the English and French, who tried to slow it down. Unfortunately, the enemy caught on just before Germany managed to slam the sword all the way home.

Now, again, the panzers rolled forward as if nothing in the world could slow them down. The experienced German troops outclassed the Ivans as effortlessly as Adi Stoss had outclassed the infantrymen he played against on that snowy Polish football pitch.

Maybe—probably, even—an individual ground pounder was in better shape than Adi. Russian panzers were often better than German machines. But when Stoss got the ball, he knew what to do with it. And even when he didn’t have it, he knew where to go so he might get it, or so he might keep the guys on the other side from causing trouble.

The Germans were like that as they pushed from Poland into Byelorussia (and into the northern Ukraine, too, but Theo knew about that only by rumor and by brags on Radio Berlin). The panzers struck, then sped on, leaving it for the German and Polish infantry slogging along in their wake to clean up the Ivans they’d shattered.

And the Ivans couldn’t figure out what to do about it. It was as if their manager had to shout in directions from the touchline to get them to move. Left to themselves, they would defend in place till they got smashed up, but they maneuvered only slowly and awkwardly. They might have those formidable panzers, but they didn’t know how to use them.

The Germans did. They took advantage as quickly and eagerly as a guy trying to screw his girl. And they were screwing the Russians, all right. People talked about Smolensk and Vyazma. When people got excited, they talked about Moscow and Leningrad.

Theo talked … very little. When he sat in the bowels of the Panzer II, he relayed orders from the platoon CO, the company CO, regimental HQ, division HQ … Whatever came in through his earphones, he faithfully passed on to Hermann Witt. And he sent back the panzer commander’s responses. Witt had to needle him only every once in a while to make sure he exercised his voice enough to do that.

“Don’t keep it all to yourself, Theo, my dear,” he would say. “They put that set in there for a reason, you know.”

And Theo would nod. And he’d do better for a while. But only for a while. He was too much a creature of the deep silences inside his own head ever to grow comfortable with the racket of the outside world.

While they drove, while they fought, he didn’t have much to do with Adalbert Stoss. How could he, when they had their places at opposite ends of the Panzer II’s fighting compartment? Adi talked to Theo—who didn’t?—but he wasn’t a guy who yakked all the time for the sake of yakking. And his job needed him to pay attention every single second, which Theo’s didn’t.

When they rolled into bivouac at the end of one of the midsummer days where the sun never wanted to set, Theo sometimes felt Adi’s eye on him. The driver rarely went beyond commonplaces when they talked, but Theo figured there was more to him than he let on. What would he say if he spoke up? Something like
You don’t have to pull in your head like a turtle to hide
, perhaps. Or perhaps not. Theo knew his own imagination and guesses sometimes ran away with him.

He didn’t know what he could do about it. Adi seemed happy thundering up and down the pitch with everybody else. Goalkeeper suited Theo better. Most of the time, the action was far away, so he could daydream. There were the stark moments when he had to make the save or botch it, but they were mercifully few and far between. Even if he did botch one, he could get by as long as he didn’t screw up too much more than anyone else would have. Sometimes you just couldn’t do anything about a shot.

Unfortunately, that also held true on the battlefield. Burnt-out carcasses of Panzer Is and IIs and IIIs testified to the truth there. The Ivans didn’t play the game very well, but they played goddamn hard. They played so hard, in fact, that infantrymen and panzer soldiers on the
pitch were as nothing beside it. Germans with a football played rough, but it was only a game. The Russians were playing for keeps. When you played like that, all the rules flew out the window.

Back in the West, when something went wrong you had a chance of surrendering. When you did surrender, you had a chance of living till you got to a POW camp—not a guarantee, but a chance, often a decent one. The Russians usually got rid of prisoners instead of bothering to send them back.

The panzers clattered forward again the next morning. There inside his armored cave, Theo listened to what was going on. Every so often, Witt would order Adi to stop the panzer. He would fire a few rounds from the 20mm or a burst from the machine gun, and they would go on. Now and then, a rifle round or a few bullets from a Russian machine gun would make everyone inside the panzer jump, but that was all. Anything more than small-arms fire … No, Theo didn’t want to remind himself of that.

“We will slow down for the village ahead. We’ll go around it and shell it from the outside.” Not the voice of God, but the company commander’s: close enough. It was the first Theo had heard that a village lay anywhere close by.

He relayed the order to Witt, who was standing up in the turret as usual. The sergeant said, “
Ja
. Makes sense,” and passed instructions on to Adi. The Panzer II slowed and swung to the left, presumably to go around the village. Theo also thought skirting built-up areas made sense. You didn’t want to give some Russian the chance to pop out of nowhere and chuck a bottle full of burning gasoline through your hatch. Molotov cocktails, the Germans called them: a name the
Legion Kondor
had brought back from Spain.

But slowing down carried risks of its own. A rifle cracked outside the panzer, much closer than usual. Witt dove—fell, really—back into the fighting compartment, blood streaming down his face. “Jesus Christ!” he yelled, dogging the hatch behind him. “There’s a motherfucking Ivan on the panzer!”

“What happened?” Theo asked, the words jerked from him.

“He should’ve blown my head off,” Witt answered. “I’m just creased—I think.” He raised his voice: “Adi! Shake him off if you can!”

Stoss didn’t answer, but the panzer sped up and jerked wildly, first to one side, then to the other. It didn’t work—Theo could hear the Russian scrabbling around on the machine’s armored carapace. Wounded or not, Witt had the presence of mind to slam the observation ports in the turret shut. The bastard out there wouldn’t be able to drop a grenade inside … Theo hoped.

He grabbed the Schmeisser that hung on a couple of iron brackets. He’d never needed it before, not inside the panzer. He wished to God he didn’t need it now.

The Russian stood up on the engine decking and worried at something on the turret. It wasn’t the radioman’s escape hatch. Maybe the Ivan didn’t even realize that was there. If he didn’t, he was about to find out. Theo yanked it open and fired off the whole magazine the instant he caught a glimpse of khaki. There was a wild scream and a thump, as of a heavy weight falling back onto the engine louvers. A moment later, the panzer shifted again, as if that same heavy weight had fallen off.

Theo sucked in a deep breath, which reminded him he hadn’t been breathing before. He took a wound dressing out of its belt pouch and turned back to Witt. “I’ll bandage you up.”

Witt had already started trying that with his own wound dressing. He was making a hash of it, since he couldn’t see what he was doing. Theo wrapped cotton gauze around his head—he had a ten-centimeter gash in his scalp. But it seemed to be only a crease, as the panzer commander had said.

“Thanks,” Witt said when Theo was done. “Way to get the son of a bitch, too. You want to take my seat for a bit? Sorry, but I can’t see straight right now. And it hurts a little bit.”

If he admitted it hurt a little, it doubtless hurt a lot. Theo didn’t want to command the panzer, even for a little while. He saw he’d have to, though. He made himself nod. “All right.” The first thing he did after that—even before he scrambled into the turret to trade places with Witt—was to stick a fresh thirty-two-round box on his machine pistol.

LEAVE IN MADRID
.
Chaim Weinberg couldn’t have been happier. Sure, he’d left New York City, come to Spain, and joined the Abe Lincolns to
fight Fascism. When he first got off the boat, he’d been raring to shoot the enemies of the working class every hour of every day of every week.

But that was three years ago now. One of the big differences between a rookie and a veteran was that the vet developed a sense of proportion. Chaim still wanted to kill Fascists. Every hour of every day? Well, no. For one thing, that increased the chances that the Fascists would kill him instead. And, for another, there was more to life than killing people, no matter how much they deserved it.

A hot bath. Delousing. Clean clothes. A shave with hot lather from a barber. Hell, with any lather. In the field, Chaim just scraped his face with a straight razor when he bothered to shave at all.

And then … Madrid! Wine—usually not good wine, but he wasn’t fussy. The lousy Spanish beer would also do. Women—usually not good women, either, but who needed an excessively good woman when you were just back from the front? Song—either in a cantina or coming out of the speakers at a movie house. Sitting in a comfortable chair in the dark for a couple of hours, watching beautiful people do things that had nothing to do with war, was not the least of pleasures … at least, if the air-raid sirens didn’t start to scream right when the flick was getting to the good part.

The food was better in Madrid, too. It also cost more. This particular leave, Chaim wasn’t inclined to complain. He’d come away from the trenches with money in his pocket. A dice game with an optimist had redistributed some wealth.
From him, according to his abilities. To me, according to my needs
, Chaim thought happily.