The War That Came Early: The Big Switch (64 page)

NOBODY’D COME LOOKING
for Adalbert Stoss. Nobody’d come looking for anyone using another name, either. As far as Theo Hossbach was concerned, sometimes—hell, often—the very best thing that could happen was nothing at all.

He’d considered telling Adi it would be smart not to play football any more, for fear of giving himself away. But Adi had thought of that for himself. Besides, telling him not to play didn’t have a prayer of working. Whenever a match was on, the panzer men clamored for him because he played so well. How was he supposed to say no to them when they did?

So Theo did what Theo did best: he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t see the Munich man who’d recognized Adi from a Münster football pitch again. Maybe the fellow’d stopped a mortar bomb with his face. Maybe his unit had got shipped hundreds of kilometers away, to shore up the line against Russian counterattacks from the south. Maybe … Maybe a million things.

But that
Landser
wouldn’t be the only one. Sooner or later, somebody else would work out who—and, more to the point, what—Adi was. It might not matter. Despite the Nazis’ best efforts, not everybody cared. Theo certainly didn’t. Too many people did, though.

It also might not matter another way. Adi might end up slightly dead, or more than slightly, before any snoopy Germans cared about who he was. If he did, Theo had much too good a chance of ending up dead with him. The Russians didn’t really know how to fight with panzers. All the same, they had a lot of them, and they kept on trying. Not only that, but almost all of their machines mounted better guns and armor than a Panzer II.

And if the Ivans didn’t do for the aging machine’s crew, the Russian winter was liable to take care of it. Theo had never dreamt he would have to build a fire under the engine compartment to thaw out the lubricants before the panzer’s engine would turn over. You risked setting the panzer on fire and wrecking it. You also risked drawing Ivans with
the flames. But if you didn’t build that fire, there you were, stuck in the snow without a prayer of starting. And so, morning after freezing morning, Theo helped get the beast going any way he could.

So did Adi. Like any soldier worth his boots, he pissed and moaned about it, too. “I bet the Russians don’t have to put up with this shit,” he grumbled, chopping wood almost as fine as kindling. The less gasoline they had to pour over the fuel to get it burning, the better.

Sergeant Witt threw a match on the fire. Such were the privileges of a panzer commander—not that there weren’t plenty of days when he’d done his own share of chopping wood and then some. Flames leaped up: fortunately, not too high. All three panzer men huddled close to the fire, soaking up as much warmth as they could. After a bit, the gasoline heated the wood so it dried out and caught, too.

“Now if we had some sausages to roast for breakfast …” Witt said.

“Then we’d be going from bed to wurst,” Adi put in.

Witt groaned. Theo winced. He’d loathe himself forever if he turned in a man for being a Jew. For a pun like that, though … Who could blame him? The panzer commander said, “Don’t be more ridiculous than you can help. When’s the last time you slept in a bed?”

“That brothel they set up for us … Only I wasn’t sleeping,” Adi said.

“I should hope not!” Witt studied the fire. “Why don’t you climb in and see if you can get her running?”

That sounded like a polite request, which was the way a good panzer crew worked together. It was in fact an order. Adi took it as such. That he said “Right, Sergeant!” instead of
“Zu befehl!”
changed things not a bit. He scrambled up and into the driver’s position. Theo hoped the self-starter would fire up the engine. If not, they’d have to crank it—hard labor even in frigid weather, and labor that could break your arm if you weren’t careful when the engine did catch.

Grinding noises came from the starter, as they would have from a car with a low battery. Witt rolled his eyes. Theo swallowed a sigh. Holding a charge when your battery cells froze up was no fun, either.

Adi tried again. The grinding noise was louder this time, and went on longer. A cough, a bang, and the Maybach engine burst into full-throated life. The exhaust blatting out of the tailpipes was the sweetest
thing Theo’d smelled this morning—though he did still yearn for sausages.

He paused for a moment atop the Panzer II before sliding down into the radioman’s seat. The morning might be cold, but it was clear. Sunrise would come soon. The eastern sky near the horizon held no color at all—not gray, not white, not blue. It was as if God had left the window-shade up a little bit and let a mere man get a glimpse of the Nothing that lay beyond the edge of the universe. Given Russian vastness, that didn’t seem so absurd as it would have back in Germany. Theo took his place and closed the hatch behind him with more relief than usual.

With the engine growling right behind him, Theo soon stopped freezing. Before long, he started sweating instead. A panzer man had only two temperatures: too cold and too hot. So it often seemed, anyhow.

The panzer company picked up a battalion of infantry half a kilometer to the north and advanced on a large village or small town that was supposed to hold a Red Army garrison. The place did, too. Mortar bombs started falling near the panzers as they approached. Fragments of red-hot metal clattered off the Panzer II’s sides. Witt hastily ducked down into the turret and slammed the hatch shut.

What were those bombs doing to the
Landsers
who loped between the panzers? The poor bastards had no armored shelters into which they could retreat. Then again, they also didn’t have to worry about antipanzer guns. Theo supposed it evened out. If you were at the front, you got the shitty end of the stick no matter how you fought.

As usual, once the Ivans dug in somewhere, they didn’t feel like leaving. Sergeant Witt fired the Panzer II’s main armament several times, and squeezed off burst after burst from the coaxial machine gun. That, and the panzer commander’s occasional obscenities, were as much as Theo knew about the details of the fighting.

Enemy bullets and more fragments rang from the panzer’s armored hide. Nothing big enough to get through hit the machine. Theo’s missing finger twinged even though it wasn’t there. Phantom pain, the docs called it. He knew what happened when a panzer brewed up. If you were lucky—and he had been—you bailed out. Then the enemy shot at you
as if you were a
Landser
. That was how Theo had got hurt. He hadn’t had anything with which to shoot back. A submachine gun hung on brackets near the radio set now, yes. If he was bailing out again with the panzer on fire, though, he doubted he’d worry about taking the Schmeisser along.

Regiment kept relaying orders to the panzer company. Theo dutifully passed them on to Hermann Witt. The panzer commander laughed at some, swore at others, and ignored almost all of them. “If those shitheads were up here with us, they’d know better than to sound like a bunch of jackasses,” he said.

“You hope,” Theo answered.

Adi let out a sudden warning shout: “Left! Fast! Bastard with a Molotov cocktail!”

Witt had no time to traverse the turret. He popped up through the top hatch like a jack-in-the-box. He didn’t forget
his
Schmeisser. A long burst from it sent cartridge cases of yet another caliber clanking down onto the fighting compartment’s floor. “Got the mother,” he said as he ducked down again. Theo’s heart descended from his throat. Burning gasoline dripping in through vision ports and under hatches? No, that wasn’t his idea of a good time.

Firing eased off. Theo knew what the quiet meant: no live Ivans left to fight. One more village taken. A few more hectares now belonged to the
Reich …
except for the Red Army soldiers still wandering across those snowy hectares with rifles in their hands and anger in their hearts.

Russia went on and on and on.
Could
you ever come to the end of it? Germany and her allies seemed determined to try. Theo didn’t know whether they could or not. He didn’t much care, either. He was alive. He’d probably stay that way a while longer. He wouldn’t get any more maimed than he was already. For now, that would do just fine.

Harry Turtledove is the award-winning author of the alternate-history works
The Man with the Iron Heart; Guns of the South; How Few Remain
(winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Novel); the Worldwar saga:
In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance
, and
Striking the Balance;
the Colonization books:
Second Contact, Down to Earth
, and
Aftershocks;
the Great War epics:
American Front, Walk in Hell
, and
Breakthroughs;
the American Empire novels:
Blood & Iron, The Center Cannot Hold
, and
Victorious Opposition;
and the Settling Accounts series:
Return Engagement, Drive to the East, The Grapple
, and
In at the Death
. Turtledove is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters: Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca.