The War That Came Early: West and East (33 page)

Then the antipanzer rifle spoke again, seemingly right in front of him.
A split second later, a Mauser in no-man’s-land answered. Willi’s ears told him about where the shot came from, but he still couldn’t spot Fegelein.

He couldn’t, but the enemy sniper could. That goddamn elephant gun fired once more, as soon as it could have after the man using it worked the bolt. Silence returned, punctuated only by the skrawks of frightened crows.

Helmut Fegelein didn’t come back for supper after sundown. Willi guessed he wasn’t hungry any more, and never would be again.

Chapter 14

P
ussy didn’t like tanks, not even a little bit. Alistair Walsh wasn’t surprised. The cat had come to take gunfire for granted. Animals sometimes got used to things more easily than people did. Pussy couldn’t know what bullets and shell fragments did to soft, vulnerable flesh. She didn’t know how lucky she was to be ignorant, either.

Tanks were a whole different business, though. She didn’t just hear them rattle and clank. She could see them move. Here was something bigger than an elephant that could—and might want to—squash her flat. Tanks smelled funny, too. No wonder the cat disappeared into the smallest hole she could find.

Regardless of Pussy’s opinion, Walsh liked tanks in the neighborhood fine. These Mark I Cruisers seemed a vast improvement over the poor Matildas that had tried to hold off German panzers the winter before. The Matildas mounted nothing more than a machine gun, and a running man could easily keep up with them. They did have thick armor … and they needed it.

These cruisers were a different business. Their turrets packed a two-pounder
cannon and a machine gun, while they mounted two more MGs in the front of the hull, one on each side of the driver’s position. It was probably crowded as all get-out up there, but enemy infantry in front of them would be very unhappy.

And they could
move
. They were as fast as anything the Germans had. More than once during the retreat from the Low Countries, English tankers had had to bail out of Matildas, set them on fire, and go back on foot or in a lorry when enemy thrusts outflanked and overran them. If they hadn’t, they would have been cut off and killed or captured. In fact, Walsh had seen a Matilda or two in German service, with a prominent cross painted on either side. He suspected he would have seen more if the Nazis liked the clunky little machines better.

Jock’s reaction to the Mark I Cruisers was more like Pussy’s. “Ah wish the bloody things’d go somewhere else,” the Yorkshireman grumbled.

“Why’s that?” Walsh asked. “Now that they’re here, we can give the Fritzes one right in the slats.”

“That’s why,” Jock said morosely. “Long as we sit tight here, we’re safe enough. Oh, not safe, Christ knows, but safe enough. With them buggers around, though, they’ll tell us to go forward again, damn their black hearts. Bad things happen when you go forward, by God.”

Half a lifetime ago, Walsh had been eager to go over the top—once. Living through that first assault cured him of eagerness forevermore. He was much happier staying in the trenches and letting the Germans come to him after that. Bad things
did
happen when you went forward. There you were, out in the open, with nothing to protect you but a lousy tin hat that wouldn’t keep bullets out anyhow. All these years later, his leg wound still bothered him.

Which meant nothing when the brass hats told you to advance. The Fritzes might rack you up. You own side assuredly would if you didn’t follow orders. He was part of that machinery himself. If you didn’t go forward because you were battle-wild, you’d damn well go forward because bad things would happen to you if you stayed behind.

“No help for it, Jock,” he said, not without sympathy. No, he wasn’t eager, either.

Jock nodded. “Oh, Ah know. What’ll we do about Pussy, though? Can’t
take her along—she wouldn’t fancy riding in your pack or on your shoulder like a bloody pirate’s parrot.”

Walsh chuckled. “Chances are she wouldn’t,” he agreed. “Somebody else will take care of her once we push on, though. Or she’ll shift for herself. Cats are good at that, you know. Plenty of birds, plenty of bugs. Plenty of mice, too, with no one setting out traps to keep them down.”

“Maybe.” Jock still looked gloomy—he often did. “She was mighty peaked when we first started feeding her, though. Mighty peaked.”

“We can’t bring her along. You said so yourself,” Walsh pointed out.

“Ah knows, Sergeant. Don’t mean Ah like it,” Jock said.

More and more Mark Is came in. Had Walsh been running the show, he would have kept them hidden till the attack went in. Surprise counted. The high foreheads actually in charge of things sent a few of the cruisers forward to see how they did against the German positions most of a mile away.

And the high foreheads learned some things they hadn’t known before. Matildas couldn’t get out of their own way and sadly lacked firepower, but they laughed at antitank rifles. The Mark Is weren’t laughing. Those big bullets pierced their armor with the greatest of ease: not only in the hull sides, but even in the turret, which was supposed to have more metal than any other part of the tank.

The Fritzes had some 37mm antitank guns in their defensive positions, too. A Matilda might even live through a hit from one of those. The cruisers looked far more modern. They had better engines and more firepower. But they burned so easily, the English soldiers started calling them Ronsons. One shot, and they lit.

“What bloody fool designed ’em?” Jock demanded, watching two of the hopeful machines send up black columns of smoke from the fields ahead. The way he said
bloody
, it had the same long
oo
as
fool
. It sounded even more accusing that way. “They won’t hold out anything tougher than a rifle round.”

“Doesn’t look that way, does it?” Walsh said glumly.

“We’re supposed to go forward with tanks, eh?” Jock said. “How do we do that if all the tanks blow up afore they get to the Fritzes’ trenches?”

“Good question,” the sergeant answered. In the last war, the order to advance would have gone out anyway. Tanks not up to snuff? Too bad. The infantry would handle things. That was what it was there for, wasn’t it?

Things were supposed to be different this time around. No one wanted another catastrophe like the Somme. With brilliant plans like that, no wonder people started calling generals the Donkeys.

But, just because things were supposed to be different, that didn’t mean they would be. Driving the Germans farther away from Paris was high on everybody’s list. The French had had an even closer call this time than in 1914. The more frantic they got about dealing with that, the more frantic they made their allies across the Channel.

Walsh did wonder how enthusiastic Neville Chamberlain was about the war. He’d done everything he could to hold it off, even flying to Germany to try to talk Hitler out of jumping all over Czechoslovakia. He might have pulled it off, too, if that Czech maniac hadn’t gunned down Konrad Henlein, the Sudeten Germans’ vest-pocket
Führer
.

Then again, it was hard to tell how enthusiastic Chamberlain was about anything. He looked like a constipated stork, and he didn’t sound much different. Winston Churchill might be a voice crying in the wilderness of party disfavor, but he was a voice crying in impassioned, exciting sentences. Walsh thought that kind of thing went a long way in wartime. As if anyone gave a damn what a staff sergeant thought!

The order to storm forward got pushed back forty-eight hours. To celebrate, Jock fed Pussy a whole tin of steak-and-kidney pie, the best ration England issued. In Alistair Walsh’s biased opinion, it was better than anything the froggies or the Fritzes made, too. Pussy daintily fed, then washed up the sides of her face with a well-licked paw. “She even goes behind her ears,” Jock said.

“When was the last time you did?” Walsh asked.

“Beats me,” the soldier said. Walsh couldn’t remember the last time he’d washed behind the ears, either. Out in the field, you stopped worrying about dirt. What difference did it make? He patted the cat. She rewarded him with a purr. When he stopped, she twisted her head and
started licking the man-scent off her fur.
How can I catch mice
, she seemed to say,
if I smell like a gamy old sergeant?

Before the two days were up, the order to advance got postponed indefinitely. No one said it had anything to do with the Mark I Cruiser’s deficiencies, but no one had trouble reading between the lines. Jock shared some milk-smooth cognac with Walsh to celebrate.

“Here’s to stayin’ put!” the Yorkshireman said.

“Here’s to,” Walsh agreed. He wasn’t sorry not to leave this ruined village. It wasn’t home, but it also wasn’t bad—no, not half. Pussy ambled up, willing to be stroked and begging for a treat. His hand caressed the cat’s warm, soft fur. Pussy purred.

LITTLE BY LITTLE
, Sarah Goldman got used to wearing the yellow star whenever she went outside. She hardly noticed. Hardly anyone else in Münster seemed to notice, either. The Nazis might have wanted to turn Jews into a spectacle, but they hadn’t done it.

Aryans were entitled to cut in front of Jews in a queue at any shop. Shopkeepers were supposed to serve Aryans ahead of Jews, which was doubly unfair because Jews had limited hours in which they could go out. The yellow star was designed, among other things, to make that easier.

It didn’t happen, not right away. German women took their places behind Sarah when they got into line after she did. No shopkeeper followed the rules to the letter. That surprised her; she knew how orderly the folk of whom she’d once thought herself a part were.

It must have surprised the Nazis, too. A flood of new edicts came from Berlin. No one was to extend Jews any courtesies, no matter what.
These people are the enemies of the
Reich,
and must not be treated softly
, newspapers thundered.
Always remember—the Jews are our misfortune!

“What did we ever do to them?” Sarah complained over a miserable supper that night. “What they’ve done to us … But what did we do to them?”

“Nothing,” her mother said. “We don’t do anything to anybody. All we try to do is stay alive. They don’t even like that, and a
choleriyeh
on them.”

“You
haven’t done anything to them,” Father said. He was weary, but
contrived to look amused even so. “I haven’t done enough—nowhere near so much as I wish I had. But Einstein and Freud and Schoenberg … They’ve done plenty. They’ve tried to drag Germany kicking and screaming into the twentieth century. ‘Jewish physics! Jewish psychology! Jewish music!’” He did his best to sound like a Nazi plug-ugly bellowing on the radio. His best was alarmingly good. He didn’t have a red face and a roll of fat at the back of his neck, but you would never have guessed as much from his voice.

“But what if Einstein’s right even though he’s Jewish?” Sarah said. “Then Germany will miss out on … on whatever he was talking about.” She knew more about the theory of relativity than she did about Zulu, but not much more.

“That’s the chance they take,” Samuel Goldman said, not without relish. “I don’t pretend to understand Einstein, but I’d think twice before I bet against him.”

Sarah always thought of her father as knowing everything. So hearing him admit ignorance always came as a surprise. Of course, Socrates hadn’t just admitted ignorance—he’d professed it (being a scholar of ancient history’s daughter, she knew such things herself). But that was different. Socrates had been—what did the card-players call it? He’d been sandbagging: that was the word. When Father said he didn’t understand Einstein, Sarah thought he meant it.

“Jewish physics? What can Jewish physics do that German physics can’t?” Sarah picked the wildest thing she could think of: “Blow up the world? That would serve the Nazis right, wouldn’t it?”

“It would.” Father sighed. “I don’t think things are quite so simple, though. It would be nice if they were, but …” He spread his hands. His palms weren’t blistered, the way they had been when he first joined the labor gang. Now ridges of hard yellow callus crossed them. He was in better physical shape than Sarah remembered his being—but he slept whenever he wasn’t working or eating. How long before he started to break down? And what would happen then?

She didn’t want to think about that. Father anchored the world. Without him, everything would be adrift, topsy-turvy. Which, she had to admit, didn’t mean such a thing couldn’t happen. In the Third
Reich
, anything
could happen to Jews, anything at all. If you didn’t understand that, you didn’t understand anything.

One of the things that could happen to Jews could also happen to Aryans. A little past midnight, air-raid sirens began to wail. Berlin and other places in the east were safe from bombs during short summer nights: the bombers that had to deliver them would still be flying and vulnerable when light came back to the sky. Not Münster. It lay too close to the French border to enjoy such protection.

“Not fair!” Sarah groaned as she hurried downstairs to huddle under the heavy dining-room table. She wasn’t thinking only of geography. Father would have to go out to the labor gang tomorrow morning even if he’d had his sleep shattered. Well, plenty of others would be in the same boat.