The War That Came Early: West and East (54 page)

Had Longstreet yelled at him (or, worse, laughed at him), he would have sat there and taken it, but something inside him would have died. He expected one or the other. Looking for sympathy from an officer was a losing game. But the captain said, “Well, your sentiments do you credit. And you aren’t going into this with your eyes shut tight, anyhow. That’s something.”

“How do you mean, sir?” Pete asked.

“If you reckon you’re the first Marine to fall head over heels for a Russian dancing girl or a Chinese singsong girl, I have to tell you you’re mistaken,” Longstreet said. “A lot of ’em think their sweethearts were virgins till they charmed the girls off their feet and into bed. You seem to know better than that.”

“Er—yes, sir.” Pete’s ears heated. He’d wished he might have been Vera’s first, but he hadn’t been able to imagine he really was. He mumbled, “She never tried to pretend anything different.”

“One for her, then,” the captain said. “You’ve got it bad, but you could have it worse.”

“All I want to do is make it legal. She does, too.”

“I’m sure she does.” Longstreet’s voice was dry as dust. “The advantages for her are obvious. I’m sure the advantages for you are obvious, too, but they aren’t the kind that’s got anything to do with what’s legal and what isn’t.”

Pete’s ears caught fire again. “Well, sir, what the … dickens am I gonna do?”

“It’s not a simple question. First, there’s the issue of whether you ought to marry the, mm, the young lady.” Captain Longstreet raised a hand. “I know you think so now, but whether you will a year from now may be a different story. Like I said, you aren’t the first Marine I’ve seen in this boat.”

“Yes, sir,” Pete muttered. As far as he was concerned, whatever Longstreet knew about love he’d got out of books. You could read about bar brawls, too, but reading about them wouldn’t tell you what getting into one was like.

“And I hate to have to remind you of it, but you
are
a Marine on active duty,” Longstreet added. “You can’t just go marrying somebody, the way you could if you were a couple of civilians back in the States.”

“I understand that, sir. That’s how come I came to see you.”

“Okay. Now we get down to the really hard part. It’s not easy for a Marine on active duty to get married. He’s supposed to be a Marine first, not a husband first. The country does expect that of him.” Longstreet sighed. “And if you reckon it’s hard for a Marine to get hitched in a regular way, it’s at least five times as hard for him to tie the knot with a stateless person. At least.” He spoke with a certain somber satisfaction.

“Tell me what I’ve got to do. Whatever it is, I’ll do it,” Pete declared.

To his surprise, the captain smiled. It was a wintry smile, but it was a smile even so. “You sound like a Marine, all right,” Longstreet said.

“Sir, I am a Marine, sir!” Pete sprang to his feet and came to rigor mortis-like attention.

“At ease, son,” Longstreet told him. “At ease. Sit down. Relax. Take an even strain. This may happen. I won’t tell you it’s impossible. But it won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick. If you think it will, you’ll burn out your bearings and you won’t get anything for it but heartache.”

“Tell me what to do,” Pete repeated.

“You’ve done the first thing you needed to do: you’ve brought it to my attention. Now I’m going to have to talk to the judge advocate. He’ll tell me where the mines are, and how you can go about sweeping them.” Longstreet must have had a lot of sea duty, to think of mines in the water instead of mines buried under the ground. Well, he wasn’t old enough to have gone Over There in 1918.

“When will you talk with him, sir? When will he figure out what needs doing?” Pete was all eagerness.

It was his life, of course. It was only Ralph Longstreet’s job, and a small, annoying part of his job at that. “I see Herb every day, of course,” he answered. “I’ll fill him in on what’s troubling you, and after that it’s in his hands. He may have to talk with some other people, too.”

Pete had thought—had hoped—this might be a matter of days. Now he saw all too plainly that it would be weeks or months if not the threatened year. His shoulders lost the iron brace they’d kept even while he sat
in the hard wooden chair in front of Longstreet’s desk. “Well, thanks for starting things, anyway, sir.”

“You did that,” the officer said. “And if you’re still as ready to go through with it by the time we’re all done as you are now, I’d say your chances with this girl will be a lot better than they are today.” He picked up the fountain pen. “Anything else on your mind as long as you’re here?”

“Uh, no, sir.”

“Okay. Dismissed.” Longstreet went back to work. Pete stood up, saluted, and left the captain’s office. He wondered if he’d done himself and Vera more harm than good.

WILLI DERNEN DIDN’T KNOW
where the hell he was. Somewhere in France—somewhere between where he had been and the border with the Low Countries. He couldn’t smell Paris, couldn’t taste victory, any more. All he smelled was trouble.

He shivered under his summer-weight tunic. It was cold as a witch’s tit. If the winter was as bad as it gave signs of being, it’d freeze his balls off. His breath smoked. That was bad. An alert enemy soldier could spot the fog puffs rising into the chilly air and lie in wait to pot the poor bastard who was making them. But he didn’t know what he could do about it. Stop breathing? No, thanks!

A gray-haired French peasant watching sheep in a meadow stared at him with no expression at all. Chances were the fellow’d gone through the mill in the last war. Would he sneak off to tell the
poilus
where the Germans were? He might.

The froggies had been polite, even friendly, while the
Wehrmacht
had the bit between its teeth. And why not? They’d figured they would stay German a long time, the way they had after 1914. Now they were wondering. That would mean more trouble down the line, sure as hell it would.

Something else moved. Willi’s scope-sighted rifle swung that way as if it had a life of its own. But it wasn’t a
poilu
. It was Corporal Baatz coming out of the bushes. Reluctantly, Willi lowered the rifle’s muzzle. Tempting as it was, he couldn’t go and plug Awful Arno. He didn’t suppose he could, anyhow. The unloved corporal was his lord and master again. He’d
been reattached to his old unit within hours after
Oberfeldwebel
Puttkamer got his head blown off. He was still surprised they hadn’t made him turn in the fancy Mauser. Somebody’d slipped up there.

Baatz saw him, too, and waved. He didn’t raise his hand too high. You never could tell what would draw a sniper’s eye. Willi wondered what had happened to the goddamn Czech with the antipanzer rifle. He was probably still busy nailing Germans. Puttkamer wasn’t around to quarrel with him any more, that was for sure.

“Wie geht’s?”
Awful Arno asked.

Willi shrugged. “I’m still here. If I get hungry, I’ll shoot me a sheep.” He paused, considering.
Hell with it
, he thought, and went on, “War’s pretty goddamn fucked up, though, isn’t it?”

He might have known Baatz wouldn’t admit what was as plain as the nose on his piggy face. “You can’t talk like that,” the noncom insisted.

“Why the hell not?” Willi said. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

“It’s disloyal, that’s what it is,” Baatz answered. “I knew the
Gestapo
guys knew what they were doing when they started sniffing around you and your asshole buddy Storch.”

And they had, too. All the same, Willi said, “Oh, fuck off, man. If you can’t tell we screwed the pooch, you’re too dumb to go on living.”

Awful Arno turned red. “Watch your big mouth, before you open it so wide you fall in and disappear. You keep going on like that, I’ll report you—so help me God I will.”

“Go ahead,” Willi said wearily. “Maybe you’ll get me yanked out of the line. If you do, I’ll be better off than you are.”

That only made Baatz madder. “You don’t know what the devil you’re talking about. Wait till they chuck you into Dachau. You’ll wish you only had machine guns to worry about.”

The blackshirts had said the same thing. Willi wasn’t about to take it from Awful Arno. “Give me a break. If telling the truth is disloyal, then I guess I am. Jesus Christ, the war
is
screwed up. Even a blind man can see it. Even
you
should be able to.”

“You’re not just talking about the war,” Baatz said. “You’re talking about how we’re fighting it. And if you say that’s gone wrong, you’re saying the
Führer
’s leadership isn’t everything it ought to be.”

“Yeah? And so? He’s the
Führer
. He’s not God, for crying out loud. When he takes a crap, angels don’t fall out of his asshole,” Willi said.

Awful Arno’s eyes widened. He looked like an uncommonly sheltered child hearing about the facts of life for the first time. “He’s the
Führer,”
he said, on a note as different from Willi as could be.

“Ja, ja
, and the
Grofaz
, too,” Willi said: the cynical contraction of the German for
greatest military leader of all time
. “But if he’s so goddamn great, how come we’re retreating? How come Paris is way the hell over there?” He pointed west.

Before Baatz could answer, a mortar bomb burst a hundred meters behind them. They both threw themselves flat. More bombs came down, some of them closer. Fragments whined and snarled overhead. Willi looked around without raising his head. Sure as hell, that Frenchman had bailed out. And a couple of sheep were down and kicking. Spit filled his mouth. Mutton chops!

Arno Baatz shielded his face with his arm, as if that would do any good. “So Dachau is worse than this, is it?” Willi said.

The corporal nodded without raising his head. “You’d better believe it is. And everybody who doubts the
Führer
will end up in a place like that.” Conviction filled his voice.

“Scheisse,”
Willi said. “If he messed up the war—and he damn well did—somebody needs to doubt him, don’t you think? I hope to God I’m not the only one, or Germany’s even more screwed up than I figured.”

“He’s the
Führer
. If we live through this, Dernen, I will report you.”

“Go ahead,” Willi said, wondering if he would have to make sure Awful Arno damn well didn’t live through it. He would if he had to, but he didn’t want to. Killing someone on his own side in cold blood wasn’t what he’d signed up for. He went on, “I’ll call you a motherfucking liar and say you always had it in for me—and that’s the truth, too. You think the officers don’t know what kind of asshole you are, Baatz? Yeah, report me. It’s your word against mine. I bet they believe me, not you, and you end up in the concentration camp.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Baatz sounded almost pitying. “This is
security
we’re talking about. Of course they’ll believe me.”

“They’d believe somebody with a working brain, maybe, but not a
fuckup like you,” Willi retorted. “Like I said, they know better. Go ahead, report me, cuntface. You’ll find out.” Maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong. Maybe nobody’d take any chances, and they’d both wind up in Dachau. If they did, he was willing to bet he’d last longer than Awful Arno.

And maybe they wouldn’t live through this, and it would all be moot. Willi lifted his head a few centimeters. Something that wasn’t a sheep moved atop the next little swell of ground to the west. Willi brought his rifle to his shoulder and snapped a shot at it. It disappeared down the back side of the hillock.

“What was that?” Baatz asked.

“Well, it might have been a hippo escaped from the zoo. Or it might have been a Frenchman.” Willi chambered a fresh round. “Odds were it was a Frenchy. So if you want to live long enough to rat on me, get your empty ostrich head out of the sand and start acting like a soldier.” He’d never had the chance to tell off a noncom like this. It was fun. It might almost be worth getting shot. Almost. If Baatz got shot, too.…

Two French soldiers came over that hillock. They were more cautious than the first fellow had been—they knew there were
Landsers
on this side, which he hadn’t. Willi fired at one of them. Then he rolled away from Baatz and into the bushes. Once the shooting started, you wanted as much cover as you could find.

Awful Arno fired at the
poilus
, too. He was a decent combat soldier; even Willi, who’d despised him for a year now, would have admitted as much. He headed for something that might be cover, too. Off to the left, a German MG-34 started sawing away. A small smile crossed Willi’s face. He loved machine guns—his own side’s machine guns, anyhow. They were the best guarantee a poor ordinary ground pounder had that he’d go on pounding ground a while longer.

The MG-34 didn’t just knock over enemy soldiers. It made them concentrate on it, so they forgot all about Willi and Baatz. He got a clean shot at a fellow crawling along in a khaki greatcoat. The fancy Mauser thumped his shoulder. The
poilu
doubled up.
Sorry, buddy
, Willi thought,
but you would have done the same thing to me
.

They held the French in place till the late afternoon. By then, Willi had
a well-positioned, well-protected foxhole—but no sheep carcass to keep him company, dammit. Even so, he was ready to stay a while, but a runner came up to order the line back half a kilometer. The Germans withdrew under cover of darkness.

Willi and Arno Baatz almost tripped over each other. They exchanged glares.
“Grofaz,”
Willi said again, defiantly. If the
Führer
was so fucking smart, how come they were going backwards? Pretty soon, even Awful Arno would start wondering about things like that. Wouldn’t he?

Chapter 23