Harry Turtledove: Two Fronts

“Bunch of ruddy killjoys, far as I’m concerned … sir.” Walsh added the honorific in case Preston happened to believe the tripe he was spouting. “I might have better wind if I tossed out my Navy Cuts, but I’d be a hell of a lot grouchier, too. Can’t get too many big pleasures at the front. Are they going to start begrudging us the little ones now? Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.” Doctors were natural-born wet blankets.

“I don’t believe they’re just speaking of wind,” Preston replied. “If I understand this correctly, they say tobacco is bad for the health generally, and hard on the lungs in particular.”

“Hmp,” Walsh said: an eloquent bit of skepticism, even if unlikely to show up in the Oxford English Dictionary . “It’ll be best bitter next, or I miss my guess.” He eyed his young superior. “I don’t notice you chucking your fags into the closest sand dune, either.”

“Er … no.” Preston had the grace to look shamefaced. “It’s a funny thing. I never smoked much before I first went into combat. But in a tight spot a cigarette will steady your nerves better than almost anything, won’t it?”

“Anything this side of a couple tots of stiff rum, any road.” Walsh held up a hand before the subaltern could answer. “And yes, sir, I know what you’re going to say. A smoke won’t leave you stupid the way a tot or two will.”

“Quite.” Preston nodded. Then he chuckled wryly. “Doesn’t seem to bother the Russians, by all accounts.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Walsh agreed. By all accounts, the Russians drank like fish. “But then, by all accounts they’re stupid to begin with.”

German artillery, or maybe it was Italian, opened up just then. Walsh and Preston dove for holes in the sandy ground. As 105s burst around him, Walsh lit a cigarette. He would sooner have had the rum, but you took what you could get. And Preston was right-a smoke did steady your nerves.

A medal. Kisses on the cheek from a Spanish Republican brigadier who smelled of garlic. A three-day pass for Madrid, and a fat wad of pesetas to spend there. Vaclav Jezek couldn’t have cared less about the first two. The medal was gilded, not gold; it clanked instead of clinking. The brigadier was just another Spaniard with a graying mustache.

The pass and the roll, though, those were worth having. The Czech sniper could hardly wait to go hunting for more Fascist generals. The Republic promised the sun, moon, and little stars for Marshal Sanjurjo, the Caudillo of the enemy’s half of Spain. The payoff on General What’s-his-name-Franco, that was it-wasn’t half bad, either.

Vaclav didn’t speak much Spanish. The only foreign language he did speak was German. Seeing as the Nazis backed the Spanish Fascists, in the Red Republic that was more likely to land him in trouble than to help him. But he could order drinks. He could get at least some food. And, eked out with gestures, he could let a whore know what he wanted her to do. The putas liked him fine: he didn’t want anything fancy, and he had plenty of money to spend. As far as they were concerned, that made him the perfect customer.

Being a stolid, thrifty, solid man, he still had a little cash in his wallet when the leave, like all other good things, came to an end. A bus took him back up toward the stretch of front the soldiers of the Czechoslovakian government-in-exile held northwest of Madrid. Almost everything on the way was smashed by bombs, pocked with bullet holes, or both together. For a while, Sanjurjo’s men had pushed into the capital’s outskirts. Slowly and painfully, a few meters at a time, the Republicans had forced them back.

If France hadn’t hopped into the sack with Hitler, the Czechs would have stayed there, making sure the Germans advanced only over their dead bodies. The cynical politicos in Paris thought they were generous to let the Czechs cross the Pyrenees instead of interning them. Maybe they were even right.

Now, though, Daladier and his cronies must have decided old Adolf made a lousy lay. They weren’t in bed with him any more. That meant the on-and-off supply spigot between France and the Spanish Republic was on again. It also meant the Germans and Italians had trouble keeping their Spanish pals in toys for a while. If the Republican officials and officers didn’t stow their brains up their asses, they’d try to take advantage of that.

The bus wheezed to a stop several kilometers short of the front. The driver said something in lisping Spanish. Since most of his passengers were Czechs or men from the International Brigades, his own language did him less good than it might have. Seeing as much, he solved the problem another way. He yanked the door open-whatever hydraulics it might have had once upon a time were long gone-and yelled, “ Raus! ”

Chances were it was the only word of German he knew. But it did the job here. Grumbling, the soldiers hopped out one by one. A hulking blond International said something in Polish. Jezek almost understood it. He cupped a hand behind one ear and said, “Try that again?” in Czech.

His words would have had the same annoying near-familiarity to the Pole as the other guy’s did for him. The big, fair man repeated himself. Vaclav shrugged. He still didn’t get it. “Gawno,” the Pole muttered. Vaclav followed that fine. Shit was shit in any Slavic tongue. Then the big guy did what a Pole and a Czech would often do instead of staying frustrated by each other’s languages: he asked, “ Sprechen Sie Deutsch? ”

“ Ja ,” Vaclav answered resignedly. He’d gone through this before. He’d hoped to skip it this time, but no such luck.

“ Gut ,” the Pole said. “What I said was, we have had our holiday, and now we are going back to the factory.” Like Vaclav, he spoke German slowly, hunting for words. As Poles would, he put the accent in every polysyllabic word on the next to last, whether it belonged there or not.

“To the factory, is it?” Jezek responded. “Well, here’s hoping we stay away from industrial accidents.”

“Here’s hoping. Ja -fucking- wohl .” That wasn’t exactly proper German, but Vaclav followed some improper German, too.

He and the Pole tramped along together for a while. They told each other the usual lies about the drinking and screwing they’d done in Madrid. A jackhammer couldn’t have done all the pounding the Pole claimed. Vaclav pretended to believe him. Life was too short for some arguments.

They waved when they separated, and wished each other luck. The Internationals’ trenches were north and east of the stretch the Czechs held. “Hey, look who’s back!” Vaclav’s countrymen shouted. One of them added, “You don’t look as rumpled as you ought to, dammit!”

“Rumpled? I’ll tell you about rumpled, by Jesus!” Vaclav retold some of the stories he’d fed the Pole. His buddies ate them up. He’d already thought them through once, and they sounded a hell of a lot better in Czech than they had in German. He hoped he gave good value.

Through all the stories, Lieutenant Benjamin Halevy listened with an ironically raised eyebrow. Everybody got promoted a grade on coming to Spain; that was why Vaclav was a sergeant now. Halevy had been a sergeant-a sergeant in the French Army. His parents were from Prague; he’d been born in Paris. Fluent in French and Czech (and several other languages), he’d served as liaison between French troops and the men who served the government-in-exile.

And he’d accompanied the Czechs to Spain. Like any other Jew, he couldn’t stomach France’s alliance with the Third Reich . French authorities hadn’t much wanted him around, either. He could have gone back to civilian life with an honorable discharge. Instead, he’d kept on fighting Fascism.