Harry Turtledove: The Big Switch

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 amp; 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.