Harry Turtledove - West and East

“Sorry. I’ll try not to let it happen again,” Peggy said.

He blinked again. Peggy got the feeling he had to put it into Swedish inside his own head before he could realize it was meant for a joke. Once he figured it out, he didn’t hold back. He had a big, booming guffaw that made you want to like him. “You are wicked!” he said, plainly meaning it for a compliment.

“Thank you,” Peggy answered, deadpan, which produced another explosion of merriment from him.

“My, my,” he said. “How am I to write a story when I am laughing so hard? Let me ask you a more serious question: with all the rationing she uses, how long can Germany go on fighting?”

That was serious, all right. Peggy gave it the best answer she could: “A long time, at least by what I saw. The food isn’t so great, but there’s enough of it. Nobody’s going hungry. People can’t get many new clothes, but they can manage with their old stuff. Most of what’s new goes straight to the Wehrmacht. But I’ve heard there’s rationing in England and France, too. You’d know better than I would, and more about how tight it is.”

“I know it is there. Past that…” Landquist shrugged. “No one on either side seems happy to admit he has not got plenty of everything.”

“You’re bound to be right.”

Landquist lit a cigarette: an American Chesterfield. Seeing Peggy’s wistful stare, he offered her the pack. They hadn’t been her brand back in the USA, but they came closer than any of the European blends she’d been smoking. She sighed with pleasure after he gave her a light. Then he said, “With the fighting to our west, not many more of these will come through.”

“The war to the west is why I’m still here,” Peggy answered, floating on clouds of tobacco-flavored nostalgia. “I mean, Sweden is a nice country and everything, but I’d still rather go home. I want to, but I can’t.”

“I am sorry.” Unlike a lot of people who said that, Gunnar Landquist actually sounded as if he meant it. “If there were something I could do-”

That subjunctive was correct. Even so, most Americans would have said If there was. Sometimes you could tell foreigners because they spoke your language more accurately than you did.

“Since you cannot go, what will you do?” Landquist asked.

“Stay,” Peggy said, which made him laugh yet again. She went on, “If I have to stay somewhere that isn’t America, this is a nice place to be.”

“I am glad to hear it. I shall write it down and quote you.” Write it down he did. He tipped her a wink. “So you like us better than Germany, do you?”

“Oh, Lord, yes!” Peggy blurted. Gunnar Landquist wrote that down, too. Peggy wondered if she ought to ask him not to. If-no, when-the Germans read it, it would only piss them off. She’d been trying to avoid that, even in this interview. Well, too goddamn bad this time, she thought. It was nothing but the truth.

* * *

Theo Hossbach hadn’t much enjoyed spending a winter in the field in the Low Countries and France. By the way things were going, spending a winter in the field in Poland would be even less fun. He came from Breslau, not that far west of where he was now. Winters got pretty beastly there, too. Not so beastly as this, though. He didn’t think so, anyhow.

Adi Stoss came from some lousy little town near Munster, way the hell over on the other side of Germany. He pissed and moaned about the cold and wind like you wouldn’t believe. “This weather ought to be against the Geneva Convention,” he said with an exaggerated shiver, huddling close to the fire the panzer crew had made of boards taken from a wrecked farmhouse. The peasant whose house it had been was in no position to complain; they’d found his body, and his wife’s, and a little boy’s, in the ruins.

“Screw the weather,” Hermann Witt said. The panzer commander didn’t get far from the fire, either, no matter what he said. He wasn’t one of the people who could light a cigarette in any weather. Finally giving it up as a bad job, he went on, “What ought to be against the fucking Geneva Convention are the Russians.”

A puff of fog escaped from Adi’s mouth as he grunted. Theo made some kind of small noise, too, but the wind grabbed it and blew it away. Neither of his crewmates paid any attention. Chances were they wouldn’t have even if they’d heard him. He didn’t worry about that. It wasn’t as if he wanted people paying attention to him, for God’s sake.

Adi looked east. He pounded his mittened hands together to try to get some blood flowing in them. “You suppose it’s true? What the damn foot soldiers were going on about, I mean?”

“That the Ivans cut the cocks off our guys in that patrol they caught? That they stuffed ’em in their mouths afterwards?” Gloomily, Witt nodded. “Yeah, I believe it. I went through basic with one of the guys who found ’em. I’m not saying Benno wouldn’t tell a lie, but he wouldn’t tell that kind of lie-know what I mean?”

“I only wish I didn’t,” the driver answered. He pounded his hands some more, staring down at the ground between his feet. When he looked up again, his face seemed ravaged and old. “Here’s hoping our guys were dead before the Russkis went to work on ’em.”

“Yeah. Here’s hoping.” Witt scowled. “If I thought they were going to do that to me, I’d shoot myself first.”

“Christ, who wouldn’t?” Stoss cupped his hands in front of his crotch. “Fun old war, ain’t it?”

“Fun… Aber naturlich.” The corners of the sergeant’s mouth turned down even farther. “How the hell are you supposed to fight against people who do that kind of shit? They aren’t people, not really. Nothing but savages.”

“How do you fight ’em? You kill ’em, that’s how. And you make goddamn sure they don’t take you alive.” Adi slapped his hip. “I never let loose of my pistol these days.”

“Makes sense to me.” Witt turned to-turned on-Theo. “How about you, Hossbach?”

“Huh?” Theo said in surprise. A blush heated his face. He couldn’t leave it there. A few more words came out: “Adi usually makes sense.”

“Fat lot of good it does him, too,” Witt said. “Sorry son of a bitch is stuck in Poland just like the rest of us.”

“Oh, there are worse places,” Adi said lightly.

“Yeah?” Witt challenged. “Name two.”

“Dachau. Belsen.” All at once, Stoss’ tone wasn’t light any more. The names came off his tongue flat and hard as paving stones.

He didn’t just kill the conversation; he shot it right behind the ear. Witt got very busy-almost theatrically busy-heating meat-and-barley stew in his mess tin. The cooks coyly declined to tell their customers what kind of meat it was. That made Theo suspect it would whinny if you poked it with a fork. He’d eaten horsemeat in the field before. This had the same strong flavor and gluey texture. He didn’t worry about it. A full belly beat an empty one any day of the week.

Like Adalbert Stoss, he preferred Poland to a concentration camp inside the Reich. That didn’t mean bad things couldn’t happen to you here. The Russians announced that they weren’t shutting down for the Christmas season by shelling the hell out of the position the Wehrmacht and the Poles were holding. Shouts of “Urra!” and the rumble of enemy panzers coming forward said they weren’t kidding around, either.

As soon as the first shells burst, all the German panzer crewmen raced for their machine. Theo slammed his hatch shut behind him. A moment later, fragments clanged off the Panzer II’s hull. Theo gave the interior wall a happy pat. He pitied ground-pounders.

“Why aren’t you starting this lousy cocksucker?” Witt shouted at Adi.

“What the fuck do you think I’m trying to do?” the driver shouted back. Behind Theo, the starter motor clicked and whined. The main engine didn’t want to catch. “It’s cold outside,” Stoss added.