Harry Turtledove - West and East

“Well, the Ivans sure as shit have theirs going,” Witt said. That wasn’t good news, which was putting it mildly. Sitting in a panzer that didn’t want to move made Theo stop envying the infantry.

“Fine, Sarge,” Adi said with what sounded like patience stretched very thin. “You can go jump in a Russian panzer, if that makes you happy.” He didn’t say You can go jump in a lake, but if Theo could hear the words hanging in the air the panzer commander was bound to be able to hear them, too.

“If you don’t get us started, we’d better bail out, because one of those assholes is heading our way.” Witt’s patience was also pretty frayed. “We don’t want to be here when he starts shooting.”

“Right,” Adi said tightly, and then, to the Panzer II, “Come on, you-!” He hadn’t been in the army very long, but he cussed like a twenty-year veteran. The starter motor ground once more-and then, with a coughing roar, the main engine caught.

“There you go!” Witt yelled. “Get us moving! Make for those bushes. And for God’s sake step on it!”

Adi must have stepped on it, because the Panzer II jumped forward. Theo couldn’t see what was going on outside. How far away was the Russian panzer the commander’d been having a fit about? How soon before it opened up? The Ivans weren’t great gunners, but a hit from anything bigger than a machine-gun round would hole this thin armor.

The Panzer II’s little turret traversed. The 20mm gun fired three rounds in quick succession. These Russian panzers weren’t so tough, either. Unlike this one, their cannon could fire useful high-explosive shells and give foot soldiers something new to worry about, but the 20mm could get through their armor as easily as they could penetrate a German machine’s.

“Ha!” Witt said. “Nailed that fucker, anyhow. Now go forward. We’ll see what kind of friends were keeping him company.”

“Forward,” Adi agreed.

Forward they went. Theo’s inner ears and the seat of his coveralls would have told him so much, even absent the order. So would the radio traffic dinning in his earphones. Through the voice tube, he told Witt, “Scads of Ivans. This looks like a big push.”

“Happy day,” the panzer commander said, and then, “Thanks, Theo.” He sounded grateful that Theo was talking at all, even to relay the tactical situation. That he did announced that he was getting to know his radioman pretty well. A moment later, he told Adi, “Put us behind that stone fence. We can give them plenty of grief from there.”

“Will do,” Stoss said. The panzer stopped a few seconds later, so he’d presumably done it. The turret traversed. The main armament fired several rounds. Witt’s exultant whoop said one or two of them had done what he wanted. Then the coaxial machine gun chattered. Witt knew how to handle the MG-34: he squeezed off one short burst after another, giving the barrel time to cool between them.

More urgent shouts in Theo’s earphones. He said, “Sergeant, we’re ordered to pull back. They’re breaking through.”

“My ass they are!” Witt said indignantly. “I’ve wrecked two of their panzers and scared off the foot soldiers. And we’ve got enough infantry of our own-well, Poles, too-to keep them from flanking us out.”

“We’re ordered,” Theo repeated. “They’ve already torn a hole in our position south of here. We’ve got to retreat so we can organize the counterattack.”

“All right. I’ll do it. I’m only a fucking sergeant-I have to follow orders.” Witt couldn’t have sounded more disgusted. He added, “I sure wouldn’t want to be the dipshit officer who gave those orders, though. When the Fuhrer finds out about it, that sorry sucker’ll be lucky if he’s still a corporal. Put it in reverse, Adi-somebody with embroidered shoulder straps has the vapors.”

“I’m doing it,” the panzer driver replied, and matched action to word. Theo knew what he thought of the Fuhrer ’s military judgment (among other things). He would have been very surprised if Adi Stoss didn’t share his views: Adi probably had stronger reasons for such opinions than he did himself.

None of which would matter if the Ivans set this perambulating coffin on fire. As it did so often, the local got in the way of the general. Once they freed themselves from this mess, Theo could worry about other things. Once they did… If they did… He wished the damned panzer would go faster.

* * *

Sarah Goldman had got used to the Gestapo and the rest of the SS in Munster. Even when the blackshirts weren’t harassing her or her family, she had a feel for how often she’d see them. They’d become a familiar if unwelcome part of the local fauna, like rats or cockroaches. The comparison wasn’t hers: it came from her father in a low voice when they were both out on the street and away from any likely microphones. Once she heard it, she couldn’t get it out of her mind; it fit too well.

When she started noticing far more SS uniforms than usual, alarm filled her. One possible-even probable-reason for a swarm of SS men was a pogrom.

To her surprise, Father didn’t seem especially worried. “You may be right, of course,” Samuel Goldman said, “but they already had more people than they needed if that’s what they’ve got in mind. Importing more would be like running over a kitten with a panzer.”

Checkpoints sprang up on every other street corner. “Your papers!” a blackshirt barked at Sarah, holding out his hand.

Gulping, she gave them to him. “Here-here you are.”

He looked them over, then returned them. His lip curled; that seemed a job requirement when Sarah dealt with blackshirts. But she’d heard plenty of his colleagues who sounded nastier than he did when he asked, “You are a native of Munster? You have lived here your whole life?”

“Yes, that’s right,” she answered.

“All right, then. We don’t expect trouble tonight from your kind. Pass on,” the SS man said. He glowered at the gray-haired man behind her. “Your papers!”

Pass on Sarah did. She wanted to scratch her head. Only the fear that the SS men at the checkpoint would find the gesture suspicious made her hold back. She hurried home to help her mother peel potatoes and turnips… and to pass on the curious news.

“They could have given you a worse time, but they didn’t?” Hanna Goldman sounded as if she had trouble believing her ears. Sarah understood that. If her mother had told her the same thing, she too would have had trouble believing it. After a long pause for thought, Mother went on, “I wonder what they’re up to.”

“Beats me,” Sarah said. Noise from the usually quiet street in front of the house made them both stop peeling and hurry out to the living room to see what was going on. Teams of horses drew two enormous antiaircraft guns down the street. The men who served the guns followed in a horse-drawn wagon (but one with modern rubber tires, or it would have been much noisier). Like the fellows in charge of the gun teams, they wore SS black.

“Well, I don’t know what’s going on, either,” Hanna Goldman said. “I wonder whether anyone does these days.” That made more sense to Sarah than anything she’d heard outside the house lately.

When Father got home, he had no doubts. He seldom did. He wasn’t always right, but he was almost always sure. “Somebody important must be making a speech tonight,” he declared. “Goring? Goebbels? Hess? Any one of them is possible, but my money’s on Hitler.”

“Ah,” Sarah said. She didn’t know if he had things straight, but her money was that he did. His explanation cleared up why Munster was full of blackshirts: they were here to protect Somebody Important from the Wehrmacht… and, perhaps incidentally, from the British and French. She told her father about the antiaircraft guns and their SS crews.