The War That Came Early: West and East

by Harry Turtledove

  “Not this time,” Hans-Ulrich said.

  “I knew you’d say that, too.” Dieselhorst stepped well away from the Stuka to light a cigarette. “Well, we’ll go on and hit the Reds a good lick. If you think I’m going to sing songs about how wonderful Stalin is, you’re even crazier than I give you credit for … sir.” He blew out a stream of smoke.

  They slept in tents guarded by Waffen-SS men. When they got mush and doughy sausages and ersatz coffee the next morning, the fellow who served them wore the SS runes on his fatigue uniform. No one said much at breakfast. Even Hans-Ulrich was sure the mess-hall attendants who carried off the dirty dishes were listening.

  Going back to the airplanes was a relief. Flying off toward the front in the east was a bigger one. At the front, things were simple. You knew who was a friend and who was a foe. Politics didn’t get in the way—not so much, anyhow.

  Before long, the communication from the ground came from men who spoke German with an odd accent, stressing the next-to-last syllable of every word whether they should have or not. “I’d say we’re over Poland,” Dieselhorst remarked through the speaking tube.

  “I’d say you’re right,” Hans-Ulrich answered. A flight of gull-winged monoplane fighters badged with the Polish red and white four-square checkerboard paced the Stukas, escorting them through an ally’s airspace. That Poland was an ally most Germans disliked almost as much as the Soviet enemy didn’t matter … for the moment.

  Hans-Ulrich eyed the fighters with wary attention. He didn’t think they were anywhere near so good as German Bf-109s. Of course, they wouldn’t have to be anywhere near that good to make mincemeat of a Stuka squadron. But they just flew along, friendly as could be. One of the Polish pilots caught Rudel’s eye and waved. Hans-Ulrich waved back. What else was he going to do?

  He also kept a wary eye out for Russian fighters. The Reds had monoplanes and biplanes, both models with noticeably flat noses. German pilots who’d faced them in Spain said they weren’t so good as Messerschmitts, either. Again, though, they didn’t need to be to shoot him down. How did they stack up against these Polish planes? He didn’t know, and hoped he wouldn’t have to find out.

  A couple of antiaircraft guns fired on the Stukas when they flew over Warsaw. Colonel Steinbrenner screamed at the Poles over the radio. The firing abruptly cut off. It hadn’t hit anybody. What that said about Polish air defenses … It sure didn’t say anything good.

  They landed at an airstrip about forty kilometers east of the capital. When Hans-Ulrich got out of his Ju-87, artillery was grumbling in the middle distance. Well, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t heard the same thing plenty of times in the Low Countries and France. He wasn’t used to hearing it come out of the east, though.

  And he wasn’t used to the scenery, either. The land looked almost as flat as if it had been ironed. A cold wind that had a long start did its best to blow right through him. He was glad for his fur-and-leather flying suit. Off in the distance, a shabby village looked like something out of the seventeenth century, at least to his jaundiced eye.

  To Sergeant Dieselhorst’s, too. “Jesus, what a dump!” the noncom said.

  “Now that you mention it, yes,” Hans-Ulrich said.

  “Don’t let the Poles hear you talk like that, or they’ll smash your face for you,” a groundcrew man advised. “They think we’re on their side, not the other way around.”

  That made Hans-Ulrich laugh out loud. “And the flea thinks the dog is his horse, too,” he said scornfully. “We’ve got our soldiers and our planes here, and we aren’t going to leave until we’re good and ready.” If the Poles didn’t like that, it was their hard luck. They were only Poles, after all.

  Chapter 25

  No one had ever claimed Wales was a place where you went to enjoy the weather. There were good and cogent reasons why no one had ever said such a damnfool thing. Alistair Walsh had seen plenty of bad weather there, and even more in his army service. All the same, he’d never imagined anything like winter in central Norway.

  The wind howled like a wolf. Snow blew as near horizontal as made no difference. He had a wool balaclava under his tin hat and a sheepskin coat a herder had pressed on him that was far warmer than his British-issue greatcoat. He wore greatcoat and sheepskin one on top of the other, and two pairs of mittens on his hands. He was cold anyway.

  A British captain who was stumbling north with him said something. Whatever it was, that vicious wind blew it away. “Sorry, sir?” Walsh shouted back.

  “I said”—the captain put his mouth as close to Walsh’s ear as a lover might—“I said, without the bloody Gulf Stream, this country wouldn’t be habitable at all.”

  Walsh considered that. “Who says it is, sir?”

  “Ha!” The officer nodded. “Makes you understand why the Vikings went pirating so often, what?”

  “Damned if it doesn’t,” Walsh agreed. “Even Scotland looks good next to this, and by God I never thought I’d say that in this life.” The country up in the north there was bleak as could be, but this outdid it.

  After nodding again, the captain said, “No fucking Germans in Scotland, either.”

  “Right.” Walsh wished there were no Germans in Norway, either. Unfortunately, wishing didn’t make them go away. They weren’t nearly far enough behind the retreating Allies. German mountain troops had snowshoes and skis, and moved much faster than poor ordinary buggers stumbling up these indifferent roads.

  Oh, the Norwegians had ski troops, too, and a few French chasseurs alpins were also equipped for winter warfare. But most of the allied expeditionary force was plain old infantry. And the plain old infantry was in trouble.

  “One good thing,” the captain bawled into Walsh’s none too shell-like ear.

  “What’s that, sir?” Walsh answered. “It’s one more than I’ve come up with.”

  “With the weather so beastly, the Luftwaffe can’t get off the ground.”

  “Mm. There is that,” Walsh said. “We can get shot and shelled, but the blighters won’t bomb us for a while.”

  “Of course, our own planes are also grounded.”

  “Yes, sir,” Walsh replied, and said not another word. The Luftwaffe ruled the skies in Norway and above the seas west of it. The RAF, along with a few French planes and what little was left of the Norwegian air force, did what it could against the Germans, but it wasn’t enough. Stukas swooped, sirens screaming. Messerschmitts strafed almost as they pleased. The Fritzes’ artillery spotting planes, the ones that could take off and land in next to nothing and hover in a headwind like a kestrel, flew here, there, and everywhere, showing the Nazis what to strike next. Clear weather favored the enemy. Well, there hadn’t been much of it lately.

  He trudged on. For all he could tell, the Germans were shelling them right now. The wind and snow cocooned him tightly. If the bastards didn’t score a direct hit, he’d never know it. And if they did, he figured he’d end up in a warmer place than this. At the moment, eternal flame didn’t seem half bad.

  “Do you think they’ll be able to pull us out, sir?” he asked.

  “Maybe. If the bad weather holds and lets our ships into Namsos,” the captain answered. He studied Walsh. The veteran noncom wondered why; neither of them showed more than his eyes. “What about you, Sergeant? I daresay you have more experience in these matters than I do.”

  Walsh only shrugged. “I may be older than you are, sir, but I’ve never been in anything like this.”

  “Last bugger who was in anything like this was Scott, and look what happened to him.” The captain laughed harshly. “No, there was bloody Amundsen, too, and he was a Norwegian himself. He must have felt right at home at the South Pole, eh?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me one bit.” Walsh turned away from the wailing wind, cupped his hands, and lit a cigarette. Some people could strike a match in any weather, no matter how dreadful. The harsh smoke—he’d taken a packet of Gitanes off a dead Frenchman—gave him something to think about besides the bliz
zard.

  “If only the German generals had given Hitler the boot,” the captain said.

  “If ifs and buts were candied nuts, we’d all have a bloody good Christmas,” Walsh answered. “D’you really suppose they would have stopped the war? They’re Fritzes, too, remember. I’ve never known those sons of bitches to pack it in while they can still fight.”

  “Something to that, I shouldn’t wonder,” the captain said. He brought up a mittened hand to the brim of his helmet. “Some sort of checkpoint up ahead.”

  “Maybe they’ll tell us which way Namsos is.” Walsh wasn’t a hundred percent sure he’d been going north. He’d been steering more by the wind than by anything else: that and flocking with his friends. If they were wrong, so was he. Sheep liked to flock together.

  “Maybe they will,” the captain said as he and Walsh neared the crossroads. A squad’s worth of men stood there—vague shapes through the flying snow. The officer let out a formidable bellow: “I say! Which way to Namsos?”

  They didn’t answer (or if they did, Walsh couldn’t hear them, which was at least as likely). The staff sergeant clumped on. He and the captain were almost close enough to spit on the waiting soldiers when the other man shouted his question once more.

  They heard him this time. One of them answered, “For you it does not matter.”

  “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” the captain said indignantly.

  “Sir—” Walsh grabbed his arm. “Sir, he’s got a Schmeisser!” One German submachine gun wouldn’t have meant much—he carried a Schmeisser himself. But … “They’ve all got Schmeissers!”

  “You are our prisoners, gentlemen,” the German said in excellent English. “Drop your weapons and raise your hands. Try nothing foolish. It would be the last mistake you ever made—you may be sure of that.”

  Some of the men with them started laying their rifles on the snowy ground. Walsh didn’t know what made him take off and run. Stupidity, odds were. But there were a few soldiers between him and the Boches, and the sheepskin coat was a dirty white that might camouflage him in the swirling snow. Maybe they wouldn’t even notice he was missing.

  The captain ran with him. Misery loving company? Whatever it was, it queered the deal. The Fritzes shouted. Shouting was bad enough. Then they started shooting, and that was a lot worse. But sure as hell, they couldn’t exactly see what they were shooting at. Some of the flying bullets came pretty close to Walsh, but he’d had plenty of nearer misses. And Schmeissers, wonderful as they were in close-in combat, weren’t the least bit accurate out past a couple of hundred yards.

  They could run after him. He risked a look back over his shoulder. They were running after him, as a matter of fact. It wasn’t as if he didn’t leave a big, juicy trail in the snow. But if he could get to the pine woods a bit more than a quarter of a mile away before he got shot or tackled, they’d have a lot more trouble catching up to him.

  That captain—Walsh wasn’t even sure of his name—was running on a different line. If the Germans wanted to grab both of them, they’d have to split up. They might not like that. Maybe the Allied soldiers were leading them into an ambush.

  Maybe there weren’t any more Allied soldiers for miles and miles. That was what Walsh feared most. In that case, he was running for nothing. He might end up freezing to death for nothing, too. Was England worth it? His feet must have thought so, or they never would have taken off.

  As he panted toward the pines, he damned all his years and damned all his cigarettes—except he wanted another Gitane. Well, that would have to wait. Couldn’t those young, fit Nazi privates outrun an old reprobate like him? Evidently not, because he got into the woods ahead of them.

  It was like being in among all the Christmas trees in the world—little ones, big ones, enormous ones. Even the smell was right. He yanked his Schmeisser off his shoulder and put a couple of Mills bombs in the sheepskin coat’s right-hand pocket. Now he could fight if he had to. He wasn’t just a target the Germans hadn’t been able to knock down.

  Which way was north? He hadn’t been sure before, and now he’d got all turned around. It would be a hell of a note if he blundered straight back to the Fritzes, wouldn’t it? They didn’t seem eager to come into the woods after him. Nor could he blame them. A man might get hurt trying something like that. Capturing troops who didn’t even realize you were on the other side was a hell of a lot easier.

  “Fuck ’em all,” he muttered, and his breath smoked around him even though he hadn’t pulled that next Gitane out of its packet. He thought north was that way. If he turned out to be wrong, well, he’d given it his best shot. The Germans might be taking Norway, but they hadn’t taken him. Yet.

  CHAIM WEINBERG HAD A NEW SACRED TEXT from which to preach. “Thieves fall out,” he told the Nationalist prisoners in the park in Madrid. “The Germans are fighting among themselves. Some of them can see that Hitler is only leading them into disaster. And if that is true for Germany, isn’t it even more true for Spain?”

  He got somber looks from the POWs. German efficiency was a watchword in Spain, especially among the Nationalists. If the gangsters who lined up behind Hitler could go for each other’s throats, what about the goons who said they were for Sanjurjo? What would they do if they saw a better deal in going out on their own? It was something for everybody to think about, not just a bunch of hapless prisoners. It seemed that way to Chaim, anyhow.

  Because it seemed that way to him, he said so to anyone who would listen. He had discovered his inner missionary while haranguing the POWs. What he hadn’t discovered was how to make his inner missionary shut up.

  He got into arguments in line for meals. He got into arguments in cantinas, and on street corners. He got into fights, too. He won more often than he lost. Few people who hadn’t been to the front wasted less time fighting clean than he did. After he left a couple of loudmouthed Spaniards groaning on cantina floors—and after he discouraged their friends with a foot-long bayonet held in an underhand grip that warned he knew just what to do with it (which he did)—the arguments stayed verbal. He got a name for himself: eso narigón loco—that crazy kike. He wore it with pride.

  Of course, by running his mouth he also set himself up for Party discipline. He’d faced Party discipline in the States. They told you to quit doing whatever you were doing that they didn’t like. Either you did or you dropped out of the Party.

  Party discipline in Spain was a different business. They told you to quit doing whatever you were doing that they didn’t like. Either you did or they threw your sorry ass into a Spanish jail or a punishment company or they said to hell with it and shot you.

  Chaim wasn’t altogether surprised when a scared-looking runner summoned him to appear before a Party organizer and explain himself. He wasn’t altogether thrilled, either, which was putting it mildly. But what choice did he have? He could try going over to the Nationalists, assuming they or the Republicans didn’t shoot him while he was trying to desert. But that would have gagged a vulture. He certainly couldn’t stomach it himself.

  And so he reported to the organizer. She had her office in a beat-up building (the most common kind in embattled Madrid) that had housed government bureaucrats before the Spanish civil war got going. That she was a she he’d inferred from the nom de guerre the runner gave him: La Martellita, the Little Hammer (with feminine article and ending). That was a good name—Molotov meant son of a hammer, too.

  Sure as the devil, she wasn’t very big. He’d expected that. He hadn’t expected her to be drop-dead gorgeous, but she was: blue-black hair, flashing dark eyes, cheekbones, a Spanish blade of a nose, and the most kissable mouth he’d ever seen. That she looked at him as if he were a donkey turd in the gutter somehow only made her more beautiful. He had no idea how come, but it did.

  “Well, Comrade, why are you throwing around such bad ideology?” she snapped, her voice cold as the North Pole.

  “I did it so I could meet you,” Chaim answered. Not for the first time
in his life, his mouth ran several lengths ahead of his brain. “People said you were very pretty, and they were right.”

  “If you think you can flatter me, you had better think again,” La Martellita said, in tones not a tenth of a degree warmer than they were before. “You will only end up digging a deeper hole for yourself—maybe one deep enough to bury you in.” She sounded as if she looked forward to shoveling dirt over him. Odds were she did.

  “I have a question for you,” Chaim said.

  “Yes?” she asked ominously.

  “What’s your real name?”

  “None of your business.”

  “That’s a funny name,” he said. Her nostrils flared, and not with pleasure. He sighed. “Okay. Um, bueno. I have another question for you.”

  “If you keep wasting my time, you’ll regret it.”

  “I believe you,” he said … regretfully. “Why is it such a sin to say the Fascists have contradictions of their own, and that we ought to do everything we can to take advantage of them?”

  “Because you are only a soldier,” she answered. “Higher-level policy is none of your business—none, do you hear me? For all you know, for all I know, for all anyone knows, we are trying to exploit those contradictions. But soldiers have no business proposing policy.”

  “I’m not just a soldier,” he said. “I’m a propagandist, too, trying to bring Nationalist soldiers over to the Republic. If I can’t talk politics with them, I can’t do my job.”

  “Did you get your views approved before you presented them?” La Martellita asked.

  “Uh—no,” Chaim admitted. He was a Communist, a loyal Communist. But he was also an American. He was used to doing things on his own hook and worrying about consequences later. Well, here it was, later, and here were the consequences. If this stunner in shapeless denim coveralls—a crime, that!—wanted him shot, shot he damn well would be.