Watch On The Rhine

by John Ringo

  * * *

  While cleaning his machine pistol, Krueger watched the Jews being herded into the makeshift, barbed-wire-surrounded camp dispassionately. What cared he for their cries? What cared he for their miserable whining? Were they not all enemies of the Reich? Did they not all deserve to die?

  Less dispassionately, he watched them strip. Though the Jews had been instructed to come well clothed and with money in their possession, as if for travel, he knew they would not need clothing or money where they were going. It was a useful little lie designed to make them easier to dispose of.

  The ad hoc strip show had Krueger's rapt attention. A few of them Jew whores are lookers, he thought. Shame we can't get some use out of them.

  * * *

  Manya just didn't understand it. Here was Mama, always so proper Mama, taking her clothes off here in the open. It was just wrong, wrong, wrong and Manya knew it.

  And then—unthinkable!—Mama began tugging at Manya's own clothing, a short, light summer dress. The little girl resisted until someone came by and hit Mama with a stick for being too slow. Then, her face leaking tears, Manya submitted.

  But she still didn't understand; she was only seven years old.

  * * *

  The fucking Yids have no clue yet what is going to happen to them, Krueger chortled to himself. You would think that taking away everything would have been hint enough. But no, they are still in denial, can't believe it is happening. Stupid pieces of shit; be a blessing to the world to rid it of them.

  With a click, Krueger seated a full magazine into his Schmeisser.

  * * *

  Manya promised the Germans that she would be a good girl. She promised! So she could not understand why they were hitting her and her mother to drive them from the camp. Nor did she understand the two lines of soldiers wielding sticks who drove them forward.

  Her mother tried to protect her from the blows as best she could. Even so, sometimes the soldiers hit her. And she had promised, too. Maybe the sticks wouldn't hurt so much if only she'd still had her clothes on.

  But she didn't and they did and she just didn't understand it at all.

  All she could do was cry.

  * * *

  The Jewish whore wanted to keep her brat with her, did she? Well, orders were orders and Krueger was a man who obeyed orders. The Jews were to be shot in groups of ten, not eleven. He rudely pulled the squalling naked brat out of the harridan's arms, tossed it to the ground, and then spent a few moments to cuff and kick them both into submission.

  * * *

  Manya was stunned by the German's blow as even being forced to undress in public had not stunned her. She sat naked on the bloody ground crying for her mother; a little girl's wordless, endless, wrenching cry. The mother too wept and shrieked.

  * * *

  The squalling brat's noise was irksome. Nonetheless, Krueger enjoyed the mother's shrieks as he raised the machine pistol and, like the professional he was . . . smiling, squeezed the trigger.

  * * *

  "That will be enough, Sergeant Major," said Hans as he placed a firm grip on Dieter's shoulder. "The men will be sickened enough as it is. There's no need for you to sicken them further."

  "Yes, sir," answered Krueger, will ill-concealed contempt. "They're just fucking Slavs, after all. It isn't like they're real people. I thought the boys should know that."

  "Shut up, Sergeant Major," said Hans, eyes flashing and one hand resting on his pistol. "Just shut the fuck up."

  * * *

  The combat cocoon was silent now, as was that of every Tiger along the front, of every other armored vehicle, and every infantryman's trench or bunker. Each soldier, German or Polish or Scandinavian—or on one other front, French—was left alone with his thoughts.

  Equally alone, Dieter Schultz pondered on the morrow. He had killed countless nonhumans, and as part of an execution party, one human being.

  After many weeks and months of thought, Dieter still didn't know how he felt about that. At the time it had seemed . . . right, somehow. Later on, he had begun to question.

  Truthfully, Dieter didn't know what was right anymore. War . . . twisted things, made things inconceivable become real and present. Did that poor bastard of a panzer grenadier deserve to hang? Maybe not. But had what he deserved had anything to do with anything? Again, maybe not.

  What was reality? Gudrun was dead. The panzer grenadier was dead. That was reality. There was no sense in wishing that things were any different, no sense in living an illusion.

  And tomorrow, Dieter knew, his last illusions would be stripped. Tomorrow he would enter the ranks of the real Nazis, the murderers.

  * * *

  Tiger Brünnhilde

  Hanau, Germany

  2 February 2008

  "Driver Johann?"

  "Yes Indowy Rinteel?" Mueller was so tall that the Indowy had generally avoided him to date. Perhaps it was that he was lying on his driver's couch, bringing his eyes down to Indowy level, that made conversation possible now. Then again, that every other member of the crew was sound asleep may have had something to do with it.

  "I have read your history, particularly from the last of your centuries. And I do not understand it at all."

  Mueller sighed. "Rinteel . . . neither do we."

  The little furry alien went silent then, and turned as if to leave.

  "Wait, Rinteel," Mueller said. "What part of our history don't you understand?"

  The Indowy turned back to face Mueller, lying on his couch. "Those humans you call 'Jews'? What made them the enemy? Why and how did they deserve what your people gave to them?"

  Again, Mueller sighed. How to answer such a question?

  "Rinteel, to this very day every German bright and knowledgeable enough to be entitled to an opinion goes to bed every night wondering the same thing. The Assyrians murdered cities . . . but at least they had a reason. Marcus Licinius Crassus crucified six thousand slaves along the Appian way . . . but at least he had a reason. The Mongols killed twenty million Chinese to make grazing grounds for their horses . . . but at least that was a reason. But the Jews?"

  Mueller stopped for a moment. The very insanity of his country's history weighed down upon his shoulders.

  "Rinteel, when we spent a generation getting ready for our First World War, our spiritual poet was a man named Ernst Lissauer. He wrote a poem called "Hassgesang gegen Engeland," a Song of Hate against England, rousing Germany's sons to what he thought was their true enemy. Rinteel, Ernst Lissauer was a German Jew.

  "When we rolled across the Belgian frontier, in 1914, and our soldiers were slaughtered in droves trying to storm the fortresses, the first man to win an Iron Cross for bravery in battle was a German Jew.

  "When Adolf Hitler was recommended by his lieutenant for the Iron Cross, the officer recommending him was a Jew.

  "They gave of their blood and they gave of their hearts. They fell in battle in droves for their 'German Fatherland.' Ten thousand of them fell in battle, Rinteel . . . giving all they had to give for what they thought of as their country. Rinteel, ten times that many served. More than the national average. They were us.

  "And so, Indowy Rinteel, it is as if God used us, we Germans, to some purpose of his own . . . but we just don't know."

  The Indowy digested that . . . thought upon the foolishness . . . thought upon the pain in Mueller's voice. Finally he said, "It was a madness then."

  Mueller agreed. "Yes Rinteel, it was a madness."

  PART V

  Interlude

  Ro'moloristen thought, What a magnificent madness is the Path of Fury. Stretching across the horizon to north and south as far as the God King could see from his lofty tenar, marched wave upon wave of the People.

  They marched in knots of twenty to fifty, each knot carrying by main strength a crudely lashed together wooden raft. Half the forests of France and Belgium had gone into those rafts.

  Above rode the God Kings, in numbers even greater than the leading
ranks of the People warranted. But from each tenar dangled a rope. The tenar would pull the rafts, and drag the People across the river to victory. The plasma cannon and hypervelocity missiles carried by the tenar flashed fire and hate at the defenders on the other side of the great river which fronted the host.

  The cannon of the threshkreen were not silent. Even at this distance the thunder of thousands upon thousands of the thresh's frightful artillery was a palpable fist. Their shells splashed down among the People, churning them to yellow froth and splintering their crude rafts.

  But always there were more of the People, more of the rafts approaching the river. The artillery could kill many. It could never kill all. Slowly, the People, stepping over the bodies of the slain, reached the near bank of the river.

  Ro'moloristen watched the first rank, what remained of it, disappear down into the steep river valley. He knew the People would have a nightmare of a time descending that frozen bank.

  But after that, Ro'moloristen expected things to be easier for them . . . once the threshkreen on the far bank saw that lashed to each raft, upright on posts, were anywhere from a half a dozen to a dozen thresh nestlings.

  Chapter 18

  Tiger Anna

  Oder-Niesse Line

  3 February 2008

  The pit of Hans' stomach was a leaden brick. Anna's view-screen told the entire crew more than they wished to know. The Posleen horde advanced to the shallow and now frozen river . . . and about half of the aliens carried or prodded ahead of it a human captive.

  Though the aliens and their captives were in easy range, few human defenders—and those mostly the snipers—fired upon them. Here and there Hans saw a Posleen stumble and fall, its chest or head ruined by a well-placed bullet.

  There were none of the aliens' flying sleds in the air. Those, Hans was sure, the defenders would have engaged gleefully, even as the snipers shot down any Posleen to which they had a clean shot.

  But it makes not a shit of difference, killing those few. Their numbers are, effectively, endless. And their most powerful weapons today are their captives.

  Schultz, sitting below Hans' command chair trembled, the commander saw. Glancing around the battle cocoon, Hans saw that everyone in view, from Harz to the operations officer, looked sick. Harz kept saying, over and over, "Oh, the bastards; the dirty, stinking, miserable bastards."

  My boys can't do it. They shouldn't have to do it. We never made them that kind of soldier. Shit.

  "Dieter, sit back from the gun. Anna, commander's gun." Relieved beyond words, Schultz sat back from the sight immediately.

  "Yes, Herr Oberst," the tank replied. From above, a gunner's suite, almost exactly like Schultz's, descended to encase Brasche.

  "Sergeant Major Krueger, take control of the bow guns. All others be on watch for enemy flyers but do not engage. Sergeant Major, engage at will."

  With a smile, Krueger began raking the mixed formation of humans and enemy. "Fucking Slav untermensch," he whispered. In the view-screen, men, women and children were ripped apart even as were the Posleen. The only difference was that the human's cries could be more readily understood.

  The sound was more than Hans could bear. It was as terrifying as the sergeant major's glee, and even more hurtful. "Anna, kill external microphones. Operations, pass the word to the other Tigers: only old SS will engage. New men are not to fire upon the horde except in point self-defense."

  Seeing that the operations officer understood, Hans commanded, "Load antipersonnel. Prepare for continuous antipersonnel."

  The loader pressed the required buttons. From Anna's ammunition rack hydraulics withdrew a single canister cartridge and fed it to the gun.

  * * *

  Tiger Brünnhilde

  Hanau, Germany

  3 February 2008

  "Feed it to them, Reinhard, feed it to the bastards."

  "Hit!" announced Schlüssel, as a small new sun formed and deformed thirty kilometers up.

  "Mueller, hard right."

  Even held securely as he was by his straps, Rinteel felt the sudden, jarring turn as the driver twisted the tank and raced forward to get out of the expected Posleen riposte. As always, the Indowy was terrified speechless. As always, he was disgusted at the slaughter his human comrades were inflicting upon the Posleen when he allowed himself to think upon it.

  And yet . . . and yet . . . familiarity had dulled the fear. The disgust was severe still, but not the paralyzing force it had been. It was a remarkable thing to the Indowy, to be not so afraid as the situation warranted. More remarkable still was it to be less disgusted by the slaughter his mind envisioned. He was finding he could face both fear of dying and fear of killing a bit better than he had ever imagined.

  And, too, Rinteel was discovering that he could kill, had killed, vicariously and without any moral dilemma. After all, though it was the crew that fired the gun, it was he, Rinteel, who made sure that gun was in full operating order. And he thought, And though it is the humans who actually fight the Posleen; it is we, the Indowy, who build them the weapons to fight with. How pure we think ourselves, how above the blood and slaughter. Yet that slaughter would be impossible without us. A foolish people mine, to think that distance from murder turns it into something besides murder.

  * * *

  Tiger Anna

  Oder-Niesse Line

  3 February 2008

  God, I was a soldier, not a murderer. Do you hate me so much then, that even this sin I must commit.

  Hans' loader, eyes fixed on the screen before him, announced, "Up!"

  Through his helmet's VR, Hans looked upon the frozen-over river. He could see that Krueger's bow guns were having an effect. He could also see that effect was not enough.

  Hans' vision fixated on a screaming little blond Polish girl held firmly in the grasp of an alien.

  Look at the little girl, Brasche. You have killed hundreds of people in your life, maybe thousands. You tried to think they were all armed enemies. Yes, on how many villages did your fire fall, villages containing little girls like that one? On how many did you call artillery? For how many did the armored spearheads of which you were a part open the way for the Einsatzgruppen? You are already a murderer ten thousand times over.

  What are a few thousand more, after all?

  Hans thought, Anna, forgive me. If this causes me never to come to you, forgive me please. Hans' finger pressed the firing stud.

  * * *

  Wiesbaden, Germany

  3 February 2008

  Thomas' hand hesitated over the detonator. He could see the bridge. He could see, too, the horde of aliens crossing on it. But he could also see and hear the mass of French civilians the aliens drove among and ahead of them. Again and again the young French soldier tried to force his hand to complete the circuit. Again and again he failed.

  Nearby, Sergeant Gribeauval fired his rifle at the crossing aliens.

  "Damn it, boy, blow the bridge!" he screamed.

  The boy stammered, "I . . . I . . . I can't, Sergeant."

  "Merde," the sergeant said. He was barely keeping the leading Posleen away from the wires that connected the detonator with the explosives affixed to the bridge, just barely. He couldn't get away from his firing position long enough to set off the charges without risking that those charges would be made ineffective in that time. "Boy, drop the bridge!"

  "Sergeant, I am trying . . . but . . ."

  Gribeauval turned from the firing position. "Merde! Just do it!"

  Thomas looked at the sergeant, wide-eyed and fearful, just in time to see Gribeauval's head explode from a Posleen railgun round. The boy was flecked with the sergeant's blood and brains. Morally frozen as he had been, his terror left him utterly paralyzed.

  And, while the boy was so paralyzed, the leading Posleen tore out the demolition's wiring.

  * * *

  Isabelle trembled with fright. People passed by the field hospital, fleeing to the north. The staff was in turmoil, in a shouting, scream
ing panic.

  The enemy was over the Rhine.

  With shaking hand Isabelle made a call to the house she lived in with her son. Briefly, she told her hosts the terrible news, then asked them to see that her boy was dressed and sent to her. They promised they would do so.

  Medical orderlies carried away on stretchers those wounded that the doctors thought had some chance. As a truck was filled with wounded it headed away to some unknown destination to the north. Yet the supply of wounded was so much greater than the supply of trucks.

  Around her was the din of dozens of moaning, wounded soldiers. A doctor walked among them, announcing, "Routine . . . Urgent . . . Expectant."

  That was the dread word: "Expectant." Expected to die.

  "Mon dieu, Doctor, what are we going to do for those poor boys we can't evacuate?"

  "We have hiberzine for some of them, the ones we might have some small chance of saving," he answered. The doctor's mouth formed a moue. "But we really don't have very much of it. Most will have to be abandoned."

  Isabelle went white. "Abandon them? To be eaten? My God, no, Doctor. We must do something?"

  "What do you suggest Madame De Gaullejac?"

  "I don't know . . . but something, surely. Oh, my God . . . I don't know."

  Then her eyes fell upon a field cabinet she knew contained syringes and various medicines, painkillers mostly.

  "There are better ways to die, Doctor, than being eaten, are there not?"

  Following her gaze to the cabinet he answered, "There are if you are strong enough. I tell you though, madame, I am not."

  * * *

  Tiger Anna

  Oder-Niesse Line

  3 February 2008

  I must be strong, insisted Hans as he fired yet another round of canister into the mixed Posleen-human mass. He found that he was unconsciously unfocusing his eyes to spare himself a clear view of the carnage he had been, and was, causing.

  They had changed firing positions three times now, Anna and her crew. From each position Hans had sent out two to three canister rounds, each shot effectively obliterating most Posleen and human life from an area of roughly one million square meters.