“Resume our previous course,” he told the helmsman. “We’ll celebrate properly when we’re clear.”
“Resuming previous course.” The petty officer grinned. Schnapps was against regulations—which didn’t mean people wouldn’t get a knock after a triumph like this.
These days, the British Expeditionary Force was mechanized. That meant Staff Sergeant Alistair Walsh got to ride a lorry from Calais to this piddlepot hole in the ground somewhere right next to the Belgian border. Then he jumped down out of the lorry…and he was back in the mud again. Twenty years unwound as if they had never been.
If anything, this was worse than what he’d known in 1918. He’d fought through the spring and summer then, and got wounded early in fall. Guys who’d been through the mill talked about how miserable trenches got when it was cold and wet. Guys who’d been through the mill always talked. This time, they were right.
He squelched when he walked. So did everybody else. People screamed “Keep your feet dry!” the same way they screamed “Always wear a rubber!” Not too many people listened—and wasn’t that a surprise? The first cases of trench foot meant rockets went up from the people with red stripes on their caps.
Walsh remembered a trick he’d heard about in the last war. “Rub your feet with Vaseline, thick as you can,” he told the men in his company. “Do your damnedest to keep your socks dry, but greasing’s better than nothing.”
Only one man came down with trench foot, and he didn’t follow instructions. “Good job, Sergeant,” said Captain Ted Peters.
“Thank you, sir,” Walsh answered. He was old enough to be the company commander’s father, but he would have had to start mighty young. “Some of these buggers haven’t got the sense God gave a Frenchman.”
“Or a Belgian.” Peters scratched at his skinny little mustache. Walsh didn’t think much of the modern fashion. If he was going to grow hair on his upper lip, he wanted a proper mustache, not one that looked put on with a burnt match. But he couldn’t deny that the captain was a clever bloke. Peters went on, “You know why we haven’t crossed the border and taken up positions where we might do some good?”
“Belgians haven’t invited us in, like,” Walsh answered.
“That’s right. They’re neutral, don’t you know?” The way Captain Peters rolled his eyes told what he thought of that. “They think they’ll offend the Boches if they get ready to defend themselves. Much good that kind of thing did them in 1914.”
Maybe he’d been born in 1914. Maybe not, too. Either way, he was right. “The Germans jumped them then. They’ll jump them again. Hitler’s a bigger liar than the damned Kaiser ever was,” Walsh said.
“Too bloody right he is,” Captain Peters agreed. “You can see that. I can, too. So why can’t King Leopold?”
“Because he’s a bleeding idiot…sir?” Walsh suggested. “Like one of those ostriches, with its head in the sand?”
“He’s got his head up his arse,” Peters said. Walsh goggled; he hadn’t thought the captain talked like that. “Thinks the French are as bad as the Germans. Thinks we are, for Christ’s sake.”
“What can you expect from a wog?” Walsh said. As far as he was concerned, wogs started on the far side of the Channel. The French were wogs on his side, which meant he cut them some slack. The Belgians weren’t, and he didn’t.
He had genuine respect for the bastards in the field-gray uniforms and the coal-scuttle helmets. The Germans fought hard, and in the last war they’d fought as clean as anyone else. What more could you want from the enemy?
Patiently, Captain Peters answered the question he’d meant as rhetorical: “I would expect an ounce of sense. If the balloon goes up—no, when it goes up—we’re going to have to rush forward to reach the positions we should already have. So will the French. That will give the Germans extra time to advance and consolidate, time they simply shouldn’t have.”
“What can we do about it, sir?” Walsh said.
“Damn all,” the company commander replied, which was about what the sergeant had expected. “Leopold won’t listen to reason.”
“Maybe something ought to happen to him—an accident, like,” Walsh said. “Not cricket, I know, but…Got to be some Belgians what can add two and two, right?”
“You’d think so. But if we try something like that and muck it up, what happens then?” This time, Peters answered his own question: “We throw Leopold into Hitler’s arms, that’s what. If the Belgians line up with Germany, we’re buggered for fair.”
Sergeant Walsh only grunted. He didn’t worry about Belgian soldiers. Who in his right mind would? But a Belgium leaning toward Hitler gave the Germans a red carpet for invading France. As soon as he called up a map in his mind, he saw as much. “We’d best not muck it up, then,” he said.
Peters lit a cigarette. Then he offered Walsh the packet, which an officer didn’t have to do. Walsh took a coffin nail and sketched a salute. Peters’ cheeks hollowed as he sucked in smoke. “Don’t get your hopes up for anything like that, Sergeant,” he said. “Not bloody likely, no matter how much sense it makes. The Belgies like Leopold, same as we like our King. That’s what he’s there for—to be liked.”
“Edward’s gone,” Walsh pointed out.
Now Captain Peters grunted. “You like to argue, don’t you?” he said, but a chuckle told the sergeant he wasn’t really angry. “If you could arrange for Leopold to fall in love with a popsy…”
“Could I have a couple of months’ leave to set it up, sir?”
“Why would you need so bloody long?”
“Well, sir, I’ve got to try out the popsies, don’t I, to see which one he’d like best,” Walsh answered innocently.
That won him a snort from the company commander. “Sorry, Walsh.” He looked east, across the Belgian frontier. “I’m not at all sure we’ve got two months.”
ONCE UPON A TIME, U.S. MARINES swaggered through the streets of Peking. People got out of the way for them. They had to be careful nowadays, though. They still counted for more than the Chinese did. But when Japanese soldiers came through, the leathernecks had to be the ones who stepped aside. Orders said so.
Pete McGill hated the orders, even though he understood the need for them. One Marine could wipe the floor with one Japanese soldier. Four or five Marines could lick four or five Japanese soldiers. The little men were plenty tough, but they were little.
And a platoon of Japanese soldiers could beat and stomp four or five Marines if they found any excuse to do it. They had, once or twice. U.S. military authorities protested when it happened. The Japs ignored the protests. As far as they were concerned, Peking was theirs now. All the other foreign troops stayed there on sufferance.
So now the idea was not to give them any excuses. “Hell of a note,” Corporal McGill complained. He and some of his buddies had just come out of the Yü Hua T’ai—the Restaurant of Rich and Fine Viands. He was full of shrimp and scallops, the specialties of the house, or he would have complained more. But he was also full of kao liang, which was brewed from millet and strong as the devil (some people said the Chinese also threw in pigeon droppings to give it extra body).
“Damn straight.” Herman Szulc knew what Pete was talking about. The big Polack had taken aboard even more kao liang than he had. Szulc got mean when he drank, too. “Ought to bust those little cocksucking monkeys right in the chops, just to show ‘em they can’t get away with shit like that.”
“Ain’t supposed to,” Pooch Puccinelli said. He always did exactly what he was told, and worried about everything else later. That made him a damn good Marine. Had the orders been to jump on the Japs with both feet, he would have. Since they were to go easy, he obeyed again—and he would do his damnedest to make sure everybody else followed along.
Szulc scowled at him. “I don’t got no orders not to bust you in the chops.”
“Well, you can try,” Pooch answered. Without orders, he didn’t back away from anything or anybody.
“Cut the
crap, both of you,” McGill said. He didn’t want to have to break up a brawl between his pals. He didn’t want to get sucked into one, either. “What do you say we go get our ashes hauled?”
“Now you’re talking!” Puccinelli was always ready for that. Herman Szulc didn’t say no. What Marine would have? Peking was pussy paradise. There were lots of whorehouses, they were cheap, most of the girls were pretty, and all of them were versatile. The only drawback was, it was mighty easy to come down venereal. Flunk a shortarm inspection, and the Corps landed on you like a ton of bricks.
With money in his pocket and kao liang in his veins, Pete wasn’t inclined to worry about that—not now, anyway. Even a Marine corporal was a rich man in Peking. He knew damn well the Restaurant of Rich and Fine Viands had overcharged him and his pals as much as the Chinamen thought they could get away with. He didn’t care…too much. The chow was good, and it was still damn cheap. Whorehouses worked the same way. You could get whatever you wanted, and it wouldn’t cost you half of what you’d pay in Honolulu or San Diego. The Chinese put down less? Well, so what?
The Marines came out of Hsi La Hutung—an alleyway wider than McGill’s wingspan, but not by a whole lot—and out onto Morrison Street. Somebody’d told McGill that the Chinese name for the street was Main Street of the Well of the Prince’s Palace, but it was Morrison Street to all the foreigners in Peking. Iron sheeting covered the well these days, but people still shoved it out of the way and drew up water every now and then. Some of the Royal Marines said Morrison had been a writer for the Times of London, and he’d lived at Number 98. Nowadays, an Italian firm occupied the building.
Chinese on foot, Chinese on bicycles, plump Chinese riding in rickshaws pulled by gaunt Chinese, older Chinese women hobbling along on what they called lotus feet, Chinese (inevitably) selling things, Chinese spitting and blowing their noses…
Chinese scrambling out of the way…Chinese leaping from the street onto the rickety sidewalks…Chinese bowing low…
“Oh, fuck,” Puccinelli said. “Here come those goddamn slant-eyed mothers.”
Chinese were slant-eyed, too, but Pooch wasn’t talking about them. Up Morrison Street came a long column of Japanese soldiers. They marched in formation, a bayoneted rifle on each tough little man’s right shoulder. When a noncom spotted a Chinaman who failed to show proper respect, four Japs jumped out of the line, grabbed the offender, and kicked him and beat him with rifle butts. They left him groaning and bloody and hustled back into place.
“Nod to the slanty bastards,” McGill said. He met a Japanese sergeant’s eye and nodded, equal to equal. The Jap gazed back. His gaze showed nothing for a moment. But then he nodded back. He’d won the exchange—Pete had acknowledged him first.
The other Marines also nodded to the Japanese troops. They got a few nods in return. Most of the Japs just ignored them. Nobody gave them a hard time. As far as Pete was concerned, that would do fine.
When the tail of the column got out of earshot, Szulc said, “Been a lot of the little monkeys going through town lately.”
“Yeah.” McGill nodded. “I hear they’re mostly getting on trains and heading north.”
“They gonna finally get off the pot with the Russians?” Szulc said. “Talk about deserving each other…” No Marine in Peking felt anything better than grudging respect for the Japanese, and Pete had never run into a Polack who had anything good to say about Russians.
“Who cares? That ain’t our worry any which way. We were gonna get laid, remember?” Puccinelli kept his mind firmly on what mattered—or in the gutter, depending on how you looked at things.
NUMBER 1 GOOD TIME, the joyhouse said in English. It had a bigger sign in Chinese. Pete would have bet that was dirtier. The Chinese had no idea what shame was, as far as he could see.
“Marines!” the madam exclaimed. Meal tickets! was what it sounded like. Sure as hell, they would have to pay more for this than the locals did, too. “Make you happy!” the middle-aged woman went on. Make me rich, she probably meant. Her cut of the wages of sin looked pretty nice. She wore brocaded silk. Gold gleamed around her neck and on her fingers and ears; jewels sparkled in her hair.
“Show us the girls!” That was Szulc, who also didn’t believe in dicking around when it came to dicking around.
“Yes, yes, yes!” The madam was all smiles. Pete McGill heard the ching of a cash register in her agreement. Well, what the hell did you expect when you went to a whorehouse? This gal had blond sisters back in the States. He’d dealt with his share of them. All the same, it did take a little of the edge off.
He got the edge back when he picked his girl. She reminded him of a Siamese cat, except her eyes weren’t blue. He paid the madam and took the girl upstairs.
His being large and hairy didn’t faze her. She wasn’t just in from the countryside, then; she’d seen round-eyes before. She didn’t know any English, though. Oh, well, McGill thought. He could show her what he wanted. He could—and he did.
The way she gasped and squeezed him inside at the end made him think he brought her off, too. Of course, whores were part actresses. If they made the john think he was a prize stud, he’d shell out more. And Pete did give her an extra dollar, saying, “Don’t tell the old bitch downstairs.”
She hugged him and kissed him and made the fat silver coin disappear even though she was naked. Pete didn’t see exactly where it went. Into her lacquered hair? Or…? He shrugged. It wasn’t his worry.
Szulc was sitting in the waiting room when he got down there. Puccinelli took longer coming back. “Twice!” he said proudly.
“You went off in your pants the first time?” McGill gibed.
“Not likely!” Pooch said. “You shoulda heard that broad squeal!”
“Thank you! Thank you! Drink?” the madam said. Herman Szulc looked ready, but Pete shook his head and steered his buddies out.
“You don’t wanna have any fun,” Szulc complained.
“I don’t wanna get drugged and rolled,” McGill answered. “I may be dumb, but I ain’t that dumb. If I was a regular there, I might chance it, but not when it’s my first time in the joint.”
“Let’s go some place where they do know us and drink there,” Pooch said.
“Now you’re talking!” Szulc said. It sounded good to Pete, too.
When they got back to the barracks, they were drunk as lords. The next morning, McGill repented of his sins. Coffee and aspirins blunted down the whimwhams without stopping them.
Pete felt so rotten, he almost forgot about the long column of Japanese troops he’d seen the night before. Almost, but not quite. He reported to Captain Horner, his company commander.
Horner heard him out, then nodded. “Uh-huh,” the officer said thoughtfully. “You think they were going to head north?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure, sir,” McGill replied. “If I was a betting man, though, that’s how I’d lay my money.”
“If you were a betting man…” Horner snorted. “You’d bet on how many raindrops landed in a pail in twenty minutes.” He had a Tidewater accent thick enough to slice. A hell of a lot of Marines, and especially Marine officers, had a drawl. And Captain Horner knew him damn well.
“One good thing, sir,” McGill said. The captain raised a blond eyebrow. Pete went on, “If the Japs are heading north like that, they ain’t gonna jump on us right away.”
“You hope,” Horner said. Pete nodded. The company CO was right. He sure as hell did hope.
INTERNED. OFFICIALLY, VACLAV JEZEK WAS classed as a displaced person. It wasn’t quite the same as being a POW. The Poles were treating all the Czechs who’d got over the border—soldiers and civilians, men, women, and children—the same way.
Yeah, they were treating them all the same way, all right. They were treating them all like dogs.
Barbed wire fenced off the Czechs’ encampment from the rest of Poland. Poles with rifles and sandbagged machine-gun nests made sure the Czechs didn’t come through the wire. The D
Ps lived under canvas despite rain and cold. They ate Polish army rations. That was what the Poles claimed, anyhow. If it was true, Vaclav pitied Polish soldiers.
Most of the Polish guards treated the Czech men—and especially the soldiers—like animals in the zoo. (Quite a few of them were friendly to the Czech women—what a surprise! And some of the women gave their all, too, for better food or more food or whatever else they happened to need.)
A few of the guards turned out to be human beings in spite of being Poles—that was how Jezek saw it, anyhow, though he wasn’t an unbiased observer. He could talk to them in bits of Czech and Polish and in (dammit!) German. “We don’t want you people here,” one of the decent guards said. “You embarrass us.”
“Why?” Vaclav said. “All we did was get out alive after the fucking Nazis went and jumped us.”
“But Poland and Germany are friends,” the Polish soldier said. “That’s why we don’t want you here.”
“Friends with Germany? God help you!” Jezek said. “Is the pig friends with the farmer? Till he’s a ham, he is.”
The Pole—his name was Leszek—pointed east. “Germany keeps the Russians away. Better Hitler than Stalin any day.”
“Better anybody than Hitler,” Vaclav said stubbornly. “Anybody. Better the Devil than Hitler.”
Leszek crossed himself. “Stalin is the Devil. He turns churches into stables and brothels. And half the Reds who run Russia are kikes. Hitler knows what to do about them, by God. We ought to give ours what-for, too. If we don’t, they’ll steal the country out from under us.”
Vaclav didn’t care about Jews one way or the other. He just said, “If you end up in bed with the Nazis, you’ll get it as bad as the Jews do.”
“You’re only mad because the Germans beat you,” Leszek said.
“Sure. And Poland never lost a war,” the Czech retorted. Even if Leszek wasn’t a bad guy, that reminder was more than he could stomach. He stomped off. Vaclav wondered if he’d come back with his buddies to do some real stomping. But Leszek didn’t, which only proved he had an even temper.
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