Berlin or Bust

^{CHAPTER NINETEEN} LIONS AND DEVILS

A splash of gunfire outside. The Fallschirmjäger bristled, cocking their ears.

The firing stopped. The men relaxed.

“Ring ding, jägers,” Steiner said. “Supper is served.”

The men held out mess tins to receive their share of the beef stew. They filled their canteen cups and took out their metal silverware to eat.

The machine-gunner blinked when Wilkins held out his tin. “I forgot you were here. Every time I see you, I want to grab my weapon. Old habits.”

“I’ll try to be less British, mate,” Wilkins said drily.

Steiner snorted. From his red beret to his stiff upper lip, Wilkins couldn’t be less British no matter how hard he tried. “You’re fine the way you are. I like having you on my side. I’d rather fight the draugr than you. The average Tommy is tough as hell.”

“Lions led by mules,” Beck laughed.

“And whatever do you mean by that?” the British sergeant wondered.

“It’s how we view the British Army,” Wolff chimed in. “Your average soldier is brave. But your tactics are outdated and clumsy, and your officers aren’t very creative. They don’t adapt to circumstance.”

“It’s how an army works, Master Sergeant. An officer must follow through on his orders until he no longer has practical means of doing so.”

“In our military, independent initiative at the lower ranks is valued as much as obedience. We’re much more flexible in the field as a result.”

Steiner let out another snort. “Ironic, wouldn’t you agree?”

Wilkins nodded, getting it. Great Britain was a democracy, but its military operated with rigid top-down decision-making. In the Reich, you could barely take a dump without written approval by the Nazis, but the Wehrmacht permitted broad latitude in independent thinking from the ground up.

Wolff said, “You’re far better than the Americans, though.”

Wilkins shrugged. “They seem all right.”

Steiner said, “They just throw everything they have at you.”

Wolff nodded. “They’re aggressive, but their tactics are simple and outdated. They send in their tanks, you knock out a few, the tanks run, the infantry ends up stranded, and then they call in a big artillery strike.”

“Their artillery is very good.” Steiner shuddered. “And their planes.”

“We’d rather fight them than the English any day,” the oberfeldwebel said. “Especially you Red Devils. We’ve heard stories about the Battle of Arnhem.”

Wilkins looked down at his stew. “That was a rough party.”

He’d been with the 4th Para Brigade then. Out of 10,000 men dropped on Arnhem, only around 2,000 made it out. After that disaster, the brigade had disbanded, with most of the men going to the 1st Brigade. Wilkins ended up freelance, performing special missions for Colonel Adams.

Another splash of gunfire outside. This time, the men ignored it.

“A waste of good infantry,” Wolff said. “Your Market Garden operation was doomed from the start.” Wolff spooned stew into his mouth and chewed. “No, I’m with Steiner. I’d rather fight draugr than you Red Devils or the American airborne.”

“We fought some of you Fallschirm blokes at Arnhem. We called you the Green Devils.”

“Now we’re all on the same side,” Schulte said from his nest. “How inspiring.”

“Ja, ja,” Steiner said, imitating Leutnant Reiser. “Everybody gets a pony.”

The men chuckled at that.

“Steiner does all the wet work with his MG,” Weber said. “The rest of us just carry his ammo around our necks.”

This observation raised another round of laughter along with groans. Everybody carried ammo belts for the MG.

Steiner grinned. “An army of mules led by lions.”

The men hooted and threw crumpled-up Nazi documents at him.

Muller said, “What will you do after the war, Herr Feldwebel?”

Wilkins shrugged. “This gopping war has gone on so bloody long, it’s hard to imagine anything else. I try not to think about surviving it. The only way to be effective in combat and survive—”

“Is to believe you won’t,” several Fallschirmjäger finished together.

“There’s a girl back home, though.”

The paratroopers perked up and went quiet.

“Go on,” Steiner leered, all ears.

“Her name’s Jocelyn. The only thing I allow myself to see in my future is being with her. It gave me something to fight for besides king and country.” The sergeant set his meal down and lit a cigarette. “What about you blokes?”

“Rebuild Germany,” Weber said.

“That goes without saying,” Steiner said. “From the looks of it, we’ll be rebuilding the rest of our lives. Me, I’d like to get a girlfriend and get busy repopulating it.”

“I’d like be an artist,” Muller said. “Travel a Europe at peace.”

“Get my old job back at the post office,” said Schneider.

Steiner looked at Wolff. “What about you, Herr Oberfeldwebel?”

“I’d like to go back to my farm,” the sergeant said. “And never shoot a gun again.”

“You have a girl back home?”

“I did, but I haven’t written her. I hope she moved on.”

“I tried to end it with Jocelyn before my first big operation,” Wilkins said. “I’d rather break her heart that way than have her see me come home in a coffin. I just couldn’t.”

“I understand,” Wolff said. “It was not an easy choice for me.”

The British sergeant pinched off ember at the tip of his cigarette so he could save it for later. “I do hope this draugr menace is the end of war. Once we beat these things, I want peace between our countries. More than that, friendship. I don’t want my sons to have to fight yours in twenty years.”

The men nodded. None of them wished this on their children.

“Ja, we’re all the same under our uniforms,” Schulte said. “How touching.”

Steiner laughed. “Shut up, Erich—”

“Alarm geben!” somebody screamed in the distance. “Alarm, alarm!”

Rifles popped. An MG42 opened up with a ripping snarl Steiner knew well. Machine pistols and submachine-guns joined in, turning the crashes of fire into a steady roar. Figures flickered past the doorway shouting. Tracers and muzzle flashes burst in the darkness. Mortars thumped.

The squad jumped to its feet and collected weapons. The mortar rounds crashed louder than they expected. The mortar teams were firing almost on top of the regiment’s position.

Leutnant Reiser entered the facility as they were coming out. “Seal the door!”

The paratroopers looked at each other. Otherwise, nobody moved.

“The samples must be protected,” Reiser snapped.

Wolff frowned. “Herr Leutnant, the regiment—”

“Will take care of itself. Our mission is to protect the samples.”

Men screamed in agony and terror out in the dark amid the steady flashes of gunfire. The paratroopers looked each other again with wide eyes.

The lieutenant unholstered his Luger. “Schnell!” He kicked Steiner in the leg, making him jump. “Move, pig-dog!”

The squad rushed to the steel door and heaved it shut, shutting out the sounds of combat and slaughter.