Last Orders

CHAPTER 11

One of the things Hans-Ulrich Rudel hated about the way the war had gone was that you couldn’t ask questions any more. Well, you could, but you had to be careful about who heard them. Otherwise, you might get a visit from Major Keller, who would wonder whether your spirit was sufficiently National Socialist.

Or Keller might just decide you were hopeless. In that case, he wouldn’t call on you. The SD or the Gestapo would. And if they took you away, who knew where you’d wind up or what would happen to you there?

No one knew, though almost everyone could make a good guess. That was another question you couldn’t ask. It was bound to bring Major Keller or worse down on you if you did.

Hans-Ulrich could still talk to Sergeant Dieselhorst, and the noncom heard news long before he did himself. Picking a time when no one stood anywhere close, Rudel quietly asked, “What’s the latest from Münster?”

“From where?” Dieselhorst said. “You mean that little town in … was it Bulgaria or Yugoslavia?”

“Bulgaria, I think.” Hans-Ulrich matched dry with dry.

The sergeant rewarded him by hoisting one eyebrow. “Martial law is the last thing I heard. I mean, the whole Reich is under martial law, or as near as makes no difference, but this is the real stuff. Curfews, and they won’t just arrest you if you get out of line. They’ll shoot you.”

“That’s … harsh.” Hans-Ulrich had supported the Nazis ever since he’d decided they were the ones to make Germany strong again. Now, for the first time, he started to wonder whether he’d made a mistake. “And how do the, ah, Bulgarians like that?”

Dieselhorst smiled a thin smile. “They’re up in arms-literally, for the people who happen to have any. And I’ve heard they aren’t the only folks in Bulgaria who are. I don’t know that that’s true. Bulgaria’s a long way away, and you can’t always trust the news that comes out of it. But that’s what I hear.”

“Huh.” Rudel didn’t like the way that sounded. “How can we fight a war if the home front falls apart on us? That’s what happened in 1918.”

After coughing a couple of times, Albert Dieselhorst made a small production of lighting a cigarette. The pause let Hans-Ulrich remember what a little boy he’d been in 1918, and that he didn’t really know for himself everything that had gone on then. After said pause, Dieselhorst answered, “You know, if you build a house of cards outside and the breeze blows it over, that’s one thing. But if you build it on the kitchen table and then you knock it down, you’ve got only yourself to blame. Or that’s how it looks at me, anyway.”

He waited. Hans-Ulrich realized he had to say something. “What do you suppose Major Keller would say to that?” he tried.

“Major Keller knocks down houses of cards for the fun of it … sir,” Dieselhorst said. “If the Party had half as many people like Major Keller in it, we’d be twice as well off. That’s how it looks to me, too.”

Rudel opened his mouth. The speech about how, when enemies were everywhere, you needed National Socialist Loyalty Officers jumped to the tip of his tongue. But it didn’t jump off. Foreign foes, yes-you needed to worry about them. When your own people started hating your government, though, how could you be so sure the people were the ones with the problem?

When Hans-Ulrich didn’t come out with that canned speech, Sergeant Dieselhorst blew a stream of smoke up toward the sky. He didn’t say anything like You’re learning or You’re growing up. The proof, as the geometry books put it, was left to the student.

Dieselhorst did say, “They would have been smarter not to mess with the bishop.”

Again, Hans-Ulrich kept quiet. This time, it was because he didn’t know what to say. He was no Catholic. He was the son of a Lutheran minister. He had no use for the Pope or his faith. But a Catholic bishop was a clergyman, too. What if the Gestapo had come for Pastor Rudel instead?

He had trouble imagining Johannes Rudel saying or doing anything that would make the authorities want to come after him. But if they did, he hoped the people of whichever little Silesian town he happened to be preaching in would be upset enough to try to do something about it.

So he said, “Yes, I guess they would. But we can’t change any of that. All we can do is bomb the French and the English so they don’t break through and invade the Vaterland.”

“Well, you’re right about that,” Dieselhorst said. “It’s bad when politics comes to the Luftwaffe, and it’s bad when the Luftwaffe gets into politics.” He ground out the cigarette under his boot heel. “And if we don’t get more fighter support, we won’t keep flying against the enemy much longer.”

Hans-Ulrich grunted. The noncom was dead right about that. Without 109s or 190s flying top cover, Stukas that ventured far past the front were asking to get shot down. When the war was new, the Luftwaffe had more fighters and better fighters than the RAF or the Armée de l’Air. German fighters were still as good as any the Western democracies made, and better than the ones they bought from America. But there weren’t enough of them here.

“Too many planes fighting the Russians,” Rudel said. “Too many trying to keep the enemy from knocking our cities flat, too.”

“I know,” Sergeant Dieselhorst replied with what sounded like exaggerated patience. “You would have hoped the people who got us into this war wondered whether this would happen when they told us to start shooting.”

“They thought we’d win in a hurry,” Hans-Ulrich said.

“Yes, yes.” Sure enough, the sergeant’s patience showed more and more. “Winning in a hurry was Plan A. But they should have had Plan B ready ahead of time in case we didn’t, and Plan C in case something funny happened, and Plan D in case something stupid happened, and … and on and on. That’s why God, or maybe the Devil, made the General Staff, nicht wahr?”

“I don’t think either one of Them would want to get blamed for it,” Hans-Ulrich answered.

He surprised a laugh out of Sergeant Dieselhorst, which wasn’t something he managed every day. “There you go!” Dieselhorst said. “You know, you can be dangerous if you give yourself half a chance.”

“Who, me?” Rudel did his best to assume a look of wide-eyed innocence. For a minister’s son, the look came naturally. The sergeant’s snort confirmed that.

It started to rain then. That was another reason they weren’t flying. The clouds in Belgium blew right off the ocean. When it was cloudy here, the ceiling was almost always low. You didn’t want to go up in a dive-bomber when you might dive below the ceiling to drop your load and then not have time to pull up before you hit the ground.

The fellows in the level bombers didn’t fret about such things. They flew above the clouds, not below them. They could bomb in any weather. But they were none too accurate even when they could see what they were aiming at. When they couldn’t … Well, the bombs were bound to come down on something or other.

Up ahead of the airstrip, German guns started firing on the enemy positions facing them. Before long, French guns answered. Chances were none of the men serving the 105s could see their target, either. That didn’t mean dropping shells on it wouldn’t hurt the other side. Stretcher-bearers and ambulances would carry wounded men back to aid stations.

Gravediggers would be busy, too. Hans-Ulrich seldom thought about such things. When you were flying, you were too busy to worry about them. Only at times like this, when you couldn’t go up, did they invade your mind.

It was also only at times like this that you got the chance to think about politics. And that was bound to be just as well.

Alistair Walsh had found one thing almost unchanged from the last war to this one. Wherever the front was in France or Belgium, estaminets would spring up right behind it. They’d sell you bad wine and watery beer, fried potatoes, fried eggs, and, if you were brave enough, fried sausages.

Somebody’d said you never wanted to know what went into politics or sausages. Was that Bismarck? Walsh thought so. The mustached old bugger might have been a Fritz, but he knew what he was talking about just the same. And you especially didn’t want to know what went into sausages you bought at an estaminet within earshot of the guns.

Which didn’t mean Walsh hadn’t ordered a couple of them with his chips and his pint. Horse? Cat? Hedgehog? Ground-up inner tube? There was enough pepper and garlic mixed up with everything else to keep you from noticing how rank the meat (or possibly rubber) was.

He thought so, anyhow. A corporal sitting at the table next to his took a bite and pulled a face. “I think the landlord chopped up his granny and stuck her in here, like in the penny dreadfuls back when,” the fellow said.

Walsh donned a contemplative look as he ate some more off his plate. “Not dry enough for granny,” he said after he swallowed. “Maybe it’s his maiden aunt.”

“If she tastes like this, no bloody wonder she died a maiden,” the corporal answered. He swigged from a glass of wine and grimaced again. “And this here is grape juice and vinegar.”

“It could be worse,” Walsh said. “The Army could be feeding us.” The bloke with two stripes on his sleeve had no comeback to that. Walsh added, “I bet it’s worse on the German side of the line, too. The estaminets there likely dish up turnip sausages and sawdust chips.”

“How do you know these ain’t?” the corporal asked, which was a better question than Walsh wished it were.

This wasn’t one of those estaminets with pretty barmaids, or even homely barmaids, available pour l’amour ou pour le sport. The landlord’s two strapping sons brought food and drink and took away dirty dishes. They weren’t in uniform. They were ready to fight for their country’s liberation to the last drop of English blood.

Well, it could have been worse. They weren’t fighting in Hitler’s Walloon Legion, either. The Fascist Belgians fought harder than the Germans did. They knew what the Allies would probably do to them if they got captured, so they made sure they didn’t.

With a sigh, Walsh set a shilling and a little silver threepence on the table, grabbed his greatcoat, and walked out. English coins were valuable all out of proportion to the official rate of exchange. For all the veteran knew, the Belgians melted them down and made ingots out of them. He didn’t care, as long as he could cheaply buy whatever he needed.

He shrugged on the greatcoat before he’d gone more than a few steps back toward the line. The wind blew out of the north, and warned that winter was on the way. For good measure, he pulled a khaki wool muffler out of his pocket. It was scratchy as all get-out-the Army worried as little about things like comfort as it could get away with-but it kept his neck warm.

Only a few trees still stood. As in the last war, hard fighting had smashed most of them to matchsticks and toothpicks. Leaves on the survivors were going, or had mostly gone, yellow. That sharp wind would soon blow off the ones that still clung to the branches.

Walsh hated bare-branched trees. Those skinny sticks thrusting up toward the sky put him in mind of bones with the flesh rotted off them sticking up from hasty, badly dug graves. You saw things like that after artillery tore up one of those burial plots. Walsh wasn’t the kind to worry about unquiet ghosts, but he also saw those bones in his nightmares.

There was one stretch of ground on the way up to his position that the Germans could get a glimpse of. If they saw you, they’d fire a burst from one of their machine guns. The range was extreme. No one bullet was likely to hit you. That was why they fired the burst-they’d spend a dozen bullets, or a couple of dozen, in hopes of the hit.

When Walsh came to the couple of hundred yards where he might be in danger, he got down on his hands and knees and crawled so the Feldgrau sons of bitches wouldn’t spot him. A couple of men were walking the other way. They didn’t laugh at him-they did the same thing. The Fritzes were too good at hurting you even when you didn’t give them any extra chances.

He sighed when he traveled up the zigzag communications trenches to the front line. The Germans had a better chance of hurting him up here, of course. But it was also a very familiar place. He’d spent a lot of time in trenches like this, through two wars and in training stints between them. He knew how to make himself at home, or as much at home as anyone could be in this low-rent district of hell.

At least it hadn’t rained for a few days. The trenches were muddy. You couldn’t get away from mud during a war, any more than you could get away from blood. But there weren’t any reeking puddles or pools; the water had soaked into the ground. That made a difference. You hated to roll into a puddle in your sleep and soak yourself. The stench wasn’t so bad after things had dried out a little, either.

He nodded to Jack Scholes, who took to this life the way any tough little creature would. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Not bloody much,” Scholes said. “Germans must ’ave packed it in, loike.”

“And then you wake up!” Walsh exclaimed. “That’ll be the day. Chances are they’re plotting something instead. Do you believe anything different, even for a minute?”

“Believe it? Nar.” The young cockney shook his head. “But Oi can ’ope, roight, loike anybody else?”

“Should never take hope away from anyone,” Walsh said, more seriously than he’d expected to. “Just don’t get your hopes up too high for no reason, or they’ll come crashing down, and you with ’em.”

“That’s the times when the Fritzes got tanks wiv ’em,” Scholes said shrewdly. “Ain’t seen none. Ain’t ’eard none, neither.”

“Well, good,” Walsh said. It wasn’t that he wanted the Germans to strike somewhere else along the line. He didn’t wish that on any of his countrymen. He didn’t even wish it on the French, not unless some froggy had gone out of his way to provoke him.

He wished the Germans would just turn around and go home. He was ready to follow them till they crossed over the border between Holland and their own country. He was ready to stop there, too, and wave good-bye as they vanished back inside Hunland. And as long as they stayed there and didn’t bother anybody else, he was ready to let them stay there and go to hell in their own way.

The trouble with them, of course, was that they had the nasty habit of not wanting to stay there. Every so often, they burst out like locusts and tried to send everybody else to hell their way. They’d almost brought it off twice now. If they went back into Hunland now, would they decide third time was the charm along about, oh, 1962?

If they did, he wouldn’t be the one who had to drive them back. He wouldn’t be a Chelsea pensioner by then, one of the ancient, doddering soldiers who sometimes went to the football club’s matches, but he wouldn’t be ready to pick up a Lee-Enfield or even a Sten gun like the one he had now and go charging across a weedy field whilst machine-gun bullets cracked past him.

No, by then Jack Scholes would be a top sergeant, if he lived and if he stayed in. An East End street rat made as good a career soldier as a Welshman who chose the trade in place of going down into the mines till something caved in and smashed him flat. Both of them understood their other choices were worse. Why else would you want to soldier?

To kill things, people who weren’t soldiers thought. But not even the Germans killed for the fun of it most of the time. It was part of the job, that was all. Only not right now, thank God.

The President of the Spanish Republic had breath like … Vaclav Jezek didn’t know what he had breath like. He’d never smelled anything like that coming from a human being’s mouth before. Coffee and harsh Spanish tobacco and brandy and rotten teeth and God only knew what all else. If you were digging a trench and you dug through a corpse that had been in the ground for only a couple of weeks, the stench from it would come pretty close to this.

If something like that happened, though, you could shovel dirt over the thing and go on about your business. Here, Vaclav had to stand next to the dignitary and take it. Señor Azaña was making a speech about what a wonderful chap he was, after all.

So Benjamin Halévy insisted, anyhow. The number of people reasonably good in both Spanish and Czech was severely limited. Halévy had come to Barcelona with Vaclav so he could explain what the President and the rest of the big shots were saying, and so he could also translate Vaclav’s replies.

Photographers snapped pictures of the Czech and the Jew-not that the papers would say what Halévy was-standing next to the President as Azaña went on and on. “You did not despair of the Republic,” Azaña declared, smacking one fist into the other palm. “After Rome was invaded from North Africa, that was the highest praise she could give her soldiers. After we too were invaded from North Africa, so it is with us as well.”

Polite applause rose from the crowd as Halévy murmured in familiar, throaty Czech. Without the translation, Vaclav wouldn’t have been sure his Excellency wasn’t complaining about the paella he’d eaten the night before.

“And we have more than praise,” the President went on. “We promote the grand hero Vaclav Jezek”-he made a horrible mess of Vaclav’s name, as any Spaniard was bound to do-“to the rank of captain in the Army of the Republic. We pay him the reward promised for the death of the arch-criminal and traitor, the so-called Marshal Sanjurjo. And we grant him the citizenship of the Republic in addition to that which he enjoys in his own land. May Czechoslovakia soon be free again, as he has helped ensure the Republic’s freedom! ¡Viva Vaclav Jezek!”

“¡Viva!” the people shouted.

Then Azaña stepped away from the microphone. Benjamin Halévy gave Vaclav a little shove toward it. He would rather have been out in no-man’s-land facing a platoon of pissed-off Nationalists. All they would have done was kill him. Here, he was going to have to kill himself, and his death certificate would read Perished of embarrassment. He’d never talked in front of more than a classroom’s worth of people, and thousands had to be staring at him here in this enormous plaza.

“Muchas gracias, Señor Presidente de la República de España,” he said, in the process using up most of his Spanish. He went on in his own language: “Not many people have been fighting for freedom longer than us Czechs. But you have, here in the Republic. The President called me a hero. I’m only a soldier, doing my job. You folks, you’re the heroes.”

Halévy translated his words into Spanish. Then, showing himself a man of parts indeed, the Jew said them again, this time in Catalan. To Vaclav, it sounded like two parts Spanish and one part French. He could tell when Halévy switched languages, but still didn’t know for sure what he was saying.

“Gracias otra vez,” Vaclav added, and drew back. Yes, he would rather have stood next to a puff adder than a microphone.

“Good job,” Halévy whispered to him as more stuffed shirts from the Republic came up to pump his hand and press their smooth cheeks against his. The crowd cheered and cheered, partly because he was the hero who’d killed Marshal Sanjurjo and partly, no doubt, because he’d kept it short. There were advantages to not being fond of public speaking.

One of the Spaniards handed him a glass of red wine and said something incomprehensible. “No entiendo,” Vaclav said. I don’t understand was a handy phrase to learn in a language where you knew only a few handy phrases.

The Spaniard aimed his words at Halévy this time. The Jew obligingly translated: “He says the Nationalists are going after each other like half a dozen cats in a sack when you kick it.”

“Well, good!” Vaclav exclaimed in Czech. He could have said that in Spanish, but as long as Halévy was here to do the heavy lifting, he’d let him. That thought sparked another one. Still in Czech, he went on, “Hey, guess what! Since they went and promoted me, I outrank you. How about that?”

Halévy came to stiff attention. He clicked his heels with a thump that would have gladdened the heart of a Hungarian colonel in Emperor Franz Joseph’s extinct army. “Zu Befehl!” he exclaimed, as if he belonged to that army. Vaclav’s father had. Maybe Halévy’s father had, too, before he’d left Austria-Hungary for France. They’d used a smashed-down soldiers’ German to let officers talk with their polyglot troops. It had worked, too, after a fashion.

The Spanish dignitary watched the two of them with no idea of what was going on. Benjamin Halévy said something to him in Catalan. Then the fellow laughed. Since Halévy had used Catalan, he did, too. If Vaclav knew only a little Spanish, he had next to none of the related language.

“He says anyone can tell we’re old friends,” Halévy explained.

“Are we?” Jezek considered that. He drained the glass of wine. “Well, hell, I guess we are. And which one of us is that a judgment on?”

“On both of us, I’d say,” Halévy answered.

“I’d say you’re right,” Vaclav agreed.

They whisked him off to another banquet. Vaclav hadn’t eaten so much since he got conscripted. The feast was in the Spanish style, with little plates of peppery this and garlicky that and pickled the other thing. Vaclav missed sauerkraut and creamed potatoes and dill and big slabs of boiled beef and all the other good things he’d grown up with. But he had plenty, and it beat the hell out of the crumbly sausage that came up to the trenches all the time and was an even-money bet to give you the runs.

After he’d had some more wine, and some more wine, and some more wine after that, he plucked up enough courage to say to Halévy, “Ask them if they think the Nationalists really will come to pieces without their big boss.”

Halévy put the question into Spanish. He got back several impassioned responses-so impassioned, a couple of the men who made them almost came to blows. In due course, the French Jew reported, “They all hope so, but some think it’s more likely than others do.”

“Is that so? I never would’ve guessed.” Vaclav laughed. He’d had enough wine to think almost anything was funny.

In due course, the President of the Republic got to his feet and raised his goblet. “Confusion to all Fascists everywhere!” he said. Everyone drank.

Then he looked to Vaclav. The sniper got to his feet, too. It took some effort; yes, he was feeling the wine. “Freedom for Czechoslovakia!” he said, first in his own tongue, and then, after more effort, in Spanish as well. Again, everybody drank the toast. He knew he would have a head like a drop-forging plant tomorrow morning. Red wine would hurt you if you gave it the chance. But that would be tomorrow. Mañana. The next thing to never.

And in the meantime … He turned to Halévy. “They’ve given me this stack of pesetas and the medal and the promotion and this trip to Barcelona and everything. Now where do I go to get laid?”

“Ah! That’s an important question!” The Jew conferred with the dignitaries. Then he gave Vaclav the word: “Go back to your hotel room after we finish here and they’ll have someone for you. They’re gentlemen-they said they’d get me a girl, too. On the house, courtesy of the Republic.”

“They are gentlemen!” Vaclav said. Nice that Halévy would get some, too. Even nicer that he wouldn’t have to pay for it. I should kill Fascist marshals more often, he thought, and reached for the closest wine bottle.

No English or French bombers had dropped their loads on Münster for a while now. They’d hit other towns not far away. The Nazis made propaganda out of that. They said the enemy planes stayed away because the people in Münster were also enemies of the Reich.

For all Sarah Bruck knew, the hacks who wrote for the Party papers were right. “Aren’t they taking a chance, though?” she asked her father after a chilly night’s sad supper. “If people think rising up against Hitler will keep the bombers away, they’ll do it all over Germany.”

“It could be.” Samuel Goldman rolled one of his cigarettes built from scavenged butts. Maybe the latest propaganda piece was on the newsprint he used for cigarette paper. He lit the cigarette and blew out smoke. Then he went on, “But it may not work like that. Too many people remember all the noise about the stab in the back last time.”

“It wasn’t true,” Sarah said.

Father nodded. “No, it wasn’t. But what people think happened is just as much a part of history as what really did happen.”

“That’s too complicated for me,” Sarah said. Off in the distance, a rifle barked. Unrest still simmered here, no matter what the rest of Germany was doing. A machine pistol snarled back at the rifle.

“Either he didn’t get the one he was aiming at or the fellow had a buddy with him,” Father said.

“Who was doing the shooting?” she asked.

“Somebody. Anybody.” Samuel Goldman shrugged. “They didn’t even want me back as an ordinary soldier, let alone for the General Staff.” Another shrug. “Ah, well. I’ve never worn trousers with red Lampassen, and I guess I’m too old to start now.” The strip of scarlet cloth along the outer seam of the trouser legs marked a General Staff officer’s uniform.

“Too bad. I bet you’d do a better job than some of the fools who are wearing them,” Sarah said.

“For one thing, you’re wrong. To get on the General Staff, you have to know what you’re doing,” Father answered. “For another, even if you were right, what would I accomplish? I’d win victories for the Führer, that’s all.”

He didn’t say anything like And every Jew in Germany needs that like a hole in the head. He didn’t have to. Sarah could fill in the blanks for herself. “Well, you’re right,” she admitted. “You know what worries me?”

“No, but since you’re going to tell me that doesn’t matter so much, either,” he said.

She made a face at him. Then she did tell him: “If they can’t make people here feel like traitors, they’re liable to try to make them feel like anti-Semites. If they’re shouting ‘The Jews are our misfortune!’, they won’t worry so much about shouting ‘Down with the Nazis!’ ”

“It could be. The Nazis always play that card, or they do when they think of it,” Father said. “And you want to remember that Cardinal von Galen complained about what Himmler’s flunkies were doing to the feebleminded. He didn’t say a word-not one single, solitary word-about what they were doing to us.”

“Us?” Sarah said in some surprise. He never rejected his Jewishness, but he rarely made a point of it like that. He wanted to be a German, even though the Nazis didn’t want to let him.

But he nodded now. “Us,” he said again. “I’m not going to deny it. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t very well deny it.” He touched the Star of David sewn onto the lapel of his threadbare tweed jacket.

There were more gunshots, these closer. Someone sprinted down the blacked-out street in front of the house. A minute later, several more people ran past after him. By the clump of their footfalls, they were wearing boots. That made them either soldiers or SS men.

I hope he gets away, Sarah thought. She didn’t say that out loud. Except for the odd gunshot or odd fugitive sprinting by, it was eerily quiet. No telling how far a voice might carry.

“Never a dull moment,” Father said dryly.

“I guess not,” Sarah said.

Mother came in from the kitchen, where she’d been pickling cabbage. Sauerkraut would keep for a long time. It wasn’t exciting, but it put food in your belly. Hanna Goldman clucked. “If anyone had told me a year ago I’d keep working while people were shooting off guns, I would have said he was crazy.”

“You get used to anything. You get used to everything,” Father said. “If people didn’t get used to dreadful things, they couldn’t have wars. You step on one mangled body, it’s the most horrible thing that happened in your whole life. You step on three or four mangled bodies while you’re walking to the field kitchen, you turn to your friend and go ‘That last shelling smacked us pretty good, didn’t it?’ ”

“That’s-terrible,” Mother said, which was exactly what Sarah was thinking.

“It is. I know it is. But you have to, or you do go crazy,” Father replied. “A few men couldn’t, and they did go meshuggeh.” He smiled at the Yiddish word, but quickly sobered again. “The first time you shoot at somebody and the first time you know you hit somebody-those are bad, too. After you do it for a while, though, you just think Well, all right, I got that one. Now he won’t get me or any of my buddies.”

“No wonder you never talk much about what you did in the war,” Sarah said.

“No wonder at all,” Father agreed. “Back before the Nazis took over, I’d go the the Bierstube with some of the other Frontschweine. We’d talk about things amongst ourselves. Why not? We understood-we were the only ones who did. But they got nervous about drinking with a Jew, and who could blame them? Besides, a lot of them are back in Feldgrau these days.”

“You would have gone. You tried to go, only the fools who run things wouldn’t let you. I was thinking about that a little while ago,” Sarah said. “Why would anybody want to do that twice?”

“That’s the wrong question, dear,” her mother said. “The right question is, why would anybody want to do that once?”

“You will never have a closer comrade than the man who saved your neck during a trench raid.” Father seemed to think he was explaining something. If he was, it was something that only made sense-that could only make sense-to someone else who’d been through what he had.

Sarah’s reflections were interrupted when another rifle shot rang out. A bullet spanged off the bricks of the front wall a split second later. “Gevalt!” Mother said. Sarah couldn’t have put it better herself.

“Hel-lo!” Father said. He wasn’t horrified. On the contrary-he looked and sounded extremely alert. He also looked as if he wished he had a Mauser in his hands. The laborer, the professor, even the Jew dropped away, leaving only the old Frontschwein.

Whoever had the Schmeisser fired back in a long, stuttering burst. Then the rifle spoke again. Somebody let out a horrible shriek. It went on and on. Sarah wanted to stick her index fingers in her ears to blot it out. You weren’t supposed to hear noises like that. Human beings weren’t supposed to make noises like that.

Father bit his lip. He would have heard such cries before. He would have a better idea than Sarah about what would have to happen to somebody to force such cries from his throat.

After a while, the shriek became something more like a gurgle. Then silence fell again. “Poor devil,” Father said. “Believe it or not, I wouldn’t wish that on even an SS man. Well, he’s not worrying about anything now.” He began to roll another cigarette.