about it,” Willi told him. They laughed. Why not? Their side was doing things. The enemy was sitting around. If the French had no stomach for a fight but one came to them anyway…
“BURN EVERYTHING,” SERGEANT DEMANGE SAID. “When we pull back into France, we want the Germans to remember we were here.” The cigarette in the corner of his mouth jerked up and down as he spoke.
One of the guys in Luc Harcourt’s squad splashed kerosene against the side of a barn. Luc grabbed a burning stick from the cookfire and touched it to a wet place. He had to jump back, or the flames might have got him. The barn sent a black plume of smoke into the leaden sky.
Other soldiers were torching the farmhouse near the barn. “Hey, Sergeant?” Luc called.
Demange eyed him as if he were a chancre on humanity’s scrotum. But then, Demange looked at everybody and everything that way. “What do you want, kid?” he said.
Make it good, or else
lurked menacingly under the words.
“If we’re doing everything we can to hurt the
Boches
, how come we’re pulling out, not going forward?” As far as Luc could see, the whole halfhearted invasion was nothing but a sad, unfunny joke. Now it was ending without even a punch line.
“Well, we went in to give the Czechs a hand,
oui?”
the sergeant said.
“Sure,” Harcourt answered. “So?”
“So now there’s no more Czechoslovakia, so what’s the point of hanging around any longer? That’s how I heard it from the lieutenant, so that’s what the brass is saying.” Demange looked around to make sure no officers were in earshot. Satisfied, he went on, “You ask me what the real story is, we’re scared green.”
Maybe Demange would end up in trouble for defeatism if somebody reported him to the lieutenant. More likely, he’d eat the platoon commander without salt. And what he said made an unpleasant amount of sense. “We haven’t fought enough to see how tough the Nazis really are,” Luc said.
“You know that. I know that. You think the old men in the fancy kepis know that?” Demange made as if to wipe his ass, presumably with the collected wisdom of the French General Staff. “Come on, get moving!” the underofficer added. “I think you just want to stand around and gab instead of working.”
Luc liked work no better than anyone else in his right mind. Even standing around with thirty-odd kilos on his back wasn’t his idea of fun. But the fire warmed the chilly morning. He sighed as he trudged away. Pretty soon, tramping along under all that weight would warm him up, too, but not so pleasantly.
Every once in a while, somebody off in the distance would fire a rifle or squeeze off a burst from a machine gun. For the most part, though, the Germans seemed content to let the French leave if they wanted to.
Here and there, the retreating French troops passed men warily waiting in foxholes and sandbagged machine-gun nests. The rear guard would give the
Boches
a hard time if they were inclined to get frisky. The soldiers Luc could see looked serious about their job. They probably thought they were saving the French army from destruction. And maybe they were right.
Maybe. But it didn’t look that way now.
Luc’s company marched out of Germany at almost exactly the place where they’d gone in a month earlier. Luc eyed the customs post, now wrecked, that marked the frontier. Men had suffered there. And for what? Maybe the important people, the people who ran things, understood. Luc had no idea.
“It’s the capitalists who are making us pull out,” Jacques Vallat said.He’d been drafted out of an army factory in Lyon, and was as Red as Sergeant Demange’s eyes. “The fools are more afraid of Stalin than they are of Hitler.”
“Shut your yap, Vallat,” the sergeant said without much heat. “Just keep picking ‘em up and laying ‘em down. When you get to be a general, then you can talk politics.”
“If I get to be a general, France has more trouble than she
“BURN EVERYTHING,” SERGEANT DEMANGE SAID. “When we pull back into France, we want the Germans to remember we were here.” The cigarette in the corner of his mouth jerked up and down as he spoke.
One of the guys in Luc Harcourt’s squad splashed kerosene against the side of a barn. Luc grabbed a burning stick from the cookfire and touched it to a wet place. He had to jump back, or the flames might have got him. The barn sent a black plume of smoke into the leaden sky.
Other soldiers were torching the farmhouse near the barn. “Hey, Sergeant?” Luc called.
Demange eyed him as if he were a chancre on humanity’s scrotum. But then, Demange looked at everybody and everything that way. “What do you want, kid?” he said.
Make it good, or else
lurked menacingly under the words.
“If we’re doing everything we can to hurt the
Boches
, how come we’re pulling out, not going forward?” As far as Luc could see, the whole halfhearted invasion was nothing but a sad, unfunny joke. Now it was ending without even a punch line.
“Well, we went in to give the Czechs a hand,
oui?”
the sergeant said.
“Sure,” Harcourt answered. “So?”
“So now there’s no more Czechoslovakia, so what’s the point of hanging around any longer? That’s how I heard it from the lieutenant, so that’s what the brass is saying.” Demange looked around to make sure no officers were in earshot. Satisfied, he went on, “You ask me what the real story is, we’re scared green.”
Maybe Demange would end up in trouble for defeatism if somebody reported him to the lieutenant. More likely, he’d eat the platoon commander without salt. And what he said made an unpleasant amount of sense. “We haven’t fought enough to see how tough the Nazis really are,” Luc said.
“You know that. I know that. You think the old men in the fancy kepis know that?” Demange made as if to wipe his ass, presumably with the collected wisdom of the French General Staff. “Come on, get moving!” the underofficer added. “I think you just want to stand around and gab instead of working.”
Luc liked work no better than anyone else in his right mind. Even standing around with thirty-odd kilos on his back wasn’t his idea of fun. But the fire warmed the chilly morning. He sighed as he trudged away. Pretty soon, tramping along under all that weight would warm him up, too, but not so pleasantly.
Every once in a while, somebody off in the distance would fire a rifle or squeeze off a burst from a machine gun. For the most part, though, the Germans seemed content to let the French leave if they wanted to.
Here and there, the retreating French troops passed men warily waiting in foxholes and sandbagged machine-gun nests. The rear guard would give the
Boches
a hard time if they were inclined to get frisky. The soldiers Luc could see looked serious about their job. They probably thought they were saving the French army from destruction. And maybe they were right.
Maybe. But it didn’t look that way now.
Luc’s company marched out of Germany at almost exactly the place where they’d gone in a month earlier. Luc eyed the customs post, now wrecked, that marked the frontier. Men had suffered there. And for what? Maybe the important people, the people who ran things, understood. Luc had no idea.
“It’s the capitalists who are making us pull out,” Jacques Vallat said.He’d been drafted out of an army factory in Lyon, and was as Red as Sergeant Demange’s eyes. “The fools are more afraid of Stalin than they are of Hitler.”
“Shut your yap, Vallat,” the sergeant said without much heat. “Just keep picking ‘em up and laying ‘em down. When you get to be a general, then you can talk politics.”
“If I get to be a general, France has more trouble than she
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