The War That Came Early: The Big Switch by Harry Turtledove Page B

Geneva Convention. Turn them loose on the Fritzes and they’d likely win the war in a fortnight.
    “Have you got another fag on you?” the staff sergeant asked. That was the other thing Murdoch was good for: the man was a tobacco magnet. In a place like this, where everything was always in short supply, that made him someone to reckon with. Sure enough, he handed Walsh a packet. Walsh took one—what he’d asked for—and gave it back. He didn’t want the sawbones to think he was greedy. After a long, reverent drag, he asked, “Extracted? How?”
    “Ships,” Murdoch answered. “Get in under cover of darkness, be well away by the time the Germans realize we’ve flown the coop. That’s the plan, at any rate—so they tell me.”
    What they told him was usually the straight goods. “What happens next?” Walsh wondered out loud. He answered his own question: “The
Luftwaffe
starts looking for our bloody ships, that’s what. I don’t suppose we’ve got air cover laid on?” He answered himself again: “Too much to hope for. Too far off for fighters to reach.”
    “I haven’t heard anything about air cover,” Beverly Murdoch admitted.
    “When they find us, then, we’re sitting ducks,” Walsh said.
    “Would you sooner be taken prisoner?”
    “No-o-o,” Walsh said slowly. “I’d also sooner not drown, though, if it’s all the same to you. And I’d sooner not be blown to smithereens.”
    “What the deuce are you doing in the Army, then?”
    That was another good question, no doubt about it. Walsh gave a rueful shrug. “I was in in 1918. Didn’t seem to be much work on the civilian side when the last war ended, so I stayed in. They won’t turn loose of me now till I do get blown up, or till I’m too old to soldier any more.”
    “The more fool you,” Murdoch said, and Walsh was in a poor position to tell him he was wrong.
    Thanks to the doctor’s warning, he had a couple of extra days to ready his men for the planned withdrawal to the harbor. Everything had to seem as normal as possible, so the Germans wouldn’t pursue with all their strength. That would be what the withdrawal needed, wouldn’t it? Machine guns and maybe tanks banging away as Tommies and
poilus
and Norwegians tried to board ship? Walsh had been thinking what juicy targets they’d make on the water. They’d be even juicier if they got caught like that.
    And a few men—volunteers all, and mostly Norwegians—
would
stay behind, to man Allied machine guns and try to create the impression that everybody was still in the lines. Walsh admired them without wanting to be one of their number. He aimed to go on fighting the war till the enemy was licked. Mooching around behind barbed wire, eating slop and hoping for Red Cross packages, held no appeal. The Norwegians had a chance of getting away and blending in with the scenery. He didn’t.
    On the appointed night, he made his way back toward the docks. Engineers often put up white tapes to guide men and machines in the darkness without showing a light. Here, they’d used black ones to stand out against the snow. It was a nice touch. He wondered where they’d got them.
    High above the clouds, airplane engines thuttered. Bombs started raining down far behind the German lines. That was another nice touch. Fighters couldn’t make it here from Blighty, but bombers could.And if the RAF pounded the Fritzes, it would make them think the expeditionary force was staying, not going. Walsh hoped like blazes it would, anyhow.
    Through the shattered wreckage of Namsos town, a woman’s voice called out, “Good luck, friends!
Bonne chance, amis!
” The locals still appreciated what the soldiers from abroad had been doing. That counted for something.
    “This way! Step lively! This way!” The authoritative voice could only belong to an MP. Sure enough, the fellow guided traffic with disks on sticks that reminded Walsh of the ones tank crews without radios used to communicate.
    He shambled up a