An airplane buzzed by overhead. Chaim automatically started to duck; German and Italian aircraft ruled the skies. But this was a Republican plane: a Russian biplane fighter. Its blunt forward profile made the Spaniards call it Chato-flat-nosed. It dove to shoot up the Nationalists' trenches, then scooted off to the east.
"'Bout time those mothers caught it for a change," Mike said.
"Yeah," Chaim agreed doubtfully. "But now we'll get it twice as hard to make up, you know?" The Spaniards on both sides thought like that and fought like that. It made for a rugged kind of combat.
Mike started to answer. Before he could, a runner came up from the rear yelling, "War! War!"
Mike and Chaim started laughing like maniacs. "The fuck ya think we're in now?" Chaim said. "A ladies' sewing circle?"
"No, goddammit-a big war," the runner said. "The Munich giveaway just fell apart. A Czech murdered some Sudeten Nazi big shot inside Germany-that's what Hitler says, anyway. And he's gonna jump on Czechoslovakia, and England and France can't back down now. And if they get in, the Russians do, too."
"Holy Jesus!" Mike said. Chaim nodded. If the gloves came off in the rest of Europe, they'd have to come off in Spain, too…wouldn't they? No more noninterference? Hot damn! Maybe things here just evened up.
Corporal Vaclav Jezek crouched in a hastily dug trench just in front of Troppau. If the Germans came-when they came-this was one of the places they'd hit hardest. Slice through here in the north, push through from what had been Austria till a few months ago down in the south, and you would bite Czechoslovakia in half. Then you could settle with the Czechs in Bohemia and Moravia-the important part of the country, as far as Vaclav was concerned-at your leisure.
The Czechoslovakian General Staff wasn't blind, or stupid. Some of the heaviest fortifications in the whole country lay along this stretch of the border. If Vaclav stood up in the trench, he could see them: big, rounded, squarish lumps of reinforced concrete that had good fields of fire from high ground and plugged valleys through which tanks might otherwise charge freely.
He didn't stand up. His khaki uniform and brown, bowl-shaped helmet offered good camouflage, but they weren't perfect. Somewhere on the other side of the border, some bastard in a field-gray uniform and a black coal-scuttle helmet would be sweeping the area with heavy-duty field glasses. Vaclav didn't want him marking this position.
Trucks and teams of horses rushed machine guns and cannon and ammunition to the Czechoslovak forts. Not all of them were done yet. The government hadn't really got serious about them till the Anschluss. But with Nazi troops in Austria, Czechoslovakia was surrounded on three sides. Without fortifications, it wouldn't last long. It might not last long with them, but they gave it the best-likely the only-chance it had.
Maybe the German with the field glasses wouldn't be able to see too much. It was cool and overcast, with a little mist in the air: autumn in Central Europe, sure as hell. But some of the Sudeten shitheads were bound to be sneaking over the border to tell their cousins on the other side what was going on here. If Vaclav ran the world, he would have shipped them out or shot them to nip that crap in the bud. But would the big shots listen to a corporal who drove a taxi in Prague before he got called up? Fat chance!
The air might be cool and moist, but he smelled burning bridges all the same. Diplomats were going home by plane and train. Armies that hadn't been mobilized were getting ready for the big plunge. The Poles, damn them, were concentrating opposite Teschen (spelled three different ways, depending on whether you were a German, a Czech, or a Pole). Didn't they see they were the next course on Hitler's menu? If they didn't, how stupid were they?
"Got a smoke on you, Corporal?" asked Jan Dzurinda, one of the soldiers in Vaclav's squad.
"Sure." Jezek held out the pack. Dzurinda took a cigarette, then waited expectantly for a light. With a small sigh, Vaclav struck a match.
Dzurinda leaned close and got the cigarette started. He took a deep drag, then blew out two perfect smoke rings. "Thanks a bunch. Much obliged."
"Any time," Vaclav said. Dzurinda puffed away without a care in the world, blowing more smoke rings. Just hearing his voice made Corporal Jezek worry. Jan was a Slovak, not a Czech. Czech and Slovak were brother languages, but they weren't the same. Czechs and Slovaks could tell what you were as soon as you opened your mouth.
And Czechs and Slovaks weren't the same, either. Czechs thought of Slovaks as hicks, rubes, country bumpkins. Before the World War, Slovakia had been in the Hungarian half of Austria-Hungary, and the Hungarians made a point of keeping the Slovaks ignorant and down on the farm. Things had changed since 1918, but only so much. The Czechoslovakian Army had something like 140 general officers. Just one was a Slovak.
If Slovaks were rubes to Czechs, Czechs were city slickers to Slovaks. A lot of Slovaks thought the Czechs, who were twice as numerous, ran Czechoslovakia for their own benefit. They thought Slovakia got hind tit, and wanted more autonomy-maybe outright independence-for it.
Vaclav had no idea whether Jan belonged to Father Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, the main nationalist outfit. Hlinka had died six weeks before, but another cleric, Father Tiso, was heading the party now. The Nazis had brownshirts; the Slovak People's Party had Hlinka Guards.
If the shooting started, how hard would Jan Dzurinda and thousands more like him fight for Czechoslovakia? A lot of Slovak People's Party men figured Berlin would give them what they wanted if Prague didn't. If you thought that way, how loyal would you be toward your nominal country?
Since Vaclav didn't know and didn't want to ask straight out, he lit a cigarette of his own. The harsh smoke relaxed him…a little. He said, "At least we've weeded most of the Germans out of the Army." The Sudetens damn well weren't loyal. They'd made that plain enough.
"Well, sure," Jan Dzurinda said, which might mean anything or nothing.
Corporal Jezek decided to push a little harder. If the Slovaks were going to run off or give up first chance they got, how could the army hope to defend Czechoslovakia? The noncom said, "Now we have to run off the buggers on the other side of the frontier, eh?"
"Reckon so." Dammit, Dzurinda did sound like a hick. He went on, "Anybody tries to shoot me, I expect I better nail him first."
"Sounds good to me." Jezek decided he had to be content with that. He could have heard plenty worse from a Slovak. Up and down the lines, how many worried Czech noncoms and lieutenants and captains were hearing worse from Slovaks right about now? How many who weren't hearing worse were being lied to? He muttered to himself and lit another cigarette and wished his canteen held something stronger than water. "FORWARD!" SERGEANT LUDWIG ROTHE CALLED softly. He laughed at himself as the Panzer II crawled toward the start line through the darkness of the wee small hours. With all the motors belching and farting around him, he could have yelled his head off without giving himself away to the Czechs on the other side of the border.
He rode head and shoulders out of the turret. He had to, if he wanted to see where he was going. They said later models of the Panzer II would boast a cupola with episcopes so the commander could look around without risking his life whenever he did. That didn't do him any good. All he had was a two-flapped steel hatch in the top of the turret.
Engineers had set up white tapes to guide panzers and personnel carriers to their assigned jumping-off points. The whole Third Panzer Division was on the move. Hell, the whole Wehrmacht was on the move, near enough. Oh, there were covering forces on the border with France, and smaller ones on the Polish frontier and inside East Prussia, but everything that mattered was going to teach the Czechs they couldn't mess around with good Germans unlucky enough to be stuck inside their lousy country.