Hitler’s War

"C-9," Theo told him.

"C-9?" Ludwig repeated, and the radioman nodded. Rothe unfolded the map so he could see where he was-or where he thought he was, anyhow. Wrestling with the map inside the cramped turret made him feel like a one-armed paper hanger with the hives. At last, though, he got it open. "Well, Jesus Christ! We're in C-10 now. Tell 'em we're on our way."

"Will do." Theo shouted into the microphone that co

Machine-gun bullets clattered off the Panzer II's steel flank. Ludwig did some shouting of his own: to Fritz, through the speaking tube. "Got you, Sergeant!" the driver yelled back. The panzer swung a little south of west.

That damned Dutch machine gun kept banging away. Ludwig wondered why. A Panzer II had less armor than it should have-he'd seen as much. One hit with any kind of ca

Most of the time, Rothe would have stuck his head out so he could see what was going on. Right this minute, that looked like a bad idea. Yeah, just a little, he thought with a wry chuckle. He had four vision ports in the turret: two on the left, one on the right, and one at the back. The bullets were spanging off the left side of the turret, so…

There it was! The machine gun's muzzle spat flame from the front of an apple orchard. Ludwig traversed the turret. He fired back at the enemy gun. The Dutch crew ma

"That's got to be the bridge, Sergeant." Fritz's voice came back through the speaking tube.

"It does?" With the turret swung to the left, Rothe couldn't see much of what the driver was talking about. He brought it back to face straight ahead again. Sure enough, there was a bridge. And the people around it were shooting at the people on it and right by it. The soldiers hanging on to the bridge wore field-gray. The bastards attacking them were in Dutch gray-green. With leaves off the trees and grass going yellow, neither uniform offered a whole hell of a lot of camouflage.

The Dutch soldiers were too busy trying to drive the paratroopers off the bridge so they could blow it to pay much attention to advancing panzers-several other machines had come with Ludwig's. One of them was a great honking Panzer III-a fifteen-and-a-half-to

It could, and it did. Three or four rounds from that ca

He opened up with his machine gun. The Dutch soldiers scattered. They hadn't looked for an attack from the rear. Well, too damn bad. They also seemed less willing than the Czechs had been to hold in place till they got killed. Say what you would about the Czechs, they had balls.

Three or four He-123s swooped down on the Dutch troops. Next to Ju-87s, the Henschel biplanes looked like last week's-hell, last war's-news. That didn't mean they couldn't do the job. They shot up the Dutchmen and dropped bombs on their heads. The bombs weren't big ones-Ju-87s could carry a lot more-but the Henschels put them right on the money.

Ju-87s had sirens to make them sound even scarier than they were. The He-123s didn't. But, when they dove, they might have been firing God's machine guns. Ludwig had heard that just the right engine RPMs on those babies could make them as demoralizing as all get-out. A lot of what you heard was bullshit. Not this. He forgot who'd told him, but the guy had the straight goods.

He stood up in the turret to get a better look around. A Dutchman fired a couple of wild rifle shots at him. He gu

Ludwig almost killed them in cold blood. At the last second, he caught himself. He pointed brusquely toward the rear. Keeping their hands high over their heads, they stumbled off into captivity…if they didn't run into some other trigger-happy German soldier before anybody took charge of them.

Not my worry, Rothe thought. He was glad he hadn't squeezed the trigger. They'd fought fair, and so had he. Sometimes, in the heat of battle, you did things you wished you hadn't later. This time, Ludwig didn't-quite.

His panzer stopped at the eastern end of the bridge. A paratrooper waved to him. "Good to see you, by God," the fellow called. "It was getting a little hairy here." His helmet fit his head more closely than the standard Wehrmacht model. He wore a coverall over his tunic, along with rubber knee and elbow pads.

And he wasn't kidding. Several of his buddies lay sprawled or twisted in death. A medic tended to a wounded trooper. Other groaning men waited for whatever he could do for them.

"Can we cross the bridge?" Ludwig asked.

"Ja," the paratrooper answered. "We pulled the wires on the demolition charges before the Dutchmen could set them off. And we've cleared the mines on the roadway and chucked them in the river. I think we got 'em all."

"Thanks a bunch." Ludwig wished the paratrooper hadn't added the last few words. The son of a bitch only laughed at him. He bent down and shouted into the speaking tube: "Take us across, Fritz."

"Will do," the driver said. "What's on the other side?"

"More Dutchmen with guns," Ludwig told him. "What the hell do you expect?"

"How about some gals with big tits?"

"Yeah, how about that?" Rothe said dryly. He wished he had a control that would let him pour ice water on Fritz. The driver was the horniest guy he'd ever run into. The worst part was, he did get laid a lot. Ludwig knew that if he used a no-holds-barred approach like that, all he'd get was his face slapped.

The Panzer II rumbled forward. Fritz did have the sense to take the bridge slowly. If the paratroopers had missed a surprise or two, he'd have a chance to stop or to go around it. Ludwig gave the roadway a once-over, too. They didn't blow up, so he and Fritz didn't miss anything important.

They went past not only dead German paratroopers but also quite a few dead Dutchmen. Some of them were in what looked like police uniforms. No, they hadn't looked for soldiers to fall out of the sky so far behind their front. These must have been second-, or maybe third-, line defenders. Whoever they were, they'd fought hard. It hadn't done them any good, though.

As soon as Ludwig heard a machine gun rattle to malignant life, he ducked down into the turret again. But the Dutch had put up a better fight on the east side of the bridge than they did here. Maybe losing it had broken their spirit. Or maybe they simply didn't have what they needed for a proper defense here.

A car with half a dozen Dutch officers screamed up the road toward the bridge-and toward the panzer. "Aren't you going to blast those shitheads?" Fritz demanded.