The War That Came Early: The Big Switch

by Harry Turtledove

  Of course, Vaclav understood not a word of the local language. As Benjamin Halévy had already shown, he could follow it after a fashion. “So what’s he going on about?” Vaclav whispered.

  “He’s thanking us for not despairing of the Republic,” Halévy whispered back.

  “I should hope not!” Vaclav said. “It’s the only country this side of Russia that doesn’t want to shoot us on sight.”

  “It’s a quotation. It goes back to ancient Rome,” the Jew told him.

  “If you say so.” Vaclav had been on the vocational track in his school days. German … You couldn’t escape German, not in a Czechoslovakia where one person in four was a Fritz. But only greasy grinds had anything to do with Latin.

  German attitudes had rubbed off on Vaclav, or been drilled into him, in ways he didn’t even notice. He’d often thought the French were less efficient than they might have been. They kept trying to muddle through and improvise instead of planning beforehand, the way anyone with a gram of sense would have. So it seemed to someone whose country had been ruled for centuries by Germans, anyhow (even if they were Germans from Vienna and not Prussians).

  But the French had at least heard of planning, whether they bothered to do any or not. With Spaniards, there was nothing but muddling through and improvising. The Republic must have known ahead of time that the Czechs were on their way. Vaclav would have thought one official or another would have decided where the new force was to go and what it would do after it got there.

  No matter what he would have thought, nothing like that had happened. Along with a bunch of his buddies, he got off the train in Sagunto—another town that Halévy said went back to Roman days—to take a leak. He’d already discovered that Spanish pissoirs were even nastier than French ones, but when you had to go, you damn well had to go. He tried not to breathe while tending to his business.

  He came out blinking away ammonia fumes … and discovered, on the platform, a Spanish officer and a civilian official shouting and screaming and gesticulating as if their next step would be pistols at dawn tomorrow. Both of them pointed a lot at the train and at the Czech soldiers getting on and off.

  Vaclav could no more follow them than if they were speaking Tibetan. He looked around to see if Halévy was anywhere close by. Sure as hell, the redheaded Jew (just like Judas ran through Jezek’s mind) was just emerging from the odorous latrine. “What are they going on about?” Vaclav asked.

  Halévy cocked his head to one side, listening. “Where the train’s supposed to take us,” he said.

  “They don’t know?” Vaclav said in dismay.

  “They’re Spaniards. What can you expect?” Halévy answered. So the men of the Republic looked sloppy even to someone used to French ways, did they? That was interesting—not reassuring, maybe, but interesting. And sure enough, Halévy went on, “It’s a good thing the assholes on the other side are Spaniards, too, or this war would’ve been over a long time ago. God, I bet the Nationalists drive the fucking Nazis crazy. Serves the Germans right, you ask me.”

  “If the Germans went straight to hell and roasted for a million years on red-hot griddles with devils turning ’em every ten minutes with pitchforks, that might start to serve them right.” Vaclav spoke with deep conviction. “A bunch of fucked-up Spaniards? Nah. They don’t begin to cut it.”

  Halévy’s smile reached his mouth but not his eyes. “When you put it that way, you’re right.”

  The train ended up taking the Czechs through the heart of Spain to Madrid. Vaclav eyed the city with surprised respect. This side of China, it was one of the few places that had been bombed before Prague. All the others were in Spain, too. This was where the Nazis, and even the Italians, had learned their tricks. Mussolini hadn’t done much with what he’d learned. Hitler, on the other hand …

  An officer in a very plain uniform stood waiting for them on the platform. He wasn’t a Spaniard—he was from the International Brigades. “I am Brigadier Kossuth. I am sorry, but I do not speak Czech. Will you follow me if I use Russian?” he said in that language.

  Vaclav could almost follow him, not least because he spoke slowly. Russian wasn’t Kossuth’s native tongue. The name he used and his accent both proclaimed him a Magyar. Vaclav had no use for Hungarians. They weren’t as bad as Germans, but they weren’t friendly neighbors, either. And so he wasn’t sorry to shake his head and spread his hands. He wasn’t about to oblige this fellow by stretching to try to understand Russian.

  Most of his countrymen seemed to feel the same way. Brigadier Kossuth’s stooped shoulders went up and down in a shrug. He switched languages as easily as he might change his cap: “All right. Do you understand me now?” he asked in German.

  He still kept that fierce accent, but Vaclav had no trouble making out what he said. Neither did most of the other Czechs. The older men would have had German pounded into them when they went to school back in Austro-Hungarian days. Czechs Vaclav’s age still learned it—it was their window on a wider world. The same evidently held true for Magyars.

  “Sehr gut,” Kossuth said. No German had ever pronounced an r like that, but Vaclav knew what it was. The officer went on, “You will serve alongside the International Brigades. It was judged best to put you with men with whom you might be able to talk.” He gave a thin smile: the only kind his weathered face seemed to have room for. “Sometimes this is an advantage.”

  Sometimes it wasn’t, too, or so Vaclav had found in France. More than once, a blank stare and a mumble had probably kept him from getting killed—or from killing some half-smart French lieutenant.

  Kossuth studied the Czechs with shrewd, experienced eyes. One eyebrow rose a millimeter or two when he noticed the antitank rifle slung on Jezek’s back. He ambled up to Vaclav. “So, Corporal, do you use that against German panzers?”

  “I have … mein Herr.” Vaclav wasn’t surprised Kossuth could read Czech rank badges. He spoke the honorific grudgingly, but speak it he did. He added, “It is also an excellent sharpshooting piece.”

  “He’s killed men out to two kilometers with it,” Sergeant Halévy said helpfully.

  The brigadier classified him with a single sharp glance. “Wilkommen,” he said, and then, “Bienvenu. You will find we already have a good many mouthy Jews among the Internationals.” Then he said what was probably the same thing in French.

  Vaclav wouldn’t have been surprised if Halévy came back in Magyar; the French Jew was a man of parts. But if he knew any of Brigadier Kossuth’s birthspeech, he didn’t let on. He replied in Yiddish-tinged German so Vaclav could understand: “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, sir. I hope you don’t hold it too much against us.”

  “Not … too much,” Kossuth said slowly. If most Czechs didn’t like Jews, most Hungarians really didn’t like Jews. After a visible pause for thought, the brigadier went on, “The ones I resent are the ones who stayed home. Those who came here have shown they can fight. This is what the struggle demands.”

  “We agree there,” Halévy said. By his tone, there would be plenty of other places where they didn’t. Also by his tone, he wanted Kossuth to know that, even if he was just a sergeant and the other man a brigadier.

  Something sparked in Kossuth’s deep-set eyes. A beat slower than he might have, Vaclav recognized it as amusement. “You are another troublemaker,” Kossuth said. “I might have known.”

  “Would I have come here if I weren’t, sir?” Halévy said, and then, “Would you have come here if you weren’t?” To Vaclav’s amazement, Brigadier Kossuth proved he could laugh out loud.

  his is the BBC news.” Those plummy tones coming from the radio seemed out of place in a military hospital in Manila. Pete McGill was disgusted with the limeys for coming to terms with Hitler. He would have bet most of the British Marines he’d known and drunk with and sometimes brawled with in Peking and Shanghai were just as disgusted. But he was glad to listen to the BBC any which way. It gave more news and less bullshit than any American station.

 
; He was also glad he wasn’t the only one in the war who wanted to know what the Beeb had to say. Even Army files could figure out that what happened in the wider world had a lot to do with the way they did business. You didn’t have to be a leatherneck to see that—but it probably helped.

  “Sir Horace Wilson’s government easily defeated a motion of no confidence in the House of Commons yesterday,” the newsreader said. “Only a handful of Tories joined Labour and Liberal MPs in opposing the Prime Minister. Even abstentions were fewer than many had anticipated.”

  That meant England would go on doing what she had been doing: kissing Germany’s ass. Pete muttered something foul. He couldn’t do anything about England’s foreign policy, but he didn’t have to like it. He also didn’t like it when the newsreader went on about the triumphs the British Expeditionary Force in the East was winning. Less bullshit or not, the BBC man said nothing about the fact that the Tommies were fighting side by side with the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS. Maybe the radio network had a guilty conscience. If it didn’t, it should have.

  “In other news”—the broadcaster said nyews, where it would have been nooz in Pete’s New York mouth—“the Empire of Japan has recalled its ambassador from Washington in protest over President Roosevelt’s decision to stop sales of petroleum and scrap metal to the Japanese. No talks regarding this delicate issue have yet been scheduled.” That came out sheduled instead of the American skeduled, but again Pete followed with no trouble.

  “Aw, shit,” said an Army corporal with a leg broken in a car crash. “Them Japs is gonna come after us next.”

  By us, Pete didn’t know whether the Army guy meant the United States in general or the men in this military hospital in particular. Either way, the other two-striper was probably right. The Japs had signaled their intentions by making peace with Stalin. If they wanted to pick a fight with the US of A, they wouldn’t have to worry about getting jumped from behind.

  That much had been obvious ever since Japan and Russia started talking about peace. It gave the Russkis their free hand in the west, too. But if the Japanese ambassador was on his way home, things in these parts might start boiling over any day now.

  And that wouldn’t be good for American interests in the Far East. For one thing, the Philippines lay within easy range of the Japanese home islands and of Formosa, which had belonged to the Japs for most of the past fifty years. For another … “Just about all of my buddies are stationed in Peking or Shanghai, one,” Pete said.

  “Tough luck for them,” the Army corporal replied. “But chances are they ain’t a nickel’s worth worse off’n we are right here, know what I mean?”

  “Don’t I wish I didn’t?” Pete said glumly. “They’re talking about letting me out of my cast pretty soon. Maybe they’ll give me shipboard duty. At least then I’ll be able to shoot back at the little slant-eyed pricks.”

  “That’d be good,” the Army guy agreed. “You can make it to the bomb shelter, too, if they do. Me, I gotta lay here and hope the assholes miss me.”

  “Yeah, that’s not a whole lot of fun,” Pete said. “I’ve been thinking the same thing every time they hold an air-raid drill.” He clicked his tongue between his teeth, considering. “If they’re even halfway on the ball, they’ll run a lot more of ’em from here on out.”

  That only drew a derisive snort from the other corporal. “If they’re even halfway on the ball, they don’t get assigned to the Philippines to begin with. Well, except maybe MacArthur, and everybody knows he’s a fuckin’ blowhard.”

  Pete didn’t keep track of Army generals. It sure wasn’t the first time he’d heard people bitch about Douglas MacArthur, though. A lot of guys still hated him for what he’d done breaking up the Bonus Army at the deepest part of the Depression; he’d heard that from other injured men here.

  He did get the cast off his ankle the very next day. He was shocked to see how skinny his leg had got under it. “I want to go back to duty right away,” he blurted.

  “Yeah, and people in hell want mint juleps to drink,” answered the medical technician who’d cut the cast off him. “Just ’cause you want it doesn’t mean you can have it. Get yourself in shape again and see what the brass tells you then.”

  It was good, sensible advice, which didn’t mean Pete liked it. How often does anybody ever like good, sensible advice? The world would be a different, and probably a better, place if more people took it.

  But telling a Marine he needed to get fit was giving advice he was prepared to heed. Pete was already in the habit of exercising till everything screamed. He was used by now to screams from one part of him or another. He’d done the same kind of thing after his arm came out of its sling and cast. “You do heal well,” a physical therapist told him. “Some people might have ended up in a wheelchair from what happened to you.”

  “Some people might have got killed,” Pete growled.

  The therapist blinked. “Well, yes.” He didn’t know about Vera.

  She was another reason Pete pushed himself so hard. While he was working and sweating and hurting, he didn’t think about her so much. He retreated into the gym the way another man might have retreated into the bottle. Sooner or later, though, a drunk sobered up. And, sooner or later, Pete had to quit working out and start listening again to the demons that lived inside his head.

  There were lots of them. Some hated the Japs, not only as enemies of the United States but also as the people who made Chinese terrorists want to blow up places like movie houses. Some of his demons hated the Chinamen who’d blown up the theater and murdered the love of his life. (That they’d ruined him, too, was no more than an afterthought.)

  And some of his demons hated his own superiors and the policies and regulations they had to uphold. If Vera hadn’t been a stateless person, everything could have worked out. Pete thought so, anyhow. He and his lady love could have got married and gone back to the States together and done … something or other. Whatever happened afterwards (even if it was only Reno and a quickie divorce—not that Pete imagined any such thing), they wouldn’t have been within thousands of miles of some sticks of dynamite attached to a ticking clock.

  If he could kill lots of Japs, that would make him feel better. Because he understood as much, he pushed his ankle far past the point where a less determined man would have started gulping aspirins and cold beer. That fight wouldn’t wait, and he was bound and determined to be ready for it when it came.

  He couldn’t get at the Chinamen, not any more. Even if he’d gone back to Shanghai, he wouldn’t have known which of the goddamn Chinks to go after. They kept themselves secret from the Japs, which meant they also kept themselves secret from everybody else. So those demons would just have to stay unsated, their blood lust unslaked.

  Consciously, Pete didn’t want to go after Marine Corps higher-ups. But he didn’t see the look on his own face when he eyed officers—especially officious, by-the-book officers, of whom the Corps had no fewer than any other outfit its size.

  Those officers saw the black looks. Officious they might have been, but they weren’t all stupid. Some of them recognized the scowls for … well, for some of what they were, anyhow. One man said to another, “We better get that guy out of here before he goes Asiatic and does something everybody’d be sorry about afterwards. Him, too, not that that would do anybody any good.”

  His friend nodded, but replied, “He’s liable to do it wherever we send him.”

  “Yeah, sure. But it’s not our lookout after that.” The first officer was indeed an officious type.

  He was also an officer with good personnel connections. And so, even though Pete McGill wasn’t quite a hundred percent yet, he found himself released from the military hospital and assigned to the USS Boise, a light cruiser that was one of the heavier vessels of the Far East Fleet. He didn’t complain. On the contrary. He thought somebody had done him a favor.

  WILLI DERNEN THOUGHT he’d learned all about the Wehrmacht greatcoat’s limits the winter before
in France. He hadn’t been in Russia long before he discovered his education in such matters was incomplete.

  The biggest difference was, in France you could almost always find somewhere cozy to hole up. Villages clustered thickly. Even if you were stuck in a trench, the line didn’t move much. You could fix up your hole till it was fit to live in. Yeah, it was cold outside. But if you had a fire and a wall to keep off the wind, you could put up with things pretty well.

  It wasn’t like that here. For one thing, the Germans and their allies were still advancing. You couldn’t put down roots, the way Landsers had in France after the big push to sweep around behind Paris fell short. For another, there were far fewer places in which to put down roots. Russian villages were few and far between, and often seemed all but lost amidst the vastness of fields and forests. Willi had never imagined such a wide, wild country. The howls that came from the woods were wolves, not dogs. His skin had prickled up in gooseflesh when he realized that.

  And finally, not to put too fine a point on it, the Wehrmacht-issue greatcoat wasn’t up to the challenge a Russian winter gave it. If you wore one out in the open, with no fire to keep you warm, eventually you’d freeze to death. Or not so eventually, depending on how hard the wind howled down out of the north.

  Willi stole a sheepskin vest from a Russian peasant’s hut that—except for not running around on giant chicken legs—might have come straight out of fairy tales about Baba Yaga. The inside of the hut was filthy. The vest probably carried lice and fleas. Willi didn’t care. He was already lousy and flea-bitten. A little more crawly company? So what? The damn thing was warm. And it fit snugly, and he could wear his greatcoat over it.

  The find made his buddies jealous. “Only thing better would have been a jug of vodka,” Adam Pfaff said. “That’d heat you up from the inside out—and you might even share it.”

  “In your dreams,” Willi said sweetly. They both grinned. Pfaff might not have been with the unit very long, but he was a good guy. He was no combat virgin, either. He knew what needed doing, and he did it without fuss—and without freezing up in a tight spot. Willi was glad to have him at his back, and it worked both ways.