The Winds of War (The Henry Family, #1)

by Herman Wouk

In the warm little dining room of the house, now a regiment headquarters, the visitors crowded around the table with the tank colonel, four officers of the regiment, and a General Yevlenko, who wore three khaki stars on his thick wide shoulders. He was the chief of staff of the army group in that sector, and Colonel Amphiteatrov told Victor Henry that he had just happened to be passing through the town.

The general talked freely about the war, and the colonel translated. His army group was outnumbered in this sector and had far fewer tanks and guns than the Nazis. Still, they might yet surprise Fritz. They had to hold a line much too long for their strength, according to doctrine; but a good doctrine, like a good regiment, sometimes had to stretch. The Germans were taking fearful losses. He reeled off many figures of tanks destroyed, guns captured, men killed. Any army could advance if its commanders were willing to leave blood smeared on each yard of earth gained. The Germans were getting white as turnips with the bloodletting. This drive was their last big effort to win the war before winter came.

At first they would advance in column down our highways, not even bothering to guard their flanks. Lately they’ve grown more careful. Yes, Hitler trained them to maraud, kill, and loot, and those are old Teutonic customs, so they are good at it. We are a peace-loving people, and I suppose in a mental sense we were caught unprepared. So, as you say, they have come far. Now we have two jobs: to keep them from coming farther, and then to send them back where they came from, the ones we haven’t squashed into our mud.”

He turned to Henry and Tudsbury. “We will do the job faster, naturally, if you help us with supplies, for we have lost a lot. But most of all, the opening of a front in western Europe can lead to the quick destruction of these rats. The English might be surprised to find they could march straight to Berlin once they set foot in France. I believe every German who can shoot a gun straight has been shipped here for this attack.”

“Well, and what are you interested in seeing, Captain? Unfortunately, this far inland, we cannot show you very good naval maneuvers.” “General, suppose—of course this is absurd, but—suppose my President could visit your front, in a cloak of invisibility from the fairy tales.” “We have such stories,” Yevlenko said, “but unfortunately no such cloaks.” “What would you like him to see?”

“You put that well. It will be arranged. As the situation is a bit fluid, I suggest you make a start at dawn.” He said to Pamela, gesturing upward, “A bedroom has been cleared for you. The gentlemen will bunk with these officers.”

54

Here Victor Henry first got an ineradicable feeling that Yevlenko had told the truth: that the Germans might gain the biggest victories, but that the Red Army would in time drive them out.

“There’s where we’re going.”

They came to a crossroads of mud churned up like water at a boil, and though the road ahead looked good, the driver slithered the car sharp right. “Why don’t we drive straight on?” Pamela said. “Doesn’t the road go through?” “Oh, yes. It goes through. It’s mined. This whole area”—the colonel’s arm swept around the quiet stubbly fields—“is mined.”

In every direction, the grain was crushed flat in great crisscrossing swathes of brown muck. Random patches of stalks still stood; and amid the long brown slashes and the green-yellow clumps, damaged tanks lay scattered on their sides, or turned clear over, or canted, their camouflage paint blistered and burned black, their caterpillar tracks torn, their armor plate blown open. Seven of the tanks bore German markings; two were light Russian T-26 tanks, such as Pug had often seen moving through Moscow. The stink rose from German corpses, sprawled in green uniforms here and there on the ground, and others slumped in blown-open tanks. Their dead purple faces were bloated disgustingly and covered with fat black flies, but one could see they had been youngsters. Pamela turned pale and clapped a handkerchief to her face.

“This happened only day before yesterday. These Fritzes were probing and got caught. Their comrades went away from here and wouldn’t stop to dig proper graves, being in a slight hurry.”

He said to the tank colonel, “Aren’t these Mark Threes? How could your T-26’s knock them out? They don’t fire a shell that can penetrate the Mark Three.” Amphiteatrov grinned. “Well, very good. For a seaman you know a bit about tank warfare. But you had better ask the battalion commander who won this battle, so let us be on our way.”

He saluted the colonel, then the two embraced and kissed. Introducing the visitors, Amphiteatrov said, “Major Kaplan, I showed our friends those busted German tanks out there. Our American Navy friend asked a real tankist’s question. He asked, how could T-26’s knock out Panzer Mark Threes?” The battalion commander grinned from ear to ear, clapped Victor Henry on the back, and said in Russian, “Good, come this way.” Beyond the last cabin, he led them into the woods, past two lines of light tanks ranged under the trees and draped with camouflage netting over their own green-and-sand blotches. “Here we are,” he said proudly. “This is how we knocked out the Mark Threes.” Dispersed in the thickets, all but invisible under branches and nets, five armored monsters thrust heavy square turrets with giant guns high in the air. Tudsbury’s mouth fell open, as he stared up at them. He nervously brushed his moustaches with a knuckle. “My God! What are these things?” “Our newest Russian tank,” said Amphiteatrov. “General Yevlenko thought it might interest President Roosevelt.” “Fantastic!” said Talky. “Why, I’d heard you had these monsters, but—What do they weigh? A hundred tons? Look at that gun!” The Russians smiled at each other. Amphiteatrov said, “It’s a good tank.”

“Great God, Henry, it’s a land battleship,” Tudsbury said. “When I think of the tiny tin cans we rode in! Why, the best German tanks today are eggshells to this. Bloody eggshells! What a surprise!”

“Where are we heading tomorrow, Victor?” “I’m going into the front line. You and Talky will stay in a town several miles back. Up front one sometimes has to make a dash for it, the colonel says, and of course Talky can’t do that.” “Why must you go?” “Well, Amphiteatrov offered. It’ll be informative.” “This is the flight to Berlin again.” “No. I’ll be on the ground all the way, on friendly territory. Quite a difference.” “How long will you be gone from us?” “Just a few hours.”

55

At the steps of the yellow brick church, Pug parted company with the others. A political officer in a belted white leather coat, with the slanted eyes of a Tartar and a little beard like Lenin’s, came to take him off in a small British jeep.

The commissar parked the jeep among trees, and he and Victor Henry crawled the rest of the way through the brush. “The less movement the Fritzes can observe, the better,” said the Russian.

Unlike the Russians, concealed like wild creatures in the earth, the Germans were making no effort to hide themselves or what they were doing. Except for the helmets, guns, and long gray coats, they might have been a big crew on a peacetime construction job. Through binoculars handed him by a soldier—German binoculars—Victor Henry could see the eyeglasses and frost-purpled cheeks and noses of Hitler’s chilled men. “You could shoot them like birds,” he said in Russian. It was as close as he could come to the American idiom, “they’re sitting ducks.” The soldier grunted. “Yes, and give away our position, and start them shelling us! No thanks, Gospodin American.” “If they ever get that bridge finished,” said the commissar, “and start coming across, that’ll be time enough to shoot a big dose down their throats.”

“This campaign is simply a race,” he panted, as they crawled between dugouts. “The Germans are trying to beat Father Frost into Moscow. That’s the plain fact of it. They are pouring out their lifeblood to do it. But never fear, Father Frost is an old friend of Russia. He’ll freeze them dead in the ice. You’ll see, they’ll never make it.”

The Germans were in view all along the river, methodically and calmly preparing to cross. Their businesslike air was more intimidating, Pug thought, than volleys of bullets. Their numbers were alarming, too; where did they all come from?

When they got back to the jeep, Pug said, “How far are we from Moscow here?” “Oh, quite far enough.” The commissar whirred the noisy engine. “I hope you saw what you wanted to see.” “I saw a lot,” Victor Henry said. The commissar turned his Lenin-like face at the American, appraising him with suspicious eyes. “It is not easy to understand the front just by looking at it.” “I understand that you need a second front.” The commissar uttered a brutal grunt. “Then you understand the main thing. But even without the second front, if we must, Captain Genry, we ourselves will smash this plague of German cockroaches.”

Amphiteatrov said he was taking Tudsbury to see a downed Junker 88 in the nearby field. Pug told him that he had seen plenty of Junker 88’s; he would join Pam in the church and wait for them. Amphiteatrov made an annoyed face. “All right, but please remain there, Captain. We’ll come back in twenty minutes or less.”

With a grim nod and chuckle the spotter stepped away from the binoculars. Pug’s eyes were watering from the wind; he put them to the eyepieces and the Germans on the riverbank leaped into sight, blurry and small, still at the same work. “Doesn’t it give you an eerie feeling?” Pam said, stroking the cat. “They’re so calm about it.”

“Pass me those.” She handed him small field glasses, in an open case beside the binocular stand. One quick look, and Pug tapped the spotter’s shoulder and pointed. Swinging the large binoculars halfway round on the tripod, the spotter started with surprise, pulled off goggles and cap, and looked again. He had a lot of curly blond hair and freckles, and he was only eighteen or twenty.

“What is it?” Pamela said. “Take a look.” Pamela saw through the big eyepieces of the spotter’s instrument a column of machines coming out of the woods. “Tanks?” “Some are trucks and armored personnel cars. But yes, it’s a tank unit.” Victor Henry, glasses to his eyes, talked as though he were watching a parade. “Aren’t they Russians?” “No.” “But that’s the direction we came from.” “Yes.”

“I’ll tell you, Pam,” he said, watching the worm pull clear of the forest and move sluggishly toward the town, leaving a black trail behind, “the colonel knows where we are now. Let’s stick here for a while.” “All right. How in God’s name did the Germans get around back there?” “Amphiteatrov said there was trouble to the south. They must have broken across the river and hooked through the woods. It’s not a large unit, it’s a probe.” The top of the ladder danced and banged under a heavy tread. The blond youngster came up, seized a stadimeter, pointed it at the Germans, and slid a vernier back and forth. Hastily flattening out a small black and white grid map on one knee, he barked numbers into the telephone: “Five point six! One two four! R seven M twelve! That’s right! That’s right!” Animated and cheery now, he grinned at the visitors. “Our batteries are training on them. When they’re good and close, we’ll blow them to bits. So maybe you’ll see something yet.” He put on his goggles, changing back from a bright-eyed boy into a faceless grim spotter. Victor Henry said, “They’re watching across the river for your batteries to fire.” The spotter clumsily waved both heavy-clad arms. “Good, but we can’t let those bastards take the town from the rear, can we?” “I hear airplanes.” Pug turned his glasses westward to the sky. “Samalyutti!” “Da!” Swivelling and tilting the binoculars upward, the spotter began to shout into the phone.

“That’s the German drill,” said Victor Henry. “Tanks and planes together.” The oncoming planes, three Stukas, were growing bigger in Pug’s glasses. The spotter switched his binoculars to the tanks again, and began cheering. Pug looked in that direction. “Holy cow! Now I call this military observing, Pam.” Tanks in another column were coming out of the woods about halfway between the Germans and the town, moving on a course almost at right angles to the panzer track. He handed her the glasses and squinted toward the airplanes.

“Just lie low, this will be over soon.” As Pug said this he saw one of the Stukas separating from the others and diving straight for the belfry. He shouted to the spotter, but the airplane noise, the chatter of A.A. guns, the clamor and cries from the town below, and the roar of the wind, quite drowned his voice. Tracers made a red dotted line to the belfry across the gray sky. The tin dome began to sing to rhythmically striking bullets. Victor Henry roughly pushed Pamela flat and threw himself on top of her. The plane stretched into a sizable black machine approaching through the air. Watching over his shoulder to the last, Victor Henry saw the pilot dimly behind his plexiglass, an unhelmeted young blond fellow with a toothy grin. He thought the youngster was going to crash into the dome, and as he winced, he felt something rip at his left shoulder. The airplane scream and roar and whiz mounted, went past, and diminished. The zinging and rattling of bullets stopped. Pug stood, feeling his shoulder. His sleeve was torn open at the very top and the shoulder board was dangling, but there was no blood. The spotter was lying on the bricks beside the overturned binoculars. Bombs were exploding below; the other two planes were still whistling and roaring over the town; one plane was smoking badly. Blood was pooling under the spotter’s head, and with horror Pug perceived white broken bone of the skull showing through the torn shot-away cap, under blond hair and thick-moving red a...

Picking up the telephone, Pug jiggled the hook till somebody answered. He shouted in Russian, “I am the American visitor up here. You understand?” He saw the smoking plane, which was trying to climb, burst into flames and fall. “Da! Where is Konstantin?” The voice sounded exhilarated. “Airplane killed him.” “All right. Somebody else will come.”

The two surviving planes were climbing out of sight. Smoke rose from fires in the town, smelling of burning hay. To the east, the two tank unit tracks had almost joined in a black V, miles long, across the plain. Pug righted the binoculars. Through smoke billowing in the line of vision, he saw the tanks milling in a wild little yellow-flashing vortex on the broad white plain. Five of the KV monsters bulged among lighter Russian tanks. Several German tanks were on fire and their crewmen were running here and there in the snow like ants. Some German tanks and trucks were heading back to the woods. Pug saw only one light Russian tank giving off black smoke. But even as he watched, a KV burst into violent, beautiful purple-orange flame, casting a vivid pool of color on the snow. Meantime the rest of the German tanks began turning away.

The ladder jumped and rapped, and Colonel Amphiteatrov’s face, excited and red, showed at the top. “Well, you’re all right. Well, I’m glad. That was best to stay right here. The bombing was bad in the town. Many people killed. Quick! Both of you. Come along, please.” Then his eye fell on the body lying in blood. “Agh!” “We were strafed,” Pug said. “He’s dead.” The colonel shook his head and sank out of sight, saying, “Well, please, come quickly.” “Go first, Pam.”