Read Online Last Orders: The War That Came Early by Harry Turtledove - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Harry Turtledove
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Germans started trying to kill them, though.
Sure as hell, the Cockney who’d pushed up against the muddy front wall of the trench next to him nudged him and said, “ ’Ere, Sarge, can I bum a fag orf yer?”
“Here you go, Jack.” Walsh handed him the packet.
“Fanks.” Jack Scholes took one and gave it back. He was young enough to be the staff sergeant’s son. He had close-cropped blond hair, a tough, narrow face with pointed features, and snaggle teeth. Helooked like a mean terrier. He fought like one, too. He was the stubborn sort of soldier who took a deal of killing.
Walsh leaned close so Scholes could get a light from his cigarette. Most of the German fire was a couple of hundred yards long. That was about the only good news Walsh could find.
He’d just ground the tiny butt of his latest smoke under the heel of his boot when the barrage stopped. Beside him, Scholes flipped off the safety on his Lee-Enfield. “Now we see if the buggers mean it or not,” he said.
That was also how things looked to Walsh. If the Germans did mean it, they’d throw men and tanks into the attack and try to push the British forces back toward the border between Belgium and France. Otherwise, they’d sit and wait and make the Tommies come to them.
They’d done a lot of sitting and waiting lately. With positions hardened by reinforced concrete, with MG-42s waiting to turn any enemy attack into a charnel house, with tanks that had bigger guns and thicker armor than anything the Allies boasted, why shouldn’t the Nazis wait? The Western Front was narrow. Their foes had to come at them head-on. They could bleed them white without paying too high a butcher’s bill of their own.
But trusting the Germans to do the same thing every time didn’t pay. Several English Bren guns started shooting all at nearly the same time. A mournful shout spelled out what that meant: “Here they come!”
Scholes popped up onto the firing step, squeezed off a couple of rounds, and quickly ducked down again. Alistair Walsh stuck his head up for a look, but only for a look. In place of a rifle, he carried a Sten submachine gun, one of the ugliest weapons ever invented. The stamped metal pieces were more botched together than properly assembled. Some of them looked as if they’d been cut from sheet metal with tin snips; for all Walsh knew, they had. If you dropped a Sten, chances were it would either fall apart or go off and shoot you in the leg.
At close quarters, though, it spat out a lot of slugs in a hurry. A Lee-Enfieldcould kill out past half a mile. Inside a couple of hundred yards, the Sten was the horse to back.
The Germans weren’t inside a couple of hundred yards yet. They had to work through the gaps in their own wire, cross the space between their stuff and the stuff the English had put up, and get through
that
before they could start jumping down into the trenches.
Their machine guns made it dangerous for any Tommy to stick his head up over the parapet and shoot at them. Twenty feet down the trench from Walsh, an Englishman bonelessly toppled over backwards. A bullet had punched a neat hole in his forehead. It had probably blown half his brains back into his tin hat, but Walsh couldn’t see that—a small mercy.
Possibly a bigger mercy was that he hadn’t seen any German tanks moving up with the foot soldiers. He especially dreaded the fearsome Tigers, which smashed British armor as if it were made to the same shoddy standards as the Sten gun.
He popped up again and squeezed a short burst at the oncoming Germans, more to encourage his own men than to put the fear of God in the Fritzes. “Keep your peckers up!” he called to the soldiers in dirty khaki. “Stand firm and they’ll turn tail. Wait and see!”
They did, too. Some of them lurked in no-man’s-land for a while. A few machine-gun teams set up in shell holes so they could rake the English line from shorter range. You could do that with an MG-42. No other
Sure as hell, the Cockney who’d pushed up against the muddy front wall of the trench next to him nudged him and said, “ ’Ere, Sarge, can I bum a fag orf yer?”
“Here you go, Jack.” Walsh handed him the packet.
“Fanks.” Jack Scholes took one and gave it back. He was young enough to be the staff sergeant’s son. He had close-cropped blond hair, a tough, narrow face with pointed features, and snaggle teeth. Helooked like a mean terrier. He fought like one, too. He was the stubborn sort of soldier who took a deal of killing.
Walsh leaned close so Scholes could get a light from his cigarette. Most of the German fire was a couple of hundred yards long. That was about the only good news Walsh could find.
He’d just ground the tiny butt of his latest smoke under the heel of his boot when the barrage stopped. Beside him, Scholes flipped off the safety on his Lee-Enfield. “Now we see if the buggers mean it or not,” he said.
That was also how things looked to Walsh. If the Germans did mean it, they’d throw men and tanks into the attack and try to push the British forces back toward the border between Belgium and France. Otherwise, they’d sit and wait and make the Tommies come to them.
They’d done a lot of sitting and waiting lately. With positions hardened by reinforced concrete, with MG-42s waiting to turn any enemy attack into a charnel house, with tanks that had bigger guns and thicker armor than anything the Allies boasted, why shouldn’t the Nazis wait? The Western Front was narrow. Their foes had to come at them head-on. They could bleed them white without paying too high a butcher’s bill of their own.
But trusting the Germans to do the same thing every time didn’t pay. Several English Bren guns started shooting all at nearly the same time. A mournful shout spelled out what that meant: “Here they come!”
Scholes popped up onto the firing step, squeezed off a couple of rounds, and quickly ducked down again. Alistair Walsh stuck his head up for a look, but only for a look. In place of a rifle, he carried a Sten submachine gun, one of the ugliest weapons ever invented. The stamped metal pieces were more botched together than properly assembled. Some of them looked as if they’d been cut from sheet metal with tin snips; for all Walsh knew, they had. If you dropped a Sten, chances were it would either fall apart or go off and shoot you in the leg.
At close quarters, though, it spat out a lot of slugs in a hurry. A Lee-Enfieldcould kill out past half a mile. Inside a couple of hundred yards, the Sten was the horse to back.
The Germans weren’t inside a couple of hundred yards yet. They had to work through the gaps in their own wire, cross the space between their stuff and the stuff the English had put up, and get through
that
before they could start jumping down into the trenches.
Their machine guns made it dangerous for any Tommy to stick his head up over the parapet and shoot at them. Twenty feet down the trench from Walsh, an Englishman bonelessly toppled over backwards. A bullet had punched a neat hole in his forehead. It had probably blown half his brains back into his tin hat, but Walsh couldn’t see that—a small mercy.
Possibly a bigger mercy was that he hadn’t seen any German tanks moving up with the foot soldiers. He especially dreaded the fearsome Tigers, which smashed British armor as if it were made to the same shoddy standards as the Sten gun.
He popped up again and squeezed a short burst at the oncoming Germans, more to encourage his own men than to put the fear of God in the Fritzes. “Keep your peckers up!” he called to the soldiers in dirty khaki. “Stand firm and they’ll turn tail. Wait and see!”
They did, too. Some of them lurked in no-man’s-land for a while. A few machine-gun teams set up in shell holes so they could rake the English line from shorter range. You could do that with an MG-42. No other
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