Vaclav had been arguing with him through Benjamin Halevy, because he still hadn't picked up much French himself. Since that wasn't getting him anywhere, he fixed the French sergeant with a glare and asked him, "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

He got exactly what he hoped for: indignant sputters. Then the Frenchman spoke to the Jewish noncom doing the translating: "He wants to know why you think he should speak the enemy's language."

"Does he?" Vaclav pounced: "Tell the son of a bitch I figured he would because he's doing more to help the Nazis by sitting on his ammo till it hatches than he could any other way."

"Are you sure you want me to say that?" Halevy asked. "He really won't help you if I do."

"Fuck him. He's not helping me now. He's got rounds for my antitank rifle, and he won't turn them loose," Jezek said.

"All right. I'll try. I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were doing." In the Jew's French, Vaclav's insult sounded less nasty than it would have in Czech or German-French was better for kissing ass than for telling somebody off. No matter what it sounded like, the crack got home. The quartermaster went as hot-and as red-as iron in the forge. He said several things that sounded heartfelt.

"What's all that mean?" Vaclav asked with clinical curiosity.

"You'd break your piece over his head if you knew," Halevy said.

Vaclav laughed. "Not this goddamn thing." Antitank rifles were huge, heavy brutes. The heavier the weapon was, the less it kicked when it spat one of its honking big bullets. Jezek approved of that. As things were, his shoulder was sore all the time. You could stop an elephant with an antitank rifle. Sometimes, you could even stop a tank. Elephants couldn't grow more armor. Tanks, unfortunately, could. The rifle would be obsolete pretty soon, and you'd need a field gun to deal with enemy armor.

In the meantime, Vaclav wished he had a field gun to deal with this goddamn quartermaster sergeant. The Frenchman and the Jew went back and forth. Halevy chuckled. "He doesn't like you, Jezek."

"Suits me-in that case, we're even," Vaclav said. "I'm trying to defend his lousy country. It's more than he's doing, Christ knows. You can translate that, too."

Halevy did. The French sergeant didn't just sputter-he bleated. Then he sprang up from his folding chair. Vaclav thought the fellow was going to try and slug him. Monsieur le Francais would get a dreadful surprise if he did; Jezek promised himself that.

But the quartermaster sergeant spun on his heel and stormed away. The view from the rear was no more appetizing than the one from the front. "If he's going after military policemen to haul you off-" Halevy began.

"They'll grab you, too, 'cause you're the one who said it in French," Vaclav said happily. The Jew seemed less delighted. Too bad for him, Vaclav thought. Just to be helpful, he added, "It's called shooting the messenger."

In Yiddish, French, and Czech, Halevy told him what he could do with a messenger. To listen to him, shooting was the least of it. Vaclav listened in admiration. He didn't understand everything Halevy said, but he wanted to remember some of what he did understand.

The quartermaster sergeant came back. A thunderstorm clouded his brow. He said several pungent things of his own. French might lack the guttural power of Czech or German when it came to swearing, but the sergeant did his damnedest. Vaclav hardly cared. At the same time as the Frenchman was cussing him out, he was also handing over half a dozen five-round clips of long, fat antitank-rifle cartridges.

"Tell him thanks," Jezek said to Benjamin Halevy.

"Sure." The Jew eyed him. "It won't do you any good, you know." He spoke in French. The quartermaster replied. Halevy translated for Vaclav: "He says you can shove a round up your ass and then hit yourself in the butt with a golf club to touch it off."

"A golf club?" Vaclav had to laugh. "Well, that's something different-fuck me if it's not."

"He'd say fuck you anyway," Halevy replied. "Let's get out of here before he decides he really does have to shaft us, just on general principles."

That seemed like good advice. Vaclav took it. The quartermaster offered a couple of poignant parting shots. Vaclav glanced toward Halevy. The polyglot Jew declined to translate. That was bound to be just as well.

Civilians streamed away from the front. They didn't want to get caught by bombs and shells and machine-gun bullets. Well, who in their right minds would have? Vaclav didn't, either. But when you put on a uniform, that was the chance you took.

Some of the Frenchmen and-women eyed the Czechs suspiciously. They weren't poilus. They weren't Tommies, either. British soldiers were familiar sights in France. The damnfool locals probably thought they were Germans-it wasn't as if that hadn't happened before farther east. Vaclav would have thought German uniforms were plenty familiar here, too. Maybe he was wrong.

Soldiers came back with the civilians. The ones who clutched wounds, pale and tight-lipped, were simply part of what war did. The ones who didn't seem hurt worried Vaclav more. He'd watched the Czech army fight till it couldn't fight any more. Then, when the Nazis kept the pressure on, the Czechs went to pieces.

Would the same thing happen here? As far as Vaclav could see, France was in better shape than Czechoslovakia had been. The country seemed united in its fight against the Nazis. Czechoslovakia sure hadn't been. Half the Slovaks-maybe more than half-wanted the state to come to pieces. Their precious Slovakia was supposed to be independent these days, but Hitler pulled the strings and made Father Tiso dance.

As for the Sudeten Germans, the miserable bastards who'd touched off the war…Vaclav muttered something foul. The Czechs had been pulling them out of the army because they were unreliable. He muttered something else. Too little, too late. Back right after the last war ended, Czechoslovakia should have shipped all those shitheads back to Germany. If they wanted to join the Reich so much, well, fine. So long.

It hadn't happened. Too goddamn bad.

A French captain spotted the enormous rifle Vaclav had slung over his left shoulder. He said something in his own language. Vaclav only shrugged and looked blank. "Do you want me to understand him?" Halevy asked-in Czech.

Vaclav didn't even have to think about it. "Nah," he said. "He'll pull me off to do something stupid that'll probably get me killed. I'd rather go on back to camp."

"Makes sense," the Jew agreed. Like Vaclav, he stared at the French officer as if he had no idea the fellow was talking to them. The Frenchman said something else. Vaclav and Halevy went right on impersonating idiots. The captain tried bad German. Jezek understood that. He also understood the captain did have something dangerous for him to try. He didn't let on that he understood one damn thing. He was willing to risk his life: as he'd thought before, that was why he wore the uniform. But he wasn't willing to get himself killed without much chance of hurting the enemy.

"Ah, screw you both," the captain said in German when the Czechs wouldn't admit they followed him. They went right on feigning ignorance. The Frenchman gave up. Vaclav had his ammo, and he didn't have to try anything idiotic. As far as he was concerned, the day was a victory so far. ONCE UPON A TIME-probably not very long ago-the froggies had had themselves a big old supply dump outside a place called Hary Willi Dernen eyed what was left of it with something not far from disgust. The Frenchmen had hauled away whatever they still had a use for, then poured gasoline on the rest and set fire to it. The stink of stale smoke was sour in his nostrils.

"Come on. Get moving," Arno Baatz growled. "Nothing worth grabbing in this miserable place."

"Right, Corporal," Willi said. Whenever Baatz talked to him these days, he had to fight like a son of a bitch to keep from giggling.