Hitler's War Read Online Free

west of the Ebro, Chaim Weinberg decided he feared his own side’s guns more than the Fascists’. When the enemy Spaniards or their German advisers opened up, at least you had a good notion of what they were shooting at. If it wasn’t you, you could relax.
    But when the Republican artillery started shooting, you alwaysneeded to be on the jump. Those shells might come down on the Fascists’ head…or they might come down on yours. You never could tell. Neither could the poor, sorry bastards firing the guns.
    “Aren’t you glad we came from the States?” asked Mike Carroll, another volunteer from the Lincoln Battalion.
    Before Chaim could answer, somebody’s shell burst much too close. Shrapnel and shards of shattered stone screamed through the air. He listened for shrieks, but didn’t hear any. Luck. Nothing but dumb frigging luck.
    “Aren’t you?” Carroll persisted.
    “Chinga tu madre,”
Chaim told him. He wouldn’t have said anything like that even in English before he sailed to Spain. Well, he was a new man now. That new man needed a shave (at the moment, he also needed a razor). He was scrawny and hungry. He was filthy. He was lousy. But damned if he wasn’t new.
    He’d never fired a rifle before he got to Spain. Hell, he’d never even handled a rifle. He could field-strip his Mauser blindfolded now. He’d started out with a crappy French piece, and got this much better German one off a dead Nationalist soldier. Keeping it in cartridges was a bitch. But keeping the French rifle in ammo would have been a bitch, too. Logistics was only a bitter joke to the Republicans.
    The shelling went on, but none of the other rounds burst close enough to make him pucker. He lit a cigarette. The tobacco was allegedly French. It smelled like horseshit. It tasted the way he imagined smoldering horseshit would taste, too.
    “No pasarán,”
Mike said, and then, “Gimme one of those.”
    “Here.” Chaim handed him the pack.
    Mike took a smoke from it. He leaned close to Chaim to get it going. After his first drag, he made a face. “Boy, that’s rotten.”
    “Uh-huh.” Chaim held out his hand, palm up. Reluctantly, his buddy returned the cigarettes. Chaim stuck them back in the breastpocket of his ragged khaki tunic. “Only thing worse than rotten tobacco’s no tobacco at all.”
    “No kidding,” Mike said.
    Chaim took a cautious look out of the trench. Nothing special was going on in the Nationalist lines a few hundred yards away—everybody here talked about meters, but they seemed like play money to him. The shelling was just…shelling. A few people on both sides would get maimed or killed, and it wouldn’t move the war any closer to the end, not even a nickel’s worth.
    “No pasarán,”
Chaim echoed. “They’d fucking better not pass, not here, or we’re butcher’s meat.” He sucked in more smoke. “Hell, we’re dead meat anyway, sooner or later. I still hope it’s later, though.”
    “Yeah, me, too.” Mike Carroll sounded like Boston. Before he came to Spain, he’d worked in a steel mill somewhere in Massachusetts. That was what he said, anyway. A lot of guys had stories that didn’t add up. Chaim didn’t get all hot and bothered about it. He didn’t tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth about himself, either. The only thing that really mattered was that you hated Fascism enough to hop on a boat and try to do something about it.
    “Amazing thing is, the Republic’s still in there kicking,” Chaim said. Mike nodded. General Sanjurjo and his pack of reactionary bastards must have thought their foes would fall apart in nothing flat. Who could have blamed them? They had the trained troops, and they had Mussolini and Hitler—which meant Italian and German matériel and soldiers—on their side.
    But it didn’t pan out that way. The brutal farce of noninterference kept the Republicans from getting munitions and reinforcements. Like the rest of the men in the Lincoln Battalion,