Hitler's war

Germans! Maybe they were from the Condor Legion, the force of “volunteers” doing what they could for the Spanish Nationalists. Or maybe they were Wehrmacht regulars. The Nazis and the Nationalists had the same enemies these days, after all. Putting Gibraltar out of action would hurt England all over the Mediterranean.

But that wasn’t why seeing those big, fair men in field-gray so heartened Joaquin Delgadillo-and, no doubt, most of the other Nationalist troopers who recognized them. Spaniards on both sides were amateurs at war. The honest ones on both sides knew and admitted as much. Left to their own devices, they probably would have made a hash of the attack on Gibraltar. The British, whatever else you could say about them, weren’t amateurs.

And neither were the Germans. If they were involved in this, it would go the way it was supposed to. That didn’t mean Joaquin couldn’t get blown to cat’s-meat. He knew as much. But he could hope he wouldn’t get blown to cat’s-meat for no reason at all, the way he might with only Spaniards running the show.

Shells made freight-train noises overhead. Some of the trains sounded enormous. And some of the shells, when they burst, were enormous. The ground shook under Joaquin’s feet. Great gouts of earth fountained skyward. And not just of earth: he saw a man, legs pumping as if he were still running, rise fifty or a hundred meters into the air and then plunge earthward again.

“Naval guns!” somebody shouted, as if explaining a thing somehow made it less fearful.

Did the British have battleships tied up at Gibraltar? Were the guns now firing on the advancing Spaniards and Germans designed to fight off battleships trying to batter their way into the harbor? Joaquin neither knew nor cared. He knew only that, whether designed for the job or not, those guns were terrifyingly good at murdering infantrymen.

Up ahead, machine guns started their deadly chatter. Joaquin dove for cover and started digging in again. If you wanted to stay alive in the vicinity of machine guns, you had to do that. Artillery was supposed to have taken out the British murder mills. Joaquin laughed bitterly. They told you that before every attack. They lied every goddamn time. And you were supposed to go on believing them? Sure you were!

Rumble of engines, rattle of tracks…The Condor Legion and the Italians had tanks. These were German machines, even if they carried Spanish markings. Good, Joaquin thought. The Germans handled their tanks as if they were fighting for their own country. The Italians handled theirs as if they’d been given a job they didn’t want to do. The least sign of trouble and they found an excuse for not going forward.

Clang…Boom! That was the sound of an antitank round slaughtering a tank. Joaquin raised his head a few centimeters. Sure as hell, one of the German machines was ablaze, sending up orange flames and a tall column of greasy black smoke. If God was kind, the British round had killed the men in the tank right away. If He wasn’t, they’d burned like a roast when the slut who was supposed to be watching it got drunk and forgot it was on the fire.

Another tank hit a mine. This one didn’t catch fire, but it did throw a track, slewing sideways and stopping in a horribly vulnerable position. If the attack suppressed the guns that could reach it, the men inside might yet live. Joaquin liked those odds…about as little as he liked his own.

“Forward!” an officer shouted. His whistle squealed. Delgadillo looked around again. He didn’t see the man giving the orders. If the bastard didn’t have the guts to stand up himself, who would stand up for him?

Then Sergeant Carrasquel rasped, “Come on, you lazy puto! You think I’m going to do this all by myself?”

He ran forward. The British machine guns didn’t cut him down right away. Joaquin knew why, too: only the good died young. Joaquin thought of himself as good. But he knew the sergeant wouldn’t agree. He also knew Carrasquel would hound him if alive and haunt him if dead. So he got up and loped after the noncom.

Crack! Crack! Any bullet you heard like that came much too close to your one and only irreplaceable carcass. When you heard a bunch of them, you were mighty damn lucky if you didn’t get ventilated.

Tanks were good for taking out machine-gun nests, even the concrete positions the British had built near the border. Gibraltar wasn’t very big. If you could get past the frontier defenses, you could go ahead and overrun the place…couldn’t you?

Down by the harbor, or maybe in it, something blew up with a full-throated roar that staggered Joaquin. Maybe it was an ammunition dump, or maybe a cruiser. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t trouble the Spaniards any more.

More guns poured deadly fire down on them. Joaquin hit the dirt again. He didn’t care if Sergeant Carrasquel pitched a fit. What kind of defenses did England have here, anyway? A cannon or machine gun on every square centimeter of ground, and more buried to pop up and spew death? He wouldn’t have been surprised. This had to be more than General Sanjurjo expected.