European geography was not too far off, were only about sixty miles from Berlin. He had heard the rumors that they would go on toward the German capital, but he’d also heard rumors that they would be held back so the Russkies could have a little revenge on the Nazis.
With a little luck, Logan thought, he and his men could stay here forever and the Germans would continue to ignore them. With a little more luck the war would be over in a few days or a few weeks at most, and then he could begin to worry about stuff that was really important, like going home, finishing school, getting a job, and getting laid. Not necessarily in that order.
Logan also knew that someone killed on the last day of a war was as dead as someone killed on the first. As the war seemed to draw to its inevitable conclusion, there was a concerted effort on the part of his men to avoid becoming that last man. They weren’t cowards or failing to do their duty, it was just that no one wanted to die, especially now. The war was almost over and they would be going home soon—unless they had to fight the Japs, and that would really be for shit. But no, he thought, concentrate on staying alive and getting home, and let the future take care of itself. The hell with heroes, was the watchword. Don’t die in Germany. Not now.
Logan glanced behind him to where another load of soldiers was about to land as the small craft continued their shuttle. Soon they would be too strong a force to dislodge except by a major attack, and the Germans seemed to have too little left for that to occur. By the end of the day the engineers would have at least one pontoon bridge across the river, and some armor would have been brought over, and maybe artillery too if the Germans did decide to show up.
In a little while, they would also have to contend with the swarms of refugees who clogged every road. They seemed to emerge from every rock and would be drawn to the new bridge like flies to garbage in their haste to get away from the advancing Russians. The human refuse was pathetic, but they could not spend time with them. They had a war to end.
Like a dog, Logan sniffed the air. There was no smell of smoke and death. American artillery chose that moment to open up. Shells shrieked overhead and hit something a few miles away. They waited for return fire, but nothing happened. It was weird. Where the hell were the Germans!
• • •
HARRY TRUMAN PACED angrily around his desk in the Oval Office which, until recently, belonged to his late predecessor. He needed fresh air and a drink, some bourbon and water, light on the water. Real light on the water. He was being lied to and condescended to and it galled him all to hell.
At least he was making some headway with his so-called key advisers. They were Roosevelt’s men and were only gradually coming to the reality that their loyalty was to the office of the president and not a dead man. Truman was a small man physically, but a terrier when it came to temperament. He was always being underestimated since, unlike some of the dandies from the State Department and the graduates of West Point and Annapolis, he’d never been to college. They didn’t know all the time he’d spent reading and learning, acquiring a superb but informal education.
He’d also been annoyed that secrets, such as the atomic bomb and the Yalta agreements, had been kept from him, but that was the way FDR operated.
Damn it to hell, he thought. He was so poorly prepared for his new job that he wanted to curse, which he did frequently and colorfully, much to the consternation of some of FDR’s people, especially those from the State Department.
Most galling to him was the fact that the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin, America’s erstwhile ally, was lying through his damned Communist teeth. He had agreed to free elections in those areas his armies would conquer that were not part of Hitler’s Axis. Instead, Stalin was gobbling up countries like a child taking candy at Easter and seemed to be daring Truman to do something about it. Free elections were not about to happen in Poland or anywhere else.
Stalin apparently thought Truman was weak, inexperienced, and ineffective.