“Sounds good to me.” Jezek decided he had to be content with that. He could have heard plenty worse from a Slovak. Up and down the lines, how many worried Czech noncoms and lieutenants and captains were hearing worse from Slovaks right about now? How many who weren’t hearing worse were being lied to? He muttered to himself and lit another cigarette and wished his canteen held something stronger than water.

* * *

“Forward!” Sergeant Ludwig Rothe called softly. He laughed at himself as the Panzer II crawled toward the start line through the darkness of the wee small hours. With all the motors belching and farting around him, he could have yelled his head off without giving himself away to the Czechs on the other side of the border.

He rode head and shoulders out of the turret. He had to, if he wanted to see where he was going. They said later models of the Panzer II would boast a cupola with episcopes so the commander could look around without risking his life whenever he did. That didn’t do him any good. All he had was a two-flapped steel hatch in the top of the turret.

Engineers had set up white tapes to guide panzers and personnel carriers to their assigned jumping-off points. The whole Third Panzer Division was on the move. Hell, the whole Wehrmacht was on the move, near enough. Oh, there were covering forces on the border with France, and smaller ones on the Polish frontier and inside East Prussia, but everything that mattered was going to teach the Czechs they couldn’t mess around with good Germans unlucky enough to be stuck inside their lousy country.

Other panzers-more IIs and the smaller Panzer Is-were dim shapes in the night. Ludwig affectionately patted his machine. The Panzer II was a great improvement over the I.

The driver’s voice floated out through the speaking tube: “Kinda hate to leave Katscher. Found this little waitress there-she doesn’t know how to say no.”