More shells fell on the Germans. He’d thought the opening bombardment would silence the enemy guns. Evidently not. One shell did hit a little Panzer I. It slewed sideways and started to burn. Machine-gun ammunition inside started cooking off- pop-pop-pop! It sounded absurdly cheerful.

Somebody in a khaki uniform-almost brown, really-popped up from a hole in the ground and fired at the Germans. They were over the border, then. Ludwig traversed the turret and squeezed off a burst of machine-gun fire at the Czech soldier. He didn’t know whether he hit the man. If he made him duck and stop shooting, that would do.

Things inside Czechoslovakia didn’t look much different from the way they did on the German side of the line. The terrain was rugged. One reason the Czechs didn’t want to give back the Sudetenland was that the rough ground and the forts they’d built in it gave them their best shield against attack. Best or not, it wouldn’t be good enough…Ludwig hoped.

The panzer clanked past a house. It looked like the ones inside the Reich, too. Well, why not? Germans were Germans, on that side of the frontier or on this one. Past the house was a forest. Ludwig thought it seemed wilder than woods in Germany would have. The Czechs probably didn’t care for it the way they should.

Or maybe they wanted it all jungly and overgrown. A machine gun in there started spraying death at the German infantry. When a bullet cracked past Ludwig’s ear, he realized that machine gun could kill him, too. He ducked reflexively. He almost pissed himself. The Czechs were playing for keeps, all right.

They had more than machine guns in the woods, too. An antitank gun spat a long tongue of flame. A Panzer II just like Ludwig’s caught fire. A perfect smoke ring came out through the commander’s hatch. Ludwig didn’t see any of the crew get away.