As politely as she could, she tapped the Frenchman on top of her on the shoulder. “Could you move, please? You’re squashing me.” He had to weigh close to 200 pounds, and there was nothing between her and the sidewalk but two layers of silk.

“I do apologize,” he said, and rolled to one side. “This is…very bad. Very, very bad. But if you hear that sound in the air, you must get down at once, without hesitation. It is your best chance to save yourself.”

“God forbid I ever hear it again,” Peggy said. The Frenchman crossed himself.

No trains went out. No trains came in. Maybe the Germans had bombed the tracks. Maybe Czechoslovakia was using the railroads to haul troops around. Peggy saw no dun-colored Czech uniforms in town. Every so often, though, the guns in the woods boomed. What kind of forts lay between the border and Marianske Lazne? How long would the Germans take to break through them. Two good questions. Peggy had no good answers.

The town was full of clinics. They weren’t equipped for carnage like this, but they did their best. Unhurt people did what they could for the wounded. Peggy carried stretcher after stretcher. She got more blood on her robe, but hardly noticed. The hotels set out the usual massive spread of cold cuts for breakfast. She ate…somewhere.

About ten o’clock, the mist retreated and a wan sun came out. Airplane motors throbbed overhead. Peggy looked up. She’d never seen anything like those ungainly vulture-winged planes before. One after another, they peeled off in dives. It was fascinating to watch. But the shrieks they let out as they dove reminded her of incoming artillery. She got down, as the polite but portly Frenchman had said she should.

People gave her funny looks-for a few seconds, till the first bomb went off and the vulture-winged planes started machine-gunning the town as they zoomed away.