Latsis agreed reluctantly. The name of Stalingrad was both sacred and evocative of slaughter on a mass scale. Suslov had taken another tank and crew through the battle, been wounded, and returned to duty as this tank’s new commander a few months earlier.

“Even so,” Latsis insisted, “I would like the opportunity to destroy a portion of the city and the people inside it.”

“I know,” Suslov said gently.

Latsis had told them several times what had happened to his village when the Nazis took it. It was not just that the people had been killed, but how they had died. Slaughtered was the better word, although even that was inadequate to describe the rape and torture that had preceded death in so many cases. Latsis was obsessed with the fact that both his mother and his sister had been gang-raped and mutilated by a bunch of Nazis, and left to die. He had found through the handful of survivors that his thirteen-year-old sister had lived in screaming agony for a few days after, but that his mother had died almost immediately.

Suslov slapped Latsis on the shoulder in an attempt to break his driver’s dark mood. “Don’t worry, there’s more of Germany than just one city. You’ll have your opportunity to make them squeal.”

Latsis grunted and moved away, leaving Suslov to wonder just what was in store for those Germans in Berlin. There were hundreds of thousands of Russians with stories just as horrible as the one Latsis told. As for himself, he had no love for the Nazis, nor hatred either. He just wanted them dead so he could go home. That is, if there was a home for him anywhere in this mutilated world.

CHAPTER 3

Major General Walter Bedell Smith, “Beetle” to his friends, was a short and belligerent man who some compared to a bulldog with a bad attitude. As chief of staff to Dwight David Eisenhower, he served at Ike’s pleasure and frequently did the tough and dirty jobs that preserved his boss’s benevolent and affable reputation. His input was received and respected. That included this afternoon’s meeting between Omar Bradley, who commanded the huge Twelfth Army Group, and Eisenhower, who commanded all the Allied military forces in Europe except the Russians.