Theo only shrugged. The less he said, the less he’d have to be sorry for later. At least Witt was interested in keeping Adi happy. That was more than Heinz Naumann, the previous panzer commander, had been. There would have been trouble between the two of them if Naumann hadn’t stopped a bullet. Theo didn’t like trouble, which meant he could have picked a better time to be born.

An infantryman came up to him. “You’re in the same crew as that maniac?” the fellow asked.

“That’s right,” Theo said. “What about it?”

“If he drives like he plays, you’re screwed,” the foot soldier said. He swiped his sleeve across his forehead. Despite the cold, sweat stained his tunic under the arms. “He’ll send you right into the Russian panzers, and they’ll blow you to hell and gone. He doesn’t know how to go backwards.”

“We’re still here so far.” Theo looked to the touchline. His greatcoat lay over there. As soon as this mouthy guy-Theo saw anyone who talked to him as a mouthy guy-went away, he could find it and put it on.

“Don’t get me wrong. He plays good,” the infantryman went on. After a moment, he added, “You weren’t bad yourself, dammit. I thought a couple of the shots you stopped’d go in for sure.”

“Thanks,” Theo said in surprise. He didn’t think he was anything out of the ordinary. You did your best to keep the ball from getting past you. Sometimes you did. Sometimes you couldn’t. Even if you couldn’t always, you tried not to look like too much of a buffoon out there.

“Well…” More slowly than he might have, the man in field-gray figured out Theo wasn’t the world’s hottest conversationalist. “See you. Try and stay in one piece,” he said, and walked off.

It was good advice. Theo hoped he could follow it. He was relieved when he found his greatcoat. Nobody who’d lost his own had walked off with it. If he found himself missing his, he might have done that. You didn’t screw your buddies when you were in the field. People you didn’t know could damn well look out for themselves.