Most of the soldiers in the ward with him had nastier wounds. Most, but not all: the fellow two beds down wore a cast on his ankle because he'd tripped over his own feet and broken it. "I wasn't even drunk," he complained to anyone who'd listen. "Just fucking clumsy."

Woozy turned to drowsy. Theo was dozing when hearing his own name brought him back to himself. The nurse was leading a captain over to his cot. The pink Waffenfarbe on the man's Totenkopf collar patches and edging his shoulder straps said he was a panzer man, too. "You are, uh, Theodor Hossbach?" he said.

"Theodosios Hossbach, sir," Theo said resignedly. How was he supposed to explain that his father had been slogging through a translation of Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire at just the wrong time?

He got the panzer captain's attention, anyhow. "Theodosios? Well, well. No wonder you go by Theo."

"No wonder at all, sir," Theo agreed.

"You are a radio operator. You are familiar with the operation of the Fu5 radio set?"

"Yes, sir." Theo knew he still sounded resigned. Every panzer in the Wehrmacht used the Fu5 except commanders' vehicles, which carried the longer-range Fu10. If he was a panzer radioman, he'd damn well better know how to use the standard set. A pfennig's worth of thought… was evidently too much to hope for.

Then the captain got to the point: "Can you return to duty? A radio operator in a Panzer II is not required to do much with his left hand."

That was true, and then again it wasn't. A radioman didn't need to do much with his left hand to operate the radio. When it came to things like engine repairs or remounting a thrown track, though… Theo knew he could have said no. His hand was swathed in enough bandages to wrap a Christmas present, or maybe a mummy. He hesitated no more than a heartbeat. "As long as they give me a jar of those little white pills, sir, I'm good to go."