Theo would have liked to do something about that. But doing something about it would have involved changing, and he didn't care to change. His panzer commanders would just have to cope with it… and so would he.

FROM GREASY TO MESSY. Staff Sergeant Alistair Walsh nodded in weary approval. The Anglo-French counterattack, pushing east from the outskirts of Paris, was still making progress. Greasy was actually the hamlet of Gressy, a few miles west of where Walsh was now. Where Walsh was now was in Messy, which looked exactly the way its name made you think it would.

Messy had good reason for looking that way. Only a few weeks earlier, the Germans had bombed and shelled the place to chase the Allied defenders back toward Paris. And then, after the German attack ran out of steam both here and up near Beauvais, English and French guns pounded Messy to push back the Boches. A few buildings were still standing and didn't seem too badly damaged, but that wasn't from lack of effort on either side.

Hardly anyone lived in the ruins. People who could get out had done so before the Germans arrived. They hadn't come back to reclaim whatever might be left of their homes and property. A lingering sick-sweet stench said not everybody'd got away. Or Walsh might have been getting a whiff of dead Germans. After three days, everybody-and every body-smelled the same.

As much to blunt the reek as for any other reason, Walsh lit a Navy Cut. Beside him, Second Lieutenant Herman Cavendish looked around and said, "So this is victory."

Walsh hadn't liked the subaltern ever since Cavendish brought the first order to counterattack. The Anglo-French strike had worked, which didn't make the veteran noncom like the very young officer any better. "Sir, when you set this against 1918, it looks like a rest cure," Walsh said.