by James R Benn
Sharp thuds echoed from the rear and one of the replacements dove flat, his hands over his helmet. The other two stood silently, looking around at everyone else walking on, calmly. More thuds and a shrieking sound overhead, and the replacement on the ground looked up sheepishly.
“That’s ours,” Shorty said as he walked by him.
“Better to duck and live to tell, than not duck and die, kid,” said Tuck, laughing as he lit a cigarette.
His pals helped him up. Dull crumps sounded ahead of them as the shells hit their target. The firing continued, thuds and crumps blending into a thunder of sound, surrounding them, echoing off the hills and rolling back at them.
“Where are we going?” Having been acknowledged, the replacement who hit the ground felt he could ask a general question. No one answered him. Jake shook his head, feeling sorry that the kid didn’t understand how meaningless the question was. New to the front, he wanted an answer in a geographical sense, a specific location. Where are we going – what town, what hill, what terrain feature are we walking towards? No one knew. They were following the company, which was following the battalion, which was…well, they all hoped there was more than their battalion involved, but who knew?
Jake knew the real answer, but it wasn’t something he could readily explain, couldn’t even tell the kid how off his curiosity was. It was that the names of things didn’t matter. What difference did it make if you got yours on a road you knew the name of? Or if your legs got blown off in a town you could point to on a map? Or were blinded on a hill you could pronounce the name of? What the fuck did that matter? They were going to attack the MLR, which is the only place there ever was. It might be a village, or a ridge, or a road intersection, or a farmhouse. Advance. Attack. Dig in. Defend. That’s where you’re going kid, and you’re going to freeze your balls off on the way there.
Today he knew even less than usual. No sergeant, and now the platoon didn’t even have a lieutenant, what with Red back at Battalion Aide, a nice clean hole in his arm. Not that it mattered, they knew enough.
Jake thought about the possibilities. This wasn’t the route they had taken yesterday. They were following a logging road out of the forest, down into cleared land in a broad valley to their east. Probably trying to flank the MLR, or avoid nasty spots like that machine gun nest they found yesterday. Bombardment or no, the Krauts made themselves some good bunkers when they had the time, and they might be in position and waiting for them. The artillery had to let up once they got close, or at least walk the shelling back. Either way, it gave the Krauts the time they needed to get out of their holes. He put that worry away, no sense stewing about it until he had to. Maybe they were going after a village on the other side of the MLR. That would be good, since it meant they could sleep inside tonight. If they held it that is, and if the Krauts didn’t have every building already zeroed in.
Jake tried to remember the last full night of sleep he’d had. He couldn’t. Not on the line anyway. They had two nights in a rear area about twenty days ago, showers, new uniforms, hot chow. Guard duty one night, an hour of shelling the next, and then back in a cold hole in the ground. Sleep. It sounded like a luxury, like something in a store window you knew you could never afford, but couldn’t stop staring at either. Unobtainable. Like the ring he had wanted to buy Mary Lou, to show her he was serious, that he had some class. It wasn’t an engagement ring, he’d have to work up to that, but it had a real amethyst and some cut crystal that looked like diamonds. Mary Lou’s father was a doctor, not a rich man, but somehow above the rest of the folks in Minersville. Not a snob, but he read a lot, he knew a lot of things, and was always telling Mary Lou to remember there was a world beyond the ridges that sliced their part of Pennsylvania into thin strips of road and river. Mary Lou always said she wanted to marry a boy who’d show her that world. Jake had no idea how he could manage to do that, but he saved and saved for that ring, feeling it would set him apart from everyone else, put him up there with Mary Lou and her father, a young man who was industrious and thrifty, but also knew his way around things like rings and fancy jewelry. He’d had great plans, but that was before things fell apart.
Jake felt the weight in his pants pocket as the grenades banged against his leg with every step. Too many in there. He pulled two out and hung them on his web harness, something he did only when he had to. It was dangerous to go around like that, except in the movies. Hanging grenades off your gear was an invitation to get them stuck on something and pull the pin—while you were wearing it. But if they were going into a village he’d need grenades, plenty of grenades. You had to toss grenades into a house to be sure, unless you wanted to risk your neck busting down the door.
He knew civilians too dumb to see what was coming sometimes hid in the cellars. He had tried not to grenade cellars, until Samuelson, that kid from Brooklyn, said he heard voices in a cellar on a street in Eperany that sounded like children. A small casement window was open an inch or so. It would have been easy to shoot out the glass and toss in a grenade, send any surviving Germans stumbling dazed up the stairs into their sights as they covered each other going in. But Samuelson was sure it was children. They tossed one grenade in the first floor window, went in, checked the first and second floors out, found nothing. Samuelson lifted up the door in the floor of the kitchen that led to the basement, called out for them to come up, it was safe. No one knew any French, but he said it slow and calm so the kids wouldn’t be scared. The darkness in the cellar lit up with fire as a burst from a Schmeisser submachine gun hit Samuelson in the chest. A Kraut came up, boots loud on the wooden steps, spraying bullets around the kitchen, the noise piercingly loud, bullets cracking wooden cabinets open and ricocheting off hanging cast iron skillets. Jake spun around the corner into the hallway, and waited until he heard the Schmeisser stop. He turned and caught the Kraut, an officer, putting in a fresh clip. The German froze, his mouth open in surprise. Jake dropped him with one aimed shot to the head, taking his time, letting the bastard see what was coming. The shot thundered inside the hallway. Jake saw a blur of red as the Kraut’s head exploded, the back of his skull splattering against the wall. He stepped over the dead officer to check Samuelson, but it was no good. He was a mess, his neck ripped open, holes in his chest, blood everywhere. Jake turned around, and fired his M1 into the officer’s body again, again, again, until his empty clip ejected and bounced on the linoleum floor with faint metallic sound. Jake didn’t feel anything except the pounding in his head, his own blood vessels pumping away, keeping him alive. He couldn’t hear anything, except that damn pounding in his ears. Then a shuffle. Sounds from the basement, more of them. Panic grabbed him by the throat, he fumbled for another clip, hand shaking, feeling like he was dreaming, stuck in slow motion while everything around him sped up. The next thing he knew a grenade was in his hand, he was pulling the pin, tossing it into the blackness and hearing it bounce down the wooden stairs.
A screech, a thin shrilling voice, a girl’s voice, a child. It carried up the stairs and stabbed him in the gut, forcing him back until he fell against the kitchen table, went down on the floor and felt the force of the explosion against the floorboards from the small basement below.
Clay found him there, lying on the floor next to the two dead bodies, his hands pressed over his ears. Clay got him up and out of there, sat him outside with Tuck and Shorty watching him. He went back in, found a candle, and went down the steps to the basement. He hadn’t even made it down halfway before he turned, ran up the stairs, stumbling and falling, propelling himself out of the house to vomit on the street.
Tuck and Shorty never asked him what was down there. Clay never said a thing about the little girl and the baby in the cellar. Jake never asked either. In Jake’s dreams, the girl was alone, and she felt the grenade as it struck her, bouncing off a stair and onto her shin, knew what it was, knew who he was, and screamed a curse for him to listen to for the rest of his life.
He remembered the scream. He also rememb
ered the Schmeisser and that if he hadn’t listened to Samuelson, had shot out the window and tossed in a grenade, the girl would still be dead, same result, and the Kraut would be dead, same thing there, but Samuelson would be alive. He’d be having bad dreams too, but he’d be alive, or maybe she wouldn’t have screamed if it happened that way and they wouldn’t bother checking out the cellar after clearing the house, so who knew what was best anyway? He’d stopped worrying about all the possibilities in all the cellars since then, imagining a street full of houses with sturdy stone cellars reaching all the way to Berlin. He tossed grenades, remembering the scream, remembering Samuelson, remembering everything.
Jake reached up and felt the grenade hanging on the canvas webbing over his heart. Hearing engines, he turned. Three halftracks came down the road, grinding gears and churning up snow. The big .50 caliber machine gun mounted above the driver gave the armored vehicles a menacing look, and Jake could see each carried a heavy mortar crew in the open rear compartment. With all the artillery fire blazing overhead, and the halftracks and their added firepower, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. The halftracks passed Jake, and he heard the three replacements cheer as they went by. Okay, he almost felt like cheering himself, but fuck it, he’d save his cheers, he wasn’t sure how many he had left.
The head of the column was clearing the forest, coming out on a wide slope of land, pastures maybe, that rolled down to the valley floor. Lines of trees and rocks divided the fields, little bits of cover and concealment but not a lot, not enough. The road curved left, into the clearing, as Jake followed the halftracks. Sunlight hit his face, and he saw the biggest patch of blue sky he’d seen in weeks. The glare off the snow was blinding, and he shaded his eyes, holding his hand up to the rim of his helmet. He scanned the hills in front of them, searching the dips and rises of the land for traces of the enemy, glancing back and forth between Clay and the others, marking where they were in relation to him. His eyes scouted the nearest cover, a barely perceptible gulley, a depression in the snow, alongside the road. Everyone was walking in the tread marks from the halftracks now. They had flattened the snow, compressed it along two parallel paths, perfect for easier walking.
Jake felt something wrong, in the air, in his mind, over his skin as it tingled a warning. Everything looked okay, but he felt like someone had him in his sights. His body tensed, a flush of sweat drenched his back, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach. What, where? He swiveled his head, searching for some sign from anyone else. Nothing. He looked off to either side, unsure, wondering if Krauts were on their flanks. Nothing. He unslung his rifle, gripping it tightly and holding it across his chest, ready.
A buzzing, faint, like a mosquito at the screen door. He cocked his head, trying to catch the direction.
“Hey!” It was one of the replacements, a kid whose eardrums hadn’t been battered by constant rifle fire yet. “We got planes too, here’s the Air Force!”
“There, fighters!” Someone pointed to the right. Jake picked them up, four dots racing towards them along the length of the valley. Or away? He didn’t know, the glare of the sun on the snow was too blinding to tell. They were low, lower than the crests of the hills that uncoiled above the cleared land. The buzzing became louder, a constant drone increasing each second, until he could see the wings grow larger and waggle slightly. More cheers from the men around him, the replacements most excited of all, being treated to a big show their first day at the front.
Jake knew what was wrong, knew in an instant that he must’ve heard an echo of the engines somehow, or seen the dots flit against a cloud without actually registering it. The planes were too far off to waggle their wings in greeting, unless they had just passed over the German lines, and they were giving the common flyer’s salute to ground troops, those poor fuckers beneath their wings. The artillery bombardment had been going on for quite a while now, long enough for the Germans up ahead to know they were going to be attacked, know that the Amis had to cross this open land to get into position. Plenty of time to call for air support, Luftwaffe fields in Germany were only minutes away—
“Take cover!” Jake yelled from deep inside his lungs, pushing Clay off the road with him and burrowing into the snow-filled gulley. His cry spread and men were moving in every direction, scattering away from the road and praying they weren’t in the fighter’s sights. Not me, not me, not me, not me.
Jake rolled into the gulley and saw the yellow noses of the Me-109s, heard the chatter of machine guns and cannon, saw the sparkling lights along the wing and from the nose of the low-flying planes. Tracer bullets, bright glowing lines of phosphorescence reaching out from the planes, guiding their aim, seeking out their victims.
“Get down!” he yelled at the replacements. Caught in mid-wave, thinking they were greeting their own air cover, they stood in the road, three of them next to each other, shoulders touching, rifles raised over their heads, whoops of joy stuck in their throats, a sudden flash of fear and terror rooting them to the spot. Jake heard a roar, one explosion followed by another as three of the Me-109s focused on the halftracks, lighting up two of them, turning steel and flesh into pillars of fire.
The fourth was strafing G.I.s in the field, kicking up tremendous geysers of snow and frozen dirt, lines of fire stitching the field with death as the pilot fought for control, trying to stay low and slow without plowing into the ground, trying not to get so caught up in targets that he forgot his altitude. He saw one last quarry below, a clump of Amis in the road, waiting, not scattering like all the others. He eased his stick a touch, kept his finger on the trigger and arced his fire into them, pulling up at the last possible second, barely clearing the tops of the pine trees, sending them swaying into his prop wash as he flew over the woods and climbed away from the sudden carnage.
Jake saw it coming. They saw it coming. The Me-109 turned slightly and came straight at them, going right for them, singling them out for destruction. They didn’t believe it, weren’t able to handle the shifts from joy to terror to flight, couldn’t fathom how such a lethal machine appeared from nowhere and then darted towards them, deliberately, like a wronged and vengeful wasp.
The fire was on them before they could blink an eye, raise a hand, do any of the useless things men did when hot steel was about to find them. One replacement was ripped in half, 20mm cannon shells severing him at the hips, his torso tumbling backwards, bright geysers of blood and strands of darker red spewing out from it. His legs, barely still connected, skidded down the snow-packed road, skewed in impossible directions. They came to rest twenty yards away, toes pointing to the sky, the tightly pulled, neatly tied laces a poignant, futile final preparation, a girding for battle that would outlast the girder. A second replacement was thrown backwards violently, as if a giant had him on a string and yanked him with all his might. One arm was shot off between shoulder and elbow and a tracer round burned in his chest, his clothing smoking as he convulsed on the snow. Clay ran over to him, heard Shorty yelling for a medic, but knew it was useless. No sound came from his mouth. It was wide open, bubbles of red froth bursting out as he worked his jaw. Clay knelt and saw the kid’s eyes dart around, saw the jaw working, trying to say something, maybe ask what was wrong, not understanding, beyond comprehension. The phosphorous still burning away on the bullet inside him as Clay smelled the flesh cooking. He pulled out his medical kit, scattering morphine syrettes at his knees.
“You’re going to be fine, kid, you did swell, hang on,” Clay said, chanting the lies into his ear. He jammed a syrette into the kid’s thigh and then cut open his pants so he could get at the skin for a second dose, holding down the quivering leg as he did it.
“Medics are coming, kid, hang on, you’ll be okay, medics are coming.” The second syrette was done and the leg stopped shaking so hard. Clay watched his eyes, saw the morphine work, wondered if he should give him another, put him under good and let him die with his eyes closed. The eyes locked onto Clay’s, stayed with him, and Clay couldn’t look awa
y, didn’t look away until the last movements ceased and the replacement stared, straight up, through him, beyond him.
Jake was up as soon as the plane cleared the trees, watching Clay, seeing the other replacement in pieces at the side of the road. The third kid, who had been standing in the middle, was untouched. His rifle was on the ground, but other than that he hadn’t moved, still standing in the same spot as he had with his buddies. Their boot prints in the snow were on either side of him. He was covered in blood, and Jake checked him, looking for a wound, waiting for him to collapse into the road. He didn’t, didn’t say anything, he just stood there, one side of him flecked with blood like a fine spray, the other soaked in deepening red. Jake stood in front of him, looked him straight in the eye.
“What’s your name?”
The replacement said nothing.
“What’s your name? Tell me your name.”
The replacement squinted, as if Jake were a mile off. He looked at his arms like he just discovered them, just noticed the blood all around him.
“Oh—” He fell to his knees. “Oh.” It wasn’t much, not even a real word, but he seemed to be out of his trance. Jake took the replacement’s helmet off, tossed it to Tuck.
“Clean this off.”
“Huh?” The replacement looked at Jake, trying to form a question. Jake saw him lose his thought, start to drift away, fear and shock pulling him under to some deep safe place.
