A lieutenant turned, probably checking to be sure I wouldn’t swipe the booze. It was easy to tell he was an aide to a senior officer. Clean boots, a good shave, and a West Point ring on his finger. He was along to carry the booze and get points for being at the front, so his benefactors in the West Point Protective Association could promote him as soon as possible.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Where’s Easy Company headed?”
“Battalion HQ could help you. They’re down the street.”
“They’re in pieces. Who’s running the show here?”
“Boyle?” It was Harding. He and Kearns detached themselves from the scrum of officers and gave a nod to the aide to let him know I was allowed access to the high and mighty. Ring knockers, we called them, for those big academy graduation rings they flashed around. “What happened to Battalion HQ?”
“Direct hit. If anyone’s alive in there, they aren’t up to running this attack. You didn’t know?”
Neither of them answered, but Kearns was off, taking the aide with him. Maybe the kid would get his boots dirty.
“What are you doing here?” Harding asked.
“Checking on my kid brother,” I said. I saw no reason to lie. Harding knew me pretty well, and I thought I had his number. He was a straight shooter, and he responded best to the truth, even when it went against regulations.
“Easy Company, Third Platoon, right?”
“Yes sir. How are they doing?”
He handed me binoculars and eased a major out of the way at the window. “See that track, across the canal?” I did. It was bigger than a path, smaller than a road. Drainage ditches had been dug on both sides, and the piled earth gave a few inches of cover. Small trees and shrubs grew along the ditches, giving some visual cover too. “They headed up there. Two companies on either side, spread out in the fields. The objective is that wooded rise beyond them.”
I could make out men crawling in the road and across the fields. Others lay still, dead, or scared out of their wits. Explosions hit the wooded rise, but through the binoculars I could see the deadly sparkle of machine guns sending controlled bursts down into the advancing GIs. It was terrible, that ripping chainsaw sound of the MG42, a machine gun they called the Bonesaw. It spewed out 1200 rounds per minute, so fast that you couldn’t hear the individual shots, just a blur of noise that sounded like heavy fabric tearing. Against that fire I could make out the almost leisurely rat-tat-tat of our machine guns, no match for the dug-in German firepower.
“They need smoke, and air cover,” I said. “Do you have a radio here?”
“No,” Harding said. “The communications gear was in the headquarters building, and the cloud cover is too low for air support. Hell, we’re just here to escort the visiting brass, and to observe.” He nearly spit out that last word as he grabbed my arm. “Come on, Boyle. I’ll find a way to call in smoke and get more artillery on that hill. You find your brother and his platoon and help them out, then get word back to me. That’s what you wanted, right?”
“Yes sir. I’ll send a runner back and let you know how far they’ve gotten.” I sprinted down the street, heading for the north gate that opened to the fields and the storm of steel and death my kid brother had plunged into. Danny, who used to follow me everywhere, who got bullied when I wasn’t around, who was smarter than I was though I never admitted it, who I’d punched in the arm, hard, more times than I could count-Danny, out there, alone. Meaning with no one he could count on. No family, no Irish, no veteran platoon leader. I jumped smoking craters and debris until I was clear of Le Ferriere. As I descended the slope, I could barely make out the tiny shapes of crawling men amidst the smoke and dust of battle. In the distance, three Sherman tanks made their way along a narrow road across the canal, the first good news of the morning. Bad news caught up with the lead Sherman as it blew up, black smoke churning out of every hatch. The other two tanks reversed, not wanting to roll over another Teller mine or into the sights of a hidden antitank gun. They retreated, I went forward, and I couldn’t help thinking they knew what they were doing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I came across the litter bearers first, hustling the wounded back to aid stations along the canal. Mortar rounds were landing near the closest bridge, so I went into the water, scrambling up the embankment into chaos. Two jeeps, pulling trailers stacked with dead, careened across the field, evading enemy fire so vigorously that the bodies leapt with every jolt, arms and legs bouncing as if they’d come alive. Machine-gun rounds chewed up the fields and zinged over my head, the odd thrum like a hornet buzzing by my ear. White phosphorous rounds began to land to our front, and I knew Harding had managed to get the coordinates to the artillery. Thick white smoke blossomed in the morning air, and I ran until I found the dirt track.
It was crowded with men, prone and pressed tight on either side, up against the cover of the ditch wall. The fields on either side had a gentle rise to them, like a lazy wave about to crest. It was less than a foot high, but when everything else is dead flat, a foot is damn good cover. That’s where the advance on the flanks of the road had stopped. Men had scraped shallow depressions in the soil and rolled into them, protected at least from machine-gun fire. To their rear, a trail of bodies stretched back to the canal.
“Is this Easy Company?” I asked. “Who’s in charge?”
“This here’s Fox Company, and you better get your damn head down,” a corporal snapped at me. “If you got further use for it, that is.” That got a laugh.
“Where is Easy Company?” I stood up, straight as I could. It was crazy, I knew. I’d seen Harding do it a couple of times, taking a chance on stopping a bullet in order to show men he wasn’t afraid and they shouldn’t be either. I didn’t give a damn about morale; I just wanted a straight answer fast. This at least got the corporal’s attention.
“Down that way, Lieutenant,” he said. “We were supposed to follow them, but we got pinned down. There was supposed to be a smoke screen a long time ago.”
“Pinned down, my ass! Where’s your officer?”
“Captain’s right there,” he said, pointing to a medic hunched over a body, bloody compresses scattered on the ground.
“Jesus,” I said, and wished that hadn’t popped out so loud. I was going to have to do something about morale whether I liked it or not. No one else was left standing. “Lieutenants? Platoon sergeants?”
“Dead. Mortar round caught them in a huddle, havin’ themselves a powwow. Captain took us this far, then he took one in the chest. The boys and I took a look and figured this was a good place to hunker down.”
“I’m in command now, Corporal. Get up, we’re heading up to support Easy Company. You,” I said, pointing to a PFC who looked only half scared to death. “You’re my runner. Hightail it back to the village and find Colonel Harding. He’s either at Battalion HQ or in that factory building on the same street. Tell him the advance is stalled and that I’m taking Fox Company forward to locate Easy. You got that?”
“Harding,” he repeated. “The advance is stalled at this point. Fox going forward to find Easy. Who are you?”
“Boyle. Now run there and run back here, fast as you can. Go.” I waited for a few long seconds as he stared up at me. If he refused to go, that was it. If I couldn’t get one GI to head back, I sure as hell wasn’t going to get fifty of them to move up.
“Yes sir,” he said, and was off like a jackrabbit.
“Corporal, if you’re the ranking noncom, then get your men moving. Follow me.”
I didn’t look back, and I didn’t try to rouse the men. That was his job, and I had no idea if he was up to it. I crouched low, to show them that I wasn’t completely insane. I heard the rustle of gear, curses, and the sound of boots on the ground. I broke into a trot, and the sound of men following me into the swirling smoke was the sweetest, most terrible sound of my life. Each death would be on my head.
The sound of mortar fire lessened. The German machine guns slowed their rate of fire, too, sending short bursts into the smoke, hoping for a hit. The crump of explosions ahead of us told me Harding had zeroed in on the hill, which would also make the Krauts keep their heads down. I picked up the pace, figuring the less time upright
