At the time the halt order was issued, the battalion commander had been with G Company engaging enemy positions on the edge of Martinville. Tracking his other units by way of the wire they'd laid down, he eventually came upon them approximately a mile away, astride of the St. Lo-Bayeux highway. Both companies, along with elements of the heavy weapons detachment, were isolated from the rest of the battalion, having no protected link with G Company holding further east, but having lost so many men for that single mile, the colonel in charge told the men to button-up.
And so a large portion of an American battalion dug-in a mile ahead of their lines, wedged behind German paratrooper positions.
Several times in the course of the Normandy campaign, the Germans had punished weaknesses in the structure and detail of American defenses with devastating artillery barrages and infiltrating counter-attacks. Often a unit would find itself far ahead of the rest of the regiment, and then it would be mauled in the course of hours, in the course of a night, when German fallschirmjager would dash into their positions spraying submachine-gun fire and grenades in a fashion that seemed haphazard, but was only chaotic because the Germans had pre-planned assault points scattered all throughout the American position.
While a combat unit was never truly secure in the frontlines, 2nd Battalion's situation was clearly precarious. It could be completely cut-off and destroyed within a day.
"Orders are to stand our ground and dig-in," the company commanders told their platoon leaders and NCOs.
Farther up the chain of command, divisional and operations officers were discussing the 116th's situation with their staffs. "They're in a pickle," they said, "and it's going to be risky, but they stay where they are. The General's worried about them, too, but they've got enough ammunition and supplies to hold for a while. He'll get support to them but the important thing is that they hold their positions."
They outlined company positions with cigarette-laden fingers, and on the standard-scale map it seemed as though individual units were clearly discernible. The operations officers dictated the tactical situation of the battalion and listed key factors. They spoke as if reports from radios and lines of wire and squares on a map gave them clarity of vision. They spoke knowing that as battalion-level officers, the crossroads at which all incoming information met, they saw the big picture from kilometers away. They were the ones who knew what was going on, why it was necessary to risk this particular group of men.
The enlisted men in the foxholes outside of la Madeleine found themselves buried in grass, their vision obstructed by position, elevation, and foliage. 2nd Battalion troops lying in the forward positions squinted through rifle sights, and those behind them could only stare at the empty green of a Norman field. Platoons were scattered haphazardly under cover; organized movement would have proven difficult since the Germans had already shelled them and any activity would invite another bombardment. These soldiers were at the center of the regiment's current crisis, and cut-off from their neighboring battalions they would not have been able to report anything insightful to their superior officers. So they reported what information they could and let higher headquarters sort things out; the men up there were schooled well in these situations and would know what to do best.
"What should we do," a 2nd Battalion private asked his sergeant.
Truttman, who'd just been asked the same question by a kid under his responsibility, shrugged. It was a question that had been asked every day in every theater of combat and Truttman had never heard an answer that wasn't either plainly obvious or full of shit. "I don't fucking know," he said, "This is fucking bullshit anyway."
It was a response typical of the college student that remained in Truttman. His comrades had gotten used to such talk, he'd always make a lot of noise about quitting - as though it were truly an option to him - but his actions revealed an intense loyalty to something in the company, an unwillingness to walk away from his responsibility. If there was one thing Truttman had gained from fighting a war it was an uncultured sense of duty, a feeling of obligation to his fellow soldiers that he harbored with self-deprecating contempt.
When had he started giving a fuck about the Army.
It was a unique leadership that he expressed in a unique way. He held no regard to the ideas of protocol or standard operating procedure. The concept of maintaining morale was nothing but an idealistic joke. To him, the sole purpose of being a leader was getting the job done, it did not matter if he believed in the job. Because that was the fastest and easiest way to keep himself and the other men alive; to complete the mission the first time around instead of spending weeks on it while getting shot at by machine-guns and snipers.
Ahead of the graves of the evening's battle, Captain Wayne wanted an opportunity to continue pushing forward, to reach 2nd Battalion's positions and reinforce them against counter-attack. But A Company was spent and exhausted - in total 1st Battalion lost 160 men in the day's action, 25% of its total strength. Any further action would prove to be expensive.
"We have orders, Captain," 1st Battalion Commander directed. "Division's got plans. Second Battalion will get help shortly but you and your men have a higher mission with greater priority." Just hours ago he'd overheard discussion of the relief effort at regimental headquarters.
"They'll be getting artillery," the colonels were saying. "We can't give them much more. We cannot be forced to commit today." They acknowledged that 2nd Battalion was in danger, but in comparison to the primary objective of the operation its crisis was a minor emergency. "We need everything set for tomorrow." The major repeated this to Captain Wayne.
"What about my company, sir," Wayne pressed. "I can take the company out for a reconnaissance. We can find gaps in the German lines, get Second Battalion help, atleast ammunition and medical supplies."
"Captain, maybe I wasn't clear. Division has plans. We are not to disrupt those plans by taking independent action."
"I will not request for any other assistance, sir, I will not call for artillery or reinforcement. All I'm asking for is permission for a reconnaissance mission."
Not used to such active voicing of a simple request, 1st Battalion Commander was beginning to lose his temper. "Goddamn it, Wayne, and what'll you do after you find them? You'll save the day with your company? You command one company, Wayne, and you're just one captain. Second Battalion's not going to benefit from anything you can give them, and I can't afford losing a company, not with this offensive."
"Sir, Second Battalion's out there on their own, they are behind an entire regiment of paratroopers. If we leave them out there to dry they are going to be shot up real bad, they'll be put out-of-action. It's going to cripple the regiment, and if the regiment's crippled then that's going to put more than a dent in any plans that Division has drawn-out."
"You listen here, you son of a bitch," the major's voice was savage, but Wayne knew it was all a show, a matter of re-asserting his authority. "You're a smart captain, but don't presume you know any more about the situation past your company than I do. I'm a major, Wayne, I'm a goddamn battalion officer. You don't talk to me like I don't know what's going on. Division knows exactly what it's doing, they've looked over every detail before making the call, they've assessed the situation. They know what's going on out here. And they know what's going on with Second Battalion. But we can't stop for every crisis that pops up, we can't be running around like a bunch of goddamn firefighters trying to keep everybody safe. This is a goddamn war, people are going to be stuck in some bad situations and people are going to die. Second Battalion might be chewed up, the entire unit might be KIA before the week's over, but Second Battalion is not the focus of Division. The Germans are hurt bad, Captain, if we keep hitting them hard Saint Lo's going to open up for us, we'll control the crossroads of Normandy. We can break the hell out of here, end the war before another battalion gets trapped behind enemy lines." The major regained some of his composure. "I know what you're thinking, Wayne, you want to be a hero. You want to do something good. But you're not going to do any good going out there with your company, and I," the major almost didn't say it, but resolved himself, "I'm not going to do any good either going out there with the entire battalion. But we're part of an army, we're not supposed to go out alone - we work as a part of the army to get things done. Sometimes we've got to sacrifice the shit that comes up for the higher missions that the army's got going."
As it turned out the higher mission in store for 1st Battalion and the rest of the 116th was a day's rest before the next big push, the one that would carry the Americans through to St. Lo. Some of the Germans had been broken yesterday, they had miraculously been grinded to a shattering point. But so had many of the American units involved. The neighboring 115th Regiment's roster was so depleted that the regimental commander had ordered rear-echelon troops including cooks, supply and logistics clerks, and truck drivers into the forward rifle companies during the day's action.
For most of the rifle companies the halt order came as a welcome and much needed pause. For the 2nd Battalion stranded a mile ahead, it was almost as though it had been abandoned. Divisional efforts for relief were to be minimal, amounting to what totalled a single battalion of the 115th Regiment, which was positioned a mile and a half to the north. And unlike the Germans in the 116th's sector, those confronting the 115th seemed to be holding fairly well.
Captain Wayne was more than aware of the general situation of the division. During his visits to battalion hq and the major's short observations of the front he could piece together enough of what was going on to flesh-out his own mental operations map, basing his judgement on the missions he was assigned and the intelligence he was given regarding the Germans for the day. German artillery had been slackening recently, meaning that some of the high ground in the immediate vicinity had been seized, most probably Hill 122 in the 35th Division's sector. The Germans ahead of A Company had also been put on the run, suggesting that they were suffering heavily, finally beginning to crack under the strain of more than a month of continuous close-range combat.
But the halt-order - coming all the way from XIX Corps hq - also pointed to a definite strain on American fighting power. Wayne could only guess how the other battalions were fairing, but if corps was unwilling to exploit a sudden slackening in the German defense then apparently the 116th had suffered losses so heavy that pursuit would have been impossible.
Looking out across A Company's position Wayne figured he had sixty men on the line.
He found himself wondering why he was still alive.
But the question of victory, that had a more apparent answer. It was never doubted that the Germans would be defeated. There was simply too much stacked up against them, on every scale, no matter how it was looked at. The Russians were smashing their way forward from the east, and here in Normandy they were dying battalion by battalion to the Allied invasion. The Germans were at the very end of their resources, the war had consumed every able-bodied man available to them and was continuing to consume the men they had out in the field; they could not keep up in terms of blood. The German army was a ghost army.
Wayne had nodded and responded, "I understand, sir," when told that 2nd Battalion was to remain isolated behind German lines, but even though he truly did understand he'd still make the push to link with them if it were his call. All it would mean was another day or two of a delay before they could renew the offensive, because the Germans at this point had lost. In those one or two days A Company would receive replacements to bring it back up to strength, and the Germans would not. The delay would bring blood and life into the rifle companies while the Germans ahead would have twenty-four to forty-eight hours of waiting for death.
And that was the truth of things. On paper, the Germans would run out of soldiers. They would be forced to use even older men and even younger kids to fill their ranks. From an analytical point of view, taking all the numbers and facts into account, the Germans were losing.
Just taking a look, however, an observation of the conditions where the rifle companies were providing those numbers and facts, revealed that the it could not be said who exactly was winning. Because Wayne had sixty men on-duty on his roster, because the other hundred men were out-of-action, KIA, buried. Because men were dying out here in Normandy.
And that's why Wayne didn't give a shit about winning the war, about accomplishing objectives. Sooner or later the war would be over, one too many Germans would go down and the last handful would give themselves up. Sooner or later every objective outlined by every headquarters would be fulfilled. Every senior officer from Supreme Command Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces on down was talking about the war being won, but the truth was men were dying. And if it were Wayne's call he'd choose to risk the lives of men to help save the lives of others.
He was not a senior officer, what could be considered a real officer of war, but Wayne possessed the same will to decide the destinies of others.
"You made some progress," the major had told him before leaving the front. "Gained some ground last evening, that's good, Captain, that's excellent." The major inhaled, took a breath. "It's good to have an officer like you," he said solemnly. "It's good to have someone who's going to win the war. A lot of other good men are starting to give up, Captain, a lot of good men. I'm getting some reports of combat exhaustion, broken nerves. But you've held on this whole time, and that's something to say, it's something to be proud of."
Captain Wayne gave a barely-perceptible smirk, a small one that hid an inordinate amount of disgust. "Maybe when I look back on it, sir."
The major had nodded, as though he understood, as though he'd been the man with the rifle telling the soldiers to move against the machine-guns. "We're almost there, Captain. Men like you are going to win this war."
The war, Wayne knew, was already won. As long as the Allies in the west and the Soviets in the east kept up the pressure, the Germans would crumble. But at this point, this far in the war, this much time spent in Normandy, winning a war was not Wayne's primary objective. It was the Army's, but not Wayne's, because the idealist in him, what remained of it, wanted to do something good before it was all over. He wanted a redemptive act, just one, so that when he looked back on things he would not say to himself, "You were a monster then."
That one redemptive act would not be granted to him, because he had orders now. Wayne's company was not to break formation with the rest of 1st Battalion, he was to make no effort to link 2nd Battalion with the rest of the regiment. Instead of bringing relief to the beleagured Americans near la Madeleine, he was to hold until directed to assault the crippled German lines.
Truttman could see Wayne with a map in his hands staring at the treeline to the west. The captain seemed to be waiting, and he stood there waiting until the mortar shells started coming down from the south with violent intensity.
redemption
2nd Battalion, 116th Regiment hadn't been prepared for a day on its own, cut off from any other support. The soldiers of the battalion had gone forward with the equipment they had on them, and this included a night's worth of rations. Water was also in scarce supply, and as the battalion was surrounded by snipers and mortars harassing them every few moments any excursions to refill their canteens would have proven risky.Harassing fire from the south, east, and west dropped on them continuously throughout the day. It came from no where, and the soldiers had no vantage points that would allow them to make an attempt at counter-battery work.
Part of the battalion's heavy weapons company had taken positions with E and F companies, and this provided the soldiers with four 81mm mortars and a few .30 Brownings. While they lacked the necessities of life, they had an abundance of ammunition, and decided that since they couldn't eat or drink, they'd kill some Germans instead.
There were fallschirmjager moving past them to the north, and these were the only Germans that 2nd Battalion had visual contact with. And so with empty stomachs, parched throats, and wounded men piling behind them in the dirt, the mortarmen ranged their weapons and began waging war.
The 116th and 175th Regiments had been ordered to remain inactive on 16 July, and for a period they did remain fairly inactive, because that was a day during which the Germans had brought an intense barrage of fire down on their positions. The slackening in German artillery had only been temporary, as they repositioned their weapons onto other vantage points south of Martinville Ridge. There was always a hill, always some landform that could be used for a purpose of war. And today the German guns seemed as effective as ever.
In the 700-yard gap that lay between 1st Battalion and the next neighboring units of the 175th Regiment, German sturmgeschutz and paratroopers were navigating through cattle trails, covered by the artillery they'd set up in forward positions. 88s barraged 1st Battalion's positions with an intensity that did not suggest a shortage in ammunition existed. The Germans were firing as though they could continue the war forever, an attitude towards artillery that they had lacked in recent fighting. Stockpiles in St. Lo were apparently being put to good use.
On the ground, black blobs - 105mm howitzer rounds - crashed into the grass, ripping out the flesh of the soil and injecting metal shards to fill in the crater. Several of the blobs detonated in mid-air, masses of black and fiery orange that suddenly boiled in the sky. Wayne noted that several of the gun crews were using air-burst fuzes, timed to set off the munitions a hundred feet or so above ground-level. Air-bursts could be devastating to entrenched infantry, since the force of the explosive and its resulting shrapnel were directed straight down, negating any cover that foxholes and terrain deformities granted to infantrymen. This, plus the fact that the fire was coming from the south and southeast, on the battalion's left flank. Their positions provided them little protection from such attacks, as the majority of the natural obstacles they relied on to repel or disperse shrapnel lie to their front.
Shrapnel raked the grass from above, and Wayne saw blood-stained rifles and helmets clatter from below a foxhole, a three-foot deep scrape of earth.
Radio reports from the platoons had been coming in for the past few minutes. Casualty reports, reports of being caught very off-guard. A Company wanted out, they wanted to re-position so they'd be able to put some protection between themselves and the incoming HE, but that wasn't an option. "Division has got plans," Wayne recalled the major telling him. Even though he was in nominal command of the company, he couldn't do anything that would disrupt the bigger command of the regiment, the division.
Wayne wondered if he would be heard through the radio. "Tell the men to tough it out. We haven't got much choice."
Truttman would have shrugged once he got the news if his shoulders weren't already tight around his neck. Toughing out an artillery barrage was probably one of the worst experiences an infantryman could go through. Admittedly there were worse things, but at the moment Truttman couldn't call them to memory. His squad had their foxholes and that was it; the rounds came in and there'd be a shower of debris, or they'd lose sight of someone swallowed by a sudden flash of smoke.
Artillery suffocated Truttman, closed down all of his options. No matter what happened, he could only wait until the shooting stopped. He could not break and run, he could not play the hero and help someone stem the traumatic blood loss of a partially-severed limb. He could not take action of any kind. For the duration of the bombardment he was confined to a shallow ditch, with nothing to do but listen to the screaming of shells of metal falling at very high velocity, the one sound of war that Truttman's mind would never grow accustomed to. An artillery round was a scientifically engineered product, it possessed certain ballistic characteristics and was designed to detonate with precise timing; it was given what was called a gauranteed effective radius - a distance from which a living being could stand from the explosion and proceed to no longer live - and when put to actual use was loaded into a chipped steel chamber and propelled out of a rifled barrel smoked to a dull black. By the time it was in the air it was stained with the gunpowder from the howitzer, spraying it across the sky through a swirling trajectory, and then as air friction picked up the round would start to scream on the way down. Depending on the caliber of the weapon it was anywhere from a shrill whistle to a freight train's roar. Once it hit, it'd plow into the earth, the fuze would set off the charge, and the round would detonate, splintering the shell surrounding the explosive and propelling jagged slivers of steel in a haphazard sphere.
The artillery round was a landmark in military engineering while it was loaded on a neat ammunition rack, but by the time it was in the air it was alive, a living entity of science and savage violence.
Truttman was powerless against those steel cases of war. They could destroy him in an instant, in the very short span of time it took to release the chemical and kinetic energy of an explosion. An infantryman with a rifle couldn't hope to stand against such a weapon, such a force.
But infantrymen with rifles did stand up to those weapons, because that's all they could do. They had orders. They had duties and obligations. There was always the option of calling it quits, as Truttman always suggested, of abandoning their posts, leaving their duties as a soldier behind. But there were other men nearby. Other men who had suffered through the same artillery bombardments, and that was the weakness in all of them. Their very own humanity was what kept them from breaking free of their military duty and choosing life over war. It was their belief in the common good that lead them to stand against the artillery, to run up against machine guns and grenade the gunners as they fled, shoot them as they lay writhing and bleeding and dying. It was their home-grown ethics and morals that forced them to kill in this war.
A simple 105mm HE round could find life from sterile technology and mass-production. A man could not find it even with his compassion for it.
It was these types of insights that made Truttman hate himself. They made things seem worse, the other men, men who did not put much thought to it, they might go home one day and they would be happy. Truttman had invested so much in what he thought was culture, he put his faith and time in social ideals and he realized now that it was all a fucking sham, that his entire life and the lives of every other man bowing their heads against the rain of steel did not match-up with the reality of the world.
"What a fucking joke," Truttman's squadmates heard him utter quietly. "What a fucking joke."
Down the line, Wayne laughed to himself, breathed a laugh that did not show through his lips, that did not come from his lungs.
Some of the men had tried to run from cover to him. They might have been carrying messages, they might be telling him that they'd spotted something, but Wayne would never know what they were going to do once they reached him because they'd all been knocked down, brushed aside by sudden blows of HE. Any messages they were carrying were lost forever, torn away along with the throats and hearts of these men, anything they had spotted would never be seen again, those images destroyed along with their eyes.
He had wanted to do something good in Normandy, that had been Wayne's agenda since the very beginning. He had not wanted to be a soldier, he had only a desire to give this expedition of democratic ideology a real purpose. To be a hero, as so many of his comrades had mocked. In pursuing that agenda he'd had to make personal sacrifices, he'd had to do things that condemned him in his own eyes. He'd had to play a twisted chess with other officers, pushing his company onto the battlefield and directing textbook maneuvers. He'd considered some men in higher priority than others, had held the professionals of 2nd platoon back and used the other men of the company to fulfill the more mundane but equally risky roles so that he would have some weight to throw once there was a stand-up fight. Under Wescott's tutelage he had become the battalion's strongest company commander, an expert officer of war.
And in all this he had failed to do something good. He had succeeded in becoming a skillful tactician, a master of combat, a student of war, but the generals at Division were students of war. They were leaving 2nd Battalion to the fallschirmjager, and they had the textbook scenarios to back up their decisions. Wayne had made ruthless calls as well, and he had some scenarios of his own to cover what he did. Students of war were invariably incapable of doing much good with the lives of men.
The last thing those soldiers had seen was Wayne watching them die. They were going to him because he was the captain, he was the officer in charge. Those men took their chances to reach him because they believed in him, if it were any other person they were looking at they would have decided, fuck it, it can wait, but they believed in Wayne, believed that he had the power to do something about what they told him. He had made himself into a man of respect, he had become brutal, ruthless, but controlled. To them he was more than just the company CO, more than the authority who commanded them - he was someone with real strength to give substance to that authority. He was the embodiment of the ideal combat leader. And these men had tried to reach him, only to die in the storm of high explosive, and the last thing they would see, the last image they would have in their conscious life was Wayne watching them go down, so detached, so helpless in the distance between them.
It was then that the artillery lifted. A Company was swathed in misty smoke and falling debris. They'd been under fire for two hours; sulfuruous odors burned their nostrils, the thick smoke burned their eyes. This was commonplace, though, they had grown accustomed to it.
It was impossible to tell how badly the company had been hit. There was the smoke, which obstructed vision even while it dissipated, and there was the shredded foliage and the overlapping shell craters that now blanketed the company's hedgerow cover. Wayne could not see the company. A Company had disappeared in sulfurous white.
Then there were calls for the aidman. There were wounded. The men's voices were high, strained, throats dry from tension.
Wayne had to take command again, had to re-assemble what remained of the broken unit. "That was heavy," he announced, "That wasn't an everyday arty shoot. I want Second Platoon to take position on the left, I want them ready for a shoot-out." Wayne ignored the calls for aidmen, knew that there were more important things than treating the wounded. The other men looked up at him as he rose from his own foxhole and walked forward, into the screen of smoke which was dying before him. "First Platoon I want back in their positions. You should have never left them in the first place. Stay in your foxholes, be ready for a rifle-fight."
He was walking down a row of tattered bodies, the remnants of a fire-team whose foxhole had taken a direct hit. Captain Wayne was focused again, he was figuring the tactics, the science of the situation. "The bazooka team needs to be set-up well forward. When they come they'll probably have armor and we won't have the firepower to suppress them so you can get in position. If you move up front you'll have a shot and they won't be ready for it. Where are my lieutenants?"
A private carrying a radio responded, "They're all dead, Captain."
A few days ago A Company had received three replacement 2nd lieutenants along with a handful of riflemen. The officers were nineteen year-olds, twenty year-olds, younger than some of the privates. They'd come from West Point, maybe had some ROTC background. A Company did not stand to salute them, did not pay much attention to them. The officers walked with too much authority, wanted to assert their rank too much. They knew that they would be commanding these men soon and they did not want to portray for these men a weak leader.
"You boys aren't too keen on etiquette, I see," one of the lieutenants noted.
"We don't do etiquette in this company," Wayne would explain in his briefing a half-hour later, having helped send the wounded and the dying off to the aid station. He had lifted their bodies, refixed bandages, and reassuringly squeezed shoulders and hands - when he approached the officers his assault jacket sleeves were stained with blood. "I run things differently here. But you'll learn that from the sergeants. You're all young and inexperienced, so for a few days you're going to be subordinated to my senior NCOs. Most of them have been in the business for a while, they know the trade. They'll show you the ropes. You're going to learn a lot in a very short time, and I can tell you right now that a lot of the things you learned at West Point don't have a place here. You've been educated, but what's important out here is experience. Books and lectures didn't prepare you for a lot of things."
The lieutenants had been willing to learn. They wanted to prove their worth. So eager to become students of war. They nodded profusely at the instruction of the NCOs, gave acknowledging "ums."
In combat, they were frantic. They dropped magazines, fumbled with grenades, and would not move from their positions once the shooting started. They would fire uselessly from behind their cover, succeeding only in revealing their platoon's positions to German mortar crews. When directed to maneuver, they would start in one direction, and watch a man fall in bewilderment. They'd turn around to head in another, and another man would go down in front of them, and they would freeze behind their cover. To them, if a man died moving to a certain destination it was not possible to push in that direction. It would only lead to more men dying.
But to the NCOs who would then take over, those dead men were an expected loss.
"Can't let something like that stop you," they explained breathlessly after taking the position, after the enemy in the immediate area had been disabled and there was some distance between them and the next closest threat. "Once you make a move and someone goes down, you can't stop. Once you're committed, you're in. The Captain makes a plan and everyone's gotta do their part or things go to shit. Everything goes to shit if you don't get your part done, it just gets complicated. What's the matter, you afraid of buying it?" And before the lieutenants could answer, the NCOs would laugh and say, "Of course not, you're more afraid of letting everybody down. Of course not. But more than anybody else," the sergeants grew serious, "more than anybody else you don't let that man down."
And they'd be pointing at Wayne.
"The Captain," the replacement officers acknowledged.
"That's right. The Captain. He's the best man you're ever going to meet in this war. He gets things done. He asks you to do something, you better make that something fucking happen."
Later that night, Wayne debriefed the men on the day's action. And it was then that the lieutenants came to perceive why Wayne was so respected.
"More than anything," he'd told them, "you're afraid of getting people you're responsible for killed. That's what you're afraid of. You think that getting them killed while they're following your orders is as good as murdering them with your own hands. It'd make you killers."
The lieutenants naturally wondered how many soldiers assigned to A Company had died under this captain's command.
"I can't help you much, I don't know what to tell you. People are going to die. You don't overthink it, you don't consider morals or get into right and wrong, it's a fucking fact. People are going to die."
The lieutenants had nodded gravely in response, as though they were accepting some kind of new-found truth. Wayne knew for a fact that they didn't get a word he'd told them. They thought this was a brave new world, a new way of life for them.
Wayne gestured at his ranks. "You know what these bars mean? It means you can't be accused of murder. You can lose your entire platoon and nobody gives a fuck. They think, it's war. That's what happens. And you get another platoon. The journalists don't care, you don't swing enough weight, you're just a field officer. You're just doing your job. The riflemen don't care, you're standing right next to them taking the shots. You're one of them. Everybody's on your side. The only person that fingers you as a cold-blooded killer is you. After a while you wonder why. What makes you such a bad guy. You're just doing what you're told, you don't want anyone to get killed but they do, it's just out of your hands." He looked them in the eye and told them, "No matter how many people you watch die, you are not a murderer. You are in it with them. But that is how things happen."
The lieutenants knew then that this man did not fear judgement, that he placed himself above it. That he believed in his own cause, his own way of living, a cause and a way of living that existed in complete disregard for the accepted principles of ordered society. To be so callous about death; to be able to both admit to and excuse himself of murder; this man commanded himself. And it was this command, this complete control of his existence, that drove the lieutenants to instinctively respect Captain Wayne. They looked at him with a new comprehension and knew that this was a man to be followed.
And so the lieutenants followed him and died.
Christ, Wayne thought, there went his leaders. Responsibility would be back to the sergeants now, and probably a few of them were dead with those replacements, too. Wayne did not know who he could trust the men with; he would be with 2nd Platoon, anticipating a flank assault, and he needed a second-in-command to take care of A Company's front. The only person he truly trusted with the company was himself, he felt he was the only man qualified to determine whether or not the lives of the company was worth the objective. No one else had that authority besides him.
He was directing the machine-gunners into new positions, now, heading towards 2nd Platoon's line on the south edge of the field. His sergeants were nodding at his orders, trusting in him completely. Wayne's rifle was pointed down in his hands as he broke into a trot, leaving 1st and 3rd Platoon with the senior NCO and giving him explicit directions to keep in constant radio contact, and A Company knew they were watching the movements of a soldier. One of them.
And then Wayne was dead.
Kast told his gunner, "Good kill," still watching the American's body cartwheel and flop uselessly into the grass. The shot had been almost a direct hit, his body had been wrapped in ribbons of fiery black and flung several meters to the side as though he were nothing more than a toy. They'd been observing the company for several minutes, and Kast had delayed solely for the purpose of killing the officer-in-charge. It'd taken a moment to confirm the target, no one had saluted him explicitly, but they could tell by the force the man seemed to possess, the way the others gave him their full attention, the way the man did not seem aware of that power he had.
Kast had very rarely operated under the command of another, but he had already guessed with a wry smile that the dead man must have been a very good officer.
Machine-gun fire ripped from the neighboring field, and Truttman could see 1st and 3rd Platoons going under, disappearing into their cover. No one knew where the tank fire had come from, and soon it did not matter, because the next HE round hit the bazooka team, shredding their hedgerow cover into wooden splinters and driving the two men and their mangled weapon into the grass. Truttman guessed they would not be getting back up.
When he returned his attention to his line he saw that field-gray soldiers were crossing 2nd Platoon's line-of-fire, maneuvering alongside the hedgerow bank; they were headed for A Company's flank, but had not expected the presence of a rearguard. Thompsons chattered into the infantry column, bowling the riflemen over as they twisted towards the sound of incoming fire. The column, however, ignored the flanking fire, and instead drove forward with more determination, even as the submachine-gunners emptied their magazines across their line. But while 2nd Platoon dropped their spent magazines, the remainder of the field-gray overcoats filtered past, disappearing into the next hedgerow.
"Get some of our guys to hold them on the other side," Truttman directed with more confidence than he felt. "If they get established on our flank we're going to be fucked," and as he said this an HE round shattered a dozen meters away, spraying the platoon's position with debris and shrapnel.
Jesus Christ. Captain Wayne had just been killed. Truttman watched a squad lope out of a ditch to interdict the German column and did not know what the next step was. The other platoons were frozen, calling over the radio - "Taking fire, taking fire, bazooka team's gone." They did not know what action to take.
There was another crump, and A Company sighted the panzer motoring onto the road to the south through a curtain of blackened debris and falling bodies, breaking from cover into a clearer position.
Tracers fluttered through the next hedgerow beside 2nd Platoon, broken by the solitary cracks of rifle shots, and the rifle squad returned a moment later less two rifles.
"They've already got machine-guns set up, looks like they've lined-up a company out there." The private was breathless, and behind him the others peered out into the German-held field, looking at the two dead men lying in the grass.
A Company's position was compromised. Machine-gun fire had their flank covered and they did not have the capability to deal with an armored attack. The assault gun was blasting gaps out of 1st and 3rd Platoon, disintegrating their hedgerow cover and inflicting casualties with each round; they could not hold. Some of the men were already breaking, inciting the German machine-guns to begin spraying fire through the hedgerow, flooding A Company's position with 7.92mm.
A rifle company that lost contact with its captain was effectively paralyzed. For A Company, this paralysis was accompanied by shock; Captain Wayne had been a figure of such commanding power his soldiers had come to see him as invincible, untouchable. He was a man who controlled his own fate and he'd been wiped from existence as though his presence of being was as insubstantial as air.
There was no second-in-command to take the reins; there hadn't been a company first sergeant since Wescott had been killed, and all the platoon lieutenants were dead. The highest-ranking NCO available was a staff sergeant, and he was radioing 2nd Platoon asking what the hell was going on. The problem with assuming command was no one wanted to take full responsibility for the fate of the company. It took a different kind of man to command other men, to decide whose life would be endangered to accomplish this task, and whose life would be written-off to accomplish that objective.
Those A Company soldiers who'd been in combat for an extended duration had become fatalistic; their destinies were out of their hands, and the best they could do was do what they were told to the best of their ability. To suddenly take action against the course of things would be sacrilegious to them.
2nd Platoon soldiers were engaging German fireteams advancing down the hedgerows, exchanging rifle and submachine-gun fire in the web of tracers lacing through the grass. This was an infantry assault, and accompanied by the fire support of the assault gun on the south road 2nd Platoon would crumple underneath the pressure. Truttman knew that the other platoons were folding, too, because the panzer was laying into them, firing into the field with impunity.
"We're getting out," Truttman told the others. "Keep those MGs down."
Behind them, soldiers were pulling out of their lines in disarray, operating solely on the squad level. They did not have an objective to reach, but they were driven by the impulse to reach a safe area, an empty field.
On the other side of A Company's field, 2nd Platoon fought a withdrawal down their hedgerow, leap-frogging with alternating bases-of-fire. Truttman could see the submachine-gunners tearing the hedgerow cover to ribbons in controlled bursts, suppressing individual machine-guns and keeping the German maneuver elements down. When their weapons ran dry, they ejected their spent magazines and slammed in fresh ones with a deft proficiency, their hands a blur; they were firing again before their empty magazines hit the grass. When their weapons jammed, it took them the span of a second to clear the action. Their shooting was tight and accurate. This was why Wescott had called them the professionals - they had developed a certain skill, a trained technique in killing.
Corporal Cook broke through a tangle of foliage, stumbling over tree roots, and was met by an empty field. He was heading north, back up Martinville Ridge. He could see the others running ahead, wading through grass that seemed to swallow their bodies. HE still tore through the earth behind him, and the jagged reports of automatic fire were beginning to filter through from 2nd Platoon's position. They were pulling back, too.
"Division's got plans." Even as they were retreating from certain death, an indoctrinated sense of duty remained a conscious part of the company's being. Even Cook felt an obligation to turn and hold his ground, but the fucking bazooka team was dead, what the fuck could he do?
He saw Truttman with his rifle shouldered firing into the field. He stood with a handful of 2nd Platoon, the others were re-positioning to spread into a skirmish line. Ahead of them, past the treeline, the Germans were also maneuvering into position under fire, making for the opposite edge of the field. They were using the covering fire of the panzer to sprint forward in short intervals; Cook could see men throwing a protective arm up as HE burst in the treeline, carving jagged gaps into the trunks, and through the splinters of wood twirling into flesh he could see field-gray helmets bobbing across the opposite hedgerow.
Cook, a practical man, always willing to do his part but not to the extent that he could be considered especially dutiful, slowed his run to a trot, to a walk. Why was Truttman making a stand against something like this? Was he going to stop the panzer with the power of his fucking heart? A few weeks ago this would be something they would have laughed at, a soldier endangering his life to fulfill his God-given duty, knowing he did not have the capabilities to fulfill it but willing to die trying. Like a fucking idiot. What drove 2nd Platoon to follow orders and hold their ground in the face of such adversity?
As he debated heading back to help a friend, he saw two men break through from the hedgerow on the right, moving in from an adjacent field. Cook thought nothing of it, figuring they were A Company stragglers, until he noticed the field caps, the gray of their fatigues - they had their Mausers shouldered.
What happened next was inexplicable. Cook's rifle snapped-up, pointed at one's chest but deliberately aimed low, and he squeezed a double-tap into the German's sternum, the rounds jerking his body into the grass, but Cook didn't see him falling, he'd already pivoted and squeezed the first round of three into the dead man's comrade, drilling a similar two rounds into the sternum but adding a headshot to finish the kill. It had happened rapidly, Cook hadn't made a conscious movement, it'd all been reflex, and it wasn't until he made a note of how many rounds he had remaining in his magazine that a memory came to him.
Wescott had been instructing the company shortly after they'd received the engineer detachment for hedgerow combat. He was discussing close-quarters drill, explaining various procedures for various close-combat situations. Cook had been nonplussed; much of the terminology, the language of killing, sounded as though it had been borrowed from medical textbooks and infused with military procedure.
"Speed, speed's what's important. When it's spontaneous and point-blank like this it's got to be reflex, you can't take the time to think about it, it's just got to happen."
"That's a lot of finesse for putting a couple bullets into a body," Cook had joked.
"It's harder than it sounds. You could do it to a target easy, but when it's down to the wire you panic, you don't think straight. You think you don't have enough time to pull the trigger twice so you pull the trigger once and point at the next guy at the same time, you end up hitting the first guy in a non-disabling target area and then they both put you down. So you've got to drill it into yourself."
Cook had just laughed contemptuously, what a crock of shit.
"You think it's funny," Wescott had shrugged.
"This is a fucking lecture on shooting another man. We've been shooting at people for a couple weeks now, and I haven't seen the science to it. If you shoot someone enough times they will not shoot back. There's not that much to killing a soldier."
Wescott had never grown irritated or frustrated with Cook or Truttman, regardless of how belligerent or condescending they became. He had looked at Cook and said, "You college guys are always difficult to train. You think too much about things, get caught up in the details. I'm not teaching you how to kill people, I'm training you in a new way of life. You're used to being told how to prolong life and stay healthy, and you come out here and it's a complete turnabout, now it's about cutting it short or having yours cut short. To you it probably sounds a little harsh, a little heartless, but I've been living like this for a couple years now. A couple of other guys tried to think otherwise, you know, kept moving and thinking like they were back home and they're dead now. But this isn't home, this is something else. Laws don't protect anyone here, hard work is not rewarded. You have got to be trained in this way of life or you won't last for longer than a week when the heat's on."
"Maybe I'm too dumb for this kind of training," Cook had smirked, amused by the sergeant's perception of war. This way of life. "And I'll bet a lot of other guys won't adjust too well to it, either. Like some of those law student officers."
Wescott, still calm and detached, had answered with genuine conviction, "Anyone can be trained to be a soldier."
Cook watched as Truttman kept 2nd Platoon standing, organizing firepower against the German flank assault while resisting the panzer's bombardment. He'd been the least likely to become any sort of leader, he didn't have the motivation. That's why he'd never been promoted past corporal, Captain Wayne knew that Truttman would never do any good as a sergeant if he didn't give a shit. But now he was in virtual command of the strongest detachment in the company, and keeping them together under unprecedented pressure.
Cook had one round remaining in his magazine, he'd been keeping track of his ammunition, because Wescott had once said that it was important to know when it was necessary to reload, otherwise time would be wasted fumbling for a fresh strip of rifle rounds. He glanced back at the two Germans behind him - they weren't moving. Wescott had trained him well. Cook had learned well.
He stopped a BAR team and told them to come with him. "Some of our boys are lining back up, we can help them out."
"There's a fucking panzer out there," they protested, and Cook cut them short.
"Hey, look buddy, you see my fucking rank? Does it look like I'm fucking asking you? Find the rest of your buddies and follow fucking orders." And Cook, an upper-middle class college student, gathered rifle grenades from the lower-class farmboys of the BAR team and led them to the edge of 2nd Platoon's position to establish a base-of-fire. They followed dutifully, adopting his hunched lope, and to the other A Company troops they seemed to be as proficient and able as the 2nd Platoon professionals.
"Radio's out," someone told Truttman.
Fucking Christ, nothing ever went right, even when he wanted it to.
Truttman glanced around for a runner, and spotted Cook and five other men creeping to the corner of the treeline. Cook was ducking repeatedly from incoming fire while pointing, and the two BARs he had with him spat their heavy rounds into the field. The others rose after the gunners had let loose several bursts, and fired determinedly into a squad of Germans across the field who dispersed into the grass.
Behind them, a sergeant was rounding the platoons up, pulling them together back into a company. He had seen 2nd Platoon holding just past their original positions and knew that they'd hold until they'd all been shot to death. As a company NCO he couldn't allow them to die alone. As a believer in espirit de corps the sergeant felt that if a handful of men chose to die as heroes, the entire unit should naturally follow suit out of comradely responsibility.
Kast didn't have any real visual targets, the Americans had all but disappeared from the field. However, the infantry he was supporting were halted short of the next field as though the Americans were resisting along the treeline, and he'd directed fire through the area accordingly. He did not have the assistance of an observer, and this diminished the effectiveness of his gun to a considerable degree.
He'd expected to be operating with Meier again, the kompanie out ahead was part of his unit, but when he'd reported to the officer commanding the assault, he'd been informed that Meier was no where to be found, that he'd disappeared from duty. One night, after calling in fire missions all day against an American battalion, he had vanished without a word. No one had seen him go.
The sturmgeschutz had been hurling rounds into the brush for several minutes now, carpeting the edge of the field with hot metal shards. The Americans hidden along the treeline still had not maneuvered from their positions; Kast had detected no movement and the kompanie had not made any attempts to advance.
"Let's get in close," Kast told his gunner. "Drive abreast of the infantry." There was no need to worry about anti-tank fire, as they'd eliminated the bazooka team right after downing the American officer. They would move within point-blank range and fire into the remainder of the resisting troops.
Truttman saw the assault gun moving from the south road and knew that the company would be fighting for survival in a few moments. The Germans were at a halt, several BAR teams had been organized under Cook and these were pinning their assault elements down with liberal fire. But once the assault gun had gotten in their faces they'd be forced into retreat, there'd be no way they could get cover between them and the HE.
MG-42s had opened, the Germans had re-positioned, and these were firing directly into the BAR teams. They were trying to gain fire superiority again, so that the maneuver elements could begin advancing. It was a stilted fight, it wasn't very long before the BAR gunners were receding from their corner of the field, creeping away under an increasing volume of fire that swept through the brush. Behind them were a large portion of their number, now pierced through with multiple bullet wounds.
Almost immediately, field-gray helmets had started to bob down the field, pausing every so often as the soldiers returned fire against the American riflemen now standing to stop their movement. It was a rifle-fight, though, the Germans could move forward freely with little loss.
One of Truttman's squadmates was knocked down as they shot into a German fireteam, an arc of blood spattering from the left side of his chest. Truttman called to the BAR teams, told them to get back into their positions.
"They've got their MGs back up," Cook answered. "We can't keep even with them, we haven't got the firepower."
"It doesn't matter if you've got the fucking firepower," Truttman told his friend. "We haven't got anything going for us, nobody's got an advantage here. That's why you've got to fight for one." And for a moment Truttman paused.
In that pause he had realized what he was saying, and both he and Cook wondered what had happened to him, what had made him so willing to die for an order.
It was only a pause, and then a sergeant with elements of 1st Platoon dropped into the treeline. He'd rounded up what men he could, he explained, and he'd sent for runners to grab the rest. Little by little, the company was coming back together, and though the units were now a hodge podge of individuals and fireteams, they were putting into practice the generic combat tactics in which they had drilled together under the tutelage of First Sergeant Wescott, and more recently Captain Wayne.
Cook took the nine men who remained of the original sixteen along with the sergeant and returned to the bullet-tattered corner of the field, where the other seven dead men were still bleeding into the grass. They had five BARs, and the sergeant coordinated their fire; three guns would shoot first, and while they reloaded the remaining two would cover for their silence. This would keep constant suppression on their targets, and would hopefully allow the sergeant and Cook to employ the use of the rifle grenades they'd gathered.
There was a second shoot-out, another violent battle for fire superiority. This time, the sergeant's fire-coordination managed to keep A Company even, though this equality was characterized by mutually heavy casualties. Neither MG-42 gunner nor BAR man allowed themselves to take cover, and in the criss-crossing streams of tracer these men were hit by bursts that stitched up and down their arms and bodies. The corner of the field became a shower of crimson streaks, a result of severe traumatic bleeding as the soldiers were ripped to shreds.
This was fighting for an advantage.
Cook and an assistant had crept farther down the corner, carrying a webbed sash bulging with rifle grenades. Incoming fire kept them at a crawl, but compared to the torrent of automatic fire exchanging behind them this was easy going. They took position in a small scrape of earth, probably resulting from the panzer's HE fire, and began to set up the rifle. The grenade launcher had already been attached to the rifle's bayonet stud, and Cook hand-loaded a grenade cartridge into the weapon.
He fixed a rifle grenade for the appropriate range - the enemy positions were a little over a hundred meters out - and planted the rifle butt firmly in the ground.
A steel chnk rang out, and a small blob arced down into the field across from 2nd Platoon's position. Bodies were flung out of the grass, momentarily lost in black, and bits and pieces of a machine-gun spun away from the grenade detonation. Several other fireteams staggered away from the explosion, then dropped as they were hit by rifle-fire.
Cook's action had attracted considerable attention, but he'd already loaded another grenade cartridge and fixed a second munition to fire. Another hollow clang as gases propelled the rifle grenade into its next target, and a second machine-gun team was out-of-action. He'd chosen a good position, Cook and his assistant had a considerable angle on the Germans.
By this time the surviving .30 Browning team had returned to support A Company's stand; the second had been shot down by the panzer. They deployed alongside the BAR detachment, now composed of four able-bodied men, and brought down their fire on the German machine-gun teams which were now re-positioning, moving away from Cook's grenade attacks. For a moment the odds were in A Company's favor, German firepower had been reduced and they weren't able to put all their guns on the line. Their assault teams had been isolated and pinned down in the field, and a squad of 3rd Platoon had arrived.
"Take those Germans down in the field," a runner, sent by Truttman, relayed to the squad leader. "Use concealment and grenades, take them down within one go if you can, and get back to our lines."
The squad nodded, kneeling down against their rifles, and crept down the treeline, trying to find an angle against the rifle teams in the field.
Cook was searching for the panzer which had disappeared from the south road; the faint rumble of its diesel engine was distinct under the constant small-arms fire, but it was concealed from sight. It was dangerous to be fighting with armor in the area, but A Company apparently didn't have the option of pulling out.
Truttman crouched down against the bank of the treeline, opening a pouch on his assault jacket to jam in a new clip. He could see the 3rd Platoon squad readying themselves, and the 1st Platoon soldiers firing with renewed intensity to give them cover. Their squad leader gave them the signal and they sprinted out into the grass, emptying their weapons into the first Germans they saw, utilizing the shock-effect of heavy fire. Behind those first few field-gray soldiers, American grenades were already bursting among the fireteams, swathing the north side of the field in smoke.
This smoke, exacerbated by the support of the .30 Browning - American machine-guns were notorious for producing large amounts of flash and smoke, which both readily gave away their positions and reduced visibility to a considerable degree - blanketed the grass in a blinding, sulfurous curtain similar to the HE residue of the panzer's barrage. Within a few minutes of the grenade assaults, A Company had limited their vision to less than a hundred meters. The German fireteams were gunned down and grenaded in this smoke, rendered invisible to their comrades farther behind them.
It was this smoke that blinded A Company to the presence of the assault gun.
The 3rd Platoon squad was hit full-on by an HE round, and as their blood-ribboned bodies rolled down into the grass as limp as rag dolls, Truttman knew that A Company's situation was once again compromised.
Kast had broken-through a tattered gap in the opposite hedgerow, and had almost immediately opened fire on the first visible target. The next round blasted a hole in 1st Platoon's line, tearing down a tree along with four of the soldiers positioned behind it. The assault gun had parked less than a hundred meters away from the company's positions, and without any cover or AT capabilities the Americans were nothing more than cannon fodder.
Driving down the field, with the gunner acknowledging the targets that he listed off, Kast was reminded of Russia; after the infantry had cleared what anti-tank threats they could, Kast would go into action and deal with the Russian infantry who had resisted the initial assault. No matter how many times he saw a neighboring assault gun or a panzer go up in smoke, whether it be from an anti-tank gun or a mine, there was always a feeling of invincibility, of wielding awesome power, in driving through the ranks of rifle soldiers while hurling HE into them, in being the machine that went into war against man. Back then, of course, there'd been an entire company, a battalion of the sturmgeschutz, spread-out across the battlefield as they roared into infantry strongpoints. Now, he was just one gun, but in the comparatively solitary combat of Normandy, the assault gun possessed an undiminished presence of strength.
Kast hated this feeling, it was always misleading. Because the fact was he was just one gun commander in a single vehicle, and in the wider scope of the war he was nothing, no matter how effective a tactician, no matter how efficient an operator he was.
"Good kill," he told the gunner, noting the death of what might have been an entire platoon within the span of three rounds.
To A Company, the panzer was the alpha and the omega. Their immediate existence revolved almost entirely around the assault gun and the chaos it was spreading through the company with each point-blank shot. The treeline was crumbling apart, filled with black debris and white splinters of bark, and where ever the soldiers turned they saw the corpses of their fellow soldiers lying in the broken earth. Submachine-gunners rose to fire ineffectually at the war machine, and their comrades farther right tossed grenades desperately, fighting with what they had while knowing that it was fruitless. One hollow boom later the submachine-gunners were down and bleeding, ripped open to bear their innards to the earth.
The sergeant had left the BAR detachment to lead Cook deeper down the hedgerow, closer to the German line. The assault gun motored no less than fifty meters out, and from their firing position down in a ditch lined with shell-casings it seemed monstrous. The crushing report of its 75mm gun reduced their hearing to a dull rush of wind, and Cook readied the next rifle grenade in what felt like absolute silence.
The panzer fired again, but this time Cook didn't hear the boom or its resulting explosion in the brush, only felt the sudden jarring of vibration rattle into him. The sergeant took the rifle from his hands and rested the butt into the dirt, and when the rifle grenade shot forward Cook noted that there was no music in that, either.
Kast heard the impact of an explosive projectile slam into the panzer, a dull crash that was all but muted in the constant rumble of the engine that reverberated within the crew compartment.
"Taking AT fire," the driver reported.
"Where's it from," Kast asked, and when he received the response, "I can't find it," he felt an intense frustration. Where was Meier? He would have been able to see for them. Even now, standing on top of the American positions, they couldn't acquire targets until soldiers would rise from cover to shoot at the infantry behind them. They were blind and deaf.
Truttman covered his head as the panzer shot another round into the brush after a considerable pause, and thought he could see dead bodies flopping around in the detonation. The rifle grenades were making the panzer nervous, it wasn't sure if there was really an anti-tank threat in the area. It was slewing about, trying to find the tell-tale muzzle that would reveal a 57mm gun position or an unaccounted bazooka team. As it searched, the remnants of A Company rose to shoot again into the Germans who had tried to push into the field again.
The sergeant had taken over the rifle, and he worked the grenade launcher with an adept skill and coordination that surprised Cook. They were attracting attention; a few riflemen had started to shoot at them, and while the BARs would be able to suppress enemy fire for a while, they would not be able to stop a committed maneuver.
Even with this in mind, the sergeant continued to launch his munitions against the panzer with as much rapidity as the meticulous process allowed. He had put ten rounds into the gun's steel flank.
The AT fire hammered relentlessly against the gun's chassis, and Kast thought he heard metal creaking, giving way. The sturmgeschutz's situation was a bad one, Kast figured that while the weapon firing against them was weak, it simply could not be located, and Kast was unable to identify the exact weapon type. He didn't want to risk the vehicle or his crew. Each round that achieved a direct hit could potentially damage the weapon or injure one of his crew; if they didn't locate the source of fire soon they would have to pull back.
Something tore through the hull and flashed white.
Kast's arm and back were aching, and soon he could feel a familiar sticky warmth flooding down his skin. He'd been hit, though in the limited light inside the crew compartment that was now obstructed by smoke he was unable to assess the severity of his wounds. He tried calling for the gunner and realized he couldn't hear; when he looked down to check if the gunner was all right he saw him rocking in his seat erratically, his head a mess of blood that seemed to pour from every external orifice; his nose, ears, eyes, and mouth were dark rivers of scarlet. "Reverse," he told the driver silently, "Full reverse, get the fuck out of here."
The sergeant was unsure if he'd penetrated the panzer's armor, though he could see a faint black was wafting out of the viewports fixed around the 75mm gun. He continued to work the grenade launcher, registering several more direct hits even as it retreated back to its infantry support.
The German infantry officer in charge of the assault had already ordered his troops to withdraw, and the rifle squads he had in the fields were bringing their wounded in. He had lost heavily during the engagement, and from a quick tactical assessment he assumed that he didn't have the manpower to mount a successful second attempt. And even as the officer sent orders by radio to his kompanie, he shook his head in dis-belief at the defense the Americans had put up. Just yesterday they'd been unable to push the offensive at the most crucial instant, had let an opportunity for decisive victory walk away from them. But today they'd conducted a spirited and well-executed defense that stopped an assault supported by artillery and armor cold. He had always ridiculed the fighting ability of the Americans, they weren't meant to fight wars.
But, he thought with begrudging acceptance, anyone could be trained to be a soldier.
prologue
After the assault units had penetrated the enemy's operational defense, which was usually centered on a lateral-axis between a rough line of unassuming cities and villages, it was not uncommon for the follow-up elements, particularly of the more experienced and "professional" divisions, to stop on the way to their destination - towards the front line - and loot the vacated homes of the natives and the rotting corpses of the enemy.Watches were pilfered from dead hands, enemy sidearms, rifles, and automatic weapons were taken as war-trophies, Iron Crosses were relieved from collars of still bearers - various souvenirs and trinkets taken from the rubble, wreckage, and ripening bodies of dead men served as trade-items and sentimental keep-sakes for the line of rifle infantry marching in the wake of a vicious, brutal battle. Houses and apartments were relieved of pottery and rugs, to be sent home as gifts for the family. Everywhere throughout the city, enlisted men, officers, and those natives who had not evacuated could be seen participating in the lucrative business of war.
1st Infantry Division was considered to be one of the US Army's most outstanding units. It had an admirable history in its service during the First World War, and as an active-service formation it was made up of regular volunteers, very American and patriotic young men who possessed an espirit de corps and a sense of pride in serving their country.
"This guy's got a Luger," a 1st Division private announced and grinned at his sergeant. He pocketed the treasured sidearm and walked away from the worthless pile wrapped in desert fatigues ragged with shrapnel tears. And behind him, trucks loaded with American wounded and dead, similarily swathed in shredded battle-dress, rolled westward.
"Hey guys, look at this," he called to his squad-mates, still grinning. "Just relieved some poor bastard Kraut of this here Luger."
The sergeant, John Wescott, shrugged and grunted. It was against Army policy to loot, but official policy never held much weight out on the front lines. The men might have cared maybe six months ago but they'd seen too much real war to care about such pointless rules anymore.
Six months ago, Wescott remembered, they'd just landed in Algeria. The 1st Infantry Division had officially entered the war that November, they'd touched foreign soil held by the enemy and had started actively fighting in World War II. The men had been awkward and out-of-place; very few of them were combat veterans, and this was their first battle experience. But war had a way of teaching men quickly, and as they spent days, weeks, months in the campaign in North Africa they learned the trade progressively, slowly transforming themselves from the fresh-faced young men who believed in warm beds and soft pillows and the comforts of home into haggard soldiers who frankly did not see the point in shaving anymore.
As they spent more time in North Africa they realized that life, existence, was a matter of simplicity. Food, drink, sleep, and ammunition - these were the four basic necessities of war. Men who had brought personal belongings with their gear found themselves throwing sentimental keep-sakes out of their packs and replacing them with magazines of .30 cartridges. They cast away much of their belongings from home, many of their luxuries and reminders of life in normal society, and hoarded with religious caution as much ammunition as they could, because in war bullets were as important as oxygen-carrying blood. The roads during those initial weeks of Operation TORCH were lined with the abandoned equipment that the soldiers of 1st Infantry Division deemed unnecessary; overcoats, field jackets, mess kits, bibles, anything that would not give benefit to a soldier in a combat situation.
They were learning one of the cardinal realities of war; life was about becoming the better killer and the better survivor. It was a return to a simpler life before human society, when the laws of nature prevailed and governed the actions of every form of life on earth, only this simpler life was characterized by modern war vehicles and weapons, the latest developments in scientific technology.
And as these men learned about war, they developed a different sort of discipline than the by-the-book order they'd practiced at camp. What they cultivated was combat discipline, restraint from producing noise and light to avoid detection, rapid reflexes to battle situations once the first shot was fired, the mindset needed to stand in the face of rifle-fire cracking less than a hundred meters away. They could withstand extensive artillery barrages, when the desert sand around them would boil black with high-explosive incendiary, and more or less endure it. They could watch men they'd trained with die terribly, get hit, struggle to crawl away, get hit again and die, and they could detach themselves from it until after the fighting was over, when they had time to think for a life other than their own. For many of them, their lives took a change.
Authority no longer put the fear of God into them, they'd put their lives on the line and what any officer could do to them could not possibly match being shot at by a machine gun. They did not become rebellious, but they became fearful, fearful that at any moment their lives would end. Every day they heard news of someone's buddy buying it, and in more recent times they witnessed it directly, and this experience unnerved them. Sometime soon it might be them who took a hit, and not some other Joe. This led them to strive to appreciate the finer things in life before they were too dead, to take part in every vice and cardinal sin possible and live a full life. They stole, slept with whores, drank profusely, lazed around whenever possible, and the field officers, who had experienced the stress of war with these men, permitted what they could and turned a blind eye to what they could not. It would be criminal of them to forbid these men who risked life and limb for the highest ideals of America and democracy to enjoy some of the fruits of their dangerous labor.
Sergeant Wescott was not a wild or passionate person. He was admired by his comrades because of his stoic detachment, his impenetrable fortress of sangfroid. He was never extremely happy or sad or angry, was always more or less cool and calm, and so was not quite as socially active as his squad-mates. He did not care much for many luxuries such as smoking or sex or a good beer, but Wescott understood when his fellow soldiers would participate in such activities. Every day they spent in the field was a gamble with death. Rifle sights had no preference, a bullet could kill a Baptist as easily as it could a Catholic or an Atheist, and the men became very superstitious, or very religious, or very fatalistic, anything that would give them hope of coming through alive or relieve them of their all-consuming fear. But they also did as many stupid things as they could, they did crazy things like initiate bar-fights, sexually assault women, told the quartermaster to fuck off, because where the guys at home had their entire lives to make mistakes, they potentially had a day.
hensley
At the end of 1941 an eighteen year-old knew exactly what would happen within the next few months of his life. He would register for the draft and be enlisted into military service. Most young men approached this with some anxiety. They did not want to die when their lives had just started. But due to what many were calling the national tragedy that had occured at Pearl Harbor, ferverent American patriotism dominated the attitude towards what had become known as the Second World War. The highest American ideals and principles were celebrated and glorified and advertised to the citizens of the United States through television, radio, and cinematic messages, and the war against the Axis Powers was characterized as one that represented a war for the security of American people and American interests. Most young men quelled their fears with a sense of civic duty; enlisting was the right thing to do. It was a good thing to do.There were also those men who'd signed up with the National Guard, American citizens who felt that they could live their own lives and then dutifully participate in the nation's military endeavors when the need arose.
To these people the idea of God and country were almost synonymous. America was a good nation, it never infringed upon the rights of other nations. Everything that America did was to uphold or advance some good intention; to Americans, the oft-cited ideals of freedom and democracy were holy and were not to be taken lightly. And war, while terrible, could be justified with the aforementioned principles; and it could certainly be justified in the case of vengeance, when two thousand American lives had been taken in the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Guardsman David Hensley - Oakland, Maryland - listened as the President of the United States announced a declaration of war through an old, beat-up radio. Words of solemn and grave nature fizzled from the shabby device, and through the hiss and crackle of static the guardsmen in their barracks felt those words affect them profoundly. America had been attacked; the Japanese and their allies and the goals they sought to achieve would clearly adversely affect the future of the United States. There was now war in the Pacific, and the war in Europe, a conflict that many thought did not concern them, now became an American war. This was a major moment in history, both for the United States and the world. It was felt that the President's words filtering through the tinny cracks and buzz of the radio's speaker marked a moment that would define the strength of the people of America and what America stood for.
Every one of the guardsmen of the 29th Infantry Division believed in America, the notion of a good United States. There was not one man in the entire outfit that was not a patriot, and this was what they told others when asked why they'd enlisted, that they were a patriot and wished to serve their country in the best way possible. But underneath the rhetoric of a good and just cause, each soldier in the barracks harbored a more personal motivation, one that they considered truly worth giving the autonomy of their lives away to the order of the military.
David Hensley had signed-up for the National Guard because he wanted to do something worthwhile in his life. He had a steady job with a small business as a carpenter, and stuck in a small town he felt his life already beginning to stagnate. At the rate at which things had been going he was going to grow old and eventually die a carpenter, and while he enjoyed some of the work, making a sturdy project that would last, he did not perceive a fruitful life in working with wood until his retirement.
He had been eighteen when he'd read the headlines trumpeting the events in Poland. Blitzkrieg, panzer divisions, the terminology was reminiscent of the history books of the First World War, when sturm troopers clashed with the French at Verdun.
He'd talked with his boss about it; the man had gone over-seas with the army in 1918, and had spent three months of the war fighting in France.
"It was something," he told David vaguely, "It was really something. It was a different experience, I'm glad it didn't last long for me, but I think it's, uh, it's uh contributed to the person I am today."
"You didn't turn out so bad," David told him.
"No, maybe I didn't. But I saw quite a few people who did," and the old man laughed, not because he thought it amusing but because he was relieved, felt fortunate. "You know how it is, sometimes you hear about a poor fellow who's lost an arm or a leg, always from an artillery shell. It was almost always an artillery shell. Or some other poor fellow comes home with his nerves shot, and that'd probably be from artillery, too. I was fortunate, I spent three months over there and I didn't get hurt, but I saw quite a few people that did get hurt. Sometimes it was unpleasant."
He didn't have much to say after that, or he didn't want to say much. David watched him for a moment. "It wasn't all bad memories, was it? It couldn't have been. You were living in a, such a historical moment, it had to have meant something."
"'Historical moment,'" the old man smiled, almost sneered. "Making history didn't mean much, then, it was a little more personal than that. Sometimes a little more threatening than that. Maybe it meant something, I thought it did, I don't know what. It was a feeling of accomplishment, of finishing very hard work. You came back home and you had a parade."
They spoke all day, all through their work, and in their distraction the old man noticed that they made some bad measurements, they were probably going to have to re-work some of the material, otherwise when they put everything together it wouldn't have stability of structure; someone would be eating off the table when he'd lean forward and a leg would snap.
David noticed that his boss never spoke with a clear statement, he seemed to keep everything as vague as possible, only occasionally citing specific events, as though he were dodging something. It wasn't until the end of the afternoon, when David was headed out the door, that the old carpenter told him anything very directly.
"If you're thinking about enlisting, join the National Guard, don't go into active service. That way you'll only go over there if the country really needs you to, not if it's just some minor conflict that won't get more than a paragraph in the history books." He gave David a grin, as though he remembered his own youthful enthusiasm when he'd heard about the first maneuvers of the Great War. "Because otherwise it'll be a waste of time, don't you think? You want atleast a couple pages for yourself. Your big moment in history." But the grin was restrained, a half-hearted effort, as though the old carpenter were merely trying to seem encouraging. As though his empathy was insincere.
And David had grinned back. The next week he was in the National Guard.
David's unit and the units from Baltimore and Virginia would form the 29th Infantry Division two weeks every year for training. But by September of 1940 Congress had passed the Selective Service bill - the war in Europe was perceived as a national emergency that would require the enactment of the draft, and the mobilization of the National Guard would follow soon after. David would receive his orders by October; in three months he was to report to his local armory for duty. Until then he would tie-up any loose ends in his civilian life.
During those three months David at the time felt that he was growing up faster than he ever was before. He had responsibility now. He was an important cog in the great wheel of things. He was a guardsman. When he was asked about his plans for the future and replied, "I'm reporting for duty soon," he was met with a kind of respect, as though the local folks were proud that such a hard-working man from their community would be going over there. Psychologically, David felt a new confidence and a sense of self-worth. The local girls, young women who had not paid much attention to him in school, saw him around town and were impressed by this sudden change in David Hensley. He almost had a swagger; he spoke with restrained arrogance, but combined with his characteristic politeness and good middle-class manners that he seemed unable to outgrow, this was found to be more charming in him than a deterrent.
"David Hensley, I do declare," the girls would say after a stop at the cinemas in which young David would express a physical confidence that they found both surprising and pleasant. And he would grin back at them, as though to say, "You liked it."
"So you'll be a war-hero soon?" they would ask him, and David would affect disinterest.
"Maybe," he told them as he shrugged.
"Don't be so modest," they would say. "I'm sure we'll read about you in the papers some day. Don't let it all go to your head, David Hensley, please remembers us small-time girls in Oakland when you come back."
"I will," David promised.
Regrettably, David Hensley would never obtain a good-bye girlfriend before he left Oakland, though he might have given more time. He figured that after he returned home to a hero's parade, he would have plenty of opportunities to entertain the ladies.
"I just don't want you getting hurt over there," David's mother would repeat to him day after day.
"He'll be fine," his father would reason. "He's a big boy, now."
In private, though, during their last father-son talks, Mr. Hensley was a little less self-assuring. "Be careful over there, son. You're a level-headed young man now and I want you to keep that head, don't let this duty and honor business get the better of you. It's one thing to serve your country and another thing to be a fool, you understand?"
David nodded in acquiescence, not enjoying the advice - he wasn't a kid, he knew that it wasn't all heroics. War was a thing where people were killed and hurt, and in all probability he would become one of those statistics in the history books, a single digit of those six- and seven-number strings of "wounded." David had begun to cope with the idea of endangering his life, and thought that he could handle being wounded fairly well. Getting killed, though, he didn't know; he thought he could just accept it, but then he never really considered it a possibility. David reasoned that it was much more likely that he would suffer an injury rather than being the one to receive the killing blow, the shot to the heart or head. The statistics were on his side.
He would just have to watch out for himself and hope for the best.
During those initial months of training at Fort Meade, David proved himself to be a hard-working individual. The junior-officers of his company noted that he was a confident guardsman, capable of working under stress simply because he believed he could do whatever job he was assigned to. He was also fairly restrained, polite and well-mannered but never betrayed very much emotion; he had a just-perceptible smile that the lieutenants knew hid an above-average intelligence. He had self-control, mental discipline, and he was an attentive learner. According to his school records, David Hensley had been an average student, but he displayed a mental aptitude that had apparently been untapped by the books of academic study.
This, combined with a strong faith in his superior officers, made David a good follower, and with experience, a good leader. He expressed confidence in the men who commanded the division, because "they were at the top," he would say, "They're the ones who see the big picture and so they're the best ones to make decisions for us here down at company-level." They were words spoken from lessons learned throughout carefully-planned training exercises. These were the lessons so oft-repeated in civilian life, but never practiced or applied with such faith or intensity as in military existence. The golden rules of society served as the core of order in the army, and David, being a good middle-class kid at heart, knew those rules all too well.
And in the army, David came to understand the order of things. Everything was based on a chain-of-command. Each link in the chain, from general down to private, was a crucial part in the operation of an army. Not a single man could be considered insignificant; each soldier served a purpose and was trained for that purpose. David realized that a similar concept existed in civilian life, but it was only in the higher-developed discipline of military life that this concept ever took apparent root, and so followed orders and always put in an extra ounce of effort to express his faith in the order of the army.
It was because of all this that he was made a squad-leader.
So David Hensley, over the course of a few months of intensive training, became Sergeant Hensley. He took responsibility and leadership over eleven other men, a rifle squad, and through a robust work ethic as well as a healthy sense of humor, Sergeant Hensley - a simple carpenter from Oakland, Maryland - became one of the exemplary rifleman of A Company, 1st Battalion, 116th Regiment, a stand-out in the neat, meticulous rows of rifle infantry assembled during routine inspection. Sergeant Hensley was well aware of his reputation, atleast within his own company, and took some pride in it. Out in civilian life, before he'd been a guardsman, David Hensley had been a forgettable young man of insignificant quality, a mediocre product of middle-class America. Oakland, after a brief funeral and some sympathetic "umms" from the older citizens, could have survived without him. In the 29th Infantry Division, Sergeant Hensley served a purpose, he'd been trained for that purpose and he worked to a considerable degree to fulfill that purpose. Things would not run smoothly if he did not play his part and so he was a fairly important figure in the operation of the unit.
Armed with this knowledge, young Sergeant Hensley trained hard and drove his rifle squad hard during those months preceding the division's entry into combat. There was a job to be done in the war and Sergeant Hensley had every intention of being prepared to take that job on. While he realized that the fate of the war did not rest on his shoulders, he knew that there was more to his participation in the war effort than victory or defeat; there was a duty to his men and his company that required his active involvement.
It would be another few years until Sergeant Hensley was informed of exactly what he would actively be involved in, but he would never have imagined the level of intensity of that experience; because huddling out on the wet sand in the roar of what seemed to be a thousand machine-gun rounds buzzing across the gray and brown beach, Sergeant Hensley was suddenly stripped of his sense of significance - just a minute ago, the platoon lieutenant had been cut down in a mist of fleshful red without a word, without a chance to give so much as a last direction to the fifty men cowering behind German beach obstacles in sporadic, broken clusters, their unit indistinguishable from the two other rifle platoons that were now trapped ashore and dying on the beach.
And Sergeant Hensley, having seen the unsympathetic, careless destruction of a link in the chain of command, could only surmise that if someone so important as the platoon lieutenant could be done away with in the blink of an eye, then as a squad sergeant - a link or two below the platoon leader - his entire basis of existence was perhaps even more rootless, as easily toppled as a poorly-made dinner table.
truttman
Matthew Truttman was what many would consider to be a bright young man. He'd been a college student, looking into a school of business to study accounting. He'd also planned to extensively flesh-out his background in world culture, foreign languages, and writing, not only because such knowledge would assist him in a world of international business but because at the time he possessed a genuine interest in such things. He was a strong, motivated student, and his professors often praised his keenly inquisitive nature and his capacity for objective thought.But in the cold English Channel water, waiting for one of the squad sergeants to make a move, any cognitive ability that Matthew Truttman could muster was functionally worthless.
Ahead of him, men moving forward on the beach were dropping as their knees lost all stability, struck down by some unseen force, and if it weren't for the scarlet mist that would dot into the brown water accompanied by a rapid buzz or a constant metallic stutter, Matthew wouldn't have known that a machine-gun was firing from the fifty-foot bluffs ahead of them.
"Where's the shooting coming from?" one of the sergeants - a young man that in a different situation Matthew would have considered ignorant because of his southern slur - was shouting from a beach obstacle, a hedgehog of steel rails.
Matthew wasn't sure, either. He could only see the red spraying from the backs of the forward soldiers as they stumbled across the beach, their assault jackets tattered by bullet-wounds, and the line of spitting sand and water as a burst tracked across the beach obstacles.
Matthew wasn't sure of anything at the moment. The platoon lieutenant had been shot as he moved forward, past the crossed-steel beach obstacle that he and his radio operator had been kneeling against. He'd said, "Everybody up the beach," and then he'd been hit. Hit and dead.
Up until the moment the ramp had dropped, Matthew had been thinking clearly. He'd been steeling himself, mentally preparing himself for what he knew would be a psychologically taxing event. The beach had been shelled by artillery beforehand, and from what he could see past the bow of the Higgins boat, it was now a burning landscape of black. It was disturbing, Matthew thought, that his entry into combat would be the pivotal invasion of France. He was a part of something very big and it was difficult to quell the somersaults his stomach was turning. But he'd developed considerable mental discipline during his years as a student and on the ride in Matthew kept his cool, straightened his thoughts out through the guttural roar of the landing craft and the periodic explosions of artillery rounds that were now landing close enough that the men could feel their detonations.
Do not panic, Matthew reasoned. You're not like these farm boys here. Let the lieutenant and golden-boy Hensley over there take the reins and follow their lead. You will probably be shot at but if you think and move with a clear head you will be okay; be smart and chances are you'll get through this fucking mess just fine.
Then the coxswain had let the ramp go, and Matthew had stared at the rotating lock, completely resolved now, completely prepared for what lay on what the NCOs and officers of A Company called Dog Green beach.
There was a whine, then another, and the men in the front were falling, jerked and then dropped, and Matthew Truttman's last comprehensive thought had been, "These men are being shot." An indefinite amount of time later, he found himself behind a hedgehog, staring at barb-wire barriers and the ragged bodies of men, A Company men, hung limply across them, while the sand boiled beneath their feet and began to stain a muddy red.
Matthew found that after all the college courses he'd taken, after all those years of mental development, he was unable to commit his powers of thought here. Because one of those men hanging from the barb-wire was the platoon lieutenant, and another was a man he'd shared breakfast with a day ago, and at any moment he could be next and judging from very recent events there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.
The one resource that Matthew had the most faith in - rational thought - had been robbed of its worth and power.
Three years ago he would have thought this was impossible.
Born in the happy year of 1920, Truttman had entered life lucky enough to have a fairly plentiful and prosperous childhood but adequately unfortunate to suffer through a relatively down-trodden adolescence of financial, social, and personal sacrifice with his family.
His father had been an accountant, a man of social and economic competence. Self-employed with a small, professional staff, Brian Truttman was a respected member of the urban community in which he had been born and raised. He managed the investments and finances of several local firms, and headed a small branch that prepared financial reports for the community stock holders.
Matthew's father possessed an intelligent mind that could keep up with the rapid economic growth of the mid-1920s. Being a man of education and of modern social values, he quickly grasped and understood the concept of the stock market and advised many of his clients in new financial plans that were in accordance with a booming American economy. But Mr. Truttman's attempts at modernizing the economic thinking of his clients were often met with the skeptical stubborness of old traditions and values.
Often Mr. Truttman would come home amused by the old-timer sentiments that some of his clients clung to. "They are afraid of change," he would say in the tone of a man speaking about children. "There's this great new idea in front of them and they won't touch it because they weren't raised with it, this is the first time they've seen it." After kissing his wife in greeting, he would look young Matthew in the eye and tell him, "Never get so wrapped up in old-fashioned codes so much that you can't look at things objectively. Always think smart. Like a business man."
Those words were what would shape Matthew Truttman into a genuine individual.
He was never known to be idealistic, Matthew learned early on to think realistically, to weigh his decisions based on functional factors. Morals and ethics had value not in being a good person but in satisfying oneself - having been raised in upper-middle-class America, Matthew chose to adhere to socially-accepted constraints because it would benefit him. It would keep his life at home relatively comfortable and it would keep his parents happy, subsequently keeping him comfortable and happy.
His family enjoyed substantial wealth until 1929, when the sudden depression in America would cause many of Mr. Truttman's clients to file for bankruptcy and leave him with no business.
Luckily, the Truttman family had moved three times in twelve years, and had rented their previous homes out to honest, young married couples. Mrs. Truttman had been a school teacher at the time, and her salary coupled with a few weekly piano lessons and the rent earned from their tenants allowed Mr. Truttman to reasonably budget household expenditures. And even in the deepest depths of the Great Depression, American citizens were required to pay their taxes, and every year Brian Truttman, the former accountant manager of his own firm, would make some extra cash by lending a friendly neighborhood hand in some federal paperwork.
Truttman wasn't even a teenager when he asked his father why the United States government would not directly aid its citizens in a time of need, but would continue to demand payment of taxes.
"Because President Hoover is an idealistic man." His father paused for a moment, probably debating whether or not he should explain this to a boy who had not even begun high school. "He believes every American should be self-reliant, and that the way out of this mess is to gain confidence again. He is choosing to trust sayings like 'hard-work will be rewarded' when it may not be completely true in this situation, instead of thinking practically. The obvious thing to do is take direct government action, but he wants everyone to be a hero, because he thinks that this is a fairytale, that everything will pan-out in the end. Maybe in a different situation this would be true, but the one we're in is a little different and a little worse."
It was at that point that Matthew realized what his father had meant when he'd said in greeting, "Always think smart. Like a business man." The ideals that he'd heard and read in school were merely that - a bunch of best-case scenarios. But rarely in life does one come upon a best-case scenario, and it's in those less-than-ideal situations that less-than-ideal characteristics such as shrewdness were required.
That began the molding of Matthew's character. He had realized that golden sentiments were often nothing more than wishful-thinking. Life was a business, it was about investment of time and emotional, mental, and material resources. It was about earning a profit. While his fellow students learned and endeavored to practice such virtues as American generosity and American selflessness, Matthew developed his own qualities - generosity to the extent that he could gain something out of it whether it be a material reward or self-satisfaction, selflessness to the extent that he would not be such a self-centered person and feel too much guilt because of it.
As Matthew aged his circumstances gradually grew with him. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal initiated a slow economic recovery. Renewed economic activity, while in some cases not as productive as was outwardly perceived, brought about a revitalization of that old American confidence, the can-do attitude that had dominated Matthew's class-room lectures. People were finding jobs again. Mr. Brian Truttman found work with one of the many civil service projects that the New Deal created. Money was still very tight, but it was prospects of the future that had improved. There would be better times and everyone who wanted to would be there to see it.
Matthew had always planned for college. Life was a business, he repeated to himself, and business was about obtaining the maximum possible profit while maintaining immediate efficiency. College was an investment with huge returns - he could find a much more secure, much better-paying job with an education, and he could retire comfortably and provide a good living for his family. With this in mind, Matthew alotted a large majority of his time to study, setting aside just enough of his day to enjoy a walk in the park with girls he'd always be friends with but never date or a game of baseball. But his plans were always centered on a college education, followed by a career in business. He would start up the ladder of success as a young man and enjoy life in the recovering United States economy.
In 1939 September, news of the invasion of Poland subsequently brought a new market to the American economy - the war industry. It was a European war, one that many Americans felt was best left for the Europeans, but there was an immense economic potential for trade exports in an international war. There was money to be made in the burning of villages and the conquest of nations.
"It is the best thing that could happen at this moment for the United States," Matthew's father had said late one night while reading an article over the slaughter of Polish cavalry. "An international war off American soil is the one economic event that would boost us back into full-production. People don't want in but Roosevelt's playing it smart by taking a side. He's setting up customers, preparing the economy for the near-future."
It wasn't until a year later that signs of active American involvement in the war began to develop. Military establishments that had once stood relatively idle were now expanding. Fort Meade in 1940 underwent extensive construction. The draft was enacted, National Guard units were mobilized. Everything pointed to a new war-time purpose, and therefore new life, in the American economy. Prospects were good for future businessmen.
Matthew's investments in life, it seemed, were about to pay off.
Things seemed this way until Matthew received his draft papers.
"Things'll be okay," Mr. Truttman had said the day Matthew left to report for active-duty, unconvincingly masking his anguish that his son would be forced to put his college education on-hold until this business in Europe was cleared up. "You saw the type of war this is in the news - it's all lightning war, it'll be over before long and you'll come back for school in no time."
"In no time," Matthew had repeated, barely suppressing his own frustration. And before he turned to walk away and board his train, he said to his father as though to give some comforting assurance, "I'll think smart while I'm out there - like a businessman."
"The only business you'll be thinking out here," a drill instructor snapped at him weeks later, "is the business of war, son."
Matthew had already zoned-out by the time the drill instructor had started his diatribe, and before he'd gotten in two sentences ending in "soldier" Matthew was thinking that his life had certainly taken an unexpected and unwanted turn. Beside him, his fellow draftees were on their bunks chatting energetically, excited with their new lives as US Army conscripts. They were Matthew's age, and judging from their use of colloquialism possessed maybe half his formal education. A few times they would try initiating a talk with him, only to utterly discourage both parties as they discovered their unconquerable barriers. Matthew Truttman was an upper-middle class American, a suburban college kid armed with studies in humanities and English composition. Many of the draftees were rural Virginians, folks who spent their time learning agricultural trades.
The drill instructors immediately took a liking to Matthew. They expected more from him, being a college student, and suspected him to be a leader behind his quiet, impassively lazy exterior. He was a quick learner in comparison with his fellow soldiers, but he lacked what in the military was known as spirit. He did not carry out his duties to the best of his ability, only to the extent that he could get away with a shabby job, and after a while the drill instructors jumped him at every opportunity.
"That's the second latrine-duty you've been assigned this week, Private Truttman, you must have taken a liking to this assignment."
"I may have, Drill Instructor Roberts."
"Perhaps you'll be given an assignment more to your liking after you start putting forth some visible effort."
"Perhaps I will, Drill Instructor Roberts."
"When do you think you'll quit this half-assed attempt at doing your job, Private Truttman?"
"Probably never, Drill Instructor Roberts," Matthew replied, scrubbing at the latrine floor vigorously.
"Oh, that's interesting, Private Truttman. Do you want to know how interesting I find that? About as interesting as another day of latrine-duty will be for you, you lazy son of a bitch."
"I'll look forward to it, Drill Instructor Roberts."
"Look forward to what, you dumb son of a bitch, I haven't explicity assigned you to tomorrow's latrine-duty."
"My mistake, Drill Instructor Roberts."
"Yes, Private Truttman, your mistake, I think we'll have you make amends by assigning you to tomorrow's latrine-duty."
"I'll look forward to it, Drill Instructor Roberts."
"Why are you such a smart-mouthed bastard?" Matthew's squad-mates shouted after they'd served a week of latrine-duty.
"Honestly, Truttman, it's all good fun whenever you're in this shit on your own, but when you drag us into it with you then it starts to get serious."
After Truttman had scrubbed his way through a week of cleaning latrines without so much as a complaint, the drill instructors decided to punish his entire squad in order to elicit some kind of change of behaviour in their problem recruit.
"You've got the worst work ethic I've ever seen," the squad-leader told him. "You're just like every other college kid, a rich, lazy, spoiled bastard who hasn't worked for a thing in his life."
Matthew stopped in mid-stroke with his toothbrush against the floor and paused. He looked up at the squad-leader very calmly. "I'm sorry, what did you just say?"
"You've got all the money in the world but you're nothing but a lazy bum. You're a waste of every gift this country has given you, and I know this because you haven't got anything to give back."
Matthew felt what he could only describe as intense anger saturate his every conscious thought. He'd lived through the same economic depression in the same part of the country as this golden-boy son of a bitch. The amount of time he'd put into school-work and school activities equalled whatever this bastard had done past his high school education. And what was most infuriating, what made Matthew want to smash this guy's face into one of the latrines, was that he spoke as if he owed something to the United States, as though it'd given him everything he had. The United States had not given him money and it had not given him the beginning of his college education. His family had made money through hard work and smart business, and his mind and the effort he put into school had given him what education he had. The United States had taxed his family, even when his father had been unemployed and they were living off a teacher's salary, and it had taken away his college opportunities so that he could fight for the nation's interests in Europe. All of his plans, all of his personal investment into the business of life had been invalidated because he was now a soldier. His actions would be dictated by officers of war and his future career as a businessman might never come to fruition because he could be killed.
What the fuck was he supposed to owe to a goddamn country that had taken away his life.
wayne
Frank Wayne, a 1st Lieutenant - an Army Reserve 1st Lieutenant - owed nothing to the United States, he was an upright and honorable citizen of his society. He did not have a criminal record, he participated in the government through voting, and he was a productive man, a year or two away from obtaining his PhD in biology. He'd only signed-up for the Reserve to appease his father, who, a retired officer of the US Army himself, had pushed all three of his sons to join the service. He had not anticipated being called to fulfill any obligations as an Army Reserve officer other than adhering to the very rare training session.At the moment though, Officer Reservist Frank Wayne felt he was carrying out a very great obligation to the United States, because he was being shot at and he had orders - not just immediate orders, but orders that had been established for some time, orders that had been executed in rehearsal for months - to move up a stretch of beach, towards the guns that were doing the shooting.
Frank Wayne was on the coast of Normandy, where he and A Company comprised the first wave of infantry assaulting the beach defenses of Fortress Europe. The wet, cold sand he was kneeling in was code-named Dog Green, and Dog Green's immediate exits were D-1, a single draw leading up the bluffs of the sector that the other officers called Omaha Beach. To Frank Wayne it was simply Normandy - the military designations confused things, they were meant to organize everything into a neat, easily-filed structure but all they did for Wayne's mind was muddle everything up.
As a 1st Lieutenant, Frank Wayne's role in A Company was to serve as a platoon leader, he had direct command of sixty soldiers. However his platoon had been broken-up and disorganized early on during the assault, because on the approach the landing craft were moving through a minefield, and then a few coxswains dropped the ramps too early so that soldiers were swimming to shore strapped in 60-pound assault packs, and then there was the fact that machine-guns from hidden strongpoints had started shooting the moment the ramps went down forcing units to disperse for cover; it had been a fairly chaotic introduction to combat.
As a biologist - Frank Wayne did not quite have his PhD but at his level of expertise he figured it was safe to think of himself as such - chaotic was what Frank Wayne did. It was one of the many facets of biology, the general unpredictability of the nature of the universe. And what he did as a biologist was experiment, he tried new things or approached ideas differently and observed and recorded data to make sense of the chaos.
The problem was Frank Wayne did not want to experiment with the soldiers of his platoon, because experimental and analytical error would result in dead piles of sand-drenched brown, not unlike the bodies washing ashore face-down with the rising tide, or the tattered forms lying on the beach under the tracking lines of sand stitching across the beach.
"Lieutenant Wayne," a soldier called to him, hunched against a beach obstacle and curled around a radio handset, "The Captain wants us moving forward, he says he wants the platoons to get past those bluffs as quickly as possible."
Wayne examined the bluffs ahead of him in case he had imagined the intensity of the shooting. There he could see A Company soldiers moving forward in a rough file, following orders from an officer who seemed to be knowing what he was doing. The machine-gun fire slackened for an instant, then trebled a moment later, and the men in the fore of the column jerked stiffly and dropped limply, their muscles tensing in shock as solid-mass projectiles punched into them with immense kinetic energy, then relaxing involuntarily as they faded from consciousness. The column scattered, then, as these soldiers, now leaderless, stopped in their tracks and dove for the nearest cover - a shell crater, a hedgehog beach obstacle, a dead body.
"Ask the Captain where exactly he wants us moving," Wayne replied.
The radio operator shouted into the radio again, his voice straining in the chatter of automatic fire and now the crashes of field artillery. Wayne and what members of his platoon that had kept with him were kneeling in waist-deep water, but further ahead, up the beach on dry ground, high-explosive rounds were slamming into clusters of A Company troops huddled together around beach obstacles, tearing through their ranks before detonating and ripping them into tattered strips of cloth and flesh. Partial bodies staggered away, men who had lost an inordinate amount of their body mass in solid flesh, and were cut down by the machine-guns as they stumbled into the open beach.
This was violence, Wayne perceived that very well. He was disturbed by it, but it was not a shock to him.
In November 1939, when Wayne had been 23, researching a paper on animal behavior. His idea of research was a trip into the backwoods of Virginia, a hands-on visual observation of the topic of his research paper.
Wolves - Wayne was out tracking wolves. They were animals who more or less co-existed in a rough, relatively complex society, they banded together in order to hunt more successfully, to more effectively kill their prey.
The wolf social hiearchy was one of the most complex organizations in the animal world. There was almost the appearance of comradeship among the animals; they engaged in complex communication, ranging from howling to actual facial expressions, and there appeared to be a sort of affection between members, as they shouldered each other in simply physical contact. During idle moments they engaged in mock-fights, as domestic dogs would.
Even with this social development, though, each wolf was nothing more than an individual killer seeking to serve its own needs, there was no true idea of a greater whole. Everything came down to the convenience of the smaller part, the individual.
There was a leader of the pack, the alpha male. The biggest, strongest wolf who possessed nominal command of the others; he had the first share of the hunt, first choice of mates. Others fought and contested him for position as alpha male, and fought and contested each other for the rewards of their mutual efforts. The alpha male had to constantly reassert his dominance, and the day he couldn't was the day he was usurped, cast from the pack society into the wilderness of solitude. Within that basic hierarchy of society there was a constant struggle for survival that matched the struggle the pack as a whole sought to overcome.
But when there was prey, when the pack went out to hunt, they were a well-orchestrated organization. They surrounded their prey, lured it into ambushes. As a team of killers the wolves coexisted seamlessly.
It was before and after the killing, it was in anything but killing that they retained the competitive characteristics that marked the nature of life.