Chapter Text
April 8th, 1945
Norman was reinvigorated when he woke up in the back of the truck; he knew how to get to the crossroad battle, and he thought he knew what he needed to do. He had to keep them all alive.
When he shot at the Hitler youth kid, he accidentally got him in the chest. The Matador survived. At the camp, Norman trotted beside Collier’s elbow as Collier tried to find a latrine.
“We need to flank through the field,” Norman said. “We’ll die if we go on the road.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“For the next mission. They’re sending us to rescue Baker company. Lt. Parker doesn’t flank through the field. We’ll get smoked out there if we take the road like he’s got planned.”
Collier put one big hand on Norman’s chest, just below his throat, and shoved him. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, but I don’t much appreciate the strategic advice of a Private who’s spent two hours in a tank,” he said. “Go help Gordo find some extra gas.”
Norman had been trying really hard not to think about what happened in the Nazi party headquarters. After all, it was just a thing men did sometimes. He was the one making it a big deal by thinking about it. It wasn’t this Collier that did it, anyways. He wasn’t some kind of queer. Norman wasn’t either. It had been a farewell kiss that Norman had given him.
He tried to find some extra gas while Collier and the other sergeants went to confer with Lt. Parker about the mission. Collier returned from the meeting tight-lipped.
“Let’s go,” he said, and then clamped his hand down hard on Norman’s shoulder. “Come with me.”
Norman was a little scared of Collier then, the way he usually wasn’t anymore. “Sarge?” he said.
Collier took him around the corner of one of the brick buildings, still holding his shoulder in a grip tight enough to bruise, and then turned on him. “How the fuck did you know about the mission?” he hissed.
Norman blinked up at him. “I don’t—”
“You saw that kid, too, when nobody else did. Why?”
“I get visions,” Norman said lamely.
“Here’s what I think,” Collier said, and then rattled something off in German, staring at Norman intently.
Norman looked up at him in confusion.
“So you’re not a German,” Collier said. “But you come out of nowhere, knowing stuff that others don’t, and I get to thinking. I think maybe you’re a spy.”
“I’m not,” Norman said.
“Yeah, well, I ain’t taking the chance. You’re staying here.”
Norman spent the rest of the day typing up letters for men who’d been killed in the past day, in a state of slight shock. It was the first time he’d actually used his training in the field.
“Nice work,” his new sergeant praised as Norman handed him the latest dispatch informing Mabel Johnston of Winsconsin that she wasn’t going to see her son again. “You’re a fast typist.”
“Thank you,” Norman said. He went to bed in the barracks that night and listened to the rattle of the big guns down in the field. The drone of an aircraft engine went overhead, lighter than the bombers; maybe a fighter plane like the one he’d seen that morning. He wondered how the Fury was making out, trapped in the crossroad. He wondered who’d replaced him in there.
“Sie müssen evakuieren. Es kommt ein Luftangriff,” he whispered to himself, to practice.
April 8th, 1945
Norman died, inexplicably, in the sugar beet field; one of the German soldiers was playing dead and zipped him when Norman got out of the tank. Norman bled out staring at the cloudy sky while Bible recited a prayer over him. He wanted to tell him not to bother; Norman wasn’t going anywhere fast.
April 8th, 1945
For the first time, the Tiger managed to get them in the field.
April 8th, 1945
He made it to the crossroad again, but they all died.
April 8th, 1945
“You’re getting reassigned. Report to Sgt. Collier. 1st platoon, 66th Armored,” the Master Sergeant said.
“Bob, give me your smokes,” Norman said, taking off his hat and scrubbing his hand through his hair with a sigh. Last time they’d been nailed by a Panzerfaust about ten minutes in and Norm had died screaming; he could still feel the phantom pain of his skin burning.
Bob didn’t even argue with him this time around, which might’ve been a bad sign. Norman heaved himself off the truck and headed over to the Fury.
-
“Might as well get a little tight. Won’t be around for the hangover,” Collier said, and Norman heard the clink of the brandy bottle.
“What we’re doing here is a righteous act, gentlemen,” Bible said, and then quoted Isaiah; “‘Here am I. Send me.’ ”
If Norman ever got out of this, he was never drinking brandy again. “‘The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we were healed’,” he murmured to himself, lifting the bottle to his lips.
It was useless trying to track what was happening in the battle. There were too many variables. They were all going to die, and they did.
April 8th, 1945
“You’re reassigned. Report to Sgt. Collier. 1st platoon, 66th Armoured,” the Master Sergeant said.
“Fuck you,” Norman said, putting his head into his hands.
“Excuse me?” the Master Sergeant said.
"What are you, fucking deaf?" Norman snapped. He looked over at the shocked faces of the men in his platoon. “Fuck all of you too. You yellow-bellied, chicken-livered sons of bitches. You fucking whore’s bastards. Suck my cock.”
He spent that day in military prison. It wasn’t the worst. Norman stared at the cement walls and tried to pray; all he could think of was the verse Bible quoted to them. Send me. Send me. Send me.
April 8th, 1945
He woke up on the back of the truck. It was almost a relief. He was worried that he was going to wake up in jail and have to write a very apologetic letter to his mother explaining he’d disgraced the family name on only his third day of war for no apparent reason.
He skipped finding Collier and searched for the armory; he was hoping he could get some claymores to mine the ditches so that when the Fury opened fire, the Germans wouldn’t be able to hide. It was a small thing, but maybe it would help.
The quartermaster wouldn’t give him shit, not even more ammunition. “Tell that cocksucker Wardaddy that when he pays me the fifty bucks he owes me, then he can get claymores, but not a second sooner.”
“We’re going into war,” Norman said, almost pleading.
The quartermaster didn’t even blink. “And I’m going into debt for that rat bastard.”
Norman stared at him for a moment, but there was no change in expression.
“Fuck this,” Norman said, and put the muzzle of his brand new M3 in his mouth.
Sometimes he wondered if the loops continued after he left them, if he was just dropping in on other people’s stories. He hoped this was one the fucking quartermaster had to live with as he pulled the trigger.
April 8th, 1945
He woke up on the back of the truck with the taste of grease in his mouth.
This time he tried to run away. He made it halfway down the road before a soldier, alerted by the shouts behind him, tackled Norman to the ground and sat on him. They dragged him to Collier covered in mud and threw him on the ground.
“Good luck,” the one solider said, kicking Norman in the back as they left.
Collier raised his eyebrows. “Who the fuck are you?”
Norman stayed curled up in the mud. He didn’t want to deal with Collier. “I’m supposed to be your new bow gunner.”
“No,” Collier said. “Who the fuck told you that?”
“Master Sergeant,” Norman said. “I’m a clerk typist with the 5th army. I’ve never even seen a tank. I don’t drink. You should probably get someone else.”
“Seems like there ain’t nobody else,” Collier said. “Get up. You try to run away?”
Norman got to his feet slowly and nodded. He tried to brush the mud off but it was no use; he just smeared the mud on his hands against the mud on his blouse.
Collier grabbed him by the front of his shirt, almost nose to nose. “You try that in my tank and I’ll cut your throat. I aim to survive this war. Understand?”
“Yes sir,” Norman said, automatically.
Collier released him and pointed at the Fury. “Head on over there. Don’t try to get close to anybody.”
Norman was angry as he trudged over; it was easier to give up on saving the Fury when he didn’t actually have to see them.
-
Spending the day caked in mud didn’t improve things much. Norman sulked all the way through to the town invasion, shooting the Hilter Youth kid, shooting the Kraut when Collier told him to. It didn’t even bother him. He was loosing it, living this day over and over again.
He took Emma into the bedroom. Kissing her felt good. He’d forgotten how soft her lips were, and the way she smelled, like fresh soap and rosemary. He’d spent too much time in the belly of the tank with other grimy, hard men, enough that it was almost a concussive shock to be with a woman again. That one time with Collier that he didn’t think about came to his mind, and he felt something stir, deep within him.
Norman pulled away from Emma and looked into her eyes. “Emma,” he said haltingly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Sie müssen evakuieren. Es kommt ein Luftangriff.”
He hoped he didn’t butcher the pronunciation too terribly. She stared at him, her eyes going wide.
She peppered him with a torrent of German he didn’t understand. He shrugged, helpless, and she got up, doing a short lap around the room, yanking at the end of her hair and muttering to herself. Norman sat, shedding dirt flakes onto the sheets, and felt bad about it for a moment before remembering there wouldn’t be a bed there in fifteen minutes.
The rest of the encounter rolled on like it was on wheels; the other men came in. Gordo told his story about the horses. The messenger called for Collier.
“Sie müssen evakuieren. Es kommt ein Luftangriff,” Norman said again to Emma when they were leaving, grabbing her hands, and added the only other German word he knew. “Evakuieren. Schnell, schnell, schnell.”
“What, are you reciting wedding vows? Let’s go,” Coon-ass said, dragging him away.
He didn’t know if she made it out, in the end. He couldn’t see her body in the rubble that time. He hoped it meant something.
-
Norman wondered if the problem was that he didn’t save the rest of the platoon from the Tiger attack. Having another Sherman or two would sure be nice at the crossroads. The thing was, he couldn’t figure out how to influence that battle at all. The most he ever did was shoot the commander. This time, he hesitated.
“Norman!” Gordo yelled, and Norman reluctantly stitched the commander up.
“Jesus,” Gordo said, slumping in his seat; he was shaking. Norman patted him on the shoulder. No matter how many times he saw Gordo in that battle, he was still impressed by him.
“This is Love-One-Six, over,” Collier said into the radio, but like always, there was nothing on the other side.
-
For whatever reason, watching the white phosphorus detonate in the farmhouse, Norman thought of the hundreds of B17s they saw that morning, headed south to Berlin. He chopped down a line of fleeing soldiers and imagined calling down an airstrike on them. It didn’t look like they had anti-aircraft guns, just the panzerfaust rocket launchers; even a fighter plane could probably decimate their division.
If only the radio wasn’t broken.
There was always a different outcome to the battle, no matter what happened. Gordo took the grenade blast, Bible died getting the machine gun, and Collier got zipped while he was up on the turret. Norman heard him cry out, once, and then a single shot. Nothing after that. It was him and Coon-ass at the end this time.
Norman’s bow gun chewed through the last belt. They were both out of ammo. He sat back, eyes stinging from the smoke, and thought about the planes he’d heard when he was trying to sleep in the barracks. He thought about the radio.
There didn’t seem to be a way to win this fight. Even if he did it a thousand, a million times, he didn’t think he could ever rehearse it to perfection, enough to avoid the sheer chaos of battle. Even if he did, it wouldn’t do any good. There were just too many of them.
“Well, kid,” Coon-ass said, taking a long swig from the brandy, “it’s been nice knowing you.”
Norman felt bad; Coon-ass probably wanted to have a good last few minutes before they died, and Norman was pushing past him to get to the radio and stare at the controls.
He didn’t really understand what he was looking at. The radio took up most of the dash, with a complex array of controls and dials. There was a row of numbers with radio crystals in a line, and a skinny vertical dash with various meters beside it. On the far end were two receivers. Everything looked fine up front, nothing wrong there. The microphone was intact as well, including the wires.
“What are you doing?” Coon-ass said, lighting up a cigarette.
“I’m looking at the radio,” Norman said. He heard footsteps on the outside of the tank and figured it was the Germans that usually dropped the grenades in. He reached up and locked the hatch without looking.
“Don’t you think it’s a little late to be worrying about the radio?” Coon-ass drawled.
If there was nothing wrong up front, then the radio was probably internally damaged, and Norman would need more time to look at it. He was done for this round. With a sigh, he dropped down to sit next to Coon-ass, who offered him the bottle.
“You’re a good man,” Norman told him, taking the bottle and wiping the blood off it. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
“Here’s hoping not, kid,” Coon-ass said with a tired laugh, slinging an arm around him. They waited together for the Germans to finish them off.
April 8th, 1945
Norman woke up with a gasp; he could still feel his skin burning from the anti-tank rocket.
“Do I scare you, Private?” the Master Sergeant said, amused. “You’ve been reassigned. 1st platoon, 66th Armored. Report to Sergeant Collier.”
“Bob, give me your smokes,” Norman said, without looking at him.
Gordo was happy, at least. They rolled past the refugees on their endless march, the pretty girl with the bike. Norman missed the Hitler Youth and Lt. Parker’s head got blown off. That hadn’t happened in a while. Norman thought that was maybe a good sign.
Norman didn’t shoot the Kraut in the back until Collier made him. He was trying to pretend he was a still a good man, slipping into an old uniform that didn’t quite fit anymore; the sight of the Kraut’s cranial cavity no longer threatened to send him off the deep end. It was just another day.
-
“Sie müssen evakuieren. Es kommt ein Luftangriff,” Norman said to Emma.
He didn’t see her body in the rubble. A good sign. Maybe.
-
Collier put him up in the main turret, Bible’s usual spot, as they rolled out to hold to crossroad. He pointed out a line of smoke on the horizon and watched Norman to see his reaction. “See that? That’s an entire town on fire.”
Norman wished he was glad. All he could think was that there were people living in that town, like Irma and Emma, like the old man that got shot in the head every time Collier asked him for directions. Maybe he hadn’t had all the humanity burned out of him yet.
“I started out this war killing Germans in Africa. Then France. Then Belgium. Now I’m killing Germans in Germany. It will end. Soon.” Collier looked up at the sky, his mouth set in a grim line. “But before it does a lot more people are going to die.”
“It all seems so pointless,” Norman commented. He couldn't remember how he'd reacted the first time Don said that to him.
“You're too young to be that cynical," Don told him. "We're the conquering heroes. Protectors of the free world."
Norman squinted at Don and changed the subject. "Hey, can you tell me about the radio?"
It was an SCR-508, a newer one; Collier showed him how to change frequencies with the radio crystals. Norman’s headset could only transmit messages within the tank, but Collier could radio all the way back to headquarters, even as they were peeling away on their lonely march towards the waiting Tiger.
-
“Radio’s fucked,” Don said with a sigh. “We’re on our own.”
“Let me look at it,” Norman said.
“Kid, you don’t know the first thing about radios,” Collier said, but Norman crawled out of his hatch anyways and circled around to the side; the Tiger had managed to punch through some of the Fury’s plating and now there was a hole the size of a baseball through the back of the radio. Norman squinted into it, but couldn’t make out much more than a nest of wires.
“Get in the fucking tank. Norman,” Collier said. “It doesn’t matter. We’re executing our mission. There’s a wave coming in, and we’re the rock to break that wave.”
Norman got back in the tank, thinking about his days as a series of waves rolling in; each a little different, but ultimately the same, time after time.
While they were stuck at the crossroads, Coon-ass let Norman borrow a screwdriver to take off the damaged plate over the radio. At the back of the radio, behind the bulky army-green plating, there were two little cylinders. One of them was busted, a mess of metal. A flattened bullet stuck out through the other side.
“What are those?” Norman asked.
Coon-ass peered over his shoulder. “Motors. Keeps the radio running. Shit, it would be good to have extras right about now.”
They have 24V printed on top in clear writing. Norman pried the broken one free; two cooper wires trail behind it. A twenty-four volt motor and two wires. That was all he needed.
-
It was only him and Don at the end again.
Norman wasn’t sure what to do about this thing, the strange mess of respect and lust and fear he was carrying for Don. He climbed up into the basket to sit next to him. He’d stopped hating Don, for what it was worth; he wished Don could remember that. He wished they were in Berlin.
“If the radio was working, do you think we could call in an airstrike?” he asked.
Don blinked slowly at him. He was dying. He always seemed togete shot in the same places. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said, his voice barely more than a rumble.
The hatch creaked open, and two potato mashers drop in. Don raised his head with great effort. “Go,” he said.
“It’s okay,” Norman said and reached out, griping Don’s hand tightly. The grenades never really hurt that much.
April 8th, 1945
“I need an extra 24V motor for the radio and copper wire,” Norman told the quartermaster.
The man squinted at him. “What unit are you in?”
“I’m in Lt. Parker’s tank. We’ve been having radio issues,” Norman said. “Hurry up. We’re moving out soon.”
The quartermaster stared at him, tapping his fingers on his desk. Norman tried to channel Sgt. Collier’s expression when he was in one of his murderous fits; inside, his heart was hammering hard against the strap of his duffel.
“All right,” the quartermaster said, after what felt like an eternity. “I’m writing this down, mind you. Motors ain’t free. The lieutenant owes me three dollars.”
“I’ll tell him that,” Norman said.
The extra motor felt as though it was burning through his chest pocket the whole while when he intercepted Collier and then met the unit. For the first time in a while, Norman was almost hopeful.
-
“Sie müssen evakuieren. Es kommt ein Luftangriff,” Norman said to Emma.
-
“Let me try to fix it,” Norman said in the field, the Tiger smoldering beside them. “I know radios.”
A lie. Collier was staring at him with the mic in his hands, clearly impatient to be off.
“Please,” Norman said, dangerously close to the very first time, crying in the field with Collier’s gun in his hands, pleading with him: please let me fix this.
“Fine,” Collier said. “You’ve got five minutes. Then we’re moving out.”
Norman and Coon-ass scrambled to open the plates on the Fury, revealing the smashed innards of the radio. Norman pried out the broken motor and pulled the fresh 24V one out of his pocket. He slotted it in, and then pulled it back out a second later when he realized he forgot to connect the wires. They twisted together easily. Norman popped the motor back into place.
It looked banged-up, and Norman’s heart dropped; he felt like he'd set it up wrong.
“Okay, try it,” he said.
“This is Love-One-Six, over,” Collier said into the mic.
A second passed. Then another. Norman dropped his head forward and exhaled hard. He could feel tears welling in his eyes, dangerously close to embarrassing himself again. It was stupid, but for the first time in a while he'd hoped they actually might make it out.
A crackle. Norman’s head shot up.
The quality was terrible, and it wavered in and out, but there was a voice on the other side of the radio. “Love-One-Six, this is Love Actual. What’s your status? Over.”
Norman almost did weep at that, the tired voice of the captain’s messenger coming in clear. Coon-ass thumped hard him on the shoulder. “Nice work, Norman.”
“We’re the only ones left,” Collier said. “Ran into a Tiger in the field. We’re getting towards our objective. Over.”
There was a long pause before the radio crackled to life. “Roger that. Over and out.”
They mounted up, and Norman thought about how they could still get out of this. They didn’t need to win the fight. They just needed to not fight at all.
-
Gordo drove over the mine. This time they were able to radio it in. Norman got sent out on guard duty. He wandered up the road, waited for five minutes, and then came sprinting back.
“Good evening, Private Norman,” Collier said as Norman ran up to the Fury. “Why aren’t you at your post?”
Norman managed to spit it out, between gasps of breath; he wasn’t exaggerating the fear. “Two, maybe three hundred soldiers. Up the road. Twenty minutes away.”
“Tanks?” Collier said sharply.
“No,” Norman said. “Transport trucks.”
He hoped like hell Collier would do what Norman wanted him to do. After looking at the horizon for a moment, Collier climbed up to the command basket and picked up the radio mic. Norman tried to remember how to breathe. “Love-Actual, this is Love-One-Six.”
Captain Waggoner must have been waiting by the radio, because he replied instantly. “What’s your status, Love-One-Six?”
“We’ve got two, maybe three hundred Wehrmacht soldiers coming up the road, about twelve klicks away. No tanks,” Collier said, and then said to Norman, “Any anti-air?” Norman shook his head. “No ack-ack. Over.”
Silence from the other end.
A burst of static. “You fix that tread?” Captain Waggoner said. He sounded tired. Tired enough to abandon radio protocol. Maybe it didn’t matter since they were all going to die anyways, despite the working radio, despite everything.
“Nope,” Collier said. “Bogey’s still busted. We’re not going anywhere, sir.”
There was no response from headquarters. The seconds dragged on. They were all clustered around the radio, trapped in the silence; Gordo’s cigarette was burning down to a long column of ash, and Bible had the good book open in his hand, the wind ruffling the tiny pages. Thrushes were chirping in the trees. The sun was going down slowly behind the grey clouds.
“We’re sending a P47,” the captain said, almost lost to the distortion in the radio. “Make sure you stay out of his way. Stay with the Fury and pick off any survivors. Good luck, gentlemen.”
“Roger that, Captain,” Collier said.
“May God guide your bullets,” the captain added. “See you on the other side.”
Norman felt like he just licked a live wire; the hair on his arms and the back of his neck was standing up. Otherwise, it was the same routine. They laid the corpse on the Fury with Coon-ass’s helmet on his head, doused him with gasoline and lit him up; then they buttoned up in the tank to wait.
Norman heard the familiar clink of the brandy bottle behind him, but Don didn’t say his usual line. When Norman craned his head, he saw Don had taken it out and was studying it, turning it over in his hands.
Don sighed. “I’ve been saving this one, boys,” he said, and then stowed it away. “Let’s save it for one more night.”
They passed around the remaining Lucky Strikes instead. Norman said, “Hey, give one here.”
Gordo frowned at him. “I thought you didn’t smoke.”
Norman shrugged. Gordo lit two, then passed one over to Norman. Taking a long drag on it, Norman burst out into a coughing fit. The other men cracked up.
“Damn, son,” Coon-ass said, reaching down to slap him on the back of the head. “You’re a fucking machine.”
“That’s it, that’s his war name,” Collier said. “Machine.”
It was like a fist clenched over his heart; Norman couldn’t help but smile. His hand was shaking when he took the cigarette out of his mouth. Hope bloomed white in his chest.
“Don’t give away our position, Machine. Could probably hear you all the way in Berlin,” Gordo joked, fingers resting on the triggers to aim the turret, tapping on them lightly without moving them.
They smoked and waited. Silence curled up in the tobacco smoke. The stamp of feet and the faint singing filtered in through the hatches as the light faded.
“That’s an SS troop,” Collier said.
In the distance, so faint Norman almost thought he was imaging it, he could hear the whine of an engine. He’d heard something like it that morning. It sounded like the drone of a wasp in the summer. He hoped he would eventually make it out of this chilly April day and into August, eating ripe strawberries and sleeping in the sun, troubled only by the insects.
“There it is,” Collier said, a second later.
The drone of the engine was coming quickly now. Norman leaned in towards his periscope, waiting to see it. The Germans had to know there was something coming.
It was so fast he almost missed it overhead – a mottled moss and olive green fighter plane roared past them with a noise like thunder, bearing down on the road. It crested the hill just a second later, dropping bombs that looked tiny from the periscope. The first lines of the SS troops were barely visible.
For a moment, there was just the receding sound of the plane. Some shouts in German. And then, the explosions.
The men in the tank all whooped. The flash seared through Norman’s eyes but he didn’t blink, transfixed by the fireball that rose up above the road in the darkening sky and then burnt out into a column of ash. A few moments later and he heard the rattle of a machine gun as the plane returned, ripping low to the ground on a strafing run. Men were screaming. A lonely panzerfaust rocket trailed off into the night, too late to touch the plane.
It pulled up and roared past the Fury, gaining altitude and peeling off into the night, back home to the roost.
“He’s done his job. Now let’s do ours,” Collier said, and then added, “Hope he killed some of those sons-of-bitches.”
They waited, hunched in the Fury, for the onslaught to begin. Norman wanted to pray, but he was out of words. All he could think was please.
-
The end, when it came, came slowly; the stragglers of the unit marched over the hill almost half an hour later. There were a lot fewer of them. No vehicles and horses accompanied them.
Parts of it were the same as they always were. A fire squad climbed on the Fury to inspect the tank. When they did, Collier blew them away, and the nightmare began. Bible sent a shell down the middle of the road. The men scattered into the farmhouse and died when the white phosphorus exploded.
There couldn’t have been more than fifty men standing against them by that time, and their bullets rained down on the Fury to no avail; one by one they got chopped down by the guns. Norman got the one pair that always tried to fire a rocket into Coon-ass’s chest. His aim had improved throughout the series of days.
Eventually the firing slowed, and then stopped. The smoke hung all around them, glowing orange from the burning farmhouse. “Keep watching,” Don said. He locked the hatches on the tank, the first time he’d done that. “Save your ammo.”
Norman wondered if that meant he thought they’d survive, and then shoved that thought away. It was too early to think that. The rest could still be coming over the hill.
They were all jumpy. Norman felt like he was going crazy, peering into his periscope through the red-tinged smoke, trying to spot shadows. He didn’t see many. He gunned down a few men trying to dart closer, but he knew there must be more out there. Any of them could be closing in with an anti-tank rocket.
The night dragged on, pitiless. Every now and then one of the other men fired a few rounds out into the night. Gordo tossed a grenade out and killed three men who were setting up a mortar. Going out to get more ammunition, Collier got nicked in the arm and Bible patched him up with a rag and some sulfa powder.
Norman didn’t know what time it was – it was still dark, but maybe lightening up – when he heard footsteps. “Fuck,” he said, his body going cold. “There’s more coming!”
The men all fumbled to get to the periscopes; Coon-ass and Bible had been dozing, exhausted after the long night.
“There’s nothing in front of us,” Gordo said, a hint of alarm in his voice.
“Holy fuck,” Coon-ass said. “It’s the 66th.”
“Let me see,” Collier said, dropping down next to Coon-ass and taking the scope. Norman twisted to look at him. All he could make out from his periscope were bodies; he would have to trust what Collier saw.
Collier was silent for a while, staring through the scope. The dim light made it hard to see what he was thinking. They were all looking at him now, relaxing their constant scan of the ground in front of them. Four sets of eyes. Norman was stunned they were all still there, barely a scratch between them.
“Sergeant Collier?” Norm ventured.
Collier sat back heavily and rubbed his hand over his face, leaving streaks of gunpower. “Looks like it’s Charlie and Dog company out there. Typical of them to miss all the action.”
None of them said anything, but they sat back heavily, easing into the thought that they might survive after all. Don lit up a cigarette, passed his pack around. Norm took one. The moment hung on. Norm met Don’s gaze and held it.
-
The 66th had brought a team of medics and a half-track. The medics re-bound Collier’s injury, the only one in the tank, and then they were sent back to the town in the half-track. Nobody told Norman he was a hero this time. He guessed what they did wasn’t all that heroic, which was fine; they’d all lived.
He spared a thought for the German boy who left him under the tank to live the first time. It made no sense, that Norman could keep kicking the can down the road, and that kid had to die.
Around the Fury there was a ring of bodies two deep, and further down, the road was still smoking from the bomb drop, although there was already a truck full of engineers headed towards it. An operations crew was swarming over the Fury. The war went on.
The rest of the men fell asleep pretty quick once they pulled away from the charred skeleton of the farmhouse, heads lolling against the dirty glass. Norman wished he could sleep. He was afraid to close his eyes.
He smoked another cigarette, lost in thought. Part of him thought he should be figuring it out, what it meant that they survived. On the face of it, it didn’t seem worth it if it was divine intervention, the lives of five sinful men. The other part of him was thinking about a hot meal and a bed; he hadn’t had a hot meal since he started the day all those days ago.
Collier came to sit next to him, plucking the cigarette from out of Norman’s mouth. “That’s a nasty habit,” Collier said, putting it in his own mouth.
Norman stared at him, too exhausted to react.
Whatever teasing light was in Collier’s eyes dropped. “It’s okay, kid. What we did out there… we did our jobs. That’s all there was to it.”
“We should be dead,” Norman said.
Collier studied him, not saying anything, eyes dropping to Norman’s mouth.
Norman kept talking, staring at his hand, the double life line on his palm. “I was scared shitless. This whole time. It didn’t even matter. If we died the troops would have just taken it this morning anyways.”
“They didn’t have the reinforcements yesterday,” Collier said. “The SS would have marched on the logistics support team, all the cooks and operation coordinators and clerks, and blown them the fuck up. Would have fucked the whole march to Berlin. That was our mission. We stopped that. You stopped that.”
Norman hadn’t known about that. “I didn’t do shit.”
“That was some trick you pulled with the radio,” Collier said, propping his feet out in front of him and studying them. He offered the cigarette back to Norman. “That wasn’t nothing.”
Norman just kept looking at him. After a moment, Collier reached out and tucked the cigarette back in Norman’s mouth, fingers brushing against his lips.
Maybe he’d had it all twisted up; maybe whatever torch he was carrying for Collier would fade away. Maybe he’d wake up tomorrow. For now, Norman was just glad they were there together. “Sure, Sarge,” Norman said.
“I told you,” he said, and then smiled, a real one. “Call me Don.”
April 9th, 1945
Norman woke up on the back of a truck and for a moment his whole body, from his heart to his guts, froze.
“No,” he said out loud. He couldn’t do this again, couldn’t keep living this same fucking day for a vast and hostile eternity. He’d done it. He saved them. It still hadn’t worked.
Someone gave him a light shove from behind. “Move, I’m fucking starving,” Coon-ass said.
Norman turned to look at him, slack-jawed.
Coon-ass looked like shit; behind him, so did Gordo and Bible, blinking awake. The truck had stopped. They were back in the town they took yesterday. There was an impromptu mess hall set up in the square, making breakfast. Norman could smell coffee.
“Come on, Norman,” Collier said from the ground, holding out his hand. “Let’s go.”