A Man Called Milo Morai

IX

Like some vast herd of huge beasts grazing the restless waves of the North Atlantic Ocean, the convoy of troop transports, supply ships and naval vessels sailed a course that was deliberately erratic, lest that course be guessed out by the wolflike packs of German submarines, the bane of wartime shipping. On front and rear and along the flanks of this convoy of men, materiel and armaments, speedy, hardworking destroyers flitted back and forth, with every crewman’s eye, every technological device aboard on the alert for the slightest trace of one of the feared submersible raiders of the seas. Should such a trace be suspected, it was the mission of these flankers to interpose their own lightly armored cockleshells between the attackers and the lumbering quarry, while others of their kind steamed to the supposed location of the foe and let off salvos of depth charges—steel drums filled with powerful explosive charges designed to create sufficient concussion to rupture the hulls of the submarines, thus drowning the crews or forcing the craft to rise to the surface, where shells from deck guns could sink them easily. Because of the dangers presented by the U-boats, because of the fact that despite all precautions, submarine-launched torpedos still found their marks, sinking or heavily damaging ships, killing or injuring men and sending to the bottom billions of tons of valuable equipment and supplies, each cargo ship was packed to utter capacity, and so too were the troop carriers, to such a point that the only men aboard who made the passage in any degree of comfort were the sailors and the higher-ranking officers. The troops were packed like so many canned sardines in a ‘tween-decks hot and thick with the reek of humanity, with no room for organized calisthenics and few possibilities for the make-work details traditionally used to keep units and individual soldiers out of trouble, their principal activities consisting mainly of endless gambling and even more endless bull sessions, interspersed with the occasional fight—a welcomed relief from boredom—and noncoms were hard pressed to prevent their troops from becoming just so many slothful, dirty, vicious beasts. They were able to maintain order, discipline and at least a degree of cleanliness only by dint of near-brutality.

So many men were crammed into the ship that only by shifts could they be allowed up into the fresh air topside, there to gather in clumps or to walk the narrow ways around and between the vehicles lashed to the decks; and even these few brief forays into natural light and clean, .crisp air were only allowed in daylight on clear, calm days without deckwashing seas, lest any of these landlubbers be lost overboard.

On such a day, a rare day for the season and the location—the sky of a silvery blue and utterly cloudless—the troopship plowed through a sea almost as calm-looking as a pond. Far away on either hand could be discerned other ships of the convoy, but to the naked eye these were merely large dots; only with magnification could details of them be seen. Headquarters and Headquarters Company of Milo’s battalion were taking their brief sojourn upon deck. Leaving his subordinates to maintain order and discipline among the troops, Milo had sought out a secluded spot—actually, in the cab of a truck—to converse and confer with his commander and old friend, Lieutenant Colonel Jethro Stiles.

“Milo, certain of the staff feel that we—I—ought to make regular inspection circuits down below decks. John Saxon demurs, but then he seldom agrees with much of anything the staff decides. What do you say?”

“I say John’s right… as usual, Jethro. Remember, he went to France on a troopship back in the Great War, so he knows just what kind of hell it is. No, best to let us no’ncoms handle it alone,” was Milo’s solemn reply.

Stiles regarded him narrowly. “That rough down there, is it?”

Clumps of muscles worked at the hinges of Milo’s clenched jaws. “Jethro, whoever designed that slice of purgatory down there was not only utterly sadistic but a certifiable lunatic, as well. How in hell are you supposed to keep up the morale and the self-respect of men who have to wallow, day in and day out, in their own filth? The so-called showers are an insult to the intelligence— the hot water lasts just seconds, you have to soap up fast as blazes before it turns into live steam, then you have to rinse yourself in cold, salt seawater, which leaves you feeling sticky, tacky all over; you may be clean, technically, but you sure as hell don’t feel clean.

“The latrines have round-the-clock lines of men waiting to use them, and what with the cases of seasickness and diarrhea and whatnot, a lot of the men in those lines are unable to wait as long as necessary, so there are mop details at work damn near any fucking time or place you look.

“The men are without exception bored, damnably uncomfortable, irascible and getting stiffer by the hour from a lack of decent exercise. Classes are an unfunny joke. They nod and sleep through them.”

“Why don’t they sleep at night, Milo?” demanded Stiles.

“My God, Jethro,” Milo expostulated in heat, “you saw those racks down there before the troops moved in, didn’t you? There’s only a foot or less of space between each one even when they’re empty; At night, a man has to slide in either on his back or on his belly, because after he’s in, there’ll be no room for him to turn over all night long. The only thing they wear at night is dog tags and jockstraps, and still they stream sweat. A man would have to be utterly exhausted to sleep under those conditions, Jethro, and they have nothing to do to exhaust them and no room to do it in.

“So under every light there’s an all-night poker game or crap shoot, and the noise they generate just adds to the echoing snores of the lucky few who have been able to sleep. We feel it would be most unwise to try to break the games up, for at least when the men are gambling-the nights away, they’re not contemplating the wretched conditions under which they’re forced to live, the swill they’re expected to eat, their complete helplessness inside the fucking steel torpedo target, their sexual frustrations, the nonavailability of booze and beer or even fucking Cokes, the suffering to be ended, maybe, by their deaths where we’re sailing to.

“One of the few good things I can report is that there’s been damned little theft reported down there, but that’s most likely just because there’s simply no place to hide anything and a thief would be found out very quickly … and probably killed or seriously injured on the spot, despite us NCOs. As it is, for the best we can do or try to do, the fights down there are frequent and vicious. We’ve locked up issue weapons, bayonets and every other item that looked like it could be used to kill or badly incapacitate a man, of course, but as you and I both have reason to realize, fists and feet and fingers and knees and elbows can do more than enough damage if a man knows precisely how to utilize them in fighting … and that’s exactly what instructors have been drilling into most of those men since their basic training.”

Stiles frowned through most of the monologue. “Well, Milo, I can do nothing about the shower facilities. Ours are no better up here, you know; the ship simply does not —could not—ship aboard sufficient fresh water to give fresh-water showers every day to so many men. For your information, I did lodge a strenuous objection to all these fucking trucks and jeeps being jammed onto the deck of this ship, but my objections were overridden by higher authorities. If these vehicles were not here^ taking up space, we could have organized physical training classes up here in the air and the light … but then if a bullfrog had wings, he’d not have a sore ass most of the time, either.

“You and the other NCOs and the men will just have to put up with the latrines and the sleeping accommodations until we get where we’re going. There’s nothing anyone aboard can now do to change or ameliorate those conditons, unfortunately. But what’s this about the food?”

“These cooks of ours,” said Milo, “are virtually without effective supervision. The head cook, Sergeant Tedley, has been ill since the day we set sail, so much so that off and on, the medics have thought he might die of dehydration. His second-in-command is so inefficient, so weak in leadership, that most of the cooks do absolutely nothing to speak of except stay drunk on lemon extract and the like and keep well out of the reach of the men.”

“Well, Jesus Christ, Milo,” snapped Stiles, “why hasn’t Lieutenant Jaquot either set this matter straight or reported it to me or John Saxon?”

Milo shrugged grimly. “Probably because he’s unaware of it, Jethro. I don’t know of anybody who’s seen the mess officer below decks since we left New York Harbor. Although the scuttlebutt is that he’s won himself a fucking pisspotful of money in some high-stakes poker game up in officer country.”

Stiles nodded, a hint of anger smoldering in his eyes. “So he has, Milo, so he has, some of it from me, too. He’s won so consistently, the Belgian bastard, that some of us are beginning to wonder just what he did for a living before the war. Of course, the fucking money doesn’t matter to me, I don’t have to try to live on what the Army pays me, after all, but, by God, I’ll have that fucker’s hide for neglecting his duties to have more time for his precious fucking cards.

“I’ll also talk to the ship’s captain and see if there’s some way we can get more ventilation down into those spaces you inhabit, particularly at night. As regards all of the rest of your many tribulations, old pal, all you and any of us can do is to just keep on keeping on until we get landed, wherever. Then if we’re lucky we’ll have the time and space and the opportunity to whip the company back into shape before we have to fight.”

The battalion landed in England one cold, wet, blustery day, and that weather remained with them for months, so that many a man and officer was soon looking back to warm and often bone-dry South Carolina with fondness and real longing. So easily did the heavy soil on which their camp was set retain water that most of those who knew anything about such matters were dead certain that the area had been a swamp in the not-too-distant past; moreover, though not within sight of the sea, the land lay sufficiently close to the coast to be buffeted by every storm or gale that chanced to come boiling in from off the North Atlantic Ocean as well as to be pervaded by each and every one of the incredibly damp and icy-cold sea fogs of that season. Nor, in the flat and almost treeless countryside, was there any natural break against the frigid winds and storms that winter brought lashing down from the Highlands of Scotland, Iceland and the arctic wastes of Ultima Thule, far to the north. But in the rare good weather or in the usual foul, the hard training had to continue, day in, day out, night in, night out, week after week, month succeeding month. Big and bloody operations were now afoot, aimed at Fortress Europe, and everyone, from generals down to lowliest privates, knew it for fact.

“I jest don’t unnerstand it none, Milo,” attested Captain John Saxon, as they sat in the adjutant’s office of a wintery day, drinking from canteen cups of hot coffee laced with whiskey and waiting for the office space heater to build up sufficient warmth to at least partially disperse the enervating, bone-chilling, damp cold. “Thesehere folks should oughta be in our debt, after all we’ve done and is doin’ right now for to pull their sad asses outen the fuckin’ fire for ‘em. More’n that, they’s s’posed to be our kinfolks, for all that they all talks damn funny, like damnyankees, kind of. But shitfire, man, you’d think the fuckin’ shoe was on the other fuckin’ foot, the way thesehere fuckers act. I allus was sorry I dint get to England back in the Great War—jest to France and then back—but I guess I plumb lucked out after all. I wouldn’ of put up with being treated like a fuckin’ mangy stray dog, the way thesehere fuekin’ limejuice bugtits treats our boys.

“Take thishere Hulbert bizness, fer instance. Did you talk to the man after they brung him back? Yeah, well, so did I. He’s allus been a good ‘un, draftee or not, and I’m damn sure that that Limey cooze is tryin’ to get the poor horny fucker railroaded, is what I think. She let him buy her drinks, the first night, see, leadin’ him on, sweet-talkin’ him inta gettin’ a cook to give him butter and powdered eggs and Spam for her, plus three fuckin’ cartons of cigarettes. She kept up smoochin’ the fella and a-squeezin’ his cock in dark places and promisin’ him ever’thing. Then when he had give her a whole passel of stuff and tried to get her to put out like she’d been promising him, the cowcunted candlebasher broke a fuckin’ bottle over his head and yelled ‘Rape!’ Did you see what them damn fuckin’ Limey cops done to the poor bastard’s face?

“But even so, he just may’ve been lucky, luckier thin some I could name what did get into a few Limey cunts and was too drunk or too fuckin’ lazy or too damn dumb to use the fuckin’ pro-kits like they been told to. Don’t you look for that fuckin’ Jacquot back anytime soon—the fuckin’ cardshark has done got hisself clapped up twenny fuckin’ ways from Sunday from all the Limey codfish he bought and slammed his wang into right after we got here. And he’s just one, too. You wouldn’t believe how many men and fuckin’ of sers, too, in the division has done gone and got theyselfs done up brown with syph, shank, clap, crabs and ever-fuckin’-thing elst the damn fuckin’ Limeys is got for sale.

“I tell you, Milo, till we gets to France or wherever, I’m stickin’ my prick into nuthin’ but Madam Friggley” —he held up one big hand and waggled the fingers— “and you’ll be smart to, too.”

Milo himself had been lucky, he decided. None of the women,-either in England or in the States, whom he had swived had apparently been diseased, or if they had been, at least, he had failed to contract any of their afflictions. It was just as well, too, for with the accelerated training and the normal day-to-day minutiae of running the oversized company, he would not have had time to undergo treatments for venereal disease or any-. thing else, and he could only again thank his lucky stars that he obviously was immune to such other annoying discomforts as flu and bronchial infections, scabies, boils, sore throats, intestinal problems and even hangovers. For all that in the perpetually wet and cold climate some of the men around him always were sniffling, sneezing, and hacking, he seldom caught a cold, and then only a mild, short-lived one. The outbreak of crab lice soon after the battalion came ashore which had necessitated the shaving of everyone’s head and body hair had pointed out the amazing fact that the tiny creatures apparently found his body fluids distasteful, as not a one was ever found upon him.

In the near future years, Milo was often to remember the crab lice episode and wonder about himself, about his decidedly unusual physiology. He was to wonder especially when those about him were suffering from the attentions of body lice, fleas, ticks, bedbugs, the various parasitic worms and leeches, while his flesh and blood and organs remained whole and inviolate. It was to be long, long into that then-unguessed future that he was to add together a myriad of assorted facts—his patent immunity to all of mankind’s diseases, his ability to survive clearly fatal wounds by way of unbelievably rapid regeneration of tissues, his complete freedom from parasites, and many another notable curiosity—and begin first to question and then to believe himself to be, as mad Major Jarvis’ intuition had told him, either superhuman or not truly human at all.

The training went on and on, becoming more and more realistic and dangerous for the trainees, which now included almost every one of the nine hundred and seventeen officers and men in the battalion. Simply for the hard exercise, Milo joined them whenever he could find or make the time to do so. He soon found that it heartened the men to find an officer or a senior noncom wriggling among them in the cold, sticky mud under the fanged wire, while the .30 caliber machine guns fired ball ammunition bare inches overhead, so he not only made more time to join the training exercises himself, but encouraged others to do so in the interests of heightened morale.

Early in February 1944, Jethrq and the officers of his staff were summoned to a series of meetings at regimental headquarters. A week later, the division engineers arrived with trucks and tools and boards and plywood with which they quickly built on the frozen ground full-size mockups of landing craft, each one complete with a hinged front ramp of corrugated steel. The experienced, hardworking men had the mockups completed before the day was out, then moved on to the next battalion on their list.

On the following morning—fortunately, one of the rare, bright, sunny days—this newest phase of their training was commenced. And the training continued despite the very .worst of weather conditions—weary officers and men burdened down with full packs, personal weapons, heavy weapons, steel boxes and wooden cases of munitions and explosives, cartons of field rations, spools of commo wire and field telephones and all of the other impedimenta of modern, mid-twentieth-century warfare. They trooped into the wooden boxes and arranged themselves as ordered, sitting or squatting or kneeling on the slick, wet, muddy boards in the damp fog or cold drizzle until the command came to arise and exit down the dirty, slippery ramp, then trudge back into the roofless structure to do it all over again. Milo participated in this training, too, and was soon to be very glad that he had done so.

In early May, Jethro suddenly appeared. Framed in the doorway of Milo’s private cubicle of the Quonset hut that housed Headquarters Company, Battalion, he beckoned, saying, “Get your jacket and come with me. We need to talk … privately.”

When Milo had driven the jeep out to a spot sufficiently far from the other humans for Jethro’s satisfaction, he switched off the engine and turned in the seat to face his old friend. “So? Talk.”

Colonel Stiles sighed. “Milo, I still can’t get you commissioned. I can’t understand any of the fucking mess and neither can regiment or division or even corps, for chrissakes. They all figure there’s a fuckup somewhere in the War Department records, and for want of anything more certain or concrete, I guess I just have to agree with them. I’m sorry. I did try.”

“So, what the fuck does it matter, Jethro? Am I demanding a fucking bar? Hell, I’m happy right where I am, in my present grade, doing the job I’m doing.” Milo was puzzled, and his voice reflected that.

Stiles just sighed again and shook his head sadly. “It matters, Milo, because of this: I’m leaving the battalion soon—division staff calls, and I’ve put them off for about as long as I can. The man who’s coming in to replace me will be bringing along his own adjutant, sergeant major and H&H first, which is, of course, his right and privilege and much better for all concerned, since he and they will no doubt work more smoothly together than he would with strangers.”

Milo frowned. “So what happens to John Saxon, Bill Hammond and me?”

“I was told I could bring up to three officers of company grade with me to my new posting and job, Milo. Bill’s commission is in the mills, and I’d hoped yours would be too, by now, but … Hell, Milo, are you sure, are you fucking positive you don’t know of any reason why somebody somewhere for some fucking reason would be disapproving all the damned commission requests I’ve sent in on you over the last few years? So I can’t take you along in your present grade. If you want to take a bust down to corporal, I might—might, mind you—be able to justify you as a driver, but it’s a mighty long chance and too fucking much risk, I think, for you to sacrifice your stripes for.”

“So, you’ve found a slot for me, Jethro. Right?” Milo asked tiredly.

Stiles nodded once. “I have. Did you hear about the cases of spinal meningitis in Charlie Gompany? Yeah, well, that left them minus two of their sergeants. You’ve met Captain Burke, of course.”

Milo nodded. “Yes, good officer. West Pointer, isn’t he?”

“Virginia Military Institute, Milo, pretty close to the same thing, and a whole fucking hell of a sight better than the frigging NGs and ROTCs and CMTCs we’re all so burdened with.

“Anyway, I’ve talked to Burke, and he would flatly love to have a noncom of your experience in Charlie Company. As you well know, you have the respect and admiration of every officer and man in this battalion. But his problem is this: his first sergeant has done and is doing as good a job as anyone could, and replacing him for no reason would make for a lot of fucking bad blood, and, of course, that’s the last fucking thing Burke wants with combat looming so close up ahead.”

“He wants me to take field first, then, Jethro? Okay, it’s a job I know, too,” agreed Milo readily.

“No, Milo.” Stiles spoke in a low and hesitant tone. “He’s got a good field first, too. He wants you to take over as platoon sergeant of his second platoon.” Then the officer added hastily and a bit more cheerfully, “But he swears, and you know it’s bound to be true, that if any fucking thing happens to the first or the field first, you’re the man for the slot.”

Milo shrugged. “Just so long as I go over in grade, don’t have to take a bust, Jethro, it’s okay with me—the diamond will come off very easily. It’ll be good to get back to doing some real field soldiering for a change, too. The way things were, it looked like I’d have sat out the whole fucking war behind a fucking desk.”

Although he sat slumped, Stiles looked and sounded much relieved. “Thank God you took it all so well, buddy. Look, I did all they’d let me do to sweeten the pill a little. You can take off your tech stripes completely and sew on a set of masters and you’ll go over to Charlie Company in that grade, too—I’ve already cleared it with Burke. And, Milo, believe me, I’m still going to keep pushing on a commission for” you. If any of us old Regulars deserves one, it’s you, my friend.”

Leo Burke, Captain, Infantry, USA, was a young man in his twenties. An even six feet in height, with dark-blond hair and snapping blue eyes, he was every bit as hard and fit as any man under his command. He spoke a cultivated English in the soft accents of his native Virginia; his handclasp was firm and his boyish smile infectious. He greeted the reporting Milo warmly, clearly desirous of real friendship with his new platoon sergeant.

“At ease, Sahgeant Moray. Sahgeant Coopuh, why don’t you have a man fetch us fo’ cups of cawfee back here. Oh, and see if you can run down Lootenant Hunicutter, too. Tell him ah’d like to see him on the double.”

When the first sergeant had departed, closing the door that led out to the busy orderly room, the young officer gestured to one of the side chairs, saying, “Please sit down, Sahgeant Moray.” When both were seated, with cigarettes offered and lit, the company commander said, “Sahgeant Moray, you just can’t know how happy and truly honuhed ah am to be able to add you to my company. You are what every offisuh and man in this whole battalion thinks about when they hear of professional sojuhs, Old Line Reguluhs. It’s sho good to know I’ll have a man like you to lean on in days ahead if the going gets as rough as it may get. Welcome to man comp’ny, sahgeant.

“Lootenant Terence Hunicutter is the platoon leaduh of second platoon, and if evuh a second lootenant needed a sahgeant like you, it’s Terry. He means well, sahgeant, he’s conscientious, hardworking, and he truly does feel fo’ the men in second platoon. But he’s one of the Civilian Military Training Corps offisuhs and he just doesn’t know a whole lot of things he should know and needs to know if he’s going to keep them and him alive and well when we get into combat. Ah’d considuh it a personal favuh if you’d take Hunicutter unduh your wing, sahgeant, and do all you can to help him become the kind of offisuh ah think and know he can be.

“In strict confidence, Moray, if ah had my druthuhs, ah’d have you as platoon leaduh and Terry as the sahgeant, but ah don’t, and ah guess we just will have to play this hand we were dealt. And, also, like I told Colonel Stiles, if anything should happen to Sahgeant Coopuh, ah mean to have you out in that orderly room as mah first so fast it’ll make your head spin. You’re wasted as a mere platoon sahgeant and ah know it, but ah still am glad to have you even as that.

“Oh, and by the way, sahgeant, Colonel Stiles told me you are a very accomplished riduh. Well, I have some distunt relatives who live near a town called Somerton, inland a ways from here. They keep a remahkable stable. If we can find time, ah’d like to take you up to meet them and we could then get in a little riding, maybe. It would be a pure favuh to them and to the po’ horses, too. One of their sons is a pris’nuh of the Nazis, taken in Greece, and the othuh has not been heard of or from since the fall of Singapore to the Japs. Their mothuh is terribly arthritic and their fathuh can’t ride too often because of the wounds he suffuhed in France in 1940.”

But the outing with Captain Burke was never to be, for the pace of the training increased to frenetic. Equipment and clothing and weapons were inspected and reinspected time after time, and all defective or badly worn or seriously damaged items were replaced with new ones. And as the days of May trickled into June, no officer or man had to be told that the time of sudden death would very soon be upon them all.

Milo found Lieutenant Terence McS. Hunicutter to be much like a puppy, painfully eager to please anyone and everyone without really knowing how. He lacked any real shred of leadership ability, and the four squad leaders had been covertly running the platoon for want of any better arrangement, all knowing that true command was simply beyond the young officer’s capabilities. The four men gladly, relievedly turned the platoon over to Milo, asking only that he “take it easy” with Hunicutter, for they all liked the boy.

By the time that young Terence Hunicutter was cut almost in two by a burst of fire from a Maschinengewehr hidden behind a Normandy hedgerow, old John Saxon, now a major, had been sent back to replace the dead battalion commander, and he was quick to approve Captain Leo Burke’s recommendation of a battlefield commission for Master Sergeant Milo Moray.

There were no significant changes to Milo’s life in the wake of the promotion, for he had been doing the identical job since they had waded ashore on the 6th of June, anyway. He just cut off his stripes and pinned the pair of gold bars gifted him by Leo Burke onto his epaulets. Then he buckled on his pistol belt, shouldered a packload of ammo and grenades for his platoon, clapped his battered steel pot on his dirty head, picked up his Thompson and departed the Company CP.

Taking a long and circuitous but relatively safe route, Milo^ot back to the somewhat reduced platoon tired but elated that at least they now had their expended ammo replaced and a musette bag full of chocolate D-bars and cigarettes to help keep body and soul together until someone got combat rations up to them again.

His inherited command now included the remnants of three rifle squads—one of eleven, one of nine and one of eight men. The last remaining light machine gun section had been pulled away from him two days earlier to be added to the CP guard lines; indeed, he had seen and traded friendly obscenities with two of those men while in the CP area.

Calling over Sergeants Chamberlin and Ryan and Corporal Bernie Cohen, who now led the third squad, Milo laid the two golden bars out on the palm of his filthy hand, saying, “Take a good, long look at them, gentlemen, because this is the last time you’re going to see the fuckers until we get somewhere where nobody’s shooting at officers and noncoms, in particular. The pack has ammo and grenades—divvy them up equally. I couldn’t get more than four new BAR magazines, so give the extra one to Pettus—he’s better with the weapon than the other two are.

“Tell your boys they better all start saving their Garand clips. There’s been another fucking snafu in supply, I’d say, because I got the last clipped .30-06 that company had. All the new ammo that came in on the last truckload is linked for machine guns, and I brought along a couple boxes of that, too, for the BAR men. No rifle grenades came, only pineapples and no adapters for those, so no point in lugging along the grenade launchers on tomorrow morning’s patrol, Greg.”

The hulking Greg Chamberlin nodded. “First squad is it again, huh, Milo … uhh, lootenant?”

Milo grinned briefly, his teeth gleaming against his dirty stubbled face. “Yep. Always a bride, never a bridesmaid, right, Greg? That’s what happens when you’re the best—or claim you are—though. And Greg, Gus, Bernie, so long as I’m the highest-ranking man around, it’s still Milo to you.

“Okay, let’s get the ammo distributed, then you can hand out some D-bars and smokes I brought. Then, Greg, come back here and I’ll go over the map with you; I’ll be going along on this one.”

“Don’t you allus?” remarked Chamberlin, chuckling.

The patrol set out at dawn and had moved well out into the unknown countryside by the time it was light enough to see clearly for any great distance. It was then that Pettus slammed his body sideways into the high, grassy bank on his right, his slung BAR under his lanky body, a hole in his head just under the rim of his helmet, blood beginning to dribble from it as tobacco juice was dribbling from the corners of his slackening mouth. He was already down and dead before any of the rest of them even heard the sound of the shot that had killed him.

Before any man could react in any way, a 7.9mm bullet took Milo in the pit of the arm he had just raised to dash the sweat away from his eyes. The bullet bored completely through his chest before exiting in the left-frontal quadrant and going through the biceps, as well, prior to speeding on. Milo later figured that it had skewered both lungs as well as his heart. The lancing agony had been exquisite, unbearable, and Milo screamed. He drew in a deep, agonizing breath to scream once again, and that second scream choked away as he coughed up a boiling rush of blood. He almost strangled on the blood.

All of the patrol had gone to ground. Chamberlin wriggled over to first Pettus, then Milo. After the most cursory of examinations and a brief, futile attempt to wrestle the BAR from under Pettus’ dead weight, the big sergeant got the men off the exposed section of roadway without any more losses. Having fortunately spotted the flash of the shot that had struck Milo, Chamberlin and Corporal Gardner divided the riflemen between them, then Chamberlin set out in a wide swing with his section, going to the left fast, while Gardner’s section moved more slowly, almost directly at the objective, now and then having one of his men gingerly expose himself to keep the attention of the sniper on this nearer unit.

Milo, back at the ambush point, just lay still, hoping that by so doing he could hold the pain at bay until he had lost enough blood to pass into a coma and so die in peace and relative comfort. But he did not, he could not find and sink into that warm, soft, all-enveloping darkness, and the pain went on and on, unabated, movement or no movement. In instinctive response to his body’s demands, he of course continued to breathe, but he did so as shallowly as possible, lest he bring on another bout of coughing and choking on his own blood.

The pain grew worse as he lay there; so bad was it that he gritted his teeth, grinding them and groaning. But then, strangely, the pain began to slowly ebb away, to lessen imperceptibly. Although he felt weak and terribly thirsty, he felt no more drowsiness than he had before he had been shot. He opened his eyes then, to find that he could see, and see very clearly, which last surprised him. What he saw was the two sections of Chamberlin’s squad parting and wriggling, then proceeding at a crouching run in two directions clearly intended to converge upon what must be the sniper’s nest—the jumbled stones and still-standing chimney of a burned-out farmhouse.

Something deep within him told him to take a better look, a closer look at the distant objective against which his last full rifle squad was now advancing. He cautiously raised himself just enough to drag from beneath him his cased binoculars, gritting his teeth against the renewed waves of pain that never materialized. What he saw through the optics was three figures clad in Wehrmacht Feldgrau, busily setting up a light machine gun, an MG-42, by the look of it, and fitted out with one of the Doppeltrommel drum magazines. The thing was on one of the rare tripods, which would serve to make its fire more accurate and devastating than the usual unsteady bipodal mount.

With no base of fire to cover them and their advance, he knew that those men of his would be slaughtered. They would not know of that deadly machine gun— for, after all, they thought themselves to be stalking only a sniper and an assistant or two and could not see from their positions just what a hideous surprise the Krauts were setting up for them—until the high rate of fire of the MG-42 was engaged in ripping the very life from out of them.

He immediately dismissed his Thompson. The submachine gun was a superlative, if very heavy, weapon at normal combat ranges, but in this instance, he knew it just could not reach the needed distance. Forgetting his wounds and his pain in his worry for his men in such a state of deadly danger out there, he allowed his body to slide down the bank, then wormed his way back to where Pettus lay.

All of his strength was required to shift the big man s weight enough to get both the BAR and the six-pocket magazine belt off it without standing up and giving that sniper a new target. Then, laden with his own weapons and equipment, as well as the twenty-odd pounds of automatic rifle and its seven weighty twenty-round magazines, he crawled up the bank to its brushy top and took up a position that allowed him a splendid field of fire.

A pair of mossy boulders situated close together provided both a bracing for the bipod of the BAR and a measure of cover from return fire, almost like the embrasure of a fortification.

He took the time to once more scan his target area with the pair of binoculars and shrewdly estimated the range at about eight hundred yards, .give or take some dozen or so yards. With the bipod resting securely on the gray boulders at either side, he slid backward and calibrated the rear sights for the range he had guessed. Then he set the steel-shod butt firmly into the hollow of his shoulder, nestled his cheek against the stock, took the grip in his hand and crooked his forefinger around the trigger.