Screaming Eagles

^FORTY GRAVES

Graves bounced up and down as the half-track ripped over a pocketed road until they came into view of the city. They were approaching from the north, and there were forces of the Allies clustered around the remains of the shattered walls and bombed-out buildings. Gunfire rippled along the line, and artillery started to boom from inside Bastogne.

From the western flank came a group of the enemies that was hard to fathom. Thousands of men poured out of the woods, scrambled over foxholes, and pounded over roads. The majority of the force were not returning fire. There were no carefully-placed machine gun squads covering the men. Mortars weren’t firing back. It was simply a mass of humanity assaulting a vastly outnumbered force, much like he’d seen assaulting their tank.

“My god. Do we even want to be rescued?” Murph said from the driver seat.

Graves swung the big-mounted machine gun around and prepared to fire on the enemy.

Bullets ricocheted off the half-track, forcing Graves and Gabby to duck.

A bazooka sounded, and the explosive sailed past their vehicle.

“Murphy! Remember when I told you to bring your pack? Well get that damn flag out and wave it like it’s on fire!” Graves howled.

“If it was on fire, they’d shoot us all to death,” Murphy said.

Murph swung his pack off and dug around inside. His brother had been killed at Normandy, and he’d been carrying big American flag as a memento of his brother’s sacrifice.

He unfurled it in the whipping wind and held it aloft. Graves reached for the other side of the flag, but it flapped just out of grasp as more bullets whizzed around them.

Graves finally got his fingers around the other end, and together they lifted the flag over the top of the half-track as it raced toward the Allied line.

“We’re going to get shot,” Murph said over the roaring wind and engine.

Graves found it hard to argue. On the cold metal beneath them, the body of their tank gunner, Tom “Big Texas” LaRue lay in the cold. Murph was right: they’d likely join him, in the coming moments.

Rounds hit the half-track, and one pierced the American flag. Murph ducked, but Graves urged him back to his feet. They got up higher, stepping on the benches on either side of the half-track’s interior slopped walls. The rounds stopped smacking armor.

They pulled in before a dug-in platoon of Army infantry.

It kept guns cautiously trained on Graves and his men.

Graves called down his identification, and cursed the lack of radio communications today. He’d left his notebook in the Sherman and he couldn’t remember the exact daily password. Lemon? Was it Tripoli? A harried officer who looked green greeted them. His uniform was spotless and his army jacket showed signs of little rolling around in the dirt, unlike most of his men.

“I’m Lieutenant Calhoun. Mind telling me how in the hell you men ended up in a German half-track? In fact, how do we know you’re actually Americans?”

“What else would we be, sir?” Graves said in confusion.

“Had reports of German forces fucking around behind our lines. Changing signs around and pointing divisions in the wrong directions.”

“Well, we’re not Krauts,” Graves said, and fumbled around his pockets until he found his wallet and tossed it to the officer.

The Lieutenant flipped through it and tossed it back.

“You men want to help? Park that half-track there,” he said, pointing at a break in the wall. “And keep the Krauts from getting too close.”

“You got it, sir. Shouldn’t we report in first, though?” Graves asked.

“No time. We’re about to be overrun by thousands of Germans. Even if every man fired nonstop, we’d never pick them all off before we were swarmed.”

“So why fight at all?” Murph interjected. “We should be packing it in.”

“Because it’s about to bet ugly and we’re all that’s protecting the city,” the Lieutenant said.

“Whole damn war’s ugly,” Graves said, looking at the corpse of Big Texas.