The Battle of North Africa

^{CHAPTER ONE} COMBAT READY

I’m actually in Africa, Tank Sergeant John Austin thought.

Aside from stands of date trees, it looked like any other coastline. Two villages bookended the beach. Farmland ahead, the Tell Atlas Mountains in the distance.

Not as exotic as he’d thought it’d be, and right now it was a god-awful mess.

Armored vehicles, trucks, jeeps, and soldiers crowded Beach Z’s landing zones. The tanks growled under a haze of blue exhaust. Red-faced beach masters waved and blew whistles to corral them all inland.

At first light, troops began landing on three points around Oran. From there, they’d strike out to seize key installations before converging on the city.

Austin didn’t care about the big picture right now, however. He had an immediate task, which was to capture an airfield. If anything got in his way, he’d destroy it.

But first he had to get off this beach.

A coastal gun boomed in the south. He turned in the cupola of his M4 “Sherman” medium tank to gaze back toward the sea. Riding a moderate swell, lighters and other landing craft came and went from the great fleet. Geysers sprayed into the air as shells splashed around one of the boats.

French 75, Austin thought bitterly.

Below the turret, Private First Class Anthony Russo, his driver, yelled from his hatch, “Hey, Boss! Don’t they know they’re being liberated?”

Pivoting his attention back to land, Austin raised his binoculars to study the valley that led to the distant purple mountains. “I guess they didn’t get the message.”

“Maybe the President broadcast it in English.”

He zeroed in on smoke plumes rising above the farmland. A pair of planes, which he hoped were American, soared across the sky. Gunfire thudded over the roar of engines, more felt than heard at this range. The Big Red One, the 1^st Infantry Division, was out there, getting killed by the people they were freeing.

The radio crackled. “Bears 3 Actual to all Bears. The captain found us a road. Get ready to roll.”

Bears was the call sign for Company B, 3 meant Third Platoon, and actual was Lieutenant Whitley, leader of this platoon of five M4 tanks and commander of Betty, distinguished by his Texan accent.

The platoon’s other tanks sounded off: Buckshot, Boxer, and Bull, all having nicknames starting with a B as they were Company B. Then it came time for Tank #34, nicknamed Boomer, to respond.

Austin keyed for transmission. “Bears 3-5 here. We still can’t move.”

In the chaos of disembarking on the lighters, his tank was loaded with the company’s maintenance section consisting of a couple of M3 halftracks and a jeep. Gunfire had forced the lighter off course, resulting in the boat landing them two hundred yards south of the rest of the company.

“We’re moving out, Five,” Whitley said. “Y’all catch up soon as you can.”

Austin winced at the lieutenant’s tone, which betrayed his frustration at losing twenty percent of his strength before the operation even began. “Roger that.”

“We’ll tell you all about it when we see you,” another voice buzzed on the radio. Sergeant Cocker, the commander of Buckshot.

“Thanks a lot,” Austin muttered. “Five, out.”

The platoon frequency filled with whoops as the tanks formed up in a column and moved off the beach, kicking rooster tails of sand. Whitley’s Betty led the way, an oversized Texas flag flying from his tank’s radio aerial.

“What’s the plan, Boss?” PFC Russo yelled up at him. “Hurry up and wait?”

Austin surveyed the soldiers and vehicles crowding the beach in front of him. He was officially in the rear with the gear. “Damn.”

He was going to miss the show. Heroic fantasies aside, he was all too aware his tank was just a tiny cog in a giant war machine, but he’d come a long way over a long time to get here, starting even before he was born.

Austin men had fought in every American war since the Revolution. Now it was his turn to face the baptism of battle. He imagined going home and telling his father he sat out his first combat mission. The squashed lump of lead in his breast pocket, a family heirloom carried into battle by Austin men since the War of 1812 for good luck, suddenly felt like a dead weight.

He switched the radio from RADIO to INT, which allowed him to talk to his crew on the interphone. “Driver, get us off the beach.”

After a long pause: “How?”

“Put the tank in gear, and lean on the sticks, Shorty.”

“You want me to run people over, Boss?”

“Nudge them out of the way.”

“Nudge them?”

The tank was nineteen feet long and nine feet wide, and it weighed thirty tons.

“Keep her in granny gear,” Austin said.

Another long pause, during which the driver was no doubt contemplating a few decades of hard labor for running somebody over. “You’re the boss.”

Originally built for airplanes and now used for tanks, the M4’s four-hundred-horsepower engine snarled. The tank crawled forward on clanking treads. Soldiers cursed and jumped out of the way. A surprised corporal started his jeep and backed it out of Boomer’s path.

His heart in his throat, Austin kept an eye peeled for officers but didn’t see any nearby. He was risking his stripes and possibly more. He hoped this stunt wouldn’t get anybody hurt.

A mean-looking, broad-shouldered beach master hustled over screaming. “What the hell do you think you’re doing on my beach, Sergeant?”

“We’ve got a malfunction! We can’t stop!” Austin swept his arm in front of him. “Clear a path for us!”

The crew interphone filled with laughter. The tank commander didn’t laugh with them. He wiped sweat from his weathered face, his terror being authentic.

The military policeman had already taken note of the tank’s designation emblazoned on the hull beside the twenty-inch white star: 1▲ 6▲ B34, which translated as, 1^st Armored Division, 6^th Armored Regiment (1^st Battalion), Company B, Tank #34. Instead of busting him, however, the MP blew his whistle to get the milling soldiers and vehicles out of his way. The gamble was paying off. The MP was no tanker. He carried too much on his plate and had to act fast.

Keeping Boomer in low gear, Russo found a path toward a stand of date trees at the edge of the beach.

“We’re gonna make it, Boss,” the driver said on the interphone.

Austin grunted. Sure enough, everybody was too busy with the invasion to care what he was doing. “Good driving.”

Russo guffawed nervously. “Yeah. Okay.”

The tank commander still wasn’t convinced his crew had what it took, and he didn’t like his driver being an Italian-American for the obvious fact America was at war with Italy. Russo was short and stocky and way too slick. Every time the kid called him Boss, Austin suspected he was being made fun of.

Still, Russo was shaping up to be a good tank driver. Austin would soon lead him and the other men into combat. They were a gunner, loader, driver, and assistant driver/bow machine gunner. They still acted as individuals, not yet a real team. Good men, but they all rubbed each other the wrong way and constantly got on each other’s nerves. They loved the tank for its colossal power, but they had no love for each other. Getting them to cohere into a single fighting organism would be a test of Austin’s leadership.

Boomer navigated the date trees and emerged facing a southerly road choked with armored vehicles raising an enormous dust cloud. Austin switched to RADIO and reported in to his platoon.

“Yup, I’ve got my eyes on y’all,” Whitley said. “Welcome back, Boomer. We’re on your two. Fall in behind Buckshot.”

“Roger.” Austin switched back to INT. “Driver, you heard the man.”

Boomer rolled forward and filled the gap that opened in the column. The commander pulled his goggles over his eyes and raised his bandana to cover his nose and mouth.

The loader’s hatch beside the cupola swung open. The loader popped up.

“What are you doing?” Austin asked him.

“I’ve never been to Africa,” PFC Amos Swanson said in his Appalachian accent. The big tanker was pure hillbilly and half animal. The crew called him Mad Dog. The swirling brown cloud enveloped him, and he coughed. “Never mind.”

“Plenty of time to sightsee later. We’ll be staying a while.”

“Not that different than home.” The hatch banged shut.

The platoon crossed the American lines. A thrill ran Austin’s spine. This was it.

He keyed his microphone. “We’re in injun country now, boys. Stay sharp.”

Buckshot emerged looming from the dust. Before he could yell a warning, Russo pulled on the sticks. Balking and grinding, Buckshot rolled off the road. Engine trouble, probably the transmission. If the crew couldn’t fix it, they’d have to wait for the maintenance platoon, which was still stuck on the beach.

“Bad luck, Barney,” Austin grinned.

“Get one for me, John,” Buckshot’s commander replied over the radio. “Out.”

An aggravated Whitley cut in, “Bears 3, at the junction up ahead, clock three and steady on First Platoon.”

First Platoon was already making the right turn. Russo geared down and swung Boomer in a wide arc to the right until the tracks found the new road. Then he threw the transmission into fourth gear. The tank charged ahead at a steady fifteen miles per hour.

The sun blazed high in the African sky. The morning air warmed steadily. Tafaraoui Airfield lay twenty-five miles away. The battalion’s fifty-odd tanks would be in action in less than two hours.

Intense firing crackled and boomed from St. Cloud in the west, one of the approaches to the city of Oran, which was the operation’s final prize. From the sound of it, the French had quite a bit of fight in them. To switch sides, apparently they’d need some additional convincing in the form of heavy shelling.

“Bears 3, clock nine at the junction up ahead. Steady on First Platoon.”

The final stretch of road, going southwest. Every minute brought the airfield closer. First, Tafaraoui, where they’d deny the formidable French air forces a base and give it to American planes now staging from Gibraltar. Next, La Sénia Airfield to the north. Then on to assault Oran and end the operation.

Austin shivered as another thrill shot down his spine. The French African Army didn’t have much in the way of armor, but they had 75s, artillery pieces powerful enough to punch holes in tanks. However, aside from a general fear he’d make a wrong decision and let his boys down, he wasn’t scared, not really. Surrounded by all this armor, it was impossible to feel anything but safe. Mostly, he was just plain excited. He wanted some action.

He’d made it to the party, and he was eager to do his country proud and live up to his family’s legacy.

Let’s go, he thought. I’m ready. Let’s get this show started.

The Tanker in the Sky must have heard his prayer, because the air filled with the thunder of guns.

^{CHAPTER TWO} WARMING THE BENCH

PFC Anthony Russo was having the time of his life as a gasoline cowboy, and to top it off, the government was paying him $54 a month for it.

Not bad for a poor kid from the wrong part of Trenton, New Jersey.

He was a long way from there and Armored Force School at Fort Knox, reveille at 4 AM, sitting at attention during class, uniform inspections, instructors barking, “Ten-shun!” After all the bullshit both pointed and pointless, he felt remarkably free, able to do what he wanted, which was drive this beautiful tank.

What a rush, working the steering sticks to make the thirty-ton Boomer go where he wanted. After his harrowing drive navigating personnel and vehicles on the beach, he felt like he could thread a needle with it. Though he’d sweated then at the risk of running some poor sap over, his biggest dream actually was to drive over something and crush it with his tracks. A jeep, maybe, or a big ol’ shack.

War was proving to be a real hoot, even if he’d spent most of it so far eating African dust.

Guns pounded outside, the sound thudding against the tank’s armor. The radio erupted with chatter.

“Button up!” Sergeant Austin yelled over the interphone.

Russo didn’t have to be told twice. Closing the hatch not only offered protection from gunfire, it allowed the turret to traverse without killing him. He lowered his seat, pulled his hatch shut, and removed his goggles and bandana from his face. Beside him, assistant driver and bow gunner Eugene Clay did the same and hunkered behind his .30-caliber machine gun.

The driver’s world shrank to a small, thick glass viewport.

“Driver, come alongside Boxer’s three,” Austin said.

“Wilco, Boss.” Russo pulled the right steering stick, which turned the tank in that direction. He was careful not to let up on the throttle during the turn, which could allow slack to build up in the track and throw it. He’d done that once during maneuvers in Louisiana and had learned a hard lesson reinforced by kitchen police duty.

Russo could barely see through the dust build-up on the viewport. He raised his rotatable periscope and tightened it until it faced forward.

“Driver, clock ten,” the tank commander said.

“Got it.” Russo reversed the sticks to bring the tank into line on Boxer’s right.

“Left stick! Okay. Stop!”

He pulled back on both sticks as the firing outside intensified. The tank ground to a halt. “Sorry, Boss. I was driving half blind there for a minute.”

“You’re about a yard away from Boxer.”

Sergeant Austin switched back to the radio, which blatted, “And tell your driver if he rams us, I’m going to drive my tank up his ass.”

That was Boxer’s commander, bitching about the close shave. Russo grinned.

“Come on,” Clay fumed at his station. “What’s going on?”

The assistant driver and bow gunner, or bog, added a machine gun to the tank’s armament. The scrawny kid hunched over his gun, chewing his Wrigley’s, which added a spearmint note to the gasoline stench.

Through Russo’s periscope, he saw armored vehicles receding in the distance as the dust began to clear. “I don’t know, Eugene. I think there’s a war going on.”

“I can’t see shit through my port. I have nothing to shoot at.”

Austin updated the crew over the interphone. “We’re in reserve. The Alligators are having all the fun.”

“There you go,” Russo said. “Company A is taking the airfield.”

“Damn.” Sweat poured down Clay’s face. “We’re warming the bench.”

“The boss will let us know if they need us. Until then, take it easy.”

“It’s just that—”

“Or don’t,” Russo said, still smiling. “I don’t care.”

The bog glared at him. “Why the hell are you so happy?”

“I got to drive a tank today! Don’t worry. You’ll get to shoot something soon.”

“It’s the waiting I hate. If we’re gonna see action, I just want to get it—”

Russo’s finger shot up in a hold-it gesture as his headset buzzed.

“Driver, move out,” the tank commander said.

“This is it,” Clay said. “We’re going in.”

Russo dropped the clutch, shifted straight into second gear to prevent stalling, and depressed the foot accelerator to channel engine power to the treads. He nudged the steering sticks forward; the tracks bit into the gravel. The thirty-ton monster rolled forward with a loud cough of exhaust.

The bog clenched behind his gun, searching for a target.

“It’s just a little sand got in the air filter,” Russo said. “Stay cool.”

Or go suck on a lollypop, the driver thought. I don’t care. The crew weren’t his friends, and he owed them nothing. From day one, they called him Macaroni for his Italian-American heritage and Shorty for his height.

Shorty he could handle—guys had to rib each other about something, or the sun couldn’t come up—and his height made him an ideal fit for the driver’s seat.

On the other hand, he hated Macaroni. His parents had emigrated from Sicily back in the ’20s, so what? It wasn’t like they wanted to cross an ocean to learn a new language and get crapped on. It was that or face starvation and Mussolini. And then Anthony Russo was born in the USA, the same as the rest of the crew. That made him as American as they were, with the same right to its soil.

The hazing had a purpose, and he knew how this story was supposed to play out. He was supposed to work hard, be the best tanker he could be, kill a lot of men from the Old Country, and maybe get wounded himself in some heroic self-sacrificing gesture. Then, at last, they would accept him as an equal.

Aside from his family, which took pride in him serving his country, Russo didn’t need to prove himself to anybody, and he sure as hell didn’t need their acceptance. They could all go suck a lollypop.

Clay fidgeted in his seat. “Where’s the enemy? Are we in action?”

“The battle’s over, boys,” the commander said over the interphone. “The Alligators took the airfield in no time, and no casualties. The doughs are mopping up.” He sounded disappointed at the missed opportunity to blood the tank. “Driver, steady on, then march on the hangar on the left.”

“Is it all right if we open the doors, Boss?”

A long pause then: “Go ahead.”

Russo raised the hatch and adjusted his seat until his helmeted head emerged from the oval-shaped opening. He blinked in the bright sun. “Ah, fresh air.”

And even better, a clear view. For the first time, he wasn’t driving in anybody else’s dust. Tank treads had a special talent for turning dirt and gravel into a fine choking powder and hurling it in the next guy’s face, especially here in a dry region like this. A downside to the job.

Clay stared at him. “You weren’t scared at all. When the shooting started.”

“Not even a little,” Russo admitted, surprised by this.

“I wasn’t either. I was just excited. I want to get in the game.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m just wondering why you weren’t even a little bit scared, Shorty.”

Russo steered the tank toward the hangar. “I’ve got two inches of armor separating me and the outside world, for starters.”

“That armor might as well be butter against a 75,” Clay said.

“It’s even thicker because the armor slopes, you know that. It isn’t butter, chum. Besides that, we’re just one of fifty tanks. That’s pretty good odds.”

“The turret is filled with bombs in dry storage. One hit and we’ll blow like a firecracker. If that doesn’t kill us, we’ll burn to death before we can bail out.”

The blood drained from Russo’s face. “Christ, Eugene.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of scary—”

“You want me to think about all that when the shooting starts? I drive the tank. I get us from point A to point B. It keeps me so busy, it’s hard to worry about anything else, which is out of my hands. I don’t even have a weapon.”

“I was just wondering why you weren’t scared,” the bog muttered.

“Well, keep your wondering to yourself while I’m driving.”

Third Platoon clanked past antitank guns in shattered sandbag emplacements and onto the airstrip, which now resembled a tank park more than an airfield. M3 and M4 tanks snorted like bulls as they parked in platoons. Armored infantry, which the tankers called doughs or dogfaces, milled around captured French African Army vehicles and planes. Grinning with victory, a platoon marched a rabble of prisoners in khaki desert uniforms.

“So what happens next?” Clay said.

Russo rolled the tank to a halt and let it idle before cutting the engine and closing the main fuel supply valves. “You keep asking that like I know more than you do.”

The tank commander stepped off the turret onto the sponson, looking like a movie star playing a tank commander. Russo found it inspiring and irritating at the same time.

“Stretch your legs, boys,” Austin said. “We’ll be hitting La Sénia Airfield next. Then we take Oran.”

Russo nodded. The driver’s station was relatively roomy and comfortable, its seat thick with a decent backrest. But it was spring instead of padded. His rear was going to have callouses by the end of this operation.

He twisted and pulled himself out the oval hatch then stretched his back in an arch. He froze at the sight of a trio of dead French soldiers lying tangled nearby on the ground. Machine gun fire had torn them apart. He wished somebody would come along and adjust their limbs to a more comfortable position.

He’d seen a dead body before. When he was a boy, his family had buried his grandmother, but Nonna had been prepared for a viewing. This was different. It was the most horrible thing he’d ever seen.

He sensed a profound truth, one telling him only life and death were real, and everything else was just an illusion, stuff humans made up to make it all mean something, including the very idea of war.

Clay paled as he zeroed in on them too. “What’s going on, Sergeant? Are the French going to surrender?”

Austin frowned. “When I know something, I’ll share it.”

The bog kept on staring at the bodies. “They should have surrendered.”

“We have to make a lot more bodies before we get to go home. You think this is bad? Wait until we go up against the Krauts. And we don’t surrender.”

“Right.” Clay had turned pale. Then he seemed to steel himself. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“What about you, Shorty?” the commander said. “You ready to do whatever it takes to beat the fascists for Uncle Sam?”

What did Austin expect him to do? Parachute into Rome and kill Mussolini? “I’ll drive your tank where you want it to go, Boss.”

True-blue, gung-ho guys like the sergeant wouldn’t bat an eye before putting you in prison for freedom. They all had a little fascist in them. It’s why he called the sergeant Boss, not to kiss up but because Austin was just that, a member of the class that ran things back home. The man’s family traced its roots back to the American Revolution. In their mind, they were fighting for their America, not Russo’s.

Thinking this, he started to tell the commander to shove it. Then he looked again at the bodies on the ground. “Yeah, Sergeant. I’ll do what it takes.”

Anything to avoid ending up like these Frenchies, lying dead in the dirt.

^{CHAPTER THREE} THE AIRFIELD

PFC Amos Swanson asked for the M3-7 wrench.

Twin tracks propelled the tank on a system of wheels. Bolted to the hull, six two-wheeled, rubber-tired bogies supported the tank on springs. Drive sprockets at the front end pulled the tracks from the rear and laid them in the path of the advancing bogie wheels. Single rollers supported the upper track’s weight.

Russo handed over the wrench and laid a straightedge along the top of the track midway between two of these rollers. Swanson set the wrench on the adjusting nut and turned until there was only a half-inch clearance between the straightedge and the top of the track.

Having gained the right tension, Swanson moved down the track. It paid to tighten up the track anytime the tank halted on a march.

As Boomer’s loader, he was responsible for the ammunition, but he’d claimed the role of main mechanic. Machines fascinated him. The tank was plenty sophisticated and could be fussier than a rich man’s daughter, but everything about it was cause and effect, which made the iron gal simple enough to figure out. Energy was produced here, pushed there, unleashed and throttled.

Swanson hadn’t even finished high school, but the Army was teaching him far more useful skills than he’d ever learn in a classroom or elsewhere back home. Skills he could put to good use if he ever made it out of this war.

Nearby, the gunner sat in the sponson’s shade, face buried in one of the many books he’d brought with him to the war. Right now he was reading a thick tome by some guy named James Joyce. Charles Wade was a cool hand behind the tank’s 75, but all his book learning had put him on a high horse.

“You’re gonna just sit there,” Swanson said, fixing the man with his best predatory sneer. “Afraid to get your hands dirty with the little folks.”

Wade gestured to the double chevrons on his sleeve, which marked him as a corporal. “Privilege of rank, Private.”

“Privilege of being a snob.”

“Only to you, Private,” Wade said, eyes still glued to his book. “Only to you.”

Fist clenching the wrench, Swanson glared at him. Even the way the corporal called him Private was snobby and insulting, deliberately drawing attention to their difference in rank. Where he came from, folks looked down on his family as being poor white trash, but nobody talked down to him. An insult was cause for a blood feud. It was why everybody was so damned polite in his neck of the woods. But he was in the Army now and a long way from Applewood, West Virginia.

Sweating and red-faced, Swanson growled as he struggled to compose a suitably cutting comeback.

“Come on, Mad Dog,” Russo said. “Let’s get this show on the road. We might be moving out soon.”

He fixed his gaze on the driver now. He didn’t like Russo either, a little guy with a megaphone for a mouth and always reminding you he was Italian. “Hey, Mac. How many gears does a ginzo tank have?”

“Oh great,” Russo muttered. “It’s my turn now.”

“Five just like ours, but four are reverse.”

The driver left the straightedge and dusted his hands. “You can finish up by yourself. I’ll be somewhere else.”

Swanson tightened another nut. “It won’t take me long. You’ll be running over crunchies in no time. I’ll bet you ginzos make a different sound, though.” He blew a raspberry.

“More like, ‘Ffangul, scustumad.’”

“There you go again, Mac. Anybody who brags about his heritage as much as you do has either got a big chip on his shoulder or is rooting for the other side.”

Wade looked up from his paperback in alarm. The driver turned red and stepped glaring into Swanson’s space.

“Call me a traitor to my face,” Russo said.

Swanson grinned. Six-three and built like a gorilla, the Army’s biggest uniform barely fit him. Hell, the tank barely fit him. He was more than a match for anybody in the company. That didn’t mean he wanted to trade punches with Russo, who was the bulldog type and wouldn’t give up until he was hamburger.

It didn’t matter, though. He’d already won. He’d never been able to rattle Wade, but the excitable Russo was easy as pushing a button.

He said, “What if I call you a runt instead?”

The megaphone mouth blared, “What if I punch that smug look off your face?”

“Russo! Swanson!” The tank commander stomped toward them. “What the hell is the matter with you two? Save it for the Germans.”

Russo reddened to a deeper shade. “He was calling me a—”

“I don’t care! We have another airfield to assault, and then we’re taking Oran.”

“That’s right,” Swanson gloated.

“And you, stop being a misanthrope and antagonizing everybody.”

He frowned. “What’d you just call me?”

“A misanthrope is somebody who hates everybody,” Wade said.

“Misanthrope.” Swanson savored the word. Yup, that was him.

“Scustumad,” Russo chimed in.

“We speak American in my tank,” Sergeant Austin said.

“That’s right,” Swanson said.

“And you, don’t talk at all. Shut up—”

Across the airfield, tankers and armored infantry belted out a ragged cheer. The men looked up. Fighter planes were approaching.

“I’m guessing by the cheering that they’re ours,” Wade said.

Austin climbed up the sponson and trained his binoculars across the airfield to the northwest. “Yup, they’re ours. Twelfth Air Force Spitfires from Gibraltar. They’re late, and we’re behind schedule.”

They’d been cooling their heels for hours out of concern, if they pressed on, the French would take their airfield back and stage bombing missions from their rear. Some French planes had counterattacked, only to be shot down by Royal Navy fighters. For now, while French 75s intermittently lobbed shells at them from the nearby hills, the battalion would wait for reinforcements to take over here so they could get back on the attack. So far, only an ammunition train had driven onto the airfield, which turned out to be French and was promptly captured.

At this rate, they’d be lucky if they made it to La Sénia before tomorrow.

The Spitfires converged into a line for landing. Another four planes approached from the west.

“More of ours?” Wade wondered.

“The lieutenant says we’re expecting some Hurricanes and C47s to show up,” Austin said. “The Spitfires aren’t reacting, so I’m guessing they’re—”

“Mannaggia,” Russo said as the newcomers broadsided the Spitfires.

Tracers flicked across the sky, guiding cannon fire toward the lead American plane. Trailing smoke, the Spitfire spiraled to the earth and crashed in a wave of dirt, taking with it some poor bastard dying on his first day of combat because his squadron had mistakenly identified the French planes as Allied.

The rest of the Spitfires veered into the attack. The ensuing dogfight weaved across the sky.

“Wow.” Clay’s eyes gleamed at the show.

One by one, the French planes flamed out of the sky. French 1, Americans 4.

“Mannaggia,” Swanson echoed the driver. “Good word.”

“Yeah,” said Russo.

“What’s it mean? ‘Long live Mussolini’?”

Sergeant Austin glared at him, but the loader smirked. Go ahead and transfer me, he thought. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to serve in a maintenance platoon where he could work on tanks all day, safe behind the idiots getting themselves killed by the idiots they were trying to liberate.

Some of the Spitfires buzzed like angry wasps around the sky, searching for enemy planes, while the rest reformed a line to land on the airfield.

A man called out: “Incoming!”

Across the airfield, tankers hit the dirt. Battalion had placed the company far from the airstrip, which the 75s were aiming at, but the shells were all over the place. A few rounds fell near their hangar, angry blasts that filled the air with dust. The first Spitfire landed in propeller roar, followed by another.

Clay crashed next to Swanson in the slit trench they’d dug beside Boomer. “Why aren’t we moving? We’re sitting ducks here.”

“We’re sitting ducks out there too,” the loader said.

“We’ll go when they tell us to go,” Austin said.

Without orders, they had nothing to do but wait. Swanson lay in the trench and wished they’d dug it deeper. He suddenly felt homesick, though home had little going for it. Moonshine merchants but otherwise doing as little as possible and never having enough to get by, his clan were mountain people, isolated and suspicious of anybody who wasn’t kin. No, he didn’t miss that life, but it was familiar, made sense, and was safer than this.

If only he hadn’t fallen for a girl. Hadn’t dreamed of her every night before he went to sleep. Hadn’t seen her with another man. Hadn’t cut that man in a fight and started a feud that could end only with somebody dying, maybe him.

Hadn’t enlisted to get out of Dodge.

Oh boy, what a mistake. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Whatever his privation and social status, he’d had it easy in Applewood compared to the Army. Armored Force School at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Reveille at 4 AM, sitting at attention during class, always some NCO yelling in his face and calling him a hillbilly and giving him demerits during every inspection. The heat, sweat, hard work, bare-bones food, raw tedium—even the marches up and down Agony Hill to get to the live-fire range—didn’t bother him. He hated the ass-chewing, regimentation, and endless chicken-shit pep drills—in general, having to kow-tow to authority with no real purpose to it. In the Army, you were just a pair of dog tags, and a whole lot of shit rolled downhill.

After a few months of this, the instructors put him in a worn-out M4 with a 37mm gun. Swanson spent the next few months roaming around brush and gullies, shooting at wood panels representing enemy tanks, antitank guns, and infantry. When the red flag went up, the commander shouted the order to fire. Swanson bivouacked, loaded during the simulations, scraped and polished his tank, played war games at Camp Polk in Louisiana, and suffered endless inspections. The only bright spot was a cold beer waiting for him at the PX at the end of the day.

Then for once, the latrine rumors proved right, and the division was packed like cattle into Pullman sleeper cars and trained out to Fort Dix. After that, the Brooklyn Army Terminal, where they shouldered their musette bags and tramped aboard the RMS Queen Mary while big cranes hauled their tanks into the holds. Thousands of soldiers waved at the cheering crowds from the railings. Later, they drifted past the Statue of Liberty and wondered if this was the last time they’d see their homeland.

Across the Atlantic, the division landed in Ireland, where they trained for months on the moors and spent their liberty chasing the colleens. When the medics punched them with another round of inoculations, Swanson knew they’d be shipping out soon. By the time they embarked again, even he was chomping at the bit for some action. Allowed topside to get some sun, the tanker gaped at the sight of American and British transports and warships filling the sea to the horizon. All the brass told them was they’d get off their ships fighting. The general consensus among the boys was they were going to France to start the drive to Berlin, but as usual, the consensus was wrong, and now here they were in some godforsaken patch of Africa, about as far away from home as Swanson could get.

Huddled in their trench, Sergeant Austin gave him the stink-eye again for his remark about being sitting ducks, but the man said nothing. Swanson would have no luck getting himself booted into the maintenance platoon. For some reason, the sergeant considered it his duty to convince his tank’s loader they were all brothers in arms and needed to do or die for each other.

The attack trickled off, and orders came down that the battalion was bivouacking here for the night. Remain overnight, or RON in Army lingo. Rumor had it the French had stopped the Allied advance and were gathering their strength for a counterattack. They weren’t the allies everybody assumed they were, and they weren’t pushovers, either.

The tankers set up their stove to make chow. Swanson watched them work and listened to them bitch, and thought, I ain’t dying for you.

A C47 landed on the airstrip and unloaded paratroopers who dodged another French barrage. Several planes had already been hit and were burning. The supply train arrived to deliver water, heavy oil, and gasoline, escorted by Buckshot, which had gotten its maintenance and was back to rolling. The camp quieted as night fell. Swanson pulled first watch, giving him some peace and quiet for two hours.

Shrouded in dark, an alien continent lay all around him. He’d crossed the great Atlantic, visited a corner of Europe, and come to Africa. The war was showing him a world far bigger than the tiny patch of ground he’d called home. Applewood may have proved too small for the likes of him, but the world was too big for comfort. He’d never felt more alone in his life. These sleeping men weren’t kin. And despite the growing bond he felt for Boomer, the big tank wasn’t home.

MAP: Progress of invasion of Oran, Algeria on November 8, 1942.

With the exception of the task group including elements of 1^st Armored, which captured Tafaroui Airfield, French resistance stopped all other forces.

^{CHAPTER FOUR} THE BATTLE OF ST. LUCIEN

Corporal Charles Wade awoke feeling the way he always did: trapped, angry, and like the world’s biggest idiot.

“Christ,” he muttered. “I’m still in the Army.”

For some reason, he felt even worse than usual today. A real case of the ass.

As was typical, he was the last awake in the entire battalion. Dawn was a red sliver on the eastern horizon, the sky still dark yet purpling at its edge. He shivered in the chill as he climbed out of his roll, unable to believe he was doing this.

The loader was tying his own rolled-up fartsack to the tank’s rear. “Top of the morning, Wisenheimer.”

When he’d enlisted, Wade had painstakingly created a strongman persona right down to the fictitious nickname, Hawkeye, which he’d claimed everybody called him back home. To avoid being singled out for tedious abuse, he didn’t want anybody to know he was a history teacher at the University of Minnesota.

It didn’t stick. Swanson was the first to call him, Wisenheimer, derogatory slang for a smart guy and which was doubly insulting because it sounded vaguely German. The loader wasn’t that smart, but like most bullies, he had a certain animal cunning. He also had it in for Wade.

“Swanson,” Wade grunted, still dazed from sleep.

“The war waits for no man, not even one as important as you.”

“I had this weird dream you were worth talking to, Private.” Wade had no interest in trading barbs with this Neanderthal until he’d had a strong cup of coffee.

He filled a large mug with water and used it to brush his teeth, shave, and wash. Russo climbed into the tank to warm up the engine. Men strolled past, a spade in one hand and a roll of Army Form Blank—toilet paper—in the other. The sun was up now, so the men could light their one-burner tanker stoves and boil water for coffee.

While he waited, he opened a breakfast box and pulled out a can of bacon and eggs, which came out in the form of a cake. Instantly, black flies buzzed around it. “What the hell is this?”

“Listen to you bitch,” Swanson said as he finished wolfing his down and bent to light a cigarette. “It’s like music to my ears. Keep it up.”

“Eat fast,” Sergeant Austin said. “We’re on the move in five.”

Clay handed Wade a mug of coffee. “Here you go, Corporal.”

“What’s the word, Sergeant?” Wade asked.

“We’re going to Oran,” the commander grinned. In other words, he didn’t know anything about how the invasion was going.

Wade blew on his coffee and drank it quickly, wishing he had time to get a few more pages into Ulysses. Right now, books were the only thing keeping his brain and soul from withering away and dying.

“Mount up!” men called across the tank park. “We’re on the move!”

Wade climbed into the tank through the commander’s hatch and settled into his vinyl-covered seat. Austin pulled mosquito netting over the hatch to trap the flies inside, which the crew whacked until they were all dead. Russo cranked the engine. As usual, the turret compartment smelled like gasoline and ass. Otherwise, it was freezing in here, a situation the rising African sun would soon rectify.

Never a moment’s comfort in this man’s army.

Wade put on his headset and plugged it into a cord dangling from his control box. Behind him, Swanson switched on the radio transmitter and receiver then pressed their assigned channel button until it locked.

The commander switched to INT and said, “Check interphone.”

“Gunner, check,” Wade said.

“Bog, check,” Clay said.

“Driver, check,” Russo called out.

“Loud and clear,” said Swanson.

“Next stop, La Sénia Airfield,” Austin said. “Shorty, follow behind Boxer.”

“Roger,” Russo said.

Wade peered into his periscope, which offered a wide view on the left for acquiring targets and a six-times magnification, reticled telescope sight on the right for shooting. The battalion’s vehicles were rolling off the airfield and forming up to drive north toward Oran.

Loaded with gear, the big, dusty tanks looked more like a caravan of mechanized nomads than an armored fighting force.

He settled the scope on Boxer and said, “Boom, you’re dead.”

Seeing as he had nothing to do for the near future other than sit on his sore ass, he wished he had more coffee. Only the lead tank traveled with a loaded gun to prevent some Swanson-type from accidentally firing at friendly armor. More mind-numbing hurry up and wait. He wished he could nap or read a book. He wished he’d never joined the goddamn United States Army and went off to war.

Wade regarded the photo of his wife, which he’d stuck to the bulkhead with a piece of gum. He’d put it there not to remind him what he was fighting for and what waited for him back home, but to give himself a thorough punishment every day for enlisting.

Alice smiled at him as if to say, Thanks for making tracks, honey. Not that the sneaking around wasn’t fun, but it’s so much easier this way. I hope you make it home alive, Charlie, though do keep in mind that, if you do happen to get yourself bopped off, your loving wife will get your back pay plus a six-month bonus.

He had plenty of time to stew.

Wade had met Alice in graduate school. He’d hoped to ensnare her with his intellect and ambition. He’d always believed he was meant for great things, and he’d worked hard his whole life to take advantage of every opportunity.

In the end, it was she who snared him with her beauty and personality. He fell madly in love, and after graduation, he married her and landed a job teaching history. The war had started, and while he hated fascism and wanted to see it destroyed, he was too established in life to consider joining up.

Then he’d caught her cheating with Larry Enfield, a literature professor who’d recently gained an appointment as a staff officer in the Army, and something inside him broke. He realized he wasn’t a great man; he wasn’t meant for great things. In a blind fit, he marched to the recruiting office to make history instead of teach it.

Even now, he wasn’t sure what he’d really been trying to accomplish. A part of him wanted her to see him the same way she had seen his rival, a fighting man in uniform. Another part of him wanted to escape, put the whole thing behind him.

Escape he had, and he’d been paying for it ever since. There are some things you can’t take back, enlisting in the United States Army being one of them.

“—Bears 3, we’re turning around,” Lieutenant Whitley said over the radio on the platoon frequency. “The Frogs are getting set to stage an attack on the airfield. The rest of the battalion is going ahead without us. Over.”

“Any idea what we’re facing, over?” Bull’s commander cut in.

“Intel is they’re tanks, possibly company strength. Wait one… There’s a town called St. Lucien about five miles southeast of the airfield. That’s where we’re going. A platoon of M3 tank destroyers is coming with us. Out.”

“Roger that, out,” Austin said and switched to the interphone. “Driver, clock six right, steady on Boxer.”

“You got it, Boss,” Russo said.

“Let’s go kick some Vichy ass.”

The crew whooped. Wade stiffened in his seat. They were going into combat again, but this time, Third Platoon would be out front, going head to head with French armor.

“Hey, Wisenheimer,” Swanson said behind him. “Wade.”

“What?”

“I intend to make it home in one piece. You’d better shoot straight.”

“Then make sure you load correctly,” Wade growled back.

With the automatic breech and a good loader, he should be able to get two or three shots off very quickly. But Swanson was crazy. Wade could see the man taking his time loading just to be irritating and make some obtuse point.

His hands felt along the firing switch, L-shaped handle used to traverse the turret, small wheel used to elevate the main gun, and wheel and button used to aim and fire the coaxial .30-cal machine gun. He’d drilled so many times their uses were second nature to him, but feeling their presence was reassuring.

“Don’t worry about me,” the loader said. “I’ll do my part and help you get home with your dong intact to that perfect wife of yours.”

“If only you had something good you wanted to go back to.”

“My life was just fine before you showed up.”

“Everybody’s life is perfect except yours, Private. Poor you.”

“You think you’re perfect—”

“And it’s all their fault, not yours.”

Sergeant Austin cut in, “Clear the interphone.”

“At least my friends aren’t books,” Swanson muttered.

Wade laughed. Being the type who liked to dish it out but couldn’t take it, the loader was too easy to antagonize. “You’re right.” He did prefer the company of books to the other men in the tank. “That should bug you.”

It certainly bothered Wade. Behind all the cool sarcasm, he felt like he was dying.

“SHUT YOUR TRAPS,” the commander ordered.

Dust covered Wade’s scope and obscured his view. The four-hundred-horsepower engine ground on. The treads clanked on the bogie wheels. The radio buzzed with routine chatter. Alice mocked him.

He wanted to talk to somebody. And no bitching about officers and food. No gossip about where they were going and what they’d be doing when they got there. No discussion about the tank and whether all its complicated parts were working properly. And no endless pining about women and food. He wanted to talk about history. He’d always loved history and could gab about it for hours on end. Outrageous gossip about people who were long dead.

Algeria had a rich past. At one time, it served as a way station for people traveling between Europe and the Middle East, making it valuable real estate. The Carthaginians ruled it then the Romans then the Vandals. The Muslims conquered it in the eighth century. Later, the Ottomans added this land to their empire, during which time the Barbary Pirates plagued the sea, until the French made it a colony.

The only guy in this tank who cared about any of this was him.

The radio chatter intensified. The column was approaching St. Lucien. Then the radio exploded with excited voices.

“They’re firing at us,” Austin told his crew. “We’re having fun now. Button up. Driver, clock two to form up on Boxer’s three in that field.”

“Clock two,” Russo acknowledged.

The dust cleared from Wade’s scope to reveal farmland all around and a town in the distance. The tank growled off the road into a vast field, its wheat or barley recently harvested. It was like driving over a thick brown carpet richly textured by the light of the rising sun.

“The tank destroyers are moving up on the left to flank them. Clock ten and steady on, driver. Gunner, on my order, give him volley fire with shot.”

“Roger,” said Wade. It was all rolling out as they’d trained countless times.

Swanson opened the breech and slammed in an armor-piercing, or AP, round. The breech closed automatically. This done, the loader patted Wade’s shoulder. He instinctively flinched from the man’s touch.

“I ain’t sweet on you,” Swanson said. “You’re up.”

The round was loaded and ready to fire.

Wade switched to six-times magnification on his scope and spotted the enemy tanks advancing line abreast from St. Lucien. Char D1 light tanks.

Company B charged forward to meet them head on.

Pouring sweat despite the turret compartment still being cold, Wade gripped the traversing handle and elevation wheel.

“Target is the tank closest to our zero,” the commander said. “We’ll let him have it at a thousand yards.”

Wade grimaced at his scope. “Roger. I got him.”

He settled his scope on the enemy tank, resting the reticle on its turret. He traversed until confident the barrel lined up for a good shot. Shimmering in the morning haze, the enemy tank drew nearer with each passing moment.

Smoke mushroomed from its barrel. Wade flinched, every nerve tingling. The shot blurred away toward its target.

The light tanks were moving fast, however, which ruined their accuracy. In contrast, the M4 had the benefit of a gyro-stabilized gun. Boomer could fire while on the move, though not very accurately at high speed.

“Driver, stop,” Austin said. “Gunner, fire!”

Wade stomped the firing pedal. “On the way!”

The tank bucked as the main gun belched the AP round at the enemy. The hot, empty shell flew out of the breech and banged on the turret basket floor. Swanson was already ramming the next round into the smoking chamber.

Through the haze, Wade observed the effect. The shell had crashed into his target’s track, which whiplashed behind it as the Char D1 swung wild.

Not bad for a first shot!

“He’s immobilized,” Austin said. “The crew is bailing.”

“Should I scratch his back?” Clay called out. He wanted to know if he should shoot the crew off the tank with his bow machine gun.

“Negative, bog.” The French were still their allies, even if they were currently fighting the Americans. “Gunner, shift target, clock right. Range, about five hundred. Drop ten.”

Wade reduced the elevation to align the gun with the French tank, which had closed the distance to five hundred yards and stopped to direct aimed fire at the oncoming Americans. “Ready!”

Swanson patted his shoulder. “You’re up!”

“Fire!” Austin shouted.

“On the way!”

Nothing happened.

“Fire,” Austin said. “Fire!”

“The round is jammed!” Swanson said.

“Then unjam it!” Wade yelled.

“You unjam it! Try to shoot it out!”

Wade stomped the firing pedal then yanked the manual lanyard. “Nothing!”

“Get that round cleared now!” the commander screamed.

“Goddamn it, where’s my rammer?” Swanson was going to have to force out the jammed round. His rammer had a special shape enabling him to do that without striking the fuze and blowing them all up.

“Hurry,” Wade begged. “Hurry.” In the scope, the French tank traversed to align its barrel with Boomer, and it was now in killing range. With the magnification, it looked like the tank was aiming right at him. “Hurry up!”

The loader was pushing at the round. “Goddamn, stupid—”

Enemy machine gun fire pinged off the hull.

“He’s shooting at us!”

“I’m doing my best!” Swanson yelled.

“Don’t hit the fuze!”

“Shut up and let me do it!”

Smoke burst from the enemy’s 47mm gun. Wade cried out as the round glanced off his tank’s beveled armor and whirred away in red-hot pieces. The next shot splintered against Boomer’s glacis plate and rang the tank like a gong.

“Driver,” Austin said. “Get us moving! Balls to the wall!”

Wade joined the loader in swearing until they were howling at each other.

“I’ve got it!” Swanson told him. “You’re up, you’re up!”

Before he could fire, the Char D1 rocked as a round from another M4 passed clean through it. Smoke poured out of the hole in its plate. The tank caught fire.

Nobody bailed out. The poor bastards.

Wade swung the scope. “I need a target.”

“Cease fire,” the commander said.

“Cease fire?”

“It’s over. The French are pulling out.”

Russo belted out, “Allons enfants de la patrie!” The first line of the French national anthem. Clay was cackling.

“We’re alive,” Austin said. “So I guess we did good.”

Wade turned to take in a pale and gasping Swanson slouched behind the breech. Still absorbing what they’d experienced together, they stared at each other. That was one close shave.

Finally, he chuckled. “Yeah. We did all right.”

Swanson sneered back at him. “What? We’re friends now?”

The gunner turned away and clenched his eyes in frustration. Christ, I want to go home. Just get me home.

^{CHAPTER FIVE} GENERAL CHAOS

PFC Eugene Clay’s nervous laughter faded. “We kicked their ass.”

Nobody cheered. One by one, the stunned tankers opened their hatches and peered out to take in the battle’s aftermath. Clay counted fourteen knocked-out Char D1s scattered across the landscape and pouring smoke into the sky.

On his own side, he counted three losses: an M4, an M3 tank destroyer, and an M3 GMC. He wondered if the crews made it out or if they’d cooked in their armor.

The French survivors were a dust cloud in the distance, and good riddance.

“That was the scrub team,” Sergeant Austin said. “Light tanks, and antiques to boot. Wait until we meet the Germans.”

Victory turned out to be a lot more morose than Clay had pictured it.

He leaned to inspect the glacis plate where the second enemy round had struck. He found a deep pockmark at the center of black scoring. Amazing.

Amazing he was still alive.

He’d volunteered for this. For months, he’d trained with an artillery unit, learning how to shoot howitzers. That hadn’t been good enough for the would-be hero of Mapleton, Pennsylvania. He’d wanted to see action on the front line. He’d wanted to prove himself. He’d pictured homecoming parades in his honor.

And he’d gotten his wish, at least the part about seeing action in a front-line unit. His gung-ho nagging earned him a transfer to 1^st Armored and an entry-level job as a bow gunner on an M4 medium tank, where he automatically received a series of colorful nicknames like New Guy, Shithead, and Eight Ball. Swanson showed him the ropes and gave him his first official duty, which was to run to the motor pool and to not come back without a can of squelch and a fallopian tube plug. The hazing eased up after a month, though it never really ended.

It hadn’t mattered. He was going to make a difference and help win the war. He’d thought of the tanks as mobile fortresses that delivered devastating firepower. They were the place to be.

It took only one brief battle to teach him a tank made a big target out in the open, one everybody was shooting at, and that he was about as useful as a fifth wheel on a motorcar. He hadn’t fought in the battle so much as come along as a tourist, his very existence in the hands of other men playing a game of life and death.

Clay shuddered. A wave of exhaustion overtook him. The day was just starting and he hadn’t actually done anything, but he was already spent.

“We did our jobs,” the commander’s voice rang in his headphone. “We gained some experience. And we’re alive. Now let’s get back to it. Driver, clock six left and steady on Boxer. We’re going to try to catch up with the battalion.”

“Roger that, Boss,” Russo said at his station beside Clay’s.

The bog pulled on his goggles and raised his bandana to cover his nose and mouth. “Hey, Shorty. Those rounds hitting us, huh? Crazy!” He patted the tank’s metal, which was already growing warm in the morning sun. “You were right about the armor. It’ll take more than that to hurt our gal.”

Talking tough calmed him, made him forget about how close it had been.

Smiling, he added, “I pity the panzer who wants to go head to head against us.”

The driver winced behind his goggles. “Shut up, Eugene.”

“I was just—”

“If we’d been hit by a panzer’s 75 at that range, we could have been killed.”

He quoted the driver back to him: “The armor is sloped—”

“Just shut up.”

Company B headed north in pursuit of the flying column on its way to assault La Sénia Airfield. Boomer might be in action again within hours. Until then, there was nothing to do except eat dust and think.

Clay sulked. “I’m just trying to stay positive here, man.”

When he was a kid, in the summers, he and his friends often went swimming in Mud Lake. While they splashed and dove, Ralph Wilson swam out toward the middle of the lake on some dumb dare and started floundering. Clay and Mike, his younger brother, stood on the shore watching the whole thing. As the older brother, Clay felt compelled to act first. He broke for the water but froze at the edge. Mike kept going, saved Ralph’s life, and became the gang’s hero, the kid everybody looked up to and followed. That one event marked Clay for life.

For the rest of his youth, he found himself taking bigger and bigger chances, doing crazier and crazier stunts. The other kids started admiring him far more than his kid brother. He didn’t care about that. To complete himself, Clay was looking to repeat the circumstances. He wanted a test where a crisis caught him flat-footed but he acted and did the right thing. The chance for his burgeoning manhood to prove itself in a trial by combat. Before the war, he’d planned to become a police officer, but then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

At seventeen, he’d lied about his age and enlisted. Instead of fighting the Japanese, he’d be fighting Germans.

“Hey, Shorty, next time we stop, can I drive for a while?” he said.

The driver didn’t answer.

“I said—”

“I heard you the first time. The answer is no.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m driving,” Russo said in his usual loud voice, as if he thought his words might be interesting to the whole platoon. “If we end up on a forced march and I get tired, that’s when you drive.”

“So—”

“Which will never happen. Because while I’m driving, I don’t have to think about how a couple inches of metal barely stopped a giant bullet from killing me. How I’m basically driving a really big magnet.”

“Come on. I have nothing to do here.”

“You can keep your eyes peeled.”

Clay looked around at the giant dust cloud. “Seriously?”

“You can also be quiet. Mouth shut, eyes open.”

Until Oran, he was stuck in his uncomfortable seat with nothing to do but make conversation with the guy next to him. Russo, however, was a terrible conversationalist.

“Great. So I’m supposed to warm the bench until somebody gets killed.”

Russo glared at him through his goggles. “Why the hell would you say that? It’s bad luck.”

Clay shrugged. He’d said it because it was true.

The driver blew out a sigh. “Okay, I’ll let you drive sometime. But not today. And only if you button your lip.”

Clay popped a stick of Wrigley’s in his mouth and chewed. “Roger.”

An hour and a half later, Boomer rolled onto La Sénia Airfield and came to a stop in its designated tank park. Clay patted dust from his tanker jacket and overalls and climbed out of the tank to stretch his legs. Some tankers from Alligator were mingling among the cooling vehicles.

“All y’all missed out on all the fun again,” a rangy corporal called to him in a nasal Southern twang. “It was a piece of cake taking the airfield.”

Clay scanned the area but didn’t see any French planes. The French knew they couldn’t hold La Sénia and had pulled out, leaving behind a token force.

The rangy tanker grinned. “What were all y’all doing?”

He gnawed his gum. “We fought a company of French armor.”

The grin evaporated. “You get any tanks?”

“One, and on the first shot,” Clay bragged, though Wade’s good shooting only reminded him of how little he’d done in the battle himself. He now wished he could be the gunner. He wanted any job in the tank, in fact, as long as it wasn’t the bog.

“Well, I’ll be,” the corporal said, clearly irritated at being one-upped.

“Overall, the company knocked out fourteen enemy tanks.”

“Fine, fine.” The guy was already leaving.

“Hey,” Clay called after him. “What’s the word?”

“The Frogs threw in the towel is what I hear. We’ll be going to France soon.”

The bog turned and spotted Sergeant Austin returning to the tank carrying a spade and roll of toilet paper. “Hey, Sergeant, did you hear? The French surrendered—”

The commander climbed onto the sponson. “Mount up! We got our orders. One last fight to go and we’re done.”

The word, apparently, was wrong. Before they became an ally, the French needed more persuading. Clay couldn’t figure why they were fighting.

“Damn.” Swanson flicked away his half-finished cigarette. “Not even enough time for a smoke. Hey, Wisenheimer.”

“What now?” asked Wade.

“On the way!” With that, the loader fired a massive fart.

Across the airfield, the big tanks rumbled to life. Boomer’s crew squirmed through the hatches into their seats, plugged headsets into radio boxes, and sounded off. They moved with an eagerness that to Clay didn’t seem like a zeal for duty. Whatever waited for them in Oran, they just wanted to get it over with.

He was surprised he felt the same. He’d never been so simultaneously scared and eager for something in his life.

“Who got hit, Sergeant?” he asked after com check.

“Buster. First Platoon. The shot slipped in under the turret and set off their ammo. Nobody made it out.” After a pause, he added: “Driver, follow Boxer.”

Clay didn’t know Buster’s crew. The only thing he remembered was its commander had an annoying laugh. He’d guffaw like a donkey.

Now he was dead. It all seemed so pointless.

“What are we doing here?”

Russo said, “There’s a war on, Eugene. Remember?”

“I mean, why are the French fighting us?”

Corporal Wade piped in over the interphone. “Because they’re following orders, kid. The orders are coming down a chain of command from collaborators afraid of being hanged from a rope. Not by us, but by their own people. Plus we’re here with the Brits, and in these parts, the French hate them as much as they hate the Germans. Back in ’40, the Brits were afraid the French would hand over their fleet to Hitler. So they bombed it, right here at Oran. It was a slaughter.”

“Nobody cares,” Swanson cut in.

“I care,” Clay said. “If I’m going to kill people I’m supposed to be allied with, it’s nice to know why.”

“Why ain’t gonna get you home, New Guy.”

He growled, “I’m not new. I’ve been with the crew for six months—”

“I’ll tell you why we need to roll into Oran. Two words: French girls.”

“Cut the chatter,” the commander said. “We aren’t done with this op yet.”

The morning wore on like this. Periods of tedium with nothing to do but eat dust and listen to the shrieking treads and routine radio transmissions. Then bouts of bickering to blow off steam until the commander shut them down.

Ahead in the dust, shouts erupted only to be drowned out by deep rumbling. The radio chatter intensified. The flying column had run into its armored brethren of Task Force Green, which had invaded Algeria to the west. As an artillery man, Clay recognized the rumble as the rain of French 155s. Then he heard even deeper booms that seemed to come from the earth itself. A strange rushing sound like distant trains. Salvos fired by Navy battleships and cruisers.

“No, I don’t know what’s happening,” the commander said before anybody could ask. “You’ll find out when I do on the radio.”

The tanks slowed to a crawl. A jeep drove up alongside and paced Boomer long enough for its officer passenger to yell, “Keep it moving, boys! Nothing’s going to stop us. We’re going to Oran!”

“Yes, sir!” Clay yelled back with a salute then turned to Russo. “Who was that?”

“That was…” The driver shrugged. “I have no idea who that was.”

“Kid,” Austin said, “that was General Chaos himself.”

The crew laughed.

Lieutenant Whitley buzzed on the radio. The Bears were stopping south of Oran to wait for the infantry to complete the city’s envelopment. They’d hurried up to wait again. The dust cleared and revealed flat farmland leading to the sprawling port, the city and its flanking hills shining bronze in the afternoon sun.

Boomer parked where instructed. The crew climbed out for maintenance and chow. Sergeant Austin called them together to tell them they’d RON here. Leaning against the tank, Russo rubbed his aching ass. Wade gripped a book behind his back, kneading the cover with his thumb as if he couldn’t wait to escape into it.

“You guys did good today,” the commander said. “But we can do better. If we want to survive this war, we need to be the best.”

Nobody said anything. Swanson lit a cigarette.

“The French are tough, but their heart isn’t in this fight. We punched through every obstacle and made it this far. Tomorrow, we’re going to ram that city right in the gut. I don’t have to tell you how dangerous city fighting is. We’ll be in close quarters with an enemy that has plenty of cover and concealment and knows the ground. We’ll be relying on our infantry. So I want everybody to stay sharp. Especially you, bog, on your .30-cal. You see anybody hostile, you shoot.”

“Roger, Sergeant,” Clay said.

The tank’s job was to smash through the enemy line and plow into the rear areas, where it could use its machine guns and crushing power to deliver havoc. Oran was one such area, the final prize of the operation. The M4 had been designed for this, with the job of fighting other tanks tasked to tank destroyers.

“Let me put it another way,” Austin said. “If you don’t see somebody hostile, you don’t shoot. There’s something like 200,000 civilians living in Oran. We’re not here to slaughter them. Okay?”

Clay gave him an exaggerated nod. “Roger.”

“And make sure you have your fallopian tube plug ready, Eight Ball,” Swanson said. “We’re all counting on you.”

The commander fixed the gunner and loader with his steely gaze. “As for you two… We can’t have our main gun jamming right when we need it. That will not fly when we finally meet the panzers. I want you to grease it good. If there’s a defective part, replace it.”

Wade grimaced and gripped his book tighter. “Fine.”

Swanson sneered at the gunner. “We’ll get right on it. We’re a good team.”

“Shorty, you and Clay will be on track and engine maintenance. Then grab the cans and see if you can scrounge up some gasoline.”

“You got it, Boss.”

The meeting started to break up.

“And one more thing, listen.” Sergeant Austin paused long enough for his gray eyes to bore into theirs. “You all act like a bunch of unruly children. You want to be eight balls off the field, fine. But when we’re in combat, you cut the crap and do your jobs. You read me?”

“Hooah, Sarge,” the men said.

“Drive on. Go get your chow. The lieutenant says we’re attacking at dawn.”

After sunset, the men pulled mosquito netting between the tank and the ground to build a tent for their sleeping bags. Clay climbed into the commander’s cupola and took first watch. All around him, the battalion snored in their tanker rolls, probably dreaming of women while the bog thought about battle. The temperature dropped like a stone, the cold wind bringing bursts of sleet.

On the horizon, a black smudge had replaced the city. Dawn would bring it back. Tomorrow, the Bears would drive straight into its streets and alleys. The French might have infantry in every window, 75s dug in among the cafes and tenements. The commander was right; it was the kind of environment where the bow gun would play a big role in the fighting.

Finally, he’d get the test he’d craved.

MAP: Progress of invasion of Oran, Algeria on November 9, 1942.

^{CHAPTER SIX} ORAN

At first light, Tank Sergeant Austin drank his coffee until Swanson emptied his nose with a couple of wet-sounding farmer’s blows. He tossed the remainder of his coffee into the dirt and strode off to find Sergeant Cocker checking the voltage on Buckshot’s radio battery.

The man’s wide head emerged above the hatch frame. “Morning, John.”

Austin patted Buckshot’s dusty armor. “How’s she running?”

“Fine, now.” Cocker emerged from the hatch to check the radio antenna. “After we fixed the clutch from dragging.”

“Yeah, I heard your driver grinding gears before you rolled off the road.” A dragging clutch made it incredibly difficult to change gear.

“Too much slack in the clutch pedal. Maintenance was stuck on the beach, so we ended up fixing it ourselves.” He let go of the antenna. “Scary, though.”

“What do you mean, scary?”

Cocker eyed his tank with suspicion. “These M4s have what, thousands of moving parts? All it takes is one to bring the whole thing to a halt, right when you need it most.”

Austin didn’t want to think about it. The constant first-echelon maintenance was all he could do. He leaned to take in a layer of sandbags stacked in front of the glacis plate. “I see you got yourself a retrofit.”

“After seeing you take a 47 round in your chest plate yesterday, I figured every little bit of protection couldn’t hurt.”

“A 75 couldn’t even penetrate the glacis plate except at close range.”

“That’s what they told us,” Cocker said. “Me, I don’t mind a little insurance.”

The added hillbilly armor looked ridiculous, but he wondered if Cocker was onto something. He took off his helmet to scratch an itch. “The whole thing was a close call. Way closer than I care to admit.”

“Why’d you stop firing?”

“Gun trouble. We had to clear a jammed round.”

“Jesus.” Cocker shook his head.

“It happens.”

“Like I said, one little thing. How are your boys holding up?”

“My driver’s good on the sticks,” Austin told him, “and my gunner is good at laying the gun. Otherwise, they’re a bunch of unruly crybabies who are going to drive me up a tree.”

The sergeant chuckled and glanced at his crew eating their breakfast around their tanker stove. “You should get to know my gang of idiots and misfits. We tankers are a special breed of asshole and proud of it.”

Sergeant Dunlap, Boxer’s commander, sauntered over and torched the tip of a Camel with his steel lighter. “Glad you’re still with us, John. Did you hear about Buster?”

Using their superior mobility, some of the French vehicles had swung around and flanked the company. They fired at the American tanks’ weaker side armor until the destroyers took them out.

“Bad luck,” Austin said. “Sergeant Cooley was all right.”

“He had a funny laugh. Like a donkey having a fit.”

Dunlap was right about that. Austin wished there was some way he could honor the man, but he hadn’t really known him.

Cocker hopped down and bummed a smoke from Dunlap. “Hell of a way to go. If I buy it, I want to see a steely-eyed Kraut with an Iron Cross around his neck pulling the trigger. Not some Frenchman I traveled a couple thousand miles to liberate from the Nazis.”

“Those French tin cans made good practice, though,” said Sergeant Blackburn, Bull’s commander, who’d joined the group. “We shot them to shit.”

Dunlap spat. “Bunch of antiques, and they still took three of ours with them.”

“Almost four, if you count our pal John here.”

Austin frowned. “I wish everybody would stop bringing that up.”

“It was my Bull saved your ass. We put a round right through him.”

“I’ll pay back the favor soon enough. Any word on what’s happening?”

Dunlap flicked the remains of his cigarette into the dirt and nodded past Austin’s shoulder. “Here comes the man in charge. You can ask him.”

Carrying a clipboard, Lieutenant Whitley strode up to the group. “How’s everything, boys? Any problems?”

Cocker told him about his dragging clutch and said his boys had fixed it. Austin piped up about the jammed round.

“All y’all are ready for action otherwise?” Whitley asked.

“Yes, sir,” they said.

“What’s the word, sir?” Dunlap asked. “When are we stepping off?”

“The Navy dropped a lot of ordnance on the French arty standing in our way. I’m assured there’s now nothing between us and the city, though we don’t know what kind of reception we’re going to get once we’re inside.”

Cocker grimaced. “You mean there’s no intel on the—?” He glared at his crew. “What are you guys gawking at? Don’t you have ammo to stow? Get the ready racks restocked. Move it!”

“The last recon flight was yesterday afternoon, and they didn’t see anything,” Whitley said.

“Great,” Cocker grumbled. That was all they were going to get by way of intelligence. The battalion’s vanguard would have to do its own scouting.

“I just came from Captain Wyatt.” Company B’s CO. “He said the Bears will lead the charge on this one as the lead element for the main body. Third Platoon will be the tip of the spear.”

Austin felt a thrill but kept his cool. “I’d like to request the honor of Boomer being first in, sir.”

The lieutenant said, “All right, y’all will take point on the assault.”

“Boomer has a gung-ho bog who will be very pleased, sir.” Not to mention its commander, who wished his dad were here to see it.

Whitley showed them the map he had on his clipboard. “This here’s Oran, here’s us, and here’s the main strategic route. The plan is simple. We’re going straight into the city and driving for General Boissau’s HQ, here. The Alligators will follow and seize the port. Then Cat Company and the tank destroyers will grab the rest of the key installations. We’ll have the doughs with us to watch our backs, and we’ll have air and arty on call. Boomer then Betty, Boxer, Buckshot, and Bull.”

“Any word on gasoline?” Dunlap said. “We’ll make it to the objective, but only barely.”

“No resupply until Oran is ours,” Whitley told his tank commanders. “If we want to eat, we have to take the city. Any other questions?”

Austin pulled his helmet over his cropped head. It was crap, but what else was new? “It’ll be duck soup, sir.” An easy job.

“Let’s hope for that and plan for the worst. Well, this is it. We take Oran and we’re done. The limeys will be able to attack Rommel in the rear and clear the Axis out of North Africa. Then we go to France and then Berlin.”

The sergeants grinned, no doubt picturing a nice, long leave in Oran at the end of this. Good food, plenty of wine, and the attentions of French women. As for Austin, he envisioned invading France.

The lieutenant inspected his watch. “Get your tanks ready, gentlemen. We’re rolling at 0900.”

Cocker offered his paw to Austin along with a lopsided smile. “Good luck, John. We’ll be right behind you.”

Austin shook the man’s hand. “You too, Barney.”

He returned to Boomer to find his crew hard at work and getting along. It was a welcome change of pace. Regardless of how they might feel about each other, they were all growing to love their M4. They clambered like monkeys over the tank with their grease guns and wrenches, lubing the bogie wheels, tightening bolts on the track links, and topping up on heavy oil and radiator fluid.

“How’s the track?” he asked Russo.

“Good and tight, Boss. Batteries and fluids are good. No luck scoring gasoline.”

“We’ll have to make do.”

“We greased the main gun and tested the firing breech,” Wade chimed in. “I think it’ll behave next time we have to shoot. We even adjusted the sights and quadrants.”

“Outstanding,” Austin said. Maybe his little speech last night had motivated them to get their heads on straight. “We’re on the move in twenty. The whole battalion is assaulting the city, and we’re going in first.”

They gathered around at this news. Russo whistled.

“What’s the objective?” Wade asked.

“General Boissau’s HQ. We capture him, we can end this now, and then we’re looking at garrison duty until they send us to France.”

“I’ll fight for that,” Swanson said.

Wade said, “Any idea on what’s waiting for us between here and there?”

“The intel says it’s clear all the way to Oran, but it’s yesterday’s news,” Austin answered. “Battalion is going to push out a recon element ahead of us to scout the road. We won’t be bombarding the city, but we’ll have air and arty support on call.”

“Why aren’t we bombing the city first?” Clay said, jawing his Wrigley’s.

Russo scoffed. “Because they’re our allies, numbnuts.”

“Why,” Swanson said. “I think that should be your new nickname.”

Austin sighed. His crew’s armistice hadn’t lasted long.

Clay tossed his hands in frustration. “It just feels funny fighting these people with one hand tied behind our back. I appreciate they’re our allies and all, but they’re trying to kill us.”

“There’s no need to risk killing civilians without solid intel,” Austin said. “We want these guys fighting on our side and killing Germans in the future. Every German they kill is one less shooting at us. Is everybody clear on what we’re doing here? Any other questions?”

He had no takers.

“Good. Now get ready. We’ll be mounting up soon.”

Just enough time to write a letter home to his wife and infant son, Rex. Writing to them made him feel the comfort of home while also making him homesick. It filled him with dread at the thought of dying. Without his family, Austin would have gladly given his life for his country, but he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving them on their own.

He was getting through this. He’d make it home to look Uncle Sam in the eye and say, I fought for you. And he’d be able to take a knee and tell his growing boy, I fought for the world that will be yours.

In the letter, Austin told Marcy again he loved her and to give his son a warm hug. Love, John. He pocketed the letter and checked his watch. The time was 0855.

“Boomer, mount up!”

Across the tank park, crews tore down and rolled camouflage netting. Drivers hand-cranked their engines and climbed in to start ignition. The cool morning air filled with the growls and snorts of dozens of manmade monsters.

“Bears 3 Actual to Bears 3,” the lieutenant said over the radio, his voice tinny. “Let’s roll. Bears 3-5, take us out.”

“Tip of the spear,” Austin said and keyed his radio to INT. “You heard the man, gentlemen. Driver, move out. Loader, once we’re in the clear, load a round of HE.” High explosive. “Gunner, note the gun will be loaded. Time to button up.”

The crew responded with a flurry of roger and wilco.

Belching a stream of exhaust, Boomer growled forward smoothly on its treads. Russo navigated between the idling tanks and hit the road.

“It sure is nice being first in line,” the driver said.

Swanson emerged from his hatch and checked out the scenery. “Nothing but clear views and fresh air up here, Wisenheimer.”

“Christ!” Wade called out. “You’re an animal, Mad Dog!”

The loader grinned at Austin. “I cut a nasty fart in there. One of my C ration specials.”

Austin elbowed him.

“Hey, now! What’d you do that for?”

The commander elbowed him again. Swanson was a big, muscular ogre and confused vendetta with hobby, but Austin didn’t care. “I warned you. We’re rolling into a combat zone. Don’t start pulling your crap.”

“You don’t want to start with me—”

“Get back to your station, or I’ll knock you down there.”

“All right, all right. Shit.” Swanson retreated down the hatch.

“Injun country,” Austin told his crew. “Eyes sharp all around.”

Nothing much to see yet. The city was a purple haze in the distance. To the west, green fields unfolded to a great salt lake. Beyond lay a series of hills, which he kept an eye on, because that was where he’d place antitank guns if he were French. The sun warmed his shaven face even as the chilly wind stiffened it.

The first thing he noticed as the column rumbled toward the city was the quiet. Not a good sign. Then again, if a column of French tanks rolled into his hometown of Scranton, PA, he’d close the shutters and lock the doors too.

He felt the weight of the Revolutionary War bullet in his pocket and wished his dad could see him now, invading an African city. Boomer passed vineyards and copses of fragrant pepper, fig, and syringa trees.

“Obstacle in the road ahead,” Russo said. “I don’t see a way around.”

Austin raised his binoculars to take in wood roadblocks and sandbag emplacements, all unmanned. “Uh-huh. Drive right through it.”

“Oh, yeah. My pleasure.”

Boomer’s thirty tons smashed the barricades and chewed them to splinters.

Along the road, dense, reeking hovels transitioned to gleaming white buildings, exotic in their combination of Algerian and French art deco architecture. The road widened into an avenue lined with palm trees, Boulevard de Mascarad on the map. Mosques with soaring minarets, cathedrals, and stolid government buildings loomed over housing and markets.

Still no people, though. Oran appeared to be a ghost town.

Then a Berber boy emerged from a tenement and froze. Gaping at the tanks in wonder, the kid threw Austin a fascist salute and yelled, “God bless George Washington!”

Apparently, he didn’t know if the invading force was American or German and had decided to cover all the bases.

The commander smiled and flashed him a victory sign with his hand.

Then he glanced at his map. “Driver, right stick at the next intersection.” The Boulevard Paul Doumer.

“Roger, Boss. Hope we get there soon. We’re running on fumes.”

As Boomer turned the corner, Austin heard the music.

Boissau’s headquarters was located at the eastern edge of a large public square. There, a military band played a rousing march as if the American gasoline cowboys were visiting dignitaries and not an invading army.

A platoon of African soldiers with rifles fixed with yard-long bayonets flanked the arched entrance, where a group of French officers waited.

“What do you want to do?” Russo asked him.

“Wait, one.” Austin switched to RADIO. “Bears 3 Actual, this is Bears 3-5. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

“Looks like some kind of welcoming committee. Park right out front like you own the place, Five. Out.”

“Roger that, out. Shorty, you heard the man.”

“All Bears 3, deploy on Boomer,” Whitley ordered.

The column slowed to a halt in a line with their guns facing the French headquarters. The armored infantry dismounted from their halftracks and trucks and fanned out to cover.

The lieutenant leaned on Betty’s hatch frame and waved at the French officers. “How do you do, gentlemen?”

The officers saluted and waited for him to return it. A grizzled colonel called out in heavily accented English, “Welcome to Oran. You will wait here.”

“What are we waiting for?” Whitley called back to the French.

“General Boissau is negotiating an armistice with your commander.”

With that, the officers turned on their heels and withdrew into their headquarters, leaving the African troops coolly sizing up the Americans with slitted eyes.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Whitley. Then he grinned. “Bears 3 to Bears Actual… Cap’, the Frogs here say they’re on the phone with General Fredendall. I think they’re surrendering.”

Russo said, “We just seized a city. Is that cool or what?”

“Bears 3, the captain says to remain in place,” the lieutenant said. “We’re not to shoot unless somebody shoots at us first.”

“Roger,” Austin said. “Boys, you heard the LT. Stay in place until the big wheels make a deal.”

“Can we open the doors, Boss?”

The commander thought about it. “Yeah. Let’s be friendly. Swanson, secure the gun.”

Russo and Clay raised their hatches and seats to scan the area.

Clay leaned into his .30-cal. “Contact.”

“Relax, bog,” Austin said. “It’s just cits.” Cits, short for citizens. Civilians.

People were emerging from the buildings around the square for a closer look at the American show of force. Berbers, mostly, men in white robes and red fez hats and their veiled women, along with a handful of their French masters.

Clay released his hold on the MG. “I really thought today was the day.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” the bog sulked. “Forget it.”

Austin shook his head, sorry he’d asked.

“Vive l’Amerique!” one of Frenchmen called out. Others echoed the shout.

“Wow,” the driver said. “Do you hear that, Boss? They love us.”

Swanson surfaced from his hatch and looked around. “I’ll be damned.”

The citizens of Oran lost their timidity as their numbers grew into crowds. Soon, around the M4s, they milled in their native garb and suits and dresses, smiling and handing out tangerines.

Swanson accepted a cigarette from one of the locals and took a puff. “It ain’t that bad.”

“You’ll smoke anything,” Russo said.

The loader pulled off his helmet and slicked back his thick black hair, eyeing up the French beauties. “Right now, I’ll fuck anything.”

“Swanson,” Austin growled.

“I can look, can’t I? Or is that not allowed too, Sergeant Killjoy?”

A bearish man in a fez hat appeared in front of the bog and launched into some grand speech in French.

“What’s he saying?” Clay asked. “Shorty, you speak Italian. Isn’t it similar?”

The driver giggled. “I think he’s the mayor. He wants to surrender Oran.”

Clay shot Austin a panicked glance. “What should I tell him?”

“Tell him, ‘Sure, pal.’”

Clay leaned out of the hatch to shake the man’s hand, and to the kid’s credit, he gave it all the diplomatic gravity he could muster. “I accept your surrender.”

“Oui,” Russo translated for the man.

“C’est merveilleux!” the mayor yelled.

“What’s that mean?” Clay asked.

“Wait a minute, mister,” said Russo. “Did you say, ‘C’est merveilleux’?”

The man nodded, his fez bobbing. “C’est merveilleux! Oui! Très bien!”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh. Jeez. What a weird custom. You’re in for it now, Eugene.”

“What?” Clay demanded. “You told me to say it!”

“He says now you have to take him to America with you.”

“What?”

Russo chuckled as French women threw hibiscus flowers in the air like confetti. The colorful petals fluttered across Boomer’s front deck. “Take it easy, I’m just kidding.”

Austin couldn’t help but laugh too.

Wade’s head popped up from the loader’s hatch. “Wow, look at all this.”

A gang of French officers exited the headquarters and addressed the crowd. Bells tolled across the city, drowning them out. The people broke into wild cheering.

“Bears 3 Actual to Bears 3,” Whitley said over the radio. “All units stand down and say howdy to our new allies.”

“I guess that’s it,” Austin said. “Peace.”

The operation was over. He couldn’t believe it.

“What now, Boss?”

He had no idea. “Wait for orders, I guess. I expect we’ll be shipping out to invade France at some point, but that could take a while.”

“We’ll be in Tunisia fighting the Germans in no time,” Wade said.

Swanson snorted. “For somebody who’s supposed to be smart, you don’t know anything. The Brits are gonna take that shithole. We’re sitting pretty.”

“Africa is Europe’s back door. Hitler isn’t going to let us just take it. He’ll gamble and send everything he’s got to Tunisia, which, if you ever looked at a map, can be easily held if they get to the mountain passes first. The British don’t have enough men to do it on their own.”

Austin frowned. The gunner was talking sense. One thing he’d learned in the U.S. Army, promises didn’t mean anything. Circumstances changed.

Swanson said, “Did we get orders to ship out? Did I miss something?”

“No, I’m just—”

“Then shut your trap, and let’s enjoy this while it lasts.”

“Do you really think they’ll send us to Tunisia?” Clay asked.

Austin knew the gung-ho kid wanted to go. “We’ll have to see.”

“Enough about the war.” Russo hopped off the sponson.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

The driver mingled among the citizens of Algiers, shaking hands. “Diplomacy, Boss.” Eyes flashing, a buxom brunette placed a garland of winter roses around the driver’s neck and pecked him on the cheek. He blinked in a daze. “Minch! I think I’m in love!”

Before Austin could growl a warning about fraternizing, an Army truck honked its way through the crowd. “Now what?”

The driver leaned out and flashed Austin fingers extended in a V. “I got some barrels of wine in the back for you and your boys! Courtesy of the colonel!”

Swanson rubbed his big hands together. “Now we got us a party.” He shot Austin a worried look that turned into an ingratiating smile. “I take it back about calling you Sergeant Killjoy. I was just teasing. You’re a great commander.”

Austin pictured Mad Dog drunk and thrown in the clink by the MPs for pawing the locals. He called out, “Send it back!”

“Killjoy,” Swanson muttered.

The driver cupped his hand around his ear. “What?”

Whitley jogged over to the truck to talk to the man. The platoon commander would get this sorted out.

The lieutenant turned and waved at his platoon. “All right, come on, boys! A helmet full of hooch for every man!”

With cheers, the tankers scrambled from their vehicles. Boomer’s crew eyed their commander with hope.

“Come on, Sarge,” Swanson said. “Live a little. We’re celebrating.”

Austin gazed back at them. Damn foolish, leaving their tanks before the ink on the peace deal had even dried. There still were snipers in the city who hadn’t gotten the message the war was over in this part of the world.

Although, they’d done well over the past few days. They’d earned a rest.

He took off his helmet and handed it to Swanson. “Bring me some.”

The crew whooped and spilled pell-mell off the tank in a tangle of uniforms. They rushed to the truck to fill their helmets with Algerian red.

Let them enjoy themselves, he thought. While there’s something to enjoy and the time to do it. Time, he believed, that would eventually run out.