The Battle of North Africa

MAP: Tunisia and its major mountain ranges.

Tunisia, the next theater of operations in the North African campaign, showing its major mountain ranges that restricted roads and movement east.

^{CHAPTER SEVEN} RACE TO TUNIS

Scores of vehicles choked the coastal road. M4, M3, M5, tank destroyer, deuce-and-a-half, mobile artillery, jeep, kitchen truck, maintenance, hospital van, and other vehicles, all heading toward Algiers. Under the Berbers’ enigmatic gazes, the whole mess crawled, stopping and starting, starting and stopping, so much hurry up and wait it exhausted PFC Russo behind the sticks.

“For two hundred fifty years, the Barbary Pirates operated out of Algiers,” Wade cheerfully lectured from his station inside the tank. “America fought two wars against them.”

Russo groaned. They’d stopped near the ancient ruins of a Roman city, a colony Emperor Trajan established for military veterans. French archaeologists had dug it up and exposed fragmented walls and columns that jutted into air like a graveyard of colossal beasts. The gunner went out of his mind roaming its limestone streets, reading Latin inscriptions, and pocketing a chunk of marble he found in what he said was the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

Now he wouldn’t shut up.

“George Washington had the country’s first navy built to protect our merchants from them. Jefferson beat Adams in the 1800 election on a promise to stop paying tribute to the pirates, which was something like a fifth of the annual federal budget—”

“Put a lid on it, Wisenheimer,” Swanson said. The loader was standing in the turret, the top half of him sticking out of the hatch with his arms draped over the .50-cal MG’s barrel. “What, making history ain’t enough for you? We’re in a world war, for land sakes.”

“Yeah, Wisenheimer,” Russo growled. “It’s your fault we got into this mess.”

For the past week, Boomer’s crew had whiled away their time chasing French girls, swilling Algerian wine, and haggling in bazaars filled with silk, grass mats, oversized teapots, and skinned goats. In base, they’d spent their hours writing letters home, playing cards, bickering, and watching “Mickey Mouse” Army films warning against the dangers of venereal disease.

Overall, it wasn’t exactly easy living, but it was comfortable enough. Discipline was relaxed, and nobody was trying to kill them. They were waiting for the bulk of 1^st Armored to arrive, which was somewhere on the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, the Germans had gotten busy responding to the invasion of North Africa. They’d invaded Vichy France and rapidly occupied the whole country. They’d also tried to capture the French fleet at Toulon, but the admiral had scuttled it with the Germans right on their doorstep. At the same time, they’d poured men and materiel into Tunisia and rushed inland to plug the mountain passes.

As a result, General Sir Kenneth Anderson’s British and American brigades, which had struck east from Algiers to capture Tunis, didn’t have the strength to push through. So close yet so far, they were unable to advance, and soon they were retreating. They needed help. Around the middle of November, the tankers of 1^st Battalion had been ordered back into the fight, and now everybody was sore at Wade, like it was his fault his prediction had come true.

Because it is, Russo thought, who believed in jinxes and malocchio, the evil eye. If you said the worst that could happen, he believed it would happen.

“Did we win?” Clay asked the gunner. “Against the pirates?”

The driver glared at him. The bog shrugged and chomped his Wrigley’s.

“Eventually, yes,” Wade said and went on with his lecture.

“Why are you encouraging him?” Russo hissed at Clay.

Another shrug. “I’m bored.”

“No need to take it out on the rest of us.”

“You know, I wouldn’t be so bored if you’d let me drive.”

The driver snorted. “Not a chance.” Truth be told, he could use a break from the march, but it was a point of pride for him to stay behind the sticks. He wasn’t Sicilian anymore, and he apparently wasn’t American enough. No, he was something entirely different—a Sicilian-American, combining the strengths of both worlds, a new breed of man, a man with cazzo made of steel.

“Are there any girls in this story?” Swanson asked.

“No girls,” Wade said.

“Then it ain’t a good story. Tell us one with girls in it.”

“Now you’re encouraging him,” Russo groused.

“He’s gonna beat his gums no matter what we say,” the loader explained. “At least this way, maybe he’ll be interesting.”

“I’d prefer a story that will help us fight the Germans,” Austin chimed in.

“History’s filled with sex and violence,” Wade said, “I could tell you about Dido, the founder and first queen of Carthage.”

“Was she good-looking?” Swanson drooled.

Russo studied the instrument panel, which told him speed, oil pressure, fuel level, and temperature. All indicators were in the normal range, and the column was moving at a steady five miles an hour. Wheat fields sprawled on his right, reeking of human waste the farmers used as fertilizer. In the distance, he spotted another fly-ridden mud-wattle village the tankers had taken to giving names like East Someplace, New Nowhere, and Another Shithole. The monotonous blue Mediterranean stretched into the northern horizon on his left.

Nothing to distract him. He had no choice but to listen.

“Very good-looking,” Wade said. “Originally from Tyre, she fled after her brother killed her husband to get his money. She stopped in Cyprus, where she picked up all the local prostitutes as wives for her ship’s crew—”

The loader bellowed a laugh. “And here I thought history was boring! You hear that, Sergeant Killjoy? That Dido was a born leader, I tell you.”

“I’m taking notes here,” Austin deadpanned.

“Give me a good woman,” said Russo, warming to the conversation, “and I’ll fight the world. It’s in my Sicilian blood.”

“Is that what it takes?” Swanson mused. “’Cuz from what I hear, you Eye-talians can’t fight for shit.”

“One of these days, I’ll show you firsthand.”

“Haw, haw, haw,” the loader gloated.

“Actually, at one time, the Italians conquered most of the Western world,” Wade said. “And ruled it for five hundred years, fifteen hundred if you count the Byzantines. My story includes the Romans as well as Carthage.”

“See?” Russo said. “The Italians know how to fight. Please continue with your excellent lecture, Corporal. I’m all ears.”

“All nose is more like it,” Swanson muttered.

“Dido landed in North Africa, right where Tunis is now,” Wade said in a loud voice before Russo could respond about Swanson being all mouth. “She made a deal with a local ruler she’d take only enough land that an ox hide covered, then cut the hide into strips small enough to stake out an entire hill.”

“Ha!” Swanson chortled. “She sounds like some broads I know back home. They sure how know to turn an inch into a coupla yards.”

“On that hill, she built Carthage. If you believe the poet Virgil, she then welcomed Aeneas, who’d just escaped the sack of Troy. They fell in love, but divine intervention forced him to leave. In her grief, she said Carthage would henceforth and always hate the Trojans, climbed atop a funeral pyre, and fell on a sword. There, she burned while Aeneas went on his way to found Rome, which later fought three wars with Carthage and finally burned it to the ground.”

“This isn’t surprising to me,” Russo said. “That the girl killed herself, I mean.”

“Why?”

“Once you’ve been with an Italian man—”

The crew’s collective groans drowned him out. He grinned.

“Just remember, we might be fighting Italian men soon,” Austin said.

“Too bad for them, Boss.”

“I’m just saying—”

“I know what you’re saying. And if you think I’m going to let them kill me out of some loyalty to a country I’ve never been to, you’re crazy.”

After a long pause, the commander said, “Well. Okay, then.”

“Good,” said Russo, hoping that settled the matter once and for all.

The crew fell back into its stupor. The men had nothing to do but stare blankly at the countryside mile after mile. The tank passed adobe villages, gum tree farms, irrigation ditches, mule-drawn hay carts, shepherds tending their goatherds, and Algerian buses with wood- or charcoal-burning engines. Every mile, it seemed, they passed another broken-down tank or other vehicle awaiting help from the maintenance section or tank retrievers. A squadron of French hussars on black chargers trotted past, making better time than America’s mechanized finest.

“I’m so bored, I could go for another one of Wisenheimer’s stories,” Swanson complained. “We had it made in Oran.”

“Then he had to ruin it,” Russo said. “Next he’ll predict how the Germans are going to wreck us, and it’ll happen.”

“Now that you mention it, it isn’t going to be the cakewalk everybody thinks it’s going to be,” Wade said. “The Germans are going to be tough as nails.”

“See what I mean?” the driver crowed.

“Reservists, I hear,” Austin said. “Coastal defense types. Not their best.”

“My only worry is they’ll get away before we catch them,” Clay said.

Russo scowled. “Shut up, Eugene.”

“I joined up to fight the Germans. Stop yelling at me for wanting to do it.”

“We’re going to Berlin, and we haven’t even made it out of Africa,” the commander said. “You’ll get your chance, bog. No need to chomp at the bit.”

The sky dimmed as the sun sank behind them. At last, the platoon commander relayed a halt order. After a lengthy inspection, the crew tramped down the slope to the shoreline while Clay remained at the tank with the Thompson. There, they stripped down and jumped into the surf to wash off the day’s sweat and grime.

Russo gazed across the Mediterranean and wondered if he’d ever get to see the Old Country. Maybe after the war, he’d visit and look up extended family. He wondered how they’d see him, showing up in an American service uniform. He hoped they had no love for Mussolini, who was ruining their country. More than anything, Russo prayed a good Sicilian girl—a strong, big-breasted, dark-haired, fiery beauty—would fall in love with him, and he’d bring her back as his wife.

At last, Austin called out it was time to return to the tank and get chow. Russo lingered another few moments to enjoy the feel of sand under his feet, rollers breaking against his skin. He sensed there was some metaphor for life here. Life just kept hitting you, but if you stood strong and tall, you could take anything. Maybe there was always that one big wave that knocked you on your ass, but he hadn’t met it yet. Russo raised his fists and howled at the sea.

Swanson did a slow clap behind him. “Nothing more entertaining than seeing a buck naked runt barking at nothing. You should be in the USO.”

“Ha!” Russo hollered as he high-stepped out of the water. Considering everything this war was going to throw at him, Swanson was nothing. He didn’t even rate as a wave.

He dressed and filled Clay’s helmet so the bog could wash. Then he trudged back to Boomer. Clay had the little tanker stove going and was heating up their supper.

While they ate their corned beef hash, the commander said, “If you guys like history, I have a story for you.”

“The jury’s still out on whether we like it or not,” Swanson said.

“If it takes my mind off this dog food, I’m all ears,” Wade said.

“Does it have Italians in it?” said Russo, pure smartass.

The loader grinned. “Or girls?”

The commander growled, “Roll up your flaps and let me tell my story, all of you.” He reached into his pocket and opened a handkerchief to reveal a lump of lead. “This is the musket ball that nearly took my great-great-great granddad’s leg during the siege of Yorktown. And a German gave it to him.”

With wide eyes, Wade leaned to inspect the musket ball. “Amazing.”

“Bartholomew Austin was with George Washington through almost the whole shooting match. He ended up the rank of captain by Yorktown.”

“The last big land battle of the war,” the gunner said.

“That’s right. At Yorktown, the Americans and French worked together to squeeze Cornwallis. Late in the siege, the Americans dug a second line that allowed their guns to pound a key redoubt. All day, the guns fired at it, and that night, Bart charged with four hundred men under Alexander Hamilton. They took it with the bayonet. Just before the British surrendered, a Hessian mercenary plugged him in the leg.” The sergeant held up the piece of lead. “And this was the bullet.”

“Wow,” Clay said.

“Five days later, Cornwallis surrendered his eight thousand troops. They were the best in the world, but the Americans were better. The war ended soon after that, and America was born from it. That’s how I know we’re going to beat the Krauts and the Japs. Americans get the job done, no matter what it takes, even if we get slapped around a bit first.”

“You got that right,” Swanson said and scowled at Wade. “Why can’t you tell stories like that?”

The gunner reached for the musket ball. “Can I hold it?”

Austin pocketed it. “I can’t let anybody else touch it. Its luck is only for me, but seeing as we’re all in the same boat, so to speak, it’s your luck too.”

“I don’t believe in luck. I believe in probabilities.”

“I’ll tell you this. If I fall in battle, I want you boys to carry this musket ball into the next. And then I want one of you to bring it home and give it to my son.”

“Don’t say that,” Russo said. “If you say it, it’ll happen.”

“Just promise me. I’ll do everything I can to not let you down as Boomer’s commander. I want you to do this one thing for me.”

“We promise,” Russo said before the others ruined the moment.

He didn’t like it, but he appreciated the honor and tradition involved. They came from different worlds back home, even different Americas, but he and Austin had one big thing in common: the pressure to live up to a family name.

^{CHAPTER EIGHT} THE LONG SLOG

American armored columns groped east along the road between Algiers and Tunis, five hundred and sixty miles of rough terrain that steadily grew hillier until the road switchbacked through cork oak forests up into the Atlas Mountains.

The air temperature plummeted while sleet and rain made the ground muddier, a gooey red muck that stuck to everything and dried like glue. Mediterranean squalls turned the mountains lush with heather. That and the fog shrouding the ancient peaks reminded the tankers of Ireland.

By early December, they emerged from the cork forests and drove through fertile grassland valleys. Cactus hedges separated farms. During the day, the Berbers sniped at them from the rocks; at night, the robed harlequins came to sell rugs, beg for cigarettes, spy for the Germans, and steal everything in sight, all the while saying, baraka, baraka, which meant, blessings.

Otherwise, the gasoline cowboys had nothing to do but stare at monotonous scenery until they were all rock happy, or gape at the ambulances hauling wounded back to Algiers along with dire news and rumors that spread fear along the column.

Supplies dwindled; speculation blossomed. Hard fighting and heavy losses at the front. German elite paratroopers and panzer divisions waiting just ahead. Powerful antitank weapons such as 88s, MG42 machine guns, and a monstrous, invincible new tank the Germans called the Tiger. Axis artillery had blanketed the mountain passes with poison gas. A supply train had been captured and its crew crucified on the rocks as a warning.

As they neared Tunis, some soldiers shot off their toes to avoid combat.

“We ain’t even there yet, and they already got us licked,” PFC Swanson said. “By the time we get there, we’ll have scared ourselves to death.”

The real enemy, though, turned out to be mud.

The treads and wheels of scores of vehicles transformed the road into a quagmire, a thick, sticky red soup. It splashed everywhere and plastered the inside of the tank. The crew was smothered in it. It delayed the trucks bringing the beans and bullets, putting the tankers on a rationed diet and barely getting them enough gas and oil to roll another hard mile.

Even worse, at least in Swanson’s eyes, nobody had any cigarettes left, and he was reduced to smoking wild rosemary rolled in toilet paper.

Boomer’s engine howled as she fought the muck. She was bogged.

“You’re burning the clutch,” Swanson yelled. “I can smell it. We’re bellied.”

“Then get out and give us some traction, boombots,” the driver yelled back.

“Everybody out,” Austin ordered. “Get my tank moving.”

“If Tunis is so goddamn important, why didn’t we land there?” Swanson yelled at the top of his lungs. “Can anybody tell me that?”

Nobody answered him, not even Wade, who had an answer for everything. The outside air was cold but warmer than inside the tank, where it was freezing. Waving acrid exhaust from his face, Swanson slid off the sponson and splashed up to his knees in muck. They were in a tight little valley his people back home called a cove. Snow-capped mountains loomed all around. He spotted some wild sheep on a nearby slope and thought about lamb chops.

Austin mounted a yellow flag on his cupola to signal Boomer was out of action then stayed at his station to man the anti-aircraft machine gun.

“I’ll get the shovels.” Clay yanked his foot out of the mud and took an exaggerated step. His face crumpled at the edge of tears. “I just lost my boot.”

Swanson untied the shovels and thought about his options. Normally, the best thing to do would be to wrap chain around the track and tie a towing cable between it and the nearest tree, but no trees were in range. “Get one of the logs.”

Ahead, Buckshot was similarly ditched in the mud, its crew grousing as they dug themselves out. Too exhausted and focused on their work, nobody called out a greeting or even the usual grab-ass taunts.

With his arm plunged into the mud searching for his missing boot, Clay was no help. Swanson shoveled and scraped while Wade untied a log from the side of the tank. Austin had insisted they cut some of these and strap them to Boomer’s side in case they ran into this kind of situation. Using the log as an anchor, the tank would be able to pull itself out on its own power.

“Okay, now drag—”

In front of them, Buckshot gunned its engine and gained traction, spraying a rooster tail of mud that splattered across Boomer and her crew.

The loader clenched his eyes in silent rage. “Help me get it under the tracks.”

Wade did as he was told. “Okay.”

Swanson derived at least a small satisfaction in ordering the gunner around and seeing him get his hands dirty for a change. “I wonder if old Dido had to put up with this shit.”

Wade laughed. “Hannibal probably did when he crossed the Alps to invade Rome. We have tanks, he had elephants.”

The loader wanted to know more but bit his tongue. Once Wade got started, there was no stopping him. “How come you know so much about history, anyways?”

“I studied then taught it for a year at the University of Minnesota.”

“No shit?”

“No shit,” Wade confirmed.

“So you really are a professor. You wasn’t a factory foreman, like you said.”

“I’ve never been in a factory. I’m a college-educated city boy from a well-off family, everything you hate.”

The guy was coming clean. He just didn’t care anymore about appearances, which Swanson could respect.

He snorted. “I don’t hate you for that.” He hated him because he was snooty. “I take it back home your nickname ain’t Hawkeye, neither.”

“No. I’ve always been Charles. My wife’s the only one calls me Charlie.”

“I’ll call you Hawkeye,” Clay said, cleaning mud out of his recovered boot. “You’re a deadeye behind the gun.”

Wade ignored him. “Anything else you want to know, Swanson?”

“Yeah. Why you always talk and act so stuck up?”

“I talk the way I talk. It just sounds stuck up to you. Why do you care?”

Swanson shrugged. “Give it some gas, Mac.”

Boomer’s four-hundred-horsepower engine revved. The driver threw the transmission into granny gear, where the tank had maximum power. Boomer clawed up and over the log, which sank into the quagmire.

Austin said, “Good work—”

Buckshot screamed with strain as a track snapped and peeled off from the wheels. In his cupola, Cocker ducked as the track cracked in the air like a giant whip and tore off the radio antenna before slapping into the muck. The sergeant let loose a string of obscenities as his M4 slowly sank up to the turret.

Swanson couldn’t help but laugh. “That tank is good and screwed.”

“Roger, sir,” Austin said into the radio. “All right, boys, grab a shovel and pitch in to get her out. We’re stuck here for now.”

“Looks like we’re all screwed,” Wade pointed out.

Soaking wet and bitching, the platoon tramped over and started digging Buckshot out. Swanson said he still had a touch of dysentery and found some juniper shrubs to hide behind. There, he squatted with his roll of Army Form Blank, lit one of his pungent rosemary cigarettes, and planned to sit out most of the digging. The Army had taught him to never volunteer for work, while his upbringing had taught him to avoid it altogether. Work was for suckers.

Through a gap in the junipers, he watched the men scrape at the mud with their tools. Even the lieutenant chipped in. Wade really went at it, giving it everything he had, venting his frustrations with a pickaxe. Swanson suspected something more than the mud, cold, reduced rations, and anxiety over the Germans was eating ol’ Wisenheimer.

Thunder boomed in the east, echoing tinny and distant among the peaks and valleys. Only it wasn’t thunder; it was big guns shooting. The men gaped east like a startled herd and returned with renewed vigor to their shoveling. There was fighting ahead, and they were stuck here missing the party.

Look at them, Swanson thought. Everybody’s in a big hurry to get killed.

Holding his gut and wearing his best hangdog expression, he emerged from behind the bushes. Austin gave him the stink-eye but said nothing. The sergeant had a good read on men, and he could smell a shirker a mile away. Swanson grinned as if they shared a secret, grabbed a shovel, and made a big show of adding his muscle to the war effort.

Sergeant Cocker ran a cable between Buckshot’s rear and Boomer’s front plate. “You ready, Shorty?”

The driver gave a thumbs-up.

“Then clear out, everybody. Get back!”

Boomer crawled backward until the cable stretched taut between the big armored vehicles. Then she hauled Buckshot from the muck with a colossal sucking sound.

Panting and covered in mud, the tankers leaned on their shovels. Looking angry and exhausted, they rested as the overcast sky darkened by the moment.

“It’s just mud,” Lieutenant Whitley told them. “Mud ain’t gonna stop us.”

This rousing speech finished, he ordered Cocker to get the maintenance platoon to fix his tank. Then he told his platoon they’d RON in place. Swanson and his crewmates tramped off to Boomer and mounted up. Between the mud and fear of Berbers cutting their throats in the dark, nobody wanted to sleep outside. Even though it was tempting to sleep under the tank in the engine’s fading warmth, they had no interest in being smothered if it settled overnight.

At suppertime, the tankers lit their stove inside the turret, probably not the brightest thing to do in a cramped space surrounded by ammo and gasoline, but nobody cared anymore, not even their by-the-book sergeant. They left the commander’s hatch open to vent the smoke. With the eggs and Algerian wine they’d stowed long gone, dinner was cans of cheese and biscuits the men called dog bones, its unpleasant smell providing welcome relief from the worse stink of body odor.

Swanson accepted his hot food and pulled his spoon from his breast pocket. Army chow never bothered him. “Any word on what we’re doing here besides slowly turning into mud, Sarge?”

“Our orders are to drive east to support General Anderson,” Austin said. “What kind of support we’re talking about depends on when we get there.”

“Any word on what’s going on, though? All I keep hearing is how the Germans are using poison gas, the Arabs are eating our dead, and Axis planes dropped a hundred prisoners on Algiers.”

“I heard the Germans upgraded their guns to longer barrels,” Wade said. “With a stronger muzzle velocity, they can easily put a round through our armor.”

“I heard they have huge tanks that can’t be killed,” Clay chimed in.

“All that’s just latrine talk,” Austin said. “None of it’s true.”

“So enlighten us,” Swanson said. “What do you think is going on?”

The commander gave it some thought while he chewed. “We’re in the western dorsal. Anderson is facing off against Axis forces holding passes in the northern part of the eastern dorsal. South of us, the French are holding the rest of the eastern dorsal. So what happens next depends on the Germans.”

The Germans had chewed Anderson up and seized the initiative. They might hang tight onto what they had, expand their pocket to seize all the passes, or drive straight into Anderson’s scattered forces.

None of it sounded good to Swanson.

Wade spoke up. “We’ll either be thrown straight into the fight around Tunis or pushed south to get between the Axis army at Tunis and Rommel’s Afrika Corps.”

“How do you know?” Swanson said.

Wade shrugged. “It’s common sense. There’s no other option. If the weather’s bad, they may keep us as a reserve for a while first.”

“Great,” Swanson muttered. As opposed to stories about Axis planes dropping war prisoners on Algiers, the gunner’s theory sounded all too plausible.

“I guess we’ll know when we get there,” Austin said. “Which could take a while at the rate we’re going. Things could change a lot between now and then.”

Outside, trucks rolled into the area.

Clay opened his hatch to inspect the newcomers. “Supply train made it through!”

They scrambled out and joined the tankers crowded around the deuce-and-a-half trucks, a motley army of mud men clamoring for smokes, chow, and letters from home. The trucks had brought hundred-octane aviation gasoline in five-gallon cans and heavy oil for the M4s’ thirsty engines. There was a water barrel to refill their depleted supply.

Otherwise, the truckers had plenty of soap, razors, shaving cream, and hair cream to choose from. No food, PX rations, cigarettes, or mail, though, which were still stuck in the mud miles away.

The tankers growled in frustration.

“They ain’t doing without in Algiers, I can tell you that much,” Swanson spat. “Goddamn Army and its goddamn Army officers.”

Too tired to argue with him, nobody said anything. After topping up the tank on gasoline and oil, they returned to their stations and wrapped bedrolls around their shivering bodies. Clay stayed up in the cupola to take first watch.

Within seconds, they were all snoring.

Swanson awoke in the dark, quaking from the cold. “Who’s that on watch?”

“We’re all awake,” Russo said. “The cold woke us up.”

“I thought Africa was supposed to be fucking hot.”

“Can we light a fire outside, Sergeant?”

“No,” the commander said. “Light discipline.”

“Everybody else is doing it.”

They opened their hatches and looked around. The cold had woken the rest of the platoon up. The tankers had filled tire ruts in the ground with gasoline and lit them to make fires. Hot, beautiful, amazing fires.

“Bad idea.” Austin let out a resigned sigh. “All right, we might as well get warm. Clay, you stay here on the .50. I’ll come back and spot you as soon as I defrost. Let’s hope it’s too cold for Axis pilots to be flying around tonight.”

Snowfall dusted the ground, which had hardened to concrete. Overhead, the sky was clear and bright with stars. Swanson joined Buckshot’s crew gathered around a burning pit of gas. The bleary-eyed men shuffled their feet and spoke in grunts that produced clouds of vapor.

The loader rubbed his hands and lit another pungent rosemary cigarette, which he was starting to take a liking to. Beside him, the gunner shivered with his bedroll still wrapped around his shoulders. The man looked miserable. City boy, right. His type wasn’t used to this kind of hardship.

“You had a good job and a pretty wife,” Swanson said. “Why’d you even join the Army?”

The gunner eyed the fire. “What, we’re friends now?”

“Forget it. I’m sorry I asked.”

“Why’d you join? You don’t seem to like it much either.”

Swanson thought about the woman he’d loved, the man she’d loved, and how he’d cut him. “Because I was stupid. We all can’t be smart like you, Wisenheimer.”

“Look at me,” Wade said. “Do I look smart to you?”

“You look—”

The men froze and cocked their ears toward the sky.

A buzz throbbed in the cold night.

Swanson gazed down the road, clearly marked by firelight. “Um.”

The buzz grew louder to a high-pitched whine.

“Everybody, find cover,” Austin roared.

The whine became an anguished, demonic moan building until it seemed to fill the world, paralyzing Swanson where he stood.

“Move it, Swanson!”

He bolted into the dark and ran straight into rosemary bushes. He fell sprawling, every nerve tingling as death howled from the darkness.

The Axis plane opened fire with its machine guns, tracers flashing as the rounds thudded against the ground, ripped through bodies and trucks, and sparked and pinged off tanks. Nobody shot back.

Then the plane zoomed overhead, the terrifying whine dropping to a deep snarl. Men screamed for help in the aftermath.

“Bog,” Austin was shouting. “Fire the .50! Clay!”

The plane’s plaintive grumble signaled it was still up there somewhere, banking. Then the sound’s pitch changed.

Another whine, rapidly intensifying.

It was coming back.

Lying on his stomach, Swanson whimpered and clawed at the hard ground, trying to dig a shallow trench for cover. It wants me, he thought. It wasn’t a plane; it was a massive bird of prey, the angel of death himself up there, hunting. It’s looking for me, just me, and when it finds me, it’ll take me into the dark with it.

Austin’s silhouette dashed past the fire pit as he made for Boomer like some hero out of Wisenheimer’s stories. The tank commander raced up onto the rear deck and unlimbered the .50-cal AA machine gun.

David, Swanson thought. David and Goliath.

The whine became a metallic shriek as the plane dove into another run and opened up on the column. Austin yanked the charging bolt on the .50 and fired back, the gun pounding shells like a hammer striking sheet metal. The sparks of his tracers zipped into the black. Spent casings clattered on the deck.

The pilot didn’t seem to care, his machine guns a blinding strobe as he strafed the column. The bullets crackled around Boomer and kept going down the road in twin trails of flying dirt clods.

The ground trembled with a boom. In the distance, a fireball soared into the air, followed by another.

A growling retreat, and then the plane was gone, heading east.

Men called to each other, rushed to the wounded, gathered around the tanks in a daze. Swanson didn’t move, even after somebody yelled his name.

No, moving was dumb. Moving got you killed. The cold didn’t matter anymore. He was going to stay put from now on, the way he should have before he ever showed up at the recruiting office in West Virginia.

MAP: Tunisian front, mid-January 1943.

The thick black line represents the Allied front line, with British and American forces stalled out in the north, while a poorly equipped French corps lightly defended the southern front.

^{CHAPTER NINE} DUST EATERS

Corporal Wade peered through his scope at a world of dust. He imagined Stukas in the roiling clouds. Then he saw his wife’s face. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

Nothing lasts forever. After weeks of slogging through central Tunisia, everything changed. New orders came through, and the sun emerged to bake the mud into concrete that the tanks in turn chewed into waves of brown, airborne filth.

The dust worked its way into Boomer and coated everything. The air filter choked on it. It also nicely marked the column’s position for roving Axis planes and clouded his view. Axis planes that took off from dry, paved airstrips near Tunis, while Allied planes remained stuck on rain-drenched airfields.

A Stuka could be diving toward him right now, and he wouldn’t know it until he heard its siren scream.

Still, it was better than digging the tank out of the mud.

The orders were to move south toward a town called Gafsa.

“You know any good history about Gafsa, Corporal?” Clay said.

“The name rings a bell,” Wade said.

Swanson snorted behind him. “Nice going, Eight Ball.”

“I’m so bored I’d even listen to you guys argue,” the bog said.

“There’s actually not much to yap about,” Wade said. “But Gafsa is supposed to be the last place where Latin was spoken in North Africa after Rome fell.”

“Nobody cares,” the loader said.

“Private Swanson doesn’t get bored,” Wade told the crew. “His whole life has been dedicated to the active pursuit of doing nothing.”

Swanson chortled. “You actually got that right, Wisenheimer. Live and learn.”

During the grueling trek over the mountains, Wade had realized something important. Joining the Army had been an irrational response to his pretty wife’s infidelity. After Oran’s capture, the act felt completed. Thinking about what she’d done didn’t fill him with anger and longing anymore.

The Army didn’t care. His story wasn’t over. He wasn’t going home. During the drive into Tunisia, for the first time, he fully understood just how screwed he was. Whatever he’d signed up for, it would go on and on, possibly for years. He was stuck for the duration, endless drudgery and smelling Swanson’s foul farts.

After the Messerschmitt strafed the column that one night, the stakes also felt different. The plane’s roar too big, too loud, like a force of nature, like a hurricane bearing down to sweep him out to sea. It had torn a tanker in A Company in half. Wade had started to understand he hadn’t joined the Army. He’d joined a war he might not survive.

Every time he’d dug the tank out, it was like digging his own grave.

As depressing as it all was, after a while, it also freed him. He realized he had nothing to prove to these men, no further need to make up a story to fit in. He just didn’t care anymore. Yup, I prefer Charles to Charlie. Yup, I went to college, and then I taught at one until I did something really stupid. Yup, I’m going to yap about history because I LOVE it.

And screw you, Swanson.

“Keep an eye on our loader, Sergeant,” Wade said. “At any minute, he’s going to switch sides and become a Berber. In fact, I think he’s been one all along.”

“Roger,” the tank commander said.

The crew laughed. By now, they all looked down on the nomads who smelled horrible, appeared sixty by the time they were thirty, scavenged the dead, and otherwise showed up out of nowhere to beg, steal, or try to sell junk.

“Them A-rabs don’t care who rolls through,” the loader said. “They just go on with their lives while we kill each other off. You tell me who’s smart.”

The tank quaked. Swanson’s big helmeted head thunked against his hatch. The man cursed.

“We blew a bogie wheel,” Russo blared over the interphone.

The wheel’s rubber padding had heated up, detached from the rim, and flew off into the dust. If the rough wheel rode on the track too long, the track itself could be damaged. It wasn’t a difficult fix, and Boomer carried spare parts like this. Plenty of spare parts, all manufactured to high design tolerances, was one of the things the U.S. Army was good at.

“We’re stopping at Kasserine,” Austin said. “We can hold until then.”

The men groaned. The bogie wheels were part of the tank’s suspension system. A rough wheel meant a very rough ride. Wade’s helmet banged against the ceiling.

“How far?” Swanson said.

“It’s at the end of this wadi.”

“That would be helpful if I knew what a wadi was, Sarge.”

Wade said, “It’s a valley that’s normally dry except—”

“Can anybody except Wisenheimer tell me what a wadi is?”

Too preoccupied with riding out the jolts, nobody answered.

“Like a peanut in a can,” Swanson growled as his head thunked again. He opened his hatch. “Screw it. I’d rather eat dust.”

That left Wade the only crewman with his head still in the tank. By the time the battalion rolled into Kasserine, he was nursing a throbbing headache. Russo changed the bogie wheel, Swanson and Clay raised the engine deck to add coolant to the radiator and clean the air filter, and Austin topped up the heavy oil and watered the battery. Wade popped a couple of aspirin and washed them down with swallows from his canteen. He poured more water onto a rag to clean the scopes.

Their work done, the crew ate their chow—franks and beans, which the men called Army chicken—in a hurry, eyes glued to the eastern horizon where a plane would come from. The Messerschmitt attack had stripped away a lot of their cockiness and replaced it with the heebie-jeebies.

Austin showed them a map. “This is us.” His finger moved. “This is Gafsa.”

“Good place for us,” Wade said.

The tank commander nodded. “It’s all about the roads.”

Gafsa was a crossroads town providing the ability to mobilize either to support the front line or strike east toward Sfax or Gabés. The capture of either would cut the German army in two, separating General von Arnim’s forces in northern Tunisia from Field Marshal Rommel’s Afrika Corps holding the Mareth Line.

“And that’s how we’re going to win,” Austin said.

Wade said, “The Germans aren’t going to let that happen.”

“According to the grapevine, the brass believes the Krauts are going to give the French a good drubbing up north.”

“Well, that’s how General Fredendall thinks.”

The commander narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Fredendall learned everything he knows in the last big war. If he thinks Rommel earned his nickname the Desert Fox by trading jabs, he’s got a severe lesson coming. When it comes to mobile warfare, Rommel’s king.”

“Didn’t I tell you he’s a pain in the ass, Sarge?” Swanson said.

Austin raised his hand to silence him. “What’s the lesson, exactly?”

“That the Germans have air superiority and shorter supply lines. They have the initiative, and when they punch, they do it fast and decisive. They’ll attack through the southern passes to secure their communications. It’s what I’d do.”

Now the commander smiled. “With what? We outnumber them.”

Wade shook his head. “You don’t know Rommel. He’ll leave his infantry to hold Montgomery and bring up every tank he has from Libya.”

“I say let him,” Clay said. “Let him come right at us.”

“Give it a rest, Eugene,” Russo said.

“No, he’s right,” said Austin. “Even better for us. We’ll have the whole 1^st Armored Division at Gafsa. If the Fox wants to do our work for us, so be it.”

“You scared of Rommel, General Wade?” Swanson said.

“I respect him,” Wade said. “There’s a big difference between fear and respect, even if you don’t seem to understand it.”

The loader scowled. He knew he’d been insulted but wasn’t sure how.

“I understand plenty,” he muttered.

“I respect Boomer,” Austin told his crew. “She’s a good tank and more than a match for whatever the Germans can throw at us. If Rommel wants to take on Old Ironsides, I’m looking forward to it.”

Wade hoped the commander was right.

They drove into Gafsa the next day and found a motley camp of French and American infantry and tanks sprawled around the town. They were close to the Sahara now, a land of wadis and brown mountains receding into a purple haze. The desert wind blew dust devils across the rough landscape.

They drove to their designated area in the tank park. Combat scars streaked some of the tanks there. They were light tanks, and their crews told one hell of a story. They’d been fighting in the north with Anderson, pushing ahead of the main body to raise hell. After surviving a Stuka attack, they’d blazed through a town, leaving the burning wrecks of armored cars and trucks in their wake, and took cover in an olive grove. When they emerged along a ridge, they looked down onto the plain to find a Luftwaffe airfield.

Being Americans, they charged right in whooping. The tanks rolled down the hill straight onto the airstrip, lighting up planes and mowing down the fleeing airmen. Ammo cooked off in the burning planes, popping tracers everywhere, while the fuel stores in the hangars belched massive fireballs.

“It wasn’t until later we ran into Kraut tanks,” said a bog with a big wad of chewing tobacco stuffed in his cheek. “They were Specials, Mark IVs with a long-ass barrel. They were knocking us out at three thousand yards, while all we had was our pop guns. We couldn’t hurt a fly past a thousand yards. We got our asses kicked. If the Brits hadn’t showed up on their flank, they’d have eaten us alive.”

“How many planes did you blow up?” Clay wanted to know.

“Maybe fifty or a hundred, I don’t know. Closer to a hundred, I guess.”

Which means thirty or forty, Wade thought.

“Wow.” Clay’s eyes shined with a crazy light. The kid wanted every gory detail.

Austin pressed for more about the German tanks, information he could use. Russo puffed out his chest and told a dramatically embellished story about how his M4 had knocked the tracks off a French tank with a single shot. The tanker’s tale had exorcised the heebie-jeebies. They were cocky again and hungry for glory.

Wade glanced at Swanson, who walked away toward Boomer. Whatever the light tank crew had experienced, the loader wanted nothing to do with it.

Looks like we have at least that in common, he thought.

Wade followed and found the man lying on the engine deck smoking a cigarette. When the supply trains had started running again, Swanson had scored a carton of Chesterfields and was finally able to give up his lousy homemade cigarettes.

“There’s a fair chance we’re going to die out there,” he said.

The loader cocked an eye at him. “Are you being doom and gloom again, or are we still being honest? Either way, you’re bad luck.”

“I don’t believe in luck. I believe in probabilities. If we’re going to survive, we need every edge. And that means we can’t have rounds jamming in the breech.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Swanson growled. “You focus on shooting straight.”

“You didn’t shove the round in all the way,” Wade told him. “You were afraid of catching your fingers in the breechblock. That’s why it jammed.”

The loader sat up and glared at him. “You’d better get out of my ass.”

“Or what?” There was a fair chance Wade was going to die before he escaped Africa. Swanson had nothing to threaten him with.

The loader glanced over to where Austin was talking to a light tank commander. “If you tell anybody, I’ll make you sorry you did.”

“Do your job right, Swanson. I intend to survive this.”

He walked away, ignoring the loader’s sputtered replies.

Over the next two weeks, the tankers enjoyed washing in the hot-spring Roman baths. Wade toured the town’s sixteenth-century citadel. Swanson and Russo frequented a bordello. At night, the sand contracted in the high desert cold, producing a strange crackling hum.

Meanwhile, the brass peeled off armored units and sent them away to support various operations. By the end, most of the division was broken up and distributed.

“Because that’s how General Fredendall thinks,” Wade said during routine maintenance on Boomer.

He handed Swanson a wrench. The loader and Austin leaned into the open engine bay to tighten the mounting bolts on the power unit.

“Lord,” Swanson said. “You really are a government-issue pain in the ass.”

Austin didn’t like it. “I can’t believe old Pinky is putting up with this.” General Orlando “Pinky” Ward, 1^st Armored’s commander, led a division that was being carved up piecemeal. “The guy fought with Blackjack Pershing in Mexico. He earned a Silver Star in France at the Battle of the Marne.”

Wade didn’t think Ward was much better than Fredendall. Much of the experience the generals had gained in the last war didn’t help in this war, where mobility was everything. The Germans had embraced new doctrines. On the American side, maybe General Patton got it, but few others in the brass did.

Russo claimed that once the Italians knew how good their cousins had it in America, they’d all surrender. A tanker in Cat Company told him to put his money where his mouth was. So Russo made a bet where he’d get five dollars for every man who surrendered and would pay only a total of five dollars if nobody did. After they shook hands on it, he wrote a message and paid some Tunisian boys a few francs to deliver it to Italian forces holding Sened Station.

Wade considered it akin to writing to Santa, but after two days, the boys returned with a letter. An entire squad was packing its bags and intending to defect.

“They’re coming tomorrow,” a grinning Russo told Wade over chow.

“Don’t say anything about it to Swanson. You know, about how easily these Italians are surrendering.”

“He’s a boombots,” the driver declared. “Me? I’ll be in Life Magazine.”

The tankers excelled at making crazy boasts, but Wade took the bait. “How do you figure that?”

“I paid a tanker in Alligator Company a dollar to take a picture of me posing with the Italians once they show up. I also sent out more letters. If I can get a whole platoon to come over, they’ll give me a medal.”

“You really think?”

“How many guys capture a whole platoon, bada bing, just by writing a letter? I’m gonna be famous, man. They’ll send me home to sell war bonds.”

“Well, okay then,” Wade said. “You’ve obviously thought it all through.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s all planned out.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Drive on, Shorty.”

Wade didn’t know what was going to happen, though with the probabilities being what they were, it was easy to imagine the worst. The driver faced the same odds, and being no dummy, he knew how this all might end for him. Russo simply refused to let it get him down. He was going to take each moment as it came and get whatever enjoyment he could from it.

The big things still terrified Wade, but he thought the little things might get him through with his sanity intact. And not just his books, but the moments of comedy and raw humanity his crewmates offered.

Austin stomped over to the tank. “We’ve got orders. Mount up!”

Russo’s mouth dropped open. “Ma che quest, goombah?”

The tank commander glared. “I told you I don’t speak Axis.”

“We’re leaving? Right now?”

“Yeah, we’re leaving, and yeah, we’re doing it now. You want a printed invitation? Get in gear. We’re supporting the attack on Sened Station.”

“We’re attacking Sened Station?”

Austin didn’t answer as he mounted the sponson.

Wade shrugged. “Bad luck, Shorty. Your plan had a weird logic to it. You might have actually pulled it off.”

“La vesa gazi,” the driver muttered.

Wade pulled on his helmet. “What’s that mean?”

“Whatever you want it to mean. It’s sort of an all-purpose cuss.”

“Move it!” the commander yelled.

Wade couldn’t help but laugh again. It quickly faded as he settled into his station behind Boomer’s big 75.

The little things were fleeting, while the big things seemed eternal. The war was always waiting, and it always collected.

MAP: Map of Southern Tunisia, showing towns of importance.

^{CHAPTER TEN} CHASING THE TAIL

PFC Clay was glad to be back on the move, even if it meant eating dust again. With Boomer’s ammo racks full and her tuned-up aviation engine purring like a kitten, she rolled in formation with the rest of the battalion.

Sened Station was fifteen miles east of Gafsa. It was a group of flat-roofed buildings clustered around a Tunisian railroad whistle stop, and now it served as an outpost for Italian troops. The American infantry and tanks were on a collision course with them.

Sened wasn’t the main objective, however. The real target was Maknassy, about ten miles farther up the road. By capturing it, the Allies would hold the pass and the high ground overlooking the plains leading to Sfax.

The infantry would do most of the work to clear the buildings, and the tanks would be there in support. The coming battle promised a chance for Clay to be useful with the bow gun. He was still grinding his teeth over freezing up at the .50 while the Messerschmitt rained death from the night sky. This time, he’d do his job and, God willing, make a difference.

The radio blatted. “Bears 3 Actual to Bears 3, we are breaking off the main body to carry out a fragmentary order. Get ready to clock six, right.”

The platoon was turning around and heading back toward Gafsa. One by one, the tank commanders acknowledged the order.

Austin: “Bears 3 Actual, Bears 3-5. You mind filling us in?”

“The Krauts are pushing hard through Faïd Pass,” the lieutenant said. “Our boys are under the hammer up there. Let’s get it done.”

“Wilco,” Austin responded. “Driver, clock six, right on the LT’s order.”

“Now,” Whitley said.

The tank clanked into a wide, ponderous turn through a cactus patch. Clay shielded his face as the air swirled with flying needles until Boomer found the road again. Whitley thanked them all for a maneuver well done.

He added, “We’re going to get on another road heading northeast toward Sidi bou Zid and catch the Kraut armor in the flank. Bears 3 Actual, out.”

Clay grinned. It sounded like a juicy op. “Finally, we’re in it.”

Next to him, Russo shook his head. “You want to be a big hero, is that it, Eight Ball? Go home with some medals on your chest?”

Clay pictured it. A huge parade down Mapleton’s Main Street, the whole town turned out to see him. His brother alongside, and his mom and dad, all walking together to Grant Park’s gazebo. There, the mayor would unveil a statue of him defying Hitler in his tanker overalls, and the crowd would cheer.

“Yes,” he said.

“If we win the war and you’re around to see it, trust me, you’ll be a hero.”

“I guess.”

While a triumphant homecoming made a great fantasy that rolled like a movie through his head, it wasn’t enough to drive him. He wanted to prove to himself what kind of man he was, and he would never know until he faced the ultimate test, a test he’d failed on the shores of Mud Lake.

Since the Messerschmitt attack, he had fantasized about only one thing. Firing the .50 at the screaming plane and bringing the bastard down in a fireball.

Clay added, “Don’t you want to do something special in the war?”

“I’m serving my country. My family’s already proud. The best thing I can do now is get home to them alive.”

“It’s different for me. I want me being here to mean something.”

“Whatever you’re looking for, you’ll find it,” the driver said. “Don’t be in such a hurry to get to the war. It will come to you.”

“But when it does—”

“I like how that came out. Real words of wisdom. You should write it down.”

“Hey, Cherry,” the loader chimed in. “What Mac is trying to say is, when you get super gung-ho, it makes the rest of us nervous. So take it easy.”

Clay shook his head. He didn’t get these guys. The Army had taught him to be aggressive. The only good German was a dead German. Go into combat with everything you had and never give up. Kill them all, every last one.

Some of his crewmates acted more like tourists than warriors. They seemed far more aggressive in how they talked about each other than the Germans. As for him, he’d fought to get transferred here from an artillery unit. He had initiative.

“We’re here to kill Germans,” Austin said, appearing to agree with his bog, but then added, “Like professionals.”

Clay understood now. He was supposed to possess an enthusiastic bloodlust but be cool about it. As if heroism, self-sacrifice, and killing were everyday things.

Nah, to hell with it. He had a feeling these guys were always going to see him as New Guy and ride his ass for it. He might as well be himself.

When he finally got his chance to make a difference, they’d see what he was really made of. He wouldn’t be New Guy anymore.

Through the veil of roiling dust cloud churned up by the tanks, Clay spotted black columns of smoke in the south. Black dots of planes dropped out of the sky on vertical bombing runs.

“Sergeant, I see planes south of us. Somebody’s getting clobbered.”

“Wait one,” the commander said. “Yeah, I see it too. That’s the other combat command heading to Maknassy. Looks like they ran into some Stukas.”

More like the Stukas ran into them, Clay thought with a shudder.

“Guess getting detached worked out for us,” Russo said. “A little good luck goes a long way.”

The tanks pushed forward until the landscape turned into semi-arid farmland and scrub-covered hills leading to mountains patched with cypress. The battalion stopped for chow and maintenance. Then it drove on until the flat-roofed houses and palm trees of a small town came into view.

“We’re close now, boys,” the tank commander said. “That’s Sidi bou Zid.”

“Bears 3 Actual to Bears 3,” the radio buzzed. “New orders.”

The men groaned.

“You’re shitting me,” Sergeant Cocker muttered.

“Yup, you guessed it,” the lieutenant said. “We’re going back.”

“What’s the situation, Bears 3 Actual?” Austin said.

“We took Sened with heavy losses, and now everybody’s pushing hard to take a crack at Maknassy.”

“What about the German attack at Faïd Pass?”

“Local forces have the situation well in hand. We’re not needed there.”

“Roger, Bears 3 Actual,” Austin said then switched to interphone. “Hey, Corporal. It looks like the Germans’ big attack failed.”

“Then it wasn’t the big attack,” the gunner answered.

“See what I mean, Sarge?” Swanson chimed in. “You can’t win with him.”

“Makes you wonder,” said Austin.

Wonder what? Clay thought. Wonder if he’s right?

Because Wade usually was. Clay had no problem with the man. He was an odd duck and a bit of a recluse, but he was friendly enough, especially when somebody pushed the right button and all the history talk poured out. He’d taught Clay to wash his uniform in gasoline to kill the desert lice. Mostly, Clay liked him because he know how to lay the gun under pressure. It was good to be rolling with a guy like that into combat, where seconds counted.

Near the end of the day, the column reached within thirteen miles of Maknassy. No sign of the Axis, though Clay felt the battalion and its attached infantry were being watched. When the radio blatted again, he jumped in his seat.

“Bears 3 Actual to Bears 3,” Whitley said. “New orders.”

“Come on!” Swanson fumed in the turret.

“The Krauts mauled our guys at Faïd and took the pass,” said the lieutenant. “Looks like we’re needed there more than we are here.”

He walked through instructions for turning around. The tank commanders acknowledged. Nobody in Boomer said anything for a while.

“That’s the big attack,” Wade said.

“We’ll plug whatever hole we find up there,” Austin said, “while the other combat command takes Maknassy. We’re still in good shape.”

“Our guys could barely take Sened,” the gunner said. “And that was supposed to be a cakewalk. We’ll see how far they get without our battalion.”

Lieutenant Whitley came through on the radio. “Thanks for the expert military analysis, Boomer. By the way, you’re still transmitting on the radio.”

“Sorry, LT,” Austin said and switched to the interphone. “Corporal, if you have anything to say, keep the topic limited to gunnery.”

“Then you won’t want to hear me tell you how bad a situation we’re in if the Germans hang onto Faïd.”

Lying in a mountainous bottleneck, Faïd was easily defendable high ground. From there, Axis forces could strike out against Allied troops scattered on the plain.

“There goes our morale officer again,” Russo muttered and sighed. “Jeez. All this back and forth chasing our tail is exhausting.”

Clay said, “If you’re tired, I can take over driving.”

“Not a chance, kid.”

“Then bitch to somebody else about being tired.”

The driver cast him a sidelong look through dusty goggles. “Stanna mabaych.”

Clay didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded appreciative. Maybe insulting his crewmates to their face was the key to respect around here. They certainly did it enough to each other. Though he had his doubts, maybe they all secretly liked each other. He hadn’t been raised like that. Back home, you raked your closest friends over the coals, but mouthing off to anybody else would earn you a punch. Maybe people did things differently outside of Mapleton.

“If they tell us to turn around again, I say we go back to Gafsa,” Swanson said.

“We’ll do our duty and follow our orders,” the commander said.

“Which orders? The generals don’t know what they’re doing.”

“Have to agree with Mad Dog on that one,” Wade chimed in.

Swanson guffawed. “Even Wisenheimer agrees. We’d be better off voting.”

“This isn’t a democracy,” Austin grated. “If you don’t like it, find yourself another tank.”

“How about the maintenance section?” the loader said.

“Mad Dog, at the end of this operation, I’ll put you anywhere you want to go just to see the backside of you.”

“I’ll hold you to that, Sarge.”

“I’ll take his spot now,” Clay said. Commanders could switch roles in their tanks for disciplinary reasons.

“Shut it, Eight Ball,” Swanson snarled.

“If you don’t want to do your part, let me do it. I’ll load.”

“Sounds good to me,” Wade said. “Let Shorty smell his farts for a change.”

“No way!” Russo protested.

“We can smell them down here too,” Clay said.

“You guys are pissing me off,” Swanson warned.

“I actually want to be here, Mad Dog. You can be the bog, and then we can call you New Guy.”

Russo shook his head. “I don’t want him sitting next to me.”

“Then let me drive sometimes,” Clay said.

“Okay, I’ll let you drive, soon! I give up!”

“Nobody’s moving me anywhere,” Swanson growled. “I ain’t sitting down there with the Macaroni. I barely fit up here in the turret, and I ain’t using the belly hatch if we have to bail.”

“All right, everybody, shut it,” Austin said. “We can talk about where we’d all like Private Swanson to go later. Right now, we’re in injun country.”

By the time they returned to Sidi bou Zid, the battle for Faïd was over.

“New orders,” Whitley said over the radio. “We’re, uh, stopping here to wait for new orders. As for what those orders will be, all y’all’s guess is as good as mine.”

The tanks rolled off the road and plowed through acacias until coiling near an olive grove southeast of the town. With one eye fixed on the eastern sky, the men watered the battery, tightened the track, and checked the fluids before getting their chow.

Fearful of air attack, they maintained light discipline and slept under their tanks. Clay took the first two-hour watch. An Axis plane winked its lights overhead, but knowing he was being baited to shoot and give away his position, he held his fire. He watched the plane cross the sky. A part of him hoped it would spot his tank under its camouflage netting, while the rational part of him didn’t.

Something big is going to happen soon, he thought.

The next morning, however, no new orders came.

Nor for the next two weeks as the front stabilized. To Clay’s disappointment, nothing happened at all during that time.

Until Valentine’s Day.

^{CHAPTER ELEVEN} THE STORM

Shivering in pitch black night, Tank Sergeant Austin awoke to howling wind and pounding thunder. Rain crackled along Boomer’s metal skin.

What a downpour, he thought. We’re in for a flash flood.

But it wasn’t rain. He nudged the other men awake. “Sandstorm!”

He could barely hear himself over the static buzz.

A colossal wind blew across the mountains from the Sahara, choking the air with stinging sand. Even nestled as he was under the tank’s big belly, the tiny grains pricked his face. He was already half buried in it.

Austin found his helmet and pulled it on along with his goggles. He spat and raised his bandana over his mouth and nose.

Again, that strange rumble sounded. Only it wasn’t thunder. Somebody out there in the sandstorm was shooting a whole lot of big guns.

Using his helmet, Swanson tapped on Boomer’s belly escape hatch. At least he thought it was Swanson; he couldn’t see a damned thing. He hoped Wade, who was on watch, heard it. They were about to be buried alive here.

The whole thing was so surreal he wondered if he was still asleep, dreaming the whole thing up. A psychiatrist would tell me the sand represents the pressure of command, or some such nonsense, he thought. My mind’s way of telling me I’m carrying too much on my shoulders. As if he didn’t know that already.

The hatch swung open. He felt along the cover to gauge its angle. Not enough room for them all to crawl up and inside, especially the loader with his gorilla build. Austin and Swanson scrabbled at the dirt until they’d dug a deep-enough depression.

Swanson squirmed up through the hatch, his boot clopping the side of his sergeant’s head. Austin tapped Russo’s shoulder to send him up next. Then he shimmied inside and pulled the hatch shut behind him.

The M4’s three interior dome lights cast an eerie glow. Shadows flickered across metal as Clay moved up into the turret to give Austin room. Wade had closed the commander’s hatch to keep out the sand, but it had still managed to dust everything. Outside, the wind and sand scoured the tank’s armor like a giant Brillo pad. Inside, the still air was dim and freezing.

After Austin traded places with Clay in the turret, Wade grabbed his arm. “Did you hear the shooting, Sergeant?”

He nodded.

“Somebody letting off a few rounds?”

Austin shook his head. Too many guns were shooting with random intensity. It sounded like combat. Some vehicles out on patrol had gotten caught by the storm and stumbled into each other, it had to be.

Though it had sounded like far more vehicles than would be out on patrol, and the firing was sustained. Echoes, maybe?

What a damned strange night.

The men settled at their stations and plugged into the com system. Austin tried the radio, hoping the wind hadn’t sent his aerial to Oz.

The other tanks in the platoon checked in. He did the same and clamped his gloved hands over his earphones to hear better.

“Nobody knows what’s happening,” Whitley told his platoon.

Austin switched the radio to INT. “Hang tight, men. Catch some more shuteye if you can. When this storm lets up, we’ll have a lot of work to do.”

Loose sand could belly a tank as good as mud. They’d have to dig themselves out, clean and test their weapons, and inspect the engine.

“First, it was mud, now it’s sand,” Swanson said. “The whole country’s trying to kill us.”

The gunner nestled into his seat and closed his eyes. “Not us. Just you.”

“Yeah? I wonder who’d like to—?”

Austin switched back to RADIO. The howling wind swallowed the remainder of Swanson’s witty rejoinder. If they wanted to bitch at each other, they could pencil messages and pass them around.

The white noise lulled him back to sleep and dreams of home; he was bobbing Rex on his knee, and then—

“We’re under attack,” the radio said.

Dawn’s light reached through the scopes into the tank, bathing the interior a dim orange. The sandstorm was over. Austin kicked Wade in the back, startling the man awake. The gunner would wake up the rest of the crew.

Then he focused on the radio. Attack? Again, he had a strange feeling he was dreaming all this.

“The Krauts came out of the pass in the storm,” Whitley said. “Apparently, the 168^th is in some serious trouble. We haven’t gotten orders yet, but the colonel wants us combat ready. Get your tanks ready to move.”

“Roger,” Austin said then addressed his crew. “Let’s get to work.”

He heaved the hatch open, and sand trickled into the turret like an hourglass. He hauled out his stiff body and inspected the view. Everywhere, tanks were half buried in drifts, camouflage netting blown away or buried along with a junkyard’s worth of gear.

One by one, blinking in the morning sunlight, his crew emerged. Russo stretched and rubbed his arms for warmth, producing a cloud of dust. In the east, the guns were still firing, a steady rumble that vibrated through the air and ground.

What a mess. Axis tanks were rumbling out of the passes, and here was Tank Sergeant Austin, without orders, cleaning up from a sandstorm.

“Get digging,” he said. “We need to be able to move fast if we’re called.”

“Cripes,” Clay said at the front of the tank. “Sergeant, check this out!”

The bog pointed at Boomer’s front plate. The storm had scoured swathes of paint off the turret and glacis, exposing gleaming, polished metal.

“We’ll give her a new coat later,” Austin said. “Let’s get to work.”

He and Clay grabbed shovels and dug while Swanson and Russo leaned into the engine bay and Wade cleaned the weapons.

His labors made him sweat, moisture that attracted every bit of sand still in the air along with black flies. After two weeks of being in the field, all he wanted was a hot shower instead of daily whore’s baths from the same helmet he shaved with. He missed the hot-spring Roman baths at Gafsa.

The lieutenant waved at him from his Betty, which once again flew the Texas flag from its aerial. The other sergeants had convened there. Austin dropped his shovel and made his way to them.

Whitley held his map attached to a clipboard. “It’s worse than we thought. The Krauts punched their way through our line, and now two battalions of the 168^th Infantry are under siege on the hills overlooking the pass.”

Cocker bent to inspect the map. His eyes widened. “You’re shitting me.”

“That’s not even the worst part. The colonel says Kraut armor is rolling up out of Maknassy and coming straight at us from the south. Word is they’re the 21^st Panzer, the best desert fighters on the whole goddamn planet. Lucky for us, they won’t get here for a while, so we can take our problems one at a time.”

Dunlap flicked his cigarette into the sand. “What do you want us to do, sir?”

“The colonel wants us on the move ASAP,” the lieutenant told them. “We’re going north to Lessouda and relieve the 168^th and buy enough time that whoever is able to pull out can do it. Any questions?”

Nobody had any.

“Then get to it,” Whitley said. “This is it, gentlemen. Today, we’re going up against Kraut armor for the first time. Let’s do it right and kick Jerry in the balls.”

“Yes, sir,” Austin said.

The pow wow broke up. Cocker invited him over to Buckshot, where they had coffee brewing. Austin looked back at Boomer. His crew was doing fine getting the tank ready, working together like a well-oiled machine.

If I could just keep them working on the tank around the clock, they’d get along just fine, he thought.

At Buckshot, Cocker gave him a steaming mug. “What do you think, John?”

He sipped the hot coffee and sighed with satisfaction. “I’m starting to think the brass doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

“My sentiment, exactly.”

At the same time, Austin was happy Boomer would see some action. She was one of the most lethal machines ever built by man, and today she’d get her test. Her crew had trained a long time and come a long way to fight.

“They’re going to order us up there, and we have no idea what we’re going up against,” Cocker complained. “It could be a whole division.”

“No use wondering. We’ll follow our orders, and whatever we run into, we’ll make them sorry.” He chuckled. “You got to admire their balls, though. Launching an offensive in a sandstorm.”

“Yeah,” Cocker said, paling. “Well, good luck today.”

Austin gave him the mug back. “You too, Barney. Thanks for the cup of joe.”

After they shook hands, he headed toward Boomer, excited and scared and oddly happy at the same time. Just before he reached the tank, his legs gave out and he sank to his knees. He yelped in surprise at his body’s betrayal.

Burning with shame, he looked around, but his crew either hadn’t noticed or were pretending they hadn’t.

Deep breath, he thought. You can do this. These men are relying on you.

Your dad is watching.

He thrust his hand into his pocket and gripped the musket ball. His great granddad had gotten shot in the leg and didn’t go chicken; he wouldn’t either. He reminded himself he had Austin blood. He hauled himself to his feet and strode up to his tank. After each man walked him through a quick inspection of the systems he’d worked on, he dismissed him to get his chow and coffee.

Then the order came through to mount up.

Russo hand-cranked the engine and ran forward to climb into his seat and plug in. Austin said, “Driver, start the engine.”

The big engine barked but refused to turn over.

“It’s just cold.” Russo gave it more choke and started again. This time, the engine sputtered and then turned over with a snarl. “We’re good!”

“Let’s go kick some Kraut ass,” Austin said. “Driver, follow Buckshot.”

“You got it, Boss.”

The battalion and its attached armored infantry and artillery units surged north toward Lessouda, straight into injun country. The fury of battle sounded from all directions now. Pillars of black smoke leaned into the blue sky. Ahead, Betty’s Texas flag flapped and rolled in the wind.

“Hi-yo, Silver!” one of the tank commanders yelled. A flurry of whoops followed. After weeks of runaround, the tankers were itching for a brawl.

The radio burst with commanders calling out plane contacts. Austin saw them too, a wave of black dots in the sky that was approaching fast.

“Button up,” he told his crew. “Stukas!”

The squadron of gull-winged Luftwaffe dive-bombers arrived from the mountains in seconds. The leader waggled his wings before dropping into a vertical dive. Austin climbed out of the cupola, crouched behind the .50-caliber machine gun, and yanked its charging handle. Tracers were already reaching up for the Axis plane as it made its screaming banshee descent.

The other bombers also plunged out of the sky, sirens wailing as they dove for their targets like giant birds of prey. Graceful and terrifying.

The tanks scattered. Boomer lurched off the road and made for an olive grove. Austin fired a burst, corrected, and fired again. The planes were too fast.

Bombs whistled through the air as the Stukas pulled out of their fall, the machines’ engines howling to fight gravity. Austin dove into his cupola as deadly missiles exploded along the formation and tons of earth erupted from the road.

The very ground beneath him shook from the impacts. Shrapnel chunks the size of baseballs clattered and banged off Boomer’s armor. Bright green light flared through the scopes as massive fireballs sucked air from the crew’s lungs and left them gasping.

“What the hell was that?” Swanson roared. “Fuck!”

“We’re okay!” Austin said. “Everybody, shut up. Driver, stop.”

He emerged from the cupola to take in a scene of devastation covered in a massive pall of dust. A dozen tanks burned around the cratered road. The wrecks shuddered with internal explosions as ammo cooked off and spat tracers in random directions. Some of the trucks had been blown clear across a neighboring field, taking their infantry with them. The olive grove had been shorn to stumps surrounded by piles of smoking toothpicks.

Austin raised trembling hands to remove his goggles, as if this would help him understand the destruction he was seeing. “My God.”

Fifty yards away, men spilled from a burning tank with its gun barrel chewed off. One of them was on fire and flailing on the ground.

His lips were moving. He was mumbling the Lord’s Prayer, stuck on a groove near the end of it. Deliver us from evil, he kept saying. Deliver us from evil.

Austin shook his head to clear it. He grabbed the radio and checked in with the lieutenant, who’d survived the attack along with his entire platoon.

“Bears 3 Actual to all Bears 3.” Whitley’s voice quivered. “We’re proceeding to objective—wait, one.”

“What do we do?” Russo said.

“We’re sitting ducks here!” Swanson fumed.

“LT said to wait, so we wait,” Austin said, hoping his voice sounded steadier than he felt. His crew was watching him to see how they should react. They needed to see him stay strong. “The Germans hit us hard, but we still have a job to do.”

“New order,” the radio buzzed. “The 21^st Panzer is a lot closer than we were told. They’ll be on our tail in no time. And the 10^th Panzer is coming down from other side of Lessouda Hill.”

The new order was to run before they were trapped.

^{CHAPTER TWELVE} THE PINCER

PFC Russo dropped the clutch and stomped the gas, pushing full engine power to the treads. He worked the sticks to zig-zag the tank across the plain, his brain on autopilot, still in shock from the pounding that had wiped out twenty percent of the battalion in minutes.

At some point, he’d raised the hatch so he could see better and, therefore, drive faster, a steady fifteen miles an hour. He didn’t remember doing that, but he was grateful for it. If the tank was hit, he could bail that much more quickly.

The platoon zig-zagged west through an onion field while, everywhere he looked, panzers blazed in hot pursuit. Hundreds of vehicles swarmed the plain. They raised wakes of sand and dust as they rolled in a well-orchestrated pincer movement.

All Russo knew was he didn’t want those deadly machines anywhere near him. Otherwise, his training did the driving.

Nearby, Sidi bou Zid was ablaze. Panicking supply officers were detonating the fuel dumps while Luftwaffe planes fell screaming on the town to drop their payloads, intent on razing it to the ground. Russo felt the heat from here. The sky dimmed as waves of oily black smoke drifted in front of the rising sun.

Beyond, American vehicles and infantry choked the roads, a helter-skelter rush west to escape the Axis juggernaut. An amazing thing, seeing thousands of troops in flight. A company of light tanks, half their vehicles already a flaming ruin, stopped on the plain, their crews bailing with their hands in the air to surrender. On the road, a traffic jam of halftracks flew apart in a rapid series of flashes and thunderous detonations.

Oh, God, a body was cartwheeling over the explosion—

“Driver, march on that orchard on our ten,” Austin said.

“Stugats,” Russo said. How could the sergeant be so calm? He was talking like this was a parade, not a do-or-die race, and what was this about an orchard? They couldn’t be stopping! “Stugats, stugats, stugats!”

Nobody knew what they were doing, the brass calling the shots was too far in the rear, American planes were nowhere in sight, and they couldn’t even get the reports right about the 21^st Panzer’s location.

He’d done his part. He’d driven the tank where they wanted and exactly how they wanted. Why wasn’t anybody else doing theirs?

He considered he might die for it.

Austin growled, “Keep it together, or I’ll put Clay in your seat. The command was to march on that orchard ahead of us.”

Russo glanced at the bog, who gaped back at him with wild eyes. Where’s your nagging to drive now, goombah?

Before his nano died, the old man had often called him that. What do you say, goombah? Calling him “man.” What did you do with your toy, goombah? Finish your manigott, goombah!

Thinking about his grandpa steeled his nerves. If he was going to die today, he wouldn’t be a coward. He wouldn’t let these men see him lose it. They’d tell mama and papa he died with honor, fighting for their adopted homeland.

I’m the Sicilian Superman, he reminded himself. These guys wanted him to prove himself to them. After today, they’ll be trying to prove themselves to me.

Then he burst out laughing, startling Clay, who probably thought he was losing it. He wasn’t losing it. It was just funny he’d actually thought he might die.

He wasn’t going to die today. It just couldn’t happen to him. No, he was going to survive, marry that Sicilian girl of his dreams, and go home a hero who’d earned his family a special place in America. One day, decades from now, he’d die a happy old man. Until then, he cursed death.

Mannaggia la mort!

“Driving for the orchard, Boss,” he acknowledged.

“We’re all going to form up and make our stand there,” the tank commander told the crew. “We’re going to stop the Germans.”

Russo clamped his lips shut to keep himself from laughing again. From the number of German tanks he’d spotted before their flight, nobody was going to stop them, not today. The remnants of 1^st Battalion was heavily outnumbered and was going to take another beating.

Not Boomer, though. Again, that feeling of invincibility took hold. He wasn’t even going to get a scratch. He was insulated from all this, able to observe it with detachment. This was all a movie for his benefit.

If they didn’t stop the Germans, at least it would buy time for the rest of the American forces to escape. He liked that idea a lot more than just trying to take as many Germans with him as possible. That was something worth fighting for.

Russo checked the instrument panel and took in the tachometer and the oil and water gauges. Oil temperature was one-sixty, about right; water temperature was one-seventy, within acceptable range. Oil pressure was fifty-five pounds per square inch, fine for the current engine RPM. Boomer was running in good health.

The plain surrounding Sidi bou Zid was a patchwork quilt of farmland radiating toward desert. Even now, with the thunder of gunfire everywhere and battle rapidly approaching, the Berbers pushed their plows with the help of oxen. Boomer rolled into a plantation of scraggly almond trees, crushing part of some poor slob’s crop. Branches and almonds and a riot of petals scattered in her wake.

After the tank crossed an irrigation ditch, the commander said, “This is the place. Driver, clock six, right, and stop in the ditch.”

“Roger.” Russo pulled the right stick to turn the tank around in a wide arc. He downshifted and edged the tank into a shallow gully until ordered to stop. Boomer was now hull down, meaning only the turret was visible to the enemy.

Austin raised his binoculars. “Button up.”

Russo lowered his seat and closed the hatch. The tank was hull down, but he was able to raise his periscope to gain a front-row seat to Custer’s Last Stand. The German tanks came on out of the rising sun, churning sand, easy to mark as targets by their pronounced shadows.

He saw Mark IIIs and IVs, some the Special type with the oddly long barrel, along with a platoon of big tanks he’d never seen before, giants that looked unstoppable. In the flat landscape, they appeared closer than they were. He kept his hand on the gearshift, ready to reverse when Austin gave the order.

Boomer was in a solid defensive line of some forty tanks reinforced by a platoon of tank destroyers and artillery tubes and infantry. Russo thought maybe this could work. Maybe they’d take out enough enemy tanks that the Germans would hesitate or even withdraw.

The defenders were Americans, the toughest, most stubborn race of jerks on the planet, and their M4s were good tanks ready to take on whatever the Germans threw at them. Russo considered the Germans might have more tanks in the field and air superiority to boot, but he had faith in his crewmates and Boomer’s firepower. These guys were a bunch of buttagots, but they could fight.

“Let’s do this,” he growled.

“Loader, give me shot,” the tank commander said.

Swanson slammed a round into the breech. “You’re up.”

“We’ll start shooting at two thousand yards.”

“Roger,” said Wade.

“Corporal, what was that inscription you translated that I liked? The one we saw on that pillar in the ruins we visited on the road from Oran?”

“‘The dead salute the gods,’” the gunner said.

“Right,” the tank commander said. “Today, we’re going to win, boys, or tonight, we’ll be saluting the angels.”

MAP: Opening attacks in the Battle of Kasserine Pass.

At dawn on February 14, 1943, the German 10^th Panzer Division (north) and the 21^st Panzer Division (south) punched through Allied defenses and encircled Sidi bou Zid and the 168^th Infantry on several hills.

^{CHAPTER THIRTEEN} HELL BREAKS

With his binoculars, Tank Sergeant Austin swept the diorama of chaos and smoke. German armor rolled toward him, commanders in black uniforms standing tall in their cupolas and ready to direct the fire of their big guns.

Some of the tanks were big, boxy monsters he’d never seen before. He thought these must be the rumored Tigers and shuddered at the thought of going up against one of them. They made big targets, but otherwise all he had to go on was hearsay about their guns being 88s, about their armor being virtually impenetrable to shot.

Whatever these tanks were, Austin would just have to figure out how to kill them or go home, and going home wasn’t an option.

He glanced at Sergeant Cocker in Buckshot’s cupola on his left, Sergeant Dunlap in Boxer’s on his right. They were muttering into their microphones, working out targets with their gunners. Dunlap leaned over the side of his turret and vomited then returned to giving orders over his interphone.

Austin raised his binoculars again. The Germans rolled ever closer. At two thousand yards, he could start firing.

“Gunner, target will be—”

German tanks lurched to a halt and opened up at three thousand yards.

Smoke puffed from barrels as the big guns boomed. White shot blurred toward the American M4s, chased by waves of dust rolling up from the ground.

A round plowed a smoking trench between him and Buckshot. Cocker goggled at it and gaped at Austin. A hill bulged out of the ground in front of Boxer, raining clumps of dirt.

Then the German gunners found the range and zeroed in.

Boxer rocked as a shell punched its turret and hurled Dunlap away in flaming rags. The explosion set off the ammo in the racks. A moment later, fire billowed from every hatch before the turret belched into the air and thudded on the ground.

Nobody got out.

Austin stared at the burning wreck in horror.

“Bears 3 Actual to all Bears 3,” Whitley said over the radio. “Move out! Get into range and kill some fucking Krauts!”

“Driver, move out,” Austin ordered. Whatever he was feeling about all this, he’d feel it later. His voice gained strength. “Balls to the wall!”

Russo barked his strange laugh again. “Roger!”

Boomer snarled as she mounted the berm and rolled into action. Bull was hit before it could get out of the ditch. The tank jerked as its track broke and whiplashed behind it. Sergeant Blackburn rolled out of the cupola, his right leg ending in a smoking stump.

The only emotion Austin felt now was rage that ignited in his chest. He peered through his binoculars. “Gunner, target is the Mark III on our eleven, passing that burning jeep, range twenty-five hundred yards.”

“Wilco,” said Wade.

“We’ll light him up as soon as we get within two thousand. Get us there quick. We’re going to kill them all. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Drive on. Let’s go kill some Germans.”

The M4 tanks charged out of the orchard line abreast and lunged forward to clash with the German armor.

^{CHAPTER FOURTEEN} PANDEMONIUM

Corporal Wade leaned into his periscope’s eyepiece to take in the Mark III bearing down on them.

I told you so, he wanted to scream. I told you so!

“Driver, stop!” Austin barked. “Gunner, tank, shot, one-nine hundred!”

Range, two thousand yards, from which the commander had deducted a hundred because the target was moving toward them.

Wade focused his scope reticle’s vertical center on the German tank. The idea was to lay the gun so that, if the round passed straight through the target, it would hit the ground on the other side. Basic gunnery, this time for real.

He swelled with a sudden sense of power. Manning the 75 was like holding Thor’s hammer. The thought chilled him; nobody should have that kind of power, nobody should ever use it. He was about to kill, an idea that went against his entire upbringing and identity.

Dirt geysered in front of him, obscuring his view. A ricochet splintered off a nearby tank and splashed Boomer’s hull.

To hell with his social conditioning. It was kill or be killed now. Emboldened by a wave of fury, he yielded his mind to his training.

Austin: “Fire!”

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

The white shot zipped toward the target and burst short and to the left of the Mark III, which didn’t even flinch. The German commander raised his glasses to study Boomer. A pair of Messerschmitts screamed overhead. Swanson rammed another round into the breech. The turret filled with the acrid tang of burnt gunpowder.

Austin: “Right five, up eight, fire!”

Wade cranked the hand wheel eight times and traversed. “On the way!”

Another blast of dirt, this time behind the target. Boomer had its prey bracketed now. The Mark III’s turret began to traverse to return fire.

“Down four, fire!”

Another four cranks. “On the way!”

The tracer blurred over the ground and smashed against the Mark III’s sloped armor. The shell shattered in a fireworks display of bright streaming sparks.

“Fire!”

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

The AP round penetrated the Mark III’s turret. The tank trembled with the detonation, its turret at an angle, smoke pouring out as it caught fire. Two tankers in black uniforms emerged from the hatches.

“That’s a hit!”

The tankers howled in triumph.

“Scratch his back!” Russo screamed. “Eugene!”

“Okay!” The .30-cal chattered. Tracers zeroed the bow gun’s fire at the fleeing Germans. One of them spun like a top and tumbled to the dirt.

Boomer’s hull shuddered and rang like a gong. Wade’s elation cut off as his heart leaped into his throat. “We’re hit!”

“It bounced off, we’re good!” Austin said. “Gunner, traverse right!”

Buckshot crossed in front of Boomer, streaming dirt that was still clumped all over it from a near miss, its gun firing at a target at close range. An enemy shell struck it in the lower glacis plate, which Sergeant Cocker’s boys had up-armored with sandbags. The bags burst in a sand cloud, followed by a heart-stopping explosion that sent the turret tumbling into the air.

“The command was, ‘Traverse right’! Gunner!”

“Wilco!” Wade moved the turret.

The battle had devolved into a chaotic skirmish of tanks roaming through coiling black smoke to trade punches across orchards and fields.

Lumbering at a forty-five-degree angle to Boomer’s path, the Tiger that had destroyed Buckshot came into view.

“Gunner, Tiger, shot, five hundred, lead three mils! Fire!”

Wade stomped. “On the way!”

The shot sparked off the heavy tank’s armor and buried in the dirt.

Then the Tiger roared back.

Wade’s scope filled with a terrifying blur, which disappeared to reveal a chain of dust devils trailing back to the German tank.

Missed!

“Fire!”

“On the way!”

The next round bounced off as well. Christ, it wasn’t fair! It was like shooting the tank with spitballs.

“Give him HE,” Austin yelled. If the commander couldn’t penetrate the Tiger’s armor, he’d bludgeon it into submission.

Texas flag streaming, Betty rumbled toward the Tiger’s flank and rammed it with a crash. Lieutenant Whitley popped up in the cupola and emptied a Thompson into the stunned German commander. The rest of the German crew bailed. Clay lit them up with the bow gun.

“Driver, reverse!” Austin said. “Get us out of here!”

A shell tore off the lieutenant’s head. The next punched into Betty’s engine bay and set the tank ablaze. The crewmen jumped out of the hatches to be mowed down in a stream of green tracers.

Another round struck Boomer’s metal hide with a thunderous clap, and the tank shuddered. Wade jerked at the shock, his jaw clamping shut with enough force to chip a tooth.

“Gunner, traverse left! Mark IV, shot, five hundred, lead five mils!”

He aligned the reticle on the enemy tank, which had stopped to shoot and was now crawling perpendicular to Boomer’s path. It was one of the Specials, carrying a high-velocity, long-barrel gun.

He tracked a bit to get a feel then swung out ahead. Boomer was still reversing, but he trusted the gyrostabilizer to make his aim true. “Ready!”

“Fire!”

“On the way!”

He missed. The Mark IV fired back, and the shell tore through the air, missing Boomer by inches.

“Right a hair, repeat range, fire!”

“On the way!”

The next shell struck the Mark IV’s weaker side armor and created a flaring hole. The tank stopped and caught fire.

“Driver, stop,” Austin ordered.

Wade switched to wide view on his scope. Black smoke from burning tanks obscured most of the scarred landscape. Somebody had fired a smoke mortar, which added a drifting white fog over part of the battlefield. He knew the Germans were all around him, though he had no targets in sight. The platoon had been destroyed. For all Wade knew, his was the last tank in the entire battalion.

Now was the perfect time to get out of here while they could.

“Driver, move out,” the tank commander said. “Gunner, let’s find a target.”

^{CHAPTER FIFTEEN} EVERYTHING THEY HAD

Another hot shell casing ejected from the breech. The turret basket was almost full of them, producing a rich ammonia reek that burned PFC Swanson’s nostrils.

He gripped the breech lever, released the latch, and pushed it to the rear and right. “Ammo, Eight Ball!”

Boomer’s steady rate of fire had long ago depleted the ready rack.

Clay passed up another black shot. “Last of the AP!”

Swanson grabbed the round, gave it a quick wipe with a rag, and shoved it into the smoking breach. The breech lock closed automatically, the firing pin cocked. To hell with worrying about his fingers. Right now, he was far more worried about the rest of him making it through this fight in one piece.

He patted Wade’s shoulder. “Up!”

“Right a hair,” Austin said. “Steady! Fire!”

“On the way!”

“Hit! He’s damaged and pulling back.”

Too tired and scared shitless, nobody cheered. The hull vibrated as Clay let rip with the bow gun. A round shrieked past the tank.

“We’re out of AP, Sarge! We’re down to twenty percent load—”

Another round struck Boomer with a crashing sound, and the tank rocked at the impact, hurling Swanson against the wall. His helmeted head crashed against metal. Seeing stars, he howled a curse.

Boomer was limping now. The shell had popped off a bogie wheel.

Clay handed up another round. “HE!”

Swanson pushed aside the hot empty casings and slammed the fresh round into the breech. “You’re up! How do you like your big attack now, Wisenheimer?”

“Not now, Mad Dog!”

“We’re gonna be salutin’ the angels! Salutin’ the angels!”

Austin kicked him hard between the shoulder blades.

“All right, all right!” Another kick. “Quit it!”

Austin ordered, “Mark III, traverse right, steady! On three hundred, fire!”

Wade: “On the way!”

“Fire again!”

“Eight Ball, another round!” Swanson yelled. “Hey, Clay!”

The bow gun stopped firing. “Just a sec—”

A heart-stopping bang. Boomer shuddered and bucked to a halt, her engine dead. Swanson yelped and shrank back as the glowing German AP shell snapped and banged crazily around the turret. Austin dropped down to gape at it.

If it detonated, it’d tear them all to shreds.

They all stared stupidly as the shell settled on its tip spinning on the deck with a whirring dentist drill sound, spewing acrid smoke. Its orange glow strobed on their faces.

Swanson pulled air into his lungs and screamed, “BAIL!”

The men snapped out of their stupor and scrambled for the exits. Swanson heaved through the loader’s hatch and rolled off the tank, slamming the ground. Austin and Wade spilled out after him. Russo joined them a moment later. The bog’s hatch blocked by Boomer’s main gun on the traversed turret, Clay crawled out the emergency hatch under the tank’s belly.

Swanson grabbed Clay’s uniform by the shoulder and hauled the man to his feet. “Run, stupid!”

The tankers bolted through the stumped ruins of another orchard.

Boomer exploded.

Shrapnel zinged past Swanson’s ear and skipped across the dirt as the hot blast wave hurled him through the air. He tumbled and lay gasping in the field.

“Stay down,” Austin said from where he lay. “Don’t move a muscle. Play dead.”

The air filled with the clank of tank tracks. Lying on his side on the cold ground, Swanson opened one eye to watch a metal monster rumble past. It was the biggest tank he’d ever seen, with an extraordinarily long, thick barrel. Its khaki turret bore the straight-armed cross emblem of the Germany Army. The hawk-faced commander was yelling at his crew in German.

So that’s a Tiger, he thought. They’re actually real. How did we survive so long in battle against machines like this?

It was amazing they’d knocked out two tanks and damaged a third before Boomer died from her wounds. Hell, it was a miracle they were even still alive. Those angels Austin had talked about were looking out for Boomer’s crew. Swanson no longer thought the idea of saluting them was dumb. Whoever was looking out for him, they’d earned his respect.

A Mark III rolled after the Tiger, followed by two trucks loaded with German infantry in peaked caps and khaki uniforms.

Swanson didn’t care about them. He looked back to watch Boomer burn. Smoke poured from her hatches. MG ammo crackled and popped as it cooked off. He thought he didn’t care about the tank, not really. He’d been hoping to leave her to join a maintenance platoon.

Seeing her die, though, was like watching his house burn down with his sweetheart in it, because Boomer, he now understood, had been both to him.

After the Germans passed, he ventured to talk. “What now, Sarge?”

The commander grimaced as he rose to his knees and scanned their surroundings. “We fought all the way to Lessouda Hill.”

Swanson spotted a red stain on his back. “Hey, are you hit?”

Austin ignored him. “We’d be better off on the hill than trying to make it back to our lines after nightfall. The 168^th is still up there.”

The crew gathered around the commander. Russo investigated the jagged tear down his left side. He shot the other men a grave look, poured sulfa on the wound, and taped a bandage over it.

“We’ll have to carry him,” the driver said.

Swanson said, “I reckon I’ll do it.”

Austin shook his head. “I can pull my weight.”

“Don’t be stupid.” He heaved the tank commander onto his back and rose to his feet.

Austin gasped with pain.

“Sorry, Sarge.”

“You’re doing fine.” The man’s head slumped against Swanson’s shoulder.

The survivors gazed up the steep slope of the tall hill. Somewhere up there, an entire battalion was dug in and promised safety, but it was going to be a long climb.

“Anybody armed?” Wade said.

Clay held out two grenades. “I grabbed these on the way out.”

“I’d rather have a Thompson, but good thinking.”

The bog barked a laugh. “I wasn’t thinking at all. If I was thinking, I’d have grabbed some water.”

“Keep those grenades in your pockets, Cherry,” Swanson growled. “I don’t want you blowing my balls off trying to be a hero.”

Clay puffed out his chest. “We don’t surrender.”

Wade said, “Yeah, we do.”

For once, the man was showing some common sense. They were exhausted, leaderless, and had no food, water, or weapons. Right now, surrendering sounded like a sensible option.

Instead, they gambled on the 168^th finding them before the Germans did.

The tankers mounted the slope, tramping over rocks and through scrub and prickly pear. Austin grew heavier with each step. Swanson’s arms and legs burned. He grit his teeth and pushed through it.

“You’d better not die on me, Sarge,” he said. “You promised me you’d get me into a maintenance platoon.”

“My boy is nuts for trains,” the sergeant said in a weak voice.

“Hang in there,” Russo said.

They marched until Wade stopped and looked around. “We’ll rest here for a bit.”

“We have to keep moving,” Swanson said. “And who the hell put you in charge?”

“He’s a corporal,” Clay said.

“The guy in charge has shrapnel in his back and needs help.”

“We’ll rest here five minutes,” Wade said. “Then I’ll carry him next.”

Swanson was spent, going on sheer stubbornness alone. “I’m gonna set you down now, Sarge.”

The men helped Austin onto the ground, where he could put his back against a boulder. The sergeant cried out in pain. His face was pale and dripping with sweat, and his breathing was labored as if he’d climbed along with his men.

“Need a drink,” he said.

“Wish I could give you one,” Swanson told him.

“In my pocket.”

Swanson pulled out a silver flask and opened it. “Liquor!”

He helped Austin take a few pulls of the medicinal brandy. The commander sighed. Swanson had a snort himself and passed it to Russo, who drank and passed it to Clay, who passed it to Wade.

Wade gazed across the battlefield. “That’s quite a view.”

Sidi bou Zid and Lessouda were in ruins, the land between them scarred and marked by the burning wrecks of tanks and other vehicles. Many vehicles stood intact, abandoned by their crews in the blind rush to safety. German grenadiers herded hundreds of dazed prisoners in straggling eastward columns. Panzers shimmied over slit trenches to crush the last Americans who defied the juggernaut.

1^st Battalion had been virtually wiped out.

The men watched the German double envelopment complete as tanks of two armored divisions met east of Lessouda. Despite pockets of shooting, the battle was over. More German trucks arrived and offloaded infantry to mop up, keep the 168^th pinned on the hills, and probe west.

“You got to hand it to Jerry,” Russo said. “He knows his business.”

No matter how you sliced it, the Germans had scored a stunning victory.

“What’s it look like down there?” Austin whispered.

“It’s bad,” Swanson told him. “You can see the whole pooch we screwed.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of. That battle… That was really something.” The commander shook with a wet cough, which turned his lips red with blood. “You’re a good man, Swanson. All of you are. An annoying bunch of babies, but good. You can do this. You can live. You can win.”

“You’re a lousy judge of character, Sarge.”

Shots rang out and pinged among the rocks.

Swanson threw himself to the ground. “Kamerad!” It was the one German word every man in the U.S. Army knew. Let’s be friends, I surrender! For good measure, he added, “Nicht shiessen!” Don’t shoot!

“They aren’t Germans,” Wade said from his hiding place. “That was a Garand doing the shooting.” An American rifle.

“Hey, down there!” a voice called from the rocky heights. “If you’re gonna kamerad, show yourself with your hands up!”

“We’re Americans!” Wade yelled back. “Don’t shoot!”

They stood with their hands raised in the air as a squad of GIs approached with their Garands tucked into their shoulders.

“Americans?” Swanson saw red. “Watch where you’re fucking shooting! I didn’t survive all that just to get shot by my own guys!”

“Yup, they’re ours,” a sergeant said. The men lowered their weapons. “I’m Hank Garrett. We thought you were Kraut tankers. You 1^st Armored?”

Wade lowered his hands. “Yes.”

“We saw the whole thing. That was a hell of a fight down there.”

“It was.” There was nothing else to say.

“Well, if you’re gonna come with us, we’re moving out.” The sergeant set his mouth in a grim line. “Sorry about your man.”

Swanson wheeled with a curse.

Sergeant Austin had slid onto his side, leaving a bloody smear on the rock. Curled up with a peaceful expression on his face.

The tank commander was saluting the angels.

^{CHAPTER SIXTEEN} IN THE BAG

Barely conscious of the physical world, PFC Clay turned his gaze inward as he trudged with the other survivors up the endless hill.

The fighting had been savage and horrific, and it had ended with Sergeant Austin dying and himself almost burning to death.

He wanted to think about these things. Even more, he wanted to feel something, anything. The terror of combat, the miracle of survival, the tragedy of the commander’s death, all of it deserved indulgence and understanding. One could study these mysteries for a lifetime.

Instead, the bog just felt hollowed out, drained, and wrung dry. Instead of thinking, Clay’s brain feverishly replayed the battle over and over.

The first tank they’d hit, he sighted on three escaping tankers and sent a stream of hot metal ripping through one of them. He next mowed down all the Tiger tank’s crew. The third tank had quickly caught fire. They’d all burned up, and he didn’t have to shoot any of them.

At the time, he’d experienced an exultation unlike anything he’d ever felt before. They had wanted to kill him, but he’d killed them first.

Then the shame had crept in. He’d signed up for service in the armor to test himself and understand heroism, and so far, all he’d done was machine-gun unarmed men in the back, men who were tankers just like him.

Clay came close to grasping some grand truth about men and war, but his mind gave in to exhaustion.

Marching beside him, Russo’s smoke-blackened face was streaked with tears. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you drive the tank, Eugene.”

“It’s okay, man.”

“I just wanted to say that.”

“Thanks.”

“What happened to the boss, it makes you think about what matters and what doesn’t. You face the idea of dying, and a whole lot of stuff just seems stupid.”

“Yeah.” Clay couldn’t think about it. His brain was done with trying to process the war.

“You’re here, and then that’s it, you aren’t. And the universe doesn’t care. You die, and it doesn’t mean a damned thing.” The driver opened his gloved hand to reveal a squashed lump of lead. “I’m gonna make it mean something.”

“You’re gonna bring it home to his kid like he asked?”

“I’m gonna help that boy know who his papa was,” Russo said. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s something that’s probably worth fighting for.” In fact, out of all the swirling thoughts in his head, this one made the most sense.

“I found the last letter he wrote to his family in the same pocket.” Russo scrutinized the musket ball another moment. Then he placed it back in its handkerchief and pocketed it. “Some good luck charm it turned out to be.”

“We’re still here, and Sarge ain’t, that’s all you need to know,” Swanson said. “‘What does it all mean?’ Listen to you mincing Nancies.”

“We were having a private talk,” the driver said.

“No such thing with you, Mac. Even the Germans are enjoying your insights.”

“Shut up, you hillbilly fuck,” Clay said. He couldn’t even process the battle’s horror without the loader stepping on it and ruining it. Right now, he was thinking the Germans killed the wrong guy. There was no justice to it.

“Looks like combat put some hair on your chest, Cherry.”

“You guys sure you’re on the same side?” Sergeant Garrett wondered.

“The battle’s over, men,” Wade said.

A pair of planes buzzed overhead.

“It’s okay, they’re ours,” Garrett said. “And about goddamn time.”

The patrol returned to the American lines, a series of trenches and rocky redoubts crowning the crest of the hill. About four hundred men along with a few vehicles and artillery tubes held the line. They’d been ordered to hold until relieved. They’d delayed the enemy’s advance into Lessouda with concentrated fire, and the Germans had responded with artillery and tanks.

“They’ll attack once they regroup,” the sergeant said. “Or starve us out. Either way, if we don’t get relief, the Krauts will have us in the bag.”

Under an overcast sky, the tankers settled into the same trench as Garrett’s squad. The doughs didn’t appear happy about sharing their water and K rations. Swanson tried to bum a smoke but had no luck. Clay sat on the cold ground and watched the German salvage crews work down on the battlefield.

Garrett scuttled to a nearby foxhole to report to his lieutenant. The man didn’t have Austin’s movie star looks—far from it with his wide, homely face—but he had the same confidence. He knew what he was doing. With the sergeant and his doughs keeping watch, Clay could finally relax.

“We watched the whole fight from up here,” a tall, skinny kid said. “Man, the way you charged in, it was really something.”

Clay took a long pull on an offered canteen and passed it to Russo. “Yeah, it was.”

“Made me sick to my stomach,” a burly corporal said. “You guys were outnumbered, outgunned, and had almost no air support. The Krauts tore you to pieces.”

“They got in some good punches,” the kid protested.

“Thank God I’m infantry is all I got to say about it.”

Clay remembered how the Stukas had chewed up the armored doughs earlier in the day. “The best place to be is in a tank behind armor.”

In fact, he felt naked and defenseless right now without it.

“Yeah, I’m sure they told you that,” the corporal grinned. “You’ll never get me near one of those Purple Heart boxes. Me, I can dig a hole anytime. It’s all about cover and concealment. You guys drive around with your asses hanging out. Plus I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing them tanker boots with the buckles.”

Sergeant Garrett returned from talking to his CO. “Jack, these guys just survived a total wipeout and lost their sergeant. So how about shutting up?”

“Didn’t mean nothing by it,” the corporal grumbled.

“We’re all in the same sinking boat now, anyway. You got any smokes?”

The man produced a half-full pack. “Yeah.”

Garrett took it and tossed it to Swanson. “Here, pal. You earned it.”

The corporal started. “Hey!”

“Much obliged,” the loader said as he lit up.

“I’ll take one of those,” Russo said.

Swanson held out the pack. “Didn’t know you smoked, Mac.”

The driver accepted a light and puffed. “I don’t.”

“The lieutenant wants to talk to one of you guys about the action,” Garrett said. “He’s hoping for intel, anything that’ll help us out.”

Swanson stabbed his finger at Wade. “He’s in charge.”

The gunner stood and dusted his trousers. “It’s worth getting up just to hear you say that, Private.”

“See you later, Hawkeye,” Clay said, thinking Wade had earned the name today.

As always, the bickering annoyed him, but it also was strangely comforting. Boomer was destroyed, but the familiar routine of the crew getting on each other’s last nerve felt like home. Clay closed his eyes but saw German tankers drop under his tracers. His eyes snapped open. He reminded himself he was safe for now, surrounded by a battalion of riflemen. He closed his eyes again and saw Boomer burst into flame. He even heard the blast.

“INCOMING!”

His eyes flashed open to glimpse dirt and rocks cascading into the air before the infantrymen dove across the trench in a squirming dog pile. The burly corporal knocked him breathless. Clay flinched at the mortar blasts and clawed for cover. Rounds whistled and tore gaping holes out of the hill.

As if surrounded by cold, trembling earth in a grave, Clay listened to the devastating explosions and promptly fell into a deep sleep.

^{CHAPTER SEVENTEEN} RELIEF

PFC Russo stood to take in the view of the American counterattack.

“You want to get yourself killed?” Garrett growled. “Get down.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

“Yeah? What’s your secret to being bulletproof?”

Yesterday, Russo had survived the battle with his sanity intact through sheer denial of his mortality, only to see that denial confirmed. He’d battled Tigers at point blank range and escaped a burning tank, all without suffering even a scratch.

No, he wasn’t going to die from a sniper’s bullet.

“I’m the Sicilian Superman,” he said.

“Great, an Italian.” The sergeant gave Swanson the stink-eye. “If you tell me your last name’s really Schulz, I’m throwing you shitheads off my hill.”

“Don’t mind Mac,” the loader said. “As long as you can overlook how loud and excitable a little pipsqueak he is, he’s actually all right.”

“Thanks, Mad Dog,” Russo said. “If only your many faults could be overlooked, I’d say the same for you.”

“You really can’t miss them,” Wade agreed.

Swanson laughed, which was an accomplishment. Usually, the loader liked to dole it out but considered anything coming back a cut that drew blood. If the big man could take it as well as he dished it, they were getting somewhere.

“Here they come,” said Garrett. “Neat as a parade.”

The hill offered bleacher seats to the game. Flanked by tank destroyers and mobile artillery, a battalion of M4 and light tanks rolled in perfect parallel columns across a furrowed field. Armored infantry in halftracks and trucks brought up the rear. The formation’s front rank ran into an irrigation ditch and shifted to cross it over a series of gullies. From up here, they looked like children’s toys.

Over the growl of the vehicles, music reached the Americans dug in along Lessouda Hill. A radio truck in the formation was booming, “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Patriotic and powerful, it seemed to propel the armored formation.

The sergeant chuckled. “They sure got spunk. We’ll be out of here in no time.”

It was all beautiful to watch, but something was wrong.

“This isn’t going to work,” Wade said.

Russo saw it too. The Army was only fielding a single armored battalion, which, no matter how impressive it looked, wasn’t enough.

“Go back,” he hissed. “You morons.”

A flare shot high over the ruins of Sidi bou Zid.

German artillery opened fire from multiple locations, the rounds splashing among the American vehicles, which dodged and scattered. American howitzers blasted back. Tigers rumbled forward to go head to head against the M4 Shermans.

Then, on the Americans’ right flank, a company-strength force of Mark IVs rolled out of concealed positions. A company of M4s broke off to engage. Moments later, another force of Mark IVs showed up on the other flank.

The Americans were outnumbered, outgunned, and rolling straight into a trap. The tankers on the hill could only watch in a helpless rage as the pincer closed.

The killing began.

Hills of dirt bulged around the M4 tanks, which blazed away at any target in range. Blurred white shots and red, green, and white tracers streamed at all angles across the landscape. Rounds bounced off glacis plates with brilliant blue flashes. An M4 burst into flame, followed by another. Engaged on three sides, the tanks flew apart as the Germans closed the vise, pausing only to pump another shell into another American vehicle. An M4 belched pieces of metal and bodies across the burning field. A turret blew into the air. Machine gun fire mowed down the escaping tankers as they ran for safety. Clusters of armored vehicles bravely charged to improve their position, only to be brutally smashed by the German guns.

And at every pause in the thunderclaps, “The Stars and Stripes Forever” blared across the battlefield, now seeming to mock the dying battalion.

“Jesus Christ,” Garrett said.

Messerschmitts howled low between the hills to strafe the doughs bringing up the rear. The armored infantry scattered into the fields chased by cannon fire that chewed up their vehicles in mushrooming fireballs.

The patriotic music died in fireworks.

The last Shermans reversed and contracted into a semicircle for a last stand. Stubborn to the last, but it was futile against overwhelming German firepower. One by one, the thirty-ton war machines sprouted smoke and fire until the only Americans remaining on the field were the dead and dying.

The battle was over. On Lessouda Hill, tankers and doughs stared at the destruction in a stunned silence. An entire armored battalion had been wiped out in less than an hour. More than a hundred vehicles burned on the ravaged plain, marked by black smoke plumes that reached into the blue sky. Following ancient camel trails, Berber nomads emerged from the hills to scavenge the dead.

“Well, that’s it.” Swanson started walking down the hill.

“Amos,” Russo said.

“What, Tony?”

“Don’t do it, man. There’s still a chance.”

The loader spat in the ground. “I ain’t surrendering, boom-bots.” Saying boombots wrong, but Russo found it amusing anyway. “Relief ain’t coming. I’m gonna go get the commander before the varmints can get at him.”

Russo watched him thread the rocky hill then said, “Wait up, goombah.”

As he caught up to the loader, footsteps pounded the dirt behind him. He turned to see Wade and Clay hustling to catch up.

“Stay low,” Wade hissed. “This is injun territory now.”

Together, the tankers retraced the route they’d taken up the hill and found Sergeant Austin lying as they’d left him, with his eyes closed and his hands clasped over his chest.

The loader heaved the man over his shoulder like a sack of meat. “Let’s go.”

At the top of the hill, they bummed spades from the doughs and dug. Russo paused to finger the musket ball in his pocket. He thought maybe he should return it so Austin could be buried with the family heirloom.

No, he was going to make it back to the real world. He was going to deliver it. And until he did, Tank Sergeant John Austin would watch out for him.

Wade had already taken his dog tags. The tankers lowered their commander into the hole they’d dug. The corporal produced the flask, and they all had a long pull to toast the man before they covered him in dirt and rocks. Clay found a slab of dry wood on which he carved, JOHN AUSTIN. Russo laid the man’s helmet over it.

It was time to say a few words, but nobody knew what to say. Even after spending all that time in the tank together, they still didn’t know each other well, the sergeant perhaps least of all. The people who knew Austin best were back home praying for his safe return, a heartbreaking thought.

Wade took off his helmet and said the perfect words, the only words. “You were a good man and a true tanker, John Austin. Rest in peace.”

^{CHAPTER EIGHTEEN} THE LONG MARCH

Standing at Austin’s grave, PFC Swanson smoked his last cigarette down to the nub and tossed it into the sand, gazing west into a red sunset made lurid by heavy particulates in the air. The plain below had already darkened except for patches of smouldering crops and vehicles that glowed like foxfire.

Right now, he faced a choice. Survive a journey across that plain against all odds, or face the brutal German stalag for the duration.

The brass just didn’t have the brains or available forces to relieve the besieged defenders still holding onto the hills around Sidi bou Zid. Now that the Germans had crushed the inevitable American response, they were free to tighten the noose. Bombard the 168^th into submission, or simply starve them out. As for the survivors of Tank #34, they were on their own.

Odd, but it was only now, facing this no-win choice, that he stopped feeling sorry for himself for all his woes. For once, he didn’t stew about how dumb he’d been for cutting a man over a woman and joining the Army to escape a feud. He was here, and things were what they were, and he had to make the best of it.

He was going to make it home, and he’d drag his crewmates with him. Without Boomer around them, and with the Sarge dead, he’d found himself feeling strangely protective of them. The corporal might be in charge, but Swanson was going to get them all through. They were morons, but they were tankers like him.

You’re a good man, Austin had said before he died.

He’d seen something in Swanson he didn’t see in himself.

You can do this. You can live. You can win.

The commander had gotten him wrong. He wasn’t a good man, at least not by Austin’s genteel standards. But he’d liked hearing it from the sergeant. It made him want to be the man Austin thought he was.

He thought: We’ll do right by you, Sarge. I can’t promise we’ll win against these crazy Krauts, but we’re gonna survive this.

“Mad Dog,” Wade called. “Over here.”

Swanson gazed up at the darkening sky, which began to blaze with millions of stars misted by gray clouds. The air temperature was dropping. “Yup, I’m coming.” He added, “See ya around, Sarge.”

He passed platoons of doughs wearing packs on their backs and carrying rifles with bayonets affixed. They hadn’t even started out yet, and they were already making an awful racket with all their gear.

He found the tankers gathered around Sergeant Garrett, who said, “We’ll be walking out of here in two columns, thirty yards apart. You guys will be behind my squad, but you’ll be on your own. I have my own guys to look after and can’t babysit you tread heads. Don’t lose the man in front of you. Don’t leave the column. If you have to piss, you hold it. And don’t make any noise. If you make noise, I’ll gut you and leave you for the Krauts. Am I clear?”

“Clear as crystal,” Swanson said.

“Capish,” said Russo.

“If you spoke German, now, that would actually be useful.” The man pinned them all with his glare. “Wait for the signal.”

Swanson grinned as the sergeant walked away to give the same speech to his squad. “I like that guy.” He pursed his lips at Russo. “And you, you can’t help yourself, can you. You’re like a guy with that disease, the one where—”

“Tourette’s,” Wade cut in.

“Yup, that’s the one. Thank ye, Wisenheimer. See, Mac, nobody wants to hear you spaghetti this and spaghetti that.”

“Yeah, chooch? They want to hear you talk about how you got your hair shamped and what dead varmints you put in your poke and how you slathered long sweetenin’ all over your pancakes?”

It was Appalachian lingo.

“That’s how normal people talk. Try it out for size.”

Garrett walked over and spat on the ground. “What did I tell you shitheads I’d do if you made any noise?”

“Our bad, Sarge,” Russo said.

“Shut your dick traps.” The sergeant eyed the driver with a mix of wonder and disgust. “Christ, you even breathe loud. Get ready. We’re moving out.”

“Ditch your helmets and put on your cover,” Wade said.

The plan was to walk straight across the plain like they owned the place. With luck, the Germans would mistake them in the dark for comrades. As part of the ruse, everybody was leaving their helmets and putting on their cloth overseas caps. The tanker caps had accentuated front and back peaks. Out of habit, Swanson put his on at a rakish angle, the tanker way.

Their route would run parallel to and about a mile north of Highway 13, a journey of some nine miles in all. The destination, Hamra Hill, lay directly across the plain. At the hill, they’d meet up with guides who would lead them all to safety.

The column shifted and moved. Swanson started marching and immediately almost lost his footing on some loose rocks, earning another glare from Sergeant Garrett. He really missed Boomer now. This walking was for the birds. His tanker boots had a steel toe, good air circulation, and buckles that made them easier to take off when caked with mud, but they had lousy ankle support.

When the columns reached the plain, Swanson gaped as a massive 88 flak gun came into view, its crew nestled around it in their sleeping bags.

A German soldier called out, “Kameraden! Wie geht es dir?” He laughed. “Ich frier mir die Eier ab.”

The Americans tensed and gripped their weapons but said nothing. Swanson grinned and waved. The soldier waved back and returned to his roll.

Well, hell, this crazy scheme might actually work, he thought.

The columns snaked through dry washes and gullies, anywhere they’d be less likely to stand out. A bright, full moon rose into restless cloud cover, turning the landscape into dappled patterns of black and gray. When clouds obscured the moon, they marched, but when it was clear, they hunkered down and waited.

After that, they were practically tripping over Germans.

The hazy outlines of massive tanks and other vehicles surrounded Swanson. A Mark IV growled as it rolled toward him, its officer calling out in Deutsch.

The geniuses leading the column had navigated them straight into a tank park.

Swanson stiffened his posture and marched smartly, making a show for the officer. The other tankers caught on and did the same, and then the doughs, on down the line.

“Buona notte, Signore!” Russo said and waved. “Come sta lei?”

Amazingly, the driver playing the part of Italian ally worked. The tank rumbled off.

They cleared the tank park and reached open country where he could breathe again until a six-wheeled armored scout car found them.

It drove directly up to the tankers. The officer standing in the turret pointed at Clay and yelled something in German that sounded like, “You. Come here.”

“Ja, ja.” The bog approached the car and saluted.

The officer yelled and pointed back toward the tank park. In the dark, the tankers looked like German tankers, and they had no business being out here with these infantry. The officer stabbed his finger. They were to go back.

Swanson tensed, though he didn’t know what he could do without a weapon. The infantry around him kept marching past, quickening their pace.

Clay took a big step back from the car and saluted again. “Ja, ja.”

Swanson jumped at the flash and heart-stopping bang. The officer rolled out of the turret and flopped smoking to the sand. The armored car caught fire. The driver didn’t bail, likely turned into hamburger.

The bog had put one of his grenades to good use.

“Not bad, Cherry.” The loader knelt beside the officer and took his Luger pistol and Iron Cross. He pocketed the pistol and gave the medal to the bog. “Trophy.”

Clay accepted it with trembling hands. “Okay.”

Sergeant Garrett appeared in the light of the flames and pursed his lips. Swanson shrugged. The sergeant shook his head.

Their luck was still holding. The Germans didn’t seem to notice or care a scout car had exploded. The columns shifted away from the firelight and kept going. The farther they got, the greater a sense of desperation grew along the line. The columns began to break up as men straggled and paused to shed weapons and gear. Soon, the route was littered with mortars and machine guns, ammo and blankets.

Then they reached an onion field and once again, the dark shapes of tanks loomed all around.

Another tank park.

Only the tanks weren’t German. They were the wrecks of M4s. This was the killing field where the relief force had bought it. Doughs scurried off to search for water and rations the Berbers hadn’t already looted. The dead bodies of tankers, many missing body parts and picked over by the buzzards, littered the ground. The air smelled like burnt gunpowder and charred flesh.

Wade tapped Swanson’s shoulder and hissed, “Follow me.”

The corporal walked off into the dark toward a tank’s hulking outline.

^{CHAPTER NINETEEN} ELEPHANT

Corporal Wade marched to the first M4 tank he found and gave it a quick inspection by moonlight. “This one’s burned out. We’ll find another.”

“I like where you’re going with this, Corporal,” Russo said.

Clay grinned. “Why walk when you can drive?”

“Split up,” Wade told them. “When you find one that isn’t burned, whistle or something to get everybody else’s attention.”

“Cool,” Clay said, the tanker version of, Hooah! He was wearing the German officer’s Iron Cross draped around his neck.

Cradling his Thompson, Sergeant Garrett came around a burned-out husk, his squad of infantrymen following. “Where do you guys think you’re going?”

“Out of here,” Wade said. “We’re going to try to get a tank working.”

“We want in.”

“Honestly, it’s a gamble. You might be better off walking.”

“I know how far we’ve come and how soon the sun’s coming up. I think you tankers are our best bet for a way out of here.”

“We could use your help. Are you willing to do what I say, no matter what?” Wade had a special detail in mind, and the doughs would hate it.

Garrett glanced at his men and turned back. “What do you need?”

They got to work. After a few minutes of searching, Clay whistled. He’d found an M4 with a massive puckered hole in the turret and a thrown track that lay twisted in the dirt. Whatever had hit the tank stopped it dead but didn’t start a fire.

Somebody had stenciled ELEPHANT on the side of the turret beside a painting of a fat elephant firing a shell with its trunk. Fixing the track would take time, but they didn’t have much of a choice. They had to make do with this tank.

Wade mounted the turret. The radio antenna was gone. He gazed down into the black maw of the commander’s hatch. “I need some light.”

Sergeant Garrett climbed up and handed him a lighter. “Jesus, that smell.”

A horrible stench poured from the hatch. The tank reeked of death.

Wade took a breath through his mouth to steady his nerves. “Here goes nothing.” He lowered himself into the turret and flicked the lighter.

The small, bright flame illuminated a slaughterhouse. The killing round had punched a hole in the turret and shattered. The splinters had rattled around the cramped compartment at high velocity, turning it into a meat grinder. The commander, gunner, and loader had been shredded so badly he didn’t even know where to look to collect dog tags. Clotted blood and flesh pasted the walls. Empty shell casings filled the turret basket. These guys had fought hard before they’d bought it.

Fighting a surge of bile, he checked the turret systems. Shrapnel had punctured the radio and damaged the switch boxes on the main gun. Deep dents and grooves scarred the traverse drive motor, generator, and gear box. Tilted and off-kilter, the turret itself was broke-dick.

They couldn’t communicate and likely couldn’t traverse the turret. He doubted the gun worked anymore. Right now, Elephant was immobilized and unable to shoot.

“Coming out,” Wade said.

He climbed out quickly, grateful to escape the freezing, blood-spattered turret and breathe fresh air again.

“How does she look?” said Russo, already making the tank his.

“Ugly. What about the engine?”

Assisted by Clay, Swanson had hauled the engine bay doors open and was inspecting it. “No visible problems. We’ll know when we start her up.”

“Good. What’s the story with the track?”

Russo rubbed his stubbled chin. “I don’t think we have to take the track off. We can re-tie it together.”

Hard work to fix it, but it was something they knew how to do and they had the tools and parts for it.

“What about us?” Garrett said from where he still stood on the turret.

“Glad you asked. I need three of yours on cleanup.”

The sergeant’s face darkened. “You’re kidding me.”

“We don’t have time to do it, and we’re not driving without it. Your choice.”

“Mickey, High Speed, Red. It’s your turn to volunteer.”

The men groaned and dragged their feet but did as they were told.

Wade checked off another box. He’d thought command would be a nightmare of pressure and tough decisions, but so far, he was actually enjoying it. He was as cool in a crisis as Sergeant Austin had been, and he liked solving problems.

The most important lesson he’d learned from Austin was how to act the part and give orders with confidence. That and how to decide on one solution and play it out until it hit a brick wall, at which time he’d shift gears and try something else.

For Wade, the best part was it made him forget his troubles back home and be in the moment. For the first time since he’d discovered Alice’s affair, he felt truly alive. A welcome if unsettling by-product of war.

The doughs handed the empty shell casings through the pistol port to another man outside, who set them on the ground. Judging from the bitching and retching Wade heard soon after that, they’d started the grisly task of cleaning the interior.

He and Russo got to work straightening the heavy track. The driver threaded a rope around the end of the block and pulled until the track meshed into the teeth on the sprocket. Wade attached chain to the ends while the driver worked a jack into position.

Gripping his Thompson submachine gun, Sergeant Garrett wheeled at the distant rumble of armored vehicles. “The Krauts are on the move.”

“Let us know if they get close,” Wade said.

“We’ll keep them busy.” The sergeant chuckled as he chambered a round.

Russo cranked the jack to pull the track ends together. “That’s surprising.”

“Hold it there.” With a hammer, Wade tapped the pins and drive connectors onto the ends of the track block pins. “What’s surprising? That Garrett thinks he can take on German tanks with his Tommy?”

The driver worked a wedge onto a connector and used a wrench to tighten the nut. “No. That Garrett can laugh.”

The resulting track was shorter, but it covered the driving star. If the powertrain worked, Elephant would be mobile. Bumpy and slow, but mobile.

“Mount up,” Wade said. “Let’s see if we can get her started.”

“About time.” Garrett climbed onto the back deck to grab hold of the .50-caliber machine gun. His doughs mounted and sat anywhere they could find room on the cold armor.

“Eugene’s going to drive,” Russo said. “I’ll take the bow gun.”

“Hot dog!” yelled the bog.

“Now’s not a good time to shake things up, Russo,” Wade said.

“If he can’t drive us out of here, we wouldn’t have made it in the first place.”

Wade shrugged. “Have it your way. Let’s go.”

The tankers settled into their stations. Garrett’s men had done the best they could, but the seats and controls were still painted in sticky, congealed blood. The men plugged in. The radio didn’t work, but the interphone did, barely.

“How come Eight Ball gets to drive?” Swanson fumed in the turret. “While I’m stuck in this slaughterhouse.”

“I need you to see if you can do anything about the gun or the turret.”

“The gun’s dicked up and done. I’ll be glad to fix it once I’m in a maintenance platoon and not having to deal with this horseshit.”

Wade planted his hands on the cupola and couldn’t help but smile. Being on top of the tank gave him a heady feeling. “Driver, start the engine.”

Clay worked the starter and the clutch but succeeded only in producing a grating whinny from the engine. “Come on, El.”

“Did you check for hydrostatic lock?” Russo said from the bog seat. “The tank’s been cold for a while.”

“I’m not getting any resistance when I crank it.”

“Push the choke all the way.”

“I know! Ignition switch on. Gonna—okay, here we go.” The engine started to catch and then rumbled to life. “I got it. I got it!”

“Move out, Clay,” Wade ordered. “Clock six, right, and head north.”

The tank crawled along at five miles an hour until it cleared the onion field. The sun would come up soon and reveal the fleeing M4 and its telltale feather of sand. They couldn’t go any faster, however, not even with the intermittent moonlight, or else risk ramming a dead tank or getting bellied on a boulder.

Swanson passed up half a D ration chocolate bar, which Wade forced himself to wolf down. They had a long drive ahead of them, and they needed calories.

“Fuel level is at sixty percent,” Clay reported.

“More than enough to get us to the rendezvous,” Wade said. They could make it all the way to Sbeïtla if they needed to. Hopefully, the Germans hadn’t pushed that far, despite their maneuvering brilliance.

The journey made him think about Xenophon’s Anabasis, the March of the Ten Thousand. Around 400 B.C., an army of Greek mercenaries fought for a Persian prince seeking to overthrow his brother and claim the throne. When the prince died in battle, the Ten Thousand found themselves a long way from home in hostile country and had to fight their way out over a period of about two years. The ease with which they strutted around the Persian Empire convinced Alexander the Great it could be conquered by a small but superior Greek army.

The Germans were hardly pushovers like the ancient Persians, however, and the crippled Elephant was hardly the mighty Ten Thousand.

Dawn brightened the horizon behind the peaks of the Eastern Dorsal. Ahead, Hamra Hill stood dark and wreathed in mist. The lost infantry battalion toiled across the plain in straggling groups. To the west, German vehicles raced toward them.

The Americans had been spotted.

“It’s getting light,” Wade said. “Give me as much speed as you can, Clay.”

Elephant rumbled past the doughs, who were scattering. German trucks stopped a mile west to discharge troops. The air filled with the terrifying zipper sound of MG42s. All around the tank, infantrymen dropped to the ground either dead or clawing for cover. Their sergeants blew whistles to rally the survivors. Some fired back with the limited weaponry they had. Scores rose with their hands in the air.

“Bastards!” Sergeant Garrett pulled the charging bolt on the .50-cal.

“Don’t shoot,” Wade told him. “You’ll make your squad a target. Nobody’s firing at us yet.”

A Tiger leading three Mark IVs arrived to settle the uneven fight. The big machines growled among the doughs, who surrendered in droves.

Holding his binoculars with trembling hands, Wade watched the Tiger track Elephant with its big 88 gun. “Balls to the wall, Clay! Go!”

The monstrous tank fired. The shell ripped past with an ear-splitting shriek and plowed a long trench in the earth a hundred yards away. Then it fired again to bracket the fleeing American vehicle.

Now it could zero Elephant until it put her down for good.

The Tiger rumbled forward, stopped, and fired again, repeating the process but unable to finish the job. Elephant was almost out of range.

Wade thought they just might make it.

He peered through his binoculars and saw the black-uniformed German tanker in the cupola offer his adversary a jaunty salute. Then the Tiger turned to complete the roundup of the trapped souls of the 168^th Infantry Regiment.

^{CHAPTER TWENTY} SBEÏTLA

Elephant cleared the olive orchards east of Sbeïtla and rolled into town. The disaster at Sidi bou Zid had sown panic here. Two armored, two infantry, and two artillery battalions lost in a single punch, and the Germans were closing in.

Sitting in the driver’s seat of the M4 tank, PFC Clay looked down on bedlam.

Wild-eyed soldiers, civilians, and vehicles jammed the streets, everybody packing up in a massive evacuation. The only people who carried on with stolid calm were Tunisian street peddlers calling out to the routing army to buy their tangerines, rugs, and cast-iron cookware.

Corporal Wade tapped the hull to signal he wanted the tank to halt. Clay pulled on the sticks. Wade yelled to an MP for directions to 1^st Armored’s command post.

Clay grinned. “That was fun.” The grin faded. “The driving, I mean.”

“Best job in the tank, goombah,” said Russo in the bog seat.

Sergeant Garrett and his squad of doughs hopped off the deck. “This is where we leave you boys.”

“What’ll you do next?” Clay said.

“I figure we’ll work our way back toward Hamra Hill and see who else made it. The Krauts couldn’t have bagged everybody.”

“Hope you find your men.”

“Yeah, me too. Thanks for the ride. Good luck to you.”

Clay wagged a thumbs-up at him. “Stay cool, Sergeant.”

The soldier shook his head and muttered, “Tankers.”

And with that parting word, he and his doughs went off to find their lost battalion.

“All right, guys, looks like we’re out of the fire and back in the frying pan,” Wade said. “The Germans took Gafsa, and they’re all converging here from both the south and the east.

“They seem to advance as fast as we retreat,” Russo said.

“Withdraw,” Wade corrected dryly. “I found out where the motor pool is. It’s north of town. Clay, move out. Get us through this mess.”

“Moving out!” Clay yelled, still a bit loopy from being up all night and getting to drive the tank.

Elephant had to crawl through the press, but then an air raid siren cleared the streets of pedestrians. The freed vehicles raced at top speed to get where they needed to go before the Luftwaffe planes started pounding the town. Driving on fumes, the battered tank rolled north of Sbeïtla into 1^st Armored’s motor pool.

The maintenance sergeant introduced himself as Sergeant Carson. He gawked at the puckered, fist-sized hole in the turret. “How are you guys even alive?”

“Our first tank got shot out from under us,” Wade said. “This one’s a loaner.”

“You’d be better off with a replacement tank.”

“You got any handy?”

The sergeant wiped his greasy hands on a rag. “Nope.”

“Then we’ll need this one fixed. The radio’s out, the turret’s off-kilter, and the gun systems are damaged. It also needs fuel, ammo, and a good, uh, cleaning.”

Carson whistled for his grease monkeys. “We can do that for you.”

“Then I guess we’ll be looking for a unit,” Wade said. “Our entire battalion pretty much bought it at Sidi bou Zid. We might be the only survivors.”

“Lot of that going around,” the sergeant said, like he didn’t believe it.

Clay climbed out and arched his back while rubbing his aching rear. He spied a group of men on the ridge above, inspecting the eastern approaches to the town with field glasses. “Who are those guys up there?”

“That’s General Pinky Ward,” Carson said. “Looking for Germans.”

“He won’t have to wait long,” Swanson said as he piled out after Wade. “The Krauts was right behind us.”

“Rommel,” the sergeant grinned. The man’s name had mystique. If your ass was getting kicked, there was some small joy knowing a legendary boot was doing the kicking.

Clay looked again at the men on the ridge and wished one of them was a Rommel. They could sure use a Desert Fox right about now.

Carson sized him up. “What do they call you?”

“Sarge, meet the legendary Eight Ball,” Swanson said.

“Yup,” said Clay. He wasn’t Cherry anymore, but he would forever be Eight Ball, a name he now accepted with pride.

“That Iron Cross you got, you want to sell it?”

“Not for sale, man.”

He wasn’t giving it up for all the money in the world.

“Well, how’d you get it?”

Clay smirked. “With an eight ball.”

The tankers burst into laughter. They were all punch drunk from the fighting, burying Austin, and the harrowing night march and escape. More than that, they were drunk on being alive. They’d run the gauntlet and survived.

Carson scowled at being put on. “What’s that?”

“With a grenade.”

“Wow, no kidding. You know, I’d love to get out there with you guys sometime.”

Swanson said, “Pal, I’m dying to get in the maintenance section. I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat. Just say the word.”

Carson suddenly didn’t seem thrilled at the idea of facing combat. “Sure, yeah. One of these days.”

An electric buzz filled the air. Stukas appeared over Sbeïtla. AA flak guns flung streams of metal into the sky.

The tankers paled at their propeller hum, all humor gone.

“We’d better let you get to work,” Wade said.

They scurried off to an empty foxhole with Elephant’s stove and cans of C rations they’d scrounged from her crates. They hunkered down and ate, one eye on the sky overhead, shoulders clenched at the howl of the planes and the blasts of five-hundred-pound bombs slamming into the town.

“Who’re you guys supposed to be?” a gangly, acne-scarred kid said.

“Who’s asking?” Clay said.

“I’m Ackley,” the kid drawled with a surprised tone, as if everybody knew who Ackley was. He wore the distinctive tanker helmet, jacket, overalls, and boots. “You came in on Elephant, but you ain’t her crew.”

“Her crew’s dead,” Wade said. “You with 3^rd Battalion?”

“Yeah. I’m Excalibur’s driver. Well, when there was an Excalibur, I was.”

The kid was one of the few survivors from the doomed relief column.

He said, “I’ll say it again, who are you supposed to be?”

“We’re 3^rd Platoon, Company B, 1^st Battalion,” Wade told him. “We lost our tank and got Elephant working on the way back.”

“Well, all right. You looking for a driver?”

“We’ll settle for a bog.”

Clay liked the sound of that. Either way, he was the bog no more.

“I can do that. Better than the motor pool. They make you work here.”

“Welcome aboard, Cherry,” Swanson said.

“I’m Ackley,” the kid insisted as he plopped into the foxhole and made himself at home. “So you can call me Ackley, or I can call you Shit for Brains.”

Swanson fixed his most intimidating glare on the skinny kid, who stared back with his perpetual disgusted expression. Then he chuckled. “I think you’ll fit right into this crew, Ack-Ack.”

Ack-ack was a nickname soldiers used for anti-aircraft guns.

The kid narrowed his eyes at the name until he seemed to decide he liked it. “Well, all right. What’s your name, since we’re all getting acquainted?”

“Swanson. These guys call me—”

“Swan Song,” Ackley deadpanned. “Yeah, I figured.”

Russo roared with laughter. “I’m Russo. Do me next.”

“Yeah. I’ll bet they call you Megaphone. I heard you all the way on the other side of the motor pool.”

Russo frowned, disappointed he didn’t get a clever take on his last name. “How about our new commander, here? His name’s Wade.”

“A handsome joe like him, he’s Waylaid.”

Wade guffawed. “Yeah, that’s me, all right.”

“What about me?” Clay said. “The name’s Clay.”

Ackley narrowed his eyes again. “Clay. Yeah, that suits you just fine.”

The tankers laughed at the zing. Clay chuckled along, though it ended with a wince of jealousy. Not only was the crew accepting this kid on the spot, but he already seemed to be bumping ahead of Clay on the totem pole.

“Don’t worry, Clay,” Swanson said. “You’ll forever be Eight Ball to me.”

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE} PANIC

PFC Russo had thought it’d be impossible to sleep through air raid sirens, Stukas screaming like bats out of hell, flak guns banging, and bombs booming, but he learned he could sleep through almost anything.

At the sound of MG42 machine guns ripping nearby, however, his eyes popped open. The rest of the crew was already awake except for Ackley, who slept like the dead. Swanson kicked the kid’s boot until he lurched upright.

Russo scanned his surroundings. Heavy cloud cover blocked the moon and shrouded the motor pool in thick darkness. The Stukas had returned to their bases. Vehicles rumbled nearby, filling the air with the stench of exhaust. From their sound, they were tanks.

“The Krauts are probing our defenses east of town,” Wade said.

“Infantry,” Russo said. “I don’t hear any big guns.”

“You woke me up for this?” Ackley bitched.

Clay peered out of the foxhole. The clouds broke long enough for moonlight to shimmer across the nearby trees, where he no doubt imagined a German battalion closing in. “What do we do, Corporal?”

Wade answered, “I’m going to see what shape Elephant is in. If I’m hit, Russo will take command.”

Russo snorted. “You think there are Germans in the motor pool?”

“Right now, I’m more scared of our own guys shooting me.”

“You’ll be all right,” Swanson said. “They haven’t gotten to know you yet.”

Wade snorted. “Speaking of which, don’t shoot me as I’m coming back. Remember the challenge and password.”

“‘SNAFU’,” Russo recited the challenge.

Clay chimed in with the password: “‘Damn right.’”

Wade rolled over the foxhole’s edge and vanished in the dark. For the next fifteen minutes, the men listened to the din of battle spread all around them. Tanks had joined the contest. Panzer shots clanged, and M4 Shermans thudded in reply. Flares arced across the sky to silhouette the orchard. Batches of flames sparked to life, vehicles on fire. Machine guns snarled in the distance.

German armor had reached the outskirts of Sbeïtla.

Maronna mia, Russo thought in mounting panic. These Germans aren’t men, they’re demons.

A veritable plague of locusts, a vicious, invincible, relentless enemy.

No, not demons, and not immortal. He’d seen them make mistakes. He’d seen them die. They were men, albeit with greater experience, superior firepower, and generals who knew what they were doing.

The Germans could die, all right. They just couldn’t be stopped.

Wade startled him by dropping back into the foxhole. “Good thing I wasn’t a German intent on cutting all your throats.”

“We ain’t infantry,” Ackley offered up as a lame excuse.

The corporal ignored him. “All right, listen up. Sergeant Carson says the Elephant is good to go, but the turret has to be traversed manually. Word is the Germans are apparently launching an all-out attack on the town.”

“The word’s usually wrong,” Swanson said.

“Be that as it may, we know they’re attacking. Everybody’s bugging out for Kasserine except for 1^st Armored. We’re to hold our ground as long as we can.”

The loader snarled, “Back in the fire. We’re like that kid with the finger, the kid from Holland, you know—”

“The little Dutch boy. Yes, we are. Okay. Ackley, you’re on the bow gun. Swanson, you’re loading. Clay, you’re driving—”

“Hey, what about me?” Russo said.

Wade said, “The turret is on manual, and the gun might be finicky. I’d better man it. That leaves you in command.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. That a problem?”

He swallowed hard. “No problem, Wade.”

“Good. We never did get new orders, but we can help out. We’ll fall in with whatever unit drives by and chip in where we can. Any questions?”

Nobody had any. The tankers emerged from the safety of their foxhole and scuttled to their tank. They mounted up and plugged in. The maintenance crew had patched the hole by welding a metal plate over it. Weak, but it was something.

Russo almost went to the driver’s seat but checked himself. He climbed into the turret, and cleared his throat. “Check interphone!”

“Gunner, check,” Wade said.

“Reading you loud and clear,” Ackley said. “With or without the phone.”

“Driver, check,” Clay said with pride.

“They did a good job cleaning out all the mess in here,” Swanson said.

Russo took a deep breath, unsure he was ready for this. Like everybody else, he bitched about how he could do the job of commanding better than whoever was doing it, but he didn’t actually want the job himself.

Sicilian Superman, he thought.

He had this.

He wasn’t just going to pinch hit for Wade. He was going to be the best tank commander ever. That was how he’d prove himself an American. Not by doing something special for these men, but by doing something significant for his country.

“Driver, start the engine,” Russo said with all the drama of ordering his men to hold to the last. “Gunner, check systems.”

The engine started, which was a relief after the pounding the tank had taken. Wade and Swanson ran the gun through its paces short of firing it.

The corporal reported, “Everything seems to be in order except the turret motor, which we already knew about. We’ll have to hand crank to tra—”

Ackley let off a burst with the bow gun. Tracers flashed into the darkness.

Before Russo could speak, Clay fumed: “What the hell are you shooting at?”

“Thought I saw something,” the kid said.

“Only shoot when you see Germans, not something, you stupid jerk. You want to hit our own guys?”

“What Eight Ball said,” Russo chimed in.

“Golly,” Ackley said. “I thought we’d rather be safe than sorry.”

Russo sighed. “Driver, take us out. March out where those M3s went and hope they don’t have any Ackley types who fire on us.”

“Roger that, Boss!”

The new tank commander stifled a laugh. If only Clay knew Russo hadn’t exactly been showing respect by calling Austin that. He’d been acknowledging the tank commander belonged to a class that had kept his family struggling since they’d landed in America.

Still, in the end, Austin was one of the finest men Russo knew. The war was eliminating some of the old differences that had divided people back home. Out here, the only thing that really mattered was sticking by the guy next to you, even if you didn’t much like him.

Even if you hated his guts, he was still your brother.

Russo spotted the dim red tail lights of the M3 column marching east out of town. Beyond, big guns crashed with greater intensity. He spared a glance over his shoulder to see flares bubble in the sky over 1^st Armored’s command post. General Ward’s CP was under attack.

This was bad.

“Driver, stop!”

Clay yanked the sticks. The tank idled on the road and spewed clouds of exhaust. Trusting in the commander, nobody said anything. They knew he had an ear for machines, especially what American armored vehicles sounded like.

“Back us off the road and stop,” Russo said.

Elephant growled in reverse.

“Good. Loader, put a shot in the gun.”

The night was pitch black. He could barely see the road he’d been on. Could he shoot by sound alone? Would the enemy tank pass by like a ship in the night?

Or was it an American tank, and he was on the verge of making a massive mistake?

“We’re up,” Swanson said.

Young olive trees crashed to the ground ahead of him. Whatever it was, it was big and heavy. It rumbled louder, very close now, floundering as it struggled to navigate the orchard.

“No target,” Wade reported.

Moonlight shimmered along the olive orchard and briefly outlined a hulking black shape. Then the dark thickened as the clouds returned to obscure the moon.

“Wait,” Russo breathed.

The tank barreled out of the olive trees and stopped. It couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards away. Either the German tank commander had spotted Elephant, or he saw something suspicious and was stopping until he’d figured out what it was.

“Gunner, tank, shot, one hundred, traverse right five mils, wait.”

Wade hand-cranked the turret. “I have him.”

The German tank revved its engine but did nothing.

Russo gaped into the darkness and held his breath.

Moonlight fell again upon the olive grove—

Panzer! “Fire!”

Wade: “On the way!”

The barrel of Elephant’s 75 flashed as it belched a shell that blurred straight into the German tank and punched a hole in it.

“Give him HE!” Russo ordered.

“Up!” Swanson called out.

“Fire again!”

“On the way!”

The HE round chased after the first and burst inside the tank. Blue-green fire shot out its hatches.

“Another hit!” Suddenly exhausted, Russo sagged in the cupola. “Check fire.”

“Nice one, Mac,” Swanson said.

“Thanks.”

“I mean, not bad for a ginzo.”

Russo ignored him. “I need a volunteer to dismount and take a look at it.”

“Why?” Clay said.

“Because I want to make sure I didn’t kill one of our own tanks.”

“What difference does it make?” the loader said. “Why bother?”

“Because the ginzo says so.”

“Well, I ain’t risking my neck for it.”

Russo understood. If they’d just put two shells into a friendly tank, Swanson would simply rather not know. It’d be better not to know.

Wade said, “Let me through, and I’ll go.”

“Take the Tommy.”

“Already have it.”

“Thanks, Wade.” He moved aside to allow the corporal to exit the tank.

“Don’t mention it.” The gunner jumped off the sponson, shouldered the Thompson, and disappeared in the dark.

“Ackley, cover him,” Russo said. “And don’t shoot him on the way back.”

“I ain’t covering nothing because I can’t see shit,” the kid said. “We probably blew up some guy’s barn.”

After a few minutes, Wade returned. “He’s a Mark IV, and you got him.”

Russo blew out a long sigh. “Good.”

“I found the commander. He was thrown clear by the explosion. Dead. One less hero of the Third Reich.” The corporal extended his hand, which held an Iron Cross medal. “I found this on him. It’s yours. You earned it.”

“Where do you want to go now?” Clay said.

Russo clenched the Iron Cross in his fist. “Next time, we might not be so lucky. We’re going to stay right here and wait for daylight.”

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO} THE STAND

Just before dawn, the crew ate their rations cold and fired up Elephant’s big aviation engine. At first light, the tank rolled into the olive orchards southeast of Sbeïtla. Corporal Wade sat hunched behind the gun’s periscope with a ready grip on the elevating and traversing wheels. The 75 was loaded with AP.

Swanson crouched behind him with another round in his lap. Short as Napoleon but twice as cocky, Russo stood in the turret with his back ramrod straight. After last night’s action, the driver had meshed with his new role as commander.

Wade was certain he’d made the right call putting Russo in the cupola because it allowed the corporal to focus on what he did best behind the 75. Who got the best seat in the tank didn’t matter anymore. What did was maximizing survival probability in a game that felt very much stacked against them.

“Friendly armor ahead,” Russo said. “Fingers off the triggers.”

Wade spotted the M3s through his scope. An interim model manufactured while the Sherman was being developed, they were similarly medium tanks. With a 37 squirrel rifle in the turret, a 75 main gun, and four machine guns, they packed a lot of firepower, but they were poorly designed. The 75 was mounted over the sponson, which limited the gun’s field of view and prevented the tank from taking a hull-down position. With their high, stacked profile, they made big, fat targets.

Whoever was in charge here knew what he was doing, though. The M3s had parked in ideal defilade positions along the wadi with their barrels aimed at Highway 14, the main road into Sbeïtla. Their crews were camouflaging the tanks with wet clay among stands of olive trees. Armored infantry and antitank guns dug in on the flanks.

“You thinking what I’m thinking, Wade?” Russo said.

“We should get in with these guys, is what I’m thinking.”

Elephant stopped and, after a brief pow wow, joined forces with Second Platoon, Fox Company, 2^nd Battalion, 13^th Armored Regiment. Lieutenant Preston commanded the platoon from his own M3 medium tank, which his crew had named Fatso. Elephant clanked into a hull-down position facing a rise three miles to the east and parked.

“Let’s camouflage this big boy,” Russo said.

Wade got out and grabbed a shovel. He usually hated the endless busywork of digging and moving only to dig again, but today, it had a purpose. Even Swanson, who reliably avoided any work not having to do with tank maintenance, pitched in and turned out to be creative in shaping the clay on the armor. Gnawing on a massive wad of Wrigley’s, Clay pitched in as well.

From a distance, Elephant’s turret would look like a big old rock.

Lieutenant Preston watched them work. “You boys have seen some action.”

“More than I’d like to think about, sir,” Wade said.

“So have we. We ran into Jerry up north, outside Tébourba, so close to Tunis we could see its minarets. They lit us up with antitank guns. Goddamn 88s…”

Wade nodded and went back to digging. Several miles to their rear, Stukas returned to bomb Sbeïtla again. American artillery rumbled.

“Well,” Preston said and walked away, lost in his memories.

It turned out they were on the right flank guarding the approaches to Sbeïtla. Ahead of them, a tank destroyer battalion had deployed in a picket line. If the tank destroyers broke, the M3s would stop the panzers here.

The M3 tank crews didn’t look scared, which made Wade reflect and realize he wasn’t either. Nobody here was, not anymore. What they were was pissed.

The Germans had slapped them around for fifty miles. That would stop now, on this ground. All over the battlefield, units were buckling in terror and bolting for the rear, chased by rumors and apparitions and in some cases very real panzers, but these men were done with it. The brass had ordered them to hold for one full day to allow the rest of the American forces to pull back to Kasserine, but orders had nothing to do with it.

Wade understood. He felt the same as them. He’d joined the Army to escape his crashing marriage, but the war he’d signed up for had become even more personal than his memories of Alice and her affair.

He was mad now and ready to fight.

Russo returned to the tank. “We’re sharing a radio frequency with Preston’s platoon now. Until we get to Kasserine, we’ll be taking orders from him.”

Wade slapped a shovelful of mud onto Elephant’s deck. “That’s good.”

Swanson scooped it up and slathered it on the turret.

“We’re hull-down. Why did you put mud all over the front plate?” Russo asked.

“Because we might have to fall back and end up in a spot where we aren’t.”

Russo blinked. “Right. You’re smart, Wade.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Anything else we should be doing that I might have missed?”

Wade smiled. “You’ve got this, Tony. Keep it up.”

Expecting the loader to deliver one of his trademark barbs, Russo shot a suspicious look at him. “What about you, Mad Dog?”

Swanson said, “You asking me what I think of our tactical setup, Mac?”

“That’s right.”

“I think I’d like to win one for a change.”

“That’s what we’re going to do.”

“I’m also happy to see Wisenheimer apply his smarts to keeping us alive instead of crap that don’t matter.”

Wade chuckled. “Yeah, Dog. Between my brains and your brawn, we somehow managed to camouflage a tank.”

Ackley ambled over to inspect their work. Despite making no apparent contribution himself, the kid had managed to plaster himself with mud. “The Krauts ain’t doing much of anything. They might not even attack today.”

Wade listened to the distant crash of gunfire. By now, he knew the difference between a tank assault and a skirmish. Right now, the Germans were skirmishing. He couldn’t figure it. As far as he knew, the enemy had the initiative and momentum across the entire front. “Strange time for Rommel to get timid—”

Gunfire erupted in the distance, a collection of booms that grew into a continuous thunder.

Russo: “Mount up and button up!”

The tankers clambered into Elephant and listened to the radio while they waited. Through his periscope, Wade called out a lot of white smoke ahead. The tank destroyers were dropping smoke pots to cover their withdrawal.

“We’re going to hold fire until the major gives the order,” Preston said over the radio. “Then we all fire. Fox 3 Actual, out.”

Glowing in the late morning sunlight, vehicles topped the rise.

“They’re ours,” Wade reported. “The tank destroyers.”

The tank destroyers were supposed to fall back by company and delay the panzers as long as possible, but they were bolting pell-mell.

“There goes our picket line.” Russo was peering through his periscope. “Loader, give me a round of shot.”

Swanson slammed a round into the breech. “You’re up!”

Afraid to even blink, Wade sat with his whole body clenched behind his scope. He was shivering but not from the cold. Sweat trickled down his face. The panzers were taking their sweet time. He spared a moment to wipe his forehead with his sleeve and glance at where Alice’s picture should have been, but it had burned up in Boomer along with Ulysses.

He returned to the scope and waited. A wave of dust topped the rise, followed by a line of monstrous German vehicles with Italian infantry clustered behind them in a formation called the grape.

“Contact,” Wade said in a steady voice. “A line of panzers. They’re Mark IIIs.” While he spoke, more appeared. “Mark IVs right behind them.”

“Wait on picking a target,” Russo said.

Wade licked chapped lips. “Roger.”

A colossal bang made him flinch. The men cursed in the aftermath.

“What the hell was that?” Clay cried. “Are we hit?”

Wade returned to the scope. He saw that the Germans had heard it too and slowed to a crawl. “My bet is an ammo dump went up in Sbeïtla.”

Russo let out the breath he’d been holding. “Mannaggia, that was loud. Sounded like it was inside the tank.”

“Just letting rip one of my C ration specials,” Swanson said.

Wade expelled his nervousness with a loud cackle. “Break out the gas masks!”

Russo and Clay joined in the laughter. They were all cracking up except for Ackley.

“Cut it out,” the kid said. “We got Krauts right in front of us, for Pete’s sake.”

The advance element of panzers resumed its march into the wadi. Then the main body arrived with a rumble that shook the earth.

“I’m counting thirty, maybe forty tanks,” Russo said.

“Uh-huh,” Wade said, caring only about the one that’d be in front of him when the order came through to fire.

The commander was grinning. “They don’t see us.”

Wade forced a smile too. For the first time, he had the drop on the Germans, who rolled on unaware they were driving deep into a trap. He settled his scope and its reticle on the nearest tank in the formation, a Mark III.

“Gunner, tank, shot, two-five-zero, wait.”

Wade hand-cranked the turret and checked the elevation. “Ready.”

Two hundred fifty yards now. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

Come on, come on, let’s—

“Let ’em have it, boys!” Preston said over the radio.

“Fire!” Russo cried.

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

The 75 blasted its shot in a white blur directly toward the Mark III and punctured its hull. Fire flared from the hole before it burst with a shriek of rending metal. Pieces of tank flew everywhere to clang on the rocks.

Hit! He’s hit! He’s burning!

“Hit!” Russo exulted. “Shift target! Traverse left!”

“You’re up!” Swanson said.

All over the wadi, tanks blazed away at each other at almost point-blank range. The Germans had stopped and were pulling back. Wade cranked the turret until another Mark III appeared in his crosshairs.

“Mark III, shot, three hundred, fire!”

“On the way!”

The shot banged off the tank’s sprocket. The Mark III whiplashed as the broken track rolled off the wheels and lunged across the ground.

“Hit him again!”

Swanson slammed another round into the breech. “Up!”

“Fire!”

“On the way!”

The next shot crashed into the turret and blew the commander out of the hatch in a jet of fire and black smoke. Wade’s eyes went wide as the 75’s devastating power poured into him. Every atom in his body howled with joy.

“Heil Hitler, you Nazi fucks!” he screamed.

Screw you, Alice! Screw you, Larry Enfield! Screw you, Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo and every one of you stupid, no-good, goddamn Nazis—

“Shift targets!”

Wade feverishly worked the turret, his scope presenting a beautiful vista of burning panzers. “No target! I need a target!”

His terror forgotten, he wanted to kill them all.

“No targets,” Russo said. “Wait for orders.”

The Germans had pulled out, hounded by arty fire as they went. The shooting faded until the only sound was the popcorn pop of ammo cooking off in the burning wrecks.

Wade sighed, trembling with excess adrenaline.

“Fox 2 Actual to Fox 2,” Preston said. “You beautiful bastards. You just stopped Rommel in his tracks.”

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE} PURE STUBBORN

The tankers cheered as the last of the German vehicles disappeared behind the rise, leaving behind the flaming wrecks of seven panzers.

PFC Swanson didn’t join in. With a sigh, he leaned against the turret hull. He’d thought a real victory would feel different. However, as after the previous battles, he was tired and hollow. All he wanted was a cigarette.

Okay, winning beat losing, particularly given he was still alive, but otherwise, it didn’t have a whole lot going for it, at least from where he sat.

This made four fights now—four instances in which his tank had killed or disabled enemy vehicles, four times he’d dodged his own death. Between Boomer and Elephant, his crew had knocked out six tanks in all, and he was no better off for it.

When he’d enlisted, he’d pictured the war being over after a few epic battles. He couldn’t have been more wrong. He was quickly learning this war was like a football game where the teams traded the initiative and fought tooth and nail to move the ball a few yards each play, one down after the next, losing players along the way, sometimes a few, sometimes many.

Russo dropped into the turret. “That’s how it’s done.”

“Bully for us,” Swanson said. “They’ll be back. And then what?”

“Then you load the 75,” Wade told him. “And then I fire it. We kill Germans. We do whatever it takes to stay alive until the end.”

Swanson stared at him. “I guess you have it figured out.”

“I never thought I’d have to tell you not to overthink something.”

“There’s a first for everything. I’m going out for a smoke.”

Outside, he sat on the rear deck and lit up. The Germans would return in an hour, maybe two or three or whenever, and they’d be pissed. They wouldn’t let a bloody nose stop them from fighting. They just weren’t the type. In Swanson’s book, the Nazis were the worst. The earnest sort who thought they were better than everybody else and did their fanatical best to prove it. The guys in his tank may have been about as agreeable as a pebble in his shoe, but they weren’t like that.

The Germans had proven to be an unstoppable wind, and so far the American rock had been as movable as a tumbleweed. That was starting to change, though. Swanson could feel it. In the end, he had to admit it was good to deliver a bloody nose. In the face of German experience, weaponry, and tactics, the tanker had his sheer stubbornness to call on, a deep sort of stubborn bred into the American character.

All his life, arrogant types like these Germans looked down on him as being mean and lazy. That they were probably right didn’t matter. Nobody was allowed to look down on him. The Army blurred these divisions with plain indifference. Look at the tanks where he’d served, where poor White trash like him shared the same tiny space with an upper-crust sergeant, an egghead, a ginzo, an all-American kid with something to prove, and whatever the hell Ackley was.

Swanson’s tank was America, and whatever else it did, the least it would do was stomp some arrogant pricks for thinking they could take the world from other people they regarded as inferiors. The resentment he’d felt his whole life now had a face, and it was German. The purebreds were going to find out the hard way what a bunch of mutts could do.

He took a last drag of his Chesterfield and flicked it into the clay. Then he joined Russo in adjusting the tension on the tracks.

“You okay, Mad Dog?” Russo asked him.

“Now that you’re in the cupola, you suddenly care?”

“Jeez, I was only—”

“Just move the straightedge so I can turn these nuts, you dumb ginzo.”

In the end, whatever story he told himself didn’t matter. Like ol’ Wisenheimer said, he’d load the gun, the gunner would shoot it, they’d kill Germans, and they’d try to stay alive. Play after play, yard after bloody yard, until they scored the final touchdown.

“Shorty,” Wade called down from the cupola. “You’re needed on the radio.”

Russo glanced at the other tankers, who were mounting their vehicles. Gunfire intensified to the south. “We’d better mount up.”

Swanson followed him down the hatch and plugged into the radio. The Germans had swung to the south and were hitting 2^nd Battalion in the flank.

“We can’t withdraw until the last of the infantry pulls out,” Lieutenant Preston said. “We’re going to hold as long as we can.”

And here we go again, Swanson thought. The unstoppable wind. “We’re like those cavalry guys who fought the Indians, and they all got—”

“Custer’s Last Stand,” Wade said.

“Right. Whenever they need a Custer’s Last Stand, they call us.”

“Then stop being cavalry,” Ackley said. “And start being an Indian.”

Swanson guffawed. “Good thinking, Ack-Ack.”

“Driver, start the engine,” Russo said. “Follow Fatso.”

Elephant swung into the column with the platoon of M3 tanks and pushed to the south. The hull and very air around him vibrated with the escalating thunder of big guns. He raised the scope and took in a series of gullies and copses running up to tanks shooting into a haze of dust and smoke. An M3 was burning.

“All Fox 2 tanks, stop,” Preston ordered.

“Driver, stop,” said Russo.

Swanson turned away from the scope. From here on out, he’d concentrate on ramming rounds into the breech as fast as possible.

“Panzer! Mark IV on our ten, shot, one-two-zero-zero, lead three mils, fire!”

The loader already had a black AP shot in his hands he’d wiped clean with a rag. He shoved the round all the way into the breech and slammed it closed.

“You’re up!”

“On the way!” Wade yelled.

The gun bucked and belched a shell casing.

Swanson pushed the next round into the breech. “Up!”

“Right five, up six, fire!”

“On the way!”

A roar filled the turret, followed by heavy clanging as shards of torn metal splattered Elephant’s hull.

“That was Fatso!” Russo said. “Driver, reverse! Reverse! Gunner, left four, down three, fire!”

“Up!”

“On the way!”

The tank rocked and gonged like an anvil pounded by the world’s biggest hammer. The crew cried out. Swanson tensed to bail, but Elephant had survived the hit.

For the next two hours, the tank kept reversing and rarely stopped, shooting all the while. During the rare breaks in action, the men passed around a canteen. Then they finished Austin’s flask. When they had to piss, they used empty shell casings and tossed them out the pistol port. Swanson shoved one round after another into the breech until his arms ached and the turret basket was full.

The tank rocked at another glancing shot. Dirt poured into the open commander’s hatch from a near miss. Russo screamed himself hoarse belting out orders. The AP ran out, then the HE.

Elephant was firing white phosphorous rounds when it took another hit. The tankers howled as the round punched a hole through the armor and splashed the interior with high-velocity shrapnel.

Pain sliced into Swanson’s chest. Russo’s legs buckled out from under him. Wade slouched against his periscope with smoking holes in his back.

Smoke and heat filled the turret.

“Bail out,” Swanson said. He made to grab Wade’s shoulder and pull but couldn’t move his arm.

“Clay,” Russo was shouting into the interphone. Swanson couldn’t hear him through the line, which had gone dead. “Clay!”

Swanson looked down at the front of his tanker jacket, which was blood-soaked and torn to shreds. Pain flared through his chest again. Merely breathing was agony. He coughed on the smoke and nearly passed out from the stabbing anguish.

He thought he might be dying; he probably was. One thing was certain, he wasn’t going to burn alive. If he was to die today, he’d do it outside.

“I’m moving,” he grunted to nobody in particular. With his good left arm, he grabbed Wade by the shoulder again and hauled the man out of his seat toward Russo. The three tankers landed in a groaning pile.

Clay appeared in the hatch above. “Hurry the hell up!”

“Get Wade out first,” Russo said. “I’ll go last.”

“Shut up,” Swanson growled and heaved him up. Clay grabbed hold of the man under his armpits and hauled him out.

Wade was next, just a sack of meat. Swanson doubted the man was even alive. It didn’t matter; nobody was burning up today. Grabbing hold of the man’s jacket, he growled and raised him high enough for Clay to get hold of him too.

The limp body ascended through the hatch. Then Clay returned for Swanson.

He rolled off the deck and hit the ground hard enough to spasm and vomit from the agony. Beside him, Russo was rolling around screaming. Either unconscious or dead, Wade was the lucky one. Ackley limped over with a bloody leg, wrapped his arms around Swanson’s chest, and pulled him toward safety. In a hail of MG fire, Clay pitched flying into the dirt.

That was when he blacked out.

He came to on the deck of a tank rumbling in the dark in a windswept column. He was stiff and aching from his wounds. Still alive, somehow, maybe still dying. The mob of men and vehicles choked the road in chaotic night retreat through the badlands. Ambulances and trucks and towed howitzers and clomping French hussars were all part of this crawling rout toward Kasserine. Overhead, reflecting vast fires on the ground, the thick clouds glowed like coals. Flares arced through the black sky, and tank shots burst in the distance as the rear guard kept the Axis at bay. The battle raged on, but it was somebody else’s problem now.

That was war. You think you’re the hero of the story and that you’ll see a fight through to the end, but then bang, you’re hit, and your story suddenly ends, and everybody goes on without you.

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR} HOSPITAL

Facing their row of beds in the Oran hospital, the doctor kept telling them how lucky they were.

“Yeah,” Ackley enthused. “We’re so lucky. So very, very lucky.”

Lying on his stomach in the hospital bed, Corporal Wade could only groan. He didn’t feel lucky. The surgeon had pulled six slivers of German metal out of him, and the morphine barely kept the pain at bay.

“You should know that for all five of you to be alive after your tank got hit like that, yeah, you’re lucky,” the doctor said.

Clay had enjoyed the least luck of them all. While pulling them to safety, a machine gun had ripped into him. He was hanging on by his fingernails in another ward for the worst-off cases.

“How’s Private Clay, Doc?” Wade said.

“No change since last time you asked me. We’re doing the best we can for him. Honestly, it’s up to him now to recover—”

“Tankers!” an infantryman growled from his bed. The man had bandages covering his head and left eye. “They’re tankers? You let tankers in our ward, Doc? This ward is for real soldiers!”

“Hide your wallets,” another dough called out.

“How am I gonna sleep with these perverts around?”

“Get them out of here before the Krauts start dropping arty on us!” This last part because when the tanks showed up, enemy artillery fire would start raining soon after and make life hell for the infantry.

“Everybody, settle down,” said a familiar voice.

Through a morphine haze, Wade slowly shifted his head so he could focus in the direction of the gruff voice. It was Sergeant Garrett.

“I know these boys,” the sergeant said. “They saved my ass. So anybody has a problem with them, has a problem with me.”

“Everything’s peachy, Sergeant,” a man said, and nobody disagreed.

The doctor said, “Ahem. We’re getting a distinguished visitor today—”

“Our luck just keeps getting better and better,” Ackley said.

The man gave him the stink-eye. “So you’ll want to behave yourselves.”

The doughs shouted examples of what they considered good behavior until he left red-faced and muttering. Then a pretty redheaded nurse came into the ward. All smiles now, the men quieted to watch her go about her rounds.

“Distinguished visitor, indeed,” somebody said, and the rest laughed.

“So that’s it,” Russo rasped from the bed next to Wade’s, his legs wrapped in bandages and his back propped up against pillows. He wore his Iron Cross over his pajama top. “While we recover, the Army will finally snare the Desert Fox and invade France. The war might be over before we get back in the field.”

Over the past two weeks, Axis tanks and infantry had overrun the Kasserine Pass and pushed on to Sbiba, Tebessa, and Thala, where they were finally checked by a stubborn defense. Overextended with limited supplies and facing counterattacks, Rommel threw in the towel and withdrew so he could focus on Montgomery approaching the Mareth Line from the east.

American troops advanced into Kasserine Pass to find endless burned-out vehicles, shells and casings, food tins, equipment, bodies, and abandoned halftracks and jeeps among massive craters. Soon after, they were back where they’d started, in Sidi bou Zid. In the end, America had won by taking so many punches the enemy had worn himself out.

“We won’t be invading France,” Wade said dreamily.

“I haven’t had a smoke in two weeks,” Swanson growled from the bed on his other side. “You do not want to mess with me.”

“I think if it’s one thing we’ve proven, it’s that we’re not ready for the big one. My guess is we’re going to take Italy out of the war next. The Army will have us in a new tank as soon as they can.”

“They’ll send us home anyway,” Russo said. “We did our bit.”

“Not a chance,” Wade told him.

Russo and Swanson said nothing to this gloomy prediction.

“Charles? Ha, it is you. I saw your name on the casualty lists.”

Surely, the morphine was messing with him. He was hallucinating. He opened a bleary eye to take in Larry Enfield, professor of literature, wearing a dress uniform with captain’s bars.

A staff officer, serving far from the fighting. Enfield had always been smarter than him.

“Larry,” he managed.

“How are you, Professor? God, it feels like forever since we’d toss back a few pints at the Falcon and debate everything under the sun.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Wade said.

Captain Enfield chuckled. “Don’t be like that, Charles. You know it was one of those things. I was shipping out, and Alice had one too many that night. All of us were always good friends. One thing led to another. I felt awful about it. She still loves you, you know.”

Wade struggled to rise. “Somebody, help me up.”

“Let me pull some strings for you, get you posted with me to Eisenhower’s staff.” The man stared at Wade’s wounds. “It’s hard to see you like this. You’ve obviously been through enough.”

Enfield had no idea. He’d gutted Wade long before the Germans had.

“Kill you,” Wade breathed.

“Hey, pal,” Swanson said with an evil grin.

“That’s ‘captain’ to you, soldier.”

“Captain, I’m going to give you five seconds to scram before I get out of this bed and punch your lights out. I swear to God I’ll do it, even if it means ripping out every one of my stitches and spending the rest of my days in Leavenworth. Sir.”

Garrett glared at Enfield. “There a problem here, Mad Dog?”

“There might be, though it ain’t nothing I can’t handle.”

The infantry sat up in their beds.

“This is me counting,” said Swanson. “Five…”

Enfield backed toward the door. “No problem, fellas. No problem at all.”

“Four…”

“You’d better beat your feet, Captain,” the sergeant said. “He ain’t kidding.”

Wade was snarling, still trying to rise.

“Take it easy,” Swanson said. “That boy has flown the coop.”

He relaxed with a groan. “Thank you, Dog.”

After a while, the loader said, “So your girl had a thing with that fancy pants?”

“Yeah.”

“And that’s why you joined up to fight the war?”

“Yeah.”

Swanson chuckled. “I’m starting to like you, Wisenheimer. Because even with all that learning, you’re a special kind of stupid, just like me.”

Wade trembled with a surge of tears he couldn’t stop. A man builds armor around himself, but it can’t keep out everything, and when it fails, every evil in his world floods in. He wept for the killing he’d done and the carnage he’d witnessed. He wept for Alice and the dull ache of longing he still felt whenever he pictured her face. He wept for John Austin, who had put his crew and his tank first, and Clay, the poor dumb kid who wanted to live as a hero and had instead nearly died as one.

“You’re all right,” Swanson said. “Let it out.”

“We got you, brother,” Russo said.

“Hang in there, Wade,” Garrett called from across the room. “We have your back.”

When a man’s armor failed, his comrades would close ranks around him. They’d lend him theirs to make him strong again.

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE} THE VISITOR

PFC Russo stiffened in his bed as the doors to the ward burst open. His first thought was Captain Enfield had returned with the MPs, and there was going to be an all-out brawl.

Instead, he found himself gawking at a barrel-chested two-star general standing with his hands on his hips. He wore a dress uniform completed by a riding crop and shiny cavalry boots. Even the helmet perched on his grizzled dome was lacquered to a gleam. Twin ivory-handled .45 revolvers hung from holsters on his hips.

He struck Russo as a movie version of a general. There was something of a peacock about him, but one couldn’t help but be impressed.

An entourage of staff officers in tow, the general strode down the row of beds and inspected the bewildered men with his permanent scowl. At Ackley’s bed, he wheeled. “What’s your name, son?”

“Ackley,” the kid said as if this was something the general should have known.

“Ackley, huh? Ackley the Terrible!”

The kid matched the general’s scowl. “Just Ackley—”

The man had already moved on to Swanson. “What about you, soldier?”

“PFC Amos Swanson, sir.”

“You’ll be back on your hind legs killing the Boche in no time.”

“Great,” Swanson muttered.

“Dying is not authorized in this ward,” the man said in a high-pitched voice that didn’t match his martial appearance. “I don’t want you dying for your country. I want you making some German bastards die for their country. Now let me see your war face.”

“My what?”

“Your war face, soldier! Let me see it!”

Swanson growled, “I don’t—”

“Now there’s a warrior! Wear that face at all times.”

“Yes—”

The general had already moved on to Wade’s bed and pursed his lips at the wounds he’d received in the back. “Who the hell is this?”

“That’s Hawkeye,” Swanson said. “He’s our gunner. He knocked out six tanks.”

A flicker of a smile crossed the man’s worn face. “You don’t say. What’d you do back in the world, soldier?”

Swanson said, “Not much.”

“History professor,” Wade mumbled.

Ackley said, “Well, I guess you could say I was—”

“History! A worthy subject.” His eyes shifted to pin Russo. “What in the name of all that’s holy are you wearing?”

Russo swallowed hard. “It’s an Iron Cross, General.”

“I know it’s an Iron Cross! What’s it doing hanging around your neck?”

He told their story, starting with disabling the French tank at St. Lucien. The long mud march, the endless dust, the plague of Axis planes, the aimless driving between fronts, getting caught in the horrific massacre at Sidi bou Zid. The night escape in Elephant, reaching Sbeïtla, the night encounter with the panzer, ambush, and desperate rear guard fighting until they were hit the last time and nearly killed.

Russo gazed at some point miles past the general’s shoulder, though he was looking inward. “Eugene Clay got us out of the tank and then a Nazi MG put him on death’s door. He saved us. He’s the hero.”

“That’s one hell of a story. But a man isn’t a hero without a team working together.” The general turned and scowled at his staff. “This is what I was talking about. Courage, stubbornness, and the ability to adapt. Sometimes, an American has to be kicked a few times, but then his innate manhood takes over and he discovers his love of battle. I want these men given the best care and put in 2^nd Armored. Well? I see doubt on your faces it can be done. Am I a general or not?”

The officers agreed he certainly was.

“Then make it happen.” The general grinned at the tankers. “I’m going to promote these boys and give them their own tanks.”

“I’d like to get into a maintenance platoon,” Swanson said.

The scowl returned in full force. “Is that what you want to tell your kids you were doing during the war against fascism? You fixed jeeps?”

“At least I’ll be alive to have kids,” the loader muttered.

“We’d be honored to fight at your side, General,” Russo said quickly before Swanson got them into trouble. He wasn’t sure if the man was serious about giving them command of their own tanks, but he had to address it just in case. “We’d like to stick together, though. Like you said, we’re a team.”

“All you boys feel the same way?”

“I reckon so,” Swanson said.

“Yes,” Wade chimed in. “The devil you know—”

“Good, then, it’s settled.” The general glared at all of them. “The eyes of the world are on you men. History itself is watching. God Himself is guiding your hand. With a little help from the Almighty and proper warrior spirit in the ranks, we’re gonna punch Hitler right in the nuts.”

With that, the general stormed out in an exit as grand as his entrance, leaving a deafening silence in his wake.

At last, Russo spoke. “Who the hell was that?”

Sergeant Garrett shook his head. “Are you kidding? That was General Patton.”

“Okay,” said Russo, who didn’t know who Patton was.

“He’s the big cheese right now. He commanded the army that landed in Morocco, and he’s taking over II Corps from General Fredendall. He just conned you into the Hell on Wheels division. The 2^nd Armored.”

“In Morocco?” Swanson said. “Fine with me. There’s no fighting there.”

“Part of the division is already arriving and driving into Tunisia, so there’s no telling where you’ll end up. Either way, he’s a real fire breather, that one. Wants to eat Germans for breakfast. If you’re with him, you’ll see more action than you ever bargained for. Good luck.”

“Great,” the loader growled. “Out of the fire straight into the frying pan again.”

Wade said, “‘Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of death rode the six hundred.’”

Swanson stared at him and said, “They gave you too much morphine.”

“It’s a poem. ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’ It’s about duty.”

“Yeah, well, this guy does not do and die. He reasons why. Remember that.”

“The poem is also about fools who take duty too far. What do you think, Shorty?”

Russo said, “I was thinking Eugene would love that general.”

He didn’t mind the situation as much as them. Sure, he’d been through hell. The tank being hit, his legs buckling under him, shrapnel slicing into his crew, the endless trek to Algiers back across the muddy Atlas in ambulances and mule carts, all of it would haunt him as long as he lived. He wanted to go home with his Purple Heart and any other medal the generals wanted to pin on his chest, and say good riddance to a war he’d thoroughly imagined wrong.

But Wade was right; the brass wasn’t going to let him go, so he might as well make the best of a bad hand. A promotion sounded grand, and maybe he’d get to keep his job as tank commander, which gave him a rush like nothing else in his life ever had or would. He’d never admit this to his crewmates, but being a tank commander, while definitely not being better than sex, was pretty darn close.

And damn, the cheesy general had gotten to him. Like Wade’s poem had, regardless of other interpretation. He wasn’t the Sicilian Superman; he was an American warrior, and his blood was still up for a fight. He wanted to destroy fascism. He and his crew were good at this. America still needed him. There was good to be found in continuing this fight, and something more, which was honor.

“I say we go back and punch some Nazis in the nuts,” Russo said.

The infantry burst into laughter.

“Hell,” said Garrett. “Since you put it like that, I might just tag along.”

Russo felt under his pillow until he clenched Austin’s musket ball in his fist. For all that had happened to him, it had brought him luck. Sarge and the Tanker in the Sky were looking out for him, helping him keep his promise to make it home and deliver the bullet to a boy whose father had sacrificed everything for him.

As long as Russo had their help and these guys fighting at his side, he knew he’d see this war through.