It was crowded with men, prone and pressed tight on either side, up against the cover of the ditch wall. The fields on either side had a gentle rise to them, like a lazy wave about to crest. It was less than a foot high, but when everything else is dead flat, a foot is damn good cover. That’s where the advance on the flanks of the road had stopped. Men had scraped shallow depressions in the soil and rolled into them, protected at least from machine-gun fire. To their rear, a trail of bodies stretched back to the canal.
“Is this Easy Company?” I asked. “Who’s in charge?”
“This here’s Fox Company, and you better get your damn head down,” a corporal snapped at me. “If you got further use for it, that is.” That got a laugh.
“Where is Easy Company?” I stood up, straight as I could. It was crazy, I knew. I’d seen Harding do it a couple of times, taking a chance on stopping a bullet in order to show men he wasn’t afraid and they shouldn’t be either. I didn’t give a damn about morale; I just wanted a straight answer fast. This at least got the corporal’s attention.
“Down that way, Lieutenant,” he said. “We were supposed to follow them, but we got pinned down. There was supposed to be a smoke screen a long time ago.”
“Pinned down, my ass! Where’s your officer?”
“Captain’s right there,” he said, pointing to a medic hunched over a body, bloody compresses scattered on the ground.
“Jesus,” I said, and wished that hadn’t popped out so loud. I was going to have to do something about morale whether I liked it or not. No one else was left standing. “Lieutenants? Platoon sergeants?”
“Dead. Mortar round caught them in a huddle, havin’ themselves a powwow. Captain took us this far, then he took one in the chest. The boys and I took a look and figured this was a good place to hunker down.”
“I’m in command now, Corporal. Get up, we’re heading up to support Easy Company. You,” I said, pointing to a PFC who looked only half scared to death. “You’re my runner. Hightail it back to the village and find Colonel Harding. He’s either at Battalion HQ or in that factory building on the same street. Tell him the advance is stalled and that I’m taking Fox Company forward to locate Easy. You got that?”
“Harding,” he repeated. “The advance is stalled at this point. Fox going forward to find Easy. Who are you?”
“Boyle. Now run there and run back here, fast as you can. Go.” I waited for a few long seconds as he stared up at me. If he refused to go, that was it. If I couldn’t get one GI to head back, I sure as hell wasn’t going to get fifty of them to move up.
“Yes sir,” he said, and was off like a jackrabbit.
“Corporal, if you’re the ranking noncom, then get your men moving. Follow me.”
I didn’t look back, and I didn’t try to rouse the men. That was his job, and I had no idea if he was up to it. I crouched low, to show them that I wasn’t completely insane. I heard the rustle of gear, curses, and the sound of boots on the ground. I broke into a trot, and the sound of men following me into the swirling smoke was the sweetest, most terrible sound of my life. Each death would be on my head.
The sound of mortar fire lessened. The German machine guns slowed their rate of fire, too, sending short bursts into the smoke, hoping for a hit. The crump of explosions ahead of us told me Harding had zeroed in on the hill, which would also make the Krauts keep their heads down. I picked up the pace, figuring the less time upright the better my chances were. Visibility was low, but the track was even and easy to follow.
It was then that I tripped. A dead GI lay half in the ditch, half on the track. I went sprawling and fell onto another body, but this one was alive. I lifted myself up and called for a medic. There were none with us.
“Water,” he gasped in a raspy voice. I looked closer, and saw he must have been hit by shrapnel. His jacket was shredded and bloody, and one side of his face was torn and blackened. “Water, please.”
I unscrewed my canteen and only then did I look at his face; not his wounds, but his face. Steel-rimmed spectacles lay bent and broken by his head. He was a kid, with the same color hair. My hand shook, and I reached for my canteen.
“Danny?”
“Water,” the voice said, fainter.
“Danny!” I poured the water on his face, washing away the blood. His eyes bore into mine, beseeching me.
“Water.”
It wasn’t Danny. I rose and ran, as fast as I could. I couldn’t face that wounded kid, I couldn’t admit to my fear, to how I felt in my heart at that moment of mistaken identity. It was a cowardly thing to do, to leave him like that, I knew. I told myself someone else would give him water, somebody would be glad for the excuse to hang back. But it was all a lie. I was afraid, that’s all. Afraid for Danny and maybe even more afraid for myself. If he died out here, I’d carry that guilt forever.
Now I knew. Now I understood my father. Now I was my father. He’d drummed it into me a million times. Family comes first. The Boyles, then the Boston PD, then Ireland. But family first. That’s what leaving a dead brother on the battlefield does. That’s what finding his brother Frank dead in the trenches of the last war did to him. I felt it in my heart, and it pained me, for all of us.
If I had been alone, I would have wept. But I wasn’t, so I barked orders to cover my fears. We were too bunched up, so I got the men spread out, advancing straight down the track and on the flanks. I strained for the sound of our own weapons ahead, but there was too much racket. Not being able to see, it seemed as if the noise was on all sides, surrounding us, echoing in the empty air. They had to be dead ahead, I thought, then wished I’d used a different choice of words.
I felt a breeze at my back. It became a gust, and I could see the smoke drifting past me, coils of misty white churning at my feet, drifting off my shoulders, making for that wooded rise where the enemy waited: their eyes squinted along gun barrels, desperate for a glimpse of us. The cloud cover above had turned dark and swollen, and a salt smell came in with the wind. A storm was brewing, and it was blowing in from behind us, stripping us of the only cover we had.
“Run!” I yelled. “Run!” I prayed they’d heard me, and knew which way. I looked behind me, and could see far enough to know that whatever was left of Fox Company was still with me, and that the smoke wasn’t. It blew past me, leaving a clear view to the rear, and at a run I could barely keep up with it. If we didn’t find cover or Easy Company, it was going to be a turkey shoot. The guys around me understood, and we all picked up the pace, eyes darting across the revealed landscape, legs pumping, weapons at the ready.
The disappearing smoke revealed a streambed, fifty yards up. GIs waved us by while they watched the smoke roll on, cresting against the wooded rise, breaking like waves on the shore. Thirty yards to go, then twenty, and I could make out the shape of trees. Ten yards, then three long strides and I leapt into the streambed as the MG42s opened up, shredding the air with their terrible mechanical constancy.
“Where the hell have you been?” Evans demanded as I rolled out of the foot-deep water and threw myself against the bank. Bullets clipped the ground above us and zinged overhead, sending clumps of earth flying in the fields where we had been. I knew Evans didn’t mean me especially; I wasn’t even sure he recognized me.