“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 2nd 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.