Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

That was what I meant. His big body swelled up and deflated with a long sigh.

"Captain, I been thinking on that so long, I'm just plain sick of it. Truth, Cap, I don't mind this here at all, not being every white man's nigger. It's okay-most of the time. Over there in England, lot of those English girls preferred the colored soldiers, said they was more polite, and I was trying to make time with one and she slapped my cheek when I said I was a Negro. Aside from that, it's been all right.

"But I can't go home and not claim my own. I can't go walking down the street pretending like I don't know the fellas I do, men I played ball with and chased around with, I can't do that. That boy I was having words with last week-that's what it was about, and I wanted to crawl into a hole after you lit into me. I can't hardly do that. And I can't turn tail on the folks who love me neither. I'll go back. That's what I reckon. But no matter what, Captain, it ain't gonna feel right."

"It won't make any difference, Biddy. You go back, get some more schooling for your photography. It won't make any difference."

"Captain, you don't really believe that."

"I do indeed, Biddy. I know what it's been like. But we can't take up the same stupidity now. Here we've had Southerners and Northerners, rich and poor, immigrants from every nation, fighting and dying for this country. People can't go back home and tell themselves we're all different when we're not. You be your own man, Biddy, nobody's ever going to judge you, white or colored."

"Captain," he said. He stopped to think, then started again. "Captain, I want you to know something. You're a good man, all right, you truly are. You're as straight and honest an officer as I've met. And you ain't hincty-you don't get up on yourself too much. But Captain, you don't know what the hell you're talking about now. That's the last we-all gonna say on this."

I had no chance to argue further because the first artillery shell came wailing in then. It landed about two hundred feet away, rocking the earth and igniting a plume of flame that irradiated the near darkness. I rose, still without my boots, and hollered for everyone to get down, just in time to witness another detonation that hurled a private at the perimeter into a thick tree, shoulder first. It was Hovler, the Texan who'd worried about his girl stepping out on him. The sheer force threw his arms and legs behind his back so hard that they wrapped around the trunk, before he slithered down in dead collapse.

What followed was twice the intensity of the TOT barrages. This was not random shelling at thirty-yard intervals from converted light AA or mortars. This was fire from bigger German guns, the 88s and even the heavy loads of Nebelwerfers, all precisely targeted and seeming to cover every inch of the forest incline we occupied. On impact, the ordnance spit up flames and snow and soil in the dark like giant Roman candles. Slumping back, tying my boots, listening to the outcry all around me, I realized that the Germans knew exactly where we were, despite our move. The earth rocked and things went flying the way they did in the newsreels of tornadoes-rifles, soldiers, and tree trunks zooming through the air in the orange light of the explosions and the resulting fires. Chunks of steel sizzled as they sank into the trees, from which smoke, like blood, leaked forth. But the noise, as ever, was the worst of it, the whistling metal raining down, the titanic boom of the shells, and the seconds in between when the panicked voices of my men reached me, shrieking in anguish, yelling for medics, begging for help. Peeking out, I saw direct hits on two holes at the far perimeter and the soldiers, already dead, flying toward me. In the uneven light, one of them, Bronko Lukovic, the poker champion, seemed to break apart in descent. He landed twenty yards from me on his back. His arms and legs were spread as if he was floating in a pool in the sun, but his head was gone, a bloody mess sprouting from his neck like the teased ribbon on a gift box.

"Move 'em out," I started screaming. I clambered from the hole, waving my arms, giving orders to Biddy and Masi, and Forrester. Bill Meadows, unaccountably, was nowhere to be found. I located him, blundering around in his hole on his hands and knees.

"Lost my specs, Captain, I'm blind without those specs." I jumped in, groping with him for an instant, then climbed back out, running from hole to hole to get the men in his platoon moving. By now I knew that if we didn't go, most of us would be blown to bits, and the remainder killed in the ground assault that was sure to follow. Even so, a couple of soldiers had lost control of themselves in the relentless bombardment. In one hole, a private named Parnek was on his knees, sobbing hysterically, as he tried to claw a hole in the frozen ground with his fingers. Another man in his squad, Frank Schultz, wouldn't leave because he couldn't find his helmet.

"Where's my hat," he yelled, "where's my hat?" I grabbed him by the shoulders to tell him it was on his head. He touched it and fled.

With the creek behind us, we could only go toward the road, and as we tumbled off the incline, I could hear the roar of tanks approaching. My men dashed forward, including the wounded who were mobile. O'Brien, the wiseacre from Baltimore, was hobbling behind me. His whole lower leg was gone, even the trousers, and he was using his MI as a crutch. As we broke into the clearing, I was following Biddy and his platoon, and his troops were suddenly falling to their bellies in front of me. My instinct was to order them back to their feet until I found myself facing the black mouth of a 75mm tank gun aimed at us from no more than one hundred yards. As I crushed myself against the snow, a rocket went right over our heads, exploding in the midst of the holes we'd just left. Most of Meadows' platoon was still back there and I could hear the shrieking. On our left, a machine gun began barking, joined almost immediately by rifle fire from the foxholes we'd abandoned last night across the way. There were two tanks in the road now, both Mark IVs that had been painted white, their big guns flashing and recoiling as they spit shells into the woods. About fifteen infantrymen were riding on each tank and firing their rifles at us.

It was havoc. Fortunato was on his feet, looking on like a spectator, with the SCR-3oo on his back. Who had given the radio to the man who couldn't speak English? Several of our soldiers were on the ground, doing nothing. "Shoot," I yelled, and raised my Thompson. I was sure no one could hear me, but on one of the tanks, a grenadier was struck and pitched forward into the snow. Ten feet to my left, Rudzicke, who'd wanted to sing Christmas carols, was hit in the back. The bullet left a clean hole that looked like it had been sunk by a drill bit. From the way he jerked forward, I was afraid he'd been shot by one of my troops, but the Germans had fallen upon us from all directions and the men had no idea even where to aim. Behind us, in the woods, grenades exploded, and in the fires burning back there, I recognized Volksgrenadiers, regular infantry who'd been able to sneak close in white snow-combat suits. They were cleaning out those of Meadows' men who'd remained in their foxholes. Amid the machine-gun and small-arms fire, there was a great jumble of voices, buddies crying out directions, but also men screaming in pain and terror. Stocker Collison teetered by, blood-soaked hands over his abdomen. I had the impression that he was holding a cauliflower against his uniform until I realized that the blue-white mass was his intestines.

Biddy had his bazooka team taking aim at the tanks, but they got off no more than one round before a grenade landed in their midst. I wanted Masi to return with his platoon to attack the grenadiers in the trees to our rear, but he went down as soon as I reached him. It was a leg wound, but a bad one. Blue-black blood surged forth with every heartbeat. He cast me a desperate look, but by the time I thought of applying a tourniquet he had fallen backward. There were two final feeble squirts and then it stopped completely.