Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

“At ease, Sahgeant Moray. Sahgeant Coopuh, why don’t you have a man fetch us fo’ cups of cawfee back here. Oh, and see if you can run down Lootenant Hunicutter, too. Tell him ah’d like to see him on the double.”

When the first sergeant had departed, closing the door that led out to the busy orderly room, the young officer gestured to one of the side chairs, saying, “Please sit down, Sahgeant Moray.” When both were seated, with cigarettes offered and lit, the company commander said, “Sahgeant Moray, you just can’t know how happy and truly honuhed ah am to be able to add you to my company. You are what every offisuh and man in this whole battalion thinks about when they hear of professional sojuhs, Old Line Reguluhs. It’s sho good to know I’ll have a man like you to lean on in days ahead if the going gets as rough as it may get. Welcome to man comp’ny, sahgeant.

“Lootenant Terence Hunicutter is the platoon leaduh of second platoon, and if evuh a second lootenant needed a sahgeant like you, it’s Terry. He means well, sahgeant, he’s conscientious, hardworking, and he truly does feel fo’ the men in second platoon. But he’s one of the Civilian Military Training Corps offisuhs and he just doesn’t know a whole lot of things he should know and needs to know if he’s going to keep them and him alive and well when we get into combat. Ah’d considuh it a personal favuh if you’d take Hunicutter unduh your wing, sahgeant, and do all you can to help him become the kind of offisuh ah think and know he can be.

“In strict confidence, Moray, if ah had my druthuhs, ah’d have you as platoon leaduh and Terry as the sahgeant, but ah don’t, and ah guess we just will have to play this hand we were dealt. And, also, like I told Colonel Stiles, if anything should happen to Sahgeant Coopuh, ah mean to have you out in that orderly room as mah first so fast it’ll make your head spin. You’re wasted as a mere platoon sahgeant and ah know it, but ah still am glad to have you even as that.

“Oh, and by the way, sahgeant, Colonel Stiles told me you are a very accomplished riduh. Well, I have some distunt relatives who live near a town called Somerton, inland a ways from here. They keep a remahkable stable. If we can find time, ah’d like to take you up to meet them and we could then get in a little riding, maybe. It would be a pure favuh to them and to the po’ horses, too. One of their sons is a pris’nuh of the Nazis, taken in Greece, and the othuh has not been heard of or from since the fall of Singapore to the Japs. Their mothuh is terribly arthritic and their fathuh can’t ride too often because of the wounds he suffuhed in France in 1940.”

But the outing with Captain Burke was never to be, for the pace of the training increased to frenetic. Equipment and clothing and weapons were inspected and reinspected time after time, and all defective or badly worn or seriously damaged items were replaced with new ones. And as the days of May trickled into June, no officer or man had to be told that the time of sudden death would very soon be upon them all.

Milo found Lieutenant Terence McS. Hunicutter to be much like a puppy, painfully eager to please anyone and everyone without really knowing how. He lacked any real shred of leadership ability, and the four squad leaders had been covertly running the platoon for want of any better arrangement, all knowing that true command was simply beyond the young officer’s capabilities. The four men gladly, relievedly turned the platoon over to Milo, asking only that he “take it easy” with Hunicutter, for they all liked the boy.

By the time that young Terence Hunicutter was cut almost in two by a burst of fire from a Maschinengewehr hidden behind a Normandy hedgerow, old John Saxon, now a major, had been sent back to replace the dead battalion commander, and he was quick to approve Captain Leo Burke’s recommendation of a battlefield commission for Master Sergeant Milo Moray.

There were no significant changes to Milo’s life in the wake of the promotion, for he had been doing the identical job since they had waded ashore on the 6th of June, anyway. He just cut off his stripes and pinned the pair of gold bars gifted him by Leo Burke onto his epaulets. Then he buckled on his pistol belt, shouldered a packload of ammo and grenades for his platoon, clapped his battered steel pot on his dirty head, picked up his Thompson and departed the Company CP.

Taking a long and circuitous but relatively safe route, Milo^ot back to the somewhat reduced platoon tired but elated that at least they now had their expended ammo replaced and a musette bag full of chocolate D-bars and cigarettes to help keep body and soul together until someone got combat rations up to them again.

His inherited command now included the remnants of three rifle squads—one of eleven, one of nine and one of eight men. The last remaining light machine gun section had been pulled away from him two days earlier to be added to the CP guard lines; indeed, he had seen and traded friendly obscenities with two of those men while in the CP area.

Calling over Sergeants Chamberlin and Ryan and Corporal Bernie Cohen, who now led the third squad, Milo laid the two golden bars out on the palm of his filthy hand, saying, “Take a good, long look at them, gentlemen, because this is the last time you’re going to see the fuckers until we get somewhere where nobody’s shooting at officers and noncoms, in particular. The pack has ammo and grenades—divvy them up equally. I couldn’t get more than four new BAR magazines, so give the extra one to Pettus—he’s better with the weapon than the other two are.

“Tell your boys they better all start saving their Garand clips. There’s been another fucking snafu in supply, I’d say, because I got the last clipped .30-06 that company had. All the new ammo that came in on the last truckload is linked for machine guns, and I brought along a couple boxes of that, too, for the BAR men. No rifle grenades came, only pineapples and no adapters for those, so no point in lugging along the grenade launchers on tomorrow morning’s patrol, Greg.”

The hulking Greg Chamberlin nodded. “First squad is it again, huh, Milo … uhh, lootenant?”

Milo grinned briefly, his teeth gleaming against his dirty stubbled face. “Yep. Always a bride, never a bridesmaid, right, Greg? That’s what happens when you’re the best—or claim you are—though. And Greg, Gus, Bernie, so long as I’m the highest-ranking man around, it’s still Milo to you.

“Okay, let’s get the ammo distributed, then you can hand out some D-bars and smokes I brought. Then, Greg, come back here and I’ll go over the map with you; I’ll be going along on this one.”

“Don’t you allus?” remarked Chamberlin, chuckling.

The patrol set out at dawn and had moved well out into the unknown countryside by the time it was light enough to see clearly for any great distance. It was then that Pettus slammed his body sideways into the high, grassy bank on his right, his slung BAR under his lanky body, a hole in his head just under the rim of his helmet, blood beginning to dribble from it as tobacco juice was dribbling from the corners of his slackening mouth. He was already down and dead before any of the rest of them even heard the sound of the shot that had killed him.

Before any man could react in any way, a 7.9mm bullet took Milo in the pit of the arm he had just raised to dash the sweat away from his eyes. The bullet bored completely through his chest before exiting in the left-frontal quadrant and going through the biceps, as well, prior to speeding on. Milo later figured that it had skewered both lungs as well as his heart. The lancing agony had been exquisite, unbearable, and Milo screamed. He drew in a deep, agonizing breath to scream once again, and that second scream choked away as he coughed up a boiling rush of blood. He almost strangled on the blood.