Крэйг Дилуи - The Battle of North Africa

“Button up!” Sergeant Austin yelled over the interphone.

Russo didn’t have to be told twice. Closing the hatch not only offered protection from gunfire, it allowed the turret to traverse without killing him. He lowered his seat, pulled his hatch shut, and removed his goggles and bandana from his face. Beside him, assistant driver and bow gunner Eugene Clay did the same and hunkered behind his .30-caliber machine gun.

The driver’s world shrank to a small, thick glass viewport.

“Driver, come alongside Boxer’s three,” Austin said.

“Wilco, Boss.” Russo pulled the right steering stick, which turned the tank in that direction. He was careful not to let up on the throttle during the turn, which could allow slack to build up in the track and throw it. He’d done that once during maneuvers in Louisiana and had learned a hard lesson reinforced by kitchen police duty.

Russo could barely see through the dust build-up on the viewport. He raised his rotatable periscope and tightened it until it faced forward.

“Driver, clock ten,” the tank commander said.

“Got it.” Russo reversed the sticks to bring the tank into line on Boxer’s right.

“Left stick! Okay. Stop!”

He pulled back on both sticks as the firing outside intensified. The tank ground to a halt. “Sorry, Boss. I was driving half blind there for a minute.”

“You’re about a yard away from Boxer.”

Sergeant Austin switched back to the radio, which blatted, “And tell your driver if he rams us, I’m going to drive my tank up his ass.”

That was Boxer’s commander, bitching about the close shave. Russo grinned.

“Come on,” Clay fumed at his station. “What’s going on?”

The assistant driver and bow gunner, or bog, added a machine gun to the tank’s armament. The scrawny kid hunched over his gun, chewing his Wrigley’s, which added a spearmint note to the gasoline stench.

Through Russo’s periscope, he saw armored vehicles receding in the distance as the dust began to clear. “I don’t know, Eugene. I think there’s a war going on.”

“I can’t see shit through my port. I have nothing to shoot at.”

Austin updated the crew over the interphone. “We’re in reserve. The Alligators are having all the fun.”

“There you go,” Russo said. “Company A is taking the airfield.”

“Damn.” Sweat poured down Clay’s face. “We’re warming the bench.”

“The boss will let us know if they need us. Until then, take it easy.”

“It’s just that—”

“Or don’t,” Russo said, still smiling. “I don’t care.”

The bog glared at him. “Why the hell are you so happy?”

“I got to drive a tank today! Don’t worry. You’ll get to shoot something soon.”

“It’s the waiting I hate. If we’re gonna see action, I just want to get it—”

Russo’s finger shot up in a hold-it gesture as his headset buzzed.

“Driver, move out,” the tank commander said.

“This is it,” Clay said. “We’re going in.”

Russo dropped the clutch, shifted straight into second gear to prevent stalling, and depressed the foot accelerator to channel engine power to the treads. He nudged the steering sticks forward; the tracks bit into the gravel. The thirty-ton monster rolled forward with a loud cough of exhaust.

The bog clenched behind his gun, searching for a target.

“It’s just a little sand got in the air filter,” Russo said. “Stay cool.”

Or go suck on a lollypop , the driver thought. I don’t care. The crew weren’t his friends, and he owed them nothing. From day one, they called him Macaroni for his Italian-American heritage and Shorty for his height.

Shorty he could handle—guys had to rib each other about something , or the sun couldn’t come up—and his height made him an ideal fit for the driver’s seat.

On the other hand, he hated Macaroni . His parents had emigrated from Sicily back in the ’20s, so what? It wasn’t like they wanted to cross an ocean to learn a new language and get crapped on. It was that or face starvation and Mussolini. And then Anthony Russo was born in the USA, the same as the rest of the crew. That made him as American as they were, with the same right to its soil.

The hazing had a purpose, and he knew how this story was supposed to play out. He was supposed to work hard, be the best tanker he could be, kill a lot of men from the Old Country, and maybe get wounded himself in some heroic self-sacrificing gesture. Then, at last, they would accept him as an equal.

Aside from his family, which took pride in him serving his country, Russo didn’t need to prove himself to anybody, and he sure as hell didn’t need their acceptance. They could all go suck a lollypop.

Clay fidgeted in his seat. “Where’s the enemy? Are we in action?”

“The battle’s over, boys,” the commander said over the interphone. “The Alligators took the airfield in no time, and no casualties. The doughs are mopping up.” He sounded disappointed at the missed opportunity to blood the tank. “Driver, steady on, then march on the hangar on the left.”

“Is it all right if we open the doors, Boss?”

A long pause then: “Go ahead.”

Russo raised the hatch and adjusted his seat until his helmeted head emerged from the oval-shaped opening. He blinked in the bright sun. “Ah, fresh air.”

And even better, a clear view. For the first time, he wasn’t driving in anybody else’s dust. Tank treads had a special talent for turning dirt and gravel into a fine choking powder and hurling it in the next guy’s face, especially here in a dry region like this. A downside to the job.

Clay stared at him. “You weren’t scared at all. When the shooting started.”

“Not even a little,” Russo admitted, surprised by this.

“I wasn’t either. I was just excited. I want to get in the game.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m just wondering why you weren’t even a little bit scared, Shorty.”

Russo steered the tank toward the hangar. “I’ve got two inches of armor separating me and the outside world, for starters.”

“That armor might as well be butter against a 75,” Clay said.

“It’s even thicker because the armor slopes, you know that. It isn’t butter, chum. Besides that, we’re just one of fifty tanks. That’s pretty good odds.”

“The turret is filled with bombs in dry storage. One hit and we’ll blow like a firecracker. If that doesn’t kill us, we’ll burn to death before we can bail out.”

The blood drained from Russo’s face. “Christ, Eugene.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of scary—”

“You want me to think about all that when the shooting starts? I drive the tank. I get us from point A to point B. It keeps me so busy, it’s hard to worry about anything else, which is out of my hands. I don’t even have a weapon.”

“I was just wondering why you weren’t scared,” the bog muttered.

“Well, keep your wondering to yourself while I’m driving.”

Third Platoon clanked past antitank guns in shattered sandbag emplacements and onto the airstrip, which now resembled a tank park more than an airfield. M3 and M4 tanks snorted like bulls as they parked in platoons. Armored infantry, which the tankers called doughs or dogfaces , milled around captured French African Army vehicles and planes. Grinning with victory, a platoon marched a rabble of prisoners in khaki desert uniforms.

“So what happens next?” Clay said.

Russo rolled the tank to a halt and let it idle before cutting the engine and closing the main fuel supply valves. “You keep asking that like I know more than you do.”

The tank commander stepped off the turret onto the sponson, looking like a movie star playing a tank commander. Russo found it inspiring and irritating at the same time.