Крэйг Дилуи - The Battle of North Africa

“Stretch your legs, boys,” Austin said. “We’ll be hitting La Sénia Airfield next. Then we take Oran.”

Russo nodded. The driver’s station was relatively roomy and comfortable, its seat thick with a decent backrest. But it was spring instead of padded. His rear was going to have callouses by the end of this operation.

He twisted and pulled himself out the oval hatch then stretched his back in an arch. He froze at the sight of a trio of dead French soldiers lying tangled nearby on the ground. Machine gun fire had torn them apart. He wished somebody would come along and adjust their limbs to a more comfortable position.

He’d seen a dead body before. When he was a boy, his family had buried his grandmother, but Nonna had been prepared for a viewing. This was different. It was the most horrible thing he’d ever seen.

He sensed a profound truth, one telling him only life and death were real, and everything else was just an illusion, stuff humans made up to make it all mean something, including the very idea of war.

Clay paled as he zeroed in on them too. “What’s going on, Sergeant? Are the French going to surrender?”

Austin frowned. “When I know something, I’ll share it.”

The bog kept on staring at the bodies. “They should have surrendered.”

“We have to make a lot more bodies before we get to go home. You think this is bad? Wait until we go up against the Krauts. And we don’t surrender.”

“Right.” Clay had turned pale. Then he seemed to steel himself. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“What about you, Shorty?” the commander said. “You ready to do whatever it takes to beat the fascists for Uncle Sam?”

What did Austin expect him to do? Parachute into Rome and kill Mussolini? “I’ll drive your tank where you want it to go, Boss.”

True-blue, gung-ho guys like the sergeant wouldn’t bat an eye before putting you in prison for freedom. They all had a little fascist in them. It’s why he called the sergeant Boss , not to kiss up but because Austin was just that, a member of the class that ran things back home. The man’s family traced its roots back to the American Revolution. In their mind, they were fighting for their America, not Russo’s.

Thinking this, he started to tell the commander to shove it. Then he looked again at the bodies on the ground. “Yeah, Sergeant. I’ll do what it takes.”

Anything to avoid ending up like these Frenchies, lying dead in the dirt.

PFC Amos Swanson asked for the M3-7 wrench.

Twin tracks propelled the tank on a system of wheels. Bolted to the hull, six two-wheeled, rubber-tired bogies supported the tank on springs. Drive sprockets at the front end pulled the tracks from the rear and laid them in the path of the advancing bogie wheels. Single rollers supported the upper track’s weight.

Russo handed over the wrench and laid a straightedge along the top of the track midway between two of these rollers. Swanson set the wrench on the adjusting nut and turned until there was only a half-inch clearance between the straightedge and the top of the track.

Having gained the right tension, Swanson moved down the track. It paid to tighten up the track anytime the tank halted on a march.

As Boomer’s loader, he was responsible for the ammunition, but he’d claimed the role of main mechanic. Machines fascinated him. The tank was plenty sophisticated and could be fussier than a rich man’s daughter, but everything about it was cause and effect, which made the iron gal simple enough to figure out. Energy was produced here, pushed there, unleashed and throttled.

Swanson hadn’t even finished high school, but the Army was teaching him far more useful skills than he’d ever learn in a classroom or elsewhere back home. Skills he could put to good use if he ever made it out of this war.

Nearby, the gunner sat in the sponson’s shade, face buried in one of the many books he’d brought with him to the war. Right now he was reading a thick tome by some guy named James Joyce. Charles Wade was a cool hand behind the tank’s 75, but all his book learning had put him on a high horse.

“You’re gonna just sit there,” Swanson said, fixing the man with his best predatory sneer. “Afraid to get your hands dirty with the little folks.”

Wade gestured to the double chevrons on his sleeve, which marked him as a corporal. “Privilege of rank, Private.”

“Privilege of being a snob.”

“Only to you, Private,” Wade said, eyes still glued to his book. “Only to you.”

Fist clenching the wrench, Swanson glared at him. Even the way the corporal called him Private was snobby and insulting, deliberately drawing attention to their difference in rank. Where he came from, folks looked down on his family as being poor white trash, but nobody talked down to him. An insult was cause for a blood feud. It was why everybody was so damned polite in his neck of the woods. But he was in the Army now and a long way from Applewood, West Virginia.

Sweating and red-faced, Swanson growled as he struggled to compose a suitably cutting comeback.

“Come on, Mad Dog,” Russo said. “Let’s get this show on the road. We might be moving out soon.”

He fixed his gaze on the driver now. He didn’t like Russo either, a little guy with a megaphone for a mouth and always reminding you he was Italian. “Hey, Mac. How many gears does a ginzo tank have?”

“Oh great,” Russo muttered. “It’s my turn now.”

“Five just like ours, but four are reverse.”

The driver left the straightedge and dusted his hands. “You can finish up by yourself. I’ll be somewhere else.”

Swanson tightened another nut. “It won’t take me long. You’ll be running over crunchies in no time. I’ll bet you ginzos make a different sound, though.” He blew a raspberry.

“More like, ‘ Ffangul , scustumad .’”

“There you go again, Mac. Anybody who brags about his heritage as much as you do has either got a big chip on his shoulder or is rooting for the other side.”

Wade looked up from his paperback in alarm. The driver turned red and stepped glaring into Swanson’s space.

“Call me a traitor to my face,” Russo said.

Swanson grinned. Six-three and built like a gorilla, the Army’s biggest uniform barely fit him. Hell, the tank barely fit him. He was more than a match for anybody in the company. That didn’t mean he wanted to trade punches with Russo, who was the bulldog type and wouldn’t give up until he was hamburger.

It didn’t matter, though. He’d already won. He’d never been able to rattle Wade, but the excitable Russo was easy as pushing a button.

He said, “What if I call you a runt instead?”

The megaphone mouth blared, “What if I punch that smug look off your face?”

“Russo! Swanson!” The tank commander stomped toward them. “What the hell is the matter with you two? Save it for the Germans.”

Russo reddened to a deeper shade. “He was calling me a—”

“I don’t care! We have another airfield to assault, and then we’re taking Oran.”

“That’s right,” Swanson gloated.

“And you, stop being a misanthrope and antagonizing everybody.”

He frowned. “What’d you just call me?”

“A misanthrope is somebody who hates everybody,” Wade said.

“Misanthrope.” Swanson savored the word. Yup, that was him.

“ Scustumad ,” Russo chimed in.

“We speak American in my tank,” Sergeant Austin said.

“That’s right,” Swanson said.

“And you, don’t talk at all. Shut up—”

Across the airfield, tankers and armored infantry belted out a ragged cheer. The men looked up. Fighter planes were approaching.