We Lucky Few...

“Krauts on the ridge, left side!” they yell and bark from all sides, doing their best to fight for their lives, same as me. The butt of the Thompson machine gun in my hands kicks against my shoulder more times than I can count; in the distance, a man falls.

“BAR! I need the BAR over here, now!” away to my left, in another half standing building, sergeant McNally yells his orders, the BAR. That can only mean one thing.

“They’re piling up in front of the Sarge’s position!” Renthick, the genius beside me, yelled out as he looked in horror at the platoon of German soldiers rushing down the hill.

“Get the BAR here, now, dammit!” time was running out for the Sarge, and still Kelly wasn’t showing up with the needed BAR gun; their lives grew thinner by the second.

“Shift fire! Cover the Sarge’s position, give ‘em hell!” my lips moved without my wanting them and I found myself sounding like the drill sergeant back at the camp. The men around me didn’t doubt my order, even if they didn’t have to follow it; they knew it was the best thing to do.

In a matter of few minutes, what seemed to be a major German attack force became a group of pinned down, scared soldiers. But, a few seconds later, and the tables would have been turned on us. On the hill’s side, in front of the sergeant McNally’s building, the Krauts fell in numbers and those that managed to stay alive or fall wounded hid nicely in the tall grass. We didn’t stop firing. Muzzle flashes and gunshots echoed from every defense point we had in that area, nearly every one of them causing more and more German blood to taint the ground, until none of them stood up, until there wasn’t any one of them to raise the white flag.

“Pour it on ‘em, don’t let up, men!” the sergeant urged us on from his position, standing up proud and tall and pointing at the entrenched Germans. “Give me five grenades, toss ‘em when ready!” the following explosions around the German’s position left little doubt: the dozen of us had just taken out an invading German platoon, the town was still ours, under Allied command.

Slowly and cautiously, I stood up, gun in hand and looking over at what was left of the Krauts’ hiding space. I touched my itching cheek and came out with specs of blood on my fingers; a bullet wound? How? I didn’t feel a shot.

“It was just a ricochet” a few minutes later, I was at doc Odd’s getting checked up, I wasn’t taking the risk of not having the wound looked at and bleeding out from some freak accident. “You were lucky; if it came any harder you wouldn’t be feeling anything at all”

“How reassuring, doc” I looked at him dead in the eye with a wry, but friendly, smile. I had been fighting alongside him since Normandy, he was my friend.

A loud, booming gunshot and the sharp yell afterwards caught both out attentions.

“Ahh! My ankle!” even as we heard the screams of pain of our fellow soldier, the single gunshots echoed all over as we ran towards the source of the yells.

“Wait! Take cover!” without giving Heller a word of doubt, the Doc and I both jumped into ruined walls and covered up. “There’s a sniper in the bell tower, it got Kelly”

“Kelly?! Where the hell was he?! We needed him at the ridge? And how is there a sniper still here?!” the questions came swarming out of my mouth way too fast for anyone to answer correctly. Right after a second bullet shattered Kelly’s elbow in a shocking display of agonized screaming, the rest of the platoon had taken cover positions around the tower. We moved fast.

Heller stayed with Kelly, his best friend, and did his best to keep him from letting his bleeding wounds knock him into shock; the rest of us moved to kill the Kraut bastard that did this. None of us could move to pull Kelly out, or we’d end up being just another victim, Heller kept firing blind shots at the tower, hoping to keep the sniper at bay and away from the wounded kid. Even as we closed up on the tower, luckily evading the sniper’s eyes, his gunshots did not stop and another painful shriek warned us in the worst possible way: Kelly didn’t have space for another bullet in him.

Index finger pointing up, closed fist moving up and down, two fingers up, open hand pointing up. We were right under the bell tower; we stopped at the entrance and anxiously read the Sarge’s orders. The Sarge and Gimms were going to run up the stairs and rush him, the rest of us stayed down and shot at the sniper with everything we had, hopefully distracting him enough to let the Sarge and Gimms take him out without him even knowing what killed him. The Sarge nodded his head and the two of them sped off up the circular stairs around the inner workings of the tall bell tower.

The rest of us pulled back and shot up at the open window at the top of the tower. Darian, Priest, the Doc, Lillian and Smitts taking rapid pot shots with their standard issues M1 rifles, while Yarrion, Samson and me poured hell from below with our automatic Thompsons. In a matter of seconds, a Nazi sniper fell limp and bloodied from the open window and splattered right in front of us; what was left of his flat body lying on the rocky floor gave us a warm feeling deep inside, a feeling that faded as soon as we remembered Kelly. We ran back as fast as we could, most of our jaws fell slowly open and the Doc dropped his gun to rush over at pale and still body lying in a pool of his own blood.

“The third shot finished him off, I wasn’t sure if I could pull him back. So, I waited until you guys stopped firing, but by then it was too late” Heller slowly squinted down beside Kelly and took off his own helmet, fighting back the tears, the kid wasn’t even old enough to shave. Doc Odd didn’t bother trying resuscitate him after Heller’s accounts and even less after taking Kelly’s nonexistent pulse.

“Heller…” Gimms spoke softly, taking baby steps towards the melancholic rifleman.

“I’ll take the BAR, one of us has to” Heller ignored Gimms helping hand and grabbed the heavy rifle from in between Kelly’s stone cold hands and walked away. “We gotta prepare for another German attack” and without giving us a second look, he walked away into the rubble.

“We should take defensive positions again, Heller might be torn up, but he ain’t wrong” the Sarge looked down at the kid’s bullet ridden body then looked back at all of us, being the great leader he was. “Lillian, Samson, bury the kid, and then come back as fast as you can. Yarrion, take the jeep and get to Division HQ up the road, tell them we need supplies and reinforcements, now. The rest of you, get back to positions” as soon as the moment started, it had ended. The tragedy was there, but like all the others that we had all gone through, it was swallowed up by the war around us. There were eleven of us now.


To Be Continued…