MCR: Peace Which Passeth Understanding [3.1]
well, this is coming out of nowhere, isn't it? this chapter's going to be split into three parts, as i'm way too overbooked to post 10,000 words in one go... also, maybe it'll motivate me to work faster! much gratitude to everyone who's been (semi)patiently waiting.
Peace Which Passeth Understanding
part 3.1 (part one here - part two here)
(gerard/frank and mikey/pete implied.)
au, based on "the ghost of you" video.
r for violence, language, sexual situations.
26 July
The bombardment began at seven.
By five-thirty, the licking, ticklish first strands of dawn slid up the edges of their makeshift encampment. Gerard awoke with the sun in his eyes -- his bedroll faced east, always east, away from the beach and the fathomless ocean behind it -- and the drone of aircraft in his ears. He sat up, and the slit of morning that filtered through the tent flap righted itself, revealing a narrow slice of life outside.
Gerard found his shirt in the semi-light, shaking out the dirt and whatever crawling, eyeless insects might have snuck in overnight. He buttoned it up over his sweat-spattered undershirt, and groped for his boots. He hadn't taken off his trousers (except to piss or shit) since Isigny. His jaw felt gritty, nubby with dead skin cells as he passed a hand over it. He thanked his grandfather's beardlessness, and decided not to even bother fixing his hair.
Packing his paltry rucksack took little time, and Gerard headed out into the morning. With a grimace, he saw that his men were already awake -- Butcher and Bryar stood in the center of the scrubby glade, pointing at the underbellies of planes and calling out makes, model numbers. Siska and Carden bickered softly over a cluster of scattered dice; Toro crouched, fingering the implements of his medical kit and tucking them each into their assigned place. Against a tree, a newly recovered Conrad held court, holding a letter from his sweetheart aloft and reading to a knot of hungry-faced men. (Gerard wondered how much he'd told her about the sixteen pieces of shrapnel Ray had pulled out of his side. Very little, he guessed.) Their voices were all swallowed whole by the engines of the aircraft, which swarmed in increasing numbers above them, blotting out larger and larger segments of the sky.
Bryar came up behind Gerard as he struggled to take down his canvas tent. "Lemme get that for you, sir." He cupped Gerard's shoulder, shouted hoarse to be heard.
Gerard tugged on an intransigent cord, shaking his head. "It's fine -- I'll get it."
Bob peeled Gerard's fingers off the rope, knuckle-by-knuckle. "Captain Trohman's back from HQ, meeting with the other officers. Artillery came in, late last night -- we're moving out with them as support, I guess."
Gerard let his grip go slack -- the rope rasped his palm as it slid through his hand. "Fuck - why didn't anyone come and get me?"
Bob crouched, yanking a tent peg out of the ground. He cast a short glance over his shoulder. "Lieutenant Iero said we should let you sleep."
Gerard stood, wiping dirt from his knees. Overhead, their dark bodies had almost beaten the sunlight. "Where are they?"
"Back by the stream, where Able and Easy set up." Bob pointed.
"Thanks." Gerard shrugged off Bob's salute. He trudged back through the remnants of the stand of trees, picking around the mangled stumps. The Americans had taken this sliver of forest nearly three weeks ago, after a firefight that uprooted most of the trees, pulverizing them into splinters. Gerard walked over a carpet of burnt leaves, long fingers of shattered wood. Mud sucked up at his feet from yesterday's rain; he stamped the ground back down with the soles of his boots. Through the massacred grove, he could see officers of the battalion's eight companies, consulting with one another in small groups of three and four. Trohman stood with Frank, Allman, and a man Gerard didn't recognize.
Frank turned. Their eyes met; Gerard's windpipe twisted in his throat. Somewhere across the next line of meadow, across the next monolithic hedgerow, an early bomb roared into its target. The earth, Gerard was almost sure, winced in its muddy husk at the impact.
"Lieutenant Way!" Trohman shouted to be heard, and Gerard began to jog. "Way!"
Gerard saluted. "Here, sir, I apologize for being late. I - "
Trohman flicked his chin, dismissive. "Lieutenant way, meet Second Lieutenant Gabe Saporta. 3rd Armored Division, 54th Battalion."
The towering, scrappy man reached out a hand. He grabbed Gerard's and shook it, not waiting for the gesture to be reciprocated. "How's it, lieutenant?" His dark eyes flickered, and he cocked a grin. "Ready for some Jerry-hunting?"
"Excuse me?" Gerard recoiled from Saporta's over-active expression, Frank's silence. He looked to Trohman.
"The Sixteenth Regiment's moving out to secure the left flank," Trohman said. "Saporta and his men are gonna give us some cover."
"Balls ahead!" Saporta crowed. All the muscles in his face seemed to work at once. "Hello, Operation Fucking Cobra!"
"Cobra?" Gerard's mouth worked.
Frank stepped in. "That's the official name -- direct from General Bradley."
"Better than Operation fucking Goodwood," Allman snorted.
Gerard flushed, but Frank continued, "The XIX corps's moving in on the east, with VIII corps to our west, along the coast. Hopefully we'll be able to knock the Germans back, open up a route to Paris soon enough." He's seeing maps, Gerard thought -- he heard the vague trace in Frank's voice -- he's got maps in his mind's eye.
Trohman pointed to the sky and the steel-gray planes that moved like rumbling clouds. "That's the Eighth Air Division; they started bombing forward targets further along the lines yesterday, but they had some trouble with aiming in the rain. Clipped a Lieutenant-General, over in VIII's sector."
He twisted his mouth into a wry smile. "Tell your men to get ready. No more hanging around in the rear -- seems there's a war on, after all."
"Yes, sir." Gerard heard a whistle, another blast. He grabbed a tree trunk reflexively, and felt the reverbations through the dead wood.
"Oh, and take Lieutenant Saporta with you -- his tank squad's going to move out with Second platoon."
Something manic danced in Saporta's eyes.
"On your order, sir?" Gerard's insides sung out for coffee. Just enough until the adrenaline kicked in, until the sound of bombs dropping stopped kicking holes in his temples.
"I'll go with him." Frank saluted. His gaze passed over Gerard, settled back on Trohman.
Saporta slung a gangly arm over his shoulders, whooped, "Onward!"
Gerard watched them go. Trohman patted his shoulder. "With those Rhino tusks stuck to the front, the Shermans can bust a hedgerow like the Clap through a whore's snatch. Saporta's got more kills than any other tank unit in the whole division."
"Yes, sir." Gerard hid his sigh. Instead, he gave a belated salute, and trailed after them.
...
29 July
"Can you see him?" Gerard hissed. He clapped his helmet to his head with one hand, laid the other on Bob's shoulder.
Bob gave a grunt, adjusted the scope on his binoculars. "All I see is fucking dust and rocks."
They crouched in what might have been the parlor of a house, two days ago. The front wall rose over them, providing a measure of coverage for the men hunched in its shadow. The rest of the house had been blown apart, its body devolving to primitive, brutal slabs of stone. It stood, the only relic on this side of the street, like a false front on a movie set. Gerard felt shards of broken glass under his knees, tinkling as he shifted positions. He rubbed his first two fingers over the jutting edge of the windowsill; under layers of dust, red-painted wood rose to the surface. A scrap of wallpaper still hung at one corner -- violets, daintily spread across a white backdrop.
The other two men of Bob's machine gun squad eased the tops of their heads over the windowsill, helmets off.
"Get down!" Bob snapped, and both men -- privates, replacements -- slid down the wall. "You want to air out your brains by letting him bust a hole in your skull?"
"Sorry, sarge."
"Better sorry than dead." Bob passed the binoculars to Gerard. "Top window, second to the right. What do you think?"
Gerard shook his head. "I don't see him. It's gotta be this house, though, right?"
"Gotta be." Bob used his left hand, drawing out sharp angles in the air. "Iero says the villagers saw a sniper climbing the roofs of the houses over that way."
"What's left of them." Gerard looked up. All he saw was sky.
"Right." Bob nodded. "The guys he hit, they were all coming south, from the fields back where the 54th set up its tanks. Which means he's got to be in a window on the south side of the street, right?"
Gerard swallowed, rubbed at his jaw. "I still can't believe we missed him."
Fox Company had fought its way through this intersection of ruined cobblestones at dawn. Damp mist had clung to shards of buildings as they'd run from alley to alley, kicking down doors, gunshot crackling like fat in a skillet.
Eight hours later, early shadows grew at the bottoms of the remaining walls. The sniper had downed six Americans, one of them a lieutenant in the Quartermaster corps. Six casualties in a cleared area -- not uncommon in these past few days, with First Division bolting ahead, sweeping through towns almost faster than the Germans could escape. Guilt, acrid-tasting and thick, clung to Gerard's throat like a lesion. He tapped each of his fingers on the wall, one through five, touching his thumb once more to make six.
"We're not gonna miss him this time," Bob said. He took back the binoculars, rubbing the lenses with the inner cuff of his shirt. "I really think he's up in that window, sir." He squinted.
"I don't want you firing unless you're sure." Gerard peered at the window, but the hidden gunman stayed out of eyesight. "The last thing we want is him setting his sights on us, next."
"Fucking Austrians." Bob gestured to the privates, who began assembling the machine gun. "All the best snipers are Austrians; Hitler recruits them from the forests. Shooting guys like they were rabbits." A hard glint surfaced in Bob's eyes, and he wrung his hands around the doubled binocular barrels. Gerard remembered the first time he'd seen Bob punch someone -- Camp Blanding, second week of Basic, some yokel at a bar who'd called Trohman a kike.
Gerard shifted, uneasy. "Let's wait a couple more minutes. See if he surfaces again."
The sniper's hideout listed, barely standing; a gashed hole in the left foundation revealed a welter of building stones, splintered timber crossbeams. Black residue scarred the edges of the hole, like a cauterized wound. A bazooka, if Gerard had to guess. Maybe a grenade. He didn't remember if any of his men had been using grenades when they came through this morning.
"It's gotta be that window." Bob set his jaw. He ran his hand over the hot metal body of the fifty-caliber gun. "I swear, Gerard, the bastard's in there."
The two privates exchanged ferrety glances. Gerard saw one of them reach for a cross, tucked under the fabric of his shirt. A bitter, rancid smell picked up as the wind shifted, wafting from the shattered moonscape behind them - death, hot and recent. Somewhere in the rubble of this house, a body was decomposing, smashed flesh putrefying in an oven of summer heat and stone. The smell of death had been following them through France, under the reek of shit and piss and rotten food and livestock and mud. Here, as they crouched like toads, death found them, rising in their nostrils.
"You can’t see him." Gerard tried to breathe through his mouth. "He might be --"
"No, fuck that. He's there," Bob said. He pulled at the back plate, swiveling the gun into better position. "Crawford, you load from the left. I’ll keep the trigger down -- make sure you keep a steady stream."
"Bob - " Gerard hissed.
A deep rumble picked up from the right: the grinding cough of a Sherman tank, caterpillar treads churning up earth. "What the hell?" Bob inched his head over the line of the windowsill, peering out at the dust-laden road. "What the fuck is this jackass doing here?"
Gerard picked up the binoculars - a familiar tank jumped into close view, its garish snake decal winding around the steel skin of its near side. "That's Saporta," Gerard said. "I guess he heard we were still clearing out the village." He flipped his gaze up to the window, saw a fluttering of motion.
"Yeah," Bob muttered, "but what's he - "
The front gun of the Sherman tank roared, 75 millimeters of fire. Gerard flattened himself against the ground, reaching up to pull down a fistful of one of his men, too. He clutched his helmet; the explosion rocked the protective wall and rumbled the earth, shaking Gerard's bones. Plaster and dust showered down, clogging the air with powder. He coughed, curling in against himself. The smell of explosives overpowered the lingering death.
Gerard counted to three, and worked his eyes open. Blinking away the dust, he saw Bob take off his helmet. His hair looked gray, his face pale like a silent film star.
Wordless, they turned to the windowsill again. Where the top half of the house had stood, only a blackened hull remained. Gerard could see through the house, all the way to the smoking fields beyond. A roof timber swung down into the empty chasm of the front room; it fell with a creaking crash, letting up another chorus of dust.
Gerard swallowed, coated his throat with moisture. "I think you were right," he croaked.
Bob nodded once. Still looking at the ruined house, he began to pack up his gun.
...
03 August
Gerard sucked hard on the cigarette, his first of the morning. The smoke slid down his throat, branching off to each of his lungs. He closed his eyes, and imagined it seeping into the blind alleys of his capillaries and alveoli. Thick, humid heat dampened his skin; he felt as though he could light a fire in his lungs, dry himself from the inside out.
"Where'd you find fresh smokes?"
Gerard coughed, spitting smoke back up. Over Gerard's shoulder, the look on Frank's face approximated a smile.
"Jesus!" Gerard swallowed. "Do you have cigarette radar or something, Iero?" The tips of his fingers itched; he scratched one hand with his opposite thumb.
Frank shifted from foot to foot, his hands deep in the wells of his pockets. "Guess you could call it that. Lend me one?"
"Can't. Siska made it for me -- rerolled it from the butts of his last pack." He pulled his teeth back into a grimacing smile. "I haven't had a fresh pack since..." Since Bastille Day - a gift from a wordless man, middle-aged, pressing the cardboard box into Gerard's hands at the dance, just before. Gerard took a long drag, shaking his head. "Sorry."
"Fuck." Frank slid his palm over his forehead, wiping away sweat. He breathed through his mouth, lips parted.
Gerard switched his cigarette to his other hand, idly rubbing his fingers against the rough cotton of his trousers. "Sisky's out on patrol duty. He should be back soon. You could ask him, ah, when he gets back."
Frank shook his head. "It's fine."
"Yeah. Okay." Gerard savored the last inch of his cigarette. He held his breath, let the smoke catch and settle. With a rueful exhale, he flicked the butt. His heel ground it into the soil with two quick twists.
"Way! Lieutenant Way!"
Siska's voice echoed from the other side of the camp. Gerard and Frank exchanged a look; both took off running. Gerard thought could hear the tread of Frank's steps, although they might have been his own.
Gerard stopped short, his boots skidding on the dusty ground. "What the hell?"
"Um." Siska looked at Gerard, hands cradling his gun. He and Scimeca stood at the front of an assortment of Germans -- some three dozen uniformed soldiers, arrayed in two lines. "I got us some prisoners, here."
"Jesus," Frank's voice caught in a laugh. "What the hell did you do, punch Hitler?"
"Frank." Gerard jerked his head. "Go get Trohman, tell him we've got prisoners. And find Butcher, tell him his squad's on guard duty." Gerard saw ragged uniforms, hollowed cheeks. He heard the scurrying mutterings of an unfamiliar language. The men were all unarmed, and some held their hands behind their heads, elbows bent out. None of them met his gaze.
"What happened?" Gerard asked.
Siska gave him a weak salute. "To be honest? I don't really know, sir." He coughed. "We were just doing like you said, patrolling the fields on the other side of the road. And we came up to this burnt out barn, this little shit-hole in the middle of nothing, but there was smoke coming out of it. So I said, we gotta head back, we gotta tell Captain Trohman. But then, that guy comes out, holding his hands up in the air." He pointed at a man at the head of the pack: tall, dirt-smudged, chiseled features. Forty, maybe. "Scimeca shoots, and misses -- "
"Sorry!" Scimeca cut in, his gaze shifting from Gerard to the Germans. "I spooked, sorry!"
Siska rolled his eyes. "And then he starts shouting in German, raising his arms higher. He gets out this handkerchief and starts waving it, like his life depended on it or something." (Scimeca gulped audibly.) "Next thing you know, we got forty-one prisoners, trying to surrender to us."
"Right." Gerard looked over. The men shifted about, restless. "All right."
"Trohman's coming." Frank was back at his side. "He's over with Third Platoon, but he'll be here as soon as he can."
Butcher and his men jogged up, and Gerard nodded to them. "Okay. Keep them close -- move them over toward the ditch, that's good enough. We can keep them there, for now."
"Did any of them talk to you?" Frank addressed himself to Siska.
Siska shook his head. "I don't think a-one of them speaks any English, sir."
Gerard watched as the prisoners filed past, urged along by Butcher and his squad. Their boots shuffled in the dust, whispering up a gritty brown cloud. Their insignia revealed various divisions, none of which Gerard recognized. Some of them, Gerard saw, looked barely Siska's age, nineteen and younger. At least a half-dozen were wounded: one man had tied the right sleeve of his rust-stained shirt at the elbow, cuff hanging uselessly from the knot. Two others supported one of their comrades between them, the wounded man's arms slung over their shoulders. His bandaged head lolled on his neck, like a doll made of stuffing.
"It's gotta be a good sign, right, sir?" Scimeca said to Gerard. "I mean, far as we could tell, they'd just been holed up there for days, hiding."
"Yeah." Gerard said again. He scratched his jaw. "Yeah, good job, Scimeca. Go grab something to eat. Tell Toro we need a medic."
The men clustered around the shallow ditch that ran parallel to the paved road, some peering at the brackish water. Frank approached them, weaving among their small groups. He nodded to each man in turn, spoke in a soft voice. Gerard unworked the tension of his jaw, tried to read his lips. Frank crouched in front of two seated men, clapping them on their shoulders. Gerard couldn't see his face.
"They're SS," Siska said.
Gerard looked at him. "Yeah?"
He gave a dismissive sigh. "The whole fucking countryside's crawling with SS. Everybody knows that."
Frank walked back to them, a smile threatening to break over his features. "How do you know?" Gerard asked, vague.
Siska didn't seem to hear him. "My kid brother says he wants a Luger. I looked, but they didn't have any. You think one of those SS guys can get me one?"
"They're not SS." Frank grinned. "Well, a couple of them are. Second Panzer Division, but those guys are too good to get themselves caught. Mostly they're the 353rd Infantry." He flicked Siska's shoulder with his thumb and forefinger. "Hey, go grab some grub."
"Fuck you." Siska saluted, and turned back into camp.
"What is it?" Gerard leaned back, away from Frank's smile. It stretched up all the way to his eyes, to the skin of his temples. Gerard coughed away the phantom taste that rose to his mouth.
Frank dug into his pocket. "Die Zigaretten?" He pitched his accent perfectly, pulled out a packet with a flourish.
Gerard laughed. "No way!"
Frank shrugged. "I'm magic." He rapped the pack against the base of his palm, pulled out two cigarettes. "Atikah - Turkish, not the best stuff. But I figure it's better than sucking on Siska's spit." He passed one to Gerard, lit the other with swift hands.
"Amen to that." Gerard jammed the cigarette between his lips, leaned in instinctively toward Frank's lighter.
Their heads came close, faces less than a foot apart. Gerard smelled the ashy sweetness of Frank's tobacco; the first few drags of German cigarettes were always the best. Frank's lips clutched the paper cylinder, taut at the corners, just wetting the tip. His eyes flashed.
Gerard took a step back, another. "I should go find Trohman." He fingered the cigarette between his fingers. "You -- they'll want you here. To talk to the prisoners."
"Yeah." Frank exhaled smoke. "Yeah."
Gerard nodded. He glanced over at the prisoners -- Butcher stood with his gun in one hand, arms folded over his chest. Beside him, Suarez tried to match his glare. The road stretched out behind them; the trees that remained reached branches over the tar, as if embracing one another. Eight weeks since D-Day, he thought.
"Gerard." Frank's voice pulled him.
Gerard glanced over his shoulder. He caught the lighter as it sailed through the air, just at eye-level.
The 'thanks' stuck in his throat. Gerard kept walking.
-----
Peace Which Passeth Understanding
part 3.1 (part one here - part two here)
(gerard/frank and mikey/pete implied.)
au, based on "the ghost of you" video.
r for violence, language, sexual situations.
26 July
The bombardment began at seven.
By five-thirty, the licking, ticklish first strands of dawn slid up the edges of their makeshift encampment. Gerard awoke with the sun in his eyes -- his bedroll faced east, always east, away from the beach and the fathomless ocean behind it -- and the drone of aircraft in his ears. He sat up, and the slit of morning that filtered through the tent flap righted itself, revealing a narrow slice of life outside.
Gerard found his shirt in the semi-light, shaking out the dirt and whatever crawling, eyeless insects might have snuck in overnight. He buttoned it up over his sweat-spattered undershirt, and groped for his boots. He hadn't taken off his trousers (except to piss or shit) since Isigny. His jaw felt gritty, nubby with dead skin cells as he passed a hand over it. He thanked his grandfather's beardlessness, and decided not to even bother fixing his hair.
Packing his paltry rucksack took little time, and Gerard headed out into the morning. With a grimace, he saw that his men were already awake -- Butcher and Bryar stood in the center of the scrubby glade, pointing at the underbellies of planes and calling out makes, model numbers. Siska and Carden bickered softly over a cluster of scattered dice; Toro crouched, fingering the implements of his medical kit and tucking them each into their assigned place. Against a tree, a newly recovered Conrad held court, holding a letter from his sweetheart aloft and reading to a knot of hungry-faced men. (Gerard wondered how much he'd told her about the sixteen pieces of shrapnel Ray had pulled out of his side. Very little, he guessed.) Their voices were all swallowed whole by the engines of the aircraft, which swarmed in increasing numbers above them, blotting out larger and larger segments of the sky.
Bryar came up behind Gerard as he struggled to take down his canvas tent. "Lemme get that for you, sir." He cupped Gerard's shoulder, shouted hoarse to be heard.
Gerard tugged on an intransigent cord, shaking his head. "It's fine -- I'll get it."
Bob peeled Gerard's fingers off the rope, knuckle-by-knuckle. "Captain Trohman's back from HQ, meeting with the other officers. Artillery came in, late last night -- we're moving out with them as support, I guess."
Gerard let his grip go slack -- the rope rasped his palm as it slid through his hand. "Fuck - why didn't anyone come and get me?"
Bob crouched, yanking a tent peg out of the ground. He cast a short glance over his shoulder. "Lieutenant Iero said we should let you sleep."
Gerard stood, wiping dirt from his knees. Overhead, their dark bodies had almost beaten the sunlight. "Where are they?"
"Back by the stream, where Able and Easy set up." Bob pointed.
"Thanks." Gerard shrugged off Bob's salute. He trudged back through the remnants of the stand of trees, picking around the mangled stumps. The Americans had taken this sliver of forest nearly three weeks ago, after a firefight that uprooted most of the trees, pulverizing them into splinters. Gerard walked over a carpet of burnt leaves, long fingers of shattered wood. Mud sucked up at his feet from yesterday's rain; he stamped the ground back down with the soles of his boots. Through the massacred grove, he could see officers of the battalion's eight companies, consulting with one another in small groups of three and four. Trohman stood with Frank, Allman, and a man Gerard didn't recognize.
Frank turned. Their eyes met; Gerard's windpipe twisted in his throat. Somewhere across the next line of meadow, across the next monolithic hedgerow, an early bomb roared into its target. The earth, Gerard was almost sure, winced in its muddy husk at the impact.
"Lieutenant Way!" Trohman shouted to be heard, and Gerard began to jog. "Way!"
Gerard saluted. "Here, sir, I apologize for being late. I - "
Trohman flicked his chin, dismissive. "Lieutenant way, meet Second Lieutenant Gabe Saporta. 3rd Armored Division, 54th Battalion."
The towering, scrappy man reached out a hand. He grabbed Gerard's and shook it, not waiting for the gesture to be reciprocated. "How's it, lieutenant?" His dark eyes flickered, and he cocked a grin. "Ready for some Jerry-hunting?"
"Excuse me?" Gerard recoiled from Saporta's over-active expression, Frank's silence. He looked to Trohman.
"The Sixteenth Regiment's moving out to secure the left flank," Trohman said. "Saporta and his men are gonna give us some cover."
"Balls ahead!" Saporta crowed. All the muscles in his face seemed to work at once. "Hello, Operation Fucking Cobra!"
"Cobra?" Gerard's mouth worked.
Frank stepped in. "That's the official name -- direct from General Bradley."
"Better than Operation fucking Goodwood," Allman snorted.
Gerard flushed, but Frank continued, "The XIX corps's moving in on the east, with VIII corps to our west, along the coast. Hopefully we'll be able to knock the Germans back, open up a route to Paris soon enough." He's seeing maps, Gerard thought -- he heard the vague trace in Frank's voice -- he's got maps in his mind's eye.
Trohman pointed to the sky and the steel-gray planes that moved like rumbling clouds. "That's the Eighth Air Division; they started bombing forward targets further along the lines yesterday, but they had some trouble with aiming in the rain. Clipped a Lieutenant-General, over in VIII's sector."
He twisted his mouth into a wry smile. "Tell your men to get ready. No more hanging around in the rear -- seems there's a war on, after all."
"Yes, sir." Gerard heard a whistle, another blast. He grabbed a tree trunk reflexively, and felt the reverbations through the dead wood.
"Oh, and take Lieutenant Saporta with you -- his tank squad's going to move out with Second platoon."
Something manic danced in Saporta's eyes.
"On your order, sir?" Gerard's insides sung out for coffee. Just enough until the adrenaline kicked in, until the sound of bombs dropping stopped kicking holes in his temples.
"I'll go with him." Frank saluted. His gaze passed over Gerard, settled back on Trohman.
Saporta slung a gangly arm over his shoulders, whooped, "Onward!"
Gerard watched them go. Trohman patted his shoulder. "With those Rhino tusks stuck to the front, the Shermans can bust a hedgerow like the Clap through a whore's snatch. Saporta's got more kills than any other tank unit in the whole division."
"Yes, sir." Gerard hid his sigh. Instead, he gave a belated salute, and trailed after them.
...
29 July
"Can you see him?" Gerard hissed. He clapped his helmet to his head with one hand, laid the other on Bob's shoulder.
Bob gave a grunt, adjusted the scope on his binoculars. "All I see is fucking dust and rocks."
They crouched in what might have been the parlor of a house, two days ago. The front wall rose over them, providing a measure of coverage for the men hunched in its shadow. The rest of the house had been blown apart, its body devolving to primitive, brutal slabs of stone. It stood, the only relic on this side of the street, like a false front on a movie set. Gerard felt shards of broken glass under his knees, tinkling as he shifted positions. He rubbed his first two fingers over the jutting edge of the windowsill; under layers of dust, red-painted wood rose to the surface. A scrap of wallpaper still hung at one corner -- violets, daintily spread across a white backdrop.
The other two men of Bob's machine gun squad eased the tops of their heads over the windowsill, helmets off.
"Get down!" Bob snapped, and both men -- privates, replacements -- slid down the wall. "You want to air out your brains by letting him bust a hole in your skull?"
"Sorry, sarge."
"Better sorry than dead." Bob passed the binoculars to Gerard. "Top window, second to the right. What do you think?"
Gerard shook his head. "I don't see him. It's gotta be this house, though, right?"
"Gotta be." Bob used his left hand, drawing out sharp angles in the air. "Iero says the villagers saw a sniper climbing the roofs of the houses over that way."
"What's left of them." Gerard looked up. All he saw was sky.
"Right." Bob nodded. "The guys he hit, they were all coming south, from the fields back where the 54th set up its tanks. Which means he's got to be in a window on the south side of the street, right?"
Gerard swallowed, rubbed at his jaw. "I still can't believe we missed him."
Fox Company had fought its way through this intersection of ruined cobblestones at dawn. Damp mist had clung to shards of buildings as they'd run from alley to alley, kicking down doors, gunshot crackling like fat in a skillet.
Eight hours later, early shadows grew at the bottoms of the remaining walls. The sniper had downed six Americans, one of them a lieutenant in the Quartermaster corps. Six casualties in a cleared area -- not uncommon in these past few days, with First Division bolting ahead, sweeping through towns almost faster than the Germans could escape. Guilt, acrid-tasting and thick, clung to Gerard's throat like a lesion. He tapped each of his fingers on the wall, one through five, touching his thumb once more to make six.
"We're not gonna miss him this time," Bob said. He took back the binoculars, rubbing the lenses with the inner cuff of his shirt. "I really think he's up in that window, sir." He squinted.
"I don't want you firing unless you're sure." Gerard peered at the window, but the hidden gunman stayed out of eyesight. "The last thing we want is him setting his sights on us, next."
"Fucking Austrians." Bob gestured to the privates, who began assembling the machine gun. "All the best snipers are Austrians; Hitler recruits them from the forests. Shooting guys like they were rabbits." A hard glint surfaced in Bob's eyes, and he wrung his hands around the doubled binocular barrels. Gerard remembered the first time he'd seen Bob punch someone -- Camp Blanding, second week of Basic, some yokel at a bar who'd called Trohman a kike.
Gerard shifted, uneasy. "Let's wait a couple more minutes. See if he surfaces again."
The sniper's hideout listed, barely standing; a gashed hole in the left foundation revealed a welter of building stones, splintered timber crossbeams. Black residue scarred the edges of the hole, like a cauterized wound. A bazooka, if Gerard had to guess. Maybe a grenade. He didn't remember if any of his men had been using grenades when they came through this morning.
"It's gotta be that window." Bob set his jaw. He ran his hand over the hot metal body of the fifty-caliber gun. "I swear, Gerard, the bastard's in there."
The two privates exchanged ferrety glances. Gerard saw one of them reach for a cross, tucked under the fabric of his shirt. A bitter, rancid smell picked up as the wind shifted, wafting from the shattered moonscape behind them - death, hot and recent. Somewhere in the rubble of this house, a body was decomposing, smashed flesh putrefying in an oven of summer heat and stone. The smell of death had been following them through France, under the reek of shit and piss and rotten food and livestock and mud. Here, as they crouched like toads, death found them, rising in their nostrils.
"You can’t see him." Gerard tried to breathe through his mouth. "He might be --"
"No, fuck that. He's there," Bob said. He pulled at the back plate, swiveling the gun into better position. "Crawford, you load from the left. I’ll keep the trigger down -- make sure you keep a steady stream."
"Bob - " Gerard hissed.
A deep rumble picked up from the right: the grinding cough of a Sherman tank, caterpillar treads churning up earth. "What the hell?" Bob inched his head over the line of the windowsill, peering out at the dust-laden road. "What the fuck is this jackass doing here?"
Gerard picked up the binoculars - a familiar tank jumped into close view, its garish snake decal winding around the steel skin of its near side. "That's Saporta," Gerard said. "I guess he heard we were still clearing out the village." He flipped his gaze up to the window, saw a fluttering of motion.
"Yeah," Bob muttered, "but what's he - "
The front gun of the Sherman tank roared, 75 millimeters of fire. Gerard flattened himself against the ground, reaching up to pull down a fistful of one of his men, too. He clutched his helmet; the explosion rocked the protective wall and rumbled the earth, shaking Gerard's bones. Plaster and dust showered down, clogging the air with powder. He coughed, curling in against himself. The smell of explosives overpowered the lingering death.
Gerard counted to three, and worked his eyes open. Blinking away the dust, he saw Bob take off his helmet. His hair looked gray, his face pale like a silent film star.
Wordless, they turned to the windowsill again. Where the top half of the house had stood, only a blackened hull remained. Gerard could see through the house, all the way to the smoking fields beyond. A roof timber swung down into the empty chasm of the front room; it fell with a creaking crash, letting up another chorus of dust.
Gerard swallowed, coated his throat with moisture. "I think you were right," he croaked.
Bob nodded once. Still looking at the ruined house, he began to pack up his gun.
...
03 August
Gerard sucked hard on the cigarette, his first of the morning. The smoke slid down his throat, branching off to each of his lungs. He closed his eyes, and imagined it seeping into the blind alleys of his capillaries and alveoli. Thick, humid heat dampened his skin; he felt as though he could light a fire in his lungs, dry himself from the inside out.
"Where'd you find fresh smokes?"
Gerard coughed, spitting smoke back up. Over Gerard's shoulder, the look on Frank's face approximated a smile.
"Jesus!" Gerard swallowed. "Do you have cigarette radar or something, Iero?" The tips of his fingers itched; he scratched one hand with his opposite thumb.
Frank shifted from foot to foot, his hands deep in the wells of his pockets. "Guess you could call it that. Lend me one?"
"Can't. Siska made it for me -- rerolled it from the butts of his last pack." He pulled his teeth back into a grimacing smile. "I haven't had a fresh pack since..." Since Bastille Day - a gift from a wordless man, middle-aged, pressing the cardboard box into Gerard's hands at the dance, just before. Gerard took a long drag, shaking his head. "Sorry."
"Fuck." Frank slid his palm over his forehead, wiping away sweat. He breathed through his mouth, lips parted.
Gerard switched his cigarette to his other hand, idly rubbing his fingers against the rough cotton of his trousers. "Sisky's out on patrol duty. He should be back soon. You could ask him, ah, when he gets back."
Frank shook his head. "It's fine."
"Yeah. Okay." Gerard savored the last inch of his cigarette. He held his breath, let the smoke catch and settle. With a rueful exhale, he flicked the butt. His heel ground it into the soil with two quick twists.
"Way! Lieutenant Way!"
Siska's voice echoed from the other side of the camp. Gerard and Frank exchanged a look; both took off running. Gerard thought could hear the tread of Frank's steps, although they might have been his own.
Gerard stopped short, his boots skidding on the dusty ground. "What the hell?"
"Um." Siska looked at Gerard, hands cradling his gun. He and Scimeca stood at the front of an assortment of Germans -- some three dozen uniformed soldiers, arrayed in two lines. "I got us some prisoners, here."
"Jesus," Frank's voice caught in a laugh. "What the hell did you do, punch Hitler?"
"Frank." Gerard jerked his head. "Go get Trohman, tell him we've got prisoners. And find Butcher, tell him his squad's on guard duty." Gerard saw ragged uniforms, hollowed cheeks. He heard the scurrying mutterings of an unfamiliar language. The men were all unarmed, and some held their hands behind their heads, elbows bent out. None of them met his gaze.
"What happened?" Gerard asked.
Siska gave him a weak salute. "To be honest? I don't really know, sir." He coughed. "We were just doing like you said, patrolling the fields on the other side of the road. And we came up to this burnt out barn, this little shit-hole in the middle of nothing, but there was smoke coming out of it. So I said, we gotta head back, we gotta tell Captain Trohman. But then, that guy comes out, holding his hands up in the air." He pointed at a man at the head of the pack: tall, dirt-smudged, chiseled features. Forty, maybe. "Scimeca shoots, and misses -- "
"Sorry!" Scimeca cut in, his gaze shifting from Gerard to the Germans. "I spooked, sorry!"
Siska rolled his eyes. "And then he starts shouting in German, raising his arms higher. He gets out this handkerchief and starts waving it, like his life depended on it or something." (Scimeca gulped audibly.) "Next thing you know, we got forty-one prisoners, trying to surrender to us."
"Right." Gerard looked over. The men shifted about, restless. "All right."
"Trohman's coming." Frank was back at his side. "He's over with Third Platoon, but he'll be here as soon as he can."
Butcher and his men jogged up, and Gerard nodded to them. "Okay. Keep them close -- move them over toward the ditch, that's good enough. We can keep them there, for now."
"Did any of them talk to you?" Frank addressed himself to Siska.
Siska shook his head. "I don't think a-one of them speaks any English, sir."
Gerard watched as the prisoners filed past, urged along by Butcher and his squad. Their boots shuffled in the dust, whispering up a gritty brown cloud. Their insignia revealed various divisions, none of which Gerard recognized. Some of them, Gerard saw, looked barely Siska's age, nineteen and younger. At least a half-dozen were wounded: one man had tied the right sleeve of his rust-stained shirt at the elbow, cuff hanging uselessly from the knot. Two others supported one of their comrades between them, the wounded man's arms slung over their shoulders. His bandaged head lolled on his neck, like a doll made of stuffing.
"It's gotta be a good sign, right, sir?" Scimeca said to Gerard. "I mean, far as we could tell, they'd just been holed up there for days, hiding."
"Yeah." Gerard said again. He scratched his jaw. "Yeah, good job, Scimeca. Go grab something to eat. Tell Toro we need a medic."
The men clustered around the shallow ditch that ran parallel to the paved road, some peering at the brackish water. Frank approached them, weaving among their small groups. He nodded to each man in turn, spoke in a soft voice. Gerard unworked the tension of his jaw, tried to read his lips. Frank crouched in front of two seated men, clapping them on their shoulders. Gerard couldn't see his face.
"They're SS," Siska said.
Gerard looked at him. "Yeah?"
He gave a dismissive sigh. "The whole fucking countryside's crawling with SS. Everybody knows that."
Frank walked back to them, a smile threatening to break over his features. "How do you know?" Gerard asked, vague.
Siska didn't seem to hear him. "My kid brother says he wants a Luger. I looked, but they didn't have any. You think one of those SS guys can get me one?"
"They're not SS." Frank grinned. "Well, a couple of them are. Second Panzer Division, but those guys are too good to get themselves caught. Mostly they're the 353rd Infantry." He flicked Siska's shoulder with his thumb and forefinger. "Hey, go grab some grub."
"Fuck you." Siska saluted, and turned back into camp.
"What is it?" Gerard leaned back, away from Frank's smile. It stretched up all the way to his eyes, to the skin of his temples. Gerard coughed away the phantom taste that rose to his mouth.
Frank dug into his pocket. "Die Zigaretten?" He pitched his accent perfectly, pulled out a packet with a flourish.
Gerard laughed. "No way!"
Frank shrugged. "I'm magic." He rapped the pack against the base of his palm, pulled out two cigarettes. "Atikah - Turkish, not the best stuff. But I figure it's better than sucking on Siska's spit." He passed one to Gerard, lit the other with swift hands.
"Amen to that." Gerard jammed the cigarette between his lips, leaned in instinctively toward Frank's lighter.
Their heads came close, faces less than a foot apart. Gerard smelled the ashy sweetness of Frank's tobacco; the first few drags of German cigarettes were always the best. Frank's lips clutched the paper cylinder, taut at the corners, just wetting the tip. His eyes flashed.
Gerard took a step back, another. "I should go find Trohman." He fingered the cigarette between his fingers. "You -- they'll want you here. To talk to the prisoners."
"Yeah." Frank exhaled smoke. "Yeah."
Gerard nodded. He glanced over at the prisoners -- Butcher stood with his gun in one hand, arms folded over his chest. Beside him, Suarez tried to match his glare. The road stretched out behind them; the trees that remained reached branches over the tar, as if embracing one another. Eight weeks since D-Day, he thought.
"Gerard." Frank's voice pulled him.
Gerard glanced over his shoulder. He caught the lighter as it sailed through the air, just at eye-level.
The 'thanks' stuck in his throat. Gerard kept walking.
-----