Clouds blocked out the moon and stars from view. The only light we got came from small patches of fire. A scent entered my nostrils that caused my skin to crawl. The bitter taste of vomit filled the back of my throat when I realized that the smell was burning flesh and bloated bodies of dead soldiers. I clenched my teeth tightly and sped up a bit, not wanting to stay there any longer than possible.
That night we had to dig foxholes to spend the night. I ended up sharing a foxhole with Malarkey, the pair of us taking turns sleeping as the night dragged on. I had the last turn sleeping and woke up to the sun starting to stream into our foxhole.
"Rise and shine, McCall," Malarkey said quietly, blinking tiredness from his eyes. I groaned slightly and woke up with the rest of Second Battalion, and we finished making our way to the town of Carentan.
The way to Carentan had a gravel road heading up a hill towards it. I could make out gray and brown brick building. But from where I was, I couldn't see if there were any Germans staying in there or not. Winters and Welsh were up front, getting ready to execute their battle plans. I crouched between Guarnere and Tipper, ready to follow them into battle.
Welsh gave a signal and he started straight up the gravel road with a couple men. I recognized Luz immediately and chose to follow his form as he headed up the hill. But right when Welsh and the others got to the top, gunfire exploded from the town and two men went down instantly. The rest of the men dove onto either side of the road, trying their best to hide in the ditches. Welsh and Luz disappeared from sight.
"Go! Go!" Nixon started to scream from the back of the crowd. Winters and Buck pelted forward and started to push men out of the ditches.
"C'mon!" Winters called back to the rest of us. There wasn't even a moment of hesitation before Easy Company followed orders and charged towards Carentan.
I charged with the rest of them, staying close to the far edge of them. I had a borrowed gun clenched tightly in my hand. I really didn't want to shoot at anyone, but my instincts were screaming at me that it could be necessary. I had just stopped running behind a small building before I heard the screams calling for a medic. I looked around the corner of the building where the screams were coming from.
I recognized the man's face from Toccoa. He had never really spoken to me, but he had never been openly hostile either. From where I was hiding, I could see that he had been shot in the throat. I bunched my legs up, hesitating before charging out towards him. But I never made it out of my cover before a German bullet met the man's head, causing him to hold still forever.
My mouth went dry and I accidentally bit the inside of my mouth hard enough to draw blood. A pool of red was forming around that man's head...
A memory of one of the first lessons of medic training came to my mind then. Unger had stressed to everyone that hesitating in the heat of battle was deadly for the men we were supposed to save. And I had just ignored one of my first medic lessons-
Another cry for a medic drew me away from my guilty thoughts and this time I bolted out of hiding and into the fray to where the cries were coming from. Another man had pressed himself up against a building's wall, bullet wounds dotting his right arm. I didn't stop until I reached him, but once I was there, I stared blankly at the stumps briefly, not entirely sure what to do.
"Medic?" The man asked in a weak voice. He knew I was there, I when I looked down at his face, I found myself locking eyes with him. Tears filled his eyes. "D-Don't let me die yet."
A surge of fierce protectiveness filled me up and I set my face into what must've looked like a stony expression. Without really being conscious of what my hands were doing, I started to do the appropriate procedure for any standard bullet wound. When I was finished, I tagged the man for a stretcher and patted his chest in what I hoped was confidence. "You're not gonna die yet, bud." And with that, I forced myself to move on to whoever else needed my help.
I was right outside of a building when the glass from the windows shattered. The force of the explosion knocked me to the ground, also causing my helmet to slide off of my head. A few shards of glass flew at my face, but I had moved my arm to block my head from the explosion. When I managed to get ahold of myself, I saw tiny bits of glass clinging to my jacket sleeve. I quickly brushed them off and glanced around briefly for my helmet. My body went cold when I caught sight of who was limping out of the building.
Tipper was somehow forcing himself to walk on two broken legs, shards of bone sticking out of his clothes. Blood covered his face and neck, suggesting that there was another wound somewhere on the top of his head. One of his eyes seemed to be completely closed; probably from the heavy flow of blood pouring into it. The other eye was squinted.
"Holy shit," Liebgott's voice sounded. He was glancing between me and poor Tipper. Liebgott and I locked eyes and I quickly nodded at Tipper. Liebgott nodded with understanding and went to help his friend. I got to my feet as Liebgott helped Tipper sit against the battered, brick wall. "McCall's here," Liebgott told Tipper.
I used a clean rag to wipe away a lot of the blood on Tipper's face. I found the source of all of it: a five inch gash stretching across his scalp. I gave the gash a battle dressing and then looked down to Tipper's legs. Liebgott held onto Tipper for me while I cleaned away the blood and bound the legs as best as I could, making sure to be extra careful about the bone fragments piercing through his skin.
"Medic!"
I heard the scream for me come out a few yards away from where I was hiding. I looked on the other side of the building and saw another soldier writhing in pain on the dusty ground. Shots of dust and stone would shoot up around him every now and then, trying to get at him and the other men. I bunched up my legs and prepared myself to run out to get him.
Liebgott saw what I was about to do and grabbed onto my sleeve. "You can't go out there! It's suicide!"
The image of that dead man I had failed entered my mind. "I have a job to do, so let go!" I snapped suddenly, breaking free of his grip. "Get Tipper out of here!" Without a second thought, I ran into the rain of bullets to the injured man. I got to him without problems and I grabbed him by the shoulders and started to drag him back to cover. The soldier groaned and moaned in pain. "You're gonna be fine," I said through gritted teeth, though I doubted he heard me.
I had gotten the man halfway to safety when a searing pain exploded on my right ear and I was knocked back by the force of the bullet. I felt hot blood pour down my neck from the graze and I pressed one hand against the side of my head to stop the flow of blood and I used the other hand to grab ahold of the soldier again.
I managed to pull him out of the way of fire. I removed my hand from my head and started to inspect him. His eyes rolled and locked on my bloody ear. I ignored his concerned gaze and found the bullet wound going through his shoulder. I lifted him up so that he was in a sitting position and checked for an exit wound. There it was. I nodded jerkily and listened closely to his breathing. His lungs sounded okay. I reached into my pocket and ripped open a sulfa packet before sprinkling it into the bullet wounds. I quickly bound the wounds and plunged a morphine needle into his arm and had him lean back on the ground before tagging him for more medical care later. "Stay here!" I shouted at him before rushing back out there to get to another soldier who went down a few yards away.
This man was missing half of his body. I stared for a second at the several bloody stumps, not entirely sure what to do. A grenade went off near us and I quickly shielded the man's body with my own. A few drops of my blood got onto the man's chest. I got off him when it was safe and pulled out another morphine needle. I couldn't do anything to safe this man's life, but I was at least gonna ease this man's pain. After I pushed the morphine into his system, I was about to go help someone else when the soldier raised his bloody stump of an arm to stop me.
"Pocket on my left leg," He said so softly I had to lean in to hear him properly. "C-Could you g-grab my picture," I did as he asked and briefly looked at the picture. It was of a two year old boy, wearing light blue pajamas and a giant smile on his face. I held it up to the man's face and a few tears slid down his face.
He died two minutes later, looking at the picture of his two year old son.
It seemed ages until the fighting slowed. I was patching another man up when we received word that reinforcements were coming to help us clear out Carentan. I sighed loudly relief and then helped the man to where our aid station had been set. We were halfway there when I started to stumble, my bleeding ear starting to give me real trouble.
We finally reached the aid station and Roe's hawk-like eyesight zoned in on the pair of us almost automatically. The man I was helping was given to another medic while Roe focused in on my injured ear.
After he finished the man he'd been taking care of, Roe pulled me away and sat me down in a quiet corner of the room so that he could clean up my ear. He quickly mopped away the clumped blood on the side of my face and neck, and his breath sucked in when he finally got a good look.
"What is it?" I asked, feeling scared now.
"It looks like that bullet took off more than half of your ear," Roe said in that analytical way of his. "The earlobe, and whatever skin was left got burned pretty bad; I'm going to have to cut all that off or we'll risk an infection. But first, we have to see if you can still hear out of that." He grabbed a tiny square of gauze and wound it as tightly as he could before putting it into my good ear as far as he could. I tried not to flinch away and had to substitute flinching with squeezing my knees with my hands as hard as I could.
Roe started to make noises like snapping his fingers and clapping right beside my hurt ear; then he'd go a little distance away and do it to see if I heard. He was gone for a long moment before I heard someone crying out for a medic somewhere to my right. I turned around to see that Roe had gotten some random soldiers to pretend that they needed my help.
Miraculously, my hearing ended up being just as it always was. Roe reported that the hole was still there, so after he cut away the burned skin and stitched up the wound, my right ear had transformed into a odd stump with a tiny hole in the center. He wrapped gauze around the wound by making it go across my forehead and down around the back of my head.
"Well, despite the fact that you're missin' more than half of your ear, I'd say that you're good as new." Roe reported. I thanked him, carefully touching the gauze at the side of my head. "Now go see if anyone out here needs help."
"Yes sir," I said before standing up and heading out into the new aid station.