Hello everybody! I hope you are all doing well. No long author's note this time because I am really tired and I don't want to bore you each time with the woes and troubles of my life ;)
I just wanted to thank all of you for reading this story and for your lovely reviews. It makes me so happy to see that you enjoy my work.
Back to their old position, Easy was met with a sobering sight. Trees burst, the snow black and riddled with charred grooves in places. Branches, fir and splintered wood everywhere.
Ana María bit her lip, dark eyes travelling to the edge of the forest. Just down the hill lay Foy, out of sight, but not out of mind. Personally, she hoped the assault on the German-occupied town would come sooner rather than later. It would put an end to the incessant shelling.
Shaking off the distracting musings, she set about fortifying the cover of her foxhole. The logs and branches laying across the hole looked rather worse for wear, the soot and scorch marks littering them strangely reminiscent of an expressionist painting her mother had shown her once.
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The Puerto Rican looked up when Frances came over, dragging a few sturdy branches behind her.
"Need a hand?", she offered.
"No, thanks. I'm just about done."
Frances nodded appraisingly as she studied the reinforced cover. "Did those clowns from 1st shit into your foxhole too?"
"Fó!" Face puckering up in revulsion, Ana María questioned: "They did that?!"
"Yeah…" Equally disgusted, Frances rolled her eyes. "I'm not getting in there. I mean, I've crawled through mud and blood and pig's guts, but this? Hell no."
"You gotta draw the line somewhere", Ana María agreed, squinting against the snow coming down in thick flakes. "Dios mio." She tsked, scrunched up her nose. "Guarros…"
"Hm. Anyways, see you around, I gotta get back to Suerth. Wouldn't be fair to let him dig our new foxhole on his own."
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Their only warning was a brief high-pitched whistle.
"Incoming!", Theresa could be heard bellowing further up the line.
The first shells struck. A tree exploded.
"Take cover!"
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Maxine shielded her face when wooden debris blasted at her from the side. "Get up!", she shouted at a cowering replacement that had been knocked over. "Up!"
The forest lit up in orange and white, the detonations slamming into her diaphragm like fists. Disoriented by the flashes and sharp noises, she stumbled as the ground beneath her feet jerked and heaved. The air reeked of gunpowder and burnt wood.
Somebody yelled "They're 88s!" like it would make a difference with what type of infernal artillery device they got shot at.
A shell whined in, shredding branches and tree limbs. Maxine hit the ground, grunting as something struck her back hard enough to bruise. She tasted ash.
"They got us zeroed!", she heard Buck holler over the din and chaos.
She found another man wobbling along. Grabbing him by the forearm, she dropped into the first empty foxhole she could see, forcing his head down. "Stay low!", she called. Half a tree's worth of deadwood came down on them.
Another close hit showered them in hot slush, the force of the blast stealing their breaths.
"Cover your ears, close your eyes, keep your mouth open!", Maxine shouted.
Shindell obeyed, gripping his rifle tightly in the crook of his elbow.
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As much as she wanted to, Maxine couldn't look away from the terrifying scene. Heart thundering in her throat, veins buzzing with fear and thrill, she stared at the world blowing up around her.
When the last thunder faded, the silence pressed against her eardrums. All too conscious of her heavy breathing, Maxine glanced towards Shindell. He stared back with wide eyes, but seemed to be holding himself remarkably well.
"Stay in your foxholes!" Lipton's voice carried easily in the eery aftermath of the shelling.
Swallowing, the Washingtonian instructed Shindell to keep his eyes on the line. "Stay here. They might try to break through." Contrary to her own order, she pulled herself out of the hole, a grainy mixture of ash, dirt and snow trickling from her ODs.
The forest was completely transformed. Trees laid to waste, evergreen branches spilling across the grey floor.
"Help!", somebody called.
Maxine sped up, repeating her order for people to stay in their foxholes as she passed them.
"Heeelp! Anyone there?", the muffled voice called again.
She spotted a dirty hand waving through the web of branches of a fallen tree. Leaping over the burnt skeleton of a spruce, she set down her rifle. "Hang on!"
The hand paused in its movement. "'tenant Lloyd?"
There was only one voice with that tone and accent. "Yeah, it's me, Heffron." She turned when she heard booted feet running towards her. "Give me a hand, guys", she said to Lipton, Muck and Penkala, who had responded to their buddy's cries for help.
Between the three of them, they made short work of hauling the fir trees off the Philadelphian's foxhole, the threat of a second barrage spurring their actions. Penkala carelessly flung the broken tree aside while Skip bent down to pull Babe out.
Tensely glancing about, Lip urged them to hurry. "C'mon, c'mon."
"Ah Jeez", Babe said breathlessly, gathering his wits. A little chuckle escaped him. "Think I overdid it on the cover of my foxhole?"
Whatever replies they had lined up were drowned under the whooshing approach of the next attack.
"INCOMING!", Lipton hollered.
They scrambled.
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As the world around her was violently ripped apart, the force of the bombs rocking the earth and rattling her teeth, Maxine instinctively followed Lipton, spatial memory reminding her that his foxhole was far closer than hers.
A shell hit, sending a ball of fire towards the sky. Heat washed over her face, scratched her throat.
Distantly, she heard somebody scream for a medic.
The next shell landed close enough to knock her clear off her feet.
Her shoulder crashed against packed dirt and her arm instantly went numb right down to the tips of her fingers. Her helmet bounced and skittered away, out of her line of sight.
"Max!" A hand wrapped around her upper arm and pulled. "You okay, can you walk?" Even before he had finished speaking, Lip began to tow her towards his half-finished foxhole. Another tree was blown to smithereens.
Following his guiding, steadying hand, Maxine grunted out a response that was intended to be a yes. Very unladylike, a part of her brain – it sounded like her mother – commented. She snorted.
Getting her feet under her in within a few stumbling steps, stomach doing flip-flops of the most uncomfortable kind, she followed the First Sergeant without hesitation as he dove for cover under the mangled tree lying across the shallow pit.
Tucked against each other in a tangle of limbs and webbing where nobody would be able to tell who was shielding who, they watched the destruction unfold, hands in fingerless gloves protecting pale, cold-tinged faces from flying dirt and debris. The air was grey with soot, hazy with smoke.
.
Quiet returned, sweeping in like autumn fog as it followed in the wake of the blast echoes. Maxine painstakingly commanded her stiff body to move. Feeling was starting to return to her arm in a surge of pinpricks and tingles.
"Lip!" Worry and a strain of please be okay rang in Luz' voice. "Max!"
Coughing to rid her lungs of the acrid sting of gunpowder and burnt trees, she lifted her head. Cries for a medic could be heard in the distance.
"You okay?", Lip called to Luz.
The radioman gave them a thumbs up. His hand shook, but nobody mentioned it.
"Stay down!", Maxine barked when she saw men inch out of their foxholes. "Do not leave your holes!"
"First Sergeant Lipton?"
They whipped their heads around, hands reaching for carbines. Dike crouched at the edge of the half-finished foxhole, wild-eyed. He carried neither helmet nor rifle. His gaze briefly flickered to Maxine before returning to Lipton.
"You get things organised here", he said, voice uneven. "I'm gonna go for help." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, then got to his feet and shambled off.
"What the fuck?", Luz whispered, staring after their CO's retreating back in disgusted bewilderment.
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Lipton's expression showed his own incredulity, but he shook himself out of it, focus returning to his duties. He looked apologetically to Maxine, who dismissed Dike's slight with an eyeroll and a distracted wave of her hand.
"Let's go", she said instead, taking charge as he had known she would.
They quickly climbed out of the pit and hurried over to Luz. "Max, where the fuck's he going?", he asked, looking as confused as they all felt.
She shrugged it off. "I don't know", she said and cut straight to the chase, considering the other matter closed. "Right, Luz, get Battalion on the line and tell them to notify BAS."
"Battalion's up, Ma'am", he confirmed automatically, receiver already wedged between his ear and shoulder.
Turning to Lipton, she continued: "Get the sergeants moving, I'm going to need a count as soon as you can. And have everyone stay sharp, they might try to break through our lines."
The First Sergeant nodded and set off at a run, Maxine doing the same but dashing in the opposite direction.
She was telling second platoon to be ready for an attack when Malarkey approached her and said: "Toye got hit."
Having seen Roe sprint past only a few minutes earlier, Maxine turned and headed in that direction, Malarkey falling into step with her.
He filled her in on all he knew – which admittedly wasn't much. "We heard him, Guarnere went to help him. Then the second round started and a minute or two after, Buck screamed for a medic."
The last part left her with foreboding lodged in her gut and a desperate mantra of please please rattling around in her brain.
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Despite knowing that Bill and Joe would be wounded, the sight still shocked Maxine to the core. But it wasn't as much the gore, or the amount of pain they were in, or the sense of urgency surrounding the two medics that made her stomach bottom out. It was Buck, standing there, transfixed and horrified. It was his rifle and helmet, lying abandoned at his feet. The glassy look in his eyes. God help us.
"What can I do, Doc?", Malarkey asked, dropping to his knees next to Joe.
Mia shot him a glance. "Tie this", she instructed, indicating the bandages she was wrapping around what was left of Joe's right leg with a tilt of her head. "And hold this."
Maxine forced her attention away from the lieutenant, who had abruptly turned on his heel and walked away. She'd handle that later. Crouching down by Bill's side, she dredged up the strength to smile at him. "Getting yourself into trouble again, Bill?", she asked, somehow managing to make her tone light-hearted.
"Ya know me, Max", he returned, lips twisting into an agony-filled version of his confident grin.
Joe wondered out loud: "Jesus, what's a guy gotta do to get killed around here?"
There was just enough indignation and his typical brand of annoyance in his tone to make Maxine chuckle. Bleeding all over the forest floor and still bitching.
Bill also snorted a laugh which turned into a grimacing grunt when the remainders of his lower leg twitched again.
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Mia signalled to the litter bearers that came jogging through the trees.
"Bill, you're going first", Roe declared.
"Whatever you say, Doc", Bill agreed breezily, "whatever you say." He turned to Maxine. "Oh by the way, Max; happy birthday."
She let out a startled laugh – though in her ears it sounded a bit too close to a sob for comfort – when she counted back and realised that it was indeed her birthday. She'd turned 23 today and hadn't even realised it. "Thanks, Bill", she said, squeezing his hand.
"Happy Birthday, Max", Joe echoed, voice rough as sandpaper but the sentiment no less genuine. "Sorry to ruin it."
"Don't worry about it, I'll send a strongly worded letter of complaint to the Germans."
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Before Maxine knew it, Bill was bundled onto a stretcher and carried away to where a jeep was waiting to take him to an aid station. "Keep outta trouble, ya hear?", he told her sternly before teasing Joe about beating him back to the states.
Resisting the urge to drag a hand down her face, Maxine got to her feet. She saw Lip hovering in the background and spotted Luz approaching.
"Hey Lip", the radioman began. His eyes caught on the bloody stump that was Joe's leg, swaddled in layer upon layer of bandaging material.
Lipton moved over to speak to him. "How's Buck?", he asked.
Luz didn't react. Maxine stepped around the group surrounding Joe, partially blocking his line of sight.
"Luz! How's Buck?", Lip repeated.
Slowly, the dark head came up, deep brown eyes settling on his face. "He's fine", Luz answered numbly.
"You sure?", Lip pressed, concern rising at Luz' scattered state.
His usually animated voice was still flat, but stronger when Luz answered: "Yes, he's fine."
He turned, shooting a long gaze towards the fallen tree where the tow-headed lieutenant sat, face in his hands. "I think you should probably go talk to him though, huh?" He looked at Maxine.
She touched his forearm, let it rest there for a moment. "I will. Thanks, Luz."
"C'mon", Lipton said to him, his tone kind and face empathetic. "Let's get back to the line."
He nodded and let the First Sergeant steer him away.
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Maxine lingered long enough to see Toye get transferred to a stretcher. And from her spot on the outskirts of the scene, she got to witness a bitter-sweet but still heart-warming exchange between him and their company's most reticent medic.
"Hey", Joe spoke up just before the litter bearers got ready to lift him. His hand reached out, caught hers. Blue eyes met his dark ones. "See you on the flip side."
She smiled, a shaky and tiny thing. "See you on the flip side", she echoed softly, small fingers briefly squeezing back.
Seemingly satisfied with her response, he let go of her and lay back. The litter bearers took that as their signal to lift the stretcher and swiftly carried him off.
Turning away, Maxine took a deep breath and mentally prepared herself for her talk with Buck. As much as she felt like crying and hiding away inside a foxhole to wallow in self-pity, she didn't have that luxury. Their commanding officer was "getting help", whatever the fuck that meant, and their best combat leader had hit his breaking point. Falling apart wasn't something she could afford.
"We'll take him off the line", Mia said quietly. The younger woman had come to stand next to her, gaze heavy and exhausted as she studied Buck from the distance.
Maxine hmmed her assent. "He hasn't been the same since he came back from the hospital", she observed.
Mia nodded, wiped blood-stained hands on dirty ODs. Eyes briefly flickering up to look at Maxine from the side, she asked: "Are you okay?"
Two of my best friends just lost a leg, our best platoon leader is in the midst of a breakdown, everyone else is sick, cold and tired and we're stuck in this godforsaken forest getting shelled to Kingdom come with a complete waste of space as a CO.
"I'll be better once we're out of these woods."
They both knew that this was the truth only in the broadest sense of the term. But Mia didn't call her out, just as Maxine had expected. The soft-spoken medic simply acknowledged her words with a humourless, sympathetic smile. "Yeah", she said, "me too."
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Officially, Buck Compton was taken off the line with a severe case of trench foot. That was also the reason Maxine gave in her report to Captains Winters and Nixon.
The two men shared a look before Winters asked: "And unofficially?"
She sighed, shifting out of the formal stance. "He wasn't the same after he came back from the hospital, sir. He was… jumpy, tense, almost distracted sometimes. Seeing Bill and Joe like that" – her voice wobbled slightly and she cleared her throat – "I think it was too much for him."
And while Buck himself had been so ashamed of his own perceived weakness, not a single person in the company – or even in the battalion – thought any less of him.
Since Lt Foley had taken over 1st platoon after Peacock's departure and Lt Shames was in charge of 3rd platoon, 2nd was now without a designated platoon leader.
It took Dick less than a minute to decide who would fill that spot.
Dear Cassandra and Nathaniel,
It has been less than two weeks since my last letter, but I cannot bear to wait for your reply as that might take months. The overall situation is much the same: we are cold and tired and frustrated. It snows a lot and we get shelled a lot. Business as usual.
Forgive the sarcasm, I'm afraid my friends have rubbed off on me quite a bit. How are you, my dearest brother and sister? And how are mother and father? Cassandra, you mentioned in your last letter that Penelope Emerson-Whitley is with child. I completely forgot to ask you to please pass along my congratulations and well-wishes to her and Harrison.
I miss you very much. Although I never want to see either of you in the Army because Lord knows I would be sick with worry for you, I cannot help but wish you were here. Right now, I could certainly use somebody to tell me that we'll make it through this. Or to quit wallowing in self-pity and do my job. Or both.
Remember Bill Guarnere? I must have told you about him and his crazy stunts countless times since boot camp. He and Joe Toye – I know I've talked about him, too – were badly wounded in an artillery attack today. I won't put the details into this letter, but suffice to say they will be sent home due to the extent of their injuries. I cannot begin to describe how heart-breaking the sight of them in so much pain was. And while it was horrible and will likely haunt my dreams forever, it wasn't the worst part. No, the worst part was seeing Lt Compton standing there, helmet and rifle abandoned in the snow, staring at his wounded friends and looking absolutely lost.
I think I have told you about Buck, Lt Compton that is. A strategist and good leader who gets along splendidly with the enlisted. Loud and gregarious, fond of a bit of gambling and always in good spirits. Seeing him like this, broken and frightened… it felt like a punch to the gut with a sledgehammer. He was taken off the line just a few hours ago. The official report will list a severe case of trench foot.
And now, they've put me in charge of the platoon. I've been an assistant platoon leader for 2nd platoon since my commission, but now, the platoon is my responsibility entirely. It's daunting and considering the circumstances, I don't have it in me to feel joy over this change. Not when I am assuming a position that has been filled by some of the best combat leaders I have had the honour of serving under.
All I can do is give my best and pray that it will be enough to get us through this. On the bright side, though, I have been in this 'sink or swim' situation both when I became a squad leader and when they made me an officer, so hopefully, I will be fine.
I have to stop now, I have rounds to do and people to check on. I love you both very much and I am already looking forward to your next letter, though knowing the Army's speed when it comes to mail delivery, it might be May by the time I receive it.
Love,
Maxine