Faucheux, Dumont, and Cpl. Navarre raced through the town like their own lives depend on it. Sgt. Peterson's desperate cry for reinforcements had just come in loud over the radio, which was the first clear sign that things had gone terribly wrong. A clear sign because Peterson knew full well that Faucheux and his team were the only possible reinforcements that would be coming to the rescue. Just the three of them.
Up until this halting incident, the Allied method of approach had worked impressively. First, Faucheux and his French expeditionary infiltration unit would move in undetected to weaken the enemy. They were like seemingly harmless sugars and citric acids of soft drinks that go to work on layers of tooth enamel with the sole, malicious intent of digging through to the center and leaving a grotesque hole in their wake.
After that, they would fall back and allow the main assault force, which was composed of the American infantry and the Royal British armored forces, to advance. They cleared the internally demolished areas with the efficiency of a construction crew. The infantry hammered the Axis responders like a wrecking ball, and as they advanced, the tanks and armored soldiers bulldozed through the wreckage.
However, the assault stopped working according to plan when the Axis soldiers had their backs pressed up against the wall. As with anything that was cornered with no other way out but through the obstacle blocking it, they were fighting back and fighting back hard. By the time Faucheux and his team arrived on scene, the number of armored soldiers had dwindled down to little less than a dozen and there were only two infantrymen left in the fight.
Peterson was one of them. The other was Pvt. Brannan, a promising future commander that was sadly unaware of his own potential, who'd assisted Faucheux's team in sabotaging the Axis ammunition supply. Both infantrymen were taking cover outside the entrance to a large courtyard. Faucheux motioned for Dumont to learn what he could from the tank operator and head of the remaining armored forces, Major Parks, while he and Navarre spoke with the infantry.
"It looked so much easier on paper," the wounded American said in that same, scratchy voice.
His words were dripping with disappointment and he looked like hell. It was as if all the fight were drained out of him. His shoulder was tightly wrapped in a damp, dark rag that hadn't been there earlier. Faucheux briefly wondered how long ago this had happened, and how bad it was. Peterson caught his concerned gaze and grinned. Navarre already had an emergency medical kit out to redress the wound.
"There's no time for that," Peterson told Navarre, who was dutifully ignoring him. "Don't worry, I'll be fine. If we don't take out those AA guns before more jerries show up, we'll all be wearing brand new bullet holes."
Faucheux certainly agreed that they needed to act fast. However, speedy executions and hasty executions were two very different things. One is done well and the other is done without much thinking or planning. He imagined that, doped up on confidence after the first three captures, the final push to the AA guns had been a hasty one indeed.
Luckily, reinforcements were here. Faucheux smiled at the parallels between the situation at hand and an ancient, legendary account of triumph over insurmountable odds. He knew that nothing new was under the sun, and figured that if he could learn from the lessons of old, the answer to the current problem would present itself. And so, while his allies all focused fire on the Axis soldiers trying to retake the tent yard, Faucheux took a moment to think about a lizard and a rat.