"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living."

Omar N. Bradley

IX

CAPTAIN BLAKE

It felt like it had happened in a whole different era altogether. Back then there was peace in their island, and the air was gently brushed by a calm breeze. David and Pekoe finally acknowledged the affection they started feeling for each other since the day the young man had his fight with Alvin when they finally kissed under a blossoming apple tree in a warm spring evening.

"We'll have to tell Lady Darjeeling," Pekoe declared, after they've spent what felt like a lifetime embraced and soaking the scent of each other and the world around them, like if everything else was inconsequential, "we're her best friends and she deserves to know before anyone else."

David could only agree with that. So they told Darjeeling they needed to have an important conversation with her. They were getting older, and although the young countess had their friendship in high esteem, she still needed to attend to her gathering responsibilities and to deal with the issues regarding her fiancé, an older man from a slightly smaller House, but with strong ties with the steel industry. Taking into account her schedule and the time she wanted to give her friends, she marked an appointment in the first free slot she had that week. And she only did that because David and Pekoe were taking the situation with awful seriousness, which she took as a sign it deserved more than a short informal conversation.

Theirs were troubled times. Business across the country was reshaping itself as war loomed on the horizon. Just a few months ago the German Army had stormed across Poland, and now it stood behind the Reich's Western border, engaged in an awkward staring contest against the French Army and the British Expeditionary Force on the other side. It was the Sitting War, in which none of the armies wished to start what would be a very bloody affair, instead waiting for the other to make the first move. Little did David and his friends knew about the storm that was about to engulf the world.

Darjeeling finally received them in the minor living room of Saint Gloriana Manor. The room was spacious enough for the three of them and very comfortable, with a large window which opened to the vast fields of tea. It felt strange to Pekoe to have her mother bringing her the tea and biscuits Darjeeling felt to be an intrinsic part of any meeting. But she had to be there with David to tell the news to her friend.

Sporting a knowing smile in her face, Darjeeling leaned back on her chair, entrancing her fingers as she eyed the couple sitting in front of her. At that instant David felt a little dumb. Of course she knew. She'd known since day one. What they were doing there was little more than a formality, one of the things he'd felt to be painstakingly outdated in British society.

"So, tell me," Darjeeling started once the three of them were left alone in the room, "what are we doing here?"

And now David felt even dumber as he realized he didn't knew how to put what he felt into words. Fortunately for him, Pekoe had him covered. Women always had a knack for those things.

"David and I are dating." The shy redhead told her friend. "Given our relationship we thought it would be important for you to know it before anyone else."

"Oh, that's lovely!" Darjeeling spouted with feigned surprise. David could quite clearly see through it, but it still heartened him that she would make such a display for their benefit. "I always knew there was something about you!"

The couple held hands a shared a glance. Then David spoke.

"We would like to have your blessing in this."

"Of course! But come on, now. How this has come to be? Tell me everything!"

They spent a good part of the evening sipping tea and talking, not only about David and Pekoe's affair, but also about their lives for the past few years, since they all met. In the end Darjeeling admitted she wanted to have a word alone with David. Knowing it had to be something important, and wishing to also gave her mother the good news, Pekoe complied and left the room, not before giving a soft kiss on her beloved's cheek.

"You've really came far since I've found you punching other kids in the barn." Darjeeling finally said, a jocose smirk in her face.

"I guess," David grinned back, "I'm in quite the good terms with them now."

"So I've heard." With a sigh, the girl leaned on her chair. "What about now? What are your plans for the future?"

"Well, I desire of no future that will break the ties with the past."

"George Eliot." Now the girl seemed almost impressed, but she knew better than that. "You've also grown educated, which is always a good thing in times like these. 'Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future."

"Euripides." David had indeed made the best of the opportunity given to him by Darjeeling, and grew passionate for learning, history and the high sciences being his greatest interests.

"Indeed." They exchanged a complicit smile. "But you must understand that being you serious in this relationship you cannot surely ignore the implications."

"The implications?" Caught off-guard for a moment, David moved uneasily in his chair.

"Of course. If you are to be a couple and eventually marry, you must have a respectable position in society. I demand no less for my friend."

Now that was somewhat expectable. Of course that she would want him to be well in life, especially if he was to share it with Pekoe.

"I couldn't agree more." He admitted. And he meant it. If there was something he knew was that he would want her beloved to have the life she deserved. And that meant he would have to take risks not only to deserve a good earning but also to defend their way of life.

"Good. With that intelligence of yours I expect you to have a plan already."

"I do. I actually already know what I want to do with my life in the immediate future."

Intrigued, Darjeeling leaned forward, her smirk never leaving her lips. "And what would that be?"

A wide grin spread across David's features. "I want to go fight the Germans!"

The change in Darjeeling's face was so sudden David barely had time to grasp it. He'd only seen her express that blend of shock and rage one or two times, and it had never presaged anything good. In one fluid movement, the girl rose from her chair, gave a step forward and slapped him with all of her might...

…as did the man leaning over him in that muddy hill in the middle of Germany, several years later.

He moved his hand to touch David's face again, probably just to check on him and not to slap him, but David still grabbed his wrist, in the case he thought about applying percussion medicine once again.

"I don't think that will be necessary…" David moaned, to the other man's surprise.

"Good God!" The corporal exclaimed. "We thought we've lost you too."

David leaned forward, feeling a rush of vertigo spreading over his skull. His whole body also ached, but nothing seemed to be broken. At least nothing important. He looked over the corporal's shoulder and saw the burning Sherman some hundred meters behind him.

"They really got us, now have they?"

"They did. They also got Captain O'Neil." The man shook his head. "We've already sent him to the field hospital, but the Doc wasn't very optimistic."

Another man spoke right after the corporal. "You'll go next, sir."

Looking to his left, David saw Private Freeman, kneeling beside him. He shook his hand at the young American.

"No need for that. I'm not out of the game yet."

Carefully, he started to get to his feet, but realized it to be difficult while he was still recovering from being knocked out. Freeman moved to help him stand, and David didn't refuse his intervention this time. He ran a quick check on himself, and found several bruises, cuts, and slight burns, and also noticed how ragged his uniform was.

While he was at it, a few American low-tier officers and NCO's approached him, some of them looking rather confused. David even noticed the young radio-operator from before, sitting over a rock, looking at the group gathering around the British officer. With relief, David noticed the young man didn't have any serious injury, save for same cuts on his face.

"What's happening?" David asked a lieutenant, a young man who looked almost too young for that war.

"The Krauts attacked the whole front," he stated, which prompted David to interrupt him.

"The whole front?"

"In a way. They've pounded us with rockets and artillery. They also made a strike with infantry and armor a little to the south. Lieutenant Mignogna went after them."

He hesitated for a moment, as thundering was heard in the distance. It was actually the American guns to the west, firing over targets around Leipzig. David used the moment to look south, where a few columns of smoke joined the overcast.

"We think the Germans were preparing a second assault." The young lieutenant said, finishing his thought.

"Who's in command there?"

"Lieutenant Tatum, sir."

So the battle was still going on? Again, David felt he was needed somewhere.

"Let's give it a look, shall we?" He told Freeman, before starting to walk to the nearby Jeep. The men around him, Freeman included, stood still for a moment, surprised with his actions. When David noticed the fact, he turned back at the young radio-operator and said, "You can come with us."

The young soldier looked up to him, his mouth gaped open, obviously unwilling to go. For a moment David thought he would decide to simply stay there. After all, and in spite of the post, David wasn't actually his superior. They belonged to different armies. In the end, though, the young radio-operator stood up, and sat in the back of the Jeep.

A moment later, Freeman was also sitting behind the wheel of the Jeep, while David took the seat beside him.

"Are you sure you don't want to see the Doc?" Freeman asked.

David looked down one more time. All the cuts had stopped bleeding before he woke up, and the remaining pain was easy to bear. He'd had worse in Caen.

"I think we won't have that luxury, mate. Let's go." Turning back to the burrowed radio-operator he said, "Tell Colonel Kay to contact us fifteen minutes from now, will you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. What's your name, by the way."

"Luke Alisa, sir. Private first class."

"Glad to meet you, private."

The trustworthy Jeep had been built to fulfill a requirement for a go-anywhere liaison vehicle for the US Army, and it not only met the demand, but went way beyond it, being capable of casually transverse terrain that would immobilize most vehicles, even some that were much larger and more powerful. Knowing this, Freeman simply went forward, over the wet terrain, taking care only with the slopes of the hills, the mud pools and the gaping foxholes and craters.

In just a few minutes the Jeep was already besides one of the new Shermans, a M4A3E8, colloquially known as an Easy Eight. While David walked to meet the tank's commander, a young black man who was scooping the horizon with his binoculars, he noticed the barely clad young woman pained on the flank of the vehicle, wearing only red underwear and with the name 'Naomi' painted in bold letters overhead.

"Curious adornment," he told Lieutenant Isaac Tatum, while he saluted.

"I gave the tank my wife's name," the man told him, "then someone decided to give a shot at how he thought she looked like. I don't mind, anyway." He shrugged. "You're Captain Blake?"

"That's me. I've heard someone went to flush out the Jerry."

"That would be Lieutenant Mignogna. He was ambushed, and we were trying to come up with a plan to save his sorry backside."

"I see." David gave a good glance around. The troops were evenly spread out, tanks assuming solid defensive positions, with some of them gathering for the incoming push. "You have also been harassed by Nebelwerfers. Did you pinpoint their positions?"

"Yes," Tatum dropped his binoculars and then jumped out of the tank, walking to Freeman's Jeep while he took a map from his breast pocket, "we called artillery strikes, but they seem to be on the move, and kept firing."

He unfolded the map over the Jeep's hood, and pointed to some points in the map.

"Last launches were from here, and here."

"Two launchers, then?"

"Maybe more, but these are what we managed to notice."

David thought the whole thing through for a moment.

"Do you have armored cars that are capable of transporting some troops?"

"I have a few M20s, and a couple Jeeps." Tatum's tone showed he was intrigued by whatever plan David had in mind, and he didn't disappoint.

"Very well. Load them with the best men you have and form two strike teams. The Jerry is using these areas to move around and hide the launchers before our artillery can get them. If you strike these locations you might catch them with their pants down."

"Are you sure about this?"

"Well, I've been working in trying to predict what the enemy might do, it's part of my job, after all. Having constant access to fresh information surely helps."

Tatum pursed his lips. "The problem is if they came across a tank, or something like that."

"They won't. We're facing the 77th Panzergrenadier Battalion. They are equipped with some half-tracks and trucks, and didn't have tanks until a few days ago. Even so, they don't have many to go around. Just guarantee the strike teams take some Bazookas with them. Once they find and destroy the launchers, pull them back."

"All right, then. I'll roll with it."

"Brilliant! I'll leave you to this, then."

For ten minutes or so, David waited in the Jeep, observing Tatum organizing his people and sending the two strike teams after the German rocket launchers. That was the lieutenant's job, so he had nothing to do with it. Instead he used the time to go through several mental scenarios about how things could happen from that point on, now that the enemy had made his move, and what could be done about the ambushed troops down in the farmland. He knew the region as well as anyone in his position could hope to. He'd only worked with maps and aerial photography, after all.

Then Alisa leaned towards him, from the back of the Jeep, holding the headset of the radio equipment.

"It's the colonel, sir."

David thanked him and grabbed the headset.

"Sorry for taking so long to come back to you," Colonel Kay said from the other side of the line, "but we're kind of occupied with another formation of German tanks. Panthers and Tigers, definitively SS."

"A whole zoo, sir?"

"Indeed. I think this is the actual attack and what happened down there was just a way to throw sand into our eyes."

It had to be so. If the Huns were throwing the heavy weaponry into the northern flank, than there was where the actual action was bound to happen. Even so, there was still an issue to be dealt with down there.

"I concur, sir."

"Good. But it seems our boys are also having troubles in your front."

"They are. The lieutenant sent some teams to hunt their artillery, but we still have to relieve an armored column and dissuade the 77th Panzergrenadiers from coming back at us."

"Do you need more men for that?"

There was a good reason for that question. After all, the traditional rules of warfare assumed that if a unit was to push into enemy-occupied territory, they needed, at minimum, twice the troops the defender had. Looking around at what he had at his disposal, David seriously doubted he had such manpower. Even so, there wasn't even a hint of doubt in his reply.

"Negative. That's what the Jerry wants. If you allow me, I will make do with what I have."

"Very well, Blake. Give 'em hell."

"Understood, sir."

Wasting no time, David returned the headpiece and looked around for Tatum. The lieutenant was already walking towards him, having noticed the conversation.

"We're moving." David told him.

"Are we really going to do this?" Freeman asked David once Tatum returned to his tank. He wasn't very thrilled with the perspective of following that British guy into the enemy lines.

"Evidently." David stood up, holding with one hand to the windshield. Battle was at hand, and he wouldn't allow the Jerry to do what he pleased anymore.