Souvenir Read Free Page A

lines, German helmets, bobbing up and down, rifle snouts sticking out, and two heavy machine guns, one oriented in the other direction, one straight towards him. The woods curved away to the right, beyond the rise. The Germans had a good spot there, good fields of fire in either direction. He scanned left. No more log emplacements. Maybe they were dug in, camouflaged? The rise was either a strong point on the MLR, or an outpost in front of it. He knew what that meant. Fuck. He slid down, head low.
    “MG-42s, two of them, with plenty of Krauts, in that hunk of woods, on the right, up on the rise,” Clay said in a low voice.
    “See anything else?” Jake asked.
    “Nope. Can’t see a thing anywhere else.”
    “Shit. I’ll go tell Red.”
    Jake went flat, crawling back and staying in the tracks he had made coming out. No nods, winks or other gestures were necessary. Clay was safe behind a big rock, and Jake was headed the same way he had gone before. Such things were left for the obvious dangers, not the everyday routine of patrolling. A guy would be one big, constant, twitching nod if it were.
    Red and the rest of the squad had moved up about twenty yards to the edge of the tree line. A sergeant should have been leading the patrol, but Marty Dorsch got his right leg ripped open in a mortar barrage when they advanced on Hoffelt a couple of weeks ago. Marty was probably in England right now, maybe with his leg, maybe not. It was a favorite debate in the squad as to whether that was a good trade. The optimists didn’t think so, but there weren’t many of them. Jake missed Marty, one-legged or whole. He had been with them since Basic, made corporal in Normandy and buck sergeant when the leaves were still on the trees. He watched out for his men and was a good sergeant, but not so great that his squad got all the dirty details, the perfect combination in his opinion. There was no corporal to take over since a sniper got Hartman outside of Dinant. No one missed him. Replacements were slim, and everyone worried about who they’d end up with. Meanwhile, Red—Lieutenant Christopher Monahan—except no one ever called him anything but Red, led them on patrols when he needed something done, like today. Red wasn’t a bad officer, and the men liked that his foxhole was right up with theirs, not as far back as he could get and still say he was at the front. Like some.
    Jake scrambled around the base of the pine Red was behind. He put his arm over Red’s shoulder and pointed to the rise on the other side of the field.
    “There, two MG-42s, camouflaged behind logs, buncha Krauts around ‘em.” Jake kept his fingers pointed until Red got out his binoculars, not as nice as Clay’s German pair, but that’s the kind of officer Red was. Their first lieutenant might’ve confiscated them as a military necessity, but Red knew that a two-hundred yard shot was something, and that the man who made it was due whatever loot he got off of it.
    “Yeah,” Red said, “Got ‘em. Any more?”
    “Can’t see on the right, and Clay couldn’t make out anything along the left side there. Could be dug in.”
    Jake couldn’t put much certainty into that last statement. They could be, or not. He knew he might be back here with the whole Company, waiting out an artillery barrage on that line. If it wasn’t there, if this was nothing but a single machine-gun nest, then they’d have to do this all over again until they found the MLR. Or it found them.
    “Let’s find out,” Red said. He looked at Jake and the others gathered around him. He wasn’t asking, not at all, but Red liked everybody on board. He liked everyone to understand, that it was important, not some chicken-shit order he didn’t like any more than they did. So he waited.
    “OK,” said Jake. Five other heads bobbed up and down.
    “Big Ned, Little Ned,” the lieutenant said. “Get the BAR set up over there, under that fallen pine. Here, check out the Kraut position first.”