2

  The Prey

  You know what they say: if it was too good to be true, it probably was. That was important to remember when your feet hurt.

  The march along the road to Monschau had not been without its own problems. Private First Class John Murphy considered himself something of a wiz at sometimes fixing problems, but this particular problem seemed like a heap of too much bullshit. Fallen trees and cratered rock blocked the main road. It appeared to be a natural cause from all of the fighting on this front, because the road beyond the fallen debris continued as uneven, blasted terrain even after the blockade. That is how it seemed, anyway.

  John didn’t like it. His gut told him something was wrong. Veering off from the main road there laid a path between the trees that appeared flat and wide, framed by fallen trunks collapsed atop each other. The path grew steeper the further it stretched onward yet it continued to run parallel to the main road. It certainly seemed easier to traverse than the main road. That stirred a fear inside John’s heart, and as a rule of thumb he always laid his utmost trust into fear.

  “Thank fuck for this,” Private Lenny Copeland said. “Looks like that route is wide enough for the tankers to drive through. At least not every part of this place is blown to shit.”

  “It’s a pretty clean path, yeah,” John said uneasily.

  “I hope they advance here. Let one of the other squads clear the road.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” John peered down the path. Late summer lingered but the trees seemed to decide that autumn was close enough; although leaves hadn’t fully made their descent, so early in the season it was, still the ground was scattered in far too many fallen leaves, more than the main road itself, and altogether it appeared almost too inviting. Flat, even terrain was a welcome sight in a hellscape of shelled and mortared land. It seemed even less natural, the more he thought about it. “It’s too easy, private,” John said finally.

  Lenny laughed. “It sure is, I guess. I’m just glad I don’t have to ruck march all day and then team lift a bunch of fucking trees.”

  “No, not that.” John jabbed the barrel of his M1 Garand at the wide, flat opening off the main road. “That.”

  “What, the path? It looks fine.”

  “Exactly. It looks like a perfect detour.” John turned around and started back. “Let’s go.”

  “Yes sir,” Lenny said with a drawl. “What makes you think it’s suspicious? It doesn’t look like anyone’s passed through there in days, maybe weeks. Nothing’s disturbed.”

  “We can’t trust yellow bricked roads,” John said.

  Together they withdrew. The early morning had laid a white fog that ghosted around the shoulders, and John made extra certain to watch his every step. The mud squelched easily underfoot, still damp from the early morning downpour, bad for hiding your tracks but that remained true for the enemy, as well. The Germans had no doubt salted this land so to speak, in preparation of an American push from over the Belgian border. So far the 9th Division had not found much in the way of booby traps or encampments, but they had only begun to traverse this corridor of road yesterday.

  There was much more work to do.

  The road had once been functional, now it was a hazard simply to stroll across. Chunks of rock jutted awkwardly upward and cratered mud spilled down suddenly. You had to climb a bit and fall a bunch to find purchase, but John felt that was as much part of life as it was being at war. The road was a bitch enough to march but for the rest of the platoon, they might as well have been dragging ass.

  Sixty yards back, the envoy truck sat parked around a gather of soldiers. Some huffed at their cigarettes, all of them chatting and shooting the shit. Down the stretch of road there were dozens of more squads in gathers, patrolling the nearby woods, marching forth. The 9th Division Infantry had three regiments: the 39th, the 47th and the 60th, and compiled all along the road, it appeared a large gathering of busy men in fatigues.

  Reclined in the passenger seat of a Willys MB that was parked on the side of the road, Sergeant Franklin Delaney chewed on a cigarette while he sipped from a metal cup of coffee. “Bad news or good news?” he asked, his dark eyes flickering towards John and Lenny as they approached the jeep.

  “The road is blocked,” John said. “Looks like there’s a detour that branches off of the main road, but I wouldn’t walk through there without checking for traps.”

  “How bad is the blockade?” Frank asked.

  “It’ll take some time to clear it,” Lenny said, shoulders slouched.

  Franklin seemed to consider this. “Alright. We’ll do both. They want a hard advance, we make that possible.”

  “Yessir,” John said.

  “Got it,” Lenny muttered.

  “We’ll rally up soon,“ Frank said as he tossed back his cup of coffee and drank it down, then climbed out of the jeep with a grunt. “For now, go get some breakfast and have a smoke. At ease.” He marched towards the group of NCOs a few yards behind.

  John strolled away, his rifle slung over his back. He pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes, drew out two cigarettes and stuck one between his lips.

  “Hey, can I bum a lucky?” Lenny asked, as expected.

  ‘Yep.” John handed the second cigarette over. He drew out his lighter and lit his smoke.

  “You got a -”

  John handed him the lighter. “I think we’re bodyguards today.” They walked off from the main road, toward a blasted trench where the rest of their squad posted around a small campfire. “We’re gonna be with the mine-finders.”

  “How’d you figure?” Lenny asked, eyes squinted under the smoke of his cigarette. He plucked the lucky from his lips and blew a cloud from the corner of his mouth. “Seems like the kind of shit we get stuck with. We found it, after all. The woes of being point-men.”

  “We’re gonna be with the advance. Delaney’s squad takes point.” John stuffed his hands in his pockets for warmth and lingered over by the campfire.

  BAR Gunner Walton Keene snorted, his mouth full from shoveling a can of beans into his mouth. “You know who can’t advance? Those fucking Yankees.”

  “We still got it,” John said.

  “Nah, bucko, your club’s dead,” Walton laughed. “Yankees can only field little pint-sized peckerwoods like you. What’re you, almost five-feet and some change, yank?”

  “Five-foot-four and some change, Tex,” John said, ashing off his cigarette. “Just tall enough to strike you out.”

  “You can’t strike out shit,” Walton said. “Your team can’t strike out shit either. That’s why your club is dead.”

  “Yankees can pull through.” Corporal Edward Russo flicked his cigarette and drew another puff.

  “Naw, they ain’t got it no more. It’s Browns all day, baby.”

  John shrugged. “Can’t wait to see you switch for the Cardinals when the Yankees walk all over the Browns.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Walton stopped eating his beans to have a long drink of dark coffee. “St. Louis is St. Louis, as long as it ain’t a bunch of hucksters like you at the World Series, I’m just fine with that.”

  Lenny snickered, unscrewed the cup off his canteen and poured himself a cup of coffee from the stein hanging over the campfire off a frame of sticks. “Winning at baseball won’t change the southern surrender, Keene.”

  Walton dismissed him with a flip of the bird. “Why don’t you shut the fuck up, Lenny? You just got with this squad, don’t run your mouth.”

  “We fight jerries, not Americans,” Corporal Russo said.

  Assistant BAR Gunner Thomas Manning flicked his half-smoked Lucky Strike off into the brush and shouldered his Garand closer to his side. “Speakin’ of Jerries, where are they? I thought we’d be knee deep in kraut by this point but it’s been a lot of quiet for the past few days.”

  “They’re runnin’ scared.” Walton leaned his head back and dumped the rest of the beans into his mouth and wiped his face off on his jacket sleeve. “Uncle Sam’s on the front porch with his fists out and Hitler’s busy lockin’ the door. Word in the outfit is that the brass think we’re mopping things up soon and heading back home by Christmas.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Russo said. “Rally up, the sergeant’s coming.”

  Rallied up, they appeared almost a full squad. Corporal Edward Russo, assistant squad leader, Private First Class John Murphy as point-man (admittedly towered over by the rest of his team), Private Leon Copeland as point-man, Private Bill Parker as rifleman, Privates Walton Keene and Thomas Manning as BAR Gunner and Assistant BAR Gunner respectively, and Private Jared Holmes as Ammo Bearer.

  “Where the fuck is Sterling?” Russo asked.

  “He had to shit,” Jared said.

  “He had all morning to shit. Go get him.”

  A few moments later, Holmes returned with a thin-framed rifleman, Private Sterling Goodman, who was busy buckling up his pants. “Sorry, corporal. I’ve been queasy.”

  “Get ready to work.”

  Sergeant Franklin Delaney had strapped on his helmet and returned with a fickle look on his face. “We’re going to secure a perimeter around the path that veers from the road. An engineer team is going to probe for traps and if need be, we’re clearing timber to make room for vehicles. The Lieutenant wants the platoon to cross the Monschau corridor by midday tomorrow. That means we double-time.”

  “Got it, sir.” Russo nodded. “Let’s move out.”

  In an orderly formation, Frank took charge, his own M1 Carbine poised against his chest. “Take point, Murphy. Copeland, you shadow.”

  John marched a few yards ahead with Lenny at his side. He took them over the hill and through the shattered path, his steps light and measured. In the muddy dirt he could still find his own footprints, the larger footprints from Lenny earlier that morning, and he made a habit out of choosing his steps to fit inside those impressions. When that failed, he chose patches of dirt and mud that would leave the shallowest impression of his boot. Forty yards down a beaten road, the blockade seemed cruder and more inhibiting than it had earlier that morning, as the early autumn fog and overcast sky began to lift. Rays of sunshine beamed down through the clouds, seemingly choked behind the gloom of the day.

  The path of leaves, as John thought of it, remained undisturbed, and he stopped at the front where the road peeled away, searching the pockets of his field jacket for another cigarette. The squad was a few yards behind and he could hear Walton bitching about the fallen trees and mud. Lenny arrived at his side, cheeks red and breathless from his effort to keep up. John withdrew a second cigarette.

  “You move fast for a city boy,” Lenny said as he took the cigarette. “You’re from Brooklyn, right?”

  “Yep,” John said. “I used to live upstate, though.”

  “Where at?”

  “In the country. Around Waterloo.” John pulled a drag on his lucky and blew the smoke out. “Didn’t you say you’re from Philly?”

  “Yeah, born and raised.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  They shared a laugh at that and chatted about the Tigers and the Yankees for a minute before the rest of the squad joined them.

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  “Watch your step and go slow,” Frank instructed. “I want point-men on the hill in the north, where the trees start. Keep eyes around the vicinity. BAR-men, on that eastern flank so you can cover the trail.” He peered around the field, dark eyes scanning between the trees that loomed on the far north

  horizon. “This is wide enough for multiple tank crews. We can advance for miles here.”

  “It’s pretty open, isn’t it?” John asked quietly. “The Germans fled this way. They would’ve used this path to get back to Roetgen, wouldn’t they?”

  “What of it?” Frank asked.

  “They know we’d likely use it too,” John said, but he felt Frank’s gaze on him, hard eyes that seemed searching or judging. John stammered. “... or that we’d need to use it. I dunno if I’m making sense.”

  “We’ve been over this already,” Frank looked away from him, back to the hills in the north. “That’s why we’re going to guard an engineer team while they look for traps.”

  John didn’t feel that his point was fully understood. It wasn’t only the traps he was concerned about. It was the idea that the Germans were giving them a route to travel through, and walking through a door held open by your enemy might as well been akin to walking into their line of fire. “Understood, sir.”

  “Go secure the hills with Copeland and Parker.”

  “Yessir.” John stepped away and did as he was told.

  The climb up the hill was not the worst but it seemed to drag the ass out of Lenny and Bill Parker. Neither seemed much equipped with a pair of climbing knees, but after enough time they managed to make it to the peak alongside John. It was hard to see the clearing beyond the tallgrass; it seemed from this vantage that the path bled back into the main road after a few hundred yards or so. The dense forest that budded up along the north did well to hide any entrenchments there. John kept his rifle poised and ready.

  Down the hills, an infantry squad escorted a group of steel-hatted engineers with their caches of gear and attachments. One of them tweezed the path from afar with a long probing stick, and another swept a SCR-625 Mine Detector over the bed of leaves. Slow but steady, they worked their way across. John turned his attention back east, in the direction that ran parallel to the main road towards Monschau. The line of trees thinned away and in that sparseness of forest, the terrain raised to form a shelf that you could perch upon. The clearing that flanked the detour had an open field that provided no shelter nor cover. John figured if he were defending his home country, he’d perch up there with a German machine gun, possibly in the confines of a concrete pillbox.

  “I shoulda brought something to read,” Bill Parker said.

  “Keep watch.” John glanced back at the engineers, probing their aluminum rods into the dirt and sweeping soil carefully apart.

  “How do you like the outfit?” Lenny asked.

  “It’s not bad.” Bill searched his pockets. “I wish they would’ve put me on the ground sooner. I bet you boys had a nice time in Paris, huh?”

  “I’m new,” Lenny said. “Infantry replacement. “

  “Shit,” Bill laughed, “Me too.”

  “John, you saw Paris, didn’t you?” Lenny asked.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “You saw all of Paris?” Bill asked.

  John grit his teeth. “I saw all of France.”

  Bill lit a cigarette. “Damn. That must’ve been fun.”

  “Not really.”

  “Spare a lucky?” Lenny held his hand out.

  “This fucking guy,” Bill muttered and fished out another smoke. “We’re pretty much done here anyway. You think the krauts got much left in the tank now? I’d be surprised if they’ve got the scrap metal for any more mines.”

  “You believe the rumors, then?” Lenny coughed and spit into the grass before he tucked the lucky back between his lips. “About us going home by Christmas? I mean, that’s why they’re pushing the Westwall so hard, right?”

  “Who knows. You gotta think that the brass are tired of this war too,” Bill said as he blew a cloud of smoke, his free hand relaxed over the butt of his Garand. “Time to finish this shit and get out of here. I still want to nab a Belgian broad to take home. That little dinner those villagers had for us was pretty damn good. What do you think, Johnny?”

  “I don’t know, man. I’m just here to work.”

  Lenny snickered. “See, that man right there? He’s all soldier, baby. Business to the core.” He held out the burning cigarette to John. “You want this?”

  “Sure.” John took it and had a long, heavy drag that he hissed from his nose.

  Below, one of the engineers shouted something and beckoned another. The second man dug the probing stick into the mud, stabbed around gently, and directed the first man to point the SCR-625 in a direction. They drew out foldable trenching shovels and began to dig around a distance from a marked spot. More men joined in and it became a methodical peeling around a circular layer of top soil, and underneath lay exposed a sheen of disk-shaped brass. Entrenchers stepped back and demo boys stepped forward, TNT in hand, and they caked the layer nearest the anti-tank mine in a few bricks of explosives.

  Everyone cleared the blast zone. Multiple squads cleared in loosely formed gathers, NCOs circled their jeeps and watched from afar and even the tankers, standing atop their rigs down the road, observed as the demo boys set a controlled charge.

  The air thundered. The ground rippled. Dirt and metal kicked skyward and sideways. The engineer team talked amongst themselves, then continued slowly excavating the area down the trail. In the meantime, tractors tumbled down the main road and a mixed cluster of infantry, engineers and even a few tankers started clearing the blockade from the road to Monschau.

  After the controlled detonation, Bill quickly looked bored again. “At this rate we’ll be fighting until the rapture.”

  “Or after,” Lenny said. “If Heaven will take me, that is.”

  John shrugged and flicked the lucky out into the woodland brush. “You’ll be alright.”

  It seemed as though, after an hour of searching, the engineer team found no more traps besides the single Tellermine 43. They combed the trail cleanly and as the rest of the platoon began to march and drive through, the engineer squads continued to comb through the path ahead at a snail’s pace. After enough time, the squad’s extended smoke break had come to an end and Sergeant Frank Delaney rallied them and set them forward to march. Lenny stayed at John’s side and they took point a few yards ahead of the squad and continued the march. The path here was not at all like the main road on the Monschau corridor, of which had seen much fighting and artillery.. This trail was not tiresome to march, it felt almost leisurely. Not quite the smoothness of a freshly mowed baseball field, but almost. Only almost.

  The day seemed to blur. He and Lenny chatted idly, and when the sun crested and the afternoon came, John had nearly forgotten that morning’s trouble with booby traps and blockades. It was part of the job, really, and he didn’t envy an engineer’s job. At least, John thought he preferred to die being shot than stepping on a mine. But the more he thought about it, he preferred neither, and instead preferred to live. As unlikely that may be. So far, he’d seen a few battles. A few skirmishes that later were called battles. Eventually the luck runs out, if its luck at all.

  He was thinking too much, he realized, as the march became instinctual and the conversation died down. He felt himself grow anxious and searched his pockets for his Lucky Strikes. “Want a smoke?”

  “No thanks,” Lenny said.

  John froze. “Really?”

  He laughed. “Naw, I’m pulling your leg. I’ll always take a smoke.”

  John drew out the pack with a smile. “Yeah, I know.”

  Muzzles boomed, the dirt ripped up. John threw himself down, face tucked under his helmet. He slid to his side, body tucked fetally, his rucksack facing the direction of the gunfire. Sustained fire continued, dirt scattered into the air, formed a dark mist that lingered. Lenny was looking in the direction of the gunfire, his Garand half-raised. His foot stepped back one pace, then he fell over, hand over his chest. John put his head back down. Body planked, he inched himself backwards on his stomach towards the rest of the platoon. The sustained fire ceased, the voices at his rear grew louder, his squad approaching.

  “Murphy!”

  “I’m good!”

  “Copeland!”

  Lenny laid on his back, gasping, blood drenched through his jacket. In both hands, he clutched his chest.

  The Sergeant barked, “You’re covered, Murphy!”

  From behind, a rapid burp of a Browning Automatic Rifle lit up on John’s left flank. He rolled over and leapt to his feet, sprinting steady, at first full straight, then he dashed laterally into the nearest brush beside Edward Russo behind a thick-trunk tree.

  “You hit, Murphy?” Russo barked.

  “Nope.” John steadied his breathing, his pounding heart. In his hands, the pack of Lucky Strikes were slippery with sweat. He reached inside and pulled out two. Sifting through all the pockets, he found himself short of his lighter. “You got a light?”

  “Huh?” Russo glanced at him, then went digging into his pockets. He handed over a brass zippo lighter. “Copeland?”

  “He’s done.” John lit the first lucky with a deep inhale and offered over the second.

  Russo tucked the smoke in his mouth. “Alright.”

  John held out the zippo’s flame for him and together, they both had a deep breath. He drew forward his Garand and took up reserve position behind Russo. Up ahead, the engineering team and their infantry escort were either sprawled on the ground or braced behind sloped terrain, shovels out and trenching soil for steeper cover.

  “Jerries scored some points on us today, huh?” Russo said, jaw tensed.

  John nodded and peered down the open field to the distant hills, where the mounds of raised earth were steeped in some faint, dark holes. Muzzles flashed and returned fire from those holes, and inside the light of their flash he saw the faint shape of the enemy pillbox etched into the hill. “We’ll score too, corporal.”