by Robert Adams
In the near future years, Milo was often to remember the crab lice episode and wonder about himself, about his decidedly unusual physiology. He was to wonder especially when those about him were suffering from the attentions of body lice, fleas, ticks, bedbugs, the various parasitic worms and leeches, while his flesh and blood and organs remained whole and inviolate. It was to be long, long into that then-unguessed future that he was to add together a myriad of assorted facts—his patent immunity to all of mankind's diseases, his ability to survive clearly fatal wounds by way of unbelievably rapid regeneration of tissues, his complete freedom from parasites, and many another notable curiosity—and begin first to question and then to believe himself to be, as mad Major Jarvis' intuition had told him, either superhuman or not truly human at all.
The training went on and on, becoming more and more realistic and dangerous for the trainees, which now included almost every one of the nine hundred and seventeen officers and men in the battalion. Simply for the hard exercise, Milo joined them whenever he could find or make the time to do so. He soon found that it heartened the men to find an officer or a senior noncom wriggling among them in the cold, sticky mud under the fanged wire, while the .30 caliber machine guns fired ball ammunition bare inches overhead, so he not only made more time to join the training exercises himself, but encouraged others to do so in the interests of heightened morale.
Early in February 1944, Jethro and the officers of his staff were summoned to a series of meetings at regimental headquarters. A week later, the division engineers arrived with trucks and tools and boards and plywood with which they quickly built on the frozen ground full-size mockups of landing craft, each one complete with a hinged front ramp of corrugated steel. The experienced, hardworking men had the mockups completed before the day was out, then moved on to the next battalion on their list.
On the following morning—fortunately, one of the rare, bright, sunny days—this newest phase of their training was commenced. And the training continued despite the very worst of weather conditions—weary officers and men burdened down with full packs, personal weapons, heavy weapons, steel boxes and wooden cases of munitions and explosives, cartons of field rations, spools of commo wire and field telephones and all of the other impedimenta of modern, mid-twentieth-century warfare. They trooped into the wooden boxes and arranged themselves as ordered, sitting or squatting or kneeling on the slick, wet, muddy boards in the damp fog or cold drizzle until the command came to arise and exit down the dirty, slippery ramp, then trudge back into the roofless structure to do it all over again. Milo participated in this training, too, and was soon to be very glad that he had done so.
In early May, Jethro suddenly appeared. Framed in the doorway of Milo's private cubicle of the Quonset hut that housed Headquarters Company, Battalion, he beckoned, saying, "Get your jacket and come with me. We need to talk… privately."
When Milo had driven the jeep out to a spot sufficiently far from the other humans for Jethro's satisfaction, he switched off the engine and turned in the seat to face his old friend. "So? Talk."
Colonel Stiles sighed. "Milo, I still can't get you commissioned. I can't understand any of the fucking mess and neither can regiment or division or even corps, for chrissakes. They all figure there's a fuckup somewhere in the War Department records, and for want of anything more certain or concrete, I guess I just have to agree with them. I'm sorry. I did try."
"So, what the fuck does it matter, Jethro? Am I demanding a fucking bar? Hell, I'm happy right where I am, in my present grade, doing the job I'm doing." Milo was puzzled, and his voice reflected that.
Stiles just sighed again and shook his head sadly. "It matters, Milo, because of this: I'm leaving the battalion soon—division staff calls, and I've put them off for about as long as I can. The man who's coming in to replace me will be bringing along his own adjutant, sergeant major and H&H first, which is, of course, his right and privilege and much better for all concerned, since he and they will no doubt work more smoothly together than he would with strangers."
Milo frowned. "So what happens to John Saxon, Bill Hammond and me?"
"I was told I could bring up to three officers of company grade with me to my new posting and job, Milo. Bill's commission is in the mills, and I'd hoped yours would be too, by now, but… Hell, Milo, are you sure, are you fucking positive you don't know of any reason why somebody somewhere for some fucking reason would be disapproving all the damned commission requests I've sent in on you over the last few years? So I can't take you along in your present grade. If you want to take a bust down to corporal, I might—might, mind you—be able to justify you as a driver, but it's a mighty long chance and too fucking much risk, I think, for you to sacrifice your stripes for."
"So, you've found a slot for me, Jethro. Right?" Milo asked tiredly.
Stiles nodded once. "I have. Did you hear about the cases of spinal meningitis in Charlie Company? Yeah, well, that left them minus two of their sergeants. You've met Captain Burke, of course."
Milo nodded. "Yes, good officer. West Pointer, isn't he?"
"Virginia Military Institute, Milo, pretty close to the same thing, and a whole fucking hell of a sight better than the frigging NGs and ROTCs and CMTCs we're all so burdened with."
"Anyway, I've talked to Burke, and he would flatly love to have a noncom of your experience in Charlie Company. As you well know, you have the respect and admiration of every officer and man in this battalion. But his problem is this: his first sergeant has done and is doing as good a job as anyone could, and replacing him for no reason would make for a lot of fucking bad blood, and, of course, that's the last fucking thing Burke wants with combat looming so close up ahead."
"He wants me to take field first, then, Jethro? Okay, it's a job I know, too," agreed Milo readily.
"No, Milo." Stiles spoke in a low and hesitant tone. "He's got a good field first, too. He wants you to take over as platoon sergeant of his second platoon." Then the officer added hastily and a bit more cheerfully, "But he swears, and you know it's bound to be true, that if any fucking thing happens to the first or the field first, you're the man for the slot."
Milo shrugged. "Just so long as I go over in grade, don't have to take a bust, Jethro, it's okay with me—the diamond will come off very easily. It'll be good to get back to doing some real field soldiering for a change, too. The way things were, it looked like I'd have sat out the whole fucking war behind a fucking desk."
Although he sat slumped, Stiles looked and sounded much relieved. "Thank God you took it all so well, buddy. Look, I did all they'd let me do to sweeten the pill a little. You can take off your tech stripes completely and sew on a set of masters and you'll go over to Charlie Company in that grade, too—I've already cleared it with Burke. And, Milo, believe me, I'm still going to keep pushing on a commission for you. If any of us old Regulars deserves one, it's you, my friend."
Leo Burke, Captain, Infantry, USA, was a young man in his twenties. An even six feet in height, with dark-blond hair and snapping blue eyes, he was every bit as hard and fit as any man under his command. He spoke a cultivated English in the soft accents of his native Virginia; his handclasp was firm and his boyish smile infectious. He greeted the reporting Milo warmly, clearly desirous of real friendship with his new platoon sergeant.
"At ease, Sahgeant Moray. Sahgeant Coopuh, why don't you have a man fetch us fo' cups of cawfee back here. Oh, and see if you can run down Lootenant Huni-cutter, too. Tell him ah'd like to see him on the double."
When the first sergeant had departed, closing the door that led out to the busy orderly room, the young officer gestured to one of the side chairs, saying, "Please sit down, Sahgeant Moray." When both were seated, with cigarettes offered and lit, the company commander said, "Sahgeant Moray, you just can't know how happy and truly honuhed ah am to be able to add you to my company. You are what every offisuh and man in this whole battalion thinks about when they hear of professional sojuhs, Old Line Reguluhs. It'
s sho good to know I'll have a man like you to lean on in days ahead if the going gets as rough as it may get. Welcome to mah comp'ny, sahgeant."
"Lootenant Terence Hunicutter is the platoon leaduh of second platoon, and if evuh a second lootenant needed a sahgeant like you, it's Terry. He means well, sahgeant, he's conscientious, hardworking, and he truly does feel fo' the men in second platoon. But he's one of the Civilian Military Training Corps offisuhs and he just doesn't know a whole lot of things he should know and needs to know if he's going to keep them and him alive and well when we get into combat. Ah'd considuh it a personal favuh if you'd take Hunicutter unduh your wing, sahgeant, and do all you can to help him become the kind of offisuh ah think and know he can be."
"In strict confidence, Moray, if ah had my druthuhs, ah'd have you as platoon leaduh and Terry as the sahgeant, but ah don't, and ah guess we just will have to play this hand we were dealt. And, also, like I told Colonel Stiles, if anything should happen to Sahgeant Coopuh, ah mean to have you out in that orderly room as mah first so fast it'll make your head spin. You're wasted as a mere platoon sahgeant and ah know it, but ah still am glad to have you even as that."
"Oh, and by the way, sahgeant, Colonel Stiles told me you are a very accomplished riduh. Well, I have some distunt relatives who live near a town called Somerton, inland a ways from here. They keep a remahkable stable. If we can find time, ah'd like to take you up to meet them and we could then get in a little riding, maybe. It would be a pure favuh to them and to the po' horses, too. One of their sons is a pris'nuh of the Nazis, taken in Greece, and the othuh has not been heard of or from since the fall of Singapore to the Japs. Their mothuh is terribly arthritic and their fathuh can't ride too often because of the wounds he suffuhed in France in 1940."
But the outing with Captain Burke was never to be, for the pace of the training increased to frenetic. Equipment and clothing and weapons were inspected and reinspected time after time, and all defective or badly worn or seriously damaged items were replaced with new ones. And as the days of May trickled into June, no officer or man had to be told that the time of sudden death would very soon be upon them all.
Milo found Lieutenant Terence McS. Hunicutter to be much like a puppy, painfully eager to please anyone and everyone without really knowing how. He lacked any real shred of leadership ability, and the four squad leaders had been covertly running the platoon for want of any better arrangement, all knowing that true command was simply beyond the young officer's capabilities. The four men gladly, relievedly turned the platoon over to Milo, asking only that he "take it easy" with Hunicutter, for they all liked the boy.
By the time that young Terence Hunicutter was cut almost in two by a burst of fire from a Maschinengewehr hidden behind a Normandy hedgerow, old John Saxon, now a major, had been sent back to replace the dead battalion commander, and he was quick to approve Captain Leo Burke's recommendation of a battlefield commission for Master Sergeant Milo Moray.
There were no significant changes to Milo's life in the wake of the promotion, for he had been doing the identical job since they had waded ashore on the 6th of June, anyway. He just cut off his stripes and pinned the pair of gold bars gifted him by Leo Burke onto his epaulets. Then he buckled on his pistol belt, shouldered a packload of ammo and grenades for his platoon, clapped his battered steel pot on his dirty head, picked up his Thompson and departed the Company CP.
Taking a long and circuitous but relatively safe route, Milo got back to the somewhat reduced platoon tired but elated that at least they now had their expended ammo replaced and a musette bag full of chocolate D-bars and cigarettes to help keep body and soul together until someone got combat rations up to them again.
His inherited command now included the remnants of three rifle squads—one of eleven, one of nine and one of eight men. The last remaining light machine gun section had been pulled away from him two days earlier to be added to the CP guard lines; indeed, he had seen and traded friendly obscenities with two of those men while in the CP area.
Calling over Sergeants Chamberlin and Ryan and Corporal Bernie Cohen, who now led the third squad, Milo laid the two golden bars out on the palm of his filthy hand, saying, "Take a good, long look at them, gentlemen, because this is the last time you're going to see the fuckers until we get somewhere where nobody's shooting at officers and noncoms, in particular. The pack has ammo and grenades—divvy them up equally. I couldn't get more than four new BAR magazines, so give the extra one to Pettus—he's better with the weapon than the other two are."
"Tell your boys they better all start saving their Garand clips. There's been another fucking snafu in supply, I'd say, because I got the last clipped .30-06 that company had. All the new ammo that came in on the last truckload is linked for machine guns, and I brought along a couple boxes of that, too, for the BAR men. No rifle grenades came, only pineapples and no adapters for those, so no point in lugging along the grenade launchers on tomorrow morning's patrol, Greg."
The hulking Greg Chamberlin nodded. "First squad is it again, huh, Milo… uhh, lootenant?"
Milo grinned briefly, his teeth gleaming against his dirty stubbled face. "Yep. Always a bride, never a brides-maid, right, Greg? That's what happens when you're the best—or claim you are—though. And Greg, Gus, Bernie, so long as I'm the highest-ranking man around, it's still Milo to you."
"Okay, let's get the ammo distributed, then you can hand out some D-bars and smokes I brought. Then, Greg, come back here and I'll go over the map with you; I'll be going along on this one."
"Don't you allus?" remarked Chamberlin, chuckling.
The patrol set out at dawn and had moved well out into the unknown countryside by the time it was light enough to see clearly for any great distance. It was then that Pettus slammed his body sideways into the high, grassy bank on his right, his slung BAR under his lanky body, a hole in his head just under the rim of his helmet, blood beginning to dribble from it as tobacco juice was dribbling from the corners of his slackening mouth. He was already down and dead before any of the rest of them even heard the sound of the shot that had killed him.
Before any man could react in any way, a 7.9mm bullet took Milo in the pit of the arm he had just raised to dash the sweat away from his eyes. The bullet bored completely through his chest before exiting in the left-frontal quadrant and going through the biceps, as well, prior to speeding on. Milo later figured that it had skewered both lungs as well as his heart. The lancing agony had been exquisite, unbearable, and Milo screamed. He drew in a deep, agonizing breath to scream once again, and that second scream choked away as he coughed up a boiling rush of blood. He almost strangled on the blood.
All of the patrol had gone to ground. Chamberlin wriggled over to first Pettus, then Milo. After the most cursory of examinations and a brief, futile attempt to wrestle the BAR from under Pettus' dead weight, the big sergeant got the men off the exposed section of roadway without any more losses. Having fortunately spotted the flash of the shot that had struck Milo, Chamberlin and Corporal Gardner divided the riflemen between them, then Chamberlin set out in a wide swing with his section, going to the left fast, while Gardner's section moved more slowly, almost directly at the objective, now and then having one of his men gingerly expose himself to keep the attention of the sniper on this nearer unit.
Milo, back at the ambush point, just lay still, hoping that by so doing he could hold the pain at bay until he had lost enough blood to pass into a coma and so die in peace and relative comfort. But he did not, he could not find and sink into that warm, soft, all-enveloping darkness, and the pain went on and on, unabated, movement or no movement. In instinctive response to his body's demands, he of course continued to breathe, but he did so as shallowly as possible, lest he bring on another bout of coughing and choking on his own blood.
The pain grew worse as he lay there; so bad was it that he gritted his teeth, grinding them and groaning. But then, strangely, the pain began to slowly ebb away, to lessen imperceptibly. Al
though he felt weak and terribly thirsty, he felt no more drowsiness than he had before he had been shot. He opened his eyes then, to find that he could see, and see very clearly, which last surprised him. What he saw was the two sections of Chamberlin's squad parting and wriggling, then proceeding at a crouching run in two directions clearly intended to converge upon what must be the sniper's nest—the jumbled stones and still-standing chimney of a burned-out farmhouse.
Something deep within him told him to take a better look, a closer look at the distant objective against which his last full rifle squad was now advancing. He cautiously raised himself just enough to drag from beneath him his cased binoculars, gritting his teeth against the renewed waves of pain that never materialized. What he saw through the optics was three figures clad in Wehrmacht Feldgrau, busily setting up a light machine gun, an MG-42, by the look of it, and fitted out with one of the Doppeltrommel drum magazines. The thing was on one of the rare tripods, which would serve to make its fire more accurate and devastating than the usual unsteady bipodal mount.
With no base of fire to cover them and their advance, he knew that those men of his would be slaughtered. They would not know of that deadly machine gun— for, after all, they thought themselves to be stalking only a sniper and an assistant or two and could not see from their positions just what a hideous surprise the Krauts were setting up for them—until the high rate of fire of the MG-42 was engaged in ripping the very life from out of them.