by Chris Lynch
“But look, commander,” Wyatt says. “There’s the airfield. You can see it, just about a half-mile up. It’s ours.”
Logan whoops again, louder. “There it is,” he says.
Pacifico gets all carried away now, excited, but unable to see that far ahead from our lower vantage point. He shoves open the hatch right above his position to get a better look.
“Shut that thing, now!” Cowens hollers a fraction of a second before it all kicks off.
The planes that we had stopped paying attention to have come to pay attention to us. And they are not friendlies.
The shell of our tank starts ratatatatat pinging with machine-gun fire as first one then another then another plane swoops low on a strafing run. There is a sudden massive explosion probably five lengths up in the line as they begin dive-bombing us.
“Did you hear that?” Pacifico says. “Shot went right off my lid, right after I closed it. I’d have been a goner.” He sounds more wide-eyed amazed than worried or thankful or any of those things he probably should be.
“Pacifico!” Cowens shouts. “Coming toward you at two o’clock. Fire that gun, boy!”
Fire, the boy does. Then the turret swings violently around, Wyatt jams a 75-mm shell into the gun, and Logan rocks us all as he fires the boom cannon.
Commander Cowens keeps barking coordinates and instructions, our gunners keep gunning, and I keep driving, guiding us toward the airfield. The French fighter planes are tenacious, going at us like this is the last battle at the end of the world, and I realize they have been scrambled from Tafaraoui itself to make their last stand to hold it. As the battle goes on, we have to slow down some to properly engage them, causing us to take a lot more machine-gun fire and narrowly miss a couple of bombs. I hear one plane, then another take serious hits and then go into that whiny death scream before crashing in two big fireballs just off to the left of the approach road.
We stop completely to stand and fight just as we are about to reach the airfield. Antiaircraft guns from the base’s own artillery begin firing on us. All thirty or so of our tanks go all-in, machine gunners absolutely filling the sky with bullets like a plague of exploding locusts and our big guns training on the battery of antiaircraft. Planes start coming down rapidly now, crashing and ditching all over the area, until the threat is no threat anymore.
It’s close to an hour since we splashed ashore, as the tanks gear up and charge straight across that field, directly into the face of those guns, which become less and less effective the closer we get because they are set to aim at the sky and by the time we are halfway across the field we just lay down a line of fire that pummels and finally eradicates the whole battery.
And then, we return to quiet once more.
We sit there in the middle of the field, looking at the smoldering battlements, crashed planes here and there, and listen as another wave of planes approaches from our rear.
“Here we go again?” I say.
“No,” Cowens says, boldly flipping up his hatch and looking back. “They’re ours. Spitfires, American, British, coming to take up residence on their new airfield.”
“Now can we say we did something?” Logan asks.
“I suppose,” Cowens says, louder now to compete with the Spitfires overhead. “Not much of something, but something.”
“Arggghh,” everyone chimes in, a mass, jokey groan.
“Children,” Cowens says. “I’m surrounded by a big can of kids, who know nothing but will learn soon enough.”
We find some space in one of the empty administration buildings, settle in, and hunker down for the night. Despite the sound of battles still going on in other sectors, ships still sending and receiving heavy fire, machine-gun and artillery bursts in the distance, we get pretty comfortable, pretty quick.
I know I do, anyway. I sleep like a hibernating bear straight through until I get pulled back to reality.
“Up, boys, up!” Cowens says, running along the line of bears sleeping on the floor, kicking feet as he goes.
“What?” I say, jumping up from a dead sleep and into my boots.
“Duty calls. We’ve got a sighting of a column of French Foreign Legion tanks heading right our way, looking for a fight.”
“What a coincidence,” Logan says. “We just happen to have one for ’em.”
Whatever tired we felt has vaporized as the whole crew of us, as well as bunches of other crews, start running like firemen answering an alarm. We barrel out of that building and man our machines.
“You boys just might get educated quickly after all,” Cowens says.
“Maybe we’ll be the ones doing the educating,” Logan says. Logan’s lack of confidence seems not to be one of our weaknesses.
We rumble south down the same road the Legionnaires are taking north, and in my head I’m picturing two of those bighorn sheep from the Rocky Mountains running headlong at each other from a great distance to smash skulls so hard the echo bounces around for days.
It isn’t quite like that, though, as about forty minutes out, we see them. They have had time to settle in, take cover in hills, and pull on camouflage to wait on us.
We’ve come with three platoons, a total of fifteen tanks, and they look to have roughly the same number, though with the camo we can’t tell for sure.
Commander Cowens is on the radio with other TCs, as well as the platoon leaders, formulating something. We are the number two tank in our platoon, meaning even if it was just our platoon, it wouldn’t be Cowens calling the shots. And with this many commanders and commander-commanders lined up it seems to me that a decision could be a long time coming.
But it’s quick.
“Bucyk,” Cowens shouts, “pull right, in formation with the rest of our group. I want you to stay right on the shoulder of the first tank, and the third will be back on your hip, and so on down the line. Our platoon’ll be going right flank, while the center platoon lays down a low line of fire and the third group forms left flank. Got it?”
“Yes, sir!” I say and fall right in alongside the number one tank.
“I trust you other children know what to do?”
“Yes, sir!” Pacifico, Wyatt, and Logan all respond, and I find myself chiming back in, too, even if he wasn’t talking to me. Seems I like shouting Yes, sir! under highly charged circumstances.
“All right, we’re rolling. Go, go, go!”
So, we go. And go and go and go.
Bu-hoom, bu-hoom, hu-hoom! The cannons of all our tanks and all their tanks explode into action at the same time, shaking the whole earth with the thunder of it. There are about five hundred yards of level field between us and the Foreign Legion tanks up on their short hills, but this is a flat-out slugfest. Our center group is doing a great job of peppering their middle while we come in at their flanks, diffusing their attention. I can see out of my peripheral vision that Pacifico is right up out of his seat, practically attacking his machine gun to attack the enemy harder. I hear Wyatt actually making grunting, growling, and barking noises as he pounds one shell after another into the gun just as fast as Logan can launch them. Which is very fast.
At one point I hear a truly strange sound.
“What are we doing?” Cowens asks nobody, since he surely wouldn’t be asking any of us. “This is reckless.”
Logan and Wyatt apparently find that thought thrilling, as they both let out war whoops, the kind real Indians never make.
Then, we’re hit.
It’s a shocker. Everybody stops doing their jobs. Except Cowens, of course. I even let my hands go off the levers for a second, nearly stalling our forward progress in the process.
“Fire!” Cowens shouts. “Drive! Do your jobs! Never stop. Never! No matter what!”
The shell that hit us smacked somewhere along the side of the turret, right above and behind me. It rang loud, bounced us a little sideways, but caromed right off.
We are closing in on them, maybe a hundred and fifty yards away.
“I got him now,” Logan s
ays, and no sooner has he said it then, BAM, WHOOSH!
The tank in the trees right in my line of vision takes the wrath of Logan directly, explodes spectacularly. I watch, even as I drive straight for them, as somebody struggles up out of the top hatch, in flames, and throws himself over the side. The driver’s hatch opens, and a flaming tank crewman, a driver like me, makes it halfway through the hatch and then just sort of flops over in the middle, never making it out past his hips. He lies there, half-in, half-out, all burning away. Nobody else comes out.
In succession, boom-boom-boom-boom, the tanks lined up against us on the right get hit and go up, like some giant, lethal carnival shoot-’em-up game.
Another shell scores a direct hit on us, this time smack on the armor plating in front of me. And again it deflects away without doing much.
It’s obvious now, and inevitable. The French Foreign Legion is making no motion to surrender, and the tanks of the US First Armored Division are making no motion to give them a chance.
It’s a slaughter. We eradicate their entire force.
There is already wild celebrating going on within our tank, and we can hear it all up and down the line. This is an unqualified success, as well as being our first real, true, proper battle to the death, and we came out on top, way on top.
The rush is incredible. Good and bad.
We did exactly what we were supposed to do, as well as we could have done it.
I already know I will never forget the sight of that driver burning away right in front of us. Or the guys we didn’t see, inside.
It was brutal.
It was also right.
Commander Cowens is more subdued than the rest of us during the triumphant trip back to Tafaraoui. He doesn’t shut us up, but he doesn’t join in.
He doesn’t say anything until we are passing into the grounds of the airfield itself, now looking as American as Fort Dix, with all the aircraft and troops and whatnot setting up and making it home.
As the tank rolls to a stop and we shut down, he says, almost sadly, “Enjoy this, fellas. Really do, for now. But know this: that if those poor no-quit Foreign Legion fools out there weren’t sent in World War One tanks, with World War One ordnance, we wouldn’t be here right now to be celebrating anything.”
The celebration goes down several notches.
“You all did fine, I’m not criticizing you guys. But if we, all of us, don’t fight smarter, more tactically clever than we did today, we are in trouble. I promise you the Germans, Field Marshal Rommel and his panzers, will surely show us how it’s done.”
There is a short, respectful silence, which is naturally broken by Logan.
“Bring ’em on, sir.”
Cowens laughs ruefully, shakes his head, and pulls himself up through the hatch and out.
The other four of us, the kids, hang back, sitting in the M-4 Sherman, our tank. We look back and forth, one to another, and we start nodding, nodding.
We all feel it. Bring ’em on.
We cannot be beaten.
DEAR HANNAH,
WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO? ME, I CONQUERED A COUNTRY. ALGERIA. ACTUALLY, YOU COULD SAY I CONQUERED AN ENTIRE REGION. NORTH AFRICA.
OKAY, YOU’VE PROBABLY GATHERED THAT I HAD SOME HELPERS. THERE WERE ABOUT A HUNDRED THOUSAND OF THEM, TO BE HONEST, BUT THINGS MOVED PRETTY FAST, SO I DIDN’T GET TO MEET A WHOLE LOT OF THEM. WONDERFUL GUYS, I’M SURE.
THERE ARE FOUR, THOUGH, THAT I WISH I COULD INTRODUCE YOU TO. MAYBE THAT CAN HAPPEN, WHEN THIS JOB IS FINALLY ALL DONE, AND DONE RIGHT. I’D LIKE THAT. THESE CAN BE THE FIRST PEOPLE WE HAVE OVER, WHEN WE HAVE OUR PLACE AND EVERYTHING. NICE TO THINK ABOUT, HUH?
UNLESS THEY’RE A BUNCH OF JERKS, OF COURSE. BUT THEY’RE NOT. IN THE TANK’S SETUP WE’RE THREE UP (IN THE TURRET) AND TWO DOWN. I’M THE DRIVER, OF COURSE, AND NEXT TO ME IN WHAT YOU MIGHT CALL THE COPILOT SEAT IS A GUY NAMED PACIFICO. HE’S BOTH MY ASSISTANT AND MACHINE GUNNER. HE’S AN AWFULLY GOOD KID, AND MAYBE A LITTLE SENSITIVE FOR THIS BUSINESS BUT I’M PRETTY SURE HE’S GOING TO TOUGHEN UP REAL QUICK OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS AND MONTHS. UPSTAIRS IS THE GUNNER, LOGAN, WHO WORKS THE BIG CANNON. NOW, WHEN WE HAVE THESE GUYS TO DINNER YOU MIGHT WANT TO SEAT LOGAN AT THE FAR END OF THE TABLE BECAUSE HE CAN BE A LITTLE EXCITABLE. BUT HE’S JUST A BIG COWBOY KID, REALLY, AND I’M GLAD WE HAVE HIM. WYATT IS THE GUY WHO KEEPS THE GUNS LOADED, ESPECIALLY LOGAN’S, BECAUSE WE DON’T WANT LOGAN GETTING BORED AND LOOKING FOR SOMETHING TO DO. WYATT’S A STRANGE GUY. HE’S A DRAFTEE LIKE PACIFICO, ONLY HE SEEMS A LOT LESS INFORMED ABOUT WHAT WE ARE INVOLVED IN AND, USUALLY, WHERE WE EVEN ARE. HE DOESN’T MIND ASKING, THOUGH, WHICH IS HELPFUL FOR HIM AND A LOT OF FUN FOR THE REST OF US.
BUT THE BIGGEST TRUTH OF IT ALL IS THAT WE’RE A BUNCH OF ARMY KINDERGARTNERS. WE ARE A CREW THAT LACKS EXPERIENCE IN A DIVISION THAT LACKS EXPERIENCE, AND THE MAN WHO MAKES EVERYTHING WORK IS OUR TANK COMMANDER. HIS NAME IS COWENS, AND HE’S A HARD MAN. HE CAN BE VERY HARD TO FIGURE OUT FROM ONE MINUTE TO THE NEXT BUT I WORKED OUT THAT THE MOST SUCCESSFUL APPROACH IS TO NOT TRY TO FIGURE HIM OUT. ONCE I WORKED THAT PART OUT, THINGS MADE A LOT MORE SENSE. I WILL SAY THIS, THOUGH. CAN’T THINK OF ANYONE I HAVE PERSONALLY RESPECTED MORE. I WOULDN’T TELL ANYBODY ELSE BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO SOUND ALL GUSHY, BUT WHILE COMMANDER COWENS IS NO JIM THORPE, HE’S ABOUT AS CLOSE AS A NORMAL PERSON COULD BE.
I’D APPRECIATE IT IF YOU DIDN’T REPEAT THAT WHEN THEY COME TO DINNER, AS THE GUYS WOULD RAG ME SOMETHING AWFUL.
AND JUST THINK, DESPITE HOW GREEN WE MOSTLY ARE, WE ARE WINNING, HANNAH. WINNING BIG. WE’RE ONLY GOING TO GET STRONGER FROM HERE, AND I BELIEVE WE WILL BE HAVING THAT DINNER A LOT SOONER THAN YOU EXPECT.
WE ARE ON THE MOVE AGAIN RIGHT NOW, REALLY FLYING, ON TO THE NEXT BIG THING, SO I HAVE TO CUT OFF HERE.
BUT, I JUST WANT TO SAY SOMETHING. EVERY TIME I DO SOMETHING, SOMETHING NEW, AND DIFFICULT, SOMETHING STRONG AND RIGHT, MY FIRST THOUGHT IS I CAN’T WAIT TO TELL HANNAH.
DOPEY, HUH? LIKE A LITTLE KID WITH A GOOD REPORT CARD, HUH?
UNTIL NEXT REPORT.
YOUR DOPE,
ROMAN
Dearest Roman,
Did you hear? I don’t know how it works over there but I imagine it must be chaotic trying to get information with everything going on. I’m sorry if you’ve already heard this. Actually, I’m sorry if you haven’t. Bill Thomas, who played with you on the Centreville Sox. He hit .270 that last year, remember? He joined the Army Air Corps, like a lot of folks around here signed up after that last game, after you and Nardini and the rest were called out by the mayor, for the crowd to cheer, and with the band and everything. I’m sorry. I just heard that Bill Thomas was killed. He was a pilot in the Air Corps, like Ted Williams. Bill’s plane was shot down in North Africa. I’m sorry.
Roman, you told me that if I felt the need, that I should feel free to tell you if I feel you are being too boastful so I am going to take you up on that right now. You have to stop. It’s scaring me. You cannot say that you cannot lose, because you can. You can lose, as fine a soldier as you are, you can lose. We all can. I’m scared.
I can’t write any more now. I had more to tell you, but it will have to wait. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry for Bill, and I’m sorry for scolding, and I’m sorry for saying I’m sorry so much.
It’s all right for you to be confident, but it’s not all right for you to be stupid.
I’m not calling you stupid but if that’s how it sounded I’m sorry for that, too.
But don’t say it anymore. Please.
Love,
Hannah
“Hellooo,” the voice calls, loud enough, but calls again when I don’t respond. It may be the third or fourth time because I’m only now becoming aware that I was already hearing it. I’m finally brought completely around to what’s happening by a wild knocking on my helmet.
I turn to find that the helmet-knocking was coming from above, where Logan was reaching down with the butt of his pistol and rapping hard enough to make a decent ringing sound. The hello was coming from
Pacifico, who was trying to inform me that the column was about to start up again and his shift at driving was over.
“Right,” I say, “right.” I tuck the letter back into my pocket and we climb over-under to take our proper assignments and start moving down the road once more.
“You okay, kid?” Cowens calls down as I ease the levers ahead into the long column of tanks.
“I am, sir, thanks.”
“Good,” he says. “It’d be a shame after all this to get knocked out of commission because our driver got distracted and ran us straight into a boulder or off a cliff.”
“I don’t see any cliffs, commander,” Wyatt says, and already I am happy for the diversion Wyatt is bringing. “Are there cliffs where we’re going?”
“Argghh,” Logan groans, and everybody but me starts laughing in a here-we-go-again fashion.
I’ll laugh soon. Very soon. Just not right this minute.
It is certainly no mistake that we drive slowly and deliberately through small towns and villages as we set off for Tunisia. This is a show of strength, a statement of seriousness, and, frankly, a big dog growling over a smaller dog as we motor down the main roads of scenic little coastal spots. The sun is shining, and I can’t quite believe the variety I see. Christian cathedrals tower over sidewalk cafés and modern office buildings that would not be out of place in Boston. But in the same blocks, we see mosques and bazaars that are straight out of some Aladdin movie to my eyes. Skinny dogs seem to roam at will, and the folks on the sidewalks are in suits and ties, looking quite French, or in Arab robes and looking a million degrees different. We are allowed to be looking out our individual hatches, and I find myself thinking, holy cow, what a great vacation this must have been.
I hear French and Spanish and some English and some languages I couldn’t dare guess at, and it feels like another world for sure. Pacifico waves, at nobody specific, which is good because nobody waves back, specifically or generally.
And I realize, there is no joy for us here. Whatever side they are on today or were on yesterday, nobody on these streets is particularly happy to see our tanks crunching through their hometowns.