Civilian Terror

Company B pulled off the highway used by the Red Ball Express—the convoy of trucks bringing supplies to the front, and ambulances bringing the wounded to the rear of the line. The men would bivouac on the hillside that night, but before pitching their tents, many went to get a look at the wreckage of a downed German plane, and the two dead fighter pilots who lay in the snow.

“You don’t want to look,” Private O’Hara said to Private Martin. “Take my word for it, kid.”

Marty took umbrage at kid. At nineteen, he was the youngest of Kennet’s squad, and he possessed a dumb innocence that made everyone want to protect him. Tired of being treated like a tyke to be sheltered, he stomped toward the broken fuselage and stood, hands on hips, looking down at the two corpses. Then he walked off another six yards and puked.

“You want to take a gander?” Hook asked Kennet.

Kennet didn’t, but, “Might as well get used to seeing it,” he said.

It was a mistake. Both the looking and the theory he’d ever get used to it. The corpses were horribly broken, arms and legs thrust at unnatural angles, bone poking through clothing. Their faces bloated, their eyes bulging in eternal horror. But hardest to take in was the turned-out pockets, devoid of possessions. The feet stripped of their boots and hands of gloves. One airman had a missing finger—clearly he’d been wearing a ring that was now some American GI’s booty.

To the victor go the spoils, Kennet thought, curling his own ringless hands in his empty pockets, resolved not to carry anything into battle that some Nazi could show off to a family member or lover.

“Come on,” Hook said lowly. Then louder, “Marty, come on. You got nothing left to bring up. You wanted to look and you looked. It’s done. Now you know.”

Thankfully, previous units had already dug in foxholes and gun positions, so setting up the outer defense went quickly. A couple of straw stacks kept the men from laying their bedrolls on the cold ground.

Kennet got a few hours sleep before it was his turn for guard duty. He rolled up his sleeping bag—nothing more than two Army-issue blankets sewed together—and stuffed it inside Hook’s bag. Hook curled around the bedding, keeping it warm with his body heat, and Kennet piled more straw on top of him. They’d learned this trick from a guy in the 82nd Airborne. If a buddy gave you a field-tested tip to keep from freezing your ass off, you took it.