"Permission to enter?" "Come." "Where's the rest of the company, Captain?" "Where do you think?" "They moved out with the battalion." "I've been waiting here for you." "You took your time getting back." "I got lost in the smoke." "What happened to your gun?" "Have you ever seen a shell-shocked horse?" "He stomped all over me and got my rifle." "Smashed it to smithereens." "I suppose horses have as much right to go crazy in this war as men have." "What do you think?" "What the hell is it?" "It's a one." "1 st Infantry Division." "The Red One." "Think General Pershing will like them?" "I got the idea from a cap of a Hun I killed." "When?" "About an hour ago." "Did he yell out anything?" "The same old Kaiser stuff." "You know, "the war's over," all that junk." "Finish it." "Sir?" "Finish it!" "The Armistice was signed at 11:00 this morning." "The war's been over for 4 hours." "You didn't know it was over." "He did." "A quarter of a century later, that piece of red cloth from the dead Hun's hat had become famous all over the world." "It was the insignia of the 1 st Infantry Division." "The Fighting 1 st." "The Big Red One." "24 years later, the Big Red One was fighting the Krauts again." "It was World War II this time." "We were invading North Africa." "Hey, Griff." "Great!" "Thanks, Sergeant." "We were his Rifle Squad." "1 st Squad, 1 st Platoon, "I" Company, 1 6th Infantry." "He called us his "wetnoses."" "Griff, he was a hell of a sharpshooter." "Johnson was a pig farmer with hemorrhoids." "Vinci was a street kid who played hot jazz on the saxophone." "And that's me." "I'm Zab." "I thought I was the Hemingway of the Bronx." "You really a book writer?" "What book did you write?" "The Dark Deadline." "Never heard of it." "Never read it." "It's an unpublished mystery novel." "Left it with my mother." "Why's a book writer a rifleman?" "To come out with a war novel, meathead." "Why else?" "You going to be a cartoonist for a big newspaper, Griff?" "Hey, Griff, you do everything left-handed?" "Everything but shoot." "And play with my pecker." ""Watch out, Vichy here comes the Big Red One!"" "Vichy?" "I always thought Vichy was some kind of soda pop." "Vichy's the French fighting on Hitler's side." "That's why we're wearing these." "So they don't shoot Americans." "We dropped leaflets so they know we're coming." "If they start a fight, we'll have to kill them." "We were in this war to fight Germans, not Frenchmen." "We were kind of hoping they were feeling the same way." "Put your rubbers on." "It'll keep the saltwater out." "Thanks, Griff." "I'll bet the guy that invented these things never figured they'd be used on a rifle." "I never could score with them." "How about you, Johnson?" "Not me." "Over on the Algerian beach lots of French soldiers were reading our leaflets and wondering if they were going to fight." "The colonel is stupid not to believe these leaflets." "We are no good." "You, me, all of us here." "Defending this miserable Algerian beach for Marshal Pétain and Adolf Hitler." "I can't kill an American." "There are four things you can hear on the boat:" "The waves, the engines an occasional muffled prayer the sound of 50 guys all heaving their guts out." "French troops don't shoot!" "We are Americans!" "Don't shoot!" "We come to fight Hitler not to fight with you." "Don't shoot!" "Hold your fire!" "Sergeant Broban!" "Yes, Colonel?" "Open fire." "Not at Americans." "Medic!" "Medic!" "Nail him, Griff!" "How the hell could you miss him?" "Hell, he's close enough to kiss on both cheeks." "What the hell's the matter with you?" "I never saw you miss." "Medic, over here!" "Sixteenth infantry hold your fire!" "Americans!" "This is Captain Chapier." "General Tavernier is dead." "Americans!" "I surrender my troops to your hands!" "Frenchmen!" "We do not accept your surrender!" "You surrender only to the enemy!" "If you're Vichy, fight us!" "If you're Frenchmen, join us!" "We were feeling cocky as hell." "Except Griff." "In the middle of the battle, he froze." "It got to Griff." "He kept away from the rest of us." "Nobody wanted to use the word ""coward. """ "Not yet." "How come we're not pushing inland?" "Red Company's carrying the ball." "Take your malaria pills." "I wonder what they gave you in the other war not to get a hard-on." "The same stuff you're wolfing down now." "It has saltpeter in it." "Griff's back." "I can't murder anybody." "We don't murder, we kill." "It's the same thing." "The hell it is, Griff!" "You don't murder animals, you kill them." "The truth is, none of us had the faintest idea what war was all about." "We hadn't met the Krauts yet." "Communications Center caught an American bomb." "These wetnoses found the phonograph and one record undamaged." "Look at the faces of these puppies, Schroeder." "They think the Horst Wessel song is holy." "Horst Wessel was a pimp who supplied Hitler with baby faces like you." "He was killed in a brawl over a whore in Berlin." "A poem by a pimp became the hymn of Hitler's party." "That right, Schroeder?" "Don't want to disillusion these infants?" "You're getting soft." "Schroeder used to be tough." "In Libya, I saw him murder a German officer." "I did not murder him, Gerd, I killed him when he ran from a fight with the British." "Murder." "Kill." "It's the same thing." "We don't murder the enemy, we kill." "Everything is on the move." "Battalion's sending us to the Kasserine Pass." "We're going to choke on Panzer fumes." "Not me, Schroeder." "Let Rommel's Panzer Grenadiers march behind his tanks." "But not me." "I want no more!" "I'm no damn Nazi fanatic like you!" "Germany is through singing for Adolf Hitler." "Our brilliant generals figured that Rommel's push would come at a place called Spiva." "So they massed most of the Allied Forces over there." "But they sent our regiment around the back way." "Through a shithole called the Kasserine Pass." "Our squad was on point." "We got an eyeful, all right." "The whole Afrika Korps was coming through the Kasserine Pass." "Rommel had caught us with our pants down." "We got tanks, boys!" "And infantry with them!" "They'll be looking behind the rocks for anti-tank guns." "So, let's go!" "Let's go!" "Sergeant, where we going to run to?" "They'll spot us out in the open." "We're not running." "We're digging in." "Digging in?" "Are you crazy, Sergeant?" "!" "Dig in and let them roll over our heads." "Hey, they're going off to the right!" "Guess again, jerk-off." "Look over there." "Jeez!" "Down!" "They're all over the place!" "The war is over for you." "We won you lost." "You are in a temporary German hospital in Tunis, Sergeant." "Our doctors are very impressed with your recovery." "You should be dead." "We better get out of here." "You heard what that orderly said." "This is an unmarked hospital and they'd just as soon blast us." "Anybody here from the Big Red One?" "Sixteenth." "Eighteenth." "Where's that Big Red One man?" "What happened at the pass?" "You with the sixteenth?" "You one of them goons?" ""l" Company, 3rd battalion." "What are you doing wrapped up in that Arab bed sheet?" "What happened at the pass?" "We counterattacked after you jokers ran." "We took Kasserine Gafsa, El Ketar Tunis." "We ran Rommel right out of Africa." "You mean the Big Red One took Tunis?" "We sure as hell did." "This is Tunis." "You're right." "We took Tunis." "The old bastard just couldn't face being left behind." "He heard we were shipping out to invade Sicily." "Where's the first squad?" "Where's the first squad?" "Out of the original twelve-man rifle squad the four of us were the only ones left." "This invasion wasn't going to be like North Africa." "The beach would be heavily defended." "So now, at least, we could all go to Sicily and get killed together." "Gave the supply officer a Luger for it." "By the way, what were you doing in that Arab bed sheet?" "They were shanghaiing all the combat non-coms as training replacements for those rebel devils." "Where'd you steal it, Stoop?" "My name's Shep, not Stoop." "I got it from the St. George Hotel in Algiers." "I understand you're an Italian, Vinci." "How come they let a Wop in this man's army?" "I don't think a Wop's going to fight a Wop." "I think all you'll do is drink dago red and sing "O Sole Mio."" "O Sole mio" "I like "O Sole Mio."" "The creepy thing about battle is you always feel alone." "All you can see are the guys right next to you and the bodies you keep tripping over." "Why are we always sent out?" "This the only squad in the whole Army?" "Where's the rest of the Army?" "There are eight patrols checking the villages for diehard snipers." "Anybody wants a transfer, just let me know." "I want a transfer." "Okay, Vinci." "You're transferred to the point." "You know how you smoke out a sniper?" "You send a guy out in the open and see if he gets shot." "They thought that one up at West Point." "You okay, Sergeant?" "Why?" "You just let Vinci waK into a sniper." "That's why he's here." "We got plenty of wetnoses here too." "You really want to finish that book, don't you?" "That's why I'm here." "Vinci made it." "Come on, Cole, it's your turn." "Let's go." "Come on!" "Hey, Vinch!" "You know where he lives?" "Working your right." "I'll go left." "It's your ball." "Bravo!" "Bravo!" "You had him in the sights all the time." "All the time." "Just wanted to see me sweat?" "Punishment for transferring me to the point." "May I rejoin the rear echelon now?" "You are transferred back to the point." "My aching butt!" "By now we looked at all replacements as dead men who temporarily had the use of their arms and legs." "They came and went so fast that sometimes we didn't even get to know their names." "The truth is, after a while we sort of avoided getting to know them." "I brought some water." "Do you know what they call you four guys at Battalion?" "The Sergeant's Four Horsemen." "I don't get it." "You lived through North Africa." "You didn't even get a scratch." "That's because replacements keep getting hit instead of us." "You think maybe I'll get it?" "Why not?" "You something special?" "I'll go get some, all right?" "Excuse me." "Water." "You'll live, Smitty." "You hit a tripwire on a mine." "They're not designed to kill you just to castrate you." "Castrate me?" "Here it is. I found it." "Oh, my God!" "It's just one of your balls, Smitty." "You can live without it." "That's why they gave you two." "Supposed to be coming this way." "Hold it up." "I said, hold it up!" "I'm eating." "Get inside here." "Come on." "I feel for snakes." "And bats." "Bats?" "I love bats." "Sergeant, what's the word from headquarters?" "What'd the lieutenant say?" "The lieutenant said the Hermann Goering Panzers overran the 2nd Battalion." "If they break through division we're in the sea." "Where are they headed?" "Right for us." "Our heavy guns will clobber them." "Still on the water." "None of them have unloaded yet?" "Not yet." "Patton's got tanks." "Still on the water." "Jesus!" "We're sitting in our own coffin." "We knew he wanted to run for it." "But we knew he wouldn't way before he did." "Anyway, the Sergeant would've shot him if he tried it." "Are those American guns?" "I thought they were still on the water." "Beats the hell out of me." "Relays." "Relays!" "Radio!" "Lieutenant?" "First squad, first platoon." "You're kidding?" "Yes, sir!" "You know who fired that artillery?" "The United States Navy." "That was the cruiser Savannah, miles offshore, right?" "Right." "Can you believe that?" "The U.S. Navy saved our ass!" "Where's our planes?" "Why can't they spot that gun?" "I don't know." "Battalion's got twenty patrols looking for it in this quadrant." "They think it's an S.P." "Why send us?" "Right!" "We got a break coming to us." "You said the Army's made of the 1 st Division and 10 million replacements." "Where are they?" "Being stuffed with a mattress cover." "I bet when we get off this island we'll get our feet wet again invading Italy." "You don't know geography well, for a book writer." "We're in Italy." "This is Sicily." "Here they say:" ""I'm a Sicilian, not an Italian."" "My old man was born" "I figure close to 2,500 bucks!" "I'm sending every lira home." "Mussolini money's good for one thing." "It's Victor Emmanuel loot." "It's kosher." "Who told you that?" "The captain." "An enlisted man can't send home more than his pay." "To discourage black marketing." "But the lieutenant can." "It's for my old man, to open up his own bagel shop." "I didn't know bagels were Italian." "Sure!" "The Pope eats gefilte fish on Friday, don't he?" "His mother." "He's hauling her to the beach." "Tell him we'll bury her." "I did." "He's putting her next to his father." "She's decomposing already." "The sun's blowing her up." "We got to find that S.P." "Ask the kid if he knows where the gun is." "Hell, he doesn't know what an S.P. is." "Tell him it's a self-propelled gun with wheels." "He knows where it is." "The smart aleck wants to make a business deal." "Shell out some of that bagel money." "He'll take us to the gun if an ambulance takes his mother to the cemetery in Gela." "He wants a casket for his mother to sleep in." "And it's got to have 4 handles." "He'll get it if he leaves his mother in the shade and leads us to the gun." "Either we take her with us or we find that gun on our own." "I don't know how long I'll be able to take this stink." "Can it, Johnson, will you?" "taking about it only makes it worse." "Hey, Sergeant." "You think this kid's leading us into a bushwhack?" "We're getting closer to some kind of gun." "Can you see what it is, Sergeant?" "It's an .88, all right." "On a Tiger tank in a house." "They got women working in front of it." "Under a schmeizer." "Makes a nice peaceful picture from the air." "Hey, "what's-your-name." You stay behind." "When you hear us fire, you take out the schmeizer." "Those Sicilian women cooked us a terrific meal." "It's too bad they were all over 50." "We were more horny than we were hungry." "A little mothering is good in any war book but this beats them all." "There's not a man in the whole village." "Hey, Vinci." "Tell Matteo the meat wagon's on its way to pick up his mother." "And that the General is sending a casket siK-lined with six handles." "Matteo!" "It's all right, Matteo." "That's okay." "Look, I told you, kid." "A deal's a deal." "Thanks a lot." "You're okay, Matteo." "It was the first time in ages we'd all felt really good." "It lasted about an hour." "Then we got our orders to move out." "Where's my helmet?" "The Krauts will spot that garden a mile away." "I like the smell." "North Africa was sand and rocks." "Sicily was rocks and sand." "England was green." "We hung around England for 7 months..." "...getting ready for D-Day." "Gimme back my doughnut!" "Then one day we were in the boats again." "How about it, Johnson?" "Who are you?" "I'm Lemchek." "Lemchek, remember?" "We been on dry runs with this invasion for 7 months in England." "I'm Lemchek." "How about what?" "Will you swap with me?" "Nope." "Eleven is my lucky number." "Try Vinci, he might do it." "Do what?" "Will you swap numbers in the bangalore relay with me?" "My number 2 for your number 10?" "How much?" "$ 10,000." "$ 10,000?" "!" "Where will you get $ 10,000?" "It's from my GI insurance." "I'll make you my beneficiary." "Can you do that?" "I can put Eisenhower down for my beneficiary." "I can put down anybody I want." "Lumnuts!" "I am really shocked." "You told me your mother was your beneficiary." "What's wrong with you?" "Don't you love your mother?" "I love my mother." "Sure, I love my mother." "But she ain't number 10 on the relay." "Swap with him." "If he gets hit, you get 10 grand." "What if I get hit using number 2?" "$ 10,000 would buy a lot of bagels." "I like my number 10, like Griff likes number 8 Zab, 9, Johnson, 11  the sergeant, 1 2." "It's bad luck to change numbers." "You'll make it, Lemchek." "You know why?" "We'll find nothing but dead Germans on that beach." "Are you sure?" "Are you really sure?" "Sure, I'm sure." "You don't think I want to blow $ 10,000, do you?" "He don't want to blow 10,000." "Relax, Lemchek." "You heard what the captain said." "Only some schnell battalions..." "First squad!" "First squad over here!" "Son of a bitch!" "This beach hasn't been touched." "Either our shells and bombs fell too far inland or in the English Channel." "Vinci!" "It's Lemchek!" "You just blew 10,000 bucks!" "Throw me his helmet!" "Second squad!" "Those combat rejects sure know how to lay down fire." "Those aren't rejects up there." "That's infantry." "We couldn't move forward, we couldn't move back." "Exit E-One was blocked by a huge barbed wire tank trap." "Our navy was supposed to shell it the planes were supposed to bomb it our bazooka teams were supposed to blow it up." "If all else failed, we were the last resort." "The bangalore relay." "First squad!" "First squad!" "Bangalore teams 2 and 3 knocked out!" "Our bazooka team?" "Dead!" "Bazooka team?" "Killed!" "Break them out!" "Naturally, all else failed." "The bangalore torpedo was 50 feet long." "And packed with 85 pounds of TNT." "And you assembled it along the way." "By hand." "I'd love to meet the asshole who invented it." "Ready!" "Number 1 !" "Number 2!" "Dead!" "Number 3!" "Number 4!" "Number 5!" "6!" "Number 7?" "Dead!" "Number 8!" "Number 8?" "You better make it, Griff, you son of a bitch!" "Because my number's up next!" "9!" "Back off!" "Come on!" "Zab, tell the colonel." "Tell the colonel that exit E-One is open." "Leyton!" "Second division, right?" "Dunham, 29th." "Get some coffees, doughnuts." "We'll chew the fat later." "Come on!" "Throw the ball." "Just another buzzbomb headed for London." "Yeah, a B-1 rocket." "How do you like the book?" "Damn good." "My mother sent it to me for my birthday." "I'm Zab." "Welcome to the 1 st squad." "I'm Kaiser." "Nice to meet you, Kaiser." "That's my book." "Your book?" "What do you mean, your book?" "I got this from the repple-depple in Saint-Lô." "I wrote it, babyface." "And I printed it." "You!" "I don't want any infantry around the Panzer." "Put the dead Panzer gunner hanging halfway out the hatch." "2nd radioman." "Here, behind that man." "Put yourself in a good position." "As we slogged through the hedgerows and across France the sergeant began keeping to himself." "It was a little spooky." "He told Vinci he fought around here in the 1 st war." "He kept ahead of us, as if he was looking for some old ghost to rise up out of the mist." "Kaiser!" "It's your turn at bat." "Would you look how fast they put up the names of all our guys that got killed?" "That's a World War I memorial." "But the names are the same." "They always are." "Enemy scout advancing." "Give him a roundtrip ticket." "I don't want any of you to be where l didn't plant you." "No fingers on triggers." "One shot in panic and we've lost what I want:" "A platoon of dead Americans." "Don't twitch any muscle." "Look dead, or you will be dead." "Give him a roundtrip ticket." "Nothing but a bunch of dead Germans." "No dead dogfaces?" "None." "Let's go." "Enemy scout returning with patrol." "These dead guys give me the creeps." "Kaiser, something's always giving you the creeps." "How come there aren't any dead Gl's?" "Shut up!" "Keep your eyes open." "Just like I said, Sergeant." "Just 3 dead Germans." "But the sergeant wasn't satisfied." "He'd noticed something about the piping on their collar patches." "They were different colors." "What color is that piping?" "White." "White's infantry." "Radio!" "Get me the lieutenant." "Lieutenant?" "Lieutenant?" "Go ahead." "This is Sergeant Possum." "Possum, right." "Where are you?" "Point 33, Christ on the cross." "You're in an ambush?" "Nothing here." "Just a bunch of dead Krauts and a knocked-out tank." "All right, sir." "We'll wait for you." "We could help, Sergeant, but you're on your own." "What's that?" "Good luck." "Over and out." "What?" "Yes, sir." "I'll be damned!" "To hell with all officers!" "He's afraid the platoon will get lost coming up here." "So we got to go back and handhold them all the way here." "I'll be a son of a gun!" "Let's go." "Don't panic." "Live people are watching us." "It's a bushwhack." "Check for wounded Krauts." "You're good at that." "You should've been in the medics." "I was one in the Indian Town Gap." "In Indian Town Gap, Pennsylvania." "Never heard of it." "Is he dead?" "Hey, Johnson." "You notice no one taKs about home anymore?" "Or women?" "I noticed." "On the double, boys." "There's a woman in there." "Is she wounded?" "Wounded, hell!" "She's pregnant." "She looks like she's about to pop." "That's what the man said." "Jesus, Sergeant!" "What are we going to do?" "Get the dead Krauts out of the tank, and get her in it." "You're going to deliver a baby." "What baby?" "Her baby!" "Her husband said she's got labor pains 5 minutes apart." "Why me?" "You're qualified." "Let's go." "Her legs got to be propped up higher." "Higher!" "And spread them apart." "Wide apart." "Give me some room." "Face the bullets the other way, away from her." "Relax, would you?" "Go to work." "I need hot water." "There's no time for hot water." "Then some rubber gloves." "Griff, break out the condoms." "I need a mask." "I can't get germs on the baby." "Germs?" "There's more germs in this tank than" "Look, no mask, no baby." "Fine, that's fine." "Get me a diaper pin." "The rubbers!" "Easy, easy!" "Come on!" "That's the United States Army for you." "Take it easy, would you?" "Put them together." "Lady I'm a hell of a lot more scared than you are." "So just take it easy." "Get her hands away." "Hey, Johnson, your dog tags!" "I don't see the head yet." "You'll never see the head if she don't push." "She's got to push, I think." "You think?" "!" "I think." "She's got to push!" "You don't know?" "I know." "She's got to push." "Are you sure you know?" "I'm sure." "You're sure, you're sure?" "I'm sure, I'm sure!" "Then do it!" "Come on, damn it!" "Push!" "Push!" "It's no use." "She won't push." "We might as well write this kid off." "Can't you push for her?" "Look, how do you say "push" in French?" "Poussez." "Pussy!" "Pussy, pussy." "Johnson, you get the head." "I'll do the poussez 's." "Easy, lady." "We all love you." "Hey, I can see it!" "I can see it!" "I can see his head!" "That's it, that's it." "Don't stop, lady!" "Come on!" "Don't stop, now!" "Keep it up, you're doing great." "It looks good!" "He's coming out!" "He's coming out!" "He's out!" "He's out!" "It's a boy!" "A boy!" "We got a bunch of medals." "Not for delivering the kid just for killing Krauts." "The Germans were on the run now." "We were on their heels." "In September, we slipped across the Meuse River into Belgium ahead of the main American push." "Regiment figures there's a railway gun that's been chopping them up." "Forward observers in a monastery right here." "Why don't we shell it?" "Throw a couple of bombs on it." "There's an underground fighter living in that monastery." "It's a woman." "She's a killer." "Her name is Walloon." "She has a squad plan for a silent wipeout of the Krauts without firing or killing one civilian." "A woman in a monastery?" "It's really not a monastery." "It's an asylum for retards and insane people." "I say division should bomb it." "Killing insane people is not good for public relations." "Killing sane people's okay?" "That's right." "Let's go." "The Americans are coming" "The Americans are coming" "Two men in the tower." "Squad!" "Come on!" "Bayonnets!" "Bayonnets!" "Beautiful!" "I am one of you!" "I am sane!" "I am sane!" "Before I dropped him I was thinking he might just be right." "When you're in a situation where you can't tell crazy from sane it's confusing for a soldier but good for an aspiring novelist." "At least that's what I kept telling myself." "I'll be a son of a bitch!" "My mother sold my novel to Hollywood!" "For Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson!" "For how much?" "For 1 5,000 bucks!" "Hey, we got another Rockefeller in the company!" "So what will you do with all the moola, Zab?" "First I think I'll blow 1 000 bucks on a squad party." "But you got to come up with the damndest things you ever wanted to do to a girl." "Hey, Griff!" "I'm working on it." "Vinci." "Come on." "I'll tell you in a minute." "Johnson!" "I think I'd like the most beautiful" "I know what I want." "Who the hell are you?" "Kaiser." "You patched me up behind that tank in France." "What tank?" "I was the one that liked your book." "Babyface." "What do you want to do?" "I want a big, Zoftig girl to stick her plump butt against an ice-cold window." "And just hold it there." "What will you do with a frozen butt?" "Thaw it out." "It may take a while." "Tree bursts making millions of splinters, Lieutenant!" "Have they spotted your position?" "They're just hitting the trees." "Take them out." "Watch out, they got snipers too." "Let's go!" "Now watch yourself, they still got snipers out there." "Can't see a goddamned thing." "Griff." "Zab." "Vinci." "Johnson." "Kaiser." "Kaiser." "I'm hit." "Where are you?" "Find me." "Did I kill that guy that killed me?" "We'd thought we'd push through but the Krauts regrouped and counterattacked and bumped us back into France." "Lieutenant." "We got tanks and infantry coming straight at us at .33." "We spent the winter freezing our asses just to take back Belgium." "Kaiser, I'm beginning to see what you like about big butts!" "Sarkit, can you come here so we can tak about it?" "I'm going to like wearing this purple heart!" "That close!" "That's where he was." "Easy target!" "Easy target!" "I don't know." "So he asked me why I didn't get him." "Zab, you know, it's time to take the hill." "Take the hill." "Wait a second." "Excuse me, my dear." "Would you help the young lady down please, Sergeant?" "Now." "Let's see." "I paid for this party." "So the hill will be took when I say it's to be took!" "I beg your pardon." "Okay, sir." "Now move!" "Yes, sir!" "Let's get on with it." "Don't forget your pieces." "Let's go!" "Keep your front sight covers on or else you'll get a rusty bore." "Let's go." "Move it!" "Come on!" "I got to get" "The party was kind of a last big blowout for us." "With the war almost over, we were sure we'd be sent to the rear soon." "As usual, we were wrong." "The sergeant hadn't told us, but we were being sent to a place called Faicannel." "He knew what that meant." "We didn't." "You got him." "Jew?" "Polish?" "Czech?" "Russian?" "He walked around for half an hour before he could bring himself to put the kid down." "That night he buried him in the woods." "Sergeant!" "Sergeant!" "Over here." "Where the hell you been?" "I'm not going to tell you again!" "No lights at night." "Sergeant, the war is over!" "Look, nobody's firing at us." "One minute after midnight." "Official." "The war's been over for four hours." "Sarge, the dead Kraut." "He's still warm." "You didn't know it was over." "He did." "He's still alive!" "Sulta!" "Come on!" "Now the pills." "Right here." "You're going to live, you son of a bitch." "You're going to live if I have to blow your brains out." "Saving that Kraut was the final joke of the whole goddamn war." "We had more in common with him than with replacements who got killed whose names we never knew." "We'd all made it through." "We were alive." "I'm going to dedicate my book to those who shot but didn't get shot." "Because it's about survivors." "Surviving's the only glory in war, if you know what I mean."