This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

Alex lowers his head, speaks quieter. “All my life I’ve been this skinny quiet kid. Who stayed home reading comics. Even after Camp Shelby, I don’t know if I’ve got it in me. This war stuff.”

Mutt elbows him softly. “You stick with me, brah. I got your back.”

They fall quiet.

“My older brother, Frank. He said that I wasn’t cut out for war, that I’ll die in seconds.” Alex hangs the binoculars around his neck. “That’s what I’m most scared of. Not the dying part, not really. But when the bullets start flying, I’m afraid I’ll … you know, freeze up.”

“That happens, I’ll kick you forward.” Mutt gives him a sideways glance. “Besides, your brother can shut up about you. The last I checked, there’s only one Maki brother fighting in this war. You’ll be fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. But just in case you do die, hey, can I have your cigs?”

Alex smiles. “You’re an idiot, you know that, Mutt?”

He laughs.

* * *

E Company heads out at 6:30 A.M. No more talking. At a half crouch, their steps slower, their bodies tensing as they near Belvedere.

They hunker down before a short hill, weapons laid flat before them. On the other side, a dip leads down to a flatland that rises up to the final hill upon which Belvedere sits. They’ll be fully exposed in that flatland, target practice for the blind.

Captain Ensminger looks at Alex, points two fingers forward. Alex nods. Crawling forward, he eases up the hill, Mutt, carrying the SCR-300 field radio, right next to him. He pokes his head over the top. Never has his forehead seemed so massive, his helmet like a shining lighthouse. After a few minutes, he crawls back down.

“Nothing,” he tells Ensminger. “No Kraut in sight.”

Captain Ensminger doesn’t show any emotion. “Call in again,” he says to Mutt.

“C Battery, report in,” Mutt says into the radio.

Garbled static comes back. Then Teddy on the line with bad news: All artillery units still on the move. Howitzers stuck in mud because of heavy rain. The order is for E Company to move in on Belvedere ASAP. F and G companies already on the move. Coordinated timing is crucial. Do not delay, move in ASAP.

Captain Ensminger curses. Moving in without artillery cover is sheer lunacy. But he’s a military man through and through; obeying orders is his knee jerk. And plus there are F and G companies to consider. Can’t leave them out to dry. “On my order, we go. Half speed.” The order is whispered down the line on either side of him to the ends. Every head turns toward Captain Ensminger, who raises his hand. Then drops it.

Everyone rises. They move down the exposed side of the hill. Boots quietly thumping down, pants swishing, too loud, too loud. Weapons half raised, fingers near triggers, bodies half bent. All eyes nervously scanning the Belvedere hill, the surrounding high elevation hiding spots. Skin prickling now, arm hairs standing tall. Alex feels a burning sensation on his chest—a phantom target mark, the false feeling that a sniper has just put a target on you.

They reach the middle of the open field. If the Krauts have their number, now’s the time they’ll strike. Everyone knows this. An electric charge runs through them, tension like they’ve never felt before. But nothing happens. Maybe the intel is bad. Maybe the Krauts aren’t in Belvedere—

Gunshots crack the air. Right on cue. Coming from the Belvedere hill. German nine-millimeter MP 40 submachines. Burp. Burp-burp. The sound almost comical, the impact anything but. Bullets striking everywhere, kicking up spouts of dust and dirt, like fat raindrops falling on a pond.

It does not register. Not at first. At Camp Shelby the simulated gunfire was harmless white noise. Every bullet blank, every grenade a dummy. The rat-a-tat meant only to scare, to distract. Not to cut down, not to kill.

But now. The soldiers are paralyzed, in a daze. The burp-burp-burp coming in faster, puffs of dirt lining in toward them.

On Alex’s left, a soldier falls to the ground. No cry or shout. Simply collapses, arms splayed, with a muted thud. Death, so routine and anticlimactic in the end, all the more horrific because of it.

Then the soldier in front of Alex. A dink as bullet strikes helmet, whipping it off. The next second, the soldier’s bared head explodes, and pieces of skull go flying amidst flung viscera. Blood sprays across Alex’s face. He blinks, gasping, feels the nauseating slick warmth—

“Take cover!” Captain Ensminger shouts.

But there is no cover, no trees, no ditches. They’ve fallen right into the Germans’ trap. Walked in stupidly. The Krauts must be laughing.

They drop to the ground. All except Alex, who is still standing. His mind going blank, his worst fears being realized, that he is a coward, that he is a child in the end. Hands grab him from behind, Mutt’s, throwing him to the ground.

Gunfire echoing off other hills. And now the screaming starts.

Alex thinks, So this is war.

Then right next to him. A different kind of gunfire, a crackling spitfire. Mutt half kneeling, firing off return fire with his machine gun. The sound glorious, an announcement, a declaration.

It sets off a chain reaction. Other soldiers let loose from the ground, squeezing triggers. Not controlled; everyone is panicking. A year of training lost in the fog of war, in the panic of adrenaline.

“Retreat!” a solider shouts, “back to the woods—” A bullet into his cheek, through his tongue, neck, carotid artery, and cleanly out. He goes spinning, his arms a whirling dervish, a geyser of blood ribboning out.

Alex whips his head side to side. They need to retreat. But they’re cut off, the woods too distant.

“Follow me!” Captain Ensminger shouts. “This way!” He’s hoisting a fallen soldier on his shoulders, beckoning his troops to follow. Not back to the woods, but forward. Into a nearby wheat field.

“Keep moving in!” Captain Ensminger shouts even as they plow into the tall wheat stalks. “Deeper!” The wheat stalks snap against their faces as they run through them, shifting and swaying like corrugated ripples, and giving their positions away. Captain Ensminger orders his men to freeze.

They do. No one moves.

Gunfire ceases. An eerie quiet settles over the land.

Through stalks smeared with blood, they gaze back at the open field. Dozens of bo

dies on the ground. Some are screaming, some moving slightly, groaning lowly. Others completely stock-still.

“We go get them, Captain? That’s Stan out there, and Magnet—”

“We get ’em later,” Ensminger answers through clenched teeth. “Right now we need to spread out, we’re too clumped together. Disperse on the next wind, men.”

They wait. Then comes a wind, blowing the sun-washed stalks this way and that, waves of buttery yellow. Using that as cover for their own movement, the men fan out, spreading deeper into the field until the wind dies. Gunfire comes again, but this time more sporadic.

Crouched low, the men wait.

So do the Germans. A stalk of wheat so much as flinches, and it’s met with a hail of bullets.

Mutt speaks into the radio in a low voice. “Teddy, we’re pinned here. We try to make a break for it, they’ll pick us off one at a time. We need the howitzers. Like, now.”

“Working on it, Mutt. Will have it set up in a half hour, tops.”

“Make it fifteen minutes. Serious, Teddy.”

No response. Just the sound of Teddy yelling at someone. Then static. Mutt shuts off the com. They wait. Try to block out the sound of their fallen comrades’ pained moans.

Then, out of nowhere, a different sound. A high-pitched whistling. Up above, coming from the skies, getting louder.

Alex doesn’t need to look up to know what it is. Artillery shells. German. A far-off artillery makes a whistling sound, an almost gleeful whoom-whee! Hear that whistling sound and you’re fine. For now. The deadly rounds are the ones you don’t hear, not until a second before they strike, when they make a swish sound. And the next second, you’re dead.

Whoom-whee!

The earth shudders beneath them. Wheat stalks and dirt are sent up into the air. More shells fall, over and over with bone-rattling force. Casualties mount in the wheat field, no telling how many exactly.

Captain Ensminger crawls over to Alex and Mutt. Sweat pours down his face, mixing in with blood and dirt. He grabs Alex’s shoulder, squeezing so hard Alex will find bruise marks there the next day. “We stay here any longer, and they’re going to shell us out. But soon as we leave, those machine guns will cut us down. We need our artillery to take out their machine-gun nests, and we need to do it now!” His voice hoarse, barely audible through the shelling. “So get eyes on them, Maki. Give us coordinates for those machine-gun nests now!”