Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow

Author:Scott Turow [Turow, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Legal
ISBN: 9780739325636
Google: I2miMWOudzIC
Amazon: 0446584134
Barnesnoble: 0446584134
Goodreads: 186980
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2005-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The 110th Infantry Regiment, what little was left of it, had been aggregated in a combat unit which Algar and his officers had named Team SNAFU. They were now under the 101st Airborne, plugging gaps as General McAnliffe designated, working in coordination with the 502nd Infantry Regiment. I was placed in command of a re-formed rifle company in a re-formed battalion. Given my lack of experience, I would have been challenged as a platoon leader, but on the other hand, G Company, which at full complement would have numbered around 193 troops, was all of 98. I had no lieutenants, just three sergeants, including Biddy, in charge of three platoons, and sparse support personnel.

On the afternoon of December 22, the newly re-formed G Company was assembled at the center of Save. By daylight, Save Me was no more than it had seemed at night, a cluster of farm buildings composed of small slate-toned stones with thick joints of yellowish mortar. The tin-roofed structures had been added on to over centuries, and the windows and doors were all different sizes and varying heights, making them look as if they’d been thrown onto the buildings.

My first sergeant, named Bill Meadows, functioned for all purposes as my first lieutenant. Meadows greeted me when we met as if we were going out together for a night of drinking.

“Whatta you know, Captain?” He smiled widely and seemed on the verge of delivering a comradely poke in the shoulder. Bill Meadows was a stocky man in his early forties, wearing metal-framed specs. Like every other soldier I had, he was unshaved and his face after nearly a week of fighting was grayed by perspiration, gunpowder, and the airborne debris of shell bursts. “All right, boys,” he called out to the troops. “Bend an ear. Captain Dubin’s going to give us our orders.”

Outmanned and outgunned by virtually everyone, Team SNAFU had been positioned here on the west of Bastogne because it was the least likely point of attack. Most of the German tanks and artillery remained north and east. Given the difficulties of moving over the snowy hills, particularly with the remaining softness in the bottomlands, the odds were against the Germans mounting a major offensive from this direction. The fact was they didn’t have to. Due to the thinness of the western defenses, Team SNAFU had been unable to prevent the Germans from working their way around us, flanking south toward the town, where they were now positioned.

For all of that, no place around Bastogne was secure. There had been a skirmish outside Champs earlier yesterday, when a German grenadier team and one half-track had briefly appeared there. But just as McAuliffe situated Algar to be less in harm’s way, so Algar was locating G where we were not as likely to suffer attack. We were assigned to seal off a narrow farm road that came down from the west through Champs and Hemroulle and joined the main byway at Savy. Algar wanted G to go

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