The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch by Kraus Daniel

Author:Kraus, Daniel [Kraus, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

VII.

FIELD ORDER NUMBER TWO WAS issued at 1405 hours. Far sturdier Marines than I had taken Hill 142, but it was a tenuous ownership, and we survivors were told to redirect our assault to recapture the strategically located Bouresches, a blameless little burg caught in the middle of the worst war the world had ever seen.

It was no good, no good at all. We had conquered not even one mile of deformed forest that no man in his right mind would want, and the fight coming from the Huns remained resolute. The first line of our afternoon skirmishers was naked to what we later learned were two hundred machine guns; every last man of this first wave drowned in a choppy sea of German lead. Shielded by these corpses, our second line made it farther, only to be picked off by snipers perched in trees. Clean red arcs of American blood capered across blue skies.

Predictably, I suppose, our staunch, methodized offensive rived into smaller skirmishes. When dusk came at last, men from all nations were mishandling their weapons, discharging fire into their own countrymen, or dropping their firearms altogether due to numbness. The scene had the absurdity of a clown revue.

It was with great relief that I received the passed word that operations were winding down along with the sun. I crawled from the crater where I’d cowered for a shameful amount of time—let us not speak of how long—to hear the exciting news that Hill 142 remained in our control. Huzzah! And while a superior field of German fire had put up a fight, Bouresches was mostly ours as well. Hear, hear! Of course, the loss of life had been catastrophic—but that’s the wrong way to think, soldier! Why not look on the bright side? We Allies were the proud new owners of a cute little corner of Belleau Wood, a pitiful foothold, for sure. But a foothold nonetheless!

None of us grunts, I promise you, gave a shit about this pile of dirt versus that. Massacred bodies created their own piles, and those were the hills that concerned us.

Peanut had been evacuated by ambulance and the word was that the Prof was missing in action. By now Sten Ehrenström could be one of the thousands of pounds of carrion being feasted upon by scavengers, or he could be caught behind enemy lines with a carving knife to his scrotum. Would he sob forth our secrets or would he forge a filibuster out of one of his memorized lectures?

No one had time to consider every gruesome possibility. There were fresh foxholes to be dug and a new trench to be twisted to our means, for nightfall would give le Boche updated conditions under which to launch bewildering new counteroffensives. Church was hip-deep in a hole to my left and I ogled his relentless action. I’d seen a lot of dead men that day, half of them with lemon stains upon their tongues. No feat of sharpshooting impressed me as much as that.

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