Suddenly he looked up and he was all alone.
The men in front of him had melted away
as if some giant hand had swept them to the ground,
leaving him alone and vulnerable,
towering above them.
But he was not alone:
as he struggled to get down to the slushy road
he saw Meringo falling sideways and someone running heavily for the woods.
The terrible whirring of the shell beat into his ears,
shaking his brain,
paralyzing him.
He hit the ground, tried to claw his way into it,
praying and cursing in the same breath.
If someone got killed it would be him for he was slow and stupid –
a stupid, dumb jerk.
He stopped breathing, this was his last instant on earth:
the shell would land directly on him,
the smooth, metal point splitting his backbone and then exploding.
He sobbed for he was afraid.
He wanted to live.
He wanted to get up and go away to where shells never fell.
It wasn’t right for him to die here,
to die on this stupid road in the goddam slush
with everybody else in Rear Echelon like the tank guys and Bannion
and the cannoneers and the civilians in France
and that fat, chicken-hearted T/5 back in England
who led them to the train when they got off the boat in Southampton.
WHERE WAS THAT SONOFABITCH ANYWAY?
The shell exploded and he was deaf and blind and dying.
He never had a chance and it was so terribly sad and it served his mother right.
Then he opened his eyes and saw feet moving around him.
There was the taste of clay in his mouth
and the stench of the powder was so strong that it was hard to breathe.
One by one the other men got up,
brushing the flecks of mud from their clothes.
He quickly did the same.
No one had been hit. (pp. 73-73)
– William Mulvihill –
“FIRE MISSION is a magnificent and moving novel of men at war. In the winter of 1944, the Allied armies were slugging it out with the Wermacht in the long drive to the Rhine.
“FIRE MISSION is the story of one American artillery battery: four 105 howitzers, and a hundred officers and men – and what happened to them in the last few weeks of a great battle.
“FIRE MISSION is no book of cowards and heroes, but of ordinary soldiers – men who have endured war and found satisfaction in their efficiency as a fighting unit, and pride in themselves as men.”