The driver wheeled over to him and opened the door. “The sarge got shot,” he said, “a bad one, one of those big 50s in the arm. But we cleaned out the pillboxes; he cleaned one out by himself. I left guys to hold them.”
Macurdy got out without help, crowding past the steering wheel, wearing his own helmet now. “Medic!” the officer shouted, then turned to Macurdy. “Take it easy, sergeant. More men have come in; the shooting drew them. I sent your other half-track through to meet them, and it brought back a radio, so I let the beach commander know we’ve got the bridge but don’t have many men to hold it. He said he’d get armor here as soon as he can, but when that’ll be is anyone’s guess.”
The lieutenant sounded as casual as if talking about the price of gas. Then he sent a half-track back to the pillboxes, with more men to man them.
A medic arrived, wearing his armband, and in the shelter of the rim, carefully but quickly removed Macurdy’s bandage to examine the wound. “Whoever took care of this did a good job,” he said, and began rebandaging it. “Sarge, you earned yourself a nice hospital vacation.” When he’d finished, he took out a syrette of morphine and injected it into the other arm.
Macurdy watched him crawl over to the lieutenant and speak to an undertone, something about “tough sonofabitch,” and “could have bled to death,” and “sleep.”
He had no intention of sleeping. Almost certainly more Germans would arrive before seaborne reinforcements could, and the troopers would be in serious trouble. Meanwhile someone had taken his BAR, along with his bandoliers. Which made sense; he couldn’t handle it one-handed. But, he told himself, he was the only one here who could make himself invisible. And even left-handed, he ought to be able to hit something close up with his .45, and toss a grenade far enough to do some good.
But first he’d gather his strength for a minute and fell asleep in spite of himself. He didn’t even waken when the racket of fighting intensified, until a mortar round landed nearby.
Regaining his wits, Macurdy crawled to the rim and peered over it, looking toward the enemy positions. The Germans had been reinforced, and were laying down a lot of rifle and machine gun fire. Presumably quite a few troopers had been wounded or killed. The captured half-tracks had attacked the Germans and been disabled, presumably by a Panzerfaust, and the Germans were keeping flares in the air almost constantly, to foil sneak attacks.
On the other hand, the troopers’ aimed fire, and the cover afforded by the rim, had discouraged the Germans from rushing them. The German strategy seemed to be to wear the Americans down with casualties-the mortars would do thatand wait for reinforcements, maybe panzers.
Someone had lifted Macurdy’s bag of grenades, too. Except for his knife, all he had left was his holstered .45, and two grenades in a tunic pocket. So he crept out toward a flank, to a trooper he didn’t know, whose M1 had gotten hot enough, Macurdy could smell char from the forepiece. The Germans must have pressed things at some point. “Let me have some grenades,” Macurdy said. “Someone took mine.”
Eyeing Macurdy’s immobilized arm, the trooper frowned, then rolled half over and fished out two.
“That all you got?” Macurdy asked.
The man started to reply, then instead, took three from his grenade bag for himself and gave Macurdy the rest. For just a moment he watched as Macurdy crept over the rim, toward the Germans, and seemed to disappear.
Bullets did not respect invisibility spells, so Macurdy crawled along on his good side, directly toward the Germans, pushing mainly with his left leg, chagrined at how tired he felt, though he drew on the Web of the World. Once a bullet clanged against his helmet, a glancing blow that made his head swim and his heart race. Eventually he reached the German positions. Now the bullets that threatened him were American, but mostly aimed fire, and not nearly as numerous as the Germans were pumping out.
Approaching a machine gun nest, he rolled onto his back, left-handedly dug out a grenade, and pulled the pin with his teeth. Then, ignoring the American fire, he rolled to his knees, released the charging lever, paused, raised his body, side-armed the grenade into the machine gun nest, and dropped onto his left side again.