Complete the Story 2

The soldiers had been hunkered down in the abandoned building all night. It had cooled off a little when the sun went down, but now sunrise was promising another sweltering day. They had to keep clear of windows, or the snipers outside wouldn't hesitate-to shoot at the first sight of even a helmet, which did happen to Pvt. Moskovich (who survived but gained a sizeable gape in it, making it unusable), and surmised that the tiny desert village they were trapped in was "lousy with fuckin' Kraut snipers!" Sgt. Dunleavy stood arms akimbo as he shifted his cigar from one side of his grimy mouth to the other. "Anybody got any idears?!" he roared. His squad traded silent glances, then Pvt. Merriman, an egghead who brought a bit more insouciance to these situations than was really required, posed a curious question to his anxious comrades. "Any o' you bookless worms know what Roman soldiers did, how they used t' defend themselves?" And he nodded to a stack of corrugated iron sheets leaning against the far wall. As the others looked blankly at him Sgt. Dunleavy, at first unseeing, slowly nodded his head. "Yeah, Merriman, I getcha...I ain't without some learnin' 'bout Roman soldiers, but...hell..." He rubbed the back of his neck roughly. "Hey, Ogilvie!" he shouted to the radio opening hunkered down under the windows.  "Any word on that truck comin' to save our asses?" "Yeah, they said it's waitin' just outside of town, but we gotta cross the square to get there." The sergeant carefully peered out of a window to the west. "Good. I see it. Alright, Ogilvie, get ready to call in an airstrike. The rest of you, grab a sheet and get ready to run for your goddamned lives!"

And so, with much more speed than grace, Sgt. Dunleavy's squad ran serpentine and in single file across the wide square of Teinte Douce, Algeria, each man holding aloft a sheet of corrugated iron (Pvt. Moskovich wanted to carry two sheets to compensate for the loss of his helmet but found the weight too cumbersome) as bullets whizzed all around them, some even piercing through the sheets but, incredibly, not inflicting any injuries. On Sgt. Dunleavy's frantic signaling the men thrust away the sheets and scurried into the back of the idling Army truck waiting in the lee of a mud brick one-story house. The shooting continued even as the truck lumbered away into the desert. "Brother, what a getaway!" Ogilvie exclaimed, wiping his brow. "You said it, private!" seconded Sgt. Dunleavy. "Hey, Merriman, I think your idea with them iron sheets might've been either the smartest or the silliest I've ever heard! Good work, though!" "Thanks, Sarge!" Pvt. Merriman shouted over the rumbling of approaching bombers. "And you don't hafta be in Rome to do as the Romans did...just do it the American way!"

 

DB/7.2026