The Lightning War

Staying Alive

We arrived back to the town at dusk, just as the sun was disappearing beneath the horizon, leaving just a sliver of golden sunlight.

It was a small town, only would have had about 1000 people, it had three main north-south roads, with 5 east-west roads. The town was in relatively nice shape, roads were in good condition besides the north western section. Of the 5 east west roads, only 4 were totally usable. The top section of the east road had been hit by artillery so it had been reduced to rubble and potholes. The buildings in that section of the city were not in the best shape, they would be missing sections of the outer wall, or missing a roof, one was hit directly, and was simply a foundation.

That northeast section was the staging point for every attack that the Germans have made on this town. Why is this town even worth the fight you might ask? The bridge, the bridge is worth three times it's weight in gold. Whenever the krauts want to move their armour deeper into France, they need to use a bridge, otherwise they would need to detour for miles in either direction. We averaged an attack, or at least a probe every few weeks, never anything big, they didn't want to sacrifice their armour knowing that there may be a large group in the city, which frankly there was.

Papa platoon was our demo group, each platoon was outfitted with two bazookas, but Papa not only had two bazookas, they also carried all of our mines and mortars. So any armour that came through this town wouldn't make it far. The most they ever sent was a half track with a a platoon of infantry, which was quickly dismissed. We set mines on the road and waited for the half track to be on top, blew the mine to take out the tracks, which in turn killed four or five infantrymen. the rest we cleaned up with machine gun and SAFIRE. (SAFIRE: small arms fire)

When we first dropped into France the company was made up of 150 infantry. We now had 130, after the death of Wells. We've been in LaGuerre now for four weeks, with only 20 casualties. pretty damn good.

When we first set up in the town it was very quiet not much in the way of any sounds besides the distant thundering of artillery. That was, of course, until they found it. I remember walking with Haeden talking about the next day, and what we would do, when suddenly there was a bunch if yelling and shouting. Haeden and I both cocked our submachine guns and ran over to the noise. We peeled around the corner to see that a group if men had found, and lit up the sign for the bar.

Naturally, that night was quite interesting, as we found all the kegs of ale and bottles of wine. They had a lot of Alcohol in that building, three separate cellars! I bet they probably had enough alcohol in there to float a large boat!

So we decided to make a deal with the company, each platoon gets their rotation. Every two days it rotates, for example Mike platoon gets the bar on Monday, then nobody has it Tuesday, Wednesday November has it, and so on.

Every Friday was "high-ups"night, only sergeants and up allowed in the bar.

So that was our night to relax and blow off some steam.

So for now, it was just a matter of staying alive.