Summary: Carentan, through Fang's eyes. We spent most of the morning moving overland towards the town of Carentan. Here and there, we'd pick up groups of paratroopers, from all sorts of other units. Charlie, 501st. Able, 527th. Fox, 505th - it occurred to me that the airborne units had just kind of been scatterfucked all over the damn place. A cursory inquiry to Anon said that it was actually pretty historically accurate, as far as he could remember from that dumb HBO miniseries. The airborne landings had thrown paratroopers all over France - apparently this was France - and by all reports, the casualties had been terribly heavy. It… didn't really fill me with confidence. By the time we reached the outskirts of Carentan, sometime after Sunrise - so maybe seven or eight or so - I was feeling… more confident, but cautiously so. Our small band of twelve paratroopers grew to about forty as we approached the town, with hope of more troops showing up throughout the morning as drop zones were left and sectors were cleared. The town in the near distance looked pretty quiet, actually, as our platoon approached. I was lugging around what was called a BAR - short for "Browning Automatic Rifle" according to Anon - which was sized a fair bit better to my lanky frame than the carbine had been. Anon, meanwhile, on recommendation from Lieutenant Taggart, had traded his Garand for a bolt action rifle of some model - one with a scope atop it. He was definitely a good shot with that Garand and just eyeballing it, so… yeah. I could see it. I might have sharp eyes myself, being a predatory species of dino, but damn, the Caveman could shoot. "-at d'you think, Sarge?" One of the privates near the front of our line jarred me from my reverie, as I blinked owlishly at him. "Huh?" Real smooth, Fang. "Y'know. World series. Who do you think was pitching? This dumbass thinks it was 'Lefty Lewis'." Another paratrooper shook his head at the aforementioned dumbass, who just gave the two a dour look. "God, I love a man with conviction." Headshaker chortled, as the third paratrooper flipped the other two the bird. "I don't watch baseball." Came my reply, after letting their chatter quiet down a bit. "Watch? Shit Sarge, I don't usually go out to games either, but hell, you don't even listen on the radio?" Oh, was television like… not a thing during the Second World War? Uh. Oops? "Uh. No. Not really." "Damn. Wish my kid brother was here, he'd know who was pitching. He's a damned baseball encyclopedia." My retort caught in my throat, as my brain momentarily flicked over to my own younger brother - Naser. Fuck, had he gotten caught up in this shit? What about Trish and Reed? Fuck. Shit. Raptor fucking Jesus would it be better or worse if they were actually here? "Not sure war's a good place for anyone, let alone your kid brother." Anon's curt reply cut off the discussion, and brought me back to reality. "And shut up. We're entering enemy territory again." Understatement of the day. Everything around us was enemy territory. "Got it, Sarge." The privates muttered, as the front of our marching column crossed into the outskirts of the town. They made it as far as an abandoned French truck before all hell broke loose. Across the street - in a two story building with a large sign stating "Café Normandin" out front - a pair of windows slammed open, and a German machine gun began- Oh, that was death. Ow. ====== Well, that sucked. Anon and I just shared a sigh. Thankfully, we weren't so far back as to be frustrating - just a couple of minutes up the road - but it was still a pain in the ass. We cut the baseball conversation much earlier this time. It was time to get to work, it seemed. We made sure to duck into cover as the cafe machine gun opened up again, and aside from a pair of unlucky paratroopers at the front, the others did the same. Anon lurched out with his rifle to line up a shot - ===== "Fuck me." He groaned, beneath his breath as I grimaced, and we started walking down the road again. "That was a stupid idea. Sorry." I shrugged. "It was worth a try. We're gonna have to kill that thing somehow." I muttered, trying not to draw the other paratroopers' attention as they prattled on about baseball and other inanity. "Let's talk about options." "We could bring down the whole ass Café, I guess." Anon hummed. "We do still have some of those explosive satchels from earlier in the morning - the ones we used to spike the AA guns." "Yeah, that could work." I nodded, tapping a finger against my snout in consideration as we moved forwards. "We'll have to distract it somehow, but I bet if you hooked left around the back of that truck you could get a good sprint in up to there." "Meh, we'll figure something out." Anon just waved off, as I gave him a short frown. "Left around the truck and up the back-alley." "Yeah. That." I replied, as we approached the outskirts again. Café Normandin rose up in the distance to meet us, as we shared a concerned look, and let ourselves fall to the middle of the group, rather than the front. The windows slammed open as we dove into cover behind the French truck, whilst the MG began spewing hot lead in our direction. Keeping tucked in as our fellow paratroopers attempted to provide what scant covering fire they could, I listened for the audible pause in its fire, as the gunners changed their ammo belt. Anon shot off behind me, ducking into the back alley, whilst I stood and leveled my BAR in the cafe’s direction. Squeezing down on the trigger, I rocked with the heavy rifle as it thumped repeatedly in my claws - it was an automatic, like my missing tommy gun had been. The gun was definitely more suited to me than even the mafia gat was, honestly. I held down on the trigger until the BAR’s short magazine clicked empty on me, then dove back down behind the broken down truck as the MG angrily swung back in my direction. Shit. Whatever Anon was gonna do, he’d better do it fast. With a grit of my teeth, I dropped the empty magazine out of the bottom of my rifle, and slapped in a fresh magazine from my belt - though I didn’t stand back up, not with the angry hornets buzzing at me again. Anon’s back alley paid off though, as a roar of explosive detonation filled my ears, the ground and cover around me shook like a fucking earthquake, and a blast of hot air flew by me - followed by debris as the ground shook again, and the whole fucking building crumbled inwards. Holy shit. Those army explosives did not mess around. “Clear! They know we’re goddamn here now!” Taggart barked, waving the troops back onto their feet, as Anon slid back around the back alley, nodding to me as I stood to my own feet. “Nice job, Caveman.” I nodded towards the destroyed cafe, as he shook his head. “Don’t thank me yet. I checked ahead a bit. More machine guns. Big ol’ church up there, crawling with Germans.” Taggart, having been listening in himself, nodded. “Yeah, figured as such. We’re taking that church though, it’s got a clear route through to the town square, going off the briefing maps.” Taggart paused, then nodded. “Yeah, we’ll clear the church, group everyone back up, and push forwards from there onto the town square. Make it happen, guys.” “You got it, LT.” I nodded, waving the rest of the troopers forwards ahead of us. Crossing past the destroyed cafe, the platoon came into the next square, where a few Germans - maybe a couple squads max - were caught off guard. They’d been jogging over to see who all was shooting, but after the cafe exploded, they’d turned around to run back to the church and tell their buddies. Big mistake, since we were right on their ass. Sliding into cover ourselves before we began to dump fire into the retreating krauts, our platoon made quick work of the Germans, and we leapfrogged up the square to their old positions. I turned the corner of the square, coming face to face with not just the Church, but the entire church square - a building across the way with another dug-in MG nest, an MG nest inside the church itself, an anti tank gun , and oh yeah, a whole ton of German paratroopers. Oh, shit. === Anon and I shared another look. “I think-” “Don’t.” I stopped him. “Just don’t.” “I mean-” “What part of ‘do not’, did you not understand?” “You literally got your head taken off by a fuckin’ AT shell, Fang. I think maybe we shouldn’t be the first ones into the square, just sayin’.” I mean… Yeah… He’s not wrong. “Okay fair, but let’s not keep talking about it, okay?” “Yeah alright.” He nodded, tapping his fingers idly against his sniper rifle. “Okay, moving on.” “Yep.” We take out the cafe again. We take out the responding Germans, again. Ugh. This time, I followed Anon’s advice, and settled for not being the first one into the square, as the German machine guns scattered about - as well as the AT gun - began opening up on our platoon. Using the nearby buildings as cover, we kicked in doors, bashed down windows, and started returning fire at the Kraut dickbags, as the bullets flew and ricocheted all over the damned place. The gunfight was… going. It wasn’t going bad, by any means, but it wasn’t going great, either. I groaned, as I watched Anon take a chest full of bullets, and back we went to the fucking road again. ==== “Fuck me that one hurt.” He winced, patting at his chest. “Ow. Shit.” “Should have ducked better then, Caveman.” I shrugged, as he gave me a flat look. “Let’s just clear the fucking church.” “Mmhm.” We worked our way back up to the church courtyard, and spread back out into the buildings for cover, once more working to clear out the well dug-in Germans. Taking better care to use our cover and surroundings, we were actually making progress this fuckin’ time. Anon was upstairs somewhere, going off with his sniper rifle and keeping the machine guns as quiet as he could manage, whilst I rocked back and forth with the BAR at anything that so much as twitched. The platoon was aided after a couple minutes by other paratroopers moving in from the left end of the church, as they moved to link up with our own group. Taggart took charge of the newcomers with barely a misstep, and once we had the heft of two platoons beneath us, rather than one, we finally shoved the Krauts out of the church courtyard - the survivors scrambling back towards the town hall with their tails between their legs like whipped bitches. Corporal Carota whistled, as he slid a fresh magazine into his carbine rifle. His .30 cal team was getting set up in the church tower, but he was down here with the rest of us while Taggart passed out new orders. Speaking of those new orders… I stopped living in my own world, as Taggart began to speak to the gathered up NCOs - self included - from amongst our growing company. “Okay, good work so far paras. The churchyard is ours, and there’s enough of us grouped up here, we can go ahead and push out on the Town Square.” He unfolded a small map from his pocket, setting it on the ground outside the church, where we could all see it. He pointed out the Church to us, with a gloved finger. “Okay. We’re here, at the church. We’ll slide up this side-road, towards the bridge here…” He continued, tracing the route with his finger, “And then cut over towards the Church square just before the riverline. That’ll keep us hopefully out of any immediate killzones, though stay frosty. Watch for any MGs, watch for any AT guns, all that shit.” He then tapped a finger against his helmet, and pointed at Anon. “Sgt. Mous, I want you a bit behind the rest of us as we move forwards. Find yourself a good shooting position as we advance, and start dumping rounds onto that Town Hall. Sgt. Aaron, you’re on point with the first and second squads. Take Corporal DeNicola with you, he’ll take second while you take first.” I nodded to Taggart, then similarly to Corporal DeNicola, who returned the nod. Anon gave a jaunty two-finger salute, and then went back to cradling his long gun. Taggart returned to speaking shortly after. “Sergeant Daniels will take third and fourth squads with Corporal Williams, and slide around to the right side. They’ll hop the courtyard wall here,” Taggart tapped another section of the map, “And then hit the Town Hall from the south side. Hopefully we time it well enough that the attack prongs hit near to the same time, but don’t expect it. Be smart. Use cover where you can, and kill fuckin’ Nazis. Sounds good?” We all gave nods or ‘yes sirs’ in affirmative, and he rolled the map back up, pocketing it. “Then let’s get to it, everyone. We have a town to capture.” Our orders passed down, I waved down the two squads I’d been assigned with Cpl. DeNicola, and we began to gather up in preparation to assault the town square. “Okay. Let’s get to it.” I nodded, as the airborne riflemen grouped up with me. I put the scrawnier ones up front - thinking that maybe their shrimpy selves would dodge the bullets a little better than taller dweebs like myself. Maybe. If not then whatever, it was war. Dudes were gonna get shot. Even potentially fake maybe a video game dudes. I mean, I wasn't gonna try and get them shot, that'd be fucked up, but… Whatever. We slid down the side-road to the left, which led us away from the town hall, and instead towards the bridges on the far end of the town. Kinda neat that Carentan was bisected by a river, but I vaguely remember Stella mentioning that a fair few European towns and villages did that, and she's like… French or something, right? She's also a huge weirdo who watches anime and plays with Tarot cards so who knows. I cut that line of thought as we switched backroads, now moving parallel to the river line rather than towards it. Hopefully, by approaching the town hall from a couple diggerent angles, we could avoid taking too many losses. For one, I didn't wanna get shot again, that sucked . For another, we didn't have all that many dudes. A couple platoons of riflemen to take a town was… well, I've seen cheesy war movies with Dad and Naser here and there, it never tends to end well. In any case, we slowly moved down the road and towards the town square, Anon a short distance behind my two squads, as I waved for DeNicola to move his squad across the small street so as to spread us out in case of onset German Bullet Hell. This proved to be a smart choice fairly quickly, as a pair of machine guns from the big-ass town hall building opened up on the front of my group, tearing straight through the first dude in the line - as the rest of us dipped off the street and into whatever cover we could scrounge. Shit, those fuckin' machine guns were pant-pissers evert single time they opened up on us. Corporal DeNicola waved a couple hand-signs at me from across the street, which I took with my vague understanding to be provide covering fire for his squad as they started moving again. I waved back an affirmative, and whistled back at my squad to do just that. Anon, meanwhile, moved past me and further into the alleyway I'd taken cover in, before clambering up and into an open window. The building he was crawling into would be a pretty good place to get set up with his rifle, being just a bit shorter than the multi-story town hall was, and angled towards town square if he continued through the hallways towards the far end of the apartments. DeNicola and his men moved as my own squad started dumping rounds downrange again, not so much aiming to hit anything, but just to keep the Germans' heads down and give the other squad a chance to move forward. My own BAR barked a throaty growl as I once more leveled it in the direction of the Krauts and dumped the automatic rifle's twenty round magazine, before sliding back around the corner into the alley. Enemy bullets hissed by my previous position as I grimaced, wondering what the fuck was taking DeNicola so damned long to get his squad in position. Finally, after what felt like for-fucking-ever, the Corporal's squad opened up on the Town Hall from across the street, as I immediately kicked my own squad into action, moving up and closer to the hornet's nest. We jumped from cover to cover across the rubble-strewn square, rifles snapping off shots and being given support from Anon's high-up position in the apartments. Things narrowly went to shit valley for a minute though, as a metal box on wheels with a quick-firing cannon slid into the far end of the town square. I am not ashamed to say I shit bricks as that hell-car swiveled it's gun in my direction and I hit the fucking dirt. "Armored car!" Someone screamed from behind me like, uh, duh, no shit Sherlock. The steady thump-thump-thump of the armored car's cannon swept across my scattered squads, as the Germans took this as a sign that they could get ballsy, and some of their entrenched infantry began making moves in our direction, probably to rush us with grenades and submachine guns. Thank fuck, about that time was when Sgt. Daniels and Cpl. Willams finally cleared the south side wall, and entered the town square from an angle nearly opposite our own. They had a bazooka with them too, apparently - and thank you, Raptor Jesus, for small mercies - as their rocket team put a piss-missile straight up the armored car's ass, knocking the damned thing out with relative ease. Hot knife, meet butter I guess. The Germans, now being shot at from a couple different directions, lost their marbles and began retreating away from the town hall, and across the bridges. Pissed off and mad at the fuckers, I followed after, spraying with my BAR as I pursued the shits, though I slowed to a stop at the bridge leading over the river and out of town, as they began to pull across and out of the hot zone. They'd left their machine guns and shit behind, which gave me a scowl, and then an idea, as I let my rifle dangle from it's strap across my chest, and slid behind the kraut machine gun. Looked simple enough, with a trigger and regular sights, just a bit limited in ability to move due to it's big tripod. It was pretty easy to figure out, as I laid onto the trigger and the gun roared - not so much rippling paper on this end of it, more like a fucking chainsaw from a slasher flick. The shaking and rattling of the thing narrowed my vision, as colors began to fade out from the sheer goddamned intensity of firing the damned thing, as my focus collapsed down to just the bridge and the crawling Germans trying to clear my line of fire. Someone was shouting at me, I think? The gun clicked empty, as the cloth belt ran dry, and color blossomed back into my world. I was breathing hard, physically drained from just the sheer exertion of trying to melt the barrel out the front of the gun, and the ringing in my ears slowly faded out as I realized, yep, Lt. Taggart was yelling at my face. "-nd the FUCK down, Sergeant!" I finally recognized the words leaving his mouth, as I shakily let go of the German MG. "They're done. It's over. They're retreating." "I- I…" Oh shit, I'd fuckin' lost it. Shit. "Deep breaths, Sergeant." Taggart snapped his fingers at me, as I followed his fingers with my eyes. "Save the ammo, war's not over yet." He gave me one last look-over to make sure I wasn't going to fall over, then gave me a nod. "Take five, get your shit together, Aaron. Krauts'll be back before too long." "R-right. You got it, sir." I stammered, inhaling, then exhaling. Taggart grunted in an understanding manner, then moved off to begin ordering troops into defensive positions. Apparently we were going to defend the town, in case the Germans showed back up. Great. Anon sank down into the dirt next to me, as I tucked my knees into my chest. "Shit, I'm a fuckin' mess." I muttered, as he just offered me his pack of cigarettes. Wish I fuckin' had my own, God I needed regular smokes badly. I bummed a cigarette off the Caveman, and lit it with a match, before taking a long drag. "Looked like it. Metal as fuck, though." He added, as an afterthought. "You just strong-armed that machine gun like it was a toothpick. You know those things are like, sixty pounds, right?" "Nope. Do now, though." I snorted, shaking my head. "Taggart thinks the Germans'll be back soonish." "Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me." Anon nodded. "This town's one of the crossroad towns on route to the beaches. They're gonna want this place back." He finished, looking out across the bridge, before speaking again. "It's midday now though. By now, the army has pushed off the beach, and they'll be headed our way. I… don't really remember when they actually get here though." "Mmh. Hopefully it doesn't take forever…" I began, then trailed off, shaking the numbness out of my claws, before letting them drop back down to tap across my slung BAR. "We definitely took some losses snagging this place. If the krauts come back in force…" "It's gonna be rough. Yeah." Anon nodded. "Hopefully the army's fast, I guess." "Yeah." I nodded, finally standing back up on my feet. I gave the abandoned German MG the side eye one last time, fingers twitching involuntarily. "Here's hoping." [NOTES] I appreciate everyone who's commented and left kudos so far, you guys are awesome! As always, any comments/criticisms/concerns/etc. are welcome at any time.