Eureka by William Diehl

joy.
    â€œWhere will you be?” Brodie asked.
    â€œFifty yards behind you. The company will move up to within fifty yards of your position before the Krauts start shelling us. I’m gambling that they’ll think we’re in the trenches, and pepper the trench line between them and us. If they find out we’ve moved back from the line, they’ll raise their big guns and blow us to hell and gone. Your gunners are our front line. As soon as you make contact, we’ll attack.”
    â€œHow long do I have?”
    â€œWith the mud? Ten minutes. Can you hold them for ten minutes?”
    In a place where a minute equals an hour anywhere else in the world?
He shrugged. “If that’s what I gotta do, that’s what I gotta do.”
    Culhane turned his hastily sketched map toward Merrill and pointed out his positions as he spoke. “I got ten machine-gun nests set up along our perimeter with overlapping fire. Max Brady’s in charge of the line. I got sappers out there planting mines in the trenches only. The mines are marked with circles on the map. I’ve got my two best shooters on the road and Rusty, the human ear, in a trench about fifty yards out. They should hear something before the shelling starts. The Krauts have four trenches to cross, a lot of wire, the mud, and the mines. The trenches are laced with ’em, Major. Warn our boys to jump across them. If they fall in one, there’s a four-in-one chance they’ll land on a mine.”
    â€œClassic setup for an ambush.” Merrill smiled. “You outguessed me.”
    â€œI need the fog to lift, because if we can see them, we can hold them in place. But if the fog holds and they get right on top of us before we can engage them . . .”
    He let the sentence die.
    â€œSo you have fourteen men holding that line?”
    â€œActually eighteen, counting me. We have two radiomen and two corpsmen up there, too.”
    â€œYou travel pretty light.”
    â€œI got the seventeen best men in the company. You got the rest.”
    Merrill leaned forward and stared at the map. “So we need the fog to hold, to cover us,” Merrill said, “and then lift just as they attack so you can zero in on them.”
    â€œThat’s about it. My two point men and Rusty the Ear are out there listening for movement. They’ll fire flares when they’re sure the Krauts are on the move. Then you can lob some star shells over them and, with luck, we’ll get a nice look at ’em.”
    â€œThey’ll charge at that point.”
    Culhane nodded. “And move their artillery down the road. If they lead off with a tank, we can take it out with grenades. If they bring on the caissons first, we’ll kill the horses and stop their artillery dead in its tracks.”
    â€œIt’s a daring plan,” Merrill said. Then he nodded. “But if it works, we can drive them right into the river. They’ll have to surrender.”
    â€œA lot’s gonna depend on the fog.”
    Major Merrill reached in his pocket and took out a lieutenant’s gold collar bar, put it on the desk, and slid it toward Culhane.
    â€œI knew you’d be ready, Brodie,” he said. “You’re the best I’ve got. I’m giving you a battlefield commission. Colonel Bowers approved it last night. I don’t have a commissioned officer left in this company.”
    Culhane stared at the bar for a full minute. He reached out with a forefinger and spun it around.
    â€œHow’d you like to tell some kid’s mother that her son was blown to bits for five miles of mud, Major?”
    â€œI do,” Merrill said quietly. “I write the letters every day. I tell them their sons died heroes.”
    â€œThere aren’t any heroes in a slaughterhouse.”
    â€œBrodie, in four years, the battle lines along the western front have moved less than ten miles in either direction. It isn’t about taking