“Sergeant?”

“Yeah, Lieutenant?” To Logan, Singer looked shaken and pale.

“Tell me about combat.”

Logan looked at the line of tanks forming to head out, and the trucks that would carry the infantry. The Sherman tanks looked strong and dangerous, but the cloth-sided trucks appeared horribly vulnerable. Even the Shermans’ strength was somewhat illusory. The stubby little 75 mm guns they carried just weren’t strong enough to knock out the newest and biggest kraut tanks, and their thin armor and high silhouettes made them easy victims.

“What do you mean, sir?”

“You’ve been in combat, haven’t you? What’s it like? How do you react?”

Logan patted the ground. “Have a seat, sir.” When Singer made himself comfortable, he continued. “Lieutenant, the first time I was in so-called combat it was a few months ago and a mortar shell landed a couple of hundred yards away, and we all fell flat and hugged the ground for as long as we could. We’d still be lying there if someone hadn’t told us it was safe to get up. Y’know, I have no idea where the shell came from or if it was even German and not one of our own.

“The second time, there was a report of a sniper in a grove in front of us and the entire platoon fired twenty or thirty rounds each into the trees. I don’t know if we hit the sniper, if there ever was one, but we scared the hell out of a bunch of trees and it felt damn good to be firing back.”

“You mean you’ve never seen a German in all this time?” Singer was incredulous.

“Sure I have. Dead ones and prisoners. But have I ever had the privilege of confronting one who was coming at me with bayonet fixed or aiming up a shot at me? No. Maybe I did see a few of them. Sometimes you see motion in the night where there isn’t supposed to be any, or you see shapes running like hell in the distance, but you can’t be certain whether they are krauts or civilians or, in the case of nighttime, just a case of the jitters.”