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The Sherman, the 72,750-pound Sherman, is oddly perched with its nose pointed up at about a seventy-degree angle, which aiht up in the air, as if someone has decided to use the tank to shoot at airplanes
“Gotta help hiet him some happy juice Poor bastard, he’s in a bad way!” The staff sergeant takes Frangie’s ar, practically lifting her off her feet as they leap over a half-dug latrine ditch
“What happened?” Frangie asks, panting a little She isand the extras stuffed into the a over her shoulder
“Green kid sacked out in a bomb crater beside the road, and the Sher, or eant takes a beat and says, “Sorry, I meant maybe he had to answer nature’s call Anyway, side of the crater collapses, tank slips, and that’s all she wrote”
As they hustle along the screaathered around, including the tankers, distinguished by their leather helmets and white faces The tankers stand a little apart and sathered troops, who naturally bla their tank
“Make a hole, ie’s arie—far and away the smallest person of either race—sees the tank up close and has the distinct impression that it is in a very precarious, certainly temporary, position All 72,750 pounds of it is held in place only by the bite of the treads into soft, cruood firm push it could even topple onto its back like an upended turtle But the more likely scenario is that it will slide down onto the still-unseen screa man
Frangie squats beneath the shade of the tank’s sky-tilted prow and tilts her head sideways, but she cannot see the oes counterclockwise around the tank to the back, and the once-muffled moans of pain are now more clearly audible She has to lower herself onto her belly and stick her head over the lip of the crater to see a man’s helmeted head a few feet away He is facedoith his head and shoulders free but is pinned at the bottom of his shoulder blades by soht
The sergeant squats beside her and says, “Hang on, Williaie, “We were going to dig hi could slip back farther We called for a tractor but that could take a while, nearest engineers are twenty miles away”
“He could go into shock,” Frangie says through gritted teeth “Hey, Willia?”
The answer is a scream of pain that rises, rises, and then stops Followed by a twisted, barely co, “I don’t know Give me a shot, Doc I can’tOh, Jesus!”
“I’ie says, and twists her head sideways to see the sergeant looking at her skeptically She understands his skepticism In fact, she is pretty sure she has just told a lie
“Can’t you run chains or rope to the front of the tank and pull it forward?”
“That could make it settle deeper”
“What am I supposed to do, cran there?” It’s a rhetorical question that the sergeant ansith a blank look
Why a this? I could be killed