The rumble of Allied trucks came from the south at last—the corridor still open, barely. Billy pushed off from the tank, adjusted his helmet, and fell in beside Jake. They walked together down the endless, muddy road, two brothers in arms, with the ghosts of a hundred more marching silently behind them.
Billy listened. Above the drumming rain, there was a low, mechanical growl. Tanks. German tanks. The rumble grew until the ground trembled.
“He’s gone, Billy. He’s gone.”
“No, no, no—” Billy tried to scramble out of the ditch, but Jake grabbed his harness and yanked him back.
Jake nodded. He pulled out a crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes, lit two, and handed one to Billy. They smoked in silence as the rain washed the battlefield clean. Brothers In Arms- Hell-s Highway
Eddie turned, eyes wide as dinner plates. A burst of German fire caught him in the chest. He crumpled like a discarded puppet. The rain washed his blood into the mud before Billy could even close his mouth.
Billy crouched behind the crumpled wreck of a German half-track, his M1 Garand pressed against his chest. Beside him, breathing in the same wet, diesel-tainted air, was his squad leader, Staff Sergeant Jacob “Jake” Marino. They had been brothers since Toccoa, Georgia—through the jump into Normandy, through the bloody hedgerows, through the frozen hell of Bastogne. Now, September 1944, they were on a road they’d come to call Hell’s Highway. The rumble of Allied trucks came from the
“He was just a kid!”