The shelling had gone on for three days straight and the trees all along the line were smashed and shattered and the bare forest floor was pockmarked with shell holes. And because God thought that wasn’t bad enough, it had started to rain. It was a cold steady soaking rain and it soaked into everything. It got into the coffee and the rations and made everything cold and tasteless, it got into the foxholes and you sat in four inches of cold water and mud during the shelling. In short it was hell. The rain wasn’t the worst part though. The worst part was the waiting. We kept waiting for them to do something and nothing ever happened except the shelling but everyone knew it would happen sometime. Until then we waited, tense and bored at the same time. Holding our position. We went back and forth between wishing it would just happen and get over with and wishing that it would never happen at all. But there wasn’t any use wishing it would never happen at all. It would happen eventually and we would be here for it.

When there was an interval in the shelling we played cards to pass the time. It was a beat-up old deck that had lasted Hart for three years now, ever since our part of the war began. Someone had strung a canvas tarpaulin up between some trees and we sat under that. It was still wet but it was drier than the foxholes. I was bad at poker, I had never had a poker face, but I played anyway. I played with Hart and Caplan and Price and we wagered with just about the only things left to wager with, which was cigarettes. Murray didn’t play. He would sit and watch but he had some kind of superstition about playing. I guess last time he played it was a couple months ago and he was playing with some guys from D Company and he had gone off to take a crap or something and while he was gone some shelling started up and those D Company guys got blown away just like that. He took that as a sign and never touched cards since. Some of the guys gave him a hard time about it. Price did. Price ribbed him every time we played. Murray just ignored him, smiled a little bit around his chewing gum. Me, I didn’t have a problem with the guy being superstitious. Some people get superstitious like that and it’s real easy to get superstitious like that in war. So I didn’t have a problem with it. Everyone wanted to make it out of here. I wasn’t superstitious but I respected the guy and personally I thought that if any of us was going to make it out of here it was going to be Murray. He had the luck. He hadn’t got a scratch this whole time. Other guys got it. Just about every other guy on this hill had something to show for being on the front line so long. Murray had the luck, plain as that.

With the shelling stopped the only thing you could hear was the rain falling on the trees and spattering loudly on the tarp. It was supposed to be spring, you remembered suddenly, and this was lovely spring rain.

“Been quiet for a long time now,” said Price without looking up from his cards. “Maybe they’re moving up.”

“It’s still raining,” I said unnecessarily. It was streaming down from the edges of the tarpaulin in a waterfall. You had to kind of shout to make yourself heard over it.

“What are they gonna do, wait all spring?” said Price.

Caplan said, “That’s right, you better hope it rains all spring.”

“Wish they would do something,” said Hart. “I’m getting sick of waiting for them to do something.”

“They got to wait for the roads to dry out before they can move their armor up,” said Caplan.

Everyone knew that but for some reason you had to hear someone say it. We went on playing cards. I was losing pretty bad. I was down to my last pack of cigarettes and we wouldn’t be getting any more until the relief came. If it ever came. We were beginning to think it wouldn’t. We had been on the front line for two months and we had been isolated here on this hill for a week, wedged into enemy territory and cut off on three sides, holding our position. Right about now we were feeling pretty alone.

The next day it was still raining and they shelled us again and all we could do was huddle up in the foxholes and wait for it to stop. It was the worst shelling yet and it splintered everything to bits. Murray was with me in the foxhole. He just sat there like it was nothing, chewing his gum. From looking at him you wouldn’t think we were in the middle of a mortar barrage. Well, he had the luck.

When it lulled a little bit I heard someone yelling medic so I crawled on my hands and knees up out of the foxhole with my kit and went running in the direction of the yelling, trying to keep low. Maybe twenty yards away to the left was Flynn and Decker in their foxhole and a mortar shell had exploded right in front of them. It was Flynn who was hit and it was pretty bad, a piece of shrapnel had opened up the side of his face and his neck and he had lost a lot of blood already, he was unconscious. I slid down into the foxhole and started digging for my sulfa and I told Decker to go call for a litter. He scrambled up and ran. I crouched over Flynn and started sprinkling the sulfa on but I knew pretty quick that it wasn’t going to do any good, he was already gone. I was too late and he had bled out too much. It was the worst feeling you could ever get. I put the sulfa away and dragged him up out of the foxhole and across the mud and met the litter guys and Decker. I filled out my report and the litter guys took Flynn back with them so the jeep could take him to the aid station. Decker headed back to his foxhole.

“Sorry, Deck,” I said to him.

He shrugged without saying anything. I didn’t say anything else because there wasn’t anything else you could say.

The shelling started up again as soon as I started to head back to Murray. I was still out in the open and I ran like hell but there was a big one close by and next thing I knew I was hugging the ground and hanging on for dear life. I don’t know how long I stayed there but it felt like forever and all I was thinking was that I was going to die now. I really did think I was dead. But then gradually I realized I was still alive and when my head cleared a little bit I could hear Caplan yelling at me to get back into my foxhole, dammit, I was the only medic we’ve got. So I up and ran the last few yards. I was reeling like a drunk. When I got to the foxhole I had to stop short because there was a pit as big as a tank where the foxhole had been. I stopped right on the edge of it, unsteadily. There was no sign of Murray. It had been a direct hit and there was nothing but smashed-up ground and bits of metal that hissed in the rain and smoke curling up from the metal. I stared at it stupidly, just stood there and waited for it to sink in. There was nothing left of Murray at all.

It seemed like a long time that I stood there but probably it was only a couple of seconds. Then another shell came whistling down and I dove over a couple yards to the right where Price had his foxhole hidden under some foliage. I slid into it under the branches.

“Doc,” said Price.

“Murray got it,” I said.

Price said nothing.

“I would have bet money on that guy,” I said, unbelieving. “I would have bet money he was the one who was gonna make it out.”

Price said, “Guess it didn’t matter about the cards.”

The next day our relief came in, fresh troops just sent up from reserve, and I got myself stocked up on cigarettes again. The rain came down as hard as ever but there wasn’t any more shelling. We found out on our way down the hill to the rear that we had won, the Krauts had started pulling out that morning because the rain showed no signs of stopping and they couldn’t get their armor moved up.