Chapter 15 - Winter Came With Teeth
By December 1944, the war had taught the men never to trust a calendar.
They had once believed they would be home by Christmas.
Then winter came to Belgium with ice in the roads, snow in the forests, and German artillery hidden beyond white hills.
The Sparrow and his Wolves dug foxholes beneath frozen trees.
Eli hated the cold.
Jack loved pointing that out.
“You’re built like a broomstick. No insulation.”
“You’ve said that four times today.”
“Still true.”
Frank sat beside a tiny stove made from an ammunition can.
“Both of you shut up before I cook your socks.”
Tommy peered over the edge of the position.
“You can cook?”
“No.”
“Then definitely don’t cook my socks.”
The jokes were small acts of rebellion.
Against fear.
Against exhaustion.
Against the dead.
News reached them that German forces had broken through farther south. Roads filled with retreating units, wounded men, civilians, tanks, confusion.
Sergeant Hale gathered the squad.
“We hold this crossroads until relieved.”
Jack looked at the map.
“What if nobody relieves us?”
Hale folded it.
“Then we become very attached to the crossroads.”
That night artillery struck.
Trees exploded.
Snow fell from branches in sheets.
The squad stayed low.
At dawn, a line of American soldiers approached from the east.
Their uniforms were right.
Their vehicle markings were right.
Something else was wrong.
Eli watched through binoculars.
One man wore his field jacket too neatly.
Another carried an American weapon awkwardly.
Tommy whispered, “What?”
“Don’t know.”
The lead soldier waved.
“Hey! Which road to Malmedy?”
Jack started to answer.
Eli said, “Ask him baseball.”
Jack understood immediately.
He shouted, “Who won the World Series?”
The approaching soldier smiled.
“Yankees.”
Frank raised his rifle.
“Wrong.”
The St. Louis Cardinals had won in 1944.
Gunfire erupted.
The supposed Americans dove for cover.
German infiltrators.
The brief fight ended with two prisoners and three dead.
But one captured man carried something that froze Eli’s blood.
A handwritten map.
Their patrol routes.
Their radio frequencies.
And a symbol drawn in the corner.
A small eagle.
Jack saw it.
“Rusk.”
Hale said, “Could be coincidence.”
Eli shook his head.
“No.”
Attached to the map was a list of names.
Captain Warren.
Lieutenant Mercer.
Sergeant Hale.
Elias Carter.
Jack Mason.
Tommy Briggs.
Frank Doyle.
Next to Collins’s name was a single line.
DECEASED — SAINT-VÉRAN.
Jack’s face went pale with rage.
“He’s tracking us.”
Eli folded the paper.
“Why?”
“Because we exposed him.”
Hale looked toward the prisoners.
“One of them may know.”
The Germans said nothing.
Hours later American military intelligence collected them.
Captain Warren arrived just before dark.
He read the list.
“So Rusk is alive.”
“You sound surprised,” Jack said.
“I hoped otherwise.”
Eli asked, “What do we know?”
“After the hunting lodge? Almost nothing. We believe he crossed into German-held territory. There are reports he has been helping intelligence units identify American procedures.”
Frank shook his head.
“An American teaching them how to kill Americans.”
Warren’s expression hardened.
“Yes.”
Jack stared at the snow.
“Collins.”
Eli knew what he meant.
The old anger was returning.
He stepped beside him.
“Don’t.”
Jack looked over.
“You know what he did.”
“Yes.”
“If I see him—”
“You remember why we fight.”
Jack laughed bitterly.
“You going to lecture me about mercy?”
“No.”
Eli pointed toward a farmhouse visible in the valley.
A family had hung a white sheet from the window. Civilians trapped between armies.
“We fight so someday that house doesn’t have to know which uniform is coming up the road.”
Jack followed his gaze.
Eli continued.
“If you kill Rusk in a fight, you kill him. If he surrenders, he answers for what he did.”
“And if I can’t accept that?”
“Then Collins died protecting the wrong version of us.”
Jack flinched.
Eli hated using the name.
But it worked.
That night the Germans attacked the crossroads.
Machine guns flashed between trees.
Mortars burst in snow.
Men shouted in English and German.
Eli and Tommy worked from a shallow position overlooking the road.
“Movement, right side,” Tommy whispered.
“I see it.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
Eli fired.
The first figure dropped behind a log.
The others scattered.
Jack’s rifle hammered from the left.
Frank’s BAR answered.
For hours the squad held.
Near dawn, ammunition ran low.
A young replacement named Miller began crying.
“I can’t do this.”
Jack crawled to him.
Months earlier Jack would have mocked him.
Instead he put a hand behind Miller’s helmet.
“Look at me.”
Miller did.
“You scared?”
“Yes.”
“So am I.”
Miller blinked.
Jack pointed toward Eli.
“He’s scared.”
Eli called from twenty feet away, “Terrified.”
Frank shouted, “I’m mostly cold!”
Tommy added, “And hungry!”
A few men laughed.
Jack looked at Miller.
“See? Whole squad of cowards.”
Miller almost smiled.
Jack handed him a fresh clip.
“Stay with us.”
Miller did.
At sunrise, American tanks finally appeared.
The German attack withdrew.
The crossroads remained theirs.
Hale counted the men.
Two wounded.
One dead.
Private Steven Miller.
The boy who had admitted he was afraid had been hit minutes before relief arrived.
Jack knelt beside him for a long time.
Eli approached.
Jack whispered, “He stayed.”
“Yes.”
“He was nineteen.”
“Yes.”
Jack closed Miller’s eyes.
“I’m so tired of remembering people.”
Eli crouched beside him.
“So am I.”
“Then why do we keep doing it?”
Eli looked at the road their dead had held.
“Because forgetting would kill them twice.”
Miller was buried the next afternoon.
No one had known him long enough to tell many stories.
That made the ceremony harder.
Hale read the address from Miller’s identification records.
A town in Pennsylvania.
A mother named Ruth.
A father named Henry.
Two younger sisters.
Jack stared at the wooden marker.
“I knew him for six hours.”
Eli stood beside him.
“That was enough for him to matter.”
Jack placed Miller’s spare gloves at the base of the cross.
“He said his mother knitted these.”
Eli looked at the careful stitching.
“Don’t leave them.”
“Why?”
“Send them home.”
Jack understood.
The dead deserved more than symbols left in foreign mud.
They deserved to return in every way the living could manage.
That evening Jack wrote his first letter to the family of a fallen soldier.
He tore up four drafts.
On the fifth, he stopped trying to sound brave.
He wrote only what was true.
Your son was afraid. I was afraid too. He stayed beside us anyway. In his last hours he was not alone, and he did not fail us.
Eli read it.
“Send that one.”
Jack folded the page.
“I hate this war.”
May you like
“So do I.”
For men who had spent months learning how to fight, saying those words felt strangely close to understanding what peace was for.
