"Corporal Burns, I'd say you get up before the LT has a field day with your ass."
I opened my eyes to see the Sarge standing in front of my foxhole, a trace of a smile on his face. "Sarge, you know that I think the LT is an asshole. I replied as I hauled myself up out of my overnight sleeping arrangement. I'll be deep in the ground before I see him do a damn thing, just wait and see."
The Sarge looked unimpressed with my response and said "You can learn better ways to talk shit about brass from Brooklyn, you know?"
"I don't know how many times I got to tell ya' Sarge. I'm from the Bronx." Private Adam Sanders, a skinny guy of 23 better known to us as 'Brooklyn', tried yet again to make his point as he joined us along with Private Victor Jackson. Also from Texas, he and I were as thick as thieves.
"Morning Vic." I said as he walked up looked around.
"Samuel." he acknowledged, using my first name to try to tick me off. He was built like a bull, having been on his high school football team as the 'best linebacker in the league'. He was 24 years old, the middle-man in the squad. Sarge and I, on the other hand, were lean, but with muscle earned from years of working on a ranch; Sarge was 49, I was 28. Vic was carrying his M1919A6 machine gun over his shoulder, and was looking up at the grey sky, thinking the same thing I was.
"Rain's coming." we said in unison. We stood around, doing nothing in particular until the last member of our squad, Private Cole Smith, or 'Schmitty' showed up. He had just turned 23 yesterday, and was the youngest in the squad. He was a whiz with mechanics, but a bit overweight from working behind the scenes for a few months.
"Those were some of the best guys to have around you in a fight. No matter what, I always knew they'd have my back, and I trusted them to have mine. It didn't take long for us to get to know each other as brothers, not just squad mates."
"Panzer!" one of the new guys shouted. We all dove behind the nearest piece of cover: a fountain in the middle of an intersection. In the middle of any Algerian town, that was a death sentence of the highest order.
"Vic, set up that thirty to cover the right!" The Sarge was barking orders left and right while he fired at the nearest enemies. "Jackson, cover him! Brandt, you and Kelly take the left. The rest of you stay here!"
The panzer fired another shot that glanced off the top of the fountain, raining rubble down on us as we fired at anything that was trying to kill us. Namely, that was everything in a five-mile radius. I heard the sergeant yelling into the radio, calling for some type of support, as the panzer fired another round, this one landing in front of our position and the concussion knocking me senseless. Brooklyn grabbed my shoulder and hauled me up, handing me my rifle. "Keep firing Corporal!" the Sarge said, and we continued to hold off the panzer's escort infantry until a P-38 roared overhead, dropping its ordnance on the panzer and strafing the retreating infantry.
"Whoo-hoo!" Jackson cheered.
At the same time, Vic said "I ain't never been so happy to see those flyboys as I am now." Twenty minutes later, a halftrack came by to pick us up, and we learned we had been the last squad in the Kasserine Pass, with a shit-load of Rommel's armor headed straight for us.
"D-Day and Normandy were bloodbaths; how we survived, I don't know. We'd become famous in the division by July that year, and Vic, Brooklyn, Schmitty, and I became known as 'Sarge's Four Horsemen'. People asked how we stayed alive, and we always gave them the same answer: The other guy got it first. Hell, sometimes we didn't even get to know their names."
"I remember that time in Sicily when I fought off an entire Italian division by myself." A new guy, something like Jacob or the like, was spinning a new tale of how he had done something that we couldn't do. His brother, who we didn't even know yet, had managed to get into the same squad, and was sitting by his tent.
"You know, that story gets more ridiculous every time you say it." he commented, and Jacob looked away, miffed. Suddenly, a loud, clear shot rang out, and Jacob's brother fell to the dirt along with the rest of us. Someone shouted 'Sniper' and half the bivouac began firing at the building the shot had come from. We got up, with the exception of Jacob's brother, who lay on the ground, breathing shallowly. His brother rushed over to him as Brooklyn yelled for a medic and started trying to save him with what medical supplies he had. Before the medics arrived though, the kid stopped breathing and looked up with a blank stare. The rest of us stood back in silence as the Sarge, as hard as he could be on us, tried to console Jacob, who was breaking down.
"Then somehow, someway, we woke up one day to find ourselves in a land loaded with brightly colored, three-foot tall ponies. Equestria. It was nice enough, I suppose: No war, corruption, or threat of everyday death. But that all changed one day…
"Now, I'm an old man, writing this book out of the journals, letters, and memories of a soldier who's been to hell and back. I never stopped fighting for what I figured was right, and neither did so many of the men that I fought with or against. But now, dead to my world, and old in this one, I think it's time I settle down, have a family, and live a real life. We've all earned it.