THE MAIN EVENT III! Arrow vs. Moondog

[Der Kuenstler]

"Death of a squad"

Going back to minute 13, Sergeant Diaz and his squad of regulars are hunkered down in a patch of scattered trees by the central church. The squad has already taken a beating from stug HE and MG42 fire up the road - Diaz has lost four men and his squad is recovering from an earlier routed condition - now they are all permanently rattled and more likely to panic or rout when faced with enemy fire again. He knows he's got to get them out of those scattered trees. Finally the order comes - he is to run his squad through the nearby house and aross the road, out of LOS of the enemy. The nearby 105mm barrage appears to be over.



The men run for it. They hustle through the house, jostling tables and avoiding windows. So far so good. Maybe the worst is over.



But just as the squad sprints into the road - KABLAAAM!! - a 105mm shell smashes into the street - the enemy barrage is not over! The brittle squad is rattled already and instantly goes into panic mode, even though no one was killed by this blast. Diaz screams "Keep moving!!" but no one is listening. The nearby tanks button up - there's nothing they can do to help the men caught in the street.



The whimpering men slither into a shell hole in the street. They are all still 44% exposed but anything beats the 90% exposure of the dirt road. Suddenly another blast goes up about six meters from the helpless men. The merciless 105mm shells have a blast rating of 115. The shells are more than twice as powerful as the stug HE that the squad had been hit with in the scattered trees. The superheated metal fragments and road gravel tear through the air and into the men, killing three of them instantly.



The shells keep coming like rain from hell itself. Each burst is answered by another helpless scream. In this shot another boy dies and the squad becomes broken.



And still another....



The minute ends but, as usually happens, shells that were in the air keep falling. This one hits the tops of the scattered trees in the area and kills two more boys.



Only one private crawls out of the horrible carnage, the blood, skin, and hair of his sergeant and his buddies spattered all over his uniform and face. He slinks under the tank and into some scattered trees beyond. He has no ordered thoughts - no thought of tomorrow or yesterday - only to hide - curl up and hide - make it all go away - far away....he was the lucky one. Or was he? He will have to carry that horror in his mind the rest of his life.