Max Hystory - Adventures in time - Market Garden

Lessons of war

Chapter Eight

Lessons of war

Jake shows Max how to load, aim, and fire the rifle that Sarge surprised him with. Max only gets to fire off a couple of rounds though, because like Jake says - "you don't want to attract any attention". Knowing the Germans have retaken the roads and are trying at this very moment to fortify it with a Panzer tank division, Sarge and his rag-tag group of misfits from the 101st Airborne and other units take to the woods and fields outside Veghel and try to make their way to Nijmegen, where Sarge thinks the combined American, Polish, and English forces will regroup after failing to achieve the goal of taking the bridge at Arnhem. Along the way Sarge is anything but quiet, when he is comfortable with the surroundings and feels somewhat safe, he is quite the chatterbox. He talks about how over half the specially equipped jeeps were lost in the landings, how to command just through this operation together without thinking, how that damn English General Montgomery should be strung up in the closest tree. Sarge doesn't have many nice things to say about the English and their way of leading the war effort, but don't you let him hear you say anything bad about General Patton. General Patton and Sarge were together in North Africa, where Sarge had won a medal for bravery, but that's also where he was reduced in rank from first Sergeant too staff Sergeant for punching a young Captain for doing something stupid and not listening to reason. Patton liked his spunk so instead of court-martialing him he sent him to a unit that could use a strong leader, this is why the Sarge likes him so well, because even though what he did was wrong, Patton probably would have done the same and told him so.

Max falls back into the ranks next to Jake as Sarge gets quiet again like he is expecting something to happen, as they continue to march through the muddy fields Max picks up on talk and chatter from the other soldiers. He figures out that this isn't a regular unit, its made up of mostly members of the 101st Airborne, but there are others from different units that have stuck along the way. Jake is in the Army air corps, part of the 305th bomb group, and others are from the British 1st Airborne, XXX corps, and the one soldier from the burned-out house in Veghel, who seems to like the killing and warfare he is what is called a Pathfinder. Jake couldn't explain to Max when asked about him because not many people have heard of the Pathfinders, but he tells Max that on the first day after insertion when Sarge stumbled across him, he thanked God for the help, and Sarge isn't what you'd call a religious man. Jake explains further that Sarge doesn't really like leading, he plans to turn over his command as soon as he can find a unit with someone with more rank, he just wants to blend back into a unit and let someone else call the shots for a while.

Walking through a muddy field much like any one of the other fields he has walked through since leaving Veghel, Sarge comes to a complete stop and holds up a closed fist to signal everyone else to stop as well. Just as Sarge turns away to whisper to those of us behind " Shut up and get down." gunfire erupts and all hell breaks loose. "Scatter!" Sarge yells as he grabs a bazooka from the soldier next to him and runs headlong at the German emplacement that fired upon us from the tree line.

"What's going on Jake?" Max asks as bullets whiz by his head.

"Ambush, come with me," Jake replies.

"Sarge!" He calls after him, but it's no use.

"Come on Jake we got to help Sarge!" Max insists as he grabs his rifle and fires into the tree line not really hitting anything, but giving Sarge some much needed covering fire. Jake sees what Max is doing and is surprised at first, but then joins in as his fear subsides, Sarge runs within a hundred yards of the tree line and drops to one knee, aims his bazooka and fires.

BBBOOOOOMMM!

The Germans must have had a fuel truck there because the whole tree line bursts into a huge fireball, fuel is thrown everywhere, igniting other vehicles and dousing German soldiers in burning liquid. They run around on fire and fall to the ground in a desperate attempt to rid themselves of the flames, but to no avail, as the fire is too intense and it does them in quickly. There is enough of the German soldiers left unharmed though to form a counter-attack and it doesn't take them long to get reorganized, Sarge doesn't wait around to see what will happen next as he is well on his way back to us when they begin to advance.