J.M.J.

Greater Love No Man Hath

August 6, 1944

There wasn't much rest for anyone in France those days, and the men in the U.S. 30th Infantry Division had less rest than most. Even those who weren't on active guard duty were restless and didn't allow themselves to close their eyes much. It was more out of habit than anything else. The Germans would have had to be insane to attack the American position here at Mortain. It was that assurance that allowed Private First Class Chet Morton to slumber at all.

It was funny, he thought during one of the many times he woke up that night and couldn't get back to sleep again. Back before the War…It seemed like ages ago, but it was only a year. Well, a year since Chet had enlisted. The War itself had been dragging on for five years now here in Europe. Chet had enlisted in April of the year before, just after his eighteenth birthday. That would be closer to a year and a half. Chet frowned slightly. That didn't sound right, for some reason. A year and a quarter? A third? He was too tired to think about math, of all things, especially fractions. They had always given him trouble in school, back when the biggest things he had to worry about were fractions and getting caught up in some dangerous mystery.

Oh, right, that was what was funny, Chet thought as he tried to get himself back on track to where he was before going on a sleep-deprived tangent. Back in those days, his friends always got themselves into scrapes while solving mysteries, and Chet had always bemoaned how dangerous that hobby was. Now, caught in the middle of a War, he would have given anything to be back home in Bayport, solving one of those mysteries. If he was, he wouldn't have said one word of complaint about how dangerous it was.

But that couldn't be now. None of the old gang were back in Bayport anymore. He was the youngest of the group by a month, so they had all enlisted before he even could. Joe and Biff and Jerry were halfway around the world right now, fighting the War in the Pacific. Joe and Biff had signed up with the Navy, while Jerry had gone for the Marines. Frank and Phil had joined the Army, like Chet had, and Tony was in the Air Force. So they were all pretty well scattered, and they wouldn't ever be together again. Chet had just heard the news a few days ago that Frank had been killed in action almost a month earlier.

Chet sat up and scrubbed some tears away with his fist. The desire for sleep was gone, but he knew he couldn't sleep now. He had seen a lot of things that made him think that he would never sleep again, things that had happened to men he knew and liked and who had become brothers through this baptism of fire and blood that they were all enduring. It was horrible; more horrible than anything he had ever imagined. But to imagine it happening to Frank, or any of the guys, for that matter—the guys he had grown up with and who were part of all the best parts of his life? That was too much. He shuddered, glad that at least he didn't have any more details besides that Frank had been killed. This way, he could imagine that it had been one of the less wretched ways to die, not that there was any way to die at age nineteen that wasn't wretched.

He really needed to try to stop thinking about it. There wasn't anything he could do right now except sleep and recover some energy. He would need it in the days ahead. It seemed selfish to even care about himself right now, but he was too miserable not to care a little bit. He closed his eyes and prayed that he would be able to forget about it, at least until morning.

No sooner had he finished the silent prayer than there was a volley of shots, along with the deep-throated roars of tanks. Chet scrambled to his feet with the other men who had been sleeping, or at least trying to. The Germans really are insane, he thought, while at the same time adding, That wasn't exactly the distraction I was hoping for.

There was no more time for thinking after that. He checked the rifle that he had instinctively grabbed as he had gotten to his feet and listened for orders.

HBHBHBHBHB

"We need a stretcher over here!"

"Bring some water!"

"Medic!"

"Bandages, Corporal! Where are those bandages?"

"Right here." Corporal Phil Cohen handed over the roll of bandages he was holding, although he wasn't certain he was handing them off to the right man. Everyone was clambering for something and it was all Phil and the supply sergeant could do to keep up with it.

The Germans had attacked in the middle of the night. No one had expected it, except, apparently headquarters. The 120th Regiment had just received the news that Allied decoders had intercepted the German orders for the attack, but it was too late to get the word to the people who mattered. The Americans were being pushed back from Mortain, and the only place they could hold their ground was Hill 314, where Phil and the rest of the 2nd Battalion of the 120th were. Now, some of the men who had been caught by surprise the night before, were making their way to Hill 314, many of them wounded.

"Water! This man needs some water!" shouted a soldier who was helping a limping man along.

Phil thought the voice was familiar, but he didn't have time to pay attention to that as he grabbed a canteen and handed it to the soldier. As the soldier took the canteen, his eyes met Phil's briefly, but Phil was already turning to attend to the next person who needed something. Then he froze and looked back again.

"Chet Morton! What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"What am I doing here?" Chet retorted. "What are you doing here? Since when have you been in the 120th?"

"Since a couple of weeks…" Phil began, but he was cut off by a cacophony of voices shouting, "Corporal!" He glanced at the supply sergeant, and then quickly said, "I've got to go."

HBHBHBHBHB

It wasn't until almost evening that Phil had a chance to breathe. He would have liked to sit down or even lie down and get some sleep, but instead the first thing he did was look for Chet. He found him sitting with his back against a tree, as he had been permitted a chance to rest, too. Phil still could hardly believe it. Running into an old friend was the last thing he expected in the middle of a battle. He sat down next to him.

"Long time, no see," Chet commented. "Seriously. I mean, it's been over two years."

Phil nodded slowly. "Don't remind me. You know, when I got transferred to the 2nd Battalion, I didn't even think of it that you were in the 30th Division, too."

"Yeah." Chet glanced at the two stripes on Phil's sleeve. "Corporal, huh? What did you do to get that?"

"Field promotion, but then they made it permanent."

"And now you're on supply duty?"

"Right, which won't be much work for much longer," Phil replied dryly. "Did you hear we're cut off?"

"I heard something about that." Chet let out a long breath. "They're not going to just leave us high and dry, are they?"

"No, they'll probably do airdrops until we can get out of here. The only aircraft I've seen flying all afternoon is Allied, so it looks like we've got control of the airspace, at any rate."

"That's good." Despite that, Chet frowned. If the Germans really wanted to break through the Allied line, they were going to have to take this hill. It would be a costly battle to try to hold onto it. "Have you heard any news from home lately?"

"Not from home…" Phil said slowly, as the piece of news that had been relegated the back of his mind all during the battle suddenly pushed itself forward again. "Did you hear…"

"About Frank?" Chet finished.

They looked at one another. There was no need to answer the question. They both knew that the other had heard the news. There was silence for a minute or two.

Phil ran his hand back through his short Army haircut. "It isn't fair. It just isn't fair. What are we doing wrong that we're still fighting wars?"

Chet puffed his cheeks out before blowing out a long breath. "I don't know, exactly. I don't think we're wrong for fighting this one, though. Do you?"

Phil shrugged. "No, but it doesn't matter if we are or not. There's no getting out of it at this point."

"Mm-hmm." There was no denying that. Chet reached into his pocket and took out a pocket knife and a little piece of wood that he had been carving on. He was trying to make it into an airplane. When he'd first started on it, he had had the whole thing pictured in his mind, all the little details. He was starting to think he didn't have the skills to make it as well as that. Woodcarving was a hobby he had only picked up shortly before enlisting, and he didn't have much practice yet. Not like some of his other hobbies. He chuckled, thinking back to some of them.

"What's so funny?" Phil asked.

"I was just thinking about the time I took up botany for a hobby. Remember that? I said I was going to go on a completely vegetarian diet."

Even in his dour mood, Phil couldn't help cracking half a smile. "That only lasted about two days."

"Yeah. To be fair, it wasn't exactly my fault. Frank and Joe's aunt Gertrude asked me to deliver that chocolate cake and the guys wanted me to follow that suspicious truck and I was almost starved to death. What was a guy supposed to do?"

"Probably not eat an entire chocolate cake."

"I didn't mean to. It just sort of happened." Chet carved a few more splinters off the wooden airplane. "Do you remember the time I got interested in ventriloquism and marionettes?"

"That's not an easy thing to forget." Phil leaned his head back against the tree. "How about your metal detector?"

Chet pointed with his knife, which caused Phil to dodge to the side. "The metal detector was a great investment. I could have gotten rich with it, given enough time."

"It would only take a few thousand years to get rich by picking up rusty nails."

"You're a skeptic," Chet said, shaking his head. "After all this time, you're still a skeptic."

A burst of distant gunfire filled the silence after that comment, and Phil's smile faded. "I don't know about still. I don't think I used to be a skeptic, but after all this…I'm not even sure what I'm doing here."

Chet went back to carving on the airplane as he thought about that. He was tired—no, exhausted, and miserable. He couldn't think beyond remembering things that had been and wouldn't be again, but he felt like if he could think just a little more clearly he could answer Phil's question. He furrowed his brow as he tried to think, but that didn't help.

Phil had gone back to watching Chet carve, wondering how he could work on something like that with a battle raging all around. It was probably just some nervous habit; Chet never could keep his hands still, but it seemed out of place to be making something in a place dedicated to destruction.

"What are you going to do with it when you finish?" Phil asked after a couple of minutes.

"I don't know. I was thinking about sending it to Tony. It might cheer him up, but they might not let him have it."

Tony had been taken prisoner nearly a year earlier and had been sitting out the war in a POW camp somewhere in Germany. Neither Chet nor Phil had heard much about him, except when someone from home would relay news to them. There wasn't much even then; mostly just assurances that he was all right, but still a prisoner.

"They probably wouldn't," Phil agreed. "It would be a waste of effort to send it, and even if he did get it, what difference would it make?"

"It would let him know we didn't forget about him. I'm going to try it. Even if they don't let him have it, they might let him know that a package was sent to him. Even that would be better than nothing. But I've got time to think about it. I've got a long way to go to finish it."

HBHBHBHBHB

The battle raged on for days, but the 120th held the Germans back from Hill 314. The fighting rarely abated entirely, and every day, men were killed by the dozen. It was much too busy for small talk. Phil and Chet would try to see one another whenever they had a moment to breathe, as an old, familiar face was more comforting than either of them would have realized before they were caught up in a war. But those opportunities didn't come often, and when they did, it was usually only for a few minutes at a time.

As Phil had thought, they were cut off from getting any supplies by land, and they needed whatever supplies they could get. Not only were there seven hundred men to feed—at least, there was at the beginning of the battle; there were a lot less now—there was also an ever-growing need for bandages and other medical supplies, as well as more ammunition. Fortunately, the Allies didn't abandon them, but the only way they could get those supplies to them was how Phil had said: by dropping them from the air.

The crates were dropped with parachutes, and it wasn't unusual for the parachutes to fall farther away from the camps than they were supposed to. When that happened, Phil was usually one of the ones tasked with going to retrieve the supplies.

It happened one night, on the tenth of August, that a crate was dropped and fell in front of the Allied line into a dense patch of brush. It wasn't too far, but it was far enough that it would be a terrible risk to go and fetch it. Phil and the supply sergeant, Sgt. Everstein, were crouched behind a tree with a split trunk, looking at it and weighing the risk.

"We need those supplies," the sergeant said after a few moments. Even from here, they could hear the groans of the wounded and dying men who were in need of the bandages, antiseptic, penicillin, and other life-saving supplies that were currently sitting only a hundred feet or so away.

Phil chewed on his lip as he surveyed the area closely. "I don't see any Germans," he said finally. "We haven't heard anything from that direction all day."

"It's too dark to tell if there's anyone there or not," Everstein replied.

"Maybe, but that also means that I might be able to get there and back without being noticed. I can at least bring some of it back."

"I don't know." Everstein hesitated a little longer. "Every bit of supplies we get could save a life. All right. I'll cover you from here as well as I can. You run straight there and straight back. Just take the medicine. Anything else, we can makeshift."

"Yes, sir."

Phil checked his sidearm to make sure it was ready to fire if need be. He couldn't spare a hand to carry a rifle, so the sidearm it would have to be it. Everstein also handed him a pry bar to hook onto his belt so that he could open the chest. Phil hadn't noticed that Chet had come nearby and had overheard the conversation, so he knew what kind of risk his friend was about to take. Chet knew better than to address the sergeant without being spoken to first, but as long as nobody told him otherwise, he wasn't going to move from this spot until Phil made it back safely.

The dash to the thicket was fast and uneventful, but Phil's heart still felt like it was going to drill a hole in his chest by the time he arrived. It would have been too dangerous to take a light, so he had to do the best he could with what little natural light there was. Fortunately, it wasn't too difficult to spot the bulk of the crate. He unhooked the pry bar from his belt and started working at the crate's lid.

Then he heard a crackle. Phil whipped his head around, knowing that any sound in the woods could spell his death. Everything seemed still. It could have just been an animal. Although still nervous, Phil went back to prying at the lid.

The nails holding the lid gave way with a moan. It occurred to Phil then that the sound he had heard couldn't have possibly been made by an animal. Any animals for miles around would have been scared off by all the shooting and fighting that had been going on for days now. Phil drew his gun and started to crouch behind the crate.

That movement saved him from instant death, but it wasn't quite enough. Someone shouted something unintelligible to Phil and several shots rang out. Most of the bullets whizzed past him, embedding themselves in the crate or flying into the dark woods, but one struck him in the lower back to the right of his spine.

The impact made him pitch forward and waves of dizziness, shock, and nausea pulsated over him, but there was no time to give in to all that. He was on the wrong side of the crate to take cover behind it, and who knew whether either side was safe either. Phil threw himself on the ground and turned around to fire several rounds back at his ambushers. He heard a strangled cry of pain. At least one of his shots had found its mark.

No more shots came from the woods. Phil blinked as he felt himself becoming light-headed. He was losing blood and losing it quickly, and the only thing he could think about was getting to safety. It wasn't too far to run. He would simply have to make it.

With that thought foremost in his mind, he made a dash for the relatively clear stretch to get back to where the supply sergeant was waiting. Phil had scarcely stepped out of the cover of the trees before his head became so light that he knew he would never make it. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground.

HBHBHBHBHB

Chet was watching as Phil dashed down into the trees. He held his breath as he waited and when he heard the gunshots, he let out a little cry. Without even thinking about it, he took a few running steps in that direction before the sergeant grabbed him.

"You can't go down there!" the sergeant told him. "The only chance of anyone getting to those supplies and back was stealth, and obviously that didn't work. Going down there would be suicide."

"But Phil!" Chet protested, forgetting that his old friend was a corporal and outranked him. "We can't just leave him down there!"

"I'll get some men together. Maybe if enough of us go, we could make it."

"That will take too long," Chet argued. "It will be too late by then. I'm going."

He expected the sergeant to order him to stay, but he hoped that he wouldn't. Even now, he didn't want to go against orders. But it didn't make any difference to what he was going to do. Unless the sergeant planned on holding him down and forcibly keeping him from going, he was going.

However, the only order the sergeant gave was, "Don't do anything stupid. I'm going to get help."

Chet took that to mean that it was up to him to determine what was stupid or not. As the sergeant went for help as he had said, Chet turned and made a dash for the thicket where Phil had disappeared only minutes earlier.

He practically stumbled over Phil as he entered the trees, as Phil was lying on his face just in the trees' cover. For a sickening second, Chet thought he was dead, but then Phil moved slightly.

"Phil! Phil!" Chet whispered, looking all around him for Germans and shaking his friend at the same time. It was too dark to be certain, but Chet didn't see any sign of any Germans around. Maybe they had run off.

"Chet?" Phil mumbled.

"Shh!" Chet warned him and then whispered, "Are you hurt?"

"My…back." Phil did his best to hold back a moan.

Chet couldn't see anything, so he reached out to touch Phil's back. It was wet and hot and Chet saw at once that he was bleeding badly. A cold fear seized him as he realized that the sergeant and his rescue party might not make it back before Phil bled to death.

"Okay, Phil, I'm going to get you up the hill where we'll be safe," Chet started, but Phil shook his head.

"Won't make it." Phil paused to grit his teeth against the pain for a couple of seconds. "Got one of them, but the others…must still be here. Go…go without me."

"No way. I didn't run all the way down here just to let you bleed out or get captured by the Germans, either one."

Phil clutched a handful of grass as he grappled with the idea of capture. It hadn't occurred to him tonight until this minute, but it had been a constant concern ever since he signed up. He knew then that the Germans were rounding up Jews and putting them in inhumane extermination camps. Recently, more and more rumors about just how inhumane those camps were had been reaching the Allies. Dying now would be a far, far kinder fate than that. "If they catch me…find out I'm a Jew…"

He didn't need to finish for Chet to understand. "I'm not going to let that happen. I'm going to get you out of here." He started to pick Phil up, but Phil made a sound as close to screaming as Chet had ever heard him utter before. Chet froze instinctively. "Sorry. I can't help hurting you a little, but you've got to be quiet. I'll try to warn you next time."

Phil shook his head. "It'll never work…You have to…leave me."

"Already said I'm not doing that."

Phil swallowed hard. "Then you'll have to…shoot me."

"What?" The horror in Chet's voice was plain to hear. He didn't even bother to whisper this time. "I am not doing that. Just shut up and let me get us out of here."

He picked Phil up hastily this time, and Phil literally had to bite his tongue until he tasted blood to keep from screaming. Even as it was, he couldn't help whimpering as Chet got him into a fireman's carry position. Then the bumping, jolting ride up the hill started, and Phil felt he simply couldn't bear it as the tears came into his eyes.

Chet looked up the hill to his starting point. He knew he would probably have to run a bit farther to get back up than he did coming down since the sergeant wasn't there anymore, but right now, the distance looked like it had quadrupled. It was taking most of his strength and focus to carry Phil slung over one shoulder, and he was trying to hold onto his gun at the same time.

He had only made it a yard or two when he heard the sound he was dreading: a crackle in the brush behind him. There were some Germans there still. Chet aimed his gun in the general direction behind him and fired off a few shots as he tried to stumble forward. The Germans fired back.

Chet pitched forward and Phil rolled off his shoulders, landing on his face. For a moment, he lay there, ready to give it all up. Then he looked up at Chet, who was also lying on his face and writhing in pain. Something snapped inside Phil and he realized that he couldn't sit back and give up.

He raised himself up on his hands a bit, trying to ignore the pain that surged through him, and he looked back. He could just barely make out two German soldiers in the brush behind them. The cowards. Not only had they waited until Chet's back was turned, but even now they were hanging back, afraid to approach where the Allied defenders might see them.

Phil spotted Chet's handgun lying on the ground a few feet away where he had dropped it. He reached toward it, but his fingers were still a few inches away from it. Suddenly, there were several shots which peppered the ground around Phil. With a strength he didn't know he still had, he crawled forward to the gun and turned around to fire back. He didn't really aim—it was too dark for that anyway—but his shots must have been better than the Germans'. He heard a cry and then the rustle of the bushes as the soldiers—or maybe just one of them—ran away.

For a few seconds, Phil remained still. A sort of numbness had come over him and was quickly removing the adrenaline that had enabled him to pick up the gun. Then he remembered Chet, and he managed to summon enough strength to crawl to his friend's side.

"Chet? Chet?" Phil reached out and touched Chet's shoulder.

Chet had had his face buried in the ground, but now he turned it slightly toward Phil. "Don't…" He mumbled something longer than that, but Phil couldn't understand it.

"What?"

"Don't…shoot y'rself," Chet tried again. "It'd be…a waste…" His voice trailed off as his labored to breathe.

"I won't," Phil said without even really paying attention to what he was saying. Chet didn't reply, and a cold stab of fear pierced Phil's heart. He tightened his grip on his friend's shoulder. "Chet?"

There was still no response, and Phil couldn't even hear the sound of his breathing anymore. Every ounce of strength seemed to drain from Phil's body. Tears filled his eyes. He hadn't allowed himself to weep freely since he had been around five or six, but there didn't seem to be any point in stopping the tears now. He wondered if he was going to die, too, and how long it would take.

He was vaguely aware of shouting and more shots being fired. Someone reached his side and tried to speak to him, but Phil neither heard nor cared what the words were. He didn't even really care right now whether it was an American or a German. Then somebody pressed something against the wound in his back, and for one blessed moment, the pain nearly drove his grief from his mind. Then, what was even better, consciousness began to drift from him and the last thing he remembered was being lifted up and laid on a stretcher.

HBHBHBHBHB

Phil was lying on a mattress on the ground in a tent several days later. There were several dozen other men in that same large hospital tent, many of them dying. Phil was one of the lucky ones, or so he was told. He'd lost some blood, but the bullet had missed all major organs and he hadn't developed any infections, and now that the Americans and Canadians had gotten through to them on Hill 314 and they were no longer cut off with limited supplies, it looked like he was going to recover.

The news had been met with little enthusiasm from Phil. Ever since he had realized that it was his fellow Americans who had come to rescue him, he had practically taken it for granted that he was going to survive. The problem was that they had come to rescue him, not them. They had been too late to do anything about Chet.

This was the first day that the medics had allowed Phil to prop himself up so that he wouldn't have to lie on his stomach because of his wound. They told him it was only for a little while before he would have to get back down on his stomach and rest some more.

"You look a little more alive than last time I saw you, Cohen."

Phil looked up to see Sergeant Everstein coming toward him. Phil nodded to him, hoping that the circumstances relieved him of any obligation to observe military courtesies. Everstein didn't seem to mind as he sat on the ground next to Phil.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"All right," Phil replied, looking down at his hands. "They think I'll live. They even think I'll be able to get back in action, if we don't win the war before then."

Everstein smiled slightly. "I think there's reason to hope we might, but there's a ways to go yet. Between us and the Canadians, we've really pushed the Germans back. I've even heard a rumor that there's a brigade of Poles fighting through. I think the Germans will wind up paying a heavy price for their efforts."

"I hope so." Phil swallowed hard. "It's no worse than they deserve."

"Morton was a friend of yours, wasn't he?"

"We grew up together." Phil brushed some tears out of his eyes and cleared his throat. "He's the second of the guys I grew up with that this war has cost us. I just want to know why."

Everstein let out a long breath. "Because there's a little man in Berlin who thinks he's a god. He thinks he can rewrite the world's rules and take whatever he wants, no matter who he has to kill, and he's got an army who are bribed or duped or just plain scared into going along with it. He needs to be stopped, because he's never going to stop on his own until he's destroyed everything that's good and worthwhile in this world."

"He's got a good start on that. Is there going to be anything left when it's over?" Phil sighed. "Why didn't Chet just stay where he was? If I'd been killed and he hadn't been, it would be the same difference…"

"No, it wouldn't. What he did was a brave thing. It might not always look like it, but no brave thing is ever a waste."

His wording reminded Phil of those last few words that Chet had said to him. "You know, I…I didn't know if they caught me, if they'd keep me alive. I mean, if I'd still be alive when they caught me. I asked him to shoot me, and when he wouldn't, I thought about doing it myself for a second."

Everstein paused. "Why didn't you?"

Phil shrugged slightly, although he instantly regretted it as it was enough movement to make his pain a bit sharper for a moment. "I don't know. I guess I was too scared."

"At a time like that, it takes a lot more courage not to do that." Everstein scratched his neck. "And that really would have been a waste. There was a reason you were the one to survive that, you know. All of us who survive this war are going to have to finish the work of getting the world back to normal and maybe even making it better than it was. There will be plenty of work for all of us, and it would be a poor way to thank Morton and all the others who have died by throwing our own lives away and not finishing what they started." He unbuttoned one of his shirt pockets. "Speaking of finishing what they started, I found these on Morton. I thought I'd bring them to you."

He handed Phil two objects, which he recognized at once. One was Chet's pocket knife, and the other was the half-finished airplane he had been carving. Phil felt the tears threaten again and his nose snuffled as he took them.

"I want you to finish that plane, Cohen," Everstein said. "You can work on it while you're recovering."

"I've never carved anything before," Phil replied, trying to hand it back.

"Then figure it out."

"But I'll ruin it."

"But at least it will be done," Everstein said. "Morton thought it was a project worth doing. You're going to finish it for him, and that's an order."

He stood up and left. Phil stared at the little airplane for a good, long while, thinking. Then, finally, he opened the knife and started to carve.

Author's note: The Germans' Operation Lüttich, or the Mortain counterattack, lasted from August 6-13, 1944 when the Germans tried to push the Allies back as they pushed their way through France. U.S. forces were pushed back, but they held the hill called Hill 314 in Mortain for a week before the Canadians and the Poles helped to finally stop the counterattack entirely. It was a desperate effort on the Germans' part that had little chance for success, but if it had succeeded, World War II may have had a very different outcome. Between 2000 and 3000 Allied soldiers were killed and an unknown number were wounded. Of the seven hundred men defending Hill 314, three hundred were killed. We must never forget the sacrifices that have been made for our freedom. The men and women who have served in the armed forces of the United States, especially those who have died in that service, have my deepest gratitude, and though this story does little justice to their great sacrifices, I dedicate it to them. May God bless them!