Shermans, the lead tank brought its 75 millimeter gun to bear on the halftrack and fired one shot. The halftrack exploded, and all firing from within immediately ceased.

Meanwhile, a medic rushed past Balto and skidded to a stop next to the badly wounded sergeant on the road. He pulled the man as far off the road as he could, and was reaching into his pack when a round struck him in the leg. Balto stared in disbelief.

They shot a medic! They shot a freakin’ medic!

“Corporal!” someone cried from behind him.

Balto, still dazed with shock, turned to see Lieutenant Winters running toward him.

“Tyrell, on me!” Winters shouted, passing him at a run, “Everyone on me! Move up!”

Instinct took over, and Balto leapt to his feet. As he rushed past the two wounded men, Balto glanced back to see a second medic tending to them both.

Moments later, he and the rest of the company advanced warily into the small German town. A church bell rang ominously somewhere beyond their sight, but the town was quiet. No Germans, Balto thought as he looked around. A relieved smile crossed his face, but quickly faded as he advanced further into the town behind Winters. No civilians either… What kind of town-?

Suddenly, a machine gun clattered, and the whole town seemed to erupt with muzzle flashes and the pounding of automatic fire…

Jenna sealed the envelope and set it on her nightstand. She would mail it later that night. She lay back on her bed and closed her eyes, allowing her mind to wander freely…

Suddenly, she was walking down her street, and it was snowing. As the silvery-white flakes drifted all around her not one landed on her, and strangely she did not feel cold. Then, as if from the air itself, Balto’s voice echoed in her ears.

I promise, Jenna. I’ll come back, and then we can pretend I never left at all.

She looked quickly around for the source of his voice, and noticed it came from woods off to her right. Puzzled, she was about to continue down the road when the voice called to her. She followed the calls into the woods. Just then, a rifle shot rang out in the silent forest, and Jenna leapt behind a tree in terror. Then, just as quickly as it had left, silence returned to the woods. She looked over her shoulder toward where the street should have been, and found to her shock that it was no longer there. Turning back toward the forest, she saw that the tree she was hiding behind had been violently severed just above her head. She stumbled back in shock, and saw that most of the trees around her were the same. What had been the tops of the trees was scattered in pieces across the snowy ground.

Off in the distance, there came the horrible sound of battle. Weapons firing, explosions rocking the ground, men crying out in pain and shock. Jenna pressed herself against the same tree for support, and was contemplating hiding there forever when she spotted a hole in the ground just thirty feet away. She left her tree and sprinted toward it. The world seemed to slow itself around her; each step she took seemed to take forever. When she was within a stone’s throw of the hole, a figure rose out of it, and looked back at her. She stopped in her tracks and starred. The young man was a soldier, no a paratrooper, of the United States, but she was not yet close enough to see his face.

“Go back,” the figure said, pointing in the direction from which Jenna had just come, “It’s not safe for you here. Go back, now.”

Just then, another, more authoritative voice rose above the fading din of battle.

“Easy Company, move out!”

Jenna looked toward the voice, and in the distance she saw more figures, similarly clad in olive-drab uniforms, moving deeper into the forest. She turned back toward the young man and found him out of the hole and jogging in the same direction.

“Wait!” she cried, trying to run after him. He stopped and looked back at her.

“Go back!” he shouted, “You can’t stay here!”

Suddenly, the air filled with an unearthly roaring shriek unlike anything Jenna had ever heard. She dropped to the ground with her hands clasped over her ears. Just then, a voice cried out, barely audible above the roar,

“Incoming!”

Jenna looked up toward the paratrooper, but her eyes only managed to take in his legs before the explosion. As the fire rushed over her, she felt as though the very air around her was being sucked away. More explosions went off in the forest around her, sending wooden shards slicing through the air toward the ground. Then, just as quickly as it had come, all of the explosions, the horrible shrieking, everything faded away into silence. After a few moments, she hurriedly got to her feet and glanced around, terrified that the explosions would come again, but the never did. Finally, she turned toward the young paratrooper…or at least where he had been. Now, all that remained was a charred hole in the ground, and a few meters away a helmet. In disbelief, she stumbled toward it.

I don’t believe it, her mind screamed, It was my fault, he wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t stopped him!

She collapsed beside the helmet and, extending a trembling hand, pulled it toward her. She absent-mindedly glanced at the inside of the helmet and shrieked in terror. For stuck under the webbing of the helmet was her picture, which she had signed ‘To my love, Jenna.’ It was stained with blood.

“Oh my God, no!” she cried, pressing the bloodied helmet to her chest. Her cries softened into despairing sobs as she realized who the paratrooper had been. “Balto…”

Jenna woke with a start, clutching her pillow in terror until she realized it had all been a horrible dream. She sobbed in relief and silently began to pray for Balto’s protection.

Balto found himself crouching low behind a short stone wall, and for a moment was not sure why, until the thudding of bullets against the other side reminded him. There were others crouching on either side of him, and though they were only wishing to prolong their life, Balto felt as though they were looking to him for guidance.

What the hell am I doing, he asked himself, I’m no good sitting here! Time to lead by example!

With that thought, he leapt over the stone wall and sprinted up to the next one. The small stone fences separating the yards of different houses made excellent cover, and Balto took full advantage of them. Moving up yard by yard, fence by fence, he finally spotted the machine gun nest that had been harassing Easy Company all through the assault. The two-man crew and their gun were perched on the roof of a three-story house, and partially hidden behind a sort of decorative wall in the middle, but despite their overseeing view of the town, they failed to spot Balto, just under forty yards away. Just then, Winters appeared beside him and shook his shoulder.

“Tyrell, you got a rifle grenade?”

“Yes sir!” he replied, producing the rounded-off tube from his jacket.

“Use it!” Winters ordered. Balto nodded, and fixed the grenade to the tip of his rifle. “MG nest, one o’clock high. Nail it!”

Balto propped his M1 rifle against the fence and angled it toward the two-man machine gun crew. He pulled the trigger, and the grenade sailed through the air. A moment later, it found its mark, and the machine gun fire ceased.

Suddenly, at least fifty Germans rounded the corner of a house barely twenty yards away, and immediately opened fire on the Balto and Lt. Winters.

“Come on Tyrell, move!” Winters shouted, physically dragging Balto to his feet and pulling him the first few steps in their flight. Balto half-turned and fired off the last three rounds in his clip, killing at least two Germans, but that was not nearly enough. He turned back and kept running for all he was worth, finally finding shelter behind another stone fence with Winters.

There he finally reloaded his rifle and began firing back at the onrushing Germans. Winters joined him, blasting away with his Thompson submachine gun. Their fire cut down numerous Germans, but as the distance between the two groups shortened, it finally became clear that there would be no victory for Easy. Winters caught the attention of a sergeant further down along the fence, and shouted,

“Pass it down the line: Fall back!”

At first, Balto didn’t want to believe his ears, but little by little, as more Easy ‘troopers flooded past him toward the American lines outside the town. Balto kept firing until he was among the last few remaining behind. Signaling the other remaining ‘troopers, mostly new replacements, he turned and started running back toward American lines, with the rest close behind.

The men of Easy Company were hustled out of the town and quickly loaded on to the convoy’s trucks to leave. As he climbed into one of the last trucks, Balto passed Lt. Winters and Lt. Nixen, Winters’ close friend, and managed to catch the end of their conversation. Winters shook his head and said,

“I don’t like retreating.”

Chapter Five

The Coming Storm

21 November, 1944

Since Jenna had graduated high school the previous spring and was not looking at colleges until the following year she spent the majority of her free time lending her help to Balto’s mother as well as her own parents and grandmother. Every morning, she rose at the crack of dawn and started her chores; she was always finished by the time her parents got up an hour later. With a kiss on both of their cheeks, Jenna left early each day for her job as a waitress at a restaurant in town.

The little town of Spring Falls, around which Balto’s mother and several farmers had established their homes and farm land, was so small it was barely worth mentioning on a road map, and only then because it was along the road to Richmond from Tennessee. The Rose, one of Spring Falls’ two