Free Articles of War by Nick Arvin

peered down at himself, his arms, hands, stomach. He was dirty, but he didn’t see blood until the sergeant gestured with the toe of his boot at Heck’s shin: oozing through the grime on his pants was a glistening dark redness between the knee and ankle of his left leg. Heck bent and tugged his pant leg up. His leg was split open by a gash some six inches long. He touched the wound with his fingers—it was an inch or an inch and a half deep. The sight seemed unreal to Heck, as though this were somehow someone else’s leg; he had never seen such a leg attached to himself before. He couldn’t think how it had happened, unless he had hit something when he’d fallen a moment before. The cloth of his pants wasn’t even torn, and he still didn’t feel any more pain than he would if he had scratched himself on a thorn.
    â€œLooks like you’ll be headed straight back,” said the sergeant. “Congratulations.”
    â€œSir?”
    â€œIt hurt?” asked the sergeant.
    â€œNo, sir, actually.”
    â€œI bet it will soon enough.” He produced a large, stained handkerchief from his pocket and tied it around Heck’s leg. “Come on, let’s get a medic to look at you. Keep your head down as we’re moving. We’re still trying to smoke out a sniper or two down this way.” He put an arm around Heck’s shoulders and led him down the street several blocks and around a corner to where an empty jeep stood parked in a shadowed alley. A sudden explosion caused Heck to flinch. Black smoke curled out of a broken window frame a block down the street. “Grenade,” the sergeant commented. “Hopefully got him.” A moment later a series of rifle shots echoed along the street, and the sergeant nodded in satisfaction. He helped Heck into the jeep’s passenger seat. “Wait here. Find cover if you think it necessary.”
    Then he left.
    Heck waited nervously. His hands trembled. He sat on them and put his injured leg up on the dash. He waited half an hour or so before a medic with a red cross on his helmet came and untied the handkerchief and looked at the wound. “You’re lucky you didn’t slice any muscle. How’d you do it?”
    â€œI fell.”
    â€œCut yourself on something?”
    â€œI guess. I didn’t really notice.”
    â€œThat can happen when the adrenaline is up.”
    â€œStill doesn’t feel like much.”
    â€œYou’re lucky.” The medic tightly rewrapped the wound with clean bandages, then walked on down the street, lighting a cigarette as he went.
    Over the next couple of hours, two more men arrived. One had had his foot run over by a truck. The other had sliced his hand open with a gilt silver-and-gold Nazi dagger while cutting potatoes for lunch. He was nonetheless very pleased with the dagger and showed it around. He said he’d found it strapped to the ankle of a pair of kraut legs—torso, head, and arms nowhere to be seen. “Pays to check everything,” he said.
    â€œWhere are we at anyway?” Heck asked.
    â€œElbeuf. Scenic, fucked-up Elbeuf, on the scenic fucking River Seine.”
    The man whose foot had been run over took out a package of Life Savers candies and shared them around.
    Dusk was obscuring the sky by the time their driver arrived. He glanced at the three bandaged men with an expression of distant curiosity. “Hang on,” he said.
    They jolted through several miles of twilight countryside and scenes alternately serene and war-blasted. With each jolt in the road the man with the crushed foot added a complaint to a long muttered monologue. They passed haltingly down what appeared to be an oxcart path. The sun vanished entirely. Heck had difficulty comprehending that an entire night and day had passed, a night and day in which he had been shelled, shot at, gotten lost, somehow gotten himself wounded, and now was being sent back again. They