Free Standing at the Scratch Line by Guy Johnson

“Anytime.”
    Professor was situated above the depot on the ridge leading up to the Vickers machine gun. It allowed him a clear view of the railroad tracks and the depot. LeRoi hid among the outbuildings. He had on a German greatcoat and a German helmet. The Lugers were in his hands and extra magazines were in his pockets. He took several deep breaths as the sound of clanking drew nearer on the tracks. The first team of soldiers on a handcar came into view. There were eight men on the first car, four of whom were industriously involved in cranking the car along. The remaining four were watching the countryside with their guns at the ready. One man carried a Lewis machine gun in the crook of his arm. LeRoi resolved to kill him first.
    There was no wind. There was no sound of birds. There was only the distant metal clatter of the handcar drawing nearer in the surrounding silence. LeRoi did not stop to consider that he was about to take more human lives. He had adapted to the rules of war. An enemy soldier’s life or death was nothing to him. The Germans were merely things to be killed. If he mourned at all, it was for the colored dead, men with whom he had shared coffee and jokes over small fires, men whose personalities and conversations were now lost in unrecorded history. LeRoi saw his breath as he exhaled and thought that at least there would be no lingering smell of death.
    The handcar cranked up to the depot. The four soldiers who had supplied the power took seats and rested while three of their companions leaped down to check out the depot. The man with the Lewis stayed on the handcar and watched warily. LeRoi waited until his back was turned and started walking toward the handcar. He wanted to get close enough to get a sure shot. When he was within twenty paces, one of the resting Germans saw him and shouted halt.
    LeRoi answered with guns blazing. The man who shouted and the man with the Lewis were dead before they hit the ground. Two other men were killed by fire from the other side of the tracks. The fifth soldier was seriously injured and fell off the handcar. Only the man’s shout had been heard; the soft thudding sounds of the silencers were lost in the general activity. Of the three soldiers who had entered the depot, two were killed as they exited and the third threw down his gun in surrender and was taken prisoner.
    The dead were dragged away and the ambushers returned to their hiding places, awaiting the next arrivals. LeRoi was the first to the Lewis machine gun. He picked it up and carried it, plus a forty-pound box of ammunition, behind some trees at the edge of the clearing. The Lewis weighed forty-five pounds and, as a much smaller weapon than the Vickers, was more suited to the type of missions to which LeRoi’s squad was assigned. He wanted to make sure his squad got to use it.
    The second handcar was more difficult to attack. The soldiers did not come in all the way, but stopped some distance from the depot and hailed the soldiers who had preceded them. When there was no answer, the soldiers started to crank in the opposite direction, but LeRoi opened fire on them from behind the last outbuilding. Three soldiers fell off the handcar. His opening fusillade made the crankers drop the crank and grab their weapons. Their return fire splintered the wood above his head. LeRoi ran around to the other side of the building and emptied his guns at the figures on the handcar. He threw himself backward down in the snow behind the building to avoid giving the Germans a target. He popped new magazines into his Lugers and got to his feet cautiously. A salvo of pistol fire from the opposite side of the tracks caught the Germans in a cross fire of whizzing bullets.
    The skirmish was over before the Germans could fire again. No one was left alive on the handcar. The riders on the last handcar had appeared in time to see their comrades fall. Their crankers were working energetically to return from whence they came.