Panther Knight

"Welcome back," the same voice says. It is a panzergrenadier sergeant who wears a broad grin but no helmet. "Perhaps you should transfer to the Luftwaffe, captain. We noticed how well you fly."

"Like Superman!" says a corporal seated nearby with an MG-42 across his lap. He lifts his arms into some semblance of the Superman flying pose. "Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive..."

Guffaws all around.

The sergeant takes a puff of the cigarette dangling between his lips and lifts his canteen to my mouth. I slurp greedily at the trickle of water flowing from it. "Easy, not too much." He screws the cap onto the canteen and slings it over his shoulder. "How do you feel?"

"I haven't had a day this shitty in a long time." I try to sit up but the straps on the stretcher keep me down. "Untie me. Do it."

"As you wish." The sergeant pitches his cigarette into the darkness and reaches for the straps restraining me.

Once loose, my head spins as I try to stand. Every part of me is sore.

Langer is standing upright in the commander's cupola. This means that he has delegated Franz as his replacement gunner. He half turns when I climb up onto the turret.

"Where are we?" There is a river to my right with the moon glowing between the gentle ripples in the water.

"A few kilometers from Arnaye-Sur-Orne," Langer says. He too, is smoking a cigarette. "You've been unconscious for several hours. I was afraid that we would have to send you east on a meat-wagon."

"What happened?"

Langer tosses a nod at the infantrymen riding the fenders. "The Typhoons shot up their truck." He removes a blood-speckled packet of cigarettes from his pocket and shakes one out. "One of them found a few packs on a dead English. Would you like to smoke?"

I would, but the smell of it is making me nauseous.

"Is everything alright?"

"That depends on the captain's definition," Langer says and pockets the cigarettes when I shake my head. "If by that you mean, 'did we barely scrape by with the skin of our asses,' then yes, everything is alright."

"Good, good." I want to sit down before I puke.

When we reach Arnaye-Sur-Orne, Franz alarms several Panzergrenadiers as he pops the turret hatch and scurries off to the post office before our Panther stops moving.

I climb down off the rear deck and follow a path toward paradise that I know well, but when I arrive, the farmhouse behind the old gate is empty.