“Yeah, they were in here all right.” Ruiz looked out among the broken gravestones. “One shell got them all,” he said with a note of proprietary interest in the seven visible corpses. “One of our guys is Herbie Witherspoon. Dave was going along right beside him, we were trying to get across the road when the Krauts jumped out of their foxholes and the shell hit all at once. Dave stayed out there a good five minutes trying to patch Herbie up. He told me to get down and cover him and I don’t God-damn’ care who knows that’s exactly what I did. I got down. One of the other GI’s is that fellow Casey or Ryan from company headquarters; I don’t know how he got over here anyway.” Ruiz made it sound as though he was objecting to an act of trespass. “We can’t figure out who the other one is. Dave thou
