Erich gazed through the rubble that had once been an elementary school.
The glass was shattered, the wall half torn apart.
Yet by some divine miracle, part of the window frame still clung to the concrete, just enough for him to rest the edge of his Panzerfaust on.
Today was an all-hands-on-deck situation.
And because of the casualties sustained by his battalion, and the rest of the brigade, as the battle raged on, he, a battalion commander, was now back on the front lines getting his hands dirty. Again.
The old wound in his shoulder, the one from Spain, ached. Not because the launcher was heavy. But because his body remembered danger better than his conscious mind ever could.
The roar of motors grew closer, engines straining, treads crushing pavement and the scattered bodies of fallen Americans beneath their steel mass.
He checked the backblast behind him, clear.
