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bursts. We waited as the sun dipped down behind us and more GIs and paratroopers came up from the direction of Gela.
    At six o’clock the Shermans roared forward and we got the signal to advance. I followed Clancy and Joe down the slope, jumping over dead Germans and wilting yellow flowers. Gunfire was heavy to our left, but in front of us all we could see were flashes of khaki running low, darting from cover and then going to ground again. We made it down to the road, to an abandoned pillbox situated to cover the road in the opposite direction. Inside was a lone German, dead, bandages swathing his abdomen. He looked a lot like the kid who had died next to me in the field hospital.
    For about an hour we hunkered down by the pillbox and listened to the Shermans firing over the next hill. The shooting slackened, then died away. We walked out into the open, standing upright, which felt strange. The Germans were gone, except for a couple dozen prisoners being marched up the slope. No explosions, no machine guns. The quiet was so sweet no one dared speak. Clancy, Joe, and I wordlessly climbed back to the top and looked out over the plain below us. A trail of dust marked the retreat of the remaining German vehicles, and plumes of smoke marked those that didn’t make it.
    The top of the ridgeline was the collection point for the dead. We watched bodies being laid out in neat rows as POWs were put to work scraping graves out of the shale. No different than the holes we’d tried to dig. It looked easier to do standing up. A paratroop chaplain knelt, saying a prayer over each body. There were thirty-four of them. Someone started knocking K-ration cartons apart, forming makeshift crosses and a couple of Stars of David. Everyone was silent, and the noise of shovels biting the hard ground seemed even louder than all the fighting. Chink, chink, metal against rock, flesh against the earth. I turned to walk away and saw Slim Jim himself standing at attention, tears washing the dirt from his cheeks. Thirty-four good names were going to be written on those wooden planks, many of them belonging to boys he knew. All of them he’d put on this ridge to fight and die. I was glad I didn’t have to make decisions like that, and then wondered if I ever had.
    Joe put his hand on my shoulder and moved me away from the group, walking me down the slope toward the olive grove and the aid station. The light was fading, but I could still see his eyes moving back and forth, looking to see who was around. He stopped and grabbed the front of my shirt, ripping it open.
    “I know you aren’t Hutton,” he said. “I helped bring his body over here and gave the lieutenant his dog tags. I doubt there’s two Aloysius Huttons on this fuckin’ island. And you don’t have no dog tags.”
    “Listen, Joe—”
    “Never mind. I got enough troubles with the Krauts, I don’t give a crap about yours. If I hadn’t seen you drop so many of them I would’ve shot you myself when you gave that phony name. But you stood your ground, helped us out, and we owe you. So scram. Grab a jeep before things get organized here. Go back to Gela or wherever you came from. And keep your head down, straight leg.”
    He nodded toward the road. Clancy stood a few yards away, keeping a lookout. “If you run into trouble with any guys from the 82nd, ask for Joe and Clancy of the 505th. Everyone knows us, we’re a team.”
    He gave a little wave. I waved back and watched them trudge back to the ridge and their buddies, alive and dead. I headed down through the olive grove, past the aid station, to a jumble of vehicles pulled off the road, and wondered exactly where the hell it was I had come from.

CHAPTER • THREE
    “HOLD STILL, DARLIN’ , let me get these bandages off. They’re filthy,” a woman said.
    “OK,” I said. I had been swiveling my head around, on the watch for officers or anybody else in the business of collecting stray GIs. Back at Biazza Ridge I had collected