Atlantik

Chapter One

With his hands resting on the ivory typewriter keys, Frank shrunk down into the wobbling wooden chair, hoping he would fade into the commotion. Barely out of college, Private Frank Miles knew his strengths and randomly patrolling for leftover Germans was not very high on the list. As a young lieutenant rushed about his quarters, Frank silently tried to make himself look busy, wrinkling his brow into a supply checklist. The officer brushed past his desk without pausing for so much as a nod. A trailing scent of musty, dirty canvas followed him to the back of the tent, a more regular smell since the invasion.

A few moments had gone past since the officer barked through the canvas door of Frank's tent, shared with two other supply technicians. He was looking for 'volunteers' to flush out a suspected German patrol that had slipped through. Really, he had pointed to a handful of green-clad American soldiers and told them to suit up. Even though it would prove to be a quick and simple affair, many of the guys in the rear didn't have a whole lot of combat experience. Simple as it was intended, just such a patrol brought a shiver to Frank's spine - real combat wasn't why he signed up for supply.

Luckily, the lieutenant had found his security force just outside of the tent, a handful of guys with nothing to do. The officer walked past a handful of neatly stacked, wooden crates toward a white sign in front of a pile of ammunition boxes. As he circled past Frank's desk to the back of the tent, he shouldered two green bandoliers recently filled with rifle ammunition.

"Need these. I'll have a requisition in before noon." He insisted, hurried and anonymous. Even if he didn't, Frank thought, the missing material was worth the price of missing a patrol.

As quick as he had arrived, the officer rolled out of Frank's tent at nearly a jogging pace. A small plume of dust kicked up behind his feet, shimmering in the mid-day sun as it peaked into the drab-walled tent.

All at once, Frank finally exhaled.

Pulling a blue-ink ammunition form from it's pad, Frank centered the page on his desk and readied his pen. He caught a glimpse of a faded red diamond on the man's shoulder and started filling in the blanks on the form in front of him to sign away the ammunition to the 5th Infantry. More often than not, he wouldn't face any reprimand for an incomplete requisition as long as the basic details were put down - it was, after all, invasion season.

Frank pushed the form forward and placed his pen back into the tray in front of him. From a few miles away, a chorus of deep thuds meant the local artillery was putting some heat on a distant enemy. The sound was muffled under the heavyweight canvas tent, but each 'woomph' put Frank's shoulders slightly lower. After the volley, he squared up, moving his eyes to the very corners of his face to make sure the other guys in his supply tent didn't notice.

He exhaled quitely, again releasing the pressure built up so quickly by the far-off shelling and stood to his feet. He pushed his chair backward and moved around his desk, toward the shortening pile of ammunition the officer had pilfered through. On top a dozen boxes of rifle ammunition lay some ready-packed slings of rifle clips, neatly squared into a pile, on top. Frank reached into the adjacent box and pulled out two new, folded bandolier belts. He stuffed a few fingers into each pouch, a trick he found to make the rifle clips slide in a little easier. Laying the two bandoliers on top the pile, he started putting a fresh clip into each pocket before replacing filled bandoliers on the pile.

The scent of cigarette smoke drifted over to Frank. He patted the bandoliers, confident in the amount of ready ammunition in case another unit should need a healthy resupply. He'd decided that, given his supply tent was further to the back and the morning had so far been relatively quiet, he would take a short break and see if he could find Mitch.