Book Title: Haya Safari
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The German counter-barrage began just as Dodger started to sprint back to Henry’s crater. The nearest German guns, those with the shortest range, were the 77mm light field guns. They fired a reasonably high velocity shell. Because of the short range and the velocity, they didn’t give a great deal of time—if any—for the target to take cover. They were known as “Whiz-bangs” for that reason, a term contributed to the language by the British Tommies, who universally hated them.
Henry heard the first Whiz-bang hit and felt the ground shake. When he looked over the rim of his crater he saw Dodger on the ground trying to crawl toward him. Dodger was missing most of his right leg below the knee, and his right arm and side were bloody. He left a trail of bloody mud in his wake as he inched his way toward Henry’s crater.
Without thinking, Henry dropped his Eddystone, stood and leaped over the crater’s edge. He ran full speed to Dodger and without stopping reached down and grabbed him by the back of his tunic collar and the straps of his musette bag and gasmask. Then he continued on in a straight line toward the next shell crater. As he moved, dragging Dodger, he heard the sound of the next German shell coming toward them, a much bigger shell, probably a 150mm. At the same instant he heard the Spandau open fire, and there was no mistaking it—he was the target. The 150mm landed with a strangely dull, muffled explosion as he heaved Dodger over the edge of the crater.
The Spandau continued to fire, long bursts of ten or fifteen rounds. Must be nice to have that much ammunition, he thought, remembering Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s stringent “No More Than Three Shots” rule. A line of machine gun slugs stitched along the ground, coming directly at him just as he hurled himself sideways at the crater.
He almost made it. Nine of the ten bullets in the burst missed him, kicking up mud and clods of other things. But the tenth 7.92 x 57mm bullet went through his body on the right side, fortuitously just under his lung and just over his liver. It broke the last rib and followed it around to exit three inches above his belt and six from his spine. All of this in less than half a second. Henry sat down heavily upon impact and toppled sideways into the crater, hoping the German gunner would be satisfied and go search out more lucrative targets than two wounded doughs. The 150mm shell, on the other hand, had contained gas, now seeping over the edge of the crater. It smelled musty, like old damp straw—phosgene. Dodger was still conscious.
Trying hard not to panic every time he looked at Dodger’s wounds—the leg was gone, so the Whiz-bang must have clipped it off as it hit, and the arm was mangled at the elbow. He’ll be damned lucky if he doesn’t lose it. But the splinter wounds in the side looked to be superficial—there was no frothy blood or the sound of air escaping the lungs. Henry reached under his tunic and pulled his web belt out of his trousers. He looped the belt around Dodger’s leg where it ended just below the knee and drew the belt up tight enough to make Dodger groan through clenched teeth. Henry looked around the crater for anything to make a handle to complete the tourniquet. Finding nothing useful in the crater, Henry finally pulled his Colt Automatic out of its holster and began to disassemble it. When he had extracted the barrel, he checked it for length against the width of the web belt and discarded it, using the slide instead.
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