Hill
256
Combat!
Kirby sees a
machine gun firing from the hill, he runs for cover
and is court-martialed. No-one else saw or heard it.
Saunders and Caje
run a risky operation behind German lines to prove the machine gun was there.
The platoon had been hacked by artillery, Kirby was picked up quailing with
nausea in a ditch by a sergeant “so conditioned to being brave,”
Saunders observes, “he couldn’t even see the danger.”
The sergeant has
a tale to tell of a similar case in Normandy and “seven good men rotting
because he got jelly in his craw.”
Komack handles
this efficiently all the way to the POV flashback in a long shot of the verdant
hill with flashes and smoke just visible. Moessinger introduces it with two
children bouncing a ball, accosted by a third, then Saunders and Caje walk into
the shot smartened up for military justice.