Private First Class Gerald Dunham crawls toward the large pillbox from which the enemy is firing and preventing his rifle company’s advance toward a German-held town.
This is near Zula, Italy. It’s April 18, 1945. World War II rages, its end still months away.
Dunham and two other soldiers, who are now crawling alongside him, have volunteered to try and “knock out the pillbox,” as it will one day say in the letter that will accompany the Silver Star he will be awarded for this moment.
Dunham notices that the pillbox a small, partly underground fort, used as an outpost has three entrances. He picks one and assigns the other two to the men crawling with him.