Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

“One last thing,” Rio says. “Why are we here?”

Silence. Then, one of the newest recruits, a woman, says, “To kill Germans?”

“What’s your name again?”

“Maria Molina, Sarge.”

“Well, Molina, you are one hundred percent correct.” Rio lifts her own rifle and holds it to her chest. “We are here to use this to kill Germans. You will kill Germans. You will kill every Nazi son of a bitch on that beach, and you’ll keep on killing them till we get to the crazy bastard in Berlin and shoot him in his little mustache!”

To her amazement, the squad cheers. Even Geer, who knows better than to think it will be that simple.

To one side she hears Cat giving her own version of the same speech. All over the ship sergeants are preparing their soldiers to kill and not to be killed.

Everyone is tense. Everyone is afraid, especially the ones who pretend not to be. But Rio sees some determination too. At least some of these men and women are itching to finally get into the war.

Luther Geer. Jack Stafford. Jenou Castain. Hansu Pang. Beebee, who has an actual name that no one calls him and everyone (possibly including Beebee himself) has forgotten. Rudy J. “Private Sweetheart” Chester. Hank Hobart. Lupé Camacho. Jenny Dial. Dick Ostrowiz. Maria Molina. Four women, seven men: her squad. Her responsibility.

My people. My lives.

Rio recalls her father, the veteran of the Great War, telling her to find a sergeant she trusts and stick by him. That had turned out to be Sergeant Mackie during basic training, and then Jedron Cole.

And now she is the sergeant. And these are the eleven men and women whose best bet is to stick close to her.

Rio remembers Sergeant Cole talking to them as they landed on the beach in Tunisia as part of a doomed British commando raid. He’d offered stern, useful advice, but he had also worked to keep his squad loose. As loose as it could be. But that part does not come easily to Rio. She wants to reach these soldiers, especially the green ones, to impress on them all she knows, to imbue them with the fears that weigh so heavily on her. But the best she can manage is “You’ll all be fine if you do what you’re told.” It is almost certainly not true, but if there’s one thing a US Army private needs, it’s hope. Hope and trust in their sergeant.

Which, God help us all, is me.

8

FRANGIE MARR—LST 86, OFF OMAHA BEACH, NORMANDY, FRANCE

The LST powers on through the night.

At sea the LST pumps water into its ballast tanks to stabilize it for the trip, which would be good news but for the fact that the waves in the Channel are quite a bit taller than they’d been in port.

Keeping company to their left are two LCTs, like smaller versions of the LST but with an open hold and flat ramp at the front where the LST has swing-out gates. The LCTs carry the Sherman DDs, the Duplex Drives, the tanks with the bulky rings that, before inflation, make the tanks look like dainty ladies raising their skirts to step over mud.

There is only filtered moonlight coming through the few breaks in the clouds, so the more distant LCTs are more felt than seen. The nearest keeps station close by, bobbing and skittering over the waves. Frangie can see the skirts beginning to inflate. Crewmen buzz around tightening this and loosening that, manhandling the skirts into place as they inflate like four great air mattresses.

Frangie’s driver, Corporal Rosemary Manning, and another medic, an older man, a conscientious objector nicknamed Deacon for his presumed religiosity, stand on either side of her. It is still dark but not quite darkest night, still an hour from the first assault, scheduled for 6:30 a.m., half an hour after sunrise.

“Think they’ll swim?” Manning asks.

“What I know about tanks wouldn’t fill a matchbox,” Frangie says. “But I guess—”

An explosion cuts her short, a muffled boom, somewhere between Frangie’s position and the still invisible coast of France.

“That’s a ranging shot,” Frangie says, feeling terribly knowledgeable with her two green companions, having spent time with an artillery battalion in North Africa. “You fire one to see where it lands. Then you adjust your aim and cut loose.”

The cutting loose starts right on cue. Straining to listen, Frangie hears the distant popping sounds of the shore guns firing. Seconds later come deeper, muffled explosions that send up pillars of water like something summoned by an angry Neptune.

“Are they shooting at us?” Deacon asks.

“Not yet,” Frangie says, glancing around to make sure no more experienced soldier is sneering at her presumed expertise. “Most likely we’re still too far out at sea.”

From a mile or more behind the LSTs comes an eruption of noise and fire and smoke, as the navy’s big battleships and cruisers return fire, hurling far larger projectiles far further. The sound is like a loud belly flop, a violent sound that bounces off the water, followed instantly by a deeper boom that extends out into a rumbling bass note.

The naval fire becomes general, fiery tulips wreathed in smoke, explosions that sometimes dwarf the ships themselves. It’s like a marching band made up of nothing but drummers, all pounding, pounding, firing ton after ton of high explosives toward shore. Lights like distant fireflies twinkle on the shore as the shells, each as heavy as a small automobile, land and blow apart men and machines.