Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

There is no question that what’s being thrown at France is greater than what the Germans are tossing back.

“I suppose it’s wrong to think about the poor souls over there in France,” Deacon says.

Manning snorts. “More the navy kills, the fewer left to shoot our boys. Or us. Fug the Krauts. They’re worse than our own white people. That’s a whole country full of KKK. Fug the Krauts.”

Deacon shoots her a disapproving look but says nothing. He’s maybe as old as thirty, with hair already beating a retreat from his brow. Somewhat to her surprise, Deacon has given Frangie no trouble. He easily and automatically defers to her rank and title, works hard and conscientiously, and is good with the GIs. Frangie does not know either Manning or Deacon well, but she likes them both, though of course there’s no way to know how they will behave later.

The naval shelling continues; endless explosions, endless bouts of fire, now joined by the destroyers so near that Frangie can smell the acr

id smoke of their violent discharges.

Down in the LCT, the Sherman DDs are inflated and squared away.

“They look like they’re ready to go,” Deacon points out.

“We’re too far out, surely,” Frangie says. The sea is still agitated, endless marching ranks of white-topped waves slap the sides of the LST, sometimes with enough force to send jets of freezing water up and over the gunwale.

“I suppose they know what’s best,” Manning says with a confidence Frangie does not share.

The sky is no longer black but a gloomy steel gray, when the LCT slows and drifts away from the LST. The LCT’s ramp begins to wind down. There comes the sound of the Sherman engines gunning. Exhaust smoke drifts.

Waves swarm over the lowered ramp of the LCT, surging up toward the tank deck. Cross seas roll the small ship with enough force to send one crewman staggering into a steel ladder.

“Head wound,” Deacon mutters. “Sulfa, bandage, check his eyes to see if they’re both pointed the same direction.” He laughs.

“If they don’t, send him to the aid station. If they do, send him back up,” Frangie says.

Deacon sighs. “That’s the part I don’t like. I guess I feel like any GI that gets hurt should get a ticket home.”

“Don’t ever say that where an officer can hear you,” Frangie says. “We aren’t here to send them home, we’re here to mend them just enough to get them back in the fight.”

Deacon nods but without agreement.

The first of the DD tanks rolls in ungainly, even rather comical, ponderousness down the ramp. The very unboatlike skirt rises at the water’s edge, coming up like a sleeve to all but conceal the tank, which wallows in a sort of cereal bowl. The Sherman weighs just short of 67,000 pounds, and the skirt does not look adequate to the job of keeping it afloat. The tank commander sits with his upper body out of the top hatch, leather tank helmet on his head, goggles down over his eyes to ward off the spray.

“It floats!” Manning says.

“Huh,” Frangie says.

The amphibious tank churns slowly away, an overly heavy, awkward boat, still more than a mile from a shoreline that is only now becoming visible in growing light.

A second DD tank clanks down the ramp and splashes heavily into the water, then, like the first, begins to push its way through the waves.

At least, Frangie thinks, the rain has stopped. For now.

The third tank rolls but as it enters the water a big swell shoves the LCT sideways. The ramp swings left like a karate chop and crumples the flotation skirt of the DD tank. Green water rushes over the side, like a bucket being held down in a stream.

What happens next takes mere seconds.

The skirt on one side collapses completely. Water floods, rises quickly above the treads as crewmen pop up out of various hatches, all yelling. And then the entire thing, tank and skirts, seems to fall through the water. In seconds it disappears from view, leaving a swirling ring behind.

“Oh my God!” Frangie cries. Everyone on deck is yelling and pointing.

Flotation rings are thrown, a voice is heard on the public address system ordering rescue boats to be veered toward the doomed tank, but there are no bodies to be seen. The five-person crew is already at the bottom of the English Channel.

The deaths are too sudden. Five men dead without a shot coming close to them.

Deacon is whispering a prayer, and Frangie joins silently.