Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

Earlier the navy had served up an extra-generous breakfast of ham and eggs, biscuits and gravy, toast and flapjacks and coffee. The swabbie cooks had gone all in. But most of that food had been hurled over the side by now, or else was sloshing in the chilly bilgewater that seeps into her boots and numbs her toes.

She tells herself not to be afraid. She looks at Richlin. The sergeant’s no older than she is, no bigger really, no stronger. But Rio Richlin stands there, leaning against the hull like she’s waiting for a bus. She looks almost bored.

Across the water comes a sound of whistles, like a football coach summoning players. The public address speaker on the looming ship crackles to life, wishing them “Godspeed.”

The first part of the wait is over: the boats finish their final circuit, then form into a rough line and go straight for the beach, hundreds of Higgins boats and DUKWs, as the big naval guns fire over their heads.

There is no visible sun, but she knows that above the clouds it is rising. She sees pearly light silhouetting a town. The church steeple is a spike, an aiming point, a goal.

Between here and there is a mile of agitated water lacerated by fire from shore. The coxswain and his crew are on the lookout for mines, one crewman leaning out over the bow and peering forward. The hedgehogs are just coming visible, looking like broken children’s toys tossed by a giant into the surf.

“Okay, people,” Richlin says in a voice pitched for her squad, the squad at the very front of the boat. “Remember what I told you. If they put us on dry land, grab your gear. If they land us in water, drop everything but your weapons. If you sink, do not panic.”

Lupé glances back and sees Lieutenant Horne talking to Cat Preeling. Preeling, like Richlin, seems relaxed, as if this is a Sunday outing on a lake. Horne is far less calm. His face is frozen. Whatever he’s saying to Preeling, it seems to be just monosyllables.

Lupé turns to the remaining sergeant, Dain Sticklin. Stick is chewing gum. As she watches, he blows a pink bubble, then sucks it back in.

It’s an act, Lupé realizes. The sergeants, the veterans, they’re putting on an act. Pretending nonchalance.

The waves nearer to shore are taller, and the Higgins boat is bucking, smacking waves that smack back, sending shockwaves up through Lupé’s boots. Standing in the stubby superstructure at the back, the coxswain frowns intently at the sea before him. To the left a long line of boats, all bouncing along and—

Bah-whoosh!

An artillery shell lands near enough to spray Lupé. Fifty feet one way or the other and a boat would have gone up in—

Ba-whoosh!

A boat no more than two hundred yards down the line explodes. Lupé sees a body twirling in the air, rising, arms flailing, and for a frozen moment Lupé has the mad thought that the soldier is flying away, escaping the war. But then gravity reasserts control, and he falls back down into fire and smoke.

Lupé feels the coxswain back off on the engine, slowing momentarily, a reflex, then accelerating again.

Lupé is near the front with Rudy J. Chester and Hank Hobart and Dick Ostrowiz. There are six new members of Richlin’s squad, and she has put them all at the front.

Is this so the veterans can push them off if they freeze up?

Maybe, Lupé thinks. But she knows there’s a harsher logic to it as well: they are untested. The veterans, Pang and Geer, Castain and Stafford and Beebee, they have all proven their value, and she and the other new additions have not. Her life is worth less to Rio Richlin than theirs.

Lupé’s stomach rises in her throat, and she has to swallow bile.

Nearer now, the beach. Nearer. Lupé’s jaw aches from clenching. Her knees tremble.

The hedgehogs come thicker, closer together, steel beams welded together to form jagged steel pyramids, obstacles meant to tear the bottom out of any boat. Farther in is a different sort of obstacle, wooden logs like telephone poles propped on triangular bases and pointed like pretend cannon, meant to stop any ship that gets past the hedgehogs.

Smoke rises behind the bluff, and with a sinking feeling Lupé now sees what Richlin and the others saw: the bombs all fell behind the bluff. They have not wiped out the Kraut positions, they have not even created craters on the beach.

Massive concrete pillboxes line the top of the cliff, especially around cuts in the cliff face, the draws, up which the Americans must necessarily go. Some of the pillboxes are so massive it seems they would collapse the cliff with their sheer weight. From within the pillboxes German machine guns and light artillery fire with impunity. German mortars are positioned behind the pillboxes, heavy artillery farther back still.

Lupé glances at the gear at her feet. In addition to her usual load, there’s a musette bag filled with grenades. And a can of .30 caliber. Rudy J. Chester has been saddled with an additional BAR as well as his M1, either because he’s big and capable of carrying

the sixteen-pound hunk of steel and wood or because Richlin doesn’t like him.

The other BAR leans against the gunwale, Luther Geer’s hand steadying the barrel. With Pang and one of the newest squad members, Jenny Dial, they are the ones assigned the management of the light machine gun.

“Five minutes!” the coxswain yells over the thrum of the engines.

“Five minutes,” Lieutenant Horne calls out. “Grab your gear!” He sounds like a scared child, his voice wobbly.

Lupé lifts the musette bag full of grenades, resting the strap on her shoulder where she can easily shrug it off.