Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

The soldiers looking to her are not all hers. Some are not even from the platoon. A bullet hits a man she doesn’t know in the face and explodes out of the back of his head, carrying his helmet away on a geyser of blood and brain matter.

Rio yells, “Ready! Go!”

10

FRANGIE MARR—OMAHA BEACH, NAZI-OCCUPIED FRANCE

The disembarkation plan calls for Frangie and the rest of the tank battalion medics to come last, once all the tanks and half-tracks are unloaded. Her jeep is on the upper deck and will have to be lowered by elevator to the tank deck once that space is clear of higher priority traffic.

The beach is close, coming closer as the LST’s skipper brings the ship in. Frangie feels contact, a slight lurch, as the hull touches ground. She hears a sound of steel grinding on sand, followed immediately by the whir of electric motors winching open the great bow doors.

From her high-up vantage point Frangie can see much of the beach. Even to a noncombatant the problem is clear: a narrow beach and a tall cliff. Machine gun fire from the top of the cliff is a symphony, with a loud zipper noise to the left answered by one from the right, volumes rising or falling on the breeze, sometimes five or six firing at once, their sounds joining and then separating.

The artillery fire is more sporadic, with shells dropping on the sand and in the surf and out to sea, sending up pillars of sand and smoke here, water there, a half-track, a jeep, a boat, a body.

The navy continues to launch its massive shells, but they cannot be used against the cliff, not at the distances involved, not without risking hitting the Americans on the beach.

There are bodies. Bodies in the sand. Bodies floating in the water. And one man, quite near, near enough for Frangie to see the corporal’s stripes on his shoulder, lies in the surf, on his back, helpless to move as the waves crash and foam covers his mouth and nose and then retreats.

“He’ll drown,” Frangie says to no one. Manning and Deacon are in the jeep, back toward the stern, patiently waiting to drive it onto the elevator.

Frangie scans left and right, searching for medical teams. There’s a medic hunched over a man. Another crawling toward a woman with one leg blown off. Neither aware of, nor with time to do anything about, the man slowly drowning.

The bow doors are open, the ramp sliding into place like an extended tongue. The first tanks will be rolling off soon. But it will be a long time yet before Frangie can disembark. Far too long for the corporal so close, so close, so doomed and yet so easily saved.

Frangie does not decide to act, at least it doesn’t feel that way to her. It feels as if her body simply starts moving all on its own, running to the hatch leading down, piling down the stairs with her musette bags banging against the rails.

On the tank deck it is a roar of engines, all the tanks and half-tracks revving as the ship’s loadmasters rush about loosening the straps that had anchored the tanks to the decks. The commanders of each tank are visible, black men, black women, helmeted, ready, maybe even eager despite being afraid.

On a platform overlooking the scene Frangie hesitates for a second, just a second, to take it in. Colored soldiers from the north, east, west, and even the Deep South prepare to roll out and engage the white supremacist Nazis.

Someday I’ll tell Obal all about this, she thinks. Then, Someday maybe my own children too.

She spots Sergeant Moore. He’ll be the second tank off the boat. She weaves her way through preoccupied crew, jumping over a snaking hose being rapidly reeled in, and yells up at him.

“Sergeant Moore!”

He looks down in surprise. “Hey, Doc. I’m a bit busy here.”

“Can I bum a ride?”

The question is so preposterous that Moore laughs despite the tension that has turned his face rigid.

“What the hell?”

“There’s a man out there,” Frangie says. “He’s going to drown.”

Moore shakes his head, but it’s not a no. “You can climb up on the side,” he says. His tone of voice carries an unspoken If you’re fool enough to do it.

Easier said than done. She finds a steel handhold and plants her foot on a bogie wheel. She bangs her knee painfully on unforgiving armor plate, heaves herself up, and squats beside the turret.

“You need to jump right off soon as we’re out,” Moore says. “We’ll be traversing the turret.”

Frangie nods. Words feel hard now, like whatever part of her brain makes words has run out of gas.

Before them the ramp completes its descent. The beach is there, right there! And the German gunners are already aiming at the LST’s opening. Bullets ricochet off the bow doors and rattle through the hold, striking sparks.

The first tank revs its engines and clatters down the ramp. Moore’s tank lurches hard and rolls after it, and Frangie has to scramble to keep her perch. Out and through. Out and down, the treads splashing through the last inches of boiling surf, throwing up a sandstorm as the treads spin and then bite.