Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

Did Mommy kill Germans? Yes, Mommy did.

They reach the far hedgerow and now Rio moves a few steps at a time, stopping to listen, sniffing the breeze for the smell of men hiding. But the only smells are leaves and grass and the oh-so-familiar scent of cows. And the mournful groaning of those beasts is the only sound.

After half an hour she stops and signals to Molina to come closer. “Hedgerow is clear. For now at least.”

Molina exhales as if for the first time in a long while.

“Let me ask you, Molina, where are you from?”

“Me? I’m from a little town in Northern California, you wouldn’t know it.”

“Try me.”

“It’s called Petaluma. We—”

“Petaluma! Hah. Well, I’ll be,” Rio says fondly. “I know Petaluma well. I’m from Gedwell Falls!”

The two hometowns are just an hour’s drive apart.

“Well, gosh, we’re practically neighbors,” Molina says. Then, feeling she’s being overly familiar, she adds, “Sarge.”

“What do your folks do?”

“My father is a farmhand, my mother, well, she takes in wash and bakes pies for a diner.”

“Is that so?” Rio says. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever milked a cow? Because those cows are in a bad way. I was thinking, maybe . . . since the hedgerow is clear . . .”

She sees Molina’s smile in the dark.

Most of the milk is squirted onto the grass as Rio and Molina squat beneath the cows and perform the job so familiar to both women. But both also fill their helmets with the fresh liquid and carry the warm, cream-rich goodness back to the squad.

The helmets are passed around like a communion chalice, and what’s left Rio gives to Cat. Molina immediately acquires a nickname: Milkmaid. The name could as easily be applied to Rio, but there are some things you don’t call your sergeant with the big, scary knife. At least not in her hearing.

And then the artillery barrage comes, and Rio’s squad cringes at the bottom of their freshly dug holes, praying to their various gods for deliverance, licking cream mustaches from their faces, and thinking of home.

14

FRANGIE MARR—OMAHA BEACH, NAZI-OCCUPIED FRANCE

“Hey there, short stuff!”

Frangie sits on dry sand with knees raised, head hanging down. Daylight has come in the form of filtered sunlight and intermittent soft rain. She is surrounded by the detritus of battlefield medicine: torn paper packaging from bandages, bloody gauze, syringes, and the discarded weapons and gear of those men and women who had no further use for them.

The field aid station has been set up. Doctors and nurses are ashore. And newer, fresher medics have followed the infantry breakout and are now up past the bluff.

Frangie looks up wearily, wondering who is calling to her and at the same time feeling the vague sense that she knows this voice. Then she breaks out in a wide smile.

“Well, if it isn’t Sergeant Walter Green of Iowa,” she says.

“Don’t get up,” he says. “I’ll sit.”

He’s a bit taller than Frangie and quite a bit broader, a young black man with an older face and spectacles that have earned him the nickname Professor. And some new stripes as well.

“They made you a master sergeant?” Frangie wonders.

He flops beside her, turning toward her with unmistakable pleasure, though she’s pretty sure she’s never looked more of a mess. Her sleeves, lower trouser legs, and chest are stiff with dried blood. Her boots are crusted with human excrement. She is covered in sand and dust. There is sand in her socks, her underpants, her bra, her ears, her nose, and her mouth.

“You are a sight for sore eyes,” Walter says.