Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

They are. They are openly betting on his death! Right in front of him!

Something changes, some scent on the breeze perhaps, because both Pang and Geer check their weapons, ratcheting back the slides to check for rounds in the chamber and look for any grit that might cause a jam. Joe follows suit, fingers trembling as they travel over his M1.

Pang and Geer take deep swigs from their canteens, and Joe copies them.

Suddenly, without warning, they are clambering up and out of their foxholes. From off to the left comes the sound of Sherman tanks revving and treads grinding over foliage.

“Where are they?” Joe asks frantically, walking at a steady if shaky pace alongside Pang and Geer. Geer has a BAR hang

ing from a strap, leveled at waist height, with an ammo belt looped over his shoulder.

Geer pauses. “Pang! Give me a scratch, I can’t reach with this damned BAR!”

“I am not scratching your crotch, Geer!”

“It’s my back, come on, Pang!” As they walk Pang scratches Geer’s back vigorously while Geer mutters, “Fugging lice.”

Ahead Joe sees a clearing, a space between these woods and identical woods farther away. It’s like a road cut through . . . no, of course, it’s a firebreak. Joe’s seen firebreaks hiking in Vermont.

Through stumps of blasted trees Joe sees Sherman tanks veering right, heading on an intercept path with the infantry. To his amazement he spots a Negro head beneath the leather tanker’s helmet of the first tank’s commander.

“They’re colored!” Joe says.

“Yeah,” Geer mutters. “This war’s gone all to hell. Women, Japs, Nigras, hell, see that fellow over there? He’s a goddamn limey!”

Joe glances and sees a handsome-looking fellow with a ginger beard darkened by soot and grime. He’s walking a pace ahead of Richlin. Joe spots a wicked knife on Richlin’s leg, and it does not reassure him. It is obviously not regulation.

Brrrrrrrrt! Brrrrrrrrrt! Brrrrrrrt!

“What’s that?”

Neither Pang nor Geer bothers to answer, and then the American tanks open up, .30 and .50 caliber machine guns, nearer and louder. A hollow katush! followed instantly by an explosion, as a tank fires its cannon.

“All right, new guy, stay behind the tanks!” Geer yells, and he and Pang break from the trees and run to unite with other soldiers, all huddling in the shadow of the tanks, moving at a fast march, wanting speed almost as much as the tankers do.

For a terrible moment Joe is not sure he can follow. The noise is like nothing he’s ever imagined. Machine guns, cannon, and now mortars, ricochets zinging, and voices yelling in rage, in pain, in fear! It’s a deafening howl, the noise you could imagine hearing if you pulled the cover back on hell for a minute.

Flit! Flit! Thunk!

The tree trunk nearest to Joe pops splinters from a bullet wound. Not all the German fire is stopped by the bulk of the tanks.

Pang and Geer are already dozens of yards away, paying Joe no attention.

Just say you’re a coward! They’ll let you go home!

No, not that. Joe’s father was old, old enough to have fought with Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba. His grandfather had been a Union captain who’d fought at Antietam and had lost a leg to a Confederate minié ball.

Joe Pastor moves. Stiff legged. A step. Another. A sudden, overpowering urge to be with Pang and Geer. He runs, runs down the side of the tanks, yelling as he goes, yelling to stop hearing the whiz of bullets past his ears.

He reaches Pang and Geer and, panting, trots alongside them, keeping both of them, as well as the tank, between himself and the murdering German fire.

Ka-BAM!

A tank blows up.

A jeep emblazoned with Red Cross brassards and driven by a tall colored woman—with a colored man and a colored girl so small Joe thinks that she might be a child—goes tearing past, seemingly indifferent to the danger.

“If they’re not worried—”