Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

Days pass in rain-filled holes. Nights pass the same way but with extra fear, because the nighttime is when the German patrols come out. Frangie and Deacon move from hole to hole, from tank to truck to half-track. They bandage and medicate, splint and transfuse, and load soldier after soldier onto the hood of Manning’s jeep for transport to the rear. And they nag. Nagging is a big part of the job. Mostly Frangie nags them to change their socks and dry their feet, because the old World War I plague of trench foot is back with a vengeance, here, just a few miles from the caved-in remains of those same World War I trenches.

The advance through the Hürtgen, so far as Frangie can tell, is not advancing. All that’s happening is that GIs are breaking down under the constant artillery and gunfire and cold and wet. And every now and then, everything goes suddenly nuts.

One of the white soldiers from the infantry down the line had come running, stark naked, through the battalion’s position, waving a white T-shirt in surrender the day before. He had come running right down the firebreak, which is all that separates them from the Germans. The only reason the Germans hadn’t shot the poor man was that they were too busy laughing. Frangie and Manning had tackled the fellow and both had smelled alcohol on him. The man was incoherent, hysterical, and thrashing about like a wild animal. Manning had applied some special field medicine: a pile-driver punch to the man’s belly, and then she and Frangie had dragged him away to safety.

“We’re going over to the attack,” Manning says breathlessly. She’s just come back from the field hospital with a jeepload of supplies and the latest gossip.

“I thought this already was an attack,” Frangie mutters.

“Who says we’re attacking?” Deacon demands.

“Says me, who overheard the colonel telling the captain, that’s who.” Manning then shares her loot from the rear-area trip: cigarettes, a nice new, as-yet-unstained stretcher, and a bar of actual Belgian chocolate, very different from the army-issued version in that it did not break teeth or give you the runs.

They share half the chocolate between the three of them, with Frangie pocketing the rest for her patients. The chocolate is impossibly smooth, sinfully rich, a glorious moment of pure pleasure. It’s almost as if God has reached down from heaven to say, “I know this is all terrible, but on the other hand . . . chocolate!”

An hour later the official word comes: they are digging out the tanks. The white infantry is coming to guard their flank. And together they are going to drive straight up the firebreak and pivot left into what the brass said was a weakly held sector of the German line.

The firebreak is about wide enough for two tanks running side by side, with the far side of that firebreak held by the Germans. It is along this firebreak that the tank battalion has stayed for days. The Germans attacked twice and were repulsed twice. The Americans attacked once and were driven back. Frangie imagines she can hear the ding-ding-ding of a bell signaling the next round in this endless, brutal prizefight.

Looking up through the Toothpick Forest, Frangie sees rain clouds above the jagged black dagger points. Which means that the planes will not be coming to help with the attack. Bad weather is the Kraut’s friend.

The attack is scheduled for midmorning to confuse the Germans, who’ve become accustomed to dawn attacks. The morning is spent backing the Shermans out of their dugouts, running ammo, and, in Frangie’s case, dealing with sprains, bruises, and mangled fingers.

The Germans hear the Shermans and have a good idea what’s coming, so they launch a heavy artillery barrage. They hit no tanks but do destroy a half-track, kill two men, and wound a woman who is tended by another medic, leaving Frangie free to think way too much about the coming attack.

Frangie, Deacon, and Manning sit in the jeep, well behind the tanks that now idle at the edge of the trees, ready to burst suddenly out into the firebreak, guns blazing. Frangie glances at her watch: H hour in thirty minutes. First . . .

A small spotter plane, a fragile J-3, drifts lazily above at treetop height as its pilot radios information back to the artillery far behind the line. Germans fire up at the plane but they, too, are limited by the terrain—no sooner do they see the plane than it is screened by tree trunks. By now the artillery has its fire mission: coordinates, types of ordnance, number of rounds. The spotter plane is there to assist with accuracy.

The first round from a 155 millimeter “Long Tom” whistles overhead and drops in a fiery crash in the woods on the far side of the firebreak.

Thirty seconds later a second round, and this one lands right in the first row of trees.

Up in the J-3 a pilot calls on his radio, signaling that the second shot was on target, and what happens next is simply stunning. Frangie has been on the receiving end of German artillery, and it is accurate and shattering. But it has never had the sheer intensity of what is now unleashed from the distant sky-pointing muzzles of 105 howitzers and 155 Long Toms. The woods opposite boil with fire and smoke. Entire trees go twirling through the air. Great gouts of dirt fly skyward. And it goes on and on, an ancient god’s temper tantrum, a pounding, beating assault, an annihilation.

When at last the shells stop falling, Frangie hears the German cries, the counterpart of “Medic!”

Out of nowhere the captain walks by Frangie’s jeep, yelling to a radio operator hurrying to keep pace.

“Ask ’em when the hell we are jumping off! The goddamned Krauts are on their asses, we should go now! Now!”

They do not go now, now. They wait as the minutes tick slowly by, minutes during which the Germans can be heard just across the firebreak in woods identical to those sheltering Frangie.

The Germans are recovering. Quickly.

The minutes drag by, and with every lost minute the Germans unpack another crate of Panzerfausts, redig a collapsed fighting hole, evacuate their wounded, and replace them with fresh troops.

Frangie feels something change. There’s a fresh, chilly breeze, portending another bout of rain. She glances at the soldiers closest to her: Sergeant Frankie Wallace in command of the tank named Firecracker. She winks down at Frangie. Frangie lets her gaze drift to Firecracker’s bow gunner, P.D., his head up through his hatch. He does not wink. She cannot hear over the rough idle of the Sherman, but she can see that his teeth are chattering.

Finally, long after the dust has settled on the German positions, the signal comes. The Shermans lurch forward, crashing into view, a line of half a dozen tanks. They advance in neat order and pivot right as white infantry drifts out of the woods to walk in their lee.

It is a terrifying spectacle for Frangie. She has never gotten out of her head Sergeant Moore’s wisdom that the Krauts will attack a tank before anything else. The Germans have heard the Shermans. They’ve had far too long to recover and prepare, and here are the tanks passing right before them, as exposed as floats at a parade, their weakly armored flanks in direct line of sight for the Germans.

Not that the tanks are trying to sneak by. Their machine guns hurl tracer rounds into the bushes and trees, their cannon erupt at intervals, firing at point-blank range. But despite the suppressing fire, the first Panzerfaust explodes against a turret. The commander buttons up but then reemerges moments later: his tank is unharmed. The other tanks veer their machine guns toward the source of the Panzerfaust, but the Germans have long since learned to fire and move, fire and move.

A second Panzerfaust comes streaking and misses; a third hits a tank in the treads, and it veers out of control, practically running over its own infantry, who scramble to avoid being crushed.

Five tanks now.