Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

Rio starts to speak then sees that Stick has it. “Sir, the Krauts can lie low in the trees, wait for us to pass by, and then cut us off.”

“You will patrol through the trees either side of the road,” Horne says as if he can’t believe Stick is arguing with him.

“Sir, in the dark? Through woods that may be mined?”

Horne stands up. “I have assured the colonel that my platoon will handle the job.”

Stick, Cat, Rio, and probably even the new sergeant, Pablo Mercer, have noticed that: a) no mention is made of Captain Passey, meaning that he probably opposed the idea; and b) Horne keeps saying “you” and not “we.”

“Who all is coming, sir?” Rio asks. She implies nothing by her tone. At least nothing she can be court-martialed for.

“Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie squads; HQ squad stays behind to remain in radio contact and coordinate.”

Rio nods and works mightily to avoid a sneer. Once again, Horne will be far from the action. She meets Stick’s eye and sees confirmation there: Stick is to lead the bulk of the platoon while Horne sits by his radio waiting for news.

They are three squads with a nominal strength of thirty-six soldiers and an actual strength of twenty-seven. The Hürtgen has been deadly, and no platoon anywhere in the Hürtgen is near nominal strength. Some platoons have been so badly mauled that their half-dozen or so survivors have been added to a different platoon entirely.

The first mile is a relatively relaxed walk since they are passing through American-held and engineer-cleared areas. But after that they are twenty-nine people walking in almost pitch-black while trying to spot wires and fresh-turned earth—things that are almost impossible to see in bright daylight.

“Where the hell are the sappers?” Jack asks, using the British word for combat engineers.

“Yeah, you noticed that,” Geer says sourly.

“Beebee, you have that chain?” Rio asks.

Beebee unwraps a twelve-foot length of heavy chain from around his neck. The chain is bright metal. He fills a musette bag with rocks and dirt then uses a strap buckle to attach the heavy bag to the chain.

“All right, people, this is slow enough, so no dawdling. Geer will heave the chain. It should catch any wires. And it may set off any antipersonnel mines. But stay on the path! Geer.”

Geer heaves the musette bag and the chain trails behind it. The bag goes fifteen feet, trailing the chain snake. Nothing. They advance. Heave. Nothing. Advance. Heave. Nothing. Advance.

This goes on until Geer has been worn out and is swapped for Chester, who is then swapped for Cat, who then swaps for one of her people. Ten feet every two minutes; 528 heaves for a mile.

Jack says, “Three hundred feet an hour. That’s not exactly a quick march.”

“You in a hurry?” Rio asks him.

He grins. “No hurry whatsoev—”

The musette bag blows up. It has landed on a mine.

“Definitely no hurry,” Jack says fervently.

Rio knows they are in a sort of legal gray zone. They are carrying out orders, just doing it so slowly that the objective might never be reached. Preparing a new weight for the chain wastes five minutes, and Stick comes walking up the line, shaking his head.

“I know what you two are doing. But Horne isn’t having it. I reported our position and . . .” He shrugs.

“These woods are mined, Stick,” Cat protests. “We just set off a Bouncing Betty that would have cost some poor SOB his family jewels.”

“I know,” Stick says grimly.

“What does Horne expect us to do? You see any engineers?”

“I can’t see my hand in front of my face, Cat,” he says, raising his voice, which is a sure sign Stick does not like the orders he’s transmitting. “But we have two miles just to reach the road, and at this rate we’ll get there around noon tomorrow!”

A compromise is reached. The three squads will advance with one GI on point. That GI will drag the chain behind him to snag any wires or mines his feet don’t. No one will spend more than ten minutes walking point.

It’s a grim lottery. It is also not something you ask unless you’re willing to do it yourself, so Rio takes the first ten minutes and extends it to fifteen, just to drive home the point. She walks carefully but at a normal pace. Cat takes the next round, and her chain, dragging behind, sets off a booby trap that sprays her with dirt but only flecks the back of her thigh with a piece of shrapnel.