Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

Jenou turns to look. “What, now? Right now?”

Sergeants Mercer and Geer join her in a huddle, smoking and shooting dirty looks at Horne, who is striding away toward the castle with his gloomy sergeant, Billy O’Banion, in tow.

“We’ve got two squads, barely,” Rio says. “No kitchen, no supply line we can count on, and the people already here, most of ’em, came straight from the Hürtgen, just like us. Basically, we’re at the bottom of a steep V. If the Krauts get the tops of the ridges, they can drop plunging fire all day long. If they take the road north, we’re cut off, may be already.”

“What’s the good news?” Geer asks sourly.

“The good news? We have a river. Plenty of drinking water,” Rio says.

“Fugging perfect,” Geer says. “Light pack?”

Rio shakes her head. “Everything the people can carry. Ammo and food. Mercer? You’ve got a bazooka team in your squad. They any good?”

Mercer shakes his head. “Not so far.”

“Everyone’s GI insurance paid up?” Geer says. It’s an old joke by now, and no one laughs.

They must cross a stone bridge, and on the other side Rio has everyone top off their canteens in the river and drink their fill. The face of the ridge is right there, right before them, five hundred near-vertical meters of dense fir forest. The trees here still have branches and graying pine needles, unlike the charred toothpick trees of the Hürtgen.

Counting the various random noncombat soldiers they’ve managed to dragoon, they are twenty-four GIs not counting Geer, Mercer, Rio, and Pettyfer, not even half a platoon.

“All right,” Rio says, grabbing a tree trunk. “Follow me.”

PART IV

THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE

Haven’t you heard? They’ve got us surrounded—the poor bastards.

—Unknown American soldier at the Battle of the Bulge

LETTERS SENT

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Pang,

My name is Luther Geer. I was with your son when he died.

I have to tell you something about him and me. I didn’t like Pang at first. But we were together in Italy, and now France and Germany, and what happened is that over a long time of being in this squad together I got so I liked him.

He was a good soldier. He was brave as, hell, any GI I have met. I hope you are very proud of him, because you should be.

Maybe after the war I could come and see you and tell you more. I’m not one for letter writing so much as talking.

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Anyway. I called him Jappo, and he called me Hillbilly. Maybe you wouldn’t guess it from that, but Pang was my friend. And I am sorry as I can be that he is gone.

Sincerely,

Cpl. Luther Geer

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Sticklin,

I hope you don’t mind me writing despite us not knowing each other, but I knew your son Dain well. We were together all the way from basic training.

Right from the start, Stick—that’s what everyone called him—stood out. Before any of us in that group were even close to being real soldiers, Stick already was. He worked hard at it, and he was very good at his job. I guess I can’t even begin to count how many long conversations I had with Stick in camps and foxholes and boats and trucks. I admired and envied how much he knew about history and different places and why the world is like it is.

Dain Sticklin was everything you could ever want in a friend or a sergeant. If I ever felt like I had a big brother, it was Stick. Losing him was like a knife in my heart. But I know your pain and sorrow must be deeper and more terrible still.