Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

“Hey, Sarge! We got a prisoner!”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Frangie says. “But you ne

ed to put the fear of God into Molina or she’s gonna lose some toes.”

Rio gives the medic a boost up and out, and Chester drops and sits at the edge of the hole, legs dangling. He has a piece of rope tied around the neck of a German soldier.

“Good work, Chester,” Rio says.

“What are you going to do with him?” Chester seems possessive of his prize.

“G2 says we send all prisoners to them for questioning,” Rio says. “Castain?”

“F-u-u-u-g!” comes the groan from the next hole, some seventy-five feet away. Their line is thin—very thin, with far too much space between foxholes.

Jenou crawl-walks over. “What?”

“Prisoner.”

Jenou’s eyes travel from Rio to the German to Chester. “Ah,” she says.

“Take him down the hill to company,” Rio says. “Take um . . . take Beebee, maybe he’ll see something to scrounge. I’ll expect you back before nightfall.”

It is all coded speech and coded looks. A little show for the benefit of some of the newer, greener troops, those whose notions of right and wrong had been formed in churches and synagogues and conversations around the dinner table and have not yet been mangled and twisted and rearranged by too much experience of war.

The prisoner is SS, and while the American GIs have forgotten the names of a hundred Italian villages, and a hundred more French and Belgian towns, one place-name is burned deep into the minds of every American soldier, never to be forgotten, never to be forgiven.

Malmédy.

Jenou locates Beebee who, after walking the early morning patrol with Chester, is attempting to hide in his foxhole and sleep. But Jenou pokes him with the butt of her carbine.

“Come on, Beeb. Let’s go for a nice walk in the woods.”

They slog along, taking turns holding the German’s rope.

“Kamerad? Amis?” the German says from time to time in a pleading voice.

“We taking him to company?” Beebee asks.

Jenou gives him a look, and Beebee falls silent. The German senses something very wrong and starts again, “Kamerad? Kamerad. Amis! No Hitler! America Deutschland, yes? Kamerad?”

“All right, far enough,” Jenou says. She stops and uses the muzzle of her carbine to push the German back against a tree. She reaches into her coat and pulls out a cigarette, which she gives to the German.

Now he knows.

His hands shake so badly he drops the cigarette, bends to pick it up, and nearly falls over when he stands.

“Nein, nein, nein,” he pleads as Jenou lights her Zippo and holds the flame to his cigarette. He reaches into his coat and comes out with an oilskin packet. Letters fall from his shaking fingers as he seeks for and finds a photograph. He holds it up for Jenou to see.

“Mein name ist Heinrich, ja? Heinrich Weber.” He beats on his chest. His name is Heinrich. “Meine kinder.” He points at the picture of a handsome, severe woman, posed with a younger version of the prisoner and two children, a sly-eyed girl of maybe seven and a little boy held in the prisoner’s arms. “Das ist Helga und kleine Fritz.”

Helga. And little Fritz.

“Kamerad,” the man pleads. Whether he has chosen to drop or his strength has simply given way, he falls to his knees. He clutches his hands in prayer around the picture, holding it up as he says over and over again, “Meine kinder. Meine kinder. Bitte!”

My children, my children.

Please.