Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

“Well, fashion magazines are kind of sparse,” Jenou says absently.

Jack says, “It’s September. Back to school.”

That earns a meager laugh followed by a gloomy silence, which is broken by Jillion Magraff, who offers up a bit of impromptu poetry.

The one-one-nine

always on the line,

Shootin’ up the Kraut,

Runnin’ in and out,

Pissin’ in our pants,

Eatin’ out o’ cans,

Wishin’ we were home,

Feelin’ all alone.

The one-one-nine,

Where life is j-u-u-u-s-t fine.

That earns some laughs and even some applause. Magraff is a useless soldier, worse than useless really, downright dangerous. But she can be amusing at times when she isn’t fleeing in terror or sunk in a distracted funk drawing in her little sketch pad.

But Cat, too, has some skill with verse, and she offers hers up as a song set to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.”

Yankees came to Africa,

To run away from Heinies,

Floated off to Sicily,

To run a race with Limeys.

Yankee doodles keep it up,

Yankee doodle dandies,

Mind the mortars and the mines,

And keep your shovels handy.

“Hold up there, Preeling. Who the hell are you calling a Yankee?” Geer, of course, dropping into the group, but welcome since he’s brought a new bottle of the possibly sacred wine. Rio takes a long pull.

“You, you hillbilly,” Cat says. “We’re all Yanks as far as the Krauts are concerned.”

Geer considers this for a moment. “Yeah, okay. But it doesn’t set well with me. Not at all.”

At which point Cat produces her second, and last, verse (so far):

Yankees went to Italy,

To visit Mussolini,

Found the bastard’s run away,