Soldier Girls in Action (Front Lines 1.50)

The ravine winds, climbs, descends, and seems to be avoiding altogether the German position.

Stick risks a whisper. “By now we must be all the way behind them.”

Rio nods. “What do you think?”

“Give it another twenty minutes. Then we give up and head back.”

But we don’t need twenty minutes because the ravine widens out and finally opens onto a starlit platform, a sort of mini-mesa fifty or sixty feet across.

Stick and Rio look around warily, guns leveled, safeties off. I have my father’s trusty old Colt Single Action in my waistband, but I know it’s a useles

s weapon in a world of Schmeisser submachine guns and grenades. And I must confess it is not recommended that reporters carry weapons—but it comforts me. At least it comforts me when it’s not sticking in my stomach.

We are exposed on the starlit mesa, but the only ones to see us are the looming mountain peaks and the stars above.

Stick motions us to lie down, and then he crawls on hands and knees to the westernmost edge. Slowly, cautiously, he looks over the side. He holds that position for a minute and then crawls silently back to join Rio and your intrepid if frightened reporter.

“We’re right on top of them. Sheer wall, no way for them to get at us. First light, we let ’em have it.”

The night wears on slowly. We are condemned prisoners waiting for execution at dawn. Or maybe, if we’re lucky, we’re the executioners.

Sticklin risks a cigarette, smoked behind cupped hands just in case there are eyes on those forbidding peaks. The moon rises and we can see our surroundings for the first time. We’re on a stone table, roughly octagonal, but with none of the sides exactly drawn according to Euclidean standards. We’re already thirsty, and that’s not going to get better with time.

The night is clear and very cold, but with no wind to double the torture. We do not talk. We lie on our backs and look up at the stars and contemplate our own insignificance, until, after an eternity, the sun begins to scatter gold here and there, illuminating this boulder and that scraggly bush.

We wait until the sun at last reaches down into the bowl where the enemy lies, unaware of what is about to befall him.

“Okay,” Sticklin whispers. “Richlin? You drop some pineapples. I’ll open up, and you start plunking anything you can see.”

“Yep,” Rio says tersely. She is on her back, M1 gripped firmly and held just over her chest. She rolls and sets her rifle carefully aside on bare rock, avoiding loose dirt or gravel that might cause a jam.

She produces four hand grenades and lines them up. She checks the pins to make sure they’re loose and ready. And then she nods to Sticklin.

He nods back, and Rio rises to her knees, right at the edge, wanting to see where she’s throwing even though it almost certainly exposes her to the possibility of enemy fire.

She grips the first grenade, pulls the pin, and simply lets it roll free from her outstretched hand. A second grenade follows. And a third. And that’s when the first grenade explodes with a flat, dull crumpf! sound. The second grenade is five seconds behind it, and now we hear shouts and cries in terrified German.

The third and fourth grenades go off, and still the surprised and baffled Germans don’t have a target. No one is shooting at us. No one is shooting at all until Dain Sticklin stands up, aims the BAR almost straight down, and starts firing.

B-R-R-R-T!

The noise is deafening but not loud enough to mute a scream of pain and a bellow of rage from below.

And then the freckle-faced farmer’s daughter from Gedwell Falls, California, stands up, her M1 aimed almost straight down. Sticklin fires in short, disciplined bursts. Richlin takes her time, and for a while it seems she won’t shoot. Then bang! and Richlin’s shoulder jerks slightly from the recoil.

The Germans have located their enemy now and are shooting up. But they’re firing into the sun at targets they can barely see and can’t hope to reach with grenades.

Richlin fires again. And again. Each time the wait, each time the careful aim, each time the gentle squeeze on the trigger. And more often than not, each round is followed by a cry of pain from below.

The Krauts are fish in a barrel.

The BAR and rifle fire alternate, a burst, a second burst, and a single shot; a burst, a second burst, and a single shot. The two GIs fire without emotion, without flinching. And then Stick tells Rio to toss a few more grenades. Richlin takes two from him, pulls the pins, and drops them both together.

The explosions sharply reduce the firing from below.

Sticklin yells down, “Surrender, you damned fools!”

Some brave German who knows a little English yells a reply that delicacy forbids repeating here.