Soldier Girls in Action (Front Lines 1.50)

“Well, that was impolite,” Rio says with a grin and tosses another grenade. She drops to her belly, rolls a dozen feet to her left, and then edges forward to be able to see over the side from a different angle. She comes back, stands up, edges back from the danger zone, and says, “Stick, there’s some kind of a cave opening. It’s not deep or they’d be all the way in, but it’s enough to give cover to three or four Krauts. There’s an opening on the north side, that must be how they see the road, but I’m guessing it’s a long drop from there, so that’s why they don’t just scoot.”

Stick says, “Well, heck.”

Sergeant Cole, his voice straining, yells up, “How’s it look?” The sound echoes eerily, bouncing around the rocks.

“We’re okay, Sarge,” Stick yells. “Got maybe three or four of them left under cover.”

“Your call, Stick,” Cole shouts.

“Give us a minute.” Sticklin reloads, and Rio pops in a fresh clip as well. She’s burned through very little ammo, unlike Sticklin, whose big BAR is smoking hot.

“We’re out of grenades,” Stick summarizes. “And getting thirsty. If the squad comes over the ridge they’ll still get chewed up.”

“We could use a rope,” Richlin says.

Stick laughs. “What are you, a Ranger now, Richlin?”

“We can send Spats down for rope and more grenades. Lower me down, and I can sling grenades into the cave before they can get a shot at me.”

“No, if anyone’s going down it’s me,” Sticklin says.

“Stick, how am I going to lower a big old thing like you down there?”

“Get some of the others up here, we can do it.”

“That’s exposing someone else to fire. The Krauts are awake, and they’ve still got a line on the ridge. Someone can toss a rope; we can’t toss a GI.”

It may occur to some of you ladies that the two GIs were more willing to expose me to possible fire than their fellow soldiers. I suppose I could have resented it, but this squad has been together since basic training. They are friends, and more than friends: family. While I am just so much dead weight.

The decision is made in that silent, tacit way that becomes second nature to soldiers doing deadly work, and your humble reporter is sent scuttling back down the ravine. It takes me ninety minutes to make the steep, cramped, circuitous round trip, but at last I come back with a hundred feet of rope, six grenades, and, most welcome of all to Stick and Rio, two canteens.

Stick uncoils the rope, ties a loop at the bottom for Rio’s feet, a second loop three feet above that to pass around her waist, and a third, smaller loop to serve as a handhold.

“Well, aren’t you just the cowboy, with all that fancy rope work,” Richlin teases.

Richlin checks her clip and slings her rifle over her shoulder, muzzle down. It will be awkward to use, almost impossible as she’s flattened against the rock wall, so on an impulse I pull out my Colt and offer it to her.

“Take this. You can stick it in your belt, and it’ll be easier than trying to use a rifle.”

“Thanks,” Rio says. “A revolver, huh? I’ve never fired a revolver.”

“It’s single action. You have to cock it each time you shoot. You get six tries.”

The young woman sticks my father’s gun in the back of her waistband. I see her loosen her knife in its sheath. She nods to Sticklin, who wraps the rope around himself and ties it off, looping it over a none-too-solid boulder.

I can’t just stand there taking notes, so I grab the rope in front of Sticklin, adding my pampered civilian’s strength to the war effort.

It’s awkward getting Richlin harnessed and then lowered over the side, and it suddenly dawns on your humble correspondent, right then at that perilous moment, that I have forgotten that Private Richlin is a female. She has become just another GI going into harm’s way, like thousands of other young men and young women fighting for our liberty.

“Don’t stop to take a cigarette break, Stick,” Rio says as she slowly slips from view.

Sticklin and I play the rope out, with the muscular corporal bearing most of the weight as the rope slides taut over sharp rock.

Do the Krauts hear? Do they know what that sliding sound means? Do they know a deadly and determined farm girl is coming to kill them? I am near the edge and can see that Rio has her left hand in the loop and it’s biting into her flesh. Her weight is all on her left foot as her right foot fends off the wall of rock. Her free right hand holds a grenade, pin loosened so she can pull it with her teeth. Suddenly a lizard pops out of a hole level with her face, and she yelps in surprise. She misses her swing and crashes into the rock wall, sending down a trickle of gravel.

It’s all the Krauts need to guess what’s happening.

A butternut desert uniform of the Afrika Korps emerges beneath Rio, rifle raised, taking aim, a shot anyone could hit, a shot that will pierce her crotch and plow its way up through her internal organs like a steel drill bit ripping her apart from the inside.