Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

Frangie hears it all as if it is a distant radio play. She is on a wheeled gurney, parked for the moment in a bustling corridor of a stuffy building with walls painted green halfway up and tan the rest of the way. She has noted the paint. She has noted the ceiling. She has noted the dim lights and the smell of alcohol swabs and ammonia.

She is a package for the moment, a bit of parcel post awaiting an address. She tells herself it’s g

ood for a medic like herself to know what it’s like for the soldiers who survive and can reach a hospital. But mostly she is bored. Bored and worried and depressed.

She had lain offshore on the British ship for three days before being off-loaded and sent on her various bewildering journeys through converted warehouses, on and off trucks, in and out of ambulances, fed haphazardly, treated with minimal kindness and no personal attention, seldom addressed and never by name.

She was an object to be handled, shunted here and there, always accumulating more carbon copies on her chart.

Depression has taken hold. It feels now as if her brain is a dull, heavy thing made of iron. She seems to have to consciously think about breathing, not because of her injuries—though deep breaths do hurt—but simply because breathing seems a pointless chore. She starts letters she does not finish. She has just enough—barely enough—energy and focus to thumb through a handful of magazines she’s lifted and concealed beneath her sheet, some English, some American, all months out of date.

One picture in a three-month-old Life magazine holds her for several minutes. It’s an advertisement of sorts for International Harvester. It’s one of many war-themed ads, this one showing a color sketch of an army field unit, men in the foreground working to repair a tank. It catches her eye because the tank is strangely tilted on the edge of a crater in a way that reminds her of the tank she crawled under. There are a dozen or more men, many shirtless, all wearing obsolete World War I helmets.

All white, all men, she notices. International Harvester does not seem to think their tractors are ever used by coloreds or women, though Frangie has seen both.

Frangie idly thumbs all the way through the magazine. There is a shockingly revealing photo of actress Burnu Acquanetta, nude behind carefully positioned venetian blinds. She is called the “Venezuelan Volcano,” though every black person who follows Hollywood knows she is just a colored girl with some Indian mixed in. Life magazine would never have allowed a similarly risqué picture of a white woman. Frangie feels a little . . . immoral . . . just looking at the picture.

The magazine also has photos of a union hall, workers awaiting defense jobs. Here there are women, but no black faces. Then, there’s an article and photos of farmworkers. All white. Defense workers. All white. Soldiers and sailors and airmen, and all are white. Here and there stands a woman soldier, never photographed, usually drawn as voluptuous and made up in a way that in Frangie’s experience the real female soldiers are very definitely not, lipstick being of little use on a face that hasn’t been washed in a week.

There’s a feature article on eight couples where the husband is off at war. In all eight pictures both man and woman grin like idiots, like they’re looking forward to it all. My, won’t war be fun! And all are white.

In the entire magazine, of hundreds of drawings and photos, thousands of faces, three are black: the seminude actress, a reporter for a black newspaper shown taking notes, and an illustration with a slave in the background.

Not until she turns to a women’s magazine—Woman’s Weekly—does she see anything about women at war. But the article is mostly nonsense while the drawn illustrations are absurd: women in tight-fitting uniforms, top buttons open, hair out of a shampoo ad, lips luscious and red, carbines cocked at improbable angles.

“Not sure which is worse,” Frangie mutters.

After a full day of being shuttled this way and that while reading the magazines cover to cover and then back again, Frangie lands at last in a makeshift hospital in the countryside north of Portsmouth. It is a former Home Guard camp, two dozen long, narrow, hastily constructed huts, three of which have been designated with stenciled signs as a “Colored Ward.”

She is still weak and weighed down by feelings of sadness, which she knows from her training are common in injured soldiers. But knowing her depression is common does nothing to lessen it.

“Marr, Francine, Corporal,” a chubby black nurse reads from Frangie’s chart.

Frangie nods, not bothering to explain that she’s usually called Frangie.

“Well, Francine, it seems you’re going to live and walk and eat solid food. You’re slated for a nice long rest and rehabilitation.”

“They’re not sending me home?”

The nurse shrugs and smiles. “Believe it or not, the generals and such never do ask me my opinion on who should go home.”

Frangie nods.

“Got the blues?”

Frangie shrugs. But now the nurse is frowning. “Marr. Marr. That’s an unusual last name. I have the feeling in the back of my head that I heard it somewhere before.”

“Maybe so,” Frangie says flatly. Then, with an effort, “What’s your name, Nurse?”

“Carmela DeVille.” The nurse waits, expecting a smile, then, slightly crestfallen, says, “That’s not really my name. I do like the sound of it, though. I’m Joan Lewis, pleased to meet you. I’ll have dinner brought round, you missed the usual dinner hour, but I will plead medical necessity! You need a good, healthy hot meal.”

Frangie falls asleep minutes later—or at least into a hazy, unsettled, restless dream state—and wakes after an indeterminate amount of time to a voice that pierces right down to her sleeping subconscious.

“Jesus H. Christ. I don’t believe it.”

A male voice, a confident but concerned voice. A voice that sounds . . .

She opens her eyes and looks up at the face of her brother, Harder Marr. He is holding a metal tray piled high with creamed chipped beef, mashed potatoes, corn, and a biscuit.