Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

Corporal Francine Marr distinguished herself for gallantry . . .

It goes on to describe how she had crawled beneath the tank. And then it talks about the day she was wounded in action and “Despite her own severe wounds, and with indifference to the enemy fire directed at her, Corporal Marr continued to treat injured soldiers . . .”

This last part baffles Frangie. She has a vague memory of trying to close a man’s stomach wound after she’d been injured, but the citation makes it seem she’d done more than that. Apparently she had treated three soldiers, saving one from almost certain death, before succumbing to her injuries and being evacuated.

“Well,” Frangie says to no one but a horse standing in the field. “I wonder what Harder will make of this?”

36

RAINY SCHULTERMAN—NAPLES, ITALY

Colonel Jon Herkemeier comes to see her every day. Sometimes he takes his lunch with her in the room they’ve given her all to herself. She has a balcony wide enough to accommodate a table and two chairs and, weather permitting, Rainy likes to be out of doors. Today, however, will not be an al fresco day. It is raining steadily and, like everyone else who thought Italy was always warm and sunny, Rainy has long since been disabused of that notion.

Rainy’s quarters are as luxurious as a five-star hotel. The room has high ceilings framed in massive wooden moldings. There are oil portraits on the wall, mostly gloomy, dark things showing various Italian notables in Renaissance tights and early-nineteenth-century uniforms. But one has caught her eye, a portrait of a thirtyish man with a bulbous nose and protruding eyes and an expression that suggests he is inclined to be amused. In fact he looks as if he is preparing a witty remark and will deliver it just as soon as the artist leaves him alone. It’s said to be a genuine Antonello da Messina, not an artist Rainy has heard of, but evidently somewhat famous.

She has taken to talking to the portrait at times when she needs distraction. She calls the man Pip, for no real reason except that he looks like a Pip, and she enjoys saying the word with its two percussive Ps.

“Well, Pip, I don’t think I like the weather in your country. Say what? With a name like Rainy I should love this weather? Say what, old Pip?”

She has been given no duties, she is on R and R, rest and recuperation. Military Intelligence has better facilities for such things than regular GIs would get—no villas for regular GIs, and there was a time that might have bothered her, but she doesn’t have the energy for fairness. Her days are spent reading books from the villa’s library. She’s already worked her way through Machiavelli’s The Prince, an Italian translation of The Great Gatsby, and most of Dante’s Divine Comedy in the original Italian.

When not reading books she reads and rereads letters from home with all their worry about her and all their relief that she is well. Aryeh has even managed to write, though reading between the lines, Rainy fears he is having a hard slog in the Pacific. Curse words have started to slip into his speech, and snide remarks about “our lords and masters with the stars on their shoulders.”

She has the freedom of the villa but rarely ventures out. Her face is no longer swollen, but her bruises are still in evidence, and while she is recovering her strength, she tires easily and walks hunched like an old woman, holding on to the marble rails as she goes up- or downstairs. Her hair is just starting to grow back in. Her appearance causes people to stop working and stare after her with sober, concerned expressions.

So she mostly stays in her room and is able to have her meals brought to her there. Breakfast with Pip. Lunch with Herkemeier. Suppers with Pip and a book. Day after day.

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Now she goes to her balcony, staying under cover so the rain sheets just in front of her face. She closes her eyes and savors the chilly mist. And when she opens her eyes again she sees Colonel Herkemeier hurrying through the garden, his briefcase held above his head to shield himself from the downpour.

“It’s not lunchtime yet, is it, Pip? Oh, you don’t have a watch? Not invented in your day, eh? Well, sorry, old fellow, but I don’t think they’d like me painting one on for you.”

Two minutes later a very damp and somewhat out of breath Herkemeier knocks on her door.

“How are you today, Rainy?” he asks, a standard greeting—they have set titles aside for now—but that is not a standard expression on his face. Herkemeier has something he wants to tell her, and it shines from him.

“What’s going on, Jon?” she asks.

He lays his briefcase on a side table, opens it, withdraws an envelope, and draws out several sheets of paper.

“You might want to sit down,” he says.

She takes his advice and sits in a remarkably uncomfortable but no doubt valuable antique chair.

He remains standing, unfolds the pages, and begins to read. “The President of the United States, authorized by act of Congress, has awarded the Silver Star to Sergeant Elisheva Schulterman, US Army.”

He lowers the paper to gauge her reaction. When she stares blankly he goes on.

“Sergeant Schulterman parachuted behind enemy lines in North Africa during . . .”

He reads and Rainy stares, first at him, then at the rug, then up at Pip, who is amused, as always. The citation begins with her parachuting behind enemy lines in North Africa. Then it talks of a secret mission that had her landing in Italy months before the Allied invasion at Salerno. This part is short on detail—secrecy, of course—so there is no explanation of the nature of her mission, only that it was of “the greatest importance to the war effort.” And it mentions heroic resistance to capture, and resistance to torture at the hands of the Gestapo.

Torture. She hates hearing that word.

Her hands tremble on her lap. Tears blur her vision. Words are impossible.

“It’s a first, Rainy. There’s never been a female Silver Star recipient.”