Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.

She glances at the men nearest. Some smoke at a frantic pace. One chews gum loudly, snapping it. Others move their mouths silently in prayer. Most stare stonily into the dark.

The men are afraid too. And these are green troops who have not yet seen what a high-powered rifle round does to a human body. Their fear is of something they cannot fully imagine. They don’t yet know how easily bones break and flesh melts and organs spill from . . .

She squeezes her eyes shut, tighter, tighter till stars and pinwheels are all she sees. She opens them to see Walter Green looking at her through wire-frame spectacles.

Is he afraid? Or are sergeants not allowed to fear?

Walter Green tosses his cigarette aside and comes over.

“Hey,” he says. “You okay?”

She nods too fast, not trusting her voice.

He says, “‘Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee.’” Seeing her surprise, he adds, “Isaiah. If I’m not mistaken, he lived through a war with the Assyrians. Very bad fellows, those Assyrians. What are you scared of most?”

“Most?” She runs through a gallery of gruesome injuries. But in her imagination she is both the wounded and the medic. The medic whose fingers fumble and who can’t remember what she’s supposed to do. “I could make you a list,” she says with an effort at lightness.

He lays a hand on her arm, looks her in the eye, and says, “You’ll do fine.” Then he leaves to deal with a shoving match between two of his higher-strung charges.

That’s it, isn’t it, Frangie thinks. That’s what I’m most afraid of. It’s not just being hurt, though that’s real enough. I’m afraid I’ll fail these GIs. I’m afraid I won’t be smart enough, brave enough . . .

The announcement comes, and Frangie jerks out of her reverie and moves along with the men and the few women of her new platoon. She shuffles along till she comes to where Walter is checking men’s gear.

“You okay now, Doc?”

She nods. “I want it to be over.”

“Come on now, it hasn’t even started.” He winks, and she can’t help but smile a little.

“Can’t fight no war without Albert Huntington gets into it,” a private says—presumably Albert Huntington, though Frangie doesn’t know him or many of the men yet. She’s new to this unit, having spent the last few months attached to a clinic where the work was largely the treatment of venereal diseases and injuries from bar fights and training accidents.

“I suppose it would be wrong to pray that all the Krauts just die,” Frangie says, sort of joking, but also not.

“It’s not wrong to pray for it to be over sooner rather than later,” Green says, seeing that she is serious.

She nods and swallows hard and prays for just that. Lord Jesus, bring this battle to a swift conclusion. And if it’s Your will, take care of Your Frangie.

The loudspeaker crackles to life. The final order is given. The mass of men and women murmurs and moves. Sailors and sergeants stand at the top of the boarding nets, which are slung over the side, hurrying and cajoling the clumsy soldiers.

“Come on, boys, it’s just a net, you’ve practiced it before.”

But Frangie has not practiced it before, and neither have the rest of them. Green troops, the greenest. Sergeant Green’s green platoon. She climbs awkwardly over the railing, feeling helping hands steady the weight of the pack on her back and guide her feet.

Hands on the slick, wet rail.

“Don’t look down, miss,” a sailor says. “Climb down, but don’t look.”

She looks.

The landing craft below her is rolling in the agitated sea, banging against the side of the ship, rolling away to expose dark water, rising, falling. She is climbing down onto a moving target. The seasickness that has dogged her during the storm-tossed trip from Tunisia comes swarming back in the guise of vertigo.

Her boots catch on every rope. Her hands are sticky with tar from the nets but so cold she doesn’t at first notice the wire-brush harshness that tears tiny slices from her palms and the meaty pads of her fingers.

Down and down, how can it be this far? She looks down as the boat rushes up, up, up as though to meet her before falling away again.

“Come on, Doc, you don’t want to swim.” It’s a private named Jasper Jones who has occasionally helped Frangie out by letting her use him as a medical practice dummy. He’s a gangly six-footer with big ears that won’t look right until his face takes on some weight with age. Frangie likes him, but she’s avoided him since it became apparent that he was thinking of her in romantic terms.