Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

The conversation is disturbing, but what strikes her now is how she had the nerve to just turn her back and walk away. That is definitely not typical of Frangie Marr. All her life she has been soft-spoken, kind to animals, deferential to older people, deferential to men, and above all, deferential to white folks. That’s just common sense and decency, with that last bit being simple self-preservation—no colored girl growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, talks back to a white person, not if she wants to reach old age.

Deference has in many ways defined Frangie’s life. She has ambitions but can’t speak about them because it isn’t her place to have high and mighty aspirations. All her life Frangie has given way to her parents, her pastor, her elders, her teachers, men, and white people.

Moore is a colored man, not white, but he is older and he is a man. And yet, Frangie just turned her back and walked away. The realization adds a little swagger to her step, which causes her to trip and very nearly plunge down one of the many steel stairs.

She heads below to the main hold, the brightly lit steel cube at the heart of the LST, with its cargo of tanks. There are seven hulking Shermans, parked with trucks and half-tracks and jeeps between so as to distribute th

e weight.

Most of the tanks have slogans or names painted on the side or in some cases on the main gun. Harley’s Harlots. GI Jane. Red Hot. One is named Nat Turner. Frangie wonders if the white generals know that Nat Turner launched a slave rebellion that ended up killing a whole bunch of white people. One of the tank commanders is being a smart aleck, and it brings a sneaky smile to Frangie’s lips, which, once upon a time, might have pursed in disapproval.

Weeks spent listening to her radical big brother, Harder, has not turned her into a Communist—they are atheists, after all, and Frangie goes nowhere without her Bible—but it has forced her to see things a bit differently. All her life Frangie has moved to the back of the bus or trolley. All her life Frangie has known to look for the signs that say “No Colored” or signs that designate special colored drinking fountains, colored bathrooms. This giving way, this automatic acceptance of white superiority, will have to resume when she goes home. The medic with the Silver Star for bravery, the young woman who time and again has run into the line of fire to save a life, will have to be . . . meek.

That meekness had always come naturally to Frangie. But meekness cannot be a part of what she does now, what she will soon have to do. There is no such creature as a meek combat medic.

On the LST are multiple holds on either side of the main deck, each a version of the puke-reeking box where she had made her rounds earlier. Her own niche is a small space that is the seagoing barracks of the medics, nurses, and assorted medical technicians assigned to go ashore with the battalion and establish a field aid station, once the beach is secure.

Frangie has volunteered to move up with the advance elements rather than be stuck working with supercilious doctors and bossy nurses at an aid station or field hospital. It’s more dangerous, but it’s also more independent, and she’s come to value independence. She will trail the advance in her own jeep with a driver, Corporal Rosemary Manning. Manning is nearly six feet tall, taller than most of the men, and makes an unlikely sight alongside the diminutive Frangie. The jeep has red crosses against white circles painted on the sides and the hood, a very different sort of armor that relies on the enemy to honor the sanctity of the medics.

Since Frangie is small, young, and reasonably agile, she’s been assigned a top bunk—just three high in this particular space. She unlaces and kicks off her boots, lies back on her wool blanket, and runs a mental inventory through her supplies. Bandages, plasma, tourniquets, splints, salves, sulfa powder, tape, scalpel, scissors, needle and thread, and yes, morphine.

She has never dealt with a serious burn injury. And now that Moore is no longer there to annoy her, his worries and questions persist.

What will it be like?

How will I do?

And just what exactly am I supposed to do to help a man inside a burning tank?

She draws out and unfolds her most recent letter from home. It’s all the usual chitchat, all but one paragraph:

Your father has been feeling poorly of late and has had to skip some work this week. But he’s going to see Dr. Teller if he doesn’t feel better.

It doesn’t sound like much, but her dad generally has to be missing a limb to even consider going to the doctor. Frangie rolls onto her side, closes her eyes, and prays fervently.

Please, Lord, if it is Your will, care for my father.

She then asks divine protection for Harder, for her little brother, Obal, and above all, and most fervently, for her mother.

She has too much to carry, Lord. Harder exiled from the family, me here, and . . . and the other things You know of, Lord.

The prayer brings terrible, sickening images to her mind. She was not born when it happened, and she grew up never knowing, but she knows now, and her imagination will not cease supplying lurid mental images of the great Tulsa riot, of colored men and women fleeing as white folk fired down at them from biplanes and threw gasoline bombs on black businesses.

But now, added to those images, come imagined scenes of Sergeant Moore burning alive.

Please, Lord, if it is Your will, care for Sergeant Moore.

For almost the last two days she’s been dealing with seasickness, venereal disease, and various psychosomatic illnesses, each accompanied by some version of “I gotta go home, Doc! I can’t be fighting Germans with this back pain!” This is not strictly her job, but the day-in, day-out of dealing with soldiers has kept her distracted from what is coming.

Coming eventually.

Coming soon.

The suspense is killing everyone. It’s almost as bad for morale as the seasickness. Everyone wants to go, and everyone is afraid—anxious to get on with something that frightens them. In a hurry to discover whether they will live or die.

Though of course Frangie knows the majority of them simply do not believe in their own mortality. The men and the women, the average GIs, the ones who will soon be driving Shermans and being hunted by Tigers, just want to get it all over with.

And then go home. Because if the American army has a single, unifying thought that runs through every division, every battalion, every platoon, white or black, it is: Let’s get this over with and go home.