Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

When did I get to be so negative?

Kasserine Pass, the Rapido River, Monte Cassino . . .

The troop ship holds most of the division, and they will be going ashore in LCVPs, also called Higgins boats, flat-bottomed, ramp-fronted boats just thirty-six feet long, ten feet wide, and capable of carrying thirty-six soldiers, or three squads: Rio’s, Cat Preeling’s, and the command squad, consisting of Lieutenant Horne, Sergeant Billy O’Banion, two runners, a radio operator, a two-man bazooka team, and a buck sergeant named Mercer whose precise function Rio has not figured out unless he is there as a replacement for . . . well, perhaps for her if things go badly.

A few rows down Rio spots Cat taking a pull from a flask. Cat sees Rio and holds the flask up in offer. Rio considers but reluctantly shakes her head. Alcohol will soften the edges of her worry, and she wants to worry, she needs to feel the danger. One of the first times Rio had been in charge she had lost a man, Tilo Suarez, through nothing but carelessness. She is determined not to repeat that. No more carelessness. No more good people dead for no reason. She’s heard some of the other squad leaders talking about taking pillboxes and maybe killing a tank, their excitement in inverse proportion to experience, but her measure of success is simpler: start the day with twelve, including herself, and end the day with twelve.

Into the boats, off the boats, up the beach, up the bluff . . . victory.

She smiles sourly at this private thought. Right. Victory. Because the Germans are known for giving up easily.

Rudy J. Chester is prosing away to Camacho and two of the newest squad members, a man and a woman whose names Rio has to struggle to recall, about his theory of combat.

“I figure the Krauts’ll know they’re licked when they see us coming,” he says. “And with all the shells we’re dropping on them, it’ll be bim, bam, boom.” He smacks his hands together, a dismissive gesture.

Rio steps to him, grabs his rifle, and points. “Your safety’s off.”

“I want to be ready,” Chester says.

“Safeties on until you have something to shoot at,” Rio snaps, resisting the urge to add, you blithering idiot.

One of the greenest of the greenhorns, a short, nervous, active man of twenty-two named Dick Ostrowiz, asks, “You’ve been in it, Sarge. How bad will it be?”

Too many eyes turn to await her answer.

“It will be bad,” she says. There’s no point lying. She has to establish from the start that she can be trusted to tell her soldiers the truth: bullshit is for officers. “It’ll be loud and confusing and scary as hell. You’ll be wet and loaded down. In fact . . .”

She glances around to make sure Lieutenant Horne is nowhere near. She lowers her voice. “They’ve got some of you hauling fifty, seventy pounds of extra gear on top of your usual loads. We’re probably just going to leave all that crap on the boat.”

Geer, Stafford, Pang, and Jenou all nod knowingly. Lupé Camacho speaks up. “Aren’t we going to need all that extra ammo?”

“It won’t be all that useful if you’re dead,” Rio says flatly. “A wet, scared, tired soldier hauling ammo boxes across the beach is the kind of bullshit some desk jockey comes up with. You’re going to be lucky to manage yourselves and your rifle.”

With a glance at Rudy J. Chester, Hobart says, “The Germans know they’re licked, though. Right?”

Rio shakes her head. “The Kraut never gives up. If he ever looks like he’s giving up, he’s just moving back to the next line of fortification. If you think he’s licked, he’s getting ready for a counterattack. And if you think you’re better, tougher, stronger, or braver, you’re wrong.”

All conversation in the immediate vicinity stops.

“He’s got better tanks and artillery. Better machine guns too. He’s better trained, and he’s dead damned serious now, because he knows we’re coming, and he knows we intend to kill him and take his country. He figures while we’re at it we’ll rape his wife and use his kids for target practice. See, the thing is, they don’t know we’re the good guys. They think they’re the heroes. So they’ll fight. They’ll fight every inch of the way.”

She lets that settle in for a minute. Then, seeing the wide eyes and nervous swallowing all around her, she says, “On the other hand, we have the air, and we have the navy, and we have this.” She smacks a hand down on the stock of Chester’s M1 then shoves it back to him. “The M1 Garand is the best rifle in this war. Keep it dry and keep it clean. Keep the waterproof cover on until you are ashore. Be careful climbing down the nets. Listen to the crews, they’ll tell you when to jump into the boat. We’ll have a nice long wait as we circle around, and then when all the landing craft are loaded up, we’ll head in. Most likely we’ll take some artillery and some machine gun fire on the way. Might as well relax during that because there’s not a thing you can do about it. Once we get to the beach, if you jump off into deep water, do not panic. Drop your belt and your pack, anything that weighs you down. Do that before you try to swim. Try to hold on to your weapon. But above all, do not panic. If you don’t panic, you won’t drown.”

The possibility of drowning has clearly not occurred to most of the GIs. They exchange worried looks.

“Get to dry sand as quick as you can. They say there’s a seawall, but it’s low and poor cover. And the Krauts will have that wall registered, zeroed-in six ways from Sunday. As soon as we’re ashore we go straight at the bluffs.”

“The bluffs?” Camacho asks.

“They’re fifty to a hundred feet high and the Kraut will be thick as sand fleas on top. But they can’t shoot straight down, not with MGs anyway, so you want to get out of the water, across that beach, to the base of the bluff as soon as your legs will carry you. If you freeze up or decide to take a break, you’ll die.”

“Cheery prospect, what?” Jack Stafford says, exaggerating his British accent for comedic effect.

Rio is the only one not to smile. She is being deliberately cool to Jack—any favoritism now, when she is in charge, would be disastrous. She will not play favorites, and more important, she will not be seen to play favorites. She is Jack’s sergeant as surely as she is Geer’s or Beebee’s sergeant, and she cannot start down the road of protecting one at the expense of the others.

“You freshmen? You listen to the upperclassmen. If Geer, Pang, Stafford, Castain, or Beebee tells you to drop, drop. They tell you to run, run. They tell you to shoot, shoot. Now get squared away, they’ll be calling our number any minute.”

“At least we’ll be off this vomit barge,” Geer says. This earns some nervous laughter, and Rio is glad to hear it. Glad that Stafford can still amuse, glad that Geer can still be sardonic. There is a fine line between realistic fear and paralyzed terror, and she wants her squad scared but not panicked.