Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

“Thanks!” Frangie yells to Moore and leaps down to land hard on the sand. She stands up, immediately crouches, and searches for the drowning man. She spots him and dashes through the gap when the next tank rolls off. It’s like running across railroad tracks between speeding express trains.

While being shot at.

She runs toward the wounded man, but as she does she suddenly realizes she’s in a race. A Higgins boat is plowing toward the same spot. She trips, lands on hands and knees, and watches helplessly as the Higgins boat drops its heavy ramp, extinguishing whatever hope the injured soldier might have had.

Soldiers burst from the Higgins boat, too busy staying alive to concern themselves with the dead man under their feet.

The German gunners have loaded their armor-piercing rounds now and focus on the disembarking tanks. A shell bounces off one tank to explode inside the hold of the LST. A second round explodes in the very mouth of the ship, and when the smoke clears Frangie can see that the ramp is twisted wildly. Three tanks have made it ashore. The rest will not be coming any time soon.

Neither will Frangie’s jeep.

For a moment she dithers, confused, not knowing what to do. Her place is with the tankers, but they are buttoned up and are already firing up at the bluff and drawing intense, focused fire down on themselves.

There are wounded everywhere, but the sand is almost alive with the tiny puffs of sand

from bullets. Any move in almost any direction could cause her to intersect with one of those bullets.

There’s a sudden smack on the side of her helmet. She drops, rolls onto her belly, pulls her helmet off and looks at it. There is a brand-new, shiny, metallic crease running right across her red cross.

A voice in the back of her mind yammers in panic that she should get back on the ship, get back on, she isn’t supposed to be here, she isn’t even responsible for these other wounded, she isn’t made of steel, she’s going to die, to die, to die.

But again her body decides. She slaps her helmet back on and starts to half-crawl, half-run, like a four-legged animal, toward a woman moaning in pain.

“I’m here, Soldier,” she says. “Where are you hit?”

A thigh wound. Sulfa, compress, wrap, morphine.

A man runs past; his legs buckle and he falls. She’s seen the bullet, a tracer round. It’s gone through his belly and come out the back. Stomach wound.

“I’m here, Soldier. Lie down and don’t move.”

She cuts open the uniform to expose the wound. It’s seeping not spurting. She rolls him partly over and removes his webbing belt to get at the exit wound. A round hits and makes the soldier jerk. Where? Where was he hit? A jet of blood from his shoulder, a lengthwise hit, the bullet digging a tunnel from his collarbone down into the meat of him, ripping arteries and tendons and organs.

Beyond help.

She stabs morphine into his neck, says, “You’ll be okay, just stay down.” He will not be okay, she knows it, he does not. She does her half-crawl, half-run toward a voice crying, “Medic! Medic!”

She finds a sergeant sheltering a lieutenant with his body, his back to the gunners.

“Get down, you fool!” she shouts and swarms over the lieutenant, searching for the wound. But then the lieutenant’s eyes flutter open. He looks around wildly, frowns up at Frangie, and begins to sit up. He’s only suffered a concussion. The sergeant who’d been sheltering him lurches forward, cursing a blue streak as his pants leg turns red.

Expose the wound, apply a tourniquet to slow the bleeding, which is serious but not arterial, sulfa, bandage.

“You want a shot, Sarge?”

“Hell no,” he says. “I’m gonna go kill the sombitch who shot me!”

Frangie crawls away toward a body like a pile of rags. She feels the neck. No pulse. Move on.

A wounded man in the surf, like the man she’d jumped off the boat to save. This story ends more happily. He’s been shot in the back, legs paralyzed, but he’ll most likely live. Might not walk, but he should live, and at least he won’t drown. She lights him a cigarette and puts it between his lips.

She finds a woman sitting hunched over, rocking back and forth. Not injured. Frangie pushes her onto her back.

“Here, Soldier. Take these. They’ll give you courage.” She digs a half-dozen M&M’s from her pocket and places one in the panicked soldier’s mouth. Blank eyes come suddenly alive. Frangie pours a few more into the GI’s hands.

A man wanders down the beach, his entire uniform below the chest is drenched with blood. She can do nothing for him; he’s moving too fast and there are nearer cases.

A woman sergeant is dragging herself along, using the butt of her M1 as a stick, digging it in, dragging herself toward the too-near, too-distant bluff. As she advances at a snail’s pace she leaves one leg behind. Her thigh is tattered uniform, shredded flesh and blood.