Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

The entire length of Omaha Beach seems to be burning vehicles and burning boats or ships, smoke and flame, soldiers facedown or on their backs, flailing weakly.

“Marr?”

Frangie twists and sees a familiar, freckled face. ?

??Rio?”

“Fancy meeting you here,” Rio says. Her friend Jenou is bleeding from a superficial wound.

“It’s a popular beach,” Frangie says through chattering teeth. Then, “Castain, put a bandage on that. Get it from your med kit.” It’s not a wound that needs a medic.

“Got any spare morphine?” Jenou asks. “I’ll take all you got, I want to just go to sleep!”

“You got blood all over you,” Rio says to Frangie. “You sure you aren’t hit yourself?”

Frangie shakes her head. “Not my blood.”

In the space of a few very, very long minutes, Omaha Beach has become populated with a strange sort of beachgoer: bodies lie where sunbathers might have spread blankets.

It is a disaster. A disaster. There is no way off this beach, and they are all going to die here.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .

A man falls, a red flower blooming on his belly.

“Take care of yourself, Rio,” Frangie says.

And then she crawls out from the shelter of the bluff and, with machine guns chasing her, runs to the fallen soldier.

“I’m here, Soldier.”

11

RIO RICHLIN—OMAHA BEACH, NAZI-OCCUPIED FRANCE

Rio watches Frangie Marr running back out, leaving the relative safety of the cliff base, armed with nothing but gauze and morphine. She does not expect to see the medic alive again.

“Little Nigra’s got balls,” Geer mutters.

Rio looks around her. Jenou is alive and well and sporting a tan-and-red bandage peeking out from below the visor of her helmet. Jack Stafford is also alive and unhurt. She does not see Pang or Beebee. But two of the replacements, Jenny Dial and Rudy J. Chester, are within shouting range.

Three dead. Two missing. Her squad is down to seven soldiers, including herself, and two of them are raw recruits. Then she sees Maria Molina running up from the beach. Bullets ping all around her, but at last she flops down atop Geer, who curses then shifts to make room for her.

The situation on the beach is clear in only one respect: no one, but no one can climb the bluff in the face of deadly German fire. The only way up is through one of the several draws, like river channels, that cut into the cliff. The nearest one is just twenty yards to Rio’s left, where she sees Stick huddled with some of his soldiers as well as a number of men and women from other platoons who, like some of those around Rio, just sort of ended up here.

The draws are the only path off the beach, but the draws are covered by German pillboxes with more hardened emplacements behind. Tanks would help greatly, but only once the cliff is topped. A tank trying to force the draw would be knocked out and become an obstacle. In the end it will be infantry work.

But it is not work that Rio can do with her squad alone. She steps away from cover long enough to spot Cat Preeling. Captain Passey is with her. Lieutenant Horne’s location is unknown.

Then she sees a man, a colonel, walking right down the line of huddled soldiers. It is not her colonel, nor anyone she’s ever seen before. A mortar shell lands too close, and the colonel runs, bent over, hand on his helmet, and squats halfway between Rio and Stick.

“Who’s in charge of this outfit?” he demands.

“Captain Passey,” Rio says. She makes a chopping motion in his direction.

“You men come with me,” the colonel says, and sets off at a lope toward Passey and Stick.

“You heard him,” Rio says. She and her squad and half a dozen soldiers from other units follow her, running crouched along the base of the cliff.