The Purple Heart

by Vincent Yee

  I see you so clearly in my dreams and sometimes I think I can even smell you. I know my dreams are playing tricks on me, but they are the sweetest of dreams. I would almost dare say that on some nights, I wish I would never wake up from those dreams.

  Tonight will be my last night writing letters from Camp Shelby. I will be going overseas tomorrow. I don’t want you to be sad or worried–we knew this day was coming. Please know that I’ll be thinking of you and no matter how many miles or oceans that may keep us apart, I will always love you. I’ll still write, but I’m sure it’ll take a little longer for our letters to reach one another but reach one another they will.

  My heart aches for you so much that it hurts. But then again, on some days, just thinking about you brings back so much joy into my heart. This is how I know I love you.

  Please hold Ichiro for me and tell him that his father will be back soon. Tell him we’ll play baseball and I’ll get him a puppy to play with. We’ll have dinner at your parents’ house and mine, and we’ll finally be a family.

  Let’s think about the future because that’s what we’ll have together.

  Lovingly yours,

  Hiroshi

  T W E N T Y T W O

  “Take cover! Take cover!” shouted Hiroshi to everyone as they approached the intersection from the south. Bullets suddenly flew past them and ricocheted off the street. Hiroshi rushed to the right with Kenji close behind, followed by two other soldiers. Akira ran to the left with two other soldiers including Peter. But Peter lagged behind, and the bullets cut off his path to safety. Peter’s heart sank as fear gripped him. The other soldiers grew further away. The Nazis couldn’t see Hiroshi and the soldiers that followed him and had quickly trained their machine gun on Akira and the soldiers moving the other way. It was a tactical mistake on Peter’s part: Being a bit slower, he should have followed Hiroshi to the right. He couldn’t make it to the building, and he was the only soldier in plain view. And the Nazis were determined to take out at least one soldier on the patrol.

  Peter crouched down as bullets riddled the ground in front of him, sending up quick flashes of dust. He raised his right forearm up against his face and peered out into the street from where the unknown Nazi position was. He could see the flashes from the machine gun muzzle behind the bombed-out tank that sat neglected in the middle of the road not too far away. It was the only thing that prevented the Nazis from getting a clean shot at Peter, and it was his only chance. Peter suddenly made a dash for the tank. As he ran, his ears filled with machine gun fire bursts, flurried shouts from his fellow soldiers for him to get out of there, and the clanking of gear clinging from his body. He dove into the ground with a thud, turned over quickly and backed up against the tank’s side, which sat at an angle to the street. Peter shifted his helmet upward from his brow as he let out several breaths as his heart pounded furiously. The bullets riddled the tank’s turret, giving off an ominous metallic sound, but he was at least safe. The bombed-out Nazi tank gave him temporary sanctuary from the bullets meant for him.

  “Are you okay?” yelled out Akira from behind the pile of rubble.

  Peter couldn’t answer him immediately as he crouched into a tighter position, holding his rifle tightly across him. His eyes darted back and forth, looking for a way out of his dire predicament.

  The entire 442nd had been joined by the 100th to liberate the little town of Sesseta, Italy from the Nazis who had taken up positions. The 442nd was able to secure the outer perimeter of the town and were ordered in to flush out the remaining Nazis. As they entered the little town, the situation became more obviously dangerous. Seemingly silent buildings started to swallow them up as they meandered into the bowels of the town.

  “Damn it, Peter! Are you okay?” shouted Akira as he looked furiously at him from the rubble that offered little cover against the bullets.

  Peter came to his senses and ducked once more as several bullets bounced off the turret above him. Peter didn’t shout back, but stared back at Akira’s eyes and nodded his head. Akira nodded back and indicated with a hand signal to hold tight as he moved against the wall to confer with the other soldiers. It was getting hot, and Peter wasn’t sure if it was the weather or the situation he was in. Peter wanted to know what Hiroshi was doing, so he carefully got down on his hands and knees, keeping his butt low to the ground to avoid having it shot off. He peered from under the tank’s treads and saw Hiroshi at the corner of the wall, peering down into the street and trying to assess the Nazi position. Kenji was kneeling down in back of him with his rifle ready while the other two soldiers stood behind them at the ready.

  Hiroshi looked frustrated. He met Peter’s eyes from underneath the tank and nodded reassuringly. Hiroshi motioned with his hand to keep low as he whispered a few words to Kenji. He then looked over the tank at Akira’s position.

  Hiroshi couldn’t get a good read on the situation from his vantage point. Akira suddenly appeared as if on cue and indicated silently that there were actually two machine gun bunkers in the doorways of the last two houses, and at least four Nazis. Hiroshi acknowledged Akira with a nod. Hiroshi looked back at Peter and signaled him to look at Akira for instructions. They had to get Peter out of there. He was a sitting duck.

  Peter turned over and backed himself against the tank once more. He looked at Akira. Akira motioned with his hand to Peter that there were two Nazi positions. They were going to lay down some cover fire, drawing the enemy’s fire allowing Peter to run toward Hiroshi’s position. Peter breathed in heavily and nodded. Akira nodded and signaled to Hiroshi just as a bullet glanced off a brick in the rubble that shielded him. Akira ducked quickly as he held onto the top of his helmet with his hand. Peter’s heart sank. But Akira’s middle finger shot up toward the Nazi positions and then disappeared. The bullets subsided, but the Nazi positions preserved their tactical advantage.

  Akira signaled once more to Hiroshi, who then nodded. Akira turned to the two other soldiers behind him, and they got into position. One rifle was no match for a machine gun and they were too far away to lob grenades. But three rifles firing in unison may be enough of a distraction for Peter to run to Hiroshi.

  Akira met Peter’s gaze once more and signaled to him to get ready. They would lay down the cover fire at the count of three. Akira moved furtively into position and looked at Peter, who had gotten up on his heels and wrapped his left hand around the tank’s corner, hoping that the leverage would whip him around that much faster. Peter’s breathing quickened, but he was ready. On Akira’s signal, he would run as fast as humanly possible.

  Akira signaled cautiously with one finger of his left hand, then two, and finally three. Akira stood up and burrowed himself against the rubble as the two other troops came around to his right, propped their rifles over the rubble, and let out a flurry of shots. Peter didn’t hesitate. He turned away and pulled himself as hard as he could with his left hand toward Hiroshi. Hiroshi had turned the corner and positioned his rifle with Kenji crouching beneath him as they simultaneously let out shots from their rifles. Peter was in an almost upright position and had almost cleared the tank when a bullet glanced off the corner of the tank. Then another landed right in front of Peter’s right foot.

  Peter suddenly felt that time itself had slowed down as he turned in the direction of those bullets. Peter saw the flashes from the two machine gun muzzles firing incessantly as countless bullet casings arced from the firing chambers. They were pointed away from him, but as he looked up, he saw a Nazi soldier leaning out of the second floor window. It was sniper fire: The Nazis had anticipated their move. For a moment, Peter thought he could actually see the sniper’s eye through his scope as a sinister smile crept across his face. There was a strange pause. Suddenly, a third bullet glanced the right side of Peter’s helmet, startling him back to reality.

  Peter felt his helmet reverberate as the glancing bullet forcefully pulled his head to the right. The two soldiers behind Hiroshi were urging him to make a run for it, but they
could not see the sniper. Peter did the only thing that he could do: He turned around and dove back toward the tank for cover. The sounds of bullets suddenly riddled the top of the turret, almost taunting him. Peter lifted his head and shifted his helmet up to look at Akira’s position.

  Akira looked furious as he stared down Peter, angry that he had not listened to his instructions. He turned away to return additional rounds as enemy bullets dotted the rubble in front of him, sending up chunks of shattered brick into the air. The other two soldiers fired as well when a single bullet made its way over the rubble and caught the last soldier in his right shoulder, sending him backwards. A sudden look of muscle-tearing pain crossed his face as he landed onto the ground with a thud. Peter let out a gasp. The wounded soldier was no longer behind the protective mound of rubble. Akira and the other soldier turned momentarily to the soldier and mouthed something incomprehensible from where Peter was. The soldier realized the vulnerable position he was in, gripped his right shoulder with his left hand, and leaned upward.

  A red dot suddenly appeared in the middle of his forehead. For a moment, the soldier calmly looked straight ahead as if the pain had faded away. Then his body fell lifelessly backwards onto the ground.

  “Fuck! Get back!” yelled Akira to the other soldier as he firmly gripped him by the scruff of his collar. “Leave him! He’s dead! Don’t risk your life for a dead man!”

  Akira and the other soldier then disappeared behind the building as additional bullets sprayed the rubble, sending up shattered brick into the air. They had not seen the shadowed sniper. Peter looked down at the fallen soldier. His head had rolled in Peter’s direction, and his hollow eyes stared back at Peter, almost as if pleading for help. His face seemed stretched out as his lifeless facial muscles had gone slack. His black eyebrows were awkwardly crooked, and his brown eyes remained eerily wide open, as they seemed to stare off into nothing. It was the face of death.

  Peter turned away from his lifeless comrade and pressed his head against the tank. Akira and the two other men did not see the sniper. This was probably the sniper’s intent. A sniper’s greatest weapon was stealth. The rubble may have offered enough protection from the merciless machine guns, but it didn’t protect Akira and the two other men from the sniper’s vantage point on the second floor of the building.

  Peter realized that he should have immediately warned Akira about the snipers. If he had, Akira may have pulled back the other two soldiers. But now, one of them was dead because he didn’t warn them soon enough. It was his fault, he thought. He lamented his hesitation.

  The bullets stopped whizzing in the air. Whatever Nazis were left were probably trying to hold onto their positions so that they could slip away under the cover of night in a couple of hours. They were probably cut off from reinforcements and needed to preserve their ammunition.

  Hiroshi yelled over to Peter, and he let out a sigh. He got down on his hands and knees once more and peered out from around the tank. Hiroshi motioned for him to stay put. He indicated that he had assessed at least two snipers on the second floor. The building on the other corner of the Nazi position, was bombed apart, so it was highly unlikely there would be any Nazis positioned there. It looked like the Nazis had taken position solely in the corner building. Hiroshi sent the two other soldiers around the block to assess the other corner, even though he was sure it was covered.

  Akira and the other soldier stood silently as they reloaded their rifles and counted their ammunition. Akira confirmed Hiroshi’s assessment from his vantage point and was ready to shoot back at the Nazi position. The street leading up to the Nazi position was littered with rubble from the buildings, and there were no useful obstacles. Anyone who was caught in the street would be torn apart by the machine gun fire.

  Additional machine gun fire could be heard a distance off, followed by silence. It was likely that the two other soldiers encountered gunfire as they approached the Nazi position from around the block. For a few tense minutes, no one knew if the two soldiers fell to the Nazi machine gun fire. Then finally, Kenji spun around to see the two other soldiers approaching them. They were unharmed and had indicated that the street on the other side was blocked off with another bombed-out tank and that it was heavily covered in rubble. Another machine gun bunker also protected the corner, and they believed they had spotted another sniper on the upper window as well. The final assessment was that there were at least nine Nazi soldiers holed up in the corner building.

  A bullet glanced harmlessly off the turret, causing Peter to duck instinctively. The sniper was taunting Peter. The Nazis were using Peter to lure out his fellow troops with the desire to pick them off, one by one, or at least kill Peter, should he try to make a run for it.

  Hiroshi backed up against the wall and wiped his brow with his left forearm. The sleeve of his uniform was already dirty from the last few days of fighting.

  “I can’t see Peter,” said Kenji as he swayed his head gently back and forth trying to find Peter from behind the tank.

  “Well, let’s hope the Nazis don’t see him either,” said Hiroshi.

  “We need to get him out of there so that we can go after these fucking Nazis,” said Kenji with a tone of frustration. “What are we going to do, Home Run?”

  Hiroshi let out a breath and carefully peered around the corner and looked up. He couldn’t see the sniper from his position. But he could make out the end of the rifle barrel sticking out of the window trained on Peter’s position. He assumed that the other sniper had his sniper’s scope trained at Akira’s position, hoping that maybe they would make a heroic attempt to drag the dead soldier back. Hiroshi then looked upwards at the rooftops of the buildings across the street and saw no movement. All he saw were the chimneystacks when suddenly an idea came to mind.

  He whistled over to Akira who carefully poked his head out. Hiroshi signaled his plan to Akira, which garnered a look of resistance. But he finally acquiesced with a nod. Hiroshi turned to Kenji and the two other men and asked, “How many grenades do you guys have?”

  They each had their full count of four grenades. Hiroshi asked that each of them give him two. They quickly handed over the grenades so that he had a total of ten. He told them of his plan as they stared back in disbelief in what he had hatched in his mind. But like Akira, they nodded and took their positions at the corner of the building.

  Hiroshi rushed to an iron downspout against the wall, strapped his rifle behind his back, and tucked the grenades inside his shirt. He then effortlessly began to climb the downspout. When he reached the top, he carefully peered over to make sure there were no Nazis lurking on the roof. Silently, he heaved his body over the wall and stealthily made his way over to the roof of the third building. He stopped just short of it so as to not let any creaks from his footsteps give away his position.

  Hiroshi ducked low along the edge of the roof overlooking the street and peered out. The faint outline of at least two Nazi soldiers, who were cloaked in the darkness of the upper corner window, could be seen. Directly below, he saw the outer ridges of the two sandbag bunkers on the ground floor. He peeled away from the roof’s edge and looked at the chimneystack. At the roof’s far edge, Hiroshi had to assume from the intelligence of the other two soldiers, that there was another corner window and at least one other sandbag bunker on the other side on the ground floor.

  Hiroshi slowly and carefully grouped the grenades into one group of three, two separate pairs, and the remaining three, he left clipped to his uniform. He laid them out strategically in preparation for his next move. He turned his head back in the direction of his fellow soldier with hope that they were ready for his signal. Hiroshi laid his rifle aside but close by. Twenty-five feet separated him and the chimneystack.

  He gave out a deliberate low sigh as he felt the sun’s rays on him. Hiroshi picked up the three grenades and silently crept over to the chimneystack. He rose up along the chimneystack and placed his ear to the opening and heard nothing. The three pins were pluck
ed and he dropped them down the chimneystack as the sound of metal bounced off the inner bricks. The noise should have caught the attention of the snipers on the second floor, forcing them to at least turn their heads around. Hiroshi only had seconds.

  He grabbed a pair of grenades, pulled their pins, and dropped them down directly over the first sandbag bunker in the doorway of the building that he was on. As they fell toward their intended target, an explosion erupted from the room below, and smoke billowed out from the chimneystack. This was followed by another explosion from below. Hiroshi didn’t hesitate.

  He grabbed the last pair of grenades, yanked their pins, and ran to the second sandbag bunker amidst shouts in German from below as he counted to himself. He dropped the second pair of grenades onto the second sandbag bunker and they exploded in mid-drop directly above the sandbags. Hiroshi ran to the corner of the building and leaned over to see the face of a Nazi soldier looking straight up at him.

  His face was covered in white dust and ash as his blue eyes looked into Hiroshi’s brown eyes. For a moment, their eyes locked until Hiroshi’s arm, bearing a grenade came into sweeping view. A look of terror came over the Nazi’s face as he watched the grenade fly through his window. Hiroshi pulled back quickly, having no interest in seeing what the Nazi soldier would do. He had already ran to the other corner when he heard the explosion of the grenade he had just tossed into the second floor window.

  As he ran, he pulled the pins from the last two grenades. He could hear rifle shots in the streets and knew that his fellow troops had come to attack the Nazi position. He reached the other corner of the building and leaned over just in time to see two Nazi soldiers stumbling out from the sandbag bunker. He dropped the grenades directly on top of them. Hiroshi then reeled back, dove flat onto his belly and covered his ears with his hands as the grenades exploded, sending up a billow of white smoke streaked with red.