Front Lines

by Michael Grant

  And so it goes, an endless round-robin of complaints, jokes, grudges, and absurdities, all punctuated with rude bodily noises, sudden laughs, snatches of song, and curses. The sound of soldiers standing around waiting for orders.

  Cat recites some poetry she’s come up with.

  “They march us here

  They march us there,

  Where we going?

  No Damn Where.”

  Cat’s bit of doggerel may be correct and they may well be heading to “no damn where,” but it doesn’t feel that way, no, it sure doesn’t, not to Rio. There is an edginess to the NCOs, even Cole. The sergeants have all been to a briefing earlier in the day and came back with long faces and extra ammunition.

  The squad is either oblivious to this darkening mood or perhaps simply refusing to yield to it. The horseplay, the whining, the ridiculous rumors all go on, but to Rio’s ears it’s all in a lower register, a shadowed tone. Rio looks from her squad’s sergeant, Cole, to Platoon Sergeant Garaman to Lieutenant Liefer—representing as they do the chain of command for Fifth Platoon, and thus Rio’s leaders, mentors, and tormentors in varying degrees—and sees the signs of nerves. Cole relights his cigar. Garaman is chain-smoking some awful-smelling smokes he bought off an urchin in Algiers. Neither looks happy. Their counterparts from Third Platoon don’t look any more cheerful.

  Down on the beach two dozen boxy landing craft cough and sputter as they come ashore, appearing as darker shapes against a faintly luminescent sea. And coming down the beach toward those landing craft is a troop—about sixty men—in the khaki shorts and knee socks of the British army. The Tommies march in their usual, swaggering swing-step, and cast dismissive, pitying glances at the green Americans.

  Lieutenant Eelie Liefer, Fifth Platoon’s commander, is joined by the lieutenant from Third Platoon and the various NCOs are now yelling to everyone to listen up, listen up, you mugs. Notably they do not call for anyone to come to attention since somehow all of that spit-and-polish stuff seems to have been abandoned once they reached the actual war.

  Lieutenant Liefer is a sight. She is the living, breathing poster girl for recruitment of female soldiers. She stands straight as a flagpole, her blond hair cut almost man-short, her blue eyes piercing, her skin glowing and perfect. Her uniform is improbably clean and still shows evidence of having been ironed at least once. There is something about Lieutenant Liefer that makes one think of girls who organize the homecoming dance, serve in student government, and are chosen as homecoming queen. She is a blonder, posher Sergeant Mackie with a lot less quiet assurance and a lot more shrill insistence.

  “Okay, GIs, here’s the scoop,” Liefer announces in her penetrating alto voice. “Third and Fifth Platoons have been detailed to accompany a troop of commandos on a mission.”

  “Commandos?” Jenou whispers.

  “That ain’t good,” Corporal Hark Millican mutters under his breath. “No, that ain’t good at all. Them fellows get shot at.” He sighs. Hark Millican is a gloomy, hangdog man who possesses an entire vocabulary of sighs.

  Sergeant Cole aims a silencing look at Millican.

  Liefer goes on. “We will embark on the landing craft you see there, move approximately a hundred and fifty miles down the coast under cover of darkness, go ashore, and advance inland to take out a German communications station. The trip will run approximately eighteen hours. Then we will return to the boats and be back here within seventy-two hours.”

  “Eighteen more hours in boats,” Jenou mutters, just loudly enough for Rio to hear.

  “Thirty-six if we make the round-trip. I wonder if the navy gets to stay on dry land?” Rio says.

  “SNAFU,” comes the inevitable summation from Suarez.

  Situation Normal: All Fugged Up.

  Liefer seems to think all this sounds just swell, although the Third Platoon’s lieutenant, a beanpole of a twenty-nine-year-old named Helder, is looking a bit green around the gills. In real life he’s an advertising man, another civilian playing at soldier, like most of both platoons.

  “You’ve been issued extra ammo and three days’ rations. Now, this is a joint operation with our allies, and the British captain will be in overall command. Needless to say, the eyes of the brass are on us, so let’s not screw this up. Do you wish to add anything, Lieutenant Helder?”

  No, Lieutenant Helder does not. Lieutenant Helder looks like he just wants to find a warm bunk and crawl into it, a sentiment shared by 99 percent of both platoons, probably even by Stick.

  The ramps of the landing craft drop to allow the GIs to board, which they do with the usual pelting disorder until the navy coxswain starts to bawl everyone out for tramping mud aboard.

  “Goddammit, you fugging GIs think I’m going to swab all that mud out? Kick your fugging boots before you climb aboard my fugging boat! And if you’re smoking, toss them over the rail, I ain’t policing up your butts, neither!”

  “Friendly, these navy boys,” Jack says.

  Now Second Squad hunkers down in the boat, which is nothing but an open gray-painted plywood box just big enough to fit two dozen soldiers or, in this case, a twelve-person rifle squad, a jeep, and a strapped-down pile of jerry cans full of gasoline.

  Lieutenant Liefer and Platoon Sergeant Garaman sit in the open jeep. Buck Sergeant Cole is offered a nice dry seat as well but opts to stay with his people. Second Squad sit on their packs, pull their ponchos over themselves, and settle in for a long, long damp ride accompanied by seasickness and the usual vomiting. There is not a man or woman in the platoon who has not puked more in the last six weeks than they have in the rest of their lives put together. They’re getting used to it.

  The diesel engine roars, the water churns, and with a scraping sound the boat reverses and pulls itself off the beach. Once afloat the boat turns sharply to head southeastward, away from the faint, shrouded glow of the setting sun and toward onrushing darkness.

  Rio Richlin wipes salt spray from her face. Her jaw clenches. Her fingers are cold and sore from gripping her rifle too tightly. And she wonders whether, once they reach the landing beach, she will be able to force herself to get off the boat. Already the sick dread is spreading through her like a poison. She has felt this before, but she was a child then. Since then she has aged. Matured. She has been trained. She has learned to . . .

  She has not learned not to be afraid.

  Her face is wet but her mouth is dry. Her heart is beating heavy and slow. Her breaths are shallow. She observes all these signs. She knows what they mean. She remembers the fear.

  Am I a coward?

  “Well, I guess I’ll find out,” Rio Richlin whispers.

  23

  RIO RICHLIN—MEDITERRANEAN SEA, OFF THE COAST OF TUNISIA

  Am I a coward?

  Soon now. Soon they will be there, wherever there is. It is a mission, it is a commando raid. It will almost certainly be combat.

  It all leads to this.

  “I do not like the water at night,” Jenou says.

  “You figure it’s wetter at night?” Tilo asks, just to start an argument and have something to do.

  “No, Suarez, I figure if it’s light maybe I can at least see which direction to swim in,” Jenou says, perfectly willing to spend half the night arguing nonsense with Suarez.

  “If you go into the drink sharks will get you, Castain,” Tilo says.

  “Nah, not Castain,” Cat says, butting in. “She wouldn’t taste good.”

  “At least if they ate me they’d get a full meal,” Jenou says. “You, Preeling? You’re all bones. Just a big old shark belly full of big old bones.”

  “Sharks’ll eat garbage, I’ve seen them do it,” Kerwin offers, not meaning to compare Jenou to garbage, just talking to keep his teeth from chattering. “Back on the transport, cooks’ mates would toss the garbage off the rail and in would come the sharks.” He makes some accompanying hand gestures meant to be swarming, diving sharks, but mostly lost for being largely invisible in the dark.

&nbs
p; An hour passes, during which the relative tastiness of various members of the squad is fully examined as related to sharks, and then, just for good measure, lions. Because, dammit, they are not giving up on lions, not just yet.

  Then, in water that calms a little as they turn to move with the current, the smokes come out, and a deck of cards that can barely be seen. The players hold their glowing cigarettes close to read the cards, which makes for a very slow poker game, but what’s the hurry? The glow also briefly illuminates their faces, mostly young, some old, all nervous. Sergeant Garaman bestirs himself from the jeep and joins in. Garaman wants to win back some of the smokes he lost in a previous game. That plus Garaman has never seen a card game he could pass up.

  Rio does not take part in the banter, the card game, or the smoking. Her stomach is touchy from bouncing along at nine knots in a craft that reeks of oil and unbathed bodies. And she cannot turn off her imagination; she cannot stop thinking of pain and death. She cannot dismiss the lurid memory of the Stamp Man. And worst of all, fear itself, just like old FDR said. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Well, maybe not the only thing.

  Rio can imagine herself panicking. She can imagine refusing to get off the boat, having Jenou coax her, having Sergeant Cole pry her fingers loose, she can imagine it all in terrible detail, down to how cold her fingers will be as she cries and pleads and holds on for dear life.

  But boredom begins to wear down her fear. Hours go by. The night wears on, and she falls asleep wedged between her pack and the side of the boat, waking whenever a gallon or six of cold water comes sloshing over the side, which is too often. She wakes as well when someone steps on her, and as she prepares an irritated response she sees that the sun has come up.

  Rising to her feet she is greeted by the sight of the little flotilla spread raggedly across a couple miles of green sea. The land must be off to their right somewhere, and she sees what may be a line of brown—or may not be.

  The squad is frowsy, soaked, and in a foul mood. Hark Millican has given up keeping his glasses dry, and now, spectacles tucked away, he looks like an owl, blinking and squinting. Cole has a nice spot for himself, legs stretched out, leaning against the front bumper of the jeep on deck. The lieutenant is up with the boat’s crew, scanning the horizon with binoculars.

  Luther lost his original kitten to the English countryside. He managed to not only replace her with a nearly identical calico but to smuggle her all the way here. The kitten, who Luther has named Miss Pat for reasons he has never volunteered, seems quite at home in his jacket pocket or occasionally stuffed down under his shirt. He takes her out now and feeds her tiny bites of C-ration cheese. Rio notices Liefer apparently just now becoming aware of the cat and watches the conflict play out on her smoothly sculpted face: make an issue of it? Or pretend not to notice?

  There being no practical way to dispose of Miss Pat, the lieutenant opts to look away.

  “See any submarines out there?” Jenou asks as she climbs stiffly to her feet and leans on the gunwale beside Rio.

  “Don’t sweat subs,” Stick says. “These boats don’t draw enough water. A torpedo would pass right under us. But you might want to glance up at the sky every now and again.”

  “Planes? Out here?”

  “Well, hopefully the Luftwaffe is busy elsewhere, but sure, sure there could be planes.”

  “What do we do if one comes at us?” Jenou asks, head swiveling to scan the sky.

  “We get our asses shot up,” Luther says. “Hope that doesn’t disturb you ladies.”

  More card games. More smoking. More grumbling. Cold food and suddenly there’s a shout from the coxswain. The engine throttles down, and the boat slows.

  “What the hell?” Hansu Pang yells, breaking his habit of complete silence.

  The boat turns sharply, and they all soon see what the hell. One of the boats has been swamped by the agitated sea. The LCM is stopped, way too low in the water, with British commandos climbing out to hang over the side and inflating their Mae West life jackets while the other boats veer in like bees heading back to the hive.

  The swamped LCM is more heavily loaded than the others as it carried one of two half-tracks, meant to give the commandos some speed on land as well as the use of its heavy machine guns.

  “It’s going!” Jillion Magraff yells. Private Jillion Magraff is blond, medium-height, and has the sullen eyes and outthrust chin of a young woman with a chip on her shoulder. Rio took an immediate dislike to her. But Magraff is right, and the boat, which had never enjoyed more than nine or ten inches of freeboard, is swamped. Only its stunted bridge and the upper half of the half-track are still visible. The sounds of lusty British cursing carry across the water as the commandos release their grips on the sinking boat and are picked up by other boats.

  The entire operation eats up more than an hour. To make matters worse, the accident plus the freshening seas force the navy to slow their speed from a healthy, but not exactly rip-roaring, nine knots to just six. Now they are poking along at slightly better than rowing speed, a gaggle of boats as exposed and helpless as slugs on a sidewalk.

  Lieutenant Helder’s boat sidles up alongside Rio’s. Helder shouts over to Liefer, “This is FUBAR, Liefer. We’ll be landing in the dark!”

  All conversation from the squad falls silent as they savor this opportunity to eavesdrop.

  “Can’t turn back,” Liefer shouts, taking a face full of spray.

  “That boat had most of the mortars, a bunch of the ammo too.”

  “I’m not in command of this mission; talk to the captain.”

  “I intend to,” Helder yells back. “I wanted to have a united front.”

  Lieutenant Liefer shakes her head vehemently. “I’m not turning tail so the goddamned Limeys can call us chickenshit!”

  “We have no business being on this mission in the first place! This is a commando raid. We are infantry, and green.”

  Liefer shakes her head no. And after a hard look and a worried shake of his head, Lieutenant Helder and the boat he’s on veer away.

  “Well, that was encouraging,” Jack says.

  A second boat is swamped that afternoon, this time one of the American boats. Two soldiers from Third Platoon drown. Only one of the bodies is recovered.

  Rio’s worries, blunted earlier by boredom, come back full force now. She checks her Mae West, and plans mentally for what gear she can ditch to avoid drowning if her boat founders.

  And then . . .

  “Plane!”

  Rio spins, tries to see who is yelling, tries to spot the plane, head swiveling, Jenou now doing the same. The coxswain hits a klaxon, which echoes across the water and then points in big choppy arm motions toward a sort of black X outlined against a falling afternoon sun.

  “Is it coming or going?” Jillion Magraff cries.

  “Can’t tell.”

  “I think it’s going . . . wait,” Jenou says.

  “Shit! It’s coming! It’s coming!” Kerwin yells.

  One of the sailors hops onto the machine gun mounted beside the conn, tears off the protective canvas cover, and racks in a belt of ammo.

  Cole says, “Everyone down, stay down!”

  Rio can hear it now, a high-pitched insect whine.

  “Could be one of ours,” she says.

  “Could be,” Cole says, “but don’t count on it. Get down. Take cover.”

  The plane roars overhead, and there, plain as day, are the black crosses of the Luftwaffe. As it zooms past every machine gun opens up, crisscrossing its wake, missing to the left, missing to the right.

  Taka-taka-taka-taka-taka!

  Everyone is on their feet now, eyes straining, tentative, praying, shouting impotent threats, shaking irrelevant fists.

  The plane is in view for several long minutes, but it does not return. Instead it arcs away to the east again, toward Sicily.

  Sergeant Garaman is beside Cole, both men keeping their eyes on the retreating plane.

&nbs
p; “Well, they’ve spotted us.”

  “That they have.”

  “Loot’s not turning back, I don’t suppose,” Cole said.

  “I reckon not,” Garaman says. “Not and be called out as a weak sister.”

  Rio scans until she spots the British captain’s boat. There is no sign it is turning from its course.

  “One hell of a secret mission we got here,” Garaman says. “That Nazi bastard either sends a fighter back after us or radios ahead to the beach.”

  “I’ll take a fight on the beach over getting sunk and shot up in the water,” Cole says sourly.

  “Six of one.”

  The British captain’s boat surges to the front of the pack, and with hand gestures he indicates that everyone is to follow him. He changes course, then gathers speed, back up to the craft’s maximum of nine knots, but not toward home, rather heading northwest toward a peninsula.

  “What in hell is he about?” Kerwin wonders aloud.

  Sergeant Cole answers. “He figures the Krauts have our course. Figures Jerry pilot radios back to Sicily, they get a plane up in the air in ten minutes, takes that plane maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes to get airborne and cover the hundred and fifty or so miles to where he can intercept our course. So we got half an hour, maybe a bit more, to see if we can’t throw him off the scent.”

  “The sun goes down in ninety minutes, after that we’ll be hard to see. So . . .” Garaman shrugs. “He’s got at best thirty minutes on target to find us again.”

  As it happens, if a second plane has been launched to locate and destroy them, they never see it. Eyes strain to catch any sight of a plane, and it is a very hard hour, an hour of nervous chatter and whispered prayers, but when darkness falls, the boats turn back south, moving again at safer speed, but now hours behind schedule.

  “They’ll be waiting for us when we land,” Tilo says nervously.

  “Could be,” Cole says, nodding in a sort of sideways, back-and-forth way that signals skepticism. “But there’s a lot of coastline. Lot of beach. They won’t know exactly.”