Front Lines

by Michael Grant

  Eventually the colonel will decide to do nothing other than forward a memo to the general, who will also decide to do nothing. It takes Colonel Jasper another half hour to reach that point, but the conclusion Rainy writes down is not a surprise. Nor is it a surprise when the colonel moves on to a much more passionate discussion involving kerosene heaters.

  Is it treason to suspect that the men commanding II Corps are incompetent? Surely the powers-that-be in Washington would not send incompetents to oversee America’s first real contact with the German foe.

  Rainy tells herself that, but she fails to convince.

  When she returns to her desk to type up her notes, Pooley looks up questioningly and gets a terse “They’re going to wait and see” from Rainy.

  She types up her notes and puts them in the “out” basket on her desk. They will be collected by the corporal, who will take them to the staff sergeant—Pooley—seated just five feet away—who will take them to the colonel’s aide, who will, as far as Rainy can tell, file them away, never to be seen again.

  At times she envies the frontline troops. At least they know what they are doing.

  “Where’s the goddamned interpreter?” This is from Colonel Clay, the S2, who now looks around the stuffy office with an irritated gaze. He is referring to Lieutenant Belfurd who, Rainy knows, is in town visiting a prostitute.

  “Colonel, the lieutenant’s out of the HQ,” she says discreetly.

  “I’ll just bet he is.”

  “Colonel, I speak and read German.”

  Colonel Clay stares at her as if she is a dog who has suddenly announced a talent for plate spinning. His two bushy gray eyebrows become one.

  Pooley speaks up, saying, “Colonel, she is fluent. She sometimes helps out Belfurd . . . Lieutenant Belfurd, I mean.”

  “What is your clearance? Your security clearance, miss.”

  It is not protocol to address her as miss. It is protocol to address her as sergeant. Or by her last name, Schulterman. But Rainy does not have quite the cheek to reprove a lieutenant colonel. Not right away.

  She reassures Colonel Clay that she is cleared for sensitive documents. He sniffs, sighs, and finally crooks a finger at her.

  Rainy leaps from her chair and follows him out of the room. They go to Colonel Clay’s office. The walls there are festooned with the usual maps, but interspersed in unused spaces are drawings of fish, done in oil crayon. Quite good pictures, Rainy thinks. Some are only partly finished.

  “Steelhead,” Rainy mutters, not thinking.

  “Did you say steelhead, miss?”

  “Sorry. Yes, sir. I didn’t mean . . . it’s just . . .” and she waves vaguely at one of the fish. “That’s a steelhead trout. Rainbow trout, some call them.”

  The colonel stares sideways at her and lights a cigarette without offering one to her. “And what would you say that was?” He points to a second drawing.

  “I’m not completely sure, Colonel. Some type of salmon, but I’m not as up as I should be on salmon species.”

  “It’s a Coho salmon. I caught him in Scotland. Twenty-nine inches. No record, but a fine fish that cooked up very nicely over a campfire.”

  For a moment he seems lost in memory. Rainy is fascinated at the possibility that an actual smile might appear beneath the unfortunate mustache, but no. He is content to smoke and contemplate his various fishes. “You must be a country girl.”

  “No, Colonel, I’m from New York City. But every summer we had Jewish camp up in the mountains. We fished a bit, and I got so I liked it.”

  Almost as if his primacy has been challenged, Colonel Clay says, “I tie my own lures.”

  “It’s a skill I wish I had, sir.”

  He still looks sourly at her, but she senses that she has passed some kind of test and been found to be of at least marginal intelligence and wit. He waves her over to his desk. “These are transcriptions of a dozen unguarded German radio intercepts. They’ve been written down phonetically since we are short of German speakers. Can you make any sense of them?”

  She gathers up the flimsy sheets and, without being asked or given permission, sits down in the colonel’s chair and frowns in concentration.

  For five full minutes she ignores the colonel as he stands, impatient and annoyed by the effrontery of a mere three-striper, a female at that, sitting there like a schoolgirl working out her homework.

  “This one is a Kraut lieutenant asking about some crates of brandy. He says he is short of brandy, and if he is to move as ordered he will need more.”

  “And what would you make of that?”

  “There’s another one here from a tanker also talking about brandy, so I think unless the Wehrmacht is composed of drunks, they are not talking about brandy. Either ammo or fuel, most likely fuel.”

  Colonel Clay’s eyes narrow. “Cigarette?”

  She takes one but sticks it behind her ear to trade later. “The others are more obvious, I think. This one is a fellow asking about an injured soldier. This one asks whether there has been any mail.” She hesitates. “No, wait, there are two asking about mail. . . . It’s hard to be sure since these are just phonetic but yes, I think they are both asking about mail. Post. Is post available.”

  “Artillery support,” Colonel Clay says. “A sort of crude code, barely disguised. They lack landlines, but they haven’t got the latest code, I suppose. Dismissed.”

  She nearly misses that last word, but after a moment’s hesitation, jumps up, snaps a salute, and walks away, deflated.

  Later that day she learns that she has been reassigned to Colonel Clay’s staff.

  It is a step down in the sense that she’ll be working for a lieutenant colonel of intelligence rather than a full bird colonel in charge of the detachment, but she allows herself a satisfied grin. She has a feeling Colonel Clay might put her to better use.

  And there is the added advantage of not working for a complete fool.

  Clearly some sort of major German attack is coming. It may already have started, and General Fredendall is in “Speedy Valley” obsessing over his new headquarters construction, and Colonel Jasper is not inclined to make waves. Only Colonel Clay seems to have a clear notion of what he’s doing.

  Somewhere out there in the vast reaches of the trackless Sahara, someone is very likely catching hell and perhaps about to catch a great deal more of it. Now at least Rainy Schulterman may be able to help them.

  28

  RIO RICHLIN—TUNISIAN DESERT, NORTH AFRICA

  They run.

  Rio and the rest of Fifth Platoon run from the gunfire and the intermittent BOOM of the tanks’ cannon and the relentless clank-clank-clank of the tracks.

  They run past Third Platoon, which promptly bails out of its shallow holes and starts running too.

  They are a mob, feeding on their own fear, tensing against the bullets that can at any moment pass through their defenseless bodies, tensing against the shrapnel and flying rock that can rip and batter them to death in an instant.

  Months of training and preparation, months of bragging that they are tough, that they can take it. Hey, the Krauts better look out now that the Yanks are here.

  It takes two German tanks and two hundred indifferent Italian infantry to send them all fleeing for their lives.

  Behind them they hear the metallic crack of the British antitank gun firing, joined by the hollow ka-tooo! of mortars firing, followed after a pregnant pause by the flat crump! of the shells landing amid the Italians.

  But Second Squad, Fifth Platoon, as well as the other squads, and Third Platoon, all the Americans in this particular section of the Tunisian desert, all run until they run into Lieutenant Eelie Liefer in her jeep. Her driver looks scared. The lieutenant looks no better.

  “Sergeant Cole!” the lieutenant yells. “What’s going on?”

  “We hit ’em, they hit back, and now we’re running,” Sergeant Cole says, disgusted.

  “Where’s Garaman?”

  “I thought he was w
ith you, ma’am. We need to form up.”

  The GIs have mostly paused to see what light the officer can shed on the situation, particularly whether she has any better idea than just running away. They mill around the jeep, worried glances cast back toward the shooting, now just out of sight but very definitely audible.

  “There’s no defensible ground here,” Liefer pronounces.

  “Ma’am,” Cole says, “there’s those rocks over there, we can set up firing positions, defilade the road, backstop the Tommies. And try for some air support or naval gunfire. Artillery. Something.”

  Lieutenant Liefer stares at him as if he’s lost his mind. “Hide in the rocks? From tanks?”

  Rio can see exasperation on her sergeant’s face. “Lieutenant, let’s at least radio in, see if we can get some arty.”

  “None of our artillery is in range, and there’s no air cover,” she says, sounding as though she knows what she’s talking about. “We have no choice but to pull back.”

  “Ma’am, we’ll be leaving the Tommies hanging.”

  “They’re commandos, experienced troops. They’re not our concern. Our concern is the safety of our own men.”

  Cole’s mouth hangs open for several seconds in pure disbelief. He makes one more try. “We can carry out a fighting withdrawal, we can set up in those rocks and—”

  “Sergeant Cole, I’m well aware that you used to have five stripes on your sleeve, but now you have three, thanks to your habit of insubordination. Unless you want to be minus another stripe, you will follow my orders.”

  Half the GIs who’ve gathered around take this as a signal to keep moving. They don’t run, they’re tired, but they walk plenty fast, away from the sounds of a battle that has grown louder and more desperate. The British antitank gun is no longer firing, just the tanks and the mortars and rifles, lots of rifles. A terrible scream rises high in the air and is cut off in midnote. A pillar of dust rises from the direction of the fight.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cole snaps. “Where would you like us to stop running?”

  “I’ll have your stripes if I hear one more goddamned word from you!” Liefer yells, and points down the road, back in the direction they came from, back to the rear. Her driver guns the engine, spins into a dusty turn, and roars away, showing them all the line of retreat.

  “I guess that’s the other reason officers need jeeps,” Luther says. “Female officers, at least.”

  Cole snaps, “Private Richlin has one confirmed kill, Geer, and another probable. What do you have?”

  One confirmed kill. One probable.

  Geer stares daggers at Richlin, and Suarez occupies himself lighting a smoke. Jack is there as well, and he frowns at Rio as if just noticing something about her face that troubles him.

  They run and they walk and they run some more, putting all their PT to a use none of them expected. Finally, after hours, they manage to outrun the sounds of the fight. Or else the fight is lost and the Tommies are wiped out. Rio doesn’t know which.

  She walks fast; Jenou at her side now, a strange echo of times walking together around the square in Gedwell Falls, or halfheartedly running the track at school. Rio and Jenou, two high school girls out for a stroll, but with slung rifles and pounds of ammo and gear, and mortal dread in their hearts.

  “I never wanted to be in the fighting,” Jenou says, her teeth chattering either from cold or fear. “I lost my helmet. I’m supposed to be at a desk. Now we’re going to have to surrender and spend the rest of the war in a POW camp.”

  “Surrender?” Rio tries the word out and doesn’t like it at all, but maybe Jenou is right. They’re licked, aren’t they? They’ve been sent packing. Where are the American lines, even? None of them really knows where they themselves are right now, aside from it being a miserable place in a country they’d never even heard of before arriving here.

  They keep moving, moving, always away from the German tanks, which they can no longer hear, fleeing an enemy that is farther and farther behind them. Fleeing to . . . where? Where is safety?

  “We just have to get back to our lines,” Rio says.

  “We have to get back to Gedwell Falls,” Jenou says savagely.

  “You shot one of them?” Tilo Suarez asked Rio.

  She shrugs.

  “She killed one for sure,” Hark Millican says. “I saw him drop. Sarge saw it too. Mighta been two. Maybe.”

  “Probably just tripped,” Rio says through gritted teeth.

  “Like hell,” Millican says. “You shot him. You shot him good.”

  Confirmed kill.

  Rio accelerates her pace, wanting to get away from him. She feels panicky, more panicky than when she was running away from actual enemy fire.

  “I probably got me one or two,” Luther says. He’s angry as well as scared. Scared of the Germans, angry that Rio has a confirmed kill and he does not. “Maybe more, I mean, I was shooting like crazy, but the smoke and all . . .”

  Something is buzzing. Jillion Magraff and Cole yell at the same time. “Plane!”

  And there it is, a plane, coming in low. Hopefully it will make short work of the tanks and save the Tommies, who sure weren’t going to be saved by Fifth Platoon.

  “Scatter!” Cole yells.

  A few seconds pass before it dawns on Rio that no, this is not Strand Braxton flying out of the clouds to rescue her, nor any friendly pilot.

  She glances left, right, no holes, no shelter. She starts to run, sees that Jenou is frozen, runs back to grab her friend’s shoulder, a handful of uniform, pulls her along, and the two of them plunge off the road, run a few steps, and hit the dirt.

  The Stuka—unmistakable once it is close enough—fires its twin wing-mounted machine guns and rips up a quarter of a mile of dirt road like some devil-possessed backhoe, and the plane roars by overhead, the black-and-white crosses and the swastika on the tail all too visible.

  The Stuka flies on, and Rio sees two bombs detach from the undercarriage.

  Out of sight, but in the area where they last saw the commandos, the bombs explode, a single massive earth-shaking detonation.

  “Move out!” Cole yells. “He may come back around!”

  But the German plane has lost interest in them and now circles to rain more machine gun fire on the commandos. The Americans leap up out of the dirt and start walking fast again, glancing over their shoulders every few steps to see if the plane is coming back.

  But it isn’t the Stuka chasing them now, it’s the tanks, that terrible clank-clank-clank distant but audible. The tanks were slowed by the determined resistance of the British commandos, but the bombs have taken care of that.

  They run and when exhausted slow to a walk and then, hearing the distant clank-clank-clank, start moving again. Some packs are shed by the road, abandoned to buy more speed. Ammo is dropped, even rifles.

  They run and walk for five miles, and there at last is Liefer and her jeep again, and beyond her three dusty trucks. The Americans pile gratefully into the trucks and join what will turn out to be a much larger rout.

  The Germans had been squeezed between Field Marshal Montgomery’s fabled Eighth Army and the cocky-but-green American forces to the west and, by all logic, should have either given up or run for the nearest beach to seek a desperate escape. Instead, they have attacked, pushing west against the Americans and north toward Tunis.

  They’re tougher than we are.

  29

  RAINY SCHULTERMAN—MAKTAR, TUNISIA, NORTH AFRICA

  “Colonel Clay wants you, PDQ.” The news is delivered to Rainy by a lieutenant who is the spitting image of her brother, Aryeh, just with less muscle.

  “Yes, sir.” PDQ—pretty damned quick—means now, so Rainy jumps up, grabs her notation pad, and fast-walks down a busy hallway past women at typewriters and men shuffling papers; past tea being brewed by the dark-skinned batman of the British liaison officer; and past two majors laughing loudly and smoking like chimneys.

  In addition to Colonel Clay there are
two men Rainy recognizes but has never met in his office, and one who openly grins at her.

  She manages to avoid letting her mouth hang open and salutes properly.

  “Sergeant Schulterman,” Captain Herkemeier says.

  “Captain, it’s good to see you. I didn’t know you were in theater.”

  “Just a week behind you, Sergeant.”

  They shake hands while Colonel Clay looks on in disdain. He says, “I understand I have Captain Herkemeier to thank for your services here,” he says.

  “Yes, sir,” Rainy says. Thus far she assumes this is just some sort of awkward reunion, though Colonel Clay would be the very last person she’d suspect of arranging any sort of social event.

  “He speaks highly of you,” Clay allows, studying papers in his hands. “Says you come from criminal stock.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Which I consider to be a plus,” the colonel goes on. “There are far too many well-bred gentlemen in military intelligence and not nearly enough aggressive Jewesses with a potential for criminality.”

  The first part of that was a shot at the other two officers, both of whom Rainy knew to be from upper-crust families and schools. The second part is by all rights offensive and derogatory, but Rainy is sure it wasn’t intended that way, and also indifferent, because it sounds like the prelude to something worthwhile.

  Still, she’s a bit at a loss for how to respond so she falls back on the always reliable, “Yes, sir.”

  “Captain, proceed.”

  Captain Herkemeier has a map, which he unfolds and spreads across the colonel’s desk. All five of them form a circle, heads down, eyes searching.

  “My division is in full retreat, getting hit hard, hoping to dig in and make a stand here.” The captain taps the map and they all nod. “But we picked up some radio chatter from the enemy; we didn’t have any German speakers on the radio, but I speak some Italian.”

  Rainy blinks, and Herkemeier notices. “Yes, Sergeant, Herkemeier is a German name, but my father never spoke it, while my mother is an Italian immigrant.”

  “Yes, yes,” the colonel interjects impatiently.