Purple Hearts

by Michael Grant

  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.

  They bunch up around Passey and Stick.

  “All right,” the colonel says. “I got some bangalores off the engineers, and we are getting ready to blow the wire in that draw. We need to charge that draw, cut the wire, and take out those pillboxes.”

  “The draw is enfiladed six ways from Sunday,” Passey says.

  “I am aware of that,” the colonel says. “But there are just two kinds of people staying on this beach: those who are dead and those who are going to die.”

  Passey nods.

  “All right then,” the colonel says. “Now—”

  His words are drowned by an explosion. The bangalores have gone off. The unknown colonel, Passey, and Stick turn the corner into the draw.

  “Let’s go!” Rio says. She blends into a stream of soldiers all following the colonel’s lead. The wire has been blown, but in the back of Rio’s mind is the likelihood of mines. The colonel and Captain Passey must also have thought of it, and they’re leading the way, so . . .

  Not all officers are useless.

  The draw is like a steep-sided gully. A huge concrete pillbox with sinister firing slots looms on the left. A smaller one is planted on the right. Bullets fall like a hailstorm. A man just in front of Rio is hit. She leaps over his falling body, accidentally kicking him, tripping, keeping her balance and . . . run, run, run!

  Only now does it occur to Rio that she has no weapon. She had tossed aside her rifle to dive after Hobart and Ostrowiz, and the BAR she’d rescued lies back on the shale.

  A man screams, twists, and falls back against the dirt wall.

  Rio says, “You sit tight and give me your rifle!”

  “I think they done killed me!” the soldier cries, pawing at his uniform to find the wound.

  “Medic!” Rio shouts.

  She grabs the wounded man’s M1 and fumbles two clips from the wounded man’s ammo pouch, then rushes to catch up. Geer is just ahead with Maria Molina and a couple of soldiers from a whole different outfit.

  The draw narrows ahead, and soldiers are bunched dangerously. A single mortar round could take out a dozen people. The two big pillboxes can no longer bring their machine guns to bear, but German soldiers atop the rise now hurl grenades down.

  Cat Preeling catches one in midair, looks confused as to what to do next, then at the last second throws it like a professional outfielder aiming for home plate. It explodes up above them, scattering dirt but harming no one. A second grenade blows both a man’s legs off, and within seconds all ten pints of blood in his body have made mud out of the sand.

  The colonel huddles with Passey and Stick. Stick waves Rio over, and she plows toward them, stepping on the legs of soldiers now clinging in panic to the side of the draw.

  “We have to take out those MGs,” the colonel says.

  Passey looks at Rio. “Sticklin says he’ll try it, but he can’t go it alone.”

  “Yep,” Rio says, trying not to sound as terrified as she is. It’s flattering that Stick wants her, but on the other hand, it may be a suicide mission. “How do you see it, Stick?”

  Stick squints, peeks around a piece of fallen concrete, ducks back as machine gun rounds bounce where his face had been, and says, “See that crack there?”

  Rio sees the crack. It looks like a washout from recent rains, just wide enough for a single soldier. It runs all the way to the top of the draw, where it is blocked by a thicket of barbed wire.

  “Maybe get us one of those bangalores?” Rio says. Without waiting for an answer she yells, “Bangalores! Bring up a bangalore!”

  After a few minutes, during which another man is hit, though not fatally, the bangalores are handed forward. They are five-foot-long steel tubes painted olive drab with yellow lettering and packed with explosive. They can be joined together to form a longer torpedo by use of a metal sleeve, with the leading tube capped by a steel nose to allow the torpedo to be shoved through sand and under the wire.

  Stick has one bangalore, Rio the other. Stick also carries the five-inch sleeve used to connect the two segments.

  “Ready?” Stick asks.

  “Yep.”

  They kick loose of their wedged positions, jump, and run, feet plowing loose sand. It is thirty feet to the crack, thirty feet of being chased by machine gun fire.

  They drop beside each other at the base of the crack and look up. It’s a twenty-foot climb into coils of wire.

  “Kind of have to wedge ourselves in,” Stick says. Rio nods. Her mouth is full of sand, making speech difficult.

  Stick pushes into the crack, leans against one side, plants his feet on the other side, and begins to ascend. It is slow and not at all easy. When he is halfway up he calls down, “Hand me one!”

  Rio balances the bangalore and heaves it up to where he can grab it. He’s found a ledge, and he precariously balances the torpedo there before calling for Rio to send up the next section.

  Then Rio starts to climb, mimicking Stick’s moves till she is just below his boots and eye-level with the balanced torpedo.

  Then Stick climbs some more, peeks over the lip, and in a relieved voice says, “I got a little defilade up here. Send me the bangers!”

  Again she hands the explosives up, and he shoves them over the lip. She shimmies until she is face-to-face with him and peeks over the edge. The barbed wire is thick here, multiple coiled strands. Beyond the wire she sees a gun emplacement, side-on, just a long rectangular slit maybe thirty or forty feet away.

  She crouches back down. “What do you think, Stick?”

  “I don’t think it’s an enclosed pillbox. I think it’s a reinforced trench. Figure a squad of Krauts, maybe two, maybe three embrasures connected by an open trench.”

  Rio looks at him in surprise and shakes her head. “Well, you’ve been paying attention during briefings.”

  “I happened to talk to one of the Canadians who was in on the Dieppe raid . . .”

  Rio says, “Once we blow the banger the Krauts will send infantry out to get us.”

  Stick nods. “Yeah. Be better if we could follow up strong before the smoke clears. Call some people up here with grenades. I want smoke and frag. And have someone grab my Thompson.”

  “Yep.” Rio can see her soldiers down below, a huddled bunch of scared faces peeking out from behind rocks, fallen dirt, and scraps of concrete. This is not a job for one of the new soldiers. With a churning, sick feeling in her stomach she quickly does the math: not Geer, he’ll have to take the squad if she doesn’t make it.

  Planning for my own death.

  “Castain! Stafford!” She relays Stick’s instructions. Then she and Stick wait, face-to-face, both breathing hard, faces coated with sand and dust and congealed smoke.

  Stafford is first. He hands up Stick’s Thompson and Rio’s newly acquired M1. Then he hands up a musette bag containing a dozen grenades of mixed type.
/>   Jenou comes behind him, carrying her own carbine and a bag of ammo clips for the Thompson and the M1. Jenou and Jack are squeezed in the place just below the two sergeants. Ammo and grenades are parceled out.

  Stick says, “When we blow the wire I want smoke up there. And we go right behind it. Right?”

  Heads nod. Jaws clench.

  Stick attaches the nosepiece to one of the bangalores, shoves it a few feet away, then with support from Rio manages to get the connecting sleeve in place. He pushes the long assembly forward. Then he sets the fuse and yells, “Fire in the hole!”

  Boomf!

  Dirt erupts upward and falls in a hard rain, clattering down the crack, sliding into collars and shirt fronts, mouths, ears, and eyes.

  Jenou and Jack both pull the pins on stubby cylindrical smoke grenades and throw them overhand with a looping move.

  “We’ll give the grenades five,” Stick says. Smoke grenades take a few seconds to really get going.

  There’s a muted pop as the smoke grenades ignite.

  “One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five!”

  Stick surges up and over. Rio slips, catches herself, and drags herself up and after Stick, clawing her way over the rim of the gully. The air is still full of falling dirt and swirling smoke from the explosion, now augmented by the white smoke of the two grenades.

  Stick and Rio run through the smoke, staying low as Rio hears shouted orders in German.

  Barbed wire fragments tear at Rio’s boots and trouser leg. The ground is sand and chunks of concrete, leftovers dumped during the construction of the pillboxes. She cannot see the gun emplacement but charges in the direction she last saw it.

  A swirl of movement in the smoke. Rio stops, shoulders her rifle, and fires. There is a cry of pain.

  Stick’s Thompson opens up, a half-dozen rounds that earn a German curse.

  Suddenly a gust of breeze parts the smoke, and Rio is close, very close to the German position. She dashes up a short slope and there it is right at her feet. As Stick predicted, it is a trench, with two main branches, one leading to their target machine gun position, the other branch ending in a similar embrasure no doubt overlooking some other gully. The firing positions are concrete frames around the long rectangular slits, open to the sky. She sees three Germans with their backs to her, working two machine guns, the brass flying. She senses rather than sees Jenou and Jack behind her.

  In both machine gun nests the Germans fire on, pouring lead on the troops below, but other Germans are grabbing their weapons and running for the exits, some pausing to fire up at the looming Americans above them.

  “Grenades,” Rio says to Jack and Jenou.

  Jack opens the musette bag of grenades, and he and Jenou pull pins and toss, pull pins and toss.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Rio stands at the edge of the trench and picks her targets. The old guy grabbing a Schmeisser. Bang! Through the chest. The young kid, scared, running and nearing the exit. Bang! Through the side and a second Bang! in the back. He falls and blocks the exit with his body.

  Stick’s Thompson spits fat .45 caliber rounds into the backs of the nearest German gunners. One machine gun falls silent.

  A German peeks up over the side of the trench, leveling his rifle. Rio shoots him in the head.

  But she has been too preoccupied with the slaughter in the trench, with grenades exploding and targets presenting themselves in her sights, to look behind her. Neither has Stick.

  Rio senses rapid movement behind her just as she fires the last round in her clip. The clip pings out. Her hand goes automatically to her ammo pouch, even as she turns, turns . . . way too slowly.

  The German’s Schmeisser is leveled. His finger is on the trigger.

  And then he seems to trip, takes a big step to steady himself, falls to his knees, and then to his face. Behind him Maria Molina’s carbine smokes.

  The young woman who practically had to be kicked ashore by Geer has come up on her own initiative to join the fight.

  Having killed everyone at this end of the trench works, Rio and Stick walk cautiously around the trench, looking for an angle on the remaining German machine gunner who still, despite everything, fires down at the beach. Stick tosses a grenade and the machine gun is silenced.

  A dust-caked German comes running, firing his rifle wildly. But Rio and Stick are above him. Both shoot the German.

  A voice yells, “Kamerad! Kamerad! Nicht schiessen!”

  “Come on out of there!” Stick yells.

  “Nicht schiessen!”

  Rio speaks no German but she can guess what it means: don’t shoot.

  Another German comes staggering along the trench, passing directly below Rio, holding his arm and dragging one leg. He is unarmed. He walks up the ramp and of his own accord drops to his knees and laces his fingers behind his neck.

  Rio stares. The German has a wrinkled face, the wrinkles made more prominent by dust. He’s lost his helmet, and his head is mostly bald.

  The German must be in his fifties. An old man!

  “That’s what’s been killing us?” Stick demands. “Richlin, secure the trench.”

  “Trade me your Thompson,” she says.

  Rio hops down into the trench with the submachine gun, followed by Molina. Beebee, too, has now materialized.

  The emplacement is more developed than it looked from above. There is extensive use of concrete to strengthen the sides of the trenches, and there are side chambers, none deep but still covered, where ammo crates or rations are stacked. The grenades have burst most of the crates, spilling ammo. The ammo is of no use as salvage since it is of the wrong caliber, but Beebee drops into the trench and now begins digging through the rations, stuffing sausages and cans into a musette bag. On the body of a dead German officer he finds the ultimate war souvenir: a Luger pistol. He winks at Rio and stuffs it in his belt.

  The two machine guns are still mounted, one tilted skyward since the gunner died still gripping his weapon. He grips it still, though the back of his uniform looks like it has been attacked by furious badgers. Two German soldiers lie atop each other. A third German has been blown against a concrete wall and now looks as if he’s sitting down, legs out, unblinking eyes staring at nothing. A fourth German is in two pieces, feet pointed up, face pointed down.

  “All clear!” Rio shouts.

  Below in the draw, the colonel orders the rest of the platoon to advance.

  Rio grabs one of the Germans’ canteens, smells the contents, and upends it, drinking deep: better to save her own water supply. Molina stands a respectful few paces away. Rio searches the young woman’s face for signs of the complete and abject cowardice she displayed on the beach. But Molina looks undisturbed. In fact, she seems to be nodding to herself, as if approving of what she’s done.

  Maria Molina looks like nothing special, a wide brown face, brown eyes, brown hair. She’s of average height and average weight. Nothing special, but Rio breathes because of her.

  “Thanks, Molina. Good shooting.”

  “Anytime, Sarge.” Molina’s eyes keep flitting back to the German who’d been cut in half.

  Rio nods. “Yep. Welcome to the war, Molina. How you liking it so far?”

  Molina looks alarmed until she realizes that this is as close to an official ceremony of acceptance as she is likely to get. Richlin is talking to her like she would talk to Geer or Castain. As if she is an actual adult. She has, in a phrase she recalls from a detective novel, “made her bones.”

  “I like it a whole lot better when I can shoot back,” Molina says.

  Rio laughs. “Castain, Stafford, and you too, Molina, let’s take a walk ahead and see what we find. Maybe kill some more Krauts.”

  12

  RAINY SCHULTERMAN—NEAR LIMOGES, NAZI-OCCUPIED FRANCE

  When handed a weapon, the first thing to do is check the safety—on—and then rack the slide to see if there is a round chambered. But this weapon is unfamiliar to Rainy.

  “Wh
y that’s a Sten,” Sergeant Hooper says, seeming revived by the sight of something familiar and British.

  Philippe is handing out weapons, Sten guns for Rainy, Marie, Wickham, and himself; a German Luger pistol and four grenades for Étienne.

  Perhaps Philippe knows that Étienne prefers handguns.

  But maybe, Rainy thinks, he has given Étienne the weapon least likely to allow him to shoot them all in the back.

  Paranoia, Rainy chides herself. But then a different word: caution.

  “I want a Sten,” Étienne says.

  “You carry the grenades,” Philippe says. “I’ve seen you play at boules—you have an accurate throw.”

  True? Or a weak excuse?

  Étienne frowns but does not argue. This is Philippe’s territory.

  Rainy sits beside Sergeant Hooper, who walks her through the gun. It looks small and cheaply made to Rainy, who is accustomed to the larger, heavier, more complicated Thompson used by US forces. The Stens are weapons favored by the British SOE, which has been financing and arming the maquis. It’s little more than a steel pipe with a stubby barrel at one end, a magazine sticking awkwardly sideways, and a metal pistol grip at the back.

  “Safety here. This button is the selector,” Hooper explains. “In for semiautomatic, out for full automatic. Of course this is the commando version with the pistol grip. It normally comes with a short metal stock.”

  “Rate of fire?”

  “Five hundred rounds per minute. Of course you’ve only got a thirty-two-round clip, so short bursts, eh?”

  “Does it climb?”

  Hooper shakes his head and gazes admiringly at the crude weapon. “It doesn’t look like much, the old Sten, but there’s not much climb and she won’t wander either. Of course beyond a hundred feet you couldn’t hit a London coach at high noon, but up close she’ll do the job. Nine millimeter, meaning you can use German ammunition at a pinch.”