Purple Hearts

by Michael Grant

  Now Frangie does her best impersonation of an exploding 88. “This is why you’re screaming like a baby? What is the matter with you? You have me running over here because you’re too clumsy to hold on to your coffee?”

  Days pass in rain-filled holes. Nights pass the same way but with extra fear, because the nighttime is when the German patrols come out. Frangie and Deacon move from hole to hole, from tank to truck to half-track. They bandage and medicate, splint and transfuse, and load soldier after soldier onto the hood of Manning’s jeep for transport to the rear. And they nag. Nagging is a big part of the job. Mostly Frangie nags them to change their socks and dry their feet, because the old World War I plague of trench foot is back with a vengeance, here, just a few miles from the caved-in remains of those same World War I trenches.

  The advance through the Hürtgen, so far as Frangie can tell, is not advancing. All that’s happening is that GIs are breaking down under the constant artillery and gunfire and cold and wet. And every now and then, everything goes suddenly nuts.

  One of the white soldiers from the infantry down the line had come running, stark naked, through the battalion’s position, waving a white T-shirt in surrender the day before. He had come running right down the firebreak, which is all that separates them from the Germans. The only reason the Germans hadn’t shot the poor man was that they were too busy laughing. Frangie and Manning had tackled the fellow and both had smelled alcohol on him. The man was incoherent, hysterical, and thrashing about like a wild animal. Manning had applied some special field medicine: a pile-driver punch to the man’s belly, and then she and Frangie had dragged him away to safety.

  “We’re going over to the attack,” Manning says breathlessly. She’s just come back from the field hospital with a jeepload of supplies and the latest gossip.

  “I thought this already was an attack,” Frangie mutters.

  “Who says we’re attacking?” Deacon demands.

  “Says me, who overheard the colonel telling the captain, that’s who.” Manning then shares her loot from the rear-area trip: cigarettes, a nice new, as-yet-unstained stretcher, and a bar of actual Belgian chocolate, very different from the army-issued version in that it did not break teeth or give you the runs.

  They share half the chocolate between the three of them, with Frangie pocketing the rest for her patients. The chocolate is impossibly smooth, sinfully rich, a glorious moment of pure pleasure. It’s almost as if God has reached down from heaven to say, “I know this is all terrible, but on the other hand . . . chocolate!”

  An hour later the official word comes: they are digging out the tanks. The white infantry is coming to guard their flank. And together they are going to drive straight up the firebreak and pivot left into what the brass said was a weakly held sector of the German line.

  The firebreak is about wide enough for two tanks running side by side, with the far side of that firebreak held by the Germans. It is along this firebreak that the tank battalion has stayed for days. The Germans attacked twice and were repulsed twice. The Americans attacked once and were driven back. Frangie imagines she can hear the ding-ding-ding of a bell signaling the next round in this endless, brutal prizefight.

  Looking up through the Toothpick Forest, Frangie sees rain clouds above the jagged black dagger points. Which means that the planes will not be coming to help with the attack. Bad weather is the Kraut’s friend.

  The attack is scheduled for midmorning to confuse the Germans, who’ve become accustomed to dawn attacks. The morning is spent backing the Shermans out of their dugouts, running ammo, and, in Frangie’s case, dealing with sprains, bruises, and mangled fingers.

  The Germans hear the Shermans and have a good idea what’s coming, so they launch a heavy artillery barrage. They hit no tanks but do destroy a half-track, kill two men, and wound a woman who is tended by another medic, leaving Frangie free to think way too much about the coming attack.

  Frangie, Deacon, and Manning sit in the jeep, well behind the tanks that now idle at the edge of the trees, ready to burst suddenly out into the firebreak, guns blazing. Frangie glances at her watch: H hour in thirty minutes. First . . .

  A small spotter plane, a fragile J-3, drifts lazily above at treetop height as its pilot radios information back to the artillery far behind the line. Germans fire up at the plane but they, too, are limited by the terrain—no sooner do they see the plane than it is screened by tree trunks. By now the artillery has its fire mission: coordinates, types of ordnance, number of rounds. The spotter plane is there to assist with accuracy.

  The first round from a 155 millimeter “Long Tom” whistles overhead and drops in a fiery crash in the woods on the far side of the firebreak.

  Thirty seconds later a second round, and this one lands right in the first row of trees.

  Up in the J-3 a pilot calls on his radio, signaling that the second shot was on target, and what happens next is simply stunning. Frangie has been on the receiving end of German artillery, and it is accurate and shattering. But it has never had the sheer intensity of what is now unleashed from the distant sky-pointing muzzles of 105 howitzers and 155 Long Toms. The woods opposite boil with fire and smoke. Entire trees go twirling through the air. Great gouts of dirt fly skyward. And it goes on and on, an ancient god’s temper tantrum, a pounding, beating assault, an annihilation.

  When at last the shells stop falling, Frangie hears the German cries, the counterpart of “Medic!”

  Out of nowhere the captain walks by Frangie’s jeep, yelling to a radio operator hurrying to keep pace.

  “Ask ’em when the hell we are jumping off! The goddamned Krauts are on their asses, we should go now! Now!”

  They do not go now, now. They wait as the minutes tick slowly by, minutes during which the Germans can be heard just across the firebreak in woods identical to those sheltering Frangie.

  The Germans are recovering. Quickly.

  The minutes drag by, and with every lost minute the Germans unpack another crate of Panzerfausts, redig a collapsed fighting hole, evacuate their wounded, and replace them with fresh troops.

  Frangie feels something change. There’s a fresh, chilly breeze, portending another bout of rain. She glances at the soldiers closest to her: Sergeant Frankie Wallace in command of the tank named Firecracker. She winks down at Frangie. Frangie lets her gaze drift to Firecracker’s bow gunner, P.D., his head up through his hatch. He does not wink. She cannot hear over the rough idle of the Sherman, but she can see that his teeth are chattering.

  Finally, long after the dust has settled on the German positions, the signal comes. The Shermans lurch forward, crashing into view, a line of half a dozen tanks. They advance in neat order and pivot right as white infantry drifts out of the woods to walk in their lee.

  It is a terrifying spectacle for Frangie. She has never gotten out of her head Sergeant Moore’s wisdom that the Krauts will attack a tank before anything else. The Germans have heard the Shermans. They’ve had far too long to recover and prepare, and here are the tanks passing right before them, as exposed as floats at a parade, their weakly armored flanks in direct line of sight for the Germans.

  Not that the tanks are trying to sneak by. Their machine guns hurl tracer rounds into the bushes and trees, their cannon erupt at intervals, firing at point-blank range. But despite the suppressing fire, the first Panzerfaust explodes against a turret. The commander buttons up but then reemerges moments later: his tank is unharmed. The other tanks veer their machine guns toward the source of the Panzerfaust, but the Germans have long since learned to fire and move, fire and move.

  A second Panzerfaust comes streaking and misses; a third hits a tank in the treads, and it veers out of control, practically running over its own infantry, who scramble to avoid being crushed.

  Five tanks now.

  An 88 fires from concealment, point-blank, right from the tree line down the line, and a Sherman blows up, fire shooting from every porthole and seam.

  “All right, Mannin
g, let’s go,” Frangie says.

  “Make sure your red cross is clean and shiny!” Manning yells as she guns the engine, and the jeep goes tearing out of the cover of the forest, bumps out into the firebreak, and turns a hard, two-wheel right. Because the infantry occupies the safer ground to the right side of the tanks, Manning drives along the left of the Shermans, between the Germans and the tanks.

  Machine guns blaze on both sides now, tracers crisscrossing over Frangie’s head.

  The exploded tank goes pop-pop-pop as machine gun rounds inside cook off from the heat and the slugs ricochet around inside, making mincemeat of anything made of flesh and blood. At any moment one of the tank’s own high-explosive rounds will reach the necessary heat and blow the tank apart like a firecracker in a beer bottle.

  “There’s a man down!” Deacon yells, pointing ahead, like a hunting dog on the scent. Manning brakes, and Frangie and Deacon jump out. There is indeed a man, or what’s left of him. He appears unhurt from the waist up, but everything below is smoking meat. A white infantryman has broken both cover and the rules to run out and throw dirt on the man’s still-burning clothing.

  “We got him, go!” Frangie yells to the white soldier.

  The wounded man gasps, mouth working like a beached fish. He’s trying to speak, but he can’t form words. His breath is short, sharp inhalations and quick moans, but he’s trying to get at something in the breast pocket of his tanker’s jacket.

  “Lie still, Soldier, we’ve got you.”

  But the man keeps clawing at his uniform, eyes bulging with some desperate need.

  Frangie cuts away the edges of burned uniform to find the line of damage, to see just how much is lost. “Deacon, look in his jacket!”

  Deacon fumbles and pulls out a rosary. “This?”

  The man shakes his head.

  Deacon pulls out a letter. From the letter falls a photograph of two little girls with their parents. The wounded man takes it reverently and presses it to his chest.

  Manning cries out, “Shit!”

  Frangie looks up to see blood pouring down the side of her neck. “Deacon!” He’s already leaping toward Manning as Frangie fights down nausea. The wounded man is more charcoal than flesh below the waist. His thighs have melted and then resolidified, as a wax nightmare version. His flesh is so hot that raindrops hiss and steam when they land.

  “I’m going to give you something for the pain,” Frangie says, and stabs a morphine syrette into him.

  “My. Babies.” He holds the picture for her to see.

  “They’re beautiful little girls,” Frangie says.

  “My. Babies.”

  “You’ll be with them soon. Million-dollar wound. You’re going home, Soldier.”

  His body jerks violently, as if the top half is trying to shake itself free of the destroyed bottom half. Shock. She would elevate his legs if he had legs. When the spasm passes, the soldier grows sleepy. His eyelids droop.

  “How’s Manning?” Frangie yells.

  The battle is not going to plan. A second Sherman explodes, and the flaming wreckage is blocking the path. Oily smoke rolls over Frangie, and she’s glad for the foul-smelling reek as it might conceal her for a while at least.

  Deacon does not answer.

  “I’m cold, I’m cold. Funny, huh?” the burned man says.

  “Yeah, kind of,” Frangie says, frantically digging out plasma. It won’t save the man: it’s just all she knows to do for him.

  Deacon, in a shaky voice, says, “Manning’s okay. Took a piece of her earlobe, is all!”

  Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk!

  Machine gun rounds pierce the jeep, passing right through one door and out through the other. Manning, thankfully, is on the ground with Deacon bent over her.

  And some force seizes control of Frangie Marr, some force she can only stand back and watch in horrified amazement. Because this thing inside her, this boiling rage made out of blood and lice and hunger and fear, propels her to her feet. She strides past the jeep. Well out beyond any tanks. Face-to-face with the Germans in the forest.

  “You fugging Nazi bastards!” she shouts. She pulls off her helmet and bangs her fist on the Red Cross brassard. “Red fugging Cross. Do you see a gun on me? Do you see a machine gun on my jeep? You want us to start shooting your medics?”

  She plops the helmet back on her head and marches back, fully expecting to feel a punch to the spine followed a split second later by the crack of a rifle.

  The battle rages on.

  Her jeep is not hit again.

  22

  RIO RICHLIN—HÜRTGEN FOREST, NAZI GERMANY

  “The replacement?” Richlin asks Geer.

  “Pang owes me fifty bucks.”

  “Anyone remember his name? I don’t have any paperwork on him.”

  “It was something normal. Like Bill or Joe or something,” Geer says. The back rear of his uniform is red with blood.

  Rio nods at the area. “You get shot in the ass, Geer?”

  “I got shot in the side, not in the ass, and I will punch the first one of you sons of bitches who says different.”

  The squad is in a state of collapse, sprawled in pine needles and mud, some already snoring, others cleaning their rifles, others still doing inexplicable things, like Jenou, who is, bizarrely, writing furiously in a little notebook she keeps.

  “You need to go seek some, uh, medical attention? In the rear?” Rio asks, then grins, betraying the pun.

  “Very funny,” Geer says, and scowls at Pang, who laughs. “No, my rear does not require me to go to the rear, fugging comedians. It’s just a graze, but it sure does bleed, and stings too. Doc says it’ll heal up. Says I should try to take it easy, stay off my feet, maybe try a restricted diet. Because he’s a fugging comedian too.”

  Rio grins. From day one at basic training she has not liked Geer, not liked his rude bigotry or his occasional bullying of replacements—not that Jenou is really any kinder—or, for that matter, anyone in the squad. Replacements come, replacements die. It’s best not to get close to anyone until they’ve survived a week. At least.

  No, Rio has never liked Geer, but she has come to rely on him. A loudmouthed redneck he might be, but he can fight, and in Rio’s world there are only three things she needs from any member of her squad: That they fight. That they fight. And that they fight.

  Geer fights.

  More surprising still, he and Pang seem to have become partners in a way. Geer could have fobbed off the BAR, which Pang feeds, but he’s kept the machine gun and his ammo carrier. They call each other “Jappo” and “Hillbilly” respectively, but they seem to get along. Pang, too, fights.

  The tanks have gone on ahead with fresh infantry, but word is they’ve stalled. And since there’s a chance of a counterattack, Rio is trying to decide whether to bully her squad into digging in here, or figure they’ll be pushed back to their start point and can reoccupy their old holes.

  “Take five more minutes,” she says. “Then I want to see entrenching tools in action.”

  The counterattack is surprisingly feeble, and they are able to drive it off with three wounded and two dead in the platoon, with one of the injuries being Dick “Lazarus” Ostrowiz, who manages a much-envied wound, a shoulder wound that will hurt like hell, take forever to heal, and require his evacuation up the chain, to battalion aid, to the field hospital, and eventually, back to the States.

  Ostrowiz, high on morphine, chuckles to himself as he is loaded into an ambulance and driven off.

  Rio is once again shorthanded. Geer, Jack, Jenou, Pang, Beebee, Milkmaid Molina, Jenny Dial, and Rudy J. “Private Sweetheart” Chester. Three short of a full squad. Meaning they’ll be sending her more replacements, replacements who’ll be wounded or run away or die so quickly there’s little point in learning their names.

  In this moment of relative calm, with holes dug and no artillery dropping—for the moment—Rio performs one of her most necessary duties.

  “All right, peo
ple: twinkle toes!”

  Universal groans.

  The single biggest crippler of American soldiers in the Hürtgen is trench foot. It doesn’t kill, but it sends a lot of soldiers to the rear and can be a sort of million-dollar wound. So Rio regularly performs what the platoon refers to as a “twinkle-toe” inspection, in which every member of the squad must remove boots and socks and show their feet. The nights are more wintry with each passing day, with temperatures dropping to freezing. Cold plus wet equals trench foot.

  “How long since you changed socks, Dial?”

  “Um . . . I, uh . . .”

  “Use a rag or some underwear and wipe out the insides of your boots, Dial, then dry those socks and put on fresh,” Rio says. “You have some powder?”

  “I used it on . . .” She looks uncomfortable.

  “Your bra. I understand, Dial, but there’s no such thing as trench breast, so save your powder for your feet. Beebee! Dial needs talcum.”

  She moves on. Geer has already taken off his boots and set them in the air to dry, at least until the rain returns. His feet look fine, as do Jenou’s and Jack’s and Pang’s. They’ve all seen actual cases of severe trench foot, and they know they don’t want it.

  “Private Sweetheart?” Rio asks when she reaches Chester. “Why do you not have a spare pair of socks?”

  He shrugs. “I lost them in a card game.”

  “A card game with who?”

  Chester glances toward Cat Preeling’s squad, similarly laid out nearby.

  “Dammit, Sweetheart, don’t you have more sense than to play poker with Preeling? Have you ever met anyone who’s beat her?” She raises her voice to a yell, but one that carries a tone of amused exasperation. “Cat!”

  Through the air comes a pair of balled-up socks, which Pang snags in midair and then tosses to Chester.

  Cat yells, “But he owes me two packs of smokes for that!”

  “Yes, he does,” Rio agrees. “Fair is fair.”

  “Speaking of fair,” Jenou says. “When are we getting some time off the line? I never thought I’d say these words, but I would really like a walk through the delousing tent. My fleas and my lice are battling for control, and I’m losing.”