Soldier Girls in Action

by Michael Grant

  She grips the first grenade, pulls the pin, and simply lets it roll free from her outstretched hand. A second grenade follows. And a third. And that’s when the first grenade explodes with a flat, dull crumpf! sound. The second grenade is five seconds behind it, and now we hear shouts and cries in terrified German.

  The third and fourth grenades go off, and still the surprised and baffled Germans don’t have a target. No one is shooting at us. No one is shooting at all until Dain Sticklin stands up, aims the BAR almost straight down, and starts firing.

  B-R-R-R-T!

  The noise is deafening but not loud enough to mute a scream of pain and a bellow of rage from below.

  And then the freckle-faced farmer’s daughter from Gedwell Falls, California, stands up, her M1 aimed almost straight down. Sticklin fires in short, disciplined bursts. Richlin takes her time, and for a while it seems she won’t shoot. Then bang! and Richlin’s shoulder jerks slightly from the recoil.

  The Germans have located their enemy now and are shooting up. But they’re firing into the sun at targets they can barely see and can’t hope to reach with grenades.

  Richlin fires again. And again. Each time the wait, each time the careful aim, each time the gentle squeeze on the trigger. And more often than not, each round is followed by a cry of pain from below.

  The Krauts are fish in a barrel.

  The BAR and rifle fire alternate, a burst, a second burst, and a single shot; a burst, a second burst, and a single shot. The two GIs fire without emotion, without flinching. And then Stick tells Rio to toss a few more grenades. Richlin takes two from him, pulls the pins, and drops them both together.

  The explosions sharply reduce the firing from below.

  Sticklin yells down, “Surrender, you damned fools!”

  Some brave German who knows a little English yells a reply that delicacy forbids repeating here.

  “Well, that was impolite,” Rio says with a grin and tosses another grenade. She drops to her belly, rolls a dozen feet to her left, and then edges forward to be able to see over the side from a different angle. She comes back, stands up, edges back from the danger zone, and says, “Stick, there’s some kind of a cave opening. It’s not deep or they’d be all the way in, but it’s enough to give cover to three or four Krauts. There’s an opening on the north side, that must be how they see the road, but I’m guessing it’s a long drop from there, so that’s why they don’t just scoot.”

  Stick says, “Well, heck.”

  Sergeant Cole, his voice straining, yells up, “How’s it look?” The sound echoes eerily, bouncing around the rocks.

  “We’re okay, Sarge,” Stick yells. “Got maybe three or four of them left under cover.”

  “Your call, Stick,” Cole shouts.

  “Give us a minute.” Sticklin reloads, and Rio pops in a fresh clip as well. She’s burned through very little ammo, unlike Sticklin, whose big BAR is smoking hot.

  “We’re out of grenades,” Stick summarizes. “And getting thirsty. If the squad comes over the ridge they’ll still get chewed up.”

  “We could use a rope,” Richlin says.

  Stick laughs. “What are you, a Ranger now, Richlin?”

  “We can send Spats down for rope and more grenades. Lower me down, and I can sling grenades into the cave before they can get a shot at me.”

  “No, if anyone’s going down it’s me,” Sticklin says.

  “Stick, how am I going to lower a big old thing like you down there?”

  “Get some of the others up here, we can do it.”

  “That’s exposing someone else to fire. The Krauts are awake, and they’ve still got a line on the ridge. Someone can toss a rope; we can’t toss a GI.”

  It may occur to some of you ladies that the two GIs were more willing to expose me to possible fire than their fellow soldiers. I suppose I could have resented it, but this squad has been together since basic training. They are friends, and more than friends: family. While I am just so much dead weight.

  The decision is made in that silent, tacit way that becomes second nature to soldiers doing deadly work, and your humble reporter is sent scuttling back down the ravine. It takes me ninety minutes to make the steep, cramped, circuitous round trip, but at last I come back with a hundred feet of rope, six grenades, and, most welcome of all to Stick and Rio, two canteens.

  Stick uncoils the rope, ties a loop at the bottom for Rio’s feet, a second loop three feet above that to pass around her waist, and a third, smaller loop to serve as a handhold.

  “Well, aren’t you just the cowboy, with all that fancy rope work,” Richlin teases.

  Richlin checks her clip and slings her rifle over her shoulder, muzzle down. It will be awkward to use, almost impossible as she’s flattened against the rock wall, so on an impulse I pull out my Colt and offer it to her.

  “Take this. You can stick it in your belt, and it’ll be easier than trying to use a rifle.”

  “Thanks,” Rio says. “A revolver, huh? I’ve never fired a revolver.”

  “It’s single action. You have to cock it each time you shoot. You get six tries.”

  The young woman sticks my father’s gun in the back of her waistband. I see her loosen her knife in its sheath. She nods to Sticklin, who wraps the rope around himself and ties it off, looping it over a none-too-solid boulder.

  I can’t just stand there taking notes, so I grab the rope in front of Sticklin, adding my pampered civilian’s strength to the war effort.

  It’s awkward getting Richlin harnessed and then lowered over the side, and it suddenly dawns on your humble correspondent, right then at that perilous moment, that I have forgotten that Private Richlin is a female. She has become just another GI going into harm’s way, like thousands of other young men and young women fighting for our liberty.

  “Don’t stop to take a cigarette break, Stick,” Rio says as she slowly slips from view.

  Sticklin and I play the rope out, with the muscular corporal bearing most of the weight as the rope slides taut over sharp rock.

  Do the Krauts hear? Do they know what that sliding sound means? Do they know a deadly and determined farm girl is coming to kill them? I am near the edge and can see that Rio has her left hand in the loop and it’s biting into her flesh. Her weight is all on her left foot as her right foot fends off the wall of rock. Her free right hand holds a grenade, pin loosened so she can pull it with her teeth. Suddenly a lizard pops out of a hole level with her face, and she yelps in surprise. She misses her swing and crashes into the rock wall, sending down a trickle of gravel.

  It’s all the Krauts need to guess what’s happening.

  A butternut desert uniform of the Afrika Korps emerges beneath Rio, rifle raised, taking aim, a shot anyone could hit, a shot that will pierce her crotch and plow its way up through her internal organs like a steel drill bit ripping her apart from the inside.

  Panicked, Richlin kicks and swings to the right just as the Kraut fires, and as she swings and the Kraut readies to fire again, Rio stuffs her grenade in her blouse and pulls my daddy’s Colt. Then she drops it from her sweaty hands!

  It lands in the dirt beside the German, who must think it’s a grenade because he shouts something and leaps away.

  Rio Richlin is still twenty feet in the air and now armed with only her grenade. She fumbles for it, retrieves it, gets the pin in her teeth and drops it just as the German realizes his mistake and fires.

  His shot is hurried and it burns a crease up Rio’s left thigh and now the Kraut sees the real grenade, sees his peril and dives back inside the cave opening.

  Crumpf!

  The grenade lands just ten feet to the side and the upward blast pelts Rio with gravel.

  “Stick! Down fast!” Richlin yells, gagging on the words, and Sticklin accelerates her descent to something just short of a dead fall. Richlin hits the ground hard, and for a moment she’s tangled in the rope and can’t reach her remaining grenades. But what she can reach . . . is Daddy’s Colt.
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br />   Ladies, please take a moment to picture the scene, with details relayed to me after the fact, as from my angle I could see little. Before Rio is the cave, nothing but a hollow in the rock. She is completely alone facing three German soldiers, only one of whom appears to have collected his wits following the grenade explosion.

  This Kraut raises his rifle and fires. A miss! But Rio knows he won’t miss a second time, not at this range. He aims, and Rio can do nothing. Nothing but sit in the dust, tangled in rope, with a heavy pistol she raises far too slowly to outpace the German’s trigger finger.

  He pulls the trigger.

  Click!

  Empty!

  Rio takes what aim she can, thumbs back the hammer, and fires the Colt, which gives a tremendous blast and jerks up and back like a living thing.

  Rio has missed as well. The two remaining Germans are experienced combat soldiers, and they’ve shaken off the concussion and grabbed a rifle in one case and a Schmeisser submachine gun in the other as the first German fumbles a clip into his gun and Rio cocks and fires again.

  The first German falls straight back with a red hole in his belly. He screams, and I hear from Rio a shout of fear and fury that surely no milkmaid ever had reason to utter.

  She fires again, and the Kraut with the Schmeisser goes down on one knee, a red flower blooming in the center of his chest. He’s pawing at it, fingers coming away red.

  The last German throws down his rifle and screams, “Nein, nein, bitte nein! Kamerad, kamerad!”

  But it is too late. Richlin shoots him.

  Ladies, I will spare you the description of that bullet’s effects, suffice to say that her bullet lifted the helmet off his head and took much of his head with it.

  Scratch another Nazi superman.

  Rio gets to her feet, legs shaking, and kicks her way clear of the rope. She aims the Colt at the Kraut with the stomach wound. He may yet live.

  “Bitte, bitte, kamerad,” he whispers in agony as she stands triumphantly over him.

  Stomach wound. There are few things worse. The pain is enough to make any man beg for morphine. Even if the Kraut lives, he’ll never be whole. It would be a mercy to finish him off, but later Richlin explains, “I was done shooting. He was no threat.”

  From the bottom of the stone bowl, now stained with the blood of Kraut soldiers, we hear Rio yell, “I’m okay! I’m okay!”

  “I’m okay,” in the voice of a terrified girl, a shaky alto. But there’s another emotion in that voice as well, and it is unmistakable. It is the age-old sound of a warrior victorious. There is blood in the farm girl’s voice.

  There is triumph.

  Ladies, did I feel relief? Yes. Did I feel pride in this young woman? Pride to the bursting point.

  By the time Sticklin and I get back down the ravine and climb over the ridge to drop down into the Kraut encampment, the rest of the squad is there.

  It is indeed a mirror image of the bowl the American GIs had occupied, but this is a slaughterhouse. The GIs have dragged eleven German bodies to form a rough lineup in the dust, a horizontal parade line of Herr Hitler’s vaunted Afrika Korps.

  One German still lives. The GIs have pumped him full of morphine, but he still bellows in pain and no one has the skill to stop the blood that mixes odoriferously with the spilled contents of his intestines. He bellows in German, and then he whimpers, and then, at last, to the relief of everyone, including perhaps himself, he dies and is dragged over to join his comrades, an even dozen now.

  I walk down the line of the dead. Of the twelve bodies, three show the signs of death by grenade shrapnel. Two have been torn apart by the BAR, which practically butchers as it kills. Three are dead from my own Colt.

  Four have died from neat holes punched into their upturned faces and foreheads by the deadly accuracy of the freckle-faced girl with the M1.

  Twelve dead Krauts. No dead Americans, though Rio Richlin has a twisted ankle and a bright-red stripe up her thigh.

  Many still debate whether women should fight or are even capable of fighting. I won’t attempt to answer the first question, that’s for politicians and clergymen and big thinkers, not reporters.

  But I can answer that second question, the one about whether women can fight, with a single word.

  Yes.

  And if you want it in two words, then hell yes.

  Now that the road is free of the threat from the German mortar team, a deuce-and-a-half truck and a jeep are sent to gather the squad and haul us all away to medical care, hot coffee, lousy food, and, best of all, mail from home.

  Richlin’s leg is on fire beneath the bandages, not that she shows it in more than a slight wince. But it’s not like she can walk on her twisted ankle anyway, so she’ll be out of the war for a week, recovering.

  I find her lying on a cot in the field hospital tent, laughing with her hometown friend, Jenou. They’re talking about boys and dropping into whispers on certain words and phrases.

  “How’s the leg?” I ask.

  “Still attached,” Rio says and grins at me.

  “So, reporter lady,” Jenou asks me. “You going to write about this?”

  I pull a camp chair over and sit. “Well, ladies, I’ll sure try. I don’t know what the censors will do to it, though.”

  “Fine by me if you never write about it,” Richlin says fervently. “I’d just as soon you not write anything. It will just worry my folks.”

  I said nothing to that. I have covered this war for months now and met many a brave young soldier, and the bravest are always the most humble. I confess I found myself deeply moved, so rather than reveal human emotion, I adopted the laconic, easygoing style of these young soldiers and said, “You owe me four rounds of forty-five ammo.”

  The two soldier girls laugh. “You’re all right,” Richlin says. Then adds, “For a civilian.”

  “You read much?” I ask.

  “I’ve read The Sun Also Rises, since that’s about the only book everyone seems to have out here. I liked it.”

  I pull a book from my bag and lay it on Rio’s lap. “Here’s one you can read if you want to.”

  Rio reads the title aloud. “The Big Sleep.”

  “Yeah, I read it already, and I don’t want to carry it.”

  “Thanks, Spats.”

  “It’s a story about tough guys and tougher dames. Or what I used to think were tough dames before I met the real thing.”

  I stand to go, and Richlin extends her hand. We shake solemnly, and I turn to leave. I’m at the exit to the tent before I hear her call out, “Hey! You’re no shrinking violet yourself.”

  Maybe someday I’ll win a Pulitzer Prize, but if that happy day comes I will be no prouder than I am of having won that young woman’s respect.

  Editor’s Note: It is with the deepest regret that we inform our readers that this was the last story filed by this reporter. Five days after the events described here, Ann “Spats” Patrone was killed by a land mine while pursuing another story with her characteristic devotion and professionalism. She leaves behind no family but us here at Ladies’ Monthly Magazine, to whom Spats will always be family.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Ann Patrone is made up, but a number of women joined the predominantly male press corps and reported on the war—from London during the Blitz to VE-Day (Victory in Europe Day). The American press corps (the media of its day) pushed hard for stories while never forgetting what side they were on, working with military authorities to tell the story without in any way aiding the enemy. Sixty-six war correspondents died so the citizens of the world’s greatest democracy could understand something of the sacrifices made by those who were risking all they had to preserve liberty.

  EXCERPT FROM SILVER STARS

  THE SECOND BOOK OF NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR MICHAEL GRANT’S EPIC ALTERNATE HISTORY SERIES, WHICH FOLLOWS THE YOUNG WOMEN IN THE US ARMY AS THEY MOVE TO THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY.

  1

  RIO RICHLIN—CAMP ZIGZAG, TUNISIA, NORTH A
FRICA

  “What was it like?” Jenou asks. “That first time? What did you feel?”

  Rio Richlin sighs wearily.

  Rio and Jenou Castain, best friends for almost their entire lives, lie faceup on a moth-eaten green blanket spread over the hood of a burned-out German half-track, heads propped up against the slit windows, legs dangling down in front of the armor-covered radiator. The track is sleeker than the American version, lower in profile, normally a very useful vehicle. But this particular German half-track had been hit by a passing Spitfire some weeks earlier, so it is riddled with holes you could stick a thumb into. The bogie wheels driving the track are splayed out, and both tracks have been dragged off and are now in use as a relatively clean “sidewalk” leading to the HQ administrative tent.

  The road might once have been indifferently paved but has now been chewed to gravel by passing tanks, the ubiquitous deuce-and-a-half trucks, jeeps, half-tracks, bulldozers, and tanker trucks. It runs beside a vast field of reddish sand and loose gravel that now seems to have become something like a farm field with olive drab tents as its crop. The tents extend in long, neat rows made untidy by the way the tent sides have all been rolled up, revealing cots and sprawled GIs in sweat-soaked T-shirts and boxer shorts. Here and there are extinguished campfires, oil drums filled with debris, other oil drums shot full of holes and mounted on rickety platforms to make field showers, stacks of jerry cans, wooden crates, and pallets—some broken up to feed the fires.

  The air smells of sweat, oil, smoke, cordite, and cigarettes, with just a hint of fried Spam. There are the constant rumbles and coughing roars of passing vehicles, and the multitude of sounds made by any large group of people, plus the outraged shouts of NCOs, curses and blasphemies, and more laughter than one might expect.

  At the edge of the camp some men and one or two women are playing softball with bats, balls, and gloves assembled from family care packages. It’s possible that the rules of this game are not quite those of games played at Yankee Stadium, since there is some tripping and tackling going on.