Purple Hearts

by Michael Grant

  “Preaching to the choir,” Rio says fervently, scratching her armpit.

  Lieutenant Horne strides toward them with Stick in tow. Horne has a determined look. Stick looks grim.

  “That’s not good news coming,” Jack says.

  “Is it ever?” Rio mutters.

  Cat and the new sergeant of Fourth Squad are summoned, and Horne leads them to a well-sheltered spot back in the trees. He takes a knee, but none of his sergeants copy the stance.

  “All right, men,” Horne says. “The colonel wants a platoon-strength recon tonight to—”

  Groans.

  “—to push off to our northeast. There’s a road the tanks want to use, but Jerry’s been busy over there so we need to assess the condition of the road.”

  “I can tell you the condition, sir,” Cat says. “They’ve cut down trees to block the road, and they’ve mined the woods on either side.”

  Horne looks up, angry. “Have you been there?”

  “No, but I’ve seen—”

  “Then best to remain silent, however hard that is for someone of your sex.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cat says, and smiles her wry, downturned smile for Rio’s benefit.

  “They’re giving us some engineers to help assess conditions. Now, if it so happens that the road is not in the condition Preeling thinks it is, then you are to advance along the road until you encounter resistance, radio back, and hold position.”

  Rio starts to speak then sees that Stick has it. “Sir, the Krauts can lie low in the trees, wait for us to pass by, and then cut us off.”

  “You will patrol through the trees either side of the road,” Horne says as if he can’t believe Stick is arguing with him.

  “Sir, in the dark? Through woods that may be mined?”

  Horne stands up. “I have assured the colonel that my platoon will handle the job.”

  Stick, Cat, Rio, and probably even the new sergeant, Pablo Mercer, have noticed that: a) no mention is made of Captain Passey, meaning that he probably opposed the idea; and b) Horne keeps saying “you” and not “we.”

  “Who all is coming, sir?” Rio asks. She implies nothing by her tone. At least nothing she can be court-martialed for.

  “Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie squads; HQ squad stays behind to remain in radio contact and coordinate.”

  Rio nods and works mightily to avoid a sneer. Once again, Horne will be far from the action. She meets Stick’s eye and sees confirmation there: Stick is to lead the bulk of the platoon while Horne sits by his radio waiting for news.

  They are three squads with a nominal strength of thirty-six soldiers and an actual strength of twenty-seven. The Hürtgen has been deadly, and no platoon anywhere in the Hürtgen is near nominal strength. Some platoons have been so badly mauled that their half-dozen or so survivors have been added to a different platoon entirely.

  The first mile is a relatively relaxed walk since they are passing through American-held and engineer-cleared areas. But after that they are twenty-nine people walking in almost pitch-black while trying to spot wires and fresh-turned earth—things that are almost impossible to see in bright daylight.

  “Where the hell are the sappers?” Jack asks, using the British word for combat engineers.

  “Yeah, you noticed that,” Geer says sourly.

  “Beebee, you have that chain?” Rio asks.

  Beebee unwraps a twelve-foot length of heavy chain from around his neck. The chain is bright metal. He fills a musette bag with rocks and dirt then uses a strap buckle to attach the heavy bag to the chain.

  “All right, people, this is slow enough, so no dawdling. Geer will heave the chain. It should catch any wires. And it may set off any antipersonnel mines. But stay on the path! Geer.”

  Geer heaves the musette bag and the chain trails behind it. The bag goes fifteen feet, trailing the chain snake. Nothing. They advance. Heave. Nothing. Advance. Heave. Nothing. Advance.

  This goes on until Geer has been worn out and is swapped for Chester, who is then swapped for Cat, who then swaps for one of her people. Ten feet every two minutes; 528 heaves for a mile.

  Jack says, “Three hundred feet an hour. That’s not exactly a quick march.”

  “You in a hurry?” Rio asks him.

  He grins. “No hurry whatsoev—”

  The musette bag blows up. It has landed on a mine.

  “Definitely no hurry,” Jack says fervently.

  Rio knows they are in a sort of legal gray zone. They are carrying out orders, just doing it so slowly that the objective might never be reached. Preparing a new weight for the chain wastes five minutes, and Stick comes walking up the line, shaking his head.

  “I know what you two are doing. But Horne isn’t having it. I reported our position and . . .” He shrugs.

  “These woods are mined, Stick,” Cat protests. “We just set off a Bouncing Betty that would have cost some poor SOB his family jewels.”

  “I know,” Stick says grimly.

  “What does Horne expect us to do? You see any engineers?”

  “I can’t see my hand in front of my face, Cat,” he says, raising his voice, which is a sure sign Stick does not like the orders he’s transmitting. “But we have two miles just to reach the road, and at this rate we’ll get there around noon tomorrow!”

  A compromise is reached. The three squads will advance with one GI on point. That GI will drag the chain behind him to snag any wires or mines his feet don’t. No one will spend more than ten minutes walking point.

  It’s a grim lottery. It is also not something you ask unless you’re willing to do it yourself, so Rio takes the first ten minutes and extends it to fifteen, just to drive home the point. She walks carefully but at a normal pace. Cat takes the next round, and her chain, dragging behind, sets off a booby trap that sprays her with dirt but only flecks the back of her thigh with a piece of shrapnel.

  Rio assigns Pang to be next, and he does the job, stopping the instant the second hand on his watch shows ten minutes. One of Cat’s veterans is next. But from here on it will be up to the greenhorns—they’ve risked enough useful soldiers.

  But one of Mercer’s privates refuses and won’t budge. Then one of Cat’s.

  “You want us to shoot ’em?” Cat asks Stick sarcastically.

  Rio says, “Listen, if we cut straight east here we’re in Kraut territory, right? Any place they are, there will be fewer mines, right?”

  “Yeah, and a lot more bullets,” Mercer says, speaking up for the first time in this group.

  “Not if they don’t hear us,” Rio says. “They sure as hell won’t see us. If they’re spread as thin as we are we can maybe just sneak past, and we cut a couple miles off the march.”

  Rio has learned a phrase from one of the war movies shown by the USO. A submarine movie had used the term rig for silent running. Now she is inspecting her people as they rig for silent running, making double sure that clips do not rattle in ammo pouches, that canteens do not bounce, that anyone who stumbles does it without the obligatory curse.

  “Not a word,” she says. “And I will personally shoot anyone stupid enough to light a cigarette.”

  They pivot east and walk in a long single file toward the German positions. Twenty-nine pairs of boots crunch on wet pine needles. Twenty-nine pairs of eyes are trained on the ground, which is as invisible as the dark side of the moon.

  The sergeants know that Rio has exaggerated just a bit: there is still the possibility of mines and booby traps, even close to German lines. Only when they are through the German front line can they relax at all, and even then there may well be minefields, though they’d most likely be antitank mines, which are not set off by even a very large soldier.

  But Rio cannot betray her uncertainty, so she walks point again, violating the rules and the logic that says she is more valuable than one of her privates. All well and good, but which of her greenhorns is going to keep up the necessary pace? And who but an experienced veteran will even spare a thought for non-
mine threats?

  She makes a fist, but the dark is so total that Jack plows into her.

  “Krauts,” Rio says in a voiceless whisper. She licks a finger and holds it up to judge the breeze. She has neither seen nor heard Germans, but the smell of bitter tobacco and pickled cabbage is on the slight breeze. She makes sure Jack is looking at her and makes a you-and-me gesture. Geer is with them now, and she says, “Keep moving. Send word back to Cat and Mercer.”

  She and Jack crouch low and creep away into the forest. She’d rather have not brought Jack on this recon, she’d rather have a second Thompson rather than his rifle, but he was next up and she is loath to ever be accused of protecting either him or Jenou. Favoritism has no place here.

  Rio places each step carefully, feeling for wires or sudden depressions or twigs that might snap loudly. Careful but not slow. Cautious but not paralyzed with fear. She motions for Jack to stay in her footprints.

  Her finger is on the Thompson’s trigger, safety off. She reminds herself of the location of her grenades and wishes she’d thought to swap the smoke grenades for the high-explosive grenades, which are more useful at night, but too late now.

  I still make mistakes. How am I supposed to tell my people what to do?

  She sniffs the breeze, nods, and motions for even slower, even more silent movements. Then . . . low voices. Low voices speaking German.

  Rio lies flat on the ground, and Jack joins her. Faces so close they’re breathing each other’s exhalations, Rio says in a voice inaudible at a distance of more than half a foot, “I’m going closer.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “Stay here. I want to see if it’s an MG or just riflemen.”

  Jack’s face is barely visible, even inches from her own. But she can guess at the stubborn expression. She crawls on hands and knees, the Thompson resting across her back. Each movement must be carefully managed so as not to snag on a branch or a root.

  Closer. Closer. Two voices. An older man and a younger. Both smoking the putrid weeds that pass for tobacco in war-strained Germany.

  Closer. Now she can hear them breathing. There cannot be more than ten feet separating Rio from the Germans, but she sees nothing. Not even shadows.

  “Ich muss scheissen,” the older voice says.

  Jack’s hand grabs Rio’s boot. She is irritated but not surprised to find that he has disobeyed and followed her. He crawls up beside her and says, “Latrine run.”

  Rio hears the German climbing heavily up out of his fighting hole. Footsteps on leaves, fading. A sound of a belt being unhitched. Trousers dropping. A sigh.

  Jack jerks his head to indicate that they should crawl back now. Rio considers crawling farther and perhaps cutting the younger German’s throat, but that would raise alarm. She follows Jack back to relative safety, then hurries to catch up with the platoon. She finds Stick.

  “We’re through their front line,” she says.

  “For what that’s worth,” Stick says.

  Rio knows what he means: the Germans put a thin line up front, the real heavy-duty line farther back, so they are likely between two lines of Germans. The question is whether the Germans have their own patrols out. The answer is certainly yes, but are they patrolling the gap between their lines?

  They move quickly after that, and in the early morning hours long before sunrise they find the road and then the engineers. Both of them. They had started out as a squad and been ambushed.

  “FUBAR,” Cat says in a whispered conference.

  “FUBAR,” Stick agrees. “Krauts’ll be—”

  The night erupts in machine gun fire.

  “Down, down!” Rio yells as a mortar explodes nearby.

  Jenny Dial panics and starts to run. She is cut down by machine gun fire.

  The experienced Germans are not using tracer rounds, so in the darkness it is not possible to see where they are, only hear them. “That way!” Rio yells, chopping her hand toward tall, looming trees.

  Jack and Jenou are firing from the ditch, Geer and Pang are setting up their BAR; Chester is flat on the road, hands over his head. Milkmaid Molina is firing her rifle. Dial is wounded, yelling in pain, but it’s a grazing wound, not fatal. Ostrowiz is missing half his head and dead.

  Rio fights down her panic, ignores the insane pounding in her chest, tries to read the terrain, tries to make sense of where they are, but it is pitch-black and there are machine gun bullets pinging madly.

  The Germans have two MGs and a mortar. At least.

  Ahead, the German machine guns and the secondary German line. Behind, only the relatively thin German front line.

  “Chester! Crawl over here to the ditch!” Rio yells.

  Where is Dial? Rio can hear her, but where is she? And where is Beebee?

  The heavens choose this moment to begin dropping hailstones the size of peas, ice bullets bouncing everywhere making a clattering noise as counterpoint to the chattering machine guns.

  Stick’s BAR gunner opens up, but he’s firing blind, spraying the woods in the vain hope of a lucky shot.

  There are two paths: retreat or advance.

  But retreat where? Go running and stumbling back into German foxholes? Or charge into invisible machine gun nests? And then what?

  Rudy J. Chester crawls beside Rio.

  “Start shooting, goddammit,” she snaps at him.

  “I can’t, Sarge, I can’t! I dropped my gun!”

  Rio hears Stick’s voice raised high. “Richlin! Preeling! We’re pulling back! On my signal, Alpha squad first, everyone else covering fire!”

  It is the only sensible move. But withdrawing in order from a hot gun battle is one of the hardest maneuvers for any military unit.

  “I see muzzle flash!” Geer shouts, and turns his BAR.

  “Shit!” Stick yells. “Horne says stay put!”

  “Horne can fug himself!” Sergeant Mercer yells.

  A mortar shell explodes, and Mercer yells, “Goddammit!”

  A voice Rio does not recognize shouts, “Sergeant Richlin! You’re in charge.”

  There’s a terrible catch in that voice. Rio feels goose bumps tickling her skin. She feels a twisting, turning inside her.

  Stick?

  “Is Stick hurt?” Her voice is the voice of a frightened little girl. She hears it. Everyone does.

  “No,” comes the flat reply. “Not hurt.”

  Stick is dead. Dain Sticklin. Dead.

  Rio is paralyzed.

  Not Stick. Not Stick!

  “What do we do?” comes Cat’s voice through the incessant rattle of machine guns.

  “Stick said pull out,” Rio manages to say through the lump in her throat.

  Jesus, not Stick!

  “Pang is hit!” Geer cries. “Medic!”

  There is no medic with this patrol. Geer stops firing and tears at Pang’s buttons, saying, “Come on, Jappo, come on, don’t fugging die on me!”

  “Geer! Keep firing that goddamn BAR!” Rio yells.

  Pull out. Stay put. Rio’s decision now. Horne may hang her out to dry if she pulls back. And if she doesn’t?

  “Mercer! Leave the wounded and pull back behind us! Then you, Cat!”

  In the dark, being murdered. They are being killed by people they can’t see. Suddenly Beebee is there, right beside her. Has he been there all along?

  “Jenou! Get up there and feed Stick’s BAR!”

  She hears gurgling from Pang. No time for Pang. No time for anything but saving the ones who can still be saved.

  Mercer’s squad—just five soldiers now—comes running by, hunched over.

  “All right, Cat!” Rio says.

  But the Germans aren’t having it. Fire erupts suddenly on their right flank, across their direction of escape.

  Cat drops beside Rio. “I got three dead, and I’m leaving a wounded man, Richlin.”

  “Geer! Enfilade those fuggers on our right flank!”

  “They’re cutting us off,” Cat says. “Everyone here will be d
ead in ten minutes!”

  My God: do I have to surrender?

  “Listen up, Cat. When I say go, you go.”

  “What are you doing, Rio?”

  “I’m going to back those bastards off our flank.”

  “You’ll get yourself killed!”

  Rio doesn’t bother to argue. Cat says, “I’m going with you.”

  “No, we need at least one experienced NCO to . . .”

  “Fug you, Rio, I’m going with you!”

  “Geer, get Stafford, Castain, Beebee, and Molina out of here when we go.”

  “I’m not leaving Pang!”

  “You cannot carry him!” But she knows there’s no point arguing. Not now. Rank means nothing now. “Cat?”

  “Yep.”

  “On one. Three. Two.”

  Rio and Cat jump to their feet. Each is armed with a Thompson. Each runs, fingers squeezing triggers, firing almost blind at nothing but muzzle flashes that shift location after each fusillade.

  The machine gun ahead now turns its fire toward the chattering Thompsons, but as they do the remains of the platoon outrun a wedge of advancing Germans. They reach trees again and in a move that does Rio and Cat proud, they turn and fire from cover on the exposed Germans, snarling and cursing.

  “Die, motherfuggers!”

  “Come on, you Kraut bastards!”

  Cat falls to the ground and trips Rio just as a stream of lead passes that would have cut her in half.

  “Shit, Rio, I’m hit,” Cat says.

  “Bad?”

  “My leg.”

  Rio has just ordered Geer to abandon a wounded Pang. She should abandon Cat. Instead she lays her Thompson on Cat’s chest, gets behind her on hands and knees, grabs handfuls of uniform, and pulls.

  Cat is hurt, but she still has her Tommy gun and she fires despite being on her back. The file of Germans that had been sent to cut off the platoon withdraws, but keeps up a steady rate of disciplined fire.

  The only way out is through a hundred-yard gap between the firing Americans in the trees and the firing Germans.

  It is flatly impossible.

  “Cat.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think we may have to surrender.”