Purple Hearts

by Michael Grant

  “Where you murder people.”

  “I . . . I . . . I follow orders. I am nobody. I am just a soldier.”

  “No,” Rainy says in her dangerous singsong. “I know soldiers. You are no soldier.”

  “A soldier follows orders!” This outburst from the officer, who, judging by age and arrogance, Rainy guesses is at least the equivalent of a major.

  “Orders to murder innocent men and women and children.”

  “But they are only Jews!” the officer protests.

  One of the enlisted men bolts, running through the woods. The GI sergeant looks quizzically at Rainy, who says, “Prisoners attempting to escape . . .”

  The sergeant grins, takes the M1 from one of his men, aims carefully, and fires a bullet into the German’s back. He falls.

  “Only Jews,” Rainy repeats.

  “Yes, of course, only Jews. And some Poles and homosexuals and other antisocial elements, but mostly Jews.”

  Rainy forms a ghastly smile. She steps very close to the officer. “Any of you boys have a smoke grenade?”

  There is an intake of breath as the GIs realize what she’s asking. A smoke grenade is handed to her.

  “Only Jews,” she says. “Only Jews.” She unbuttons the fly on his trousers. She stuffs the smoke grenade in, without pulling the pin, and then carefully rebuttons his trousers.

  All the while the officer protests and demands and squirms against the rope holding his hands tied behind his back.

  Rainy steps back.

  Rainy pulls something from her coat. It’s an envelope that has been reopened and folded closed. She shakes out something delicate and holds up a gold chain with a tiny Star of David dangling.

  “My mother sent it to me for my birthday.”

  The SS officer sees the Star of David. His eyes go wide. Now the SS officer realizes what she is doing. And now he is no longer arrogant or demanding. He pleads, he talks about his family, he says, “Fug Hitler, it’s all over, the war is lost, we must unite against the Russian hordes of Asian mongrel peoples who will—”

  Rainy fires once.

  The bullet hits the grenade before spraying lead shrapnel through his groin. He falls to his knees roaring in pain, but the bullet wound will not kill him, and he knows it.

  The Willy Pete, the white phosphorus, ignites.

  He screams as the fire grows in his crotch and his upper thighs and smoke pours from him as his uniform burns and he writhes and bucks and screams and screams.

  The remaining prisoner collapses, hands folded in prayer, begging. One of the remaining GIs says, “Malmédy, motherfugger,” and shoots him in the face.

  It takes a while for the SS officer to lose consciousness as the white phosphorus burns him like so much kindling.

  Rainy puts the necklace in her pocket. She takes out a cigarette and barely manages to put it to her lips. Her fingers will not manage the Zippo. So she takes the cigarette, leans down, and lights it on the human fire at her feet.

  “Any of you boys have a problem with any of this?” Rainy asks.

  Four helmeted heads shake as one.

  The sergeant says, “Nothing happened here, Captain. Not a single goddamned thing.”

  PART VI

  VICTORY

  When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall—think of it, always.

  —Gandhi

  LETTERS SENT

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Marr,

  I am sorry to be writing you out of the blue like this. I am Master Sergeant Walter Green, US Army. I have had occasion to meet and I believe become friends with your daughter, Sergeant Frangie Marr.

  I am writing to ask your permission to court Frangie.

  Of course this would only happen when the war is over. But I hope once that happy day comes to spend some time with Frangie. My intentions are only of the most honorable nature.

  I am a little older than your daughter, being twenty-six on my last birthday. I have a degree in engineering from Iowa State University. My family—mother, father, and seven brothers and sisters all younger—lives in Iowa, which is not so very far away from Tulsa. I am a healthy, God-fearing man. I do not smoke or drink or gamble. I believe I will easily find employment as I have numerous contacts with local businesses who assure me they could use a man with my qualifications.

  I would do all in my power to make your daughter happy, and to be completely honest, I cannot imagine being happy myself unless it is with Frangie.

  But I will not proceed in pressing my case unless I can do so with your blessing.

  Sincerely,

  Walter Green

  Dear Miss Castain:

  It is with regret that I must inform you that we cannot publish your short story “On the Line with the Soldier Girls.” It simply does not meet our editorial needs at this time.

  However, I believe you have talent and you may yet become a published author. I urge you to continue writing.

  Sincerely,

  Wilmer Cutler,

  Associate Editor, the New Yorker magazine

  My Dear Daughter,

  My sweetest of hearts, I am so terribly sorry to tell you that Daddy has passed away. It was his kidneys, although the doctors say if it wasn’t that it would have been his lungs.

  We will bury him tomorrow.

  I don’t have words for this, Frangie. My heart is filled with grief. He could be difficult at times, but I loved your father with all my heart and soul, and I am destroyed.

  I don’t know how to make this easier for you. I thought maybe I wouldn’t tell you because I know you have so very much to cope with already. But in the end I thought you must be told. I wish there was another way.

  I will write to Harder as well. I suppose he will be relieved.

  Come home safely to me, Frangie. Obal and I need you.

  Your loving mother

  33

  RIO RICHLIN—BAVARIA, GERMANY

  The village is called . . . well, the fact is Rio has forgotten what the village is called. It is yet another village in Germany, much like the last half-dozen villages—neat, orderly, prosperous, and full of resentful, frightened German civilians.

  Rio and her platoon—now nearly at full strength—are set to enter the village, secure the roads, power stations, railroad sidings, bridges, etc., and make sure the village is safe for the military police and the occupying authorities.

  The village is in marshy territory watered by a sluggish river. Cows and sheep can be seen in wonderfully green fields where they are guarded against refugees by civilians with knobby sticks and pitchforks. Most of the DPs are former slave laborers trying to walk home from Germany, to find a way back to France, Belgium, Ukraine, Poland, Netherlands, and many more nations. Others are concentration camp survivors. Some are people in search of family. Some simply need to get away from the sporadic fighting that continues on the Western Front. And, increasingly, the DPs are Germans fleeing from the Soviets and carrying with them dark tales of mass rape and summary executions at the hands of the Red Army.

  But whoever they are, wherever they are from and wherever they are going, the DPs are like swarms of locusts, desperately needing food and water. The occupation authority does what it can, but with a rail system ripped by Allied air attacks, with cities in flame, and with Nazi dead-enders still fighting in pockets of resistance, there is little anyone can do.

  As they approach, with Martha Swann walking point for Geer’s squad, they are blocked by a standoff between a farmer and his teenage son, both armed with farm implements, and two hundred or so ragged, desperate DPs. The farmer is swinging a hoe back and forth, standing literally between the DPs and four pigs in a pen.

  Rio pushes through the DPs. “Anyone here speak English?”

  Of course the answer is no, but some of the DPs have a few words, and Mazur is able to identify the language they are speaking
as Polish, which makes these DPs longtime slaves of the Nazis.

  Rio levels her Thompson at the German farmer. “You or the pigs?” she asks. “I shoot you. Bang, bang. Or I shoot the pigs. Bang, bang.” She emphasizes her point with hand gestures and in the end fires a quick burst into three of the pigs. She points at the last pig and gestures for the farmer to get himself and his surviving pig into the barn.

  The DPs fall on the dead animals and the butchery begins, which effectively gets the crowd out of the way so the platoon can march through.

  Geer’s squad, formerly Rio’s, which now consists of Jack Stafford, Jenou Castain, Beebee, Milkmaid Molina, Martha Swann, Rudy J. Chester, and a handful of greenhorns who probably have names, but whose names are not yet important to anyone but themselves, leads the way into the village.

  It is a particularly picturesque village, bordering on becoming a town, with a central square ringed by sagging, half-timbered buildings that must be centuries old. There is a church, but it’s nothing special in the jaded estimation of GIs who’d by now seen a dozen major cathedrals.

  Rio soon sees the signs of looting. Doors have been kicked in, windows smashed, and everything from personal items of clothing to random bits of furniture to store mannequins have been strewn in the main street.

  “Dammit!” Beebee cries. “The place has been gone over!”

  There is a fine line between occupation and looting, and the Americans have long since crossed that line. GIs have abandoned any sense of limitations when it comes to stealing. And Rio, like most noncoms and indeed officers, has prudently chosen to draw the line not at theft but at the harming of civilians.

  In brief the rule is: Take what you want, leave the civilians alone. Unless there is the slightest resistance, in which case: shoot the Hitler-loving bastards.

  But lately the villages and towns the Americans reach have been looted by retreating Wehrmacht and especially SS. They pass a civilian, face black with blood, hanging from a lamppost. A sign around his neck says Verräter. Traitor. It is not Rio’s first lynched German: the pathological murderers of the Sicherheitsdienst and the Gestapo, both now in flight toward the Alps, are punishing Germans for any sign of disloyalty, even as they flee in hopes of saving their own lives.

  A second civilian lies swinging gently against the second story of a four-story building. The placement of the rope indicates that she was pushed out of an upper-story window and had her neck snapped before her feet could reach the ground. She has no sign.

  “Geer, hold up!” Rio calls out and trots ahead to join him. “Where the hell is the burgomaster?”

  A burgomaster is a mayor, and the usual routine had been for a nervous, fidgety old man with a sash of office or some such thing to come forward behind a white flag to greet the occupiers.

  Geer nods. “Yeah. Quiet. Not the good kind of quiet.”

  Rio nods at the town hall, a rococo structure of white plaster and green-painted cornices. “There. The church. And . . .” She looks around.

  “That hotel over there,” Geer says. “Anyway, that’s where I’d put snipers. We can call up a tank and blow the shit out of ’em, see who comes running out.”

  Rio sighs. “Captain was very clear: minimal necessary damage. I’ll get Mangan’s squad to check the church, and Big Pete can do the town hall. You check out the hotel.”

  “Yep. Stafford! Castain! Beebee! See if you can get around the back of the hotel.”

  The three set off at a loping run, down a back alley they hope will get them there.

  Geer exhales. “For what it’s worth,” the newly minted sergeant says, “the army can take its stripes and stick ’em where the sun don’t—”

  Bam!

  A single, small explosion.

  “Cover!” Rio yells, and everyone finds a doorway, a shattered storefront, or a tight alleyway to hide in. The new kids cower nervously behind cover. The veterans light cigarettes or take the opportunity for a pee.

  “Come on, Geer,” Rio says. The two of them check their weapons automatically and by mutual consent take the street just to the right of the one Jack and Jenou had taken. They run crouching, boots on cobbles, breathing hard.

  Crack!

  A single rifle shot and the wall next to Geer emits a puff of dust where the bullet whizzed by.

  “See him?”

  “No,” Rio admits. “But we’ll have defilade if we go through this house.” She kicks the wooden door, which is sturdy and locked. “Open or you get a grenade!”

  Maybe the occupants speak English, or maybe they merely understood the tone, but the door opens and Rio and Geer burst through.

  “Raus! Everybody raus!” Rio finds the back wall of the house and guesses it shares a wall with the house behind. She fires a quick warning burst into the wall, enough hopefully to convince any civilians on the other side to run. They blow the wall with a rifle grenade and push through a dust cloud and debris into a bedroom.

  Rio eases the window shade up, unhinges and pushes out the shutter. The view opens onto a street, and, to the right, a widening space, not quite a square, but a wedge of space between two streets.

  And lying in the street, faceup, is Jack Stafford.

  “Jack!” Rio cries.

  “No!” Jack yells. “Stay back!”

  He is on his back, clutching his stomach. The side of his uniform is red.

  Rio bolts for the door, but Geer tackles her and swings her back out of sight.

  “What the fug are you doing, Richlin? You know he’s bait!”

  But Rio is not rational, not even thinking, just feeling her heart tearing in two. She struggles but Geer is stronger, and he keeps his arms wrapped around her. She reaches her koummya and draws it, the blade suddenly at Geer’s throat.

  “Richlin. It’s me. It’s me!”

  The wild panic in Rio’s eyes fades. She draws a sobbing breath and drops the koummya to the floor.

  Geer releases her, bends down to retrieve the knife, and carefully slides it back into its scabbard.

  “Jack! Hang on!”

  “No, Rio, no!” Jack yells in a voice strained by pain and fear.

  She glances across the street and sees Jenou and Molina in a doorway. They look pale and frightened.

  “I can get him,” Rio says to Geer. “Give me covering fire, I’ll grab him and—”

  “Goddammit, Richlin, no! No! You know better. That sniper is sitting up there waiting for one of us to show our heads. You’d be dead before you got halfway to him!”

  Crack!

  Jack’s leg jerks from the impact, and he bellows in pain.

  “You know the routine,” Geer says intently. “He’s gonna keep Jack screaming until we break and go for him.”

  Rio manages a tight nod.

  Jenou yells, “What do we do, Rio?”

  “Stay put!” Rio cries.

  What do we do, Rio?

  “I’m going to bazooka this Nazi son of a bitch!” Rio says. Then, “Castain, stay put! Molina, go back, tell them to send up the bazooka team.”

  No answer. She looks outside again, and both Jenou and Molina are gone.

  “Shit!” Geer says. “They’re going to try and encircle him.”

  “We need to put some covering fire on the bastard,” Rio says, and leans out of the window just long enough to fire a burst from her Thompson at what she suspects is the right building.

  Crack!

  The sniper hits the place where Rio had been half a second earlier.

  Rio jerks her thumb upward, and she and Geer go pounding up the stairs to find an elderly couple cowering in their bed, covers pulled up as some kind of symbolic protection.

  Rio goes to the bedroom window and carefully cracks the shutter. She peers through the narrow gap and this time she is almost certain that she sees movement in a window on the hotel’s third and top floor.

  “Give me your M1,” she says.

  “Screw you, Richlin, I have it.” Geer crouches, takes careful aim, and fires once. Th
e sniper is momentarily visible, recoiling. “Yeah, that’s him. Top floor, far left.”

  Rio peeks and can just barely see Jack lying on the cobbles. His belly is bloody from side to side. His left leg bleeds too.

  And she has nothing. No plan. No sudden rush of courage. Jack is bait in a trap. Anyone trying to help him will be shot. She feels a strange disconnection, as if her brain simply does not want to face the facts. But at the same time another part of her brain is spinning madly, going around and around in circles, trying everything, knowing it’s useless, but powerless to stop herself.

  Suddenly she’s on her rear end. Her legs have simply collapsed. She sits with her Thompson on her lap, gazing down at it through a blur.

  Geer squats beside her. “It’s okay, Rio. Just stay put. I’ll take care of it.”

  “I’m . . . something is . . . Jesus, Luther, I . . .” She tries to stand but her legs, the legs that carried her through Sicily and Italy, France and Belgium and Germany, don’t have any strength left in them. She is dimly aware of tears running down her cheeks. “I . . . I don’t know . . .”

  Jack!

  Geer takes her shoulder and pushes her back until she is looking at him. “Richlin . . . Rio . . . You’re not fighting this war alone.”

  Suddenly there comes the sound of a grenade, instantly followed by rapid M1 carbine fire. It lasts only a few seconds.

  Then, the voice of Jenou Castain cries, “All clear!”

  Now Rio’s legs work again, and she bolts from the room, practically tumbles down the steps and bursts out of the door and onto the street. She runs for Jack, who already has a medic hunched over him.

  “Jack!”

  “Hey there, Rio,” he says, managing what might be a smile, quickly wiped away by a grimace of pain. He’s white, so white he might be made of snow.

  “Morphine will hit in a second,” the medic says. “Don’t sweat it, Stafford, you just got a second navel is all.”

  “Jack, are you all right? Don’t die on me!”

  She is back on the beach in Tunisia, trying to keep the blood inside Kerwin Cassel.