The hole in the wall isn’t all they’d have liked. It is not a doorway, just a hole barely big enough to crawl through. Rio points her rifle into the dark hole and fires off a whole clip, eight rounds. No response.
Rio sticks her head through the hole, calls for Jenou to hand her a flashlight, and points the beam around.
“Looks like the entrance to an apartment building,” Rio reports. “Stairs and mailboxes.” She squeezes through.
A tiny, wiry-haired dog stands its ground and barks furiously at her. “Hey, boy, relax. They should name you Lucky, pooch. I could have shot you.”
Jenou fishes a bit of cracker from her pocket, kneels, and hands it to the dog. The dog eats it greedily and immediately starts barking again.
“Ingrate.”
They repeat the process six more times. Sometimes the explosions are so closely timed they are indistinguishable. Other times there’s a full second between. Rio wonders what the Kraut sniper can possibly be making of all this.
But at last they reach a looted grocer’s, every shelf empty. Through the jagged glass-ringed hole where the store’s front window had once been she can cautiously look out and see a doorway into the sniper’s lair.
“Cat,” Rio calls.
“She found another toilet,” Jenou says.
“Okay, then you go back and tell Stick we’ve got a ten-foot gap between this spot and that door.” She points.
Jenou runs off, and Cat returns looking both embarrassed and belligerent. “Hey, if I find a toilet I’m using it.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
They wait in the dusty silence of the eerily vacant shop.
“Suarez, man,” Cat says. “That’s FUBAR.”
“Yeah.”
“He was okay. Pain in the ass and all, but . . .”
“Yeah.”
Jenou comes climbing laboriously back through the various grenade holes. Stick and Jack are with her. As the five of them contemplate their objective, Rio says, “I got the door.”
“No,” Stick says.
“What do you mean, no?” Rio demands.
“You’re not fighting the war by yourself, Richlin,” Sergeant Sticklin says, and a part of Rio’s mind marvels at the authority in his voice. He’s always been a serious, mature sort of person, but he’s becoming something more. It seems unimaginable that Rio would ever be able to master that sort of voice herself.
Jack says, “Yeah, Rio, let other people play. I’ll go.”
“Whoa,” Rio says, ready to object.
Stick holds up a hand, silencing her. “When you’re sergeant, you’ll make the call,” he says.
Rio says, “But . . .” and looks anxiously at Jack. The extremely vivid image of Tilo Suarez fills her vision. But another part of her mind takes in When you’re sergeant and files it away for later contemplation.
Jack is already in position. “You suppose that door over there is locked?” He sounds calm, even casual.
“Nah, sniper’s gotta think some of his own boys might try to get in,” Cat suggests.
“Fingers crossed,” Jack says. He winks at Rio. He takes a deep breath and leaps through the shattered window, four fast steps and he’s at the door. He turns the lever handle and is inside in less than three seconds. Rio is right behind him, not waiting for Stick’s permission.
There is no fire from above. The sniper has not seen them. Yet.
A stairwell rises to the second floor, one long flight without a landing. They creep up, Jack at the front, his M1 at his shoulder, finger on the trigger. From directly overhead they hear the German firing.
The steps end on the second floor, some kind of warehouse or storeroom. Papers and account books from the look of it—and from the fact that it hasn’t been looted. It takes a few moments for them to locate an exterior iron ladder that seems to be the only way up. Up they climb, one at a time, rifles slung, in full view of their comrades below, who have their rifles ready for covering fire.
Jack reaches the top. There’s a very narrow platform and a door. Jack waits until Rio is perched beside him on the precarious ledge, facing the low, wooden-slat door.
Jack makes hand motions: you go right, I go left. Rio nods. The door has a latch, not a handle, and Jack presses down on the piece of metal.
Locked!
A yelp from beyond the door, the sound of rapid movement. Jack says, “Grab me!” Rio grabs his shoulder, supporting his weight as he leans back far enough to fire two rounds into the door handle. The door flies inward, and Jack tumbles after it.
Bang! Bang!
Rio pushes past a crouching Jack and sees a German soldier dead, facedown across his machine gun, killed in the act of swiveling it toward them.
“See?” Jack says to Rio. “Easy.”
The intensity of Rio’s relief surprises her. “Nothing to it.”
But then a bullet comes zinging in through the shot-up door. “It’s the other one, the one who got Suarez,” Rio yells. She takes a quick peek and sees that from this angle the second sniper is in line of sight behind a roof parapet a hundred yards away.
Rio fires at him but then reconsiders. The sniper almost certainly has a scoped rifle, and she is not going to win a bullet-for-bullet exchange.
“Hey, Stick!” she yells down.
His voice comes floating up. “You okay?”
“We’re just swell,” Rio says. “Can you send up some rifle grenades?” She looks at Jack. “You have any blanks?”
He fishes in his ammo pouch and produces three. They look like regular bullets but with the end crimped down and with no slug.
“All out of antitank grenades,” Stick yells. “You want the bazooka?”
Rio looks around, considering. The space is too cramped for a bazooka—there’s nowhere to vent the back end of the bazooka, and they’re likely to cook themselves or at the very least start a fire. “We’ll try with frags,” Rio calls back.
Three grenades and an adapter come up with Jenou. The space is cramped with three of them. Rio attaches the grenade launcher. It is a steel tube about six inches long that slides over the muzzle and snaps in place like a bayonet. There are half a dozen raised rings around the launcher.
The adapter is a short, squat tube with a simple gripping spring that cradles a grenade. Rio slides a grenade into position in the adapter, sighing as she pushes it onto the fourth ring—the deeper the seating, the more power, but also the more recoil.
She crouches beside the low door, peeks at the distant sniper, and gets a stone splinter in her cheek for her pains.
“He’s good,” Stafford says. “You’ll need covering fire.”
Rio looks around, muttering, “I wish I could prop it against something. Damn recoil.”
“How about him?” Jenou suggests, indicating the dead German.
They drag the dead man into place. Rio sets the butt of her rifle against his bent back.
“Okay. On three.”
Jenou and Jack stand ready with their weapons. It’s going to be cramped and dangerous firing through the doorway while Rio is aiming the rifle grenade.
“One. Two. Three!”
Jack and Jenou blaze away, Rio sights the rifle grenade and fires. The recoil punches the dead German hard, and the three of them twist out of the line of fire.
Two seconds of flight and bam!
Rio glances out, sees plaster dust and a little smoke beside the sniper’s window. Close. Not close enough.
“Another,” Rio says, and reloads.
The same routine, but this time the sniper is expecting it and his fire drives the three of them back behind cover before Rio can aim.
And then, a distant pop-pop-pop.
And a voice yelling, “He’s down.”
Rio looks out and sees Hansu Pang waving from the sniper’s perch. Stick has taken advantage of the distraction to run up the back street and send Pang up to the roof of an apartment building and shoot the unaware sniper.
Tilo is avenged.
&
nbsp; Maybe now we can retrieve his body.
Another day of the war. Another small, nasty firefight that would never make it to the history books. Another few hundred yards of rubble gained.
The full platoon, forty-six men and women now, after losing Suarez and the replacement, and the several wounded, spends the night in a church that must have been quite beautiful once. The roof is partly collapsed, but there are still hints of gilt and paint suggesting the ceiling was once a work of art. The cross is gone from the altar, as are the usual vestments, candlesticks, censers, and chalices. A painted plaster Madonna has lost her Baby Jesus and part of her face. Another saint stands looking up toward heaven though some joker has hung a grenade from her hand.
The pews are cots now, GIs sprawled along them. There’s a campfire going on the slate floor just before the altar steps. The smell of instant coffee tugs at Rio’s awareness.
“Hey, I found the wine!” a guy Rio knows only vaguely as Skip announces, proudly waving four bottles, two in each hand.
Rio flinches, recalling Tilo’s glee at seeing the bottle of wine.
“That’s sacred wine, you damn heathen,” says Cat.
“Not if it ain’t been blessed and had words said over it,” Skip retorts.
“Well, let me try a little,” Cat says with a broad wink. “I can tell you whether it’s holy or not. Won’t take me more than half a bottle. If I don’t burst into flames by then, you can safely drink a little yourself.”
Rio sits with her back against a cold stone pillar, feet toward the fire, boots off, socks laid as close to the fire as they can be without catching fire. With her are Jenou, Jack, Cole, Jillion, Hansu Pang, Beebee, Geer, and two guys from other squads, one of whom is using his bayonet to open a can of hash.
Jenou raises her canteen cup. “To Suarez.”
Those who have beverages raise them. The others just nod.
“I don’t like him still lying over there in the street,” Rio says.
Sergeant Cole gives her a sidelong look. “Graves registration will be here tomorrow. Engineers are there sweeping for booby traps now, that comes first.”
“I knew it was nuts there being loaves of bread out,” Rio says. “Wine just sitting there. I just didn’t . . .”
No one says a word of comfort, no one says a word of reproach. It was not really her responsibility; they all knew about the possibility of booby traps. But it was her detail and she has left a man dead, and that fact cannot be dismissed.
“Where’s Miss Lion, Geer?” Cole asks to get them all past the moment.
“Sent her back with the water truck to the quartermaster back down the hill.” He sighs. “This is no place for a lady.”
“No ladies here,” Jenou says glumly.
Geer starts to argue, then raises his canteen cup in Jenou’s direction and falls silent.
Jenou pulls her book from her backpack and turns so she can read by firelight.
“Jenou Castain, bookworm,” Rio marvels.
“Well, fashion magazines are kind of sparse,” Jenou says absently.
Jack says, “It’s September. Back to school.”
That earns a meager laugh followed by a gloomy silence, which is broken by Jillion Magraff, who offers up a bit of impromptu poetry.
The one-one-nine
always on the line,
Shootin’ up the Kraut,
Runnin’ in and out,
Pissin’ in our pants,
Eatin’ out o’ cans,
Wishin’ we were home,
Feelin’ all alone.
The one-one-nine,
Where life is j-u-u-u-s-t fine.
That earns some laughs and even some applause. Magraff is a useless soldier, worse than useless really, downright dangerous. But she can be amusing at times when she isn’t fleeing in terror or sunk in a distracted funk drawing in her little sketch pad.
But Cat, too, has some skill with verse, and she offers hers up as a song set to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.”
Yankees came to Africa,
To run away from Heinies,
Floated off to Sicily,
To run a race with Limeys.
Yankee doodles keep it up,
Yankee doodle dandies,
Mind the mortars and the mines,
And keep your shovels handy.
“Hold up there, Preeling. Who the hell are you calling a Yankee?” Geer, of course, dropping into the group, but welcome since he’s brought a new bottle of the possibly sacred wine. Rio takes a long pull.
“You, you hillbilly,” Cat says. “We’re all Yanks as far as the Krauts are concerned.”
Geer considers this for a moment. “Yeah, okay. But it doesn’t set well with me. Not at all.”
At which point Cat produces her second, and last, verse (so far):
Yankees went to Italy,
To visit Mussolini,
Found the bastard’s run away,
And left the German meanies.
This time most people—including Geer—join in the chorus.
Yankee doodles keep it up,
Yankee doodle dandies,
Mind the mortars and the mines,
And keep your shovels handy.
Then, someone across the church, a man with a very fine voice, perhaps even a professional voice but certainly worthy of any church choir, begins a mournful Bing Crosby song.
Be careful, it’s my heart.
It’s not my watch you’re holding, it’s my heart.
That earns less appreciative whistling and more respectful applause. He didn’t quite pull off Bing’s lazy drawling croon, but it is well done nevertheless. The mood turns wistful and even, in some cases, thoughtful.
Rio retrieves her dry and toasty socks, puts them on and her boots as well. She never wants to be caught fumbling with laces if trouble starts, but the front line has moved past them for now and short of an air raid—or a sudden counterattack—there is no real danger on this night. Probably.
She bunches her coat up into a pillow and closes her eyes. She has acquired the combat soldier’s ability to fall asleep any place, any time, within seconds. Usually. But now she lies back listening to voices, some familiar, some not.
They’ll have us up again tomorrow, just you wait and see if they don’t . . .
I’m going to open my own garage. I’m good with engines, don’t know why I’m not in some motor pool instead of here . . .
Yeah, that’s one pretty girl, Henricksen, you’re a lucky guy . . .
FUBAR as usual, it’s all FUBAR . . .
Tell you exactly what I’m gonna do. I got me a bass boat, fourteen-footer, gonna fill it up with tackle and beer and some boiled shrimp, see, and just drift down the bayou. And I won’t even mind if I don’t get a nibble . . .
If you shoot me in the foot, I’ll shoot you. We’ll say it was just some beef over cigarettes or something . . .
Fugging Suarez, man . . .
She ain’t waiting for you . . .
If the bullet’s got your name on it . . .
I miss . . .
I wish . . .
Home . . .
28
FRANGIE MARR—US ARMY HOSPITAL, PORTSMOUTH, UK
“This one’s a Nigra. What am I supposed to do with her?”
“Chief says coloreds go to the Sixth.”
“How in hell am I getting her there, we only have . . . Never mind. Three more, that’s four. That’s a load.”
“Yep. Get ’em an ambulance. You’ll need a colored driver. Make sure you put ‘colored’ on all the paperwork.”
Frangie hears it all as if it is a distant radio play. She is on a wheeled gurney, parked for the moment in a bustling corridor of a stuffy building with walls painted green halfway up and tan the rest of the way. She has noted the paint. She has noted the ceiling. She has noted the dim lights and the smell of alcohol swabs and ammonia.
She is a package for the moment, a bit of parcel post awaiting an address. She tells herself it’s g
ood for a medic like herself to know what it’s like for the soldiers who survive and can reach a hospital. But mostly she is bored. Bored and worried and depressed.
She had lain offshore on the British ship for three days before being off-loaded and sent on her various bewildering journeys through converted warehouses, on and off trucks, in and out of ambulances, fed haphazardly, treated with minimal kindness and no personal attention, seldom addressed and never by name.
She was an object to be handled, shunted here and there, always accumulating more carbon copies on her chart.
Depression has taken hold. It feels now as if her brain is a dull, heavy thing made of iron. She seems to have to consciously think about breathing, not because of her injuries—though deep breaths do hurt—but simply because breathing seems a pointless chore. She starts letters she does not finish. She has just enough—barely enough—energy and focus to thumb through a handful of magazines she’s lifted and concealed beneath her sheet, some English, some American, all months out of date.
One picture in a three-month-old Life magazine holds her for several minutes. It’s an advertisement of sorts for International Harvester. It’s one of many war-themed ads, this one showing a color sketch of an army field unit, men in the foreground working to repair a tank. It catches her eye because the tank is strangely tilted on the edge of a crater in a way that reminds her of the tank she crawled under. There are a dozen or more men, many shirtless, all wearing obsolete World War I helmets.
All white, all men, she notices. International Harvester does not seem to think their tractors are ever used by coloreds or women, though Frangie has seen both.
Frangie idly thumbs all the way through the magazine. There is a shockingly revealing photo of actress Burnu Acquanetta, nude behind carefully positioned venetian blinds. She is called the “Venezuelan Volcano,” though every black person who follows Hollywood knows she is just a colored girl with some Indian mixed in. Life magazine would never have allowed a similarly risqué picture of a white woman. Frangie feels a little . . . immoral . . . just looking at the picture.
The magazine also has photos of a union hall, workers awaiting defense jobs. Here there are women, but no black faces. Then, there’s an article and photos of farmworkers. All white. Defense workers. All white. Soldiers and sailors and airmen, and all are white. Here and there stands a woman soldier, never photographed, usually drawn as voluptuous and made up in a way that in Frangie’s experience the real female soldiers are very definitely not, lipstick being of little use on a face that hasn’t been washed in a week.