Anyway, does Strand imagine that life as a woman in the army had been easy?
He had lost friends? So had she. He’d been scared? So had she. His life was at risk? So was hers.
My God, I’m stronger than he is.
The thought is so unexpected that it elicits a short laugh, which Strand takes as ridicule.
“I tell you you’re no woman and you laugh at me,” Strand says, dripping bitterness from each word. “I guess that proves my point.”
Rio sits, silent, head down, slowly metabolizing this new and startling information. Big, tall Strand Braxton has found his limit. His courage is used up. His self-respect is shattered. And even if she could help him, any help would be rejected and seen as still more proof that she was “no woman.”
She is now quite sober. Quite completely sober.
Rio stands up. “I’m still a woman,” she says coldly. “It’s just that I’m a better woman than you are a man.”
She turns and walks away, pursued by a wave of conflicting emotions. Sadness. Anger. Self-pity. But most revealing of all to her is one single dominant emotion.
Relief.
PART III
HÜRTGEN FOREST
In the Hürtgen forest proper, our gains came inch by inch and foot by foot, delivered by men with rifles—bayonets on one end and grim, resolute courage on the other. There was no battle of Europe more devastating, frustrating, or gory.
—Major General William G. Weaver, Commanding General, Eighth Infantry Division
We are taking three trees a day, yet they cost a hundred men apiece.
—Anonymous army captain
20
JOE PASTOR—HÜRTGEN FOREST, NAZI GERMANY
Joe Pastor climbs down from the truck. He is in a forest, has been in a forest for an hour now, bumping along in the back of the deuce-and-a-half. The truck is jammed with men and women, almost all young, all white, none capable of looking tough.
Joe notices things like that, like the looks in people’s eyes. He’s a watcher, one of those people happiest on the sidelines observing. He observes a woman trying persistently to write a letter despite the jerkiness of the transport. She struggles over each word, puzzling it out before putting pencil to paper, more often than not tearing the paper in the process.
He observes a man who has rolled the sleeves of his uniform up to reveal a lurid tattoo on his forearm of a scantily clad woman entwined around the word Texas.
He observes a man who chews gum, snapping it, blowing bubbles, looking around constantly as if anxious for conversation and finding none in this taciturn group.
They are all wet through to the bone, having been left standing for an hour and a half, waiting on the truck to arrive at what had come to be called the Repple Depple, a torturing of the words Replacement Depot.
Joe wonders if these are the men and women he’ll be fighting alongside. And he wonders if he shouldn’t force himself out of his shell and actually engage some of them. Try to make friends, for once.
But Joe Pastor comes from quiet folk in Boston, his father a newspaper editor and his mother active in causes and charities. His father is the shy, quiet one, and Joe’s mother rolls her eyes in mock despair at how much her “two boys” are alike. Fortunately, Joe’s little sister, Barb, is practically a carbon copy of their mother, so there is balance in the home.
The home that Joe suddenly misses with a pang so intense it almost doubles him over.
I didn’t know homesickness could hurt so bad.
The truck rattles to a stop. Joe leans out of the back, peering around the canvas cover. He sees no special reason to stop here, except for a tiny sign stenciled by engineers with some incomprehensible numbers. A female corporal stands with an M1 carbine hiked on her hip, a cigarette dangling from her full lips, and an expression of weariness bordering on catatonic.
The driver clambers down with his clipboard held importantly and says, “Pastor. Joe Pastor.”
“That’s me!”
“Swell. Grab your gear and get off. This is your new home. Lucky you.”
Joe does as instructed. He jumps down, and the truck quickly lurches away to deliver the rest of its replacements.
“I’m Castain,” the corporal says. “Let’s go. We’ve got a little rumble scheduled for—”
Suddenly they hear the crash and pound of artillery. It’s not on them, but it’s near enough for Joe to think he should get into the ditch. Which he does. And then notices Castain looking down at him with a puzzled look.
“Hey, pal. That arty’s a good mile away, and it’s dropping on Germans. That’s ours.” She waves a hand. “You’ll get so you know which is which, not that we may not get an accidental shellacking by our own artillery, but in this case, it’s just a little wake-up call for Fritz.”
“Fritz?”
Her answer is a slow drawl. “Yeah. You know, the Germans? They’re this bunch of assholes who keep shooting at us. We don’t know why. I think they don’t like us.”
He climbs up out of the ditch.
“You smoke?” Castain asks.
“No.”
Castain nods. “Then give me your issue. Otherwise you might be tempted, and it’s a bad habit.”
Joe dutifully digs out his army-issued tobacco ration and hands it to Castain, who favors him with the kind of smile you reserve for dealing with the not-quite-all-there.
“Green as a whole field of new alfalfa,” Castain says. “A little suggestion? See how you got your grenades hanging? You don’t hang them by the fugging pin. See, because when you’re running around, the weight of the grenade could pull the pin and you blow yourself up and me, and I will not be happy. I will resent it!”
For some reason that phrase brings a crooked smile to the corporal’s face, and for the first time it occurs to Joe that she is actually quite pretty. Which does not help, because if there’s one thing that intimidates Joe more than a foulmouthed veteran, it’s a pretty girl.
He quickly rearranges his grenades.
“Okay, let’s go,” Castain says. “Listen up, because we are going right into the shit when that barrage stops.”
He falls into step behind her, confident that he can easily keep up with the young woman. He is quickly disabused of this notion, because Castain moves through the dense forest like a monkey, stepping narrow, sliding through gaps, jumping fallen logs, and using close-packed trunks like a gymnast. Joe is soon panting. And all the while Castain keeps up a stream of words that is at once laconic, constant, and sometimes incomprehensible.
“See this path we’re on? See how it’s marked out with tape? That means engineers have cleared it. That way and that way? Mines and booby traps. Bang! And suddenly you don’t have to worry about ever having babies.”
Joe instinctively reaches for his crotch. He looks left, looks right, peers intently for the sight of a stretched booby-trap wire, and falling behind in the process so he has to jog to catch up.
“Richlin is your squad sergeant. Stick—what the hell is his real name? Sticklin. Yeah, Dain Sticklin—he’s the platoon sergeant. Both rock solid. Captain Passey’s all right for an officer, not big on chickenshit. And Lieutenant Horne, well . . .”
He’s about to prompt her when he notices the shrug and correctly decides that he’s being given information that is not to be spoken of openly.
“There’s a battalion of tanks going to make a run, and we’re going along to keep them from getting lonely,” Castain says. “Job number one when working with tanks? Don’t get run over! They can’t see much through their little portholes, and they will absolutely run right the hell over you.”
Wait a minute, is she saying I’m going into actual combat?
Now?
“Here’s the way your day is planned out: you’re gonna fall in with the rest of us, and we’re going to walk along beside the tanks, then we’re all going to turn and go blazing into the woods and the Krauts will panic and flee!”
Joe feels he may need to throw up.
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“Here’s how it’s actually going to happen: you’re gonna fall in with the rest of us, and we’re going to walk along beside the tanks, and the Krauts will be raining mortars on our heads and getting their MG42s nice and warm, and then a tank’s gonna blow up, and everyone’s going to be screaming and yelling and running around like chickens with their heads cut off.”
“I think I need to—”
“Puke? Go ahead. Better to get it over with now.”
He pauses, leans against a tree, and empties his stomach.
“There are two schools of thought on stomachs,” Castain proses on as artillery pounds and Joe retches. “Your optimist says it’s best to have a nice, big breakfast so you have energy for a long fight where you might not get a chance to eat. Your pessimist, on the other hand, says better to have an empty stomach and bowels, too, though no one can take a shit anyway if they’ve been living off C rations without shoving a grenade up your rear. Or unless you’ve got the trots, and if you don’t, you will.” Then, realizing she hasn’t finished the thought, she adds, “Empty stomach in case, you know, in case you’re gut-shot. You don’t want your half-digested Ham and Lima Beans bubbling out of the hole.”
Joe had thought he was done puking. No. He had more.
Usually after throwing up he felt better. He does not feel better.
“You’re gonna think, mortars, hey, I better hit the dirt! Uh-uh. Mortars, you keep moving forward. First of all, Fritz is careful not to shell his own people, unlike the idiots in our artillery, not to mention the goddamned air corps shooting anything that moves. So the closer you are to their lines, the safer you are from shelling. Also, the way shells hit, see, the shrapnel keeps flying mostly in the same direction the shell lands.” She makes an exploding motion with her hands to illustrate. “So you want an 88 or a mortar to go off behind you, not in front.”
“But . . .”
“But?”
“But if you get closer to the Germans, don’t they, you know . . . shoot at you?”
They’re moving again, but Castain pauses a beat to look him over as if examining a rare but hideous new life-form. “Why yes, I’m very much afraid that they will shoot at you, Private Dumbass. The Germans are very fond of shooting, and their favorite thing to shoot at is a dumbass greenhorn.”
She takes his shoulder and pulls him close. “Here’s the secret not many people know: our job is to go and kill the sons of bitches Krauts before they can kill us. Shh! That’s a secret known only to Ike and Patton and me.”
They move on, and now Castain switches from glib mockery to a more intense and hurried tone. The artillery barrage goes on, and it sounds—and feels—horribly close. It’s like a long, slow earthquake, wobbling and shaking under his boots.
“In the woods you can’t see shit. So you do what’s called marching fire, right? You shoot even when you don’t have a target because the Kraut doesn’t know you’re just shooting trees, he thinks he better keep his head down. Right?”
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, yes.”
“I don’t mean just fire away till you run dry, but don’t just carry your rifle, use it. And if you do see a Kraut, what do you do?”
“I . . .”
“Shoot him. You shoot him right then, no thinking about it, you aim and you shoot the bastard.”
Is it possible to throw up with an empty stomach?
Better empty if you’re gut-shot.
“If you see dead Krauts, fire a round into their heads to make sure. And do not loot the bodies because—”
“I wouldn’t do that!”
“Shut up, Private Dumbass. Don’t touch dead Krauts because sometimes the bodies are booby-trapped. Same with their dugouts. We got a guy with the squad, name of Beebee, he’s our scrounger. He knows his way around Fritz’s little wires and such, and he’s fair with dividing up the booty.”
“The artillery stopped,” Joe observes. “Maybe we’re not—”
“Kid, listen to me: shut up. Shut. Up. You know nothing about nothing. Do what you’re told and only what you’re told.”
Joe has not until this minute noticed that the tapes marking the path are gone. Instead he’s noticed that there are very few leaves or branches on tree trunks that are often scorched black. And suddenly he realizes they are walking through a thin line of foxholes. He sees helmeted heads peering cautiously out.
A young female sergeant spots Castain and gives her a brief wave. Castain leads the way to the sergeant who, on closer inspection, must be even younger than Joe himself.
“This is . . .” Castain pauses, holding a hand toward Joe. “What’s your name?”
“Joe. Joe Pastor.”
“Yep. Pastor, Richlin; Richlin, another idiot who doesn’t know how to carry a grenade or which end of the gun to point.”
A woman? His sergeant is a woman?
“Right,” Richlin says, not even looking up from loading loose .45 caliber rounds into a Thompson clip. “As usual, we’re giving the Krauts time to reset the table.” Then she glances at Joe and says, “Put him with Pang.”
Pang, to Joe’s shock, is a Jap. Or something pretty darn close to being a Jap. But he’s polite—for a Jap—and makes space in his foxhole for Joe to climb down in with him.
“Got a name?” Pang asks.
“Joe Pastor.”
“Welcome to World War Two,” Pang says. “And yeah, I look like a Jap. I am one, partly, so you can either get used to that or go dig your own hole.”
Joe does not want to dig. He wants to vomit and defecate simultaneously. Water fills his boots. He looks down and sees that Pang is standing on a piece of wooden crate, keeping his boots dry. There is no room on the crate for Joe.
“We’ll be jumping off here pretty quick. Make sure to take the safety off. It’s hard to shoot with the safety on. No, not yet! I didn’t live this long letting greenhorns run around loose shooting me in the behind.”
“What do we do when we . . . when we jump off?”
“We get up out of this hole and go where Richlin points. Then we shoot and we get shot at.” Seeing the distress on Joe’s face, Pang softens a little. “Look, kid, on the bright side maybe you get a million-dollar wound? A nice through-and-through in the meat of your calf, let’s say. Just stay next to me.”
A big man drops into the foxhole and curses on finding Joe.
“What’s this, Pang, you making friends?”
“New guy, Geer.”
“Hmm,” Geer says. “What are the odds, you figure?”
Pang shrugs. “Beebee says any new guy is five-to-one in the first twenty-four hours. Odds will change after the first fight.”
“Yeah, he’ll be dead or crying, one or the other,” Geer says, and only slowly does it penetrate Joe’s nearly paralyzed brain that they are talking about him. Betting on him.
Betting on his life.
“I’ll go ten bucks at five-to-one,” Pang says, eyeing Pastor like a racing tout checking out a horse.
For the first time Geer looks at Pastor. It’s an up-and-down appraisal that takes in Joe’s uniform, his weapon, the contents of his webbing belt, his face, and ends with an intent stare into his eyes. “Nah. You’re wrong this time, Pang. I’m going to take that bet, and you’re gonna give me back what you won on Dial.”
They are. They are openly betting on his death! Right in front of him!
Something changes, some scent on the breeze perhaps, because both Pang and Geer check their weapons, ratcheting back the slides to check for rounds in the chamber and look for any grit that might cause a jam. Joe follows suit, fingers trembling as they travel over his M1.
Pang and Geer take deep swigs from their canteens, and Joe copies them.
Suddenly, without warning, they are clambering up and out of their foxholes. From off to the left comes the sound of Sherman tanks revving and treads grinding over foliage.
“Where are they?” Joe asks frantically, walking at a steady if shaky pace alongside Pang and Geer. Geer has a BAR hang
ing from a strap, leveled at waist height, with an ammo belt looped over his shoulder.
Geer pauses. “Pang! Give me a scratch, I can’t reach with this damned BAR!”
“I am not scratching your crotch, Geer!”
“It’s my back, come on, Pang!” As they walk Pang scratches Geer’s back vigorously while Geer mutters, “Fugging lice.”
Ahead Joe sees a clearing, a space between these woods and identical woods farther away. It’s like a road cut through . . . no, of course, it’s a firebreak. Joe’s seen firebreaks hiking in Vermont.
Through stumps of blasted trees Joe sees Sherman tanks veering right, heading on an intercept path with the infantry. To his amazement he spots a Negro head beneath the leather tanker’s helmet of the first tank’s commander.
“They’re colored!” Joe says.
“Yeah,” Geer mutters. “This war’s gone all to hell. Women, Japs, Nigras, hell, see that fellow over there? He’s a goddamn limey!”
Joe glances and sees a handsome-looking fellow with a ginger beard darkened by soot and grime. He’s walking a pace ahead of Richlin. Joe spots a wicked knife on Richlin’s leg, and it does not reassure him. It is obviously not regulation.
Brrrrrrrrt! Brrrrrrrrrt! Brrrrrrrt!
“What’s that?”
Neither Pang nor Geer bothers to answer, and then the American tanks open up, .30 and .50 caliber machine guns, nearer and louder. A hollow katush! followed instantly by an explosion, as a tank fires its cannon.
“All right, new guy, stay behind the tanks!” Geer yells, and he and Pang break from the trees and run to unite with other soldiers, all huddling in the shadow of the tanks, moving at a fast march, wanting speed almost as much as the tankers do.
For a terrible moment Joe is not sure he can follow. The noise is like nothing he’s ever imagined. Machine guns, cannon, and now mortars, ricochets zinging, and voices yelling in rage, in pain, in fear! It’s a deafening howl, the noise you could imagine hearing if you pulled the cover back on hell for a minute.