Front Lines (25 page)

She pulls, and he loses his grip.

She grabs his wrist with both her hands and pulls, but
there's something wrong. He can't hold on. He's crying now, she can see the tears, and she can feel the weakness in his grip. Sobbing, big wracking sobs.

“Help me, someone! Help!”

But no one can hear; it's a landscape with no sound but the droning tone in her ears.

She releases her grip on Doon and stands up, amazed she still can. It's wreckage and destruction everywhere. Trucks and cannon lie like some failed attempt at sculpture, twisted, blown into pieces, jagged edged, smoking. The water truck drips the last of its water. Men and women wander lost and confused, looking for nothing, looking for something, around in circles. The young lieutenant stares down at a twisted hunk of steel and cries.

“I'll get help,” Frangie tells Doon. She grabs the lieutenant and jerks her head toward the foxhole. “Help me.”

The lieutenant doesn't understand, but he's willing to be led. Together the two of them kneel by Doon's foxhole. They reach down, each taking an arm, and pull Doon up.

His intestines remain behind.

He sits on the edge of the hole looking at the horrifying mess that slips down his lap. With limp hands he tries to reel his intestines back up, but they're slippery and he's crying, tears rolling down his cheeks. Frangie tries to help, tries to pull the pulsating wormlike tube up, but she's crying and making sounds that are not words.

Doon looks at her. He says something, words she can't hear. Then he dies.

Someone is shaking Frangie's shoulder roughly, yelling at her, a sound she cannot parse, cannot understand. But the face looking at her is anguished. She nods.

She leaves Doon and the weeping lieutenant behind and in a trance follows the soldier who guides her by the hand to a second soldier. He's lying against an unharmed howitzer. His foot is gone.

“Traumatic amputation.” That's the term for it. Something has been blown off. Something is missing.

His ankle is a mess of red worms, arteries and veins and shreds of meat and a circle of white bone oozing marrow, but half of it has been cauterized, seared shut by the heat of the shrapnel. It saved him a lot of blood, that's a good thing. She tightens a tourniquet around the stump. Instinct. Training.

Humanity.

She slaps a bandage on, inadequate, laughable if laughter is ever possible again. She stabs a morphine syrette into his thigh.

There's more. A dead woman. Frangie cannot raise the dead, not this PFC, and not Doon Acey.

A man with shrapnel in his chest and belly roars in pain, the first real sound she's heard since the bombardment. More morphine. The man has to go to the field aid
station; there's nothing she can do with a belly wound. She sends him off on a cloud of morphine.

There's a broken arm, a scalp laceration, a few small burns. And there's a body without its head. The head is never found. A male soldier with a superficial wound—hot shrapnel grazing a thigh—demands to be sent home.

“Can't do it,” Frangie says as she sprinkles sulfa powder on the wound. “That doesn't even rate stitches.”

“I coulda been killed.”

“And if you had been, you'd be going home.” She's pleased with the steadiness of her voice, she likes the toughness of it. And she's coping, that's the important thing, she's coping.

Despite the hammering they've taken there's only three deaths: the PFC, the headless man, and Doon Acey. He was the only one she knew in the outfit, the only one she could talk to.

If I were a real doctor, maybe . . .

After doing all she can for the urgent cases she sets up an examination office of sorts, an upturned ammo crate for a chair, another one for her patients. Three men and one woman line up, all with minor injuries.

Frangie is in charge. She's the doc, at least for this part of the battalion.

All around her there is frantic activity as soldiers run a length of chain to a surviving truck and haul an
overturned howitzer upright. The battery must be moved if they are to avoid another barrage.

“Sergeant Acey.” It's the young lieutenant. His pale skin is covered with dust, so even in firelight he looks more gray than white. “There was nothing you could do for him?”

She is busy picking at a stubborn roll of medical tape. “No, sir. It was . . . Um.” She grabs the tape end and pulls. “It was . . . It was bad.”

“He was a good soldier.” The dust on Lieutenant Penche's face reveals the track of a tear. He is shaken up.

He's not much older than I am.

“Yes, sir,” she says. “I knew him. I know his folks. I can write them.”

He shakes his head. “No, I'll write them. And the others. I mean, of course you can, but I must. It's my duty.”

“That's the captain's job, isn't it, sir?”

“The captain . . . Well, he's not . . . I mean, with colored troops and how . . .” Lieutenant Penche realizes he's said too much and finishes lamely by saying, “Let's both write to his folks, you and me, Doc.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there anything you need here?” He doesn't seem to want to leave.

“Water, sir, if there is any.”

He's relieved to be given something to do. “I'll do what I can.”

She watches him walk away. He looks lost, somehow. He's swallowed up in the rush of soldiers and vehicles, and Frangie figures that's it, he's done what he thought he had to do and having discharged his duty she'll hear no more from him. But within ten minutes a five-gallon can of awful-tasting but satisfyingly wet water is delivered.

It takes the battalion an hour and a half before they can relocate and begin the job of doing unto others what's been done to them, and by then half a dozen soldiers have disappeared, melting into shadows and heading toward the rear.

Frangie has seen the insides of her hometown friend. When she writes his parents, she will not mention that. And she will try to forget it.

Then, as if she is receiving a vision, a glimpse ahead in time, like a newsreel of her future, Frangie knows that blood and bone, spasms and shrieks, terrible, terrible things will be her future so long as she is in this war.

She looks longingly back down the road, back toward safety, and thinks,
Let them court-martial me. Let them lock me up and call me a coward. I don't care. I can't do this.

I can't.

Dear God in heaven, you know I can't.

“Off the beach, off the beach! Come on!”

The person yelling sounds authoritative, and Rio responds, moves, moves, anything to get away from the scene of Kerwin Cassel's death, from the salty smell of his blood, from the memory of a beating heart come to full rest.

It's a panic reaction, a visceral need to get away, to put distance between herself and death, and it almost gets her killed. She stands up and instantly earns a shout of, “Stay low, you stupid bugger!” in a British accent. It's Jack. “Sorry, Rio, didn't mean—” His unnecessary apology stops abruptly when they hear shouts and gunfire and then . . .

Crump!

Crump!

Two grenades go off in rapid succession, and the
machine gun falls silent. Shots. Slow, aimed, deliberate. Someone is finishing off whoever the grenades didn't kill. Shooting bullets into human beings.

Liefer yells something about getting the wounded onto the boats, but most of the boats are gone already, racing away to safety in deeper water.

What will they do with Cassel? He has to go home. He has to go home.

A coal miner and his haggard wife, that's what Rio pictures. Pictures them getting the telegram all the way up in the steep, green hills of West Virginia.

“Second Squad, over here!” Sergeant Cole, somewhere in the darkness ahead, for once not mumbling.

Rio can't see where “over here” is, but she runs toward the sound of his voice, runs hunched over until she plows into a seated soldier and hits the sand face-first.

“What the hell?” Cat's voice.

“Sorry, Preeling.”

“Jeez, Richlin, you kneed me in the neck.”

“I said sorry.”

Rio spits sand and struggles into a kneeling position. After a moment it occurs to her that she should probably level her rifle. She adopts the textbook kneeling firing position, with one shin flat on the ground, the other vertical with her knee up, elbow on knee, rifle leveled. At Cole.

“Excellent position, Richlin,” he says, looming up out of the dark. “But if you shoot me, I will be irritated at you.”

“Sarge got the machine gun!” Suarez says, running up and kicking sand as he does. He's excited. Giddy. “You should have seen him, it was—”

“Knock it off,” Cole snaps. “The Tommies say we're on the wrong beach.”

“What?” half a dozen voices chorus. Followed by variations on, “Lousy navy,” and “It figures,” and assorted curses and nervous witticisms.

“We want to be that way.” Cole points with a chopping motion. “About two miles.”

“Two miles? We're off by two bloody miles?” Jack demands. “Well, that's a bit much, what?”

Jack is playing up his posh-sounding British accent for laughs.

“Don't you know this is Uncle Adolf's's private beach here,” Cat says. “No GIs allowed.”

“Where's Cassel?” Jenou asks, looking around at the dark faces.

Rio has the answer and it's on the tip of her tongue, but when it comes down to it, she can't say the words. She does not want to say that he is dead. She isn't ready to believe it herself. Kerwin dead? No, that's nuts. But there's a mix of sand and blood grit between her fingers.

“Cassel's not coming.” She doesn't mean to sound terse but she's feeling sick, and one more word and she might be sick. Jack makes eye contact, moves slightly as if he would comfort Rio but thinks better of it and instead pulls off his helmet to push his unruly red hair back.

The jittery smartass talk dies out then for a while. They straighten their gear, take long pulls from their canteens, cast worried looks around, and follow Cole as he feels his way forward, leaving the beach.

“Topping this dune, keep low. Don't give them a silhouette.”

They keep low.

Cassel. Dead.

Beyond the dune there's a dip, a sort of natural ditch partly choked with straw-like beach grass. The depression runs parallel to the beach and they follow this, relieved to be able to stand up. A low, reassuring conversation starts up again.

“Sarge blew the hell out of that machine gun.”

“Is Cassel hurt?”

“Are they evacuating him?”

“Who was shooting, was that a German?”

“Cassel bought it.”

“Bought what?”

“Just some fugging Italian, I heard, not Krauts. But Sarge got them with grenades, boom, boom.”

“Keep quiet,” Sergeant Cole says, and there's a raggedness to his voice. “Shut up and whoever's got their canteen banging, tighten it down. Keep your interval.”

Keeping an interval is easier said than done moving through pitch darkness where the person in front of you disappears within twenty yards.

Rio follows Jenou and, as far as she can tell, is followed in turn by Sticklin.

I'm lost. We're all lost. Cassel most of all.

A runner from Lieutenant Liefer comes huffing and puffing up behind them and only barely avoids being shot by yelling, “Mustard, mustard!”

Jenou says, “Ketchup!” She's the only one to remember the call sign.

Rio bends down and wipes the blood off her hands onto a sparse tuft of sere grass. But it's on her rifle as well. So she tries to wipe that with the tail of her shirt, which is soaked with salt water and coated with wet sand. Not good for the mechanism of her rifle, but necessary. She feels wrong, feels like she's destroying evidence of Kerwin's life, like she's trying to forget him, insulting his memory by needing to get his blood off her.

Luther Geer, his voice quieter than usual, asks, “Is Cassel dead?”

Rio's stomach heaves, and she vomits off to the side. Trying to be discreet. Trying not to look weak. Like a girl.

“Let it go, Geer,” Stick says quietly.

The runner is with Cole, and in defiance of orders the squad gathers around to eavesdrop.

“Loot says this is the wrong way,” the runner announces nervously, anticipating a hostile reaction. “Go inland. She says there's a road.”

“I'm in a nice sheltered gully here,” Cole answers. “I've got cover. She wants us on an open road instead?”

“Orders from the limey captain. Plus they can't drive the jeep down this gully.”

“The half-track can do it.”

“Bit of a SNAFU there, Sarge: our only remaining half-track took a round right through the engine block. We got a jeep. One jeep.”

“Uh-huh,” Cole says, and spits. “And what squad is taking point on this little stroll down a wide-open road where we don't know where we are?”

“You're farthest south,” the runner says, and shrugs to show that it's not his decision, he's just the messenger.

“Swell,” Cole mutters. He grabs Rio's sleeve and pulls her aside. “You all right?”

“Yeah, just like delayed seasickness or something.”

“You can't dwell on it, Richlin.” The way he says it makes it clear he knows this is not about seasickness. “You put it aside. You put it all in a box, and you don't open that box until after.”

“Right, Sarge. I'm fine.”

“Yeah, we're all just great,” Cole says. “Okay, Geer? You take point. Richlin, you have his back. Castain and Pang take the rear. The other squads will be on our six, so Castain and Pang, do not shoot them. They will be irritated with us if we shoot them.”

“Right, Sarge.”

Rio has a moment to wonder which is worse: being in the front, or bringing up the rear. Then again, if you happen to be a German gunner you might aim for the middle of the column, so . . .

“Don't watch Geer,” Stick mutters so only Rio can hear. “Look past him. Right? And use your ears too.”

“Yeah, Stick,” Rio says, hoping she sounds tough and confident, but secretly glad of any advice. Private Geer (and his kitten) is on point, but she neither likes nor trusts the big redhead.

Stick, on the other hand, pays close attention and takes soldiering seriously, but he's humping the BAR so he can't be walking point.

He hasn't talked much about it, but once in a tipsy pub conversation back in Britain during extended training, Stick let slip to Rio that he came from money. With his connections and smarts, Stick could easily have arranged a soft job far, far from the front lines. He could have had an officer's commission without too much effort, and
could have found a place on some general's staff where he would sleep in a feather bed every night. He has chosen instead to serve as a private and to request the infantry.

No one
requests
the infantry. Rio sure as hell didn't.

Luther seems to think he's being singled out for his skills, and he puffs out his chest as he swaggers out in front, his face too bright against black night. Rio hears the soft rattle of something in his pack, the crunch of his boots, the sloshing of water in his canteen. She even hears when he farts. But she can see him only as an indistinct gray shape.

Rio is next in line. Behind her Tilo, then Stick, then Sergeant Cole, who will make a habit of never being far from point, but never so far up front that he's the first guy shot.

Absolutely no one but no one wants Cole shot. As far as Rio can tell, Sergeant Cole is the only one who knows what's going on, or at least can pretend to. Corporal Millican has a little rank, but Rio worries about him, and the truth is, Millican worries even more about himself. Corporal's stripes do not a leader make.

They stumble around in the sand until they find the road, and, while it might be more exposed, it's a whole lot easier to walk along mostly dry, hard-packed dirt interrupted in low spots by shallow patches of slick mud.

Rio peers deep into the darkness on either side of the
road, head swiveling, just like she's been taught. Is that a German helmet or a rock? Is that a bush or a man squatting behind a machine gun? Are there eyes out there in the night seeking just as eagerly for her?

Geer walks with his weapon resting in the crook of his left elbow, right arm looped through the strap. Rio does the same, though she occasionally blows into her hands or sticks her fingers under her arm to ward off the chill. It is cold, cold in the desert night, which they all agree is a travesty, a violation of the laws of the universe, and a damned dirty trick for the god of weather to play on them.

At first they move slowly, cautiously, then word comes forward to pick up the pace, they don't have all night, so Geer takes longer strides and the rest follow.

“How'd he go?” Tilo stage-whispers. “Richlin. How'd he go?”

Rio considers pretending not to understand, but she understands fine, and Tilo and the others have a right to know. Kerwin had been everyone's friend. Well, mostly. Luther never liked him much, and not being at all good-looking, he'd been all but ignored by Jenou.

“Two bullets, chest and neck,” Rio says at last. The callous tone of her voice surprises her. She doesn't feel callous. She feels like her soul has been sandpapered raw.

She listens to her news being whispered back down the
line. She waits for Cole to put an end to it, but he remains silent, knowing they need to digest this new reality.

“Was it . . . ?” Suarez doesn't know quite how to finish that sentence.

“It didn't take long,” Rio says. “Doc did his best, but the whole thing, maybe two minutes.” A very long two minutes. Two minutes that will resonate, that will spread into all the minutes to follow.

There is no follow-up question. The remaining eleven members of the squad ruminate on the fact that a man can be alive and talking and normal, and a second later be bleeding on the sand, and dead within two minutes.

Two minutes.

A long time for a dying man to think about the things he'll never experience.

There are photos in Rio's inner pocket, wrapped in oilcloth to keep the wet at bay. She wants to look at these pictures. She wants to remember those memories. She wants to push the other thing, this new and terrible thing, down below those gentler memories, dismiss it, put it in a box, like Sarge said.

In some way she cannot explain, Kerwin's death makes Rachel's death more real. Until now death has been an idea, a thing she could examine from a safe distance. It has touched her, but only through loss, not physically, not graphically, not with blood on her hands. One day Rachel
was alive in Rio's mind, the next she was gone, and Rio misses her, but Rachel's death happened far away. Rio has had to imagine Rachel's death. Cassel's death requires no imagination.

“Probably didn't hit the dirt fast enough.” A barely audible whisper from Jenou, bunching up like she shouldn't. Instinctively moving closer to Rio.

“He never was quick,” someone else offers. “Still . . .”

“Yeah . . .”

“Okay, knock it off,” Cole says, finally shutting the whispers down now that everyone had at least been told the basics. “Back in line, Castain, and keep your goddamn intervals.”

What else should I tell them? The way his last breath made a sound like a straw at the bottom of a milk shake? The way he emptied his bowels so that he stank? The slickness of his blood? The way it looked like chocolate syrup in the dark?

They march on, miles passing beneath sore feet. Now the sky is clearing as thick, low cloud gives way to the higher, thinner stuff. The moon has set, but the stars are able to peek through in patches, so now Rio can actually see where she's going and even see a bit beyond Luther.

Heel, toe. Heel, toe. She hears the cadence call in her head.
Your left, your left, your left, right, left.
The soft crunch of boots on hard dirt. The squishy sound when
they hit mud. The many sounds of straps chafing, and uniform pants rubbing, and packs straining, and her helmet riding on the tops of Rio's ears, which means she needs to adjust her helmet liner, though not just now. Definitely not taking her helmet off just now.