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Prologue
107TH EVAC HOSPITAL, WÜRZBURG, GERMANY—APRIL 1945
I’m not going to tell you my name, not right away.
I’m in this story, and you’ll see plenty of me. But I don’t want to tell you this story in a way that makes it about me. I don’t expect you’ll understand that, Gentle Reader, so let me try to explain it like this: I’m not the hero of this tale; I’m just alive to tell it.
As I type this I’m sitting here safe in this hospital waiting on the official announcement that we have won this war. I’m here alongside a bunch of other women and girls hurt as bad or worse than me, some a hell of a lot worse. All around me are women with stumps of arms or legs wrapped up tight in white bandages or casts; women with half their bodies covered in gauze; women who can’t hear or can’t see or who are glad they can’t see so they don’t have to look at themselves in a mirror. Some are on their cots, some are in wheelchairs, some are just standing, staring out of the tall, dirty windows. We play cards sometimes. We listen to the radio. We talk about home, about boys and husbands.
We wait.
It’s funny that they keep the men and women separate here, because we sure weren’t separate up on the front line. But they’re just across the hall now, the guys. The people running this place tell us we aren’t to fraternize, but we are all of us done taking orders. So we stumble or shuffle or roll ourselves over there after evening chow because they’ve got a piano and some of the boys can play and some of the girls can sing. No smoking, no drinking, no fraternizing with the opposite sex, those are the rules. So naturally we smoke, drink, and fraternize most evenings.
At night we cry sometimes, and if you think that just applies to the females then you have never been in combat, because everyone cries sooner or later. Everyone cries.
We are the first generation of female soldiers in the American army. Lucky us.
My sisters-in-arms are still out there right now, flushing out the last German strongholds, and more of us will die. This war isn’t over yet, but my part of it is.
Anyway, I’ve had this feeling nagging at me, this feeling that once they declare the end of the war, all my memories of it will start to leak away, to fade and become lost. Will you understand, Gentle Reader, if I tell you that this is something I both long for and dread?
There’s a typewriter here, and I’ve taught myself to be pretty quick on it. There isn’t much else to do, and I want to get it all down on paper before the end.
The snap of the keys striking the page soothes me. Is that because the sounds are something like the noise of gunfire? That’d be something, wouldn’t it? For the rest of my life am I going to hear a typewriter and be back on some beach or in some freezing hole?
Well, let’s not get too deep. How about I just tell the story?
I’m going to be just as honest as I can about each of the people in it. I know these women and men. I sat many a long hour in troop ships and foxholes and on leave drinking beer and swapping stories. There isn’t much about them I don’t know, and what I don’t know, well, I’ll make up. But it’ll be as close to true as any war story can be.
I’m in a fever to tell it all, right now before it fades, before I start to rewrite the truth and make it more acceptable to myself and you. See, Gentle Reader, I know the rules of war stories. I know I’m supposed to present a tale of patriotism, of high-minded motives and brave deeds, hardships endured with a stiff upper lip and a wry grin. I’m supposed to tell you about the brotherhood—and now sisterhood—of soldiers. But there’s one thing I cannot do as I pound these typewriter keys, and that is lie.
My body is damaged, my mind is too full, my soul too raw. The things that I saw and did are too real. If you’re looking for the kind of story that will puff you up with an easy reflected pride, I am not your girl. If as you read this you come to admire these soldiers, I want it to be because you know them with all their weaknesses
as well as their strengths.
You may imagine that any war story must be all about righteous hatred of the enemy. And yes, you’ll hear some of that. I was at the camps. I was there. I saw. So, hate? Sure, I’ll show you some hate.
There will be hate.
But I suspect over time the hate will fade, and it will be the love that lingers: the love of the woman or man standing next to you in a hole; the desperate love of a home that seems farther away with each squeeze of the trigger; the fragile love for the person you hope—or hoped—to spend the rest of your life with.
A moment ago I reached the end of a page and ripped it from the machine, and in trying to insert the next sheet I made a mess of it. My fingers shook a little. I feel jacked up, high and wild, a twanging nerve, a guitar string tightened and tightened until it’s got to break, till you kind of wish it would just break. I’m sweating, and it isn’t hot. But as long as I keep hitting these keys, as long as I don’t stop, maybe that will all pass. I don’t know.
We are the first generation of young American women to fight in a great world war. “Warrior Women” is what the newspapers like to say. But when it all began three years ago, we were not any kind of women; we were girls mostly. And with the wry mockery that comes so easily to men and women at war, we made up our own headline and called ourselves not warrior women but soldier girls.
As I sit here pounding feverishly on these keys, I feel as if I am all of them, every soldier girl who carried a rifle, dug a hole, slogged through mud, steamed or froze, prayed or cursed, raged or feared, ran away or ran toward.
I am Rio Richlin. I am Frangie Marr. I am Rainy Schulterman and Jenou Castain and Cat Preeling. As long as I’m pounding these keys I’m all of them.
This is the story of what happened to a few of us who ended up on the front lines of the greatest war in human history.
PART I
VOLUNTEERS AND DRAFTEES
1
RIO RICHLIN—GEDWELL FALLS, CALIFORNIA, USA
1942.
Remember 1942? It’s been a long three and a half years since then, hasn’t it? In 1942 the Japs were unchecked, rampaging freely across Asia. The Germans had taken all of Europe and some of Africa before running into trouble in the Soviet Union. Our British allies had been hit hard, very hard.
And we Americans?
Well, we were just getting into it. Still with plenty of time to worry about the little things . . .
“Rio Richlin, stay out of the sugar. Heavens, girl, the ration for the family is thirty-two ounces a week, and I’m saving for your sister’s birthday cake.”
“I just used a teaspoonful for my coffee, Mother.”
“Yes, well, a teaspoon here, a teaspoon there, it adds up. Who knows what Rachel is getting to eat?” Mrs. Richlin says. She has deep and dark suspicions when it comes to navy rations.
Rio is sixteen and pretty; not a beauty, but pretty enough. Tall for a girl, and with the strong shoulders and calloused hands of a farmer’s daughter. Rangy, that’s one word. If she’d been a boy, she’d have played ball and you’d expect her to be able to throw from center field to home without much trouble.
Her complexion is cream in the mild Northern California winter and light-brown sugar during the long days of summer, with faint freckles and brown hair pulled back into a practical ponytail.
“I guess the navy is feeding her; wouldn’t make much sense to starve your own sailors,” Rio points out.
“Well, I don’t suppose her captain is making her a nineteenth birthday cake. Do you?”
Mrs. Richlin emphasizes what she sees as her conclusive statement by taking the ration book with its multicolored stamps and fanning it out on the table in front of Rio. “You see the situation. Thank goodness for the cows. I trade my milk to Emily Smith for her coffee ration, otherwise your father and you would have nothing to drink.”
“There’s always beer.” This from Rio’s father, Tam, who rushes through the kitchen on his way to the feed store he owns. “But not for you, young lady,” he adds quickly, pointing at Rio then winking.
It’s a spacious kitchen with green-painted oak cupboards on most of one wall, a battered and well-used white-enameled stove and oven, a long porcelain sink, and a deeper tin sink beside it. There’s a bare wood counter so long-used that dips are worn into the edge where three generations of Richlin women have kneaded bread dough and chopped carrots and parsnips and sliced tomatoes fresh from the garden.
In the center of the room stands a round table—antique, quarter-sawn oak—surrounded by five chairs, only two of which match and all of which squeak and complain when used.
