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Yet Second Squad, Fifth Platoon has remained cocky. Wet, cold, dirty, sore, hungry, tired, and endlessly disgruntled, but cocky.
Except now they are marching away from their temporary camp into the African night, the full desert night under a dangerously clear sky still dominated by the German Luftwaffe.
I could die tonight.
Second Squad and the rest of Fifth Platoon march, grumbling all the while, through slow-to-dry mud to an assembly area where Third Platoon is already standing around looking scruffy and unhappy. There’s some sort of ongoing beef between Fifth and Third Platoons, dating back to the Tiburon. Rio doesn’t know what it is, nor does anyone else (though it may involve a missing case of fruit cocktail), but it is for certain that Fifth Platoon is in the right. All forty-five soldiers in Fifth Platoon, including the twelve in Second Squad, are pretty sure of that.
The assembly area is a field once sparsely covered with desiccated grass, now trampled into the mud with such thoroughness that it almost seems like deliberate vandalism. They are within sight of the beach, an endless and barely visible stretch of sand that would no doubt be a playground in better times.
Sunshine and lovely warmth is what they all expected when they were told they’d be fighting in North Africa. Wasn’t Africa all lions and elephants and jungles and sunshine? It seems not. This part of the continent is sand and rock and gloomy stone hills and squat, desperately poor villages that survive on date palms and an olive tree or two, with a fair number of mules and the occasional camel, but nary an elephant let alone a lion.
“Maybe there’ll be lions wherever we’re heading,” Jack says, knowing better, but too nervous and too bored to stay silent.
“Lions got too much sense to get theirselves into a war,” Kerwin says, to which Cat says, “Themselves, you dumb hick,” to which Jenou says, “If you two start in again, I will shoot both of you,” to which Tilo says, “Well, you’re both safe. Castain couldn’t hit a barn with a brick at two paces.”
And so it goes, an endless round-robin of complaints, jokes, grudges, and absurdities, all punctuated with rude bodily noises, sudden laughs, snatches of song, and curses. The sound of soldiers standing around waiting for orders.
Cat recites some poetry she’s come up with.
“They march us here
They march us there,
Where we going?
No Damn Where.”
Cat’s bit of doggerel may be correct and they may well be heading to “no damn where,” but it doesn’t feel that way, no, it sure doesn’t, not to Rio. There is an edginess to the NCOs, even Cole. The sergeants have all been to a briefing earlier in the day and came back with long faces and extra ammunition.
The squad is either oblivious to this darkening mood or perhaps simply refusing to yield to it. The horseplay, the whining, the ridiculous rumors all go on, but to Rio’s ears it’s all in a lower register, a shadowed tone. Rio looks from her squad’s sergeant, Cole, to Platoon Sergeant Garaman to Lieutenant Liefer—representing as they do the chain of command for Fifth Platoon, and thus Rio’s leaders, mentors, and tormentors in varying degrees—and sees the signs of nerves. Cole relights his cigar. Garaman is chain-smoking some awful-smelling smokes he bought off an urchin in Algiers. Neither looks happy. Their counterparts from Third Platoon don’t look any more cheerful.
Down on the beach two dozen boxy landing craft cough and sputter as they come ashore, appearing as darker shapes against a faintly luminescent sea. And coming down the beach toward those landing craft is a troop—about sixty men—in the khaki shorts and knee socks of the British army. The Tommies march in their usual, swaggering swing-step, and cast dismissive, pitying glances at the green Americans.
Lieutenant Eelie Liefer, Fifth Platoon’s commander, is joined by the lieutenant from Third Platoon and the various NCOs are now yelling to everyone to listen up, listen up, you mugs. Notably they do not call for anyone to come to attention since somehow all of that spit-and-polish stuff seems to have been abandoned once they reached the actual war.
Lieutenant Liefer is a sight. She is the living, breathing poster girl for recruitment of female soldiers. She stands straight as a flagpole, her blond hair cut almost man-short, her blue eyes piercing, her skin glowing and perfect. Her uniform is improbably clean and still shows evidence of having been ironed at least once. There is something about Lieutenant Liefer that makes one think of girls who organize the homecoming dance, serve in student government, and are chosen as homecoming queen. She is a blonder, posher Sergeant Mackie with a lot less quiet assurance and a lot more shrill insistence.
“Okay, GIs, here’s the scoop,” Liefer announces in her penetrating alto voice. “Third and Fifth Platoons have been detailed to accompany a troop of commandos on a mission.”
“Commandos?” Jenou whispers.
“That ain’t good,” Corporal Hark Millican mutters under his breath. “No, that ain’t good at all. Them fellows get shot at.” He sighs. Hark Millican is a gloomy, hangdog man who possesses an entire vocabulary of sighs.
Sergeant Cole aims a silencing look at Millican.
Liefer goes on. “We will embark on the landing craft you see there, move approximately a hundred and fifty miles down the coast under cover of darkness, go ashore, and advance inland to take out a German communications station. The trip will run approximately eighteen hours. Then we will return to the boats and be back here within seventy-two hours.”
“Eighteen more hours in boats,” Jenou mutters, just loudly enough for Rio to hear.
“Thirty-six if we make the round-trip. I wonder if the navy gets to stay on dry land?” Rio says.
“SNAFU,” comes the inevitable summation from Suarez.
Situation Normal: All Fugged Up.
Liefer seems to think all this sounds just swell, although the Third Platoon’s lieutenant, a beanpole of a twenty-nine-year-old named Helder, is looking a bit green around the gills. In real life he’s an advertising man, another civilian playing at soldier, like most of both platoons.
“You’ve been issued extra ammo and three days’ rations. Now, this is a joint operation with our allies, and the British captain will be in overall command. Needless to say, the eyes of the brass are on us, so let’s not screw this up. Do you wish to add anything, Lieutenant Helder?”
