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Ladies of America, by the time you read this exclusive report the fighting in Tunisia will be all over, but the war has just begun for our boys in uniform—boys who have now been joined by girls. I recently had occasion to spend some time with the soldiers of Second Squad, Fifth Platoon, Company A, 119th Division, and I saw firsthand the way some of our soldier girls behave in battlefield conditions.
This is not the story of the battle of Kasserine Pass. It is not the story of any great battle of the sort you read about in history books. This is the story of one of those numberless, small but vicious fights that test a soldier’s courage and determination and all too often end not with the awarding of medals, but with “Taps” being played mournfully over a fresh grave.
I had missed most of the heavy combat by the time I made it to North Africa, having, as regular readers will recall, been held up in Burma. But I was determined to see whatever was left of the fighting, so upon my arrival at the headquarters of 119th Division outside Ghezala, Tunisia, I found a young corporal named Milo Jorgenson who had temporary ownership of a jeep.
“So, where are we going, Corporal?” I asked him.
“Nowhere good, ma’am. There’s a squad in a ravine up in them mountains, there? Got themselves some Kraut dead-enders that didn’t get the word that it’s over, I guess. SNAFU.”
SNAFU, ladies, is the acronym of choice for GIs. It stands for Situation Normal: All Fouled Up. Though another word is sometimes substituted for Fouled.
Corporal Jorgenson agreed (after a negotiation involving a carton of cigarettes) to allow me to tag along on a mission to run ammunition to the infantry squad deep in the rugged foothills of the Atlas Mountains.
I soon discovered why we were carrying ammunition in a small jeep rather than one of the big trucks the GIs call deuce-and-a-halfs. It seems the only road into this remote fastness was within range of the very German mortar team we were going to see about, and we didn’t want to give them any more of a target than strictly necessary. Indeed, they took a shot at us and thankfully missed!
This Kraut mortar team was the objective of Sergeant Jedron Cole’s squad, and his squad turned out to be quite unexpected, starting from our first encounter. For I was met on my arrival by two GIs, a big, rangy country boy named Luther Geer, and a young blonde reclining against a rock and scribbling in a notebook. She was a pretty girl with short-cut hair coated with the same dust that covered everything else. She had the collar of her overcoat turned up against the cold.
“Hello,” I said.
“Yeah?” The woman soldier was as suspicious as you might expect a GI in a remote location to be upon seeing a reporter.
“I’m Ann Patrone. I’m a reporter. Friends call me Spats.”
That earned me a tilted head and a guardedly interested look. “Jenou Castain,” the soldier girl said. Then, “J-E-N-O-U. It’s from the French word ingénue. And the big ugly one there is Luther Geer. Geer is spelled A-S-”
This being a family magazine, ladies, I will spare you the rather risqué and clearly inaccurate spelling she provided. Geer, her fellow private, took it all in good humor.
“What are you doing here?” Geer asked.
“Looking for a story.”
“Well, we ain’t much of a story. You gonna help us carry the ammo?”
I assured them that I would.
“Got any smokes?” Castain asked.
I handed her two packs of Luckies, and with that the deal was done. Although if I’d known just how hard it is to climb through ravines and scramble across slippery shale while carrying two cans of .30 caliber ammunition, my camera, and the trusty revolver my father gave me, I might have decided against it.
It was a long climb, much of it almost vertical. I tripped and fell more than once, and even slid ingloriously down a gravel slope and very nearly flattened Private Geer. But at another point I was able to stick a leg in front of the five-gallon water drum Geer was carrying and stop it rolling down into a deep crack, which earned me both a bruise and a little grudging respect.
After a long, cold, miserable climb full of scrapes and bruises, we came at last to a small, almost round bowl formed entirely of rock. It was a pretty enough spot, just the sort of place for a romantic picnic, with a sandy floor and rock walls turned red where touched by a beam of sunlight, and gray where shadows endured. It reminded me of an exhibit of landscapes by Georgia O’Keeffe I saw in New York.
One side of the bowl looked like a landslide, like maybe this bowl started out bigger but it was cut in two by an avalanche of sharp-edged stones and gravel. The fallen rock formed a ridge that rises to a height of twenty feet, and half a dozen soldiers perch atop it, careful to stay low and out of sight of whatever’s on the other side.
For I must tell you, ladies, it was the Germans on the other side of that heap of rock, and we were close enough to hear them coughing and moving about.
The squad is alert, ready to yell if the Germans suddenly come sneaking around behind us, but their relaxed postures signal that this is unlikely. I can see why: the stone bowl we’re in has just a single narrow entrance—the ravine we came by. The bowl has one low side, no more than ten feet high, and it is manned by a vigilant corporal everyone calls Stick, but whose true name is Dain Sticklin. The other sides of the bowl rise sheer and tall, so I have to bend my whole body back just to see the top.
Sergeant Jedron Cole, a gap-toothed, cigar-chomping textbook example of the genus Sergeantus americanus, explained the situation to me.
“Up top there, that highest part, it’s gravel and loose shale, so we’d hear anyone coming from that direction. Even if a Kraut got up there he wouldn’t be able to sight a rifle ’cause of the angle. Might could toss some potato mashers—sorry, Kraut grenades—but they aren’t as dangerous as our pineapples. And if they try to climb this rubble we’ll hear ’em, and it won’t be an easy climb for them.”
“So how do you plan to deal with the Germans?” I asked, to which Cole grinned and said, “Carefully, ma’am. Carefully.”
Then he turned serious and explained a little more. “Some bright bulb up the chain of command decided someone had better come in here and flush them out. We think it may be just half a dozen fellows, or maybe a dozen, but they’ve got that mortar and they’ve got themselves an old Spandau spittin’ out six hundred rounds a minute. From what we’ve been able to make out—which is from holding a little mirror up on a stick—they’re in something like a mirror image of this bowl we’re in, only they’ve got a clear view down over the road.”
“You can’t call in an artillery mission?”
Cole spit out a loose bit of tobacco. “Lady, I don’t know how accurate you think a 105 is, but they’re as likely to kill us as the Krauts. Anyway, down in that bowl, it’d be a one in a million shot to hit them.”
“So it’s a standoff.”
“Except we can still get ammo and food, and sooner or later those cutoff Kraut bastards are going to run out. They’re being careful not to waste shots, so we know they’re getting low. They’d have gotten your jeep for sure if they could have spared the rounds.”
“So you just wait?”
With the laconic drawl that is the official tone of the combat veteran, Cole made me an offer. “If you want to go get ’em, I’ll happily loan you my Thompso
n. They’re just over that rubble. We hear ’em singing at night.”
Needless to say, ladies, I did not take him up on the offer.
Cole’s squad is unusual in that it has more women than most outfits, and it even has an Englishman, Private Jack Stafford, a rakish young charmer with a devilish gaze and a ready laugh. Stafford was evacuated to the United States during the London Blitz. He later lost his family to Nazi bombs and, unable to join up with the British Army, he added his talents to ours.
There is also an Oriental by the name of Private Hansu Pang, but never fear, ladies, this one is red, white, and blue all the way through.
Private Cat Preeling is the sort of girl you might expect to find in a front line unit—stocky and strong, but nearly as puckish as Stafford. Private Jillion Magraff is shy, quiet, given to drawing in a notebook she keeps with her at all times.
Every unit needs a playboy, and Private Tilo Suarez fills that role to a tee, looking like a dirtier, beat-up version of Frank Sinatra.
Finally, there is Private Rio Richlin. Richlin and Castain are childhood friends, but they could not be more different. For one thing, Richlin is the very picture of the corn-fed, freckle-faced, all-American girl. An all-American girl you might expect to find at the counter of the local soda shop or speaking at a high school assembly.
She looks impossibly young, but the impression of sweet innocence evaporates quickly. You see, ladies, there is a look in the eye of a true fighter, a real combat veteran. It is made of wariness, skepticism, and exhaustion that somehow add up to a profound sense of competence.
Richlin balances her M1 Garand rifle on her hip, nods warily at me, and speaks to Sergeant Cole.
“Sarge. Stick and I think we see a way to maybe get around them instead of just going at ’em and getting shot up.”
“What are you thinking, Richlin?”
“Is that spelled R-I-C-K-L-I-N?” I interrupt, ever the reporter concerned with accuracy.
“R-I-C-H-L-I-N. First name Rio, like the city down in Brazil where I wish I was right now.”
