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Machine gun rounds pierce the jeep, passing right through one door and out through the other. Manning, thankfully, is on the ground with Deacon bent over her.
And some force seizes control of Frangie Marr, some force she can only stand back and watch in horrified amazement. Because this thing inside her, this boiling rage made out of blood and lice and hunger and fear, propels her to her feet. She strides past the jeep. Well out beyond any tanks. Face-to-face with the Germans in the forest.
“You fugging Nazi bastards!” she shouts. She pulls off her helmet and bangs her fist on the Red Cross brassard. “Red fugging Cross. Do you see a gun on me? Do you see a machine gun on my jeep? You want us to start shooting your medics?”
She plops the helmet back on her head and marches back, fully expecting to feel a punch to the spine followed a split second later by the crack of a rifle.
The battle rages on.
Her jeep is not hit again.
22
RIO RICHLIN—HÜRTGEN FOREST, NAZI GERMANY
“The replacement?” Richlin asks Geer.
“Pang owes me fifty bucks.”
“Anyone remember his name? I don’t have any paperwork on him.”
“It was something normal. Like Bill or Joe or something,” Geer says. The back rear of his uniform is red with blood.
Rio nods at the area. “You get shot in the ass, Geer?”
“I got shot in the side, not in the ass, and I will punch the first one of you sons of bitches who says different.”
The squad is in a state of collapse, sprawled in pine needles and mud, some already snoring, others cleaning their rifles, others still doing inexplicable things, like Jenou, who is, bizarrely, writing furiously in a little notebook she keeps.
“You need to go seek some, uh, medical attention? In the rear?” Rio asks, then grins, betraying the pun.
“Very funny,” Geer says, and scowls at Pang, who laughs. “No, my rear does not require me to go to the rear, fugging comedians. It’s just a graze, but it sure does bleed, and stings too. Doc says it’ll heal up. Says I should try to take it easy, stay off my feet, maybe try a restricted diet. Because he’s a fugging comedian too.”
Rio grins. From day one at basic training she has not liked Geer, not liked his rude bigotry or his occasional bullying of replacements—not that Jenou is really any kinder—or, for that matter, anyone in the squad. Replacements come, replacements die. It’s best not to get close to anyone until they’ve survived a week. At least.
No, Rio has never liked Geer, but she has come to rely on him. A loudmouthed redneck he might be, but he can fight, and in Rio’s world there are only three things she needs from any member of her squad: That they fight. That they fight. And that they fight.
Geer fights.
More surprising still, he and Pang seem to have become partners in a way. Geer could have fobbed off the BAR, which Pang feeds, but he’s kept the machine gun and his ammo carrier. They call each other “Jappo” and “Hillbilly” respectively, but they seem to get along. Pang, too, fights.
The tanks have gone on ahead with fresh infantry, but word is they’ve stalled. And since there’s a chance of a counterattack, Rio is trying to decide whether to bully her squad into digging in here, or figure they’ll be pushed back to their start point and can reoccupy their old holes.
“Take five more minutes,” she says. “Then I want to see entrenching tools in action.”
The counterattack is surprisingly feeble, and they are able to drive it off with three wounded and two dead in the platoon, with one of the injuries being Dick “Lazarus” Ostrowiz, who manages a much-envied wound, a shoulder wound that will hurt like hell, take forever to heal, and require his evacuation up the chain, to battalion aid, to the field hospital, and eventually, back to the States.
Ostrowiz, high on morphine, chuckles to himself as he is loaded into an ambulance and driven off.
Rio is once again shorthanded. Geer, Jack, Jenou, Pang, Beebee, Milkmaid Molina, Jenny Dial, and Rudy J. “Private Sweetheart” Chester. Three short of a full squad. Meaning they’ll be sending her more replacements, replacements who’ll be wounded or run away or die so quickly there’s little point in learning their names.
In this moment of relative calm, with holes dug and no artillery dropping—for the moment—Rio performs one of her most necessary duties.
“All right, peo
ple: twinkle toes!”
Universal groans.
