Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(67)

Rio swallows. She bites her lips. Then, “I wanted him to kiss me. In fact, I think I almost forced him to. Poor Strand.”

“Yes,” Jenou drawls with heavy sarcasm. “Poor Strand.”

“I’ve just never . . . and it was all of a sudden. It was like, well, there he was, and he was right there.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And he just kept talking. And I wanted to say ‘Shut up and kiss me.’”

“My little Rio,” Jenou says proudly. “You’re growing up.”

“And now . . .”

“And now you’re tingling all over.”

Rio nods vigorously and rolls onto her back, leaving Jenou even less room and pressing her against the steel bulkhead.

“I think I’m rambunctious,” Rio says.

“Did he try to . . . you know.”

“No! Of course not. He’s a gentleman. He would never.”

“Never? I hope that’s not true. I’m still hoping to be Auntie Jenou to your children.”

“You’ll have children of your own; you won’t need to be Auntie Jenou to mine. Ours.”

“Oh my goodness, whatever happened to my favorite naive farm girl? You just talked about sex without blushing.”

“No I did not!” Rio said hotly. “Take that back!”

“Sweetie, when you start daydreaming about children, you’re daydreaming about ‘s-e-x.’ You do know the two things are connected, right?”

“I may be naive, but I know how a cow and a bull come to have calves.”

For some reason this causes Jenou to sputter in amazement and then start to giggle. Soon Rio is giggling as well.

Cat pokes her head up. There’s a strange look when she sees the two of them lying side by side. She seems almost jealous, or maybe just left out, but she quickly conceals it with a request to borrow some boot polish.

The PA crackles to life, announcing chow time for their company, and there is no dawdling when meals are announced—the navy serves good chow, and eating is about the only thing that punctuates the long days of doing nothing.

They file out to stand in a long, slow line for dinner, where Rio eats her fried chicken and mashed potatoes with unusual energy and enjoyment. And that night she lies in the dark after lights-out, staring up at the steel pipe over her head, and recalls every detail, every single detail, savoring, wondering, replaying.

But she replays, too, Strand’s insinuation that she is merely playing soldier. She’ll have to have a talk with him about that someday.

First another kiss, then a conversation, because somewhere along the line, Rio has ceased to see this as any sort of game. She never wanted to really go to war, but now it seems she is, and a part of her, a small but growing part of her, is almost looking forward to it.





PART II

WAR





THE OPENING DAYS OF 1943

The Nazis and their collaborators control all of Europe except for a handful of neutral countries. Italy’s buffoonish dictator, Benito Mussolini, has suffered one humiliation after another, and now the remains of his army in North Africa are increasingly dependent on the Germans. The French Vichy regime, Nazi collaborators allowed to control the southern parts of France and French overseas colonies, have begun shipping French Jews to the extermination camps. The German army, the Wehrmacht, has been stopped by the Soviets at Stalingrad, with staggering casualties on both sides.

A direct attack on Germany is not yet possible, but the Americans are anxious to strike a blow. The target is the Mediterranean, where the tiny British-held island of Malta has held out against impossible odds, keeping Allied air power alive. The Royal Navy, strengthened by the output of American factories, now dominates the western Mediterranean. The British fortress of Gibraltar, the gateway to the Mediterranean, remains firmly in Allied hands.

In Egypt the great British general Bernard Law Montgomery, known as Monty, has turned the tide against the equally skilled German general Erwin Rommel. Monty drives the Afrika Korps and what’s left of the Italian army from the east across Libya. The Americans have arrived in Morocco and Algeria and lie in wait. The trap is set.

The Allies are sure that the Germans, Italians, and a handful of remaining Vichy will have no choice but to surrender or be wiped out.

The Germans have a different view.

In her first entry for 1943, Anne Frank writes, “All we can do is wait, as calmly as possible, for it to end. Jews and Christians alike are waiting, the whole world is waiting, and many are waiting for death.”

But the US Army is not waiting. It goes looking for death and finds it at a place called Kasserine, Tunisia.





“I want to impose on everyone that the bad times are over, they are finished! Our mandate from the Prime Minister is to destroy the Axis forces in North Africa. . . . It can be done, and it will be done!”

—General Bernard Law Montgomery, British Eighth Army

“We have come into North Africa shoulder to shoulder with our American friends and allies for one purpose and one purpose only. Namely, to gain a vantage ground from which to open a new front against Hitler and Hitlerism, to cleanse the shores of Africa from the stain of Nazi and Fascist tyranny, to open the Mediterranean to Allied sea power and air power, and thus effect the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the pit of misery into which they have been passed by their own improvidence and by the brutal violence of the enemy.”