Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(3)

But here’s one of the nasty little twists that come in war: if you don’t manage to get wounded or die, they’ll promote you. And then, before you’re even close to ready, you are the sergeant. You’re the one the green kids are sticking to, and you’re the only thing keeping those fools alive. Right when you start to get good at following, they want you to lead.

Some of us made that leap, some didn’t. Not every good private makes a good sergeant.

But enough of all that; what about the war itself? Shall I remind you where we were in the narrative, Gentle Reader?

After Kasserine, the army in its wisdom got General Frendendall the hell away from the shooting war, and it turned the mess over to General George Patton, “Old Blood-and-Guts.” He and his British counterpart, General Montgomery, finished off the exhausted remains of the German Afrika Korps and their Italian buddies and sent General Rommel back to Hitler to explain his failure.

Everyone knew North Africa had just been the first round; we knew we were moving on, but we didn’t know where to. Back to Britain to prepare for the final invasion? To Sardinia? Greece? The South of France? Being soldiers, we lived on scuttlebutt, none of it accurate.

Turned out the first answer was Sicily.

Sicily is a big, hot, dusty, stony, hard-hearted island that’s been conquered by just about every empire in the history of the Mediterranean: Athenians, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Romans, Normans, you name it, and now it was our turn to conquer it. And damned if we didn’t just do it.

This is the story of three young women who fought in the greatest war in human history: Frangie Marr, an undersized colored girl from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who loved animals; time after time she ran into the thick of the fight, not to kill but to save lives. Rainy Schulterman, a Jewish girl from New York City with a gift for languages and a ruthless determination to destroy Nazis. And Rio Richlin, an underage white farm girl from Northern California who could not manage her love life and never was quite sure why she was in this war, not until we reached the camps anyway, but she could sure kill the hell out of Krauts.

They didn’t win the war alone, those three, nor did the rest of us, but we all did our part and we didn’t disgrace ourselves or let our brothers and sisters down, which is all any soldier can aspire to.

That and getting home alive.





PART I





1

RIO RICHLIN—CAMP ZIGZAG, TUNISIA, NORTH AFRICA

“What was it like?” Jenou asks. “That first time? What did you feel?”

Rio Richlin sighs wearily.

Rio and Jenou Castain, best friends for almost their entire lives, lie faceup on a moth-eaten green blanket spread over the hood of a burned-out German half-track, heads propped up against the slit windows, legs dangling down in front of the armor-covered radiator. The track is sleeker than the American version, lower in profile, normally a very useful vehicle. But this particular German half-track had been hit by a passing Spitfire some weeks earlier, so it is riddled with holes you could stick a thumb into. The bogie wheels driving the track are splayed out, and both tracks have been dragged off and are now in use as a relatively clean “sidewalk” leading to the HQ administrative tent.

The road might once have been indifferently paved but has now been chewed to gravel by passing tanks, the ubiquitous deuce-and-a-half trucks, jeeps, half-tracks, bulldozers, and tanker trucks. It runs beside a vast field of reddish sand and loose gravel that now seems to have become something like a farm field with olive drab tents as its crop. The tents extend in long, neat rows made untidy by the way the tent sides have all been rolled up, revealing cots and sprawled GIs in sweat-soaked T-shirts and boxer shorts. Here and there are extinguished campfires, oil drums filled with debris, other oil drums shot full of holes and mounted on rickety platforms to make field showers, stacks of jerry cans, wooden crates, and pallets—some broken up to feed the fires.

The air smells of sweat, oil, smoke, cordite, and cigarettes, with just a hint of fried Spam. There are the constant rumbles and coughing roars of passing vehicles, and the multitude of sounds made by any large group of people, plus the outraged shouts of NCOs, curses and blasphemies, and more laughter than one might expect.

At the edge of the camp some men and one or two women are playing softball with bats, balls, and gloves assembled from family care packages. It’s possible that the rules of this game are not quite those of games played at Yankee Stadium, since there is some tripping and tackling going on.

Both Rio and Jenou wear their uniform trousers rolled up to above the knee, and sleeveless olive drab T-shirts. Cat Preeling, fifty feet away and playing a game of horseshoes with Tilo Suarez, is the only female GI with the nerve to strip down to bra and boxers. She’s a beefy girl with a cigarette hanging from her downturned mouth. Tilo, like many of the off-duty men, wears only his boxers and boots, showing off a taut, olive-complected body that Jenou would be watching much more closely if only Tilo were six inches taller.

The bra and boxers look is a bit too daring for Rio and Jenou, but Cat seems to have a way of deflecting unwanted male attention, like she’s wearing a sign that reads: Don’t bother. Even the ever-amorous Tilo is content to toss horseshoes with her, though the shoes in question are actually brass rings roughly cut from discarded 155 brass and the peg is a bayonet.

Rio and Jenou both have brown-tanned faces, necks, and forearms, but the rest of them blazes a lurid white with just a tinge of pink where the skin is beginning to burn.