Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(35)

“You okay now, Doc?”

She nods. “I want it to be over.”

“Come on now, it hasn’t even started.” He winks, and she can’t help but smile a little.

“Can’t fight no war without Albert Huntington gets into it,” a private says—presumably Albert Huntington, though Frangie doesn’t know him or many of the men yet. She’s new to this unit, having spent the last few months attached to a clinic where the work was largely the treatment of venereal diseases and injuries from bar fights and training accidents.

“I suppose it would be wrong to pray that all the Krauts just die,” Frangie says, sort of joking, but also not.

“It’s not wrong to pray for it to be over sooner rather than later,” Green says, seeing that she is serious.

She nods and swallows hard and prays for just that. Lord Jesus, bring this battle to a swift conclusion. And if it’s Your will, take care of Your Frangie.

The loudspeaker crackles to life. The final order is given. The mass of men and women murmurs and moves. Sailors and sergeants stand at the top of the boarding nets, which are slung over the side, hurrying and cajoling the clumsy soldiers.

“Come on, boys, it’s just a net, you’ve practiced it before.”

But Frangie has not practiced it before, and neither have the rest of them. Green troops, the greenest. Sergeant Green’s green platoon. She climbs awkwardly over the railing, feeling helping hands steady the weight of the pack on her back and guide her feet.

Hands on the slick, wet rail.

“Don’t look down, miss,” a sailor says. “Climb down, but don’t look.”

She looks.

The landing craft below her is rolling in the agitated sea, banging against the side of the ship, rolling away to expose dark water, rising, falling. She is climbing down onto a moving target. The seasickness that has dogged her during the storm-tossed trip from Tunisia comes swarming back in the guise of vertigo.

Her boots catch on every rope. Her hands are sticky with tar from the nets but so cold she doesn’t at first notice the wire-brush harshness that tears tiny slices from her palms and the meaty pads of her fingers.

Down and down, how can it be this far? She looks down as the boat rushes up, up, up as though to meet her before falling away again.

“Come on, Doc, you don’t want to swim.” It’s a private named Jasper Jones who has occasionally helped Frangie out by letting her use him as a medical practice dummy. He’s a gangly six-footer with big ears that won’t look right until his face takes on some weight with age. Frangie likes him, but she’s avoided him since it became apparent that he was thinking of her in romantic terms.

The last thing she’s interested in right now is men. At least not men as boyfriends. Men and women as patients are her focus. Anyway, what kind of kids would they have? A beanpole and a midget? They would make a ridiculous-looking couple.

This is what I’m thinking of?

Better than so many other things . . .

She gratefully accepts Jasper’s help as he reaches to guide her feet into the last couple of holes and then holds her steady as she jumps down into the rising boat.

“All set, Doc?”

“All set, Jasper. Thanks.”

“Anything for you, Doc.”

Of course he’s doing the same service for all the GIs. Climbing down a net is hard; climbing down a net in full gear from a heaving ship onto a boat that is doing an impersonation of a crazy elevator is a whole lot harder.

Once the boat is loaded it veers away from the side of the ship and begins turning a big circle, waiting until more boats are loaded. The sea is rough, and once again seasickness threatens. Cold, salty spray lashes them.

“You scared, Doc?” Jasper asks.

“I am. Aren’t you?”

Jasper laughs. “Me? Nah. The bullet with my name on it hasn’t been made yet.”

Another private shakes his head sadly. This is Paul Dixon, called Daddy D on account of his age, which may be as old as thirty. “You’re a young fool, Jasper Jones, that’s why you’re not afraid,” Daddy D says. “You are a young, know-nothing, been-nothing, done-nothing infant dressed up in a uniform that looks like it was a hand-me-down from some shorter cousin.”

Jasper could take offense, but he recognizes the bantering tone. “Me young? Maybe to an old, old granddad like you. Weren’t you in the Spanish-American War, pops? See the thing is, you being all old and dried up and wrinkled—”

“I do not have one single damn wrinkle—”

“You get closer to death, you get so you can see it through the mist, and that mist? That mist is starting to clear now . . .” There is some hand-waving here to simulate pushing through a fog. Jasper switches to an old man’s reedy quaver. “And you’re thinking time is short, time is short, it’s all gonna end!”

Daddy D makes a wry smile at Frangie. “I am twenty-nine years old. Only in the damn army does that make me old.” Turning back to Jasper, Daddy D says, “Difference between us isn’t age, it’s experience. I am a man. You are a boy. I have known the love of a good woman who knows how to be a bad woman; and I’ve known the love of bad women who know how to be worse women; and I have known the love of the worst women in Tuskegee, Alabama, and, son, those are some very bad, very, very bad women, women who used me up till I was a shambling wreck, a husk of a man . . .”