Purple Hearts Read online

  DEDICATION

  To all the real soldier girls.

  EPIGRAPH

  Today we rule Germany, tomorrow, the world!

  —Adolf Hitler

  And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler.

  Just like I’d shoot a snake!

  —General George S. Patton

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1944

  Prologue

  Part I Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Letters Sent

  Part II Chapter 19

  Part III Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part IV Letters Sent

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Part V Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Part VI Letters Sent

  Chapter 33

  Interstitial: 107th Evac Hospital, Würzburg, Germany—April 1945

  Part VII Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Obituaries

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Photo Glossary

  Bibliography

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Michael Grant

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1944

  World War II has raged in Europe for five long years, but the tide has turned decisively in favor of the Allies. France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, Greece, the western part of the Soviet Union, and North Africa have all been occupied at one time, but now the edges of the Nazi Reich are being rolled up.

  In Italy, Hitler’s clownish fascist henchman, Benito Mussolini, has been overthrown. Pro-Nazi governments in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and parts of Yugoslavia are looking for ways to make peace with the Allies. The Nazis are out of North Africa and southern Italy.

  The Soviet Union is ruled by the paranoid monster Joseph Stalin. Having once made a treacherous peace with Hitler allowing the Soviets to stab Finland and Poland in the back, Stalin found himself betrayed in turn by Hitler. Ignoring a peace agreement between them, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, inflicting unspeakable brutality on Poles, Belorussians, Ukrainians, Russians, and, of course, above all, the Jews.

  But the Soviet Union has proven to be too big a meal for Hitler to swallow. The Nazis have been turned back at Stalingrad and Leningrad, forced to flee after the largest tank battle in history at Kursk, and are now retreating with a vengeful Soviet Red Army hot on their heels.

  From June 25, 1940, and the surrender of France to June 1941 when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, Great Britain, her Commonwealth and her Empire, stood alone against the Nazi tidal wave. With British cities being bombed by the Luftwaffe and British shipping largely at the bottom of the Atlantic, Britain still stood—cut off, hungry, and alone—the indomitable hero of the western world.

  But after Hitler’s ally, Japan, attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the great sleeping giant across the sea finally awoke. The United States of America, which had till then limited itself to supplying material aid to Britain, was all at once, overnight, fully engaged in the war.

  America’s not-so-secret weapon was its productive capacity. By 1944 the USA was producing 96,000 warplanes per year, more than 10 planes each hour in a twenty-four-hour day. In the total war effort American industry produced 110 aircraft carriers, 41,000 cannon, 100,000 tanks, 310,000 aircraft, 12.5 million rifles, and 41 billion rounds of ammunition.

  It also raised, trained, and equipped a military that by 1944 numbered nearly 12 million soldiers, sailors, and marines.

  The world waited as the Americans put on a poor show in North Africa and became bogged down in Italy under ineffectual generals. America’s allies granted the genius of American war production, but they doubted the fighting spirit, grit, determination, and competence of American soldiers, from Eisenhower down to the private in a foxhole.

  The Americans faced the ultimate test: leading a fractious, suspicious coalition of British, Canadian, Australian, Free French, and Free Polish forces to invade and liberate Europe and to destroy Hitler’s evil regime.

  The Nazis were no longer advancing, but the Nazi empire was very far from beaten. New German weapons, the V-1 cruise missile, the V-2 ballistic missile, the world’s first jet fighter, the Me 262, and the massive Tiger tank, were coming online.

  Now on the defensive, the superbly equipped, experienced, well-trained, well-generaled, and dug-in German army, the Wehrmacht, and its brutal and fanatical counterpart, the Waffen SS, were fighting to save the Nazi regime and their Fatherland.

  The Nazi beast cornered was at its most dangerous.

  Between D-day, June 6, 1944, and the German surrender on May 7, 1945, 125,000 American GIs—more than 350 per day—would die bringing freedom to western Europe and destroying the greatest evil humanity had ever faced.

  Prologue

  107TH EVAC HOSPITAL, WÜRZBURG, GERMANY—APRIL 1945

  There’s a story going round, Gentle Reader, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but supposedly a guy heard it from a German POW. The story is that the first Allied bomb dropped on Berlin killed an elephant in the zoo.

  I guess I’m sorry for the elephant, but that sort of sums up the way it goes in war. There’s no moral sense to it. Sure, one side may be better than the other. I mean, I was at Buchenwald. No one needs to convince me the Nazis are evil. But what I mean is that in the day-to-day of it, death and destruction do not rain down on the bad and spare the good. Death does not care whether you’re a bright and sparkly hero or a yellow coward. Death doesn’t know you, or care to know you. You’re just the poor dumb bastard who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You’re just that elephant.

  The philosophy of the combat soldier in a nutshell: you’re gonna die. Might be today, might be tomorrow, might be fifty years from now all safe and snug in your bed. But when your number is up, your number is up. And that might be in three . . . two . . . Bang!

  Do I sound like a weary old veteran? A sweet young slip of a girl like me? Shall I blush?

  When this all started, when the US of A got into this war and the Supreme Court decided what the hell, let’s send women too, everyone wondered what effect it would have.

  Could women fight? My girl Rio has a shiny Silver Star, a fistful of Purple Hearts, and a notched M1 that say yes.

  Could the men fight alongside women, or would the simple creatures be too distracted by feminine curves? Well, I once spent a long night in a hole with Luther Geer, who has never been a gentleman but he is a good soldier, and he never even made a pass at me. Possibly he was distracted by the artillery barrage coming down on our heads. Possibly it was that I hadn’t showered in . . . God only knows how long, you’d have to ask my fleas. We were not a man and a woman in that hole, we were two scared little babies screaming and cursing and so cold we were grateful for the warmth of our own piss running down our legs.

  It was not a romantic evening.
/>   And people wondered what it would do to us afterward, to us “soldier girls.” Would we lose all our feminine attributes? Would we become mannish?

  Stupid question. Women don’t stop being women, and men don’t stop being men. Both of us, men and women, become an entirely new creature: the combat soldier. You don’t recognize combat soldiers by legs or breasts or the hidden bits; you recognize them by their eyes. Maybe a civilian wouldn’t spot it, but we always will. We are our own separate tribe. We know things. And we are none of us, men or women, the people we started out being.

  Sorry, Gentle Reader, I’ve been prosing on and I should be sticking to the story. It’s just that as bad as North Africa and Sicily were, as miserable and brutal and pointless as Italy was, what comes next I am afraid will defeat my meager talents as a writer. I don’t know quite how to explain Omaha Beach, or the bocage country, or the bloody goddamned forests they call the Hürtgen and the Eifel. And Shakespeare himself could not do justice to Buchenwald or Dachau.

  Sorry.

  I guess you can’t tell, but for a minute there I couldn’t type. Maybe it was more than a minute. I suppose it must have been a while longer because one of my pals here in the hospital came up and for no reason laid her hand on my shoulder and that’s when I realized I’d been crying.

  There are things in my head, pictures and sounds and smells . . . I did not need to know these things, Gentle Reader. I could have lived my life and never known, but now I do, and perhaps it’s perverse of me, but I’m passing those terrible things along to you.

  Not very nice of me, really.

  Maybe that’s why the old guys, the veterans from the first war, don’t talk much. Maybe they don’t want to inflict it all on unsuspecting civilians. Maybe they are kinder than I am. But I figure you deserve the truth.

  Here’s some truth: I once shot an SS prisoner in the throat. He was begging for his life, half dead from hunger and cold. He only had one boot and the other foot was black from some combination of trench foot and frostbite. And I put a carbine round right through his Nazi throat. I could have shot him in the head, but I wanted him to have a few seconds to reflect on the fact that he was going to die.

  You don’t approve, Gentle Reader? Are you tut-tutting and shaking your head? You would never do that? Oh? Were you there in the Hürtgen? Were you there on Elsenborn Ridge? No? Then with the greatest respect I have to tell you that your moral opinion means nothing to me. My judges are the filthy, freezing, starving men and women who were there with me. Come with me to the beach and the bocage and the forests, Gentle Reader, spend a few days, and then render your judgment.

  Well, enough of that. Tell that story when it’s time. Wipe your eyes and keep typing, old girl.

  Time is short. They’re shipping me out soon, back to the land of Coca-Cola and Cadillacs, and I need to finish this story. At night I read bits of it to some of the other guys and gals here. We drink the hooch smuggled in by our buddies outside, and we chain-smoke, and we don’t say much because there isn’t much to say.

  This last part of my story begins with the most long-awaited battle ever.

  For long years the Nazi bastards had been killing people in Europe. Doing things, and not just at the camps, things that . . . well, you’ll see. Let me just say that anyone who says G2 aren’t real soldiers, I’ll introduce you to Rainy Schulterman. She may be in intelligence, not combat, but she’s a soldier, that girl. She told me some things.

  Where was I? Right, reminding you that we were still mostly new to this war. Everyone had been at it longer than we had, we were the new kids at school, but everyone knew we were the biggest new kid they’d ever seen. Before D-day the war in the west had been mostly Britain and its Commonwealth.

  After D-day, it was our war.

  Every eye on the planet was turned toward us. From presidents and dictators to car salesmen and apprentice shoemakers, from Ike up in his plush HQ down to the lost little children with helmets on their heads and guns in their hands, the whole world held its breath.

  D-day. June 6, 1944. On that day many still doubted the American soldier.

  By June 7, no one did.

  PART I

  D-DAY

  SUPREME HEADQUARTERS

  ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

  Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

  You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

  Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.

  But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940–41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us a superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

  I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

  Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

  —Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF)

  1

  LUPÉ CAMACHO—CAMP WORTHING (SOUTH), HAMPSHIRE, UK

  “Camacho comma Gooda . . . Goo-ada . . . Gooa-loopy?” Sergeant Fred “Bonemaker” Bonner does not speak Spanish.

  Camacho comma Guadalupé, age nineteen, cringes and glances left and right down the line of soldiers as if one of them can tell her whether or not to attempt to correct the sergeant.

  But there are no answers in the blank faces staring forward.

  “It’s Guadalupé, Sergeant!” she blurts suddenly. “But you can . . .”

  She had been about to say that he can call her Lupé. As in Loo-pay. And then it occurred to her that old, gray-haired, fat, bent, red-nosed sergeants with many stripes on their uniform sleeves do not always want to chat about nicknames with privates.

  The Bonemaker turns his weary eyes on her and says, “This here is the American army, not the Messican army, honey. If I say it’s Gooa-loopy, it’s Gooa-loopy. Now, whatever the hell your name is, get on the truck and get the hell out of here.”

  Guadalupé starts to go, but Bonemaker yells, “Take your paperwork. I didn’t fill these forms out for nothing!”

  Lupé takes the papers—there are several carbon sheets stapled together—and rushes to the truck. Or at least rushes as fast as she can with her duffel over one shoulder, her rucksack on her back with the straps cutting into her shoulders, a webbing belt festooned with canteen and ammo pouches, and her M1 Garand rifle.

  She heaves her gear over the tailgate of an open deuce-and-a-half truck and struggles to get up and over the side herself until one of the half-dozen soldiers already aboard offers her a hand.

  She slumps heavily onto one of the two inward-facing benches. She nods politely and is met with faces that are not so much hostile as they are preoccupied by nervousness and uncertainty. That she understands perfectly.

  She is only five foot five, tall enough, she figures. She has black hair cut very short, the sort of dark eyes that seem always to be squinting to look into the distance, a broad face that no one would describe as pretty, and dark, suntanned hands and forearms marked with lighter-toned old scars from barbed wire, branding irons, horse bites, and even a pair of tiny punctures from an irritable rattlesnake.

  Guadalupé has had a mere thirteen weeks of basic
training from an Arizonan sergeant who had precisely zero affection for “wetbacks,” and who, as far as Lupé could tell, had no direct experience of anything war-related. Just the same, she was not a standout at basic, and to Lupé that was a victory. Lupé does not want to be here at this replacement depot, or in any other army facility, especially not in England getting ready for the invasion everyone says is finally coming.

  Her only outstanding quality at basic had been her endurance. She had grown up on a ranch in southern Utah, a family-worked ranch. She started riding horses at age three, learned to accurately throw a lasso by age five, and by age twelve was doing about 90 percent of a full-grown ranch hand’s work. Plus showing up for school most, if not all, of the time.

  But Lupé has another talent that did not come out during training. She’d shot an eight-point mule deer buck right through the heart when she was nine at a distance of three hundred yards. She’d killed a cougar with a shot her father advised her not to take because it was near impossible.

  Guadalupé Camacho could shoot.

  In fact, she shot well enough to consistently fail to qualify with the M1 Garand rifle and the M1 carbine while making it look as if she were trying her best. She failed because she did not wish to go to war and shoot anyone, and she was worried that had she shown any ability she would be shipped off to the war. So on the firing range she amused herself by terrifying instructors with near misses and general but carefully played incompetence.

  It turned out not to matter. The pressure was on to move as many recruits as possible to the war in Europe, so Lupé was marked qualified with the M1 Garand, the M1 carbine, the Thompson submachine gun, and the Browning Automatic Rifle—the light machine gun known as the BAR. She had in fact never even fired the Thompson, and with the BAR she legitimately could not hit much of anything—it was nothing like a hunting rifle—but various sergeants stamped various documents and thus she was qualified.