Soldier Girls in Action Read online

  CONTENTS

  Begin Reading

  Author’s Note

  Excerpt from Silver Stars

  Back Ads

  About the Author

  Books by Michael Grant

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  LADIES’ MONTHLY MAGAZINE, MAY 1943

  THE SOLDIER GIRLS IN ACTION

  —BY SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT ANN “SPATS” PATRONE

  Ladies of America, by the time you read this exclusive report the fighting in Tunisia will be all over, but the war has just begun for our boys in uniform—boys who have now been joined by girls. I recently had occasion to spend some time with the soldiers of Second Squad, Fifth Platoon, Company A, 119th Division, and I saw firsthand the way some of our soldier girls behave in battlefield conditions.

  This is not the story of the battle of Kasserine Pass. It is not the story of any great battle of the sort you read about in history books. This is the story of one of those numberless, small but vicious fights that test a soldier’s courage and determination and all too often end not with the awarding of medals, but with “Taps” being played mournfully over a fresh grave.

  I had missed most of the heavy combat by the time I made it to North Africa, having, as regular readers will recall, been held up in Burma. But I was determined to see whatever was left of the fighting, so upon my arrival at the headquarters of 119th Division outside Ghezala, Tunisia, I found a young corporal named Milo Jorgenson who had temporary ownership of a jeep.

  “So, where are we going, Corporal?” I asked him.

  “Nowhere good, ma’am. There’s a squad in a ravine up in them mountains, there? Got themselves some Kraut dead-enders that didn’t get the word that it’s over, I guess. SNAFU.”

  SNAFU, ladies, is the acronym of choice for GIs. It stands for Situation Normal: All Fouled Up. Though another word is sometimes substituted for Fouled.

  Corporal Jorgenson agreed (after a negotiation involving a carton of cigarettes) to allow me to tag along on a mission to run ammunition to the infantry squad deep in the rugged foothills of the Atlas Mountains.

  I soon discovered why we were carrying ammunition in a small jeep rather than one of the big trucks the GIs call deuce-and-a-halfs. It seems the only road into this remote fastness was within range of the very German mortar team we were going to see about, and we didn’t want to give them any more of a target than strictly necessary. Indeed, they took a shot at us and thankfully missed!

  This Kraut mortar team was the objective of Sergeant Jedron Cole’s squad, and his squad turned out to be quite unexpected, starting from our first encounter. For I was met on my arrival by two GIs, a big, rangy country boy named Luther Geer, and a young blonde reclining against a rock and scribbling in a notebook. She was a pretty girl with short-cut hair coated with the same dust that covered everything else. She had the collar of her overcoat turned up against the cold.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Yeah?” The woman soldier was as suspicious as you might expect a GI in a remote location to be upon seeing a reporter.

  “I’m Ann Patrone. I’m a reporter. Friends call me Spats.”

  That earned me a tilted head and a guardedly interested look. “Jenou Castain,” the soldier girl said. Then, “J-E-N-O-U. It’s from the French word ingénue. And the big ugly one there is Luther Geer. Geer is spelled A-S-”

  This being a family magazine, ladies, I will spare you the rather risqué and clearly inaccurate spelling she provided. Geer, her fellow private, took it all in good humor.

  “What are you doing here?” Geer asked.

  “Looking for a story.”

  “Well, we ain’t much of a story. You gonna help us carry the ammo?”

  I assured them that I would.

  “Got any smokes?” Castain asked.

  I handed her two packs of Luckies, and with that the deal was done. Although if I’d known just how hard it is to climb through ravines and scramble across slippery shale while carrying two cans of .30 caliber ammunition, my camera, and the trusty revolver my father gave me, I might have decided against it.

  It was a long climb, much of it almost vertical. I tripped and fell more than once, and even slid ingloriously down a gravel slope and very nearly flattened Private Geer. But at another point I was able to stick a leg in front of the five-gallon water drum Geer was carrying and stop it rolling down into a deep crack, which earned me both a bruise and a little grudging respect.

  After a long, cold, miserable climb full of scrapes and bruises, we came at last to a small, almost round bowl formed entirely of rock. It was a pretty enough spot, just the sort of place for a romantic picnic, with a sandy floor and rock walls turned red where touched by a beam of sunlight, and gray where shadows endured. It reminded me of an exhibit of landscapes by Georgia O’Keeffe I saw in New York.

  One side of the bowl looked like a landslide, like maybe this bowl started out bigger but it was cut in two by an avalanche of sharp-edged stones and gravel. The fallen rock formed a ridge that rises to a height of twenty feet, and half a dozen soldiers perch atop it, careful to stay low and out of sight of whatever’s on the other side.

  For I must tell you, ladies, it was the Germans on the other side of that heap of rock, and we were close enough to hear them coughing and moving about.

  The squad is alert, ready to yell if the Germans suddenly come sneaking around behind us, but their relaxed postures signal that this is unlikely. I can see why: the stone bowl we’re in has just a single narrow entrance—the ravine we came by. The bowl has one low side, no more than ten feet high, and it is manned by a vigilant corporal everyone calls Stick, but whose true name is Dain Sticklin. The other sides of the bowl rise sheer and tall, so I have to bend my whole body back just to see the top.

  Sergeant Jedron Cole, a gap-toothed, cigar-chomping textbook example of the genus Sergeantus americanus, explained the situation to me.

  “Up top there, that highest part, it’s gravel and loose shale, so we’d hear anyone coming from that direction. Even if a Kraut got up there he wouldn’t be able to sight a rifle ’cause of the angle. Might could toss some potato mashers—sorry, Kraut grenades—but they aren’t as dangerous as our pineapples. And if they try to climb this rubble we’ll hear ’em, and it won’t be an easy climb for them.”

  “So how do you plan to deal with the Germans?” I asked, to which Cole grinned and said, “Carefully, ma’am. Carefully.”

  Then he turned serious and explained a little more. “Some bright bulb up the chain of command decided someone had better come in here and flush them out. We think it may be just half a dozen fellows, or maybe a dozen, but they’ve got that mortar and they’ve got themselves an old Spandau spittin’ out six hundred rounds a minute. From what we’ve been able to make out—which is from holding a little mirror up on a stick—they’re in something like a mirror image of this bowl we’re in, only they’ve got a clear view down over the road.”

  “You can’t call in an artillery mission?”

  Cole spit out a loose bit of tobacco. “Lady, I don’t know how accurate you think a 105 is, but they’re as likely to kill us as the Krauts. Anyway, down in that bowl, it’d be a one in a million shot to hit them.”

  “So it’s a standoff.”

  “Except we can still get ammo and food, and sooner or later those cutoff Kraut bastards are going to run out. They’re being careful not to waste shots, so we know they’re getting low. They’d have gotten your jeep for sure if they could have spared the rounds.”

  “So you just wait?”

  With the laconic drawl that is the official tone of the combat veteran, Cole made me an offer. “If you want to go get ’em, I’ll happily loan you my Thomp
son. They’re just over that rubble. We hear ’em singing at night.”

  Needless to say, ladies, I did not take him up on the offer.

  Cole’s squad is unusual in that it has more women than most outfits, and it even has an Englishman, Private Jack Stafford, a rakish young charmer with a devilish gaze and a ready laugh. Stafford was evacuated to the United States during the London Blitz. He later lost his family to Nazi bombs and, unable to join up with the British Army, he added his talents to ours.

  There is also an Oriental by the name of Private Hansu Pang, but never fear, ladies, this one is red, white, and blue all the way through.

  Private Cat Preeling is the sort of girl you might expect to find in a front line unit—stocky and strong, but nearly as puckish as Stafford. Private Jillion Magraff is shy, quiet, given to drawing in a notebook she keeps with her at all times.

  Every unit needs a playboy, and Private Tilo Suarez fills that role to a tee, looking like a dirtier, beat-up version of Frank Sinatra.

  Finally, there is Private Rio Richlin. Richlin and Castain are childhood friends, but they could not be more different. For one thing, Richlin is the very picture of the corn-fed, freckle-faced, all-American girl. An all-American girl you might expect to find at the counter of the local soda shop or speaking at a high school assembly.

  She looks impossibly young, but the impression of sweet innocence evaporates quickly. You see, ladies, there is a look in the eye of a true fighter, a real combat veteran. It is made of wariness, skepticism, and exhaustion that somehow add up to a profound sense of competence.

  Richlin balances her M1 Garand rifle on her hip, nods warily at me, and speaks to Sergeant Cole.

  “Sarge. Stick and I think we see a way to maybe get around them instead of just going at ’em and getting shot up.”

  “What are you thinking, Richlin?”

  “Is that spelled R-I-C-K-L-I-N?” I interrupt, ever the reporter concerned with accuracy.

  “R-I-C-H-L-I-N. First name Rio, like the city down in Brazil where I wish I was right now.”

  “Let’s hear the plan, Richlin,” Cole says.

  Richlin turns and points to the sheer wall to the right of the ridge where half of the other soldiers crouch. “See that kinda seam or what have you? You get to that ledge there, after that the seam cuts back into the rock so it’s covered, almost like a tunnel. We figure it’s worth checking out, because maybe it continues on and comes out on the other side. Figure the Krauts either don’t see it or can’t get at it. It’s tight and it won’t be easy, but it might give us some enfilade with Stick’s BAR.”

  Cole considers this, following her pointing finger. “Richlin, that’s a long shot. You’d be exposed trying to jump to that ledge.”

  “Figure we go after dark,” says the young farm girl, sounding almost bored at the prospect.

  “There’s a half moon, and it’s looking to be clear,” Cole says. “Which means you’ll be silhouetted against the stars.”

  “We go before the moon comes up. First light we see what we see and if we get an angle on them . . .”

  “You and Stick?”

  That is my cue. “And me,” I say. There is something engaging about the freckle-faced soldier girl. And a desperate night mission with one of the newly minted girl soldiers? What better story would I ever find than the battle for Tunisia in its final phase?

  “Okay. You and Stick get some rest,” Cole says. “As for you, miss . . .”

  “Folks call me Spats.”

  “I suppose there’s a story behind that nickname,” Cole says.

  “I suppose there is, and if you let me go along on this mission I’ll buy you a drink someday and tell you all about it.”

  “I don’t really think that’s . . .” He begins, ready to tell me no. That’s when I play my ace.

  “Say, Sarge, I notice you enjoy a good cigar.”

  “Lady . . . sorry, Spats . . . I enjoy anything that even looks like a cigar out here, it don’t have to be good.”

  Like a magician producing a rabbit from his hat, I draw a cigar out of my blouse pocket. “I don’t know if this is any good, but I swiped it off a colonel’s desk.”

  I confess to having embellished that story a little, ladies. In fact, I swiped it from a competing reporter. But nothing catches the attention of an enlisted man like the prospect of putting one over on the brass.

  I spent the rest of the day interviewing the members of the squad, and I may write about them someday. But this story, I knew, was about the freckle-faced soldier girl.

  The hour comes, and we begin to crawl up the gravelly slope, the grim-faced Corporal Dain Sticklin in the lead, his BAR heavy and no doubt painful on his back. And behind him a young but equally grim soldier named Rio Richlin, with her M1 Garand slung over her shoulder and her pockets stuffed with grenades.

  The plan is to reach the top of the rise and then jump—silently we all pray—to a rock ledge three feet away and in plain view of the enemy. It’s too dark to see the ledge, but the two GIs have spent the day memorizing every inch of the approach. Darkness will hide them, but it may also betray them.

  This is not one of the great battles of the war, ladies. This is a small but possibly deadly action, a squad of GIs against a squad of Krauts, the kind of dirty little fight that is the essence of war. Man on man, but in this case, one of the “men” is a girl who looks like she should be applying makeup and picking out a dress for the high school dance.

  The jump is dangerous and terrifying. It will require Rio Richlin to stand up, fully exposed, and to leap three feet into darkness so profound I can barely see my fingers six inches in front of my face, and land on what she can only hope will be a solid ledge. Rio will go first so Stick can toss her his BAR. She crouches low and glances to her left to see the outlines of helmets from those ready to provide covering fire if the enemy starts firing.

  She drinks deeply from a canteen, then sets the canteen down carefully. Canteens are noisy, and both she and Stick are stripped of all gear but ammo and grenades. The ammo clips have been wrapped in dirty socks to muffle any noise they might make.

  Rio takes a couple of deep breaths, exhalation steaming, steadying herself. Then fast, silent, and fluid, she stands up and takes two steps forward over gravel that skitters a bit underfoot. And she leaps.

  She lands hard, and I can hear a small sound as she bites off a grunt of pain. But she’s on the ledge, and the Krauts seem not to have noticed.

  She turns and stretches out—exposed again—to take the BAR from Sticklin.

  Stick jumps next and is guided to a softer landing by Rio’s outstretched arms. Stick squeezes her shoulder in thanks, a small gesture. A brotherly gesture, it seems to me, as I crouch terrified, waiting for my turn to jump. To my embarrassment I make a mess of it, kicking gravel on the takeoff and emitting an explosive exhalation on landing.

  Immediately one of the soldiers crouching in wait below coughs loudly and scatters some gravel to distract from my clumsiness.

  Miraculously, the Germans have not noticed, or if they have, they’ve decided against firing up at us.

  We find ourselves in a smooth-walled ravine so narrow we have to turn sideways to go forward. My slight claustrophobia begins to nag at me. Some part of my brain keeps warning that we’re going in and never coming out. That there’s no way to run. That we could be trapped in here.

  The ravine winds, climbs, descends, and seems to be avoiding altogether the German position.

  Stick risks a whisper. “By now we must be all the way behind them.”

  Rio nods. “What do you think?”

  “Give it another twenty minutes. Then we give up and head back.”

  But we don’t need twenty minutes because the ravine widens out and finally opens onto a starlit platform, a sort of mini-mesa fifty or sixty feet across.

  Stick and Rio look around warily, guns leveled, safeties off. I have my father’s trusty old Colt Single Action in my waistband, but I know it’s a usel
ess weapon in a world of Schmeisser submachine guns and grenades. And I must confess it is not recommended that reporters carry weapons—but it comforts me. At least it comforts me when it’s not sticking in my stomach.

  We are exposed on the starlit mesa, but the only ones to see us are the looming mountain peaks and the stars above.

  Stick motions us to lie down, and then he crawls on hands and knees to the westernmost edge. Slowly, cautiously, he looks over the side. He holds that position for a minute and then crawls silently back to join Rio and your intrepid if frightened reporter.

  “We’re right on top of them. Sheer wall, no way for them to get at us. First light, we let ’em have it.”

  The night wears on slowly. We are condemned prisoners waiting for execution at dawn. Or maybe, if we’re lucky, we’re the executioners.

  Sticklin risks a cigarette, smoked behind cupped hands just in case there are eyes on those forbidding peaks. The moon rises and we can see our surroundings for the first time. We’re on a stone table, roughly octagonal, but with none of the sides exactly drawn according to Euclidean standards. We’re already thirsty, and that’s not going to get better with time.

  The night is clear and very cold, but with no wind to double the torture. We do not talk. We lie on our backs and look up at the stars and contemplate our own insignificance, until, after an eternity, the sun begins to scatter gold here and there, illuminating this boulder and that scraggly bush.

  We wait until the sun at last reaches down into the bowl where the enemy lies, unaware of what is about to befall him.

  “Okay,” Sticklin whispers. “Richlin? You drop some pineapples. I’ll open up, and you start plunking anything you can see.”

  “Yep,” Rio says tersely. She is on her back, M1 gripped firmly and held just over her chest. She rolls and sets her rifle carefully aside on bare rock, avoiding loose dirt or gravel that might cause a jam.

  She produces four hand grenades and lines them up. She checks the pins to make sure they’re loose and ready. And then she nods to Sticklin.

  He nods back, and Rio rises to her knees, right at the edge, wanting to see where she’s throwing even though it almost certainly exposes her to the possibility of enemy fire.