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 shoe-makers, 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.
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 marching together to Victory!
I have full confidence in your 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 Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF)
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, sun-tanned 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 ninety 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 which 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.
Stamp, stamp, staple, staple, and it was off to war for Guadalupé Camacho, Private, US Army.
Lupé had been drafted very much against her will. She was not a coward, nor lacking in patriotism, but she was needed at home. She had already missed the spring round-up, and if she didn’t get out of the army and back to Utah she would miss the drive up to the Ogden railhead. It was to be an old-fashioned cattle drive this year—trucks, truck tires, truck spare parts and most of all truck fuel were hard to come by. You could buy everything on the black