about I call you sweetheart?”
This from the big boy from Philadelphia, Rudy J. Chester. He’s grinning, and for a moment Lupé is convinced that Sergeant Richlin will let it go. Then she sees the way Sticklin draws a sharp breath, starts to grin, looks down to hide it, shakes his head slowly side-to-side and in a loud stage whisper says, “The replacements are here.”
There’s the sound of cots being overturned and a rush of feet. A pretty blonde corporal bursts through the tent flap, blinking at the gray light as if she’s just woken up, glances around and says, “Uh oh.” And then, “Geer! Beebee! Get out here. I believe one of the replacements just back-talked Richlin.”
There’s a second flurry of movement and a young man with shrewd eyes, and a big galoot with an impressive forehead come piling out, faces alight with anticipation.
“What’s your name?” Sergeant Richlin asks.
“Rudy J. Chester. Sweetheart.” He grins left, grins right, sees faces that are either appalled or giddy with expectation, and then slowly, slowly seems to guess that maybe, just maybe, he’s said the wrong thing.
Rio Richlin steps up close to him, her face inches from his. He is at least four inches taller and outweighs her by better than fifty pounds. Which is why it’s so surprising that in less time than it takes to blink twice he is on the ground, face down, with his right wrist in Richlin’s grip, his arm stretched backward and twisted, and Richlin’s weight on her knee pressed against his back-bent elbow.
“Oh, come on, Richlin!” the big galoot says. “Should of used the knife!”
The pretty blonde shakes her head in mock disgust. “She’s gone soft, Geer. It’s all this high living.”
Richlin lets Rudy J. Chester writhe and struggle for a few seconds before explaining, “The average human elbow can be broken with just fourteen pounds of pressure, Private Sweetheart. How many pounds of pressure would you guess I can apply against your elbow?”
Chester struggles a bit more before finally saying, “More than fourteen pounds, I guess.”
“More than fourteen pounds I guess, Sergeant Richlin.” She gives his arm a twist that threatens to pop his shoulder out of its socket.
“More than fourteen pounds I guess, Sergeant Richlin!”
Rio releases him. The blonde corporal mimes applause. The big corporal named Geer goes back under cover. Beebee shakes his head and mutters, “I missed the first part. Can we do it over?”
Private Rudy J. Chester gets to his feet.
“Now listen to me, the three of you,” Richlin says. “This is Second Squad, Fifth Platoon, Able Company, 119th Division. This is a veteran division, a veteran platoon. Everyone in this squad has been in combat. You have not. Therefore everyone in this squad outranks you. Are we clear on that?”
Three voices say, “Yes, Sergeant.”
“Okay.” Now Richlin allows her voice to soften. “We have a few days, at best a week, to get you ready for the real thing. The real thing will be like nothing you learned at basic. Whatever ideas you have, get them out of your head, because you know nothing.”
Three heads nod. Lupé thinks, I should have mouthed off and maybe she’d break my arm and send me home.
At the same time she thinks she’s never before met any woman who could convincingly threaten to break a man’s arm. Let alone a freckle-faced gringa who can’t weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds.
“This is Sergeant Sticklin, the platoon sergeant,” Richlin goes on, explaining in a tone that suggests she’s talking to the slow-witted. “Here’s the way it goes: Franklin Delano Roosevelt gives an order to General Marshall who gives an order to General Eisenhower who gives an order to General O’Callaghan, who gives an order to Colonel Brace, who gives an order to Captain Passey, who gives an order to Lieutenant Horne who gives an order to Stick—Sergeant Sticklin—and then Sergeant Sticklin and I try to figure out how to carry out that order without getting you people killed. Is that about right, Stick?”
“It is,” he allows, mock-solemn.
It might be funny, but it doesn’t feel that way to Lupé. There’s something specific in the way she says killed. It’s not a word to Richlin, it’s a memory.
“Keeping you from getting killed is the main job of a sergeant. When I was a green fool of a private fresh out of basic, I had Sergeant Jedron Cole to keep me from getting killed. He kept me and Stick both from getting killed in Tunisia, and in Sicily and in Italy.”
“Many times,” Stick agrees.
“Now it’s our job to do the same for you. Maybe you don’t care about staying alive to get home again someday, but I suspect you’d prefer to stay alive, so here’s how you do that: you listen to Sergeant Sticklin. You listen to me. You listen to Corporal Geer there.” She crooks a thumb toward the big galoot who has already disappeared back into the tent. “Corporal Geer is my ASL, my assistant squad leader. He and I are going to train the living sh—stuffing out of you in whatever time we have in hopes that you can stay alive long enough to carry Corporal Castain’s extra gear.”
Still not funny, Lupé thinks. Even Rudy J. Chester looks solemn. Hank Hobart looks positively petrified.
“Now get over to Company HQ to process in,” Rio says. “When you’re done, grab some chow and get back here and Corporal Castain will get you settled. And about eight seconds after that, Geer is going to march you over to the rifle range and make sure you know which end to point at the Krauts.”
The three recruits turn and flee, not even bothering to ask where the Company HQ tent is.
But as they walk away, Lupé, who is in the rear, overhears Corporal Castain saying, “That was very good, Rio. Very Sergeant Mackie, if I may say.”
And she hears a low chuckle from Dain Sticklin.
RIO RICHLIN—HAMPSHIRE, UK
“Two packs of smokes and the gin,” Rio Richlin says.
The corporal, a chubby young woman with a smiling face and cold eyes, leaning insolently against a jeep, sizes Rio up. “I can get gin anywhere. Give me your knife.”
Rio makes a thin, compressed smile. “I have a sentimental attachment to my koummya,” she says. “Besides, you wouldn’t like it. I haven’t cleaned all the blood from it yet.”
The smile disappears from the corporal’s face. She glances at the knife, then at Rio’s chest, then back at the knife. “Four packs plus the gin.”
“Done. I’ll have it back in twenty-four hours tops.”
Rio Richlin seldom wears her dress uniform, in fact, never recently, but there is one advantage in the remarkably uncomfortable get-up with its multiplicity of buttons, its impossible-to-keep-on cap and its khaki tie: in full dress one wears one’s medals.
The three stripes of the buck sergeant will impress precisely no one in a Britain neck-deep in the soldiers, sailors, coastguardsmen and airmen of a dozen nationalities. But the red, white and blue ribbon, beneath which hangs a pale gold star, is the Silver Star, (despite the baffling color of the actual star) and is given for Gallantry in Action. Quite a few Silver Stars have been handed out, but when Rio received hers it was the first time the medal had been awarded to a female combat soldier. Ever.
The star cuts down considerably on the number of leering, obnoxious, improper suggestions Rio has been on the receiving end of. Mostly you didn’t get the Silver Star unless you’d made a fair number of German and Italian widows and orphans, and that realization causes some male soldiers to . . . well, reconsider making a crude pass at Rio.
Alongside the Silver Star is