Both the barrage and the screaming seemed to end at the same time. A medic had administered morphine to the man. Stephie rose and moved down the ditch toward John, stopping at each soldier to ask if he or she were okay. Many of the cherries were too frightened to say anything in response, forcing Stephie to demand a spoken, intelligible reply. That was how she found Third Platoon’s most serious casualty.
The woman — a medic — stared blankly at Stephie. At first, Stephie thought the woman was simply frozen in terror. “Are you all right?” Stephie repeated testily. The woman looked Stephie straight in the eye, but said nothing. “Answer me!” Stephie demanded. Still, nothing. Stephie dropped to her knees and turned the medic onto her stomach. She flattened the fabric of the unresisting woman’s BDUs and searched up and down for punctures.
“What are you doing?” a male cherry asked from the slowly gathering crowd.
Animal answered for Stephie. “She’s checking for wounds.”
Stephie could feel the medic begin to shake. “You’re gonna be okay,” she said as she rolled the woman over and searched her front. “It’s all right,” Stephie assured the replacement. “I don’t see anything wrong. You’re gonna be fine. Just relax. Take it easy. Can you tell me where it hurts?” The medic’s breaths were coming in shallow pants, and her face had grown deathly pale.
“Where is it?” Animal said angrily as he patted up and down the medic’s thighs and pelvis and checked his hands for blood, finding none. John appeared and knelt at the woman’s head. He removed her helmet. A dozen bobby pins held her dirty blond hair neatly tucked into place. John lifted her head into his lap. Her eyes were now glassy and unfocused. “Where the fuck is it?” Animal raged as he searched.
John’s raised fingertips smeared with the faintest tinge of pink. The wounded medic began to convulse. She bucked and emitted a horrible gurgling sound. They turned her over. Animal forced her jaws open and inserted the handle of his knife into her mouth to keep it open. With his fingers, he fished the tongue that she had swallowed from her throat. John pulled the medic’s hair from the base of her neck. A red welt no bigger than a mosquito bite rose on her smooth, white skin. At the center was a tiny pinprick from which seeped thick, pinkish fluid.
“She’s stopped breathing!” one of the cherries shouted. They rolled her onto her back, removed Animal’s combat knife, and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. One cherry frantically unzipped her flak jacket and began pumping the center of her chest. John cradled her head in both hands and looked at Stephie and Animal. Even as the others continued their lifesaving efforts, John pressed the now still medic’s eyelids closed.
The replacements gave up one by one. “What the hell happened, sir?” one asked John. They all waited, but he didn’t answer. Stephie watched him closely. He held the lifeless girl’s head in his lap with both hands as if it were a priceless treasure, not a corpse.
“Shrapnel splinter,” Stephie answered for John. “Caught her right under the helmet. Must’ve gone straight into her…” She cut short her unscientific autopsy report and again looked at John, who sat there unmoving. “All right!” Stephie said loudly as she rose to her feet. “We’re bunched up! Get back to your positions and prepare to move out! Let’s go!” She ordered Dawson to take charge of the casualties. The man wounded in the calf lay limp and exhausted as a medic bandaged his bloody leg. “Take turns with a fireman’s carry,” she suggested. “Head back to the trucks at the rally point.” A male soldier hooked two pistol belts together, which he would drape over his shoulders and in which his wounded comrade would ride piggyback.
“What about her?” a cherry asked, looking down at the dead medic.
Stephie replied, “Body bags have handles in the corners.”
The man seemed upset by her answer. The woman wasn’t dead to him yet. Stephie dug into the medic’s first aid kit and handed the man a compact, tightly folded plastic square. After hesitating a moment, he began unfolding the black bag.
Stephie turned to John and said, “We gotta get moving.” John lay the woman’s head on the ground with the greatest of care and rose slowly. Soldiers lifted her body by the armpits and ankles and laid her in the long bag. “Recover her ammo and other gear,” Stephie ordered. The men hesitated before complying. Reluctantly, they laid her medical kit, magazines, and grenades on the ground beside the bag. “Leave those for graves registration,” Stephie instructed as one cherry fished out a sealed letter the medic had addressed and stamped. The replacements would soon learn the drill. When all the usable gear — including canteen — had been salvaged, the pale medic disappeared from toe to head to the tearing sound of a zipper. In death, her face was peaceful and pretty. One young soldier who must have known her was crying.
The platoon re-formed in the middle of the road and continued toward town as Dawson’s Second Squad trudged off in the opposite direction. John had kept Dawson’s weapons crews, meaning that the short-handed platoon still numbered forty-eight troops, most raw and green. Their orders were to enter the town and probe for contact with the Chinese. If the enemy cut and ran, they were a patrol trying to fix American positions. If the Americans were forced back, they reported having struck something hard. Both sides lost people to glean intelligence of fleeting tactical value.
Twice in the next half mile, their platoon’s point man — a veteran from Third Squad — went to ground. Every man and woman was wired tight and scared to their limit. People dove into the ditch along the right side of the road as if their life depended on speed, which it did. Stephie watched the road ahead through the point man’s camera. The first time he went to ground he zoomed in on a hungry dog rummaging through an overturned trash can. The second time she saw nothing at all. Both were false alarms. The cherries cursed as they brushed the dirt from their gear. The tension was released. Maybe they wouldn’t make contact, the cherries thought.
The tension built again with every meter their patrol came closer to the Chinese. In half a mile, half of the cherries and an even greater percentage of the veterans were visibly shaking. When an electric frisson of fear charged through Stephie, she surreptitiously checked her hands. They quivered noticeably. It was a tremor that spread like an Ice Age throughout her body.
When the point man scampered off the road a third time, four dozen troops dove into the ditch. There was an annoying rattle as weapons were seated to shoulders. Their firepower was such that each soldier — alone — could be critical to the survival of every other soldier in the platoon, and each understood that fact. Each could be called upon to fire to the end as the Chinese overran them, or ordered to rise up and storm the enemy.
“If we all just do our jobs.” Stephie prayed they had absorbed. She had spent time — one on one — in actual conversations with each new soldier, relentlessly pounding them. “We don’t let each other down. We stick together. Everybody together. Nobody lets his buddy down. That’s what we expect from you,” she would say, and then, for the capper, “and that, whatever your name is, is what we offer you.”