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So, Gentle Reader, we come now to a period of ti inside us We were corips e were meant to do, ere irls, you see, not even woirls, most of us e started And the boys were just boys, not un to live life, we knew little and understood less We were unformed, incomplete It’s funny how easy it is to see that now If you’d called o when this started I’d have been furious But looking back? We were children just getting ready to figure out what adulthood was all about

It’s a hell of a thing when a person in that wonderful, tre moment of readiness is suddenly yanked sharply away fro they’ve ever known and is handed over to drill sergeants and platoon sergeants and officers

“Ah, good, the youngster is learning that her purpose is to kill”

Yeah, we figured that out, and we knew by then how to be good ar nice deep holes; we could follow orders We kne to unjam an M1, we knew to take care of our feet, we knealk point on patrol Mostly we knehat seant, because that’s yourbrother all rolled into one

But here’s one of the nasty little twists that coet wounded or die, they’ll promote you And then, before you’re even close to ready, you are the sergeant You’re the one the green kids are sticking to, and you’re the only thing keeping those fools alive Right when you start to get good at following, they want you to lead

Soood private eant

But enough of all that; what about the war itself? Shall I remind you where ere in the narrative, Gentle Reader?

After Kasserine, the arot General Frendendall the hell away fro war, and it turned the e Patton, “Old Blood-and-Guts” He and his British counterpart, General Montgomery, finished off the exhausted remains of the German Afrika Korps and their Italian buddies and sent General Rommel back to Hitler to explain his failure

Everyone knew North Africa had just been the first round; we kneereon, but we didn’t knohere to Back to Britain to prepare for the final invasion? To Sardinia? Greece? The South of France? Being soldiers, we lived on scuttlebutt, none of it accurate

Turned out the first ansas Sicily

Sicily is a big, hot, dusty, stony, hard-hearted island that’s been conquered by just about every einians, Phoenicians, Romans, Normans, you name it, and noas our turn to conquer it And damned if we didn’t just do it

This is the story of three young woie Marr, an undersized colored girl from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who loved aniht, not to kill but to save lives Rainy Schulteres and a ruthless detere white fare her love life and never was quite sure why she was in this war, not until we reached the camps anyway, but she could sure kill the hell out of Krauts

They didn’t win the war alone, those three, nor did the rest of us, but we all did our part and we didn’t disgrace ourselves or let our brothers and sisters dohich is all any soldier can aspire to

That and getting home alive

PART I