Grantville Gazette, Volume 40 Read Free

resting inside the box.
    Ella Lou's eyes lit up as she put the Purple Heart down and pulled out the medallion, running the red leather cord tied to it through her fingers. "Oh, this thing? You know exactly where he got this."
    Indeed he did, but it was a game they played. All the children played it. Every year on the vigil, their father would put it around his neck and wear it proudly, and the Rice kids would all say, "Where'd you get that, Daddy?" And he would tell them, his face beaming with delight, his eyes wet with tears. It was a great story, a painful story, and John Thomas Rice made sure his children heard it every year.
    "He got this during that very same battle," Ella Lou said. "It's an old family heirloom."
    "How did he get it?"
    Ella Lou leaned back on the couch and held it to her chest. She closed her eyes and told the story, as she remembered it, from her husband's own words. . . .
    December, 1944, near Wahlerscheid, Siegfried Line, Belgium-German Border
    John Thomas Rice hated recon duty, especially in the frigid wind that now cut across his vision, blinding him in a bitterly cold white mist. Why he was out here was anyone's guess. Hadn't the 2 nd Infantry Division cleared this area once already? But reports of heavy German movement near the Siegfried Line had spooked HQ, and Lieutenant Colonel McClernand Butler wanted a peek. The lieutenant colonel had reconstituted part of his own 395 th Infantry Regiment, combined with elements from the 393 rd , to form a new regimental combat team, and had loaned it out for special duty. The Second shits and the 395 scoops, was the saying among the men. Rice could not argue with that. He growled and spit into the rising snow.
    "Spitting into the snow? Onto God's green earth? For shame!"
    Rice recognized the high-pitched, impetuously youthful voice. He smiled. "Stow it, Davis. We ain't in Kansas anymore."
    "You know I'm not from Kansas," Davis said in his best country boy drawl, picking up a handful of snow and casting it toward Rice. It scattered in the wind. "I'm from the greatest place in the world. Wild, and wonderful , West Virginia."
    Davis was no older than eighteen by Rice's estimation. Perhaps even younger; it didn't happen often, but once in a while a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old faked papers and got in. This West Virginia boy had the unmistakable exuberant immaturity of youth, coupled with a sense of faith that both impressed and annoyed Rice. He'd never been religious himself, and never intended to be. But it would be nice in times like this to give oneself up to some higher power, to not worry about what lay on the path tomorrow, or what lay beyond the tree line before them today.
    What did lie beyond those trees? Rice did not know. The world was quiet, deathly so, and Rice would give anything in the world to be back in Höfen, bundled up in some foxhole, smoking a cigarette and drinking black, bitter coffee. The small German village was just a few miles behind them; not very far at all, but a world away in terms of safety. That's what Davis did not understand. None of the young men around them had that much combat experience; their regiment had just recently been put into the field. But Rice was twenty going on twenty-one, and Davis was . . . not. A big difference there as well.
    They reached a narrow road that wound its way through the woods. They stopped, went prone and held their rifles forward, watching the sparse tree line, a line that had already experienced heavy fighting, tree bursts, downed foliage, and abandoned bunkers. "West Virginia, eh?" Rice said, keeping the mood light while he fumbled through his coat pocket for a smashed pack of Luckys. "Where from?"
    Davis held his rifle forward, his hands bone white from the cold but his face brilliantly lit with the thought of home. "Oh, a great little town. Best of the bunch. Grant—"
    "Quiet!" Sergeant Greene said, waving his hand down. "No talking!"
    Rice shook his head and chagrined. Greene was a pain