Michael Grant - Purple Hearts

First published in Great Britain in 2018

by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Published by arrangement with HarperCollins Children’s Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, New York, New York, USA

Text copyright © 2018 by Michael Grant

First e-book edition 2018

ISBN 978 1 4052 7388 6

Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1656 7

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.

To all the real soldier girls.

“Today we rule Germany, tomorrow, the world!”

—Adolf Hitler

“And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I’d shoot a snake!”

—General George S. Patton

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN Published by arrangement with HarperCollins Children’s Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, New York, New York, USA Text copyright © 2018 by Michael Grant First e-book edition 2018 ISBN 978 1 4052 7388 6 Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1656 7 www.egmont.co.uk A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.

Dedication To all the real soldier girls.

Epigraph “Today we rule Germany, tomorrow, the world!” —Adolf Hitler “And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I’d shoot a snake!” —General George S. Patton

PROLOGUE

PART ONE: D-DAY

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

LETTERS SENT

PART TWO: PARIS

19

PART THREE: HÜRTGEN FOREST

20

21

22

23

PART FOUR: THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE

LETTERS SENT

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

PART FIVE: THE CAMPS

31

32

PART SIX: VICTORY

LETTERS SENT

33

INTERSTITIAL

PART SEVEN: AFTER

34

35

OBITUARIES

EPILOGUE

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

IMAGE LIST

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Back series promotional page

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

1944.

World War II has raged in Europe for five long years, but the tide has turned decisively in favor of the Allies. France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, Greece, the western part of the Soviet Union and North Africa have all been occupied at one time, but now the edges of the Nazi Reich are being rolled up.

In Italy, Hitler’s clownish Fascist henchman, Benito Mussolini, has been overthrown. Pro-Nazi governments in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and parts of Yugoslavia are looking for ways to make peace with the Allies. The Nazis are out of North Africa and southern Italy.

The Soviet Union is ruled by the paranoid monster Joseph Stalin. Having once made a treacherous peace with Hitler allowing the Soviets to stab Finland and Poland in the back, Stalin then found himself betrayed in turn by Hitler. Ignoring a peace agreement between them, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, inflicting unspeakable brutality on Poles, Belorussians, Ukrainians, Russians and, of course, above all, the Jews.

But the Soviet Union has proven to be too big a meal for Hitler to swallow. The Nazis have been turned back at Stalingrad and Leningrad, forced to flee after the largest tank battle in history at Kursk, and are now retreating with a vengeful Soviet Red Army hot on their heels.

From June 25, 1940, and the surrender of France, to June 1941, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, Great Britain, her Commonwealth and her Empire stood alone against the Nazi tidal wave. With British cities being bombed by the Luftwaffe, and British shipping largely at the bottom of the Atlantic, cut off, hungry and alone, Britain still stood, the indomitable hero of the western world.

But after Hitler’s ally, Japan, attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the great, sleeping giant across the sea finally awoke. The United States of America, which had till then limited itself to supplying material aid to Britain, was all at once, overnight, fully engaged in the war.

America’s not-so-secret weapon was its productive capacity. By 1944 the USA was producing 96,000 warplanes per year, more than ten planes each hour in a twenty-four-hour day. In the total war effort, American industry produced 110 aircraft carriers, 41,000 cannon, 100,000 tanks, 310,000 aircraft, 12,500,000 rifles, and 41,000,000,000 rounds of ammunition.

It also raised, trained and equipped a military that by 1944 numbered nearly 12 million soldiers, sailors and marines.

The world waited as the Americans put on a poor show in North Africa and became bogged down in Italy under ineffectual generals. America’s allies granted the genius of American war production, but they doubted the fighting spirit, grit, determination and competence of American soldiers, from Eisenhower down to the private in a foxhole.

The Americans faced the ultimate test: leading a fractious, suspicious coalition of British, Canadian, Australian, Free French and Free Polish forces to invade and liberate Europe, and to destroy Hitler’s evil regime.

The Nazis were no longer advancing, but the Nazi empire was very far from beaten. New German weapons, the V1 cruise missile, the V2 ballistic missile, the world’s first jet fighter, the Me 262, and the massive Tiger tank were coming online.

Now on the defensive, the superbly-equipped, experienced, well-trained, well-generaled and dug-in German army, the Wehrmacht, and its brutal and fanatical counterpart, the Waffen SS, were fighting to save the Nazi regime and their Fatherland.