by Alan Gratz
Away from the trucks and men—soldiers, Monique corrected herself—the beach was different too. Before, it had been smooth sand interrupted only by the big X-shaped metal obstacles the Nazis had placed there. Now most of the obstacles remained, but the smooth sand was dotted with craters big and small. Abandoned gear and weapons of all kinds littered the beach, and olive-green lumps dotted the waterline.
Bodies, Monique realized. She put a hand to her mouth and gasped. All those olive-green lumps were soldiers. She had heard the battle raging from where she hid in the bathing hut, and it had sounded terrible. But she’d had no idea of the human cost.
Most of the soldiers were dead, but Monique could see some who still moved, still called out for help. There were medics on the beach—she could tell who they were from their white armbands with the red crosses on them—but there weren’t nearly enough to take care of all the wounded.
One of the bodies a few meters away groaned something that sounded like the French word for doctor, but nobody heard him.
Nobody but Monique.
She looked up the beach, past the smoldering grass on the dunes. Was her bike still up there, or had it been destroyed in the constant shelling from the ships? Monique wanted to go look for it. Bike straight home. Crawl back into the beach hut of her quiet life with her mother, and shut the door.
But then there was the soldier lying in the sand, moaning, “Medic. Medic.”
It was time to leave the hut.
Singing “I Will Wait” to herself, Monique tiptoed toward the soldier.
Monique looked around anxiously, worried someone would see her going onto the battlefield instead of away from it.
Monique was tall for her thirteen years, and on the thin side—just like everyone else who had suffered through four years of food shortages during the Nazi occupation. But there was no way that anyone would mistake her for a soldier. Her brown hair was down to her shoulders, and she wore a simple, short-sleeved blue denim dress that buttoned down the front and was belted at the waist. Her slightly oversized green rubber boots were the only good pair of shoes she owned anymore—and the laughingstock of the neighborhood—but they proved useful now in keeping her feet out of the wet sand.
And the blood.
Monique knew she wasn’t supposed to be there, but all the soldiers swarming the beach had other things to worry about, and she made it to the injured man without being noticed at all. Some of the kids Monique knew from school were squeamish around anything to do with blood or guts, but Monique never had been. Once, when a boy had dislocated his fingers after a hard fall in a soccer game in the street, Monique had surprised everyone—herself included—when she had been the only one who would pull them back into place again. (One of the other boys who’d been watching had fainted when she’d done it.) From that point on, Monique had been known as “Dr. Monique” in the schoolyard. Even if it had been meant as a joke, it had given her the idea to read up on first aid in the public library.
Before the Nazis had closed it and burned all the books.
Monique knelt down nervously by the wounded soldier. She wasn’t afraid of what she might see—that’s partially what had brought her over in the first place. She was worried she would get in trouble for being there.
The soldier lay on his side, and Monique peered at him. He wasn’t German. She knew what those uniforms looked like. And he wasn’t French—there wasn’t a French army anymore. Not to speak of. She’d heard rumors of a Resistance but had never seen them. This soldier was one of the Allies, then, she was sure. But British? American? American, she thought. Weren’t they the ones who wore green in the propaganda posters?
What she could tell was that the soldier was injured in two places: a lighter bullet wound in his left arm and something more serious in his right leg.
Monique looked around anxiously, but still no one noticed her.
If no one else is going to help him, then I am, Monique decided.
Humming “I Will Wait,” Monique stopped waiting and tore the man’s trousers away from the bloody wound on his leg. A bullet had gone right through his thigh, shattering his femur. Monique’s eyes went wide. She could see the broken bone in the wound. Fascinating. She had only seen pictures of bones in books!
The soldier’s skin was ashen and cool to the touch, but when she put a finger to the pulse in his arm, she felt his heart racing. This was something called shock. The man’s heart was overcompensating for his loss of blood. How long had he been lying like this? Why weren’t there more medics?
Monique didn’t know if his leg could be saved, but this man would be dead long before that if she couldn’t stop the bleeding. Using the soldier’s belt and the handle of his collapsible shovel, she fashioned a serviceable tourniquet, stanching the flow of blood from the wound.
As she worked, Monique sang, which seemed to calm the soldier down. His shoulders relaxed, and the painful frown left his face. Monique suddenly worried he wasn’t relaxed at all but was slipping into unconsciousness—or worse, dying—and she stopped.
The soldier’s eyes opened at once, and though he didn’t seem to see Monique, he spoke to her. He said something in English Monique didn’t understand, but one word came through loud and clear: “Mama.”
Monique blushed. The soldier must have been confusing her singing with his mother singing to him when he was a boy. When he was a younger boy. He couldn’t have been a year out of high school himself. She felt awkward, this young man calling her “Mama.” But what he needed right now was comfort.
Monique sang to him again, haltingly this time, still embarrassed, and he closed his eyes again and relaxed.
Monique tore material from his ripped trousers to make a bandage for his arm, and tied it off.
Yes. Good, Monique thought. She let out a deep breath. The man needed much more help than she could provide, but she’d done something, and no one had caught her and sent her away.
Then someone behind her said, “Bonjour,” and Monique jumped out of her skin.
Monique spun around. An American medic with a canvas stretcher was standing right behind her! Monique immediately bowed her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said in French. “I know I shouldn’t be here. It’s just, I came to the beach today to collect my bathing suit, and then there was the invasion, and so many soldiers need help—”
The medic knelt to examine the soldier. “This is good work,” she said in French.
She. Monique looked up at the medic in surprise. “You’re—you’re a woman! A woman doctor!” she cried.
The woman smiled. She had pale skin and a round, kind face, with curly brown flyaway hair tucked up under her green helmet. “I’m not, really,” she said. “I mean, yes, I am a woman. But I’m not a doctor or medic of any kind. I’m a reporter. I just dressed up as a medic to get on the beach. They wouldn’t let me be here otherwise.” She held a finger to her lips. “I won’t tell on you if you don’t tell on me. The name’s Dorothy. Dorothy Powell.”
Monique introduced herself, and they shook hands.
Dorothy looked at the soldier again. “You may have saved his life,” she told Monique. “Let’s get him to the medical tent.”
Monique’s chest swelled with pride, but just as quickly she was panicking again.
“The medical tent? But if they catch me here—”
“No one’s paying any attention,” Dorothy said. “But here.” She picked up the soldier’s helmet and put it on Monique’s head, tucking Monique’s hair up under it. The helmet was heavy and floppy and way too big for her, but it certainly hid her. “He’s not going to need it anymore, that’s for sure. Now help me get him on this stretcher.”
Together, Monique and Dorothy unrolled the canvas stretcher and lifted the now-sleeping soldier onto it carefully, gently.
“One, two, three, lift,” Dorothy said, and they staggered off through the sand toward a tent a few dozen meters away.
“You’re a reporter?” Monique asked the woma
n as they went.
Dorothy nodded. “With Collier’s, in America. They sent me to cover the war, but the army disapproves of women reporters in active fighting situations. Not men reporters, mind you. Ernie Pyle can go war-horsing all over North Africa and Italy with soldiers, but we women are stuck well behind the lines doing puff pieces. So I snuck aboard a medical ship in England, stole a uniform, and came ashore with the relief corps.”
Monique couldn’t believe it. The daring of it—to stow away, to disguise herself, to come ashore while there was still danger.
“If you’re a reporter, why are you helping take care of soldiers?” Monique asked.
Dorothy’s smile faded. “I admit, I came here just to observe. To report. But no one who saw what happened here today could just stand by and watch, could they? You couldn’t.” She paused as they negotiated a tricky crater. “All these poor men,” Dorothy said at last. “Not even men. Boys, most of them. They look like they could be in high school. I dare say many of them still would be if there hadn’t been a war. It’s America’s future we’re sacrificing here on these beaches, and in Africa, and Italy, and the Pacific, and the skies over Germany.”
Monique nodded. The Nazis had also stolen France’s future—and their present too. How many men and women had she seen taken from her village? How many boys and girls? There was almost no one left. Monique’s two much younger sisters had been sent to stay with their aunt in the city of Lyon, where it was safer, while Monique stayed in Normandy with her mother. Monique’s father was gone too—sent to work in a factory in Germany. Hope and fear tugged at Monique’s heart—would she ever see her dad alive again? Would the invasion mean he was finally free to come home? Her sisters too? It seemed like forever since they had all been together as a family.
Dorothy and Monique arrived at the medical tent, where dozens of medics and soldiers were moving here and there in what amounted to barely controlled chaos. Monique kept her head down and tried not to make eye contact with anyone.
“Got another one for you,” Dorothy called.
Monique’s heart jumped into her throat. Dorothy was disguised in a uniform, but even though Monique wore a helmet, she was still wearing her dress and rubber boots. She stood out like—like a French girl in the middle of an American military base. What if they were angry at her? What if they threw her into some sort of military jail?
What if they told her mother?
Two soldiers came up to take the stretcher away from them, and Monique looked at the ground and held her breath.
To her great surprise, neither of the soldiers said a word. They were too busy to worry about who brought the stretcher to them, and they took the wounded man away without even acknowledging Dorothy and Monique.
“What did I tell you?” Dorothy whispered.
Dorothy snatched scissors and tape and bandages from a cart and thrust them at Monique.
Monique hesitated. She was worried someone would see, yes. But what really gave her pause was her own fear. Could she do this? Should she do this? What if she tried to help someone, and did more harm than good?
What if she failed?
“Come on, Monique. Take them,” Dorothy said. She offered the medical supplies again with a quick look around to make sure no one was watching.
Hiding out in the beach hut is easy, Monique reminded herself. But life is happening outside.
Borrowing some of Dorothy’s daring, Monique took the pieces of medical equipment and stuffed them in her big pockets. Her heart fluttered.
Dorothy grabbed an empty stretcher, and together they ran back out to look for more wounded soldiers.
Back and forth they went, all evening, bandaging up soldiers as best they could and bringing them back to the medical tent. Monique quickly forgot the cold and her hunger. She didn’t have time for either one.
From the medical tent, some of the wounded were sent on by truck to Bayeux, where there was a hospital. Those were the soldiers who might recover and be sent back to the front. Most of the others—like the man Monique found propped up against one of the big metal obstacles with a syringe tube stuck in his chest to drain air from a chest cavity wound—were put back on Higgins boats to ferry them out to the big white medical ships that floated like ghosts just off the coast. Once the medical ships were full, Dorothy explained, the wounded soldiers would be carried away to England and the proper hospitals there, before being sent back home.
The rest were put in body bags.
Dorothy and Monique worked until their hands got blisters. The blisters tore and oozed and stung on the wooden stretcher handles, but Monique wrapped them in bandages so they could keep working.
“What’s that song you’re singing?” Dorothy asked her.
Monique blushed. She hadn’t realized she was singing out loud again.
“ ‘I Will Wait,’ ” Monique said.
“What’s it about?” Dorothy asked.
“A girl, she says she will wait forever, night and day, until the man she loves comes back to her,” Monique explained. “It’s a very popular song here in France.”
“That would be a popular song just about anywhere in the world right now,” Dorothy said, her eyes taking in all the young men who lay dead on the beach. Monique understood what she meant. There would be a lot of young women waiting forever for young men who would never return.
Monique knelt to wrap the arm of another wounded soldier who would return, just not, perhaps, in one piece.
“You’re pretty handy with a bandage,” Dorothy said.
“I want to be a nurse,” Monique said.
“I’ve seen your work, my dear, and you have no business being a nurse,” Dorothy said.
Monique looked away, hurt, until Dorothy lowered her kind, round face into Monique’s line of vision and smiled. “You shouldn’t be a nurse, my dear. You should be a doctor.”
Monique beamed, and hope filled her. A woman doctor? Who’d ever heard of such a thing? she thought. But why not? She could do the job just as well as any man. Better.
The rest of the night, Monique was half in the present here on the beach and half in the future in a hospital, where she wore a white coat and attended patients as a surgeon. Along the way, Dorothy picked up pieces of “I Will Wait,” and they sang it together as they worked.
Sometime later, back in the medical tent for the umpteenth time, Dorothy bent over too sluggishly to pick up another stretcher, and her helmet slipped off. Her frizzy hair fluffed out like popcorn bursting from a kernel. She stood quickly, trying to smooth it down, to pull it down in the back with her fist, but the jig was up. Half the soldiers in the tent had seen it happen and were gaping at them.
Dorothy and Monique were busted.
“You there! Who are you? You can’t be here!” the beach master cried, charging up to Dorothy. He spoke French, but with a strange, flat accent. He was a stout man with a red face and a black mustache like a walrus, and his job was to coordinate all the many moving pieces on this part of the beach post-invasion. And those pieces, apparently, did not include a woman reporter and an amateur nurse. “And you, young lady!” he said to Monique. “What the devil are you doing here?”
Monique’s first instinct was to look away, to beg forgiveness. But she was tired of lying low, tired of not speaking up or speaking out. She had picked up a little of Dorothy’s stubbornness too. Besides, it was time to call a cat a cat: She had helped, really helped, and she knew it. What right did this man have to tell her she couldn’t be on this beach? It was her beach, after all, not his.
Monique held her head high. “I’ve been bandaging soldiers and moving them into the tent,” she said.
“That’s not what I mean!” the beach master said. “You’re neither one allowed here.”
“And why not?” Dorothy asked.
“Because it’s not safe!” the beach master told her.
“It’s not safe for you either,” said Dorothy. “But here you are.”
“Because I’m a—�
�
“Man?” Dorothy finished for him.
The beach master looked flustered. “Yes,” he said. “And a soldier. It’s my job to be here.”
“Mine too,” Dorothy told him. “I’m a reporter with Collier’s.”
“And I live here,” said Monique.
The beach master scowled at them. “Nobody who can’t dig a latrine should be allowed in battle,” he said, as though that settled it.
Dorothy put out her blistered, bandaged hand. “If you’ll give me a shovel, Captain, I’ll dig you the prettiest toilet you ever saw. Good enough for your crap, anyway.”
Monique’s eyes went wide, and she put a hand to her open mouth. One of the soldiers who’d been carrying stretchers back and forth all night alongside them snickered, and the beach master looked affronted.
“No? Then can we please get back to moving these boys off the beach?” Dorothy asked wearily.
“They been working real hard, sir,” the other stretcher-bearer said. “Just as hard as the rest of us. And we could use all the hands we can get.”
When Dorothy translated what he’d said, Monique was surprised. She thought no one had taken any notice of them, but clearly someone had.
“You’ll leave my beach this instant,” the beach master told Dorothy and Monique, “or I’ll have you arrested and hauled away.”
Dorothy held up her hands in surrender. “Have it your way, Captain. Come along, Monique.”
Monique couldn’t believe Dorothy would give up so easily, and she followed along dejectedly. It had felt so incredible to be useful, to be contributing something to the invasion that was here to free her country from Nazi rule. Even though it had been tiring, painful, emotionally difficult work, Monique would have kept doing it until the last man was taken care of if she could.
When they were outside the tent, out of the view of the beach master, Dorothy took Monique’s hand and pulled her behind one of the trucks being loaded up with patients bound for Bayeux.
