The Paris Orphan

by Natasha Lester

  But what were they returning to? Make sure you come back alive. Jess had repeated those words to herself every day since the party at the chateau and now she was to find out if they had come true. That was if they ever found the battalion headquarters. When at last they did, Jess’s legs almost ceased to function. Because in that building with only two walls and half a roof was Dan, alive. Thank God!

  He was standing beside a wall map scribbled with red and blue marks signifying areas of heavy mortar, or panzers, or ferocious small arms fire, and relaying orders on the phone to his men out in the field. She watched him ask a team of engineers to signpost and clear a road studded with mines, heard him say in a soothing voice to someone on a field phone that Company B was on its way in to help, and at last she smiled.

  Every man who conferred with Dan did what Dan asked of him willingly. Every man spoke to Dan with respect, even a little hero worship. That was what had kept Bastogne in Allied hands: the leadership of men like Dan, who knew not just how to maneuver companies and battalions, but how to make men believe that what they were doing meant something when, all around, the evidence of obliteration suggested otherwise.

  Marty waltzed over and kissed his cheeks. “I know someone who’ll be glad to see that you made it,” she said, indicating Jess, who hung back awkwardly, fiddling with her cameras as if they needed her attention, unable to follow Martha’s lead and kiss him too even though it was all she wanted to do.

  “Sir.” Sparrow appeared from behind them and claimed Dan’s attention before he’d had time to offer Jess more than a smile. “You’re needed out there.”

  “Coming?” Dan asked Marty and Jess, who both nodded eagerly, knowing they couldn’t venture out to the front without someone who knew exactly where the front was and how hot the hotspots were.

  “Jess!” Jennings’ voice broke into the conversation and Jess turned to find her cheek kissed by the perennially smiling Jennings, wearing new insignia—now adjutant, Dan’s administrative assistant.

  Jess’s eyes met Dan’s at last and she knew he’d found a more permanent solution to his personal mission to keep Jennings alive and her heart hurt as if it wasn’t quite big enough to contain everything she felt in that moment. Now she wished she had kissed his cheek because Dan deserved at least that much.

  “This way, Sir.” Sparrow led the way to the jeep, more serious than Jess had ever seen him, more corporal now than joker—a promotion he’d gained since Bastogne too, as well as landing the job of Dan’s driver. Which only served to underscore just how many had died and how lucky Jess was to find these three men had dodged not just a bullet, but some pretty damn heavy artillery.

  “Where are we off to?” Martha asked Jennings as they pulled onto the road, following Dan and Sparrow’s jeep.

  “Something I thought our CO would want to deal with,” Jennings said quietly.

  But how could anyone deal with what they found?

  In the forest, surrounded by shell craters, trees splintered like matchsticks or disfigured with bullet holes, and foxholes lined with snow in which men had been living in groups of three of four for warmth for weeks, was an injured man. He’d been lying in the snow for three days after stepping on a mine. He’d been lucky, Jennings said grimly as they drew near; if you stood on a mine in a particular way, it pushed the veins and arteries up into the leg, closing them off somewhat, staunching the bleeding from the severed foot.

  “The medics tried to get to him,” Sparrow added as they walked closer, “but they got shot at every time. The Krauts have pulled back now so we can reach him.”

  Jess could see that the injured GI was still, somehow, through losing a foot and lying in the snow between two opposing sides for three days, conscious. His lips were moving. Dan dropped down beside him.

  Jess took a picture of Dan, sitting in the snow and lighting a cigarette for the injured man, who was telling Dan that he’d been set upon by Germans under cover of darkness on the first night. The Germans had booby-trapped him, rigging up a device under his back that would explode the moment he was lifted up by the medics or someone like Jennings from his platoon, killing them all.

  Thank God he was still conscious, Jess thought now. Thank God he’d been able to tell them.

  While Dan smoked a cigarette with the man, more the leader right now than he’d ever been as he saluted the courage it had taken to not succumb to blackness in order to save a life or two, while an engineer worked to cut the wires leading to the explosives, all Jess could do was record with her camera, honor this man in black and white for an act that would never win a war, but that meant Jennings’ parents or Sparrow’s parents or somebody else’s parents would still have sons to pray for.

  * * *

  The costly battle of the Ardennes meant that Jess hardly spoke to Dan for the next month. To even want to take his attention away from the things he had to do would be pure selfishness. But, every time she saw him, she remembered the caress of his thumb, which meant that the quick dozen words and smiles they occasionally exchanged weren’t enough.

  Soon, like every other fight, the Ardennes was over but Dan was with the advance troops as they pushed down to Cologne. Jess and the other correspondents ferried back and forth to Spa from the front each day, a situation that wouldn’t change until they’d secured a base in Germany. All the traveling meant even less chance to see Dan, and that she rolled a jeep in the ice, which was a common problem among correspondents in the late winter weather. Dan visited her, fuming, in March at the hospital where she’d been sent to have two broken ribs bandaged.

  “Lee Carson rolled four jeeps in a week,” she said to him weakly, trying to smile over her sore ribs.

  “I don’t give a shit about Lee Carson,” he said. He stepped closer to the bed, furious in a way she’d never seen before.

  What had happened to them? Jess almost wished they’d never danced together but at the same time she wished they’d danced for longer, anything to relax the strain that seemed ever present between them now. And she vowed then that she would never ask him about what had happened in the ballroom because it had only made things awkward.

  Before she could reply, Lee Carson herself, along with Martha, appeared.

  “They told me to tell you they’re running out of jeeps,” Marty said, planting a kiss on her cheek.

  “Which is more your fault than mine,” Jess said lightly to Lee, who grinned.

  Dan didn’t smile. Instead he gave everyone a curt goodbye and left, after practically yelling at Jess to be more careful.

  “What’s up with the gorgeous Lieutenant Colonel?” Lee drawled, helping herself to Jess’s cigarettes.

  “I don’t know,” Jess replied honestly.

  By the time Jess was out of hospital, Cologne was secured, and then the Rhine was crossed. After that it was impossible for anyone to enforce the rule of women not going near the front because the front was everywhere. Nobody cared anymore about Martha’s lack of accreditation papers; the quality of her reporting for Collier’s, in spite of the impediments, was all the proof anyone needed. In fact, the women correspondents were encouraged to use the press camps for the first time ever because it was the only way to stay safe. Which meant Jess having to use all her skills to avoid Warren Stone. She was getting better at that though, and he was so busy actually working that he left her alone more often than not.

  At the press camp in Schweinfurt, news came in that President Roosevelt was dead. Following in its wake, GIs poured in, wanting to find out if the reports were accurate, wanting just to sit and talk.

  Jess walked out of the censor’s office after a particularly bruising fight with Warren about whether there really were camps all over Germany holding people the Nazis considered undesirable—of course Warren found her belief in the rumors laughable—and saw Dan standing a few feet away. It was the first time she’d seen him this close since the hospital, and he smiled at her. She walked over to say hello, resisting the urge to wrap her arms around him.
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br />   “So it’s true,” he said when he saw her face.

  She nodded. “Come and sit down. I’ll find some schnapps.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “We drink whatever’s available. Calvados in Normandy, champagne in Paris, schnapps in Germany. It’s the only thing I miss about Paris.”

  Dan laughed and suddenly it felt normal again: Jess and Dan sharing a drink and a joke the way they’d always done. Thank God! She knew her smile was too bright for a day of mourning but she was so relieved to have restored her friendship with Dan that she couldn’t wipe it away. She led Dan into the mess, where she saw soldiers and correspondents all doing the same thing, drinking and talking, the death of one man like a blow that almost could not be borne.

  Jess poured the schnapps and sat across from Dan. “To Roosevelt,” she said, lifting her glass.

  He clinked his glass against hers. “We’ve seen so many dead men over the past two years and here we all are, brought to our knees by a death we haven’t even seen.”

  “I know,” was all she could say, because she did know. War made one irrational; sights that were incomprehensible failed to pierce one’s consciousness, yet seemingly small moments became the incidents that must be talked over, that could never be forgotten.

  “How are your ribs?” Dan asked. “And how many more jeeps have you slid off the road?”

  “Ribs are fine. And while at least a dozen correspondents have rolled jeeps lately, I haven’t been one of them. I used to dream about being killed by a shell; now we all dream of being killed in a jeep accident,” she said wryly. “It’s April though, so that should stop soon.”

  “It’s not funny, Jess.”

  “Nor is watching you walk out of here and not knowing when I’ll see you again,” she said quietly. It was close to what she meant but still skated on the edge of friendship.

  Dan stretched out his arm, as if he intended to take Jess’s hand across the table. But then he stopped as the seats around them began to fill with too many people for privacy.

  “Shift over.” Martha, bearing more schnapps, bumped Jess’s shoulder and slid in next to her as Lee Carson sat beside Dan.

  “It’s interesting, isn’t it,” Marty said. “How it’s impossible to find any Nazis in Germany. Nobody was ever a Nazi; somebody else was to blame. Amazing that an entire country could have been so ignorant.”

  “When will we get to the camps everyone’s talking about?” Lee batted her eyelashes at Dan, just as Jess had seen her do at the Hotel Scribe with Major Mayborn.

  “Getting your story the usual way, Lee?” Warren Stone jibed as he walked past. “You’re taking lessons from the best, aren’t you?” He smiled at Jess as if he’d meant to compliment her.

  Dan stood up. “I’d better get back. Before I punch someone,” he muttered under his breath but Warren had moved on, as always doing enough just to irritate but never enough to justify drawing real fire.

  “I’ll walk you out.” Jess stood up too and felt Lee’s eyes on her, watching her accompany Dan out of the mess. Warren’s eyes too, most likely.

  And that was the problem. There were eyes and people all around. No possibility of a quiet moment, an actual conversation. Even here, by the entrance, people flowed in and out, nodding at Jess or at Dan or at both.

  “Do you think there are camps?” Jess asked as they reached Dan’s jeep. “Some of the correspondents say there aren’t and I was just told in no uncertain terms by the delightful Warren Stone that I was being fanciful and I wasn’t to report anything on the speculation. But…”

  Dan sighed. “I think Warren’s wrong. We won’t know until we find the first one though.”

  “How does a world become so evil?” Jess said, staring out at what she could see of Germany. “That’s why I think people say it can’t be true. Because they can’t imagine there are worse things. But every time we think that, we find evidence of something worse than the worst possible thing.”

  “Do you want to come when we do? You don’t have to. Nobody would think any less of you.” Dan’s voice was gentle, his eyes like soft fingers stroking her face.

  “I would think less of me. I already have one piece I’m too scared to write.”

  “Your piece about the rapes?”

  Jess nodded. “I keep telling myself it’s not the right time, that now, when Germany must surely be close to surrendering, I shouldn’t do anything to hurt morale. But what if it means that every week I delay, another woman is raped? Doesn’t that make me responsible? Doesn’t that make me a coward? I assume it’s why the edict about fraternizing with the locals came down—because the powers that be have got wind of what’s happening too. But how do you square that with the prevailing view—which I’ve heard is General Patton’s own—that fornication without conversation is not fraternization? So if you club a German woman over the head and make sure she can’t speak, then you can do whatever the hell you like to her?”

  “You’re not a coward, Jess. In fact, you’re the bravest woman I know.”

  Their eyes locked just like they had on the balcony that night at the chateau; honesty, care and concern all caught there—but something more too, the shadow of what had happened in the ballroom.

  “Hey Jess.” Jennings had come to fetch his CO, making Jess and Dan start.

  “Goddammit,” Dan said through gritted teeth. “I have to go. I’m sorry I’ve been absent. But I’ll come and get you if I hear anything about a camp. I promise.”

  With that he hopped into the jeep and Jess returned to the mess, where she had to field Lee’s questions about Dan and avoid Martha’s knowing eyes when Jess found that every time she said Dan’s name, her cheeks flushed in a manner entirely unlike that of the worldly Jessica May.

  * * *

  Only a night passed before Dan returned to the press camp in the early morning to collect her. Luckily she was up and about and had spotted him pulling in before anyone else asked for a ride too. “Where are we going?” she asked after she’d raced outside to meet the jeep.

  “The scouts came back with a report that nobody can quite reconcile. I think it’ll be gruesome,” Dan said soberly.

  “Just like the past two years then,” she replied, more lightly than she felt, even as her stomach lurched.

  “Yep.”

  The passenger seat of the jeep was occupied by Sparrow, who seemed lost in a trance.

  “Sparrow was one of the scouts,” Dan said as if that explained it.

  But it didn’t. Something was up. And she could smell it now as they drove onwards, the scent of anguish in the air, a miasma of ash and marshy earth and salted tears.

  “Pull over,” came Sparrow’s voice.

  Dan drew as close to the shoulder of the road as was safe and Sparrow leapt out, trying for the sake of propriety to make it behind the scrub but instead heaving the contents of his stomach onto the ground not far from the vehicle.

  Jess and Dan both jumped out but Dan shook his head at Jess, so she stayed where she was, watching Dan stride over to Sparrow and say, “I’ll take you back.”

  And Sparrow, shaking his head and pushing away the hand Dan placed on his back. “No. If she can stomach it, then so can I.”

  Jess’s gut contracted again.

  After an hour they reached the abyss. At first it seemed almost pleasant, a great square, surrounded by immaculate lawns. Bright red flowers, the color of love and hope, bloomed from well-kept beds. Two rows of wooden barracks stood on either side of a raked and tended street lined with trees, a road that swept forward grandly in a manner reminiscent of manorial gardens.

  But then there was the stench. Not an odor or a smell. A pervasive and choking fetor that had Sparrow leaping from the jeep again, dry retching. Belying the reek and the fortifications, the impression of having chanced upon an estate was reinforced by the large cage of resplendent peacocks, the monkeys swinging on trees, and a parrot colored like a rainbow screeching “Mama!”

  Jess almost didn’
t wait for the jeep to stop before she climbed out and began to shoot pictures of this paradise, knowing this was what she had come here to do. To document the indescribable. The malodor clung to her and she knew that somewhere beyond lay the inferno.

  Then Jess saw what looked like human figures, scorched, spread along the barbed wire fence, frozen in poses that indicated they’d been running. Desperate to risk death in order to flee what they’d faced inside the camp walls. But that wasn’t where the smell came from. It rose like an inescapable fog from the more than a dozen boxcars to the side of the camp, filled with the remnants of human beings, all dignity taken from them, their lives deemed worthless as they were left in the sun to ebb into the German soil.

  For the first time, Jess realized there were degrees of death. That these once human beings were radically and starkly dead in a way that a person in New York who’d been placed carefully in a coffin, dressed, hands folded, awarded a tombstone and flowers, would never be.

  Suddenly the women appeared. Or what were once women. These creatures had been pushed beyond the limits of what was human. Cadaverous, some crawling, or not even crawling; dragging their bodies along the ground with the last remnant of strength left in their arms. They were nothing but enormous eyes, bone, nostrils, and open mouths.

  A movement above made Jess look up to the watchtower looming over her. The guard inside trained a gun on her. “We’re Americans!” she screamed in German. “Get the hell out of there!”

  She was barely conscious of Dan and the others moving in front of her, weapons ready, of the rest of the jeeps in the convoy drawing up. She kept shooting pictures as Dan shouted at her, “Move!”

  But she didn’t.

  “Goddammit, Jessica! He’s got a gun. Move!” Dan yelled again, pushing her behind him.

  She was barely conscious of the fact that Dan was so incensed that he’d called her Jessica, barely conscious of the moment the guard in the watchtower dropped his gun and Dan released his iron grip on her arm.

  She entered the camp with the men of the United States Army and she knew the moment she caught it that it was the image that would show America what war had become. Not a gallant and heroic jousting for glory but a savage and bestial destruction of humankind.