With Love, Wherever You Are

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  Lartz, lying in his bunk reading a book, looked up. “Sounds like good news.”

  “You said it!” He would love to tell Lartz. But it didn’t feel right. The person he needed to talk to was Helen. He couldn’t wait another minute. He needed to write her now!

  My darling Helen,

  You have made me the happiest man on earth. I’m going to be a daddy! I intend to shout it for the rest of my life (except when Junior is sleeping). Me, a daddy! Do you suppose I’ll be any good at it? You would make a better father than I, I’m afraid. But you can’t be both mother and father, so I’ll just promise to do my best.

  Darling, this means that you should get to stay in the US now. How I wish we could sit together and work out the details, but I’m confident my capable wife will do what’s best for her and for Junior. I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know that I can’t be there with you.

  Tell Schnapps to give you the hug I can’t.

  With all my love,

  Your Frankie, husband and father

  Frank had just finished addressing his letter to Helen when Sarge came barreling in.

  “Attention, soldiers! We’re bugging out! One stop at the staging area, then on to you-know-where!”

  “When?” Andy asked.

  “Now! Transit trucks are outside! Move it!”

  Pandemonium broke out in the barracks. They’d been on twenty-four-hour notice so long, they’d grown lax. Now, men shoved gear into duffel bags and packs.

  Frank didn’t know whether he felt relieved to finally be on the way or panicked that he wouldn’t see Helen before he left for Europe.

  Thirty minutes later Frank and his unit were squashed in a transit truck that couldn’t have been designed to transport humans, or at least not this many humans. He tried to tamp down his overstimulation of the vestibular apparatus, which was how he preferred to think about nausea. He told himself that Helen’s nausea put his to shame.

  The truck jerked, sending men sliding like dominoes, nearly pushing Lartz and Frank out the open back. But all Frank could do was laugh.

  “You sure you’re all right, Frank?” Lartz asked.

  “I’m swell, Lartz!”

  “You like being reassigned,” Anderson grumbled. “This isn’t fair.”

  Frank smelled a storm brewing. He could barely see in the dark, tarp-covered transport. Headlights were swallowed by fog clouds that swirled around the truck. He closed his eyes and pictured Helen—the way her smile took over her whole face, like a wave rolling first to her eyes, then moving to her tiny nose, and finally reaching her mouth. He called up the mental picture of Helen talking to Hudy as she changed his bandages. He loved her strength, wrapped in gentle kindness. Helen was the best person he’d ever met, the best wife in the world. And now they were going to have the best son . . . or daughter.

  “Knock it off, Daley,” Mort said. “I’m sick of that smile.” Mort was the kind of guy who’d complain if he got sent to Florida for the winter. He griped about the food at every meal and about his “buddies” in between. But he’d lent Frank his flashlight so Frank could write Helen once his stomach settled a bit. And right now, Frank loved everybody, even Mort.

  Sarge maneuvered his way over to Frank. “I posted your letter myself, Lieutenant, and the PO gave me these.” He pulled a handful of letters from his pocket. “Enjoy them. They may be the last you’ll get for some time.”

  Frank thanked Sarge, then dug into his pack until he found the Bible the Army gave to every soldier. He could use it as a desk to write Helen again after he read her letters. Carefully, he opened the first of seven letters from his wife. As he read, his chest began to burn, from his esophagus to his abdomen. Helen sounded more distant with every letter. She believed he didn’t want their baby. She actually thought he wasn’t writing her because he was too upset about her pregnancy!

  Frank wanted to jump out of the truck and go to Helen, wherever she was now. Instead, he pulled out his stationery, not knowing when, or if, she’d ever get his letter.

  Lt. F. R. Daley

  In transit to Staging Area on coast

  Dearest precious Helen,

  How I wish I could be with you now so that you would see for yourself how happy I am! Helen, why would you think I’m not writing you? Why would you assume I’m angry? Surely you know me better than that.

  A wave of nausea washed over him and forced him to stop writing. He focused on the road behind them until the nausea passed. He knew he’d better wait to write, but he felt like he’d be okay to read Helen’s last letter. He just hoped she’d come to her senses in this one.

  Dear Frank,

  You no longer need to worry about a child. I have suffered a miscarriage. I feel it’s my duty to write. Even that urge has drained from me. So much has happened since I’ve heard from you that you barely feel real. Nothing seems real, not even war.

  When I was in fifth grade, our teacher, Miss Huntsinger, arranged for each student to write to a pen pal. My “pal” lived on her grandfather’s plantation in South Africa. We exchanged dozens of letters, and I remember thinking that this girl would always be my best friend. But one or the other of us stopped writing. And by then, it didn’t matter. The girl in the far-off country had ceased being real to me.

  You don’t need to hear this, and I’m sorry. Perhaps it’s best if I stop writing too.

  Love,

  HED

  Frank put down the letter and stared at the Bible on his lap, wondering if he’d ever felt this sad, this empty. They had lost their baby. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d only known about the baby a few hours. His grief spread through every vein and artery in his body.

  Heart pounding, Frank tore up the letter he’d begun writing to Helen. Then he found another piece of stationery.

  My dearest, most precious Helen,

  I have only this minute read your sad, sad news that you are no longer carrying our child. How I wish I’d been by your side, sharing this roller coaster of emotions. I can hardly find words adequate to convey how I feel. Like you, I was ecstatic at the notion of a child. My total joy surprised even me. And like you, I am now devastated at our loss.

  It’s important for you to know that in no way was the miscarriage your fault. You are an incredible woman, capable of taking charge and doing what most of us can only watch in amazement. But this is out of our control. I love you so much, Helen. When the time is right, we will have our family. And our children will be the luckiest kids on the planet because they will have you as their mother.

  With all my love,

  Frank

  P.S. Helen, my only regret is that you believed the worst of me when my letters were held up. It saddens me that you don’t know me well enough to trust in my steadfast love. We are distant in miles and hours, but not in my heart.

  Frank turned off the flashlight. There was more he wanted to say, like how hurt he was by her lack of faith in him. Had she really decided to stop writing him? That wasn’t the Helen he knew, and it wasn’t the Frank she should have known.

  CAMP ELLIS, ILLINOIS

  Helen’s unit had received no more advance warning about their move to Camp Ellis than Frank’s unit had. She’d struggled to keep down the fierce hope that Frank might still be there. But of course, he wasn’t. He hadn’t even left her so much as a note.

  Over the next few days at Camp Ellis, Helen kept busy with marching drills, arms training, and regular nursing of soldiers on base. At the end of the day, she curled up on her bunk and played solitaire. She wrote no letters, and she received none.

  Lydia eyed her from the next bunk, where she, Peggy, and Naomi were locked in a game of gin rummy. “So your husband hasn’t written lately, Helen,” Lydia said. “Is that any reason to be so morose?”

  “Yes,” Helen answered.

  Naomi tossed in her cards, then joined Helen. Naomi reminded her of her own mother—quiet and gentle, but a force to be reckoned with. She was big-boned and older than most of the nurses, and she had
a husband back in Ohio, though she rarely talked about him. Peggy said the guy had gotten himself a deferment but encouraged Naomi to join. “Helen, what if Frank is on a boat to the Pacific right now? How would that make you feel, knowing you haven’t written him?”

  It made her feel rotten, but she wasn’t about to let Naomi see it.

  “Fine,” Naomi said. “I’m heading to the post office. Want me to check for you?”

  “Don’t bother.” Helen lay back and curled into a ball.

  She sat up again when Naomi returned with a handful of letters. “One for me. And six for you. All from Frank.”

  Helen hugged her. “I’m a lousy friend. Sorry, Naomi.”

  Naomi pointed to the stack of letters. “Tell him.”

  Even as she opened the first letter, Helen told herself not to care what Frank had to say. He hadn’t wanted their child. She’d gotten through everything just fine on her own.

  The first line she read changed everything: My darling Helen, You have made me the happiest man on earth.

  She kept reading, ignoring the tears that fell like raindrops on the letter. Her husband had been every bit as thrilled about becoming a father as she had about being a mother. He’d been devastated when he learned of the miscarriage.

  She loved Frank. She should have known how he’d really feel about being a father, instead of assuming the worst. Gott im Himmel, why am I always so quick to pull inside my turtle shell and go it alone?

  She fell asleep rereading Frank’s letters.

  In the middle of the night, Helen bolted upright in bed. The letters. She’d missed something. She’d been so overcome with her husband’s sweet understanding that she’d paid attention to little else. Flashlight in hand, she began scanning the letters again.

  Then she found it. “Whoopee!”

  “Helen, will you shut up and go back to sleep?” Victoria shouted.

  But there would be no sleep for Helen, not tonight. Frank claimed he planned to drown his sorrows in banana pudding, a dish he abhorred. And there was the code.

  He wasn’t on a ship in the Pacific. He was on his way to Europe!

  Now all they had to do was get there and find each other.

  US EAST COAST

  Frank piled off the train behind Anderson and plunged into a darkness that might have been outer space, except for the smell of salty brine. Blackouts and silences were strictly enforced on the US coastal regions, and not a single light from the city showed. Even the sky obeyed orders and hid moon and stars. The train ride from their staging area hadn’t taken long, but they’d had to stand up the whole way. Crammed into club cars, soldiers fell asleep without falling down, propped up by other soldiers. Frank had felt carsick, but he’d kept swallowing, forbidding his nausea to erupt because if he got sick, a whole battalion would feel it.

  “Smell that sea?” Lartz said behind him. “Can you make out anything? Your eyes are better than mine.”

  As his eyes adjusted, Frank made out the form of a gray hull, then ship after ship lining the dock like overgrown, mismatched blocks. “Ships, Lartz. Dozens of them.” Some vessels were large as ocean liners, others small as tugboats.

  “Men of the 11th General!” Major Meredith called. His voice, which resembled a squeaky hinge, cut through murmurs around them. Meredith had joined the unit in Ellis, but kept to himself, abstaining from football and poker. He was older than most of the doctors, and his most distinguishing feature was a large mole the shape of Texas, positioned where a beard might have grown if permitted. Frank had spent a couple of late nights with Lartz and Andy speculating how the major could shave without slicing the panhandle.

  Meredith waved his arms. “This way! Follow me!”

  Frank and Lartz shuffled toward the major, falling in with others from the 11th. They filed onto a narrow bridge that made Frank think of metal catwalks, only wider. He shivered, but he didn’t know whether to blame the icy winds off the Atlantic or the thought that he was actually boarding one of those hunks of metal. He followed the others across the gangplank, where midway they were met by smiling Red Cross workers.

  “Here you go, soldier.” An attractive young girl with perfect white teeth shoved a paper cup of something hot into his hands.

  Frank took it gratefully and let it warm his fingers. “Thanks.” He traded smiles with the girl as he downed the bitter coffee in two gulps. “Are you coming along for the ride?”

  “Me?” She laughed. “No, I—”

  Anderson shoved between them. “Mustn’t talk to that fellow,” he told the girl. “He’s an old married man.”

  “Hey!” Frank began. Then he thought better of it and laughed along. Yet inside, he wasn’t laughing. Anderson was an older married man than he was. And besides, did being married mean you couldn’t talk to another gal?

  The gangplank jerked, then dropped, as if to lower them to the tanker below. Frank grabbed the railing. Somebody slammed into him from behind, jamming his barracks bag into his shoulder and making him clobber the poor fellow in front of him. He could see the end of the gangplank. It fed onto a tiny deck of what really did look like an oil tanker. “We can’t cross the ocean in that.”

  “Of course not,” Anderson said. “That one’s probably a supply tank. Right, Lartz?”

  “Doubt it,” Lartz said. “The Army’s using everything they can to get forces overseas.”

  “Not this,” Andy said.

  “I read about these. They call them cement boats.” Lartz sounded almost gleeful to see one in person. “DuPont couldn’t keep up, so the Army uses an oil tanker mold from Kaiser.”

  Anderson cursed DuPont, Kaiser, and the Army.

  Names were already being called out for the 11th General as they moved along the plank toward the cement monster that waited to swallow them whole. Frank heard his name and shouted back, “Here!” He was here all right—marching like a lemming over the abyss. He held the railing as he stepped onto the rough and narrow tanker deck. His mind flashed back to the patio his dad had built behind their house, the house that also served as his dad’s office. Frank and his brother had seen the wet cement as an unprecedented opportunity to leave their mark for all mankind. Not settling for simple handprints or names etched with sticks, they’d ridden their bikes through the thick cement, then tossed finely ground chat into the mix and added a few leaves. Jack had taken all the blame, as usual, but they’d both been punished—sentenced to yard work by day, confined to their room by night. As rough as that patio deck remained for the rest of their years, this tanker deck was rougher.

  Major Meredith led them down into the hold, where the stench of oil was strong enough to confirm Lartz’s theory about tankers. The major sounded like a tour guide. “This is the hold, or the hole, where you men will take turns at watch duty. We’ll guard against ships and submarines and anything else the enemy might throw at us. It will be up to you men to keep us safe.”

  They marched down a cement corridor that went on and on. The oil smell grew stronger with each step. Frank scanned the round windows, looking for exits, in case he couldn’t keep his coffee down where it belonged. Already, the tanker sloshed and rocked, forcing them to steady themselves with outstretched arms.

  “Where do we sleep?” Anderson shouted. Nervous laughter rippled through the throngs of soldiers.

  “Almost there, soldier,” Sergeant Miller answered.

  Still, they trailed up a flight, through a barren room, down endless steps, winding left, then right, until a door was flung open to reveal metal bunks, stacked four high to the ceiling. The narrow bunks were wedged in so tight Frank wondered how anybody could reach the ones in the back. Men shoved past him, claiming bottom bunks by tossing their equipment onto the not-quite-cots. Mort and Anderson staked out bunks close to the door.

  Frank and Lartz had to settle for upper bunks in the next-to-last row. If the boat were attacked, they’d be stuck.

  “Attention, men!” Major Meredith stood in the doorway and eyed his men. Up until now,
Frank hadn’t been able to see past the mole on Meredith’s chin. It struck him that the man’s eyes were unnaturally large, showing too much white. His face had the sunken look of someone constantly chewing on the insides of both cheeks. “On this ship, the ‘eyes’ have it. We will be in a constant state of vigilance. Therefore, when you are in this barracks, you can sleep, knowing there are men in the hole guarding you. We’ll work in shifts as battle-ready teams. Sergeant Miller will give you the call, and it will be your duty to respond immediately.”

  Sarge read a list of names for the first shift. Frank thanked his lucky stars that his name wasn’t among them.

  Those whose names hadn’t been called wandered back to the deck. Frank followed Lartz, who had a keen sense of direction, something that eluded all Daley men. It was a wonder Jack could succeed as a spy. Only Dotty could find her way out of a paper bag, in the middle of a sea filled with paper bags.

  The stench of oil, still overbearing, thinned on deck, assaulted by the salt spray as waves spanked the sides of the tanker. It felt like they were in the depths of the sea already.

  “Mess hall must be down there.” Lartz pointed to a stairway blocked with soldiers.

  Frank didn’t even want to think about food. The boat rocked, and his stomach lurched.

  For a second, clouds parted, and the moon sent a jagged stripe of light onto the deck. Caught in the moonbeam was a line of soldiers on the gangplank, still pouring onto the ship. “Lartz, tell me we’re not still anchored to the dock!”

  “You thought we’d set sail already, Daley?” Taggerty, one of seven lieutenants in the unit, laughed heartily. Tough and able as an Irish gangster, Taggerty was someone you’d only want by your side in a fight. “You’ll know when we’re on the sea, you landlubber.”

  Hours later, Frank understood what Taggerty meant. He’d gone back to the barracks to write Helen, but that had made him so nauseated that he’d inaugurated their latrine with the remnants of breakfast. He told himself that even if the Army had come up with the seasick medicine he needed, he would have thrown it up already.