Two violent bouts of nausea later, he made his way back to the deck by asking half a dozen enlisted men for directions. Once on deck, he found Lartz, and the two men hung on to the railing as the tanker groaned and chugged. It was a miracle no one went flying overboard. Taggerty informed them that they were in the middle of a convoy of seven ships, though Frank could only see the two behind them, and one of those was already passing their tanker. That vessel, twice as big as theirs and several stories high, looked brand-new and oil-free as it sped past them.
“On the move now, we are,” Taggerty said, frost clouds billowing from his mouth. He wasn’t a bad guy, but Frank doubted they’d have been friends out of the Army. The fellow had a chip on his shoulder. Frank thought Taggerty might have been teased in school for the trace of a harelip that would have made him lisp as a boy. “I can tell you where we’re likely headed,” Taggerty said, leaning on the railing next to Frank.
“Where?” If Frank knew, he could get the location to Helen, in case her ship followed before his company moved on. Lartz pressed in closer too.
“We had orders to dock at Brest.” Taggerty shielded his words with a hand to his mouth. “But those orders were remanded.”
Anderson, who had appeared out of nowhere, swore. “Doesn’t the Army know Brest is among my favorite locations?”
Taggerty ignored him. “Instead, we’ll dock in the British Isles and make our way to Camp Pinkney. It’s a stopover for troops leaving for a combat zone through one of the channel ports, probably Southampton. Need to know, gentlemen.” He strolled off up the deck, hands clasped behind his back.
“Wonder how long we’ll be in England,” Anderson said once Taggerty was gone. “Any chance we’ll ride out the war there?”
“Doubt it,” Lartz said. “The whole reason they want doctors now more than ever is this big push somewhere in France. That’s where I’m betting we go.”
Frank knew that if he wanted to meet up with Helen—and he did—it would have to be soon. If he wrote Pinkney in code, would she know where that was? He wouldn’t have. But he could at least let her know he was in England. “I’m going back to the barracks to write Helen.”
Anderson groaned.
It took Frank twenty minutes to find his barracks and fifteen more to get back to his bunk. His gear had been moved—Lartz’s too. He climbed up and fished an airmail from his pack.
Positioning code letters to spell England was easy, but he almost forgot the tip-off line. He had to squeeze it in above the code: Helen, you know how I love to travel the rough seas, so you can imagine how much I am enjoying the rocking waves.
Then he made a mad dash to the latrine.
Hours later, when his group received their first call to the hold, Frank stayed facedown on his bunk. Every muscle and tissue in his body teemed with nausea, as if somebody had scooped out his insides and filled him with sludge. He was already shirking his Army duties, and they hadn’t even arrived overseas yet. What kind of a soldier was he going to be?
GREAT BRITAIN
Frank had been off the tanker and onto firm, muddy land for forty-eight hours. In that time, he’d formed two conclusions. First, he would never again take land for granted—it had required a full twenty-four hours for his body to realize he wasn’t still out on the ocean. Second, Great Britain was so named because of the great cold here. Missouri winters dipped below zero, but that dry cold was nothing compared to this drizzling, never-ending, icy rain.
He had been so eager to get off the boat that he hadn’t realized they were in Scotland until a line of men in kilts passed in front of them. The instant they landed, they’d been herded and forced to walk for miles. His unit joined others in long lines that snaked past Loch Lomond, where fall trees shone bright and beautiful, despite the bitter cold and unending mud.
Finally, still on foot, they reached a bivouac area. But instead of resting there, they boarded trucks that were lined up as far as he could see. Frank and Lartz stuck together and climbed into a half-filled truck parked next to a Scottish regiment equipped with bagpipes, funny hats, and kilts. Frank wasn’t the only American soldier to stare.
A Scottish officer called to his troops, “Steady, men! Hold your kilts down. The bloomin’ Yanks want to see if it’s true that you have lacies underneath.”
They laughed, but the laughter cut out suddenly as a roar sounded overhead and a wave of planes became eerily visible in the dark, moonless night.
“Bombers,” Lartz said.
Frank held his breath and watched as six planes passed high over their truck. “Ours or theirs?”
“Ours,” Lartz answered.
“How do you know?” Anderson demanded.
“They didn’t drop anything,” Lartz said.
Frank had imagined battles being fought around him while he and the other doctors and nurses did their jobs in hospitals, close but not too close. What if the bombers hadn’t been Allied?
And what about Helen? She’d already gone through so much. Frank missed that unborn baby as if the child had been born and now lived in another land somewhere. He could only imagine what Helen’s grief looked like.
Now she would be entering the war without child or husband. If she were still pregnant, she could have stayed in the States. Safe. The thought flashed through his mind: What if he and Helen didn’t make it through the war?
He shut out that thought and pictured his wife holding a baby, their baby. He put himself in that picture, husband and father hovering over the ones he loved most in the world. Helen would be fine, and so would he.
Lartz had been right when he said they were part of the biggest buildup and supply push in the history of the world. Convoy after convoy of American troops joined Scottish soldiers as they set off in the same direction. Of course, with his lousy internal compass, Frank had no idea which direction that was. He kept scanning the sky for more bombers. The truck hit a bump, knocking him into Lartz. But with soldiers packed like cigarettes in a case, there wasn’t much room to roll.
“Stop it!” someone shouted from the other side of the truck. Frank could make out the wiry shape of Major Johnson, who generally kept to himself. “Quit touching me!”
“Is he kidding?” Andy asked. “It would be physically impossible not to be touched in this tin can.”
Lartz whispered to Frank, “I thought something was off with Johnson on the ship.”
Frank remembered seeing the man roaming the deck the last day of the voyage. He’d looked like a wide-eyed coyote in wrinkled fatigues.
“There! You did it again!” Johnson’s voice, an octave too high, silenced their transport, and in the quiet, Frank thought he heard the staccato of distant guns.
“Major, are you all right?” Sergeant Miller moved into the vacated seat next to Johnson.
Johnson drew back from him. “What do you think?”
Apparently, Sergeant Miller knew better than to answer—Johnson was far from all right. The man was terrified. Until this moment, Frank had never stopped to wonder whether he’d be too scared to function. What was it that made one man buck up, another act heroically, and another give in to terror?
And which one was he?
When they finally pulled into camp, it was still dark. They might have been anywhere, if that “anywhere” rained all the time and won awards for the coldest and most miserable spot in the universe.
“All out, mates!” shouted a British officer. “Last stop, Camp Pinkney.”
“Told you!” Taggerty bellowed.
“Be ready to bug out in twenty-four hours!” the officer added.
Groans shot up from every truck.
“Didn’t say you’d be leaving in twenty-four, did I? Just be ready. Tents are over there. Get your assignments here. Don’t forget your allies are sleeping, so quiet as you go, right?”
The Yanks thundered out of trucks, grabbed their gear, then raced through driving rain to find their assigned tents. “I’m thirty-four!” Anderson shouted above the ruckus.
“Twenty-nine,” Lartz said.
Frank had to shine his flashlight on his work order to see the number. “Thirty-four.”
“Over here!” Anderson took off down the row of identical, sopping-wet tents. A sheet of canvas covered the entrance but flapped in the chilling wet wind like a flag in a hurricane.
Frank ducked under the flap, then stood just inside, waiting for his eyes to adjust.
Hang on a minute. He shut his eyes. They must be playing tricks on him. But when he opened them, he saw the same thing—two men in each cot, sleeping side by side, as close as he and Helen on their honeymoon.
“Why would they do that?” Anderson whispered.
“Don’t ask me,” Frank whispered. Half the bunks were empty. The other half were doubled up. “And don’t get any ideas, Anderson.”
“I mean, I’ve heard jokes about the Brits,” Andy began, “but I didn’t think—”
Before Andy could finish, one of the men in the nearest cot shouted, “Shut up and get to bed, you Yanks!”
“No thanks,” Andy said. “Wrong tent. Not our cup of tea.”
“Ours neither, mates,” he said, sounded miffed. “You lads just wait until you try a night in this leaky tent with only your one issued blanket and no body heat but your own. Then we’ll see whose cup of tea you are.”
Anderson raised his eyebrows at Frank. Frank shook his head. They shuffled to the far side of the tent. Andy threw his barracks bag onto the corner cot. It squished like a sponge. Frank fingered the cot he’d been about to sit on. Soaked. A drop of water plopped on his head. He eased closer to the Brits and felt three more cots until he found one that was damp, but not soaked. Exhausted, he spread out his blanket and lay down fast. The blanket smelled like wet goat. He lay there shivering, listening to raindrops thump the canvas roof. Patrols of MPs plodded past outside. He wanted to get out of here and find a better spot, in the woods maybe. But he reminded himself that he wasn’t in Camp Ellis. They were under strict orders not to leave the tents for anything except the latrine.
An icy blast ripped through, ruffling the canvas and showering him with water droplets. He tried to cocoon himself in his tiny Army blanket, but he couldn’t have it under him and over him at the same time.
Minutes later when Anderson crept up with his blanket and climbed onto Frank’s cot, Frank played possum and didn’t object. They lay back to back, lying on one blanket, covered by the other.
After a few minutes, Frank whispered, “If you ever tell anyone, Andy, I’ll—”
“They could pull out my fingernails, mate.”
Frank and Anderson woke up in the dark with the rest of their tentmates. Frank had slept, but he felt stiff and damp, his knees creaking as he got to his feet.
“Nice sleep, mates?” asked one of the Brits. “Chummy, were we?”
Andy jumped up, scowling. “We’re not the ones who—!”
Frank stepped between them. “You Brits had the right idea all along. Besides, I expect it’s been years since Anderson got to climb into anybody’s bed.”
The soldier frowned, then burst into the heartiest laugh Frank had heard since his brother had caught him trying to dance the Charleston. Half a dozen eavesdropping limeys joined in, and finally, even Andy.
No sign of light peeked at the horizon as Frank and Andy followed their new mates to the latrine. Frank smelled it before he spotted the wooden shack, where fifty or sixty men jockeyed for position in two lines. Next to the latrine stood another shack with a corrugated tin roof. Frank opted for that one and found a couple dozen men crammed in front of three cracked mirrors above rusty sinks. He joined one group and managed to wet his face before trying to shave with ice water. He’d have to remember to ask Helen how she felt about beards.
Feeling scruffier than before, Frank trailed others to the mess tent, where apron-clad soldiers stood over charred trash barrels and plopped scoops of Spam next to suspicious strips of “American beef.”
Once inside the mess, Frank took a seat on the nearest bench and struck up a conversation with a British major named Bradford. The man’s deep-set eyes didn’t miss a trick as they scanned the tent, the table, and Frank himself. After they’d exchanged names, ranks, and medical histories, including training and pre-war specialties, Bradford grinned over his mug of tea. “We’re very glad you Yanks jumped in when you did, though we wouldn’t have minded the company a bit earlier.”
Frank returned the grin. He liked the guy already, in spite of his posh accent. “We might have made it here sooner if anyone had told us what lovely weather you Brits enjoy.”
“Ah, that reminds me of a story,” Bradford said. “It seems President Roosevelt and Churchill went to heaven, but St. Peter closed the gates in their faces, saying, ‘You two fellows have caused too much trouble on earth. We don’t want you up here.’ Churchill said, ‘What will we do?’ ‘I’ll tell you,’ said Roosevelt. ‘You kick the gate down, and I’ll pay for it.’”
They talked baseball and argued the merits of American and European football. Frank told him about the oil tanker that brought his unit across the Atlantic and nearly killed him before he’d made it to the war.
When they got up to leave, Bradford asked, “Where are you off to, Lieutenant?”
“Need to write my wife.”
“The little woman you left back home worried about you, is she? Has she heard what you Yanks get up to over here?”
“She’d be crazy to worry, and she’s definitely not crazy. Besides, she’s not even back home.” The second he said it, he wished he hadn’t. Frank had been the one warning Helen not to broadcast the fact that they were married once they were overseas. It might not matter. But the wrong officer could make it tougher to get leaves if the higher-ups were afraid married couples would lose focus and forget why they’d signed up.
“If she hasn’t remained in the colonies, where is Mrs. Daley?”
Frank stopped. They were standing in a mud puddle behind a row of tents. Ropes tied to wooden stakes stretched from the backsides of tent canvas. He glanced around to see who else might be listening. “My wife is in the Army too.” They wandered aimlessly around Pinkney while Frank told Bradford all about his and Helen’s lightning romance and marriage.
“I admit I’ve heard of a number of hasty marriages. But your Helen sounds lovely,” Bradford said.
“She is.” He glanced around. Everywhere, mud and tents. “Major?”
“Yes?”
“Which one of these tents is mine?”
By the time they reached his barracks, Frank was regretting his loose lips. “Major, I have to ask you not to tell anyone about Helen. The US Army’s funny about married couples on the same continent.”
Bradford laughed. “Your secret is safe with me. Now go write your letter. They’ll be coming with assignments soon.”
Lt. Frank Daley, MD
The land of mud and rain
Dearest Helen,
I apologize for the letter I wrote while in the throes of nausea. My morale improved as soon as I got off that boat. How I hope you get a better one! And soon—before I move on!
Nearly all the picturesque villages we pass through show evidence of bombings, though these stone houses are built to stay. The weather is cold and wet, devoid of sunshine. But the ███████ have won me over by their tenacity, spirit, and their honest belief that this, their fifth year of war, will be the last. I suppose, then, that we shouldn’t lament our diet, which will mainly consist of K- and C-rations.
You and I must connect soon before we’re sent to different countries.
With love, wherever you are,
Your Frankie
P.S. We are not playing at war here. Wear your helmet!
CAMP PINKNEY, ENGLAND
The weather served up an unbroken string of rainy days. Each morning Frank expected to move on, but the 11th General seemed stuck in the mud. He took advantage of the downtime and tried to track down Helen’s unit. With the aid of Major
Bradford, he got the name of the advance man and found out the 199th was still stateside waiting for transport.
For the time being, a combined American and British unit was established at Pinkney under the joint leadership of Major Bradford and Colonel Croane. Croane had been in a position of leadership for the 11th General since they left Camp Ellis, though Frank rarely saw him. Frank confided to Lartz that if Santa had a bald and beardless brother—a lazy, though not evil, twin—he would look just like Croane.
On the third day since their arrival at Pinkney, Colonel Croane took front and center after roll call. “At ease, men! I think you’ve all been told of our mission while we’re here. But I’ll leave it to Major Bradford to explain your assignments.”
The colonel outranked Bradford, but nobody had any doubt which man they’d follow into battle. Bradford exuded a confidence Frank envied. As Bradford took his place in front of the unit, he seemed to eye each soldier conspiratorially. “You men have come here at a crucial time in our joint history, a time other men will look back upon when they assess the fate of the world.” He sounded like Churchill did on the radio, only younger. “Until further notice, we shall be assisting in a nearby hospital. Your duties are to begin this morning.”
Andy whispered to Frank, “I’ll bet we’ll stay at the hospital till the war ends.”
Frank ignored him.
Bradford continued, “This is a purely unofficial arrangement, gentlemen, while we await more permanent orders. The general hospital is understaffed, yet overflowing with patients. I’m certain you will be of great help during your short time here. Unless there are further questions . . . ?” He turned to Colonel Croane, who shook his head. “Then you are to report to your transport immediately. You will be driven directly to the hospital. Be prepared to walk back to camp once your shift ends. But do not—I repeat, do not under any circumstances—walk alone.”
Frank didn’t like the sound of that. General hospitals were supposed to be safe havens.
With Love, Wherever You Are Page 17
