Andy scrambled beside him as Frank headed for a truck, half-full already. “I’ll tell you what, ol’ man. I’ll work in their hospital. But I draw the line at anything closer to the front. I’m a skilled physician. I’d be wasted in a mobile unit.”
“You’re wasted half the time anyway,” Frank muttered.
“That’s not funny!”
“I thought it was rather amusing,” Bradford said, coming up behind them.
“And they say Brits have no sense of humor,” Frank commented.
“Who says such a thing?” Bradford demanded in mock outrage. “Those are fighting words, gentlemen.” He bounded into the waiting truck, and Frank climbed in after him.
Anderson hopped in last. “Is everybody crazy around here?”
Frank worked beside Bradford all day on the burn ward, feeling like an ignorant intern. In addition to soldiers wounded in battle, the hospital serviced a steady influx of civilians. Bradford explained that many of the sick and injured walked for miles with wounds suffered from exploding bombs or mines. Other patients were flown in, or driven in because they needed surgery. Each patient deserved the best, and Frank, next to Bradford, did not feel like the best. The man reminded him of his brother. Jack had always been the best at everything—from sports, to academics, to spying.
Over the next few days, the wounded poured into their war-weary hospital like molasses into a dirty, overflowing jar. Frank learned more than he wanted to about bombs, a subject Bradford seemed as well versed in as he was in treating burn patients. He could identify the type of bomb by the whistle it made, the mark in the earth . . . and the burns it left on its victims.
“These three men met up with an incendiary much like the kind dropped on London.” As he talked, Bradford wrapped the soldier’s arm with the light touch of a gentle lover. He’d seen Helen treat patients that way.
“It would have been a light incendiary,” Bradford continued, “a magnesium body with a cast-iron nose filled with pellets that can burn for ten minutes, consuming anything in its path. I’ve seen them wave through the sky like a ribbon. Usually you hear the first two explosions and think that’s the end of it. And when you believe it’s safe, the third explosion can knock off a roof. Some of the nasty buggers have a delayed high-explosive version set to go off a few minutes after they land with the initial explosion. That’s exactly the right time to kill any would-be rescue team.”
“That’s what happened,” the soldier muttered, his mouth only opening enough for words to wrinkle on the way out. “I’m a medic.” His face contorted as he tried to pull himself up and look around the ward. “The soldier I was working on?”
“If he’s here, we’ve got him covered. Just be thankful you made it out.” Bradford stood, one hand to his lower back. Frank had no trouble identifying the pain from bending over cots all day because he shared it.
That afternoon, Frank assisted in three major grafting surgeries, and then Bradford left him on his own to perform two more. He was terrified and caught himself holding his breath to steady his hands. The wounds were both large, and he’d never worked on that kind of surgery in training. There was no way to know if he’d done a great job or a lousy one, but he was pretty sure he’d done no harm.
It was dark out when Bradford found him again. “We need to get back and catch a couple of hours’ sleep, Lieutenant. You did aces today.”
“Yeah?” Frank didn’t know Bradford well enough to tell if he meant it or was just being nice. Still, it felt good to hear. He started to tell the major to go ahead without him. Then he remembered they weren’t supposed to walk alone, and he didn’t see anyone from Pinkney still in the hospital. “In a minute.” He wouldn’t get any sleep if he didn’t check on his surgical patients one more time.
Twenty minutes later, he found Bradford outside, leaning against the battered hospital facade and smoking a cigar. When he saw Frank, he ground out the cigar stub and started walking.
The night shivered, and stars blinked from a black-cold sky. The smells were the scents of autumn in Missouri. Frank had been thinking about his sister and her husband all day. He hadn’t heard from Dot in weeks. He’d thumbed through every English newspaper he could get his hands on and never could find news of the Philippines. According to the armed services’ broadcasts, the invasion was going well. Dotty had written that she was afraid the Japs would evacuate prisoners to Tokyo. Jack probably knew more about Boots’s situation than Dotty did, but Frank hadn’t heard from him, either.
“Any word from your Helen yet?” Bradford asked.
“No. But thanks for asking.” It occurred to Frank that he didn’t even know if Bradford had a wife. “Do you have a family back home?”
“I do, as it happens. Elaine and I have been married twelve wonderful years, and that’s twelve out of twelve. We have two lads, Lance and Richard, ten and six—quite a match for Elaine, I’m afraid.”
Frank thought about the child he and Helen had lost and how hard it would have been to be so far away from a son or daughter. “Do you worry about them?”
“I do. They’re staying with Elaine’s mother in the countryside, so that helps.”
“Your wife must worry about you, too.”
Bradford took so long to answer that Frank was afraid he’d overstepped his bounds. He didn’t usually pry into other people’s lives.
At last, Bradford said, “Elaine and I and the boys are in this war together. We’re trusting God to see us through to peace.”
Frank didn’t know what to say.
Bradford stared at the path ahead of them as if he could see his family there. “When Lance was born with a weak heart, we didn’t know how long he might live. I was a physician. I should have been able to rescue my son. And Elaine has always worked toward peace and enriching the lives of the poor and suffering at home and abroad. But we found ourselves helpless to help our own child.”
Frank kept still. He understood that sense of helplessness. He hadn’t been able to help Helen or their unborn child.
“Ah, we have nearly arrived,” Bradford said as the camp came into view. “I fear I have taken a circuitous path to answer your question. Let me conclude by saying that my wife and I found peace in Christ, with a bit of help from the hospital chaplain. That faith, that peace, has served us well.”
“Thank you, Major. I needed to hear that.” Frank could have said more. He envied the man’s strength, his faith, and the peace that showed itself whether he was performing skin grafts on a patient or walking into camp with a friend.
At supper, Frank made sure Lartz loaded up on everything. He was starting to look like the cadavers in med school. The pyramid mess tent, pitched over a concrete slab, wasn’t much warmer than their barracks, and steam clouds rose from plates like fog on early Missouri morning cow dung. Frank took his time stepping over the long wooden bench and sitting down so he could scan the tent. “Anybody seen Anderson?” The last time he’d seen Anderson, Andy claimed he was headed out to find a drugstore since the Army PX wasn’t set up yet. It had sounded fishy then, and it sounded fishy now.
Lartz whispered, “He didn’t come back last night. He’s probably sleeping it off in a bar somewhere . . . and not alone.”
“I don’t really care,” Frank muttered, “as long as he made it to Western Union before he passed out. I gave him just about everything I had, and he promised to send my telegram to Helen.”
“Saved me a spot, gents?”
“Speak of the devil,” Lartz said.
Anderson, disheveled and bloodshot, wormed his way onto the bench across from Frank. A couple of Brits wrinkled their noses and slid farther down.
“Just tell me you sent my telegram.” Frank could have sent it himself in three days, when he finished the burn rotation, but he didn’t want his wife to have to worry seventy-two hours longer than necessary.
“What telegram?” Andy asked.
Frank wanted to reach across the table and strangle him. “You’d better have sent it,
Anderson!”
“First thing I did, ol’ man.” He was already feigning a British accent. “Shame you couldn’t have come along like the good ol’ days, Daley.”
“Wait a minute . . .” A nurse partway down the table broke into a big smile. “Daley. Are you Frank Daley? The Frank Daley?”
Anderson dropped his fork. “The Frank Daley? Doubt it.”
“Fever therapy!” she exclaimed.
Frank laughed. “How did—?”
“That was you, mate?” one of the Brits said. “Well done, you!”
Frank couldn’t believe it. In residency when he’d worked on the disease ward, medical personnel were always delaying diagnoses because they had to go to the library and look up the many possibilities for the patient’s fever. So Frank had made up a poem about fever therapy to help remember how to handle various treatments. He’d really just wanted to save himself from all those library runs. But the poem spread like poison ivy. “Don’t tell me that poem made it overseas before I did.”
The nurse said, “On the field, we received a hundred patients with fevers and no manuals to look things up. We used your poem. And here you are in person!”
“Here he is,” Andy muttered.
After supper Frank walked the nurse—Becky—back to her barracks. They chatted about everything from the new penicillin—“the best warrior in this man’s Army”—to the never-ending British rain. Becky said she’d been sent to Pinkney from a field hospital for a full medical workup. “One of the patients fresh from the battlefield, in a fit of frenzy, knocked me out. I guess I was unconscious long enough to worry them. I tried to tell them it was nothing.”
Frank wouldn’t have thought her old enough, experienced enough, for a field hospital. “You are so brave,” he said. “I don’t know how I’d do in a field hospital.”
She laughed and put her hand on his arm. “You? Now I know you’re having me on. Anyone can see how brave you are.” She didn’t look away, and her tiny hand still rested on his arm. She made him feel like he really might be brave.
Was she flirting? Was he? “I’m married,” he blurted out.
Without removing her hand, Becky said, “Oh-h-kay?”
Why did he feel he had to clarify his marital status? They were just talking. Since when couldn’t a married man talk to a nurse? “Well, good night, Nurse.” He took a step backward. “I have to write my wife.” That wasn’t what he meant at all. “I love writing my wife. I didn’t mean I have to.”
“Good night then, Dr. Frank Daley.” She turned and ducked into her barracks.
Frank jogged back to his.
CAMP PINKNEY, ENGLAND
Frank couldn’t help smiling as he strolled to the PX before sunrise to mail Helen’s letters. Maybe one of hers would have gotten through. He longed to know how she was, where she was.
While still a hundred yards from the PX, he heard arguing coming from inside—Mort was at it already. The fellow seemed daily to have gotten up on the wrong side of the cot. “Buy cigarettes, soldier!” Mort shouted. “They’re good for what ails you, and you can’t afford them candy bars.”
Frank knew the Army sold cigarettes at a loss, believing they calmed men heading into battle. Candy, on the other hand, turned men into boys. Frank stepped through the flimsy screen door and let his eyes adjust to the single overhanging lightbulb. Boxes lined the walls of the ten-by-twelve, and shelves looked fully stocked.
“No mail yet! What do you want, Daley?” Mort barked.
“A spot of kindness and a drop of compassion?”
“Good luck with that,” said the private who’d been angling for candy over cigarettes. He stormed past Frank empty-handed.
“Another satisfied customer?” Frank mused.
Mort glared up from the box he was cutting open. “You looking for Lartz?”
“Should I be?”
“He was in here last night, badgering one of the limeys about their German captives. He kept pressing for information about how the Germans were treating prisoners, whether they’re letting the Red Cross in or not.”
Frank had known something was weighing on his friend, but he hadn’t asked. His mother’s voice, still echoing in his head, insisted, “We Daleys are private people. Don’t be nosy.” He hadn’t been nosy where Lartz was concerned, but maybe privacy wasn’t what his friend needed now.
“There you are. Lieutenant Lartz said I might find you here.” Major Bradford caught him outside the PX. “I thought we might walk to the hospital this morning, if you’re up for it. It’s stopped raining, and I’d like to show you a church you shouldn’t miss.”
“Sounds good.” He fell in with Bradford, glad for the walk.
“Mind if I ask? Is your mate all right?”
Frank shrugged. Here was the second person to ask about Lartz today, and the sun wasn’t even up yet. “What makes you ask?”
“He’s been hounding the higher-ups, I hear. Something about where the Germans are holding prisoners. Your Colonel Croane seems quite irritated with the lad’s persistence.”
“Why would Lartz want to know about prisoners?”
Now it was Bradford’s turn to shrug. “Just a guess, mind you. But does your man have family over here?”
“Nobody in service.” At least he knew that much about his best friend.
“Then perhaps civilians he fears may have fallen to the enemy? If so, he has good cause to be concerned, especially if his relatives are Jews. We’re aware of forced-labor prison camps that torture, starve, and kill their captives.”
Frank had heard the rumors. He knew Lartz’s mother was Jewish, but he didn’t know much about the rest of his family.
God, take care of Lartz and his family. Frank surprised himself with the prayer, which came naturally. Maybe Major Bradford was rubbing off on him.
Bradford took a path into the woods, and they trudged through wet leaves and under canopies of orange and yellow until they came out onto a stone pathway.
“Good of you to take me along, Major. Helen loves old churches.”
“She would indeed like this one. See that tower? The bell still rings for national moments.”
Even from this distance, Frank could see how magnificent the stone face was, the tower massive, dominating the countryside. “How old is it?”
“Just over nine hundred years.” After a minute he added, “I have something to confess. This isn’t strictly a sightseeing venture. More like an exploratory mission. What do you know about aircraft?”
Frank stopped. “Not a thing.”
“No worries.” Bradford pulled a folded parchment from his inside pocket and handed it to Frank.
Frank unfolded the oversized paper. On it were sketches of fighter planes, bombers, helicopters. Under each were words or phrases identifying the aircraft: Heinkel He 11, Heinkel He 177, Junkers Ju 188, Junkers Ju 88, Messerschmitt Bf, Focke-Wulf Ta—
“I don’t understand.” He tried to hand the schematic back to Bradford, who refused to take it. “Are these German? What do you want me to do with this?” He tried to refold the thing, but he’d always been lousy with maps. He could never quite figure out how to follow one, and he had even more trouble trying to refold them.
“Memorize it for starters,” Bradford said. “We’ll be getting assignments tomorrow and moving out before long. Where we’re going, we’ll need someone who can identify what’s flying above us. After you have these in hand, I’ll see that you get a roster of our own planes—the RAF, that is. I assume you can recognize your own Yankee aircraft.”
“Assume again.” This time when Frank shoved the paper at Bradford, the major took it and folded it easily before handing it back. “Why me, Major? Don’t get me wrong—I kind of like the idea of knowing who’s flying over my head. I just don’t know why you want me to do it.” He’d felt the same way when he’d been put in charge of the disease ward in Battle Creek.
Bradford grinned. “I like you, Daley. Unfortunate for you, right? I did ask Colonel Croane why
he hadn’t seen to your promotion to captain before you left America, as all promotions have been frozen in this theater.”
Frank sighed. This was not news to him or to any of the should-have-been captains in his outfit. “Our beloved Colonel Croane missed our promotion deadline by twenty-four hours, resulting in our persisting rank as lieutenants and a lower pay grade.”
They walked through the old church, and Bradford served as guide, filling in bits of English history. But it was clear to Frank that the whole outing had been a ruse to get him alone and arm him with homework. It was also clear that Bradford had picked the wrong horse in this race. Frank would do his best to memorize all the aircraft on the chart, but he couldn’t promise not to be found cowering in the nearest trench if he actually spotted one.
V-mail Oct 27, 1944
Dearest Helen,
Mail! Mail from you, my angel wife! There is no greater gift. You cannot imagine how desperately I needed to hear from you today. I think you might have been embarrassed if you’d seen your husband dance around the barracks when his name was called for mail and he saw three letters from you. The dancing might have made you laugh, especially if I told you how Anderson and I spent our first night in this camp. Perhaps more on that later. Perhaps not.
We are seeing close-up the many effects of war.
Something is troubling my friend Lartz, and now it’s troubling me as well. So many worries. I believe you and I finding each other is one of the few good things to come out of this war.
With love, wherever you are,
Frank
NEW YORK HARBOR
Helen couldn’t believe her luck. She was on her way to Europe—more importantly, to Frank—in luxury unlike anything she’d ever seen. As the 199th rushed out of their transport trucks and onto the docks in New York, there sat “the Queens,” the two greatest ships in the world—the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary. Even in the murky light of dusk, Helen could make out the grandeur of the giant tiered ship that would be their home for a few days—the Queen Mary. “It looks a bit like a wedding cake, doesn’t it?” she said, thinking of the sweet wedding cake she and Frankie had at the Blackhawk.
With Love, Wherever You Are Page 18
