With Love, Wherever You Are

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  The truck stopped, and they piled out onto a dock. The moon peeked through thick, gray clouds and shone on limestone cliffs eroded by monstrous waves into weird, hollow shapes. A biting wind tore at her coat, and she had to hold it closed.

  Bill elbowed her. “Not scared to cross the Channel, are you, Nurse?”

  She punched his shoulder the way she did with her brothers. “Nope. I know a ward master who would save me if anything went wrong.”

  His laugh rattled his six-foot frame down to his boots. “You know I got to keep an eye on you nurses. So, where’s that fella of yours?” He gazed around, as if searching for him.

  “I know where Frank was, but not where he is now. Pretty sure he’s not in England, though.” After their wonderful rendezvous in Birmingham, neither of them had been able to get away for another reunion. When her period was three days late, she’d tried not to hope she was pregnant again. After all, her pregnancy would complicate everything. But when she found out she wasn’t pregnant, she’d burst into tears. “And how’s your gal?”

  Bill’s weathered face softened. “Jennie’s swell.”

  “And you still write her every day, right?”

  “Yep. I know you’ll ask me that every time I see you.”

  Helen laughed. “Count on it!” She angled her back to the wind. “How long do you think they’ll keep us waiting out here?”

  Bill nodded toward the only ship at the dock. “Not long. That one’s ours, the SS Léopoldville. She’ll take us across the English Channel to Étretat, on the French coast. Sooner or later, probably later, we’ll catch a train to Rennes.”

  Peggy waved, then shoved her way over. “Bill, darlin’!” She looped one arm through Helen’s and the other through Bill’s. “All aboard!”

  The trip across the Channel took longer than Helen anticipated. Right away, waves rocked the Leo, and the passage got even rougher once they lost sight of land. Bill kept them entertained with stories that sounded like Texas tall tales. Unless he was making things up, the guy knew something about everything. Yet he never came off as a know-it-all.

  “Didn’t anybody think to add seats to this ship?” Victoria asked.

  Helen had to agree. It wasn’t good for her to stay on her feet so long. Already, she imagined she could feel the veins in her legs trying to poke through. She hoped she’d never have her mother’s varicose veins.

  “Don’t be talking down the Léopoldville,” Bill warned. “She’s a good ol’ gal. Used to travel between Belgium and the Congo. Since she’s been a troopship, the Leo’s made two dozen voyages, not always this route. Have to keep the Jerries off balance.”

  “Don’t tell me German subs are lurking in the English Channel,” Lydia demanded.

  He shrugged. “You’d be surprised.”

  “We all would,” Peggy said.

  No transports were waiting at the French docks when the Léopoldville arrived. Helen had never seen so many seasick soldiers and nurses. The deck sounded like a torture chamber, and the fish in the sea would have plenty to eat for days. But she’d never forget the sight of that Normandy coast, the high cliffs as white as the cliffs of Dover. Low gray clouds met the tips of jagged rock, and the scent of fresh sea air scrubbed out her hospital lungs.

  They were herded like cattle off the ship, and whatever louse was in charge issued the order to march into Étretat. Positioning herself in the middle of the herd, Helen let them carry her along, but she refused to march. Her legs already felt wrapped in barbed wire.

  “Helen! Over here!” Peggy waved like she was flagging in bombers.

  Helen shook her head.

  Peggy gave in and pushed through to Helen. “You can’t see anything from here!”

  “And I can’t be seen.”

  Peggy started out marching but eventually dropped to a walk beside Helen. “I wonder how far it is from Étretat to Rennes. You think we’ll get time off? I’m going to Paris if I have to go AWOL.”

  Helen knew Peggy, unlike Frank, was kidding. If Helen ever got a leave, she’d go wherever Frank was. But if he got a longer leave, maybe they could see Paris together.

  After an hour or so, they stopped. Helen had no feeling left in any part of her body—only a frozen fatigue. “Please tell me we’re here.”

  The crowd broke apart, and Helen could make out what had likely been an attractive town square once upon a time, a time before war. In the center of the dirt square stood a pile of red-tinted wooden shapes that looked like children’s toys—sticks and disks with holes in them. She thought about Eugene trying to build his forts with pencils, spools, and balls. He’d begged Dad to buy him a set of Tinkertoys, but the answer was always no.

  She’d finally gotten a letter from Eugene. He’d addressed it to Helen Eberhart, so it was a wonder she’d received it at all. The letter was short, and some of it didn’t make sense. His handwriting looked like somebody had bumped his arm while he tried to write.

  And she couldn’t do a thing to help him.

  A French officer strode from the shadows and commanded attention. “Go no farther! Observe. These innocent-looking bits of wood are triggers from German booby traps found in the area.” His accent was heavy, but his English good. “Our engineers disabled the explosives this day and will hunt for more. Welcome to the war zone!”

  Colonel Pugh asserted himself, making it clear who was in charge. “Don’t wander outside the yellow stripes you see there and there.” Pugh pointed at a crooked, narrow trail, made even narrower by yellow tape. “Those strips mark the only paths cleared of mines and booby traps. This area around Étretat hasn’t been liberated all that long, and the enemy had a lot of time to leave their mark. Nothing is safe to touch. Since we shouldn’t be here long, you’ve been given sleeping quarters in the factory just there.” He turned and pointed to a building that had obviously been bombed to bits. Yet the yellow-taped road led directly to it.

  Helen didn’t care. All she wanted was to get off her feet. Colonel Pugh kept talking, but she tuned him out and gazed at the stars. Ma used to say stars were heaven’s light peeking through pinholes in the velvet sky. Helen hoped they were peeking in on Frank for her.

  Suddenly everybody started moving, treading lightly down the yellow-taped path to the ruins of the blackened factory. The north wall stood intact. They entered by the bombed-out side and unrolled their sleeping bags on the cement floor. Helen thought she’d never get to sleep, but in seconds, she was out.

  Peggy had to shake her to wake her up. “Come on, dream girl! Ten minutes to fight for well water and the best seats on the outdoor toilet.”

  “Are we moving on already?” Helen rolled up her bedding, then grabbed her toothbrush.

  Peggy glanced back at her. “Where were you when they told us we’d work at the hospital until transport arrived?”

  The “hospital” was in the remains of a bombed school gymnasium. Tents covered the roof, where red tiles had been blown off. Nurses were dispersed to various areas but given no instructions. A dozen nurses in Helen’s unit milled around, waiting for assignments.

  Not Helen. She eyed the ten or twelve closest patients and started with a boy who reminded her of Hudy. Gauze bandages covered his upper torso, his head, and one eye. “Hey, soldier! I’m new in town. What’s new with you?” She said this while reading his chart. Burns, infection, and trench foot.

  The boy—he couldn’t have been eighteen—tried to sit up but couldn’t move without pain. “I’m Johnny from Kansas City, Missouri.” His voice had surprising depth, a natural baritone.

  “No kidding? My husband is from Missouri!”

  “You’re married? And your husband let you come over here by yourself?”

  She laughed. “Did he let me come? You don’t know me very well, soldier.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  She gave him her best smile so he’d know she’d been kidding him. “As it happens, he’s here too. In the war, I mean. I’m not sure where exactly.”<
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  “What’s his name, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Frank.” She leaned in and whispered, “Don’t tell anyone, but when I write him, I write, ‘Dear Frankie.’” It might have been her imagination, but she thought she felt heat coming from the boy. She caught Bill’s attention and asked him to get a thermometer.

  “‘Dear Frankie,’” Johnny repeated. “Guess he won’t get a Dear John letter.”

  “Somebody back home write you a Dear John letter, Johnny?”

  “My gal.” He shut his eyes. “We was supposed to get hitched soon as the war ended. She says she found herself another guy. I reckon she’d have ditched me soon as she got a look at the new me anyways.”

  “Well, it’s her loss, Johnny.” She took his temperature and didn’t like it. “I know a dozen gals who’d go gaga over you. Want me to fix you up with some? We’re all suckers for a Missouri accent.”

  “Don’t suppose you’d like to marry me yourself.”

  “I would love to marry you.” She tied his arm bandage, ripping off the tape with her teeth, a habit she should break. “I just have to ask my husband first.”

  The next day when Helen got to the hospital, she went straight to Johnny’s cot. It was empty. She stopped a nurse rushing by with a tray full of meds. “Where’s this patient?”

  But she knew, even before the French nurse frowned at the bed and said, “Mort.” Helen struggled to hold back tears at the thought of Johnny’s sweet, deep voice. She should have done something, stayed the night. Worked harder to bring his fever down. She thought of Frank and tried not to picture him as a patient in a hospital close to the front. She thought of Eugene and all of her brothers. And she hoped that if they needed a nurse, they’d get a better nurse than she’d been to this poor Missouri boy.

  Helen lost count of the number of patients she treated that day and the days following. Although their standing orders were to be ready to bug out in twenty-four hours, they didn’t. Work was nonstop as the hospital received a steady stream of casualties from the Allied troops’ attempt to clear the Germans from the Hürtgen Forest. She dressed wounds that carried the stench of death, and she replaced shoddy dressings applied by civilians in the field. Her patients were a mix of GI, English, French, and civilian. She would never get over how young they all were. She was twenty-four and felt like an old lady around them.

  On Christmas Eve, Helen was administering insulin to patients when cheers rose from the hallway.

  “Mail call!” said an amputee who’d been in the hospital since the 199th arrived in Étretat. He was a former high school quarterback from Michigan. Nobody had warned him about Hitler’s Tinkertoys.

  Helen’s mind filled with the promise of a letter from Frank. It would be the best gift she could hope for since there had been no way for them to spend their first Christmas together. She told herself it was okay—they’d spend every future Christmas together. But she’d wanted them to establish their own Christmas traditions. She didn’t even know if her husband opened presents on Christmas Eve, as her family had always done, or on Christmas Day. Did he want a star on top of their tree, or an angel?

  “Don’t you want to see if you got a letter?” asked Michigan Quarterback.

  Helen set down the syringes she was about to load. She hadn’t put the needles in yet. “Well, if you insist!” She ran to collect what she guessed would be a pile of letters.

  One lone V-mail was waiting for her, and half of it had been blacked out.

  My darling Helen,

  ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████

  Thanksgiving was lonely. I can’t imagine Christmas without you. But I feel blessed to be able to miss someone as wonderful as you. I can’t write about my present assignment, so I’ll just say that when I have time to eat, the food is much akin to the nasty weather. I ran across a new phrase the other day: parochial xenophobe, one who hates every country not his own. Seems a dangerous disease, if you ask me, as we are seeing the gruesome results of such a mindset.

  With love, wherever you are,

  Frank

  P.S. Good night. Hope you keep warm in your sleeping bag. Is there room for two?

  Peggy and Naomi came running up. “Just the gal we’ve been looking for!”

  Helen tucked her letter into her pocket and forced a smile. “What’s up?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s Christmas Eve, you ninny!” Peggy locked arms with both Helen and Naomi. “What we need is a Christmas party!”

  Somehow, Naomi, Peggy, and Helen worked out party details while finishing their shift. They pulled in Lydia and Bill, who declared that having a party was the best idea he’d heard since fried possum. Bill put himself in charge of “finagling treats and eats,” and within an hour he’d produced a boxful of candy bars and two bottles of Scotch. Naomi would lead the singing—hymns and Christmas carols. And Peggy was in charge of the games. Helen volunteered to read the passage in the Bible about the birth of Christ. Every soldier had been given a leather Bible, Army-issued like their weapons, and she hadn’t used either—gun nor Bible. High time she did delve into that Bible.

  Helen and Naomi had nearly finished delivering the nightly round of meds when Bill ran into the hospital, wheezing from the effort. Helen expected him to yell, “Merry Christmas!” or to let them know the party was starting without them. Instead, he stood in the hospital entryway and shouted, “Incoming!”

  Naomi sighed. “How many?”

  “Too many! Truckloads.”

  Bill wouldn’t say more, but Helen knew he had details—he always did. She pulled him aside. “What’s going on, Bill?”

  “Look, the general himself gave the order. It’s top secret.”

  Helen had experience penetrating layers of secrets, thanks to her siblings. “Okay. Just nod yes or no. Are the injured coming from a major battlefield?” He shook his head. “From another hospital?” No. “Was it a bomb?”

  Again, Bill shook his head.

  “Bill, you think we won’t ask our patients? You think they won’t tell us?”

  “Aw, okay. But you didn’t hear it from me. It’s the Léopoldville—she went down. Sank like a stone.”

  Helen felt a wave of nausea pass over her. “Our Léopoldville?”

  He nodded. “We were her last voyage, before this one.”

  “But how? How did it happen?”

  “German U-boat. A torpedo sank her, stern first. There were over two thousand GIs aboard, plus Brits and Belgians. I heard maybe half of them drowned. Tweak of fate and we’d be at the bottom of the Channel ’stead of them.”

  For an instant, Helen was back in the Cissna Park cistern, struggling against the putrid waters closing over her head. She could almost smell that dank, slimy water. Then another picture flashed through her brain—Battle Creek. The lake. Going down and down.

  In her mind, drowning was the worst way to die.

  A roar of engines sounded outside as trucks and ambulances pulled in. Nurses ran to the long line of trucks filled with the injured. Helen worked triage, sending the hypothermia patients inside first. Some of the soldiers had two broken legs from jumping onto smaller rescue boats. Others suffered third-degree burns, shock, and frostbite.

  They worked through the night, treating wounded, fighting infection, fighting sleep. Christmas sneaked in while no one was looking.

  NORTHERN FRANCE

  Frank greeted Christmas in a field tent hospital not far from the Normandy coast. He and Lartz worked as a team, while the bombing grew louder, more insistent. When
it started to get dark, they lit lanterns and hung them on tent posts.

  Frank was headed back to his tent for a couple hours of sleep when he spotted someone in a jeep. The horn beeped the old two-long, three-short code.

  “Jack!” Frank jogged up and saw that his brother sported a leather cargo jacket with Airbourne written on it. “So now you’re part of a British flying unit?”

  “Like it, little brother?” Jack asked without answering Frank’s question. “Guess I should stop calling you that, you old married man.” He leaned across and shoved the jeep’s door open. “Hop in!”

  Frank obeyed, and just like that, he was once again under his brother’s spell. “Where to?”

  “Just a Christmas joyride.” Jack floored the accelerator so hard it made Frank’s head jerk back. “Merry Christmas, Frank!”

  As they rode, they exchanged news, though Jack remained vague about his antics.

  “I can’t believe you could show up for Christmas, Jack. Remember that Christmas when you got a bike and I didn’t?”

  Jack laughed. “Ah, what fond memories! So it really was all about the presents.”

  “No.” For a while now, Frank had wanted to break through the Daley privacy barrier and talk to Jack about things that really mattered. Who knew when they’d get another chance? He cleared his throat. “Jack, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”

  Jack frowned over at him. “A bit late for the birds-and-bees honeymoon talk. Didn’t they teach you anything in med school?”

  “Funny. And not what I meant. Since I’ve been over here, I’ve been thinking about a lot of things.”

  Jack interrupted. “Here we go with another lovely memory of gifts not received.”

  “I’m serious, Jack.”

  “Oh no! Tell me the war hasn’t sapped the fun out of you.”

  Why was it easier to talk to Major Bradford than to his own brother? He tried again. “Okay. It’s just that since I’ve been here, I’ve been thinking more about God and Jesus and faith and everything.”