by Murray Pura
“‘If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.’”
After everyone had eaten, the White Knight squadron took off as one and flew toward Pont-à-Moussan and Metz. They cruised at twenty thousand feet, looking for German fighter formations or reconnaissance aircraft.
For a long time the blue and white sky was quiet. Jude kept turning his head, looking in every direction, but nothing appeared. Part of his mind began to drift toward Pennsylvania and Lyyndaya, while another part dwelt on reports of food riots in Germany and demonstrations against the war. Could it be possible the German Empire might collapse from within? Could the conflict be over as soon as November or December? He saw himself disembarking from the train in Paradise and Lyyndaya waiting for him in a black carriage. Bishop Zook and the pastors sat nearby in a different carriage. What could he say to the leadership of the church that would convince them to welcome him back? What words could he speak to Lyyndaya to convey all he felt for her after a year’s separation? Mulling over these things preoccupied him more and more as the squadron held formation for no-man’s-land and Metz.
So he did not realize the Albatros fighters were there until he and his men were under attack, the Germans dropping out of the sun one after another like fireflies, their guns winking and glittering, the bullets tearing into wood and fabric, smoke and flame erupting from his engine, Lucille hurtling through the sky as if she had a mind of her own, Jude with no time left to think, hardly any time left to pray.
TWENTY-TWO
Swallows were rolling across the October fields in dark clouds as Lyyndaya and her sister walked slowly along the road, Ruth leaning heavily on Lyyndaya’s arm. The sun was still warm on their faces and there was green in many of the trees, although leaves the color of pumpkins skittered across their path. Their house was only a few hundred yards in front of them and they could see their mother sitting on the porch watching her daughters while pretending to sew a torn pair of pants.
“She’s been working on Papa’s trousers for more than an hour,” said Ruth.
“It must have been a large rip. Perhaps Papa caught it on a nail.”
“If only she would relax.”
“We almost lost you. I suspect it will be months before she believes you’re completely well.”
“But the epidemic is over, isn’t it? She knows that?”
“It’s not entirely over,” Lyyndaya said. “There are still plenty of cases, especially in the cities, and especially in Philadelphia. It’s true that things have quieted down, but that can change in a few days or weeks. No one knows when this influenza will die out to the point that the doctors can actually stand up and say to the public there’s no longer a reason to fear it.”
“No one is sick here that I know of. Are you still thinking of volunteering in a hospital in the city?”
“I don’t know. Not until you’re stronger.”
“I am stronger.”
“Not strong enough.”
“What is that?” Ruth suddenly asked, looking ahead.
“Where?”
“Up the road. It is a motorcar, isn’t it?”
Lyyndaya squinted. “Yes.”
“We hardly ever see them here.”
They watched the vehicle come along the road toward them, then slow and turn in at their house. Their mother stood up and they could see her open the front door and call to someone, probably their father. Sure enough, he came out and stood on the porch with Mama just as the sound of slamming metal doors reached the sisters’ ears.
“That’s Bishop Zook,” said Ruth.
“Yes.”
“And soldiers. Officers.”
Lyyndaya felt a coldness in her arms and stomach. “Why would they be here?”
“There’s no reason for them to be here unless it’s about Jude.” Ruth looked at her sister’s face. “Lyyndy, don’t think the worst. They’re probably going to give him a medal for bringing in that German pilot you told me about.”
“Schleiermacher.”
“Who has ever heard of such a thing in a time of war? Why else would they be here?”
As they drew closer the sisters could distinguish more easily between one person and another.
“There’s Jude’s father,” said Lyyndaya.
“You see? It is all right. It’s about an honor they’re going to bestow.”
Yet as they turned into their lane, Ruth determinedly putting one booted foot in front of another, Lyyndaya could almost taste the feeling of dread that rose up in her throat. It seemed that a touch of darkness was drifting toward her from the cluster of people. None of them were laughing or smiling, no one was shaking hands, no one looked relaxed or at ease. It was not a picture of joy.
What has happened? Please, Lord, brace me.
Jude’s father stepped down from the porch and came to them, his hands outstretched. “Lyyndaya,” he said softly.
She stopped, Ruth leaning against her.
“The men from the army have come to tell us—”
An officer left the larger group by the porch and walked over to them. “Miss Kurtz?”
Lyyndaya hesitated. “We are both Miss Kurtz. We are sisters.”
“Miss Lyyndaya Kurtz?”
“Yes.”
“Major Robert Trenton. Your bishop told me you have been in something of an intimate relationship with Captain Jude Whetstone for some time. Captain Whetstone’s father has said the same thing.”
“I would not use the word ‘intimate’—but we have been good friends…” Lyyndaya stumbled, feeling the blood coming to her face.
“It’s important that I tell you what I have already informed the others of. Captain Whetstone was shot down over the German lines about five days ago. I’m very sorry to have to be the one to tell you this.”
“Shot down?” Lyyndaya felt her mind going numb and could only keep hearing those words. “Do you have him…in the hospital?”
The officer’s blue eyes were firm, but not without gentleness. “Officially, he is missing in action. Our doughboys got to the crash site as soon as they could, but it took some time as the position was under German sniper fire. Captain Whetstone was not in the cockpit.”
Lyyndaya didn’t know what to ask or say. She felt Ruth squeeze her hand with a strength she didn’t know she had in her.
“Is he a prisoner of war, Major?” Lyyndaya heard Ruth ask without a trace of illness or weakness in her voice.
“Both sides exchange this sort of information regularly as a courtesy. The Germans do not have him. They assured us that if they did they would be telling everyone about it.”
“Then where is he?” Ruth persisted, seeming to gain strength with each question she asked on Lyyndaya’s behalf.
Major Trenton was reluctant to voice his opinion, but finally said, “He may have fallen out of the cockpit before his aircraft hit the ground.”
Again, Lyyndaya felt Ruth’s hand tighten on hers.
“But you have found no body?” Ruth demanded.
“No.”
“So he could have escaped from the aeroplane’s wreckage after the crash?”
The major looked away. “He might have. However, German troops were concentrated in the vicinity. It’s doubtful he could have eluded them. Especially if he had sustained injuries.”
“You said he was officially missing in action.”
The officer glanced back at them. His face and eyes were rock. “Yes. Missing in action and presumed dead. I’m sorry.”
From a great distance, it seemed to Lyyndaya, she heard Major Trenton apologize again, say that it was a great blow to America as well, Captain Whetstone was a genuine hero, even the Germans and Austrians had sent condolences and tributes through official channels, a combat pilot who had never taken a life, who had fought with honor, a man who had brought down one of the German Empire’s greatest aces without killing him. A true Christian officer and a g
entleman.
“There are some other things I need to tell you,” she heard him say. “I feel they would be an encouragement at such a difficult time. But we should go somewhere and sit down, perhaps?”
“Thank you, Major,” she heard Ruth say. “Our kitchen would be best for that.”
Now Lyyndaya felt her sister guiding her up the porch steps and then through the door into the kitchen. She sat down across from Bishop Zook, whose eyes were dark and kind as they rested on her. Her mother was with her and Ruth. Her father sat on one side of Major Trenton, and Mr. Whetstone on the other. The officers who had accompanied the major elected to stand.
“I should make coffee,” Lyyndaya heard her mother say.
“There is already some that our young Sarah has brewed,” Lyyndaya’s father spoke up. “Let me get a few cups and pour.”
“Some water for our daughters, Father.”
“Ja, ja.”
When a glass of cool well water was placed by Lyyndaya’s hand her mother urged her, “Drink, it will help.”
Lyyndaya felt as if everyone was sitting farther away from her than they should and the sensation disturbed her. “I can’t, Mama.”
The major stirred cream and sugar into his coffee. It was so quiet the clicking of his spoon against the sides of his cup sounded like a harsh ringing of bells in Lyyndaya’s ears. Finally he put the cup to his lips, drank some, then set it down and looked around the table.
“Captain Whetstone was not alone when this happened. He was with his squadron, so there are several witnesses to what occurred. It seems pretty clear that the captain was hit when he put his plane between one of his men and a German attacker. The Hun had the other American pilot dead to rights and was about to fire directly into him, when the captain hurled his plane in the way of the guns and took the bullets. It set his engine on fire, but he would not leave the fight. His men report that he continued to harass and fly circles around the enemy, as was his custom, in order to throw off their aim and separate them from the planes they were attempting to shoot down. Finally he was hit by a burst of machine-gun fire and his craft went into a spin he couldn’t pull out of until the last. He managed to level out just above a field, and then the plane struck the mud and barbed wire and broke up. The other men of the squadron say his craft was smoking badly, but there never was an explosion.”
No one responded. Bishop Zook, as was his habit, began to drum on the table with his fingers.
“So, at the end,” the bishop said, “he gave life back, he did not take it.”
The major cleared his throat. “Well, from what I understand, the way Captain Whetstone went out was the manner in which he usually conducted himself throughout the war.” He reached into a pocket of his uniform and read from a small piece of white paper. “I am directed to express to you the regrets of the United States Army Air Service and to convey the personal condolences of the Vice President of the United States, as well as those of President Wilson. Captain Whetstone is posthumously promoted to the rank of major and awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. A posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor is under consideration. From France, he is awarded the Croix de Guerre.”
The major handed the paper to Jude’s father and murmured something Lyyndaya couldn’t make out. Mr. Whetstone nodded and held the slip of paper tightly in his hand. Then Major Trenton looked directly at her.
“His men mentioned you, Miss Kurtz. Apparently not a week went by that he didn’t have his orderly mail something to you. I trust you have received the majority of his letters despite the inevitable delay in postal services during a time of war and when great distances are involved.”
Lyyndaya said nothing.
“I am instructed to inform you, in conclusion, that Captain Whetstone served his country, his allies, and—in the words of Vice President Marshall—‘the human race’ in the best traditions of the United States Army, and in doing so represented the best the people of the United States of America have to offer the world. He gave his life for the life and liberty of others. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. God rest his soul, and God bless his memory to us and the American Republic.”
Lyyndaya remained in her chair while the three men left. Her sister stayed with her while the others accompanied the officers to the door and to their car. She listened to the engine start up and slowly fade in the distance.
“I don’t feel anything,” she said.
Ruth put a hand on her arm. “That’s all right.”
“No, it is not all right. Jude meant a lot to me. Why don’t I feel anything?”
“Because it’s too much, you can’t take it in.”
“God help me, I want to feel something!”
“Shh, shh. In time you will. In time all you feel will come out of you.”
Bishop Zook and the girls’ parents returned and sat back down at the table. Lyyndaya’s mother looked at her daughter with deep and troubled eyes and rested a hand over hers. The bishop ran large fingers through his dark beard and stared at the wall.
“God’s ways are past finding out,” he finally said in a low, unhurried voice. “That an Amish boy should be in the army and fly an aeroplane in a war—and then be honored by his country for fighting in that war and never taking a human life. Who can plumb the depths of these things? Who can comprehend the mysteries and wisdom of God?”
He looked at Lyyndaya. “You will remember that I spoke with you a few days after my son’s funeral, hm? I asked you not to share what I said.”
Lyyndaya nodded, still feeling everyone was sitting far from her and she from them.
“So now I will tell your family.” He looked around him from one person to another as he spoke. “Before Hosea died, once he knew…he was going to die…he takes my shirtfront in his hand, in his fist, and he pulls, you would not think he had such strength left, but it was the strength of a man that drowns. Jude, he says to me with what voice he has left, Jude. Over and over again. His eyes are desperate for me to understand, but he cannot form all his words, his tongue will no longer help him, and he does not have the breath. Us, he says, us, and he looks around the room even though we are alone. All of us, Papa, he tells me, all of us. Then he collapses on his bed and is only able to whisper—Jude. All of us.
“Nothing more comes out of him about this again. He dies the next day. Yes, he speaks a few more times, says he loves his mother, asks us to pray for his soul, wants to see Emma, but of course Emma is fighting for her own life and cannot come. What did he mean about Jude, hm? What was it my son wished to convey? I have talked with the pastors, we have prayed and thought and read the Word of God. This is what we understand—that he speaks about the army camp where they were all imprisoned, and that something happened that affected Jude and all of them, something very important. But what? What? The other boys do not know. We do not know. Something needs to be understood, something needs to be revealed. But I myself think that Jude may have been forced to fly. That the others were released on the condition that Jude fly for the army.”
He shook his head. “It may be we will never come to an understanding. In any case, Jude is gone and my Hosea is gone. Perhaps it does not matter now.” He reached inside his black jacket and brought out a packet of letters bound in twine. “These are yours, my dear.” He placed them by her hand. “Jude now faces the Righteous Judge who understands all. The Meidung is no longer in force. His words for you belong to you. God bless, my sister. Let me pray.”
His hat already hung from a hook by the door. He bowed his head and prayed in High German for five or six minutes. Lyyndaya bent her head along with everyone else, but later she couldn’t recall much of what the bishop said to God. Then he looked up.
“There is also this, which the major told me when he first came to my house. Jude’s squadron has sworn to avenge him. But how will they do this? As our world would do such a thing, and kill as many Germans as possible? No, they wish to make every effort to honor him by tak
ing German planes from the sky and putting the pilots in prisoner-of-war camps. That is what they intend. The major told me they realize they do not share all of Jude’s convictions, and that many times the only thing they will be able to do is shoot the enemy down in flames. Yet, they want to try to win the bloodless victories Jude won and see their enemies behind walls of wire, not under mounds of earth. So that also is something. That also is the hand of God.”
He finished speaking. Slowly he got to his feet and left, taking his hat and placing it on his head. Slowly Lyyndaya went up the staircase with Ruth, both of them leaning on one another.
In their room, they each sat down on their bed.
Slowly, Lyyndaya untied the twine and opened a letter.
It was dated July seventeenth. She started to read out loud—“My dear, sweet Lyyndy, how I wish we were up in the air together every day, how I hate flying alone…” but then she couldn’t continue, and the pain she hadn’t felt, and the tears that wouldn’t come, suddenly swept through her body like a wind and came out of her mouth in a loud cry. Ruth threw her arms around her and rocked her while she wept.
“Oh, Jude, oh, Jude, oh, my friend…I thought…my Lord, I thought…you had promised him to me as a husband—”
Their mother rushed into the room and put her arms around Lyyndaya along with Ruth. They cried out together, heads and bodies touching. In the doorway stood her father, his eyes glistening with tears, watching them. After some time the weeping stopped, and Lyyndaya asked her mother and father to stay in the room and hear some of Jude’s letters. They sat on her bed and sometimes Ruth read out loud, sometimes Mother, and then when Lyyndaya had enough strength and composure, she read the letters to the others herself, though not without tears or sharp stabs of anguish. Even the most intimate dreams Jude shared she read to the others because she wanted them to know who he really was and how real their love had grown until a war had ended it.
