The Girls from the Beach

by Andie Newton

  Also by Andie Newton

  The Girl I Left Behind

  The Girl from Vichy

  THE GIRLS FROM THE BEACH

  Andie Newton

  AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

  www.ariafiction.com

  First published in United Kingdom in 2021 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus

  Copyright © Andie Newton, 2021

  The moral right of Andie Newton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (PB) 9781800246249

  ISBN (E) 9781789546699

  Cover design © Leah Jacobs-Gordon

  Aria

  c/o Head of Zeus

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.ariafiction.com

  To Matt, Zane, and Drew

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Become an Aria Addict

  Prologue

  New York

  1989

  The delivery arrived just after lunch: a bulky cardboard box wheeled in on a dolly by a man dressed in a brown uniform. The reporter sent for it that morning from the storage unit where it had sat for over five years, paying extra to have it messengered express.

  He jumped up from his chair where he’d been anxiously waiting, and peeked through his office blinds, watching the delivery man weave his way through the second-floor newsroom, past the drum of electric typewriters and correspondents on phones.

  He tipped the messenger well; it wasn’t every day a reporter was hand-delivered the story of a lifetime—the kind that made you wonder, the kind that made the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up—the kind that made you question what you knew about the war and its heroine nurses.

  The box belonged to his mother, and he felt a pang of remembrance when he saw her handwriting next to the curling postage stamps. He didn’t think much of the box at the time she’d sent it to him; it was something to go through later. But when his boss asked him to work on a series of stories about WWII nurses, he remembered what his mom told him about the women who disappeared.

  He used his scissors like box cutters to cut through the tape, knowing curious reporters on the other side of the door were listening, and probably drooling. He stood back after looking inside, hand over mouth; there was more than he expected. He dug in with both hands, sifting through old photographs of his mother’s field hospital and women of the 45th, letters, and medals, and notes.

  And a single diary entry dated 1945.

  We’d heard stories about the nurses in tent seven. A secret mission, stolen money, and spies, some of them posing as soldiers. One thing I know for certain: Kit was involved. She might be the only person who can shed light on those five days in September and tell the world what happened when the women went missing.

  1

  KIT

  Lorraine, France

  September 1944

  A man burst into our clearing station unannounced, scanning the lot of us—three nurses and one surgeon caring for the Third Army. After standing in the open tent flaps and letting the rain and cold push in, he stomped over to the operating table where the doctor and our chief nurse were up to their elbows in a private’s abdomen. A heated exchange followed.

  “But I’m two nurses down from yesterday!” the doctor spouted, thrusting a pointed finger in the air, when the man leaned into his ear. I watched them from afar, trying to hear, trying to listen, but they were whispering.

  The doctor moved his pointed finger to me.

  “Mother of God,” I said, looking away, and my patient struggled under his bandages, reaching for his face like so many of the wounded did, wanting to know how deep the gashes went, but had lost the ability to tell.

  “Nurse?” my patient said.

  “Just saying a prayer, private. Wrapping you up now. Not to worry.” I squeezed his hand when evac took him away, wishing him well, before my gaze trailed back up to the man.

  His eyes looked dark and burdened with thought—not the kind of look I expected if he had come to confront me about the cigarettes I’d lifted from ration packs, and what nerve if he had, coming into our tent when our boys are in such miserable condition. Was he even American? It was hard to tell with the fatigues he wore, which looked unpatched and black at my angle.

  Roxy, the other nurse on shift in our cramped little clearing station, looked up from the bedside of some poor fella who bought a heap of shrapnel in his face. “You get yourself in trouble again, doll?” She looped gauze around her patient’s head, glancing up and chewing her gum. “Kit, you do something?”

  “No,” I said, followed by a cringe. We’d been at this clearing station for three days, having just bivouacked to our new field hospital after the battle for Arracourt started; I hadn’t had time to get in serious trouble. The spare time I did have I spent sleeping, sometimes on our medical cots in between patients—definitely not something I remember Nurse Blanchfield mentioning in the War Department film on what to expect.

  “You write another complaint letter?” Roxy asked, and I rolled my eyes.

  Letters. “No,” I said. Roxy didn’t like the letters, said it put a target on her and our chief nurse’s backs since we bunked and nursed together. Not that I complained about anything that important; better toiletries, and a share of the command staff’s wine was about all I had requested.

  “Maybe you stayed out too late?” Roxy said, and I shook my head. “Oh, I know!” Her eyebrows rose into her forehead, fanning her thick lashes. “Maybe you forgot a shift? They don’t like shift dodgers, ya know…”

  “That’s not it,” I said.

  “Maybe you—”

  “Roxy,” I said, but she leaned over her patient and projected her whisper with a cupped hand.

  “Boy, the doctor looks mad,” she said, followed by a whistle.

  I glared. “Would you—jeez!” I said, and she finally clammed up.

  As much as I didn’t want to admit it, he looked mad all right, shaking that pointed finger. I certainly didn’t have to come all the way to France to get a finger pointed at me. I could have stayed on the dairy farm in Washington where I was doing a fine job upsetting my father regularly by smoking in the barn, and ever
yone knows you shouldn’t smoke in a barn with all that hay, but I was trying to hide my ugly little habit from my mother.

  The doctor shook his head as he continued to operate, and the man left in a rush, throwing back the tent flaps.

  “Well think,” Roxy said. “You must have done something.”

  Headlamps from his parked vehicle shined onto our tent. He was waiting for the doctor to finish. It’s not the cigarettes, and it’s not the letters… I gasped, hand to my mouth. Ah hell, what if he knows? My stomach sank, thinking someone had found me out.

  Roxy waved me over to help her, and I composed myself as best I could, holding her patient’s head steady between my hands.

  “No sense in getting upset yet. Right?” Roxy said, but even she glanced up at the illuminated tent flaps. “I guess you’ll know when the doctor’s done.”

  I nodded, and her patient squirmed. “Hold still, soldier,” I said, tightening my grip on his head. His cheek had been a pile of mush before Roxy got a hold of it, and she stitched him up as clean as she could before evac and reconstruction, but there was little she could do. The scar that would form would be his reminder, a souvenir from this damn war.

  He caught me looking into his eyes and mumbled some words. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Roxy here knows what she’s doing. Don’t you, Rox?”

  “Sure do.” Roxy pulled scissors from my waistband to cut the gauze. The soldier whimpered a bit, then asked the question we knew we couldn’t answer truthfully.

  “Are the girls gonna wanna kiss me back home?” Suddenly his voice sounded like all the other boys before landing on the beaches, naïve and sweet, and oh so pure, not yet sullied by the harsh reality of war.

  Roxy stopped chewing her gum and batted those big brown eyes of hers. “Hey, now, big fella.” Roxy grabbed the soldier’s hand and pressed it against her right breast, which was covered only by the thin twill of her olive drab nursing fatigues. “Who cares about kissing when you’ve got these big hands?” Only Roxy could do these things and get away with it. She gave me a wink. “Right, Kit?”

  “Roxy doesn’t lie,” I said, and that really was the truth. “She’s from New Jersey.”

  Roxy smiled with that famous Roxy smile of hers. “That’s right, I’m from Jersey and ask anyone out here. Nobody from Jersey will lie to you.” She leaned over the soldier and kissed him right on the mouth. “If anyone gives you crap back home, you tell ’em you had the greatest dame in all the Nurse Corps. You got me?”

  She kissed him again before the medics moved him to evac, only he smooched back a second too late while staring at the tent ceiling. And he was gone; only the faint scent of Roxy’s hair soap to remember her by.

  We rushed to prepare her vacant bed, and soon enough we each had another patient. Spitting rain turned into a pour, knocking on the tent like big, fat knuckles, channeling a muddy soup of water around our floorboards.

  The doctor took off his gloves, and I immediately sat down when I heard the latex peel and snap from his fingers. He rushed toward me, and I had a terrible sinking feeling that this had nothing to do with my secret, but had everything to do with my brother, who’d been captured by the Germans not long ago. Red, our chief nurse, walked up behind him and my whole body tightened, bracing for the terrible news he was about to deliver.

  “Doctor Burk—”

  “Kit,” he said, and I stopped breathing, waiting for those inevitable words of doom. Your brother’s dead. My heart lobbed in my chest and pumped in my ears. “Is it my brother?”

  He shook his head, and the breath I’d been holding blew from my mouth, but I still wasn’t completely relieved. He motioned for Red to sit next to us. “Some men are waiting for you outside this tent—a sergeant and one other—you’ll need to go with them and do whatever they say.”

  “From the Nurse Corps?” I asked.

  “Sergeant Meyer is his name.” He swallowed, appearing conflicted, which did little to ease my nerves. “He’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

  I pointed to my wounded soldier, waiting to be bandaged. “But I have a patient,” I said.

  “Roxy and I will manage,” he said, and Roxy looked up from the suture needle she was threading. Red looked concerned, taking off her hair cap and holding it between her hands.

  “But Doctor Burk…” Red said.

  “It’s an order, Red,” he said, and that was enough for her. “Do what they ask.”

  The tent flaps flew open and the sergeant stepped inside. He pointed at me and then to Red. “You two,” he said, hiking a thumb over his shoulder, “this way.”

  The doctor patted the top of my head as if he was sending me off to an unknown place, never to see me again. “I don’t understand.” I looked to Red for help, but she’d made way to leave.

  “Kit,” Red said. “It’s an order.” She fit her helmet over her head, hastily tucking in her ginger curls, and left out the open tent flaps. The doctor put his head in his hands, which only made me feel more uneasy than before.

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  The sergeant hiked his thumb over his shoulder again. “You’re wasting time.”

  Roxy pretended not to know anything strange was going on, refitting her pink headscarf and tying it just so over her dark hair, but she was a lousy pretender. She reached for my hand. “I’ll keep things going here,” she said.

  The doctor handed me my helmet.

  And I walked out of our clearing tent and into the rain.

  *

  I climbed into the back of a covered army lorry, taking a seat across from Red on a metal bench. A soldier sat with us, helmet down low, holding a gun by his side. I wasn’t sure if he was guarding or protecting us. The engine started up and we lurched forward, driving down a dirt road with our lights off. I held on to the bench.

  The soldier didn’t move, and I looked him up and down, studying him, black duty boots, and worn fatigues but no patches. “You got a name?”

  He moved slightly so he could see me, and shook his head.

  “Well, can you at least tell us where we’re going?” I said, and he shook his head again.

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Red said, but my stomach swirled from not knowing.

  German screamers dropped in the horizon, lighting up the sky in quick bursts while we jostled and swayed in the back from the uneven road. The lorry turned sharply, and the body-shaking zing of German 88s spewed into the air.

  “Red,” I called out, and she placed her hand on my knee. “We’re driving into it.”

  “Like old times, Kit. Me and you,” she said. “Utah Beach.”

  A blast on the road threw me from the bench into the tailgate. My ears rang, spits of mud flew up from the back tires, and my helmet slipped off my head, dangling from my neck.

  *

  Utah. D-Day+4

  Red and I waited in line for the ladder ropes off the SS Pendleton, the sea washing up against the ship in swift waves, causing the landing craft to whack against the starboard side. A boom from a German shell on the beach, and I grabbed Red’s arm, looking over the bow of the ship into the swirling water and at a mine that had yet to be swept.

  “Don’t look at it,” Red said. “Mind your feet and get in that landing craft. You hear? Be glad we have ladder ropes.” She looked at me. “It was worse in North Africa.”

  “Worse?” A shell exploded in the water, spraying us like a typhoon, very close to the mine, which could explode from troubled waters. “We’re gonna die, Red!” Dead soldiers bobbed in the water, sinking and then reappearing moments later, bloated as whales.

  Red turned me by the shoulders. “We’re not going to die. Got it?” She nudged me toward the rope ladder. “Now go. Eyes on your boots, Kit!”

  GIs already in the landing craft shouted at us to hurry as we climbed down the rope, canteens hanging from our belts, medical kits tied around our waists, and wearing men’s uniforms that were two sizes too big. Only I fell feet above the craft and landed mighty
hard from a shift in the water. Red grabbed me by the sleeve and pulled me in close next to her in the rear of the craft. “Stick close to me,” she said, and that was exactly what I’d been doing since we met in England, waiting for orders at the evacuation hospital at Tortworth Castle. She’d just arrived from North Africa, having already seen her fair share of horrors, and took me under her wing.

  Our craft motored toward the shore after a listing start. The nurse next to me vomited into her helmet. “Helmets on!” Red barked, and the nurse burst into tears, holding her helmet like a bucket between her legs. Red dumped the helmet out in the water collecting around our boots and told her to put it back on her head.

  The bow ramp lowered, and we marched right into the water, which looked to be about waist-deep. “The swells come in fast,” someone shouted. “Get off the beach!”

  I stepped into the cold ocean water as a German aircraft fired on the beach, punching holes into the sand. Zap, zap, zap. Nurses fell into the surf like dominoes, screaming along with the sharp zips of returning fire. Ships still looking for sea-lanes erupted into flames. A swell took me under, and I sank to the seafloor under the weight of my pack. Red’s searching hand grabbed a hold of my collar and lifted my nose above the churning water, dragging me to the beach.

  “Kick,” was all I heard between the pulses of water splashing into my ears. “Kick!”

  Somehow, someway, I was able to turn upright by digging my water-filled boots into the soft sand. I gasped for air and got a load of saltwater instead. The enemy aircraft flew off inland, smoke billowing from one of its engines and droning from being hit, while we washed up onto the shore, coughing and yakking up the sea.

  I clawed my way up the beach, one hand after the other.

  Red spat out some sand, coughing and mumbling, before swiping seaweed from her eyes. Her chinstrap dangled from her helmet, then a rolling wave took it from her head. “Damn, Kit, you’re heavy for being so small.”