by Andie Newton
Red had a strange pleading look in her eyes, and it was then I understood the real reason she didn’t want to go. It wasn’t about saving our boys, or not saving them. What kind of trouble we were in, or could get into. There was danger, yes, but Red had landed on Utah Beach in a hail of bullets; danger wasn’t something that held her back. “Kit,” she said, reaching for my hand. “You understand, right?”
I nodded.
“I could be listed as a deserter,” Red said. “The government doesn’t pay a missing nurse.” She looked very conflicted, her eyes moving between mine and Roxy’s. “I can’t do that to my mother.”
“You don’t have to explain,” I said, taking a deep breath, and with that, I felt my lips wiggling from an oncoming cry. This would be the first time we’d been separated since landing on the beach, and I tried not to wonder how I was going to do this without her. On D+15, she threw me into a ditch, saving me from an unspent grenade. On D+24, she found me smoking in the dark and in the rain and saved me from a Screaming Mimi that blew our hospital to smithereens. And on D+32, when I heard the bone-chilling whirr of a German Stuka diving out of the sky, she’d dragged my paralyzed body to safety after she’d already found cover.
The doctor retrieved a bag from his vehicle and began passing around civilian dresses and shoes for us to wear while Red sat on my cot, watching. “These are for after we cross into enemy territory,” he said.
Roxy’s head bobbed continuously into one long nod, taking the dress and holding it to her body. “Hear that?” Roxy said, elbowing Gail, who nodded.
I packed up my dress and shoes, and padded my pockets, checking for my pocket knife, but found the map of Germany instead. I paused, thinking of a place to hide it while I was gone, but no spot seemed safe enough, not in my things, especially with Nosy Noreen around. A nurse with a map—she’d think I was a spy. I stuffed it into my pack when Red wasn’t looking. I took off my dog tags next. Roxy and Gail did too, then Roxy asked for Gail’s ring, which she didn’t want to take off.
“Why my ring?” Gail said.
“It’s American, toots,” Roxy said. “Someone will know.”
Gail reluctantly took off her ring and handed it to Roxy. She rubbed her finger where her skin was shiny and smooth.
Roxy tucked our tags inside an empty K-ration box and put it with Red’s things—nobody would touch a chief nurse’s K-ration. She hugged Red quickly, pulling away before the tears came. “So, that’s that.” Roxy marched toward the tent flaps and stood in the open wet air, one foot in and one foot out. “So dark,” she breathed. “Strange, isn’t it?” She turned, looking at us over her shoulder. “No eggs dropping from the sky. No glowing bursts of orange. I’d almost feel better if there were, ya know?” Her voice turned into a whisper, which I could barely hear over the rain. “In the dark, the Huns can hide anywhere.”
Roxy walked out of the tent toward the doctor’s vehicle, which I could see a few feet away outside, sputtering with its red taillights glimmering off the puddles.
Thunder rolled and Gail’s whole body shuddered as if it were the Germans dropping bombs on our heads. She took a breath, the kind you take before diving into deep water, and followed Roxy out of the tent.
“Love ya, Red,” I said.
I turned around to see her once more. Leaving her felt as natural as ripping off a sticky bandage from dry skin. And I stared at her, wanting to go, but couldn’t move for the life of me.
She stood up to pace, blowing air forcefully from her mouth, her eyes red from crying. “Dammit,” she said to herself, before walking over to her medic bag and opening it up.
“What are you doing?” I said, gulping, hoping to God she had decided to come with us.
She shook her head, mumbling to herself about how she couldn’t believe what she was about to do, pulling a hypodermic needle and ampules of medicine from the bag.
“Red—”
“Let me tell you one thing,” she said, pointing a finger at me. “If we stumble upon any of that Nazi loot we heard about—the giant—I’m keeping some of it. Got it?”
“Red… I… I…” I wanted to tell her not to come, though I needed her to come, and I’d be lying if I said a pang of guilt didn’t hit me square in the chest for not telling her directly that we’d be all right without her. “But your mother,” was all I could say.
“Yeah, I know!” She slipped her dog tags into the box with ours. “But there’s something you don’t.” She looked into my eyes, and I’d never seen them so glossy. “I can’t let you go alone.”
She threw open the cabinet we used to store extra medical supplies and grabbed enough morphine syrettes to kill us all.
“That’s too much,” I said, reaching out.
Red turned around, counting the last few syrettes she had in her hand and shoving them into her bag. “Kit, we’re women. If we get caught by the Germans, the last thing you’ll want to be is alive.”
She grabbed my hand and we walked out together.
9
KIT
Nowhere had it rained more in one night, than that night in France. We piled into the back of a lorry pockmarked with shrapnel, packed up with our equipment tied to our bodies, and drove down a rustic road into the country. I fastened my helmet strap and closed my eyes.
“We’ll be fine,” I said, tipping my head back, my face wet and salty from the rain. “We’ll be fine.” The road was rugged and full of twists and turns, which made us bump up and down like jalopies.
“Is this what it was like the other night?” Roxy said, and I looked at her.
“Other night?” I said.
“Yeah,” Roxy said, holding on to her helmet. “The friendly fire.” After I didn’t say anything, she leaned forward to catch Red’s eye. “You know, those civilians you fixed up.”
“No.” Red looked at me when answering, her face hard as stone.
“What happened the other night?” Gail said.
I shook my head, giving the kill motion to my neck, and Gail sunk down next to Roxy. I wasn’t about to have that conversation. My mind was on the enemy line we were about to cross, not the laws I broke days before.
“Well, do we know where we’re going?” Gail said. “Does the doctor have permission to drive this lorry?”
“It doesn’t matter now, permission or not,” Red said.
“I’m sure Doctor Burk will brief us when we get there,” I said. “You know, in case…”
“Yeah,” Red said. “In case.”
We stopped abruptly surrounded by dark hills, and the doctor came around in a hurry. “Let’s go… go, go, go!” And we filed out of the back of the lorry and into a tiny European car that had been waiting for us with its engine running. Doctor Burk claimed the front seat with a driver, a girl who looked about fifteen, scrawny as a chicken, wearing a thin lavender peasant dress; not what you’d expect in this rain. Red slid into the back seat, and I realized there was only enough room for one more. I turned to Roxy, hand on the door, and she looked up at me in the rain.
“What?” Roxy said, and I pointed. “Oh no! Where are we gonna sit?”
Doctor Burk rolled down his window and slapped the side of his door. “In the trunk. Hurry! We don’t have time.”
Roxy grunted a little bit, having to climb into the trunk with Gail, who got in carefully as if she was stepping into a hot bath.
The driver pushed a gun at the doctor. “You’ll need this,” she said in broken English, and he took it, reluctantly, stuffing it into his pack.
“We save lives, not take them,” Red said, and the girl slammed the car into gear.
She drove into a decrepit vineyard with quiet urgency, straight through rows of knotted, tangled vine with fruit that had been left to spoil. The rain fell so hard the driver rolled down her window to see the road, splashing through mud puddles that spurted brown droplets into the car.
I squeezed my medic pack, trying not to think of what waited for us, and how we were going to walk through a village unnoticed. What am
I doing here? I thought to myself, and I was thrown back to the day my brother and I enlisted, when we confessed our secrets to each other. Seemed like a million days ago. Another me. Both of us naïve, young, unsuspecting.
*
I’d noticed his bedroom door was shut for quite a while, and the field hands were still milking the cows, and he was supposed to be in the barn, supervising. I rapped on the door once, waited for a second, and then rapped two more times after I didn’t hear anything.
The lock clicked over and I cracked open his door. He’d walked to his window and gazed outside. “Why aren’t you in the barn? It’s milking day.”
He’d turned around after a pause. “Sit down,” he said, pointing at the corner of his bed, and I knew it had to be bad. “We need to talk.” I sat down gingerly, tucking my skirt under my thighs, nervous he was going to tell me he was sick, or that Mom or Dad were sick—some terrible secret only he knew. Then he blurted, “I’ve decided to enlist.”
“In the war?” I wasn’t sure what was better, to be sick or join the war.
“Well ya, sis,” he said. “What else is there to enlist for?”
I suppose I wasn’t totally surprised. Sam had dreamt of being a pilot since he was a boy, making planes out of paper and sticks and modeling kits. “He’s an engineer,” Mom would say, ignoring his blatant fascination with aircraft, “building skills he’ll need to run this farm someday.” She was proud he’d gotten his degree in Pullman, and even prouder when he moved back home, immediately settling into the role of foreman. What she didn’t know was that Sam flew Jenny crop dusters in the Palouse during college. He was already a pilot.
“Have you told Mom?”
He hung his head slightly, gaze trailing to look out the window. “I’m gonna tell her after it’s done. Dad, he’ll understand, but Mom…”
And we were quiet for some time, both of us staring out the window, watching the cows eating grass in the pasture. Grant County was small, everybody knew everybody, and most importantly, they knew my uncle died in WWI and how his death had devastated my mother. Parents told their children about the war growing up, ending with “and then there’s what happened to poor June Perkins from over there on Jacobs Road.”
“Why, Sam?” I asked. “Why now? You registered, isn’t that enough?”
He looked at me, a little wink in his eye. “For the same reasons you’re joining.”
“What?” I’d only told one person I was thinking of joining the Nurse Corps. My mouth pinched. “Damn that Barbara—she told you? I knew I shouldn’t have trusted that little—ugh! She still owes me a dollar she lost on a bet.” I stood up. “Wait till I collect. I’ll give her a piece of my mind—”
“I saw you in town coming out of the cinema. There was only one film showing, and I knew what you were planning,” he said, and I sat back down.
“Oh.” It was true. I’d watched that damn War Department film a hundred times in the last week. Nurse Blanchfield was very thorough, sitting at her desk in her official uniform—she’d been a nurse for over twenty-five years. Everyone loves a nurse, I think is what she had said, and I wanted to be part of it—and get out of Grant County.
“You’ll be a great nurse, sis. You don’t have to sneak around.” He slowly looked up, meeting my eyes. “It’s my secret that will break her, and I’ll have to live with that.” He scooped me up in his arms and we hugged. “I love you, sis. Don’t ever forget.”
I went to bed that night praying for the mothers of the war, and that if their sons didn’t come back, they’d rest a little easier knowing they’d raised heroes.
*
The car slid with a sharp turn, and that’s when I saw Red looking at me. She patted my knee. “Did you steal that champagne?”
I smiled, and she knew. “I won it,” I said.
“Yeah, sure.”
The driver looked over her shoulder, giving me a strange look from having broken the silence. She had tan eyes. I didn’t think it was possible to have tan eyes, but she did, and when she looked at me, I felt a pang of fear.
She shouted something in French before slamming on the brakes, and I grabbed Red’s hand, but we’d flown into the front seats. “It’s time,” she said, flicking her hand at the doors. “You leave.” She threw open her door and ran around the back in the rain. The doctor got out, followed by Red and me, and we watched her unlock the trunk. She looked out into the horizon where the sun had started to rise, over her shoulders and to both sides, which made me look over my shoulders.
“Be careful,” she said, and the trunk popped up.
The air smelled as heavy as the rain with the exhaust pumping from the tailpipe. “Are we across enemy lines?” I said, but she’d walked back to the front of her car.
Roxy and Gail climbed out from the trunk looking like they’d been through a washing machine. Wet and tossed and sick. Gail ran her fingers under her eyes where her mascara had run, and her bottom lip trembled when she saw the black streaks on her fingertips. Roxy snorted her running nose, wiping her face with her wet sleeve.
The driver pointed east, shouting a few things in French nobody understood. “What?” Red said, but she’d backed up her car and sped off under the grind of rusty gears, and she was gone.
“Let’s go.” The doctor motioned for us to follow him, but we’d only walked a few feet on the trail before we were brought to a halting stop by the sudden appearance of a rushing river.
We stood like gray figures cast against first light, up to our knees in the tall wet grass at the river’s edge, feeling very exposed with nowhere to hide. Then the lightning came, streaking across the morning sky in jagged strips of orange. “Where’s the bridge?” Rain pelted my face, and we looked at each other, mouths drawn in disbelief.
“But… but… nobody said anything about a river!” Roxy said.
Red grabbed my arm, her fingers slipping from the rain. “This way,” she said, but I could only read her lips. She pointed to where it was more of the same, soggy wet grass with a vanishing bank, but a leafy bush and some brambles that provided a little cover. We knelt down in the reeds, with our medic bags and slippery helmets that wouldn’t stay on.
Doctor Burk pulled a folded piece of paper from his front pocket. “The village is a few miles walk. I have the map.” He held the paper up before tucking it back into his pocket to keep it dry. “We should be home by nightfall if we follow the plan. Get in quick, stitch them up and get back.”
“Tonight,” I said, looking at Red as if to reassure her, but then turned to the doctor. “What’s the name of the village? Where are the men?”
“Lichtenau. Third building on the right after entering the square. A sympathetic has taken them in.” He walked several paces away, sizing up the narrowest part of the river and the bank on the other side.
Lichtenau. That didn’t sound French, but every village sounded strange and foreign and more of the same. I chased after him, holding my helmet to my head.
“Lichtenau, Doctor? This is in France?” I said, but he swatted his hand in the air.
“Not now, Kit,” he said, and he walked back to the group, leaving me by the swirling river and making me feel silly for even questioning—he would have told us if he was leading us into Nazi Germany.
“Now, everyone ready?” he said as Red futilely wiped the rain from her face. “Let’s get going!” He adjusted his pack as if he was going to cross the river.
Red gasped. “We can’t cross here—we’ll get swept away!”
“The bridges are blown,” the doctor said. “Our only way across is to cross it together. Arm in arm.” He demonstrated how we were to cross, hooking Red’s arm. “Like this.”
Another crack of lightning burst over our heads. “You knew there was a river?” Roxy shouted so she’d be heard, and the doctor half nodded.
He tightened the straps on his medical pack. “I’ll go first, followed by Red, Kit—” he pointed with his head “—Roxy and Gail.”
Roxy folded h
er arms for warmth, shivering and chattering. Gail stood up like a pole, lanky with her arms by her sides and her hair stuck to her neck under her helmet. I had to wonder how’d she make it across. The rain alone on her skin looked like it had been a shock to her system, with her body shaking as much as it was, more so than that ride in the trunk of the car.
“All we need is a couple hundred feet of bridge,” I said. “We should at least try to see what’s around the bend.”
Doctor Burk gazed at the raging river while Gail stood right next to him trembling from her head to her toes.
“Doctor, look at Gail,” I said. “I’m not sure she can make it.”
After a second of examining her, he’d finally given in, and tightened up his medical pack with one last swift pull. “Okay, Kit. Fifteen minutes in that direction.” He pointed. “If we can’t find anything, we walk back here and pick up the trail. Across the river.”
And we labored on, our boots sinking into the mud and the ground, slipping and sloshing. It had been well past fifteen minutes, but nobody wanted to stop. We all wanted to find a bridge around the next bend, but when there wasn’t one someone would say, “How about the next bend?” and that turned into yet another bend and another. Roxy had slowed down, and her pack drooped low on her back, hanging near her rear end. She was getting tired, and as far as I was concerned none of us could afford to be tired. And when she stepped, she stepped with force, with anger.
“Hey, psst!” I said. “Did you think this was gonna be a picnic?”
Roxy turned around as she walked, hand on her helmet, and looked me in the eye. “Where’s the bridge, Kit?” she said as if it was my fault we’d been walking in the rain, tired, and across enemy lines. “Huh, doll face?”
“Quit jabbering your gums, will ya?” I said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Roxy said turning back around.
“Get down!” the doctor commanded, and we dropped to our bellies in the grass.
“Is that a bridge?” I said, pulling a pair of binoculars from my front pocket. “Holy smokes, it is a bridge!”
