Homefront Hero

by Allie Pleiter

  “I’m sorry, soldier, you’re absolutely right—the pattern does say to knit that row.” No amount of prayer had banished John from her mind, no Psalm had replaced the loss with contentment or trust that God knew what He was doing. Her mind knew what was right but her heart refused to comply—and the tug between them had overthrown her concentration. Leanne looked around the classroom to realize she was missing a student. “Where is Private Carson?”

  “I was wondering the same thing,” Ida said. Whether Ida had come to the soldiers’ class for moral support or for the view, Leanne was glad to have her. “He was going to turn his heel today, wasn’t he? I’m surprised he isn’t here.”

  Just the thought of turning a heel brought back John’s delightful admiration of the process. Why must everything remind her of him? She knew he most likely stayed away from the base hospital now, but Leanne found herself looking for him around every corner anyway. Was she searching for him, or watching out to make sure she didn’t see him? She could not decide.

  “Maybe he’s got the grip,” another soldier offered. “Poor fella, if he does.”

  “I do hope that’s not the case. I’ll check up on Private Carson this afternoon.”

  After class Leanne pointed herself in the direction of the barracks housing recuperating soldiers. Everyone at the base seemed to know the location of every soldier, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find Private Carson and arrange for a makeup class if he chose. He was still so physically weak in many respects, and the grip was a nasty business even for the healthiest of soldiers. Don’t let that be what kept him from class, Father, she prayed as she walked.

  “A nurse!” One soldier standing near the barracks saluted with a wry smile. “They’re sending you to us now? I hadn’t realized it got so bad.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Those two barracks got dozens of men down with the grip. If you ain’t here to help, you’d best keep your distance.”

  “Do you know if Stanley Carson’s come down with it?”

  The soldier took off his cap and gave her the strangest look. “Stanley Carson from Georgia? The one missing a leg?”

  “Why yes, that’s him. I’m worried that he didn’t show up for a class I teach.” The man’s expression grew alarmingly grim. “Has something happened to him?”

  “You teach that sock class, don’t you? I think Stan liked that. He talked about it a lot. When he talked, which wasn’t much.” The man offered his hand. “Roberts. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” He looked anything but pleased. As a matter of fact, he looked as if he’d have rather been anywhere but talking to her at the moment.

  “Can you tell me where to find Private Carson? I’ve a training session in an hour and just wanted to check up on him.”

  Roberts motioned to a bench a few feet away. “Why don’t you sit for a minute, Miss…”

  Leanne reluctantly took a seat. “Sample. Leanne Sample.” Roberts wrung his cap in his hands. “Mr. Roberts, what is it?”

  Roberts sat on the edge of the bench. “I sure am sorry to be the one to tell you this, but he…well, they found him yesterday afternoon. He’s gone, ma’am. Passed.”

  He’d never looked well, always so gray and sad. Still, the shock of it was one more blow to her frail composure. “I’m so sorry to hear that. I hadn’t realized his injuries still posed such a threat.”

  Roberts gulped audibly. “Stan didn’t die of his wounds, Miss Sample. You know how sad he was. Carson…well, ma’am…he done ended things on his own, if you understand my meaning. I really am sorry you had to hear it from me, but seeing as you seemed to know him and all, I thought you ought to know.”

  Leanne’s throat went dry. “Private Carson…took his own life?” It seemed too horrible to think. She’d thought her class a bit of hope for him, had been so proud of the tiny spark she could occasionally light in his eyes. To think it hadn’t been enough, to think she’d been so busy with John, never taken the time to talk to the man about her faith, turned her throat from dry to burning with tears. She hadn’t done enough.

  “It happens. Sadder than anything it is, but Carson, well, he never could seem to find his place around here. He was proud of that sock, though. You ought to know that. The only joke he ever made was about how he’d only need one sock at a time.”

  One sock. Complete yet incomplete. And here Leanne thought her heart couldn’t break further.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Something was wrong at the general’s office.

  John was used to the chaos behind the calm—he’d been involved in enough military promotional junkets to know that the appearance of control required frantic backstage maneuvers—but this was something altogether different. It had been brewing for days, now that he thought about it. Clerks buzzing about offices with frowns, higher-ups huddled in secretive meetings and a general undercurrent of alarm. Either the war had taken a turn no one wanted to publicize, or something else had reared its ugly head.

  “Captain Gallows, you’ll need to wait. I’m afraid the general is behind schedule.” The clerk at the reception desk looked as if he’d been up all night. John felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Barnes watched the clock with an obsessive punctuality—if he was behind schedule, something was most definitely amiss.

  Feeling his leg respond to his body’s tension, John chose a chair that offered him views into several offices. A group of officers, sleeves rolled up and ties loosened, bent over a table of documents. All three of the office’s telegraph machines clacked without interruption, each telegram quickly scanned, ripped off the machine and rushed off to other offices. Whatever it was, it went well beyond Camp Jackson.

  John caught the words hundreds and Devens as a pair of men in doctor’s coats came out of the general’s office. They halted conversation immediately upon exit. A minute later the door opened again, a weary General Barnes leaning out. “Taylor, get me a meeting with the mayor and the university president before three.” He wiped his hands down his face. “And find more coffee and some sandwiches.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Behind the general, John saw a handful of nervous men pacing in front of a United States map covered in lines, pins and numbers. This was no overseas crisis. Whatever was happening had pins placed up and down the Eastern Seaboard, with more than a few heading into the Midwest. Were they mobilizing troops? Preparing for the possibility of an air strike? Most of the push was to send men overseas right now—it was why the camp was teeming with bodies, all funneling in from elsewhere to board ships to the front. Soon enough he’d be one of those walking up the gangplank of a transport ship to walk down onto French soil. If they were gearing up to go faster, that’d be all the same to John, maybe save him this detour to Chicago, as well.

  “Gallows.” Barnes pointed at John, nodding back toward his office. Without further invitation, the general turned and walked back in, leaving the door open for John to make his own way inside.

  John felt like he’d stepped inside a beehive. In the outer office, there was at least an effort to appear calm. Not in here. A doctor pushed past John without so much as a word, barking orders to two clerks about bed partitions. John heard the word quarantine twice in as many seconds. “Sir?”

  “Influenza’s run mad down the coast. Ships are coming in on skeleton crews with heaps of bodies. Philadelphia’s a mess, Boston’s a disaster. I want you on the train to Chicago tonight, but you’re not to go to Fort Sheridan. You’ll be met in Chicago and taken to an office downtown. It’s time to keep everyone calm and we’ll need your silver tongue to help do that. The Era cover couldn’t be hitting at a better time—you’ll have enough celebrity from that to get the attention we need.” He stuffed a pile of papers in John’s hand. “These’ll get you off camp and anywhere you need to go.”

  “I need papers to get off camp?”

  “This isn’t an ordinary influenza. We’re about to lock down in quarantine, Gallows. At least until we can figure out what’s going on.
As far as the public is concerned, this is just a bad case of the grip, understood? Under control and nothing to worry about.”

  “And what the public doesn’t know is…?”

  “We just heard from Devens, sir.” A clerk walked in without even looking up from the telegraph he was reading. “Four hundred dead and still climbing as of 0900 hours this morning.” Barnes growled and the poor lad looked up. “Oh. Sorry, sir.” He handed the paper to one of the men standing in front of the board, and the sets of numbers pinned up all over took on a grisly importance.

  John knew Devens was an army camp outside of Boston—Dr. Madison had talked about his time there. Half of Camp Jackson’s new soldiers had just poured in from Philadelphia. America’s military was evidently at war with a new enemy. And if the general had just asked to meet with the mayor and the university president, this wouldn’t stop with men in uniforms. John’s gut turned to ice while his leg began to burn.

  With the gravest expression John had ever seen on the man, Barnes pointed to an envelope marked “Gallows” and a handful of gauze masks. “Whatever it is, it’s killing soldiers and it’s on its way here, if it’s not here already. So pack your bags and wear these. Wire me from Chicago. Dismissed.”

  * * *

  Private Carson was dead. John was leaving. The wondrous new world awaiting her at Camp Jackson seemed nothing more than heartache upon heartache as Leanne made her way back home. She hadn’t realized that she’d expected her knitting to save Carson, to draw him back from his personal darkness, but she found herself devastated that it had not. I know a pair of needles cannot mend a soul, she cried out to God as she walked, but couldn’t it have made this one bit of difference? I can’t understand why You placed a burden in my heart for the poor man when it did no good at all.

  The lament seemed to apply to more than just poor Private Carson.

  Leanne couldn’t fathom going to some training class. She couldn’t eat or sleep, she could not talk to John—although she yearned to—and it seemed unfair to cry on Ida’s shoulder yet another time. Leanne did the one thing she always did when at the end of her rope: she knit. Grateful she’d brought her knitting bag to sit with Private Carson should he wish it, Leanne found a quiet spot in the sunshine and began stitching. Around and around, stitch after stitch, Leanne let the craft soothe her soul.

  Her prayers could always find their way up out of the yarn when she knit in solitude, but peace eluded her today. Tired of her own complaints, Leanne tried to pray for the soldier who would receive the pair of socks she was working on, but it was no use. Her thoughts refused to focus. Instead of picturing some wet and tired soldier, her imagination only conjured up images of Carson alone and afraid, hopeless in the dark. Worse, her thoughts turned to John. She saw him clenching his teeth as he tried to run on his bad leg. Falling while scrambling over battlefields. John crawling in search of safety as gunfire pounded around him. John lying wounded on some foreign shore.

  Leanne looked down at the sloppy stitches and sighed. Had it come to this, that she could not even knit? It seemed like every solace had been taken from her. She gathered her things and began walking toward home when she noticed a young man slumped on a nearby bench, bent over in a violent cough. She looked around for the man’s companions but found no one. She hurried up to the poor lad and put a hand to his shoulder. He was shaking. Another grip case, to be sure. “You need help, soldier.”

  “No, I’ll be all right. I was fine this morning…” A violent cough prevented further words.

  The young man looked up, forcing Leanne to swallow a gasp. His color was dreadful. She hadn’t hid her reaction well, and fear crept into his glassy eyes. “Well—” Leanne put on her calmest nursing voice “—you’ve obviously caught whatever they told me is going around the camp. We’d best get you back to the infirmary.”

  “I’m supposed to be on duty in fifteen minutes.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen. What’s your name?” It was one of the first points of bedside manner; learn the patient’s name and use it frequently.

  “Harper. It hurts.” He sounded painfully young, like a child moaning to his mama.

  “I expect it does. You’ll not make it in far that condition. The hospital’s right around the corner, we’ll head straight there. Can you stand, Mr. Harper?” He managed a tottering rise, hanging on to her for balance. She noticed small spots of red on the soldier’s handkerchief. “Where are you from?”

  “Boston. Shipped out—” another cough, this one worse than the last “—a week ago.”

  “The way boys are pouring in, I suppose it’s unavoidable lots of you come down with something.” She forced a conversational quality into her voice as they limped along, but inside she was wondering if he had the stamina to make even the short walk to the hospital.

  Thankfully it wasn’t long before more soldiers happened by and with their help, Leanne managed Harper through the hospital doors to discover the ordinary outbreak of grip on camp had turned into something far larger. Two dozen or so young men lay on beds in varying states of a similar illness. A nurse Leanne didn’t recognize, looking like a white specter in her uniform and a surgical mask, thrust a mask at Leanne and her soldier companions. “Go wash,” she barked as another nurse gathered a collapsing Harper from Leanne’s grasp.

  “What’s happened?”

  The nurse’s eyes—the only real part of her face Leanne could see—darted anxiously. “Some sort of virus.”

  “Not the grip?”

  “Does this look like the grip to you?”

  Leanne hadn’t seen enough of the malady to answer. Still, it was true: these boys looked far worse than those she’d seen earlier. There had been stories in the paper of “the Spanish sickness” hitting some of the forces in Europe. It was powerful enough to slow the German offensive, so perhaps some soldiers had brought back this new strain. She’d been taught influenza was highly treatable. Even the worst cases required not much more than a quarantine for a handful of ships as they docked. Her nursing teachers had spoken of it as an expected outcome of global combat, something to be managed with a clinical calm. The sort of thing a wartime nurse must expect to encounter.

  There was no clinical calm here.

  * * *

  “Why are you hesitating?” Artie Shippens, John’s only bunkmate at Camp Jackson before three more officers had moved in last night, tossed down the cloth he’d been using to polish his boots. “You’ve been itching to get out of here since your arrival. Barnes just handed you a golden ticket out of town. You should be running to catch that train.”

  “They’re not even shipping me to Sheridan anymore, which tells me Sheridan’s in worse shape than whatever’s starting here. No matter where I go, I’ll end up in the thick of it, if I’m not already. Besides, my family is here. What if this thing, whatever it is, gets into Charleston?”

  “You act as if a soldier’s never come down with the grip before. This bursts through a camp for a few weeks and then everyone gets better. That’s all this is.”

  John put down the stack of masks Barnes had given him. “I know what I heard, Artie. That is not all this is. They’re panicking up there at the headquarters, even if no one will tell you that. Telegrams are coming in with death tolls. Not men ill, men dead.” He eased himself onto his cot, his leg throbbing. “There’s a huge outbreak in Philadelphia, and we docked a ship from there just three days ago.”

  “I played cards with them the other night. Took ’em to the cleaners, those boys from Philly. They said there had been a load of sick boats, but the grip don’t kill nobody. Pack your bags and hit the road.”

  John chose not to argue. He ought to be doing just what Artie said, but somehow he couldn’t get himself moving.

  Artie stood over John. “Aw, no, don’t tell me. Do not tell me you’ve got second thoughts about leaving that knitting nurse. Shoot your own career in the foot on behalf of a woman? She’s not worth it. Not with all you’ve got to gain.”
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  “It’s not that.” She’d told him to leave. Leaving was best for all concerned. It couldn’t be that, he was just stunned by the fact that he’d been handed an escape from the disaster evidently about to strike the camp. John looked at Artie, calculating how many of his card victims from the other night had already fallen ill. For all John knew, Artie might already be infected, and himself from sleeping four feet from the man. The trio that had arrived last night had done their fair share of coughing, too.

  Artie snapped the tin of polish shut and tucked it into his locker. “If you tell me it’s because you need to finish that confounded Sock Brigade of yours, I’ll have to consider shooting you.” Artie had taken to calling John’s Red Cross photo campaign “The Sock Brigade” the day John brought the yarn back to camp and hadn’t let up yet. Artie would have a field day once the issue of Era found its way to newsstands.

  “We finished the final photographs. I’m sure it’s the only reason the general is able to ship me out so quickly. When I’m gone, you’d best take those winnings and bid sky high for my sock at the Red Cross auction.”

  “Off to Chicago while they lock us down tight back here. There are twenty men if not fifty who’d line up to be in your shoes.” Artie started to laugh, but finished it with a small cough.

  John sat up. “You’re all right? Feeling okay? You said you were playing cards with Philly boys.”

  “Fit as a fiddle. Honestly, John, this kind of panic doesn’t suit you.”

  He was done trying to talk himself out of it. “I need to see Leanne before I go.”

  “Don’t do it, John.” Artie’s eyes were serious. “You know it’ll just make things worse.”

  John put his jacket on. It would only take him minutes to pack, anyhow. “I can’t not say goodbye.”