He shook his head. “The RAF raid set all the old wooden houses aflame. Meine mutter…” He choked on the words and his face puckered. “My mother died as she tried to pull my young sisters from the inferno. I tried to help but…” He drifted off, tears glistening on his face.
After a moment, he continued, his voice trembling, “Lübeck was the first German city your RAF bombed in large numbers with incendiaries. Our radio told us Churchill bragged and said it showed Hitler the RAF could penetrate German territory.”
Listening, Charles felt a strange mix of guilt, pride, and vindication. What did this German expect after the Luftwaffe had set half of London on fire?
Günter nodded, seeming to read Charles’s expression. “I joined the Luftwaffe to avenge my family. I wanted to kill many British. Like you do Germans. I was too young to be a pilot. Sixteen years. They put me on flak guns. When I hit my first Allied bomber, it exploded. My unit took me drinking to celebrate. I was sick afterward. But not from beer.”
Günter’s blue eyes closed, his grip started to loosen. But then he roused himself and asked, “Have you read The Merchant of Venice?”
Charles nodded. But why the devil was the Nazi bringing up Shakespeare?
“The city’s Christians shame the Jewish merchant, remember?” Günter paused, waiting for Charles to nod that he did. “I have been thinking about what the merchant tells them. I played him for my school production. It seems so long ago now. Happier times.” Günter paused, closing his eyes to remember: “The merchant says, ‘If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’ Then he promises, ‘The villainy you teach me, I will execute.…But I will better the instruction.’” Günter tugged on Charles’s sleeve once more. “We taught you villainy. Now you teach us. Your D-day is the beginning of the true lesson.”
The boys were silent for a moment. Charles remembered Murrow’s description of the RAF raid on Berlin as an orchestrated hell—a terrible symphony of light and flame.
Günter let go of Charles, falling back onto the ground. He smiled weakly. “I heard you talk in the fields. Go home, yes. Defend it. Kill if you must to serve your country. But revenge is a poison. Like this snake. Fight to end hatred. Fight to bring peace. Yes?”
Charles frowned. Then he slowly nodded.
Günter turned to look at Wesley. “I wish I met your Indian.” His voice was fading. “Take my book. It tells of two enemies—a white man and an Apache—coming to respect each other, becoming friends. Perhaps like us, yes?” Günter’s head drooped to one side.
Wesley gasped. “Is he dead?”
Charles put his head against Günter’s chest and listened. “No, his heart is still beating.” He sat up. Günter’s mention of Apaches had reminded Charles of something. “Wes, were you there the day Mr. Johns’s dog was bitten by a snake?”
“No!”
“I’m trying to remember what he did. For starters, I’m going to have to cut open the snake punctures and suck out the poison.”
“Oh, Charles!” Wesley’s eyes got big. “Can’t that make you sick too?”
Grimly, he nodded. “I need to be jolly well careful.” He paused, holding up his little knife as he thought. “Mr. Johns did something else, too. He used the roots of some weed; it had little yellow flowers. Any idea what that was?”
“I do! Mr. Johns said it was the one good thing we British did for them. We brought Saint-John’s-wort in our ships because it could treat wounds. It’s gone native here. It grows all over.”
“Do you know what it looks like?”
“Oh yes! He showed me. Oh, this is so exciting, Charles! We’ll be like medicine men!”
“Wes, for God’s sake, be serious. This isn’t make-believe. Can you find some, quick?”
Wesley sobered. “It should grow along the creek.”
“Go look. But be careful. Watch for more snakes. I’m going to bring up some mud so we can mix a kind of poultice with the two. Hurry!”
The brothers snapped into the same life-or-death focus they’d learned during air raids in England. Charles dug up fistfuls of dense, wet mud. Wesley scurried and found a batch of flowering, three-foot-tall Saint-John’s-wort. The ground was so wet he easily yanked up several by their roots. He raced back to Charles.
“Brilliant!” said Charles. He cut the roots into wedges like apple slices and handed one to Wesley. “Chew this up. Make it the consistency of a pudding. All right? Once I’ve drawn out the poison, you spit that glop out and pack it on the wound. Then we cover that with mud. Got it?”
Wesley wrinkled his nose and nearly threw up at the root’s earthy taste. But he chewed, his mouth filling with a syrupy paste he was careful not to swallow.
“Here goes,” Charles muttered as he put the knife’s blade against Günter’s skin, just below the puncture holes. Not too deep, he cautioned himself. Just enough to release the venom. Like prying out a big splinter. For pity’s sake, stop blithering and do it!
Charles clasped his two hands together to stop their shaking. He punctured the skin and cut a shallow inch-long line. Günter moaned as the wound erupted, pus and blood streaming down his calf.
Now to draw out the poison. Charles took a deep breath. It’s now or never, Bishop, he thought. For the first time in a long while, the Lord’s Prayer filled Charles’s mind and heart: “Forgive us our trespasses as we…”—he paused and emphasized the words to himself—“as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Chapter Twenty-five
“Eeeeewwww!” Jamie and Johnny squealed in delighted disgust. “Did you really suck out snake venom?” “Did you really chew up a smelly old root?” “Really?” “Did you really?”
Charles smiled mysteriously and took a bite of his pancake, not answering. Wesley followed his lead, thoroughly enjoying their new status as family legends.
“Yes, they did, boys,” said Mr. Ratcliff as he sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. He’d been outside talking with the sheriff while the boys ate. “And don’t you ever think about doing something like that, because it could kill you. And if it didn’t kill you, I’d tan your behinds.” But he winked at Charles as he said it.
“What did Sheriff Bailey say, Dad?” Bobby asked.
“Well, sir, as we speak, Günter is being transported to Fort Eustis in Newport News. Evidently, at that camp the army is going to teach more open-minded Germans the principles of democratic government with the hope they will lead Germany to a better way of doing things after the war. On the flip side, the Kraut we old men caught is being sent to Oklahoma to a die-hard Nazi camp where there’s maximum security.”
Mr. Ratcliff rocked back in his chair. “Now, here’s the real excitement. Charles and Wesley are going to be written up in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The sheriff’s calling them true red-white-and-blue American heroes.”
“What?” Charles and Wesley asked together.
“I reminded him that you two are British. He thought that made the story even better.”
“Hold your horses,” said Ron. “Bobby and me went looking for that guy too, you know.”
“Aww, come on, Ron,” Bobby started to silence him.
But Wesley interrupted. “We wouldn’t have gotten there without Freddy either. He told us where to go, and Freddy wouldn’t have been there if you hadn’t given him a ride on your bike, Ron. We’ll tell the newspaper that, won’t we, Charles?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Ron said, nodding and sitting up taller. Then he grinned and added, “Limey.”
The boys laughed and went back to their pancakes.
Patsy rolled her eyes. “Honestly, don’t you boys ever tire of goosing one another?” She turned to Charles. “I’m just glad you’re all right. What you did was very brave. And kind.”
It was the first time she’d really looked at him since getting the news that Henry was missing in action. Charles felt a little twinge of that suppressed crush on her.
There was a knock on the door.
“Goodness,” sighed Mr
s. Ratcliff. “What now?” She got up to answer it.
“Probably the newspaper people,” Mr. Ratcliff explained. “The sheriff said they wanted a photograph of you two. Better finish your food and go clean up.”
“Yeah, gotta get pretty for the cameras,” Bobby teased.
Mrs. Ratcliff came back into the kitchen. She held a telegram. Her face was pale.
“What is it, Mary Lee?”
She answered by approaching Charles and putting her hand on his shoulder. “It’s from your mama, honey. She’s fine. But your daddy has been hurt. He was at church with your uncle, the Buckingham Palace guard, when some new kind of Nazi bomb came out of the blue and hit the Guard’s Chapel, completely destroying it during Sunday service. It’s an unmanned rocket bomb, of all things. No planes needed, so there was no air raid warning sounded. Those poor people saying their prayers didn’t know trouble was coming. Hitler’s calling it V-something. Some German word for vengeance. It’s nothing but pure spite.”
Mrs. Ratcliff knelt by the table to catch Wesley up in a hug. “Sugar, I’m so sorry. Your uncle is dead. The roof collapsed on him and about two hundred other people.” She hurried to add, “Thank the good Lord that your daddy was pulled out alive. His legs and hip were broken. But your daddy will recuperate. It’ll just take time and considerable bed rest.
“Wesley, you’ll stay here with us. Charles”—Mrs. Ratcliff turned to back to him—“your mama says she needs your help to take care of your dad. These days, the Atlantic crossing is safer. Our navy has the upper hand on the seas. She wants you to come on home now.”
“All ashore that’s going ashore!” a merchant sailor called, in the last call for boarding.
The time had come.
Charles glanced over his shoulder at the Liberty ship, crammed with wartime cargo for England, that he was about to board. Finally, he was going home as he’d longed to do. But he was leaving America, which he had come to love too. He hadn’t expected how bittersweet the parting would feel.
“Well, this is it.” He smiled and shrugged uncomfortably, turning back to the Ratcliffs there to see him off. “Please tell Ed for me that I really appreciate his son arranging a berth for me on his boat.”
Mr. Ratcliff nodded. “I will.”
“And, Mr. Ratcliff, I can’t thank you enough…for everything.”
“It’s been a pleasure, son. You be careful now, you hear?”
Charles nodded and stepped to face Bobby.
Awkwardly, Bobby punched Charles’s shoulder. Charles punched him back.
“Hey,” Bobby joked. “That’s my throwing arm!” Then his face grew sad. “The football team just won’t be the same without you, Chuck.”
Charles swallowed. “Nawww, it’ll be okay. Ron’s coming up next year. Bet he can catch your passes. They’re always spot-on. Right, Ron?”
Ron grinned that new genuine smile of his. “That’s right…old chum.” He shook Charles’s hand.
Bobby grabbed Charles in a bear hug, the two friends slapping each other’s back.
Patsy was next.
“I’ll never forget how you encouraged me about my artwork,” she said in a low voice. “Maybe I’ll come to London someday to see all the paintings you described. Buy me a cup of coffee if I do?”
“Tea,” Charles corrected her. God’s teeth! What a stupid good-bye! But it was too late to say anything else as Patsy kissed him on the cheek, and stepped back to let him say his good-byes to Wesley.
The two Bishop brothers had already discussed their parting. No blithering at the dock, they’d agreed. Now they faced each other in a kind of attention, even though tears blurred their eyes.
Charles took his little brother’s arm by the elbow. “Stiff upper lip, now.”
“Never show we’re downhearted.” Wesley repeated the mantra the brothers had been told as they’d boarded the ship that took them to the States, across the treacherous, wide waters of the Atlantic, three thousand miles from home, not knowing if there would even be an England for them to return to one day.
“Good little ambassadors for England,” Charles finished.
Wesley nodded.
“Good lad,” Charles said. “Do write me what is going on here. Just like we did for Mum and Dad, eh?”
“Shore ’nough,” Wesley drawled in a perfect Tidewater Virginia accent.
Charles laughed, proud of his little brother’s new shield of humor. He started to turn.
“Charles,” Wesley whispered.
“Yes?”
“There’s a stowaway in your bag.”
“What?”
“My stuffed koala bear. I haven’t had nightmares for the longest time now. And I’m going to move in with Ron and the twins since you’re leaving. Ron and I talked about it. Bobby should take the attic bedroom. Ron said I can hang Churchill and our model Spitfires over my bed. So I don’t need Joey anymore.” He smiled and added with a new Charles-like swagger, “And since I can’t be on the ship to look after you properly, Joey can.”
“Glad you told me, Wes, so I didn’t unpack him around a bunch of sailors!”
“Be careful, Charles. Old Adolf’s still out there, you know.”
Charles squeezed Wesley’s arm. Then he gave the Ratcliffs one last fond look. He’d learned so much from them—about friendship, about generosity, about standing up to trouble. “Right-o,” he said. “I’m off.”
Putting his British bravado back on like a life jacket, Charles stepped onto the gangplank.
From an adjacent ship, docked and unloading, a sailor shouted. He threw up his arms in greeting. Then he raced down the gangplank to gather up a beautiful girl waiting there for him with a Hollywood-perfect kiss. It was the kind of unabashed display of joy Yanks were so good at, Charles thought as he watched, the kind of spontaneity and openness he’d come to really appreciate. He’d have to try to hold on to that American influence back home in England, that uninhibited courage to say what they honestly thought and felt.
Wait a minute. Charles stopped in his tracks. What did he have to lose? He dropped his bag. He turned and strode down the gangplank—straight for Patsy.
Before she could protest, he grabbed her. He wrapped his arms around her. And he kissed those lips he’d longed to touch. It was his very first kiss. And it was beautiful. He’d remember the sweet burning press of it for the rest of his life.
Mr. Ratcliff cleared his throat loudly.
Charles let go and imitated the thickest of London cockney accents. “That’s what you missed out on, love.”
With that and an enormous self-satisfied grin, Charles swaggered back up the gangplank. As he stepped onto the ship’s steel deck, an Andrews Sisters tight-harmony hit filled his mind. It was one of those American big band, swing-dance melodies, the kind during which a boy could dazzle a girl with a dip and a slide, and then grab her for a whirling embrace. The song was all about confident, no-regret good-byes as a man sailed off to sea. Don’t cry, baby.…Shhh-shoo baby, shoo, shoo.
Charles crossed the deck to face the ocean as the sailors released the ship’s mooring ropes. Its foghorn blared farewell, and the boat skimmed out into the Chesapeake Bay currents. The sun was warm. The sky was clear. The waters were calm and beckoning, a gray-blue mirror of the azure heavens. Charles knew he was heading back into uncertainties, back into a war-tossed world. But he was ready to face it now, to fight, as Günter had advised—not for revenge—but to stop those who brought war and delighted in it.
Charles took in a deep breath of salty air. It smelled like home. It smelled of promise.
Back on the docks, the Ratcliff boys stared at Patsy. Flustered, blushing, she laughed out loud. “What a cheeky bloke!” she murmured, touching her lips.
Wesley smiled to himself. It was the very first time Wesley had ever heard Patsy use a British phrase. It’d be the first thing he’d write Charles.
Afterword
“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, j
ustice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”—Winston Churchill
In May 1940, Hitler’s Blitzkrieg (lightning war) gobbled up nation after nation with terrifying ease. Denmark fell in one day, Holland in five, Belgium in eighteen, and France in six weeks. Only Great Britain remained standing in defiance.
Immediately, Hitler’s Luftwaffe set up air bases along France’s coast, just across the English Channel. It took Nazi bombers a mere sixteen minutes to be over London. In contrast, the British RAF needed eleven minutes to scramble their fighter planes—once they knew the Luftwaffe was coming. At first, the RAF had only seven hundred serviceable planes to fight the Luftwaffe’s thirty-five hundred. “Never was so much owed by so many to so few,” Prime Minister Churchill said about the pilots who raced up into the sky to face down the Luftwaffe legions.
The Blitz—Hitler’s air campaign to pound the British into surrendering—began in earnest on September 7, 1940, when the Luftwaffe dropped nearly a hundred tons of incendiary bombs on London. After that, Nazi bombers came almost nightly. With each raid, hundreds of homes went up in flames.
To survive, the British huddled in deep Tube (subway) stations and prefab backyard bomb shelters. Cardboard boxes containing gas masks hung from their necks at all times. Barrage balloons and ack-ack cannons ringed the city. Thousands became volunteer firemen, ambulance drivers, or simply joined the effort each morning to dig out their neighbors from rubble. More than 43,000 British civilians died, including 7,736 children.
Most children were sent out of the cities to the relatively safer countryside. But when the Blitz started, the American embassy was besieged with two thousand frantic calls a day from parents wanting their sons and daughters out of England entirely. About four thousand children came to the United States, some sponsored by the CORB (Children’s Overseas Reception Board), their costs paid for by the British government. After ten days, however, that board had stopped taking applications—they’d already received 211,448 pleas for the few thousand slots they had to offer.
As ships steamed out of Liverpool for dangerous two-week crossings, evacuee children sang “There Will Always Be an England.” From July to October 1940, the height of the evacuations, German U-boat submarines (Unterseeboot) sunk 217 British ships. To safeguard them, children’s ships were tucked into large convoys sailing in zigzags. Portholes were blacked out and screwed shut so no telltale shard of light shone along the waters. Children were strapped into cumbersome, orange cork life jackets.
Across a War-Tossed Sea Page 17
