by Helen Wells
So she leaned back between Ann and Gwen, and drank in the sight of sun and leaves and dappled shadows, and enjoyed herself.
Their first glimpse of the little town was a curtain of protective barrage balloons, low in the sky, attached to cables. These helped fend off enemy planes. They saw three houses with roofs missing. In another house they looked in through a broken wall and saw a woman, wearing her coat, cooking at a stove. But at the village square, where the jeep driver called “Last stop!”, they found themselves in a kind of storybook village.
“It must be a movie set,” Gwen insisted, as they all stood and stared. “It can’t be real.”
Elsie planted her feet firmly on the ground, industriously opened her guidebook, and read aloud, “Forty-five million people live on this small crowded island. The need for privacy has made them reserved. The Magna Charta was the first democratic bill of rights—”
“Elsie! We can do that later!”
Elsie thumbed through the book. “I had the wrong page. No place in England,” she read brightly, “is more than a hundred miles from the sea. There is a great variety of scenery. The—”
“Well, look at the scenery!”
“—Tower of London is a thousand years old, and—”
“It’s positively dreamy,” Agnes Gray crooned to herself. “Oh, do you suppose we’ll be permitted to take pictures?”
Cherry and Ann were murmuring, “It’s lovely, lovely!”
Nestled in a green valley, this village, with its low ancient buildings, was like a jewel cupped in a setting. A mellow patina of age had softened and deepened all the colors. The rosy bricks of the many-chimneyed houses were overgrown with rustling ivy, shaded by massive trees. Plaster cottages with steep, sloping, thatched roofs and dormer windows sat amidst gardens. The pub—public house—and the Fish and Chips shop displayed curious many-paned windows, and worn stone doorsteps that must have known the tread of the people of Elizabethan times. The silvery-gray fieldstone church, of exquisite and simple design, stood in the heart of the village, facing the single winding tree-lined street, High Street. Along the lanes were gardens and hedges ripe with centuries of cultivation. Over everything hung a serenity and dignity, even in wartime, which was very impressive.
The nurses strolled past a line of people patiently waiting at a sign Queue Up Here For Bus. Their pitifully shabby clothes, rather worn faces, several bandaged arms and legs and heads, bespoke the hardships of war. Yet these English people appeared cheerful and calm. The only betrayal was that the women on line stared at the American girls’ nice stockings. Their own were homely makeshifts, much darned.
The girls looked in the window of a food shop. There was little except potatoes, mutton and Brussels sprouts. No eggs, no red meat, no oranges.
Cherry sighed. “Let’s go see the church,” she suggested.
They went up High Street, past a staid chemist shop which, unlike an American drugstore, was not a wondrous bazaar but sold only drugs, past a stationer’s with books in the small window, past the familiar red front of a Woolworth’s. They found the church was lovely within, and with the rector’s permission, they lingered there.
Coming out, the girls remembered Major Thorne’s suggestion that they have a tea party.
“Have we the right to eat these people’s limited food?” Ann asked.
They debated it, and decided Major Thorne would not have suggested having tea if it were not all right.
“Besides,” Maggie offered shyly, “we’ll be careful to eat very, very little.”
Cherry remembered having passed a shop with a sign reading Tiffin at Four O’clock. She proposed, “Tiffin must mean tea, and four o’clock must mean you can’t buy food at any old hour of the day.”
They found the shop and went in. It was a modest little tearoom. A plump woman in a flowered apron bustled over to them. She addressed the nurses, in a country accent which they could hardly understand, as “our transatlantic friends.” It made Cherry feel very strange to realize she now had the status of a foreigner, albeit a welcome one. The woman apologized that there were no traditional strawberries and thick cream and crumpets for tea during wartime. Instead, she served them excellent tea and paper-thin cucumber sandwiches. They were fun but not filling. Cherry, who had a hearty appetite, began to sympathize in earnest with war-hungered people. Paying for their tiffin led to confusion and hilarity. The big English bank notes looked like wallpaper to them, and the huge coins like lockets. The obliging teashop woman explained, and said as they walked out the door:
“Come back after the war. Then you’ll see what a jolly country this is!”
The six nurses waited under a great oak for a passing jeep or Army truck.
“We had quite a lark, didn’t we,” Lieutenant Gray said soberly.
“It was lots of fun,” Maggie said in such a subdued voice that they all half-smiled, rather grimly.
“Not much fun, this business of having war in your own front yard,” Cherry summed up. She thought gratefully how lucky she was to be an American. She thought too, “It’s just as well that I didn’t find Mrs. Eldredge this afternoon. I needed to see all this before I could talk with any understanding to any English civilian!”
For the next few days, Cherry helped out in the Army hospital. She met so many new people and was shifted around so much, from ward to X-ray rooms, from giving treatments to soldiers to being circulating nurse at surgeries, that her head whirled. One tired Chief Nurse said to her, “I wish to goodness more of our young girls would enter nursing. There’s the free Cadet Nurse Corps scholarship for them, and all. Student nurses, right at home, could relieve this shortage so much, if they only would come forward to help and release older nurses for overseas duty.”
“It would mean more American boys’ lives saved,” Cherry agreed. She knew that, against tremendous odds, the Army and Navy Medical Corps managed to save ninety-six men out of a hundred.
Some extra help did come—from British children, eleven to fifteen years old, who called themselves Cadets. Cherry saw many of these Cadets from the neighborhood around the hospital. United States doctors gave them training. These Cadets proudly did amazingly difficult things—helped take off plaster casts, made plaster bandages, took charge of a desk. Their favorite job was regularly visiting the patients with gifts of food. And how the lonesome GI’s enjoyed their visits!
The young Cadets bobbed up with invitations for the nurses from their hospitable parents. Cherry was asked to dinner and to tea almost every day. She was disappointed that, so far, she was far too busy to accept.
And then to her immense delight, Cherry received her first flight order. She was the envy of all Flight Three, for the others’ operational orders had not come through yet.
Cherry was on the line at eight A.M., dressed in her blue flying slacks, blouse, and cap—so excited, nervous, and happy she could hardly wait to get started. She waited in a small building—the “base operations”—on the air strip. Bunce, furiously chewing gum, was standing beside her. Like Cherry, he was wearing the white brassard with a Red Cross on his left sleeve. They had already carefully checked to see that straps, seats, and medical kit, were in place for patients. Bunce was too excited to talk. He merely sputtered.
“If I do anything wrong—gosh, Miss Cherry, keep your eyes peeled—maybe you could catch my mistakes in time—”
“You aren’t going to make any mistakes, Bunce. Calm down or you’ll explode into a million little pieces.”
“Yes, ma’am! I’m calm! I’m calm like anything! Just—just—I mean—”
“Well, here’s our pilot!” Cherry exclaimed.
Captain Cooper strode down the air strip to the base operations hut, past the C-47’s with their motors idling. Lieutenants Mason and Greenberg marched together behind him, carrying their gear. Wade was not laughing this morning; he looked almost stern.
“Good morning, Nurse. ’Morning, Sergeant. Parachute checkup. Line up, please.”
Cherry nodde
d hello to the copilot and the radioman as they all lined up and Wade inspected their harness.
“All right, everybody. Destination—Prestwick! Give it everything you’ve got.” Captain Cooper gave orders to his own crew, and to Cherry, “Nurse, whistle when you want me.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Wade stayed at the hut to make his necessary clearances and manifests—that is, records of crew, weights, weather, flight plan—and to make a last-minute weather check. The flight nurse and her technician walked on ahead to the plane.
At the plane they were joined by the Flight Surgeon, plump little Major Thorne. Then the copilot backed up the C-47 to meet five ambulances rolling down the field. Cherry and Bunce ran, and Major Thorne puffed along too, to be on hand as the ambulance orderlies lifted out the litters.
Cherry caught her breath as she looked into the first litter. She pressed her lips tightly together, to keep from weeping at what she saw. This was no healthy GI playing patient; this was a boy with his leg torn off. In the second litter handed down, lay a khaki-clad fellow whose face was white and set with pain; his tag showed that his spinal cord was severed. “Easy, don’t jolt him,” she cautioned the stretcher-bearers. She smiled at the lad.
“How are you, fellow?”
“I’m fine, Nurse,” he whispered.
In the third litter was a boy in a leather jacket. His shattered jaw was held in place by wires, but his eyes smiled, because he was going home. In the fourth litter was a dazed-looking man. His medical tag read internal wounds and mental shock.
As Cherry bent to look at each casualty, she directed, with the Flight Surgeon’s approval, where he should be placed in the plane. Then she hurried off to see that the litters went onto the elevator safely. She found that these skilled medical corpsmen were carrying off the whole loading process with the deftness and silence of a surgical operation. She beckoned to Bunce.
“Sergeant, get up there in the plane with three loaders. Put the broken back in a middle tier where I can reach him easily. Put the internal wounds case way up forward, where the riding is smoother. See if the back case needs a sedative. I have to check in the second ambulance load.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Bunce disappeared into the plane.
Cherry returned to the ambulances and the Flight Surgeon. The second ambulance load was gently being lifted out now. After consulting with the Flight Surgeon she hurried back again to the plane. Cherry climbed up into the big transport and stood in the doorway, where she could watch each wounded man as he was lifted in. The litter-bearers sweated and strained under their heavy loads of inert men. They were wonderfully skillful, gentle and patient.
Cherry saw to it that the men were firmly taped in, each on his tier. They seemed to relax, now that they could lie still in one place. She said reassuring words, laid a broken arm in a more comfortable position, and gave a tense soldier an extra smile and pat on the arm. To see a smile come over these wounded men’s faces, as she bent over them, was her reward.
In twelve minutes, all eighteen men were loaded and the five ambulances rolled off down the runway. Just before the plane’s bay doors were slammed shut, Major Thorne jumped aboard for a last-minute check of the wounded. The Flight Surgeon gave Cherry a few instructions about the spinal and chest cases, then left her in sole charge of the lives of the eighteen men.
Now Cherry looked around for Captain Cooper. He was not in sight.
She found him, not in the base operations hut but not very far away, wistfully poking around a bomber.
“Captain Cooper!” Cherry said furiously. Her black eyes seemed to shoot sparks. “Here is our list of patients!”
They hurried back together to the base operations hut. Wade gloomily reported the list of patients. He and Cherry synchronized their watches. All this went on in heavy silence.
When they got outside, Cherry demanded:
“Wade, what’s the matter? What’s bothering you?”
“Playing nursemaid! Me!”
“Wade Cooper, this job’s every bit as important as piloting a bomber!”
“I know, I know. More important. That’s just it. I can handle a bomber. I know how to fight. But when I think of eighteen beat-up kids lyin’ back there, all helpless, all depending on me—I’m scared cold. Scared and nervous, I tell you.”
“Silly, you shouldn’t—”
“What altitudes do you want?”
“Keep it as low as you can. We’ve got a bad chest wound aboard. If you have to go up over eight thousand, give me as much advance notice as you can. Look, you old worrier, there’s nothing to be scared of. This is easier than—”
Wade bolted, calling, “Get all belts fastened. Let me know when you’re ready back there to take off.”
“We’re ready now. Won’t you come back and tell the boys—”
But Wade was gone. Cherry bit her lip in exasperation.
She tried to reassure the wounded soldiers. Standing in the aisle, she said:
“We have a fine, experienced pilot, fellows. And Sergeant Bunce and I are going to take good care of you. So you just relax and try to sleep.”
The weakest men seemed not to have heard. The rest stared back at her solemnly.
Their engines roared. She and Bunce made a final check to see that all the patients were secured. Then they sat down on bucket seats and strapped in. They felt the plane strain, then gently lift. Cherry clasped her hands anxiously. Now came the big test for her—for all of her crew.
Bunce was anxious, too. He whispered to her:
“I put water and coffee and fruit juice in the kitchen. There’s plenty of plasma, extra oxygen, and I laid out fresh dressings for that internal wounds case. Oh, yes, and I gave the spinal cord case a sedative. All right?”
“Very all right!” She wished silently that Wade were as thoroughly reliable as Bunce.
They leveled off at around four thousand feet and flew along smoothly in the morning sunlight. Now Cherry had to take back that mental comment. The cockpit door opened and in came the pilot. He walked unsteadily down the aisle between the litters, his eyes glancing into each tier. He faced Cherry sheepishly.
“Copilot took over.” Wade cleared his throat. “Uh—everyone comfortable?” Then, without any prompting, he raised his voice and self-consciously said:
“Men, my name’s Cooper. I just want you to know that when I was in the ATC, I flew from San Francisco to Stalingrad through a series of storms with a load of machinery and we set her down without a scratch.”
Wade said it all in one breath, as if he were ashamed of it.
One weak voice called, “Get any vodka?”
Wade relaxed. “Vodka and champagne and caviar—for breakfast! And they met us at the airport with a brass band!”
There were amused murmurs and smiles along the tiers of wounded men.
“Thanks, Wade,” Cherry whispered.
“Sure. Take it easy, fellows!”
Cherry whispered, “I thought you’d flown only in China.”
“Well—I—uh—I have to go up forward now. ’Bye.” Wade stopped on his way up the crowded aisle to shake a soldier’s hand.
“Nice guy,” said the patient at Cherry’s elbow. He turned his head contentedly and shut his eyes. Cherry could have hugged Wade at that moment.
The flight went off smoothly, and the patients (who had already had considerable hospital care) slept most of the way. Subsequent flights went off well, too. Cherry became familiar with the holding hospital at Prestwick, Scotland. Here patients waited six hours or three weeks, to be picked up by transatlantic ATC planes. Four hundred wounded were flown out every morning, westward over the Atlantic, fifteen enormous C-54’s at a time. The transfer hospital was a huge barn of a place. “Must be a good deal like lying in Grand Central Station,” Wade commented. The men there were cheerful, though, because they were going home. These short hops to Prestwick were easy, Cherry realized. When her team went into combat areas, it would not be so easy as this. Until then,
jumping back and forth across the British Isles, eating in strange places, sleeping when and where she could, was a gypsylike existence.
The trips back to home base were carefree. The plane then was empty of patients. They would carry back supplies from ships docking in Scotland, usually medical supplies. Once Cherry was entrusted with a precious package of oral penicillin, which an ATC plane had rushed from New York for a stricken soldier in a British hospital. Cherry thought it would have heartened that soldier’s family to see this swift, conscientious aid. On the way back, too, she had a chance to see from aloft the long chain of American Army hospitals scattered throughout England.
Cherry’s favorite perch on the way home was beside a low window, back in the fuselage. Lying flat, while floating along in the empty sunshine, she would watch the green hills skim by, listen to the motors’ ceaseless throbbing, and dream. Sometimes the sun would sink before they reached home. Then the cabin filled with shadows, while all around and under them, cloud banks piled up, savagely red, swiftly fading.
Sometimes they flew at night. One particular night, an incandescent moon lighted the air. It seemed to Cherry their plane was flying right at the moon. Wade’s low voice called her up front. He dismissed his copilot. The silvery-white planet hung just outside the plane’s nose.
“Bomber’s moon,” Wade said to Cherry. “Where is Bunce?”
“Asleep on a litter.”
“Want a blanket over your lap?”
“Thanks.”
He tucked her in, keeping one hand on the stick. Cherry could see his face in the night light. On his chin there was a streak of red from the dim glow of lights on the instrument panel. Wade smiled at her and his hand touched hers.
“Nice to have a lady aboard.”
“Nice to be aboard, Captain.”
“This particular lady, I mean.”
“Cooper, Ames, and Company.”
“I mean more than that, Cherry.”
Then came an event which shattered the smooth-going, easy tenor of these many days and nights.
One afternoon, a mission to Prestwick completed, they circled and prepared to land on their home field. They kept circling. Cherry heard the officers up in front grumbling about something. Lieutenant Greenberg’s radio tapped insistently. Finally they did land, easily and smoothly. When Cherry and Bunce flung open the side bays and jumped down, they found the whole field almost deserted. No men, no planes.