by Helen Wells
“In a way. There was—there used to be.” She was thinking guiltily of Lex.
“There still is?”
“I don’t know,” Cherry replied honestly. “I haven’t seen him for a year. There was never anything definite between us. But—well, you know.”
Wade declared cheerfully, “If that’s all, if it’s just loyalty to a dead issue, I refuse to be scared out. Waitress! What can you feed us?”
After they had started in on substantial sandwiches, Cherry put her original question again.
Wade grinned and slowly shook his head. “We-ell—I want to do the best I can for those beat-up boys. But some day, after I’ve done my penance in this branch, I hope they’ll put me back in combat flying. This is too tame.”
Cherry smiled. “So you still feel like a nursemaid!”
“Let’s talk about something else, huh?”
“Yes, there is something I want to talk over with you,” Cherry said soberly. She waited until Wade ordered two Coca-Colas and poured them.
She told him, without reserve now, all she knew of the story of Mark Grainger. Wade listened closely. Then Cherry told him she had seen Mark Grainger that morning on the restricted military airfield.
“He was hanging around a special sort of plane.”
“Yes, Cherry. I know the plane you mean.”
“What’s that plane used for?”
Captain Cooper hesitated. “I have no right to tell you.”
“And yet, Wade, I have to know. If this man should be a spy—”
Wade took a long sip of his Coke, considering. “All right. But keep it quiet. The plane he was loitering around is for carrying paratroops—infantry who drop from that plane by parachute, into enemy country or enemy-occupied countries. You see, they go in in a surprise attack.”
“And Mark Grainger might be forestalling the surprise? And then when the paratroopers hit the silk, there might be enemy troops waiting for them. . . . What was in his bundle, do you suppose?”
“No telling. Dynamite, possibly. Paratroops carry that.”
Cherry tiredly pushed her black curls off her forehead. “It sounds bad. But I just can’t believe it of Muriel’s father.”
Wade pulled her head down on his shoulder. “Now quit worrying. You’re so tired, your imagination is running wild. You, little lady, shouldn’t be thinking of anything but sleep right now, and leave prowling spies for manhandling by Intelligence.” He grinned at her. “Besides, he probably isn’t a spy at all!”
Cherry said gratefully, “Good old common-sense Cooper.” She thought that if this were Lex instead of Wade—Lex with his seriousness and rather heavy intensity—the air would not be cleared so quickly and happily.
“Could we do some sleuthing?” she asked.
“And where are we to get the time or freedom to go chasing spies all over the country? No, ma’am. The only place you’re going now is off to your little bunk.”
Five minutes later, Cherry was snuggling down into her pillow and blankets. Wade was right. She was very tired, very, very tired. Never in her whole life could she remember having been as tired as this. The question of Mark Grainger would have to wait.
CHAPTER VI
A Medal for Johnny
THE NEXT TIME CHERRY FLEW TO THE SAME HOLDING station, Mark Grainger was nowhere in sight. No special plane for paratroopers was parked on that air strip, either. Cherry saw that the instant her plane landed.
She followed Major Wright into the rough tent, wondering whether she should say something about the furtive visitor she had seen the other day. But the Army doctor was preoccupied in classifying the men who lay on litters.
Besides, the guns sounded sickeningly close today, and there was no time to linger. Their casualties might be strafed as they were being lifted into the hospital plane! She urged the volunteer loaders to lift the litters aboard as fast as possible.
In less than ten minutes, they were loaded. The doctor had given Cherry last-minute instructions about the eighteen litter cases aboard, and Bunce was slamming the plane doors shut. Cherry strapped in and waited anxiously for the take-off. She had some bad cases aboard today.
Wade took the plane up swiftly. Their four fighter escorts were flying steadily just above them. Cherry did not wait until they had leveled off to get to her strange ward.
“Nurse!”
She stood on tiptoe to peer at a sergeant lying on a top tier. He was an older man, badly shot up.
“Water, Sergeant?”
“No—never mind me! Is that boy all right? He’s in my company. I saw him get it this morning. He took it deliberately—saved at least six of us.”
“I’ll find him. Don’t worry.”
Cherry followed the sergeant’s anxious gaze and went to the next tier. There, in a middle stretcher, with one man lying below him on the plane floor, and two men slung above him, lay a stocky, very young soldier. Cherry noticed that although these other tired, dirty men had dark shadows of beard on their jaws, this boy was clean-shaven. His eyes were closed.
“Hello,” Cherry said softly. “How’re you making out, soldier?”
He opened his eyes and stared at her. Perhaps he was too dazed to speak. Cherry put her hand on his smooth cheek. Sometimes just the reassuring touch of the nurse’s hand was enough to calm a frightened patient. But Cherry had a surprise coming.
“I’m perfectly jake. Go away!”
Cherry took his pulse and respiration. “You could be better. I’m going to give you a hot drink, and change those bandages.”
“Go away, will you? Let me alone!”
Cherry glanced up in some confusion at the sergeant, who was looking down on this scene. For some reason, the older man was grinning. Something was up. What was it?
Cherry went ahead with the dressings while the young soldier grumbled. He had a bad leg, and his right arm and hand lay useless on the stretcher. Cherry gave him a stimulant, too, carefully regulating the dose of medicine to their altitude. She was trying to give this boy, as she did with each patient, as much individual care as possible.
“Now will you go away?” he scolded.
Cherry grinned at this youth. Freckles spattered over a turned-up nose, clear brown eyes and a broken tooth in front made him look very young indeed.
“You look about fourteen years old,” Cherry teased, as she finished the treatment. “Why are you so eager to get rid of me?”
The man on the tier above said weakly, “Shall we tell her, Sergeant? She’s guessed it, anyway.”
“Want to tell me?” Cherry asked the scowling boy. She realized now that a full half of the men lying in the swaying plane were watching, amused but concerned too.
Suddenly the truth hit her. The others were all unshaven—this boy was smooth-faced—he had squirmed when she said he looked only fourteen years old—
“Why,” she exclaimed, “you are only fourteen.”
“Fourteen and a half!” he said indignantly. “And don’t you dare tell on me!”
Laughter spread weakly from tier to tier. Cherry worked from man to man. Each one begged her not to report Johnny. She was glad they had something to talk about, to distract them from their pain. Even a fractured knee, a smashed pelvis, a pleurisy-tuberculosis case, and a back full of shrapnel fragments, seemed less terrible on this trip. The soldiers were absorbed in making their special pleas for Johnny.
“He had our whole company fooled. You know we shave every day if it’s at all possible. Didn’t suspect until these last three days. We were in those foxholes for three days and nights without moving. Couldn’t shave.”
“Nurse, be a good sport about Johnny, won’t you? He’s one of the best GI’s in our outfit. He took it on the chin for our platoon this morning.”
“Don’t tell on the kid! It’d break his heart to be mustered out of the Army and sent home to school!”
Finally Cherry burst out laughing. She made this announcement, not only to Johnny, but to all of them:
“Fellows
, I ought to report Johnny but I won’t. Just the same, someone is sure to find out when you’re all in the hospital. You see, the corpsmen will come around with shaving things—and believe me, those doctors and nurses have sharp eyes.”
Johnny called stubbornly, “I won’t let ’em catch me. I’m not going home!”
Cherry shook her head doubtfully but she had to laugh again. She was impressed, too, at the spunk of this boy. He must have run away from home and fibbed his way into the Army. His parents probably were worried to distraction about this youthful adventurer.
The flight back to the base hospital went off almost cheerfully, because Johnny was aboard.
As the men were being unloaded, Cherry whispered to the fourteen-(and-a-half)-year-old boy, “I’ll come to the hospital to see you!”
He scowled up from his litter. “Don’t you write my ma!”
“No. Promise.”
Cherry was too busy for the next few days, and also too tired, to get over to the hospital to see the underage soldier. She was a little puzzled over her continuing fatigue. The other flight nurses admitted they too found this work a terrific strain. But they perked up after a long sleep, and somehow, Cherry did not. However, she pushed herself and kept going—more flights into combat areas, helping out on wards, preparing for the next flight.
There was not a moment to see Muriel or Mrs. Eldredge now. Cherry debated as to whether or not she should tell Mrs. Eldredge that she had actually seen Mark Grainger on a forbidden military airfield, in the heart of the combat area. It certainly made things look bad for him. What had he been doing there? If he were a spy—
A spy could make real trouble in that spot. A spy could tip off the enemy that this was where the unprotected wounded lay. A spy could learn for the enemy the comings and goings of paratroop planes, for this air strip apparently was used for more purposes than evacuating the wounded. A spy could walk only two or three miles from the holding station and be at a headquarters tent, where written orders and marked maps for the battles to come were kept. A spy in this critical spot—with, perhaps, a load of dynamite—Cherry’s head ached at the endless and terrible possibilities.
If Mark Grainger were a spy, could the sentries actually have been so lax as to let him through? Yet an occasional slip-up was almost bound to occur. Mark could have slipped in, unnoticed, or he could even have come in quite legally, by pretending to be a neighboring farmer with food to sell to the Army. There were a dozen ways for a clever, fearless man to get in.
How did he get across the Channel? That was another, and thorny, question. Certainly not on that carefully restricted plane he was hanging around.
Should she tell Mrs. Eldredge? It was a heavy question.
“I’d better not do or say anything until I’m sure,” Cherry thought. “It would only worry Mrs. Eldredge unnecessarily.” She recalled her talk with Wade. “After all, we don’t have anything very definite to base any charges on. It looks suspicious, but I don’t know.”
Once more, the picture of Mark Grainger playing with his little daughter, in that peaceful sitting room, returned to Cherry. There popped into her head the reproachful words—“O ye of little faith!”
She did have faith in Mark Grainger, suspicions notwithstanding. Muriel’s faith in her father was the basis for it. Children were not easily deceived, Cherry thought; children had a basic, unspoiled honesty which sensed dishonesty in others, particularly in those they loved. Perhaps Muriel’s innocent trust in her father was the true barometer of Mark Grainger’s worth.
So when Cherry finally had a little free time, the following week, she used it not to pursue her suspicions, but to visit fourteen-(and-a-half)-year-old Johnny.
At the hospital, Cherry applied for entrance and cleared with the Information authorities, like any other visitor. Then she went upstairs to a ward she had never seen before. She was curious to see how some of those men, who were transported on her plane the other day, were getting along.
The minute Cherry entered the ward, she was heartened. The long white room was badly overcrowded—jammed with extra rows of beds—but these young men were getting well! It was absolutely amazing how quickly they snapped back to health and high spirits. A radio was playing swing music. Some of the fellows were already strolling around the ward visiting. Those still in the beds were joking with the Red Cross ladies as they played checkers or learned to knit woolen socks. It was hard to recognize the beat-up soldiers out of the foxholes in these clean, cheerful lads. “Our young men have the stamina and resilience of steel wire!” Cherry thought proudly. “And what unquenchable spirit!”
They were talking, she discovered, about their chances of being flown home to America—talking eagerly. Planes did a lot for morale!
Cherry located Johnny hunched up in bed. He was not a bit glad to see her. In fact, he pulled the covers over his face. Cherry pulled them down again. A pair of fiery boyish eyes snapped at her.
“I s’ pose you’ve come to report me!”
Cherry laughed. “Nothing of the sort. But haven’t they caught you yet?”
Johnny looked around guardedly. “They’re beginning to suspect,” he whispered. “But they still don’t know.” He gave her an impish grin. Out of uniform, he certainly did look like the schoolboy he was.
Cherry took a look at his chart, hanging on his bed. It said that Johnny was a long way from recovery. Although he did not know it, Johnny was slated to return to a hospital in the United States for long-term convalescent care. Somewhere along the way, he would surely be discovered and retired from the Army—though of course the Army would keep him in a hospital until he was thoroughly well again. Johnny was not going to like what lay ahead.
Cherry looked into his scowling, freckled face, and considered. Better for him to face the inevitable with the right attitude. She was the only Army Medical Corps person who knew of his plight. She had a responsibility here. She must try to make Johnny face the facts with a more grown-up attitude.
“Quite a flight we had the other day,” she started. “How would you like to fly home?”
“Not goin’ home!”
“But suppose the Army ordered you back home, for medical treatment?”
“Too risky, sittin’ around a hospital. I’m goin’ to get out of this hospital, or any hospital, quick—’fore anybody catches me.”
Cherry shrugged. She apparently was not going to get very far on her first try. “Bet you a stick of chewing gum that I can beat you at checkers,” she dared him.
Johnny reluctantly grinned. “You’re not so bad. Okay, it’s a bet.”
She let him win. They parted good friends, but with Johnny as stubborn as ever.
The next afternoon, over another furious game of checkers, Cherry tried another tack.
“I spent the whole morning writing letters,” she mentioned casually. “Do you write home often to your folks?”
“Naw. Never write at all.”
“Tough guy, aren’t you?”
Johnny suddenly looked his age. He bluffed, “Sure, I’m tough. How could I write my folks? If my ma knew where I was, she’d get me home faster’n—well, too fast. Naw. I just don’t write at all.”
Cherry jumped his king with her single. He was exasperated but impressed. Johnny did not enjoy losing. She seized his little discomfiture to make her next words sink in.
“Your mother must be awfully worried about you.”
“Aw, she knows I can take care of myself.”
Cherry did not press the point but chatted instead of other things. She exerted herself to win that game, and the next. Her winning weakened Johnny’s aggressiveness a little, made him vulnerable to Cherry’s next words. She aimed them carefully.
“I’m glad I’m not your mother. I guess she’s half out of her mind with worry about you.”
This time Johnny’s round eyes showed concern. “Honestly? I never thought about that. I wouldn’t want to—to make her feel bad, or nuthin’. Ma’s swell.”
C
herry sharply changed her tactics. “You know, Johnny,” she said again, casually, “I admire you a lot. As a soldier, you’re really a grown man.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant.”
“But you ought to grow up.”
“Grow up!” Johnny sat up, indignant and excited. “Didn’t you just say I’m a good soldier?”
“Ssh! I mean, grow up in the sense that you face reality.”
“Foxholes are real enough!”
“And another reality is that a fourteen-year-old boy is illegally in the Army. If you were really a good soldier, you wouldn’t want to break the regulations.”
“Yeah.” Johnny lay back on his pillow, thoughtful.
“I’ll come around tomorrow,” Cherry said, rising from her chair. “If you feel like writing letters tomorrow, I’ll be glad to write ’em for you.”
“So long,” said Johnny shortly. Cherry left him with plenty to think about.
On her third visit, there was no checker game. Just talk—and a letter to Johnny’s mother. Cherry sat at the boy’s bedside with paper and pen.
“What’ll I say?” he demanded. “You got me into this! Now tell me what to say.”
“Well, tell her you’re in the Army. In a hospital, but not too badly hurt,” Cherry suggested.
“In a hospital! You think I want to worry Ma?”
Cherry smothered a laugh. “Well, how about this? You’re undoubtedly going to get some sort of recognition for saving those men in your company—a Purple Heart, at least. Your mother would be proud to know that.”
“I should say not! She’d think I was beat-up for sure. Sure, it was machine-gun bullets, and I bled a little, but I’m not really hurt. And what can you do with a medal anyway?”
“Well, tell her you’ll probably be seeing her soon.”
Johnny’s freckled face grew mournful. “They’re really going to send me back?”
“It looks like it.”
“And then I’ll have to go back to school. ‘Discharged for bein’ too young!’ What a reason! Me, a fightin’ man, saying, ’Yes, ma’am’ to the teacher!”
Cherry nearly laughed at this schoolboy patriot, but she sympathized with him. While Johnny muttered that he was “strictly GI” and “they can’t do this to me,” Cherry wrote a very creditable letter to his mother. Johnny finally approved it and Cherry tucked it in her pocket to mail.