by Helen Wells
Well, she had won half her point. The other half—Johnny’s reconciliation to being mustered out—was still to be managed, somehow.
Cherry did not manage it. A General did.
The Commanding General came into the ward an afternoon later. Cherry happened to be at the bedside of the intractable Johnny. An electric thrill went through the ward. The convalescing soldiers, even those in bed, tried to come to attention.
“At ease!” the General said. He was smiling. He was dressed in the same simple windbreaker and trousers. and trench cap as infantrymen wear, except for the stars on his shoulder. He said, “I’m glad to see you’re all improving. “I’ve been reading reports about you men. Fine reports.”
He beckoned to the two aides behind him who were carrying typed papers and a small box.
The General stepped over to the first bed and bent down to greet the sergeant who had been on Cherry’s top tier. “Sergeant Jerry Kowolwicz, for bravery in action,” he read from his report. “Sergeant, the Army wants to award you this decoration. Fine work, sir! Hope you’ll be up and out of here soon.” They shook hands.
“Thank you, General,” said the sergeant as the whole ward applauded.
From bed to bed went the General. Cherry tingled with excitement as he told in ringing tones what these Americans had done. She moved back into the aisle as she saw that the General was coming to Johnny’s bed!
Johnny, sitting up, was pale with excitement. Each freckle stood out plainly and his eyes were round as a puppy’s. The General marched up to his bedside and smiled at the boy.
“Well, Private Kane, you’re a little younger than I expected—from such a record!” He read for the whole ward to hear, “Private John Kane, for extraordinary courage under fire and selfless devotion to his comrades!” The ward broke into applause for Johnny, even before the General bent to pin a medal on Johnny’s pajama top.
“Wait just a moment, sir?” Johnny remonstrated respectfully.
He hopped out of bed on his one good leg, and stood at attention.
“—award you the very high decoration—the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism!”
The applause was deafening. The General applauded too. Cherry clapped her hands till they burned. When it had quieted down a bit, the General said,
“Tell me, son. How old are you?”
There was silence. You could have heard a pin drop. All the men were poker-faced. Cherry watched Johnny hard.
He gulped. “I’m fourteen and a half, sir,” he admitted.
“Well, I’ll be—!” The General shook the boy’s hand and he himself helped Johnny back into bed. “You little rascal!”
Johnny held out until after the General had made all the awards, and left. Then he pulled the covers up over his face. Cherry went and peeked underneath. The boy was sobbing into his pillow.
She stroked his hair. He seized her hand and held on tight.
“I—I did the right thing, though!” he choked out.
“You certainly did and it took courage. I’m awfully proud of you! Your mother will be thrilled!”
He sniffed loudly. “Well, anyhow, I won’t mind so much—goin’ back to school—with a D. S. C. pinned on me! I’m satisfied to go now. You were right, at that, even if you are a girl. You—you win!”
The last Cherry ever saw of Johnny, he was smiling, and waving good-bye to her from his bed.
CHAPTER VII
Christmas Party
CHERRY’S CHRISTMAS STARTED AT SIX A.M. WHEN THE bugle notes of reveille echoed around the hills. She climbed out of bed eagerly. Today was not only Christmas but her birthday. Though her birthday was really December twenty-fourth, Cherry was celebrating it today. She looked out the barracks window hoping to see snow. A light powder of frost lay on the British earth and trees.
“Back home,” she thought, “in the good old U.S.A., and especially in Hilton, Illinois, I’ll bet the snow’s knee-deep—trees groaning with the weight of it!”
It was going to be lonely, not being able to spend her Christmas-birthday at home, with her family. Perhaps there would be letters from home for her today. There should be. Cherry was a little disappointed that no Christmas packages had arrived as yet. Where were they?
The girls were waking up, lazing a little this holiday morning. Only Elsie and Agnes had flight orders today. They were disappointed, because all the flight nurses were giving a Christmas party for the children of the near-by villages. It was Bunce’s idea, originally. Everybody was pitching in, though, to make the party a success.
“First, I absolutely must get my mail!” Cherry declared.
Gwen and Ann grinned at each other. “We have your mail, dear. We’ve had it hidden away for three days.”
“You wretches!”
“Oh, we know you! We know you could never hold out till your birthday to open your presents!”
“Give them to me right away!” Cherry implored.
Gwen said solicitously, “Not on an empty stomach?”
Cherry shrieked. “Yes, before breakfast! Come on now—hand them over!”
Flight Three was enjoying the joke hugely. Ann and Gwen dug Cherry’s packages out of their foot lockers. The whole flight looked on appreciatively as Cherry unwrapped her birthday-Christmas gifts. There was food from Cherry’s mother—which by unspoken Army agreement was community property—a tiny camera and some precious rolls of film from Cherry’s father. Midge sent impractical, lace-edged, crepe underthings, but Cherry was glad to see “something civilized” again. Dr. Joe sent a book; he always sent that. For the first time in Cherry’s life, there was no present from her twin brother, Charlie, though she had sent him one, months before. She was disappointed but realized the Army Air Forces must be sending Charlie to places where there were no knickknacks to buy. There was no present from Lex, either, though Cherry really did not expect one.
“A very respectable haul,” Gwen declared loyally. “My vote goes for the pretties Midge sent.”
“There isn’t much you can give someone in service,” Ann said. “However, Gwen and I did find you these.”
“These” were a beautifully tooled leather writing case, and a quaint old silver powder box. Cherry was really pleased with these typically English souvenirs.
She had presents for her two old friends, too. “Don’t know how you’ll ever get these home, but here they are.” It was Cherry’s turn to dig puppy-fashion in her foot locker. She handed Ann a blue Wedgwood teapot, “to match your eyes, Annie.” And for Gwen she had a pair of tawny tortoise-shell combs.
So everyone was completely happy.
“Mail for you, too, Cherry,” Gwen confessed. She took a handful of letters from her seemingly bottomless foot locker.
The girls began to troop out to breakfast. “Coming, Cherry?”
“What, with all these letters to feast on!”
“I’ll bring you some coffee,” Ann promised, patting Cherry’s black curls. “Happy birthday!”
Cherry curled up on her bed, in the deserted barracks room. Six letters to read and enjoy—from her mother, her dad, Charlie, Dr. Joe, Midge Fortune, and finally Lex. Cherry stacked them in that order and eagerly started to read.
Mrs. Ames wrote a good, satisfying letter about home. It was full of little details about the house, the neighbors, and the antics of Midge who was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Ames while her father, Dr. Fortune, was in the Army Medical Corps. “I miss you, Cherry,” her mother wrote. “Frankly, I worry about you. I would be just as well satisfied if the Army Nurse Corps would send you back to the United States.”
“I wouldn’t be satisfied, Mother,” Cherry replied silently. “What an odd idea for you to think up! Never mind, I’ll write you a long, newsy letter soon.”
Her father was not much of a hand at letter writing, leaving that chore to Mrs. Ames. Nevertheless, when Cherry opened his V-mail, she burst into giggles. Reproduced on the tiny page was a tiny airplane and a girl—labeled C. A.—hanging onto the tail. Her father
’s drawing was so bad, and his idea of her job so strange, that Cherry sat and shook with laughter. “This bee-you-tee-ful picture from your loving Dad,” he wrote.
Charlie had sent a V-mail also, two of them in fact. Cherry bent over his close typing.
“Congratulate me. I am,” he wrote, “a hero by mistake. I was flying down a mountain pass here in—– and came to two passes that looked exactly alike. I mean they—–. I was flying by map. Just when I was getting good and worried, I saw a field with a dozen—– so I went down in a surprise dive and set them afire. When I got back, it took my commander and me two hours of studying our maps to figure out what field I’d shot up so neatly. Seems I’d been two hundred miles north of where I had intended to be! No medals for this, either! It’s a gyp.”
Cherry grinned. She’d have to show Wade this letter, even if it started him wishing for combat flying again. Wade and Charlie certainly would understand each other. Cherry puzzled over the blanks in her twin’s letter. It sounded as if Charlie were somewhere in the Orient, possibly Burma.
“I’d give a nickel, pal, to see you right now,” Cherry thought. No doubt her brother felt the same way on this, their mutual birthday.
Dr. Joe’s letter was all about his work, in general. Not a word about the Mark Grainger matter except at the very end. “Mrs. Eldredge has written me that you came to call on her. She said she finds you ‘helpful.’ I trust you will discover nothing serious, Cherry.”
“I hope not!” Cherry thought. But at the moment Midge’s fat, bursting envelope was clamoring to be read.
“Dearest Duck (that’s an English expression), I think about you all the time up there in your romantic airplane. I’ll bet all your patients fall in love with you.” Cherry smiled but shook her curly head. Midge had a blissfully ignorant idea of those flights as joy rides. “You’d hardly know me. I’ve grown another inch and wear my hair a new way. Your mother said I couldn’t use lipstick yet—chiefly because she says I smear on too much—and I guess she’s right. School is still wearing me down. But I keep thinking, ‘Oh, well, I’ll be a nurse yet!’ so I suffer willingly. I wrote to the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps at that address you gave me—Box 88, New York—and Box 88 wrote me back a real nice letter. Maybe I’ll win one of those nursing scholarships yet. Box 88, I love you! I am also slightly in love with two boys in my class, but I guess when you love two boys at once, you don’t really love either one. So I will wait a while, because anyway I still have to pass Intermediate Algebra. Lots and lots of love, Midge.”
“P.S. I sent you some simply lush undies. Hope you like them.”
“P.P.S. Do you think it is possible to care for two boys at once? Midge.”
Cherry put the letter down with a smile. Tomboy Midge—wanting to use lipstick and worrying about love!
Cherry turned to her own love department—the letter from Lex. Their romance seemed a long time ago to Cherry. But a letter from Lex was still saved to read at the last.
His first sentence puzzled her: “Dear Cherry, This is going to be a difficult letter to write. But I would rather you heard this news from me, not from anyone else. Yet I hardly know how to tell you.”
Cherry read on, with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“I asked you to marry me on several occasions, but you always put me off, saying you were not yet ready for marriage. Even when I finally persuaded you to accept the ring which was my grandmother’s, you still did not feel you could regard it as an engagement ring. I did understand how you felt, Cherry, believe me.
“During this past year another girl has come into my life. We have fallen in love with each other and by the time this letter reaches you in England, we will be married.”
Cherry slowly put the letter down. She could not see to read through the tears in her eyes. Lex married! She waited a moment, then read Lex’s last few words.
“I don’t flatter myself that this news will hurt you.
You never really cared for me, I know. It was a beautiful friendship, though, and I am grateful for it. Please keep the ring in pleasant memory of your old and devoted friend, Lex.”
Cherry dropped the letter and frankly wept. She let the sobs tear at her, then suddenly thought:
“What am I really crying about? I never loved Lex—he’s right. I never really wanted to marry him and spend the rest of my life with him.”
She sat up very straight and rubbed her eyes hard. Just the same a terribly forsaken feeling pervaded her. The pang would not go away.
She scolded herself for feeling this way. Surely she did not begrudge Lex his happiness with another girl. And yet—and yet—the mingled sweetness and pain left her puzzled.
Ann opened the door, faithfully bringing Cherry some coffee. When she saw Cherry sitting there with an empty, faraway look in her eyes, she put her arm about her.
“Why, sweetie, what’s wrong?”
Cherry shrugged. “Maybe just hurt vanity,” she said accurately enough. “Lex—has married another girl.”
“Well, that’s nice,” said Ann. “I know it hurts, but after all, dear, Lex wasn’t for you.”
“Lex wasn’t for me,” Cherry echoed. Ann was generally penetrating and understanding. This time, again, Ann was right. Cherry had never found Lex much fun, though she admired him. Yet the hauntingly sweet ache persisted.
“Drink your coffee,” Ann urged gently.
The hot drink steadied her a bit. Cherry washed her face. But she still felt unhappy.
“I’ll leave you alone,” Ann said tactfully. “I came back to tell you something, but I guess this isn’t the moment.”
“No, do tell me, Ann.”
“Well! Jack just wrote me—in our own private code—that he believes his outfit is coming to England. He says this time, at long last, we’re going to be married. Even if he has to break all Army regulations to do it!” Ann’s grave blue eyes were glowing.
“Oh, Annie, I’m so glad for you! You and Jack have waited so long.”
Cherry was genuinely glad. Yet after Ann had left, Ann’s happiness in love only made Cherry feel more desolate.
There was a tap on the window. Cherry went and opened it. Grinning in the frosty air was Wade Cooper.
“Merry Christmas! Don’t you want your present?”
He impudently leaned through the window and kissed her.
“Oh, that’s not the present,” he said laughing. “Here!”
He gave her a billowing white silk scarf. He had had it made especially for her—from a parachute that had once saved his life.
“Why, Wade,” Cherry breathed.
Suddenly life was wonderful again. That forsaken, desolate feeling amazingly evaporated. She leaned out the window and hugged her pilot, to the astonishment of Major Thorne and three corporals who were passing by.
It was not too difficult, after that, for Cherry to write Lex. She assured him she was honestly happy to hear of his happiness—“if you chose her, she must be nice”—thanked him for the ring which she would certainly treasure—and wound up with her very best good wishes to him and his bride. She pounded the stamp on the envelope, and with a light heart, went out to mail it, and to help get things ready for the Christmas party.
But she turned back. Good heavens! She had omitted sending a Christmas greeting to Mrs. Eldredge! She could still catch the mail corporal who was driving in to the villages. He would deliver it for her. Cherry raced back into the barracks and found a pretty card. She sat there biting the end of her pen. She wanted this to be a cheerful, hopeful message. Finally she wrote:
“Merry Christmas! I hope this finds you well and having a happy holiday, and not worrying! I feel more sure than ever there is really nothing to worry about. All my best wishes.”
There! She hoped that might help. Now, off to Officers’ Mess hall to get ready for the children’s party.
Cherry saw that the long tables in the mess hall had been taken down. A circle of nurses were laughing their heads off. She wiggled her way i
nto the circle. Major Thorne was rehearsing for his role as Santa Claus. Major Thorne was naturally jolly and plump—so plump the nurses did not need to stuff him with the pillow someone had brought.
“I’m well built for the role,” he jested. He beamed benignly in the baggy red suit Flight One had made for him. Then he submitted to having a long white beard, fashioned from cotton and muslin strips, fitted to his several chins.
“Will it fall off if I sneeze?” he asked.
“Don’t sneeze, sir!” he was warned.
Not needed here, Cherry wandered off to give a hand with the refreshments. Powdered milk and powdered eggs, with a dash of flavoring and nutmeg, was turning into a fine eggnog. “Skinny little Muriel and those other undernourished little kids can use plenty of that,” Cherry thought. She offered to help, but was told to go inquire about the steak.
“Steak!” Cherry cried incredulously. “Where did you get steak in wartime Britain?”
These nurses, too, burst into laughter “See Private Jones in the kitchen,” was all they would say. Mystified, Cherry went into the kitchen and inquired for Private Jones.
A sober youth in uniform advised her how the steak was obtained.
“I was doing guard duty last night. I heard someone moving around in the trees. I shouted ‘Halt! Who goes there?’ No answer. Just more footsteps and stuff. So I challenged again and waited for the password. This person in the bushes says: ‘Moo! Moo!’ Now you know yourself, ma’am, that ‘Moo’ wasn’t the password. So I had to shoot him.”
Cherry collapsed on a flour barrel and laughed till her sides ached.
“You’ll probably get court-martialed for shooting somebody’s cow,” she finally managed to gasp out.
“That cow was trespassing on a military area,” the boy said sternly. “Any self-respecting cow would have learned the password.”