Cherry Ames Boxed Set 1-4

by Helen Wells

  Some tank boys went roaring by on their enormous steel monster, which they had affectionately named Baby, raising clouds of dust. Cherry swallowed the dust, wet her dry lips, and looked longingly at a roadside stand before a farmhouse. It was piled high with glass jugs of rosy liquid and the sign read: “Ice cold cherry cider—All you can drink—Ten cents.” Right in front of the stand, Sergeant Deake, in response to a hand signal from up the line, yelled, “Detail, halt!” Up and down the road, the order was signaled and repeated, and the long winding line came to a stop.

  “Yoo-hoo, Sergeant Deake!” Cherry yelled, as respectfully as is possible at the top of one’s lungs.

  He fell behind to Cherry’s column. “You want something, Miss Ames?”

  “Yes!” Cherry said. She shook dust off her field coveralls. “I want a drink. Over there.”

  Sergeant Deake looked at her reproachfully. “D’you think the Commanding Officer’s going to let you break ranks for refreshments? Maybe you’d like a taxi? Honestly, Lieutenant Ames, I’m surprised at you.” Cherry had to smile at his softened manner. “Don’t let me catch you taking a drink out of your canteen, either. Not after all this sun and exercise.”

  Cherry was about to mutter that she did not want lukewarm water anyhow, when Captain Endicott rode up beside the nurses’ ranks. He halted his jeep and spoke at length to Sergeant Deake.

  Just then the farmhouse door flew open and a little girl of about ten, with fair sunburned hair, came running out. She was crying and there was a bloodstain on her faded cotton dress. She stumbled as she ran toward the road. Suddenly she stopped and stared at the Red Cross arm band.

  “You’re nurses, aren’t you?” she cried in a thin little voice. “You are nurses—please somebody help my little brother——”

  Cherry and the other nurses looked at the frightened child in concern. But Cherry, like the others, hesitated to act outside of her Army duties—especially with Captain Endicott watching coldly. “Oh, please!” the little girl begged. “Can’t you help my little brother?”

  “What’s wrong?” Cherry asked her gently.

  “Jack—he—we were out by the silo playing on the corn cutter—and Jack, he’s only four, he didn’t know any better—he got his arm cut! And he’s—” the child’s face screwed up as she wordlessly held out her stained dress. “Please come! Somebody come!”

  Cherry looked around for Sergeant Deake. This was a ten-minute break and Sergeant Deake would be generous enough to relax the rules and let her go for five minutes. But Sergeant Deake had gone up the line. Only Paul Endicott was here, sitting stiffly in his jeep.

  “May I leave for five minutes, sir?” Cherry asked him.

  “Certainly not.”

  “But this child needs——”

  “I heard her, Lieutenant Ames. Let her call a doctor.”

  The child, clinging to Cherry’s side, cried. “We—we haven’t any telephone! And anyway, our Dr. Gillis in Milltown is in the Army and went away. And Pop hasn’t enough gasoline to drive all the way to Center City to——”

  “That’s too bad, but it’s not our concern,” Paul Endicott interrupted. “This is not a civilian nursing corps.”

  Cherry managed to keep her voice calm. “Captain Endicott, I could give first aid in five minutes—three minutes!”

  “No.”

  Cherry blew out an angry breath, then looked down at the anxious child.

  “What’s your name, dear?”

  “Sally. And my mother’s in the hospital!”

  “Well, Sally, you tell me about Jack’s arm.”

  Sally described her brother’s wound as well as she was able.

  “All right,” Cherry said soothingly. “Here is what you must do.” And she explained, very clearly and carefully, how to stop the bleeding, how to clean the wound and bandage it. “Do you understand now? Good, you’re a brave girl. I know you can take care of your brother,” she reassured her.

  But Sally, though calmer now, was still badly frightened. Cherry glanced at the name on the mailbox: Johnson. They were farmers, without a phone or gasoline or much money. Cherry realized that no distant doctor would be summoned to treat the boy. The sister’s first aid would not be adequate. She made an instant, reckless decision, not with her mind but with her heart. Dropping her voice very low because Paul was suspiciously listening, she said, “You do what I said and I’ll come back tonight and take care of Jack.”

  “You will do nothing of the sort!” Captain Endicott snapped out. So he had heard! “I expressly forbid you to leave the Army area for any such purpose!”

  Sally’s worried face clouded again and she looked up at Cherry with unhappy eyes. Cherry’s fingers tightened around the small shoulder. She determined, Endicott or no Endicott, broken rules or no broken rules, to get back to these children tonight! The little boy needed help! Especially with his mother away. And Cherry was not going to let that four-year-old risk a serious infection for the sake of a petty taskmaster like Paul Endicott!

  The column started off again, and Cherry marched away reluctantly with her platoon of nurses. She felt Sally’s pleading eyes following her. But she had to trudge on, a part of that long, winding, tramping column of soldiers under full pack.

  “I’d better think of something cheerful,” Cherry decided, “and stop this useless brooding about those children.” She looked at Gwen and Ann at either side of her to see if they felt like talking. But the nurses had long since given up chattering and singing to save breath. “Let’s see. What’s cheering, besides cherry cider?” Lex might be cheering, except that she had been too busy to see him since the dance. Lex was along today, and Captain Endicott was present as Liaison Officer to the Commanding Officer, she had heard, whatever that meant. Her monthly pay was cheering—one hundred and fifty dollars base pay plus all living expenses paid for her. Tonight’s “battle” with her own Tans fighting the Blues might prove pretty exciting. Cherry was a little vague as to the military techniques involved, except that there was going to be a lot of shooting and spying and secrecy, but she loyally wanted the Tans to win.

  They were marching up a hill. Cherry noticed that when the column of nurses ahead of her reached the top of the hill, it veered right and entered the shadowy woods. This probably was where they would make camp. When Cherry reached the top of the hill, she looked back. The distant ruby jugs winked at her in the sun, making the location of the Johnson house clear as a map to Cherry. “I must get back there tonight,” she thought. “It’s only a mile back from here. That isn’t too far.” She prayed that they wouldn’t go too deep into the woods but, come what may, she had to get back to the little injured boy. Her decision made, Cherry cut short her worrying and entered the chill shadowy woods.

  In a cleared space, under arching treetops, jeeps, tanks, and trucks were already bustling around. Men in green fatigues hastily and softly unloaded supplies; other men set up gun emplacements; still others gathered for a low-voiced assembly. Cherry went on with her own group deeper into the woods.

  Here, in a comparatively protected and camouflaged spot, some more fatigue-clad soldiers were putting up hospital tents. Bunce and the other corpsmen were unpacking medical supplies and instruments, with “Ding” Jackson and Lex directing them. Cherry saw Paul Endicott slowly ride by in his jeep, one of the few men not in fatigues, checking the medical group with his list.

  Paul saw Cherry, and he saw Lex. But he made no sign of recognition, preferring to preserve strict military discipline. Cherry’s chief concern now, though, was to get that thirty-pound pack and mess kit off her back. She did not dare remove her gas mask, nor her three-pound helmet, nor her pistol belt with its first-aid packet.

  The pack off, she stood looking around in amazement at the field hospital which was mushrooming into existence. One heavy tent, shaped like a pyramid, for surgery, was going up at Colonel Wylie’s orders. Gwen called her to come pitch their own shelter tent. Suddenly there was a heavy, deafening, pounding roar. The earth shook and
Cherry clung wildly to a tree trunk. Ann threw herself flat at Cherry’s feet.

  “That’s our firing batteries at the other end of the bivouac area!” Sergeant Deake shouted over the uproar. “You’d better get used to the sound of a barrage of big guns!”

  The pounding of heavy artillery went on, firing blank ammunition over their heads toward the oncoming Blues. The nurses hastily remembered to camouflage their net-covered helmets with leaves and black their faces. “Look out!” Sergeant Deake signaled them. Cherry whirled to see the sergeant tossing practice grenades at them. Surprise drill! The nurses instantly threw themselves flat.

  “Never a dull moment,” Cherry panted as the puffs of white sulphur smoke cleared away, and the girls gingerly got back on their feet.

  The wiry little sergeant called through his hands, “Okay. Nurses. Now set up your tents!”

  Pitching pup tents was fun. It did not take long for Cherry and Gwen, working together, to put up theirs. Each girl put up the half of the tiny tent she had carried. “Real homelike,” was Gwen’s tongue-in-cheek verdict.

  “Homelike for a pup,” Cherry said, crawling in and promptly backing out again. “Nice in there if you like to suffocate. Come on, I see patients… already!”

  Although a rough dispensary was just shaping up and the cots barely had been set up under the trees, five soldiers hobbled in for treatment. These “casualties,” even before the “action” began, consisted of a sprained ankle, an enormous bee bite, and three upset stomachs. But a little later, Cherry was startled to see Bunce and another corpsman carrying a young man on a litter toward the hospital tents. This soldier was unconscious and badly hurt. Cherry was at his side in an instant.

  “He was thrown from a jeep,” Bunce blurted out. His young face was anxious and strained, but he reported clearly, “Looks like he’s sustained a fracture of the left hip and leg. He had a lot of pain, sir, so I gave him a sedative.” Cherry had not seen Lex come up. They looked at each other quickly. “George and I went back half a mile for him when we heard about it. Thought we’d better carry him than drive him… not so rough,” Bunce finished.

  “Good work,” Lex commented. “You know a lot for a corpsman.” Cherry smiled proudly at her corpsmen. Lex added, “We’d better get to work on that leg.”

  Before they could start to the hospital tent, Captain Endicott drove up again in his jeep, slowed, and glanced into the litter.

  “I’d like a report,” he said curtly to Lex.

  “First we’ll take care of the patient, then you’ll get your report,” Lex replied, equally curt. He said to Bunce and George, “Take the patient in at once.”

  “Just a minute, Smith!” Paul Endicott unexpectedly turned on Bunce. “On bivouac, you take your orders from me, not Upham. You’ll take that patient in after you’ve given me a report.”

  Bunce looked uncertain. Cherry sprang forward, anxious for the patient’s safety. She knew Bunce was more concerned about that than for the details of military regulations.

  “We can’t report until we’ve examined the man!” she tried to put Paul off with tact. “You understand that it’s necessary to——”

  Lex impatiently brushed her aside. “I’ll get Captain Endicott out of the way myself, Nurse!”

  “Watch your tongue, Captain Upham!”

  There would have been a nasty quarrel if Colonel Wylie had not called out from a tent doorway:

  “What’s going on out there? Why are you letting that patient wait?”

  Instantly the group broke up, and the patient was carried into the tent. In the tent Cherry watched Lex set the leg, quickly and skillfully. Bunce and another corpsman came and carried the patient out to a cot. Bunce would watch him constantly.

  Lex was grumbling to himself. Cherry took a deep uncertain breath. Cherry knew, and Lex knew, that Paul Endicott was either waiting outside or would come back soon for the report.

  “But, after all, getting the report is Paul’s job,” Cherry said to Lex.

  “That’s not what I’m griping about,” Lex said. His tawny eyes searched her face. “I’m annoyed with you!”

  “Me! What did I do?”

  “Why did you have to make excuses to Endicott?” Lex demanded. “Don’t you know the patient comes first?”

  “Certainly. I was thinking of the patient! But I was also trying to save Bunce from another scrape!”

  Lex turned on his heel and strode out.

  Cherry leaned against the tent pole, wondering. Why had she and Lex quarreled over this Endicott incident? She felt wretched about quarreling with Lex, and she suspected he felt just as miserable. She noticed that Paul Endicott did not come back for his report. And Bunce wag missing. Paul must have called the boy to headquarters. Cherry did not like that. She lined up on the chow line for supper with a heavy heart.

  Supper made Cherry feel better. Food had been cooked in camp and brought here in trucks. Shallow slit trenches, covered with grates, served as stoves to reheat the food. Cherry moved down the line, her leafy helmet slung over her shoulder now, holding out her mess gear to the boys dishing out food, and received a piping hot supper. It tasted marvelous out in the open air. Then they washed their metal mess kits, and Cherry washed her face in cold spring water out of a bucket hung on a tree. The first brilliant stars reminded her it was nearing time to go back to the Johnson farmhouse. But first, she was on duty until bedtime at ten.

  She found the evening irritatingly poky. Back at the hospital tents, everyone was overcome with yawns but Cherry. Two boys came in with poison ivy, and a third soldier seemed to be on the verge of appendicitis. But after these emergencies were taken care of, the evening dragged. The firing had died away, even the birds were quiet. Cherry was impatient to finish her duty and go to the Johnson’s. She sat in a tent with Ann and Gwen, folding bandages by carefully dimmed lantern light, and tried to stir those two sleepyheads to conversation.

  “If you must talk,” Gwen protested drowsily, “I did hear one thing. It seems the Blues have learned our location… from our artillery fire, of course… and they’ve split their troops in two to encircle us.”

  “Ah-h-h-h,” said Ann, rubbing her eyes.

  “Well,” Cherry demanded briskly, “that means we Tans have to do something to prevent encirclement and getting captured. What do you suppose we’ll do?”

  But none of the girls were precisely military strategists. After a few wild guesses, Ann leaned back and frankly closed her eyes. Cherry turned desperately to Gwen. She wanted to talk about Sally and Jack Johnson and what she was going to do. Still, she had better not tell the girls she was going… that would make them guilty, too. Anyway, the redhead, though her eyes were still open, was asleep for all practical purposes.

  Half an hour later, Cherry had to rouse them and help them stumble across tree roots to the nurses’ shelter tents. Ann dropped into the tent she was sharing with Vivian. Gwen dumped herself into the little tent, half indistinguishable from the bushes, farther down. Fortunately Gwen was sound asleep on her bedroll when Cherry crawled in beside her to leave her gas mask behind.

  Through the triangular opening of the tent, Cherry saw a million stars glittering above the treetops. Were Sally and Jack and Mr. Johnson waiting for her? Cherry listened to Gwen’s soft, regular breathing. She looked at the luminous radium dial of her wrist watch. Only a little after ten. She knew she should not leave camp. None of the nurses knew she was leaving. But she had promised Sally she would come!

  Impulsively, Cherry wiggled out of the tent and slipped away. She could hardly see the toy-size tents, scattered and camouflaged as they were, under the dark concealing cover of trees. Tiptoeing away, she gained the sentry’s post under a tree some fifty yards ahead. He was a corpsman patrolling the nurses’ area.

  As she came up, he said, “ ’Evening, Lieutenant!”

  “Good evening. I want to leave bivouac on urgent business.”

  “Well, ma’am, an officer doesn’t usually need permission to leave, if he or
she is going within ten miles and will return in four hours. But it’s different on bivouac.”

  “Oh, I’m not going that far!” Cherry said. Hastily and rather guiltily, she signed the officers’ book. She had to get to Sally and Jack. Mr. Johnson probably was anxiously awaiting the nurse, too.

  The sentry looked worried. “We’re on bivouac, remember. You’d better not go. It might be dangerous.”

  “What could happen?” she demanded.

  “Nothing is certain in the Army but the uncertainty,” he warned her.

  Cherry hesitated, then thought of the little girl’s stricken face. The corpsman sentry watched her doubtfully as she left him. Cherry picked her way through the sleeping camp. Outside the nurses’ area, another sentry, posted by H.Q., stopped her again. When Cherry insisted on going on, this sentry hailed the next sentry. Again and again, Cherry was challenged by sentries. Persistently, stubbornly, she argued her way through to the main sentry.

  But the main sentry barred her way with his rifle. “You shouldn’t go, Lieutenant. The Blues are approaching. They might pick you up and hold you prisoner. Or you might get lost.”

  Cherry pleaded, “It’s an emergency. I’m urgently needed. I’m only going down to that roadside stand. I couldn’t get lost, that little walk, and if I should, there are soldier lookouts along the road to direct me. Besides, the Blues couldn’t be here in the next hour, and,” she promised earnestly, “I’ll surely be back by then! I wouldn’t leave the area if it weren’t a real emergency!”

  The sentry lowered his rifle, but he said warningly, “I don’t know what the Commanding Officer would say if he heard about this. I’m only a private, I can’t stop an officer. You’re going at your own risk.”