by Helen Wells
So they wearily drilled, and Cherry drilled most of all. For she took the girls in relays of twenty, so with sixty nurses, she herself drilled three times, to each regular nurse’s one time. Cherry did not feel exactly gay.
When her half-day off a week, and her full day off a month, rolled around, the Chief Nurse was always too busy to take time off. She worked right through her so-called free time.
As a grand and gloomy climax, it rained. It was the end of March, the beginning of April, and supposedly the rainy season was about over. But the rain came down in torrents, flattening the convalescents’ vegetable gardens and the wild orchids Ann had just planted around the Ritz Stables and her own ward. Tents tugged at their moorings in the lashing rain, and one did blow away, with Cherry and her girls chasing it like drenched demons. The high surf broke loose two barges and they washed up on their beach. Little, friendly lizards climbed up their screens and had to be discouraged from such neighborliness. The ward tents got wet and would not dry out, and Cherry worried about her patients. There was no use worrying about wet floors, nor about the mud that everyone carried in large cakes on his shoes. It rained till the roads were all ditches, the sopping palms drooped like weeping women, and nobody cared whether tomorrow ever came—for tomorrow it probably would be raining again.
Cherry had once thought these tropical storms were picturesque, but after she had struggled, with the help of the corpsmen, to clean up the half-drowned tent wards, she thought of rain in a class with measles, toothaches, and those pesky, ever-biting chiggers. When the watery fury finally slowed down and dripped to a stop, the dampness brought out insects in armies. Cherry and the corpsmen and extra volunteers worked long hours spraying the swampy greenery with anti-malaria spray.
Then suddenly the sun came out. Everything still stayed wet, but after a day or two of blue skies and crimson flowering vines and bright-hued birds singing, everyone perked up again.
Except the Chief Nurse. For now, on top of Cherry’s other ticklish jobs, Major Pierce made a new health rule for Island 14 and ordered Cherry to announce and enforce it. The rule was that, despite the intense heat, the patients had to wear long-sleeved, high-necked pajamas, and well soldiers had to wear all their clothing—not only outer shirts but every article they possessed, right down to leggings and gloves and buttoned collars—to foil this onslaught of disease-laden insects. Cherry, tacking signs to this effect on trees, and dodging the bitter complaints of sweating boys, remarked to herself:
“An executive’s job is no bargain. Who loves an executive? Nobody!” She pulled down her helmet, pulled on her own gloves, and groaned to her nurses, “When we say we’re sweating out this war in the jungle, boy, you can take that literally!”
“If you think we can grouse and gripe,” Gwen advised her, “you should hear the G.I.’s!”
But Cherry’s chief worry was about Charlie. She was concerned about his inability—and his crew’s—to answer the Intelligence Officer’s interrogations. Charlie was away now. Cherry suspected that he was spending at least part of his time on Island 13, with Captain May, though she heard the deep roar of transport planes at night. Cherry knew how troubled Charlie was about these fruitless questionings, and especially about Gene’s condition and learning what had happened. Cherry wished she could help her brother. If only she could solve this mystery—even find just one clue!
The mystery seemed to be at a standstill. Nothing developed, that Cherry could learn of, from Colonel Pillsbee’s possession of the shrapnel fragments. Most disappointing of all, Gene had had a relapse. It was a purely physical relapse—he had caught cold somehow. He was more cheerful now but too weak to be questioned. Cherry had to be content to let the airman rest and gain physical strength, before she could hope for him to talk, or even write again. She had been playing the victrola, borrowed from the recreation room, and the music seemed to help him. Once he had even smiled. And his shoulder was coming along very well. But all this brought the mystery no closer to its solution. Cherry could only wait.
One custom on this island, at twilight just before the bugles blew “chow,” was faithfully followed. Soldiers and corpsmen and sometimes a few adventurous nurses climbed to the top branches of the tallest trees and looked out over the sunset sea to see if perhaps the mail speedboat was coming over from Janeway. The men had had no mail for two months, except for the little V-mail Charlie had been able to fly in. But not all the men’s families used V-mail. Still, they never failed to climb the trees hopefully. Cherry felt sorry to see this pathetic, wasted ceremony, evening after evening. But this particular twilight, one corpsman, atop the tallest palm, shouted:
“The mail boat! I see the motorboat! Mail! Mail, everybody!”
It seemed to Cherry that the whole island came running. Bugles blew for Mess but no one went near the mess halls. Everyone on the island, including the officers, ran down on the beach, pressing forward as the speedboat cut through the water and shoved up in the slack tide. Eager boys waded out and pulled the small boat in, and huge duffel bags of mail were hastily passed from arm to arm, to be dumped on the sand.
Cherry was as eager as anyone else to get her mail, but the scenes going on around her snared her attention. The soldiers were so happy that the mail had arrived, so eager and clamorous as they pushed forward to help sort it and hear names called, so pathetically afraid there might be no mail for them after all. When the boys heard their names, they ran forward shouting, “That’s for me! Here I am! Oh, boy, let me have it!” They dashed for the precious letters and packages, then suddenly came to a stone-still halt, not even bothering to move away, as they immediately tore open the letters and bent their heads to read. All over the beach several hundred boys stood, each one alone, hungrily reading those letters, smiling or frowning as they read, wistfully studying enclosed snapshots. Boys who had received packages immediately were surrounded by ten or twelve other boys, who politely offered to carry the bundles and made it clear they were going to stick around when the cake or candy or soap or razor blades or magazines or cigarettes were unwrapped. The owners of the packages grinned good-naturedly; the packages were understood to be more or less community property. Here and there, a soldier who had received no mail, went up to the mail clerks, whispered an anxious question, and turned away forlornly, empty-handed. Cherry saw several of those boys turn away with tears in their eyes: big, husky youngsters who had seen battle and who were not afraid of anything, except being forgotten at home. There were some funny things, too. Someone had received not candy but vitamins, and Miltie was opening still another fruitcake from his wife. Cherry stood with her own letters in her hand, thoughtfully watching this strange, touching, reading crowd on the beach, as the sun rapidly sank into the cobalt water. She thought mail call was the happiest and saddest day in camp.
Cherry was about to open her own mail when she saw men bringing huge crates from a Higgins boat onto the beach. The letters on the crates caught her eye. Some of them held precious dried blood plasma. Civilians donated and sent their own blood to their wounded sons and brothers and husbands and sweethearts. Cherry thought what dramatic proof this was of the tie and love between Americans at home and Americans away fighting. But she did not like the words she saw stamped on one crate. It was labeled “Purple Hearts,” the medal given to those wounded in action. It was a terrible reminder that many men, going into battle sound and strong and vigorous, would probably be carried out on stretchers. Cherry shuddered. “I hate war,” she thought. “War is no exciting adventure—it’s the most horrible thing in the world.”
With a sigh, she turned at last to her own letters and sat down in the warm sand to read them. There were several letters from her mother, and Cherry brightened as she read them. Her mother wrote that Hilton was just the same, still under snow, and she was having the downstairs rooms re-papered. “The living room paper is blue, with a dainty silver sprig in it. Dad argued with me to have it papered in red—can you imagine! … Everyone asks after you. You are quit
e the town heroine.… I’ve had several letters from Charles but no hint as to where he is.” Cherry smiled at that. Their mother would be receiving soon, perhaps was reading at this very instant, her letter saying that Charlie was right here with his sister! Home sounded reassuringly normal, but very far away, very remote now. The bugles blew “chow” again, with a warning final ring, and Cherry walked up the beach to Mess, still reading. “I am working as a nurse’s aide in Hilton Clinic, and Midge volunteered to do occupational therapy in arts and crafts. She will write you herself.” Her mother asked if there was anything Cherry wanted them to send, exhorted her to take care of herself, “and do wear your rubbers when it rains.” That was amusing, in view of the violence of tropical rainstorms. “Much love from Dad and me, Mother.”
Midge’s letter, propped against Cherry’s cup on the rough mess hall table, was livelier. Midge had written in her sprawling, teen-age hand:
“I have decided something terribly important. Don’t swoon. I think Midge is not a very dignified name, since I am practically grown up now. So I’m going to ask every-one to call me Madge. Don’t you think that’s right, Cherry? Don’t forget—Madge, not Midge. But it’s still me, and if you forget, I won’t be angry. I wish I’d been named LaVerne or Jacqueline or Daphne or something romantic. Why, oh why, do parents pick out sensible names like Margaret? Anyway, don’t forget, it’s Miss Madge Fortune.”
Cherry chuckled understandingly and turned the pages of Midge’s letter. The paper was pink, the ink violet. It occurred to Cherry that, if madcap Midge was paying attention to such fancy little feminine trifles as these, she really must be growing up. Suddenly Cherry lifted the paper to her nose. Sure enough! Midge—Madge—had perfumed it! Cherry laughed aloud, but it was approving laughter.
“What are you laughing at all by yourself?” Vivian inquired across the mess table. “Don’t you know people who do that go for a ride in a little wagon with a bell on it?”
“Listen to this!” Cherry retorted, and read aloud to the girls from Midge’s—Madge’s—letter:
“Do you remember our friend Kitty Loomis? She lives in that big red brick house on Fine Street. Well, she just joined the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps. I am green with envy because she is lucky enough to be seventeen, the youngest age you can be to get that free nurse’s training. She’s already packing to go off to a New York hospital, right after high school graduation at the end of January, and she’s so important I can hardly stand it. But I guess Kitty has a right to be proud, because only the girls in the upper third of their high school class can enter the Cadet Nurse Corps. She took all the right high school courses for nursing, too. It certainly is an honor. Golly, if I ever escape from high school, I’m going to try for the Cadet Nurses. I’m bound and determined to have a profession and go places like you, Cherry!”
Pink paper and violet ink and perfume—from Midge to Madge—ambitions to make her way in the world—and a definite plan as to how to win a proud profession for herself—“My little friend is really growing up,” Cherry thought, as she folded and put away Madge Fortune’s letter.
Two letters Cherry saved to read later that evening, when she could be more or less alone in the Medical Headquarters tent. One was from Dr. Joseph Fortune, the other from Cherry’s very good friend, Lex. Cherry lit the lantern on her desk, dropped the canvas door flap for privacy, shooed away the insects for the moment, and started to read the closely written pages.
Dr. Joe’s was the small, precise handwriting of a scientist. It was typical of him that he started with mention of his medical research work.
“Not a great deal that I am permitted to write you. Lex and I are still here at Bethesda, studying tropical medicine.” Bethesda, Cherry knew, is near Washington, D.C. and is the laboratory center of the U.S. Public Health Service. Dr. Joe was working to discover new medicines and treatments. Then Dr. Joe went on to write of his astonishment at the changes in his daughter.
His letter had none of the elderly doctor’s own gentle humor and glowing idealism. Dr. Joe just did not manage to get himself into a letter. She turned to young Captain Lex Upham’s letter, knowing that Lex, whether in person or on paper, was always what the girls had called him at Spencer—a cyclone.
“Why haven’t you written to me oftener?” he started out explosively. “I don’t care how busy you are—I’m busy too. I might as well admit that I miss you. And if you don’t miss me too, then you certainly owe me an explanation!” Cherry grinned. That was Lex, all right—highhanded and aggressive, and underneath nice as pie. “Sent you some presents, with the permission of your postal branch, things I thought you’d need, not silly girl stuff. Tinned orange juice, toothbrushes and powder, combs, and I broke down and sent you a bracelet too.” Cherry chuckled. Trust Lex to figure out the things she really needed—and to give in and send a bracelet, anyway! About the work he was doing with Dr. Joe, he wrote, “I know it’s essential but between you and me, Cherry, I’d rather have a gun in my hands.” But Cherry knew Lex was more valuable right where he was. His letter finished up, “No use my writing you a lot of love stuff. I never was any good at it, anyhow. Tell you that when I see you. Whenever that may be. I just hope you’re safe and well, Cherry. Don’t forget me for any of those soldiers you’re taking care of.”
“No, Lex, it isn’t likely that I’ll forget you,” Cherry thought. “The soldiers here are fine boys, but you, Captain Lex, are unique!”
She strolled back dreamily to the Ritz Stables, thinking how nice it would be to see Lex right now, even for half an hour. She missed him. And she certainly could use his help with this mystery. Lex’s warm understanding always had taken the form of helping Cherry, no matter what risks he had had to face.
As she entered Nurses’ Quarters, she found lights were out and most of the girls were snugly tucked in their cots.
“Cherry!” It was Ann’s voice.
Cherry groped her way in the dark to Ann’s cot and sat down on its edge. The two girls talked in whispers.
“Did you get a letter from Lex?”
“Mm-hmm. A nice, affectionate letter, bawling me out and giving me orders.”
Ann laughed softly. She alone of all the girls at Spencer Nursing School, except Cherry, had been unafraid of the brilliant Dr. Upham. She whispered, “I got a letter from Jack. He keeps writing about when we’re going to be married. Oh, Cherry, I wonder if he’ll ever——”
Cherry waited. “Wonder what, Annie?”
“Bend down.” Cherry put her ear close to Ann’s lips. “From Jack’s new APO address on this letter and from something I heard this week, I know that—Jack’s not very far away from this island. And so I know he may—take part in the big battle up forward that everybody knows is coming.”
“Oh.” Cherry found Ann’s hand, with the small winking engagement diamond on it, and squeezed it. “Don’t worry, Ann. Please don’t. It doesn’t do any good. At least you and Jack are in the same part of the world, even if you can’t see each other. At least we nurses are close by where the fighting is, so we can really help.”
“I wish,” Ann whispered, “I could be right up there where we hear the guns.”
“Me too. Maybe we will be, yet!” Cherry answered adventurously. “I just wish——”
She never finished her sentence, for a pillow came hurtling at her out of the dark and knocked the breath out of her.
“All right, I guess I can take a slight hint,” Cherry said with mock indignation.
She too climbed into her cot but, before she settled down, she thoughtfully returned Gwen’s pillow—in the same manner. There was a squeal, and several assorted giggles, then, presently, only the buzz of insects. Cherry lay there, half-dozing, relaxed by the soothing hum of the creatures outside. Suddenly the hum grew louder and louder. Planes! Cherry grew suddenly wide awake. The sound of the busy motors mingled with the rumble of distant guns started her wondering again about the mystery of Gene. These sounds of war, so very close, made her fully aware of the importan
ce of solving the mystery quickly. She began to review in her mind the meager facts which she and Charlie had gleaned—step by step. First, the operation and the strange wound. Vividly in her mind’s eye she assisted again at the operation, and saw the strange metal as it was carefully extracted from the wound—piece by piece.
“Heavens!” she exclaimed in alarm. “Those two fragments that poor Bessie had overlooked! What did I do with them?” She leaped off her cot and dashed to her footlocker. Frantically she dug into it and searched her coveralls, hoping and praying that they were still there. She breathed a sigh of relief when her fingers discovered the two precious bits of metal safely nestled in the corner of her pocket.
“What do I do now!” Cherry wondered. “If I report this, poor Bessie will be disciplined.” Frightened and shaken, she threw herself on her cot and tried to think. “Oh, if only Charlie were here! Perhaps we could figure a way out!” Then, too exhausted to think any further, she fell into a restless, fitful sleep.
CHAPTER IX
Danger Ahead!
CHARLIE WAS BACK ON ISLAND 14 AGAIN. IT WAS A VERY excited and flushed Cherry who did not even stop to say hello but blurted out to him the story of the two fragments. “What will we do?” she wailed.
Charlie whistled softly. “Now that’s a poser, but quiet down, Sis, so we can talk this over calmly.”
“I have it!” exclaimed Charlie, after a moment. “With the aid of those two fragments and a close examination of the plane, maybe we’ll be able to deduce something. It’s just a hunch, but one worth trying! Where are the fragments?”
“Right here with me!” Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a handkerchief, in one corner of which she had securely knotted the tiny pieces of metal. “I haven’t dared to let these out of my sight!” she exclaimed breathlessly.
That was why Charlie and Cherry were setting out on this, her free evening, to the jungle spot where the plane was hidden.