The Girls from the Beach

by Andie Newton

  “Don’t feel guilty,” he said. “Not anymore.” We hugged again.

  I looked at my watch. “We should go. I told Roxy and Gail we’d meet downstairs.”

  We took the elevator downstairs and waited in the lobby. Women walked in, some with canes, some in wheelchairs with hearing aids. Not all had worn their uniforms; some wore pink suits similar to the one I had up in my room. “Where is she?” I said, standing on my tiptoes, feeling the stiffness of the boots and looking over gray and silver bobs of hair, when suddenly Roxy appeared, like the parting of the Red Sea, walking toward me, smiling, and wearing her old fatigues. We instantly embraced, and the warm comfort of having her with me brought more tears to my eyes.

  “Hey ya, doll face,” Roxy said, and when we pulled away, she gave me a look-over. “Looks like we had the same idea with our old unis.”

  “The last time I wore this I was with you,” I said, and we hugged again.

  “Now, where’s that reporter?” she said. “I need to thank ole Nosy’s son for coming to your house that day. If he hadn’t, you wouldn’t have called me and maybe none of us would be here.” She pulled back. “You gonna be all right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  Roxy’s husband walked up behind her. “Sam,” I breathed, taking my brother’s hand. “Boy, are you a sight. New Jersey is too far away.” I took Roxy’s hand next. She had found her dreamboat after all, marrying my brother a month after I married Jack.

  “Are you ready for this?” Sam said, and I only slightly nodded.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’ll never be truly ready, but it’s something I need to do.”

  Roxy pulled me to the side to talk. “I’m nervous,” she whispered. “You know your brother doesn’t know all of what we did. I skipped over a lot. Another war story I wanted to forget.” She paused. “But how could I forget?”

  “Do you still get headaches?” I asked, and she nodded.

  The din of noisy women reuniting after more than forty years rose to a blaring level, people recognizing each other despite the decades that had passed and the wrinkles that had set into each and every one of our once plump faces. Displays had been set up, old tents complete with cots, and the old medical supplies we’d used—looked like the organizers stole it from the nearest museum. Hostesses and ushers passed out programs, all dressed in period costumes and uniforms.

  Michelle stepped forward, and it had been several years since she’d seen her aunt and uncle. “Man, oh man…” Roxy’s mouth hung open. “Where’d you dig this thing up?”

  Michelle laughed. “Aunt Dorothea,” she said, and Roxy shushed her.

  “I’m known as Roxy here. I’ve got a reputation to maintain around these broads.” She sucked in her gut, holding her breath, before letting all the air out like a deflated balloon. “It’s good to see you.” They hugged.

  A producer led me and Roxy to a room not far from the ballroom, where a set had been erected for interviews. Robert walked up, clipboard in his hands, and introduced himself to Roxy, who looked at him strangely as they shook hands.

  “Sorry for staring,” Roxy said. “You’re the spitting image of your father. And your mother. A clone of both of them!” She turned to Sam but hiked her thumb at Robert, mouthing her shock.

  “And the others?” Robert said to me. “Red and Gail. When you telephoned, you said the girls would be joining you.”

  Roxy spun around; her eyes as wide as I’d ever seen them. “Red?”

  “They’re next,” a producer said, pointing at us, and Robert rushed to sit down in his interviewing chair.

  “You didn’t tell him about Red?” Roxy whispered, and I shook my head. “I guess they really will get an earful today. Won’t they, toots?”

  “I’m Gail Barry!” I heard behind a curtain, and her voice was so loud, and still prissy, which made me chuckle.

  Roxy smiled. “She’s here!”

  Gail walked in, brassy hair feathering around her face, throwing her blue cape over her shoulder. She smiled the instant she saw us, and we squealed like little girls before hugging, all three of us. Then we cried. Neither of us had seen Gail since we left the Corps, only kept in touch through our Christmas greetings and an odd letter here and there.

  “You two are going to ruin my makeup,” Gail said, wiping tears away, but still smiling.

  “I can’t believe you still had this cape,” I said.

  Gail laughed. “I thought it’d be cute,” she said. “Looks like I should have worn my fatigues.”

  “Trust me, toots,” Roxy said. “I almost busted my buttons getting into these pants. The cape is a better idea.”

  We were quiet for a moment after our private little reunion, looking at the set, and at the four chairs that had been brought over when there were only three of us.

  “Are we really going to do this?” Gail said. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

  “I have to, Gail,” I said, just as her husband Carl had come in and put his hands on her shoulders, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek before joining Sam and Jack. Gail and Carl married not long after the war, but she kept her maiden name. They met during the Battle of the Bulge; he was the new surgeon assigned to our unit.

  “I know you do, Kit.” Gail took a deep breath. “Truth is, so do I. Carl doesn’t know the half of it. The war wasn’t something we wanted to talk about.” She rolled up her sleeve, showing us her jagged white scar on crepey skin. “But the truth is, I got a counselor not long ago and I noticed I started to feel better talking about it.”

  “Same,” Roxy said, just as Robert called us over.

  We sat down next to each other. The lighting technician repositioned a spotlight, centering it on us three, and I closed my eyes from the intense brightness of it. When the television camera zoomed in, my heart raced and my neck got warm. I felt the locket against my chest under my fatigues before reaching for Roxy’s hand, and then Gail’s with the other. All the tension, all the worry, all the fright I’d been carrying in my shoulders, in my head, in my mind, expelled from my body with one deep breath.

  There was no going back now.

  “It was a pleasure serving with you ladies,” I said, turning to each of them. “I’d never said it before, and I want you to know.”

  They each nodded, pulling tissues from their pockets. Robert sat across from us, notes in hand, with a producer powdering his nose. He told us how portions of our interview would be played during the dinner program, and how the rest would be featured on television. I nodded, understanding that everything I said wouldn’t be retractable.

  “And Red?” he questioned, looking at the fourth, empty chair.

  “Are we starting?” I said.

  “Oh…” Robert shuffled through his notes. “Yes, I suppose so.” He turned to the cameraman. “Are we ready?” he said, and the cameraman nodded. Robert smiled into the camera. “Here we are with Evelyn “Kit” Jones and Dorothea “Roxy” Anderson and Gail “The Bullet” Barry, battle nurses from the 45th…” He looked at us three. “There is another nurse, one who served with you. Can you tell me about her?”

  And we told our story. For the first time ever, and in painstaking detail. By the end of it, every producer in the room was speechless, mouths drawn, some having to sit down. Robert never asked a second question. Didn’t have to.

  Some had applauded when Roxy talked about going back at night to retrieve the soldiers’ dog tags in Lichtenau, then there were gasps when Gail told them about the tea. But there was stunned silence when I told them about Red, and what she’d done for me.

  “Not a day goes by I’m not reminded that my life had been spared, and yet another was taken,” I said. “She was my friend. Red was her nickname, but her real name was Grace Turnbow. And if you were to look up what “grace” meant in the dictionary you’d find her picture. Because I’d never known a greater woman, a greater person on this earth who would lay down their life for a feisty little pipsqueak from Washington State.” I wi
ped my eyes of tears after looking at Michelle and Jack. “Because of her, I had a life.”

  Roxy nodded, and so did Gail, pressing tissues to their eyes.

  “She saved us all in one way or the other,” I said. “I tried finding her mother after the war, but I never could. I thought she must have succumbed to a broken heart after receiving Red’s dog tags in the mail along with her belongings.”

  A producer walked up to Robert and whispered urgently into his ear, flipping through the notes on her clipboard before turning to me. “Mrs. Jones,” the producer said, “what did you say her name was?”

  I wiped my dribbling nose with a tissue. “Grace Turnbow, she was the greatest—”

  “Are you sure?” the producer said. “From Oklahoma?”

  I scooted up in my seat after a pause. “Yes.” Roxy and Gail both squeezed my hands. “Why?”

  She whispered again to Robert, pointing to something she had written down before Robert took the clipboard himself, looking a little lost for words, staring at me.

  “Evelyn,” he said, gulping. “Grace Turnbow—Red—she was rescued from a POW camp in 1945. In Germany.”

  “What? What are you saying?” I said.

  “Evelyn,” he said. “Red’s alive.”

  Roxy stood up. “If this is some kind of cruel joke, I’ll… I’ll…”

  Robert shook his head. “It’s not a joke. In fact, she’s not just alive. She’s here!” he said, and I fainted into a wrinkled heap onto the floor.

  *

  I woke to Roxy fanning me with her folded program, and Gail checking my pulse. A small crowd gathered around. Jack and Michelle clutched each other, looking down at me.

  “Kit,” Roxy said, sniffing. “Did you hear that? Did you hear what he said?”

  “She’s alive, honey,” Jack said, leaning down. “She’s alive,” he said, only this time his voice wavered, and I knew what I’d heard was for real.

  “Where… where…” I said as Jack helped me up. My head was still light and my legs wobbly. Gail took my hand, and Roxy pointed toward the ballroom.

  Robert waved for the camera crew to follow us as I stumbled off trying to find my friend.

  “This way, this way,” Roxy said, motioning, and my gait turned into a fast shuffle through the crowd, pushing people out of the way.

  “Sorry… pardon me…” I walked out onto the stage, a blurry-eyed old woman in shiny black boots and faded olive drab fatigues. The crowd in the ballroom was a mixture of chit-chat and laughter and elevator music. I shielded my eyes from the overhead lights. “Red…” I scanned the crowd. “Red… Grace Turnbow…” People turned, looking up at me as if I was crazy. The chatting quieted as my voice rose. The music switched off.

  “Who’d she say?” I heard.

  “Red!” I yelled, looking into the crowd. “Grace Turnbow!” Roxy touched my shoulder, looking for her too.

  Old nurse after old nurse turned to stare, the room turning deafeningly quiet. “Red—”

  “Kit!” I heard from the middle of the room, and I gasped.

  The crowd parted, and there she was. Dressed in a pink suit like the one I had upstairs. She walked slowly toward me. Still tall and shapely, ginger-red curls thinned with gray. I hurried down the platform stairs—plunk, plunk, plunk—in my heavy army boots, and into her arms in the middle of the ballroom. Roxy followed, and then Gail piled on, and we cried hysterically. People clapped for what seemed like many minutes, hands patting our backs. The music turned back on. And Robert, with his camera, was in our faces.

  Red wiped tears from her eyes, touching my hair. “Jesus, Kit, you haven’t aged.” She looked at Gail and Roxy too. “None of you have!”

  An ugly cry poured from my eyes, unable to control my emotions, and Jack ushered us into a conference room where a few of the mock nurses’ tents had been erected for viewing, and where Robert couldn’t get to us. Red never let go of me.

  We sat down on two cots in one of the tents where the lighting wasn’t as harsh, and our surroundings were quiet with the tent flaps closed.

  “I thought…” My throat turned dry. “You were dead. This whole time.”

  “I tried to find you,” Red said. “All of you. But the war was over and I went back home. Then we moved.” She shrugged. “God, I missed you ladies. I didn’t know what happened to you. I hoped you were all still alive.” She wiped her tears with tissues Gail had given her. “I went to the library and looked through old phone books.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I did that.”

  “We all did it,” Gail said, sniffling into her tissue.

  Red told us what happened to her, saying there was a fight between her and the conductor and she’d lost the morphine. They weren’t bombed, but she was taken to a prison camp and nearly died of tuberculosis. “So, life’s been hard since then.” She coughed and her lungs wheezed. “I’ve never been the same.”

  “What about you?” Red held my hands. “You obviously made it through the river, back to the hospital.”

  And I told her what happened, how I’d gone back to the pharmacy and made the wife drive to the river, and how I crawled through the night to the safe house. “And we told the OSS I lost the package crossing the Rhine,” I said, “but that’s not what happened.”

  Red looked pleasantly surprised. “Oh?”

  “We gave it to some nuns on the street corner,” I said.

  Red’s mouth fell open. “You did?”

  “Yeah,” Roxy said, followed by Gail.

  “Well…” I said, smiling.

  Roxy sat board straight. “Well, what?” Her eyes turned beady.

  I reached for my locket, pulling it over my head. “Turns out not all of it went to the nuns.” I twisted the locket in my hands, but instead of splitting into two lockets, it opened up to four little rubies shining up in the dim tent—the ones me and Roxy wanted to keep but Red wouldn’t let us. “A souvenir,” I said. “You know… for the trouble.”

  Red smiled. “You don’t say?”

  “Evelyn Kit Jones,” Gail said, mouth hanging open.

  I handed each girl a ruby.

  “You’ve been saving them all this time, doll?” Roxy said. “All these years?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah.” I thought about all those visits to the library, looking through old phone books and cold calling every Turnbow in the state. “I guess deep down I never gave up hope. You know? I believed.”

  Red smiled. “Yeah.”

  And we spent the rest of the night in that tent together, but we didn’t talk about the war like you’d think.

  We talked about our lives.

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction, though the experiences the characters had in the Nurse Corps, starting with their arrival on the SS Pendleton four days after D-Day, was inspired by the numerous diaries and interviews I read from WWII nurses who served on the front lines. I took great care in the setting, trying to create a plausible nursing environment for Kit, Red, Roxy, and Gail, but of course took certain liberties when necessary to create a compelling story.

  When I read a historical novel, I like to know what inspired the author. Here are a few tidbits I think you might find interesting. The idea for Evelyn’s postwar story came to me after I read about a WWII nurse whose doctor called her a liar after she described symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. She was left feeling hopeless during a time when little was known about PTSD; I can only imagine how devastating that would have been.

  The setting. The Battle of Arracourt ticked all the boxes, from the location, the timing, to the pause in fighting, which made it possible for my characters to disappear for a few days. What sealed the deal for me was when I read that an uncooperative high-ranking SS officer had been brought into one the clearing stations. My writer’s mind went rampant with what-ifs, imagining all that could have happened when the army realized who they had in their hands.

  The Nazi war chest. This was very interesting to learn about. One rumor I read
was that it was quartered and split, loaded onto train cars, and sent into the Alps. Another rumor was that a portion of it was sent to Bavaria, thought to fund the postwar resistance army being trained in Aachen (Werewolves of Aachen). When I learned this, the pieces for my story started to fall into place.

  This story is different than my other books, but also similar. Each woman had their own reasons for joining the Nurse Corps, and each woman had something to lose and something to gain by going on a dangerous mission across enemy lines. This is, as I said, a work of fiction, though I hope through this story, we can celebrate and recognize the bravery and heroism of the real nurses who served. They were the brave ones. They were the heroines.

  I hope you enjoyed my story! Thanks for reading.

  Acknowledgements

  This novel would not have been possible without my husband and two kids, who are a constant source of love and support. Thank you to my agent, Kate Nash, who loved this book the moment I pitched it, and encouraged me to write it. Thank you to my editor Hannah Smith, and the wider team at Aria Fiction, for giving this novel a home. Hannah, editor extraordinaire, your feedback and advice has elevated my writing and made my novels shine; I’m forever grateful.

  A writer needs a tribe to survive, and I have one of the best, most supportive tribes ever. After I completed the first draft of this book, I shared it with one person, which feels a little like walking outside with only your underwear on. That person was fellow writer Paula Butterfield. Thank you for always reading my work, sometimes at a moment’s notice, even when you have your own pages to work on. I’d go crazy without my writers’ group: Sandy Barker, Fiona Leitch and Nina Kaye. I talk to them daily, and I can’t tell you how much a writer needs that. Writers Terry Lynn Thomas, Aimee Brown, Carmen Radtke and Marie O’Halloran are always there for writerly questions—and when I say always “there,” I mean within seconds. Thank you to my friend Alisha who connected me with the most amazing sensitivity reader for this novel. Katrina, thank you so much! You took time to read my book during one of the busiest times of year, and you gave me valuable feedback. To the readers, thank you for buying my books and allowing me to call this my job.