by Sarah Sundin
“So nothing new.” Rose’s gaze darted to Georgie, hungry, then scooted away.
Mellie’s mouth drifted open. Oh goodness. Rose and Georgie and Ward had been an inseparable trio. In fact, Ward had been closer to Rose than to Georgie until high school. Was Rose . . . ? Could she be . . . ? Mellie felt Rose’s pain as a stab in her own heart.
Rose was in love with Ward.
And she was too good a friend to Georgie to interfere. Rose complained that the fellows didn’t look because the only fellow she wanted didn’t want her. She snapped at that flyboy because her heart was already taken.
Fresh tears filled Mellie’s eyes.
Georgie attempted to hop over three squares as the ship shifted course, always zigzagging to avoid U-boats, and she fell on her backside. “I should have worn my life jacket a bit lower for padding.”
She and Rose broke out laughing, and Mellie attempted to join them.
Two friends. Two secrets. One person who knew both.
Mellie trembled from the responsibility.
“I lost, so I get to pick next.” Georgie gathered the jacks into the bag. “Jump rope.”
Mellie and Rose took the ends. After a few tries, they coordinated the rhythm.
“One, two, three.” Georgie watched the arcing rope and nodded with the count. She inserted herself neatly and hopped away. “Ready, girls? ‘MacGilliver the Killiver needed gold and silliver, begged from—’”
“No!” Mellie’s hand dropped. The rope wiggled and flopped to the deck.
Georgie stumbled. “What?”
“Not that rhyme. I hate it.”
“Oh.” Georgie’s mouth went as round as her word.
“That’s right,” Rose said. “The little boy in your scrapbook.”
“He’s real.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think.” Georgie scrunched up her mouth. “Please forgive me.”
“Of course.” But Mellie drew back slightly. Georgie and Rose talked openness but kept secrets. They talked kindness but gossiped. They talked mercy but chanted a rhyme that trivialized three deaths and humiliated a child.
“Let’s try again. We know plenty of rhymes.” Rose circled the rope and laughed when it went nowhere. “Come on, Mellie. You need to join in.”
Mellie stared at the rope, a symbol of how they’d overlooked her many faults, swept her into their circle, put up with her odd ways, and thought of her in a deeply touching way. How could she not offer them a fraction of the mercy they’d offered her?
She picked up the rope and smiled, brimming with gratitude. “Let’s play.”
16
Thélepte Airfield
Tunisia
February 17, 1943
Tom parked his jeep and squinted up through the haze. The last of the 81st Fighter Group’s P-39 Airacobras took off and joined the formation over Thélepte.
“They won’t have to go far to find a fight,” Larry Fong said.
“Nope.”
General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps raced north from Gafsa and west through Sbeïtla, converging on Kasserine Pass. Thélepte stood in the way. The U.S. II Corps tried to hold off the German panzers, but the Twelfth Air Force couldn’t take any chances. Thélepte had orders to evacuate by noon and to destroy what they couldn’t ship out.
Tom looped Sesame’s leash through the steering wheel. “Stay here, Ses. Good boy.”
He and Larry got out of the jeep. Sergeant Lehman’s squad laid mines on the main road east of the airfield.
“Hey, Lehman. How’s it going?”
“Swell. Leaving gifts for the Nazis.” Lehman rubbed his jawline, gray with stubble and dust.
“Who’s got the diagram?”
“Diagram?”
“The placement of the mines. So we can find them when we come back.”
Lehman waved his square hand as if swatting a fly. “There won’t be any left. Rommel will find ’em all. We’ll blow the Desert Fox sky-high.”
Tom glanced at Larry, who puffed his cheeks full of air and shook his head. Without a diagram, mine removal would be slow and dangerous work.
“I need that diagram,” Tom said. “Where’s your foreman? Put him on the job.”
“You kidding, Gill? Those tanks will roll up that road any minute. You heard the scouts. The Jerries are bearing down hard on Fériana. That’s only five miles away. I’m mining this road and getting my tail out of here.”
Tom glanced south over the barren plateau toward Fériana. Artillery thumped in the distance, and the dust of combat marred the horizon. His chest felt tight. “A diagram is essential.”
“Sure. I’ll pull one of my men from blowing up tanks so he can draw a picture.”
Tom’s pulse throbbed in his temple. He looked his squad leader in the eye. Quincy would cuss and scream at the man. Reed would issue a cold command. Both officers would get a diagram.
But Tom—what could he do? He had to fight with both arms tied behind his back and his feet hobbled. Breaking those bonds and acting like a normal man would undo a lifetime’s work.
“The Lord always provides a way,” his mom used to say.
Tom gritted his teeth. Where was that way?
“Say, boss,” Larry said. “You’ve got to check on Weiser and Moskovitz. I’ll stay here, put together a diagram as best I can.”
Tom released a sigh and all his tension. He clapped his platoon sergeant on the shoulder. “Thanks.”
Larry gazed down the road. “How long?”
“It’s 1040. The security inspection starts at 1100. Get to the rendezvous site at 1115. We need to be out of here before 1200.”
Larry tipped him a salute. “See you then.”
“Thanks again, buddy.” He returned the salute. He didn’t want to acknowledge Lehman, but years of training forced him to say good-bye with a smile.
Back in the jeep, he rubbed Sesame behind the ears. “At least you obey me.”
Tom drove west parallel to the main runway. That morning, 124 fighter planes had flown off to strafe German troops and tanks. After their missions, they’d land at Tébessa, Le Kouif, and Youks-les-Bains safely behind the front lines. For now. What if Rommel broke free and pushed the Allies back out of North Africa?
Out on the runway, trucks towed eighteen unserviceable planes into place to be blown to smithereens.
“What a waste.” Tom pulled up to the supply dump, where men loaded trucks to the limit. Nothing could be left behind for the Germans to use.
After he secured the dog’s leash, Tom hopped out of the jeep to find Weiser. Like everyone at Thélepte, his squad had started work at one o’clock in the morning. The order to evacuate had come at midnight, and no time could be wasted.
Tom scanned the work crews—ground crewmen and headquarters personnel from the fighter groups, members of the Twelfth Air Service Command, as well as the 908th Engineers. All worked at a frantic pace.
Where was his squad leader?
Tom weaved among the crates and burlap sacks and rushing men, from one end of the supply dump to the other. No sign of Weiser’s squad. He jogged down dirt steps to a dugout, where an officer tacked a map of Stalingrad to the door. The Germans might be momentarily victorious in Tunisia, but they’d just suffered a horrendous defeat to the Soviets in Stalingrad.
“Anyone in there?” Tom asked the officer.
“Just rats and booby traps.”
“Looking for someone?” Martin Quincy stood at the top of the steps. “Like Weiser?”
“Yeah.” Uneasiness crept up Tom’s spine. “You seen him?”
“His squad truck took on half a load of supplies. Then Weiser and his men climbed in, and off they went.” Quincy knifed a hand in the air to the west. “Won’t be hard to find them. The snakes left a yellow trail from their slimy yellow bellies.”
“Oh no.” The engineers were supposed to be the last troops out.
Quincy cocked his head. “Whatcha gonna do? Give ’em lollipops?”
Tom didn’t know wha
t he’d do. He stomped up the steps and headed for his jeep.
“You won’t do a thing,” Quincy yelled after him.
Tom walked hard, swung his arms hard, stretched his fingers out hard. He had to do something. Weiser let down everyone at Thélepte. What kind of men abandoned their duty? What kind of officer let them get away with it?
A useless officer like Tom, that’s who. He climbed into the jeep, untied Sesame’s leash from the steering wheel, and drove away to find Moskovitz. He glanced at the little dog. “What can I do, boy?”
Smiles and bribes and competition weren’t enough. The military had rules. Discipline needed to be doled out, and that was Tom’s responsibility as an officer. As a man.
If he didn’t learn how to discipline, his men would continue to let down the battalion and the Allied cause. But what tools remained?
Mom’s tools worked on the playground, in the classroom, and on the job site when he wasn’t in charge. But they failed him now. They weren’t a man’s tools. His father never passed on a man’s knowledge, never equipped him to function in a man’s world.
He raised his head and let out a growling roar. He thumped his hand on the steering wheel. “Lord, how can I lead men when I can’t be a man myself?”
At the west end of the airfield, Tom pulled up to the rendezvous site by the road to Youks-les-Bains. He’d leave the jeep while he checked on Moskovitz, who was supposed to be blowing up planes. Best not to get the vehicle or the dog too close.
“Stay here, Sesame.” Tom jogged toward the runway and checked his watch—1105. “Please, Lord. Please let Moskovitz be doing his job.”
A ball of flame erupted and shook the earth. Black smoke roiled up into a flaming column. One of the planes. Seventeen to go. They planned to douse them with the sixty thousand gallons of aviation fuel they couldn’t evacuate and take the planes out of German hands as well.
Efficient. Smart. But Tom hated to have a hand in destruction.
His ankle turned on a rock, but he kept running. His father loved to blow things up. That was his job—demolishing old buildings and bridges. He loved the explosions, loved seeing everything crumble into a pile of rubble, loved taking down the work of years in seconds.
“He destroyed everything, Lord. How can I forgive that?”
Another explosion, closer, and Tom stumbled. He had to forgive. God commanded it. As Annie said, he didn’t have to understand or excuse his father, but he did have to forgive. What right did Tom have to hold back his forgiveness?
“I don’t, Lord. Help me forgive Dad.”
Dozens of men lined up at the tankers, filled gas cans, and ran them out to the aircraft. Urgency filled the air, as pungent as the gas fumes.
Thank goodness Moskovitz worked hard. He called out orders and hustled his men. A string of petty teenage crimes had landed Moskovitz in Tom’s misfit platoon, but the man rose above his reputation.
“Hiya, Gill.” Moskovitz raised a hand in greeting. “How much longer we got?”
“Not much. You’ve blown up two—”
An explosion pounded Tom’s ears, another, and another. “Five planes?” He shouted over the roar of flames and the pop of snapping metal.
A thunderous explosion. Tom leaned on the tanker for support.
“Six,” Moskovitz said. “Ain’t it fun?”
“Yeah. Fun.” An inferno raged before him, a blaze of orange flame, black smoke, and gusts of heat.
“We may have a humiliating defeat, but at least we get to blow things up.” Moskovitz hefted up a gas can. “Better get back to work.”
“Yeah. Meet at the rendezvous as soon as you can. We’ve got to be out of here by noon.”
“Sure thing, Gill.” Moskovitz trotted off with the gas can toward a P-40 with a shot-up engine and a crumpled tail fin.
Tom stared at an empty gas can at his feet. He had a few minutes before he needed to return to the rendezvous. He should help. But how could he engage in destruction?
He knew the answer. They didn’t have time to cart away the fuel and planes. If they left them behind, the Germans would use that fuel in their own aircraft to strafe and bomb Allied troops. They’d repair the P-40s and use them to spy.
If Tom and his men didn’t destroy, good men would die.
Tom lifted the gas can, filled it with amber fluid, and screwed on the cap. He ran out to the P-40 and poured the fuel over the nose of the plane, anointing it for its death.
He couldn’t watch the funeral pyre. He ran back to the tanker. The explosion shoved him in the back, and heat curled around him.
Tom set his jaw, filled the can, ran out, and doused another victim. Burning carcasses littered the runway, and nausea swirled in Tom’s stomach.
Nonsense. No one else on the field thought twice about it.
He returned to the tanker, determined to take out as many planes as possible. Why should he be different from the other men?
“Looks good.” Moskovitz made check marks on a clipboard. “We’ve got teams on all the aircraft. Let’s blow this tanker.”
The men tossed the gas cans under the tanker and vacated the area.
Ed Giannini and Felipe Lopez from Moskovitz’s squad set up a pole charge, blocks of TNT strapped to a long pole, which they leaned against the tanker. Lopez spooled out detonating cord to a safe distance, then lit it.
Tom ran with the rest of the men toward relative safety. The tanker blew. Several of the men fell to their knees and got up, embarrassed.
At the rendezvous area along the road to Youks-les-Bains, Captain Newman marched around, pointed at vehicles, and called out orders. The men piled into trucks.
Larry stood by Tom’s jeep with Hank Carter, the driver.
“Hi, Larry. Got a diagram?”
“I’m sorry, Gill.” Larry’s eyes looked darker than usual. Furrows ran like railroad tracks up his forehead. “I tried to catch him, but he’s too fast.”
“The diagram?” How could a diagram be too fast? But Tom followed Larry’s gaze to the jeep. Barracks bags filled the backseat. Where was Sesame?
“I got here when a bunch of planes blew. He took off. I tried to grab the leash, but you know how fast he runs.”
Tom’s face felt cold. The leash. He must have forgotten to tie the leash to the steering wheel. “Where’d he—which way did he go?”
“After you.”
“Oh no.” Tom spun and faced the runway, the burning planes, and the clouds of black smoke. His dog? In there?
“Okay, Gill, ready to go?” Newman strode over. “Let’s head on out.”
“No.” Tom turned to his CO. “I’ve got to—I’ve got to take care of something.”
“We’ve got to get out of here. The Germans are in Fériana.”
“Five minutes.” Tom couldn’t wait for permission. He took off running.
“I’ll come with you, Gill,” Larry called out.
“Thanks.” Tom ran hard. Smoky, dusty air burned his lungs. He had to find Sesame. What would the Germans do? Use him for target practice?
Sesame depended on him, trusted him, and Tom could not abandon him, could not let him down.
“Sesame! Sesame!” His voice competed with rumbling trucks and crackling explosions.
“Sesame!” Larry called. “I’ll go down this side of the runway. You go down that side.”
Tom nodded. What was the dog thinking? He hated explosions, turned into a quivering mass of fur during air raids.
That was when he had Tom by his side. He was looking for Tom.
Pain rent its way across his chest. “Sesame! Lord, help me find him.” He peered around burning planes and inside dugouts. Where would Sesame look for him?
He stopped in his tracks. All these explosions. Like an air raid.
“The slit trench.” Tom wheeled away from the field. “Sesame!”
He leaped into the earthen trench, whipped his head left, then right.
Sesame cowered down, his face burrowed against the wall.
Re
lief tumbled around in Tom’s chest. “Sesame,” he said in a low voice. “Here, boy. I’m here.”
He lifted one eyebrow.
Tom clucked his tongue and crawled forward. “Here, boy. It’s okay now. Everything’s okay.” He reached out his hand. Sesame didn’t draw back, so Tom stroked his warm head covered with short tawny fur. “Hey, boy. I’m here now. It’s okay.”
Sesame whimpered and raised his head, his brown eyes questioning but trusting.
Tom gathered the dog in his arms and buried his face in that soft fur. “I can’t believe I almost lost you.”
Sesame licked Tom’s face, concentrating below his eyes. Tom scrunched his eyes shut—his wet eyes. He was crying? When was the last time he’d cried?
The day Dad died. Two decades without tears. Was he losing control? He couldn’t afford to do that.
Tom drew a deep breath, climbed out of the trench with Sesame in his arms, and jogged back to the jeep.
Larry ran on the other side of the runway, waved at Tom, and raised a fist of victory. For a fellow who had never owned a dog, he’d become awfully fond of Sesame.
Tom held that dog tight. In this life he had God, Mom, Annie, and Sesame. But Sesame was the only one he could hold.
17
Oran, Algeria
February 22, 1943
Mellie leaned against the wrought-iron railing on the grounds of the old French villa and absorbed the full rainbow of color around her. Purple-tinged clouds hovered over the gray-blue Mediterranean. Orange and red hibiscus and magenta bougainvillea spilled over the villa’s yellow walls.
“So beautiful,” she said to Georgie and Rose. “I haven’t seen colors like this since I left the Philippines.”
Georgie’s cheeks glowed. “This is wonderful, isn’t it? From Ernie Pyle’s columns in the paper, you’d think North Africa’s nothing but mud and gloom.”
Rose laughed. “We’re almost four hundred miles from the front.”
That distance shortened every day. Mellie shuddered. In the past week, Rommel’s tanks had rolled over Allied strongholds, stormed through Kasserine Pass, and driven the Allies back over fifty miles. The Germans took five American airfields and thousands of prisoners. Mellie prayed Ernest wasn’t among them.