His Very Own Girl

by Carrie Lofty

  The deed done, he expected to feel a shot of panic. But none came. He stood in the stinging sleet and breathed easier for the first time in weeks. No matter what happened now, he’d said his piece. What Lulu chose to do with it . . .

  Now he had new unfinished business. He had to stay alive long enough to read her reply.

  chapter twenty-four

  Lulu spent Christmas with Nicky and the new friends she’d made at White Waltham. She’d never been more miserable. Rationing, of course, meant little by way of festive meals or gifts. Bad weather meant few flights and infinite hours of boredom. The Germans’ surprise assault on the Ardennes Forest meant American paratroopers had been surrounded and under attack for more than a week. In a lounge where she and the other pilots spent copious downtime, the wireless was never silent. Updates broadcasted on the hour, interspersed with music and programs intended to keep morale afloat and provide a little laughter.

  Lulu didn’t have it in her to laugh.

  Snow beat against the windowpane, as furiously as she’d ever seen in the south of England. The idea of Joe huddled in a foxhole was a constant torture. He and his buddies were beset by freezing temperatures and enemy bombardments. She hadn’t been able to eat beyond what she choked down. Hadn’t been able to sleep more than a few fitful hours each night.

  She’d been trying her best to make herself numb to the worry and the waiting. Her body was numb, but the worry never eased. Had they parted with more loving and optimistic promises, maybe he would be stronger. Guilt wove through her unease.

  When three in the morning rolled around on Christmas Day, Lulu was awake—as she always was at that hour. She lit the oil lamp in her cramped little dormer and kept the wick at its dimmest setting. Forever conserving resources. A few sheets of Joe’s letter were streaked with mud. One looked like it had been crumpled, then smoothed out and mailed anyway. Lulu was left to wonder if he’d done the crumpling, or whether he’d simply found a piece of scrap.

  He used pencil on most, but his latest displayed tight, precise handwriting in bright black ink. The date meant he wrote it while camped in France, where luxuries such as fountain pens must’ve been more plentiful.

  12 December 1944

  Dear Lulu,

  I can’t understand your need for flying. Maybe that’s the hardest part when we talk about what we want. I can’t credit taking more chances than you need to.

  No, I tell a lie. I remember it from when I was younger. I used to shoot out the lights, so to speak. Life in North Shore was quiet and dull. Dad was dead. I had a restlessness in me that made me angry and stupid. I made the most trouble I could and it wasn’t ever enough.

  Maybe I was just hurting still.

  That was a long time ago. Longer every day. I feel like I’ve been here a decade. I have to tell you: prison, the army, war—they take that temper out of a man, or they grow it until he chokes. I can no more be that person again than I can understand why you do what you do.

  But I wouldn’t change you. God, I hope you know that. You just scare me half to death. If I could have it both ways, I’d let you lead me around by my nose for the rest of our lives.

  So tell me, if you can. Explain it to me. I want to see it the way you do.

  And while we’re pretending, you can pretend more about what we’d do next time we see each other.

  Your Joe

  P.S.—Do you still have the ring?

  Lulu reclined in the wooden slat-back chair and rubbed her eyes. They were moist with tears. Always. Months of penning and receiving letters, most of which explored their innermost dreams and thoughts, had rubbed a sore spot on her heart. The anticipation of mail call mingled with excitement and heaps of anxiety. And no matter what she said on the page, she stored so much more inside her, like the lines of a play she couldn’t wait to recite. That privilege was asking too much when it was so far away.

  She opened the little cardboard box and stared at the ring. She wanted to wear it. White Waltham was a busy place, full of pilots and instructors and servicemen from every corner of the Allied map—a veritable League of Nations. She could easily justify wearing it to stave off unwanted male attention.

  But her justifications would last all of two minutes. She simply wanted it to be true, that she and Joe would get married one day.

  He’d never even asked her properly. There in the hotel room, with the sounds of a July morning creeping into the silences they’d inflicted, he’d pulled it from his rucksack like a dare. An engagement ring as a gauntlet. She’d kept it because the prospect of forcing the box back into his hands had been too petrifying.

  He hadn’t asked. She hadn’t accepted. Yet she wanted to wear it anyway. She could touch the tiny, imperfect, wonderful stone whenever she was nervous or worried about Joe. A talisman to keep him safe.

  A knock on the door pulled Lulu from her reverie. She couldn’t believe what she’d been thinking. How could they get married if they couldn’t even pretend the same future? She was lonely, concerned for his safety, and desperate for the comfort of his embrace. That was not enough to found a life together.

  After donning her dressing gown, she crossed the tiny room and opened the door. Nicky stood at the threshold. “This is a surprise,” she said.

  “I saw your light.”

  “Ah.”

  “Are you working tomorrow? Or today, I should think.”

  Lulu leaned against the door frame and crossed her arms. She shivered, but not from the biting cold slinking around her ankles. “I suppose so. I can’t imagine Christmas being terribly festive.”

  “I don’t reckon so. But you should know that the Germans are running out of petrol. The BBC says their push toward the Meuse River is stopped dead.”

  “Really?”

  “Heard it just before they signed off for the night. The newsreader said it might make this Christmas a little brighter. Have a listen come morning.”

  “I’ll do that,” Lulu whispered. It was too good to be true, too amazing to be believed. But oh, how she wanted to. No petrol meant no tanks. No tanks meant Joe and the lads would be that much safer. “That’s just wonderful. Otherwise I suppose I’ll be flying, if I can.”

  “Good. I want you to take the flight to Marseilles tomorrow.”

  Her jaw dropped. “The York?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What about Don Marshall?”

  “Out sick with a chest infection. He sounds like a blimmin’ foghorn.” Nicky shrugged. “That wouldn’t be so bad, but the fluids in his head mean he can’t even walk straight. Balance is shot to bits. Flying is out of the question.”

  “And there’s no one else?”

  “On a York? No. Not with the weather so bad. It’ll be clear tomorrow, but everyone is backlogged around the country. You’re the only other Class Five pilot available.” Blue eyes found hers for the first time since she’d opened the door. “You’re off and away, my dear.”

  “To the Continent?”

  “That’s right. Command says beginning in January, women can take whatever flights they’re certified to take, no matter the destination.”

  “Officially?”

  “I told you they would,” he said with a ghost of a smile. “Once you get to Marseilles, the return flight might be a little dodgy. I don’t know what they’ll have for you.”

  But Lulu wasn’t worried. That sort of aimless, unpredictable adventure sent a bright flame of anticipation through her. She would see the whole of Europe before the war was done—and she would help ending it far sooner.

  “You be careful.” His quiet concern interrupted her dreams of adventure.

  “I will.” She gave him an affectionate hug. He held stiff and still in her arms, then relaxed. For a moment, it was enough.

  When they broke the embrace, she laughed shakily.

  Nicky cleared his throat. Behind his glasses, he watched her with blatant affection. His defenses were as reduced as she’d ever seen. For a studious Englishman, that wa
s saying a great deal. He touched her cheek. The softest caress. Then he stepped back.

  “Does your Yank know what he has?”

  Fatigued and raw, she swallowed the tears in her throat. What she wouldn’t give to reply with a strong affirmative. Their future was so tenuous and fraught with competing visions. Even if Joe returned safe and whole, she had no guarantee their love would survive peacetime. Who would back down first? Was compromise even possible? And what if he suffered too many hideous memories to even want to try?

  “He’s doing his best,” she said quietly. “Both of us are.”

  Nicky seemed to consider her words until he gave another curt nod. He’d always been a puzzle where every piece was the same color: simple at first glance, yet impossible to decipher. No matter how much she should want to stay safe in the keeping of such a good man, her heart had grown into a fiery, impetuous organ. Adventure and trouble mingled in her blood.

  And her impetuous heart already belonged to Joe.

  “Nicky, I’m sorry—”

  “Get some rest,” he said, then cleared his throat. “Wouldn’t want you to sleep through your big day.”

  “No, of course not. Thank you for everything. I don’t know that I warrant all you’ve done for me.”

  “All that and more, Louise.”

  After another frowning smile, he turned and disappeared down the corridor. Lulu stood in the doorway. So, that was the end. She knew it was true. A ragged exhale left her chest feeling scoured by shards of glass. All she could do was add another hope to her long list: that Nicky would find a woman to care for him as he deserved.

  She ducked back into her room and began to pack. Her hands shook. Five hours till dawn. Five hours till she’d fly to France.

  The assault on Schönberg was going well—as well as could be expected. Baker and Able companies had been charged with overrunning the last holdouts of a decimated German regiment that held the crossroads in the center of town. Success would mean bedding down within a mile of the Siegfried Line. They’d be into Germany the next morning.

  Joe’s only complaint—other than how long it’d been since last feeling his extremities—was the new medic. His name was Wally Lindt, assigned to second platoon after Smitty’s replacement had caught a piece of shrapnel with his forehead on New Year’s Eve. The new kid was twenty and fresh out of someplace that probably still had blankets and beer. Worse than young, worse than green, he was a fool.

  Joe tied a knot to keep a bandage on Lt. Harkes’s upper arm. “Aid station,” Joe said.

  “After the assault,” the resilient platoon leader replied. His expression was pained yet determined.

  “Good man. Go get ’em, sir.”

  Wiping his hands on his stiff, frozen ODs, Joe looked to his platoon’s left flank. Across the span of a crumbling town center where a fountain had collapsed in on itself, second platoon wasn’t making progress. Machine gun fire clotted their avenue of entry. But with any luck, they could hold out until first and third met on the other side of the town and swept back inward, surrounding whatever tenacious resistance remained.

  Then he spotted Lindt. The kid held a rifle.

  At first Joe couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A medic holding an M1? It made no sense.

  Then like a bullet out of a chamber, Joe tore across the pitted cobblestones. He hunched over and ran as fast as he could. When he stubbed his toe on an upturned brick, tripping, he caught himself with his own momentum and fired curses into the frigid air. A machine gun nest sprayed lead before him, behind him, creating deadly plumes of snow all around, but he kept his eyes on Lindt.

  He stayed low like a wrestler and took the kid out at the knees. They landed together with a heavy thud. The air knocked out of Joe’s lungs. He was so spitting mad that he wouldn’t have been able to speak anyway. He just kept Lindt pinned to the ground, then stripped the rifle from the kid’s hands. The M1 skidded away on frozen cobblestones.

  “Come here,” he growled, hauling the medic by his epaulet until they were behind the scant shelter of the ruined fountain. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”

  “I was helping the boys, sir. They’re taking heavy fire.”

  At least he didn’t blanch or play dumb. Joe should’ve given the kid a little credit, but he was beyond any thought other than rage.

  “Private, are you trying to get me killed?”

  “Sir?”

  He cuffed Lindt on the ear, then kicked the soles of his boots. “Are you trying to get me killed? Because when you wear that armband and pick up a rifle, you tell Jerry that the Geneva Convention means bunk to GIs. What do you think keeps them from taking off our heads?”

  “The SS don’t care about that. They shot at medics in Bastogne!”

  “But if you start firing back, then we all get tarred with that brush.”

  “I was helping my men!”

  “Sure you were, cowboy,” Joe shouted back. “And while you had a rifle in your hands, who was tending your patients? You think of that? If you care about your men, then you get your ignorant ass back out there and do your goddamn job!” He gave Lindt a hard shove and watched him scramble back to his platoon.

  The hoarse cry of “Medic!” from Joe’s own fellas yanked him to his feet once more. He hustled back across the square. His anger wasn’t spent. Even as he wound a tourniquet around a replacement’s shredded bicep, Joe couldn’t remember being so furious. Not ever. Even the impotent, confused rage of his youth—branded a criminal because of Sheriff Plank’s violation—didn’t compare. Lindt’s actions were an affront, like a pillaged place of worship or a phosphorus burn on a child’s skin.

  Joe had seen both since D-Day.

  Hours later, with Schönberg well in hand and the last of the enemy troops rounded up for the MPs to process, Joe sat against a tree and smoked. The frenzy had leaked out of him, leaving him shaky and cold—colder than what had become normal in those brutal January weeks. His ass had gone numb in the snow. His fingers trembled as he brought the cigarette to his lips. Both his canteen and his entrenching tool poked painfully against his lower back, but he didn’t have the energy to shove them into a more comfortable position.

  He sat there and watched as a two-and-a-half-ton truck lumbered into town. Someone shouted, “Mail call!” Joe perked up briefly, but he tried not to get his hopes up.

  For the third day in a row the sun refused to break through the thick marsh of winter clouds, but at least they were in contact with the rest of the divisions. After the surprise German offensive through the Ardennes had surrounded the 512th and the other airborne units, they’d been completely cut off. No air support. They’d weathered mortar shellings and the ugly hell of close-quarter combat with as few munitions as winter clothing packs.

  It was enough to send a man off his trolley.

  Following the siege in the Ardennes, the battalion’s intelligence officer, Capt. Piper, had traveled back to France. There he’d scrounged winter coats and weeks’ worth of letters. One letter from Lulu, postmarked the day after Christmas, had mentioned an exciting new assignment. She’d been off the map ever since.

  Supply troubles. Bad weather. Misdirected letters. Poor intelligence.

  Has to be.

  That she’d tired of their correspondence never occurred to him. That something terrible had happened to one of her flights assaulted him with more nightmares than D-Day. Concerned, he’d asked Capt. Piper to see what he could turn up.

  Despite the troublesome direction of his thoughts, Joe was exhausted. The cold had sapped the life out of him, to the point where gearing up for battle meant reanimating a corpse. He did it, but he never felt like himself. He floated outside and beyond.

  “Doc Web?”

  Joe jerked awake. The cigarette he held had long since burned out. The sun was nearly set.

  His hands toying with the flap of his aid bag, Lindt stood some five feet away. Too close for Joe’s liking. “A word, sir?”

  “Take a kn
ee if you want,” Joe said. “I’m not getting up for the likes of you.”

  Lindt knelt in the snow. His helmet sat cockeyed on his brow, and he had a slight hunch to his back. A pronounced overbite meant his teeth flashed like a smile whenever he spoke. Joe waited for the return of his urge to knock the kid’s face in, but it didn’t come. The tenacious high of combat had faded since his brief nap, leaving him light-headed and indifferent.

  “I’m sorry about how I acted, Doc. Honest. I just thought I could help. We were losing so much ground, and the other platoons weren’t nowhere to be seen. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Yarvil was dead, and there was his rifle . . .”

  Joe let him ramble, knowing he would’ve scraped together just as many excuses at that age. Across the square, first platoon had hunkered down beneath ancient sentinels of beech and pine. Another dozen soldiers hunched against the cold, shooting the shit and griping about the food. They looked as miserable and old as Joe felt. Cigarette smoke and frosty breath mingled with pallid clouds and snow to blanch the scene. Only shell burst craters and ruined buildings broke up the pervasive whitewash.

  Joe toyed with the scissors he kept tied to his wrist with a length of twine. Fully intending to rail against the kid, all manner of crass words bunched up in a mental tirade. But when he spoke, he surprised himself.

  “You do your job, Lindt. That’s all we can do. I know what you’re thinking, believe me. You’re wondering why the hell you got tapped to be a medic when all you wanted to do was show Jerry what for.”

  Lindt smiled broadly. “Sure, that’s right.”

  “Not us medics, kid. Not this war. You get to fix up the fellas and keep your stomach from upchucking right out your throat. You get to scoot your ass across the snow in the middle of a barrage because someone called ‘medic.’ And you sure as hell don’t get to pick up a rifle. If we get to the point where aid men have to take up arms just to win this thing—well, that would be an unholy day.” Joe took a deep breath and rested his head against the cold, sharp bark. “The sooner you learn all that, the better you’ll be for this outfit.”