The Valiant Hearts Romance Collection

by Kristin Billerbeck

  “They wanted to go. They knew what might happen.”

  Glorie shook her head fiercely. “No. They wanted to be heroes to impress their friends and families and girls. They were frightened of dying in war, though they blustered that they weren’t. They didn’t want to die at home of the flu. I doubt they believed they’d return like the overseas men here today.”

  “No one thinks horrible things will happen to them. Soldiers aren’t alone in owning that illusion.”

  Glorie pushed herself away from the wall. “For most of the world, the war is over. For me and the rest of the medical staff, our war is just beginning.”

  “Excuse me.”

  Glorie turned toward the male voice with the heavy German accent. Blue eyes danced in a middle-aged man’s narrow, deeply wrinkled face. Beside him a woman with round red cheeks and blond hair had equally happy eyes.

  An answering smile spread across Glorie’s face. “May I help you?”

  The man doffed his hat and held it against his chest. “Our son is here. He’s back from the war, a patient, Lt. Johan Baker. Do you know where we can find him?”

  “He’s right through these doors. Let me show you.” Glorie opened the ward door.

  The couple followed, thanking her. The mouth-watering aroma of fresh-baked bread brought Glorie’s attention to a large basket the woman carried. A white linen towel covered the contents. “Oh, he can’t …” Glorie hesitated. She’d started to tell them Johan couldn’t eat solid food yet. How much did they know about his injuries?

  They hurried past her and down the aisle toward his bed in the middle of the ward. She trotted after them, smiling at their eagerness.

  The conversation and laughter of the other patients died as the soldiers watched the couple approach their son. They stopped beside his bed. Johan was sleeping again. The couple’s gaze moved from Johan to Glorie. She saw fear in their faces. They don’t know how he was injured, she thought. “He’s only sleeping. It’s fine to wake him, but you mustn’t let him talk much. His throat is still healing from the lesions caused by mustard gas.”

  Mrs. Baker’s eyes widened.

  “It will be fine eventually,” Glorie rushed to assure her, “but for now he needs to let his throat rest. As you might imagine, he’s had a hard time keeping quiet and not celebrating the Armistice.”

  The Bakers’ faces relaxed into smiles.

  “Why don’t you wake him?” Glorie suggested to Mrs. Baker.

  The woman set the basket on the floor, laid a hand on Johan’s shoulder, and leaned close to say in a soft German accent, “Johan, it’s Mother.”

  Johan moved slightly in his sleep. A small smile formed.

  Mrs. Baker shook his shoulder lightly. “Wake up, Son.”

  This time Johan obeyed. The surprise in his eyes was greater than when he’d awakened to see Grace and Glorie. He bolted to a sitting position and threw his arms around the woman’s neck. “Mother!”

  Glorie blinked back sudden tears. Even through Johan’s scarred throat, even though it was barely more than a cracked whisper, the word held a world of love.

  “Father, you’re here, too!” The men gripped each other’s hands. Tears streamed down all three faces.

  Glorie turned discreetly away. The room had gone from its first hushed notice of the couple to complete quiet. She glanced at the men. Each one watched the meeting. Tears sparkled in more than a few eyes. A couple of men dashed away tears from their cheeks. One corporal pulled out a khaki handkerchief and blew his nose loudly.

  The men who earlier appeared tough, courageous, even cheerful in facing the future with the handicaps war had bestowed on them watched the family wrapped in each others’ arms. This is what they’re all waiting for—to be home, all the way home, with their loved ones. She swallowed the lump the scene brought to her throat and unnecessarily started down the row straightening blankets. It wouldn’t do for the men to find her staring at them.

  “Hip-hip-hooray for you, Johan,” one soldier whispered through a throat as scarred as Johan’s.

  Only Glorie heard him. “Amen,” she said softly.

  She glanced back at Johan. His mother, beaming from ear to ear and with eyes only for her son, was seated on his chair. She held one of his hands in both her own. A soldier climbed out of bed and brought another chair for Mr. Baker.

  Glorie continued straightening blankets and began a conversation with two soldiers. The other patients cleared throats and turned away to give the Bakers privacy.

  Even so, Glorie heard pieces of the family’s conversation. Johan’s questions were those of any family member away for a time—about relatives and friends. The news that an uncle had died in the flu epidemic brought a stillness to the room again, but only for a moment.

  Mr. Baker told how the family dog carried one of Johan’s shoes everywhere he went. “Even sleeps on it, like a pillow.”

  Glorie thought she wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Mrs. Baker, too, kept something of Johan’s with her all day and all night. Glorie herself kept a picture of her brother, Fred, on her bedside table.

  She started back toward Johan’s bed. She hated to cut the visit short, but Johan shouldn’t be talking so much. When she’d almost reached them, she heard Johan say, “Where’s the bread? It isn’t my imagination that I smell it, is it?”

  Mr. Baker grinned and lifted the basket. “We made your favorite sweet buns.”

  Mrs. Baker folded back the linen towel and displayed the golden bread.

  Johan reached for a bun. Glorie grabbed his hand and smiled at his parents. “I’m afraid Johan can’t eat that yet. He’s on a liquid diet until his throat is better.”

  “Can’t I keep it just to smell?” Johan gave Glorie such a beseeching look that she laughed out loud.

  “I’m afraid not, Lieutenant. No doubt you have strong willpower, but these wonderful buns would be far too tempting for any man.”

  He pretended to pout. “I dreamed of these during every one of those meals of beans and mush in France.”

  “We own a bakery, Nurse,” Mrs. Baker explained. “My husband’s people have been bakers for generations. That is why our name is Baker.”

  “Our son will not be a baker.” Mr. Baker lifted his chin in pride. “Johan will be attending the university.”

  “Schooling won’t take away what you taught me,” Johan said. “I’ll still make a great batch of bread.” The last word was strangled in the beginning of a cough that continued for too long.

  His parents leaned toward him, concern written in their eyes.

  “I’m afraid you must end your visit for today. Johan, Lieutenant Baker, must rest his throat.” Glorie felt a wave of color flood her face. The nurses never called any of the soldiers by their first names. She tried to cover her slip with a question for his parents. “Do you live nearby?”

  “Not far,” Mr. Baker replied. “Our bakery is in downtown Minneapolis.”

  “As soon as I can eat solid food, I expect a basket of buns and bread each day,” Johan challenged. Again a cough erupted, smothering the smile his words brought to his mother.

  “That won’t be too long,” Glorie assured while pouring a glass of water from the pitcher on the white bedside table. “If he learns to stop talking so much.” She smiled sweetly at the dirty look he gave her across the glass he accepted.

  Mr. Baker took the basket from his wife and set it on the chair. “We’ll leave this for the other patients.”

  Glorie hesitated. She wasn’t sure it was fair to share it with only a few, but she didn’t want to hurt their feelings.

  “We don’t want anything made by a dirty old Hun,” Captain Smith spat out.

  Glorie spun to face the man sitting up in the next bed. “Captain!” Hatred burned in his eyes and so changed his features that she barely recognized him.

  He grabbed a bun from the basket and hurled it. It bounced off the wall and hit Mrs. Baker’s cheek.

  “Stop!” Glorie yanked back the basket before t
he captain could reach another bun.

  A roar came from behind her. A second later Johan burst from his bed. He lunged toward Captain Smith.

  Glorie tried to throw herself between the two. The basket which made her hands useless added to her effectiveness as a barrier.

  Other patients hurried to the fray. Joe grabbed Johan’s arm, and two men pressed Captain Smith back against the mattress.

  “You can’t insult my folks that way.” Johan’s attempt at a yell came out a scratchy growl.

  Glorie’s own throat hurt for the pain she knew he must be feeling, both physically and emotionally. “Lieutenant, please, remember your throat.”

  “She’s right,” Joe told Johan. “Besides, the captain outranks you. We might be in a hospital, but we’re still in the army.”

  The satisfied glint in Captain Smith’s eyes sickened Glorie. There wasn’t an officer of higher rank in the ward at the moment. Surely that wouldn’t allow him to get away with such behavior. “Assault on a civilian isn’t acceptable no matter what an officer’s rank.” The command in her voice surprised her.

  It obviously surprised the captain, too, from the look on his face when his gaze jerked from Johan to her.

  Glorie hurried around the end of Johan’s bed. Mrs. Baker held a hand to her cheek. Tears pooled in her eyes, but they weren’t tears of joy this time. Mr. Baker had an arm around her waist. “Are you all right, Mrs. Baker?”

  “Yah.”

  “We’re used to worse than this.” Mr. Baker glared at Captain Smith. “We didn’t expect it from the soldiers Johan fought beside.”

  Glorie walked with them out into the hall. “I’m so sorry Captain Smith ruined your visit.”

  Mr. Baker shook his head. “To see our boy back, to know he is going to be well … nothing could spoil that.”

  “He isn’t our boy any longer, Father,” Mrs. Baker said softly. “Didn’t you see his eyes? He has his father’s eyes now, old eyes, the eyes of a man who has seen too much.” She turned her hands palm up and stared at them. “When I fed him as a babe, he’d hold my little finger. It filled his entire hand. When he was a toddler, I’d wrap his blond curls around my fingers when I brushed his hair.” Her sorrow-filled gaze met Glorie’s. “Our boy went to war, but a man came home.”

  Mr. Baker laid an arm around his wife’s shoulder. “Come, Mother. Let’s go home.”

  Glorie held out the basket.

  “You share it with the other nurses.”

  “Thank you.”

  Their steps were slow and they leaned against each other, a different image than the eager couple who’d arrived a short time ago.

  The memory of Johan’s face when Captain Smith shot his ugly words and threw the bread cut into Glorie’s heart. She sighed and sent up a prayer for both young officers.

  The war was over, but it left a bottomless lake of hate behind. She and the rest of the medical staff would give their all to help the soldiers’ bodies mend, but only God could mend men’s souls.

  The Bakers disappeared around a corner, and Glorie threw off her dismal thoughts. She hurried to the ward station. Relief flooded over her when she saw the ward officer there. She described the situation between Captain Smith and Lieutenant Baker.

  “I’ll take care of it,” the ward officer assured her. “Wouldn’t you know trouble would break out between officers and not enlisted men? Poor example, I’d call it.”

  The next morning Glorie found Joe assigned to the bed Captain Smith previously occupied. The captain now resided in the bed at the far end of the row. This wasn’t a permanent answer, of course, but at least it put some distance between the barb-throwing captain and the lieutenant.

  Johan managed a smile when she approached his bed, but he didn’t attempt to speak. She could see by his eyes that he was in physical pain. All the talking and yelling yesterday likely tore at the throat lesions that had begun to heal. Her own throat tightened in empathy as she took his wrist to check his pulse.

  When she returned later, she brought a pad and pencil. “In case you want to say anything,” she said, handing them to him. She poured aspirin powders in a glass of water for him. It wouldn’t alleviate all his pain, but it would help a little.

  Glorie dreaded changing the dressings on the blisters caused by the mustard gas, but it had to be done. She was as gentle as possible. Still, she wondered whether her attempts were clumsy and knew they were hurtful. The blistering was similar to that experienced with first- or second-degree burns.

  The blisters had broken on his trip from New York to St. Paul. Now it was important to prevent infection from setting in. She knew if that happened, it would add five or six weeks to his recovery. As usual with mustard gas burns, the blisters were the worst in places where there was the most body friction, like the armpits and behind the knees.

  He flinched when she removed the last old dressing.

  Glorie gasped, dropped the dressing, and stepped back. “I’m sorry.”

  Johan scratched something across the pad, then turned it toward her. In bold capital letters he’d written OUCH!

  A giggle escaped her. Guilt followed on its heels. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, though she couldn’t discipline her grin.

  He smiled back.

  She returned to the dressing with a lighter heart, knowing he’d intended to make her laugh. The pain she’d caused him was real; she’d seen the glint of a tear at the corner of one eye. Yet he wasn’t about to wallow in his pain or allow her to feel guilty about it.

  Her exposure to the effects of gas warfare made her profoundly grateful for the thousands and thousands of peach pits scouts had collected during the war. The pits had been ground and used in making gas masks. She’d grown so tired of eating peaches and canning peaches and even seeing peaches that she’d remarked to Grace, “I’m surprised God made them yellow instead of red, white, and blue.”

  Treatment of the blisters required frequent dressing changes. The second time Glorie changed them, Johan showed her two sketches. The first was a stick man with a sad face. An arrow pointed from a notation to the man. The notation said, “Me after weeks on a liquid diet.” The second sketch was a handsome, muscled, smiling man beside the words, “Me before the liquid diet.”

  She chuckled and reached for the first dressing.

  He scribbled something else. She glanced at it. Beside the sketch of the handsome man he’d written, “Aren’t you going to tell me how good-looking he is?”

  Her gasp was a mixture of surprise and laughter. Turning her gaze and hands to the dressing, she replied with intentional primness, “Mother always said, ‘Handsome is as handsome does.’”

  When she chanced a glance back at his face, he was grinning.

  On night duty, Glorie discovered that Johan wasn’t the only patient experiencing nightmares. Every night at least a half-dozen men thrashed about or awoke screaming. She’d hold their hands, bathe the sweat from their faces with a cool cloth, and speak to them in low, soothing tones until they fell back asleep. But their screams awoke others who lay tense, staring into the darkness, not needing sleep to produce nightmares.

  Glorie stopped in surprise beside Johan’s bed a couple of days later. He was sitting up, his sketch pad resting against his knees. His face was covered with white cold cream. He’d exaggerated and thickened his eyebrows with a charcoal pencil. A clownlike broad band of a red smile covered his lips and more. “What on earth …?”

  Johan’s eyes glinted in a smile. He lifted his hands, opening them wide to frame his face, and she saw that he wore white gloves. He pointed to the next bed. Joe wore the same gloves and face covering.

  Joe pretended to hit a badminton shuttlecock to Johan. Johan hit it back. Joe returned it. Johan slapped a hand to his forehead, as if he’d been hit. A white finger scolded Joe.

  “You’re mimes,” Glorie exclaimed in delight. The other nurses and most of the patients joined her in laughing at Johan and Joe’s show. After the game of volleying, they performed a tug
of war until Johan was tugged out of bed. He brushed himself off thoroughly, while casting dirty looks at his gleeful opponent.

  “Charlie Chaplin better watch out or you two will replace him as America’s favorite comedian,” Glorie quipped when Johan finally settled back into the bed. “Before we change your dressings, we’d best get that cold cream off your faces. The cream isn’t good for blisters, you know. Good thing the blisters on your faces are dried up and almost healed.” There wasn’t the friction on the face skin that caused such severe blistering elsewhere, she remembered. She leaned closer to Johan’s face, studying his clown mouth. “Where did you get the lipstick?”

  He jotted down the answer.

  “From Grace. So my own sister is plotting with you. I can see I’m going to have to watch the two of you like a hawk.”

  The clown smile grew very wide.

  The days soon fell into a routine for the medical staff and patients at Fort Snelling. Each morning, promptly at seven—or 0700 in army parlance—the nurses entered the wards. Any fatigue or self-centered pettiness they possessed fled in the face of the patients’ situations and cheerful courage in facing their wounds.

  The nurses awakened the soldiers with sunny greetings, took vital signs, and wheeled in curtained dividers that were placed between beds for privacy when the patients were bathed. Then came the more challenging duties. Changing dressings was the most painful task, for both patient and nurse.

  Convalescing soldiers often preferred to sleep in, but such laziness wasn’t allowed. “Muscles need use to heal properly. You want them built up nice and strong for the girls back home, don’t you?” Glorie wasn’t above needling. Her approach usually brought the desired result. The chaplain doubled as the athletic officer. He made sure the men who were physically able exercised daily, building up their strength slowly.

  Next the nurses prepared for the ward officer’s 0900 inspection. After the ward inspection, the nurses brought meals to the patients unable to eat in the mess hall.

  Each week, another 150 men came for reconstruction and convalescence. Reconstruction is such an impersonal word, Glorie thought, wheeling a patient in a high-backed cane wheelchair to a physical therapy session. It’s a term for repairing buildings, not bodies. Yet that was the term coined for the medical help she and her coworkers provided the soldiers.