“Promise you’ll write every week.” Claudette was saying to Stella as she gripped her hands from across the table. “Promise that you won’t meet some soldier and get married and stay in London.” She commanded her friend earnestly. Stella looked at the pale, flawless beauty that she was lucky enough to call her friend.
“Claudie, I’ll write every day, if I can.” Stella solemnly vowed. “And I promise you, I have no intention of falling in love with anything beyond the view of Yorkshire as the train rounds the last bend to bring me home.” She squeezed her friend’s hands and smiled.
Stella hugged her friend tight as she stood, and then accepted rounds of hugs and back pats and kisses from the patrons who had all gathered to tell her good luck on her journey. By the time Stella had said goodbye to her friends, it was time to make the trek home, laden with not only the meat for supper but gifts and tokens for luck from the townsfolk of Dalby.
Her Dad was even more taciturn than usual during their evening meal and dessert. She sat impatiently by his side, waiting for words of wisdom from him or encouragement, or even chastisement at her choice to go into the Queen’s Service. After dark fell, the three of them ambled along the paths worn into the land by season after season of trudging boots and hooves by starlight. As they reached the high pasture, the moon rose over the trees, lighting the farm with its soft glow.
“Tomorrow is a day of new beginnings, Stella-my-girl.” Her father spoke almost reverently as they looked over the moonlight drenched dale that spread out far beyond their own land, and out of sight into the darkness of the forest. “You will do amazing things, and we are proud of you.” He continued, emotion adding gravel to his voice. He broke off and Stella leaned into his side and reached around him to include her mother in an embrace.
“I’ll be home before you know it.” She whispered as she let her parents hug her as though she were still a child. “I promise.” They walked back to the house and her mother hurried her off to bed. Stella was sure she was too excited to sleep, but eventually sheer exhaustion won, and she dreamed of air raid sirens and an unending parade of wounded. When she awoke in the morning, she was less excited and more distressed about leaving. With one last look at the farm as the carriage rounded the corner, Stella tried to memorize her childhood home, to carry in her heart while she was away.
The porter ensured her trunk and bags were loaded, and she hugged her parents again. Amid the calls of “All aboard!” from the conductors, Stella waved one last goodbye to her home and boarded the train, making her way to the private car she’d purchased a ticket for.
2. Calais, France
Captain Malcolm Ross was a ruggedly handsome man whose brooding good looks and serious brown eyes made him one of the most popular soldiers stationed at Calais. In spite of all the attention he received, he remained oblivious to the attentions of the females around him and was content to sit in his bunk with the much-read, dirty pages of his regulation book while his squadron laughed and joked across the room over their card game. Within minutes of the poker game starting, the talk had turned from cards to the beautiful French women they had encountered, (or wished they had). Then, the young Captain who remained steadfastly boring and reserved after three successful campaigns together, came up in their beer-fueled conversation.
Gunner Abercrombie was the one who finally suggested a way to get the standoffish young man to loosen up. He lowered his voice to a semi-drunken stage whisper and told the rest of the crew what he intended. Crimmens, the copilot and second-in-command, quickly scrounged up a pen and paper, and the boys put their heads together to write an advertisement for the London “Matrimonial Column”. They figured by the time he found out, letters would be pouring in for him, and perhaps they’d remind him of the allure of the fairer sex.
Timothy Crimmens licked the end of the pencil and thrust his tongue out to one side as he carefully considered which words to put to the page.
“The advertiser, (having recently arrived in France) being isolated from society here, is induced to seek feminine engagement through the medium of the Matrimonial Column. As the advertiser is in earnest, and diligently fighting for Her Majesty’s Airforce, he will be brief in explaining his request. His age is 28, of good family and education, fond of literature and considered by his acquaintances to be of engaging appearance and having moral rectitude. Any lady possessing traits considered complementary accomplishments, wishing to render the advertiser happy by a union, is sought. Money is no object but that it conduces domestic happiness. -All replies will be considered strictly confidential.”
Abercrombie, Badgers, Stillwell, and Knox all carefully read the missive that Crimmens had put to paper for them. Badgers wrung his hands and pursed his lips. He alone was the voice of reason that if return mail came pouring in, they were sure to catch hell from their squadron leader.
“What I want to know,” Abercrombie stated with mock solemnity, “is… exactly how did you know what to write for a matrimonial advertisement, Crimmens?” He waggled his eyebrows at his gunner while the rest of the table stifled laughter behind their hands. Even Badgers ceased his hand-wringing for a moment as a grin split his young, freckled face. They drew cards to choose who would mail the missive back to London, and of course, young Badgers drew the lowest card. With a sigh, he snatched the paper out of Crimmens’ hand and tucked it out of sight until he could mail it.
The men went back to their poker game until Captain Ross reminded them of lights out, and the early morning training exercise they had to be up for in the dark hours of morning. Then he went back to his own bed, and back to the copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “This Side of Paradise” that he had hidden in the torn cover of the Airforce regulations handbook. The stricter the others thought he was, he thought to himself, the more time he could simply spend reading and looking forward to going home and getting back to the business of finding real work, or at least an internship with an actual veterinary clinic.
It was a small wonder he hadn’t been conscripted into the Medical Corps, with all his surgical skill. But the thought of dealing with human blood bothered him far more than patching up hurt animals, or at least he prized his animal patients so much he was willing to deal with the ugliness of surgery when it was necessary to save them. At lights out, he made his obligatory rounds of the bunks and counted heads, then turned in for the short four hours or so that they got to sleep. The morning exercise was just routine, but night flying was dangerous, and they all needed practice, especially Abercrombie. The gunner was one of the best Malcolm had seen, and he had only turned nineteen one week ago. It had become his imperative to keep his small crew alive long enough to see the end of this bloodshed and carnage and return to their homes and families.
Malcolm brushed his fingers through his thick black hair. Almost an afterthought, he noticed it was getting long and jotted a note for himself, to remember to get it cut to regulation tomorrow. He dressed down and climbed into his bottom bunk, and fell asleep with one hand around the small paperback under the pillow.
At precisely four o’clock in the morning, the bugle sounded, immediately followed by groans of dismay from men all over the compound. Captain Ross rousted his men and within minutes, they were standing at attention under the floodlights as their aircraft was inspected one last time. Malcolm was so intent on getting the flight underway, he didn’t notice Crimmens and Badger approach one of the mechanics and, after a short conversation, exchange a small envelope. The mechanic saluted Flight Lieutenant Crimmens and strode off the field quickly, while the two crew members joined their pilot, gunner, and navigator aboard the “Gruesome Crewsome” B-17. Ross initiated the instrument check and his men settled down to business without a single word of sarcasm or light-minded joke.
On the ground, Ross’ crew was known for their antics and lightening the mood for everyone around them, in the sky, the were known for getting the job done, cutting swathes through the path of the enemy. As Malcom expected, the flight went off without a
hitch, aside from the bumpy ride of a turbulent morning. Abercrombie marked his targets and according to calculations, hit each one dead on, even accounting for the high winds. Malcolm couldn’t have been more proud if they’d been his own marks.
Once they were given the clear to land, Ross and Crimmens fought the wind to set their bomber down on the narrow field that served as their landing strip. Once they had her powered down and the men were safely on solid ground once again, the captain found himself subjected to more than a couple jokes at the expense of his flying prowess. To rid himself of them, he gave them the rest of the day to be on-call, with a check in at the ten o’clock hour, in the event that their commanding officers had other plans for them.
With whoops of joy that rivalled any schoolboy on the first day of summer, Crimmens and company jumped into one of the parked Austin 8 military staff cars and drove the short distance to town. With a sigh that was at least half relief, Ross made his way back to the offices to complete and file the training exercise paperwork before the officer’s mess was opened for breakfast.
The next two weeks passed quietly enough that the men actually started to worry about their chances for survival. Each mission they flew, they lost more allied planes. Miraculously, it seemed, they kept narrowly escaping the missiles that downed their friends. But, the B-17 was riddled with holes from the last firefight, and Badgers had taken a hit to his shoulder that had him going home, his right arm hanging useless and numb from the elbow down.
While the crew waited for their new member to show up, they patched up the Gruesome Crewsome and added three more tally points to her tail. The men had long since forgotten the letter they’d smuggled past their captain, and the story had even gone cold among the gossips. The stress and unease of the advancing Germans had taken even the smallest pleasures from the entrenched British air force. Then, one morning at mail call, the bewildered Ross was presented with a large, bag of mail, bursting at the seams with floral scented envelopes of every imaginable colour and size
There was an instant of silence, then raucous cheers broke out amongst the ranks. Word spread like wildfire that the moment of fruition had arrived. Mechanics and radio operators left their duties to watch the Captain stride past with his perfumed bundle, as he hurried toward the relative privacy of his deserted bunkhouse, followed by a few stragglers. He shoved the door closed in the face of one persistent private and proceeded to open the bag.
Much to his dismay, he quickly realized why the men were so boisterous about his abnormally large mail call. He opened letter after letter, some obviously scented with perfume, all written by feminine hands. He laid the letters out on the table, stacked neatly, but in no particular order, and left them there unopened, while he waited for his crew to return.
As he suspected, it didn’t take long for Crimmens to lead his sheepish men back into the bunk, where they faced the nonplussed Captain Ross and the table covered from edge to edge with pink and white and cream envelopes.
“So,” Malcolm began, pacing in front of his men. “I have reached the understanding that you men simply do not have enough to do to fill your time with worthwhile endeavours.” He growled. Abercrombie flinched, but Crimmens, Stillwell and Knox stood firm, (although Knox had a devil of a time not smiling). “As such,” their leader continued, “you will be tasked with answering each of these letters individually, with…my…regrets.” He finished drily. The four men surrounded the table with chairs and began opening envelopes.
Soon their work was punctuated by laughter as the men shared the words of hopeful women from not only Great Britain, but the US and France as well. Malcolm couldn’t help but inch closer to hear what the men were saying, without being noticed. Soon enough his curiosity got the best of him and he pulled up a chair of his own to help open and read the letters.
“I must say, lads. That had to have been some letter you wrote to garner me all these responses.” He pronounced drily, one eyebrow arched as a Frenchwoman offered herself to him on site, at his expense, of course. Malcolm sifted through the envelopes, wondering how much of this pile was due to the war. Lovers lost, killed in action, the loneliness of losing one’s whole family. That was a pain he understood. Perhaps, he thought to himself, it wouldn’t hurt to answer one person. Give one person a friend in a time of fear and sacrifice.
He picked up a simple white envelope that hadn’t been open. With careful fingers, he gently broke the seal to preserve the return address. The handwriting was tidy and concise, and the note was almost regrettably short. He pushed back from the table and read:
“Dear Sir. I happened upon your advertisement in the matrimonial column, and I felt impressed to respond. Please understand, firstly, that I am not looking for a mate. However, if it please you, I would be happy to write to you as a fellow bibliophile and one who has also been taken from her home because of the war. I look forward to correspondence, if the idea is agreeable to you. Very truly your friend, Stella”
Malcom considered the letter for a moment, then quietly folded it and slipped it into his pocket. As he watched his men serve their punishment for the prank they’d played, he noticed that a few more letters went missing from the pile, stowed away by the other crew members. As their campaigns grew in number and the war waged on around them, letters from girlfriends and even family back home began to thin and arrive less and less frequently. It was good to have each other, but there was an emptiness to living and fighting so far away from home and friends and family that you knew before the fighting began. The more time they spent in the air and in the trenches, the more difficult it was to recall a spring day at home, or the exact fragrance of the water and trees that were once so familiar you hardly noticed them.
The captain ignored the few letters that disappeared into waist pockets and sent his men to the mess hall for lunch. While they were gone, he sat at his desk and responded to the letter from Stella. In halting words, he accepted her offer of a pen pal and snuck the sealed envelope into the officers’ outgoing mail. No notion of romance intrigued him, but it would be nice to talk to someone who knew a love of books and could possibly even aid him in acquiring new reading material, as books were scarce here at the front, and one could only reread F. Scott Fitzgerald so many times before it lost its flavour.
Their next few campaigns were quick hits that seemed almost too easy to feel right. The weather had held up longer than expected, and the commanding officers took every opportunity to push back against the encroaching enemy and gain more ground into the interior of France. A couple of weeks passed and as far as the base at Calais was concerned, the letters were long forgotten, and the men too busy to wonder if they’d ever hear from the women they had courted.
As reports of imminent weather change came in, the Gruesome Crewsome and her crew took one last short hop over inland, scouting for a missing plane and possible marks in the same trip. The convoy was one of the first in a long time that all came home, and they were able to give coordinates for the fallen plane to command for retrieval as well. Upon landing back at Calais, Captain Ross gave all the men a day of leave. He could smell rain on the breeze and knew there was as much chance of being grounded for a week, as there was for another flight before the storm finally hit.
Smiling to himself, Malcolm headed over to the officer’s club for a drink and a few feminine bodies to observe, still too introverted to come right out and flirt with them. He downed a pint by himself in the corner, and then another that Crimmens purchased when he found the pilot in the corner nursing the dregs of his stout. Two more followed that, bought by friends of the affable Crimmens, and soon, Captain Ross found himself in a most outgoing mood, laughing and talking with the other officers more than he had since arriving at Calais.
When he and Crimmens finally staggered back to their bunk, Abercrombie delivered sobering news. In two days’ time, they’d be completing a bomb run over the enemy controlled town of Boulogne, in an effort to divert a Panzer attack that intelligence reported would b
e heading their way. Malcolm nodded at the report and, spinning on his heel without another word, headed down to the command centre for briefing.
There was an air of sombreness over the work of the next day. The plane was readied and examined for any issues that could cause failure in-flight. The Gruesome Crewsome was found to be in top shape, but the men watched the sky with concern. According to reports, black, angry clouds moved steadily toward them, and if the weather turned sour, they might not be able to complete their mission. The only good new to that, was if the weather really became that stormy, no Panzer attack would be viable either.
By lights out, the stars were completely hidden by the storm clouds that had reached the shores of France. All night, the men listened to the rain and thunder, punctuated by flashes of bright lightning on the walls of their quarters. The thunder and lightning had let up by midday, but the rain carried on into the night again, causing reports of massive flooding and roads being washed out all along the path to the interior, and the approaching enemy. Two days turned into nearly two weeks of inclement weather, with the men growing more and more bored and hungry for a mission.
Finally, intelligence informed them that all tank attacks were delayed by the boggy roads, so marshy that even the treaded vehicles couldn’t stay in motion, and the infantry had been slowed to a crawl. As soon as the rain allowed, the commanding officers reported, The Gruesome Crewsome and her men would be in the sky again, to hunt and bomb the panzers where they stood. Malcolm had trouble shaking the feeling in the pit of his stomach that their luck had run out. Not wanting to worry anyone else, he kept the gnawing fear to himself and prepped for the mission ahead.
Malcolm slipped away from the bustle of mechanics and crewmen touching up paint on their birds and busying themselves with last minute repairs and instrument checks. He slipped back to his desk and took out a creamy piece of blank paper he’d wheedled from the commander’s clerk. He stared at the paper for what seemed like an eternity, while he chewed the end of his pencil and thought. He realized he didn’t want to tell her about the war, or the missions, or the death he was surrounded by. He pulled the pencil out of his mouth and looked at the tooth marks in chagrin. With a sigh, he put pencil to paper and began to write about Leeds before the war.
The Thanksgiving Day Bride: Mail Order Bride Novels Page 94