None But The Brave: A Novel of the Surgeons of World War II

by Anthony A. Goodman

  His head swam, and in the darkness—a darkness he recognized as the coming of death—he saw flashes of light against his closed eyelids. What was left of his rational medically trained brain told him these were the random firings of oxygen-starved brain cells in his visual cortex. Hallucinations. The last things his brain would see before he died.

  The pressure on his back suddenly released. The boots stepped off him, and he could take a small breath. A very small breath. A tearing sound raced past his ear. Hands—how many he didn’t know, but many—grabbed at him. Cold wet air swept over his face. He gulped at the sweetness of the first breaths, coughing and choking.

  Strong hands pulled at his arms, legs, head, and chest. It felt like a coordinated effort to tear him apart. He was twisted and turned and dragged as the rough canvas scratched his face.

  In a moment, he was through the hole in the canvas, and there were stars in the black sky, and people running and scrambling everywhere, tearing holes in the ruined tent and pulling bodies out from underneath. It was like an anthill that had just been stepped on, with small dark creatures swarming out to meet the attack.

  Just as Schneider was about to turn to his rescuers, a hand cradled his cheeks and turned his face upwards. He was staring into the eyes of some dark stranger who released his hold, allowing his head to fall back against the outside of the tent. His head banged on the ground, as Schneider heard the voice say, “He’s OK! Let’s go!”

  And they were gone. Like the Masked Man and Tonto. That’s what Schneider thought anyway. Just like that.

  Schneider got to his feet. He was bent double at the waist, hands resting against his knees as he took deep breaths of the cool night air. It was crisp and fresh and wonderful, and it made him cough. He couldn’t get enough of it.

  When he had gathered his wits, he stood and looked around.

  Where the hell are Gene and Dan Page? There was an army of men running and crawling across the downed tent, now in shreds, probing and cutting and pulling bodies from underneath the heavy suffocating folds. But he could not find Gene or Dan. With all his senses restored, perhaps keener than ever, Schneider joined the search for bodies, crawling along on his hands and knees, feeling for shape, for movement. He knew there were others who were suffocating just as he had been and he needed to get to them quickly.

  It reminded him of the avalanche he witnessed years ago while skiing, all of the rescuers crawling across the cold white rubble of the huge avalanche field, probing and poking the snow and ice and rocks for bodies, for life. On that day, there had been none. Three people had died, and it took hours to find the corpses. None had sustained serious injuries, it turned out. They had all suffocated in snow compressed into facial masks of ice.

  But tonight there was life under that mass of canvas, and he was proof of that. After a few moments, he found a mass moving slowly just under his knees. Remembering how it felt to be trampled by the boots a few minutes earlier, he carefully backed off, feeling for a free space near the body. He tried again and again to tear the cloth, and only when his fingers were slipping in the blood from his own finger tips did he realize he was doing no good. Even the nail that had torn off his index finger had not caused enough pain to slow him down. He was holding his breath as he struggled, as the man beneath him might be holding his. Schneider nearly cried in frustration at his inability to get through the thin barrier of canvas—the thin barrier between the air and some poor soul’s life. His precious switchblade knife was back in his tent!

  Then, two GIs scampered past him. He called out to them.

  “I need a knife! Give me a knife! Please!”

  Without stopping to speak, one of the GIs unsheathed a bayonet and tossed it to Schneider. He grabbed it by the blade and cut his hand. For an instant he was put out by being handed a bayonet. He wanted a surgical knife.

  A scalpel, for Christ’s sake! Not a bayonet! he thought.

  He sawed through the canvas, making as big a slit as he could, trying not to injure the man beneath him with the bayonet. When the hole was big enough he reached in and grabbed at some clothing. He pulled and struggled and kicked backwards from his sitting position until he finally got the man out, hauling on his shoulders and sliding him out onto the canvas headfirst.

  Schneider and the man found themselves sitting on top of the giant white circle with the blocky red cross in the middle; the red cross that was supposed to protect them from low level bombing runs like this.

  Those fucking Krauts bombed our hospital!

  It made him so furious he wanted to scream at someone. But there was no one. Just this poor, nearly-suffocated GI.

  Schneider tried to examine the man, but he had rolled onto his side and was clutching at his abdomen. Schneider wasn’t able to get him rolled over, but even in the dimness of the night, he could see a trail of black liquid pouring from between his fingers.

  Oh shit, I stabbed him with that bayonet.

  Schneider was horrified that he might have killed this man in his panic to get him out of the tent.

  The man remained doubled over on his side in the fetal position. Finally, he relaxed and let Schneider roll him onto his back. However, Schneider’s relief was very short-lived as he realized that the GI had not acquiesced, but was now in hemorrhagic shock.

  There was very little time left.

  Schneider pulled off his undershirt and stuffed it into the wound. He couldn’t believe it. The man was going to die in his care from wounds suffered at Schneider’s own hands. He wiped the abdomen clean with the shirt, and before the field filled up with blood again, he managed to see the ragged torn edges of an entry wound. It was not the clean linear surgical slit of a bayonet, but rather the jagged path of a large caliber tumbling bullet.

  The fucking Krauts strafed us at the same time they bombarded us, and this poor guy caught one in the belly.

  He looked around for help shouting, “Medic! Medic!”

  But there was no response. There was no spare help. Everyone was busy trying to help someone else.

  Then Schneider saw their second operating tent standing untouched only twenty yards away. The bomb that had obliterated his tent had spared OR Tent Number Two except for a few shrapnel tears, which emitted spears of white light into the darkness like a movie projector. People moving inside the tent caused the light to flicker, making it even more like a projector.

  Schneider grabbed the man by his wrist, and from a kneeling position slung him up onto his shoulders in the classic fireman’s carry. With his other arm between the man’s thighs, Schneider staggered to his feet, wobbling across the uneven surface of the downed tent. He ran the gauntlet between the squirming bodies still beneath the canvas and the swarms of GIs trying to rescue them. Although he no longer had the bayonet, he was in no position to help anyone else anyway. He needed to get this man to surgery.

  One patient at a time.

  Schneider made it to the tent with the GI on his shoulders. He crashed though the double set of doors, and all the OR tables were full. He tried to gauge who would be finished first, so he could get this guy on the table and opened up.

  There were no free cots in the pre-op area, so he lowered the man carefully to the floor. Schneider’s shoulders and abdomen were covered with the dark crimson jelly of clotted blood. He expected to see a river of bright red blood issuing from the center of the man’s abdomen, but there was none, and that worried, rather than reassured him.

  Schneider gathered up IV supplies from the locker: plasma bottles, IV tubing, needles, gauze, and tape.

  “Hey, Doc. What do you need?” It was Higgenson.

  “Oh, thank God. Here, take over this IV and get some fluid into him. Much as you can. I’m going to find a Lap kit and open this guy right here.”

  Higgenson took the supplies and sorted through them. Then he tied a rubber tourniquet around the man’s left upper arm and looked for a vein. These young muscular GIs were usually teeming with veins, but there wasn’t a single one Higgenso
n could get a needle into. He slapped three fingers against the skin at the inside of the elbow joint, but there was still nothing. He kept slapping and slapping, looking for anything that might take a large-bore needle. Still nothing.

  Maybe he didn’t want to know, to admit the truth, but he kept at it. He had no idea how long he persisted. Finally, he sat back on his haunches, and looked at the wound. The blood in the wound had clotted, and there was no up-and-down movement of the belly or his chest.

  Schneider came back and dropped to his knees across from Higgenson. “Got a table for us. No anesthesia, but this kid won’t need any.”

  Then he made a quick visual assessment. He wiped away the clot. There was no fresh bleeding. Finally, he took out his penlight and pried open an eyelid. He shined his light in the right eye and then the left. No response. The pupils were fixed and dilated. He put a finger on the carotid artery on the left side of his neck, then on the facial artery where it crossed the jaw, then the temporal artery. He never bothered with the heart, for his stethoscope was still buried under hundreds of pounds of shredded OR tent.

  He looked at Higgenson, whose face had grown old and sad.

  “Ah, crap! Jesus,” Schneider said in a whisper.

  He took the GI’s cold hand in his and a saw a high school ring on the fourth finger of the left hand. There was a faceted crimson stone covered with little scratches all over it. In an oval around the stone were the words “Ridgedale High School.” On the two sides of the ring were inscribed the numerals 19 and 43.

  Schneider turned off the penlight and, for the second time since his landing in France, he began to cry.

  It would not be the last time.

  Before dawn the chaos had subsided, replaced by the orderly rebuilding of their field hospital. A new operating tent was on its way, they were told, and in the meantime thirty combat soldiers cleaned out rooms in the farmhouse to serve as ORs.

  After Schneider recovered, having found Antonelli and Dan—at about three in the morning—he later ran into Hamm and McClintock at their operating tables. They had been awakened from their sleep by the chaos of the bombing. Unbeknownst to Schneider, both were among the many GIs scampering over the folds of the ruined OR tent looking for survivors. At dawn they were back in the OR as if nothing had happened.

  Hamm pointed Schneider to the pre-op area indicating to him there was plenty of work to do. Schneider could see in their eyes that he must still be showing some of the shock from the night’s terror. Schneider nodded to Hamm and made his way to pre-op to triage a few cases. Then he selected the most seriously wounded soldier he thought he could save and prepped him for surgery.

  Schneider spent the rest of the next hours putting the boy back together.

  As dawn cleared the sky and the sun peeked over the trees on the low hills to the east, the encampment became very quiet. Everyone was exhausted. More than that, the bombing and strafing had created a sense of a new vulnerability. They had passed many days pretending that their status as non-combatants, healers—men without guns—would somehow protect them from the enemy. Surely, the Germans would respect the red crosses on the tents, trucks, helmets, and armbands. Instead, during the night they had lost their collective virginity, and the reality of their new world scared the hell out of them.

  Schneider finished his last case and checked the pre-ops. Nobody else was waiting for surgery, and the medics seemed to have things under control. He was just getting out of his bloody scrub suit and washing his hands when he heard a commotion outside the tent. Then he shook his head and ran outside where there was fresh air and room to run. No way would he be buried under another tent. He was sure they were under another attack from somewhere.

  He looked to the sky, and screamed out loud to no one in particular. “Where the fuck are they?”

  But there was no sound of airplane engines, no noise of close combat.

  His ruined tent was already gone, only the shallow bomb crater remained nearby to remind him of the night’s events. A crowd of shouting GIs lined the entry road. As Schneider drew nearer, he realized that they were cheering. He thought reinforcements or supplies must be on the way. Red Cross packages, perhaps. But, no, it was none of that.

  A hundred yards away was a slow-moving convoy of canvas-topped trucks, all bearing red crosses on their sides and roofs, even on top of the hoods. He still couldn’t figure out why all the excitement. The four trucks came into the courtyard, escorted by several jeeps with machine-gun mounts armed and ready, and circled to a halt. A sergeant major strolled up to the first truck and spoke with the driver. Then he went to the rear and pulled down the tailgate. He extended his hand up to the back of the truck, and to Schneider’s complete amazement, a beautiful white hand reached out and took the sergeant major’s fat, hairy paw. A leg stepped out, bare to the skirt hem. The sergeant major extended his arms and lifted a WAC nurse by the waist and gently lowered her to the ground. She wore captain’s bars on her shoulders.

  The WAC officer stepped back as the sergeant major snapped a crisp salute. She returned the salute and then waved to the back of the truck. In a moment, the crowd of GIs surged forward and began helping the WAC nurses down from the trucks. There must have been sixty of them in all, and to the tired medical group they were as creatures from another world. Their uniforms, both enlisted and officers, were crisp and clean, and their shoes were still shined.

  Schneider walked closer. He did not want to miss a moment of this. He stood among them, not speaking but drinking in their presence. Their hair was washed, and he could smell the soapy fragrance of them. As they walked by laughing and smiling and greeting everyone, he just stood there. He simply could not move. He could not believe the whiteness of their skin, the softness that emanated from them. In the few minutes since their debarkation, his world was once more transformed. He was grateful that they had not arrived earlier, to be there for the bombing of the tent. He shuddered to think that some of these young women might have died in the night; then he realized to his horror that inevitably some of these young women would die here in the next days or months or years. For better or for worse, with their arrival, life would never be the same again.

  Schneider stopped his staring and sniffing. He fought the urge to sweep up one of these creatures into his arms. Instead, he wiped his hands on the khaki towel he had unconsciously brought with him and started toward the changing tents to get out of his bloody scrubs. Before he got more than a few yards, a voice called to him, and somehow he knew, without turning, that it was she.

  “Good morning…uh…?” she said.

  Schneider turned and looked into the eyes of the first WAC captain he’d watched descend from the truck. She looked at Schneider quizzically, and he realized that she had not finished her sentence because he was out of uniform, so she did not know his rank.

  “Schneider,” he said. “Steve Schneider.”

  He put out his hand, but she still had that puzzled look on her face.

  “Oh,” he went on, his hand hanging in the air, “Major Steve Schneider.”

  She saluted, a courtesy he returned feeling very silly. Then she held out her hand and shook his. Her hand was the softest thing he had ever touched. At least it felt that way to Schneider. He flushed with embarrassment, sure his pleasure showed in his face. Worse still, this simple touch of a woman’s hand, after so very long, gave him an erection. In a scrub suit, standing out in the open, that was not a good thing. He quickly dropped her hand and continued drying the nonexistent water from his hands, keeping the towel well positioned in front of his fly.

  She smiled widely—so widely that her wonderful teeth and red lipstick were all he could take in at one time. It was a moment later before he finally noticed her emerald green eyes and flaming red hair.

  “I’m Captain Ferrarro. Molly Ferrarro.”

  “Welcome to our field hospital, Captain Ferrarro,” he said.

  “Thank you. And Molly is just fine with me, Major.”

  “And
Steve will be fine with me. We rarely refer to rank here.” Schneider looked around. “Oh, and we generally don’t bother with saluting. Not necessary, and it might let a sniper know who’s an officer. Anyway…what have you brought for us?”

  “We’re a surgical team. We have scrub nurses, circulating nurses, recovery room nurses, ward nurses. Just about any job you could need done, we can do. We’re here now to free up the surgeons from the scut work, so you can do your jobs. We’ll move with the hospital wherever it goes.” She reached into her shoulder bag and started to take out some papers. “I have my orders here—”

  “No, no, no. You’ve got the wrong guy. I just work here. I’m a general surgeon. You want to give those to the CO,” he said, pointing to the house. “He’s over in that building.”

  “Thank you, Major,” she said and started to salute again.

  “It’s still Steve, and ditch the salute.”

  She laughed, and said, “Perhaps tomorrow. We’re a little new at this.”

  They said good-bye, and Schneider made his way back to the changing tent. Ferrarro made a beeline toward the farmhouse, walking right past the khaki rags and debris of what was left of the operating tent without even seeing it.

  It was a whole new world now. Schneider walked slowly back through the crowd of mingling men and women—boys and girls really—the chatter and the nervous laughter. He might have been at a high school prom. Or a college mixer. But it wasn’t a prom, and he wasn’t in high school any more, though most of these kids weren’t far from it.

  As he entered the tent, he tossed his towel in with the dirties and glanced at his wedding ring.

  Chapter Seventeen

  13 June 1944, 0600 Hours

  Field Hospital Charlie-7, Hiesville, France

  Schneider stood next to McClintock at the head of the table, watching Hamm finish his operation. When he related what had happened to him, the hair literally stood on the back of Hamm’s neck. McClintock and Hamm listened, riveted, as Schneider recalled the night’s events. Although he tried to underplay the terror, it was clear to everyone that Schneider was badly shaken by it.