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

by Anthony A. Goodman

  Molly could see the pain in Hamm’s face. She reached out and took his hand in hers. As she tightened her grip, Hamm looked into her eyes and saw the tears forming there. His own eyes were tearing too. Then, he pulled his hand away, and turned from her.

  Molly rose.

  “Want some coffee, Captain?” Hamm said.

  “Sure, Major. But, you can call me Molly. Everyone else has since we landed here. OK?”

  “Fine. And if you’re comfortable with it, you can call me Hamm, at least outside the operating room.”

  They walked back to the mess tent, which was now almost empty. Hamm got two mugs of coffee and carried them to where Molly had taken a seat with some of her nurses. When he got there, the others smiled, gathered their things and left. Hamm didn’t know if they were finished eating or whether they were giving Molly and him space to be alone.

  After their brief hand holding, the other nurses leaving them alone made him uncomfortable, probably because he found her so attractive and had a few more stray fantasies than a married man ought to have. Either way, they sat there for a while just sipping the hot coffee—black and bitter—and saying nothing. Their visit to James had taken a toll on them both, and he reminded himself that visits to those doomed men were among the most important things he could do.

  Chapter Eighteen

  1 July 1944, 0800 Hours

  Field Hospital Charlie-7, East of St. Lô, France

  Schneider, Hamm and McClintock sat around the wooden table in the mess tent. Most of the team had cleared their places and were beginning their own shift in the ORs. Hamm clutched his coffee mug between two hands, warming them in the morning chill. McClintock was on his third cup of the strong black brew. Schneider sorely missed his super sweet coffee with the heavy cream he used to have at home. Instead he stuck with tea now rather than give in to the bitter brew the army served up.

  Hamm said, “I can’t believe it’s only been three weeks since we landed. Feels like years, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s the constant packing up and moving that’s getting to me,” Schneider said. “The scrambling to keep up with the front lines, and all these casualties. I never expected anything like this.”

  “Well, we’re in a war, Steve,” McClintock said. “What did you think it would be like? Office hours?”

  “Oh, screw you.”

  “I just meant we need to be as near to the action as possible. It’s all about how long it takes to get these poor bastards on the operating table from the time they’re hit, so you can cut on ‘em.”

  “Oh, really? I never knew that. Thanks so much for letting me in on that, pal.”

  “Jesus, guys,” Hamm said. “Give it a rest. We’re all on the same team.”

  Schneider looked at his watch. “Okay. So let’s go do it. Hamm, let’s see about the autoclaves we’ve been waiting for. Maybe Molly knows something.”

  “And a good opportunity to see Captain Molly, eh?” McClintock said.

  “What’s with you today, Ted?”

  “Enough, you guys,” Hamm said. He took his coffee mug to the dirty dish rack and turned to leave. “C’mon, Steve. Let’s go. See you in the OR, Ted.”

  McClintock stayed where he was, nursing his coffee in silence. Hamm and Schneider left the mess tent and walked over to Molly’s office outside the operating tents.

  “What the hell’s McClintock got up his ass?” Schneider said.

  “Just let it go, Steve. Everyone’s under a lot of pressure. He’s okay.”

  Molly’s nurses were keeping the operating rooms turning over at an astounding rate, meaning more men were making it to the operating table alive. The field hospital had done over nine hundred cases in the first weeks, and the nurses were pitifully overworked and sometimes underappreciated.

  Hamm and Schneider turned the corner to Molly’s tent and saw a hand-lettered sign on her door:

  EX NULLO, NON FECES

  Hamm translated, “No Shit From No One! Whoever wrote that got it right.”

  Schneider laughed. “She’s fighting a lot of big egos around here.”

  Hamm looked at Schneider and raised his eyebrows.

  “I know! I know! I’m one of them,” Schneider said. “But it’s so easy to blame the nurses when things go wrong.”

  “Damn right, so don’t be one of those.” Hamm said.

  “Molly’s tough though. She doesn’t let her nurses get bullied by the surgeons, or anyone else for that matter. And anyway that should be Ex Neminae Non Feces.”

  Hamm just shook his head, knocked on the tent post and entered.

  “Hey, Captain,” he said.

  “Good morning,” she said to them both. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, first, any news on the extra autoclaves?”

  “No. The same old stuff. ‘They’re on the way.’ But no one seems to know where or when.”

  “Anything we can do to speed that up?” Hamm asked.

  “Well, you could drive back to Omaha Beach and see if they’re…Sorry, I’m getting cranky lately.”

  “You’re in good company,” Schneider said.

  “Look, Captain,” Hamm said. “It’s only been a couple of weeks. Your WACs have made a hell of a difference around here. We moved three times in four days. It’s exhausting. The packing and unpacking. But, your nurses are really doing the lion’s share of the work.”

  “Thank you, Major. It’s good to know we’re appreciated.”

  “No question about it. We’re heading over to the OR. See you there, probably.”

  “Definitely,” she said.

  July turned wet and miserable. Conditions were demoralizing. Living outside week after week might have been bearable under beautiful, dry, peacetime conditions. Barely. But in the wet and the cold of that summer, it was awful. Even in the big tents it was awful. Water seeped in and soaked the sleeping bags. Some of the men and women dug trenches around their tents, but they, too, inevitably filled with water. When they dug foxholes they were only dry until the first rain. Team members lost their toothbrushes, combs and family pictures in the mud. So, after several awful days camping out under incessant downpours, the group finally found farm buildings to use, and life dramatically changed for the better.

  There had been a series of moves, first south and then to the east toward Paris. Names like Ste. Mère Église, Carentan, Isigny, and St. Lô stood out in Schneider’s brain, though he had barely known of them before. Sometimes he could recall them clearly, like the total devastation at St. Lô, or the church steeple and the hedgerows around Ste. Mère Église. But the others became a blur of muddy villages with shattered stone fountains, partially-destroyed homes with shutters hanging askew, and bloated cattle lying in the roads with their feet pointing to the sky. The mix of smells was burned into his mind: the odors of rotting and burning flesh and meat commingled with the freshness of the summer vegetation. It was so bizarre that he knew he would never be rid of it.

  Then there were the children in the villages, ragged in their country clothes. They stood staring out the windows of their shattered homes as medics passed by in the trucks and jeeps, or they ran alongside the vehicles collecting stale chocolate from the soldiers’ C rations, yet enduring it all, the way only children could.

  The teams pushed on as the battle and the front lines moved east. Finally, when they were just about at the end of their collective rope with the wet and the cold and the mud and the dying, there was a lull in the battle. Their good fortune extended to setting up at a lovely farm west of Paris.

  Schneider didn’t know how far it was because here too, the Germans had taken down all the road signs. But there had been lots of talk about getting to Paris someday. Always someday. Perhaps that day was coming.

  This particular farm had been deserted for some time. Weeds choked the untended fields. The cattle roamed freely thanks to the artillery-blasted holes in the fences and hedgerows. The main house miraculously had escaped the shelling, and the men quickly converted it into
quarters for the officers. They converted the barn for the enlisted men. It didn’t take long to get the hospital up and running. By this time, the forward movement had stalled, so they settled in for what they expected to be a long haul. Long, at that time, might be as much as a week.

  The operating tents were still fitted with the white liners to give better light and keep dirt from falling off the canvas into the open wounds or onto the sterile instruments. There were two post-op tents now and an evacuation tent where the convalescing soldiers awaited transport to the rear. They set up the tents in the shape of a cross, with the OR at the center. Everything revolved around the OR. The mess tent was near the farmhouse and tended to be the place away from work where everyone congregated. The mess tent was always filled with an entire shift of men and women trying to get some food before sleep. They worked twelve hours on and twelve hours off, when they could. Sometimes it was twenty-four hours on, or thirty-six or forty-eight if the fighting was really intense. After forty-eight hours, though, nobody was much good for anything, and they forced themselves to try to sleep for at least a few hours before they began making fatal errors.

  So, to allow the off-duty people some undisturbed rest, those on call sat up and socialized in the mess when they weren’t operating. It was warm from the cooking stoves and always smelled of coffee. The coffee smelled better than it tasted, but then Schneider had always felt that way about coffee. Like the smell of cut grass: sweet and pungent, and it always made him smile.

  The downside of the farm was that, for some reason, it seemed to be on the Luftwaffe’s target list. It was bombed and strafed with regularity. At first, everyone was terrified. Surgery would stop when the bombs started. Nurses and surgeons dropped to the floor, with no pretense of trying to maintain sterility. But, after a while they got philosophical and just kept operating. Somehow, the hospital never took a direct hit at that farm, and there were no tragedies such as the collapse of the surgical tent at the field hospital that killed so many and nearly buried Schneider alive. The sidewalls were ventilated with bullets and shrapnel a few times, but mercifully nobody was injured.

  The other side of all of this was the total lack of privacy. There were always lines and small crowds for everything that needed to be done. Everyone showered with company, went to the latrine with company, ate with company, and slept with company in the same room. There were constant nocturnal noises: farts and groans and screams caused by nightmares. It seemed impossible to be alone even for a few minutes. It was dangerous to stray too far from the guarded periphery of the field hospital because there were still snipers around, and the battle lines kept changing all the time anyway. They never knew how close they were to an actual German position.

  One afternoon, just after a long shift, Schneider couldn’t stand the crowds any longer and took a walk away from the OR tent. He left the area, but instead of going to the mess tent or the officer’s quarters, he just walked in a straight line away from everyone.

  He found himself at the periphery of a field just beyond the farmhouse in the shadow of the trees that served as a windbreak for the once-cultivated land. There he saw a giant sawed-off tree stump, and there also, to his surprise, sitting on the stump, was Molly.

  He was about to call out so as not to frighten her by his sudden appearance. She seemed to be laughing almost uncontrollably. When he got a little closer he realized she was crying. Actually, she was sobbing uncontrollably, long wrenching spasms of grief. Her shoulders were hunched with the effort, the tears cascading off her cheeks like rivers. She didn’t even bother to wipe them away. The flood just continued, as if her soul were being wrung dry to rid herself of some grief, some longing, some loss. She was so completely submerged in her sorrow that Schneider thought, even if the Germans strafed and bombed and overran their position, she would have been unable to move from that stump.

  Schneider moved to her side. When his hand touched her shoulder, and when she should have jumped out of her skin with fright, she kept crying, as if refusing to be interrupted in her grief.

  “Captain?” he said softly.

  She only continued to convulse. He decided to say no more until she was ready. He kept his hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her in her grief.

  Finally, she turned, wiping the tears from her eyes, shaking herself free of her thoughts and coming back into the present. Back to the awful war.

  “I’m OK,” she said and touched his hand where it rested on her shoulder. He didn’t take his hand away. There was something startling in the intimacy of the touch. Perhaps it was the wetness of her tears still on her fingertips.

  He started to walk away then, to leave her to her thoughts when she said,

  “No. Don’t go just yet.”

  He came back, and began to sit down on the ground. “No,” she said quietly, her voice interrupted by the last residual spasms of her sobbing, “it’s too wet. There’s room here.”

  She moved over, and he sat down beside her. Their bodies touched, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder. Schneider realized that this was the first time in nearly three years that he had felt a woman’s body this close to his. He could sense her heat, and it felt good. Maybe too good.

  “It’s hard, isn’t it?” he asked her. “The dying and the pain. You just can’t get away from it, and God knows how long it’s going to continue. I don’t think we’re anywhere near the end of this war.”

  She seemed confused.

  “It’s not the war. I’m doing OK with that. That’s my job, and I can handle it. It’s just….”

  “Look, Molly. I’m intruding. You don’t have to tell me anything. I just saw you out here, and I was worried. We’re still a little too near the front for you to be so far from camp. These lines change so fast that there could be Jerries out here. I actually thought you were laughing when I walked by. It was odd to see you here by yourself, laughing uncontrollably. Then, when I got nearer, I realized you were crying. Funny, isn’t it, how crying and laughing are so similar? You can mistake them so easily….”

  He stopped abruptly. He realized that he was rambling because he was nervous being this close to her. He felt embarrassed and stupid and unsympathetic for being so preoccupied with her.

  She nodded, still struggling to suppress her sobs.

  In her silence, he went on.

  “Anyway, I feel as if I’m intruding…so I’ll go on back. Just don’t stay here too long, OK?” He rose to go.

  “Don’t go…Steve.” she said suddenly. “Please don’t go.”

  He sat back on the stump, this time still closer.

  “I’d like some company right now,” she said with a sigh. “We’ll just change the subject, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “So…what’s the new subject?” she said, letting out the first laugh of the day.

  He laughed, too, and the two of them sat in silence for a few more minutes.

  “Well, for one thing,” he said, “I still haven’t figured out where a woman with flaming red hair, freckles and green eyes gets a name like Ferrarro. Doesn’t exactly fit with Molly either. You just don’t look Italian. Scottish. Irish, maybe. Sicilian? Never!”

  As she started to speak, they heard the sound of artillery at their backs, and turned to see how far away and from what direction it was coming. It was very far to the east. The delay between the flashes just over the horizon indicated they were in no danger. They had gotten good at estimating the distance from the front this way.

  “Irish, actually,” she said. “And Scottish. My maiden name was Molly Fitzgerald. Doesn’t get more Irish than that. My father was Irish, my mother Scottish. A Campbell, she was. And she has more freckles than I do.” She laughed. “And greener eyes, too.”

  Greener than hers? It was impossible to imagine. Schneider could hardly stop staring at them.

  “Ferrarro is my husband’s name.” She was choking again, but she forced herself to go on. “Nick Ferrarro. And from Brooklyn! Can you imagine anything more Italian than
that?” She seemed to be holding back again, but Schneider couldn’t tell what.

  He pulled back a bit, physically at least.

  There’s no point in dragging this out, he thought, but she just plowed on, for better or for worse.

  “Steve…Nick is dead. I’m going to keep his name forever, but he’s dead.”

  “I’m so sorry, Molly. I didn’t know…I’m…sorry.”

  “No way for you to know. Nobody around here knows. I just can’t talk about it without crying. Happens every so often. But, I’m doing pretty well right now, so I may as well….”

  “You don’t have to say anything. It’s OK.”

  “No. It’ll be good for me. That is, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not.”

  Molly took a deep breath as a shudder passed through her.

  She said, “He was Navy. OCS. I met him in New York, when I was working the OR at Bellevue. He was having his appendix out. One thing led to another, and we were married just before the war. Then he volunteered, and I did too. He was sent to Pearl, so I requested Tripler Army Hospital, and since they were short of OR staff anyway, they granted my request.”

  She sat silently for a moment. Schneider was keenly aware of her body heat now, and he was very uncomfortable. Or maybe too comfortable. But still, he didn’t move away.

  “He was killed in the Japanese attack. The Arizona. I don’t know the details, and I really don’t want to know because then I would picture him dying and suffering…and I just want to remember him as I knew him. I can still picture where the Arizona went down, and the flames and the men in the water trying to escape, and…Oh, dear God.” She stopped again and buried her face in her hands, trying to blot out the images in her mind.

  “Anyway, I couldn’t stay at Tripler any more after that. I couldn’t be so near Pearl knowing he was down there. Under the water….”

  This time she couldn’t stop the sobs that welled up again. Schneider held her and she turned her head into his chest. Her warm tears soaked his scrubs, and it made him giddy and guilty all at once.