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

by Anthony A. Goodman

  “Hey, Steve,” Hamm said. “What’s the plan?”

  “What? I’m the commanding officer now?”

  “No,” Hamm said, “but we have to stay a little focused and organized. We might be needed, and I don’t want everyone scattered all over to hell and back. And you’ve been to Paris and know the geography.”

  Hamm and Schneider got together with McClintock and had a little huddle there on the sidewalk. The nurses and the medics were milling about, moving off into the crowd and coming back to the safety of home base, like little kids exploring a new playground.

  “Look,” Schneider suggested, “let’s just leave the truck locked up here for a while. We can take a look around and then meet back here in a few hours. What do you think?” Hamm looked skeptical, but McClintock cut him off. “Hey, man,” he drawled, “let’s all take a little breather from this war. Ain’t gonna hurt nothin’. Let’s just enjoy this little celebration. Find out if we’re needed anywhere, and then meet back here sometime reasonable. Like tomorrow morning.”

  Ah, fucking McClintock! Schneider thought. He could have kissed him. Hamm started to sputter, but McClintock just plowed right on.

  “Ain’t nothing gonna happen in that little biddy time, Hamm. We’ll be back at the front soon enough, and then you’ll wish we had taken the time to relax a little bit.” He reached out and squeezed Hamm’s trapezius hard with his meaty fist. Hamm winced even as he smiled.

  Schneider thought McClintock was looking at him with more than a casual interest—maybe some jealousy too—but then the anesthesiologist turned and moved off into the crowd. Before he got ten feet, a French woman opened both her arms and smiled the biggest smile Schneider had ever seen. She said something in French that Schneider couldn’t hear, and that McClintock surely couldn’t understand, and then fell into his arms, giving him the most wonderful kiss. It lasted forever. The medical team stood staring in silence.

  One of the woman’s legs lifted from the ground, bent at the knee. Her stockings showed in the sunlight, and it rattled Schneider to realize he had not seen the seam of a woman’s stocking in a long time. The woman wore a flowered cotton dress, and her dark hair was piled high wrapped in a braid. When they had finished their kiss, McClintock walked away with the woman on his arm. Before he disappeared into the crowd, and without even a backward glance, he raised his free hand, waving goodbye in their direction.

  Antonelli and Marsh were chattering away with a couple of nurses in anticipation of free play. It was a high school outing.

  The deal had been sealed. They would all meet back at the truck the next day. No time was specified. Schneider heard Hamm telling Marsh to check on the truck from time to time, and that maybe it would be even better if he and Antonelli took turns guarding it. It wasn’t an order. Just a question.

  Marsh looked at Hamm as if he were speaking Chinese. He nodded and stood there as Hamm, too, walked away. It had been a suggestion. No orders given. So, none could be disobeyed.

  Then Antonelli and Marsh were gone.

  Then Marilyn and Jeanne and Joan.

  Just gone. Everyone blended into the crowd, hugging and kissing the Parisians who proffered champagne in celebration of the renaissance of their city.

  Soon Schneider was standing alone next to the truck.

  Alone? Jesus! Where’s Molly?

  He couldn’t find her, and he panicked. Did she walk off with the nurses? Had he totally misinterpreted her signals? Was it really only his imagination?

  Shit!

  He began to scramble around the rear of the vehicle and shout her name when he ran right into her coming around the side of the ambulance. They slammed softly into each other. He grabbed her arms to keep both of them from stumbling and falling down right there in the street.

  Molly looked at Schneider and smiled. Then, she released herself from his grip and reached up to put her arms around his neck. Schneider bent down and hesitated, but she did not. In a second, her lips were on his. Not tentatively. Not as strangers. But hard and bursting from the hours and days and weeks of frustration that had been penned up in both of them since they first spoke that morning after the strafing of the OR tent.

  Molly pulled back after the longest time and smiled at Schneider again.

  “Come on, Steve, show me Paris.”

  Where do I begin? Schneider wondered. This is Paris, the most romantic city on earth.

  And more than that, it was Paris on the day of its liberation from the goddamned Nazis after four long awful years of captivity and death and war. And it was Paris with a woman who had taken hold of his heart in such a very short space of time, his heart that was now being squeezed in his chest by her soft grip. It was better than wonderful.

  Schneider’s mind was awhirl with thoughts. His brain felt like scrambled eggs. Molly took his arm, and they started down the side streets trying to avoid the crowds. It had been a long time since he had been in Paris. He remembered with a wild joy the excitement of sailing to Europe in the cheapest cabin aboard the Queen Mary so many years ago in college. The arrival at Southampton, the first days with his college friends in London, the sights, the concerts. A train trip out along the Thames for The Henley Royal Regatta. Then the boat train to Paris in time for Bastille Day.

  It was all a far cry from his most recent trip across the Atlantic two years ago. His mind recoiled at the thought of it. This time it was the Queen Mary again, but now her holds were crammed with fifteen thousand GIs instead of two thousand luxury passengers. The carpets were gone and the rich wooden doors replaced with steel. The soft beds were gone, too, with bunks stacked six tiers high in their places. And the food. Oh, God! That crappy food!

  The overwhelming stench of body odor and vomit flashed through his brain, requiring him to physically shake loose from the memories of that awful voyage. But he couldn’t and thought of the towering wave that had struck the ship with such force that it listed until the upper decks were awash with sea water, a mere five degrees from capsizing with the possible loss of fifteen thousand souls—a disaster that would have dwarfed the sinking of the Titanic.

  Punctuating the end of the voyage, with England in sight, they had collided with a British vessel, cutting her in half and killing hundreds of their Allies. Schneider watched men drown in the sea with land in sight, feeling utterly helpless and shackled by his own fear.

  But now, back here with Molly, even in the throes of war, his mental gyroscope was very well tuned to the city that he remembered, as if it were his hometown, even from so long ago.

  So long ago, he had come to Paris in the middle of the night, just two weeks after his nineteenth birthday, on the thirteenth of July, the evening before Bastille Day. The entire city was out in the streets, dancing and drinking and celebrating their favorite holiday. Paris then was almost as exciting as it was today. There was no Hitler yet, and the shock of the Depression was wearing off. There he was, a college sophomore, on his own with just enough money to last the summer…if he were careful. It was magic.

  Now he was back again, and he could hardly stand it for the joy he felt. The magic again. He knew the war was far from over, and that this was just a break in the fighting. Soon enough, they would all be back at the front lines dealing with more death and injuries than he cared to think about. It didn’t escape him that his and Molly’s survival were still very much in question. He wondered who might be grieving his death if he were to die a year from now, a month, tomorrow? Susan? The girls? And who would grieve for Molly with her husband dead?

  Still, he determined that he wouldn’t think about the next day or the day after that. Who knew if they would come? He would take whatever moments the world would give him, alone with Molly in this island of peace in that sea of tragedy.

  Even the Parisians were on his side. They were all in love from the looks of them.

  Schneider’s Uncle Mike, his father’s brother, used to say to him, with a cherubic smile on his face, “When you’re in love, my boy, the whole world
is Jewish.”

  Yeah. So why not me?

  Suddenly, he was no longer haunted by the thoughts of his wife and children at home. The truth of it was that he had been away for a hell of a long time. And he hadn’t made love with anyone in more than two years, much less someone who had captured his heart as Molly had; someone who shared the daily fear and the pain and the dying. She knew him in some ways better than Susan, who had known him since their childhood.

  “So, where are we going?” she asked, squeezing his arm tighter, interrupting his thoughts.

  Schneider thought, that is a much bigger question, you know. Or else you’re reading my mind.

  “Well, let’s head over to the Champs Élysées. We’ll see the Arc de Triomphe. I bet that’s where all the celebrating will be.”

  So they moved in the direction of the Champs, following Schneider’s nose and his memory. They took a few wrong turns, but in that quarter of Paris, every street was worth the walk. There were lovely old homes and shady streets that seemed untouched by the years of war. Schneider wondered how many of those houses had quartered the Gestapo and the SS and the German Wehrmacht officers. But he shook the thoughts from his mind and continued to enjoy the beautiful summer weather. The streets were dappled with sunlight through the heavy foliage of the old trees. The air was warm and moist, heavy with the fragrance of the flowers still blooming along the streets.

  After about ten minutes, they could just begin to hear the noise of the crowds near the Étoile. In a few minutes they were up to their necks in celebrating Parisians, but at that moment Schneider wasn’t ready to share Molly with the crowds.

  He stopped suddenly in front of one of the wonderful old town houses, surprising Molly and accidentally yanking her around by the arm. She laughed as she pirouetted into him, and in a moment he was lost in her lips again, and her hair, and her scent. He could feel her body sliding beneath her loose fitting khakis. She pressed herself to him almost as if she were reading the question in his mind, answering with her body: Yes, we will make love tonight.

  Schneider could feel her presence all through his body, and it was nearly more than he could bear. She hugged him tightly, then released him from her grip and took his hand, pulling him toward the noises of the Étoile.

  They made their way through the shady side streets where people were fewer and the going easier. Here and there were the remnants of burned German flags, the swastikas still smoldering on some of them. The French tricolor hung from hundreds of windows, fresh from their secret storage places of the last four years. There were even some American and British flags hanging alongside the French ones. Schneider wondered at the risks people took in keeping these flags hidden and ready throughout the whole Occupation. Many of the windows were open to the unbelievably beautiful summer’s day. There was not a cloud in the sky. A light breeze moved the air.

  The French were certain that God was on their side that Saturday morning in August.

  Schneider and Molly heard later that the last week’s fighting between the French Partisans and the Nazis had been particularly fierce. There were more than four hundred barricades erected all over the city to isolate the German groups and prevent the movement of tanks and armored personnel carriers. It was like the French Revolution, with cries of “Aux Barricades!” resounding throughout the city. There, lying behind pathetic fortresses of furniture, mattresses and burning tires, the French Partisans defended their posts with a terrible loss of life. Medical care was nonexistent, which might explain the welcome the Americans received as they came into town with their ambulance and their uniforms with their medical insignia. Quite unintentionally, they were the first of the Americans to arrive in Paris that day. The FFI, under Général De Gaulle had demanded that the French themselves, and only they, liberate Paris.

  “Let’s get over to the Étoile and see what’s happening. Then we can find a place to stay for tonight,” yelled Schneider over the noise of the crowd. “I think there’s going to be a crush of people wanting rooms in Paris, and I don’t know how many hotels are even open at this point.”

  Schneider was damned if he would spend this night on a park bench somewhere.

  They walked faster as they neared the noises of the Champs Élysées, their excitement rising alongside the fervor of the French. They intersected the Champs several streets down toward the Place de la Concorde.

  The crowds were in a frenzy. Marching through the streets was a column of French Partisans holding their guns on about fifty women with shaved heads. The crowd was now becoming more angry and violent, and only the presence of the Partisans kept them at bay. These women were collaborators who had given comfort, primarily their bodies, to the Nazis. Now they would feel the full brunt of the anger that had been pent up in the Parisians for so many years. The shaved heads identified their crimes, and their torn clothing (leaving some of them nearly naked) was a sign of the contempt in which they were held.

  As the women passed, Molly drew nearer to Schneider and tightened her grip on his arm. She was shaking, and Schneider could see she was upset at the sight before her and the violence they both knew awaited these women. There was not long to wait.

  Almost directly in front of them, amid shouts of “Putains! Les Salauds!” (Whores! Bastards!), a woman lunged from the crowd and spit into the passive face of one of the shorn women. The spittle dripped down her face. Her hands were bound behind her back. Her dress had been ripped from her, leaving her wearing only a tattered bleached slip and brassiere, exposing her shame to everyone on that crowded street. Molly buried her face in Schneider’s chest, and even he, the supposedly battle-hardened surgeon, wanted to turn away. But, he couldn’t. He was hypnotized and, in a way, fascinated. There was some kind of justice here, and he found himself, to his shame, almost enjoying it. He, like the Parisians, wanted revenge.

  Behind these women came another band of captured collaborators. Schneider had no idea who they were, so he asked a Frenchman who was standing next to him. The man spit on the ground, and then explained that these were the male profiteers who had made money and curried favor from the Nazi occupation of Paris. Then he spit gain. The man paused for a moment, looking at Schneider’s and Molly’s insignias. He broke into a smile and grabbed Molly, kissing her on both cheeks. Without a pause, he turned and grabbed Schneider, kissing him too.

  “Merci, mes amis. Merci beaucoup.”

  The man moved off and Schneider turned back to the spectacle of the captives. They were a ragged bunch, their clothes torn and their faces bloodied and swollen. Again, the crowds surged forward as these men were marched off to wherever the Partisans were taking them. Schneider knew that wherever it was, it wouldn’t be pretty. Many of these men would not survive the night.

  The Partisan captors were a ragged bunch as well, armed with a variety of weapons and wearing no uniforms. They had suffered greatly during the war, and at this moment they were not men and women to be trifled with. They prodded their prisoners ahead with their gun barrels. Occasionally, they struck a laggard in the back or head. Molly saw only the first such beating, for afterward she never took her head from Schneider’s chest. This professional nurse who had seen, day in and day out, the worst that humans could inflict upon humans, could not bear to watch the revenge play out before her eyes.

  Schneider never blinked.

  One prisoner was dressed in a gray suit jacket, white shirt, and silk tie still knotted neatly at his throat. But his trousers were gone, making him a ridiculous figure standing there in his stocking feet and underwear, his tattered socks held up by garters. Schneider almost felt sorry for the man. Suddenly, a woman burst through the crowd and ran into the line. She shoved past a mildly protesting Partisan and struck the man in the temple with a cobble stone. She was so much smaller than the man that she had to jump to reach his temple. The man staggered and then received a second blow to the same place, toppling him to his knees. Only then did the Partisan guard gently take the woman by the elbow and lead her from the
street and back into the crowd.

  Another guard yanked the now bleeding man to his feet, shoving him back in line. The prisoners were made to keep their hands over their heads the whole time, though none could have put up any resistance at this point without being killed on the spot.

  And so the shaven-headed women and the collaborator men continued down the violent and shame-laden gauntlet of the Champs Élysées and the Rue de Rivoli to whatever fate.

  “Can we leave here, Steve?” Molly said as soon as the group had passed. “I don’t want to see any more of this. This is…this is more like what I expect the Germans to do.”

  Schneider was struck at how the scene had shaken her, this woman who was in the presence of terrible wounds and pain and death almost every day of her young life. She was literally up to her elbows in blood twenty-four hours a day. There was something about the calculated brutality, even against the vermin collaborators, that offended her sense of fairness, her rules of fair play. At that moment, he wasn’t quite sure what to think, but suddenly he, too, wanted out of there. The exhilaration of liberation day had been sadly stained by the public brutality, and Schneider wanted to get away as badly as Molly did.

  They headed left, back up the Champs Élysées toward the Étoile. It was early afternoon by then. There must have been a million or more people crowding the two sides of the enormous avenue. Schneider had been impressed with the size and scope of the Champs when he was there during peacetime, but now, with this unending throng of people blanketing nearly every square foot of ground, it seemed far more vast than before.

  Schneider and Molly were soon well away from the shadow of reprisals and revenge, for there in the streets again was the unbridled joy that had first greeted them when they arrived. Slowly, Molly came back to herself and seemed to put the scenes of a few minutes earlier behind her. As she emerged from her sorrow and fear, so did Steve. He held her tightly, for if he lost her in a crowd such as this, God only knew when he could find her again. They hadn’t thought to set a meeting place in case they got separated—never even considered it.