by Cara Black
Suddenly she heard the sickening crash of metal. Then a thundering explosion ricocheted down the chilly street. The ground rumbled, throwing them against a stone wall.
She heard screams. Behind a low row of houses she watched the jagged roofline of the post office blush red. Flames.
Kate pulled herself up, her pulse racing, and yelled over the shouting for the doctor to follow her. She ran forward into a cloud of powdery dust that shimmered white in the heat, choking her. Flames crackled, their combustion sucking the air like a hot wind tunnel.
Had a bomb gone off?
Turning the corner, she found the street was a blast furnace. Cries and the yelping of a dog echoed from somewhere in the smoking haze.
“Dafydd! Lisbeth!”
Terror stricken, she saw a gaping hole where the post office had been. Now it was a flaming heap of collapsing stone. A figure writhed in the burning driver’s seat of the Red Cross truck. Horrific. The doctor was trying to open the truck’s door. Kate kept moving, she had to find her family. “Dafydd, where are you?”
She tried to see through the smoke, inching her way along a wall that was hot to the touch. Finally she could see through the smoke enough to make out a burning petrol supply truck, its front end crumpled and smashed into—no, no, it couldn’t be. The truck had crashed into the Tilly, creating a fireball.
Screaming and stumbling toward the burning Tilly, she inhaled acrid smoke. The wall sparked into flame and began to crumble. She heard a baby’s cry. Lisbeth. The last thing she remembered was a rush of raining soot.
Kate blinked awake to bright lights, a burnt hair smell in her nose. She felt a cold disk against her chest.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in the naval hospital. I’m the duty doctor.”
Kate’s eyes focused on an older woman with short gray hair, a stethoscope hanging from her neck, who was feeling for her pulse.
“You’ve been treated for burns and smoke inhalation,” the doctor was saying. “And for shock. All your vital signs are stable.”
“I want to see Dafydd,” Kate said, trying to sit up. “My baby.”
The doctor sat down next to Kate on the bed, taking Kate’s bandaged hand. “Miss—”
“It’s Missus,” she said. “Mrs. Rees.”
“Mrs. Rees, we’ve had a terrible tragedy—”
“What happened?” Kate’s foggy mind struggled to remember.
“There was an attack,” the doctor said, fury in her voice. “The Germans torpedoed a ship—the Royal Oak. There were twelve hundred men and boys aboard.”
“But—” Kate’s memory was coming back—the glittering white heat, the Red Cross vehicle in flames. “There was a petrol truck,” she said suddenly.
“Yes,” the doctor said softly. “In the confusion of the attack there was a horrific accident. Three vehicles, including a petrol truck. It caused a huge fire. There were many casualties.”
“You don’t understand,” Kate said, as she tried not to understand. “My husband was with my sick baby, waiting for me by the post office. They must have been taken to safety.”
“They’re gone. I’m so sorry.”
“Gone?” She grabbed the doctor’s arm and pulled herself up, startled by the sudden pain in her burned legs. “Gone where?”
“They didn’t make it.”
“No, that’s not true.”
“I’m afraid no one survived.”
That’s when she felt the searing pain in her gut. “Then how did I?”
“You were lucky.”
“Lucky?” She threw the covers aside. “I don’t believe you.” Struggled as the doctor held her down. “We have to find them.” She was screaming as a nurse came toward her with a hypodermic needle. “Don’t you understand?” And then she felt the jab.
June 16, 1940
Hoy, Orkney
More than half a year had passed since the crash and Kate still woke up sick every day. This morning she’d gone to where the post office had stood, now an empty sore of a fire site, the whole place fenced off up to the pier it bordered. Scapa Flow’s oily water churned below. Only a buoy in the harbor marked the watery grave of the sunken warship HMS Royal Oak. Her mind returned to its fiery sinking, lurching like a wounded whale. She climbed through the wire fence and combed through the rubble and burnt wood, up to her knees in soot. Always looking for a trace of Lisbeth, Dafydd. To find something for the hole in her heart.
She tossed charred bricks aside, finding chunks of mortar, shards of glass. Dug deep and felt a piece of smooth metal. Under it something jagged—a scorched wooden baby rattle, the handle blackened. Her heart fractured. Lisbeth’s favorite. How had it survived the flames? It was as if fate were being especially brutal. Sobbing, she brushed the soot off, kissed it. Held it close to her chest.
Flapping in the rubble was a torn and crinkled newspaper page—a photo of a candlelit rally, Hitler standing before a giant swastika. The man who had taken her family away. And for what?
An aching split her insides. Nothing could fill the emptiness.
Below her foot a shard of glass sparkled in the morning sun. She thought about how easy it would be to pick it up and slice her wrist, put the emptiness behind her forever.
The wind blowing over the treeless fields carried the bleating of sheep. She thought of her pa back in Oregon. When she was a little girl and her stupid brother had tripped her, Pa had told her to get up. Get up and get even.
She stared at Hitler’s picture and wiped her tears, letting her anger fill her.
You’ll pay.
“I’m still shocked ye came back ta work,” said Greer, grinding out a cigarette with her toe in the brick factory yard.
Kate shrugged. “What else would I do with myself, Greer?”
Without work to distract her, she’d find herself on the roof, ready to jump.
Greer was local, the only good friend she’d made working in munitions assembly. Today, as usual, they ate lunch together perched on wood boxes of ammunition stacked in the factory yard under a metal canopied supply lean-to that protected them from the weather. Across from them at the other end of the dirt yard was the warhead examination room, beyond that the hurriedly built torpedo depot. In the adjoining building was the recreation center, where Greer’s gran worked. The recreation center was a vital part of the military complex, hosting activities to boost morale on this remote island.
Troops marched past, headed toward the power station on the freshly tarmacked road, as Greer divided her doughy pasty, which was wrapped in a creased, much-folded piece of newspaper, and shared half with Kate. Kate had little appetite. Everything tasted like cardboard after her loss. She hated this dried-up pasty. Yet the doctor had warned her she’d get sick again if she didn’t eat, and then she wouldn’t be able to work.
“Don’t ye want ta go back home ta Oregon?” asked Greer.
“Nothing makes it across the Atlantic anymore with the U-boats, Greer. Not even letters.”
The last letter from her father had arrived three months ago saying her brother Jed had jumped the gun and enlisted in the army. He’d written how sorry he’d been not to meet his son-in-law and granddaughter. Touchingly, he had requested a lock of Lisbeth’s hair to keep alongside her mother’s.
She didn’t even have that.
“Mah brother’s bin evacuated,” said Greer. He had been sent to France and Kate knew Greer had been desperately worried about him since the fighting began at Dunkirk. He was only sixteen—Greer had confided that he had lied to join the army. Just a kid.
“Hope he’s home soon, Greer.” Kate had listened to the BBC broadcast last week, when the recently appointed prime minister Winston Churchill had described the British soldiers evacuating the Dunkirk beaches on every kind of fishing boat, a flotilla bobbing in the Channel. Churchill had warned of the impending German
invasion, his words still ringing in her mind: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
“Have a wee sip.” Greer poured steaming milky tea from a thermos into a chipped mug and offered it to Kate. “Mah gran found sugar on th’ black market.”
The tea was hot, sweet and strong as nails. “You’re a real pal to share, Greer.” Kate squeezed Greer’s hand. Rationed sugar was like gold on the island. “Lovely, haven’t tasted anything sweet since I don’t know when.”
Several of the maintenance crew were emerging from the torpedo depot, wiping their hands. As they passed Kate and Greer, one was saying, “What’s that noise?”
Kate heard it, too. It came from the sky.
A propeller plane droned out of the clouds, followed by a second, then a third one.
A Royal Navy lieutenant was pointing. “Call control. We need to identify these aircraft.”
The whole island of Hoy was a restricted security area. Special permits and security clearance were required to travel in or out. Planes brought supplies and equipment only at scheduled times due to the difficulty of moving the hydrogen-filled barrage balloons that camouflaged the pier, the anchored fleet and naval stores. A shipment had come in several days ago; there wouldn’t be another today. But Kate knew yesterday’s storm had grounded all but one of the barrage balloons; normally hostile aircraft would have been forced to higher, less accurate bombing altitudes.
“Sound the alert!” The team of servicemen playing hockey in the next field were beating a path off their pitch, shouting and pointing at the sky. As the planes approached from the east, the plane fuselages came into view—unmistakable swastikas. The Luftwaffe.
Startled, Kate choked on the tea.
“Bloody ’ell.” Greer chewed faster.
Confusion set it. People were running for cover. Why hadn’t the alert sounded? Kate saw the gunners at the newly installed Vickers Mk VIII light antiaircraft guns trying to fire, but the guns seemed to be jammed. So much for thinking this place was impregnable.
The planes made a lazy dip, then the droning faded away. Gone. Had the Luftwaffe strayed too far from their Norway base? Why hadn’t the radar system warned the two frontline RAF fighter squadrons stationed over at Wick to intercept the planes?
The English officer was chiding servicemen to return to duty. “Back to positions,” he said in that let’s-be-sensible-and-not-cause-a-big-fuss way Kate had still not gotten used to during the time she had been living among English officers. “Control is looking into what’s going on.”
Greer stood, wiping crumbs from her work smock. “Gotta tell mah gran ta get home. She shouldna finish out her shift.”
“See you later, Greer.”
Kate put the half-eaten pasty in her pocket and drifted across the yard to join some coworkers. There was general excited discussion of the Luftwaffe planes as they trudged back to work, filing along the factory’s blacked-out windows, their sills gray with clots of pigeon droppings.
They hadn’t made it into the factory when Kate heard the drone of planes again. Her stomach clenched. Everyone looked up. The Luftwaffe were taking another pass now that the clouds had parted. Only two this time, their swastikas glinting on the fuselage.
Then a thundering explosion. A bomb. Dark black billows mushroomed from the naval barracks beyond the factory. The ground trembled.
“Attack,” someone yelled.
The nightmare of the fiery explosion that had taken Dafydd and Lisbeth was happening all over again. Frozen in the horror of her memories, Kate watched as a plane broke out of formation, picked up speed and swooped down, flying low along the pier, not three hundred yards away beyond the factory wall.
Why were only the Territorial Army unit overlooking Lyness responding with their eight 4.5 heavy antiaircraft guns? Why wasn’t an alert sounding?
The plane executed a loop. Showing off, the cocky bastard. Sun sparkled on the cockpit window. The plane dipped, heading straight toward the factory, the armament stores, the torpedo depot and the recreation center.
The place would explode, taking the wharf and the base with it.
She looked around at the shocked faces of her coworkers.
“Gas masks, everyone!” yelled the factory foreman. “To the shelter at the foundry!”
Sirens blared. Assembly line and munitions workers streamed past her now, jostling and shoving toward the shelter on the other side of the yard.
Over the fence she saw a plume of charcoal smoke rise from the black hull of the half-sunk shipwreck used to block submarines from the harbor. Everyone was running for cover, into nearby barracks, the canteen, any place to escape the plane’s machine gun strafing. She saw a stream of bullets scattering people coming out of the recreation center. A screaming woman pulled her child down to the ground. An older woman ran terrorized only to be mowed down by machine gun fire, dropping like a doll.
Kate felt her heart seize. She thought of Greer’s grandmother—could that woman have been her? But where was Greer? She searched the crowd.
“You there, get going.”
Her heart thumped in her chest, fear icing through her veins. The plane’s constant droning got closer. “Greer!” Her shout was swallowed by all the other shouts in the yard.
“Hurry inside, the shelter’s filling up,” said one of the older men from the ammo supply. He grabbed her arm, pulling her into the throng.
When they were inside, standing crowded together, she wiped the perspiration from her forehead with her sleeve. One of the English home guard wardens blew a whistle. “All inside, door closing.” The metal door grunted and scraped over the stone as the other warden started to pull it shut.
More tat-tat-tat sprayed the brick wall. In the narrowing patch of daylight on the other side of the door, Kate saw a woman running toward the shelter. Her torn dress trailed in the oil puddles in the dirt yard and a gas mask was bouncing from her belt. Greer!
“Don’t close the door, let her in!” Kate shouted.
The home guard warden was still pulling hard on the scraping door. “It’s too late. We’re responsible for everyone’s safety—”
In the last inch of daylight coming through the door, Kate watched a trail of bullets raise dust puffs in the yard. Kate choked back a scream as Greer pounded on the door. Any second the gunner would pick her off.
With all her might, Kate shoved the guard aside and threw her body weight against the heavy door.
“Quick, Greer!”
Panting, she yanked her friend inside.
Greer huddled in the shelter, trembling. Kate rubbed her back, steeling herself against the dirty looks of the home guard wardens.
“You put a lot of lives at risk, Yank,” said the one she’d shoved. “I’m going to have to report this.”
There wouldn’t be a report at all if the shelter was bombed to smithereens.
Kate hated feeling so helpless. And now here she was stuck in the shelter trembling in fear like everyone else. She tried to ignore the angry mutterings of her coworkers, but they carried loudly in the stale air of the shelter.
Greer’s chin quivered. “I owe ye, Kate.”
“You would have done the same.”
After ten minutes, a fog horn sounded the all-clear.
“About time,” Greer said. “Gotta find mah gran.” Kate heard false bravado in her voice.
As people exited the shelter, the home guard warden took Kate’s elbow. “You’re a civilian subject to His Majesty’s naval base regulations,” he said, his tone officious. “In this military facility your security clearance depends on your adhering to the rules and regulations. I’m reporting you for disciplinary action. We’re going to the head home guard warden’s office right now.”
“I understan
d,” Kate said, trying to look apologetic. “But no one got hurt.”
“She saved mah life, ye eejit,” Greer said, dusting off her dress.
“She risked the lives of a hundred people!” said the home guard. “As a foreigner—”
“A foreigner?” said Kate. Would she lose her job? But this was ridiculous. “I am the widow of a Welsh naval officer.”
“As a non–British citizen,” the warden said, spittle flying from his lips, “you’ve been allowed to work here on sufferance because of your husband. You’ve gone too far now. Let’s go.”
Kate paced the linoleum floor in the home guard warden’s empty office. Her blouse collar stuck to her damp neck. Outside the window naval cadets marched in unison; work was resuming on the wharf.
The base Red Cross ambulances had arrived after the all-clear; the nurses were moving among the injured in front of the recreation center. Kate watched as medics lifted the lifeless older woman onto a gurney. She recognized the face as they pulled a sheet over it. Greer’s gran.
Heartbroken, Kate watched Greer, sobbing, follow the medics to the ambulance. Mah feisty gran, Kate could hear her friend saying with a grin, always takin’ the piss out of someone who deserves it. This warm-hearted woman who’d always been so kind. Kate could still taste the black-market sugar she’d scrounged for that sweet milky tea.
An innocent victim of the Luftwaffe. A pointless death.
She sat on the floor, wrapped her arms around her bent knees. No tears left, she rocked back and forth, rocked and rocked until her back was tired and her rear end was sore.
After half an hour, Kate realized she’d been forgotten.
Now what?
Kate couldn’t face returning to work. Or the cottage, filled with memories of what she’d never have again. Dafydd’s warm arms. Lisbeth’s soft cooing.
She had to do something with herself. For eight months she’d been treading water, wallowing in grief, mindlessly testing rifles and completing her factory work. She couldn’t stand it anymore.