by Jane Healey
“I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” he said, taking a deep breath and starting the car. He rubbed his hands over his face. “Just the rose on every grave . . . and then being with you three makes me think of home and . . .”
This time Dottie leaned over and put her hand on his back. “It’s okay,” she said. “Thank you for showing us.” We drove back to the camp in silence.
By the time we got there, the rest of our group had arrived at the camp, and we focused on setting up our gear for the evening. We also tried to sponge some of the dust and dirt off ourselves, using our helmets as tiny sinks.
That night after dinner and another sing-along with the soldiers, we sat on our bedrolls and sleeping bags next to the Cheyenne, listening to the sounds of battle that were all around us, seeing flashes in the sky. Right as we were settling in, one of the soldiers came over and handed us a bottle of wine to thank us “just for being here.”
We dug the cork out with a knife, and I retrieved three coffee cups from the Cheyenne.
“You okay, Fiona?” Viv asked. She was sitting up, her legs tucked under her as she smoked a Chesterfield.
“Yeah,” I said. “That kid today? Dick? That was tough. That poor guy.”
“I’ve been thinking about him all day,” Dottie said. “And I’ve been thinking about Joe, of course, and my brother, who’s still somewhere in the Pacific. And the Eighty-Second. Too many guys to worry about.”
“I know, poor Dick. Jesus,” Viv said. “And I’ve been praying for our friends from Leicester too and, believe it or not, Harry Westwood.”
“Oh?” Dottie said in a teasing voice.
“Yeah.” Viv shrugged. “I think I might actually have a thing for him.”
“Good,” I said. “I think he’s good for you.”
“You haven’t said much about saying good-bye to Peter, Fi,” Viv said. “What are you going to do if you see him again?”
“If he survived Holland?” I said, thinking about the captain’s words and feeling sick all over again. “I don’t know. Don’t get me wrong. I still love Danny with all my heart. But then the war happened, and he went missing, and here I am now, in this place, where I care about Peter too. And what do I do with that? What do I do if I see him again?”
“Here’s what I think you should do, Fi,” Viv said, sitting up and looking at me, her face serious. “Stop thinking so damn much. Stop trying to control what you can’t. This life over here is a world all its own. None of us knows what the hell is going to happen in the next hour, never mind months from now. Focus on one day at a time. And if one of these days you happen to reunite with Peter? Simply enjoy that day for what it is.”
We were all quiet for a moment as we sipped red wine, and I thought about Viv’s words. The truth was that living for the moment had occurred to me too. It was impossible to plan for anything or anyone when your future could be shot out of the sky tomorrow.
“You’re right,” I said. “But you both know how much I like to plan.”
“No, really? You?” Dottie and Viv almost said these things in unison, full of so much sarcasm that I kicked both of their feet across our bedrolls.
“All right, point taken.” I sighed.
After we stopped talking and settled down to sleep, I stayed up for a long time watching the horrible, fascinating flashes of shell fire in the distance against the black sky. It was still hard to believe I was camping on a beach in France in the middle of the war.
I thought about my last days with Danny and kissing him on our checkered blanket on Bunker Hill. And I thought about the feel of Peter’s lips on my forehead before he left for Holland. Viv was right: living in the midst of war was its own reality. And all of us that were living in it longed for intimacy and connection, however fleeting, because it reminded us of what mattered most.
Chapter Nineteen
September 25, 1944
After a fitful sleep, we woke up caked in more “Normandy dust,” as the soldiers called it, and I was desperate to get to Cherbourg so we could take a real shower at the Red Cross Club Victoire.
We followed Liz’s jeep in a convoy and made the thirty-mile trek to the newly liberated city. England had barely prepared us for the devastation of the battle-scarred Normandy countryside. And though Jimmy had tried to teach me well, my just passable driving skills were not quite up to the task of navigating the near-demolished roads.
There were enormous bomb craters everywhere. Sheep, cows, and horses lay dead, pushed off to the side of the road or in pastures. Hundreds of flies buzzed around them, and the stench made you cover your face as you passed. There were trees that had fallen in the road as well as others with sheared limbs dangling dangerously above us. We saw newly erected signs in English with notices such as “Mines Cleared to Hedges.” One sprawling field was littered with the helmets of German soldiers that had been taken prisoner by the Allies.
The road was also congested with heavy traffic going in both directions. Allied army vehicles of every type, including large convoys like ours, shared the road with haggard French villagers that were finally returning to their homes, many of them with only a baby carriage or cart full of their possessions.
But amid all this devastation, there was also a feeling of goodwill and genuine happiness among the Allied soldiers and the French. Now that Paris was liberated and the D-Day invasion successful, it felt like everyone was exhaling for the first time since the war started. There was a palpable degree of hope in the air.
As we drove, our Clubmobiles were greeted with whistles and whoops from the hundreds of soldiers we passed. Some were walking, weighted down by their battle gear, their faces streaked with dirt under mud-crusted helmets. When they spotted us, they broke out into smiles and shouted familiar questions like, “What state are you girls from?”
French men, women, and children stood in front of their destroyed homes and still managed to smile and wave at us as they watched us go by. Some gave us the V for victory sign, and we heard yells of “Vive la France!”
One little dark-haired girl in a tattered pale-blue dress came running up to the Cheyenne to toss us a bouquet of pink roses. Hers would be the first of several baskets and bouquets of flowers we would receive along the way, and we decorated the Clubmobile with them inside and out.
Halfway to Cherbourg, we reached the town of Valognes, which was decimated to the point that it was no longer a town at all. There were gigantic heaps of rubble where buildings had once stood. Any structures that were still standing had been hollowed out, some stripped down to their frames, a phantom of what they used to be. A couple of buildings resembled oversized dollhouses, the facade blown off, but the broken stairs and shattered, furnished rooms inside fully visible.
“That was the longest thirty-mile drive I’ve ever taken,” Viv said as we finally arrived outside the city of Cherbourg hours later. Liz was parked on the side of the road near the entrance to the city. She waved us down.
“Park here. I’ll drive you to the club in the jeep like I did the other two groups,” she said. “Some of the streets are too narrow to maneuver the big vehicles through.”
Dottie had fallen asleep with her head against the door of the truck, Barbara softly snoring in her lap. Viv elbowed her awake.
“My arm aches from waving at people so much,” Dottie said stretching, much to Barbara’s annoyance. She put her hand to her head and added, “Oh, and my hair feels awful, so stiff, like it’s plastered with dust.”
“Uh, yeah, it is, and it looks disgusting,” Viv said. “As does mine. But Fiona, I think yours might be the worst.”
“Hey thanks, Viv,” I said. “Pray the showers at the club are working.”
The city of Cherbourg also had areas that were destroyed, though some streets had fared better than others. On the less damaged passageways there were beautiful, unscathed gray stone buildings with chocolate-brown storefront signs advertising various pâtisseries, boulangeries, and boucheries. I finally felt the f
irst thrills of being in France, a place I had only dreamed about visiting. We had made it at last.
The enormous American flag in front of Club Victoire made it easy to spot. Liz dropped us at the door, and we were greeted by the club director, Marion Hill, and her staff. They were dressed in fresh uniforms and white shirts, which made me feel even worse about how grimy we were.
Marion led us into a large lounge where a number of soldiers and Red Cross personnel were having coffee, sodas, and cigarettes. The walls were freshly painted battleship gray and decorated with numerous army division emblems and American flags.
“Holy cow! Is that who I think it is under all that dirt?” Then I heard someone scream my name before we were tackled by Blanche, Martha, and Frankie. The six of us hugged and laughed, and Dottie and Martha shed some joyful tears. A few of the soldiers started clapping for us, enjoying our reunion scene.
“Viv, how’s that manicure holding up now?” Frankie said, laughing.
Viv held up her short, polish-free, chipped fingernails and smirked. “You’re hilarious, Frankie.”
“Follow me, I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping tonight as well as where the showers, toiletries, and towels are upstairs,” the club director said. “No hot water, but at this point, I’m sure you just want to be clean. Oh, and I have some fresh white shirts you’re welcome to have if they fit you.”
We told our friends we’d be right back and went to scrub up, wash our hair, and feel human again.
When we emerged downstairs an hour later, Martha, Frankie, and Blanche applauded as we twirled around and showed them our newly clean selves. They had saved us some seats around a scratched-up wooden coffee table in the corner of the lounge.
“Okay, Liz is running around like a chicken with her head cut off; I see that hasn’t changed,” Blanche said, taking a cigarette from Viv. “She came and told us that she’ll be back to talk to us about our first assignments in a little while. And then we’ll take you to a café down the street we’ve been to a few times. There isn’t much food available, but there’s tons of wine and liquor, and, between the French and American soldiers, we’ve never had to pay for it. We’re staying here tonight too—cold showers or not, it’s a nice break after living like gypsies for the last two weeks.”
“Girls, it is crazy over here,” Frankie said, coming back from the little bar with a Coke. She took a sip and just paced back and forth in front of us. “Leicester was a picnic in the park compared to this. But it’s thrilling to finally be right in the thick of the action . . .”
“It’s also sometimes horrific and traumatizing—don’t forget to mention that,” Martha added, raising her eyebrows at Frankie.
“Really?” I said. “How’s that been, getting used to it, I mean?”
Martha paused for a second before answering. Some of the fullness had gone out of her round face, probably from too many K ration meals.
“On my farm back in Iowa, we have to slaughter animals sometimes, and it’s absolutely awful. The first time I saw my father slaughter a pig? I was probably nine years old. I’ll never forget it—the sounds, the smell. I cried all night long. I never got numb to the horror, but over time, I got used to it. I think that’s what witnessing a war is like—what you see is still so terrible, but you soon realize it’s part of life here and you have to deal with it.”
“Martha’s right,” Blanche said. “We’ve seen some horrible stuff: soldiers wounded like you wouldn’t believe, dead Germans, just . . .” She shuddered. “But you’ve got to get used to it, or you might as well go home, right? They don’t need Red Cross girls that are blubbering messes, falling apart all the time. We’d be useless to them.”
There was a pause in conversation as we all pondered this. Blanche put out her cigarette in the tin ashtray on the coffee table and said, “Enough grim talk. Who’s in love? Got any scandals?”
“Martha’s in love,” Frankie said with a mischievous grin, taking a cigarette from Viv. She was still standing, tapping her foot and leaning against Dottie’s chair. “He’s an undertaker from Topeka, Kansas. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Seriously?” I said, trying not to laugh. The color in Martha’s cheeks grew deeper by the second.
“Oh, be quiet, Frankie,” Martha said. “His name is Arthur. And yes, that is his job back home.”
“He’s a very nice undertaker,” Blanche said, nodding, her expression serious, but then she covered her mouth and started giggling, waving her hand in front of her face. “I’m sorry, Martha, I know we tease you about him way too much.”
“Way too much,” said Martha, kicking her foot.
“We can’t wait to meet him,” Dottie said, trying to make Martha feel better.
“Any word about Danny, Fiona?” Frankie asked, sounding hopeful.
“Nothing since you left,” I said, and all of my mixed feelings came bubbling up. “No mail from home at all since you left. No news from the IRC. Nothing.”
I didn’t want to dwell on it or get into anything else, so I said, “Viv, you have to tell them about running into Harry Westwood again.”
“Where and when?” Blanche asked Viv. “Spill the beans, Viv. He is gorgeous. We want all the dirt.”
“I saw him the night of the Glenn Miller concert a couple of weeks ago,” Viv said. “Oh girls, I wish you had been there, because that was a pretty fantastic night.”
Our three friends gasped at the mention of Glenn Miller. Blanche and Martha could not get their questions out fast enough as we proceeded to tell them all about the secret concert, including Dottie’s big singing debut, which made Frankie spit out her Coke.
That led to the story about Joe Brandon professing his love for Dottie. And I could tell Viv was itching to say something about Peter Moretti. I was silently warning her not to with my eyes, when Liz walked into the lounge, files and clipboard in hand.
“Ladies, you’re the last Clubmobile group I’m meeting with today,” she said. “Are you ready to hear what’s next?”
“Yes, please, Liz, let’s get this show on the road. We want to go drink champagne,” Blanche said.
Liz rolled her eyes, pulled up a chair to sit with us, and opened one of the file folders.
“Even with eight more Clubmobiles since yesterday, we still have a huge number of troops to cover, so I’ve mapped out a way to reach as many units as possible.”
She showed us a map with pinpoints marking the different camps in this part of France as well as some lists of different groups that I couldn’t read from where I was sitting.
“I’m splitting the Clubmobiles over here into groups of two and three,” she said, pausing for dramatic effect before continuing. “I’m not sure Miss Chambers would approve of this decision, but the Uncle Sam and Cheyenne are going to be together moving forward.”
The six of us caused a small scene, again, and soldiers and Red Cross workers looked over with curiosity as we all cheered at this news.
“So, good decision?” Liz said, clearly pleased with herself.
“Such a good decision,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
“Don’t let me down, girls,” she said, getting serious again. “You all are going to be out in the field with not much contact with me or any other Red Cross personnel. For that reason, you’ll have an army liaison assigned to you at all times. He’ll be your mother superior over here. He’ll drive the supply truck, take you to the different camps, and help you navigate the often-insane routes. Of course, he’ll also help keep you safe, get you out when you’re too close to the action.”
“Who is this liaison? Do we know him?” Frankie asked, looking skeptical.
“No, you’ll meet him first thing in the morning,” Liz said, distracted and shuffling through her files. “Finally, I’m going to designate Fiona as the captain of your group. She’s great with keeping things organized and paying attention to the important details of life on the road. Are you all okay with that?”
My five friends nodded in agreement,
and I looked around at all of them with gratitude.
“Told you she’d be the best,” Viv said to Liz.
“Aw, thanks, Viv. And everyone,” I said, feeling my face grow warm.
“Happy to be your second-in-command,” Frankie said. “Only if you need one.”
“Okay, now can we go have champagne?” Blanche said. “Liz, you’re welcome to come with us.”
“Now you may go. I’ll go over the rest of the details in the morning when we meet down here at six a.m.,” Liz said. “I’m finally going to shower myself. Maybe I’ll join you for a glass later.”
Our friends took us to a café next to Cherbourg’s city hall that had some minor shell damage, but by some miracle it had been spared the devastation of some of the surrounding buildings. The owner, a slight gray-haired man in his sixties wearing a black apron, had done his best to clean up the rubble on the street outside to make room for the café’s rickety wooden tables and chairs. He pushed a couple of them together for us, threw a few ashtrays on them, and made a gesture for us to sit.
“Filles américaines,” a French soldier sitting at the table across from the front door called over to us as he nodded. “Bonsoir. You like champagne?”
“Blanche wasn’t wrong,” Frankie said. “It happens every time we come here.”
“Non, merci,” Martha said, giving the man a shy smile and waving her hand, signaling no thank you.
“The trick is to refuse once or twice, and then they will insist,” Blanche whispered to us.
Just then the old man came back with a younger woman wearing a simple floral dress, her hair tied with a red bow. She had a tray of six glasses, and he had two bottles of uncorked champagne. We looked over at the table of the French soldiers as the two employees served us, but they shrugged.
“Pas nous,” the one who had offered champagne said, raising his hands, making it clear it wasn’t them.
The young woman pointed behind us, to the table farthest away, on the corner of the street. The four American officers sitting there raised their glasses to us and smiled.