The Gathering Storm

by Bodie Thoene

  Papa did not comment on this observation. After a long pause he said, “Did you know? A great many wounded soldiers came in just at dusk. In the days ahead there won’t be stretcher-bearers enough to carry them, I think. Many will have to remain here and make the best of whatever comes.”

  I felt a lump of ice form in my chest. “You…you aren’t coming with us, are you, Papa?”

  He sighed heavily. “I’m needed here.”

  I was resentful and hurt. “But what about us? Jessica and baby Shalom? Gina and the girls? What about our needs, Papa? Who will take care of us?”

  “I am counting on you, Loralei. So like your mother. So strong. So capable. You will be the leader now.”

  “But why, Papa?” I protested still. “There will be wounded soldiers wherever we go. Needy people, anyplace we are. Why must you stay behind here?”

  When he spoke again, it was clear Papa had anticipated the question; had marshaled his reasons ahead of time. He delivered his settled opinion in quiet, sensible words, against which there was no argument. “Because,” he said, patting his jacket pockets for his pipe, then saying, “ah, mustn’t light any matches, of course.” He stopped to look me right in the eye. “Because,” he resumed, “the more desperate the fight becomes between here and safety, the tougher it will be at each bridge, each intersection.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Colonel Gilmore discussed it with me. It’s my accent, you see. Austrian. Not like you or Jessica…American. Even Texas-American. I will only hold you up; might even endanger you.”

  I bristled with anger at the very thought of my good, kind, generous father being taken for a Nazi…and a Nazi spy, at that. “Then you must have Colonel Gilmore write you a pass,” I demanded.

  I heard Papa’s gently mocking smile, even if I couldn’t see it. “What would it say? ‘Please excuse this German-sounding man? He’s really harmless’? Really, Loralei, now is not the time and this is not the place to take chances with your sister or the children. No, my place is here. We’ll meet up again in England when I can get away, eh?”

  My heart was breaking. Bits of my life were being violently torn from me. There was never time to recover before the next gash exposed already gaping wounds—Mama, our home, Varrick…now Papa too? How could I stand it?

  “I miss your mother so much.” Papa’s voice floated wistfully in the dark like a secret whispered on the breeze. “I’m not afraid. I want to be with her, if…if it’s time.”

  “Papa, Papa.” I clung to him.

  “Shhh, shhh,” he said, as if I were five years old again. “Remember your mother’s favorite story? The Alamo, she always said, was the highest form of bravery. It’s not heroic to fight if you have no choice. But to stay and face the enemy when there is a choice to go or to stay? That is true heroism. Maybe no one will remember this place or make up songs about it. But you, my Lora-liebling, you will remember. And someday, to your children you will speak of it.”

  The morning chores on the day we departed from Tyne Cott cemetery began well before sunup. I did not sleep but busied myself in repacking our few belongings, especially the precious teacups.

  Dear Lord, I thought. I don’t care how few of our belongings make it to England, so long as we’re all safe…and these three teacups!

  The more I found to do, however inconsequential, the less time I thought about Papa staying behind. If Mama were here, what would she have really said about Papa’s choice? She could have swayed his decision, I knew.

  But what course would Mama have demanded of herself?

  I not only grieved for my mother, but I desperately missed having her around for advice and comfort.

  Gently nudging her awake, Papa spent time with Jessica, explaining to her his determination to remain at Tyne Cott and help with the wounded. I overheard part of the discussion. There was no chaplain with these British soldiers. Papa spoke English. English boys, wounded and perhaps dying away from home, would need his solace. It was a duty not to be shirked, as binding as if Papa was a medical doctor. “And I’ll have company,” he said. “Private Kadle is remaining with me. Says he’s ashamed America is not yet in this fight. He wants to represent her until she ‘gets her head on straight,’ he says. Your mama would approve, eh?”

  Papa was not as direct with Jessica as he had been with me. With his older daughter he emphasized this separation was only temporary, promising to catch up with us “as soon as he could.”

  “And you may rely completely on Captain Blood,” he said. “The Tin Noses are fine men; fine and sturdy. They’ll see you get across the Channel safely. You like the captain, don’t you, Jessica?”

  “Yes, Papa,” Jessica replied. “Shalom and I are both grateful he was here.”

  I heard the members of the Tin Noses Brigade as they roused the rest of the camp. “Let’s be up and moving now,” I heard Sergeant Walker urging. “Pack up! With a good foot under you, you can make Langemarck by breakfast. Look alive there. Langemarck,” I heard him reply in answer to a question. “Why, it’s not but seven or eight miles off. Just a good stretch of the legs.”

  Judah returned to the basement sanctuary with Papa just as I made the girls ready for travel. Jessica, holding Shalom, still looked pale but resolute.

  “We’ve a garden cart for you and the baby,” Judah told Jessica. “It’s not an elegant carriage, but it does have rubber tires and won’t bounce too much.”

  “Let the girls ride,” Jessica protested. “I can walk. And I can carry Shalom, too.”

  I exchanged a look with Judah. “No, you can’t and no, you won’t,” I said firmly. “And you won’t start off arguing with the captain, either.”

  “It’s all right, Mama,” Gina piped. “We don’t mind walking.”

  “That’s what Judith says too,” Susan reported for her sibling.

  “To begin with, we’re going cross-country,” Judah said. “It’ll be rougher, but safer than being caught on the roads.”

  I remembered the aerial attacks on the refugees. “I know,” I agreed with a shudder. “The deeper the woods, the better.”

  “And it won’t be for long,” he added. “There are good roads beyond Langemarck.”

  “How do we know where to go?” Gina asked.

  Taking the girl by the hand, Judah led the small band of travelers up the steps and faced them toward the west. “See that band of clouds, just there? That’s called the marine layer. That’s where we’ll find the sea.”

  “And England?”

  Judah nodded. “Just beyond that bit of cloud.”

  Papa leaned against the doorframe, biting his lip. Gina hugged him around the waist. “Come soon, Grandpa,” she said.

  “Take good care of your baby brother,” he said, before kissing Jessica and Shalom each on the forehead and helping Jessica get seated in the cart.

  He held the baby close for a moment, putting his nose against the top of his head, as if he would inhale Baby Shalom. Then he surrendered the baby to Jessica.

  I saw Papa dab at his eye. Perhaps a bit of dust had lodged there.

  “Form them up, Sergeant,” Judah said softly to Mickey Walker. “Short good-byes are best.” Then louder, he directed, “Lieutenant, I’d like you to be the rear guard. Sergeant, you are the advance scout. We’ll take turns pushing the cart.”

  I ran back to my father’s side. “I—I love you, Papa. And I’ll pray for you…pray for you lots.”

  “And I you,” he said, squeezing me tightly. “Do whatever Judah says. You’ll be fine.”

  I lost sight of Papa as the procession exited the back of Tyne Cott and dropped into the swale beyond. When we started up the next slope, I couldn’t help myself: I looked back. Papa was there, dark suit outlined against the light backdrop of the platform of the stone cross. He was waving and waving.

  By the time the entourage reached the edge of the woods and I looked again, he had gone.

  _____________________

  3 Matthew 6:34
>
  4 Psalm 23:4

  15

  Despite Judah’s assurances, the garden cart rumbled and jolted its way down from Tyne Cott’s plateau and into the farmland. I saw Jessica bite her lip and flinch when the wheels struck unyielding stone ledges or banged down hard over stones, but she made no complaint.

  Sometimes we encountered a pit too deep or narrow to cross easily. Then Sergeant Walker and Judah picked up the entire contraption—mother, child and all—and carried it across.

  Baby Shalom slept serenely throughout.

  As we emerged from a stand of trees, I saw a large number of other fugitives from the Nazi onslaught trailing after us. No matter how intimidated by the painted masks they might be, the refugees instinctively sensed in Judah a man of leadership.

  As I walked, Gina held one of my hands, while Susan held the other with Judith attached on the far side of her. The morning progressed into a fine, blue-skied day. With hundreds of people tramping across the meadows, it was as if an entire village had turned out for a spring festival or picnic.

  Why were we leaving Tyne Cott? It seemed so unreal, so against my senses, to imagine that we fled from the horrors of war, even though I had recently seen its reality.

  The country ramble vaguely reminded me of something, but I couldn’t place it exactly. I said as much to Jessica.

  Her brow furrowed for a moment and then she exclaimed: “Of course! Tonkawa Park. But you can’t remember that. You were too little.”

  “Tell us, Mama,” Gina demanded.

  “When your aunt Lora was very young—tiny, even—Papa took us to Waco to a big meeting.”

  “That’s in Texas, U.S.A.,” Gina explained with authority.

  Susan and Judith nodded.

  Jessica had stopped speaking. I knew she was thinking about leaving Papa behind, back at Tyne Cott.

  I was too. When would we see him again?

  “Go on,” Gina insisted.

  When Jessica resumed there was an unfamiliar huskiness in her voice. “There’s a park outside of town where a camp meeting was held. It had a grove of trees and a stream and a big rock. People would leap from that rock into a swimming hole.”

  The girls giggled when Jessica unconsciously lapsed into talking Texan: “swimmin’ haul.”

  “Anyway,” she continued, “today reminds me of that. The whole crowd from the camp meeting traipsed across the countryside to the creek.”

  More giggles when she pronounced “crick.”

  “But you were so little,” she said to me. “You can’t possibly remember it.”

  I shrugged. “Something locked in my head all these years.”

  Leading the advance, Lieutenant Howard held up his hand for a halt. A thin plume of black smoke rose into the still morning air right in our line of march.

  Cocking his head, Judah listened carefully.

  I did the same but heard nothing except a low chuffing sound, like the heavy panting of a St. Bernard.

  Motioning us to move on cautiously, Judah led the way up a small knoll.

  On the other side the ground sloped away sharply. In a black line at the bottom of the slope a passenger train lay on a siding. It was motionless, its idling engine causing the resonant rhythm.

  The engine pointed north, toward the sea.

  As the throng of refugees topped the rise beside us, excitement swept over them. “A train,” one shouted.

  “No more walking!”

  “We’ll ride to the coast!”

  “Wait!” Judah warned.

  No one heeded his alert. Like a pent-up wave, the tide of civilians swept down from the crest. Many waved and hallooed, as if afraid the train might suddenly depart, leaving them behind.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  The answer came, not from Judah, but from an insistent buzzing that began behind my right shoulder and grew louder with each moment.

  Judah’s next words were: “Get down!” He lifted Jessica and the baby out of the cart and into a ditch.

  The diving German warbirds were already in their attack. Heedless of his own safety, Judah waved and shouted to the crowds. “Get back! Get down!”

  But it was already too late. A train stalled on a siding was raw meat to hungry carnivores. The Stukas pounced from out of the sun.

  Lieutenant Howard gathered in the girls and shoved them inside a culvert and put his body across the entrance.

  Jessica cradled Shalom at the bottom of a pile that had me lying across her, and Sergeant Walker and Judah atop both of us.

  The high-pitched shriek of the falling bombs and the shrill, terrifying noise of the swooping bombers fell from the sky. The noises collided with the screams of the people caught on the train and in the field beside it. I wished I could plug my ears from the screeches.

  A startlingly loud explosion told of a direct hit, and the ground rose and bucked beneath us. A second later another detonation was only slightly muffled. I felt the shudder in the earth even greater than from the first.

  Instead of subsiding, the noises grew louder as something on the engine exploded. Waves of concussion rolled across the landscape.

  The planes roared past overheard, heading east.

  “Keep down!” Judah warned. “It’s not over.

  The shrieking of human voices was louder than ever, coupled with a guttural moan that rose in intensity with the agonies of grief and pain.

  For once, Judah was wrong. The Stukas did not return.

  At length we unpiled from the ditch, and Lieutenant Howard retrieved the girls from the storm drain.

  Sergeant Walker’s mask had slipped in the tumbling. Hurriedly he straightened it.

  Seeing his embarrassment, Jessica hugged him around the neck. “Thank you,” she said.

  A blush crept out from under the tin faceplate like a spreading pink stain.

  “We can follow this channel around,” Judah said to me as he helped me to my feet. “There’s a railroad bridge no more than a quarter mile away. The sergeant will lead you. Once on the other side, there is a good place to hole up.”

  “While you see what you can do for the wounded?”

  “We won’t be long,” Judah promised. “Just…don’t let the girls look back.”

  The image of a carefree throng heading toward a picnic was gone forever. Shattered lives; shattered memories. Once across the tracks I checked: Mama’s teacups were all still intact.

  It seemed absurdly important to me.

  The journey toward the English Channel had lost any resemblance to a pleasurable country outing. Now the small bands of travelers had a furtive air. When two family groups had an encounter, they treated each other with suspicion and sometimes hostility.

  Beyond Langemarck a spine of low hills curved around until it was aimed northward. Since the crest and sides were tree covered, Judah elected to use it as our path.

  “We must have come at least ten miles,” I said. “Can’t we get back on a road of some kind?”

  Calling a halt to the procession, Judah led me to the crest of the ridge. Before the summit he made me crouch down and creep up the slope beside him. The view down the other side included a road about a mile distant.

  It was packed with British military vehicles…all heading toward the coast.

  “Not only is that convoy a bull’s-eye for the Luftwaffe,” Judah said. “It also means something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. For this many British units to pull back this far means the Germans have broken through in strength. No, we’ll keep off the roads.”

  I did not ask again.

  The rough terrain made frequent rest stops necessary. The young girls were exhausted. Sergeant Walker had taken over scouting duty, and Howard was now assisting with the cart, but no one had relieved Judah.

  Looking at the strain in his neck and shoulders, I realized the captain was likewise exhausted. I also knew he would never call a halt for himself, so I pretended to need the break for myself.

  We had not eaten since early morning. It wa
s now late afternoon.

  Lieutenant Howard rummaged in the knapsacks and under the blankets with which the cart was lined. “Sergeant,” he asked, “where’s the kit with the grub?”

  “Tied to the back of the—”

  The canvas duffel bag containing our food supplies was no longer on the wagon. “I’ll go back and find it,” Walker volunteered. “It might have bounced loose when we crossed that last culvert.”

  “All right,” Judah approved. “But no more than fifteen out; fifteen back. That’s all we can wait.”

  It was actually no more than twelve minutes total before the curly-haired Irishman returned. He was sporting a goose-egg at his hairline, and he did not have the duffel bag.

  “What happened?” Howard demanded.

  “Somebody took a shot at me,” Walker said.

  “Are you hit, man?” Howard said with alarm. “Sit down and let me see.”

  Walker waved off his friend’s attention. “Not a wound,” he argued, touching his forehead and wincing. “Least, not from a bullet. Hit it on a tree limb while ducking.”

  “Germans?”

  “Trigger happy Belgians,” Walker corrected. “But I didn’t stick around and try to explain. Sorry, Captain.”

  “We may have lost the pack clear back at the rail line,” Judah suggested. “Anyway, never mind. We’ll get by.” A box of crackers was located amongst the other sacks, and this was shared by the girls. “The rest of us will tighten our belts until tonight. We’ll come across something by then. Sergeant, take the point again.”

  “Let me help with the cart,” I suggested. “You’ve been pushing and dragging it all day.”

  Judah protested. I insisted.

  In the end he allowed me to share the duty, trundling one of the wheels while he propelled the other and Howard hefted the handles.

  Judah smiled at me, and I returned it.

  “This line of hills ends at Dixmude,” he said. “We’ll make for there; try and find food and lodging for tonight.”

  “Do you do a lot of hiking?” I teased. “How do you know this country so well?”

  “I fought across it in 1917,” he said. “And I saw it…other times as well.”