Cherry Ames 04 Chief Nurse (8 page)

“Lieutenant Ames will become more dignified and the nurses will cease wearing white dresses.” That left fussy Colonel Pillsbee without much to say. He harumphed and looked at Cherry. “Really, Lieutenant Ames, I cannot help feeling that your youth and good looks are a disadvantage which you must live down. I shall be back tomorrow.’’ Then he stiffly rose and stalked out of the tent.

Cherry and Major Pierce looked at each other and burst out laughing.

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“But it’s not funny,” Cherry said, trying to sober up

“The old boy has it in for me. Oh, Major Pierce, how can I make myself older, uglier, and more unpopular?” She went off into another peal of laughter but recovered rather hastily. “Couldn’t you please, sir, put in a good word about my work to the Colonel?” Major Pierce grinned his tough and cheerful grin, but shook his head. “I’m completely satisfied with your work, but this is your problem, young woman. You must solve it yourself—I can’t solve it for you.” He turned back to the records he was working on.

Cherry felt let-down. She started to leave the tent, wishing for Miss Mac or Miss Reamer or some experienced older woman to guide her. Major Pierce called after her:

“Oh, Lieutenant Ames! Here’s a chore for you!” Cherry came back to his desk. The unit director told her the X-ray had completely broken down and they desperately needed another. He would have to ask the short-wave installation to radio the Air Transport Command to fly in another portable X-ray. Since he could not telephone this confidential message over the camp’s general and therefore public line, Major Pierce asked Cherry to go to the short-wave post with this request.

“If we’re lucky,” he told her, “the anaesthetist might arrive on the same plane with the X-ray.”
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A plane! An ATC plane coming here to their island!

Cherry thought excitedly, “So planes
are
beginning to land at the secret base now!” But even in her excitement, Cherry could not forget that her troubles with Colonel Pillsbee were growing worse instead of better. She wondered what she could do to square herself. Her work was above reproach, her work was excellent. Colonel Pillsbee had taken a personal dislike to her, that was all. Or maybe—maybe she did not understand
his
viewpoint? Whatever it was, she must find something to do about this, and quickly. If things went on like this, she would find herself relieved of her Chief Nurse’s post! And all this put a severe strain on Cherry’s idealism. She needed a little understanding and encouragement.

Late that afternoon, Cherry commandeered a jeep and drove to the southern tip of the island, just beyond the Infantry tents. She supposed that she would have to see the Signal Corps men, who handled communications. She wandered over to a group of young men wearing headphones. They were in a three-walled shack, half-hidden in a clump of tall ferns, and worked over a big, folding contraption, a sort of telephone switchboard with plugs and wires.

“You’ll have to consult the Intelligence Officer for a radio message,” they told her. “We’ll telephone over to Island 13 for you.”

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The signalmen handed Cherry headphones to put on.

This was the closed telephone used for confidential messages between Islands 13, 14, and 15, and was also used for code messages to the combat zone up forward.

While she waited, she heard these signalmen talking to troops on the embattled forward islands, in a sort of code. It was a curious experience.

Presently she heard Captain May’s pleasant voice in her own headphones. Cherry explained about the needed X-ray.

Captain May’s voice said, “Perhaps you’d better come over here—the transmitter . . . No, on second thought, you had definitely better
not
come!” There was a pause, and Cherry heard confused voices over her wire. Then Captain May’s voice returned.

“All right, Lieutenant Ames. We’ll take care of your message.”

Cherry hung up. What was happening on Island 13

and at the secret air base, anyway? She tried not to wonder, driving back to her own part of the island.

But thoughts of these two strategic spots were still whirling about in her head when she went to bed that night.

Long after the other girls in the Ritz Stables were asleep, and the blacked-out island was quiet, Cherry tossed restlessly on her cot. At last she fell into a fitful doze, only to waken with a start. She thought—she
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dreamed—she heard planes! Not guns—she was used to that—but planes!

She staggered out of bed and tiptoed to the door. She had not dreamed that dull hum, it was real! Closer and closer the high-up drone sounded. Enemy planes? Our own? No warning siren roused the island: our own.

A swarm of tiny black planes passed distinctly across the face of the moon. One by one, they plunged again into darkness, roared over the island, and were swallowed up in huge night clouds.

Cherry stared until her eyes ached, listened until her ears echoed. But there remained only the man in the moon, winking down at her.

c h a p t e r v

A Plane Arrives

the first of march was a burning, glaring day.

Cherry was at work that morning in the Medical Headquarters tent. She was thinking nothing more urgent than that a raw, cold March wind would be welcome here in the tropics. She was completely surprised when, without warning, Major Pierce said to her from the next desk:

“Lieutenant Ames, I nearly forgot to tell you. The Flight Surgeon arrived a couple of days ago at the air base on this island. I met him, and I think you ought to go over and meet him. Now, if it’s convenient. Tell him we’re sending him the insect spray by jeep. And find out while you’re there if there’s anything else he wants.” Cherry was delighted. A chance to see the new air base! She jumped up at once to go.

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Major Pierce grinned at her excitement. “Take my jeep. Get someone to take your place for an hour or so.

And give the Flight Surgeon my respects. Verify the spray order, will you?”

“Yes, sir!”

Cherry ran to the supply tent and checked that the spray was being sent. She hailed a passing corpsman and scribbled Ann a note, asking her to take over and listing the duties. Ann’s ward did not have many patients this week; the nurse assigned with Ann could handle the ward alone.

Then Cherry jumped into Major Pierce’s jeep, and the corpsman driver started off at top speed. She remembered, as the jeep drove northwards, aiming for the tip of the island, that on the day of their arrival Captain May had described the base as only a bare beach. Her black curls whipped against her brilliant red cheeks, her khaki coveralls flapped, and Cherry’s curiosity about the base mounted.

They bounced to a stop at the air base, and Cherry clambered out of the jeep, wondering where to find the Flight Surgeon. There were no planes in the sky. But she walked along the beach in amazement.

Here on a wild jungle beach, partly disguised with camouflage nets and movable palm trees, there had sprung up a solid asphalt runway, a strip wide and long enough for the biggest four-engined ships to land on.

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There were, half-hidden, huge gasoline drums for refueling; a barracks and mess for the crews and the ground maintenance men; repair shops. Here was a miracle in a month. The Seabees and Engineers had departed long since, so Cherry knew that the Army Air Forces men themselves had built this complete base. In view of all this preparation, it certainly looked as if a big military drive from here was being planned.

AAF young men were everywhere, but Cherry headed for the hut with the medical Red Cross painted on its roof.

The Flight Surgeon turned out to be a delightful man, crisp and humorous in manner. Cherry delivered Major Pierce’s message, and in a few minutes her business here was completed. Her driver was waiting in the jeep, but Cherry could not resist having a look around before she drove back again. Her lively black eyes fell on some signalmen. She knew one of them slightly, and wandered over to their three-walled hut.

The three signalmen, wearing their heavy helmets for protection against the tropical sun, crouched over the same kind of telephone switchboard Cherry had seen at the Infantry installation. They also worked with a small, heavy, many-dialed instrument which she supposed was a radio for communicating with planes.

“Good morning, Lieutenant West,” she said.

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“Hello, Lieutenant Ames. Want to see something interesting? Stick around about five minutes and see a Flying Freighter come in!”

“What kind of plane is that?” Cherry inquired.

One of the other young men looked up from the intricate instrument panel and grinned. “A converted, civilian DC–3, only we call it a C–47 in the Army.

A transport, one of those big babies that looks as long as a battleship.” Cherry’s black eyes widened. “Hey, what’s that?” the soldier hastily adjusted his headphones and listened. He scowled, and nudged the man next to him. “Bill, I can’t make this out. See if you can.” Bill listened, too, but shook his head. Very clearly and deliberately, he spoke landing instructions into a small microphone. Then a tiny hum sounded in their ears, grew louder . They looked up and out over the blue sea, straining their eyes. A speck came into view, disappeared momentarily, then emerged larger and lower than before, and presently became distinguishable as a great, graceful flying ship.

Suddenly a ball of fire dropped from the ship, was swept sideways by the wind, blazed downwards to the water, and was extinguished. The three men beside Cherry shouted, and one seized her elbow.

“A flare! That’s a signal there’s a wounded man aboard!” Bill snatched up the field telephone. “Flight Surgeon!

Wounded man coming in, sir! We need a stretcher!”
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He switched connections, meanwhile asking Cherry rapidly, “Can you medics send us an ambulance?

We haven’t much equipment, didn’t want to duplicate yours–—”

At Cherry’s nod, he handed the headphones to her.

She found herself talking to Major Pierce, asking for an ambulance at once. He asked no questions, but promised that one would be sent immediately.

Bill took the headphones from Cherry. “G–2, G–2,” he signaled. “Intelligence Officer, please . . . Hello, this is the air base. You’d better come over here as fast you can, sir. You’ll want to make an interrogation.” The huge brown ship was roaring nearer and nearer.

Now they could see its twin propellers lazily spinning, the skimming shadow the plane cast upon the water, the fliers’ tiny heads silhouetted against sunny plane windows and blue sky.

“Do you think the man is badly wounded? What happened?” Cherry asked.

One of the young men shook his head. “Don’t know what happened, but a supply plane is unarmed, you know.”

Bill said absently, “Flight Surgeon will have the first look at him,” and ran off toward a hut. Cherry, with her professional nurse’s readiness to serve, hoped she would be allowed to help, and kept her eyes on the transport.

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Now the plane swooped down straight at them, barely clearing the treetops, roaring and throbbing for a moment over their heads. Cherry saw its lowered wheels. It flew lower and lower over the broad runway.

Its wheels lightly, unerringly, touched the asphalt, as the pilot carefully set the plane down. The two men beside Cherry sighed with relief. The ship skimmed along the strip, gradually slowed, turned, and slowly taxied back to a white circle painted on the strip, then stopped, its nose facing them. Everyone on the field ran toward the plane.

Running, Cherry happened to glance up into the cabin. Her heart gave a wild leap and she stopped in her tracks. For a moment she could not see, as tears stung her eyes. There, smiling out of a window amid-ships, was her brother Charlie! Oh, it was too good to be true! Out of the several young men moving inside the plane, dressed identically in sheepskin-lined leather windbreakers and khaki trousers and the jaunty soft-visored cap, Cherry picked out her twin brother! She swelled up so with happiness that she thought she would burst! Charlie saw her; he touched his cap and looked at his sister with grave, glowing blue eyes. Cherry tried to rush forward to him, to the ladder the ground crewmen were lugging to the wide plane door. But she was pushed aside in the commotion.

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Men were bringing a stretcher and a first-aid kit, and close on their heels came the Flight Surgeon. Other men followed with coffee and cups and a can of purified water. Ground crew boys in grease-smudged coveralls and ball player’s caps were already swarming around the plane and climbing up on the great wings, squinting as they explored the fuselage for bullet or shell holes.

Charlie had disappeared back into the cabin again with the stretcher-bearers. Cherry anxiously pushed forward a second time, when someone took a firm grip on her elbow. It was the Intelligence Officer, looking at her with piercing eyes.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Cherry explained. Captain May said, “All right, but you had better wait over here until the ambulance arrives.

Now the first members of the crew were climbing down, Charlie among them, and they were lifting the stretcher gently out of the plane. The wounded soldier struggled, reared back his head, then lay still again.

The crewmen watched him, deep concern on their faces, saying under their breaths, “Watch his head.”

“All right, now?” They lifted him tenderly to the ground. The wounded man blinked in the glaring sunshine and weakly threw one arm across his eyes.

Someone who had picked up his cap put it, with a gesture of respect, on the foot of the stretcher. Charlie
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