His Very Own Girl (20 page)

Paulie’s mouth had tensed, but her eyes remained sympathetic and kind. “It’s because you’re frightened.”

“Terribly. That’s the most embarrassing part. He’s out there doing the impossible, and I don’t even have the courage to write him a letter.” Lulu choked back a sob. “He doesn’t deserve such a coward.”

“When it comes to love,” Paulie said, stopping as they came to the front door of their residence, “we don’t have a say in what the other person needs from us.”

Love.

The word hit Lulu in the chest like the concussion of a bomb blast. Her lungs seized and tightened. Emotion flooded in. She had broken her own cardinal rule. She’d fallen in love with a soldier—not even a soldier who could protect himself. A medic. Good God.

“Is that what it is for you? With Lee?”

Paulie touched the back of her neck. She wouldn’t meet Lulu’s eyes. “Can’t say as yet. I know I’ve been a flighty goose with men, but yes. This feels different.”

Lulu tipped her face toward the sky and shut out the messy gray clouds. “I hate days like these. Most times I can keep moving, keep checking, and nothing catches up with me. But not today. Just fog and bad thoughts.”

Fog and bad thoughts and the realization that she was in love with Joe Weber.

“Doc Web?”

“Yeah?”

“Mail for you.”

One quick look at the return label told Joe it was from Lulu. His heart thudded.

He’d been using forceps to extract a piece of shrapnel from the leg of Capt. Johnny Banks, the newly promoted CO of Baker Company. Capt. Crowly had been killed two weeks earlier. In the three days since the 512th had helped take the little French commune of Auvrairie, Banks had proven to be an aggressive, clever tactician.

Despite his eagerness to read the letter Pvt. Jenner laid on a nearby bar stool, Joe didn’t pause in his duties. Other patients awaited his attention, there in the bombed café that served as the battalion aid station. He needed to bandage Banks’s leg and get him on his way.

Across the room Smitty worked on a sergeant with a bad facial burn. That he and his pal had come so far buoyed Joe and kept him working.

“You got a girl, Doc?”

Banks continued to smoke his cigarette with nonchalant grace. The pain had to be pretty bad, with his shin gashed open by a long thread of twisted metal, but he didn’t show it. What he did show was a keen curiosity. His eyes narrowed. Joe felt like squirming beneath the full appraisal of that fierce, perceptive mind. So he fell back on what he always did: tending the injury at hand. Forceps aside, he reached for a canteen.

Whether Capt. Banks was just nosy or trying to better know his troopers, Joe couldn’t say. Not that it mattered; he wasn’t ready to share his raw feelings for Lulu. And he wasn’t exactly sure what her letter would say—the first to find him since Operation Overlord had begun.

Using water purified with halazone tablets to irrigate the shrapnel wound, Joe worried that the letter would be filled with polite distance. A letter of obligation. Even an outright “we made a mistake” would be better, although that prospect crumpled his guts. He was simply too weary to lift his hopes for anything better. In the last month he’d learned that sane soldiers were ones who kept their hopes under wraps.

“That letter may answer your question, sir,” Joe said.

“Then you’d better open it.”

“After I finish here.”

The captain took one last appreciative draw on his cigarette until only the butt remained. “It’ll wait, Doc. Take five. Get a smoke. You look like shit.”

Joe exhaled something close to a laugh. “Thanks, sir.”

“Don’t mention it. But only five minutes, got it? We’re on the move before sunset.”

Another night, another objective, as they stomped across the French countryside. Next up was the area known as Mont Castre, where they would link up with the 90th Infantry and break through to the south. Resistance had been staunch and bloody. Their regiment had advanced only twenty-odd kilometers since their D-Day rallying point of Sainte-Mère-Église. Now, after more than three weeks in France, they were finally making progress.

Joe wiped his hands on a bloodied scrap of blanket, then snatched up the letter. “Smitty,” he called to his friend. “Holler if you need me.”

“Sure thing, Web.”

Outside the café, Joe sat against a protective chunk of brick wall and fished a pack of Lucky Strikes out of a breast pocket. All around him, up and down the streets of the tiny village, members of Baker and the other men of the 512th took a moment to breathe and gather their resources. Some played craps against the upturned hood of an old car, betting chocolate bars, cigarettes, and souvenirs that ranged from watches to Nazi flags. Others lounged in the overcast sun of a late June afternoon, smoking or eating K rations, writing letters or cleaning their weapons. For some, sleep was the best reward after another impossible day.

With their faces pinched tight, they looked like genuine soldiers now. They held their bodies on alert even when relaxing. Any minute, their postures said—any minute now, we’ll be fighting again. Joe felt it too, as he leaned against that half-crumbled wall. He’d breathed so many times since departing Spanhoe, but not one of those breaths had been serene.

And any minute now, I’ll open this damn letter
.

Disgusted with his delay, as precious seconds of free time slipped by, he lit his cigarette and ripped open the envelope. From that single sheet of paper in neat, measured script, Lulu spoke to him:

12 June 1944

Dear Joe,

I’ve started this letter eight times. I feel ridiculous, what with rationing and all, but don’t worry; I’ll use my mistakes as scrap. Still, I cannot seem to get this right. I’ve asked, How are you? But the answer is bloody obvious, isn’t it? Miserable, would be my guess. How’s the weather? If it’s anything like here in the Midlands, it’s been weeks of hideous rain. I cannot imagine you out in it every night. The thought makes me ill and, oddly enough, more lonely.

So, enough with that useless small talk. I’ll save it for the likes of the other boys I’ve yet to write. You deserve none of it.

I never thought of myself as a coward, but I’ve most assuredly become one with regard to you. I’m afraid of thinking the obvious or feeling the obvious, and I certainly cannot say it aloud. Perhaps I can force my pen to form the words—words I wanted to say weeks ago, before you left.

Joe, I love you.

Joe closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the bricks. The vise around his chest began to loosen. He pressed his tongue against his teeth, grounding his free-falling mind in that sharp sting. She loved him. What the hell was he supposed to do with that? The surprise of it hit him like the bright glare of an explosion, but instead of fire or pain, he felt giddy and boneless. He shook his hands one at a time, as if trying to banish a case of pins and needles.

He read on:

I was home ill with the flu when you jumped into Normandy. I’ve been worrying like mad ever since. I can’t help but remember those last few hours we spent together and how precious they’ve become to me. I wanted more and I still want more—more time with you, more hours to hold you and to be held by you.

I’m crying now. I pray that this letter reaches you, that you’re safe and well . . . and that you can forgive me my cowardice.

I wait for you with all my heart.

Your Lulu

P.S. Flying four-engine airplanes is staggering. Even now, wiping away my tears as I write, I cannot help but smile. Joe, it’s like nothing in the world!

The paper jittered in his hands and smelled of lavender. Had she done that on purpose, dusting the finished letter in perfume like some girls did? Or maybe it was simply the scent of her, faint but conspicuous amid the stench of ruined earth, burned buildings, and spent artillery. He liked to think it was just her.

As he lifted the paper to his nose and inhaled, taking his first satisfying breath since hitting Normandy, he let himself remember that cherished dawn and the following day. He remembered her skin and her tangled hair and her sighs—everything about her had been soft, when his body had been so damn hard, demanding all she had, claiming all she offered.

Now she was offering her love.

“Doc Web!”

Joe was on his feet in two seconds flat. He stuffed the letter in his breast pocket, then headed back to the café full of walking wounded. Capt. Banks wore a look of vague annoyance, bur very little seemed able to pierce the man’s offhanded nature.

“Sorry, sir.” Joe opened his aid bag and grabbed out a sterile bandage.

“I’ll accept your apology if you answer my question.”

“What question was that?”

“You got a girl, Doc?”

Joe stared down at the white gauze he held. Tying a field dressing had become an impossible puzzle as three words echoed in his head:
Lulu loves me
.

“Yes, sir, I believe I do.”

chapter eighteen

The morning of D-Day +27 was drenched with rain.

With a dead GI’s poncho draped like a blanket over his head, Joe squatted beneath the branches of gnarled oak and watched first platoon’s squads assemble on their sergeants, rifles at the ready. The 512th was set to join two other infantry regiments to take a three-hundred-foot hill where the Germans had dug in along an ancient Roman ruin. The prospect of attacking an entrenched, elevated position made everyone jumpy, and now the rain promised to make fighting conditions even worse.

Water dripped across his line of sight, but at least his neck was dry. He hated water down the back of his collar. And at least he’d been able to restock his aid bag.

He didn’t want to reread Lulu’s letter for fear of ruining it in the downpour. Besides, he knew it by heart. Four days had proven enough time to commit every word to memory, although the paper now smelled of his sweaty jumpsuit, not the faint lavender hint of her skin. He closed his eyes. God, what he planned for them when he got back to England. With a weekend pass in his pocket, he’d spend forty-eight hours getting reacquainted: touching her, kissing her, moving with her.

Loving her.

More than anything, he wanted to make plans. He wanted to share the hopes he’d kept hidden for so long, hopes that prison had nearly doused. Some men argued that the only way to survive the war was to pretend they were already dead, but for Joe, the key to survival had proven just the opposite. He needed that rosy picture of the future, the one he kept tucked in his mind just like he stashed Lulu’s lone letter in his breast pocket. His lifeline.

“First platoon, form up!” shouted Lt. Harkes.

Joe pulled on the poncho, secured the neck drawstring, and refastened his helmet. He double knotted the rawhide tie that secured the bottom of his aid bag around his thigh, which kept it from banging when he ran. With his adrenaline flowing, he always had to pace himself so as not to outrun the riflemen, mortar crews, and machine gunners. His platoon began to move out toward the fortified hill. He kissed his fingertips and patted the pocket containing Lulu’s letter.

Just another objective.

Joe chanced a glance up the hill, but that was all. He didn’t need to see any more. The situation hadn’t changed. Three hours into their attack and the Bosche defenses hadn’t budged an inch—as if
they
had been the ones with reinforcements, not the Allies. He was soaked through, from his hair to his socks. The onslaught of water washed the blood off his hands but made tying bandages and gripping torn uniforms almost impossible.

He gave a hard yank on his patient’s lapels. “C’mon, Hanson! You have one good arm. Help me here!”

“We’re getting slaughtered, Doc.”

“Not my problem.
You’re
my problem. Now keep your eyes off that goddamn hill and hold this.” He reached into his aid bag for a syrette of morphine.

Hanson put his good hand on the box and shook his head. “Save it. Honest.”

Cpl. Hanson’s face had the sickly color of a boiled potato, but now that he’d escaped the continuing carnage on the hillside, he seemed lucid.

“Good man,” Joe said. “Stay low—and I mean
low
. Head back to the aid station. You don’t need a tag. Just tell them what I did to you.”

“That you prodded my arm till I puked? Sure thing, Doc.”

“Get out of here.”

Joe ducked behind a half-toppled brick wall and found Capt. Banks there with his intelligence officer, Capt. Charlie Piper. Both used binoculars to peer over the scant defensive cover, but unlike most officers, they both had blood on their ODs. Pvt. Gillingham, a radio operator, was shouting into his handset.

“What do ya know, Doc Joe?” Banks said, stashing his binoculars.

“I’m hungry and have to piss.”

“Sounds about right. Alas, luxuries for some luckier fellas.”

“First platoon is dug in tight, Johnny,” Capt. Piper said. “Second and third are still fighting for that ridge. Can’t get a toehold.”

Banks wiped his sopping wet face. “We have to take that ridge. I’m heading over there.”

Joe grabbed the departing captain’s forearm. “Sir, permission to come with you and see if Smitty needs help with second platoon. Won’t be any casualties with mine while they wait.”

“Permission granted.” Still crouched low, Banks thumped Pvt. Gillingham on the helmet. “Any luck?”

“No, sir. Second battalion’s CO says he can’t link up. Gunfire is too heavy in the field between us and them.”

“Bullshit. If we don’t link up with them, we’ll be cut off. Charlie,” he said to Capt. Piper, “use your college boy manners and tear that asshole a new one. Doc Web, on me.”

Joe followed Baker Company’s CO though the thickets and shelled trees along the bottom ridge of the hill. Rain made the white beech trunks wiggle. Branches faded in a textured haze. Machine gun fire ticked and pinged, as staccato as rain against a tin roof. Joe kept a measured pace, his gaze fixed on the flashing soles of Banks’s jump boots.

“
Medic!
”

It was as if Joe’s legs had radar. He took off toward second platoon’s left flank. Leaping over men who huddled together on the mud-slicked ground, he kept moving, kept running, even when the air filled with hot lead and shell bursts. Thirst, a mind-numbing thirst, demanded more of his attention than did the bullets and mortar shells.

“Make a hole!” he shouted. “Coming through!”

He spotted the wounded man, a sergeant named Finks. Blood from his ruined thigh was bright like a beacon among the rain-washed greens and browns.

Joe slid alongside his latest patient. “Hey, Sarge.”

“Doc Web,” the man said tightly. Despite the pain and an emotion that might’ve been anger, Sgt. Finks’s eyes brightened. That rush of needy hope from hardened men never failed to punch Joe in the solar plexus.

He hauled Finks behind a fallen tree, then got to work. Rip the pants. Judge the damage.

No matter how slippery the rain made his forceps, Joe needed to use them now. He straddled the sergeant and flared the tails of his poncho on either side of the man’s body, making a half-assed tent. The process of finding his artery was like trying to clamp two slippery worms.

“Shit, Sarge,” Joe said as he worked. “You called me over here for this?”

“Quit babying me and let me get back to work.” Thick brown hair on Finks’s head and along his jaw made for a sickly contrast to his pallor.

“Got to baby you, sir.” With the artery clamped, Joe looped a stick into a tourniquet tie. “What else are we goldbricks for?”

“For pissing me off, that’s what. Useless sons of bitches.”

“Relax, damn it. Get your hands out of the way. I can’t do this with you fighting me.”

The sergeant slumped back in the mud. His face twisted as Joe cinched the tourniquet. “Christ, that hurts like hell, Doc.”

“Morphine in a minute. Promise. We need to get you on a litter.”

“After you’re done molesting me?”

“It’s either molest you or try firing a rifle.”

“Piss on that,” the sergeant said with a hiss. “You’d take out Capt. Banks by mistake.”

“Here ya go.”

Joe fished a syrette of morphine out of his bag and injected it into Finks’s other thigh. An instant look of peace eased the man’s tight features. “Good stuff, Doc.”

Poking his head out from behind the downed tree, Joe found another radio operator. “Hey! Hey, Wallis! I need litter bearers for Sgt. Finks! Let them know where he is!”

Wallis gave a thumbs-up.

Another call for a medic. Smitty was already emerging from his cover on the right flank. Up and on his feet, crouched low, Smitty reached the wounded man at the rear of the advance. They were in the middle of the clearing. No cover. No support.

“Damn it, Smitty,” Joe muttered. He pinned the empty syrette tube to Finks’s jacket. “Good luck, Sarge.”

Joe took a deep breath and waited for a pause in the machine gun fire, which was hard to judge because of the rain. Then he ran. Adrenaline surged like acid in his veins, but his lungs chugged air at a shallow, near-normal rate. He’d simply barreled past some invisible threshold, living where physical limits meant nothing.

Another slide into home. “Hey, Smitty, what we got?”

“Sucking chest wound. This piece of shit is useless.” He yanked the crimson bandage off the man’s chest and smacked it against the ground.

“Hold up.” Joe ducked low to the ground, removed his helmet, and slipped out of his poncho. Water soaked the last of his dry clothes. Helmet back in place, he grabbed the knife out of his boot and sliced a swatch of waterproof nylon off the hem.

“Smitty, hold the poncho above my head.”

Joe found the soldier’s wound and pressed the nylon across it. Air sucking into the collapsed lung no longer had an entrance.

“Gotta tape it down, Web. How you plan to do that in this rain?”

“Hell if I know.” Joe wiped his forearm across his cheeks. Water kept pinging off his helmet and dripping into his eyes. “Twine, maybe? We can wrap it around his chest.”

The timbre of the battlefield changed. Joe couldn’t have put his finger on it if he’d been ordered to at the point of a gun. But with his hands still pressed against the downed soldier’s chest—damn, what was this kid’s name?—he looked up the hill.