On Distant Shores (28 page)

Pomigliano Airfield
March 22, 1944

For the first time in weeks, Georgie wanted to fly.

Mount Vesuvius had erupted on March 18, with earthquakes and giant billowing clouds, bulging with ash and death. Last night, furious red lava spouted thousands of feet into the air and slithered down the slopes, menacing Italian villages already pummeled by war and poverty.

For once, the sky seemed safer than the ground. In the air she wouldn’t be turned into a statue like those poor souls in Pompeii, frozen in their death poses for tourists to gawk at almost two thousand years later.

After Roger Cooper and his crew had dusted ash from their C-47 and the mechanics assured them the engines were clean, Georgie and Sergeant Ramirez loaded ten patients eager to escape from Italy to Tunisia. Since the ash delayed their takeoff until late afternoon, they’d stop over in Palermo, Sicily, for the night.

The plane lifted into the air, and Georgie sighed in relief. After they leveled off, she began her rounds. Three litter-bound patients on the left side of the plane, and the rest sat in canvas seats toward the front and along the right.

Using the stirrup-shaped foot under the middle litter, Georgie hoisted herself up to take vital signs on Private Stowe in the top litter. Blinded and burned in an exploding tank in one of many attempts to take Cassino, Stowe couldn’t see Vesuvius’s fireworks.

“One step closer to home.” She wrapped her fingers around his wrist.

He turned his bandaged head away from her. “What? So I can start my new life? Hardly. My life’s over.”

“I’ll have no such talk.” Georgie squeezed his arm. “I won’t lie to you. Life won’t be easy. But with persistence, ingenuity, and hard work, you can accomplish much. I’ll allow you exactly five more minutes to feel sorry for yourself, and that’s all.”

“You sound like my mother.” The bandages on his face shifted as if he were trying to smile. “Six minutes, and we have a deal.”

“Oh, all right. Six. But I’ll check on you to keep you honest.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The plane banked sharply to the right.

Georgie lost her footing, her grip, cried out. She tumbled to the floor and whammed back into a patient’s knees.

He grabbed her shoulders. “Ma’am! You all right?”

“I’m fine.” Other than a sore backside.

What was going on? Roger Cooper never made drastic maneuvers like that. She struggled to her feet and braced herself on the right side of the fuselage over the patients’ heads.

The plane continued a steep climbing turn, and Georgie fought her way uphill.

Something bonked the fuselage, shook the plane. Another hit, loud and sharp.

Every drop of Georgie’s blood turned icy cold. They were under attack? The Luftwaffe rarely ventured as far south as Naples anymore.

“Everything’s fine, gentlemen. Lieutenant Cooper’s an excellent pilot.” She held on and looked out the left windows.

Large dark chunks dropped from the sky. What on earth?

One hit the left wing, tipped the plane out of its climb.

She bit off a scream. Her patients needed her calm.

Sergeant Ramirez sat on the floor at the back of the cabin, his hand pressed to his temple, blood oozing between his fingers.

Georgie froze. She should help him, but first she wanted to find out what was going on. “I’ll be there in a minute, Sergeant.”

“It’s not that bad. Go talk to the crew.”

She plunged forward, upward as the plane spiraled high, and she pulled herself through the door into the radio room. The radioman-navigator spoke into his headset, and the aerial engineer leaned through the doorway into the cockpit.

“What’s going on?”

The radioman glanced up at her. “Vesuvius remains loyal to the Axis cause. It’s throwing flak at us.”

“Flak?”

“Volcanic rocks. Coop didn’t want to fly today, thought it was dangerous. He’s trying to get up out of range. Then we’ll check for damage, decide if it’s safer to proceed to Palermo or venture back into the maelstrom.”

“Oh no.”

“Just keep the patients calm.”

“I—I can do that.” If she could keep herself calm first.

From the shivering recess of her heart, she prayed for wisdom and strength. She worked up a smile, closed the door behind her, and faced the patients. “Gentlemen, we’re in for
an exciting ride, something to tell your children about—the time you got caught in the eruption of Vesuvius.”

The men sat forward, shouting questions and comments.

She held up one hand. “Lieutenant Cooper is taking us up out of danger. Now, was anyone other than Sergeant Ramirez hurt on our roller-coaster ride?”

Since no one claimed new injuries, Georgie made her way to the back of the plane, the men holding her hand to keep her from falling.

Sergeant Ramirez sat on the left side of the plane by the cargo door and wore the interphone headset. “Listening in on the chat up front.”

“Anything new?” Georgie flung open the medication chest.

“Coop thinks we’re clear.”

“Here, stop the blood.” She handed him a gauze pad and pulled out iodine.

He pressed the pad over his temple. “Not that bad. You know how head wounds bleed.”

“I know. But we’ll want to clean it up and take a closer look.”

Ramirez’s dark brows wrinkled. He raised a hand to silence Georgie and stared straight ahead. After a minute or two, he looked up to her. “Coop says number one engine took some damage but is functioning okay. None of the crew wants to return. They think it’s safer to go to Sicily. But just in case . . .”

Georgie’s stomach felt queasy, and she wrapped her arms around her middle. “Just in case what?”

He pursed his lips. “In case we have to ditch, they’re making preparations, radioing RAF Air-Sea Rescue.”

Ditch? The word stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant. You know they have to prepare for the worst.”

Georgie gripped the side seams of her jacket in her fists. “Of course.”

“We’ve leveled off. Why don’t you finish your rounds while we wait for the bleeding to stop?”

“Yes.” She blinked too many times, recognizing his attempt to distract her with activity.

Still nothing but a helpless baby who needed someone to show her the way.

“Well, go ahead.”

She nodded and obeyed. Her clipboard and flight manifest had fallen when she had, and one of the ambulatory patients handed it to her.

For the next half hour, she made her rounds, noting elevated heart rates for most patients. Her own pulse had to be high as well. Her voice sounded tinny, and her fingers trembled. She thought she’d grown the last few months, but she still unraveled in a crisis. What good was she? Whatever made her think she could succeed as a flight nurse?

And she didn’t like the look of things. She’d flown in a C-47 often enough to recognize normal engine sounds. Engine one ran rough and choppy, and engine two worked harder to compensate. Her ears popped a few times. They were descending.

After she’d filled in her manifest with shaky handwriting, she returned to the back of the plane. “Let me see that wound, Sergeant.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He removed the reddened gauze pad.

Georgie inspected the cut, about three inches long. “It isn’t deep. You won’t need stitches. I’ll bandage it for you.”

“Thank you.” He sat in silence as Georgie cleansed the wound and applied a bandage.

His silence made her more nervous, as if he were waiting until she was done to relay bad news.

But delaying bad news didn’t make it any less bad. “What’s the latest?”

“We’re heading for a lower altitude. Engine one won’t last, and they’re descending so we can ditch safely in the Mediterranean. We need to prepare.”

“Pre—prepare?” She sank to her backside and winced from the pain in her tailbone.

“Yes, ma’am. We’re about halfway between Palermo and Naples, and we can’t make it either way. We need to plan.”

Plan. Plan. Plan. The word bounced through the dark emptiness of her mind.

“What’s the first thing we have to do?” Ramirez narrowed his eyes at her.

“Do.” She pulled her knees tight to her chest.

“Come on, Lieutenant.” He put one hand to his bandage and got to his feet. “I’m one of the surgical techs Major Guilford recruited from an evac hospital in Algeria. I never went to the School of Air Evacuation, never got ditching training. You did. What do we do first?”

Thoughts sloshed in her mind, drowning. Ditching training? She took that. She passed. What was the first thing to do? She hugged her knees tighter. “G—group the patients. Ambulatory patients who can’t swim. Ambulatory patients who can swim. Litter patients.”

Ramirez picked up the flight manifest and gave her a long, hard look. “If you don’t pull yourself together, Lieutenant, a lot of men could die.” He headed down the aisle.

Georgie rocked back and forth. The plane was going into the ocean. If they survived the impact, she had two minutes at most to evacuate the patients. Perhaps as little as thirty seconds.

A flight nurse was supposed to be calm and collected, quick-thinking, decisive.

Daddy had told her she was in over her head, and Ward said Georgie being decisive was like a thoroughbred trying to be a big old draft horse.

Her throat swelled shut. Why had she been so stupid, so vain, so headstrong to think she could do this?

Today, due to her incompetence, a lot of men would die.

93rd Evacuation Hospital, Nettuno

In the waning light of a pointless day off, Hutch lounged on his cot, alone in his tent with the
Stars and Stripes
. The Allies on the Cassino front wouldn’t relieve the troops at Anzio anytime soon. The Army Air Forces had bombed the living daylights out of the abbey of Monte Cassino over a month ago and the town of Cassino a week ago, but the infantry couldn’t cross that line.

“Sergeant Hutchinson?” A corporal peeked inside the tent. “Mail.”

“Thanks.” He set down the newspaper, fetched two letters, and returned to the cot.

A letter from Lucia, which he savored. She’d written half of it herself, in large handwriting and decent English. Miss Carpino wrote the rest, where Lucia raved about another visit from Georgie and her nurse friends, who brought dresses, shirts, and sweaters they’d made.

A strange thought—two girls he loved, two girls he’d lost, enjoying each other’s company. Without him. Jealousy twisted inside, but he shoved it away, thankful Lucia had someone to brighten her life. Wasn’t it just like Georgie to do the brightening?

He’d lost so much.

Hutch sighed and picked up the letter from Dad, postmarked February 15. Over a month earlier. Maybe he had
some news about the Pharmacy Corps. The Army had dragged its heels so much, a ditch a foot deep had to extend halfway across Washington DC.

Hutch jabbed his finger under the lip of the envelope and pulled out a sheet of stationery in Dad’s firm, careful script.

Dear Son,

I don’t believe in idle talk when bad news awaits. The Army commissioned twelve officers for the Pharmacy Corps in January, before your examination even arrived. Your exam score was outstanding, but it was too late. For the past two weeks, I’ve pulled strings and called on every favor. In vain. John, I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done.

The cruel injustice of the matter is that you weren’t selected because you’re overseas, and yet your overseas work helped create the Corps.

Hutch couldn’t even read the rest of the letter. He crumpled it up and ground it into the dirt with his heel.

“For nothing. Nothing. All for nothing.”

His chest heaved, his stomach writhed.

Because he chose to serve as a pharmacist, he got sent overseas and lost Phyllis. Because he chose to pursue his goal, he lost Georgie. Because he chose to practice his profession, he lost his chance to serve in that profession’s own Corps.

Everything, everything had been stripped from him. All respect, all control, all love.

What did he have left? The makings of a stomach ulcer.

Hutch groped in his pocket for his pillbox. Not there. Must have left it in his other pair of trousers.

He grumbled and dug into his barracks bag until he found his trousers. Where was that pillbox? The day he needed it more than ever?

There. His fingers felt the cool metal, but it slipped away and down through the crevices in his bag.

Hutch fisted his hands, and a growl emanated from deep in his tortured stomach. Couldn’t any single thing go his way? Just one thing? Just for once?

He plunged his hand into the bag until he reached the bottom. There it was, lying on a leather case.

The telescope.

Rage ripped through him. He yanked and tugged until the case rested on his cot, taunting him.

His breath tore out his nostrils in hot bursts. That telescope represented everything the Army had done to him, emasculating him.

He never asked for a new telescope. Georgie thrust it on him and he had to take it, had to take everything the officers dished out. He definitely didn’t want a telescope purchased by his officer girlfriend out of pity.

Why would he want to watch the stars anyway? The stories behind the constellations now repulsed him.