Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(68)

—British Prime Minister Winston Churchill





Interstitial

107TH EVAC HOSPITAL, WüRZBURG, GERMANY—APRIL 1945

Thus do our young heroines train and prepare and ship off for war, Gentle Reader. Enfilade, defilade, bandaging, and spy craft, but the war is not yet real to them. It is out there, waiting for them, but they have no sense of what it is, really. It is vague. Indistinct. It’s something concealed from view by fog so thick that even the sound of cannon would still easily be mistaken for thunder.

What do you think of my soldier girls, Gentle Reader? Aimless, naive Rio and sexy Jenou; smart, determined Rainy; and gentle, conflicted Frangie.

Could you see yourself sitting down to tea with these girls? Will it surprise you to learn that one of them went on to gun down three unarmed German prisoners? Will it shock you to learn that one lit her cigarette from the flames of a burning German SS officer?

We understood nothing, you see. We thought we were soldiers, but we were still civilians dressed in khaki and OD. None of us had yet felt the fear so overpowering that you shake all the way down to your bones and your bladder empties into your pants and you can’t speak for the chattering of your teeth. None of us had yet seen the red pulsating insides of another human being. We had not yet killed, and that, Gentle Reader, that is what we had been trained to do.

We had made friends among our fellow soldiers, male and female, but we as yet had no idea what those men and women could do, for we had as yet no idea what would be required of us.

It seems impossible to me now as I sit here deciding whether to bully an orderly into bringing me coffee, scratching the itch beneath my bandage, typing away in this dark and gloomy place and . . . dammit, the screaming again, someone trapped in a nightmare or in some more present physical agony.

I was attempting eloquence, Gentle Reader, and was interrupted by the raw urgency of another woman’s pain. It serves me right, I suppose.

My own leg hurts, my breast hurts, but I’m not that poor woman screaming in the night, am I? Will you understand if I tell you that there are times when it is better to feel the pain yourself than to see it and hear it in another?

Helplessness is a big part of war, helplessness and confusion and boredom, too, so that at times you tell the woman or man beside you that you’d rather be getting shot at. But that’s always a lie, something you say to . . .

I’m getting ahead of myself. I am not here to ruminate and philosophize, or to attempt eloquence, I am here to tell the story, our story. Much of the time my fingers fairly dance over the keys and the sheets of paper go flying in and out. But right now as I write this, each letter is a struggle. For now our story leaves behind the sweet before and enters the darker after.

Where is this war, you wonder? Enough of the familiar; show me the blood and guts. When do we get to the killing and the dying?

Well, it is very near now, Gentle Reader, for we are going to North Africa, to the deserts where the Brits have the famed German Afrika Korps on the run after many battles. The Americans have landed against some resistance from the Vichy French, most of which crumbled soon enough.

It was supposed to be a pincer movement; Brits to the east in Egypt and Libya, Americans to the west in Morocco and Algeria, with the Germans, a few Italians, and a sprinkling of unrepentant French collaborators—running out of fuel, tanks, and ammo—trapped helplessly between the two.

We had yet to learn war, and we had yet to learn that the Kraut was never helpless.

One more boat ride and we will arrive at the front lines in Tunisia. And there, Gentle Reader, you’ll get your blood and guts.





LETTERS SENT


Dear Pastor M’Dale,

I hope you won’t mind me writing to you. I am writing to my parents and brothers as well, but I can’t worry them. I suppose I shouldn’t be worrying you either, but I need to do this, I need to write to someone. I talk to the other folks in my unit, but none of them has become really close. The men don’t talk to us women, and the women mostly want to talk about what dress they’ll get for the big victory party we all keep saying we’ll throw someday. Or else they talk about boys, and that’s not on the top of my mind. I guess you’ll be relieved to hear that.

After an uneventful sea voyage, I’m in XXXXXX. I think I can say that without getting censored. They put me on a ward for badly injured English soldiers as practical training. The Tommies aren’t as concerned about black folk tending their white wounded since a lot of their nurses are already from colonies where folks are mostly brown or black. It’s not like the white boys treat us as equals, but they seem happy to have any soft hand regardless of color to apply a salve or inject morphine.

I saw some bad things, sir. I don’t really know how to explain without making you see what I don’t suppose you want to see. But I think if I don’t tell someone I’ll crack up.

There was this one white boy. I can’t tell you his name so I’ll make one up: Errol. I’ve always liked that name.

Anyway, Errol had got hit by a passing 88 shell. It didn’t explode because it was fused for armor not flesh, but it took off a chunk of his face, including his nose and part of a cheek. His buddies had found the missing flesh and bandaged it back on and sent him off to their field hospital and they had tried to sew it back on. And when he got evacuated here to XXXXXX the doctors thought maybe . . . But it didn’t take, so the sewed-on part grew septic and morbid.