Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(16)

So I didn’t fly under the Eiffel Tower, but I did fly in big lazy circles around it, while everybody pointed and cheered and somebody snapped a million pictures over my shoulder like a sightseer. At that point I’d stopped singing because I was really too low and I had to concentrate on flying.

I’m BUZZING THE EIFFEL TOWER, I thought. JUST WAIT till I tell Daddy I’ve buzzed the Eiffel Tower!

It is the most wonderful thing I have ever done.

The rest of the day has brought me back to earth with a wallop because after I landed and had my camp tour and went shopping, the nurses I am staying with put me to work in an ‘outpatient’ clinic tent of the field hospital – walking wounded only, thank goodness. I was assisting, holding equipment and cutting gauze for bandages, not actually changing dressings myself. To tell the truth, I think they just grabbed the opportunity to use me as a morale booster.

‘From Pennsylvania! A pilot! Shouldn’t you be in school, young lady? Look at those curls!’

It reminded me of when Maddie and Celia and Felicyta and I handed out the strawberries to the soldiers on D-Day – except these men weren’t as frightened. They’d already been to battle and it’s hardened them, or at least made them better at hiding that they’re scared. It makes my heart ache, thinking that none of these brave boys are so badly hurt they won’t be fighting again in a couple of weeks. I don’t want them to be badly hurt, but equally I don’t want them to be killed on the front lines. I have got ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ stuck in my brain. Glory glory Hallelujah!

It is why I am up so late – I have been working on a poem in my head all day, and I want to write it down in case I forget it.





Battle Hymn of 1944


(by Rose Justice)

O let them struggle wisely, these brave boys



and girls around the watchfires; grant they should

fight with realistic hope, not to destroy

all the world’s wrong, but to renew its good.

Make them victors and healers, let them be

unsentimental and compassionate;

spill not their generous blood abundantly

as gifts of stockings and gum and chocolate.

Let them be modest, knowing the irony

of hard-fought peace, our bold united youth

returned in strength across the migrant sea,

rebuilding and restoring law and truth –

then afterward, when the last prayer’s been said,

home for the living, burial for the dead.






And now I am going to go to sleep. I have been scribbling this by flashlight under my borrowed US Army blanket. I’m not flying the Oxford back – they want to keep that here for local taxi runs, so one of the RAF pilots at the front will come pick up Roger to take him to his next stop, and I am going to swap planes and take a Spitfire back to Southampton for a new paint job (it is being modified for reconnaissance).

Now that I want to go to sleep I can’t put my notebook and flashlight down on the ground because it’s just an ocean of mud, and I don’t want to get out of bed and wake everybody up hunting for a place to put them. So I guess I’ll shove everything down at my feet and hope I don’t kick it out of bed. I’d put the notebook under my pillow except I haven’t got one! I hope I don’t forget it tomorrow morning.





‘Chiltern Edge’



1 Thames View

Medmenham, nr Marlow

Bucks

4 October 1944

Dear Mrs Beaufort-Stuart,

Thank you for all your thoughtful effort over the past three weeks. I wish I had some good news, or even some small shred of hopeful news, to pass to you and your fellow pilots. But there isn’t anything – not a single thing. As time moves on and so many others are also lost, it seems selfish to keep badgering for an investigation into one more missing aircraft, especially as it wasn’t entirely above board for Rose to be in France in the first place. My husband Roger feels keenly that if he makes a fuss about losing Rose, none of the rest of you young ladies will ever be allowed to fly in Europe.

I do not want to give up hope, but I do not think we are ever going to hear anything now. Roger says her family won’t even get a military pension. I suppose you know that, being a civilian pilot yourself. But it does seem dreadfully unfair.

Perhaps you would like to write to her parents. I think they would appreciate hearing from one of Rose’s friends. Sometimes I think I will send them the poem you copied out for me from her notebook, the ‘Battle Hymn’. ‘Home for the living, burial for the dead.’ And then I think I won’t, as poor Rose will have neither.

I shall leave it up to you.

Thank you again for all your past kindness, to me and to my missing niece.

Yours sincerely,



Edith Justice





Justice Airfield



Mt Jericho, PA

23 November 1944

Thanksgiving Day

Dear First Officer Beaufort-Stuart,

I want to thank you myself for the effort you’ve made on our daughter’s behalf. You say in your letter that you don’t feel you’ve done enough, but in every telegram from Roger and in all Edie’s letters they always mention you. I know how many times you’ve telephoned Edie to check for news – that you supplied your husband’s squadron in Europe with Rose’s picture so they will know who to look for – that you took over the sad task of sorting through Rose’s things and packed them up for Edie to send us. She also sent us the newspaper clipping you gave her about the shot-down gunner who spent three months hiding in France. But I think it is better for us to face the worst than to hold out for good news that will never come.