Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(80)

Now I’m back, and everything’s changed. Everything!

I’m not much of a journalist. But I didn’t get a chance to feel like an imposter at the Doctors’ Trial last week because Dr Alexander, the American medical expert, kept me so busy. The medical report for my tutor will be straightforward and mostly a matter of typing up my notes. The sizzling human interest story is harder to write, especially since I ended up sitting in court for one day only. I’ve got an idea for how to tell it though – how going to the Doctors’ Trial changed my mind about going to the Ravensbrück trial. I still don’t want to go and even if I am going now I feel kind of ashamed and embarrassed for being such a scaredy-cat about it in the first place, but I’ll use this story for Olympia as a chance to defend myself.

I’m going to try writing a draft of it right here in my Ravensbrück notebook. It seems like the right place to do it. And that’s why Maddie gave it to me in the first place after all, to bribe me with nice paper. There’s enough room left because the Ravensbrück bit is all written from top to bottom and edge to edge of every page in absolutely minuscule writing. I don’t remember doing that on purpose – in the back of my mind I probably thought someone was going to take the paper away from me.

I like the idea that if I draft this article here then the story will be complete and in one place, even if the last part – the part I am about to write – gets typed up later and published somewhere else.





Kite Flying: four principles of flight



(by Rose Justice)



A pilot’s greatest challenge is not bad weather or low fuel or getting lost. It’s not even getting shot at. My greatest challenge is a friend who is afraid of flying.

I got my high school diploma six months early because I had a job in the British Air Transport Auxiliary, ferrying aircraft for the Royal Air Force in the spring of 1944 just before the Allied invasion of Normandy. Before I went to Europe I decided I was going to take every one of my best friends from the girls’ varsity basketball team for a joyride in one of my dad’s Piper Cubs. It only has two seats, so this was a fun project, just me and my friends without my dad. We’d fly over their houses or over the lake where we swam in the summer, or west to see the state Capitol building, and they’d take pictures, and then we’d get my dad to take a picture of us standing together by the plane afterwards – laughing and windblown, arms around each other’s shoulders, looking very pleased with ourselves.

It never occurred to me Polly would be any different from anybody else on the team. She didn’t say anything. She was probably trying hard to be brave. After all, everybody else had gone flying with me, and they’d all come back safely, bubbling over with enthusiasm and snapshots.

So when Polly walked out to the plane with me, I didn’t even know anything was wrong until she sat down on the brown winter grass of the airfield and burst into tears.

I thought she’d twisted her ankle!

‘Hey, what’s wrong?’

‘I won’t I won’t I won’t I won’t I won’t –’

‘Won’t what?’

‘I won’t get in that kite! I don’t want to go anywhere near it! I told you I didn’t want to come –’

She had, sort of, but she’d made it sound like her mother didn’t want her to come.

I knelt down next to her and put my hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry! It’s not scary getting in, and there are shoulder straps. The cockpit shuts up tight just like a little car. It’s so beautiful in the air! If you close your eyes while we’re taking off –’

My best friend Polly socked me in the eye.

That might have been the biggest shock of my entire life up to that point. In a million years I wouldn’t have guessed that my best friend could possibly be so scared of something that she’d punch me in the face for trying to talk her into doing it.

I burst into tears. Polly was already crying. After a moment she clapped her hands over her mouth and gasped, ‘Rosie – I’m so sorry! Gosh, we’re like second graders pulling each other’s hair! I just –’

She didn’t actually pack much of a punch. It had just been such a surprise. I laughed shakily and said, ‘No, I’m sorry, and you should have told me you were scared! I wouldn’t bully you into doing something you’re that scared to do – it’s supposed to be a treat! It’s not important enough to make you do it!’

I really believed that when I said it to Polly. It was true for Polly. I guess it’s still true for Polly, but under other circumstances – sometimes it is important enough.





1. Lift





My sense of who I am is partly based on the fact that I learned to fly when I was twelve. But there are a lot of other things that define me. I am a Pennsylvania Dutch Lutheran. I am a student at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, halfway through my second year of a Bachelor of Medicine degree. I am a published poet, in this magazine and one other, with two poems soon to be printed in The New Yorker. And, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal completed in Nuremberg three months ago, I am one of the millions of victims of Counts 3 and 4, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, brought against the Nazi leaders convicted there. I am one of the lucky ones, because I am still alive.