Long Way Home(68)

I was working in the women’s ward in the hospital on a sunny afternoon in early April with an hour remaining on my shift when air-raid sirens began to sound. There wasn’t much we could do when that happened except to brace ourselves and hope that the large red cross on the building’s roof would prevent enemy airplanes from targeting us. Even so, I felt a shiver of panic each time the alarm sounded. I removed the blood pressure cuff from my patient’s arm and waited, listening.

Then, above the wailing sirens, came the droning roar of aircraft. It grew louder, closer. I crossed to the window and looked out, and what I saw made my heart stop. Airplanes filled the sky like an enormous flock of birds, too many to count. I’d never seen so many before. And so close! They didn’t look like the Luftwaffe planes that I’d seen landing and taking off regularly at a local airstrip. The Nazis were using a former car factory in Mortsel to repair their planes.

The sudden rattle of antiaircraft fire from the ground confirmed that these were Allied planes. Then the first bombs began to fall, followed by thundering explosions that made the windows rattle. Not one or two bombs, but an endless chain of powerful explosions. The blasts boomed and rumbled and thundered on and on as if the entire world might explode. My pulse accelerated. Bombs had never fallen this close before. Plumes of black smoke billowed in the distance above Mortsel. Where Ruthie was.

“Oh, God, please! No!”

The hospital lights flickered and dimmed, then blinked off. Panicked patients called, “Nurse! Nurse!” as sirens continued to scream outside and bombs exploded and roared. My instincts told me to run, but there was no place to go. Why were the Americans bombing us?

I moved away from the window as the deafening explosions continued, my heart racing, my stomach heaving. The ward matron hurried from her station to assure the patients that all would be well, but she began herding any ambulatory patients who wanted to flee to safety down to the basement, just in case. They would have to use the stairs. The elevator was inoperable without electricity. The more seriously ill patients, like most of the ones I tended in this ward, had to stay where they were. The elderly woman whose vital signs I had just taken called me to her bedside. She had tears in her eyes as she asked me to pray with her. I held her hand while we recited the Lord’s Prayer together. “Forgive us our debts . . . Deliver us from evil . . .”

It seemed like hours passed before the bombing raid ended and the roar of planes faded into the distance. The rattling antiaircraft fire and wailing sirens ceased. For a moment, the silence that fell seemed as deafening as the bombs. No one moved. Then a commotion started up in the hallway outside the ward. The lights were still off, but I heard telephones ringing and people running. I went to the door and saw doctors and nurses and nuns scurrying around. The matron beckoned to me and I joined a group that had gathered around her in the corridor. “Reports are coming in of catastrophic civilian casualties in Mortsel. At least two schools filled with children were hit. Every available doctor and nurse is needed.”

Ruthie’s school was in Mortsel.

There was no question that I would volunteer. But I felt such a rush of fear and dread that I wasn’t sure how much help I would be. My hands trembled so violently I couldn’t manage the buttons on my jacket as I prepared to go. I wobbled when I walked, my legs like jelly. I couldn’t string two coherent thoughts together. I followed the others and did what I was told, quickly packing emergency kits and bandages and morphine, then crushing into the back of an ambulance with the other nurses and doctors.

One of the surgeons, Dr. Janssens, briefed us as we drove. “The Americans must have been targeting the Luftwaffe installation but something went terribly wrong. Hundreds of bombs fell on the center of Mortsel, in the area called Oude God. We have calls from four schools now, and the town’s residential areas were also heavily hit.”

I closed my eyes and prayed for my sister as we hurtled through the streets, alarm bells clanging. At last we halted. So much rubble clogged the streets that the ambulances couldn’t get any closer. I struggled to push my dizziness and shock aside, grabbing my supplies and following the others, walking forward as if in a nightmare. I had seen Mortsel and the Oude God area a few months ago when I’d tried to visit Ruthie, but it was unrecognizable now. It resembled a scene from hell, bombed into oblivion. Bodies and parts of bodies lay scattered everywhere. Shouts from the workers along with pitiful screams and cries for help filled the air.

I struggled to concentrate as Dr. Janssens issued orders. He told us to do whatever we could to bring aid: apply tourniquets to stop bleeding, assess wounds, give injections of morphine, stabilize broken bones, perform triage to decide who needed surgery first. The medical personnel were told to spread out to the hardest-hit areas, and I was assigned to go with Dr. Janssens and three other nurses to St. Vincent School. We set off in that direction, dodging huge chunks of debris and downed trolley lines. Thick smoke from burning cars made my eyes water. I knew I needed to pull myself together, but all I could think about was Ruthie. Surely God wouldn’t take her from me, too. Not after all we’d been through. Not in such a horrifying way.

We reached what was left of the school, and the sight of three small, lifeless bodies lying in the street overwhelmed me. I froze, paralyzed with horror. Workers were digging more bodies out of the rubble while teachers and distraught parents, blackened with soot and dust, screamed and wept. Someone grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “Nurse! Get ahold of yourself! You’re needed over here.” A group of children that the workers had rescued from the rubble were still alive. I prayed for strength and clarity of mind and went to work, applying all of my skill and training to help each child as if she were Ruthie.