Cherry Ames 05 Flight Nurse (15 page)

“Oh, let’s enjoy ourselves!” Muriel cried eagerly.

Going in, they met Bunce coming out. He wore the broadest smile Cherry had ever seen on his blithe face.

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Hanging on to both his hands were half a dozen small boys. His effort to salute Cherry was futile.

“We’re goin’ to see the plane!” Bunce said. “Yes, sir, these men are going to climb all over it.”

“These men” were in too great a hurry to stop and chat. They tugged Bunce along, with small cries of

“Going up, men!” and “Pip pip!”

“Have fun!” Cherry called to Bunce. He tucked two of the smallest boys under either arm and ambled off with the others trotting at his heels.

Muriel sniffed. “I don’t like boys. They’re dirty and they make too much noise.”

“You’ll feel differently when you’re older,” Cherry assured her. “Besides, don’t you like Captain Wade?” she asked as she saw him coming. A small boy was riding on his shoulder.

But just then Muriel caught sight of the Christmas tree. She forgot herself, squeaked, and ran over to the tree, then wiggled her way through the group of excited children, closer to the tree. She dropped to her knees and gazed up at it rapturously.

“Is that candy?” she pointed hopefully at the decorations. A piece popped into her mouth completed her bliss.

Wade came over and knelt down, too, beside the tree.

His small masculine passenger slid off the Captain’s shoulder, made a horrible face at Muriel, and galloped off shouting.

Cherry looked through the pile of packages heaped at the foot of the Christmas tree, for something for the mascot. The mound of gifts had already grown smaller.

Santa Claus Thorne appeared from behind the tree at that moment. Muriel’s eyes popped.

“Saint Nicholas!” she whispered. “He
did
come!” The jolly Santa leaned down to shake her hand and boom, “Merry Christmas!”

“Santa,” Cherry said, “Muriel has been a very good girl, all this year. Have you a present for her, Santa?”

“Why, of course!” Santa enlarged upon all the gifts he and his trusty reindeer had brought. Cherry whispered to Muriel:

“What do you want?”

The small flight nurse was covered with confusion.

“Come on, tell us,” Wade whispered.

“What I want—no. I’m a soldier now.”

“I know what she wants, Santa,” Cherry said. “A doll!

Isn’t that right?”

Muriel nodded. Cherry and Wade pinched and poked around in the packages until they found her a doll. It was only a rag doll but Muriel cradled it in her arms and pronounced it “beautiful.” She thanked Santa, who turned to the next eager visitor.

“Captain Wade, I have another present,” Muriel started, and her fingers strayed to the neck of her blouse. She caught Cherry’s eye. Guiltily the small hand came down and awkwardly patted the doll.

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“Don’t I get to see your present?” Wade asked.

“This is a secret present,” Cherry explained.

The thought of that medal, stamped Berlin, hanging around Muriel’s baby neck, interfered with Cherry’s enjoyment of the party. She helped organize a game of Going To Jerusalem, and took her turn at ladling out eggnog. But she was so absent-minded that several of her friends commented on it.

“You’ll have to do better than this,” Ann whispered to her. “After all, Lex’s marriage surely couldn’t hurt you so much!”

“It isn’t—oh! Yes, Annie, you’re right,” Cherry evaded. “By the way, would you tell Gwen for me?” Gwen, notified, came over to shake Cherry’s hand.

“I never liked him,” the redhead said flatly. “Whew!

It’s a relief to admit it.”

“Kind of a relief to me too.” Cherry grinned and wondered now why she had wept so hard this morning.

What an odd Christmas-birthday she was having.

Other years, Cherry had been completely, light heart-edly happy. This year, in England, came news from America—and hints of news from Berlin—that left her troubled.

“Hello, sobersides,” said Wade, and yanked her black curls. “Cheer up. Don’t you know this is your birthday party? Don’t you know you’re the glamour girl of this outfit? And don’t you know your pal Muriel has suddenly become the guest of honor?”
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A chorus of wobbly treble voices started to sing.

Muriel’s thin piping rose above the rest. Behind the children’s carol, came the full-throated notes of a small portable organ, which one of the pilots had brought.

Someone lit candles now. A hush came over the rest of the excited children as the little chorus sang. Then the organ pealed out familiar tunes, and everyone was singing. The voices, deep and high, blended and swelled, until the paper star atop the Christmas tree quivered.

Then Santa Claus read them
The Night Before
Christmas
and Dickens’
Christmas Carol
. The small guests were half asleep, the smallest ones soundly asleep, by the time he finished. It was time to go home.

Cherry and Wade had assumed responsibility for taking home a dozen children in Muriel’s village. Amid much confusion, they found the right coats, hats, scarfs, mittens and boots, and after a struggle, got each child buttoned and ready. Then into a jeep they went, tucked warmly under Army blankets. One little girl kept repeat-ing sleepily, “Not even a mouse. Not
even
a mouse!” The roads and lanes were pitch-black. Wade drove along carefully, this time, in the black-out. It seemed sad to Cherry that Christmas, most joyous of holidays, should ever have to be celebrated in the black shadows of war.

The last child but Muriel was taken home, and their jeep drew up before Mrs. Eldredge’s wintry garden.

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Muriel piped up, “Look! Someone left a light shining!”

Cherry and Wade followed the child’s sleepy gaze.

Yes, up there shone one bright light in the black-out.

They had better black it out.

They climbed up a little hill, Wade and Cherry hand in hand, with the child tagging after them. They ran to turn the bright light out, running up and up to the very top of the hill.

The light, they found, was a star. It never could be blacked-out.

c h a p t e r

one afternoon in january, cherry was unexpectedly called off hospital duty. Her name had not yet come up again, in the nurses’ rotating roster of flight assignments. But she knew something was afoot. Across the field, a stockade of airborne infantry had been waiting restlessly for days, in one spot. They appeared to be alerted. High-ranking staff cars had been seen rolling around this Troop Carrier Command base. Whatever action was planned, it had been kept so secret there were not even rumors. Anyway, an emergency could hardly surprise Cherry any more.

She reported, as instructed, to a flight nurse from Flight One who was Captain Betty Ryan’s assistant.

“Captain Ryan went out on a flight this morning,” the nurse told Cherry. “I’ll have to assign you myself.

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This is an emergency mission. We’re alerting a lot of our flight nurses. Don’t discuss this order with anyone, please. Be down on the line in half an hour.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.” Cherry saluted. “Any flight plan to give me? Any information as to where we’re going?”

“You’ll learn that once you’re up,” the nurse said grimly. “Good luck.”

Cherry raced over to the barracks and found every other girl in her flight—except Gwen, who was already out on a flight—alerted for the same mysterious mission. They pulled on their heaviest flying clothes—fur-lined jackets with parka hoods, heavy trousers, sheep-lined ankle boots—in tense silence. There was no time or use to speculate. Whatever was coming, it was something big and rough. The girls strapped on their pistols along with their musette bags.

At base operations hut, Cherry’s flight team arrived just as she did. Wade made his clearances and the team headed for their aircraft. Cherry was amazed to see closely ranged inside the enormous hangar, great numbers of planes of all types, and even greater numbers of gliders.

“Wade, wh-what?—” she stammered in her excitement.

“Those are to carry infantrymen, and also tanks and field guns. They aren’t starting for a few hours yet—not until we’ve gotten things ready for ’em.”
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“
We?
Oh, you mean we’re hauling cargo to the front as usual.”

“Just take a look at the cargo we’re hauling today,” Wade said grimly, as they approached their plane.

The doors of their enormous C-47 stood open. But instead of ammunition or gasoline or medical supplies being loaded aboard, soldiers were marching aboard.

They were grave-faced, heavily armed infantrymen. In eleven other C-47’s, more airborne infantry were filing aboard.

“Captain,” Cherry asked, “aren’t we going to pick up wounded today?”

“Certainly. But we’re going to drop these men first.

Aboard, please!”

Cherry, with Bunce right behind her, ran up the ramp into the plane. They slammed the doors shut, squeezed in, in the tail behind the soldiers, and strapped in.

The plane’s four motors roared, the aircraft vibrated, strained to lift. Cherry looked around curiously. The men, seated on the pull-down wall benches, were silent, tense. The very plane itself looked different. All her hospital equipment was stowed back close against the walls to make room for these men and their bulky tommy guns, parachutes, and field packs. It was evident they were going to be landed in enemy territory. Enemy territory! Cherry realized she was going to be in the thick of things today!

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Their ship gave a terrific pull. The motors beat hard.

Then they were taxiing, then swiftly taking-off. They gained altitude quickly. Before and behind them roared the other C-47’s. Cherry looked out the low rear window. They were flying in two formations of six and six: each six spread out like two mutually protecting trian-gles.

“I’ve never seen this formation before,” Cherry said to Bunce.

A soldier on her other side told her, “It’s a combat formation, Lieutenant.”

Cherry would have talked to this man, and those around him, but they were not communicative. Two or three of them had brief words of praise for a girl who would brave this work. One very young man said, with a grin, “Ma’am, when you get off this plane, the GI’s just won’t believe it. There’ll even be wiseacres who’ll point to your pants and say, ‘No woman could possibly come here!’ ” Another said, “We’re willing to dare anything so long as we know you medical people are near by.”

A few words like these, and the men lapsed into silence. If they talked at all, they murmured to one another about fighting techniques, or about their families, or made grim jokes. One boy was reading his Bible.

They were going into battle—going to be landed for a surprise attack to soften up the enemy, and open up the way for the other infantrymen who would follow.

No wonder, Cherry thought, that these young men sat grave and silent in the roaring plane.

She found it a long, tedious, nerve-racking trip. In these two hours, there were so many preparations she and Bunce needed to make for the wounded they were flying to pick up. But with the airborne GI’s crowded aboard, it was impossible to pull down the web straps to hold litters, or get oxygen tanks or the sterilizer ready. Cherry and her medical technician did what they could in the tail, preparing medicines, bandages, and hot drinks. For the rest, they would simply have to wait till they landed, and then convert the transport from a carrier to a hospital plane at breakneck speed.

The south of England floated by below, gray and seemingly peaceful in the thin winter sunshine. Then their two formations were pounding over the Channel. Twenty minutes’ hazardous flying over water, with an eye out for enemy planes, and then the coast of France hove into view. Here possibility of enemy attack, by planes and by flak from ground-based anti-aircraft guns, became very real. Here, too, their formation gradually split up and Cherry’s plane flew alone. Now Wade gunned the motors to top speed.

Afternoon shadows were growing longer, over this unknown countryside. The soldiers glanced at their watches. Cherry began to recognize a few landmarks below, for this was her fifth combat mission. But they 154

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flew beyond the landmarks she knew, deep into fighting areas.

“Scared, Miss Cherry?” Bunce whispered.

“Who, me?” Then Cherry grinned. “Yes, plenty scared.”

“I’m shakin’ like a leaf.”

“Never mind, we’ll both put on a confidence act for our wounded.”

She began to hear the rumble of heavy guns, louder and louder, as they streaked ahead. Sharp ack-ack sounded. A cloud of fiery spray shattered past their wing. Flak! Wade outflew that danger, got away fast from the German lines.

Cherry and Bunce strained their ears.

“Other planes?”

“I think so.”

“Gosh, I hope they’re ours.”

“Aren’t we nearly there
yet
?” Bunce and Cherry kept watch at the window in the tail. Presently she pointed:

“Isn’t that a camouflaged air strip?”

“But it’s smack where they must be fighting! You can hear the guns real plain!”

Nevertheless, that was where Wade circled and started to go down. Cherry watched but saw no signal flags, nothing. Apparently all this had been arranged beforehand. There was nothing impromptu in the sure
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way their pilot set the plane down on this rough, mile-long strip, right in the middle of nowhere.

A few men in uniform came running down the air strip. Cherry could see no holding station, only a muddy clearing and clumps of broken trees. Planes and guns rumbled all around them. She distinctly saw flashes of fire, and smoke rising in the frosty air.