Cherry Ames 05 Flight Nurse (17 page)

C H E R R Y A M E S , F L I G H T N U R S E

“You’re still mighty cute.” Cherry swabbed the grime and sweat off his face. “You probably have three or four sweethearts.”

“Nurse—Do you think girls will—will go out with me now?”

Cherry patted the soldier’s cheek. “You’re still
you
.

That’s what counts. How would you like some cool fruit juice?”

“Gee, Nurse, you make me feel lots better.” Most of the other patients were too badly hurt, or too dazed and faraway, to talk. Cherry went from one to another. Although she was thinking hard about the medical problem involved in each case, she noticed now that she heard only their own plane’s engines. The fighter escort must have withdrawn. She noticed, too, as the air in here grew colder, thinner, harder to breathe, that their transport must be climbing again. Cherry hoped fervently it was not because there were enemy planes to avoid. This higher altitude aggravated certain cases.

The usual nursing techniques did not work properly up this high. Cherry improvised as she went along, and also kept a sharp lookout to see which men needed more oxygen. Some of the sitting cases looked as if they might be airsick, though this was less important than their wounds. Cherry and Bunce tried to make them as comfortable as possible.

But her key job was to reassure these helpless men—

particularly when, in back of them, came a roar, which
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steadily grew closer. Cherry counted. One—two—

three—it sounded like three planes closing in on them.

Suddenly over the interphone came the copilot’s voice:

“Three Messerschmitts at eleven o’clock! Came out of that cloud bank!”

Cherry picked up her own interphone and whispered into it furiously, “Turn off that radio back here! Do you want the men to hear?”

There was some buzzing and some talk back and forth. Wade’s voice came over, “It’s jammed.” The wounded men were alert and listening now.

Dick Greenberg, radioman and navigator, spoke next:

“S O S. S O S. C-47 hauling wounded—approaching Cologne. Want fighter protection. Over.” Up front a gun went off with a terrific bang. The Germans were trying to get the pilot or the C-47’s engines. The suffering men in the litters were pale and sweating, their eyes distended.

“S O S. C-47 approaching Cologne. Fighter protection. Urgent.”

Their ship lurched and rolled sideways. Everyone not taped into litters was thrown. Cherry got to her feet, feeling a pain in her back, but with her attention fixed on a casualty who was growing hysterical. She gave him a hypodermic. Now, if ever, was the time to keep her head. Bullets whistled, and engines roared outside the plane.

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“S O S—C-47 hauling wounded—fighters, fighters.

Come in!”

The noise outside nearly split their eardrums.

“S O S—fighters—”

Then a strange voice asked, “What the heck do you think we are?” Past the rear window flew a group of Allied fighter planes.

A distinctly British voice said, “Cheer up, chickens, we have you.”

The wounded cheered. Some wept, and Cherry all but wept too. They could hear the air battle shrieking outside.

American Mustangs and British Spitfires fought off the Messerschmitts. They drove them away quickly.

Wade rode steady through it all.

Then, flying lower and slower, the fighters mothered the big transport across France, and all the way to the Channel.

Cherry had soothed her patients by this time, and helped the worst shocked over their violent reactions.

There was order and quiet in the ambulance plane once more, so now Cherry could relax a little. She noticed that her back pained and that she was limping, but she went right on cauterizing a bad wound, happy in the thought that they would soon be home. At last, they were safely over the Channel! Below them, in the waning sunlight, stood the cliffs of England!

Only an hour more, in safe skies. Cherry checked their Estimated Time of Arrival, sent radio notification of the number of wounded aboard and asked to have extra ambulances waiting. Only an hour more, but it was still a long, hard pull. Cherry realized now that their aircraft was shot up and that Wade was bringing them in largely on sheer skill and will power. Wade sent back a message by Bill Mason.

“We’re a mess of holes, but tell the boys ‘Papa’s going to take you home.’ ”

And he did. They flew low over their home base at dusk. She looked down on the field to see the ambulances and unloading crews and ground crews waiting.

The entire complement of the field, and a crowd of pilots and flight nurses, were standing all over the field, looking up for their C-47! Cherry thought of all the times she had sweated in overdue or imperiled planes.

Now she was being sweated in herself! The radioman must have notified home base of the air battle over Germany.

They circled past the control tower, and skimmed lower and lower over the runway. Cherry could see the uplifted faces clearly, now, in the January twilight. They were strained and anxious. She and Bunce prepared the wounded to be moved, then strapped them down firmly for the landing. She kept an eye on Mark Grainger as their wheels touched the air strip. Mark Grainger was to be turned over to the military police immediately.

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As they skidded perilously to a stop, ground crewmen swarmed to the transport. The ambulances waiting at the runway backed up to the plane doors. Major Thorne tugged them open as Cherry and Bunce pushed from inside, and the cold air poured in. They were home—

safe and out of danger. They were home! Cherry saw the American flag fluttering down from the hospital flagpole. Nothing had ever before looked so good to her as that familiar red, white, and blue.

“Lieutenant Ames! Are you all right?” demanded the Flight Surgeon. She nodded, and he asked, “What cases have you brought?”

Cherry rapidly led him through the plane, and also handed him a brief report on each patient. She signaled the unloading crew to come aboard. Promptly, under her supervision and with Bunce’s help, they lifted two litters at a time onto the hydraulic elevator. More loaders on the ground swiftly put the men on stretchers into the ambulances. The Flight Surgeon was already detailing the worst injured for immediate operations.

Wade called from the ground, “All right, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, Captain. Are you?”

“Yes.” Wade nodded in an exhausted way. He was too tense, too full of battle, to talk yet. He strode off to direct the mechanics, who had waited weary anxious hours for their endangered plane. Then Cherry saw him go off toward the base operations hut.

She was helping the walking wounded off the plane when Captain Betty Ryan ran up beside her.

“Lieutenant Ames, I’ve been so worried about you!

Why, you’re limping!”

The Flight Surgeon turned to look. “It’s your back, isn’t it?”

“I was thrown,” Cherry confessed. “It’s nothing. Was everyone taken care of all right, sir?”

“You did a magnificent job,” Major Thorne said. “I’m officially going to commend you for what you did on this combat flight! Don’t you think she deserves it, Captain Ryan?”

“Lieutenant Ames fully deserves it,” the Chief Nurse said warmly. “Thank heavens those Mustangs and Spitfires showed up!”

Cherry glowed. She felt her tiredness draining away, and in its place, a deep well-earned satisfaction. She honestly felt that on this terrible flight—this great test—she had fully lived up to her nurse’s idealism.

She had brought the wounded home and given them care, in spite of all odds. Suddenly Cherry remembered Mark Grainger. She would have serious explanations to make! She had broken military regulations.

“Excuse me,” she said to her two superior officers, “I have to go back to the plane.”

“Just a minute.” Plump Major Thorne wiggled his finger at her. “I want you to report to the hospital and have that back looked at.”

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“In fact,” said Captain Ryan slowly, “I think you’d better have a complete physical checkup. I’ve had my eye on you for some time, Lieutenant Ames, and I’m not at all pleased with that tired look of yours. I even thought we ought to ship you home one of these days for a good, long rest.”

“Oh, no!” Cherry wailed. “You can’t do that to me!

Why, these big battles are just starting—you need every flight nurse—oh, no! I don’t want to miss anything!” Then suddenly she remembered Mark Grainger again.

“If you’ll excuse me—”

She limped back to the tail. Mark Grainger was not there. She hunted furiously through the plane. He was not there. Out on the field, she searched frantically among the ambulances. She saw no one in civilian clothes. She questioned the loaders. No one remembered seeing a civilian. She ran, despite her twinging back, a little distance around the plane, then up the runway. In the gathering dusk, only figures in khaki or in blue fatigues came to meet her.

Mark Grainger had disappeared! Slipped away!

“Now I am in for it! If he’s a spy—and I’ve let him get away after I’ve illegally brought him into the country—

Oh, my heavens, what have I done!” She thought of something else. Mark was wounded.

Bunce had given him only first aid. If he were a spy—

and would not dare call a doctor—infection, worst danger of any wound, might set in.

He might easily be found at Mrs. Eldredge’s. He might call a local doctor. But that did not remove Cherry’s guilt. Catching a criminal does not clear an accessory to the crime.

Cherry stood still on the busy, darkening field. She pressed both hands to her throbbing temples.

“So I’m in danger of going home for a rest, am I? I only wish it were merely that!
Spy or not
—when the military police learn what I’ve done, I’ll be sent home, all right—dishonorably discharged!” Frightened, but determined to face the conse-quences, Cherry went to General Headquarters and reported in detail to the Commanding Officer. She was warned not to talk about the situation to anyone. In the meantime, she was to go on with her duties until further notice.

The Mystery Explained

cherry was now something of a heroine. the other Flight Three nurses had had their adventures, too, but none so hair-raising as Cherry’s. Upon this they agreed.

Later that week, as the six girls rested in their barracks room, Lieutenant Gray said, “Imagine coming face to face with an enemy plane! How I would have loved that!”

“You would not,” Gwen contradicted her. “Sounds thrilling to hear about, but boy, I’ll take my thrills on a roller coaster, or something nice and safe!”

“Weren’t you thrilled, Cherry?” the energetic New Englander insisted.

Cherry ruefully shook her black curls. “I was scared to a jelly. I shook like a jelly too.” 174

Ann poked her here and there with one finger. “You seem to have hardened into your normal consistency again.”

“She still looks as if she saw a ghost!” Elsie Wiegand declared.

“Well, she has a right to look like a jelly or a ghost or
anything
!” little Maggie defended her. “Cherry did one of the bravest—”

“Hear, hear!” Cherry waved a handkerchief over her head like a flag. “Good heavens, kids, can’t we talk about something else? The weather, for instance?”

“Well, you
are
a heroine. And,” Ann pointed out, “you brought it on yourself.”

Cherry thought, “If you only knew what else I’ve really brought down on my head!” She fully and soberly expected the military police to summon her any minute.

Wouldn’t the girls be disappointed in their ‘heroine’

then?

Cherry’s reaction to her narrow escape in the air surprised her. She found that she was writing long letters home—thinking of home in a new, homesick way.

Like all soldiers, Cherry and the other nurses constantly talked and thought of home. Yet they would not have gone home if Headquarters had told them they could.

Now home seemed to Cherry more real than the night-mare she had just lived through. Her mother, Midge, their big gray house in Hilton, seemed closer and more 176

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real than the Army people and English countryside which Cherry could reach out and touch. It comforted her to talk with them by writing letters. She was careful, though, to omit any mention of her fatigue and her strained back.

Cherry reported to the hospital for her checkup.

When the doctor and the attending nurse saw her bright eyes and cherry-red cheeks, they declared:

“
You
sick? We don’t believe it.”

“I’m out of order,” Cherry insisted. “But not much.” After they had examined her, the doctor and nurse laughingly told her they had to apologize. “You are out of order, at that.”

“May I see my health report?” Cherry requested.

But they refused. Cherry was puzzled, and a little uneasy, about that. However, it could not be helped, and what good was worrying? So she dismissed the matter.

Besides, she felt very much better now. Even her limp was wearing off.

“Too bad,” she joked to the other girls. “That limp was so picturesque!”

“We could toss you down a flight of stairs, if you’d like,” Gwen offered. “Always co-operative.” Cherry refused with thanks.

Flight Three was having a sort of holiday. Under orders to rest, the girls’ only obligations, temporarily, were drill and calisthenics and road marches. Cherry had time now to stand out on the windy airfield with Wade
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Cooper and wait for their pilot friends to come roaring home. If the sound of outgoing bombers and fighters had haunted her before, they very nearly stopped her breathing now. For she herself had been through an air battle. She knew vividly what those young men went out to face, and what they would—or would never—return from. When Shep or Tiny or Bob came down wide open and screaming to “buzz” the field, nearly sweeping the ground, or joyously did roll-overs, Cherry really shared their elation now.