Sentimental Journey

About Jill Barnett

Jill Barnett sold her first book to Simon and Schuster in 1988 and has gone on to write 19 novels and short stories. There are over 7 million of her books in print, and her work has been published worldwide in 21 languages, audio and large print editions, and has earned her a place on such national bestseller lists as the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Barnes and Noble and Waldenbooks —who presented Jill with the National
Waldenbook
Award. She lives with her family in the
Pacific Northwest
.

Sentimental Journey

by

Jill Barnett

Bell
Bridge
Books

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead,) events or locations is entirely coincidental.

Bell Bridge Books
PO
BOX
300921
Memphis, TN 38130

Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

Copyright 2002 © by Jill Barnet
eISBN:
978-1-935661-70-2

Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Originally published 2002 by Pocket Books, mass market edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers. You can contact us at the address above or at
[email protected]
or at
www.bellbridgebooks.com

Cover design: Debra Dixon
Interior Design: Hank smith
Plane Photo Credit:
©
Bart De
keyzer
|
Dreamstime.com
Woman photo credit ©
Konradbak
|
Dreamstime.com

:Mz:01:

DEDICATION

I grew up at the knee of one of the finest storytellers ever walk over the red dirt of
Texas
, and that’s saying something because most Texans can tell one hell of a good tale. Guy Barnett was a tall, red-haired devil, a veteran of World War II, a damn fine Big Band musician, and a man who loved to fly planes.

He was one of those rare people who talked to strangers, and rarer still, he listened to what they had to say. He could walk into a room full of people and two hours later tell you something interesting and personal about each and every person there. He was my father, and part of a fading generation of patriots who believed in their country, in the American flag and what it stood for.

His stories of the war were my bedtime tales, the lush sweet notes of his muted trumpet were my lullabies.
 
Long before a woman ever burned a bra, he taught me I was his equal, and it was by his example that I learned what a good man was.

This book is for him and his courageous generation—the men and women of World War II who were willing to risk their lives for honor, for their country, and so their children, like me, could have the freedom to write about it.

PART
ONE

NORTH AFRICA

1942

LIBYAN DESERT
,
OCTOBER 11

There’s no rhyme or reason as to how the mind of a soldier works in battle. Men holed up in a farmhouse will cook dinner in the middle of a sniper attack, setting the table with a checkered cloth and folded napkins, a platter of sliced fruit and cheese sitting in the center, like they were chefs in some Italian joint back home. You find that you don’t think they’re nuts for longer than that first stunned moment, that one second of rational thought in a place where hell’s a-popping and nothing makes sense.

If there’s no guarantee of a tomorrow, you need normalcy to ground you. And it’s then you realize that maybe those cookin’ fools have got a helluva good idea. You sit yourself down with them and stuff your face, while the whole damn war is going on around you.

You see a soldier fall into a ditch of mud and dead men, then come crawling out more worried about the photographs in his wallet than about cleaning his rifle. It sounds insane, but when you have the chance to, you squat behind a tree, bullets flying around you, and there, behind that tree, for just one second, you pull out your own wallet and flip open the pictures.

In a bar or at a canteen dance, when some dame finds out you’ve been in combat, she asks questions like, “Before a battle, do you think about heaven?”

No.

“Do you think about dying?”

No. You’re too damn afraid to. You might jinx yourself. You decide early on that no matter how much the enemy shoots at you, you’ll be damned if you’re going to get hit.

Kitty asked one night, “Don’t you ever get scared?”

Everyone gets scared. Fear keeps you alive. But once you see the enemy, you don’t have much time to be afraid. Or to think about it. The truth is, it’s fear of the unknown that really gets you.

She understood. She lived with that kind of fear every waking minute. Maybe that was the night they fell in love, when they were alone, spilling their guts to each other, thinking life made no sense because they were damn near freezing to death in the middle of the
Sahara
Desert
.

Just like now.

Lt. Colonel J.R. Cassidy was back in
North Africa
, in the desert again just before dawn, where it was still and quiet. The sand was hard and bare and so cold it was like lying on snow.

Through a perimeter of wooden crossed-stakes and entangled wire stood his objective—a bowl of Axis trouble hollowed out of an endless range of sand dunes in the Libyan Desert. Dim lights downlit the corners of the buildings and the northeast side of the compound, where a convoy of trucks and tanks were lined up for fueling at first light.

From here it looked like a movie set, the type of place Gary Cooper stormed in
Beau Geste.
But this was 1942, a different time, a different war. This was real.

In less than ten minutes, Allied mission Foxfire would begin. Their job: to infiltrate Rommel’s compound. Ten minutes after that, they would blow everything sky-high: the compound, the largest Deutsches Afrika Korps supply dump in the desert, and the Jadgwaffe’s airfield.

He checked his watch . . . every few minutes.

Time moved at glacial speed. Seconds and minutes—measurements of a lifetime that have little meaning by themselves.

He waited. Tense. Edgy. Until 0400.

This was it.

He clipped a hole in the wire and moved forward, shimmying down a dune and up over another like some kind of desert viper.

“Halt!”

He froze at the edge of the dunes, half afraid to look up because he didn’t know if he would be staring into the barrel of a Kar98k or if the voice he’d heard had carried up from below.

Lt. Colonel J.R. Cassidy raised his head slowly to find he was alone in the dunes.

But below and from out of nowhere, a troop of armed soldiers ran all over the compound. Spotlights sliced through darkness, sudden and glaring. The place lit up like a ball field in October.

Rommel’s men had been waiting for them.