Tomorrow Is for the Brave, page 28
“Goddamn bosches,” he wheezed as Violet rushed to help a medical orderly hoist him onto a bed.
Someone had wrapped his arm with a uniform shirt, and as the orderly peeled the fabric away, the gunner groaned. Violet forced herself not to look away from the bright shard of bone that had pierced the skin of his upper arm or the blood that had sheeted the skin beneath.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Smith. Horace Smith.” He struggled to sit up.
Violet pushed him back down. “Relax. We’ll take good care of you.”
“Goddamn bosches,” he said again, his head falling back. “They got Davis. And Zip too.”
“Who?” Violet asked as a doctor elbowed his way in to examine the gunner’s arm.
“The fellas in my crew.” He cursed, his lips barely moving. “They’re going to need help.”
“Is someone bringing them here?” Violet asked.
“No.” He closed his eyes. “They’re still on the gun. They won’t leave their posts. Can’t leave their posts. Too many goddamn planes.” He opened his eyes and looked beseechingly at the doctor. “But they’re in a bad way. You need to go help them. Davis was bleeding bad.”
“Out of the question.” The doctor was already motioning for the orderly to move the gunner out into one of the boxy vehicles they were using to conduct surgeries. “Can’t leave. Not if you want to keep this arm.”
“Please,” the gunner gasped, jerking upward in pain as he was shifted. “Help them. Not me. Send medics.”
“Stay still,” the orderly snapped.
“We don’t have medics to send,” the doctor told him with regret. “They’re attending a crew of sappers. Heard two of our water trucks were hit.”
“Two?” Violet gasped. She’d only seen the first. “How?” They’d dug those trucks in deep.
“Don’t know. Don’t have time to wonder.”
The orderly threw the bloodied uniform shirt to the side with far more force than necessary. “Would have been better if the bosches had hit another ammo dump.”
“It would be better if they weren’t hitting anything at all.”
“Please help my crew,” Horace whimpered from the bed, interrupting the two men.
“I’m sorry,” said the doctor. “Truly. But I can’t help. Not right now.”
“I’ll go,” Violet told him.
The doctor and orderly looked at her askance.
“To the batteries?” the orderly asked, his jaw slackening. “Good Christ. Do you know what’s happening out there?”
Violet glanced back at the wounded gunner. “I have a pretty good idea. I also know that if those guns fall silent, it’s going to get a lot worse for many more.” She looked back at the orderly and doctor. “I can’t do surgeries but I can do first aid,” she said quickly. “You’re both needed here but I am not. You can spare me.”
“You look like you’re wounded already.”
“It’s nothing. Scalp wound. It can be stitched later.”
The doctor grunted. “Very well. Not my decision but I won’t stop you. Take a field kit from whatever is left of the supplies.”
“Surely someone else could go?” the orderly protested.
“Who?” Violet demanded.
The orderly threw up his hands.
“Go,” said the doctor.
“Thank you.” She crouched beside the gunner. “Tell me where to find your crew.”
This close, Violet could feel the power of the guns all the way through her body each time they fired. The 75s and 25-pounders roared incessantly at the encroaching tanks and artillery while men sweated and swore beneath the beasts. She held her helmet to her head as she wove her way through the network of trenches and dugouts, a field kit of first aid supplies strapped across her chest. She followed the gunner’s instructions with help from a handful of Legionnaires along the way who gave her stunned looks but nevertheless simply pointed her in the right direction. Violet found his crew exactly where he said they would be, manning one of the big, swivelling Bofors guns dug into the southwest corner. And their comrade had been right. They were in a bad way.
The two Legionnaires who sat on the pointer and trainer seats on either side of the long cannon were slumped behind their sights, and for a moment, Violet was afraid that they might be dead. She glanced up at the sky, but miraculously, there were no Stukas in sight. She wasn’t sure how much time she had before that changed, but it wouldn’t be long. Another member of the gun crew was sitting propped up against a stack of ammunition crates, naked from the waist up, and it was he who saw Violet coming first.
He struggled to his feet, swaying.
“Please do sit back down,” Violet said, eyeing the blood that had dripped down his bare chest and soaked the waistband of his shorts. “Before you fall down.”
The gunner obeyed with a groan and collapsed back against the crates. The top of his bony shoulder was badly burned, the skin red and raw, and beneath that, lacerations striped his ribs. One of his eyes was completely swollen shut, the other nearly as bad, and the side of his face was already purple and puffy. He had lost his helmet, or perhaps had never had it to begin with, and his shaggy hair was matted with more blood. The two other gunners had stirred at the sound of her voice and they stared down at her from their perches, blinking rapidly.
“You are Davis?” she asked as she crouched beside the badly bleeding gunner. She opened her field kit. There wasn’t much she could do for the burns or the swelling at this very moment but she could at least slow the bleeding across his ribs.
“La Fleur.” He sounded dazed. “You’re real.”
Violet started. She would never get used to being recognized by men she hadn’t yet met. “I am quite real,” she confirmed, pulling out a packet of gauze. “Horace sent me to help. And I’m assuming it was your uniform he was wearing wrapped around his arm.” She had nothing to wash or disinfect his wounds—those supplies had run out yesterday—but the flies were already at the lacerations.
“Yes.” Davis was watching her out of his one eye, though he seemed to be having trouble focusing. “I thought I had maybe died.”
“Not yet.” Violet gave him a quick grin. “But this is going to hurt.” She began winding the bandages around his ribs.
Davis cursed.
Violet winced. “Sorry. One of you Zip?” she asked over her shoulder.
“That’s me,” said the soldier sitting in the trainer seat. His voice was like gravel.
“You hurt?”
“Not enough to get out of this seat.”
“Be more specific,” Violet said. “Your man in the hospital seemed to think you’d been injured.”
“Ankle probably broken,” he said tightly. “But I don’t need it to work the hand wheel swivel. Petey over on that side does all the firing with the pedals. I just get the gun pointing in the right direction.”
Violet glanced up briefly. “And you, Petey? Injured?”
“No.” Petey sounded like he was sixteen. “Horace and Davis got it worst.”
“All right.” She returned her attention to Davis and the wrappings she was applying. “God, I hate blood,” Violet muttered.
Davis’s head jerked up to stare at her before he started laughing, a slightly hysterical, rasping sound.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, ripping the end of the bandage with her teeth.
“I hate guns,” he wheezed. “Always have. And yet here you are with the bandages, and here I am with a cannon that can shoot a plane out of the sky.”
“You win,” Violet said, and that sent the gunner into another round of gasping mirth.
She tied off the end of the dressing and sat back on her heels.
His laughter faded. “Merde. My head. I can barely see, and what I can, there are two of.” He slumped back.
“You need to get to the hospital,” Violet told him.
“Can’t. Bastards will be back. Gun doesn’t work without someone loading it.”
Violet scowled. “You can barely sit much less stand.”
“I can—”
“Listen.” Petey had twisted in his seat. “Do you hear them?”
Violet did. The distant shriek of Stukas.
Davis lunged to his feet, only to go down in a graceless pile, landing on his hands and knees.
“Merde,” said Zip.
Petey leapt from his pointer seat. “Davis. You got to get up. We need a goddamn loader.”
Davis mumbled something unintelligible and promptly collapsed.
Zip cursed again. The approaching Stukas became louder.
“Tell me what to do,” Violet demanded.
Petey gawked at her for a heartbeat before he scrambled up onto the loading platform behind Zip. Violet followed him.
“These are the clips,” he said, pointing to the stacks of shells. “Four shells in each clip.”
They looked like any other bullet, except these were longer than her forearm.
“All you gotta do is feed them into here.” He showed her the channel for the shells. There was already a clip loaded. “Clip on the left, pointy end to the front. We’re short a guy to hand you clips, so you’re on your own. Do your best. But don’t stop.”
“Right.”
“Here.” He reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out a wad of cotton. “For your ears.”
“Get in your goddamn seat, Petey,” Zip shouted over the increasing scream of the Stukas.
“Don’t stop,” he said again to Violet. “No matter what. Zip will be working the swivel, and I have the cannon angle and fire pedals. Keep feeding the gun until I tell you to stop. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Violet stuffed the cotton in her ears.
Petey clambered off the platform and threw himself back in his seat.
“Coming in from the northwest,” Zip barked. “First formation, three.”
Violet snatched a clip from the stack as the platform swivelled beneath her feet. Her heart was pounding so hard that it felt like it was going to come right out of her chest. Both Zip and Petey were working the wheels behind their sites as they lined up the approaching planes, and the cannon rose to meet the trajectory of the planes.
“Come and get us, you bastards,” Zip shouted just as Petey engaged.
The Bofors roared as Petey fired, and Violet pushed another clip into the channel as the shells disappeared. The planes screamed overhead and around the battery, and sand and earth erupted, leaving columns of drifting dust and debris in the air. Violet snatched another clip and then another and then another until her world had been reduced to nothing more than a desperate race to keep the gun fed.
A thump and a muted explosion followed by an exultant shriek from Petey told her that at least one of their shells had found their mark. One of the Stukas dropped sharply in altitude, trailing black smoke behind. Violet did not have time to see if it went down because another formation was already in front of them.
“Where the hell are these bastards going, Zip?” Petey yelled.
“I don’t—Oh, Jesus.” The gun paused, and an explosion boomed into the momentary stop. “They’re bombing the hospital.”
“Bastards!” Petey screamed, and the Bofors thundered into action again.
Violet wanted to stop, wanted to see if the Luftwaffe had really gone after the tent with the bright red cross, wanted to cry, wanted to be sick, wanted it all to go away. Instead, she kept feeding the gun, her breath coming in great, heaving gulps, her arms aching, her hands raw. She lost track of time, and it wasn’t until she became aware that the platform was no longer swivelling below her feet and the sound of the Stukas was fading once again that she allowed herself to look up, over the edge of the battery’s dugout.
Across the expanse, where the hospital tent had once stood, fires raged. She could make out men running in and out of the smoke, presumably in an attempt to assist. She wobbled off the platform and fell to her knees before regaining her footing. Without looking back, she started running through the trenches in the direction of the hospital.
The swarm of Stukas that had veered deliberately away from the minefields and the batteries and taken aim at the hospital tent and surgical theater vehicles, all marked clearly with bright red crosses, had done so with expert accuracy. The patients suffering beneath the canvas roof, including gunner Horace Smith, who had sent help to his crew, and the Legionnaire who had enjoyed The Hound of the Baskervilles, were killed instantly. Three orderlies that Violet had worked side by side with perished. The remaining reserves of medicine and medical supplies were also destroyed as the Luftwaffe completed their carnage. By the time the sun started its descent in the west, the sky singed an unnatural purple-orange from the dust that still lingered in the air like a fog, Violet felt spent, heartsick, and helpless.
She leaned against the colonel’s Ford, resting her forehead on her arms, careful to avoid the row of stitches that snaked along her hairline. She hadn’t known where to go or what to do in the wake of so much destruction and devastation, so she’d come here and spent an hour digging out the tyres. She had no idea if the Ford would ever be driven anywhere again or if it might just be pounded into dust in the coming days that were as bleak as they had ever been. With the destruction of the two water trucks, their water supply had reached critical levels. Ammunition was dwindling rapidly, and the hospital and all its supplies were now gone.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
Violet raised her head to see Henri striding toward her. In four long steps, he had reached her and, without pausing, he pulled her against him, his arms like steel around her.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he mumbled again against her ear. He tightened his embrace. “I thought you were dead.”
“I’m not dead.” She allowed herself to lean into him, just for one moment putting all the dread and the doubt and the horror out of her mind, because she was too exhausted and too broken to resist. For a moment, she just wanted to pretend that everything was different.
Henri released her and pulled back, his hands running over her shoulders and down her arms, his eyes searching her face. “I thought you were in the hospital,” he rasped. “I thought you’d been killed, but when I got back all I heard from every Legionnaire in this damn fort was that you weren’t at the hospital at all but somewhere out on a goddamn perimeter battery. On a goddamn Bofors with a crew that had been hit, knocking Stukas out of the sky. And then I wondered all over again if you were dead because no one seemed to know where you were.” He was rambling, his words almost nonsensical and tripping over each other. “And they all called you some sort of avenging angel and I was terrified that you might actually have become one. An angel, I mean, a real one, a dead one, and you scared me, Vi. You could have died out there. They target those batteries.”
“They targeted the hospital too.” She stepped back, away from him. “They’re trying to break us. And they might just have done it.”
“No,” Henri said. “We won’t break.”
“We lost two water trucks this morning,” she said dully.
“I heard.”
“They exploded. Five men died. Fourteen more were wounded.”
“What do you mean, exploded? They were hit by a shell?”
“I don’t think so.” The odds of two separate trucks, dug deep into the ground, being hit by two separate shells were low. Violet slid down the side of the Ford, putting her head in her hands. She felt, rather than saw, him lower himself beside her.
“What does that mean? What the hell is going on Violet? I need you to tell me,” he croaked.
She understood that she was at a crossroads in this moment. That she had to make a choice.
“Let me help. Please, Vi.”
Violet lifted her head and met his cerulean gaze with her own. “Before he was killed, the commandant sent me to British intelligence.” In halting words, she recounted everything that Captain Lipton had told her. “He asked if there were any suspicious deaths or any suspicious acts that could be sabotage. Patterns or events that would suggest that there was a spy working against us from within.”
Henri leaned back against the side of the Ford, silent.
“He suggested that the most likely suspect would be among those with ties to Germany.” She didn’t look away from him.
“I have ties to Germany,” he said presently. “My father, who fought for the kaiser, was killed in the last war. My mother was born in Berlin.”
“I know.”
“You thought I was a spy. I could easily be one.”
“I didn’t want to think that.”
“But you doubted me.”
She couldn’t lie to him. Nor could she bring herself to answer.
“Do you still think I’m a spy?”
“No.” She almost wished he would yell. Tell her that her doubt was unforgiveable and that he was angry and hurt. Instead he continued speaking in a controlled, impassive voice.
“Why?”
“Because I have to believe in something out here, Henri. And I choose to believe in you.”
He dragged his fingers through the sand, making uneven channels. “You think the commandant, the ammo dump, the water trucks are all connected.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. But I have no proof.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“What?”
“If the Abwehr has had a spy embedded in our ranks somewhere for as long as you’re suggesting, then he is a very patient and very dangerous man. He won’t leave proof behind.”
“I saw Gasquet today.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“He was near the trucks. Said he was checking on a radio.” This had weighed on her mind, festering like a weeping desert sore that wouldn’t heal.
Henri inhaled sharply.
“He was close to the hotel when the commandant was killed. He was in the fort when the ammo dump blew. And he was there, right where we had dug in those water trucks.” She didn’t add that he’d insisted that she retreat to the hospital. The hospital that had been bombed.
