Nancy Was Delighted to Hear a Familiar Voice
“I hope so,” said Marian, “for there’s a half-mile walk through the bush after you get off the tram on the other side.”
“The bush?” repeated Nancy.
Marian laughed. “I believe you’d call it the woods.”
They put Nancy aboard the almost empty ferry, and started back to the tram in the storm. It was some time before the ferry moved out across the harbor in the pelting, chill rain. Nancy thought it was too bad to have such a miserable day for her excursion, for the rain cut off most of her view as the ferry finally moved slowly away from the dock.
This was the first time since she had left home that Nancy had really been alone. Suddenly she felt loosened and detached from all her recent experiences, and viewed her training as through a telescope. Though the time had not been long since she left home, she felt as different as if actual years had been required for her preparation.
The fact that her brother had been on this very ferry on his last visit to Sydney brought him still closer to her. He had constantly been in the back of her mind during her trip at sea, and today she felt more strongly than ever that he was really alive. She thought how lucky she was to be sent into his field of operations. It seemed prophetic to her that somehow, somewhere they were going to meet again.
The ferry staggered through the gale around a point of land and soon came into sight of the woods on the other shore. Nancy was thrilled to find Miss Anna waiting for her, bracing herself as the wind whipped at her raincape. Her face was damp with the mist as she caught Nancy to her and gave her a hearty kiss.
“How good to see a little bit of America!” she said. “And how stunning you look in that uniform!”
She held Nancy off at arm’s length to inspect her, regardless of the rain beating down on them. And Nancy felt almost as happy as if she were being welcomed by her own mother.
“We’ll be wet as rats by the time we get up to the house,” said Miss Anna, “but it’ll be cozy and warm inside.”
They caught a tram promptly and were soon on the path through the dripping bush. It swung back toward the water and presently Nancy caught a glimpse of the large community building in which Miss Anna made her home with many other workers of various sorts. The house stood on a hundred-foot bluff overlooking the water.
“What a heavenly place!” exclaimed Nancy, looking around delightedly.
“So it is,” agreed Miss Anna, her small brown eyes twinkling. They stepped inside the door and she threw back her raincape.
Nancy followed her upstairs after taking off her galoshes and dripping cap and overcoat. The home-cooked breakfast they sat down to a few minutes later was a feast indeed to one who had eaten camp and ship fare so long. There were peaches covered with thick cream to start with, scrambled eggs, delicious hot muffins and golden butter such as Nancy had not seen in a long time.
“We have our own cows and chickens here,” explained Miss Anna by way of apology for the excellent items on which others were so closely rationed. “I had some coffee made especially for you. Most everyone out here, you know, drinks tea.”
“And it is really good coffee,” said Nancy gratefully.
Most of the other residents of the house had hurried off to catch the ferry back to the city, so Nancy and her friend were not disturbed while at their breakfast. Nancy told of her training and her voyage, and answered numerous questions about mutual friends back home.
Finally she burst forth, “I can hardly wait to hear about Tommy—how he looked, what he said when you last saw him.”
“He looked really marvelous in his uniform, but he was a little nervous, and I’m afraid his visit here wasn’t very relaxing.”
“Why? What happened?”
“The very night he was here they caught some Jap subs in the harbor.”
“Really! Seems I do remember hearing something about the nervy little Nips slipping into Sydney harbor.”
“And we had a box seat for the whole performance,” Miss Anna went on.
“You mean it was really near enough to see what happened?”
Miss Anna nodded, her alert eyes flashing. “During the night I was awakened by the most infernal noise—sounded as though it came from the very bowels of the earth—something you might imagine being a forerunner of a volcanic eruption. But it really came from under the water out in the harbor, the sub’s torpedoes.”
“Heavens! You must have been terrified to be so close.”
“That was only the beginning. Then came our big guns roaring from the forts over on St. George’s Heights. The reverberations shook some pictures off my wall.”
“It must have been like an earthquake,” put in Nancy.
“Then for a half hour there was peace, and by that time it was almost daylight. Then the commotion broke loose again. I got into my clothes and went out to find Tommy looking from the hall window. It was really the sight of a lifetime. There were four little corvettes dropping depth bombs as they careened around the harbor in wide circles.”
“Oh boy, I’ll bet Tommy was excited!” Nancy exclaimed.
“He kept saying, ‘Oh, Miss Anna, if I were only in my plane wouldn’t my bombardier like to drop a few? We’d soon blow those subs to bits.’ But the corvettes were doing a good job. Every time they dropped a depth charge a huge waterspout burst high in the air—and such a terrific noise!”
“I think I should have been yelling—worse than at a football game.”
“We were too tense and frightened. But those corvettes did get that sub.”
“What happened then?”
“A huge dredge boat came out with cranes, and sat over the spot where the sub lay on the bottom. But it was three days before they could get it to the surface.”
“And by that time Tommy was gone,” said Nancy wistfully.
“He was really disappointed not to be able to wait and see it brought to the top, but he had to go back on duty. I wrote him all about it, though. The dredge finally brought the sub up vertically, and it was towed across to Sharpe Island.”
“What an experience that must have been—seeing all that.”
“She had been about sixty-five feet long, but the rear end had been blown away. What crafty creatures those Japs are! You know the front of that sub looked like the mandibles of a beetle. It was equipped with cutting apparatus to tear through the harbor nettings.”
“Gives me the shivers to think how close they came,” said Nancy.
“They say one of the subs got caught in the nets at the harbor entrance.”
“How many dead Japs were there?” asked Nancy.
“Six. Their bodies were burned, according to Japanese custom, and their ashes were buried with military honors.”
“They didn’t deserve it!” exclaimed Nancy bitterly.
Miss Anna looked at her with an odd expression. “We must not become bitter or intolerant, even toward our enemies,” she said with gentle persuasiveness. “We would appreciate our dead being given honorable burial, wouldn’t we?”
“Oh, yes, of course!” exclaimed Nancy, thinking at once of her brother, and how she had prayed that the enemy would treat him humanely if he had fallen into their hands. But she had seen too many pictures of scores of people thrown into common graves to credit the enemy with ever treating any as considerately as these men from the Japanese sub had been treated.
“If by treating their prisoners fairly it will make life easier for even a few of ours in their prison camps it will be worth the effort,” said Miss Anna.
“But it makes me positively ill when I think that Tommy may have fallen into their hands,” said Nancy.
“It would be better a thousand times if he were dead,” Miss Anna told her with conviction. “Tommy had nothing to fear in death, but horrible things to endure if he’s a prisoner of the Japs.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Nancy said. “But I simply can’t believe he’s dead—I can’t.”
“Don’t let wishful thinking keep you from facing reality, my dear. There’re many things worse than death in this war.”
“I’m sure of that. But Tommy isn’t dead! I—I just know it!”
Suddenly Miss Anna’s palm stroked Nancy’s cheek caressingly. “I hope you’re right, my dear. I must admit I, too, have a feeling that Tommy is alive somewhere and needs help.”
Nancy glanced at her friend’s strong, kindly face, and asked, “What makes you think that way, Miss Anna?”
“I’ve never lost the feeling since I first learned his plane had gone down over enemy territory. Then the other night I had such a vivid dream.”
“A dream?” Suddenly Nancy recalled that one of Miss Anna’s lectures had been on the significance and meaning of dreams. She added her own illuminating interpretation to what the psychologists had learned on the subject.
“I thought I was moving through the jungle, trying to locate a voice that was calling me. Then as I went nearer I recognized it as Tommy’s. He was burning with fever and I brought him water from a spring. I was so distressed because the water didn’t quench his thirst. Then I woke suddenly with his words ringing in my ears, ‘Thank you just the same, Miss Anna.’ I’ve hoped all along that Tommy survived a forced landing. Since that dream I’ve felt certain that he is alive.”
Tears were shining in Nancy’s eyes as she said, “You really are a comfort, Miss Anna.”
Her friend went to a near-by bookcase and took out a small volume of poetry. “Here are some verses written by Anna Bright, a friend of mine who lost her son in the last war. Instead of grieving, she used her genius to give comfort to those who had had similar sorrows. Listen to this:
“That is really the way most of them go,” said Nancy. “Not only our Tommy, but thousands of others.”
“Not only our men, but our women, too, in this war,” said Miss Anna. “I only wish I were young enough to do more. You’re a privileged girl, Nancy, to be prepared to do so much.”
Nancy’s unit went into action in northern Australia. The trip up to the new hospital was an exciting experience to these nurses, most of whom had never left the States before.
“Seems queer to find it so much warmer as we go north,” said Nancy during their first day’s travel by train.
“I feel as though I’m living upside down, or something,” remarked Mabel. “When we’re asleep it’s broad daylight at home. While it’s warm at home we’re shivering here.”
Though it was late fall in the southern hemisphere, flowers were still blooming in great profusion in gardens and parks. Many of the flowers were unfamiliar, but Nancy did recognize the hibiscus bushes. The trees, too, were strangers to them and had strange names. They saw the eucalyptus for the first time. Another tree had needles like the pine back home, but fewer branches, which made it less picturesque.
To many of the American girls this was like another world. Yet when the train stopped at stations along the way veterans of the various campaigns came up to the windows of their carriage to greet them, speaking English and asking about America. Most of them had old-young faces, as if each year of fighting had been like ten of ordinary life. Some were so newly returned from the fighting they still had that fixed, dull look in their eyes that was to become so familiar to the nurses later, the look of men who had seen awful things, never to be forgotten.
“I know your men will be glad to see you American Sisters,” said a veteran of Dunkirk at one station.
They learned that the Australian nurses were always called “Sisters.”
The hospital to which they were assigned proved to be far more comfortable than they had anticipated. Several blocks of bungalows in a small town had been taken over for hospital use. These houses reminded Nancy of farmhouses in her own southland, for they were built high off the ground on stilts, so the air could circulate under them. Like the American houses also, they were surrounded by wide porches.
Again the nurses were packed four in a room, and Nancy had the same congenial roommates she had had on the boat. There was little chance to think of their own comfort, however, for they were plunged at once into work. For the first time since they left California their foot lockers were brought to their rooms, and once more they had all their baggage. It seemed good to settle down and actually begin the work for which they had trained and traveled halfway around the world.
The girls had just started unpacking when news spread that a convoy of patients, a day overdue, was coming in. These were American boys who had been given first treatments in field hospitals and had been flown back from the front.
In a half-hour Nancy had donned her brown-and-white-striped seersucker uniform and received her first assignment from Lieutenant Hauser. The walls had been torn out of the entire lower floor of several bungalows to make wards about seventy-five feet in length. Nancy’s heart went out in compassion when she caught a glimpse of those long rows of beds and the faces on those pillows—faces gray with weariness, suffering and dirt.
Her first job, and that of many other nurses, was to get the men cleaned up, and begin dressing their wounds. The bandages had not been touched during the trying convoy journey from the landing field.
“It’s glad I am to see ye,” said the first man to whom Nancy ministered.
It must have taken courage to force that smile to his round Irish face, for gangrene had taken hold of his shrapnel-shattered leg, and Nancy knew it would have to be taken off promptly.
“And glad I am to be here,” she told him cheerfully.
“How’s everything back home?” the next boy wanted to know.
“Oh, just fine! We got here only ten days ago.”
“Haven’t had a scratch of mail in nearly four months. I hear you all are having it pretty tough with the rationing, and strikes and all.”
“We haven’t a thing to complain of as to food,” Nancy retorted. “We’re still living like royalty.”
“So’re we,” agreed the man whose arm had been shot off, “except once when we ran short of supplies—caught on an island without reinforcements.”
“We’ll make that up to you here,” Nancy assured him, and swallowed hard on the lump in her throat. She wasn’t going to let any of this get her down, or she couldn’t go on looking after them. “I’ll see you get an extra helping of dessert this very day.”
“Say, if you get a whiff of apple pie please label a hunk for me.” Suddenly the blue eyes above the shaggy beard flashed. “You know it was a funny thing. While I was lying out there on the beach when they blew my arm into the sea I got to thinking about Ma’s apple pies. Queer how a fellow can think of such a thing at a time like that. Like a dumb bloke I didn’t worry about the arm much, just thought, ‘Now it would be just too bad if I never get to taste one o’ Ma’s apple pies again!’”
Nancy laughed in spite of her stinging tears. “I’ll see that you get a whole pie if I have to make it myself,” she promised him.
“How’s Everything Back Home?” the Boy Asked
And so she went down the line of beds, cheering and joking with them while she looked after their wounds. There were few complaints. But how eagerly they welcomed the gentle hands that came to minister to them. Most were ready with brave banter, but some, too ill for speech, turned pleading eyes that spoke volumes toward Nancy.
Nancy’s supper hour was forgotten. There were too many who still needed attention. When her period of duty was over she went back to her room, feeling utterly spent. This first contact with those fresh from the fighting zone had taken more out of her than she had anticipated. In spite of the physical weariness Nancy had a wonderful sense of well-being. At the moment she felt certain there was no greater work in the world than that of any army nurse.
Mabel and Shorty had already gone out on duty when Nancy and Ida Hall returned to their room. Nancy was relieved to see that Mabel had put her clothes in order. The two nurses who had been off duty had arranged hanging places for their garments. Mabel had even put Nancy’s pajamas on the foot of her bunk, and her bedroom slippers were near by.
“It’s really going to be very comfy here,” said Nancy when she came in from a shower at the end of the hall. However, she found that Ida Hall was already asleep.
Nancy scarcely remembered getting into her double decker before she, also, was asleep. That was the beginning of a routine that lasted for several weeks; eight hours’ work eight hours’ sleep, eight hours for eating, bathing, washing clothes, and a bit of recreation.
Even the southern hemisphere mid-winter which came in June had but a slight cooling effect on them, for they were too close to the equator. Nancy had been almost two months in Australia before she had her first letters from home. There were a round dozen from her parents. Eagerly she climbed up under her mosquito bar to enjoy them.
There was always the possibility that there might be news that Tommy was found. So many of their friends who had first been reported missing had later returned. The fact that Miss Anna also had a hunch that Tommy still lived, had boosted Nancy’s own belief that he would eventually be returned to them.
With her usual orderliness Nancy arranged the home letters according to date and opened the oldest first. Each letter was filled with bits of news of home and friends and encouraging words for herself. But she read on and on without finding the longed-for news about Tommy. She had just picked up a letter from a friend when she heard Ida Hall exclaim, “Oh, say, there comes more work!”
Nancy crawled down from her perch to look out the window and saw a convoy rolling into the streets between the hospital buildings. First there were trucks packed with the wounded who were able to sit up. These were followed by Red Cross ambulances loaded with the seriously ill.
“They’ll more than fill the long tent they put up back of ward three,” Nancy predicted.
She was right. They filled the tent to overflowing and some had to be packed into the already crowded bungalow wards. Nancy was now serving on night duty. Orders came before she went on that evening to report for duty in the tent where the new patients had been put.
It was already dark when she took her G.I. flashlight, dimmed with blue paper, and crossed the street behind the buildings to go to her new assignment. Bee Tarver, the nurse she was relieving, told her the men had all been bathed, fed and their wounds looked after. Night duty was easier of course, though Nancy sometimes had to struggle to keep awake. She was rather relieved to know there would be plenty to do tonight, as Bee described the various cases.
“Number three there may have to have another hypo. He’s very disturbed,” she explained.
Some would have to have sulpha tablets, and others must have attention at regular intervals. One poor chap, who couldn’t move, must have his position eased occasionally. Nancy went her rounds and toward midnight sat down at the end of the long tent, just inside the mosquito netting. This end of the tent was close to the bush, and the sounds of many strange insects was like a pulse beat in the night. Once she heard planes droning far off under the star-studded sky. Occasionally a groan escaped someone in the tent.
Their new tent ward boasted no floor, and Nancy had to keep on the alert for frogs and insects that got under the netting in spite of all their precautions. She finally decided the creatures must come up from the earth.
She had just caught a green frog in a small box and was taking him to the door when there came a prolonged groan from cot three. She washed her hands in the basin near the door, and hurried to the patient, who had been sleeping ever since she came in. The electric wiring had not even been finished, so she picked up a lantern and hung it on the tent post above the suffering patient.
She turned around and was moving closer when the man on the bed lifted his head and stared at her with wild eyes. Then a joyous expression broke over the gaunt face as he cried, “Tommy, old boy! I knew you’d get away from ’em.”
Nancy wore her seersucker trousers and shirt, and had her head tied in a kerchief, a precaution against the wind that blew eternally across their campsite.
If the patient had fired a gun at her, however, she could not have been more shocked when he called her “Tommy!” Could he possibly mean her Tommy, her own lost brother?
When she recovered from the shock, she went nearer the bed. The brown-bearded man, his face haggard from suffering, fell back to the pillow in disappointment.
“Aw-w,” he groaned, “I thought sure you were Tommy.”
“Tommy?” she whispered softly, putting a soothing hand on his forehead, and brushing back the fever-wet hair. “Tommy who?”
“Tommy Dale of course. Never another pilot like him.”
Nancy was so excited she scarcely knew what she was saying as she asked, “You thought I was Tommy?”
“I could have sworn those were Tommy’s eyes. But maybe they did get him. He made me jump first,” the sick man rambled on. “But the plane was still in the air when I saw it last.”
“And Tommy was in it?” she encouraged him gently, fearing his memories might be so fragile the least shock would shatter them.
“Tommy would stick it till everybody was safely out.” He broke off as the feverish eyes came back to the brown ones bending over him. “Your eyes are enough like Tommy’s to belong to him. But maybe I’m dying at last and you’re really Tommy come to see me over.”
“I’m Tommy’s sister,” she said with bated breath.
He could only stare for a moment incredulously. “No, it can’t be,” he finally burst forth. “Things like that don’t happen.”
She pulled her dog tag from under her shirt, and held her flash so he could read the inscription.
“Glory be to the saints!” he burst forth, seizing her hand and pressing it to his lips.
Nancy put her flashlight on the foot of the cot for she was trembling. She pulled a packing box closer to the man and sat down from sheer inability to stand.
“Do you feel able to tell me what happened?” she asked.
“Gosh yes,” he said emphatically. “I can get well now! Who couldn’t with Tommy’s sister for nurse? I know all about you,” he said, his eyes beginning to have a more normal expression. “Tommy read me all your letters.”
“Oh, then you’re Bruce Williams, his bombardier?”
“Sure! We were real buddies, Tom and I. No crew ever had a finer pilot. He never gave me an order I didn’t want to follow until that last command to jump and leave him alone to his fate.”
“Do you think there’s any chance he may be living?”
“We were over Jap-held territory. If he survived the jump there’re nine chances out of ten he’s a prisoner.”
“But they didn’t make you a prisoner!” she exclaimed.
“Oh, yes, they did! Three long months they held me. That’s why I’m in this fix—I broke my leg in the parachute landing and it never healed properly, and we were all but starved to death. I hoped many a time while I was a prisoner that Tommy was dead and out of such misery.”
“Oh, no, don’t say that!” exclaimed Nancy, tears starting to her eyes. “I’ve never felt that Tommy was dead. He must come back to us, sometime, somehow.”
Bruce closed his eyes wearily and turned from her a second. “I guess you haven’t seen enough, yet, Nancy. The ones who get a clean ticket to the other side are the lucky blokes!”
Nancy thought of the poem she had copied from Miss Anna Darien’s book:
She took the sunburned hand lying on the sheet and stroked it gently. Tommy’s friend brought her brother so much closer to her.
“Did any more of Tommy’s crew come through alive?”
He shook his head. “Not that I know of. Two of us were picked up by a Jap boat and taken to a prison camp. Pete Crawford died of his injuries three days after we got there.”
“I shouldn’t let you talk any more,” she said gently. “You must sleep now.”
“I don’t want to sleep. It’s been so long since I talked to anyone who cared.” He smiled diffidently, then apologized, “That may sound nervy.”
“Oh, I do care—you know I do! It’s next best thing to finding Tommy, having you here!”
“Thanks, Nancy. Thanks a lot—a fellow gets to feeling awful sorry for himself when he’s sick out here alone. Now it looks as if I’ve got something to get well for.”
“But you won’t get well unless you obey my orders and go to sleep,” she said with playful severity, as she pulled the sheet up around his damp chest and tucked him in. He caught her hand again and pressed it to his lips before she turned away.
There were a thousand questions she wanted to ask, but she dared not tax his frail strength further tonight. Tomorrow, after he had slept, she would ask him more about Tommy’s last flight.
During her off hours next day Nancy went back to see Bruce. She found him propped up, having his lunch.
“How much better you look!” she said.
He smiled at her brightly. “You gave me a new lease on life last night.”
She laughed, and suddenly he glanced up from his bowl of soup with an expression of appraisal. “Say, but you’re pretty!” he said after his inspection. “Much prettier than those pictures Tommy had.”
Nancy was glad she had left her hair unbound and taken pains with her make-up. But she flushed and said, “Don’t you dare hand me blarney, Bruce Williams. I’m too tall to be pretty.”
“The idea! I hear that’s the kind they’re hunting for the New York shows now—tall gals.”
“Tommy’s only one inch taller than I am, and our coloring and eyes are so much alike—no wonder you thought my eyes were his last night. Everyone says we do look lots alike.”
“Sure do.”
“People used to take us for twins when we were growing up.”
“It’s the eyes that are so much alike—something in those Dale eyes that goes straight to your heart.”
She sat down on a packing box by his bed and said, “I wanted to ask you last night how you finally got away from those Japs.”
“I guess God just answered my prayers and sent our own boys to Manka Island.”
“Oh, were you there when they took it?”
“That’s where they kept the ones who weren’t able to work in their fields. I’d been better off if I could have worked. They get more food I hear, and have a better chance to store up supplies for escape.”
“We’ve had some accounts back home from those who escape,” she told him. “But just how were you freed?”
“Those Japs just cleared out and left us to our fate when the firing got too warm. Some of our own men were killed by the American firing. That’s how I got the spatter of shrapnel in my side.”
“It must have been marvelous to see your own countrymen coming ashore on that island,” she said.
“You’re tellin’ me!” he exclaimed. “Santa Claus at Christmas when I was a kid, was never more welcome than those khaki uniforms coming in through the jungle.”
“Had you been on the same island all the time?”
He nodded as he finished his soup and pushed the bowl to one side of the tray. “I haven’t a very clear idea of the location,” he admitted. “I never paid much attention to the directions. My job was to spill those bombs at the right place. I didn’t worry about the rest.”
He cleared a place on the tray and began to draw an imaginary map with his finger. “See, it was something like this. Here’s Australia, and over here’s New Caledonia where we took off, and here’re the islands we headed for.”
“Wait a minute,” said Nancy. “I’ll get a map, then you can sketch me a more detailed plan of the area you operated in.”
“Sure,” agreed Bruce. Then a shadow crossed his face. “But what’s the use? We can’t go out there and look for Tommy.”
“Who knows?” she asked, stubbornly clinging to her hopes. “I may sometime get to the islands. I want to hear every detail you can recall about the location.”
“Of course, I’ll do the map for you.” Then he added hastily, “But don’t go for paper now.”
“Sure. I’ll get that later. But right now I want you to tell me everything you can remember about that last trip with Tommy.”
“I could never forget any detail of it. Did you know it was Tommy’s last mission before he would be free to go home?”
Nancy’s heart almost stopped beating for a moment. “No, I didn’t! He had written us he was almost through, however, and would be coming home soon.”
“It’s that last flight that generally gives our pilots the jitters,” Bruce explained. “And the last five or six are no picnics.”
“I can well imagine that.”
“Naturally we had our bird tuned up and checked down to the last bolt. She took off, singing as sweet as any lark as we flew into the northwest. We had spilled our load on some Jap oil tankers and were on our way back when those nasty Zeros knocked one of our engines out of commission.”
“How about the crew?”
“O.K. then, but the next hail of fire got our co-pilot, Jack Turner. Tom kept his head until the other engine began to sputter. For a while he tried to make it closer to our own territory, but it was no go.”
Nancy was folding the hem of the sheet into tight little creases while she listened tensely. “Then you had to jump?” she asked.
Bruce nodded again. “Every man knew his job, of course. We had done it time and again in practice. I destroyed my bombsight. All our bombs had already been spilled, but I saw that the bomb-bay doors were tightly closed, ready for the plane to hit the water.”
“What was the use of taking all those precautions when you had to jump anyhow?”
“You know that bombsight, Nancy, is America’s own prize possession. No bombardier leaves that for anybody to investigate. St. Peter wouldn’t ever let anybody through the pearly gates who had left that little instrument intact behind him.”
Nancy smiled in spite of her heavy heart. “I don’t see how you can keep up your joking like that.”
“Better to laugh than cry.”
Janice, who was on duty, came to take Bruce’s tray away. When she had gone Nancy asked, “You didn’t see Tommy jump after you hit the water?”
“No. I think he meant to ditch the plane after we were out. He loved that bird like something human. He meant to stick to her till the last minute.”
“Then you think he went down with her to the bottom—like a captain with his ship?”
“Oh, no! If he landed on the water O.K. there’d be a few minutes when he could get out and try to swim to one of the rubber boats.”
“Oh, you had rubber boats?”
“Sure! Pete Crawford, our radio man, pulled the levers to release the life boats just before he jumped. You know, they inflate as they go down. Vernon Goodwin, our top gunner, had filled them with water, food supplies and navigation instruments.”
“Did you find one of them when you jumped?”
“We were lucky. Pete and I came down close together and reached one of the boats. We might have made it somewhere with the provisions we had, if those Japs hadn’t picked us up before dark.”
“Did You See Tommy Jump?” Nancy Asked Bruce
“If you saw Tommy still in the air after you got into the boat he must have been too far away to swim to any of the other boats after he hit the water.”
“I’ve worried a lot about that,” Bruce told her. “But it looked to me as though the plane was turned back in our direction. There was a wooded island on the horizon, and pretty soon our ship was so low we lost sight of it behind those trees.”
“An island!” exclaimed Nancy. “Do you think Tommy might have swum to it?”
“That was our only hope for Tommy and the others. Some jumped after we did, and might have come down nearer that island. Pete and I started paddling in that direction, but we’d both been hurt and the distances were deceiving. My cracked leg had begun to swell, and any movement was agony. Pete checked out clean for a spell, and I was afraid he was gone. Before we realized what had happened the island was nowhere to be seen.”
Nancy smoothed out his sheet, and sat silent. After a moment she said, “Bruce, when you draw that map of the islands write down the names of all Tommy’s crew and the positions they held.”
“Now why do you want that?”
“I may run across some of the others somewhere. Maybe someone was nearer Tommy when he ditched and will know what became of him.”
“Now don’t you go getting your hopes up, Nancy. There’s not a chance in a hundred that any of the others will turn up.”
“You do what I ask anyhow,” persisted Nancy. “When I get home I’ll write to the families of all the crew and tell them what I know. Even though there may be no hope, it’s some comfort to know the details.”
“I suppose that would give our relatives some satisfaction,” Bruce admitted. “I’ve been so full of my own woes since I got back I haven’t thought of the folks back home wanting to hear about the others.”
“Who in your condition wouldn’t be preoccupied with his own woes?” asked Nancy understandingly. “But we’re going to have you on your feet again before too long.”
Nancy did all in her power to speed Bruce’s recovery in the weeks that followed. She felt a real personal pride in his improvement. At last there came a day when he was able to walk to the recreation room with only the aid of a stick and her arm. The nurses had fixed up this room for the use of convalescing patients.
“I mustn’t get well too fast,” Bruce said with a twinkle in his nice gray eyes, “or they’ll be sending me away from here.”
Bruce was sitting opposite Nancy at a game of bridge that day, and she thought how really handsome he was, now that he had shaved off his beard, and his gaunt cheeks were beginning to fill out.
Pat Walden, the one-armed chap, for whom Nancy had finally made the apple pie, sat opposite Mabel. Nancy had devised a rack with nails driven through wood for Pat to stand his cards in while he played with his one hand. Her mother had sent out some magazines, published for the handicapped in the states. Nancy and Pat had quite an interesting time exploring the back issues in search of gadgets to help the one-armed. The magazines had gone the rounds of others who must begin life all over with various handicaps. Pat had a way of making jokes about his trouble, and Nancy had played the game with him as he learned to do things with one hand.
Many of the boys, however, were sullen and sensitive about their afflictions, and with these the nurses had to pretend that their handicaps didn’t exist. Though the wounds in Bruce’s side had been slow in healing, and he would always limp from the improperly knit leg bone, at least his body was whole, and the doctors assured him he would be strong again.
At the moment the number of cases was slightly reduced in number. Many of the earlier patients had been sent to ports to be taken home on ships that brought nurses and men over.
“I heard a rumor today,” said Mabel, “that we may be moved soon—out to the islands.”
“Soon?” asked Nancy eagerly.
“Don’t know. I just got a whiff of a change.”
“Nothing would thrill me more.”
Bruce threw down a card with vigor and glanced across at his fellow-sufferer. “That’s the way they treat us, Pat. Eager to leave us to our fate.”
“You’ll be moving on yourselves before too long,” Nancy assured him.
“Just when I’m beginning to enjoy life here,” said Bruce, “Nancy looks forward to leaving me.”
Nancy flushed, seeing the other two at the table figuratively cock their ears.
“Oh, you’ll soon be able to get along without any nursing,” Nancy assured him.
“I can never get along again in this life without you,” he told her, regardless of their audience.
“Say, what’s all this?” burst forth Mabel. “A public proposal in broad open daylight?”
“Don’t be silly!” exclaimed Nancy.
Bruce laughed heartily at Nancy’s chagrin. “Thanks a lot, Mabel, for helping me out. I’ve been trying to figure out a good opening for a proposal for the last week.”
“You’ll surely have to make an improvement before I’ll accept you,” stated Nancy, triumphantly trumping Bruce’s ace.
Bruce looked from Mabel to Pat Walden, and said mischievously, “You’ll both stand witness that she’s practically accepted me.”
“Stick to your card playing, Bruce,” said Nancy pertly. “This is no time to settle down to marriage. We have a war to win.”
“But it’s not too early to begin making plans for the peace,” he retorted promptly.