Cherry Ames 04 Chief Nurse (19 page)

This, her first taste of fire, was what Charlie had been through so many times. That thought made her proud, and steadied her.

Next thing she knew, the three of them were standing on the beach at the airport, while Major Pierce argued and pleaded for a plane. She looked around
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hoping she would get a glimpse of Charlie. Perhaps he might have returned. Impossible to find anyone on this dark, plane-crammed beach, in this milling but orderly crowd of men, with planes taking off so close that her black curls were blown back and her ears rang with the noise of the motors. The field and the sky overhead were thick with our planes. Out of dark distances—

coming, Cherry realized, from the nearest airdromes—

fighting planes of all descriptions were flying in to join the fight. Some of them must have flown very long distances.

A passing figure looked vaguely familiar to Cherry, and she seized the soldier’s sleeve. It was a signalman she knew. She asked him if, by any chance, he knew where Lieutenant Charles Ames was. “I’m his sister,” she explained. “I knew he was sent out but I have no idea where and I’m anxious for news of him!” He smiled at Cherry and quickly set her mind at rest,

“I don’t know exactly where he’s gone or where he is, but I do know he’s not in this battle.”

“Thanks for telling me. Is Gene, the pilot and gun expert, down here? The one from Captain Keller’s crew who was wounded?”

“I wouldn’t know, Lieutenant.” The signalman was gone in the shadows.

Cherry took a backward glance at Major Pierce. He was still negotiating with the AAF men for plane and
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pilot. She had a few minutes to look for Gene. She suspected he must have come here. But where to find him? Ask at the hangar. She did that.

The grease-covered sergeant told her, “Yes, he’s here.

He’s already been out once. Went out in a P–38 and came back in a sieve.”

It took Cherry a few seconds to decipher this and understand that Gene had flown over the battle area, his plane had been shot up, but he had got back safely. He was here now! And he was probably going right out again!

Just then a tall figure in a leather flying jacket strode hurriedly by and the ground crewman grasped Cherry’s arm. “There he goes, Lieutenant. On his way out again and in an awful hurry!” Cherry, dashing quickly after him, caught up with him.

“Gene!” she cried worriedly. “What do you mean by leaving the hospital without permission?” Gene looked up gravely, and then grinned, as if Cherry should know better. He took her arm and guided her to the side of a dressing tent. They stood in the shadow of the tent, apart from the many men and planes and trucks surging by.

“You already went out to fight—” she started.

His look silenced her. “Of course I went out,” he said quietly. “Do you think I’d stay behind when I’m needed? You knew you had to get me fixed up in time
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for a special mission. Well, Cherry, this isn’t exactly the special mission I was slated for. We were planning to launch an attack. Instead, the Japs beat us to the draw.” He put one hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for getting me ready in time.”

Cherry looked into his dark blue eyes; they were black and burning tonight with intense purpose. His aquiline face was remarkably calm. Yes, she had helped him to get well, and in time. Remembering how much suffering he had endured only a short time ago, she marveled all the more at the tall quiet figure in the flying suit standing so determinedly by her side.

He had gone through this inferno before, yet he was willing and eager to go right back into it. What courage!

What spirit!

His hand, still on her shoulder, tightened. “Wish me good luck,” he said. “I’ll be coming back. You—you take care of yourself.”

She watched him go with long, deliberate strides to the plane and climb in. In a flash of exploding light, she saw him wave, then pull down his goggles and duck his head. The propellers whirled, the motors sang, the plane rolled down the runway. Farther off, she saw it lift, gain speed and height, and streak away to the north.

Cherry stood there with her fists clenched in her coverall pockets, a grimy, sturdy little dirty-faced figure, with black curls curling around her metal helmet,
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watching the speck that was Gene. For the first time that terrible night, deeply moved by the courage of a man who had been wounded and deliberately returned to the fury of battle, Cherry wept.

Suddenly she remembered there was no time to cry and she hurried back to Major Pierce and Captain Willard.

“I couldn’t get a plane,” he told her flatly. “Well, I have another plan. Get in the jeep.” The three of them climbed in the jeep and drove back to the hospital area. As he drove, Major Pierce talked.

“It’s the usual Jap sneak tricks. The painful truth is we’re losing. Jap troop transport and landing barges managed to pass our Air and Naval patrols guarding those forward islands. They sneaked in in a surprise attack, using everything they had, and established air superiority. Our forces are trying to beat them off, back into the sea, but they are getting their beachheads firmly established. They’re fighting on the beaches and from the battleships just offshore. Lord help our men!

They’re outnumbered. Reinforcements are coming but until they do come——”

Captain Willard said glumly from the back seat,

“Only one good thing—in this inch by inch, single file, jungle fighting—at least we use hundreds and not thousands of men. But those wounded! There’s no way of
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getting them out by boat. And planes are so precious they can’t spare one for us.”

“How terrible for those wounded men!” Cherry said very low.

“Well, we won’t let it remain terrible,” Major Pierce declared fiercely. Forcing a note of cheerfulness into his voice, he said with determination, “Don’t let me for one minute hear anyone suggest we’re licked. We’re not licked. Our planes are coming in in greater numbers, and they’re going to help us beat the Japs off those beaches and back into the sea yet!” He cautiously pulled the jeep into the darkened hospital camp, braked it, and turned in his seat to the other two.

“If we can’t get the wounded over here, we’ll go over there and treat them. Since we can’t get over by plane, we’ll have to get there by boat. A small boat might conceivably sneak over to the fighting island under cover of darkness. I’m going out to organize a surgical team.

Willard, you’ll assist me. You come with me. Ames, you’ll organize the wounded there. Be in Medical Headquarters tent with supplies for operating and an anaesthetist in ten minutes!”

“Yes, sir!” Cherry nearly sang it for joy. The dauntless Major Pierce was right—as long as they had courage and wits, the wounded
would
be taken care of!

As she quickly collected supplies, Cherry realized fully for the first time that she was going right up close
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to those bombarding Jap ships, right under those bombing Jap Nakajimas, within range of Jap soldiers themselves armed with rifles and bayonets—and that she very easily might never come out of it alive.

“I can’t!” she thought wildly. “I can’t! I’m afraid!” Then she caught herself sharply. She raged at herself, “You
have
to face these dangers. If we don’t go over there and act as a field hospital, men will die. Whether you can or can’t isn’t even a question—you
must!
What did you have all that military training for, Ames, if not just exactly for this? You know how to take care of yourself under fire—you’re trained for it! You’re a soldier as well as a nurse, and don’t you forget it! And don’t you forget those wounded men!
They must be saved!
” She came out of this session with her conscience feeling tough and sure. She ran and asked Bessie to come. Bessie agreed instantly. Cherry could have hugged her.

A Higgins boat was all that could be spared. The surgical team went aboard, loaded down with surgical supplies, a portable electric generator and machinery, blankets, plasma, medicines, anaesthetic, sterilizing chemicals. In the little band were Major Pierce, to be operating surgeon, Dr. Willard as his surgeon assistant, two enlisted men trained as medical technicians, Bessie Flanders as nurse-anaesthetist, and Cherry as organizer and operating nurse. Two corpsmen gave the boat a
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shove off the sand and they churned out into the night sea. Major Pierce steered.

They headed straight for the exploding lights ahead.

But another danger worried them more. They would be on the water at least fifteen minutes, and already coral streaks appeared at the horizon line. If the sun rose before they could get their boat to the island and take cover, they would be outlined in the sun, an easy target for the enemy! It would be a race with the sun!

Major Pierce urged the boat ahead as fast as possible.

No one talked, all anxiously watched the coral streak broaden and lift. The sea was heavy, the surf tossed their small craft from side to side. Above the engine beat and the lashing of water, the crashes ahead grew louder: they gained sight, now, of the embattled island. It looked unreal, encased in the thin blue shadows of before dawn. Then suddenly every tree, every leaf, every billow of smoke, was lighted up from underneath. The sun was climbing up over the curve of the world. It was so eerie, so primitive, Cherry thought the earth must have looked like this at the beginning of time.

But sunrise meant nothing so romantic to Major Pierce. It spelled danger, and he forced the boat ahead with every resource he had. Their Higgins boat scraped up on the sharp coral reef and lurched to a violent stop just as the sun burst in its full fiery glory. Major Pierce worked like mad to get the stalled boat off the reef
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before the Japs could spot them and fire on them. They lurched again, hit the water with a splash, and the boat cut through the tide to the beach. They climbed out into knee-deep water, seized their supplies, and dashed to the trees for cover.

“That little boat ride, my hearties,” Major Pierce said with a grin, as they stood trembling in the wood, stopping to catch their breaths, “isn’t exactly what I’d call a nice little excursion trip!” Through breaks in the foliage, in several directions, the hospital people could see as well as hear snatches of the battle. In the lifting shadows and smoke and confusion, bursts of fire illumined running figures.

Cherry saw a handful of men in muddy khaki clinging to a cavelike hillside hurling grenades—two soldiers darting wildly across the fiery path of a machine gun—

more men in khaki and helmets crawling on their bellies, a great red cloud of smoke sweeping over them. It was incredibly slow, painful fighting for every contested step of ground. It was men fighting other men for their very lives. The snatches that Cherry saw left her stunned.

So this was what our fighting men had to do! Jap ships and planes strafed the Americans holding this scrap of an island. The impact of the explosions bent the tall thin palm trees nearly double.

Cherry roused from watching when Major Pierce called out. Someone at a distance, with a blue flashlight,
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paled by the light of dawn, was signaling them to come forward. Apparently all this had been arranged for via field telephone. The hospital people struggled forward under the ragged palms.

A roar overhead, and the sky suddenly dense with planes bearing the white combat star, stopped them in their tracks and set them to cheering. Air support for the ground forces had come, in strength! The battle was decided now! But the fighting was by no means over, and more wounded would be brought to join the wounded already awaiting help.

They pushed forward again. Then two medical corpsmen of these fighting Infantry units came running.

They guided the surgical team to a cleared area within a grove, a clearing station.

Wounded men were lying in crowded straggly rows on the earth. Some of them were bleeding profusely, few of them moved. A handful of medical corpsmen had set up a rough medical aid station and administered first aid. Flares of bursting shells lit up their haggard faces. Cherry took one quick look around and thought her heart would break. But the way these men could take it, the devotion of the corpsmen, and the surgical tent promptly going up, gave her courage.

She set about her own task of examining the wounded and marking lipstick symbols on their foreheads for the surgeons. Behind her, the two technicians gave
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preliminary drugs. The two surgeons were already washing up in powerful antiseptics, and Bessie was laying out the supplies and anaesthetic.

Now the team assembled in the tent. Stretcher-bearers brought in the first wounded man. They laid him on the rough operating table. Through the blow-ing canvas door flap the team could see the fire and smoke of battle. The thunder of big guns made the table tremble.

“Ready?” said Major Pierce. “Incision—clamp—

ie——”

c h a p t e r x i

Happy Landings!

victory had left sun and a softness in the air.

Now, after four days of mopping up, Cherry and some of her nurses were relaxing on the beach. The ragged, bullet-pocked trees just behind them afforded more memories of recent battle than shade. But everyone was happy this golden morning, for now the American flag flew from the historic island, and from the captured Islands 20 and 21, which the Japs had held, as well. It was a great victory. To make them feel even better, fresh troops and supplies were coming over from Janeway today. Everybody was smiling—the soldiers and corpsmen who touched their caps to the nurses on the beach; clusters of patients sitting in wheel chairs or stretched out in the sunny sand; even the flowers seemed brighter and the Pacific bluer;
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