Cherry Ames 04 Chief Nurse (4 page)

“As for your own behavior,” Colonel Pillsbee cocked his head at Cherry in his birdlike fashion, “you are the leader and your behavior should be exemplary.”

“But, sir, what did I do that was wrong?” Cherry felt her cheeks flaming redder than ever.

Colonel Pillsbee said disapprovingly, “Your laughter sounded to me—I believe the right words are, a little too flippant. A little more dignity and formality, Lieutenant Ames.”

“Yes, sir,” she muttered. It was useless to try to explain to him. “Here is my report of the day’s work, sir.

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We plan to work tonight, also. Will that be all, Colonel Pillsbee?”

“Yes, thank you, Lieutenant Ames. Have your nurses on the road at eight-thirty tomorrow morning, with all equipment packed. And I do not mean eight-thirty-one.”

“Yes, sir.” He dismissed Cherry, and she left, shaking her head.

Several of the girls were waiting for her under a tree.

They had saved her her supper from the cook tent, and were keeping it warm under a helmet. When they saw Cherry’s dismayed face, they demanded:

“What did The Pill say to you?”

“You mean Mr. Sourpuss!”

“I guess we mean Colonel Icicle.” Cherry sat down cross-legged beside them, and reached for her mess gear. “Never mind, little pitchers.

You kids have outsize ears.” She was not going to relay Colonel Pillsbee’s “formality” order until she discussed it with the unit director. Cherry was reasonably sure that Major Pierce would not give them any such misguided order.

The tropical sky burned and suddenly darkened, as the girls spent their supper hour under the tree. Their talk turned to home.

“Boy, when this war is over,” Gwen declared, “I’m never going any farther than the corner drugstore! I’ll
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just stay in our mining town, where my Dad’s the doctor, and be his nurse.”

“You know what I’m homesick for?” Marie Swift said thoughtfully. Marie was a small, blonde girl, who found nursing more thrilling than anything her wealth had ever bought her. “I miss Spencer most of all!” The girls’ thoughts turned to the great white hospital where they had had their nurses’ training. “Golly, we had fun there,” Vivian Warren said, laughing reminis-cently. “Wonder if the student nurses there now have such a picnic?”

“Did you ever hear of a student nurse who
didn’t
have fun?” Cherry countered. “What I’m wondering is how many smart girls are taking advantage of that nursing education provided by the Government.”

“I just love the gray Cadet uniform,” Mai Lee said dreamily.

“
I
just love—” Cherry said, and started to fish in her big patch pockets. She always carried her letters with her. “You kids remember Mildred Burnham, the probationer I ‘adopted.’ Well, she’s a senior now. She’d only be a junior, except that she transferred to the U.S.

Cadet Nurse Corps in the middle of her training.”

“Huh!” said Bertha. “Instead of three years in nursing school, only two and a half years in school, and six months’ real practical experience with some Federal agency! That’s
something!
”
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“It’s funny,” Cherry mused. “Mildred is a very good but not spectacular student, and her parents could afford to pay for her training. But here the Government is paying her whole nursing school tuition, plus her living expenses, plus an allowance, plus—”she grinned at Mai Lee “—

that stunning gray uniform. If Mildred can qualify for the Cadet Nurse Corps, I should think lots of other smart girls could, too. They could even enter training direct from high school. Well, anyhow, here’s Mildred’s letter.” Cherry opened the crumpled sheet. The sun had already set, since they were just south of the equator, and she read aloud by flashlight. Mildred had written:

“Here’s what I’m going to do when I graduate—ahem!

I’m going to repay the Cadet Nurse Corps by giving six months’ nursing to the Government. Old Undecided (that’s me) still doesn’t know whether she’ll volunteer for civilian nursing or Army nursing. I’ve received so many offers of jobs, my head is spinning. I guess a nurse is never out of work. In the meantime, it’s scrumptious being a senior!”

“A senior!” Marie Swift groaned. “Now you’ve really made me homesick for Spencer!” The girls were quiet, thinking, remembering.

“What I’m homesick for,” Vivian winked hugely at Cherry, “is one of those mysteries you specialize in.”

“Oh, we won’t find any mysteries out here,” Cherry scoffed. “Plenty of insects and fever, but no mysteries.”
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“Don’t say that so fast!” Ann sat up one one elbow.

“Nurses are always coming across medical mysteries and—and——”

“Strange wounds,” Gwen supplied eagerly. “Remember that case in the newspapers recently, where a man was found to be a spy because a strange bullet burn on his hand gave him away?”

“How about our portable X-ray?” Marie Swift offered.

“Or the unit’s diathermy machine? You could flash short-wave signals with those!”

“My gosh, what notions you ladies have!” Cherry laughed. “Well, here’s hoping you find a mystery. I know I don’t expect to.
Oh!
” she exclaimed, as she glanced down at her watch. “Seven o’clock—and there’s lots to be done yet.”

The girls scrambled to their feet and hurried back to work.

Electric lights, belonging to the work battalion here, had been strung across trees and through tents. In the operating tent, the power was working. An operating table made of planks set upon sawhorses was set up.

Captain Bennett, a surgeon, was preparing to operate on an emergency appendicitis case in this crude but sanitary tent. Cherry assigned one of her nurses as anaesthetist to aid the surgeon. She herself worked as operating nurse. After that, she checked on the work of all her other nurses. By midnight Cherry ached all over
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with fatigue. Almost everyone was asleep, except the sentries and conscientious Colonel Pillsbee, when Cherry still sat making out her night report by the light of a lantern. At last she crawled into the pup tent she shared with Gwen.

“A-a-a-h!” Gwen greeted her, and went right back to sleep.

Next morning the nurses were on the road at eight-thirty, “and not eight-thirty-one,” Cherry thought, breathless but triumphant. The medical tents had magically turned into big bundles on the corpsmen’s shoulders.

Grateful soldiers waved good-by as the little band started off.

That day and the next were, as Ann said, “More of the same, only more so.” Pushing with slow difficulty all day through the silent, winding jungle, at evening they arrived at the next outpost to rejoin the second section of the unit. They camped overnight, pushed on again in the morning. By midmorning, the whole unit was together again.

Major Pierce congratulated Cherry. “Your leapfrog plan worked out as neatly as a hole in one,” he laughed.

Cherry glowed at her unit director’s praise.

“You know, Major Pierce, we thought this assignment was impossible,” she confessed. “But we’ve done it!”

“Sure you did it,” Major Pierce said, an amused twinkle on his attractive face. “But if you nurses think
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this was difficult, then, in those classic words, ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet!’”

Cherry’s excitement mounted at Major Pierce’s prediction, and at approaching so close now to their destination. The final lap of their trek turned out to be the hardest. The last outpost sent them part of the way, over a grassy plain, in two-and-a-half ton Army trucks. Cherry gasped, as she bounced in the truck, “If this is—riding, I’ll—oops!—walk!” But when the terrain grew so muddy and rutted that the trucks could no longer get through, and everyone took to his own two feet, even riding in a broken-down wheelbarrow would have been acceptable.

Laborious hours under heavy pack and through scratchy foliage brought groans, moans, and the nurses’

first real complaints. By afternoon, the girls were very tired, and Cherry realized that their spirits drooped along with their bodies.

“Onward, my sissies!” she called back to the long column she led. “It’s only about a million miles more!”

“I’ll bet we’re marching all the way to Asia!” someone shouted unhappily.

From farther back, Mai Lee lifted her quiet voice.

“If we’re ever anywhere near Asia,” the little Chinese-American girl called, “there’s a certain village where I have work to do.” Cherry and the girls fell silent. They knew Mai Lee meant her family’s peaceful ancestral little town, which the Japs had destroyed.

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Cherry saw that this turn of the conversation was depressing the girls still more. Footsteps lagged. In desperation, Cherry suggested, “Let’s sing,” and started rather quaveringly herself.

Vivian, the rather wistful girl Cherry had helped through a misguided romance, loyally joined in. Gwen made the duet a trio. “The rest of us will have to sing, if only to drown you three out,” Ann sighed, poked Marie, and they joined the chorus. Presently other girls sang too. Before long the whole column was singing.

The steady rhythm, the heartening tunes, gave them a feeling of being warmly together and the remainder of the journey seemed less arduous.

Finally they came to a beach. At the water’s edge, Cherry and her nurses halted. This was the farthest tip of Janeway Island. They had reached the jumping-off point. Ahead stretched only blue sky and blue water.

The far-off guns were louder here.

Colonel Pillsbee herded the big unit into the many Higgins boats, manned by Marines, waiting on the beach. Cherry and most of her nurses seated themselves in close formation in one boat, some of the nurses sat with corpsmen in another. These were square, stubby, wooden boats, with a front wall that dropped down for a gangplank. Cherry declared they all looked like so many bundles of groceries packed tightly in a square grocery box. Sitting down like this,
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their heads came neatly to the top of the boat walls, so they could see exactly nothing, nothing but blazing blue sky over them. Just when they were bursting with curiosity!

Suddenly the boats roared, rapidly turned around, and they were skimming across the water—headed like swift sea birds for Pacific Island 14.

c h a p t e r i i i

Island 14

cherry stood up in the boat. rising out of the tropic sea were three islands, fringed with tall palms and ablaze with flowers. Their boats sped toward the center island. From this distance, it looked to Cherry like a giant ant hill, with crawling movement everywhere. Nearer, she made out men in green fatigues working up and down the long beach.

The Higgins boats crawled right up on the sand. The girls jumped off and blinked in the intense sun and heat. Cherry did not know where to look first.

Seabees, the sailor-workmen, carried boxes of supplies on their shoulders. Other Seabees were hammer-ing away on a half-finished wooden building under the trees. Engineers drove a noisy bulldozer, laying down rough roads. A big stout man, apparently a beachmaster,
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roared orders. Cherry’s trained eyes picked out several camouflaged fortifications.

What really made her catch her breath were signs of recent battle. In hollow ground stood a heavy mortar, the gun camouflaged with a net roof of leaves. She saw half a grass hut standing, the other half crumpled on the ground, sliced neatly away by a shell. She stood there and stared at the mute evidence of war that lay all around her.

Major Pierce and another officer, in green fatigues, came up the beach to the waiting nurses. “I think the first thing the unit had better do,” Major Pierce called out, “is get acquainted with the place. This is Captain May, the Intelligence Officer. Captain May’s headquarters, called G–2, is on Island 13, but you will see him around here on 14 once or twice a week. Captain May is going to take us on a tour and explain things.” The Intelligence Officer nodded pleasantly to the medical people, who gathered around. He was a very young man, self-contained and average-looking, except for his extraordinarily alert eyes. Cherry liked the friendly, informal way he talked to them.

“Well, I’ll start at the beginning. Only about three weeks ago, these three small islands were the scene of combat. We took them from the Japs. That was the gunfire you heard on Janeway. Our troops are fighting on, trying to seize more islands to the northwest. That’s the
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gunfire you’ll hear occasionally on Island 14. We may be bombed,” he warned. “The Japs haven’t bombed for a long time, they must be saving up for something.

Or our troops on the forward islands are keeping them too busy. You can’t see those islands, but they’re only thirty miles from here. So you see,” Captain May turned to the nurses, “you young women are as close to the fighting as the Army lets its nurses go.” Cherry spoke up, “If we were in a field hospital, we could go within six miles of combat, couldn’t we?” Captain May smiled. “Yes, in an emergency. But this ought to be dangerous enough to satisfy anybody. The Japs may make an attempt to retake these islands, or as I said before, they may bomb us. That is why we black-out every night.”

The medical unit listened with visible excitement.

Captain May gave them a sharp look, and resumed, “As soon as Islands 13, 14, and 15 were ours, the Seabees and the Engineers came in. Three weeks ago this place was a wilderness. The Japs never make their islands habitable. Their troops live under the most primitive conditions—they built only some pillboxes. There was nothing at all here but jungle. Now—well, you’ll see!” Jeeps and trucks rolled up. The entire unit climbed in and followed the Intelligence Officer’s jeep all around the island. Here, to their amazement, they found a small community hacked out of the jungle. There was a power
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