Cherry Ames 04 Chief Nurse (5 page)

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plant, there were roads, electric lights strung on palm trees, running water for washing, and hanging on trees were Lister bags holding purified water for drinking.

Cherry saw mesh hammocks suspended between palm trees in a grove where the Seabees slept, many hammocks but scattered for security, with foxholes dug directly underneath. They passed a column of infantrymen, who, despite the heat, wore heavy clothes and even gloves for protection against disease-bearing insects. The soldiers looked up in amazement and waved joyously when the jeeps full of girls passed.

“Now try to get this picture clear in your minds,” Captain May called to them. The jeeps and trucks halted in a sand cay and formed a circle at his signal.

“This island is roughly oval in shape. Your hospital will be in the center, for secrecy and for safety. To protect you and your hundreds of patients, there are, scattered over this island, an Infantry Division—that’s three Infantry regiments; one regiment of Artillery; and an Antiaircraft detachment. That’s mighty good protection.

“Working with these riflemen and heavy gunners,” the Intelligence Officer continued, “are a Signal Corps company for communications; a Quartermaster company for supplies; and one platoon of Military Police.

The Seabees, the workmen you saw on the beach, will be leaving soon, their work is almost finished. Colonel Pillsbee”—Cherry sighed at the name—“is in charge
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of everybody and everything. And then there’s one other thing——”

The Intelligence Officer hesitated and frowned. He held a whispered consultation with Major Pierce, seemingly doubtful about something. Finally, he turned to the medical people again.

“I am going to entrust you with some confidential information. You will see and hear certain activities going on, especially at night. You might as well know what they are—so you won’t be tempted to write anything in your letters home about this. Let me warn you that this is a closely guarded operation.” Cherry and the other girls looked at one another.

What was up?

Captain May pointed to the northern tip of their island. “Up there you will see Army Air Forces men un-rolling steel mesh mats on the sand. Those are for plane runways.
They are building a secret air base here.
Short-range fighter planes will refuel here. Also, in order to supply our troops fighting up forward—and perhaps ourselves in case of emergency—Air Transport Command supply planes will land here at this halfway base.”

“Air Transport Command!” Cherry breathed to Ann and Gwen, beside her in the jeep. “That’s where my brother Charlie is now!”

She was so excited she hardly heard the rest of the Intelligence Officer’s remarks. Charlie might conceivably
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fly here! Cherry hoped hard that he would. And then she remembered the watchful enemy only thirty miles away, and she hoped just as hard that Charlie would not be flying into range of those enemy guns. It never occurred to her to be afraid for herself.

When the unit returned to the center of camp late in the afternoon, Cherry thought every soldier on the island must have hiked over to greet them. Young, lanky, casual, thin shoulders bent under heavy rifles, dirty worn fatigues and caked mud on their heavy shoes, but wide smiles on their drawn, tired faces. As the nurses climbed down from the jeeps and trucks, the soldiers surged forward. The Army rule forbidding enlisted men and nurses, who are officers, to fraternize, was momentarily laid aside as the soldiers cried out:

“Girls! Real live American girls! Gosh, are we glad to see you!”

“You’re the first American women we’ve seen in two years! Any of you nurses from Red Oaks, Kansas?”

“Girls from home! Nurses! And we thought Headquarters had picked us to be the Forgotten Men!”

“This is almost as good as having my mother show up!”

One of the soldiers seized Cherry’s hand and shook it. Every face she looked at was stunned and overjoyed.

Cherry swallowed hard. So they had been cut off for two monotonous years in the nightmare jungle! These
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fighting men looked to her suspiciously like homesick small boys. They were pathetically eager for the nurses to make some sort of response.

Cherry impulsively stepped forward. “We’re just as glad to see you as you are to see us! We’re going to take good care of you! And—and—” She looked into the waiting, lonesome faces, and was so moved she forgot such things as rules “—and you’re all invited to a party!

The nurses invite the whole island to a party!” This time, her sixty nurses as well as the crowd of soldiers let out a delighted yell. General bedlam and joy broke loose. “A party!” “Oh, boy!” “We haven’t had any fun in months!”

“With refreshments!” Cherry shouted over the up-roar.

“Ice cream?” several very young boys shouted back eagerly. “We sure do miss ice cream!”

“And ice cream,” Cherry promised blindly. “And entertainment!” she added in a shout. She could not stop herself. She impulsively promised, and the next moment wondered desperately how she could keep her promises. Well, she would make good on her promises if she got court-martialed for it!

At that moment, Colonel Pillsbee’s aide came hurry-ing down a little hill and approached Cherry. “The Commanding Officer wishes to speak to Lieutenant Ames!”

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The soldiers scattered to their posts. Major Pierce rather hastily led the nurses away. Cherry was left alone to accompany the furiously silent aide up the hill.

The command tent and Colonel Pillsbee’s tent quarters had just been set up on a high cleared plot of ground, and some soldiers were building a wooden railing to enclose Headquarters. “Colonel Pillsbee
would
erect a railing between himself and the rest of us,” Cherry thought. That railing made her feel quakingly as if she were entering a jail, instead of the headquarters tent.

“What is this talk of parties?” Colonel Pillsbee demanded primly.

Cherry stood before him and explained, or at least she did her best to explain.

“Don’t you know the nurses are not to mingle socially with the enlisted men?” Colonel Pillsbee reproved her.

“Yes, sir, but this is a group party,” Cherry sought for tactful words. “The girls won’t be having dates, sir, they’ll just be acting as—well, sir, as Army hostesses to several regiments.”

Colonel Pillsbee considered this. The good Army word “regiments” and the phrase “Army hostesses” had an impersonal, formal ring; they satisfied him. “But,” the Commanding Officer said, his small eyes like chips of ice, “these men are fighting men. We must not coddle them. It softens them, and does them real harm when they have to face combat.”

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Cherry thought anxiously that Colonel Pillsbee had an indisputable point there. Then she thought of those homesick faces. “Would just
one
party do them very much harm?” she pleaded. “After all, sir, these men have been stationed on islands like these for two years, and it seems, at least to me, sir,” she said gingerly and very respectfully, “that their morale is a little—

discouraged.”

Colonel Pillsbee in his turn looked anxious. “Sit down, Lieutenant Ames.” Cherry sat down on the edge of a box, scarcely daring to breathe.

“Two years here is a long time,” Colonel Pillsbee admitted. A shadow crossed his face. Cherry realized that in his touch-me-not way, he cared deeply for his men.

“Well, Lieutenant Ames, suppose I gave permission.

How would you propose to manage a party of that size, and furnish the ice cream and entertainment which I heard you indiscreetly promise?” He was now at least considering the idea! “I haven’t the slightest idea where I’ll get those things, sir,” Cherry replied blithely, “but I’ll find them! I won’t let those men down!”

Colonel Pillsbee tapped a bony finger on his table.

“I am opposed to this party. It sets a bad precedent. One thing leads to another—I fail to see the need for such a display of sentiment. If the men need relaxation, we will
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arrange something more suitable. For example, a swimming hour every day.”

Cherry’s hopes sank. “But, Colonel Pillsbee, I promised the men! I can’t go back on my word!”

“That,” the Commanding Officer observed coldly, “is the only reason I am troubling to discuss this matter with you, Lieutenant Ames. Ordinarily, I would summarily refuse permission. But an officer’s word is his bond, and you have—most impertinently, I must say—pledged your word. I cannot afford to sacrifice the confidence of the personnel in their Chief Nurse. Therefore——”

“Oh, thank you, sir!”

Colonel Pillsbee looked at her. His face stiffened.

“Lieutenant Ames, I strongly disapprove of this party and of your behavior. From now on, you will not under-take matters pertaining to general personnel without consulting your Commanding Officer first.”

“I—I’m sorry, sir,” Cherry faltered. She got to her feet, feeling humiliated and scared. But she had won permission for their party!

“One more thing, Lieutenant Ames. You may not have this party until the hospital is completely set up.”

“Yes, sir.” It meant a wait but of course he was right.

Cherry dared one glance at Colonel Pillsbee’s frozen face. “Thank you, sir,” she said, saluted, and fled.

Hurrying down the hill, she lectured herself. “Ames, be careful! You’re only
acting
Chief Nurse. You must
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turn in such a bang-up job, and be such a goody-goody, that the C.O. will
have
to approve of you!” Setting up a hospital on this South Sea island was a big order, and a large part of it was up to Cherry and her nurses. It had to be done swiftly, too. The advance detail had brought in a great deal of equipment, sorted it out, and set up a few tents temporarily. Now Major Pierce chose a treeless clearing in the heart of the island, as a sort of yard and traffic center. Around that open oblong of ground, the corpsmen set up tents under the high concealing palm trees.

At one end of the open yard was the Medical Headquarters tent, with Major Pierce’s and Cherry’s offices, and the Receiving tent for new cases. In back of these was the doctors’ quarters. At the opposite end of the yard, the Seabees built them a supply shed, and in back of that was the nurses’ quarters. Then down one long side of the clearing, they set up an Operating Room in a portable Quonsett hut, and flanked the O.R. by three smaller tents, one for X-ray and laboratory work, one for dispensary and pharmacy, and one for dental. Along the other long side of the yard were diet kitchens and the unit’s mess hall, and beside it a shack which Cherry hoped to turn into a recreation room. Then, all around this nerve-center, the various wards—medical, surgical, orthopedic, contagious; several of each—were laid out in big tents and
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thatched pavilions. Finally, enclosing the whole hospital grounds like a ring, came quarters for the two hundred corpsmen. A weird city of canvas mushroomed in a week.

Cherry wished they could have streets and gardens to take away the bare utilitarian look of the place. But there were more essential things to attend to first, like tacking up screens and netting against dangerous insects; working out how to camouflage and still admit sunlight for their patients; and furnishing the rough wards. There was not very much with which to make a thousand-bed hospital: a few hundred white iron hospital beds with not very comfortable mattresses, many Army cots and thin mattresses, some crude wooden two-decker beds draped with nets, not nearly enough tables and supply cabinets. Cherry and her nurses, even with the corpsmen’s willing help, had a struggle. But they evolved clean, orderly wards, surprisingly like a hospital at home. Already they had forty patients, with appendicitis, broken bones, and various infections, to admit to their new wards.

An infantryman showed up one day and announced he had been a sign painter in civilian life. He made them neat, businesslike signs reading, “Medical Ward” and “C. Ames, Chief Nurse & Registrar” and “Purified Water” and “Quiet Please Period.” The American flag, and beneath it the Red Cross flag, flew from Medical
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Headquarters tent, and their hospital began to take on the look of a going concern.

Cherry met many new people in their joint struggle to set up the hospital. Major Pierce was not only unit director but chief surgeon. By this time Cherry already knew the other doctors and technicians by name. Now she met and worked with the Chief Medical Officer, white-haired Captain Jonas, who handled the administrative or non-medical affairs of the unit. Cherry worked with Captain Ricciardi, a plump smiling man, the supply officer, and Captain Penrose, a soldierly man who commanded the corpsmen, and the pharmacist who described himself as “head of the iodine squad.” She also met Captain Bill Wilson, a tall young Texan who was mess officer.

Working with these highly trained, experienced men specialists, in these first two weeks, took every ounce of resourcefulness and maturity Cherry possessed. She had to be as efficient as they were, and it was no easy task to measure up to these men.

Busy as she was, Cherry’s feminine instincts kept cropping up. She had an overwhelming desire to make this bare place livable and homelike.

So did the other girls. When they had first trooped into Nurses’ Quarters, Gwen had given a yelp and dubbed it “The Ritz Stables.” It was a long, bare shed with a dirt floor. Cherry, though Chief Nurse, was
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squeezed in there with the rest of the girls. The nurses had cots and Army blankets, and not another thing.

“What we need is a note of luxury,” Gwen declared desperately. Now that their work on the hospital was well under way, the girls determined to do something about their quarters.