CHAPTER FOURTEEN   BRUCE’S REPORT

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.