CHAPTER THIRTEEN   TOMMY’S BOMBARDIER

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:

“Were he dead, could I weep

For one who gladly bore

A cross that I might sleep

In peace?”

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.