“Well for one thing, all you’ll be talking about is the soldier who got his leg shot off and you’re trying to stop from bleeding to death before you land, or the one who lost an arm, or can’t see, or will never walk again. You don’t need to discuss literature and ballet,” she said in her usual direct way, and Emma laughed. “And she’s American, so she won’t hear your East End accent. Neither do I, nor do I care. And you never have trouble talking to me.”
“That’s because I know you.”
“We’re all the same here, Emma. That’s what the uniform is about, especially for us. We’re all nurses, trying to keep these guys alive. It doesn’t matter where we came from, or why we joined up. We’re here to save their lives. It’s a rotten business, and we’re all in it together. And she may be ‘posh,’ as you put it, but she’s not thinking about that when one of those boys bleeds all over her or throws up on her, or she has his guts in her hands, or he dies in her arms. Who gives a damn about posh then? I’m sure she doesn’t.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Emma conceded. “I always expect people to think less of me because I’m from Poplar and they can hear it. And people are such snobs sometimes.”
“Not here, and anyone worth a damn as a human being won’t care. I know this is a ridiculously snobbish country, but let’s hope the war changes that. You’re every bit as good as I am, and possibly a better nurse. These girls are American. They didn’t grow up with all that crap that you and I did, which tries to keep everyone in their place, and has for centuries. You’re much smarter and far more educated than all the posh girls I’ve ever known. All they had were dancing lessons, how to do watercolors, and they were taught French. Most of them are so dumb, they bore me to sobs and I can’t sit through lunch with them. It didn’t sound like Alex was too enchanted with her world either before she enlisted and came out here. That way of life just doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore, not to me, and maybe not to her either. Give her a chance.” Emma nodded and made her peace with it. Pru always made so much sense, and she was so fair.
* * *
—
The first day that Lizzie went out with Pru and her corpsmen, her knees were shaking as they climbed the ladder to the plane. She had heard so much about their missions by then that she wondered if she would be equal to the nursing requirements, or even if their plane would be shot down. It happened. Several of the flight nurses and air evac crews had been killed. It didn’t happen often, but it did happen. But she was more worried about doing the right things as a nurse than getting killed herself.
Pru could see how nervous she was, and tried to reassure her, as they checked supplies and made sure that all their beds were ready.
“Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of you.” Pru smiled at her.
“I’m more worried that I won’t know what to do for the men in an emergency. This is my first combat mission.”
“You’ll be fine, Liz,” Pru said confidently, and remembered what Lizzie had said about Audrey’s brother. It was a sad story, but there were so many like it, in England too. She felt sorry for Audrey too. Pru could only imagine how she would feel if one of her brothers died. She worried about them all the time, particularly Phillip, who was a daredevil. Her older brother, Max, was only a few years older than Phillip, but had always been more cautious, even when they were children. “You just have to treat each case individually. The corpsmen do triage as soon as the men come on, and they tell us who to take care of first. They do a lot of the initial work for us. Some of the soldiers just need to be made comfortable for the flight. And when needed, we give them morphine if they’re in too much pain, so they sleep. There’s only so much we can do up here. We can’t fix them. We’re kind of a medicalized taxi service, and now and then we have to deal with a real medical emergency. But most of it is fairly straightforward, and obvious when they come on. We know what we’ve got on the flight, and some of them are ambulatory. They’re not all at death’s door. Some are, and then you just do what you can, and pray they hang on till we get back to the base. Stay close to me or Ed, and you’ll find your feet very quickly.” Pru had confidence in her as a nurse, more than Lizzie had in herself.
She introduced Lizzie to both corpsmen, and then the pilots a few minutes later. Their second corpsman was Charlie Burns, a lively Scotsman and an excellent medic. Ed Murphy was the best corpsman Pru had ever worked with, and he knew far more than most corpsmen did. His medical knowledge was impressive.