“So do you,” she said, smiling at him. They were both reluctant to make plans. There were too many unknowns in their lives, and they were afraid to tempt fate. “And then what? Practice medicine together?” She loved the idea, but it seemed a long way off. “Where would we go to school? We’d have to practice in the country where we go to medical school,” she said practically. And she had to go back to Boston for her parents.
“Don’t forget, I have a cousin in Boston,” he teased her. She knew she’d have to go home to Boston after the war, since the family lost Greg. “What specialty would you want, or just general practice?” he asked her.
She thought about it for a minute before she answered. “Maybe pediatrics. It seems like a nice, happy practice after all this. You?”
“I’ve thought about it. I like the idea of obstetrics for the same reason. If I never see another bleeding male body, torn to bits and broken beyond repair, it will suit me just fine.”
Suddenly the idea of medical school didn’t seem like it would cause such a battle with her father. She had the feeling that he might not fight her on it so vehemently after the war. But they all had to stay alive and get home first. They couldn’t make plans yet.
* * *
—
There were rumors that a big invasion was being planned on the coast of France, but it was top secret and no one knew anything for sure. Their C-47s were too awkward and cumbersome to land on the beaches, so they wouldn’t be able to pick up the wounded. The air evac unit would have to come in by ship from France, or from hospital ships off the coast of England. There were rumors that two or three ships would be coming soon, but they hadn’t seen any so far.
Five days after their casual conversation about medical school, which was just something to talk about, Audrey and Lizzie were sound asleep in their beds in the dorm when the night duty officer went floor to floor pounding on the doors and an alarm bell sounded. Within minutes, everyone was up and in the halls. A hospital ship was lying off the coast at anchor. It had come in during the night, and the Germans had bombed it. It was sinking, and the nurses were needed on land and sea to help rescue the injured men who would otherwise go down with the ship. The C-47s were going to try to land on the coast as close as they could to fly the wounded in as quickly as possible. The officers who ordered them to their posts said the ship was burning and would go down soon. The Luftwaffe had clearly known about the ship and had bombed it mercilessly despite the visible red cross. A second hospital ship had been sunk at sea, heading for Southampton.
As soon as they jumped into their flight suits, Lizzie took off at a dead run for the airstrip with dozens of nurses. She saw Pru run past her and wondered if the men would already be there. Emma and Audrey were with them, and all the familiar faces. Every available nurse was heading for the hospital or the airstrip, ambulances were taking off at full speed. Lizzie’s crew got to their plane seconds after she did, and C-47s lined up on the airstrip for takeoff one after the other. They flew low and reached the coast quickly. They saw the hospital ship, and hundreds of men in the water. There were said to be fifteen hundred wounded on board with crew. It was pandemonium and the ship was listing badly as the German fighter planes returned to strafe them again and killed many of the men on deck and in the water. It was a scene of total carnage. Reggie tried to stay out of sight until the fighter planes left again, and then landed in a field as close as he dared get to the water. Ambulance crews and trucks of personnel grabbed litters and headed to the shore, where navy rescue boats were circling the ship, trying to grab men out of the water, and pull others from lifeboats.
The ship continued to explode from the fuel they had on board, and the scene on the shore was one of organized chaos. Ambulances were coming and going, rescue boats were circling. Rescuers and severely injured men and dead bodies were in the water. The rescuers worked steadily until dawn as best they could to save any survivors. There weren’t many. In the end, three hundred and ninety souls were saved. Fourteen hundred men had died. The ship sank before the sun came up, and steam continued to rise from it for hours. The rescuers were filthy and exhausted when it was over, and the hospital on the base was bursting at the seams. Their fleet of C-47s had to be used to transport hundreds of wounded to other bases and hospitals. Lizzie flew a hundred of them in four trips to the hospitals equipped to take them, and she lost several patients before they got there. Many were burned beyond recognition.
She saw Ed at the main mess hall for the base when she and her crew went there for something to eat when they were finished. It had been a hard night’s work and a tragedy of epic proportions, and a huge victory for the German air force. They had sunk two ships that night, and there had been only eighty-four survivors from the ship they sank en route to Southampton. The rescue crews were tired and angry over the merciless murder of so many men. Ed and Bertie, Reggie’s copilot, came to sit at her table when they saw her, and Pru joined them a little while later.