She came to see him off when he left to rejoin his unit. They were on the Cotentin Peninsula by then and had captured the port of Cherbourg. Allied bombers had caused extensive damage to the city of Caen, the Germans retreated, and Caen was liberated. They’d made some progress while he was in the hospital, and so had he and Alex.
“Take care of yourself. I’m expecting to see you in Paris one day, or New York. And be good to that leg,” she warned him.
“You too,” he said gently. “Watch out for those Krauts when you’re flying your missions.” She nodded, and he bent down, pulled her into his powerful arms, and kissed her. She smiled up at him afterwards. It felt perfect. “Stay safe, Alex. We have a lot to look forward to when we go home.” She waved as the bus that was taking him back to his unit with four other men who had been released from the hospital pulled away. She walked back to her barracks with a smile on her face. She felt young, and alive, and like a girl for the first time in a long time. She hoped they’d both make it through the war and come out safely at the other end. She had something to look forward to now, instead of dreading going home. No matter what her parents thought of him when they met him, she knew Dan Stanley was just the man for her. She hoped that he would survive and she’d see him again.
* * *
—
After Dan left at the end of July, almost two months after the navy’s invasion of Normandy, the Germans were pummeling the British even harder than before. British cities took a beating, and even the countryside was being hit hard. There were bombings in Yorkshire, near Pru’s parents’ home, which worried her. So far they’d been lucky. Her brothers hadn’t been wounded, and her parents were well.
Due to the increased activity of the Luftwaffe, they sometimes put two nurses on a flight, and they gave them a fighter escort for some of their missions. It was somewhat reassuring, but their missions had become more dangerous with more intense fighting on the ground. Emma was assigned to one of Pru’s missions, and they enjoyed working together.
They were on their way to their pickup location, on their second mission of the day, with two fighter escorts, when there was a strange staccato sound from the engine. Reggie checked his dials carefully, and looked first at his copilot, then at Pru. Ed had a day off, which was rare for him, but he and Lizzie had synchronized their days off to be together, and Pru had two new corpsmen with her.
“What’s up?” she asked Reggie, and he looked at her in dismay. “We’ve got an engine failure in the right engine.” And two minutes later, he turned to her. “We’re going down, Pru. Put your parachutes on,” he told the crew. He radioed their position in code, and he knew the fighter pilots would communicate it to the base. He showed a hand signal to one of the fighter pilots, and the plane started going down fast. Pru looked at Emma, and she looked scared. They both had their chutes on, and Pru grabbed a backpack of supplies for an emergency like this one, with a limited amount of food, a thermos of water, and a gun. The corpsmen did the same, and Reggie shouted at them. There was no controlling the plane. The copilot had opened the rear door and Reggie ordered them all to jump. Pru let Emma go first and followed her as closely as she could. She thought the corpsmen were right behind them, so they’d land near enough to each other. What they had to avoid now was getting caught by a German patrol, when they landed in the vicinity of battle lines.
Emma took a long time to pull her rip cord, but she finally did and the chute opened sharply, then she drifted gently down clear of the tree line. This was the part she had hated most in their training, but she made a smooth landing and got rid of her chute quickly, under a thicket of bushes. There was no sound of gunshots nearby, although they could hear heavy artillery in the distance. And another C-47 was going to have to pick up the wounded Pru’s flight wouldn’t reach now. She made a sharper landing than Emma but got rid of her chute swiftly too. They headed into the trees as silently as they could. Pru put a finger to her lips and Emma nodded. They started walking away from the German front toward where they believed the British line was, near the French border. But technically, they were behind enemy lines now. The plane had come down hard in a field, and damaged a wing, but there was no explosion. The crew had made a smooth getaway too, in the opposite direction. They knew to spread out rapidly. Pru and Emma had no idea where they were and didn’t see them again after they landed.
They walked steadily until nightfall, but didn’t see any houses or farms. They wouldn’t have approached them anyway, since they were in occupied territory on the frontier of France.