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Things have gotten worse with Diana—it seems she went a little farther than writing letters with that prisoner. Margaret is beside herself. On the telephone the other day, she wailed, ‘Our own daughter, a traitor! How could Harry and I have raised a traitor?’
I reminded her Diana was only following an adolescent whim. But in Margaret’s eyes, it’s black-and-white and there’s no room for any other considerations.
Then she said, “And to do this right after we found out about Paul... I can hardly believe she would stoop this low.”
It’s easy for me to see this is about Diana’s immaturity and shortsightedness, not betraying her country, but for Margaret, what she did stands in direct opposition to everything Paul died for.
It’s so hard to offer her any comfort. I don’t think she can accept any, at least not right now.
I’m really glad you aren’t living there now. Can you imagine how hard this has to be for Benny? But at least Harry is at home, so he has somebody to talk to.
Actually, they may not have told him any of the details. That would be like my side of the family. We’ve always swept as much as we could under the rug and hoped it would magically disappear.
I didn’t mean to spend so long on this, and sure hope it can all get worked out. Margaret mentioned the law might even get involved, I hope not, for Diana’s sake. After all, she’s grieving too. I could never say that to Margaret, of course.
From your first letter, it sounds as if you’ve got your feet on solid ground there. What a great start, to have friendly classmates and a job waiting for you. What I see between the lines is a very busy daughter, but you can handle this.
Like your dad said to me a little while ago, ‘Twila’s a go-getter.’
He’s spending most days at the lumberyard, and a couple of times, has sent Rodney home. Sharon is thrilled to have him catch up on things there, and says Lukey follows him all around the house.
He’s grown inches every time I see him. Inches taller, and inches around—such a roly-poly child. Ah well, he’ll grow out of that once warm weather comes.
Charlotte’s grandmother stopped by the other day and said to wish you well. She brought over some photographs, so I’m enclosing them. Char was always such a good friend. I know you must still miss her.
Time to go to bed, so I’ll close by saying we couldn’t be more proud of you.
Love,
Mom
“WONDER WHAT ELSE DIANA did?” Twila muttered to herself as she set the letter down on her dresser and checked the time. Still an hour left before Mrs. Alcott—Adriane—expected her. Probably about the amount of time it would take to brush up on the bone structure chapter for tomorrow’s test.
But the photos arrested her—she and Char on the day she moved away with her parents. Seemed like forever ago. Char on her graduation day, and then beside a huge lighted Christmas tree in a massive building, maybe at the USO?
Char was as real now as she’d ever been. It seemed she might walk through the door any moment, healthy and so alive. After Stan left Camp Algona, it was like this, too. She half-expected him around every corner. That’s probably how Aunt Margaret felt about Paul, and Uncle Marvin about Butch.
In one way, time and distance changed nothing. Char’s smile came to her just the other day when the Alcott’s playful puppy jumped up into her lap. Char would have loved cuddling with him as much as the children did.
And today, when a write-up of this semester’s costs appeared in her mailbox, she could hear Stan saying everything would work out. He’d been right. Between her salary and the government tuition grant, she had nothing to worry about.
Holding that list in her hand, he’d seemed so close, so real, even though he was thousands of miles away by now. Nothing to worry about, true; but plenty to pray about.
***
DECEMBER 16, 1944
“That’s our plane, the C-46 Commando over there. Pretty safe, I’d say. These workhorses have been flying over the Hump to supply American and Nationalist Chinese forces for three years now.”
Stan’s commander shouldered his gear. “With overloads, monsoons, miserable airstrips and the Himalayas to face, our pilot probably thinks he’s landed a dream job this time.
“Might as well get a move on. There’s just twenty of us, but they’ll be loading up some Wright engines for replacement parts and that pile of stretchers over there, too.”
What a difference from his last journey to the South Pacific. For one thing, they were scheduled to land in little more than twenty-four hours. Waiting outside the plane, Stan chatted with an older civilian worker waiting to load.
Or so he thought. He realized how wrong he was when the fellow said, “This’ll be my eightieth wartime flight to pilot. Our total westbound lift has gone up from five-hundred tons to sixteen hundred during the past year.”
“How long have you been flying?”
“Started before you were born, I expect. I’ve flown just about every model, starting with biplanes. In ’43, they called me into the Air Transport Command out of retirement. Not too many pilots can say they miss grandchildren.”
One of Stan’s crew overheard and muttered, “Talk about experienced...”
The pilot gave a wry grin. “I’m an old-timer, all right, although anything can happen to anybody at any time. But from the time I saw a biplane land at an airport in Indiana, I knew flying was the life for me.”
“How old were you?”
“I don’t remember. I became a mechanic, and a few years after the war, somebody told me about the Navy’s first flight to Hawaii in a seaplane. That was John Rodgers and his crew—I knew I’d discovered my hero. And I also knew I’d never be happy till I got my license.”
“I had to work hard. When I re-enlisted, my commander appreciated maturity, I guess. And the rest, well...
“On this flight, we’ll stop in Hawaii and proceed to Port Moresby, New Guinea. That’s thirteen hundred miles north of Brisbane, so we’ll cut off a chunk of flying time without even trying. But seven thousand miles is still seven thousand miles.”
He joined the inspection crew, and no one asked any more questions, but during the flight, Stan overheard a couple of men describing the flight he’d mentioned.
“Nobody had flown two thousand miles before that, and even twenty-five hundred was unheard of. Lindbergh hadn’t crossed the Atlantic yet, either. But Rodgers and another seaplane headed out, and the other one had troubles early on. Rodgers kept going, but ran out of gas near Oahu.
Stan got out his writing paper and recorded this story for Benny. He’d send it to Twila in his next letter.
A man named Rodgers glided the biplane to the ocean, and a search boat found him and his crew nine days later. But listen to this: Rodgers and his crew had stripped fabric from one of the lower wings, rigged it between the upper ones, and sailed over four hundred miles.
I know you’re an Army man, but just think about those sailors. In the face of what might have been certain death, they persevered. That’s what it takes to survive.
And they did. They ran out of food after three days, and after three more, ran out of water. But it rained. That saved them.
Imagine being out there on the Pacific for that long. But these men used imagination to create a sail. By the time a very shocked navigator found them alive after nine days out in the elements, they had sailed four hundred miles!
This happened almost twenty years ago. Just think how far we’ve come since then. By the time you graduate from high school, what more might we have accomplished, and what new challenges will we face?
Tuning in to the rest of the conversation gave him the perfect ending for Benny.
“So what’re we doing in the Army?”
“Well, here’s the rest of the story. Two years later, the Army outdid the Navy when two pilots made it from California to Hawaii in twenty-six hours. So there you have it—that’s why we’re in the Army.”
Picturing it all, Stan jotted another paragraph. Then he retreated into his own thoughts. Like Twila kept saying, everything had happened so fast. Yet even in the whirlwind of the past week, thinking of her brought a sense of calm.
A rough landing at Hickman Field shook him awake. Suddenly, the big plane shuddered as if the tail wheel had a mind of its own.
Tap... tap... tap... that must be the pilot’s feet on the rudder pedals. For a full minute, it seemed the tail wheel might refuse to settle, but somehow, the pilot gained directional control.
Communal relief flooded the fuselage as they touched down and rolled in. The commander issued orders—stretch your legs, find something to eat, but stay close. They’d refuel here and undergo a routine engine check, that was all.
Feeling the earth beneath his feet, Stan glanced around. Still a few signs of the Japanese attack. The attack that hindered supplies from getting to Corregidor. The attack that changed everything.
“Take a quick whiff of Hawaii, men. We’re almost halfway to paradise.”
***
READY FOR A NIGHT’S sleep herself, Twila gathered the Alcott children around her. Sarah, Benjamin, and Susie snuggled on the couch, ready for a story.
“Maybe I’ll tell you one that just came in a letter. A man named Stan wrote it and sent it to me all the way from Hawaii. Do you know where that is?”
“Where Daddy go?”
Six-year-old Benjamin frowned. “Naw. He isn’t out in the ocean, sis. He’s in France.”
According to last night’s news, father might well be stuck in a foxhole in Belgium. American forces were taking heavy losses in the heavily forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in eastern Belgium, northeast France, and Luxembourg.
Mrs. Alcott, who asked Twila to call her Adriane the first time they met, wanted this trio in bed with the chickens, so in the next two hours, Twila missed Benny. A checker game would do her good. She bet he missed her, too. Diana’s behavior couldn’t do anything to improve Aunt Margaret’s outlook, but hopefully, Harry liked to play checkers.
Besides listening to the radio, tonight would be perfect for getting another letter ready for Benny. So far, he’d been a faithful correspondent, and she could imagine how much he’d have to say about Stan’s Hawaii story.
After she told a brief version of it to the children, two of them fought back yawns. Even Benjamin offered no resistance, and twenty minutes later, she settled down to read several chapters and finish some worksheets.
But after the newscaster brought word of rising casualties in the Battle of the Bulge, he focused in on the German massacre of Americans at Malmedy. The horror of this story captivated her.
Picture yourself locked in the present life-and-death struggle in the Ardennes. What fires your morale? What tells you we will win regardless of our present sacrifices? One word.
Malmedy.
For it was here that on December seventeenth, a German tank force ruthlessly fired upon 150 Americans who had surrendered. The enemy herded these soldiers into a field during the opening hours of the Nazi counteroffensive.
In the words of a survivor, ‘We had to lie there and listen to German non-coms use pistols on the wounded who groaned or tried to move.’
Another survivor says, ‘They had 15 to 20 tanks. They disarmed us and took anything valuable. We lined up along the road for an hour, at least. Then they stood us all together in an open field. Then one German pulled out a pistol and shot down our fellows from less than 50 yards away.’
This soldier continues, ‘We hadn’t tried to run away—we had our hands up. Our only choice was to flop down and play dead.’
As we hear continuing reports from the Bulge, we grieve those we have lost. But through it all, we will remember this vicious, unprovoked murder of 130 of our young men.
We can never forget this barbarous act, and rest assured that our troops over there will never forget it, either.
And we will win. No matter what.
Switching off the radio did nothing to remove the image, and studying became a struggle. Tendons and nerves, bones and ligaments, veins and arteries—they all swam in a field in Belgium.
When Adriane came home from her shift at the hospital, Twila hurried several blocks to her dormitory. A quiet night in Iowa City—most students were probably studying.
Inserting her key into the lock, she filled her lungs. That scene the newscaster described—one of those helpless soldiers might have been Butch or Paul. Or Stan.
A shiver took her as she climbed the stairs to her room. One day, the soldiers who survived would be coming home. They might be injured, and she would be proud to care for them.
This motivated every hour of study, every page she read, every lab she attended, every move she made.
