Page 12 of The Lies We Leave Behind

12

We landed in a field, the sound of machine gun fire not far off, men rushing around caked in mud, sweat running down their faces, bloodstained and red-eyed.

“This way!” said the medical technician I’d been assigned, pulling my sleeve to get my attention as I took in the scene.

I’d never had a med tech, as he called himself, and certainly had never worked with a man I had rank over. But Theodore didn’t seem to mind it. He’d been on a dozen or so trips to Normandy already and had filled me in on the ride over with how it would go once we landed.

There were tents set up everywhere, men reloading weapons, checking gear, moving supplies here and there as the sun beat down on us, the urgency in the air fraught and trembling around us.

The patients we were bringing back with us were gathered off to the side of a makeshift runway that had been marked off with flags. I made my way through the litters, kneeling beside each man with a gentle smile as I read the piece of paper attached to his uniform or blanket.

They were in bad shape. The wounds fresh and caked with dried blood. Sand and mud dripped from their pockets and was smeared across their faces. It was unsanitary and ripe for infection. We needed to move them. Now.

Keeping out of the way of the men unloading the supplies we’d brought, I boarded the plane again and began attaching the brackets used to hold the litters. It was going to be a full flight and I was glad to have Theodore onboard to help.

“Campbell?”

I turned to see the med tech standing with a worried look on his face.

“Yeah?” I asked, turning back to the brackets.

“We have three prisoners coming back with us.”

“Okay,” I said, not registering what that meant.

“Our boys won’t like that.”

It struck me then what he’d said and I sucked in a breath and turned to look at him with wide eyes.

“Have you flown with prisoners before?” I asked.

“Yes. It can be...” He shrugged. “Our boys don’t like it, as you can probably imagine.”

I blew out a breath. “Will they give us trouble?”

“Which ones?”

“Any of them.”

“They’ll all certainly try.”

“Great.” I turned back to the brackets. “Any ideas on what to do?”

“We remind our boys that they have to keep calm or they could make their injuries worse. As for the prisoners, they don’t always speak English so...”

“Understood,” I said and continued the task at hand.

He left then and a moment later the patients were being loaded onboard.

Theodore and I helped strap them in and make them as comfortable as we could, which wasn’t easy for the couple of men who’d managed to have casts put on their broken bones to immobilize them for the trip. And then there was the soldier with his jaw sewn shut, wicked black stitches laced from mouth to ear.

“What are the scissors for?” I asked Theodore. There was a pair pinned and hanging by a string from the patient’s uniform. Something I’d never seen before.

“If he vomits you use them to cut the stitches. Otherwise he could choke.”

“Oh.”

Most of the men had been given morphine for the trip and I hoped they would sleep, including the Germans, who were the last to be loaded and thus at the far end of the aircraft. My heart raced at the thought of having to tend to the enemy. But as Theodore had explained quietly, we were to treat them just as we would our own so that they would heal and could be bargained for or interrogated.

But it wasn’t just that they were the enemy. It was that they were German. German soldiers fighting for a cause that made me feel sick, angry, and not sorry for their pain. As far as I was concerned, they didn’t deserve my help. They had betrayed their country. And their countrymen.

I barely looked at them as I made sure they were strapped in securely, my eyes glancing over their injuries. The two younger ones had lost limbs, the oldest of the three had a head injury. They’d all been given morphine, which I hoped would sedate them and keep them from starting any trouble, but the younger two, who were situated across from one another, spoke in German to one another about what they would do to the “Ami”, their slang for Americans, once they had healed.

“De Mund halten!” the third one said from his upper bunk, nearly making me grin. He had probably been listening to them talk like this for hours now, thus his exasperated “shut up.”

“Ready?” the pilot shouted.

I gave each litter one more look as I hurried up the aisle and strapped in beside Theodore.

“Ready!” I shouted.

As soon as we were at altitude, I unbuckled.

“I’m going to make the rounds,” I told Theodore, who nodded and moved to a little desk beside us that had been fastened to the wall.

“Shout if you need me,” he said.

Most of the men were asleep, a few drowsily staring at me as I checked for fever, swelling, or bleeding. I moved down the aisle, kneeling to look over the men in the lower bunks, then standing on tiptoe to check the upper bunks, making my way slowly toward the back, dread filling my body the closer I got to the prisoners, who I hoped were sleeping.

As I reached the last of the American soldiers, I noticed a pair of eyes, a blue the color of faded denim, watching me.

My gaze skimmed the paper attached to his shirt and I reached for the blanket covering him, but he placed his hands over it.

“Don’t you think you should ask first?”

His grin was teasing, his dark hair tousled and streaked with mud. I chuckled and shook my head, looking again at the paper for his name.

“My apologies,” I said. “May I check your wound please, Sergeant Mitchell?”

“This is how they get you,” he said, his voice a quiet drawl. “They pretend they’re interested in your wound, and the next thing you know, you’re married.”

I pressed my lips together, trying not to laugh and failing.

“I promise I won’t trick you into marrying me. I just want to check your injury.”

“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. This time tomorrow, we’ll be betrothed. A wounded man is hard to resist.”

“I’m sorry to tell you, but I’ve resisted more than a few wounded men in my time.”

“Your loss.”

“The thing is,” I said, working hard to ignore his determined gaze and dazzling smile. “I’d be tempted...if I hadn’t already promised myself to a lovely man with a head injury just yesterday.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked.

“Mmm-hmm. He probably doesn’t remember asking. But a promise is a promise.”

He was handsome, even with dirt covering half his face, a split lip, and a bloodstained T-shirt. But it was his laugh that really drew me in. A deep, husky sound that had an intimate quality to it, laced with a bit of naughtiness.

“Oh,” he said suddenly, the laughter gone as quickly as it had started, his good arm clutching his stomach.

“Let me see,” I said, and lifted the blanket and looked at the bandage covering the left side of his abdomen.

“Shit,” I said, frowning when I saw blood seeping through the white gauze. “I’m going to need to undress this.”

“You work quick. Already undressing me?” he said. But the teasing tone in his voice was fading and I realized now he didn’t have a drawl at all, he was losing blood and woozy.

“Theodore?” I called, gesturing for him to join me. “I need stitching, a needle, and fresh bandages. More morphine too.”

I lifted the blanket for him to see.

“Hey,” the sergeant said. “This ain’t a free show. He has to pay.”

One of the young Germans muttered something and I ignored it as I looked to Theodore who nodded and strode up the aisle to get what I’d asked for.

“William,” I said, using the soldier’s first name now in an attempt to sound familiar. Comforting. But his eyes were starting to flutter. “Your stitches tore and I’m going to need to put in some new ones, okay?”

“You’re nice,” he murmured, reaching up with a bloodstained hand to touch a lock of my hair that had come loose from its bun.

“You think that now, but it’s probably going to hurt. We’re going to get you more morphine though, okay?”

He nodded and his eyes closed, his head slumping to the side.

“Shit,” I whispered just as Theodore arrived with the items I’d asked for.

I pulled back the blanket and carefully removed the bandages that were soaked with blood and had begun dripping down William’s torso and the side of the litter to the floor and my boots.

“I’ll clean that up,” Theodore said.

“Later,” I said. “I’m going to need you to help hold the wound closed while I sew.” I pulled a bottle of morphine from my pocket and handed it to him. “Be ready if he wakes.”

“Er word stern,” one of the Germans said and I sucked in a breath. William was not going to die. Not on my plane.

I got to work sewing, my fingers slipping on the needle as blood continued to spill from the wound, Theodore trying to hold the torn skin together where a bullet had ripped into the soldier and then had been hastily removed by the field doc before being sewn closed.

“Sorry,” Theodore whispered as his hand slipped again. But I was almost there. Just a few more stitches and I could tie it off.

There was a grunt followed by a sudden scream and William lurched upward, smacking my hand away as he hit his head on the litter above him.

“Hold him down!” I shouted as one of the Germans began laughing and taunting us.

“Ich sagte der dummen Schlampe dass er sterben würde!” he yelled.

I exhaled, steadying my hands as William writhed in agony. And then it was done. I tied off the string, covered the wound with a fresh bandage, and grabbed the morphine from Theodore’s pocket, hurriedly administering it and counting silently in my head until the thrashing began to abate.

Theodore let out a breath and stepped back, his eyes still on William.

“It’s okay,” I said, placing my hand on his arm and then looking at our patient. “You okay, William?”

“Are you done?” he murmured.

“All done.”

“Sorry for the screaming.”

I smiled. “I think you earned some screaming.”

“Will you still marry me?” he asked.

Theodore chuckled as he gathered the bloodied bandages I’d removed and took them up front to dispose of them.

“I don’t believe I ever agreed to marry you,” I said, watching the soldier fade into the haze of the morphine, his blue eyes disappearing behind increasingly slowed blinks.

“You want to say yes though. I can tell.”

My eyes traced his straight nose, chapped lips, and square jaw darkened by a shadow of whiskers. An ache I’d never felt before, low in my belly, made me want to run my fingers along his cheekbone.

“Die Sau,” I heard the young German say. It was a childhood insult to be called a swine. I’d been called worse. But I was on edge.

Losing my composure I turned and whispered, “Leck mich am Arsch!” watching his eyes widen in surprise at me telling him to screw off in his own language before I turned back to William and covered him again with his blanket.

“You speak German,” he said before turning his head away from me, the morphine finally taking full effect.

Shaking, I stepped back from him, horrified at what I’d done. I glanced around, seeing if anyone else had heard, and found myself staring into the eyes of the older German soldier in the top bunk who had managed to turn onto his side in the cramped quarters and was watching me quietly.

“You do good work,” he said, his English thickly accented. “My apologies for my comrades. They are young. Brainwashed. They have not seen the world like I have. They have no friends beyond the youth they have been forced into training with. They know nothing now beyond what they are fed, through their mouths, and through their ears.”

I inhaled.

“Then they should ask questions,” I said.

He shrugged. “Young men don’t ask questions. They think they know it all at that age. They think they understand the truth of it, don’t you, boys?” He glanced down at the men lying below him. “Du weibt alles, nicht wahr?” he said, asking in a cruel, teasing tone if they knew it all.

One of the soldiers snapped a curse at the older man, who chuckled in response.

“But if you know the truth,” I said, “why are you wearing that uniform?”

He sighed and held my gaze. Accepting of his part or defiant, I couldn’t tell. After a moment of silence, he waved away my question, turned onto his back, and closed his eyes.

I rested my hand on the edge of William’s bunk and took a breath.

“You okay?”

Startled, I looked up to find him watching me.

“I thought you were asleep,” I said, averting my eyes and pretending to be very busy tucking in his blanket.

“Not yet.” He was quiet for a moment and then: “You didn’t answer me.”

I sighed and met his eyes, my shoulders sagging as I nodded. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

He gave me a sleepy smile. “Fine is not okay. But I suppose it gets us by, doesn’t it?”

“It does the job. Or at least, it keeps us doing the job.”

“Yeah,” he murmured and reached out a hand, briefly squeezing my wrist before letting go again. “Thanks for saving my life.”

He wasn’t joking with me now. The teasing from earlier had left his voice and demeanor altogether.

“Just doing my job.”

“Still...thank you.”

“Well, I can’t marry you if you’re dead, William.”

He chuckled and then winced, pressing his hand gently to his wound. “What about the head injury guy?”

I shrugged. “He probably won’t remember asking me anyways.”

“I have a feeling I’ll one day regret a lot of things I’ve done and said in this war,” he said. “But asking you to marry me while high on blood loss and morphine won’t be one of them.”

And with that, he stopped fighting the medicine, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.