The Gathering Storm Read online

  “Enough, Sergeant,” Judah ordered. “Unlock all the old German pillboxes. Make certain the lanterns have oil. If the bombers come back, we need better shelter than crouching behind headstones. Spread the word. Lieutenant Howard?”

  “Sir?”

  “Organize rescue parties. Take the wounded into the emplacement beneath the cross. There must be doctors and medical orderlies in the mob. Send them along with as many supplies as they can carry.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Kadle,” Judah continued, “you and I will organize the burial detail. This corporal will help us.”

  Lance Corporal Sackett had finally emerged from his fetal position beside the memorial. Like a frightened stray dog with no home in sight, he gravitated toward Judah with desperation on his face.

  The remainder of the day was spent clearing up the aftermath of the bombing. Twenty-two people had been killed and another twenty-seven wounded badly enough to require treatment at the impromptu aid station. “Surprisingly modest butcher’s bill, considering how jammed the road was,” Howard noted.

  “Miracle,” Judah said. Even though it was amazing scores more had not been killed, there were two scenes Judah knew would haunt him forever.

  When the smoke cleared, families gathered around their dead and wounded. Stunned by the sudden ferocity of the attack, the shell-shocked survivors wandered over the cemetery, looking for assistance. The refugees could not avoid stepping over and around headstones, but there was one place that was universally shunned. Judah went to see why.

  One grave had been ripped open as thoroughly as if a giant spade had scooped out the earth. The coffin was tilted upright and the cover was askew, revealing skeletal remains. The occupant appeared to be sitting upright, surveying the carnage.

  Nor was that the strangest part of the tale.

  One of those killed by the blast, a middle-aged civilian, came to rest on top of the exposed coffin, as if desiring the occupant to move over and give him room.

  The other haunting death was even more tragic.

  Outside the gate were blast victims and burn victims and bleeding wounded, perforated by shrapnel.

  And a little girl, about seven years old.

  She was lying in the ditch. Her mother knelt beside her. “Please, Meena, wake up. Won’t you wake up for Mommy? Please, darling, stop teasing me. You’re scaring me, Meena. Wake up.”

  There was not a mark on the child—no wounds, no burns, no obvious fractures.

  But she was dead.

  “I don’t understand why she won’t wake up,” her mother argued. “We were walking together. She was holding my hand. And then…you know, I saw people starting to run, but I didn’t know why. I held her tighter. I really did! I didn’t let go!”

  A nun, a streak of blood staining her wimple, knelt beside the dazed mother and put an arm around her. “I know, dear. I saw you.”

  “You did?” the mother asked, her features lighting up. “I’m so very glad. But why won’t she wake up? She’s just sleeping, isn’t she? Isn’t she?” The mother’s voice gained a note of hysteria.

  “Sister,” Judah said, “would you like to take her into our quarters? Private Kadle will show you the way. We’ll…we’ll do what needs to be done here.”

  Throughout the day the quartet of the Tin Noses Brigade were looked upon as heroes. They dispensed comfort and instruction and reassurance to the confused and frightened and grief-stricken.

  Then came sunset.

  Judah first noticed the change in the eyes of Lance Corporal Sackett. As they continued toting supplies and helping the wounded with food and water by lamplight, Judah saw the corporal sneaking furtive glances at him, specifically at the mask over his nose and forehead.

  Nor was the captain the only one to experience the difference. “Captain,” Sergeant Walker said, “you know what? No one’s asked me for anything for the past half hour. Before that I was mobbed with folks wanting to know: ‘Where’s the water? Where’s the toilets?’ But now, nothing.” He straightened his eye patch. “I don’t mind for myself so much, but the lieutenant…it’s hit him hard. All day everybody needin’ his help and not even noticing our masks, like. Now, he says, he walks by, and a mother covers her child’s eyes, like we’re the worst thing they’ve seen today.”

  “We’re the living reminder of the horror of which today was just a sample,” Judah said. “War has forcibly come to people who yesterday or last week had simple, ordinary lives. Today they’re trying to make the best of hiding in a graveyard…and here we are, the keepers of the place.”

  Walker snorted. “Still don’t seem fair. We’re the same as we was before it got dark. They all wanted our help then.”

  “Just need to adjust their thinking,” Judah said. “Tonight everything frightens them, including us. Tomorrow’ll be better, eh, Corporal. Corporal?”

  But Lance Corporal Sackett had fled, nor was he alone in his decision. More than half of those who had sheltered in Tyne Cott left before the next sunrise. Only those with wounds or wounded family members greeted Judah and his men the next day…and they shuddered as they did so.

  PART FIVE

  A time to be born,

  and a time to die.

  ECCLESIASTES 3:2A

  11

  Papa? How do we get from here to Tyne Cott?” I smoothed the map out on my knees as Papa and I sat together on the running board and studied by the light of a cigarette lighter. Jessica and the girls slept in the back of the Fiat.

  The surrounding fields were sown with sleeping exiles—all too weary to press on in the dark. Behind them the horizon flashed and boomed from the encroaching battle.

  “This way.” Papa traced the line with his finger.

  I looked up into the star-filled sky as lightning flashed. We had come so far from Brussels. Only thirty or so miles to go until the safety of Tyne Cott! Such a distance was nothing; nothing at all for me to walk. Even with three little girls in tow, the distance on foot might be manageable. But as I considered Jessica’s swollen ankles, heavy abdomen, and spreading hips, the distance to Judah Blood and the cemetery sounded like the other side of the planet. Paris was the far side of the moon.

  “Papa? I don’t know if Jessica can.”

  “She must. She will.”

  “But the baby…”

  “We can’t stay here until it’s born.”

  “Only five miles back to Ghent. Perhaps we were wrong. Perhaps we should go back.”

  “You see those flashes of light?” Papa demanded, forcing me to examine reality. “Look. Look over there.” He swept his hand toward the glow on the horizon. “That’s Ghent. Can’t you smell the smoke?”

  I rested my head in my hands. “Oh, Papa, there must be someplace. Someplace closer.”

  “Everyone who can walk is out here. Tonight. On the road. Sleeping in the fields. With us.”

  There was a stirring in the car. Jessica’s exhausted voice called, “Thirty miles? Is that all?”

  I whispered, “You awake?”

  Jessica coughed. “Go back to Ghent? You crazy?”

  I stood and peered in through the open window. For an instant a distant explosion illuminated my sister’s face. “Can you walk thirty miles?”

  Jessica’s arms were around the girls. “As long as I’m going forward.”

  “I just thought…a bed for you. You know?”

  “What are you talking about? Go back? Loralei Bittick! I’ve got to have this baby someplace safe.”

  “I miss Mama,” I blurted. “She’d know what to do.”

  Jessica lay back, stroking Gina’s hair. “I miss her too. And you know what Mama’d say? She’d say, ‘Girls? Remember! Never look back! Somebody might be gaining on you.’” She laughed. Her laugh sounded so much like Mama’s. “Loralei, there’s just one thing. We’ve got to save the teacups. Wrap up Mama’s teacups. I can carry them.”

  Tears stung my eyes. I wiped her cheek quickly as the moisture spilled over. “All right then, Jes
sica. You’re older than me.”

  “And wiser.”

  “But I’m taller.”

  “My feet are bigger.” Jessica chuckled. “So I can walk farther. You just make sure Mama’s china is wrapped good.”

  “All right. We’ll save Mama’s teacups.”

  Papa folded the map. “It’s settled, then. You’ll save your mother’s teacups from the Blitzkrieg. And we won’t look back. Go to sleep. Get some rest. Tomorrow we start walking.”

  Before the sun rose the rolling thunder of tanks and artillery jolted me awake. Papa was already up, standing in his stocking feet, staring at the ensuing panic of civilians returning to the road.

  I called, “Theirs? Or ours?”

  He licked his lips and shook his head. “Ours, I think. In that wood, a few miles away.” As he spoke the whoosh and freight train rumble of a shell passing overhead obscured his words. A moment afterward something like a Fourth of July fireworks display erupted in the woods. “That was theirs,” he said regretfully. “The Panzers have found the range.”

  People screamed and began to run, pushing and jostling to escape.

  “Papa!” Jessica’s face was ashen as she peered out from the Fiat. “Which way will we go?”

  Hands on his hips, Papa scanned the fleecy white clouds for some sign of enemy aircraft. His eyes narrowed as he calmly observed the frantic fight of thousands to escape. He shouted to us over the noise: “They’re all going that way.”

  “Where?” I covered my ears. “Where are they going?”

  The roar of explosions drowned out his reply. He shook his head in disbelief. He pointed toward the woods and, beyond the forest, to hedgerows dividing pastures. He yelled above the tumult, “We’re going that way…off the roads…enough food and water in the pack. Tyne Cott!” His face turned away from the chaos. “Never look back.”

  Despite this warning, it was impossible to avoid looking back as we reached a still-too-close hill. Breathless from our awkward sprint, we collapsed onto our knees behind a row of trees. Lifting our faces in horrified supplication, we watched and knew who was gaining on us.

  Flashes from the French artillery emplacement winked like fireflies against the dark green backdrop of the woods.

  My count reached five before the pop of the guns reached me.

  “French 75s,” Papa observed.

  In the debate between weapons the German artillery offered an overwhelming response. Much too far away to be heard as they launched, a fearsome rain of shells fell on the French positions.

  Instead of the gentle blink of fireflies, the Nazi return fire was lightning falling from heaven, obliterating trees, brush, and French cannons.

  “German 88s,” Papa said sadly.

  One by one the French guns fell silent. The rolling barrage of the German weapons lifted to trample the field that had lately sheltered scores of families.

  “It’s good everyone left when…,” I began.

  Then the German shells tracked onto the highway, jammed with fleeing civilians gripped by the traffic and unable to move. Like giant fists slamming against an ant trail, the road jumped and buckled. A direct hit on a car left a smoking crater behind it. Bodies were flung aloft, spinning crazily before plunging back into the midst of the flames.

  Jessica was very brave, I decided.

  Very, very brave.

  Sometimes my extremely expectant sister trudged along with both hands under her belly, as if supporting an inconveniently placed and awkwardly loaded cannon ball.

  Sometimes Jessica walked bent forward, one hand pressed to the small of her back, as if the baby were carrying her instead of the other way around. I also saw that she was stepping pigeon-toed, trying to shift the weight to the outside of the soles of her feet.

  But she never complained; not once.

  “Papa,” I urged, “we need to stop. We need to rest. The girls are tired.”

  The truth of the matter was that the three young females were managing better than we adults. With barely any weight in the knapsacks on their backs, they still found energy enough to dart ahead of the group. Gina and Susan carried on animated conversations, long after Papa and Jessica and I had lapsed into the silence of misery.

  Papa was puffing, and his complexion was a sallow gray. He squinted at the sun, now dropping below the trees. “I agree. I think we’ve come far enough for one day. We’re in the valley of the Lys. If I haven’t led us too far astray since we started this cross-country jaunt, we should reach the village of Nazareth by tomorrow. We can cross the river there.”

  “Nazareth?” Gina chirped. “Is that where Jesus lives? Can we see Him?”

  Judith frowned and waved to get her sister’s attention. “Judith says He won’t welcome us,” Susan replied. “We’re not Christians.”

  Papa smiled at his granddaughter and his wards. “First of all, Judith and Susan, He most certainly would welcome you. You are children of Abraham and so was He. And He loved children and loved telling stories to children best of all. He was a famous rabbi, you know.”

  Judith continued to frown, but Susan’s eyes grew big and round. “Then why do the Hitler-men shout at us and call us Christ-killers?” the younger sister asked. “If your Jesus was a Jew, wouldn’t the Nazis have hated Him too, and tried to kill Him too?”

  “Yes,” Papa agreed. “They do hate Him and every time they hurt His people they are trying to kill Him all over again. But enough of this serious talk of hating and killing,” he said brightly. “Gina, you know Jesus lived in Nazareth a long, long time ago. And anyway, this is a village named for Jesus’ home, but not the same one He lived in.”

  “Seriously, Papa,” I asked, “can we find a place to stay in the village for tonight?” I inclined my head slightly toward Jessica, who was using both hands to rub her belly in alternating circles.

  “I wish we could. But Nazareth is where several roads come together to cross the Lys…do you understand me?”

  No more than a week earlier I would have needed further explanation as to why roads and bridges were places to avoid. Now, after getting close to war, I had begun to know how the Germans thought: locate a spot where traffic backed up and refugees crowded against army trucks. Such a location was an irresistible target for bombing and strafing.

  “I understand,” I said.

  Tucked within the band of trees was an ancient charcoal-burners hut. The roof was sway-backed and the floor dirt, but it was vacant and secluded. “I think we may borrow its use for one night,” Papa said. “And since we’ve seen no one else all day, I think we may have a fire to toast some bread and heat water for tea…a very small fire,” he cautioned.

  I made my sister sit down. Jessica had to do so in stages, like the mechanical folding of a carpenter’s rule. She leaned her back against the wall of the cabin. “Remember: stopping now was your idea,” she scolded me. “I won’t be able to get up again until tomorrow.”

  “Never mind,” I agreed. “Just let me see your feet.”

  As soon as I removed my sister’s shoes, I gasped. The soles of Jessica’s stockings were outlined with blood. “Jessica! What?”

  “Don’t tell Papa,” Jessica cautioned. “He’ll just fuss. I know you packed Mama’s nursing kit. Just let me rest them tonight, and tomorrow we’ll bandage them before we set out again. I can do this, Lor. I have to.”

  The next morning the trees and the charcoal-burner’s hut were shrouded in mist. It clung to the branches and dripped onto the turf with a soft patter like rain. I woke before the others with a sense of peace. Perhaps today we would reach Tyne Cott and relative safety. Perhaps today we would find a doctor for Jessica and her baby, who must surely be arriving soon.

  At the moment the need was fresh water. “Papa,” I whispered, “I’m going to refill our water bottles.”

  “I think there’s a meadow just west of here,” he returned, “where the valley slopes toward the river. You may find a creek there. Just don’t take any chances and don’t be gone more than
a couple minutes. And don’t…,” he added, peering out at the dense fog, “don’t get lost.”

  The thick vapor covering the copse of trees was even more dense than I first thought. By the time I had gone a handful of steps from the cottage the shelter’s humble form had completely vanished.

  The pines and spruce, laid out in orderly rows, were not native to the area. They had been planted after the Great War to hide the hideous moonscape scars of shell craters and trenches and earth works. The original beech trees were only just now struggling back to life in the isolated clumps where they had survived the conflagration.

  The replanting had been done in such a methodical manner that whichever way I faced I peered down an avenue of conifers. Papa was right, I thought. Better pick just one such vaulted row and follow it out and back. If I adopted any other course, I would never get back to the shack before the sun burned away the mist.

  Because I could not see more than a handful of steps before or behind, I began counting the trees I passed. At least I would have some record of how far I had come and how long the return should take.

  I had just reached seventy when the fog ahead began to lighten. The curtain of vapor parted enough for me to see I had reached the edge of the wood.

  As I reached out to touch the branch tips of the last spruce before the meadow, I had a sudden appreciation for the friendly corridor of trees. The fog was still dense up ahead, but there were no well-defined passages, just a great, gray void. All the openings back into the rows of trees looked the same. How could I mark the one out of which I had come so as to find it again?

  There was a handkerchief in my jacket. I tied it around the outstretched arm of the spruce. Even if I wandered a bit on my return, eventually I would find this marker again.

  Besides, I told myself, if I went straight out and straight back, how lost could I get? I would have to attempt it. If I turned back now, Jessica would tease me.

  I marched resolutely forward. Papa had been right again. The meadow sloped gently westward. There must be water somewhere nearby.