“Yeah, but they haven’t been in it as long. They’re fresher. We’ve been at it for four and a half years. They’ve been at it for two, and they’re only training them as flight nurses now. It’s a whole new game for them.”
“True,” Emma said. She couldn’t deny it. She felt as though she had grown up here, or maybe just grown old. It was hard to feel young with what they saw every day, so much tragedy and loss of life, such a waste of human beings, lives that were cut short, and dreams that ended with a single bullet or a bomb.
They walked to the nurses’ barracks since they weren’t in a hurry, and it was nice to get fresh air after a day with the smell of blood, burned and torn flesh, vomit, and disinfectant all around them. They both took deep breaths of the evening air and the smell of the earth.
There were clusters of women in uniform outside the dormitory, and as they walked past them, Pru and Emma could hear American accents mixed with English ones, from all walks of life. There were a group of Australian nurses banded together, laughing at something. And as they walked into the building, Pru spotted the women she had met the day before. They had notebooks in their hands and had just come in from their day in the classroom. Pru stopped to talk to Alex, and then introduced Emma to all the girls she’d met.
“So did you learn all about the RAF today?” Pru asked them with a wry grin. “Tell them to hurry the hell up. We need you in the air with us, and you won’t need all those protocols once you get up there. You know as much as we do, or you wouldn’t be here. And I hear your air evac training is hell on wheels.” They all laughed and agreed with her.
“It almost killed me,” Lizzie said, and Audrey nodded.
“Can we talk you into dinner at the pub, or are you in love with the fine cuisine in our mess hall?”
“It’s no worse than ours,” Alex answered generously, although they had all agreed after the night before that it quite possibly was worse, due to the rigors of rationing and food in short supply. The whole country was hungry and being short rationed.
“The pub sounds like a nice change,” Louise said politely, and Emma smiled.
“It’s all we’ve got if we don’t want the slop they serve here,” she said, and the others laughed. The six of them headed toward the pub a few minutes later. They were all happy to order a pint of ale or a glass of wine, and they ordered sausages and beans, and a wartime version of shepherd’s pie, which bore little resemblance to what it used to taste like before the war. But it was food, and the beer and wine raised their spirits after a long day.
“When do you start flying with us?” Emma asked them. She liked Lizzie and Louise and had talked to both of them. Audrey and Alex were talking to Pru. Emma decided Pru was right. They were nice women. She hoped they were good nurses too.
“They said next week,” Louise answered. “Or the others will. They’re assigning me to the hospital at first, and I have to do a rotation with the injured German POWs they have in a locked ward on the base.”
“Oh that.” Pru glanced at Emma knowingly, who nodded, and then Pru spoke to Louise to give her the straight scoop, in case no one had. “We don’t have segregation in our army the way you do in yours, but there are some ‘special assignments’ reserved for colored nurses, British nurses too, not just Americans. The German POWs are one of them. Just about all their nurses are colored, and they do a rotation at the hospital before they fly the transports with us. There’s no segregation in the dorms, you can room with whoever you want. And you can date whoever you want, but you get stuck with German POWs. I have no idea why. I guess no one else wants to manage them.”
“It’s still better than what happens at home. My father didn’t want me to enlist because the army is notorious for how segregated it is. And there’s not a single Black nurse in the navy. So whatever happens here is an improvement. I’m glad they let me enlist in the air evac training, and I was the only woman of color in it. I don’t think they accept many.”
“You’re probably a damn good nurse, and they knew it,” Pru said fairly, and the others nodded. Louise was smart and dedicated. She had been a wonderful addition to their group, but they were well aware that in certain parts of the United States she would have been in an all-Black unit, and wouldn’t have been allowed to treat white patients. She was better off in England, from what Pru was saying. She hadn’t met any odd stares since they’d landed. And she could tell from the way men on the base had looked at her that they didn’t have the same taboos and prejudices here. They looked at her as they would have any other woman, not as an object of hatred, unbridled lust, or disdain. She felt like an ordinary person here, she could already tell. Although POW duty didn’t sound enticing, particularly caring for their enemies, and it wasn’t why she had come to England. She had come to fly on the air evacuation teams, but it sounded like she would get there eventually. She just had to go through some extra steps, which was still a better deal than she would have gotten in the States, where she would have been treated like a second-class citizen, or even subhuman, by some ignorant whites.
“Okay, so let’s get down to the important stuff,” Pru said after they ordered their second round of wine and ale. “Who has a boyfriend and who doesn’t?” They all laughed at the question.
“We’re a sorry lot,” Alex answered for them. “I don’t. I enlisted in order to avoid being married off to any dreary banker my parents considered socially desirable in New York. I bolted and went to nursing school, enlisted in the army after Pearl Harbor, and haven’t had a date since, or not one I cared about. My mother assures me that men hate women in ugly uniforms or with jobs. She says khaki’s not my color, and I look like hell in pants.” Pru and Emma laughed heartily at her blunt honesty, which was Alex’s usual style.
Audrey went next. “No boyfriend for me either. My father died when I was fifteen, nine years ago, and my mother got seriously ill after that. I went to nursing school so I could take better care of her. She passed away a few months ago, and I had been taking care of her until then. I enlisted when she died, this is my first assignment. I was always afraid to leave her at night, and taking care of her, I never had a chance to meet any boys. I’ve never had a real date or fallen in love. Maybe it will happen here.” She blushed as she said it. It wasn’t her primary goal, but a possibility for all of them.
“I certainly hope so,” Pru said.
Lizzie went next and kept it brief. “I was in love with Audrey’s brother for two years before he noticed me. Audrey and I went to nursing school together,” she explained. “He was in the navy, stationed in Honolulu, and we went to visit him as a graduation present from Audrey’s mom. He finally noticed me. We fell in love.” Her eyes filled with tears then. “He was the greatest guy I’ll ever know. Three weeks later, they bombed Pearl Harbor, and he was killed. That was a little more than two years ago. I haven’t had a date since and don’t care. I came here to work, that’s all I want.” She smiled and brushed the tears off her cheeks, and Emma patted her hand.