In the early hours Johnny had woken up. The first thing he was aware of was intense pain in his head. It hurt to open his eyes. He was on his back in bed that much he realised. Light was coming in from a window behind him. He closed his eyes and slept some more. When he woke again there was someone else in the room with him. Johnny tried to get out of bed, his eyes only half open.
“No!” the strong female hands were there again and they stopped him easily “You must rest.”
“I want to go. I don’t want to be here.”
“I know but you can’t go anywhere until the Doctor has seen you. He will be here soon,” the female voice said.
Johnny left hospital the following day. During his stay he had gotten to see the owner of that sweet voice.
She was a young pretty nurse with beautiful eyes and long dark curly hair tied in a bun and held by pins and her nurse’s hood. By the time he left he knew that he was in love with her. He was devastated that it was her day off when he was released. He enquired as to her name and had to ask half a dozen people before any one could tell him.
“Margaret Harris.”
No one would give him her address but he was promised by one of her friends that if he wrote to her at the hospital the letter would be forwarded to her.
Feeling on top of the world a bandaged Johnny Larder waited with his friends at the bus stop for the bus home. As soon as he got home he began writing to her. Then they had begun dating and their love grew. They often talked of the future, of children, of old age, of the things they would do, the places they would see. Then one day the news came that they had been dreading.
He was joining the eighth army as an engineer.
Their world was suddenly torn apart. They were devastated. They spent their last remaining hours trying to put off the inevitable. Margaret didn’t know why she did it, and knowing it would probably make matters worse she let him take her virginity and as she lay there as he panted in her ear she knew that this was it between them. She couldn’t carry on with him so far away from her for who knew for how long. She didn’t want to spend her days worrying about him.
He tried to see her at the hospital but the sister told him she couldn’t be spared the few minutes because there was a serious car accident case coming in. A dejected Johnny Larder left wanting to smash the hospital up.
The following day he left for North Africa.
The letter from Margaret ending their relationship arrived almost a month later.
Johnny was heart broken and every time he’d been alone he’d had tears in his eyes. He had tried to get out of the army but was refused. He had even considered suicide.
Then unexpectedly a new letter from Margaret arrived. The one he was reading now and it lifted his spirits to a new height, a plane he had never reached before in life.
She was coming to him.
To Cairo to be precise.
In this new letter she had apologised for ending their relationship and explained that she didn’t think that she could cope with them being so far apart and that she’d panicked. She had applied to nurse in the British hospital in Cairo and had been accepted.
Johnny read her words again. She had included a tiny piece of lace that she’d cut from her lingerie and had glued it inside the letter to remind him of what he was missing. He had kept this out of sight of the others because he thought they would probably make fun of him.
He couldn’t wait to see her. He would visit her in Cairo next time he got some leave.
“Let me know when you’re coming Johnny and I’ll get my leave arranged for the same time.”
Johnny hated the thought of the servicemen in the hospital looking at and touching his Margaret, his sweetheart. They laying in their crisp, clean bed sheets. Her in her crisp, clean uniform. The men laying there all day watching her bottom wiggle. She unaware of the lustful looks as she went about her work. Them all so far away from and so safe from the war.
He couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Every day she held a man’s hand while he slipped from this life to the next. The smell of decaying flesh surrounding them. Of blood, pus, burned skin, charred flesh. Margaret knew that the stench would stay with her for the rest of her life.
How could she forget?
When grown men whimpered like babies and called for their mothers. Some just passed away, their eyes glazing over, never wanting or asking for anything. Dying thousands of miles from home in a war that wasn’t theirs.
Johnny tried to put the negative thoughts away as he re-read her words. Then he kissed the small piece of lace and folded the letter and put it away.
There were two black dots in the sky. Johnny screwed his eyes up to see them better.
They were probably birds. Two big black birds, flying to only god knows where in the endless rolling dunes of the Sahara.
‘Maybe they’ve found a corpse,’ Johnny thought.
He laughed as he saw some of his mates rugby tackle Alf to the ground. For a ball they were using a rolled up jacket tied with string.
The two dots appeared to be heading straight for them.
Johnny watched them. Then he heard the drone of the engines.
Alf spat out dust, the others pinning him down. Then as one they all looked up into the sky.
Billy Mitchell loved flying. It had been his dream since childhood. Since he had been able to walk and talk he’d wanted to fly. As a child he spent all of his time making model aeroplanes. His big break had come at eighteen when he had been accepted into the rapidly forming U.S air corps. Just a year after pearl harbour he was now a veteran at twenty one.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see the other plane. He glanced across to it. It was his buddy Chuck Holts. They were part of a patrol that were on the look out for German convoys. This morning they had flown out over the sea looking for shipping and too small a detachment to attack marine convoys they had headed inland in a wide sweep towards Matmata. As they circled the hills they had seen the dust column near the village and had climbed to five thousand feet to avoid detection. They had kept close to the mountains for cover, banked and now descended to a thousand feet and were heading straight for the stationary convoy.
Chuck opened up his throttle, gave a “Whoo hooooo!” into his headset and zoomed in for the kill.
The two pilots could see men on the ground running to their trucks for cover. They dropped to a hundred feet and closed in.
Chuck opened fire at five hundred yards distance. It was good to get some action after weeks of finding nothing to shoot at.
Johnny saw the bullets that were coming for him. They kicked up tarmac, stones, dirt and dust as they raced past either side of him. The plane screamed over head and was soon lost by the buildings.
“Johnny take cover!” Alf was shouting.
Larder was still in the same place trying to load his gun. He cocked it just in time and sighted on the planes as they made their second run. Johnny aimed and pulled the trigger.
Click!
Nothing happened.
The sten had jammed.
He was forced to run for cover as the bullets ripped up the ground around him. Two of the men weren’t so lucky, falling to the ground with their legs shot up. Alf and Wilf Burroughs dashed out to them as once again the planes turned. They dragged the groaning wounded men to safety.