wanting to laugh, and feeling slightly ridiculous, too.
When Fletcher looked up, she said, “I think Jane needs a man in her sights rather than a tree”—her voice as serious as if by “a man” she meant a German soldier. She cut me a sly look only when Fletcher again tended to the gun.
Liv hadn’t done much better when her turn with the pistol came, but then Fletcher hadn’t put his arms around her to show her how to shoot.
That was the first of our daily shooting lessons, after which Fletcher left the gun with us and set off in the jeep for the press camp at the Vouilly Château. He went to the ten a.m. press briefings most mornings, and sometimes to the late-afternoon ones as well. He went to deliver his film to a contact who sent it on to military intelligence so it could be used to plan the attack. Or that’s where he said he was going, anyway, often giving us shooting lessons first and always leaving us the Webley, always asking Liv and me if we were sure we didn’t want him to send out our work. He could have slept nights at the press camp, in a dry tent in the château’s pasture, waking to pressed clothes and a hot breakfast, food not scooped from ration tins but rather served on china that was washed afterward by staff while he attended the press briefings in the château’s living room. But sleeping at the press camps would have meant leaving Liv and me.
I saw him headed away from the press camp, though, when he said that was where he was going, and in the hours before dawn, too. The Germans were just a few thousand yards away here, so he used his telephoto lens to peer over at them, capturing what the terrain on the German side was like, what equipment they had, and how they were dug in. I didn’t know whether Fletcher would go beyond the front into German territory, but I tried to watch him go whenever he left us, in case he didn’t come back. I had no idea what I would do if he didn’t return, but I knew that if it were Liv and I, he would comeafter us, and it seemed I ought to at least know where someone might begin to look for him if it ever came to that.
W e gathered with a number of other journalists and military men in the bombed-out farmyard each morning, already used to the stench of dead cows. Ernie Pyle was there. Fletcher introduced us to the Scripps-Howard columnist, who took off his helmet and smiled shyly, his eyes about the saddest I’d ever seen. I took his hand, not quite a handshake—so few men could comfortably greet a professional gal. His palm was sweaty-nervous in mine.
“Looks like a lousy day for a bombing, doesn’t it?” he said.
I remembered a column of his I’d read, one from Africa: Pyle had shared a ditch with an American soldier during a German strafing run, and when the plane was gone he’d tapped the soldier on the shoulder and said that had been close, hadn’t it? The soldier hadn’t answered him, though—the boy was dead.
Pyle said to Liv and me, “There’s a snowdrop making his way around this splendid French countryside looking for you.” He ran a hand through his hair—red and thinning, and gray at the temples. “But I suppose you know that?”
I scanned the barnyard almost involuntarily. Military men were everywhere, but none were wearing the snowdrop-white helmet, gloves, and belt that distinguished the US Army military police from anyone else in a class A uniform.
Liv said, “A snowdrop,” repeating Pyle’s words without appearing to care as much as I knew she did.
“Average height and build, with a ridiculous little mustache and a nose tilted just so.” Pyle tipped his nose up comically. “As if to sniff for prey. Piggy, almost colorless eyes, too—although you don’t want to get close enough to him to see that.”
“Wouldn’t I?” Liv said with a lift of one dark brow. Then, “I hope you’ve worn your track spikes, Mr. Pyle. Miss Tyler and I plan to sprint the whole distance to Paris once we’ve broken through the
When Fletcher looked up, she said, “I think Jane needs a man in her sights rather than a tree”—her voice as serious as if by “a man” she meant a German soldier. She cut me a sly look only when Fletcher again tended to the gun.
Liv hadn’t done much better when her turn with the pistol came, but then Fletcher hadn’t put his arms around her to show her how to shoot.
That was the first of our daily shooting lessons, after which Fletcher left the gun with us and set off in the jeep for the press camp at the Vouilly Château. He went to the ten a.m. press briefings most mornings, and sometimes to the late-afternoon ones as well. He went to deliver his film to a contact who sent it on to military intelligence so it could be used to plan the attack. Or that’s where he said he was going, anyway, often giving us shooting lessons first and always leaving us the Webley, always asking Liv and me if we were sure we didn’t want him to send out our work. He could have slept nights at the press camp, in a dry tent in the château’s pasture, waking to pressed clothes and a hot breakfast, food not scooped from ration tins but rather served on china that was washed afterward by staff while he attended the press briefings in the château’s living room. But sleeping at the press camps would have meant leaving Liv and me.
I saw him headed away from the press camp, though, when he said that was where he was going, and in the hours before dawn, too. The Germans were just a few thousand yards away here, so he used his telephoto lens to peer over at them, capturing what the terrain on the German side was like, what equipment they had, and how they were dug in. I didn’t know whether Fletcher would go beyond the front into German territory, but I tried to watch him go whenever he left us, in case he didn’t come back. I had no idea what I would do if he didn’t return, but I knew that if it were Liv and I, he would comeafter us, and it seemed I ought to at least know where someone might begin to look for him if it ever came to that.
W e gathered with a number of other journalists and military men in the bombed-out farmyard each morning, already used to the stench of dead cows. Ernie Pyle was there. Fletcher introduced us to the Scripps-Howard columnist, who took off his helmet and smiled shyly, his eyes about the saddest I’d ever seen. I took his hand, not quite a handshake—so few men could comfortably greet a professional gal. His palm was sweaty-nervous in mine.
“Looks like a lousy day for a bombing, doesn’t it?” he said.
I remembered a column of his I’d read, one from Africa: Pyle had shared a ditch with an American soldier during a German strafing run, and when the plane was gone he’d tapped the soldier on the shoulder and said that had been close, hadn’t it? The soldier hadn’t answered him, though—the boy was dead.
Pyle said to Liv and me, “There’s a snowdrop making his way around this splendid French countryside looking for you.” He ran a hand through his hair—red and thinning, and gray at the temples. “But I suppose you know that?”
I scanned the barnyard almost involuntarily. Military men were everywhere, but none were wearing the snowdrop-white helmet, gloves, and belt that distinguished the US Army military police from anyone else in a class A uniform.
Liv said, “A snowdrop,” repeating Pyle’s words without appearing to care as much as I knew she did.
“Average height and build, with a ridiculous little mustache and a nose tilted just so.” Pyle tipped his nose up comically. “As if to sniff for prey. Piggy, almost colorless eyes, too—although you don’t want to get close enough to him to see that.”
“Wouldn’t I?” Liv said with a lift of one dark brow. Then, “I hope you’ve worn your track spikes, Mr. Pyle. Miss Tyler and I plan to sprint the whole distance to Paris once we’ve broken through the
Similar Books
