#junojelli

The station was full of families, waiting expectantly in their best coats and hats, tearful mothers and smiling wives, and he realized, belatedly, that he should have asked for the color of her coat.

"John! John Brady!"

There she was, in Alice blue, and suddenly he couldn't see, his eyes filled with tears and nothing like he'd rehearsed it. He dropped his duffel, unable to move, and Fred was moving quick enough for the both of them and then she was with him and his arms were blindly, awkwardly around her. "Fred."

"What, did you think I was going to leave you here all alone?" Fred chided with a smile, her voice warm in his ear.

"Was afraid you wouldn't recognize me," he admitted, still hugging her close. Fred! Here! Not a dream and not a ghost, only the thing he had longed for.

"It would take a lot longer than that to forget your face," she said, and he could hear the tears in her own voice. "But this one doesn't know you just yet," she offered, pulling away just a little so the child in her arms could look up, confused by the sudden emotion and her mother's apparent distress. The little face turned, all red cheeks and curious eyes, pressing back into the familiar confines of her mother's coat, and John felt the tears start up again. She's so big! "Do you want to smile for Daddy, Aggie?" Fred asked, glancing into the child's bright blue eyes, and Brady could feel his own eyes tearing up at the sound of Daddy and Aggie and Fred's gentle child-sized question, recognizing the gaze as a perfect little copy of his own. This is mine! This is my daughter!

The glasses with blinkers that initially the women of the ATS had initially baulked at wearing had become as integral to their kit as their binoculars. A few days of a cloudless sky, and looking directly towards the sun (because that's how the enemy hid their approaches on a clear day) had left them all in bed with various migraines and spot blindness. After that, every spotter had honed her wire frames to fit well without indenting or falling off.

She had been doing just that, adjusting the arms and cleaning the lenses ready for the start of her shift when the rhythmic trot of boots on concrete came past the command post. She hadn’t meant to look up at them, except Janet who was manning the post with her asked her to check the range on the scope, and she had looked up from her fiddling as they jogged past.

Of course, her looking up at the passing platoon for a fraction of a second was enough to warrant a chorus of whistles and shouts now the men realised they had an audience. Their lieutenant, a short curly haired fellow shouted for them to quieten down as they went past, but even he had a smile on his face. She heard Janet next to her sigh and mutter to herself about ‘don't encourage them by noticing them’.

Yet it was rather hard not to notice the Americans at Upottery. Firstly, it was the largest group of men her age she had seen assembled since the arrivals back from Dunkirk back in ‘40. Secondly they were loud. Forever yelling, shouting or cracking jokes. Occasionally they just fought with each other for the hell of it, and they weren’t even drunk. Thirdly, they were all under lockdown together at the airfield. There were a dozen ATS ladies on base, and even with the glasses, brodie helmets and their tents being segregated by barbed wire, they stood out like a sore thumb.

‘Hey, HEY doll! What’s your name?’

‘-you look swell without them goggles on!’

‘Where you from, honey?’

The shouts were enough to make Harriet quickly look back down to her glasses in her lap and place them on her face. She was used to the shouts by now after several days, but the novelty hadn’t worn off for the Yanks. Something about them not being used to women stationed in men’s roles on the homefront. They, the ATS women were also as Janet had grimly said in the tent the previous night, ‘convenient’. With no pubs, beaches or villages in beautiful Devon to invade, they took what chances they could. Being fenced in under lockdown could only mean one thing, something big was about to happen. Any fool knew that the sheer numbers of these men gathering along the southern coast of England meant that something ‘big’ was at work, but being under lock and key with sentries patrolling the perimeter meant that it was imminent.

Such thoughts had left her with a lump in her throat. How many of these men were to die before their feet hit the ground? How many would return to England? How many would make it home over the seas? If she looked at them, could she tell which ones would make it? Or is war just a game of undiscriminating luck? It had all begun with brothers of friends she had danced with at parties, or someone she knew from church. She would receive a letter from a friend, a cousin or her mother telling her ‘dear Alice’s boy, Michael, who was a lieutenant with the Worcestershires has been killed in Burma’. The worst was meeting an old friend for afternoon tea, and asking after their beau, only for the friend’s composure to drop for a moment, enough for one to know the answer is ‘departed from here’. It had become the kind thing to not ask, but instead offer your own news delivered with the British stiff upper lip. Over the years, many of the young men standing alongside her in photos or in memories all faded away leaving a few remaining, who still weren't home.

She wondered if the men knew she was thinking this, if they were thinking about their own imminent mortality and deciding to embrace what potential few days of peace they had left in England. She couldn’t begrudge them that, taking the chance to call at a couple of women manning a spotter telescope with no other pretty girls around to entertain at a pub on a Friday evening. Still, she wouldn’t encourage it. No good would come from being chatted up by some handsome (yes, she did have eyes that off-duty would look at her surroundings) young men about to jump to their fates across the seas. She knew she was a convenient distraction. Best to look past the white shirts and fatigue trousers towards the horizon.

It was the second to last man on the nearside of the group that had turned to look at her that caught her attention. He hadn’t yelled, or called out, he was just smiling. He looked happy. It had been so long since she was truly happy, it was warming to see it on the face of another person. It was a quick, slight movement of his arm that turned into a slight wave at her, and his head had locked with hers and had kept his attention, even as he jogged past he craned to look at her. A well meaning shove from a fellow soldier behind him and a quip ‘Forward, Smoke, or I swear you’re gonna trip over those big ass feet again’ broke the moment, and he was off and away.

In retrospect, Harriet felt foolish. There was no moment, was there? He could have been looking at Janet. She had been wearing her glasses for heaven's sakes, so she could have been looking anywhere. Perhaps it was her lipstick, her own little streak of personality in her uniform that she had retained over the years. She didn't even know what this man looked like, except that he was a tad taller than the rest of the group around him. He had a nickname ‘Smoke’, but was it even a nickname? Was that just some name Americans made for each other? (One of the girls in their tent had said one tried to introduce himself as ‘Gonorrhoea’!) But he had smiled at her, and for the first time in years, she felt herself smile back. That was worth something, wasn’t it? Or was she getting khaki fever suddenly in her 4th year of the war?

Today, all the men were laying out their gear on the runways, a sea of olive drab littered with C47s. It was impossible to tell who was who, particularly with half the tarmac covered in camo cream and wearing their helmets. She sighed, leaned back in her seat at the battery and brought her binoculars up to her eyes. The best she could do now for this soldier was to do what she did best: keep watch, call in the range and bearing on any enemy aircraft she sighted, and give him a fighting chance before he landed on his feet. If it was meant to be, luck would bring him back her way again.

More about the ATS enemy aircraft spotters here. A lovely oral history from a former ATS spotter and gunner is available here.

I decided to place this in Upottery as I drove past it yesterday, and its a very tense part of the first episode for all involved.

Kitty’s last letter is still in his pocket. He read it ten times since this morning, vibrating with anticipation of finally seeing her again. After two years — and hell, if it doesn’t feel longer than that! It feels like Harry’s spent a lifetime without his love… missing her, dreaming of her, haunted by her in the morphine-hazy days while his wound was healing. He imagined her specter in the frigid Bastogne woods, slipping through skeleton-tree silhouettes. He imagined brushing the snow from her eyelashes, dancing with her around the drifts and bomb craters, kissing life back into her frozen hands as they grew blue and lifeless…

Kitty’s been with him in a thousand ways since the last time he saw here. There were her letters, of course, endlessly cheerful and full of rambling stories from home — he saved every one. Then the care packages, knitted mittens and homemade cookies gone stale over the long journey… that picture she had taken in her favorite pearls, just because he asked her for a new one. The articles she sent from home, the Wilkes-Barre Journal mentioning their hometown heroes by name. The letter with a red-lipsticked kiss pressed into the bottom of the paper, Christ Almighty…

He’s been dreaming of Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, for so long… that not seeing her feels like a punch to the gut.

He gave her the right time, didn’t he? The right day? She knows when he’s supposed to be pulling in, he made sure of that —

Another soldier shoulders past, nearly knocking him over. A protest is already on Harry’s lips when he turns, to see the man being embraced by a well-dressed woman. He loops his arms around her waist, swinging her off her feet; she lets out a noise that sounds like a sob, rumbling his uniform as she grips him.

For a minute, he can’t help staring. Something sour and sharp twists in his stomach, a longing he can’t grasp with both hands. When Harry finally tears his gaze away, his throat feels tight.

She said she’d be here…

Slowly, he shuffled forward along the platform. It isn’t crowded, but he searches each face all the same. A telltale flash somewhere, that’s all he’s looking for — a head full of bouncy curls, a smile that could light up the night sky, a sparkling laugh or bell-clear voice calling his name…

He sits down on the bench. He waits.

He’s all alone.

Ten minutes pass, then half an hour. By the time the crowd has thinned down to nothing, the sun is already starting to set on the horizon. Against a backdrop of gold and salmon, shadows stretch longer, and the train station feels lonelier than ever. Harry exhales, long and low, through pursed lips. There’s a paperback in his bag  ---  he finished it on the train  ---  and a half-done crossword puzzle he picked up in New York City, but he doesn’t feel like either of them. If he looks away for a second...  well, the irrational thought’s caught hold in his head that Kitty will slip by and he’ll miss her.

She’s not coming. That’s the other irrational thought, a thousand times worse than the one before. As the moments tick by, the more likely it seems. Nixon’s teasing words ring in his ears  ---   if she hasn’t run off with some 4-F by now...   that’s not even funny...

He scrubs his palms against his knees, nauseous. Jumping into Normandy wasn’t as bad as this. Even then, he had Kitty’s photo in his pocket, and the reassurance of her kisses as soon as he got back, if he got back. Now, it’s a different uncertainty, a buzzing dread that stirs his nerves into an electric storm. He never worried about coming home hurt, even coming home in a box...  because at least then he thought Kitty would be there to welcome him back.

He’s made it back in one piece, and she’s not here.

Something inside feels like it’s breaking. Harry pushes it down, smothering it like the burn of sore muscles and frostbite. Worse pain than this, he reminds himself. You’re a paratrooper. A tough son-of-a-bitch. Paratroopers don’t cry, damn it.

When he rises from the bench, heaving his bag up with him, he doesn’t...  even if his eyes sting, and his throat feels too tight to force out a word if he tried.

He could walk home, he considers, making his way to the stairs leading down from the platform. Hitchhike? Maybe some nice Patriot will offer a ride to a guy in uniform. He’s been travelling all day, and he’s rather not heave this bag all the way back to his mother’s house  ---

The stairs are steep, several flights descending down in a long stretch to the parking lot below. Bathed in dying gold light, Harry can just make out each step...  and a figure, too far away to make out, at the very bottom of the stairs.

She’s wearing a mint green dress, and a hat with a turned up brim. Her hair flies about like it’s escaped from their pins in some struggle  ---  curls, he realizes, catching the light like liquid gold. She stumbles on the bottom step, obviously in a hurry, and only catches herself with one hand on the railing.

Harry’s looking down. She looks up.

Their eyes meet, and the world explodes into radiant color.

“Oh my God  ---” From a distance, he registers his bag dropping to the ground; but Harry’s too caught up to notice, too busy throwing himself forward down the stairs. It’s quicker going down than going up...  but she’s moving just as fast, practically bounding up the steps in unsteady kitten heels.  (She hates heels, can’t stand them, swears she’ll only wears them for special occasions  ---)

They meet each other halfway.

Kitty laughs out loud as she falls into his arms. Immediately, he’s gripping her like a lifeline, like he’s parachuted into the ocean and she’s the only raft keeping him afloat. He presses his face into his hair, inhaling the sweet smell of her, registering her urgent babble from a distance.

“I’m so sorry, the car broke down, I waited at the side of the road for an hour, a nice lady had to stop and show me how to fix it, I was worried for you the whole time  ---”

“I knew you’d come,” he breathes.

Kitty pulls back, hands on his shoulders; her eyes are wide, impossible sweet and unbearably earnest. “Of course I would. You silly, silly man.”

He always imagined that their first kiss would be sweet — something tender, like a reward for making it back alive. Instead, he kisses her like a drowning man desperate for air. His hand knots in her tangled curls; she grips his shoulders fiercely, and presses back with all the fire he remembers, what he fell in love with in the first place. She holds him like she’s determined to never let go again. Kitty presses against him, body angling into his own, and Harry grips her like a prayer. Until the sharp tang of salt forces its way into their kiss, he doesn’t realize he’s crying. When he pulls back, breathing hard, tears streak Kitty’s rosy cheeks as well.

“No, no,” he hushes, wiping them hastily with his thumbs before pressing another kiss to his brow. “I’m home… I can’t believe I’m really home.”

“I missed you so much,” she declares, caressing his cheek like she’s trying to memorize the outline of his face. When Harry breaks into a grin, she beams back, managing a shaky giggle.

Forget the ships, forget the trains… seeing that smile is what truly brings him home.