World War II: Duffy Bracken and Summer3ve

Summer3ve · Jan 30, 2013

[FONT=&quot]The sound of the sirens rang out over the field, an all too familiar sound. This siren only bared the sound of wounded soldiers and scream in pain. Blue eyes looked up at the sound of the men yelling as they ran to gather weapons and to their stations. The young woman of only nineteen moved away from the window and towards a groaning lieutenant. He had come in about a month and a half again. He had come in with three privates and another commanding officer; it had been one of the worse injuries that Ann Marie had been part of from the beginning. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]"Lieutenant Johnson! Bring the water!" Colonel Smith yelled at the top of his lungs. The sound of men yelling and hissing in pain rang through the room. Ann Marie brought the water and bandages placing it as calmly as she could on the table between the lieutenant and one of the privates. Anne Marie did her best of trying to cool what she could with his burns as the doctor tried to remove as much as shrapnel as he could with the man moving in pain. Another nurse helped dose the morphine. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]"Shhh, it's going to be alright," Ann Marie cooed softly running her hand through his hair trying to get him as not to allow shock to happen. Her hands dipping the new rags into the new ointment another nurse had brought for the burns. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Ann Marie looked up quickly as the sound of the doctor cursing loudly. The other commanding officer that had been just been shaking violently was now still and the empty look in his eyes looked back at her. Her eyes slowly went back to the lieutenant that was starting to shake slowly. Her hand grabbed his hand as she ignored the burns as to keep him as calm as possible. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]"Hey there son, it's gonna be alright," She spoke softly, her southern accent coming out in her lower voice. "Shhhh." Her hand ran back through his hair again, and her body half leaned over him. He was just about to have the stitches taken out, and there was no need to have them ripped out now. The other nurse that was currently in the room watched her, before checking on a few of the men that were awake. [/FONT]

Duffy Bracken · Jan 31, 2013

Pain had become part of the very day for the soldiers of Normandy. Wherever French, British, or the sporadic American that had filtered across the Atlantic, all were brought together in a common, horrific unity. Loss of time went hand in hand with the patients of the Royal Adriane, the military hospital established in the border town of Alsace Lorraine after Germany's push into Western Europe. Lieutenant Benson had been told, several times, that he had been here eight weeks, but each informing kindness of the staff came just before, or just after a morphine shot.

He looked up into the nurses' eyes as she tended to him. It was the same, all too kind face that had been part of his dreams and nightmares alike since the incident. Many military and civilian personal had been and gone, some only passed by and muttered, others came to inspect, and to congratulate him on bravery he could not remember. He wished they would leave, except for her…the accent was a sure sign she was near, and his injuries, though constantly ablaze, seemed to sooth when he heard her voice.

"Are you…an angel?" he asked, a croaky voice with a less than soft Kentish accent broadly declaring his epiphany to the ward. She smiled weakly, clenched his hand tighter, and shook her head. "Shame…" he said, "you look like one." He tensed. He could only guess that, whatever was coming, it would revive all the agonies he had felt and all the memories the drugs, and his own shame, had tried so hard to bury.

He was far away from London now. He was far away from the mechanical engineers, the camaraderie, and the grease. His world had become a white washed chamber, which smelt constantly of Listerine and iodine, and there were only Mother Mary paintings and ironic crosses on the walls. A bright red cross, chipped, bullet riddled, and defiant of the nearby battle lines was all he could see through the window over his bed. It was the only way he knew he was safe, when she wasn't there to guide him.

"Okay…" he said, realising she was waiting for his consent. He nodded, his wet, sweaty forehead glistening beneath the glare of the morning sunlight as it streamed own across the hospital. He strained to move his head to the side, revealing a cocked smile full of cheeky indecision, and clenched his teeth when he heard the familiar sound of tools clattering on a gurney. This would not be pretty.

Summer3ve · Jan 31, 2013

[FONT=&quot]Ann Marie watched at the young man as he started to relax and talk and a little bit as his comments starting to release a soft smile from her. "Wounded and still managing to have charm," She teased letting out a soft laugh as she pulled his blanket back up over him. The sound of the men kept ringing through even if the siren had stopped it calling. She could hear the shots ringing out. A sound that use to cause jumps from the young woman were nothing more than background noise that she had learned to block out. Other nurses started coming into the room to keep as many of the men they could calm. When the shots rang out, it was always the worse. Ann Marie could not wait until the men managed to push the Germans back and gain more control. God knows it would make this base camp just a bit easier.

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[FONT=&quot]She watched his head turn slightly towards her. She looked at his cocked smile as he spoke a pain-filled okay. She reached over and grabbed a towel taking the sweat off his forehead. "Why don' you just relax? I'll be back as soon as I'm able," She spoke, putting the towel back in the water. She gave his hand one last squeeze as the sound of the old too familiar gurney came through the halls. The doctor was soon within the room and yelling for help. Ann Marie along with an older woman, Katie, rushed over to help anyway they could. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The young man had been hit twice in the shoulder and once in the side. Ann Marie started to administer as much morphine as possible to keep the solider relaxed. They had seen wounds like these and it would only be a matter of time before he would be sitting up and talking, as long as shock did not creep into the picture as it normally did….

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[FONT=&quot]Within a few hours the last shot rang out and the men were once again at a stalemate. It had been the day with the fewest men wounded. Ann Marie was put back in the intensive care as well as a British nurse around her own age, Jenny. The first soldier of the day was sent to Out Patient Care seeing as he would be going home within a few days. His shoulder bone was too far damaged to handle going back out on the battle ground. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Ann Marie had been changing the bandages on a Major that had come in nearly two weeks before the Lieutenant and two privates. The wound were nearly the same, but the Major had very few less burns. "Ann, would you mind changing the Lieutenant's. I need to finish the privates yet, and he seems to be the calmest with you," Jenny explained walking over to the Major's bed and talking a smoothing tone.

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[FONT=&quot]"It's because he likes me," She joked in a childish voice, as Jenny shook her head and walked away.

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[FONT=&quot]"Well, you never know!"

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[FONT=&quot]"I didn't join for the same reasons you did," Ann Marie called after her, going towards the supply cabinet to grab the bandages and ointment for the burns. She walked over towards the Lieutenant, placing her hand against his sweating forehead. "How are we doing, Lieutenant?" [/FONT]

Duffy Bracken · Feb 6, 2013

William watched the nurse approach. He tried, very hard, not to break into a weak smile when she neared, but he was unable to contain himself. She had that effect on him; an angelic gleaming.

"Not too bad," he croaked, trying to sit upright with her help.

When he was seated, thick, coarsely filled cushions propping him up against the white iron frame of the bed, he stopped smiling. She began to dress his leg wound, pulling back the sheet, cloth, and bed clothing with indifference. She had skills with a needle and gauze that he could only begin to fathom. He had grown to admire her, as much as be drawn to her; to all the staff in the hospital, in fact.

"That's swell," she curled her lips. "Now, this might h-" before she finished her warning, and before the lieutenant could brace himself, she pressed a cold square of cotton wool over the gauze and pressed down - pressed down hard.

"Damna!"

The battlefield swelled with smoke and anger. Flashes of flame and black smog filled the sky, the rattle of the anti-air craft batteries rumbled into the soil. The front line was in full swing, and William ran along the bottom of the trench, head low even though he was fifteen feet below the firing line, and feet caked in so much mud he had forgotten he had boots on at all.

"Captain, captain!" he roared, making his way around a left turn, and into a small bunker where the battalion leaders made their home. He nearly careened straight into the company commander, stood opposite the captain's rickety desk in salute. The two man broke off their conversation to turn and stare expectantly at the source of the interruption.

"What is it, lieutenant?"

"Mortar fire is falling on the eastern quarter, sir. We have heavy casualties. The men need, well," he looked at the company commander, "the men need guidance, sir." He frowned. He was a competent soldier, a solid engineer, and a grounded leader of his own squadron. He came undone when the whole of Normandy needed direction.

The captain nodded.

The flashback faded as the pain in William's leg died. The room returned to view, it's familiar whitewashed roof, cracked beneath the thundering descent of mortars from the early days of the war tracing patterns that soothed and calmed him every night. He slouched back into the bed, his muscles slowly relaxing, his brow, sodden with sweat, wiped clean with a sleeve.

"William?" Ann Marie asked, forgetting her training to care for customer, not charter. "You're not okay at all...are ya..."

The lieutenant shook his head, white as a sheet lips pursing as the wound finally stopped throbbing. She had dressed it so well it quickly lost it's potency.

"Here," she walked to the adjacent bed, picked up the battered old threadbare chair, and slid it to the side of the bed. The second she sat in it, the bolt of sunlight from William's window threw her into a new light, and he could not help but smile again - this time, there was no need to hide it. "Let me tell you a story about why I became a nurse..."

William had never listened so intently in all his life.

Summer3ve · Feb 6, 2013

Ann Marie looking at the young soldier, as her mind struggled to find the words to speak. She knew the exact reason she ahd become a nurse, but never really told anyone. Then again, nobody ever really needed to know. She leaned on the bed a bit putting her head beside his knee. She looked back at him and smiled some. "I guess you can say it began when my mother and sister became ill. My father had been working for about two months as a part of the TVA," She explained, "The TVA being a program from the President in hopes of getting work for men along the Tennessee Rivers constructing dams. Anyway, we still never held any money enough for a doctor to come on down to the small shack, you could call it, that we were livin' in. With my younger brother being too young and my ma and sister too ill to tend for themselves that is where I learned how to treat the sick."

She gave him another weak smile of her own. "Long and sab story short, my mother never did recover and we ended up burying her at the town graveyard and my sister, Michelle, well she hasn't ever really been the same." Her hand gave his a tight squeeze as she sat up off the bed and wipe off his forehead a bit. "I guess you can say, I became a nurse in hopes that other people's family member can return on home. It's not the best thing to loose someone," She said laughing a bit. "I still remember the day I told Daddy I was goin' off to war. You should have heard him yellin' and grouchin' about how war is not a place for women and the such. However, I could never see myself working in a factory. I would much rather be seeing the difference I am making rather than just hearing 'bout it."

She laughed a little bit at her own memory and started to look back at William. He was rather easy to talk too, but maybe that was the fact that he never really had anyone talk to him in nearly two months. Ann Marie placed the rag becak into the bowl. A lot of the other men had drifted off to sleep and hadn't bothered to listen. "Yeah, they y'all get whatever I can afford to send them, My Daddy, brother and Michelle. Of course, it probably won't be long until Micheal is over here. That is what scares me the most. If he joins how soon will I see him?" She bit her lower lip a little bit and took her spot back on the bed.

"Why don't you tell me your story? Anyone special waiting for you back home?" Her pulled the blanket back up over his legs and lower waist. Her eyes looking back at him. She watched stared back at him and gave his shoulder a couple of pats. "A good lookin' man like yourself can't possible be alone." She let out a light and started to lean a bit over him and she listened to his story. It wasn't often she had heard about what happened long before men came here. Normally it was just how they got to be here.

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