Duchess

Chapter 7

The French countryside, one hour after the plane crash, 1941

"Maureen!" I screamed as I dragged myself through a field smelling of burning lavender and metal, "I'm coming, I promise! Just hold on!"
     Blood dripping down my face, I held my broken ribs with one hand and crawled towards the wreckage of another one of the planes. I had crashed almost a mile away and had been searching other downed planes for survivors for almost an hour.
I was about to die of exhaustion and blood loss, but I couldn't just stop looking. These were my friends, and I felt responsible for it all.
Maureen's agonized cries echoed through the flickering of flames in the Mustang plane's shell, and I couldn't stop the tears from falling.
      Survive now, I thought, cry later. It was useless.
My legs had been crushed by the control panel on impact, and blood continued pouring from the back of my head, where I had painfully removed a piece of shrapnel from when the plane was hit. Burns streaked across my back.
"Louisa," Maureen said weakly as I found her hand in the twisted wreckage and climbed over to see her, "you're bleeding badly."
I smiled a little and whispered, "I'm an American, sweetheart, I'll be alright."
It has been our joke for months to reference my nationality when something went wrong. The thought of it now made her smile, and that was all I needed.
"I'm stuck," she said, frustratedly trying to lift the piece of the wing on top of her.
"Don't tire yourself out," I grunted as I pulled it away and helped her crawl out from under it, "We have a long way to-"
I froze. Her legs were a bloody mess—much worse than mine were—and I could see bone piercing out from the skin. She paled at the sight.
Maureen's adrenaline seemed to fail her, and it was as though all the pain that had previously been blocked out suddenly forced itself into the forefront of her mind.
"Louisa, I can't-"
"Shh," I said weakly, wincing as my ribs ached with every breath, "you're going to be fine. I can help carry you while we look for other survivors."
She put a hand to my face and clumsily wiped blood from dripping into my eyes with a sad look on her face. "You can't even walk, Lou: you can't carry me. The Frenchman you spoke to on the radio...does he know what happened?"
Tears streamed down my face as I began dragging her away from the burning remains of the plane, and I panted, "He was American. I told him we were going down, but didn't get to tell him any coordinates. Who knows how far we are from the airstrip. I've walked almost a mile already."
"And no others?"
"I searched two other planes and found Jane and Ethel's bodies. Another plane had exploded and was just a pile of ash. My fault."
She shook her head and took my hand to comfort me. "You know that's not-"
Gunshots screamed all around us, and I covered Maureen with my body, trembling with fear as I covered my head with my hands.
"Sie sind Frauen," I heard as the bullets stopped and footsteps approached. German soldiers. My heart sank.
"What are they saying?" Maureen whispered as I discreetly pulled a shard of shattered metal into my knees as I pulled away from her.
"They're surprised that we're women."
She gave me a worried glance as a gun was pressed to my head.
"Hände hoch," one of the four Nazi soldiers barked, "Hands up."
I obeyed, covering the hidden piece of metal with my legs.
"Du sprichst Deutsch?"
I didn't answer. He backhanded me hard, sending me reeling on my knees.
     "Ja," I replied reluctantly. My mother had lived her whole childhood in Austria, and I learned the language intensively as an elective during training. I spoke German almost as well as English.
"Und sie?" one of the men added, gesturing with his gun to Maureen, "And her?"
I shook my head, and Maureen seemed to understand what we were talking about.
"I speak Spanish," she offered, but the men weren't impressed. They were going through the wreckage of her plane, looking for something of use.
If Nazi soldiers had already been able to find us, perhaps the American working with the Resistance intelligence would come quickly. That was my only hope.
Suddenly, the gun moved from my head to Maureen, and the soldier cocked the pistol without hesitation. I lunged between her and the gun, and screamed, "Nein, nein, bitte!"
My sudden outburst stopped the man in his tracks, and Maureen whispered, "Louisa! That is perhaps the most bloody American thing I've seen all day. Don't do something foolish just to save me, sweetheart. I'm half-dead anyway."
She smiled a little, but I couldn't. The realization hit me that she was right. She would probably die before they were able to register us as prisoners of war. And I would quickly follow.
"Aufstehen," one of them said.
"He's telling us to-"
"Get up," Maureen grimaced, "I figured. Help me."
She noticed the makeshift weapon hidden under my legs, and swept her hands through the debris, pulling a piece of burned plexiglass of her own close to her.
"You take the one on the left," I muttered as I helped her to her feet and let her lean heavily against me. Her legs were covered in blood, and I noticed a gruesome wound on her shoulder.
"There's three others, Lou," she grunted, "Do you plan to take all of them?"
I smirked and gripped her hand in pain with the hand not holding the shard of metal. "Not sure yet."
"Hör auf zu reden!" the man in charge yelled, "Stop talking!"
"I'm going to work on getting the guns first," I breathed, "Go for him after me."
The soldier took a hand away from his gun and reached to handcuff me, and I seized the opportunity.
Lunging for him, I drove the metal into his neck and kicked the gun out of his hand, crying out in pain with every movement.
Maureen had already taken down the unsuspecting left soldier, and was sprawled on top of his body as she tried to stand again. The bloody piece of glass in her hand trembled.
"Nice job," I panted, impressed.
I picked up the gun in the burned grass and shot at the man attacking Maureen, hitting his forearm. A soldier came up behind me and wrapped his arm around my throat to strangle me and wrestled the pistol from my hand.
The burns on my back sent pain through my spine as I fought to get away, adrenaline doing more harm than good but at least allowing me to forget the plane crash and focus on the current situation. I dreaded the shell-shocked mess I would be later, if I ever made it that far.
      Maureen shot the man attacking her, and he collapsed at her feet as she turned her gun to me and the Nazi holding me.
      It was too close. If she tried to shoot him, it would likely kill me as well. The soldier knew this and pulled me against him as a human shield, his hands still around my throat. I felt ready to pass out, but Maureen looked worse than I did.
     I didn't know what to do. British female military training didn't cover hand-to-hand combat in an attempt to save you and your dying friend from becoming prisoners of war.
     "Don't shoot yet," I mouthed, falling like dead weight in the man's arms. He stumbled forward and I reached out, grabbing his legs and pulling them out from under him.
"Hündin!" he swore at me, punching me hard in the face.
     "Let me shoot him!" Maureen cried, stumbling closer. I shook my head and let him punch me again, grabbing his arm as his fist connected to my jaw and pulling him forward into the ground.
     Using the momentum I had, I pushed myself up and elbowed him hard in the back, rolling away enough for Maureen to get a clear shot. The bullet made it's impact. We both collapsed.
     Breathing hard, I overcame my adrenaline paralysis and crawled over to Maureen, a stunned smile on my face.
     "You just did that," I managed.
     "That was all you."
     "That's what every war hero says."
     She playfully reached up and socked me in the shoulder, and I laughed shakily. We were both in shock, but it was better than hysteria.
     "We ought to look for other survivors," I said, holding my ribs in pain. Blood dripped down my neck beneath my white shirt, and I loosened my black tie to breathe a little easier.
     "I don't even see any smoke on the horizon, Lou," she panted, "They could all be miles away."
A low rumble began to grow from the south and a US-made Jeep began making it's way through the fields of lavender.
     I jumped up, stumbling through the field to reach the truck. Two men sat in the front--one older and one in his early twenties, and Ruby and Jennie sat in the cargo hold behind them. Tears streaked their faces and they both stood up at the sight of me.
    "First Officer Adams! You need-"
     "Maur—First Officer Dunlop is over there," I stammered, losing all sense of coherence in my thoughts, "You have to help her."
     The young man in the driver's seat jumped out, wearing a dark green sweater over his white collared shirt, but heavy-duty military boots on his feet.
     I collapsed in his arms, despite myself, and let him carry me into the Jeep. Maureen's name was the only word on my lips, and I gripped the man's arm as he set me in his seat and began to leave.
     "It's going to be okay, Miss Adams," he stammered in his comforting American-Irish accent, "I'm going to get Miss Dunlop."
     "I'm about to pass out," I breathed, "so you have to promise to treat her first. She's-"
     He squeezed my hand firmly and nodded. "We will. Mr. Bernard has already called in some more doctors so you'll both be treated. Just rest."
     The man jogged away after saying something in French to the older man, Mr. Bernard, and I was unconscious before I could translate it in my head.