Still - h.s (au)

Chapter 38

Grace

January 1945

It took me nearly two months to finally arrive home.

Two months.

When I stepped inside that truck in the north of Italy, I never imagined how hard the journey home would be. Getting out of Italy was, surprisingly, the easy part, as we then sook refuge in Switzerland, which was a safe haven for us. But what we weren't expecting was that our whole crew would get sick in the meantime.

I have been a nurse for four years and I have never seen anything like that in my life. The days we spent driving through the country roads of Italy, barely eating anything and drinking from the rivers caused some of us to fall sick with a stomach bug, and it was one of the worst things I have ever seen.

Almost everyone, including doctors and nurses, suffered from vomiting, diarrhea, high fevers, and severe dehydration which caused the death of the most vulnerable. This set us back several weeks as we couldn't continue our journey with half of the people sick. 

Luckily, I was one of the few that did not catch anything, and I had to remain away in a tiny room right next to the hospital with other three girls who were in the same situation as I was in.

Nina fell ill, but Charlotte did not, so she joined the Swiss nurses to help take care of the sick. I could not see them for weeks just for precaution, it would be terrible if I feel sick while I was pregnant. The other girls who were sharing the room with me were foreign girls, expecting a baby as well, two polish girls and a Russian girl, so language was a problem. I barely spoke or did anything during the time we spent there.

For a while I thought I was going crazy in that tiny bedroom.

It has been two months since I last heard of Harry, and the absence of news was killing me. While we were traveling, we did not have access to any form of news it was too dangerous for us to turn on the radio. So we did not know what was happening in the war, but as soon as we finally landed in England we were flooded with new information.

The region where we were in the North of Italy had suffered several push backs, and some of our soldiers had been captured and sent to labour camps and many others had died. The decision of sending away soldiers right before the attack was being heavily criticized by the common people and the higher ranks of the military are being constantly judged for their actions.

All I wanted was to know how Harry and Ben were. But I had no way of finding out more about them unless they contacted me. But that would only happen once I made it home, well, to Scotland.

Christmas came and went and we were still stuck in Switzerland, but when the new year arrived we finally managed to resume the journey home. It was so cold, and I had been wearing the same clothes for weeks. I was wet and freezing the whole time, at one point I thought I would not make it past a cold night.

But eventually, we arrived in England. And it was such a bittersweet feeling.

The last time I had been here was in 1941. After I found that Harry was alive, I dreamed about this moment almost every day, the day we would come home for good to start our life together.

Now here I am, pregnant and alone once more.

Nina and Charlotte offered to let me stay with them at their family houses in the South of England, but I could not accept it. Harry asked me to go to Scotland, so there is where I am going, even though I am afraid of what I am going to find out.